The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel (21 page)

Lock wrenched open the door. It was only then that he recognized Laird, the college chancellor.

The stench of gasoline pouring from the car’s tank was overpowering. Lock grabbed his Gerber and used the blade to slash at the already deflating airbag.

‘Can you move?’ he asked Laird.

Laird nodded, the neck movement more encouraging than the weak ‘Yes, I think so.’ Lock reached down and shoved the seat back to give him more room, used the knife to cut the seatbelt and helped him out of the car. He was banged up, and pale with shock, but he was mobile.

With Lock’s help, Laird hobbled gingerly away from the car. ‘My family. I have to contact them. My cell phone’s in the car.’

He started back toward the vehicle but Lock stepped in front of him. ‘Not a good idea.’ He grabbed his own phone. ‘Here, tell me the number.’

Laird got it together just enough to remember his wife’s. Lock punched it in and handed his cell off to Laird. The cut on his face was pretty nasty, but other than that he seemed to be in pretty decent shape for what he’d just been through. Lock stepped away and left him to the call. He turned around to see Ty emerge from between two houses and jog over to him. ‘I lost him. You figure out what was going on?’

‘Not yet,’ said Lock. ‘But I think the chancellor here might finally be ready to do the right thing.’

Standing in Allan Laird’s home office, Lock punched in the number for the home of the FBI’s head of staff in Minneapolis and handed the phone to the chancellor. Laird’s hands were still shaking as he took it and said quietly, ‘I’m very sorry to disturb you at such a late hour, but it’s important.’ Through a gap in the door, Lock could see Ty standing with Laird’s wife and daughter. The drapes were drawn, and he was keeping them clear of any windows. The house and garden had already been searched and, despite Lock’s distrust of them, the local police were on the way to provide additional security.

Lock stepped out of the office and walked over to Ty. ‘How’s everyone doing?’

'Shaken up.’

Headlights swept across the front of the house. Lock went to the window, and took a peek. ‘College security.’

He watched as the female cop who had tricked Ty climbed out of a cruiser and walked toward the front door. ‘Your buddy’s here,’ he told him. Lock had known him long enough to recognize Ty’s game face. It was the usual precursor to someone having their day ruined by the six-foot-four marine. ‘Let’s hear what she has to say first.’

Ty didn’t appear convinced. ‘She watched Tromso drive off with me. You trying to tell me she didn’t know what he had planned?’

‘No,’ said Lock. ‘I’m saying that we already got enough to deal with here. If she was helping Tromso, that’s for the FBI to deal with. Not us.’

The doorbell chimed. ‘I’ll get it,’ Lock said.

He walked into the hallway, and unlocked the front door. ‘Mr Lock?’ she said, putting out her hand. ‘I’m Officer Svenson. I’m acting chief since Officer Tromso was killed.’

She didn’t look like a cop so much as like a young woman playing a cop in a TV show. It was nothing to do with her gender. Lock believed that in most instances women made for better law-enforcement personnel than men. They generally had better communication and negotiation skills and were less likely to escalate a situation unnecessarily for reasons of ego or machismo.

But there was something about the woman standing in front of him that didn’t fit with the uniform. Cops had a look to them when they were on duty. Lock could usually pick one out anywhere. They carried themselves differently from civilians. They looked at you differently. Even when they were off-duty, they gave off an aura of situational awareness not found in the general population. It had been said that it was the same for criminals: a thief could pick out another thief from a hundred yards.

Lock shook her hand. ‘Yeah, I think my partner wants to speak to you about what happened with that.’

‘I’m sure he does. I’d appreciate the opportunity to clarify it for him.’

Lock glanced beyond her. ‘Do you have any other personnel available?’

She looked away. ‘We’re rather short-staffed right now.’

That wasn’t what Lock had seen. If anything he had been pretty taken aback by just how many cops they had for a campus that, barring recent events, was very low crime.

‘I’ve placed a number of personnel on leave pending further investigation.’ When Lock didn’t react, she added, ‘Personnel recruited by Officer Tromso.’

Lock didn’t say anything. If she was trying to present herself as some kind of new broom, ready to sweep out the corruption of a previous regime, he wasn’t buying it. Ty had been very clear about her having gone along with what had happened. If she knew what had been going on, she could have turned whistleblower long before now.

