The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  It was only when Malik had raised the alarm, then wouldn’t let it go that he’d taken action. He’d kicked it down to Tromso to investigate and banned Becker from the campus in the interim. That had led to the threat of legal action from Becker’s attorneys in Minneapolis. ‘But I held firm,’ he said to Lock.

  ‘Yeah, you’re a regular hero,’ Lock told him. ‘So what else?’

  ‘There was no else. It was being investigated.’

  Lock had to fight the sneer from his voice. ‘By Tromso? Why didn’t you contact someone in Minneapolis?’

  It was Laird’s turn to smirk. ‘Are you forgetting the part about Aubrey’s brother being governor? What good would it have done? I was hoping that by banning him from campus it would scare him enough to stop him doing whatever he was doing.’

  ‘By which you mean raping kids.’

  That wiped the smug grin from Laird’s face. ‘I didn’t have the details.’

  ‘So why not go out of state? Call the FBI.’

  Laird spread his hands out of the desk. ‘Even if I had, they would have had to wait while the ongoing investigation came to some sort of conclusion. Tromso told me that if he did find evidence he would hand it to a special prosecutor.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ said Lock. ‘You know he burned the Shaw home to the ground, right?’

  Laird blanched. ‘No, I most certainly did not.’

  ‘My partner watched him go in with a can of gasoline. Getting rid of the evidence.’

  ‘You think Tromso killed them? That’s preposterous.’

  Lock stared hard at Laird. ‘He lied about everything connected to the crime scene in his report. Must have realized it wasn’t going to stand up. We have pictures to prove that his version of what went down was pure fantasy.’

  Lock could see the cogs turning in Laird’s mind. Every logical pathway led to how he could extricate himself and limit the damage to the college. ‘Then if he did that, and he’s dead, and so is Aubrey Becker …’

  ‘You’re in the clear? That what you’re thinking, Chancellor?’

  As Lock stood up, Laird flinched. He really was a pitiful sight, thought Lock. A man who thought only in terms of public perceptions and balance sheets. A man who didn’t care about the damage that might have been done to those left behind, or the pain of Becker’s victims, not to mention how he’d placed Malik Shaw’s family in danger, and pretty much signed their death warrant, by not doing the right thing. Even though Lock knew none of that would stand up in a court of law — Laird had dotted his is and crossed his ts — it was still how any decent person would see it.

  ‘Not me,’ said Laird. ‘The institution.’

  The intercom on Laird’s desk buzzed. ‘May I?’ he asked Lock.

  Lock nodded for him to go ahead. ‘Just don’t say anything silly,’ he said, his hand falling to the butt of his SIG Sauer to emphasize just what a bad idea it would be.

  ‘Yes,’ said Laird.

  ‘Officer Svenson is on her way up to see you.’

  Lock knew a cue to get the hell out of Dodge when he heard one. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure that this is over. Malik Shaw didn’t kill Tromso and the other person they found.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ said Laird.

  ‘Because I was with him,’ said Lock. He stopped at the door, and nodded toward the windows. ‘I’d keep your blinds closed, and your eyes open, Chancellor. I’ve a feeling this thing still has a ways to go.’

  Fifty-nine

  The attic was dark and dusty. Head bowed, Ty crawled through the clutter, using a flashlight he’d found in the kitchen. After he’d got through searching the office, he’d tried to think of where else someone like Aubrey Becker would hide something he didn’t want the world to see.

  Not that Ty knew if there was anything. But while he was there, he figured he might as well go over every inch of the property. There was something else that had lodged in his mind. A story Lock had told him about his time in the British Royal Military Police in Germany. It had been an investigation into a serial predator similar to Becker, and the evidence that had sent the man to jail had been carefully stored in his attic. It made sense. It was a place that a casual visitor was hardly likely to stumble into. Plus the house had no basement so that left this as a storage area.

  Ty worked his way methodically through the piles of boxes. Most of it seemed to be soft furnishings, drapes and pillows that he figured had been placed there by Gretchen Becker. At the bottom of one stack, he came across some old files. Maybe this was it. He pulled the box out, took off the lid and began to go through the papers but nothing leaped out at him.

