Gridlock: The Third Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  ‘That was the caper with the porn-star guy, right?’

  ‘Yeah, John Holmes was the dude’s name. He was working as a porn actor, doing well, but got into some heavy drugs. Ended up with him and three of his buddies dead in an apartment. Then there was that whole machete-attack deal a year or two back. Those were porn people too.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with this?’ Wilkins asked.

  ‘Nothing directly, but it’s one fucked-up way of making a living. Drugs, disease, a lot of lowlifes. You survive in that world you ain’t no innocent,’ Brogan said.

  Wilkins’s eyes narrowed as he glanced back towards Raven. ‘Which means that she knows a whole lot more than she’s telling us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t sweat it either way,’ said Brogan.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Wilkins asked.

  Brogan gave another little shrug. ‘Body falls in Van Nuys, head falls in Central. That means the whole package is probably going to land on someone’s desk down at the Police Administration Building. That means this whole caper is NOP.’

  ‘NOP?’

  Brogan smiled at her partner. ‘Not our problem.’

  Four

  Stanner arrived almost a full hour later, his broad shoulders and mass of tightly curled hair visible over the crowd. Raven had met with him twice before, once here at her house and once when she’d taken some of the letters into his office at the Threat Management Unit. She’d liked him. He didn’t look at her like she was a piece of meat or like she didn’t warrant protection because of what she did for a living.

  And as the letters had piled up and the phone calls had started, when no one spoke, he’d done more than she’d expected. He’d organized for a panic alarm to be fitted in her home (although she’d had to pay for it), extra patrols to run by at night, and he’d added the address as a ‘special location’ to the dispatch system. They’d come up against one problem, though. Unlike the vast majority of these cases, he’d explained, Raven had no idea who the person stalking her was, and neither, even after months of investigation, did Stanner or the LAPD. The letters and silent phone calls had become the criminal equivalent of chronic back pain, something that wore you down and was always in the background. They were also, however, something you learned to live with. Raven had learned to live with a lot of things.

  ‘How you feeling?’ Stanner asked.

  Raven studied her feet. ‘Tired. Shook up. I’ve had a hell of a night.’

  Stanner squeezed a smile. ‘Listen, the SID people will be here for a while.’

  ‘SID?’ Raven asked him.

  ‘Scientific Investigation Division. Forensics.’

  Raven glanced back to her house. Most of the neighbors on either side had retreated into their homes. ‘Then what happens?’ she asked.

  ‘There’ll be a homicide investigation, because we believe the body in the trunk of your car is linked to another discovery in Central Division, which makes it more likely that the case will be passed over to the Homicide Special Section of Robbery Homicide to investigate. There’ll be more questions for you.’ He sighed, and rubbed his head. ‘Sucks, I know, but it’s the way it goes.’

  ‘What about me? Do I go into witness protection or something?’

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t really work like that.’

  ‘But I’m being stalked. I mean, this is more than some creepy letters.’

  ‘It certainly is, but the Threat Management Unit doesn’t operate a witness protection program.’

  ‘So what are you going to do to protect me?’

  ‘You have an alarm. We can up the patrols. Your address is on our dispatch system.’

  Raven felt her face flush with anger. Why did no one seem to understand that her life was at risk here? ‘You’re doing all those things anyway,’ she said.

  ‘We can do more patrols.’

  ‘Some woman is dead in the trunk of my car and you’re going to do more patrols?’

  Stanner sighed again. ‘I know it seems inadequate, but we’ve been through this already. The Threat Management Unit can’t offer you close-protection security, or someone to watch over you twenty-four hours a day. We simply don’t have the budget for it.’

  Raven thought of being on stage, and the predatory way the men she was dancing for stared at her; she thought of the house and how exposed it now felt; and she thought of Kevin and how she’d do anything to protect him.

  The garage door was open and she could see her car, the trunk open, men and women huddled around it, one of them taking pictures, the flash from the camera bringing back the full horror of the body and what had been done to it. She looked at Stanner, who shrugged apologetically.