‘You think I was involved in all this, Mr Lock, don’t you?’ She said it with a smile, as if she knew something that would make him seem foolish when it came out.

‘I know only what my partner told me. And I’d believe him over anyone else in this world, so try not to take it personally.’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t. May I come in?’

Lock opened the door and she walked past him. ‘Is the chancellor speaking to the feebs?’

‘In his office,’ said Lock.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s about time. If only he’d done it before now all this could have been avoided.’

‘If you say so,’ Lock told her.

Laird walked into the living room. His wife went to him and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. Lock had a vomit-inducing feeling that Laird was going to come out of this a hero, even though nothing could have been further from the truth.

Ty hard-stared Svenson from across the room. Lock had a sneaky feeling that part of the reason Ty was so angry was that he’d been fooled by a pretty woman. Most men would have steered clear of him, but not Svenson.

She walked straight over to him. ‘Mr Johnson, I owe you an apology.’

Ty scowled at her. ‘You think?’

‘I can understand your anger. I’d feel the same if it was me.’

From what Lock could see, Ty wasn’t about to be taken in again. He grabbed his partner’s arm before things got ugly. ‘I need to talk to you.’ He pulled Ty into a corner of the room. ‘What do you want to do about Malik?’ he asked.

‘What you mean?’

‘Well,’ said Lock, ‘he can’t stay hidden for ever. The FBI are going to drag it all out into the open, whether people round here want them to or not. We have enough evidence between the pictures you took at the house and everything else we know about Becker, Tromso and that other lunatic to put him in the clear. Seems like now would be a good time for him to hand himself over.’

Ty weighed it up. Finally, he said, ‘You’re right. Let’s call him.’

Lock handed Ty his cell. ‘Here, you do it.’

Ty took the phone and stepped off into a corner as Svenson walked back over.

‘You get a look at the guy who fled the car?’ she asked Lock.

‘Not really, no. White. Five eleven, six feet. Average build. Dark hair. Early thirties. That’s about it.’

‘Not a lot to go on,’ she said.

‘Did you know what was going on?’

Svenson met his gaze. ‘Knowing and proving are two different things.’

Ty headed back to them. He grabbed Lock and steered him into the hallway, out of earshot of everyone else. ‘He’s not picking up.’

‘It’s late. He’s probably asleep.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Ty. ‘But I called the motel manager. He said that the person in that room left this afternoon. I made him go check. Malik’s gone.’

The alley that ran behind the fast-food restaurant was empty, apart from a few rats foraging for scraps. A cell phone trilled inside one of the restaurant’s three Dumpsters. The display flashed the word ‘Lock’ on the screen.

Finally, the ringing stopped as it defaulted to voicemail. A few minutes later another call came in. Still no one answered.

It was a little after five in the morning. Ty paced back and forth from the door of Lock’s hotel room to the window. Lock sat at the desk with a laptop. He ran through the pictures from Ty’s cell, making sure he had everything. He had also laid out a time line that documented every event since Ty had received the first phone call from Malik while they were in Manhattan. Finally he had spoken, at length, with an attorney, to ensure that there would be no blowback from his and Ty’s full and frank disclosure.

In two hours, at precisely seven a.m., Lock was due to start his interview with the assistant special agent in charge for the FBI’s Minneapolis-based VCAC program. VCAC stood for Violent Crimes against Children. The special agent in charge, a twenty-year Bureau vet called Dennis Lee, had already told Laird that he was pulling as many bodies as he could to Harrisburg, leaving only a skeleton staff in Minneapolis. He had requested additional resources from Quantico. He had also requested that Detective Johanssen and anyone else working at state level step off the case after they had handed over all files to the feebs.

Ty stopped for a moment at the window. Down below on what passed for Harrisburg’s main drag, the lights of the diner had just flipped on. He recognized the young waitress whom he’d stood up for days earlier. She was standing with the short-order cook and a Somali bus boy, all three sipping coffee, bracing themselves for the day ahead. It was about to get busier. Sheer human misery was good for business, thought Ty. We feasted on it.

The wind was picking up again. It whipped down the street, picking up a missing-person flier with Jack Barnes’s picture on it, throwing it up into the air before it came to rest under a car.

