The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  Soon they had cleared a path to the cabinets. Mike left Lock to it. He started with the cabinet in the furthest corner from the door. There were six cabinets and each had five drawers.

  The third cabinet was locked. He left it while he checked the others. They hadn’t been locked so if the records were here they would be in the third cabinet. He used his Gerber to force it open. The top drawer was empty. So was the second.

  Opening the third drawer, he hit pay dirt. The summer kids’ program had been divided by years. As he rifled through the files, looking for 1994, he wondered why someone had locked the cabinet when they could have removed, and then destroyed, the files. He guessed it came down to laziness and complacency. Securing the cabinet would deter a casual search. And even if someone did grow curious and open it, they would most likely have no idea what they were looking at.

  He wondered, too, what had happened to cause the program to be closed. Had a concerned parent or guardian contacted the university? Had a different version of Malik Shaw walked in on something? Whatever it was, it must have given someone somewhere a scare.

  Like so many cover-ups, thought Lock, this one had deep roots. There was rarely a single moment of discovery when it came to these things. Often there were repeated attempts to bring the truth to light that were ignored or, like this one, simply buried. People were paid off, threatened or ridiculed. The really persistent faced intimidation. But the truth could rarely be denied forever. It had a way of surfacing.

  Lock found the printout that listed the names of children who had attended the summer camp in ’94. He ran his index finger down it. He already knew what he was looking for: a surname. That surname was Svenson. It had been the name of one of the boys pictured attending the camp in ’94. Daniel Svenson, a scrappy-looking little kid with a bad haircut and a gap between his front teeth.

  When he had seen the name beneath the picture, he had almost blown straight past it. What had stopped him was the kid’s resemblance to Jack Barnes. It was eerie. They were separated by twenty years but they might have been brothers. They had the same bone structure, the same features, and they were about the same height.

  But that in and of itself hadn’t been very significant. Lock imagined that men like Aubrey Becker and Weston Reeves had their types. No, the resemblance between Daniel and Jack had been fortunate only in as much as it had delayed Lock by a few seconds. Those seconds had been long enough for an alarm to sound in his mind about the boy’s surname. Like someone he knew from a different context, then bumped into them in a store, Lock had to think about why the name seemed familiar. Then it had hit him.

  Could there be a connection? It was a name that was neither rare nor common. It warranted more investigation, but it could well turn out to be a dead end. Now he had his answer. Like everything else in this mess, there were few coincidences. Everything linked. Everything fitted together.

  He kept scanning the file. Midway down the third page, he found what he had been looking for. It was there in black and white, the name Svenson. Typed twice. Not an error of repetition, but for good reason. Two names. One just above the other. Daniel and Kelly Svenson. Next to the names was their date of birth. The dates were the same.

  Eighty-five

  Lock pulled down the edge of his jacket to conceal the gun on his hip as he waited to be buzzed into the campus security office. A few seconds later the buzzer sounded, and he hauled open the door.

  ‘Officer Svenson?’

  The civilian at the counter dusted some donut sugar from her hands, and picked up the telephone on the desk in front of her. She cupped a hand over pursed lips as she made the enquiry. A moment later she put it down again. ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I’ll need to know who’s asking first.’

  Lock advanced on the receptionist. ‘I don’t have time for games, lady. Now where is she? Or do you want to explain to Special Agent in Charge Lee why you’re obstructing a federal investigation?’

  ‘She’s probably out at the stadium.’

  By the time she had finished the sentence Lock was pushing back through the door.

  Eighty-six

  They had always been close. Not all twins were, despite what people believed. Forced into the same clothes, and constant proximity, some twins couldn’t stand the sight of each other. But from very early in their lives, Kelly Svenson had felt a strong connection to her brother, Daniel. Part of that might have been down to biology and having shared a womb, but she believed it had to do with their upbringing, not the early years, but what had happened later, when Aubrey Becker appeared in their lives.

