Deadlock (Ryan Lock 2) (22 page)

‘Then hook me up,’ Lock said. He nodded at Ty. ‘Is he really well enough to leave?’

‘As long as he’s at home taking it easy, he should be fine.’

Lock clasped Ty’s good shoulder. ‘I’ll make sure of it,’ he said.

Together they had a fighting chance of finding Reaper and his posse. But to do that, Lock knew they had to go back to the source.

47

After a long drive and a few more snatched hours of sleep in the car, Lock and Ty pulled up next to the former Prager residence out in Lancaster. It lay in a street of foreclosed houses with yellowing, weed-infested lawns and boarded-up windows. Even amid such generalized misery and misfortune, the house gave out a vibe all of its own. Lock, however, was more concerned with the fact that Ty had insisted on them taking his car. Given that a place like Lancaster was prime territory for white supremacist skinhead gangs, and therefore, by extension, for the Nazi Low Riders, a purple classic car was not an ideal choice.

On the drive there they had debated their next move. Lock had admitted to Ty that although there were a lot of threads, nothing pulled them all together. He therefore felt it was best to go back to the beginning, back to Prager’s investigation. Ty wasn’t sure it was the right thing to be doing, but equally he wasn’t sure what else they could do, so he’d agreed to go with Lock’s hazy outline.

Next door to where the Pragers lived, a woman was packing her kids into the car. She kept on glancing over at their car.

‘I’ll go talk to her,’ Lock said. ‘You keep the pimp-mobile running in case she thinks you’re a white slaver.’

Ty flipped him the bird as the woman slammed the rear passenger door on the two kids and hurried to get in herself.

‘Ma’am? Excuse me?’ Lock jogged the last few yards towards her. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Why can’t you people just leave us alone?’ she shouted. ‘We don’t have any money!’

Clearly, the much-vaunted economic recovery had not made it as far as Lancaster just yet.

Lock noticed the lack of a For Sale sign in her yard. He put up his hands. ‘Ma’am, I just wanted to ask you aboutyour former neighbors.’

‘Even better,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘A reporter.’

‘No, ma’am, I’m trying to understand a few things about what happened to them.’

‘You’re a private investigator?’

Lock stopped, deciding to tell the truth. ‘Aaron was my godson. I hadn’t seen his mom or dad for a few years after they moved out west.’

The woman reached in and turned on the engine so the kids could get the benefit of the air con, then she took a step towards Lock. ‘I’m sorry. I thought…’

‘It’s OK. I’d be suspicious under the circumstances as well.’

‘I’m not sure how I can help you though.’

‘You lived next door to them.’

‘Yes, but that’s kind of it.’

‘I heard that Aaron fell in with a bad crowd.’

‘Not exactly difficult round here.’ She sighed.

‘Kids at school?’

‘Maybe a few of them. There’s a couple of those skinhead gangs round here. I think he started hanging out with one of them.’

‘You know which one?’

‘I don’t know the names. But I could tell you where they like to hang out. There’s a McDonald’s down on Challenger Way, I’ve seen ’em there.’

‘What about Mrs Prager – Janet?’

‘I only really got to know her before… They said her husband was an undercover agent?’

‘That’s right. For the ATF.’

The woman looked away, then spoke again. ‘You know, it’s so weird.’

‘What is?’

The woman worried at her wedding band, twisting and turning it on her finger. ‘I’m not sure I should be telling you this.’

Lock moved closer. ‘Listen, it’s OK. No one can hurt them now.’ He clasped his hands together, mirroring the woman’s body language. ‘I really need some closure,’ he added.

The woman studied her driveway, and nodded silently. ‘The last time I saw her, she was hammered.’

‘Janet? Drunk?’ Lock was surprised. Ken’s wife had never been a drinker.

‘Yeah, as a skunk. I took her in. Tried to get some coffee into her. I didn’t want her son seeing her in that state.’

‘Something had upset her?’

‘She told me that she thought her husband was having an affair. I didn’t know he was undercover. All she said was that it was someone he’d met through work.’

Lock took in a quick breath, glancing back over his shoulder at the Pragers’ old house, the paint peeling from the eaves, the gutters choked with leaves. This changed everything.

Inside the car, the woman’s kids were starting to squabble, and Lock knew his time was about up.

‘She mention a name?’ he asked.