  ‘I don’t need more patrols,’ Raven said, her voice rising. ‘I need protection.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I wish there was more we could do.’

  ‘Well, if you can’t help me, then who can?’

  ‘There are lots of private individuals and companies who provide security. The good ones aren’t exactly cheap so I’m not sure how much that would help you.’

  Raven bit down on her lip. ‘I have money. But how do I know which the good ones are?’

  Stanner looked around nervously. ‘Listen, we’re not supposed to hand out recommendations.’

  ‘But you know of someone?’

  ‘He’s from back east, but he’s been out here working. I don’t even know if he’s still around, but if I was in your position, he’d be the guy I’d want to talk to.’

  Finally Raven felt she was getting somewhere. ‘So does this person have a name?’

  Five

  Ryan Lock lay in bed, listening to the sound of rocks heaving against the giant wooden supports that held the rented beach house suspended in mid-air above the Pacific Ocean. In his first few weeks in the house with his fiancée, Carrie, the fact that the ocean ran directly underneath the house at high tide hadn’t bothered him. It was only with the arrival of the Santa Ana winds, and the way that the tides now sucked sand from the beach to expose the jagged black rocks, that he had become unsettled.

  There was some small consolation in knowing that he wasn’t alone. The dry, hot winds unsettled everything, leaving wild fires in their wake as well as giving rise to the vicious rip tides that clawed away at the sand, dragging it back into the water.

  The seasonal winds took their toll on human beings as well. Back in ’84 the howl of the Santa Anas had been pierced by the screams of the victims of Richard Ramirez, the serial killer dubbed the Night Stalker, as he carved a bloody trail across the city. This kind of nightmare manifestation made flesh was rare but still every year the winds brought a sharp, sudden spike in violent crime. Perhaps this was why the original settlers had dubbed the Santa Anas ‘the devil’s winds’.

  As the rocks continued to pound against the wood, Lock glanced over to the red digits that burned next to him. It was close to five in the morning. Too early, really, to get up but too late to stay in bed awake.

  He got up as quietly as he could, leaving Carrie lying asleep on her side, her hands folded like a pillow under her head, and their yellow Labrador, Angel, sprawled across the bottom of the bed, her jowls twitching as she chased imaginary sea monsters.

  Measuring every step with care, he walked downstairs. In the kitchen, he filled a glass with water from the faucet and took a sip.

  He opened the dishwasher, and a rush of warm, wet air filtered out. He pulled out the top rack a few inches, jamming the door open. Then he walked to the large sliding door that fronted one half of the house, pulled it open and stepped out on to the smaller of the beach house’s two decks.

  Looking over the guard rail he could see the white foam of the surf. The air out here was cold. Off to his right Big Rock, a cluster of huge rock formations, lay about thirty feet from the edge of the houses that crowded the coastline. Might as well enjoy all this while it lasts, he thought.

  He had come out to Los Angeles a few weeks ago to provide close protection security to an overly paranoid mo
vie actress, who was having problems with an ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t accept that their relationship was over. Unusually for one of his protection gigs, Carrie had tagged along for the ride. The work had paid ridiculously well. The beach house, a second home that the star in question rarely used, had been thrown in as part of Lock’s remuneration, saving them the cost of a hotel or small apartment.

  The troublesome former boyfriend had turned out to be an Australian actor. He played tough-guy action heroes and took the method approach a little too seriously. In the end Lock had got him alone in a parking structure in Westwood and explained the difference between fiction and reality, illustrating his point by dangling the action hero over the edge of the roof while rush-hour traffic sped past five hundred feet below. The guy had taken the hint, and the movie actress had been so grateful to get him out of her life that she had offered Lock the use of the beach house for as long as he wanted. Lock had thanked her, but regular life called, at least for Carrie, and in two days’ time they were due to fly back to New York, Carrie to her job as a news reporter and Lock to whatever corporate security gig came up next.