  Aubrey the charmer. The pillar of the community. The man with the perfect wife, who went to church every Sunday and put so much of his money into good causes.

  Kelly had been of no interest to Becker. Girls weren’t his type. Weston Reeves had been a little different. He didn’t appear to mind whether it was a boy or a girl. Sex, normal sex anyway, didn’t interest him. He enjoyed instilling fear and inflicting pain. That was where Reeves got his kicks.

  Until the age of nine, the twins’ childhood had been regular. Then their father had gotten sick. Cancer. He had felt unwell for six months before their mother had forced him to see a doctor. By then it was too late. He had died three months later, leaving her a widow trying to survive on her income from a part-time job at the local Coborn’s supermarket.

  Their mom had done her best. Daniel had been closer to their father than Kelly was. He had taken it hardest of all of them. Where once he had been bright and extrovert, now he was dour and withdrawn. He had even lost his interest in sport.

  In the late spring after her bereavement, their mom had visited the campus to enquire about a secretarial job in the English Department. She had run into Aubrey Becker somewhere along the line and they had got chatting. She had shared her story and Aubrey had mentioned the summer camp. It must have seemed a Godsend. She didn’t have money for someone to mind the kids while she worked over the summer, her family was scattered, most of them living in Florida, and the camp was right there at the college. If she got the job, which Becker made sure she did, she could drop Kelly and her brother off in the morning and collect them in the afternoon. And it was free, thanks to the generosity of Aubrey Becker.

  So, in the summer, Daniel and Kelly had started at the camp. They hadn’t known much about Aubrey Becker for the first three weeks, other than that he paid for the whole deal. They didn’t see him. They saw only the coaches and the other kids. It was all perfectly normal. Better than normal. It was well run and a ton of fun.

  Kelly remembered the first time she had met Becker. He had arrived with a large man, whom she later discovered was Weston Reeves. Becker was all smiles. He asked the kids about themselves. He had brought two coolers full of soda and ice cream for them. He stayed around for a half-hour and then he left. She realized later that this had been a reconnaissance trip. He was scoping out potential victims.

  It was a week before he came back, again with a glowering Reeves as his driver. Again with sodas and ice cream. This time he stayed a little longer.

  And that was how it went. Each visit a little longer. He was making sure the kids and the coaches were comfortable with his presence. After two more weeks he started to do a little coaching of his own, although he passed it off to the other staff as helping the kids who lacked confidence. Again, he was careful never to be alone with any of them.

  The summer passed. The camp ended. They didn’t see Aubrey Becker again until the late autumn when he appeared at their house. She and Daniel got home from school one afternoon to find him sitting in their living room, in their father’s chair, sipping coffee and chatting to their mom. He was extending the summer program to a weekly camp. For boys. Sadly, Kelly wouldn’t be able to participate. They didn’t have coaches for girls and, with the children being in their teens, well, boys were easily distracted. That had been Aubrey Becker’s line.

  Most of the boys were f
rom difficult backgrounds or had been in trouble with the law. They had been referred to the program by a young police officer in Harrisburg named Tromso. He had worked for the city before he became head of the college police, and the lines between town and college became even more blurred. The club would run on Friday and Saturday nights. It would use the college facilities. It would be free. Aubrey Becker told their mom that while Daniel didn’t fit the profile — he was a model student rather than a delinquent — he might benefit from it because of his athletic talent.

  And that was where it had started. On Friday evenings after school, her brother would head to the college to play basketball, touch football, baseball or soccer. At first, there was no change. He seemed happy. He even teased Kelly about being excluded. Something she had resented at the time.

  The change in Daniel’s mood was gradual. At first she put down his outbursts to the changes they were both going through. Then he started to shut down. They had always been able to talk. But that changed as he spent more time at the college. He started picking on her at dinner. Teasing her. Generally being an asshole. Then, a while after that, he seemed to get really low, like he didn’t even have the energy to rile her anymore.

