The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  Twisting around, and leaning back, Ty managed to get his fingertips into the man’s pocket and pull out a wallet. He let it drop open onto the floor, shimmied back round, and took a look at the clear plastic partition where the guy had a New York State driver’s license. New York, New Hampshire, Ty had been close. The name didn’t mean anything to him. He filed it away for later. If there was going to be a later.

  Back outside it was quiet. The patrol car hadn’t moved. No one had emerged from the woods to check their kill.

  He waited for another thirty minutes before breaking from the cabin. He walked down the track. He could have run, but the truth was that if the sniper was still there and wanted to take him out, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  Tromso was slumped at the wheel of the patrol car, his chin resting on the steering-wheel, eyes open with surprise. With difficulty, Ty managed to haul open the door, and find the keys to the handcuffs.

  He spent another twenty minutes trying to open them. With his hands behind his back, it was impossible. He would have had to be double-jointed at the very least. He dropped the key a half-dozen times before he picked it up for a final time, and began to stagger down the track toward the road.

  The hairs on the back of his neck bristled as he walked. He could feel eyes on him. He looked around, scanning the trees that crowded in on the track from either side. He didn’t see anyone, but they were there.

  He kept moving, resigned to the fact that at any second he might hear another crack, and his life would end.

  Forty-nine

  The Audi sped past a wooden sign that read ‘Wisconsin Welcomes You’. Inside the car, Lock glanced behind him to see Malik curled up in the back, his eyes closed.

  ‘You sleeping?’ Lock asked him.

  ‘Not really. Just couldn’t keep my eyes open. Wish I could.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lock, ‘the good news is we’re out of Minnesota. Won’t stop you being arrested, but at least it’ll be the Wisconsin cops taking you in, so less chance of an accident.’

  Malik sat up. ‘Hey, Ryan, thanks for doing this. You were taking a risk.’

  Lock shrugged. ‘If we got caught, I was planning on telling them I’d picked you up hitchhiking, didn’t know anything about what had gone down back there. Aiding and abetting is a hard charge to make stick. Prosecutors tend to lose interest once they have the person they really want.’

  ‘Well, thanks anyway. Hey, you mind if I sit up front?’

  ‘Go right ahead. You want me to pull over?’

  ‘No, I’m good.’ Malik levered himself through the gap between the front seats, and slumped next to Lock. ‘Tell me this isn’t happening,’ he said.

  ‘You mind if I ask you a couple of things, Malik?’

  Malik looked out of the window as a mini-van drove past with a picture-postcard family: mom, dad, and two kids. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘Ty spoke to your neighbor about the night it happened. She said she was pretty sure she saw you hightailing it out of there.’ As he said it, Lock watched Malik out of the corner of his eye.

  Malik looked straight at Lock. ‘She did see me.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Lock took his time answering. ‘Matters if you want us to find the people responsible.’

  Malik closed his eyes. ‘I do.’

  ‘So?’

  Lock had noticed a grey Ford Explorer hanging behind them. It had been there since they had crossed the state line. There were two men in the front, both white, both wearing sunglasses, and both sporting close-crop semi-military haircuts. The Explorer was about two hundred yards behind now, far enough back to remain anonymous (or so the occupants thought), but close enough to maintain a visual on the Audi. Now they seemed to be closing up a little, cutting the distance between the two vehicles. He kept throwing hard glances at it. He wanted them to know he was onto them. That way he could force their next play.

  Malik sighed. ‘The night it happened, I got a call from Eve Barnes saying that her home was being watched. She was terrified. I could hear it in her voice. She’d been about as calm as could be expected up until then. I couldn’t leave her to deal with it alone. Not after I’d tried to push her into pursuing it.’

  ‘She was the mother of the boy you found at the stadium?’ Lock said.

  ‘Yes. Anyway, she didn’t want to call the cops, for obvious reasons, so I agreed to go over there.’ Malik trailed off for a moment. ‘Kim was pissed.’

