Deadlock (Ryan Lock 2) (23 page)

‘Yes, Jessica, could you call 911 and ask them to respond to the school?’

Then she calmly put the receiver down.

‘Now, unless you gentlemen can show me some bona fide credentials, which doesn’t mean some private investigator’s certificate you scammed off the internet, I’d like you to not only leave my office, but to leave school property immediately, and never return. Nor should you contact either me or anyone else at this school by any other means. Do you understand me?’

Lock nodded. Ty nodded. They both rose, and almost in a daze walked swiftly out of her office, down several corridors and out of the school gates.

Back in her office, the principal lifted her phone once more.

‘Jessica, you may call the police back and assure them that it was a false alarm.’

Out in the parking lot, Ty turned to Lock. ‘What was that?’

‘I don’t know, but if I ever land a job which requires the ability to garner total cooperation, I’m kicking you to the kerb and hiring her.’

Ty opened the driver’s door, then stopped. ‘Goddammit.’

‘What is it?’

Ty hunkered down and rubbed at the paintwork. Someone had taken something sharp, keys probably, down the side of the Continental, leaving a thin grey scar.

Lock looked up to see the white Snoop-wannabe staring at them.

‘It was some of those Hammer Skin kids,’ he told them. ‘They give everyone a hard time.’

‘You saw them?’ Lock asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘Wasn’t like they were trying to hide doing it.’

‘The cops are on their way,’ Lock said. ‘Will you tell them what you told us?’

The boy smiled. ‘Are you out of your mind? I like having my teeth in my head. Listen, bro, I got three more years in this dump, then I’m outta here. Anyways, what are the cops gonna do when the Hammer Skins are their own kids?’ The boy looked beyond Lock to the school. ‘What did the principal say?’

‘Nada.’

‘That figures. She’s scared of them too. She tried to make a stand a few years back and they put a pipe-bomb under her car.’

Lock saw Ty perk up to the extent that he lost interest in the damage to his car. He stepped towards the boy. ‘The cops investigate?’

‘What did I just say? No one wants any trouble.’ The boy air-quoted the last three words.

‘So the skinheads do what they want?’

‘If you don’t mess with ’em, they leave you alone. For the most part.’

‘What grade you in?’

‘Ninth.’

Same as Aaron. Even in a school with such a large number of students, Lock knew that they’d just caught a break. Rather than go the direct route, he took a different approach.

‘I guess some of the kids hang out with these skinhead gangs to stop themselves getting picked on.’

‘Some, yeah.’

‘You friends with any of those kids?’

‘Not once they join up,’ the boy said, spitting on the ground and jamming his hands into his pockets. ‘Man, why don’t you just ask me what you want to ask me?’

‘We’re trying to find out what happened to Aaron Prager.’

The boy choked back a grin. ‘I can help you with that. Bitch got shot.’

Ty moved in on the boy. ‘Have a little bit of respect. You wanna be ghetto, you’d better understand, you step to us wrong and you know what’s gonna happen.’

The kid’s eyes fell back to the sidewalk. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

Lock could see that what the boy aspired to, Ty simply was, with all that entailed. He decided to let Ty handle him.

‘Did you ever speak to Aaron after he hooked up with this gang?’ Ty asked.

The boy’s smirk was back, but there was a touch of something else there too. Lock guessed at a creeping understanding of how people could change, and not always for the better.

‘The only time he spoke to me was to call me a wigger.’ The boy kicked at the ground. ‘He used to be a nice guy.’

‘Do they have a leader?’

‘Roach, I guess.’

‘What’s he look like?’

‘Big sucker. Shaves twice a day. You’ll know him when you see him.’

‘He a student here too?’

‘No, he got kicked out last year.’

‘Where can we find him?’

The boy gave Ty the name of the same fast-food restaurant as the one provided by the Pragers’ neighbour.

‘Thanks for your help, bro,’ Ty said, bumping fists with the boy.

‘Just don’t mention my name, OK?’

Lock and Ty got back into the Lincoln, leaving the kid on the sidewalk. Lock waved a thanks but the kid was too busy jamming his headphones into his ears. Lock didn’t blame him. If he’d grown up here, he’d have wanted to shut out the world too.

As they pulled away from the school, Ty sideways-glanced at Lock. ‘This Roach kid sounds like a real charmer.’