  At the very bottom he found a pile of old magazines. Gay porn, and some old naturist stuff from the 1960s, the kind that had families. He didn’t dwell on it. He took a quick look at the covers and threw them back into the box. Knowing what he did about Becker’s appetites, it made his skin crawl.

  He wasn’t going to find anything there that would tell him something they didn’t already know. He climbed back down the attic ladder and stood in the hallway. He checked back through the rooms. He grabbed the yearbook from Becker’s office and took one final look. The young Becker stared back at him, no hint of what he was to become. Ty closed it again, but took it with him. Downstairs he combed through a papers caddy in the kitchen, retrieving some itemized cellular phone bills for both Aubrey and Gretchen. Lock could give them to Salas and see what he came up with.

  Finally, and with a feeling that he’d missed something – something important – Ty walked back out of the Becker home and got into the Chevy Blazer. At the end of the long driveway, he turned back toward Harrisburg.

  Sixty

  Ty pulled over to the curb opposite the diner. Lock opened the front passenger door and got in.

  ‘What did Laird say?’ Ty asked him.

  ‘Apart from giving me the I-was-just-doing-my-job line? Not a whole lot. He did the minimum. Turned it over to the cops, and banned Becker from campus. He didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Kim and the kids. Not directly, anyway. You? Anything turn up at the house?’

  ‘Hard drive for Becker’s computer is gone. Found some dirty magazines in the attic.’ Ty opened the glove compartment and pulled out the bills he’d filched. ‘Got some phone records that were lying around. Maybe you can get Salas to run them.’

  Lock leafed through them. ‘This is good. This bill here for Aubrey Becker must have just come in. I’ll ask Salas to get us everything after the last call on here as well. By the way, that female cop was on her way in to see Laird when I was leaving.’

  ‘She see you?’ Ty asked.

  ‘No. I took the stairs. But Laird probably told her about my visit. Wonder where she fits into all this. You said she saw Tromso driving you away?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ty, his expression sour. He was still annoyed with himself for having been taken in so easily by her. ‘Sat and watched it happen.’

  ‘Maybe she was scared of him. Didn’t want to intervene,’ Lock theorized.

  ‘Or she was in on it?’ said Ty.

  ‘Or that.’ Lock drummed his fingers on the dash. ‘We’re missing something here. Hey, can I see your cell phone?’

  Ty dug into his pocket and handed it to him. Lock hit the picture icon and started swiping through. ‘We should check in with Malik,’ he said.

  Sixty-one

  Malik snatched up the phone on the first ring. The food and supplies Lock had left with him were still on the floor, still packed. He was wearing the same clothes. He hadn’t showered. He’d barely moved from the bed where he was lying now, staring at the ceiling, afraid to close his eyes. The darkness brought horror. He planned on staying awake until exhaustion overtook him and he had no other choice than to plunge back into the abyss.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice ragged and broken, the voice of a stranger.

  ‘It’s Ryan. You staying put? Any problems?’

  Malik was grateful that Lock hadn’t asked ho
w he was or if he was okay. ‘I’m here. There’s not been any problems.’

  ‘Good. In a moment I’m going to send you through a couple of pictures. They’re not very pleasant but I want to know if you recognize the person in them.’

  Malik sat up. ‘Okay. Who is it?’

  ‘Someone Ty had a run in with. Don’t worry, he’s safe here. The other guy not so much. Take a look, see if it jogs anything, and I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.’

  Lock hung up, and Malik waited. A few moments later the phone chimed twice. Malik opened the pictures. Lock had been right: they were gruesome. Before what had happened, they would have upset him. Not anymore.

  He waited for Lock to call back. Again, Malik answered immediately.

  ‘I don’t know his name,’ said Malik, ‘but I know who he is.’

  Sixty-two

  They sat side by side cross-legged on the floor of the forest. Through a gap in the pine trees, they could see Harrisburg laid out beneath them. It was getting darker, and as the sun shrank from the town, the cold was bitter. A wind picked up from the east, rattling its way through the trees and making the boy shiver. He took the scope and handed it to Jack.

