Middle Of Nowhere

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.

C H A P T E R

40

"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."