Lock puffed out his cheeks. ‘Big fish in a small pond. Maybe if we drain the water a little we can get him flapping.’

‘You think he’s caught up in this?’ Ty asked.

‘I can definitely see him giving up Aaron. I’m not so sure about anything else. Although, if he wanted to make a name for himself, then who knows.’

Lock fell silent for a moment, his jaw clenched tight.

‘I’ll promise you one thing though, Tyrone.’

‘What’s that, brother?’

‘He’s gonna tell us everything he knows about what went down.’

51

The boy they’d spoken to at the school was right, Roach was hard to miss. Six foot plus and maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. He wasn’t up there with Reaper or the other members of the AB, but he would hold his own in most prisons, which in Lock’s view was exactly where he was heading.

He greeted Tyrone with a faux-menacing ‘What you looking at, nigger?’

Tyrone’s expression read mock-offended but he kept his hands by his side as Roach’s compatriots snickered. He and Lock hadn’t exactly expected a ticker-tape parade, and they weren’t going to be disappointed.

‘I get it,’ said Ty. ‘This is the part where I say, “Who you callin’ a nigger?” And then you say, “I’m callin’ you a nigger, nigger.” And then I throw a punch at you. And that gives you and your cronies here the perfect excuse to triple-team me and beat me to a pulp.’

Ty’s speech seemed to throw Roach. He looked to his fellow skinheads for a reaction, but they seemed equally perplexed.

‘Except,’ Ty went on, ‘there’s a couple of problems. One, I’ve been called all kinds of names. And you know that saying about sticks and stones…’ He pulled down his T-shirt to expose the fresh wound on his shoulder. ‘And I been shot too. Recently. You ever been shot?’

Roach looked at his cheerleaders. ‘Nigger’s crazy.’

Lock eyeballed Roach. ‘Answer the man’s question.’ He parted his jacket just enough that the butt of his 226 was on view. ‘You ever been shot?’

Roach backed up a step. ‘Screw you, nigger-lover.’

Before anyone had a chance to react, Lock’s gun was in Roach’s face. Roach’s mouth shaped to say something, then he changed his mind.

‘Get in the car,’ Lock whispered to him.

Roach’s bravado was very slowly ebbing away. Easy to be top dog in a town like this, thought Lock, especially when you were big and stupid.

‘You’re playing in the big leagues now, Roach.’

Roach reacted to hearing his name. ‘Who are you?’

The longer the delay, the more chance someone would call the cops, Lock knew, smashing his gun into the side of Roach’s face. His buddies did some sidewalk dancing and shouting, but none of them made a move to help their fallen leader.

Ty grabbed Roach, dug both thumbs under his jaw and propelled him towards the Lincoln. Together, he and Lock bundled him into the back. Lock climbed in with him, giving Roach a few digs of his elbow for good measure.

‘You guys are dead!’ Roach shouted.

Ty caught Lock’s eye. This was going to be fun.

They drove for more than an hour in total, heading due east towards the desert. The longer they drove, the more Roach’s self-confidence peeled away in layers. He quickly moved from threats to a sullen silence, finally settling on a couple of half-hearted pleas for leniency, all of which were met with studied silence by Lock and Ty.

As the traffic on the highway thinned out, Lock finally spoke.

‘You bring the shovel?’

Ty glanced in the rear-view for the briefest of seconds.

‘In the trunk with the quicklime.’

Five minutes later, Ty pulled the Lincoln off the road and they hauled an unwilling Roach out. They walked him for ten minutes, hitting a rise and putting them all out of sight of the highway. Every time Roach tried to look over his shoulder, Lock prodded him with the gun.

‘This looks as good a spot as any,’ Ty said.

‘Get down on your knees,’ Lock ordered.

Roach was crying now. Big mucus-filled sobs. Just like Aaron Prager. Lock contemplated starting out by cutting off one of Roach’s many Nazi-themed tattoos. He jammed his gun into the back of Roach’s neck.

‘This is bullshit, man. You’re going to kill me because I called someone a name?’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ve done a lot worse. Sure there’s been more than a few blacks, or Hispanics, or gay folk, or people who just looked different, who’ve run into you and your little jerk-off crew. Haven’t there?’ The SIG was ready to fire. He withdrew it from Roach’s neck. ‘I’m going to use this, but I don’t want any contact burns. It makes the gun easier to trace if they find you.’

