John Lutz - In for the Kill

Pearl's clamshell phone snapped closed with the force of powerful jaws.

Quinn didn't slow down, but he took his eyes off traffic for a second to glance over at her. "Trouble?"

"Not unless I let it become trouble."

Another curious glance. "Jones?"

"My mother."

Quinn nodded grimly and drove on.

Quinn flashed his shield for the uniform standing next to a radio car that was skewed sideways in the street and blocking traffic. The cop stepped back and waved for Quinn to drive around the car. This required putting a front wheel up on the curb, but Quinn didn't seem to mind. Pearl placed both hands on the dashboard to keep from getting bounced around.

He pulled the Lincoln in at the curb half a block up and just around the corner from the Waverton Hotel. The cross street was blocked, too, by a black Traffic Enforcement car. More than a dozen radio cars and two unmarked vans were parked at haphazard angles. Half a dozen SWAT guys were standing in a knot. About a dozen uniformed cops in bulky flak jackets were grouped near them. The SWAT people had dark, stubby automatic rifles. Some of the uniforms had shotguns. Quinn recognized Officer Vern Shults and his female partner, Nancy Weaver. Shults was nearing retirement and shouldn't have been there. He was armed only with his regulation nine. The intrepid and promiscuous Weaver was carrying a shotgun. She spotted Quinn and Pearl and waved to them. A small woman with a backpack was standing off to the side, talking into what looked like a recorder.

This was much more backup than Quinn had requested. They were here to arrest a killer, not start a war. What the hell was Renz-

There was Renz, standing near one of the vans alongside a tall, blonde woman Quinn recognized as a local cable TV news anchor. As he and Pearl walked toward them, a brightly lettered news van entered the blocked street and parked at the opposite curb.

"Good," Renz said, as Quinn and Pearl approached. "Now we can get to this."

"Because we're here, or the press?" Quinn asked.

Renz ignored the question and said something into the two-way clipped to his lapel. The anchorwoman, a blonde whose name Quinn remembered now was Mary Mulanphy, smiled faintly but knowingly.

"Who's the woman with the SWAT guys?" Quinn asked.

"Cindy Sellers of City Beat," Renz said. "We owe her. She gets the print scoop."

Quinn wondered if newspaper people themselves still used the word scoop.

There was activity among the backup cops. A couple of car engines started, and a radio car backed swiftly toward where the one-way street was blocked.

Fedderman appeared out of nowhere and said, "He's still in his room."

Renz tucked in his chin and spoke into his lapel again to relay that information on his two-way. A two-man crew with a shoulder-mounted camera emerged from the TV news van, moving slowly and gingerly under the burden of technology, like a team of almost-drunks walking with exaggerated precision. Staying more or less on course, they crossed the street to get closer. They stopped about twenty feet away, and Mary Mulanphy stood out in the middle of the street and began speaking into a cordless microphone, facing the camera. Quinn knew he and the cops around him were part of the shot's background.

Renz spoke into his lapel yet again, saying exactly what he'd said the last time and apparently getting an identical answer. Was this one for real, or was it for the media?

Quinn looked across the street and saw that the SWAT team and most of the uniformed cops had disappeared, and one of the unmarked vans was gone. Cindy Sellers had disappeared, too.

After a few minutes, Mulanphy backpedaled smoothly in her high heels to where she'd started from, stepped deftly aside, and nodded to Renz. "We're still taping." Quinn noticed she was the only one who didn't have perspiration stains on her clothes. She in no way seemed bothered by the sun's glare or the heat radiating from the summer-baked concrete.

"Traffic has just been interdicted up the block from the hotel," Renz said loudly and with crisp enunciation, looking directly at a somewhat surprised Quinn. "We have all possible escape routes blocked. It's time to start the operation. Main investigators will be accompanied by uniformed officers Shults and Weaver." Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman glanced at one another. Renz said, "I want everyone to please be careful. I don't want anyone hurt." He looked toward the camera, pretending to notice it for the first time, and raised a palm toward it, shaking his head. "We don't have time for that now." Loudly, back to Quinn: "This is a go."

Quinn motioned for his team to follow, then walked toward the corner. By the time he'd turned it, Pearl and Fedderman were on either side of him. Shults and Weaver, in their bulky flak jackets, Weaver with her shotgun, brought up the rear.

Almost the rear. Actually, Mary Mulanphy and her camera crew brought up the rear, about fifty feet behind the others. Renz had stayed back at the rendezvous point to issue executive orders.

Pearl's throat was dry. She felt like an actor in some kind of eerie movie as they approached the hotel's marquee. The uniformed doorman who sometimes stood outside was nowhere in sight. All traffic, vehicular and pedestrian, had disappeared from the block. She hoped Jeb, up in his room, wouldn't notice the sudden absence of traffic noise from directly below. Then she remembered his room didn't face the street. They could catch him unawares.

They had to.

Without hesitating, they turned and entered the hotel lobby.

It wasn't much cooler inside.

"You okay, Pearl?"

Quinn's voice. He sounded farther away from her than just a few feet.

She nodded.

The lobby was deserted except for a guy in a gray business suit who'd been undercover but now had his shield displayed dangling in its leather case from his breast pocket. He unbuttoned his suit coat, like an Old West gunfighter getting ready to quick draw. There was no one behind the desk. Another plainclothes cop stood stone-faced and unmoving in the archway to the coffee shop.

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.