The woman sighed. ‘Not unless “that blonde bitch” is a name. She said that Ken had gotten her pregnant.’

48

Chance sat in the back of a Toyota Camry rented the previous evening at San Francisco International Airport and watched as Glenn Love emerged, yawning, from his house, clambered into his work truck and backed out of his driveway. She noted the time, the make and model of the truck, the reg and the decal.

An hour later his wife, Amy, opened the blinds at the front of the house. Three-quarters of an hour after that she emerged with their two children. Chance grabbed her handheld video camera and taped them getting into their car and driving off. If they had to take the kids at the school, she didn’t want any cases of mistaken identity. Killing someone was relatively straightforward. A kidnapping, however… well, a myriad things could go wrong.

Five minutes after Amy Love drove past them, Chance got out of the car and approached the house. She rang the bell, feigned surprise when no one answered and wandered round the back. There was no alarm system and no cameras. She noticed a plant pot near the back door. It was empty save an inch or two of moldy compost. Lifting it up revealed a key – an unexpected bonus. It suddenly occurred to Chance that the key could cut out most of the risk if they were clever about how they approached this part of the operation.

The key fitted the rear door, and she stepped inside. Breakfast dishes lay stacked in the dishwasher; a copy of the
San Francisco Examiner
was spread out on the table. She moved quickly through the ground floor and entered the children’s shared bedroom. She took several items of clothing and moved into a study-cum-office area in the hall with a desk and a filing cabinet. She jotted down Glenn and Amy’s cell numbers from old bills, along with the number for the house landline. She also noted their social security numbers and a couple of other pieces of information. All this would come in handy too.

Satisfied that she’d gathered everything they’d need, she exited the house, placed the key back under the plant pot and walked casually back to the car. This time she got in the front and drove off. She’d return later when it was time to move on to the next stage of the plan.

‘Damn, man, does this guy ever leave the house?’

Cowboy drummed his fingers on the steering column. Next to him, Trooper kept his head in his copy of
Sports Illustrated
.

‘He’s probably not even awake yet.’

‘It’s nine thirty,’ Cowboy said, staring across the road at the ivy-clad New England colonial which was the boyhood home and California residence of Supreme Court Justice Junius Holmes.

‘So? He’s old. He’s probably in bed by nine.’

‘Which means he should be up early. Old people need less sleep, don’t they?’

‘How the hell should I know?’

Cowboy started to open his door. ‘I’m gonna go take a peek.’

Just then a figure appeared at the gates. A man wearing tennis shorts, sneakers and a Harvard alumni T-shirt.

‘See,’ said Trooper. ‘Patience.’

The man broke into a slow jog on spindly legs that looked barely able to support the rest of him.

‘Holy shit, he might not live long enough for us to kill him.’

Trooper studied him from behind his magazine. ‘You think he jogs this time every morning?’

‘Guess so. Why, what are you thinking?’

‘Well, we were planning on shooting him, right?’

Cowboy shrugged. ‘That’s usually the quickest, most efficient way of killing someone.’

‘Draws a lot of attention too. Which, if you think about it, is something we don’t necessarily need.’

‘Where you taking this?’

Trooper grinned. ‘You’ll see.’

49

‘Hey, I’ve heard about deep cover, but that’s something else. You sure?’ Ty asked, maneuvering the Lincoln down another street of shattered sub-prime dreams.

‘That’s what she said Janet told her.’

Lock was finding it hard to reconcile the neighbour’s revelation with what he remembered about Ken and Janet’s marriage. They’d always seemed like such a solid couple. He guessed you never really knew what went on behind closed doors.

‘Kind of explains one thing,’ Ty said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why there’s no mention of this chick in any of Prager’s reports back to his bosses. I mean, you go undercover and fall into bed with a suspect, that’s one thing, might even be taken that you’re taking the job seriously. But then you go and get her pregnant? Damn! You imagine the kind of fun a defense attorney would have with that?’

‘You’d be lucky to keep your badge,’ Lock said.

‘And your pension.’

Lock stared out of the window. By the looks of where Aaron’s friends were living, they were surrounded by people clinging on by their fingernails.

‘That’s not the full explanation though, it can’t be,’ said Lock. Something about the whole scenario was chewing away at him.