  ‘Here,’ he told the boy. ‘Now, press your eyes up against it. Yeah, that’s right, close your left eye. Try not to squint, though.’

  Jack was so focused, so concentrated, but he could also see the wariness in the boy’s eyes. That wouldn’t go away. It would stay with him. He knew that because he had it too. The only comfort was that it could serve someone well if they knew how to channel it. Wariness, suspicion, a high level of alertness, whatever you wanted to call it, had kept him alive where others hadn’t been so fortunate. He hoped in time that Jack would come to understand that along with all the pain there were also blessings.

  ‘Okay, tell me what you can see,’ he said to the boy.

  ‘Hey, I can see the stadium,’ Jack said. He lowered the scope from his eye. ‘Could you hit the stadium from here with your gun?’

  ‘Lemme see … I probably could, but it’s a little too far to have any accuracy. You’d want to be closer in.’

  Jack frowned, apparently a little disappointed by the answer. ‘I don’t think my mom wants to be here,’ he said.

  ‘I know. But it won’t be for much longer. I promise you.’

  Jack grabbed a piece of wood from the forest floor, and began to dig it into the ground. His brow furrowed. ‘What was it like for you? Y’know, with Becker and …?’

  That Jack couldn’t bring himself to say the other name didn’t surprise him. They had both left scars, but the man whom Jack couldn’t name had made sure that the wounds he left were physical as well as psychological.

  He took a breath. He had known that this question, and more like it, had been coming since he had shared with Jack what had happened to him, the experiences they had in common. He had decided that he owed it to Jack to be honest. And he felt the boy would understand. Victims did, though he tried not to see himself as a victim so much as a survivor. And now as an avenger whose enemy was silence. So, talking about it was good.

  ‘At first,’ he said, ‘it was nice. All the attention. All the things he would buy me. Getting taken to the college games. I felt … special. You know what I mean, right?’

  Jack nodded.

  ‘He didn’t do anything at first. He’d give me a hug, or there was one time when he was driving me back from the fair and he had to pull over the car because I was feeling sick from all the candy I’d eaten. Anyway, I was throwing up, and he was rubbing my back, telling me to get it all out. And even when I couldn’t throw up anymore, and wanted to get back into the car and go home, he kept rubbing. Stuff like that.’

  Jack was staring off into the distance. He knew the look. ‘Same with me,’ said Jack. ‘The first time was in the car. I had shorts on … And what about, you know, the other one?’

  He wasn’t ready to talk about that yet, even if Jack was. ‘Rougher, huh? No presents. He just took what he wanted.’

  Jack shivered.

  ‘But it’s all over now, Jack.’

  The boy looked up at him. ‘So what are we doing here? I mean, if it’s all over.’

  He got to his feet, grabbed the rifle and the scope and started back toward the house. Jack got up and chased after him. ‘Why?’

  He turned back to the boy. ‘You see all those people down there? They knew. Or if they didn’t know, they knew someone who knew someone who did. That’s why this happened. That’s why we’re here now. You and me. Because those people need to pay for what they did.’

  ‘We can’t punish all of them,’ said Jack.

  Up near the house, he could see a car approaching. Its headlights flickered through gaps in the trees. ‘Sure we can,’ he told the boy.

  Sixty-three

  Salas’s name flashed up on Lock’s phone. He hit the answer button. ‘What you got?’

  ‘Weston Reeves. Forty-seven years of age. White male born in New Hampshire. Resident in Minnesota for the past twenty-five years. Worked in a variety of roles for Aubrey Becker. Security, fixer and general gopher. I’m still working on him but, yeah, Mr Shaw remembered correctly.’

  ‘He work for any of the rest of the family?’ Lock asked. Across the street, Ty was getting them coffee and something to eat while Lock kept an eye out for any other members of the college or town police department.

  ‘You mean like the governor? Not as far as I can tell,’ Salas told him. ‘Talking to people, I get the impression that the rest of the family had been distancing themselves from Aubrey over the past couple of years.’

  ‘They knew?’ said Lock, watching Ty walk out of the diner and start to cross the street.

  ‘Impossible to say. But I’d imagine that if there were rumors flying around they would have picked up on them.’

