Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

She nodded, her fear more apparent.

"Do it."

The manager summoned an employee named Doug to the front desk using the public address system. A moment later, the man stepped in behind the reception desk.

"Call," Boldt said sternly, indicating the phone. "Please," he added, somewhat sarcastically. Mulwright was out there preparing his team. He didn't trust him to wait. "We need to do this quickly."

Two heavily armed ERT operatives entered the motel's north fire stairs exactly five minutes after the last of the manager's phone calls. Two others ascended the building's south stairs at the exact same moment. Wearing protective vests, Boldt, Lee, Hu, and Bobbie Gaynes entered the lobby, passing the gathering of evacuated families who, until that moment, had believed their rooms' smoke detectors were malfunctioning. With the stairwells covered, the Boldt team split up, Lee guarding the lobby, Boldt, Gaynes, and Hu dividing up to ride the two elevators so that Flek could not slip past.

Boldt had in his possession a master key. One of the ERT guys carried the steel ram, to be used to take out the door jamb's interior security hoop. Boldt's pulse hovered around a hundred and twenty.

Mulwright, acting as CO-command officer-choreographed each team's movements to coordinate perfectly, so that as Boldt stepped off the elevator on the third floor, one member of each stairwell team was already silently running toward him and room 312.

In a flurry of hand signals, Boldt indicated he would clear 312's lock, to be followed by the ram. The order of entry was the two ERT men, then Hu and Gaynes, and finally Boldt.

The door's lock mechanism made a noise as Boldt turned the key, any element of surprise lost. The second or two that it took the ram to explode the interior hardware felt fatally long to Boldt.

The two black-clad ERT men lobbed both a stun grenade-"a dumb bomb"-and a phosphorus charge- "white lightning"-a fraction of a second before rushing the room, weapons ready in the familiar leapfrog dance of advance and cover. They arrived to find Courtney Samway lying on the bed in underwear and bra, her nose and ears both bleeding from the dumb bomb, her hands frantically waving behind her blindness due to the white lightning, her screams penetrating even the cement block wall so that they echoed not only down the stairs, but out onto the street. The TV was tuned to a pay-per-view movie where a police gunfight raged. Within seconds, the room was crowded with all but Boldt, as the team searched under both beds, through the room's only closet, and its small bathroom.

Boldt was first to notice the communicating door that connected with the adjacent room. He pointed it out, picked up the ram from the hallway floor and signaled for his team to divide, all the while his mind grinding through the reality of the situation: If Flek had taken the adjacent room, then the manager, on Boldt's orders, had just asked him to come down to the lobby because of a smoke alarm problem. Flek would have fled the room immediately, either remaining inside the motel, or disguising himself and slipping out unseen.

The team raided the communicating room from both sides simultaneously. They found an oily pizza box and the recently opened package that Samway had delivered. Empty. SID would later find the fingerprints to confirm it. Bryce Abbott Flek had escaped. And Boldt had helped him to do so.

" The minute he got the phone call from the manager, he pulled on a pair of boxer shorts, threw a towel over his arm, and headed down to the pool," Samway said from the other side of the cigarette-scarred interrogation table in the box. Mulwright, Boldt and Gaynes occupied the other side of the table.

Samway wore an extra-large black police windbreaker to cover herself. The effects of the stun grenade had required a visit to the emergency room, costing Boldt precious time. She had punctured an eardrum and wore some foam padding over her left ear, but other than that was medically sound.

"The rifle?" Boldt asked.

"I ain't saying nothing about no rifle," she replied. "Not until I see me a lawyer."

"Young lady," Boldt addressed her, "you are in legal quicksand. The more you move, the deeper you sink. Do you understand? We've been through this attorney thing before. One has been assigned to you and is on the way, just like last time. But just like last time, you are far better off to cooperate now and save yourself some heartache."

"In a backpack. He carried it with him."

Samway continually glared angrily at Gaynes, recognizing her from their pool encounter. After a long stare she complained, "Dyke bitch." She told Boldt, "She hit on me!"

Boldt wondered if Flek had walked right past the front desk, right past that one-way glass in the office. It seemed unlikely. He said, "I would have seen him in the lobby."

"There's an entrance to the pool from the weight room on the second floor," Jilly Hu informed Boldt.

"And we didn't hear about it?" Boldt thundered.

"We knew about it," Mulwright countered. "It's on the floor plans of the building," he said, referring to the city fire department's data. "We re-deployed assets to cover the various exits. Higher priority."

Boldt complained, "You did this after the suspect had already fled the building."

"Hey," Mulwright countered. "Don't lay that shit on me! You were the one wanted to wait. I was the go-guy. If we'd have gone, like I said we should'a, then it wouldn't be this bimbo in the chair, it would be our boy."

"Who you calling a bimbo, Moon Face?" Samway countered, shouting because her voice could not adjust to the temporary loss of hearing in the one ear.

"You, Lap Dancer. I'm calling you a bimbo, and you know what? I'm wrong. Bimbo's a compliment to a slut like you. You're street trash, whoring for some asshole who goes around beating on people and heisting VCRs. You think that's a man you been spreading 'em for? You think he didn't know what was coming, leaving you behind in the room like that? He could'a got you killed! You know that? You understand that? You think he cared? He tell you the police were coming? Did he? No. He didn't, did he? I can see it on your face. He burned you. He sacrificed you, Sweet Tits. And you know what? He's laughing over some beer somewhere. He skates while you get the dumb bomb. And here you are de fending him, protecting him. Give me a fucking break!"

"What do you mean, beating on people?" Of everything Mulwright had said to her, this is what stuck.

Boldt said, "We mentioned the assaults the last time we talked to you."

She squirmed. Maybe she'd been high the last time. Maybe she didn't remember.

Boldt explained, "We think he broke the neck of a woman police officer."

"He'll break your neck someday when he's tired of what's between your legs," Mulwright added.

"Dream on, Pizza Face. He don't get tired of it. You ever seen me dance?"

"The only dancing you'll be doing where you're going will be for some bull dyke who's got you in her love pack."

For the first time, Samway's composure cracked. The men missed it, but Bobbie Gaynes recognized the woman's vulnerability from their conversation in the elevator.

"You realize that, don't you?" Gaynes said, cutting off Boldt before he could speak. "Sergeant Mulwright is right about that. You play dumb with us and you'll be locked up. You go to trial. With what we've got, you're an accessory to first-degree assault. With your record, you're screwed. You'll be sentenced to an adult women's correction facility-medium security, most likely-six to a cell, thirty in the showers at the same time. And the hell of it is, not only will the dykes make claim to you, make you do things you've never dreamed could be done by two women, but the screws-the guards, men mostly-will make you go down on them for a pack of cigarettes, a pack of gum, anything and everything you want. And you'll want it all-but they're the ones who get it." She waited a moment and informed the other, "We try to fix the system. Reform it. We really do. But I'm not so sure it's even possible anymore. You know? No matter how hard we try, the bigger women are going to take lovers, and a bad screw is going to slip through every now and then."