  By then he was spending more time with Aubrey Becker and the kids from the program. Weekday activities started to spill over into the weekend. There was a sleepover at the college, in one of the dorms. When he had come home from that, she had gone to pick up his laundry and noticed blood where a young girl might leave blood, but a teenage boy wouldn’t. She had asked him about it. He had flown into a rage.

  She thought that perhaps he was being bullied by some of the other boys. Some were older. They were rougher, a lot more streetwise. Two weeks after the bloody underwear, he had got into a fight with one of the older kids. At first he wouldn’t talk about it. After many hours Daniel told her that the boy had called him a fag, but he wouldn’t say any more than that. It was only later that she found out the result of the fight. She had assumed that Daniel had lost. He hadn’t. Far from it. The rage he was feeling had been unleashed: Daniel had broken the other boy’s nose and three of his ribs. If it hadn’t been for Weston Reeves stepping in, one of the other boys told her, Daniel would have killed his tormenter. As the boy lay injured, Daniel had walked over to a weight rack in the gymnasium and grabbed a bar bell. Reeves had shown up and grabbed it just as Daniel was going to bring it down on the other kid’s skull.

  It took Daniel a long time to tell her what was going on. By the time he did, she knew, even at her age, that the damage had been done. By then Daniel was nearly fifteen, and Aubrey Becker had begun to lose interest him. One day, after another weekend sleepover at the Becker house, he had dropped Daniel off and never called again.

  Kelly had tried speaking to a teacher at school about it. The woman, in her fifties, had taken it seriously. She had even gone so far as calling the cops. Tromso had turned up at their home and warned Kelly and Daniel about spreading malicious gossip. They had realized then that Becker was untouchable.

  Daniel had joined the army. She had left Harrisburg too, going to college out of state and eventually drifting into law enforcement. She’d thought that being a cop would mean being able to make a difference. She had been right and wrong. You could make a difference, but not in a place like this.

  Kelly walked up the stairs that led to Daniel’s apartment door. She took out her key, turned it in the lock and walked inside. Daniel was sitting on the couch. The curtains were drawn. The place smelt of rotting garbage and sweat.

  She looked at her brother. He didn’t move. She went over to him and touched his shoulder. His hand moved up and clasped hers. They didn’t need to speak anymore. They had done their talking when they had decided to come back.

  Once upon a time she had failed her brother. She had promised him when he had first told her about Becker and Reeves that she would never fail him again. Whatever he needed to do would be okay with her. She had never imagined her promise would bring them to this.

  Once she had crossed certain lines, she had known that there was no return. You either upheld the law or you didn’t. She had chosen to break it. There was no grieving about that now. What was done was done. There was no going back. Not now.

  ‘It’s all set,’ she said to Daniel. ‘Just like you wanted.’

  He nodded. There was a hint of a smile. He had that faraway look he got sometimes when he was happy. She recognized it from when he was little. He’d be sitting outside on a sunny day, playing on the front lawn, and he’d have that same look, like he knew a beautiful secret about the world that no one else did.

  ‘They all stayed silent, sis,’ he said. He ran a hand through his hair, sweeping it back from his face. He’d grown it long since he came out of the army.

  ‘I know they did,’ she said. She walked to the window. Part of her knew what she was helping him do was wrong. That it would solve nothing. That it would only make matters worse. And yet …

  The man with the sign had changed things. She and Daniel had seen him in the newspapers. It was during the Penn State scandal. He was an alumnus. When Penn State had decided that someone having used their campus to rape kids was no reason to stop their precious football games, that man had driven to Happy Valley with his sign and held it silently in protest. People – young, old, men and women – had cussed him out and spat at him. Someone had thrown beer over him. Most of the crowd, well, they’d just ignored him and walked in to watch the football game. His sign had read: ‘Put abused kids first. Don’t be fooled, they all knew.’