  Ty opened the passenger door of the Chevy and handed Lock a coffee. ‘And were there rumors?’ Lock asked Salas. He covered the phone and said to Ty: ‘Blond dude who wanted to carve you up was working for Becker.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Salas. ‘Going back a long time. Couple of out-of-court settlements too. Big ones. Soon as complaints were made the Becker family sent the lawyers in with a check book and an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement. Guess they didn’t want it out that there was a pay day for anyone whose kid had crossed Aubrey’s path.’

  ‘Any law-enforcement investigations?’

  ‘One. About five years ago. Kid who lived in Murray County and had come up to Harrisburg for a summer camp at the college. Went home, told Mom and Dad that Aubrey Becker had made an inappropriate approach toward him, and this time someone took it seriously.’

  ‘Another pay-off?’ Lock asked.

  ‘Maybe. It went away in any case. But here’s the twist. The sheriff who was looking into it, six months later he’s run off the road one night. Survives the crash but while he’s trying to pull his head out of the windshield someone puts three shots into him. No way of saying for sure if it’s connected or not, but it did kind of leap out at me.’

  The implication was obvious to Lock. Someone connected to the Becker family had been worried enough that they’d resorted to killing a county sheriff in order to save Aubrey Becker. ‘Anything else?’ Lock said to Salas.

  ‘That’s it for now, but like I said, I’ll keep digging. Got a feeling I’ll find plenty more too. Kind of have me a feeling that our governor ain’t gonna be running for president.’

  ‘Think you might be right,’ said Lock. Salas ended the call. Lock peeled back the plastic lid on the coffee mug and took a sip. ‘You catch that?’ he asked Ty.

  ‘Enough, yeah. So who do we think took out this Reeves cat and Tromso?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Lock. ‘But sure looks like someone tying up loose ends. Becker’s dead, and apart from a bunch of families who’ve already been paid off, who is there left to throw the family skeleton out of the closet? Tromso, for sure, and this guy Reeves. They go, they pin it on Malik, and that�
��s your ending neatly wrapped up with a bow on top for anyone who looks into it.’

  ‘So why leave me?’ Ty asked.

  Lock shrugged. ‘Any number of reasons. Ran out of ammo. Couldn’t get a shot off. Or, more likely, didn’t think you were important enough to warrant a bullet.’

  Ty dug into a brown-paper bag and grabbed a tuna sandwich. He handed one to Lock. ‘Don’t buy it. Dude was a pro. If he’d wanted to kill me, he would have. I had my hands cuffed, couldn’t move that fast. It wouldn’t have been a problem.’

  ‘So,’ said Lock, ‘he decided not to. Like I said, he probably had you down as some random guy who’d got on the wrong side of Tromso and Reeves.’

  A college police cruiser was heading down the main drag toward them. Ty noticed it first. He put his sandwich on the dash, and his hand fell to the butt of his SIG. He and Lock watched it roll past.

  ‘Guess we can speculate all we want. But that’s not gonna tell us anything. Let’s go check out Mr Reeves’s place. See if we can’t find something there,’ said Lock, putting the Chevy Blazer into drive, and pulling away from the curb before the police cruiser had a chance to take another pass at them.

  Sixty-four

  Weston Reeves had lived in a three-bedroom steel-sided rambler that sat on a corner lot on a quiet street in Wolf Falls, a small town about eight miles north-east of Harrisburg. Lock parked the Chevy in the empty driveway. He and Ty got out. The house next door and the one opposite were both dark. The street was empty.

  Both men stood back from the house and took a look. They could tell a lot about someone from the outside of their house. Weston Reeves’s home was no exception.

  For a start, all the blinds were drawn, although it was likely he had left this place for the last time when the sun was up. A metal grille gate covered the front door, which sported a heavy-duty lock. A dummy alarm box was mounted high above the front door, and two security cameras at the front. The cameras covered the driveway and the front door. All the security seemed over-the-top for the location. Security of that kind was usually reserved for high-crime neighborhoods, or a property with something valuable inside, and Reeves hadn’t struck them as the kind of guy who had money. His boss, yes, Weston not so much.