by Sean Black
‘Was there anything else with the note that led you to believe it was the same person who’d killed Cindy Canyon?’
Raven sank down an inch in the passenger seat. ‘That was her name? The girl in my trunk?’
‘Her stage name, yeah. Did you know her?’
‘I’d heard of her.’
‘Ever met her?’ Lock pressed.
She rolled her eyes. ‘No. Jesus, what’s with all these questions? Are you a bodyguard or a cop?’
Lock sure as hell wasn’t a cop and disliked the term ‘bodyguard’ so he shrugged off the question. ‘The more I know about this situation, the more effective I can be in keeping you safe. Before the body turned up in your car—’ He stiffened. For the past few minutes a Blue Honda Accord had been behind them on the freeway. He had accelerated and switched lanes and it had followed suit. Now, as he slowed and indicated that he was leaving at the next exit, its blinker had come on.
‘What’s the problem?’ Raven asked.
‘Blue Honda about three cars back. It’s been tailing us since we left your house.’
Nine
Raven turned in her seat to take a look but Lock caught her arm. ‘Best if they don’t know that we’ve spotted them,’ he said, switching lanes suddenly, and pulling in behind a black Volkswagen Bug. He checked the mirror again. He had a visual on the driver of the Accord. White or light-skinned Hispanic. Early twenties. Kind of scruffy. Keeping a real sharp eye on them but trying not to be too obvious, and doing a bad job of it.
From what Lock guessed the LAPD’s profile of the stalker was, he imagined that several boxes had just been checked. There were other possibilities as well but in these situations it was always safer to assume the worst and work back from that point.
He sank back in the driver’s seat, watching the traffic behind them in the side mirror as the Honda moved up on the outside. The driver had his eyes on them, no doubt about it.
In an ideal world, he would have had time to get a full briefing from the LAPD so that he could run a full risk assessment. He would have been able to go over Raven’s daily routine, bolster the security at her house, make sure they had the appropriate men and equipment, including up-armored vehicles if they were required. He could have studied her plans for the week and reconed every venue ahead of time so that there would be no surprises. But the world wasn’t ideal. If it had been, the job he did wouldn’t exist.
Normally Lock would have been reaching down to rack the slide on his SIG Sauer 226, but this was Los Angeles and a concealed-carry permit for someone not resident in the state of California was almost impossible to come by. You could carry illegally, but if you were stopped and caught without a permit you were probably looking at jail time. So, given the risks involved in the job he had flown out to do, he had chosen to forgo his usual weapon. And right now, legal or illegal, he was starting to regret it. Los Angeles was the city of the car gun and the bad guys tended not to worry about administrative details such as concealed-carry permits.
He looked over at Raven. Her face was pinched and anxious. ‘Do you have a number for Stanner or any of his people in the TMU?’
‘Why?’
‘Like an emergency number?’
She snapped open her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. ‘I thought that’s why you were here. In case there was an emergency.’
‘Do you have one or not?’
‘If I felt scared and I wasn’t near the panic alarm, they told me to call nine-one-one.’
Of course they did, he thought, taking out his cell and putting in the call himself. He gave the dispatcher their position on the freeway, which was about two miles from the Sepulveda exit, and jammed the phone back into his pocket. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the Accord in the rear-view as the driver waved at him to pull over.
‘What’s he doing now?’ Raven protested.
The Honda was a single car behind them and, from the brake lights of the other cars around him, making moves to get closer. Lock tensed. There was still no sign of the Highway Patrol or any other members of law enforcement, and if their pursuer was going to do something to harm Raven, he was her only defense.
As the Honda moved up on them, he got a better look at the driver. Long, greasy hair, a hipster patch of facial hair below his bottom lip, and a pair of chunky earrings.
Up ahead the traffic was beginning to concertina to a halt, hardly an unusual occurrence in a city where the freeway system regularly ran at over ninety per cent of full capacity. The next exit where, presumably, the Highway Patrol would be waiting for them was still a half-mile away.
Lock nudged ahead of a soccer mom who was driving her Saturn with her elbows while applying lipstick with one hand and talking on her cell phone with the other. He edged into the inside lane.
The driver of the blue Honda was still muscling his way through the columns of slowing vehicles towards them. Lock watched him as he took one hand off the wheel and started to rummage around on the front passenger seat.
Eyeing the breakdown lane next to them, Lock suddenly spun the wheel, and accelerated at the same time. The driver of the Honda followed suit, careening down the empty lane, as people stared at them through their car windows.
‘Get down,’ Lock shouted to Raven, pushing her seat back, so she could squeeze into the footwell in front. ‘Damn it!’ Ahead of them in the breakdown lane a hulking recreational vehicle loomed up through the windshield. Lock jammed the brakes on, scoping out the possibilities for evasive action.
To the right of the RV the cement wall next to the emergency lane was too steep for them to go round. On their left was a solid wall of traffic.
Looking behind them again, Lock could see the driver of the Honda closing in tight on them. He was scowling, angry, his shoulders hunched as he crouched over the wheel; a raging bull, everything about his body language signalling aggression.