  Behind them, the Explorer had tucked in behind a truck. They had, by Lock’s estimation, about three miles to the next exit. If the Explorer stayed where it was, he planned on pulling off there and seeing if it followed.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Malik, oblivious to what was going on behind them, ‘when I got there, they were both gone. Eve and Jack. I tried calling her cell, but it was dead. I drove around for a while, asked some of her neighbors. They hadn’t seen anything. I didn’t know what to do next, so I headed home to talk to Kim. When I got there … it was already too late.’

  Lock’s heart sank as he listened to Malik. Whoever it was, and it was likely that more than one person had been involved, they had played him well. Chances were that they’d been with Eve Barnes when she’d made the call. Once Malik had got to her place, or someone had seen him leave his house, they’d made their move. Still, even with everything that Lock knew about what had been happening, killing someone’s family seemed beyond extreme. Unless, of course, they’d wanted to set him up. With the local cops in their pocket, Malik being shot and killed during capture would have tied things up nicely.

  ‘So you fled?’ Lock prompted, realizing when he checked his mirrors again that he had lost sight of the Explorer. It must have tucked in really tight behind the truck, which gave him an idea.

  ‘I didn’t want to leave them.’ Tears ran down Malik’s face as he spoke. ‘But I knew if the cops showed up it was over for me. And that meant that whoever did it was going to get away. So I got out of there as fast as I could.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ said Lock. ‘Now, you have that seatbelt on nice and tight?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Malik. ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to check the brakes on this thing,’ said Lock, throwing an arm across Malik’s chest and tapping the accelerator to get some distance between the rear of their car and the grille of the truck. Two seconds later, he took his foot off the gas pedal and stomped on the brake. He could feel the tap against the sole of his right foot as the Audi’s anti-lock system kicked in.

  He and Malik were thrown forward with a jolt. Lock watched the truck driver panic, and stomp down hard on his brakes as he tried to avoid rear-ending the Audi. With only a few feet to spare, Lock accelerated and flipped back out into the passing lane, out of the way of the truck.

  His eyes were fixed on his mirror as chaos unfolded behind him. The driver of the Explorer had the same idea. He spun his wheel to try to move around the truck. It was a good idea, but an SUV wasn’t the right tool for the job. Lock knew from experience that, to pull off that kind of move, you needed a low center of gravity, four-wheel drive or not.

  The Explorer started to wobble. The driver’s face tightened with panic. The passenger had thrown his hands on the dash as he white-knuckled it. He had what looked to be a Glock 9mm in his right hand. The way he was holding it, and the angle at which it was pointing, there was every chance he would drop one into his buddy’s chest before they crashed.

  Amateurs, thought Lock, as the truck’s wheels started to seize and the rig’s tires began to lose grip on the blacktop. The driver over-corrected. It spun out into the other lane. Lock accelerated harder to make sure the truck didn’t clip the back of his Audi, and send him into a spin.

  The Explorer was trapped on the outside. Sandwiched between the truck and a crash barrier that ran down the middle of the road, the driver didn’t seem to know whether he should stick or double down, try to squeeze past, or hit the brakes and let th
e truck slide past him.

  In the end, he did neither. As the truck inched its way toward him, the driver of the Explorer tried to move out of the way. He had a problem. There was nowhere to go. By the time he realized it, the side of the truck was already scraping his vehicle. There was a grinding of metal on metal.

  Lock was safely clear by now. All he could do was watch the chaos behind him. The road had been empty behind the truck and the Explorer for a good distance. He had made sure of that. The truck driver would likely walk away. The occupants of the Explorer might not be so fortunate. He took his arm from Malik’s chest.

  Finally, they came to a halt. Now Lock pulled over and got out. He looked back down the highway. The truck driver clambered out of his cab, shaken but apparently unharmed.

  There was no movement from inside the Explorer. Lock got back into his car, and pulled out onto a clear freeway. He switched the volume up on the scanner. There was already chatter of a traffic incident, but no mention of a police or other official unit being involved.

  Whoever the two men tailing them had been, he doubted they were cops. He took a moment to check on his passenger. ‘You okay?’ he asked Malik.

