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THERE WAS AN EMPTY LOT between the bar and the inn, with eight windows on the inn facing the bar and three in the bar facing the inn. All the inn windows had been broken out, but they could see no faces or movement behind the windows.
Lucas, Laurent, and Peters crouched behind the bar windows, looking across at the inn, and Lucas asked Laurent, “What do you think?”
“If we can take the high ground, we can get them out of the hardware store and the blue house—but if they get up on that roof, we’ve got a big problem.”
Lucas nodded. “That’s what I think. We got to get them out of there.”
“You got a plan?”
“I do, but it’s sorta horseshit.”
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LAURENT CALLED IN the deputies who’d been assigned to cover Lucas’s group as they went for the bar. Once inside, he gave them their directions—they’d be covering the windows of the inn, both first and second floors, and the edge of the roof. While he was doing that, Lucas called Frisell at the bridge, and when he’d told Frisell what he wanted, Frisell said, “We can do that. When do you want it?”
“Stay by the phone. When we’re cocked and ready to go, I’ll call you.”
“We’re all set here. Go anytime. Good luck.”
Lucas, Laurent, and Peters went out the back door of the bar, and edged close to the corner nearest the inn. Peters said, “I’m the tiniest bit scared. Nothing to quit over, though.”
“Think about what a great fuckin’ story this’ll make—we’ll be living off this for years,” Laurent said.
Lucas said, “Shut up,” and called Frisell. He said, “Anytime you’re ready. Aim for the ceilings.”
Three seconds later, a barrage of gunfire hit the second floor on the other side of the inn, the three cops in the creek bed deliberately aiming at a sharp angle up through the windows, hoping the slugs would embed in the roof and not go ricocheting around inside the upper floor.
As soon as the shooting started, Lucas, Laurent, and Peters dashed for the corner of the inn, where they couldn’t easily be seen by anyone inside. They crouched at the corner for a minute, until the gunfire stopped.
Behind them, in the hotel, they could see the rest of their group at the windows, ready to open fire if anyone showed at the windows of the inn. In the sudden silence after the spurt of gunfire, Lucas said, “I’m going to peek,” and at that moment, a woman began screaming on the second floor and then a man began shouting: it didn’t sound like terror, it sounded like an argument.
Lucas peeked through a broken ground-floor window, a quick half second. Saw nobody, dropped to his knees, and waited. No reaction. Looked again, this time a longer peek, then another, then he whispered to Laurent and Peters, “You’re not going to believe this, but there’s nobody in there. At all. It looks like it used to be a kitchen, and there’s nobody in there.”
“Can you get through the window?” Laurent asked.
“I could if we could get the window open.” Though the glass had been broken out, the wooden crossbars that held the glass panes were still intact.
Laurent was the lightest of the three of them, so Peters made a stirrup with his hands and boosted Laurent high enough that he could reach the lock on the double-hung window, and turn it open. When that was done, he dropped back to the ground; the window had been painted shut, but with some careful pressure on the side bars, they were able to get it loose enough to lift.
Lucas went through the window first, with his pistol, which would be handier than a rifle in the close confines of the kitchen. The wooden floor squeaked underfoot, but he managed to tiptoe to the kitchen door and peek out into the lobby. Nobody there—nothing but a vacant spot where a check-in desk used to be, a pile of what looked like discarded curtains, and stairs going up to the second floor. The whole place smelled of mold and wood rot; a bird’s nest was stuck on a corner beam, with a little pile of black-and-white-speckled droppings on the floor beneath it.
Lucas motioned to Laurent, still outside the window, and he pushed himself through, followed by Peters. They opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the lobby: nobody there. The windows on both sides of the building had been broken, as though somebody had been stationed there, but had gone somewhere else.
There had been two restrooms down a hall that led to a back door. The doors had been scavenged off the restrooms, and they stood open to the hall. Lucas took off his shoes and tiptoed down the hall, checked the two, found them empty—somebody had taken out all the fixtures, including the lights and paper-towel dispensers. The remains of a condom dispenser still hung from a wall in the men’s room, but it had been smashed open and now looked like a toaster that had been hit by a train.
Lucas tiptoed back down the hallway, and called the other two men together. They could still hear a man and a woman, apparently arguing, and a third woman crying, and Lucas whispered, “Sounds like things are tough up there. I need you guys to get on both sides of the stairs, hiding below banisters. If you see a guy with a gun, shoot him.”
“Where’ll you be?” Laurent asked.
“I’m going to slide up the stairs,” Lucas said. “I did it once before. If they stay busy up there, I should be able to take them. You gotta take care of me, because if that guy’s got a gun, and I believe he does, and if he walks up to the top of the stairs and looks down at me, I’m gonna be SOL.”
“This does not sound entirely sane,” Peters said.
Lucas grinned at him. “Well, what can I tell you? We need to get them out of there. And that crying woman up there . . . something’s going on.”
Laurent nodded, and said, “Show us where you want us.”