‘Okay, we’re going to stop in a moment and when we do you’re going to stay as far down in the footwell as possible. You got me?’
Raven nodded, her face pale with fear.
Lock’s Range Rover was still moving as he reached down and yanked on the parking brake, throwing off his seatbelt at the same time. The vehicle shuddered to a sudden halt and he clambered out. Staying low, he ran to the corner of the car, then popped his head up to take a peek.
The Honda had stopped too, and the driver was starting to get out, only his left arm and hand visible.
Lock stayed low. Then the driver spotted him and they stared at each other for a long moment. Lock noted the driver’s right hand was still moving inside the Honda. The movement made up Lock’s mind for him. Pushing off on his back foot, he sprinted towards him. As his vision tunnelled he saw a black shape in the driver’s hand.
Lock jumped, tackling the driver high around the top of his chest, the kind of tackle that in most contact sports would have earned you some pretty serious time on the bench or even a lifetime ban.
The driver gave a shout of pain, his shoulder slamming against the edge of the open car door, then Lock was on top of him, searching for the object in the driver’s right hand and coming up with a black digital single-lens reflex camera with a telephoto lens, the strap wrapped around his wrist.
‘What the fuck, man?’ the driver protested, as Lock got to his feet. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
In the distance, Lock could hear the sirens. All around them people seemed to be on their cell phones. He guessed that they weren’t calling home to check on what was for dinner. He knelt down next to the driver. ‘Where does it hurt?’ he asked, feigning sympathy.
‘Here,’ the driver said, rubbing at his shoulder.
‘There?’ Lock asked, slamming a fist into the wounded area. The driver howled. No words. Just a guttural noise of torture.
Across the concrete barrier, a patrol car was steaming towards them down the car-pool lane on the opposite side of the freeway, against oncoming traffic, lights and siren blazing.
Lock s
tepped in close behind the driver. ‘What’s your name?’
The driver started to glance round but Lock nudged a knuckle into the base of his spine hard enough to get his attention. ‘Name.’
‘Raul Dominguez.’
The patrol car was pulling up close by, so Lock chose his words with deliberation. ‘Okay, Raul, listen to me carefully. Until this psycho is captured, I will assume that anyone pursuing or stalking Raven Lane is a threat to her life and I will respond with the level of force appropriate, including deadly force, to ensure her safety.’ He paused for effect, his tone low and even. ‘So, I want you to pass that message on to anyone else who thinks they can make a quick buck taking her picture. The glint from a camera lens and the light that bounces off a rifle scope aren’t all that different. And that’s what I’ll be telling the judge. Do you hear me?’
Raul stared straight ahead. ‘Assault me for doing my job, that’s some bullshit right there. Man’s got to make a living.’
Lock looked back at Raven, who had stumbled from the Range Rover, her face pale and drawn after this latest ordeal. ‘It’s going to be even harder making a living if I break both your legs.’
Ten
The almond-shaped eyes were the giveaway, the skin folded over so that it almost entirely obscured the inner corners. Set in an overly rounded face, above a slightly protruding tongue, the eyes told the story of Raven’s unwillingness to leave the country, and therefore her need for the services of someone like Lock. Her brother, Kevin, had Down’s syndrome.
Kevin and Raven hugged, the warmth of their relationship evident for all to see.
‘Did you and Wendy have fun?’ Raven asked her brother. Lock noticed a slight tremor in her voice. The strain of recent events was catching up with her.
‘Yeah. We watched a movie,’ Kevin said.
As he broke away from his sister, Kevin stared at Lock for a long second, almost as if he were waiting for the flicker of pity in his eyes. Lock wondered what it was like going through life where the first reaction people had to you was pity or shock or, in some cases, discomfort. In that single split second before they drew the curtain of politeness over their initial reaction there must have been a thousand tiny wounds.
Brought up to treat everyone the same, he smiled and put out his hand. ‘Kevin, I’m Ryan Lock. I’m a friend of your sister.’
A single crease etched across Kevin’s palm confirmed, if any were needed, his condition. It also confirmed Lock’s feeling that he’d been correct in accepting this assignment. Protecting the vulnerable was what he did best. And, however you cut it, and whatever politically correct platitudes society offered, Kevin was more vulnerable than most seventeen-year-old boys.
Behind Kevin stood a girl around the same age, with the same physical characteristics. ‘I’m Kevin.’ He thumbed over his shoulder at the girl. ‘This is Wendy. We’re getting married when she’s eighteen.’
Behind Lock, Raven and Wendy’s mother raised their eyebrows simultaneously. Clearly, thought Lock, this was not news.
‘Kev, can you get your stuff together?’ Raven prompted.
Wendy’s mother, a woman in her early fifties with short-cropped blonde hair, smiled at them both. ‘They have separate rooms when Kev sleeps over.’
‘Mom!’ Wendy protested, her face turning red: Miss Teen Drama 2011.
‘Thanks for taking him,’ Raven said.
‘It’s not a problem. But I do kind of need to talk to you in private,’ Wendy’s mother said.
Raven turned to her brother. ‘Kev, what did I ask you to do?’