Taking a step back, Lock aimed the SIG six feet to Roach’s right, then pulled the trigger. Roach let out a choked scream and, judging by the smell, emptied his bladder and bowels simultaneously.

‘Damn, that’s rank. You want to get a bit more variety into your diet there, son,’ Ty said.

Roach turned to them, tears streaming down his face. ‘Hey, if you’re going to do this, just do it, OK?’

‘Why shouldn’t we torture you a little bit first, like your friends did with Aaron?’ Ty said. ‘Eyes front, cockroach.’

Roach complied.

Lock raised the SIG again. ‘Now, you have one chance and one chance only to tell us who you ratted Aaron out to.’

Roach sucked some snot back up his nose. He shuddered a sob. ‘He never told us his real name.’

‘He must have called himself something.’

‘Cowboy.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Like six two. Bigger than average. Real fit. He was in the military.’

Another look between Lock and Ty.

‘Ex-military?’

‘No, still serving. He was trying to get us to sign up too. He said that was the best shot the movement had. For as many of us as possible to join up, get the training and then use it when the time came.’

‘What unit was he in?’

‘He never said.’

‘Infantry? Air Force? Navy? What?’ Lock pressed the SIG into Roach’s back.

‘He just said something about Special Forces.’

Lock noticed Ty’s wry grin. Every wannabe Walter Mitty character – and the white supremacists had plenty of those – claimed some kind of connection to Special Forces.

‘Did he say where he was based?’

‘He said they came from all over, but he was down in Coronado.’

‘You got the Seals down there, far as I remember anyway,’ said Ty.

Lock jabbed the gun into Roach’s flesh. ‘That ring a bell?’

‘No. I swear.’

‘So this Cowboy guy came down and hung out round here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘After you told him about Aaron and who his father was?’

‘No, I met him before that.’

So much for Aaron dicking about on the wrong internet forums. The Feds had called that one wrong. Lock could see Ty thinking the same thing.

‘He come on his own?’

‘Apart from one time. There was a woman with him.’

‘Catch her name?’ Lock asked, his attention sharpening.

‘Chance,’ said Roach.

Lock sighed. Another street name.

‘What was she like?’

‘Like maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. Blonde. Super-hot. Nice rack.’

‘She military as well?’

‘No, but her father had been. She talked about him some. He was a martyr to the cause. You know, like David Lane and those guys in the Order.’

‘He was in the Order?’

‘No, he came after those guys. She said he was up in Pelican Bay.’

Lock breathed in sharply. ‘She have a name for him?’

‘No.’

‘Think hard, Roach,’ Lock said, pushing so hard into Roach’s neck with his gun that he could see a welt starting to form.

‘Cowboy called him something. It was kinda cool.’

‘Reaper?’

‘Yeah,’ said Roach. ‘That was it.’

52

Cowboy woke with a start. The engine was idling, and he was in the passenger seat. He started to sit up. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

Before he could get an answer, Trooper floored it and Cowboy was flung backwards.

‘He’s up ahead.’

‘Jogging?’

‘Taking a walk. You know that little rise we came over when we got here?’

‘Yeah,’ said Cowboy, hauling himself up so he could see through the front of the windshield.

‘Well, right now, he should be just about over that.’

The speedometer of their SUV crept past fifty, then sixty. Either side of the road was grass and trees. They had to make sure they stayed on the road. And so did the man up ahead of them.

‘Keep the speed up but the revs down,’ Cowboy said. ‘He hears the engine, he’ll jump out of the way.’

‘OK, but he’s probably going to think it’s kids, not someone who’s aiming for him.’

Junius Holmes heard the car behind him as he crested the hill. There was the road and then three feet of asphalt beyond the white line where it was safe to walk. Anyone passing him, and recognizing him, might have guessed he was thinking about weighty matters. A case the Supreme Court had before it, or what he was going to say at a seminar he was to give shortly at Harvard about law and philosophy. In fact, he was thinking about what he was going to have for dinner. Even a justice of the highest court in the land had to eat, he told himself. He was thinking chicken, with mashed potato and broccoli.

Ahead of him there was a low roar – a big rig struggling to get up the sharp gradient. It wasn’t a road ideally suited to such a wide vehicle, but there was rarely much traffic here and it would be on the opposite side to where he was walking, so he didn’t deviate from his path.