I aimed one-handed so I could free up my left hand. I held a finger up, one, then another finger, two.
The blond was speaking frantically. I could hear snatches of his voice, do it, God, do it.
I actually started to put up that third finger, when the bill-cap man put his hands up, slowly. Empty hands, but I was betting any amount of money that he had some nasty piece of hardware in his lap. Oh, yeah.
Claudia kept her gun against his window. I think because she hadn't been told to move away. Frankly, I liked her there, close enough to fire if he went for whatever was in his lap.
I made the universal sign for roll the window down, rolling my hand in the air. They were in an old enough car that they actually had to crank it down. The blond unwound the window, slowly, carefully, and kept his other hand glued to the steering wheel. He was a cautious man. I liked that.
He rolled the window down, put his hands back on the steering wheel, and said nothing. He didn't try to plead innocence, or confess guilt. He just sat there. Fine.
I was short enough that with a little stooping I could see into the other man's lap. It was empty, which meant whatever he'd been cradling was on the floorboard. He'd dropped it so we wouldn't see it. What the hell was it?
I raised my voice a little. "You in the cap, put your hands slowly on the dashboard, flat, and if they move from there, you will be shot. Is that clear?"
He wouldn't look at me.
"Is that clear?"
He began to move his hands towards the dashboard. "It's clear."
"Why were you following me?" I asked, mostly to the blond, because I was beginning to realize the other man wasn't going to volunteer much.
"I do not know what you are talking about." He had a faint German accent, and I had too many relatives with the same accent not to recognize it. Of course, they were all over sixty, and hadn't seen the old country for a few decades. I was betting blondie was a more recent import.
"Where'd the pretty blue Jeep go?" I asked.
His face went very still.
"I told you," the bill-cap said.
"Yeah, we spotted you," I said. "It wasn't all that hard."
"You would not have seen us if you had not been swerving all over the road," Blondie said.
"Sorry about that, but we had some technical difficulties."
"Yeah, like one of you turned furry," the guy in the cap said. He definitely was middle American, middle of nowhere, no accent.
"So you wondered what was wrong, and got close enough to see," I said.
Neither of them said anything to that.
"You are both going to get, very slowly, out of this car. If either of you goes for a weapon, you may both die. I only need one of you for questioning, the other is just gravy. I'll do my best to see that one of you lives, but I won't break a sweat to save you both, because I don't need you both. Is that clear?"
The blond said, "yes," the other one said, "Crystal fucking clear." Oh, yeah, he was American, only we have that poetic turn of phrase.
Then I heard the sirens. They were close, very close, like in front of the building close. I'd have liked to think they were just passing through, but when you're holding this many guns out in the open, you can't count on that.
"Never a cop when you need one," Bobby Lee said, "try to do anything illegal, and they're all over ya."
The billed-cap man said, "If you put all your guns away before the cops get in sight, we'll just pretend this didn't happen." He was smiling as he leaned across, so I'd be sure and see the smug expression.
I smiled back, and his smile wilted because I looked too damned pleased. I wasn't smooth at digging my badge out of my pocket yet, not one-handed anyway, but I managed. I flashed the metallic star in its little case. "Federal marshal, asshole. Keep your hands where we can see them until the nice policemen arrive."
"What are you arresting us for?" the blond asked in his German accent. "We have done nothing."
"Oh, I don't know. We'll start with carrying concealed weapons without a permit, then suspicion of grand theft auto." I patted the side of the Impala. "This ain't your car, and whatever your friend over there dropped on the floorboard is going to be illegal. Just call it a hunch."
"Bobby Lee, we don't need this big a crowd."
He grasped my meaning and barked another order in that odd guttural almost-German.
The wererats melted away in that too-quick-to-follow-with-the-eye blur of speed I'd seen them use once or twice.
Claudia stayed at her post, and Bobby Lee refused to leave, but it was just the three of us when the first policeman saw us. Well, five if you count the bad guys.
Two uniformed officers came up the alley, walking, because the truck that was blocking the road hadn't moved, but the wererat that had been driving it was walking just ahead of them with his hands laced on the top of his head. With his hands up, it flashed that his shoulder holster was empty. They'd taken his gun.
I made sure my badge was held up as high as I could manage. I was yelling "federal marshall" as they came around the corner.
The cops used the few cars on that side of the lot for cover, and yelled, "Guns down!"
I yelled, "Federal Marshal Anita Blake, the rest of these people are federal deputies."
Bobby Lee whispered, "Deputies?"
I spoke out of the corner of my mouth, "Just agree with me."
"Yes, ma'am."
I stepped back from the car enough to flash my badge better and yell, "Federal Marshall Blake, glad to see you officers."
The officers stayed behind the engine blocks of the cars, but had stopped yelling at us. They were trying to figure out how much trouble they'd be in if we really were federal and they messed up what we were doing, but they weren't worrying about politics so hard as to risk getting themselves shot. I approved.
I lowered my voice and spoke to the men in the car, before I walked towards the policemen. "Carrying concealed without a permit, weapons on you that are illegal no matter what, a stolen car, and I'm betting when your prints hit the system it lights up like a Christmas tree." I was smiling and nodding at the two policemen hiding behind the cars. The badge had calmed them, but they still had their guns out, and I heard other sirens in the distance. They'd called for backup, I couldn't blame them. They had no way of knowing any of us qualified as a cop.
I glanced at the blond. "Besides, the police around here take a dim view of criminals following federal marshals around."
"We did not know you were police," the blond said.
"Your intel sucks," I said.
He nodded, his hands still on the steering wheel. "Yes."
I put my gun up and held my badge up very high, put both hands up to show I was currently unarmed, and walked carefully towards the two uniforms, and the others that were creeping, cautiously, guns drawn, out of the alley. There were days when I truly loved having a badge. This was sooo one of those days.
36
Three hours later I was sitting in the outer office of the police station, sipping really bitter coffee, and waiting for someone to let me talk to my prisoners. I had a badge, and I had the right to deputize anyone I saw fit in an emergency. The police had taken Bobby Lee, Claudia, and the one driver in for questioning. They'd been sent home an hour ago. Bobby Lee had tried to insist he stay with me, but his lawyer had told him going home after only two hours was a gift and he should take it. He took it after I insisted. It helped that there had been an MP5 Heckler and Koch submachine gun on the floorboard, not to mention about half a dozen more smaller weapons, four knives, one of those collapsible clubs, an ASP. Oh, and that the car they were driving wasn't theirs.