“Mr. Tenning, you parked your car in a fire zone, remember? August fifteenth of last year. You failed to appear in court.”
“You want to arrest me for that?”
“Open up, Mr. Tenning.”
The doorknob turned, and the door whined open. Tenning’s look of annoyance changed to anger as he saw our guns pointed at his chest.
He slammed the door in our faces.
“Kick it in,” I said.
Conklin kicked twice beside the knob assembly, and the door splintered, swung wide open.
We took cover on both sides of the door frame, but not before I saw Tenning standing ten feet away, bracing his back against the wall.
He was holding his Colt .38 in both hands, pointing it at us.
“You’re not taking me in,” he said. “I’m too tired, and I’m just not up for it.”
Chapter 105
MY HEART RATE ROCKETED. Sweat ran down the inside of my shirt. I pivoted on my right foot so that I was standing square in the doorway.
I held my stance, legs apart, my Glock trained on Tenning. Even though I was wearing a vest, he could cap me with a head shot. And the paper-thin plasterboard walls wouldn’t protect my team.
“Drop your weapon, asshole!” I shouted. “I’m one second away from drilling a hole through your heart.”
“Four armed cops on a traffic warrant? That’s a laugh! You think I’m stupid?”
“You are stupid, Tenning, if you want to die over a fifty-dollar ticket.”
Tenning’s eyes flicked from my weapon to the three other muzzles that were aimed at him. He muttered, “What a pain in the ass.”
Then his gun thudded to the floor.
Instantly we swarmed into the small room. A chair tipped over, and a desktop crashed to the ground.
I kicked Tenning’s gun toward the door as Conklin spun him around. He threw him against the wall and cuffed him.
“You’re under arrest for failure to appear,” Conklin said, panting, “and for interfering with a police officer.”
I read Tenning his rights. My voice was hoarse from the stress and the realization of wh
at I’d just done.
“Good work, everyone,” I said, feeling almost faint.
“You okay, Lindsay?” McNeil asked, putting a beefy hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah. Thanks, Cappy,” I said, thinking how this arrest could have turned into a bloodbath — and still all we had on Tenning was a traffic violation.
I looked around his rented room, a ten-by-twelve box with a single bed, small pine dresser, two file cabinets that had once formed the base of his desk. The wide plank that had served as the desktop was on the floor, along with a computer and sheaves of scattered paper.
Something else had been dislodged during the fracas. A pipe had rolled out from under the bed.
It was about an inch and a half in diameter, eighteen inches long, with a ball joint screwed onto one end.
A two-part construction that looked like a club.