  He went back inside the house, pulling the glass door closed behind him. On the kitchen counter his BlackBerry was vibrating. He crossed to it, picked it up, and studied the glow of the screen.

  The number was showing as unknown and, above that, the time as 04:56 hours. Out of habit, Lock answered it.

  Before he even had the phone to his ear, he could hear a woman on the other end of the line, her voice ragged and husky, as if she had only recently stopped crying.

  Lock listened for a moment as, under his feet, another boulder slammed into one of the timber supports holding up the house.

  ‘Ma’am? Can you hear me?’ he said softly. ‘Are you in immediate danger?’

  There was a short silence. Then the woman spoke again. ‘Not right this second but, yes, I’m in a lot of danger. You help people in my situation, right?’

  Oh, Jeez, thought Lock, here we go. Between them, he and his business partner, Tyrone Johnson, attracted around a dozen crank calls a week. Tough guys who lived in their parents’ basements, reading comic books, and wanted the opportunity to go toe to toe with them; tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists who wanted to let Lock in on how the government was attempting to control the population’s thoughts. And, a third category, which Ty, much to Lock’s annoyance, seemed bent on encouraging: a group of women they referred to as Damsels in Distress, who often invented all kinds of threats (abusive boyfriends, prowlers, deranged stalkers) in order to try to arrange a rendezvous.

  He had a feeling this was a category-three phone call. ‘Ma’am, if your life is under threat you need to call nine-one-one and speak to the police department in your area. I’m sure they’ll be able to help you.’

  This time the woman sounded almost irritated. ‘Who do you think gave me your number in the first place?’

  Lock was taken aback. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘My name is Raven Lane. I’m being stalked. I have the LAPD’s Threat Management Unit helping me out but something just happened. I need some additional security. They told me to call you.’

  Through his work so far in Los Angeles, Lock knew all about the Los Angeles Police Department’s Threat Management Unit, or TMU. It dated back to 1989 when California had passed the first anti-stalker legislation. Being slap-bang in the center of the entertainment industry, the police officers who worked for it were kept busy. When it came to non-celebrities they were only usually involved when stalking or harassment became aggravated. Lock knew that for the most part the victims were fairly anonymous. Sometimes all it took was a sad individual chancing upon a Facebook page for a whole world of misery to open up for the unsuspecting victim. He also knew that stalking cases were messy and difficult. ‘But why, if the TMU are helping you, do you need me?’

  ‘The TMU’ve been great but a panic alarm and a drive-by from a patrol car twice a night isn’t going to cut it any more. I need someone who’s going to stop this stalker before he hurts me.’

  Lock sighed. In the normal run of things, and with the exception of big-mouthed Aussie thespians, he wasn’t in the vigilante business. Sure, push him hard enough and he’d push back harder, but he didn’t go hunting down stalkers and dishing out street justice. In the real world, behavior like that tended to land you in prison and, from recent experience when he had been under cover in one, he knew he didn’t like prisons very much.

  At the other end of the line, the woman must have read his silence. ‘Listen, I’m not asking you to kill the guy. Hell, I’m not even sure who he is.’

  Lock still said nothing, counting on her to fill the silence.

  ‘I can pay you, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Lock said, looking up to see Carrie walking bleary-eyed down the stairs, Angel skittering in a figure-of-eight pattern around her heels.

  ‘Then let me help you out here,’ the woman said. ‘This morning I found a body in the trunk of my car. I’m pretty sure it was a woman’s.’

  ‘You think?’ Lock asked, suddenly interested.

  ‘It was difficult to tell,’ the woman said. ‘She didn’t have a head.’

  Six

  As Lock swung his rented Range Rover from the Pacific Coast Highway through the short stub of the McClure tunnel and out on to the 10 freeway, Carrie glanced up from the browser feature on her BlackBerry. ‘She’s a porn star,’ she announced.

  ‘That so?’ he said, noncommittal.