  ‘Guess my heart’s still working,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Lock. That was a start.

  Fifty

  Ty was already finding it tough to be a black man in this part of Minnesota. But being a black man in Minnesota with his hands cuffed behind his back, and having to persuade a complete stranger to unlock them, was a whole other level of difficulty. Thankfully, there was, if not American Express, cold, hard cash.

  He had made it down to the road, and started walking. The gloom had cleared to reveal a sparkling bright day that was at odds with everything else. At any minute he expected the wail of police sirens, but they hadn’t come. In fact it had taken a full fifteen minutes’ walking along the quiet country road before he had seen a vehicle, and a further twenty before someone had stopped.

  The man who pulled up next to him in a broken-down station wagon, with two hunting dogs in the back, grinned at him through yellowed smoker’s teeth from the driver’s seat. ‘Let me guess, you slipped in the shower, and those cuffs just fell round your wrists and snapped into place?’

  ‘How’d you guess?’ said Ty.

  ‘Happens more than you might think round here.’ The man nodded behind him. ‘Springs Falls? Am I right?’

  ‘You lost me.’

  ‘You’re some actor, I’ll give you that, young man. Spring Falls Correctional Facility is back there. That’s where you’ve come from.’

  Ty looked at him. ‘You’re not going to believe me if I tell you the truth, so let me save us both some time. I have the key. I have money. You get these things off, you can have the money and we never saw each other.’

  The man didn’t answer straight away. That was more of an answer than if he had said something. ‘I dunno. What you do? I mean, if you robbed a bank, and I let you get away then I guess I could live with myself. But if you’re some kind of a pervert or something …’

  ‘Then I’m hardly going to tell you, am I? But no, I’m not a pervert.’

  The man flattened a ragged mustache with his hand. ‘How much we talking? There’s money and then there’s money.’

  Ty knew he had the guy. But at any moment a fleet of cop cars could descend on them. He didn’t have time for a prolonged negotiation. ‘I have a thousand dollars in cash on me. You can have it all. Full and final offer. You say no, I keep walking.’

  The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where’s the key, and where’s the cash?’

  ‘Both here in my back pocket.’

  The man got out of his vehicle. He dipped a hand toward the front pocket of Ty’s jeans. ‘Sure you’re not some kind of a pervert?’ he asked.

  ‘Even if I was, I doubt you’d be my type.’

  The man fished out the key and Ty’s wallet. He took a step back and started to look through the wallet. He took out the cash. ‘You got cards here too. Bank of America. Visa. How does a guy who busted out of jail have all this?’.

  The man grabbed the handle of the driver’s door. He started to open it. Ty took three long strides as he started to climb into the vehicle. He kicked out, catching the guy’s ankle with his foot and tripping him. He went down. Ty managed to stay on his feet. He stood over him.

  ‘Don’t hit me!’

  ‘Let’s try this again, shall we?’

  Ty sat down hard on his chest, his back to the man’s face. ‘Now,’ said Ty, wiggling his hands. ‘Get that key, and take these off, before I lay my whole weight down and start cracking ribs.’

  ‘I can’t breathe,’ the man protested.

  ‘Better work fast, then, huh?’ said Ty.

  ‘I could have a heart attack.’

  ‘Hey, we all gotta go sometime,’ said Ty, feeling less than charitable.

  There was a scrambling and scuffling as the man tried to find the key to the cuffs. A few seconds later, Ty felt them pop. He grabbed the driver’s door, and hauled himself back to his feet. He rubbed at his wrists. Tromso had made sure the cuffs were on good and tight. He checked out the road in both directions. It was still quiet. No one had passed but the odds were it wouldn’t stay that way for too much longer. He put out a hand and helped the man up.

  ‘You could have killed me.’ He stood there and rubbed at his chest. He was winded but unharmed.

  Ty stared at him. ‘We had an agreement. You broke it. By rights, I should kick your ass.’

  The man flapped at him as Ty put his hand out. ‘My money?’

