On three of the plastic chairs sat three people.
Nadia Brandt sat in the middle, in her green canvas jacket. On her right was a heavy, mustached man in his sixties in a pawnbroker's cardigan with his arms folded. And on her left was a tall, stooped old man with a long, sad, handsome face and big knuckled guitarist's hands folded in his lap, wearing a corduroy jacket that had been good twenty years ago.
They all stood up at once.
Carrow saw them and stopped so suddenly that Ray almost walked into his back.
Rosario Ocampo unfolded his arms.
"You shaved," he said.
The tall old man in the corduroy jacket took one step forward. His voice, when it came, was soft and hoarse, the voice of someone who had spent forty years talking over amplifiers and had very little left.
"Hello, Curtis," said Gus Brandt.
Carrow turned toward the front door. It was twelve steps away across the lobby. Ray didn't grab him and didn't chase him. He simply moved, two easy steps to the left, and was standing in front of the door with his hands loose at his sides, the way he'd stood in a thousand doorways, solid as a fire hydrant.
"Mr. Carrow," he said quietly. "Or whatever it is. Before you go. I think Detective Ruiz would like a word with you after all. And I'd sit back down, if I were you. These folks have been waiting a long time."
Upstairs, a door opened. Ana Ruiz came down the stairs at an unhurried pace with a pair of handcuffs in one hand and her phone in the other.
"Funny thing," she said. "I just got a call from a patrol unit on Upland Road. Very nice house. Short-term rental. The owner lives in Arizona. She's never heard of you. And the back door, Mr. Carrow, has never been broken."
She held up the cuffs.
"Dennis Carrow, also known as Curtis Lyle, also known, I'm betting, as Kevin Dunleavy and Michael Prentiss, you're under arrest for making a false statement to a police officer and attempted theft by deception. There'll be more. Turn around for me, please."
He turned around. It was, Ray thought afterward, the least dramatic arrest he had ever seen. The cuffs clicked. Nobody shouted. Somewhere in the building a phone rang and rang. Gus Brandt sat back down in his plastic chair very slowly, as if his legs had decided before he had, and put one big hand over his eyes, and his daughter knelt on the linoleum in front of him and put her arms around his neck.