  The phrase ‘headless corpse’ meant that Carrie was riding shotgun. A reporter is never officially off-duty, she’d explained to Lock, as they’d both thrown on their clothes. Angel had also insisted on tagging along and had taken up a position in the back, occasionally poking her head through the space between the two seats, hyped up at the prospect of an unscheduled road trip.

  ‘You want me to read you some of her credits?’ Carrie asked him.

  ‘Any of them win any awards?’

  Carrie scrolled down. ‘No Oscar nominations, but Yank

  My Doodle, It’s A Dandy is kind of a snappy title.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Are you really going to look after this woman, Ryan?’

  Lock glanced over. ‘You don’t think I should? Y’know, even porn stars have a right to be safe.’ He nodded towards Carrie’s BlackBerry. ‘What else you got?’

  Carrie studied the screen for a moment. ‘Wow.’

  ‘What is it?’ Lock asked.

  ‘Well, she’s not how I’d imagined.’

  ‘How’d you imagine her?’

  ‘Blonde, lots of silicon, huge boobs. Kind of plastic-looking.’

  ‘She’s not?’

  Carrie’s brow wrinkled a little. Lock found it reassuring. After all these weeks in LA, he’d grown used to the complete absence of facial movement. Everyone out here seemingly had the Botox look, which left their faces a flat plane devoid of expression. Their happy face was the same as their sad face, which was almost the same as their angry face. Coupled with the habit of framing every sentence like it was a question, even when it wasn’t, it rendered the most mundane of daily interactions a veritable minefield.

  ‘No,’ Carrie continued. ‘She’s beautiful, not fake at all, and she looks … I dunno, kind of fragile.’

  On the dash, the fuel warning light pinged on. Lock checked the GPS for the nearest gas station and switched lanes, ready to pull off at the next exit.

  At the gas station on Fairfax, he slipped his credit card through the window to the cashier and went to fill up. Carrie leaned against the side of the Range Rover and watched him. ‘You know how you sometimes say that what people call a sixth sense is them adding up all the data but not being able to articulate the conclusion?’

  Lock glanced over at her. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, if there’s a better than fair chance that something bad is going to happen to her, you have one question left to answer.’

  ‘Is she a
good person or not?’ he said, smiling at her, liking the way she looked, and feeling lucky all over again that she’d decided to be with him.

  ‘And her job doesn’t make her a bad person,’ Carrie said.

  Lock stifled a yawn. Sharp autumn sunshine reflected back off the windshields of the cars travelling in the other direction. Carrie was right. But then she was always right. So why did he still feel uneasy about taking this job?

  Although it was daylight by the time they arrived, Raven Lane’s street was still awash with emergency vehicles – a couple of Scientific Investigation Division wagons, a van from the Medical Examiner’s Office and the requisite marked and unmarked cop cars. Lock parked up twenty yards shy of an LAPD police cruiser and got out. He flagged down a uniform. ‘You still have a watch commander here?’ he asked him.

  Lock knew from experience that with a crime scene like this there was usually a captain designated to co-ordinate the security of the scene so that everyone else could do their job without risking the contamination of any potential evidence. Ever since the O. J. Simpson trial, where footage was played of detectives wading through the front of the crime scene without the appropriate gear aimed at preventing cross-contamination, the LAPD had been shit-hot about stuff like this. A clear chain of command at a crime scene was key to making sure there were no screw-ups a defense lawyer could pounce on later.

  The uniform looked at him. ‘And you would be?’

  Lock gave his name and why he was there.

  The uniform stared at him. ‘This is a crime scene, sir. You’ll have to wait for this young woman until we’re finished talking with her. You understand me?’

  Lock was neither surprised nor upset by the officer’s reaction. If he’d been doing the same job he would have reacted in the same way. Cops viewed private security contractors as wannabe cops. In Lock’s experience many of them were.

  He walked back to the car to be greeted by a barking Angel. Carrie was down the street, away from the crime scene, chatting up one of the neighbors.