  The guy grumbled. Another look from Ty settled him down. He pulled out the roll and Ty took back his cash. He peeled off two hundred and handed it back.

  Fifty-one

  The station wagon pulled up at the bottom of the track that led to the cabin. Ty took the keys, the man’s cell phone, and got out. The older guy was still rubbing his chest and grumbling about being ripped off.

  Ty ducked his head back into the car. ‘Wait here and don’t speak to anyone. That’s another two hundred. If anyone does show, honk the horn.’

  The other jerked his head up the track. ‘What’s up there anyway?’

  ‘Better you don’t know,’ Ty told him.

  Ty left him to it and hiked up the track, staying close to the tree line. He was gambling on the sniper having cleared out. If he was still about, and decided to take a shot at him, there would be little he could do about it. But he wanted to take a look at the scene before the cops finally tracked down Tromso.

  It was a short hike. Tromso’s patrol car was still where it had been, the fat cop slumped over the wheel. Ty took a quick walk around, trying to estimate the angle and direction the shots had come from. He retrieved his own weapon from inside the patrol car, but left Tromso’s service gun with the body.

  He walked back to the cabin, keeping an eye on the ridge. Everything was quiet. What made the place perfect for a little quiet torture made it work equally well as a location to kill a cop. Ty took a couple of pictures of the blond guy and his ID with his cell phone. He didn’t have a signal here but as soon as he did he’d pass them on to Lock via encrypted email so he could run some checks.

  From the size of the hole in the front of his face, the single shot that had taken him out was consistent with the rounds that had been fired at the patrol car. Ty peered back up the ridge at the angles: it didn’t look like the sniper had moved much, if at all. He, or they if he had a spotter, had scoped out his spot, set up, then picked off his targets with cool efficiency. If he’d stuck around, he could easily have killed Ty. So either he’d split after he’d finished Tromso, or Ty wasn’t on his agenda.

  Ty left the cabin, and started toward the ridge. The trees, mostly silver birch with some spruce, were nicely spaced, and though there was a slope, it was easy ground to cover. He followed a line from the cabin door, tacking on a diagonal. The trees thinned nearer the top and the slope became more severe. Ty slowed, looking for sign
s of disturbance.

  He found it about twenty yards further on. A glint of reflected light caught his eye. He bent to take a closer look. It was a brass shell casing. He picked it up, and laid it in the palm of his hand as, below, he heard a car horn sound a long single blast.

  Fifty-two

  Ty watched as two patrol cars pulled in behind the station wagon. One had campus-police markings, the other was from the county sheriff’s department. Kelly Svenson got out of the campus patrol car on her own, and walked round to talk to the guy, who took about half a second to dime him out. Ty could see him patting his hand to his chest, and otherwise miming the ordeal he’d been through. No doubt any bribery or deception on his part wasn’t going to feature in his version of events.

  A city cop in plain clothes joined her. He was a tall white guy, whom Ty recognized from outside the Becker residence. They stepped off to one side. Going by their body language, they seemed to be debating who would go on up the track to see what had happened to Tromso. They walked back to their vehicles. The city cop took the lead while Kelly hung back.

  Ty decided that he wasn’t about to stick around. He already knew how the story had ended for Tromso. Kelly had been happy enough to see her partner disappear Ty from custody. He wasn’t going to trust her a second time. And certainly not with a dead cop in the mix.

  Fifty-three

  Lock pulled into the parking lot of Walmart. He parked well away from the front entrance. He left Malik in the car, his head resting against the window, a sweatshirt cushioning him from the glass and obscuring his face. Inside, Lock bought Malik everything he’d need for the next week, including clothes and food, stuff that didn’t require a refrigerator and wouldn’t spoil, like protein bars. He also picked up three cases of water, a pre-paid cell phone, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo and soap.

  He wheeled his cart out of the store, and loaded the supplies into the back of the Audi. He pulled out of the parking lot, and headed a half-mile down the road to a motel he had scoped out on TripAdvisor. It had the worst reviews in the greater Madison area, which made it perfect for his purpose, as long as Malik didn’t mind roaches.