Ty pulled on to a wider street, this one with more commercial property. On their left was a gas station, on their right a couple of fast-food joints. One of them was the one mentioned by the neighbour as a favorite hang-out for one of the local skinhead gangs. They’d head back here after visiting the school.

Lock rubbed his eyes, wishing that his lack of sleep wasn’t making it so hard for him to think clearly.

‘You know, at Pelican Bay I got a glimpse of how seductive the whole white supremacist rap could be.’

Ty sideways-glanced at Lock as he drove. ‘You got something you want to tell me?’

A pick-up truck pulled up alongside with two middle-aged white guys in it. They stared menacingly at Ty until Lock glared over at them.

‘It’s almost like a cult,’ he continued. ‘They have a way of seeing the world. They have a purpose. An ideology. And it’s a powerful one. Otherwise how would a whole country have been sucked in back in the 1930s, so much so that they were prepared to slaughter millions of innocent people, women and children, pack them into gas chambers?’

‘You don’t think Ken went over to the dark side, do you?’

‘No, otherwise why would they have killed him? An inside man with the ATF would have been a wet dream for them. But what if he was conflicted about the whole deal?’

‘So he was giving his bosses some of it, but not all of it,’ Ty said slowly.

‘Maybe.’

‘I still don’t buy it, Ryan.’

Lock looked out at the down-at-heel blue-collar neighbourhood. Even with crisp blue California skies overhead there was something depressing about it.

‘Ken was a veteran agent, right?’

Ty nodded.

‘Yet here he was still out in the field, while his bosses were all cosy back at base. Ken was taking all the risks and getting what in return?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ty slowly. ‘You’re reaching.’

‘The Aryan Brotherhood are great at telling people that they deserve better, that somehow they’re being cheated. All it needed was for a couple of seeds to be planted. Then Ken falls for this woman. Hard.’ Lock rubbed at his face again, closing his eyes for a second. ‘I’d say that’s all any man would need to start questioning where his loyalties lay.’

They pulled into the entrance of the local high school. Kids were streaming out, the older ones heading to their cars. A few were checking out the Lincoln 66. A fat white kid sporting a do-rag and a soul patch stopped in his tracks as Ty lowered the window.

‘Sweet ride,’ he said.

Ty beamed. ‘Kid’s got taste.’

‘See what I mean about people getting confused?’ Lock said. ‘He’s white, but he thinks he’s Snoop Dog.’

‘We have the more interesting culture, that’s all.’ Ty leaned out of the window towards the teenager. ‘Yo! Where’s the principal’s office?’

The kid pointed to a side entrance.

Over in a corner of the parking lot, Lock spotted a bunch of other youths. Hair cut short and wearing English Doc Marten boots, they were scowling at the car and, in particular, Ty.

50

They stood outside the principal’s office, unable to escape that sense of being back at high school themselves.

‘Bet this takes you back,’ Lock said to Ty.

‘Deja vu all over again, baby.’

‘Me too. I spent more time here than in class.’

The door opened and a severe-looking African-American woman in female school principal uniform of long heavy skirt and ruffled blouse stepped out. A brief thought crossed Lock’s mind, that he’d rather go back to the SHU at Pelican Bay than spend too much time in her office.

Her opening line didn’t exactly fill him with joy either: ‘I have three and a half thousand young people to look after, so would you gentlemen kindly explain what you want?’

‘May we step into your office, ma’am?’ Lock asked.

Ty shot him one of his trademarked ‘Are you out of your freakin’ mind?’ looks.

The principal stood aside.

‘Nice move,’ Ty whispered as they stepped inside. ‘Who knows if we’ll ever get out alive again?’

She gestured for them to sit. They did. She didn’t say anything, just stared at them – a tactic beloved of salesmen, interrogators and school principals. When neither Lock nor Ty said anything, she looked at her watch.

Lock swallowed. Yup, definitely worse than the SHU at Pelican Bay.

‘Aaron Prager was a student at your school,’ he said at last.

She didn’t give any of the standard responses, or at least any of the responses Lock had anticipated. She didn’t say, ‘I can’t discuss current or former students.’ She didn’t say, ‘What’s your interest in Aaron Prager?’ She didn’t even say, ‘Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, he was a fine young man.’ What she did first was stare at Lock’s right hip, where his 226 bulged under his jacket. Then she picked up her phone.