The elevators were dead so the assault force rapidly took the carpeted stairs to the fourth floor, where Jeb Jones was registered.
'Goddamnit!' Pearl heard the blonde anchorwoman whose name she couldn't remember say behind them, and there was a muffled noise like somebody tripping up the steps. Pearl figured that would be cut out of the tape. Maybe the poor guy who had to lug the camera up the stairs and keep it aimed and focused had tripped. She didn't look back to see what had happened. At the third-floor landing, where there were two SWAT guys with automatic rifles, Pearl drew her nine-millimeter Glock from its belt holster and started concentrating hard.
The fourth floor was unnaturally quiet except for their footfalls on the soft carpet.
As they approached Jeb's room, Pearl said, 'I'll knock. If he looks through the peephole and sees me, he'll open the door.'
'Don't be a fool, Pearl,' Quinn told her. 'Let these guys earn their money.'
She glanced back where he was motioning and was surprised to see that the two SWAT team members from the third-floor landing had followed them up.
'This is a media show for Renz!' she whispered angrily to Quinn.
'Tell no one,' he said to her softly, maybe smiling.
'If they shoot Jeb-'
The two SWAT guys moved out ahead of her and she shut up. They looked back at Quinn, who nodded.
The SWAT guys went in hard. One of them had a weighted battering ram slung by straps over his shoulder and crashed the door open, and the other tossed in a flash-bang grenade. There was a deafening sharp explosion that Pearl knew would do no damage but was meant to temporarily freeze whoever was in the room. Using those precious first few seconds, the grenade tosser charged inside. The door rammer followed. They were shouting over and over that they were police, making all the noise they could to maximize the element of surprise, and because they were revved. Behind Pearl, the blond anchorwoman was speaking frantically. And beyond her, tiny Cindy Sellers had rematerialized and was yammering into her recorder.
Jesus! Pearl thought.
Gotta get in there!
Time was on fast-forward and might leave her behind.
Her heart hammering like a machine gun in her rib cage, she passed Quinn and Fedderman on their way into the hotel room. Weaver somehow squeezed ahead of her, flak jacket and all, smelling of stale sweat and cheap perfume, shotgun leveled.
Don't you shoot him, bitch!
Pearl held her Glock pressed tight against her thigh as she entered and glanced around.
At first she thought the room had been unoccupied, and she felt a great surge of relief.
Then a hand appeared above the narrow space between the bed and the wall, fingers spread wide.
Another hand.
The smoke-fogged room suddenly became silent.
Jeb stood up slowly, surprise and fear on his face, but not panic. When he saw Pearl, his lips parted as if he were about to say something, and his expression of surprise turned to one of disappointment. Pearl felt for a moment as if she might begin to sob.
Damn it, hold on to yourself!
She swallowed, not liking how loud a sound it made.
Pearl knew Quinn had decided to put on a show for Renz. It was, after all, part of the deal. He held his old. 38 police special revolver in both hands, pointed in Jeb's direction but low enough so that if he fired, a bullet would go into the bed.
'Sherman Kraft, we have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Marilyn Nelson. You have the right…'
At the mention of the name Sherman Kraft, Jeb suddenly looked stunned, and Pearl knew in heart as well as mind that they had the right man. Her wrong man.
Again.
But they'd solved the case. They'd stopped the killing. And she'd been part of it.
She had her emotions tightly tied and knotted as she listened to Quinn finish reading Jeb-or Sherman-his rights.
Fedderman gripped one of Jeb's raised arms and led him out from behind the bed, then turned him around and yanked both his arms down behind his back.
Pearl stepped forward and handcuffed him.
She had on her cop's face when he was led away and they exchanged glances. She wasn't sure if he knew she was the one who'd cuffed him.
'Have you anything to say?' the blond anchorwoman asked Jeb, dancing nimbly alongside and trying to keep up.
He stared straight ahead. 'Only to my attorney.'
Pearl thought, Bastard!
49
Sherman Kraft sat at a small oak table bolted to the floor in a precinct interrogation room. Behind him stood a uniformed officer with his arms crossed in a way that displayed bulging biceps. Shavers was his name, Quinn remembered. He was a lean-waisted black man who'd won a weightlifting championship while in the academy. Quinn figured he had to be well into his fifties by now, but he didn't look it.
Besides the two unmoving figures and the table in the room there were four hard wooden chairs. They looked and were uncomfortable. It was in one of them that Sherman Kraft sat-uncomfortably.
Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman were standing outside the room with Renz, looking in through the observation window. Kraft couldn't see out, but he knew they were there, of course, having watched plenty of TV cop shows. From time to time he glanced in their direction.
He'd stuck to his word about waiting for his attorney, but surprised them by asking for a public defender. A call had been made to the Legal Aid Society.
'He doesn't look worried,' Fedderman said.
'Concerned, though,' Renz said.
Pearl found it difficult to connect this pleasant-featured, mild-looking man with the killer who'd dismembered his victims and stacked their body parts in ritual fashion in their bathtubs. More and more she saw the world as a series of facades, and it scared the hell out of her.
The attorney from Legal Aid turned out to be Lisa Pareta, a woman in her forties with square-cut gray bangs framing a square-featured, ruddy face. She had blue eyes that always seemed to be red-rimmed and swollen, as if they hurt. Quinn knew her to be smart and tough.
Renz glanced over at her approaching figure. She wore a gray pantsuit, sensible black shoes, and was carrying a worn black leather briefcase. She had a confident smile and was swinging the briefcase in her right arm with each stride as if she wouldn't mind bonking someone with it.
'Ball breaker,' Renz said in a low voice.
Pearl thought he had a point, but what did he expect?
'Lisa!' Renz's jowly face shaped itself into a smile as he stepped forward to meet her.
Looking serious, flushed, and slightly out of breath, Pareta pretty much ignored him and said, 'That my client in there?'
'The one without the uniform,' Renz said. Before she could ask, he handed her the arrest warrant and she scanned it and gave it back.
She looked at all of them as if they were the suspects and said, 'I'm assuming he's been read his rights and hasn't yet been interrogated.'
'We tried,' Renz said honestly. 'He's been silent as the furniture, waiting for his champion.'
Pareta moved closer to the observation window and seemed to study her new client for a moment. Pearl