Lock looked up from his computer. ‘Okay, that’s everything.’ He stood up and reached out a fist. He and Ty bumped. ‘Keep me updated. Okay?’

‘You got it,’ said Ty.

Ty took a deep breath and walked to the door. Now that Lock had everything, he was leaving, heading to Wisconsin, to find Malik and bring him back. Assuming his friend was still alive.

Downstairs, he walked past a night porter, the man’s chin resting on his chest as he dozed. Prominently displayed on the reception desk was the same picture of Jack Barnes, this one laminated. Something in the boy’s eyes chilled Ty to the bone. It was a veiled weariness that no child should have.

Out back, Ty climbed into the silver Chevy Blazer, gunned the engine and pulled out of the tightly packed parking lot. His route out of town took him past the stadium and along Wolf Road.

He thought about Malik, and how he and his friend must have looked when they were Jack’s age. Even though they had grown up in a place far poorer and more dangerous than Harrisburg, neither of them had spoken of their childhood with anything other than affection. They had had at least one loving parent and lived among a tight-knit community that looked out for each other. And they had had their friendship. When the world seemed organized against you that meant something. That kind of connection ran deep. No matter what had happened over the past week, Ty wasn’t about to give up on his friend. He would find him, and he would help him find peace.

The FBI’s special agent in charge of the Minneapolis office, Dennis Lee, was an Asian American in his late forties, with an easy smile and a compact former-bodybuilder’s physique. He eyed Lock from across a borrowed conference room that linked to Chancellor Laird’s office. Laird, finally as good as his word, had gone all in, offering Agent Lee and his team a free run of the entire campus.

Lock had already given Lee and the other person in room, the FBI’s legal counsel/media advisor, a woman in her thirties called Becky Coulson, a full run-down of what he knew. He had also handed over the pictures Ty had taken of the Shaw house before Tromso had torched it. Lee and Coulson must already have seen Tromso’s initial homicide book because the first thing Lee had done was make a call to ensure that nothing was going to happen to the bodies of Kim, Landon and Katy Shaw until he said so. It was a first glimpse of good news. The delay meant that if Ty could find Malik, he would be able to attend the funerals. Given the story that was out there, Kim’s family had been pushing for a quick funeral with Malik, as prime suspect, excluded.

In addition, Special Agent in Charge Lee had also offered to help Ty in locating Malik. Becky Coulson had already drafted, and released, a statement to the media that spoke of new developments, and saying that while Malik Shaw remained someone they wished to speak to as a matter of urgency, he was no longer being sought as a suspect.

As starts went, it was a good one.

‘Not your first time helping the Bureau, Mr Lock,’ Agent Lee said, filling a fresh cup of coffee from an urn near the window.

‘Kind of unavoidable, given my job,’ said Lock. It was true. Lock and Ty were usually called upon to provide protection and consultancy services in high-stakes and often high-profile situations. That brought them into contact with United States law-enforcement agencies at every level, including federal. They had been involved in a number of instances when their path had intersected with that of the FBI, sometimes with a good deal of friction, and at others more smoothly.

‘You remember Levon Hill?’ Becky Coulson asked him, her hand sweeping back a tangled mane of coppery red hair from thick black-rimmed glasses.

‘I do,’ said Lock. ‘Bright guy.’

Levon Hill was a profiler used by the FBI. He had been called in while Lock and Ty were protecting an adult-film star called Raven Lane from a murderous stalker terrorizing Los Angeles.

‘You think we have a serial killer involved here?’ Lock asked.

‘Not really, no,’ said Agent Lee. ‘But it doesn’t hurt to have another pair of eyes on things.’

That was true, thought Lock. It was very easy in an ongoing investigation to lose sight of the obvious. His eyes wandered to the far wall, where the standard photo-montage of victims and anyone connected to the case was plastered, with black lines drawn between them to suggest connection, either familial or circumstantial.

The pictures of the homicide victims were easy to spot. Not only did they have a red outline running around the edge, but the shots were taken from the crime scene. There were seven in total. The Shaw family accounted for a three-photograph cluster, Aubrey and Gretchen Becker added two, and were arranged alongside Weston Reeves, Aubrey Becker’s old school buddy and partner in perversion. Off to one side, an arrow linked Weston Reeves to the college’s former chief of police, Keith Tromso.