  Daniel had talked about that man a lot. He’d said that such things would keep going on unless people understood that silence came with a price. As soon as he’d said it, she knew he was right. Silence wasn’t neutral. It was an endorsement. So was inaction. If you saw someone drowning in a river and walked by, that didn’t make you a casual observer: it made you the asshole who had let them drown.

  They would all tag along to the stadium tonight, the college kids and the people of Harrisburg. They would hold hands, sing songs and nothing would change.

  Laird wanted a PR exercise. Well, her brother was going to give him a lesson in PR. One that no one here, or in the rest of the world, would ever forget.

  Eighty-seven

  Lock stood for a moment in the half-light of the empty bedroom. The bed was still unmade. Underwear and clothes were strewn over the floor. The apartment was best described as utilitarian. There was everything someone would need to live comfortably but there were no homely touches: no flowers, no plants, no evidence of any pets.

  He tensed a little as he heard the front door open and someone walk in. He moved quickly to the bedroom door, and peeked through into the corridor. He pulled his SIG from his holster, and held it by his side. Quietly, he opened the door and slipped out into the corridor.

  Kelly Svenson was in the kitchen. He watched as she took off her jacket and slung it across the back of a chair. She walked toward the refrigerator. He raised his gun, and waited until she opened the fridge.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he told her.

  She twitched. The movement was more shudder than jump.

  ‘Keep your hands in plain sight,’ said Lock. ‘Raise them up, and turn around.’

  Her face gave nothing away as she stared at him. She raised her hands. He walked over to where she was standing, his SIG still punched out in front of him, his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze off a shot if he had to. He was hoping she wouldn’t do anything stupid. He didn’t want to kill her. He didn’t want to kill anyone. There had been more than enough killing in Harrisburg.

  ‘Becker send you?’ she asked, as he plucked her service weapon from her hip and made it safe.

  He had a good idea whom she was referring to, but he would see where her assumption took them. It would be good to get confirmation of what he already suspected. ‘Becker’s dead,’ he said.

  She smiled, but it was forced. Her mouth turned up at the corners but her eyes w
ere dead. ‘Governor Becker.’

  Lock stepped back and lowered his gun. ‘I try not to work for politicians. Tends to interfere with getting a good night’s sleep. I’m here because of what happened to Malik Shaw’s family. My partner grew up with him.’

  Nothing from her. In another life she would have made one hell of an actress. She betrayed nothing that she hadn’t already decided to show. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘why do you have a problem with me? I wasn’t involved in that.’

  ‘You knew about it,’ said Lock.

  ‘After the fact. Tromso was a scumbag, along with the rest of them, but even I didn’t think he and Reeves would go that far. You know about Reeves, right? I mean, you wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

  Lock nodded. ‘Where’s your brother? Where’s Daniel? And don’t lie to me. I know he’s here, just like I know that he’s a very dangerous man.’

  That finally got a reaction from her. A bitter laugh. ‘Dangerous? Y’think? He’s what they made him.’

  Lock said, ‘I’m sorry about that. I truly am. Just like I’m sorry Malik Shaw had to pay the price he did for trying to do what was right.’

  ‘One honest man among thousands, and he was an outsider.’

  Lock advanced on her. ‘This is over, Kelly. Now, tell me where Daniel is before more innocent people get hurt.’

  ‘So everyone can lawyer up and walk away and my brother can go to prison? No, thanks. I’ve seen how the law operates around here. There’s one rule for the likes of the Becker family and another for everyone else.’ She took a step toward him. He moved back. ‘He was a kid. Do you want me to tell you what those animals did to him?’

  ‘I think you should tell everyone so that there’s less chance it can happen again,’ said Lock. ‘But first I’m going to need you to tell me how to find that brother of yours.’

  ‘Go to Hell.’ She flew at him. Lock didn’t raise his weapon. She was unarmed, forty pounds lighter, and five inches shorter. If he couldn’t handle her, he’d be as well to retire. He didn’t like the idea of hitting a woman much either, but it beat shooting one.