Kevin grabbed Wendy’s hand and pulled her out of the room and up the stairs. She giggled at this show of possessiveness as Raven rolled her eyes, more mother herself than older sister.
Lock sensed that this was a conversation the two women would want to have to themselves. ‘I’ll go make sure he behaves himself.’
‘Thanks,’ Raven said, with an awkward smile. Lock trooped up the stairs following the sounds of Kevin’s bravado all the way into a small spare bedroom where he was busy jamming his clothes into a rucksack.
Downstairs, he could hear snatches of conversation. Wendy’s mother seemed to be doing most of the talking.
‘I think it might be best.’
‘At least until all this blows over.’
‘You know how fond we are of Kevin.’
‘It’s nothing personal.’
It had started already. The gradual isolation of Raven and her brother. No matter how nice someone was, how kind, how understanding or empathetic, no one wanted themselves or their child drawn into even the furthest orbit of the psychopath who had dumped Cindy Canyon’s body in the back of Raven’s car. Raven’s stalker – assuming they were one and the same as Cindy’s killer – had chalked up another victory.
Lock had seen it before with stalking cases: the slow and steady isolation of the victim. Human predators knew as well as their counterparts in the animal kingdom that half the battle was isolating their prey from the herd. Even if it wasn’t conscious, Raven’s stalker must have known that his gory display would have that effect. He stepped into the spare bedroom. ‘You want me to help you with that?’ he asked, nodding to the Superman backpack on the floor next to his feet.
Kevin and Wendy looked up at him but didn’t say anything. He wondered if they’d also caught some of the conversation from downstairs. After a few moments, Kevin shrugged his assent.
‘Superman, huh?’ Lock said, picking up the backpack. ‘You know, I reckon I could kick Superman’s ass if I put my mind to it.’
Kevin got up. ‘No way. Superman could kick your ass.’
Wendy giggled, and covered her mouth with her hand. Lock liked her. In fact, they made a cute couple. There was more genuine warmth and affection between the two of them than there was in ninety per cent of the adult relationships he saw.
‘I’m telling you, man,’ he said, walking towards the door. ‘There’s no way Superman would survive if we went one on one.’
‘Are you a cop?’ Kevin asked.
‘Something like that.’
‘So how come you don’t have a gun?’
‘Because I don’t need one.’ Lock crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping this was true. ‘I’m like a cop who protects people.’
‘What do you mean?’ Wendy asked.
‘I guess it means that I make sure bad things don’t happen to good people.’
Raven shouted up the stairs, her voice sounding strained, ‘Kev, we gotta go.’
Kevin started down the stairs with Wendy, Lock to the rear, Kevin’s backpack slung over his shoulder. He caught a whisper of ‘Superman would so kick his ass,’ from Kevin to Wendy, and smiled.
Raven was waiting for them by the front door. She put an arm around her brother. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’ Then she looked to Lock. ‘Can you maybe call and see if that’s gonna be okay?’
‘Why wouldn’t it be okay?’ Kevin asked.
‘We had a little accident back at the house. Some water got into the garage. That’s all.’
Lock stepped out of the house and stood on the front porch. Not even midday, and the heat was building. It was like breathing soup. He called the Van Nuys Division headquarters. ‘Am I clear to bring them back to the house?’
‘Yeah, the techs are just finishing up. We had to take her car in as well.’
‘Understood,’ Lock said, hanging up.
He stepped back inside. ‘I just spoke to the plumber,’ he said to Raven. ‘You’re good to go.’
While Raven hustled Kevin out of the door, he took a quick check of the street and hung back for a moment.
‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’ he said to Wendy’s mother, handing his car keys to Raven. ‘I’ll be real quick.’
He watched Raven and Kevin walk slowly towards the Range Rover, then turned back to the woman. ‘I understand your concern with everything that’s going on. And I just want you to know that if you send your daughter over to see Kevi
n I guarantee you she’ll be safe.’
Wendy’s mother nodded, but avoided eye contact. ‘I appreciate that. However, I’m not sure that’s a chance I want to take. When you have a child like our daughter, they mean more to you than a regular kid, not less.’
‘You know what Raven does for a living, right?’ Lock asked.
Another nod and floor stare. ‘This is the Valley, Mr Lock. You’d have to be pretty naïve not to know what goes on with some people around here. But she’s a good sister to Kevin. Most people would have put him in a home, walked away and not looked back, got on with their life. She has to get credit for that.’
‘And he’s a good kid. They both are. But this isn’t about what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, is it?’ Lock asked her, already knowing the true answer. He’d seen the subtle shift in her expression when Kevin and her daughter had talked about marriage.
She finally made eye contact with him. ‘This talk about them getting married. We laughed it off at first. But they’re serious.’
‘Then if that’s the reason you don’t like them seeing each other at least be honest about it. Right now it’s looking like it’s some kind of judgement on Raven’s lifestyle. You know she didn’t invite this crazy into her life.’
Wendy’s mother’s face hardened. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’
Eleven
When they arrived at Raven’s house, Ty’s purple 1966 Lincoln Continental was parked at the edge of the police cordon. Ty was slouched against one of the car’s huge, tapering rear fins, his eyes obscured by mirrored Aviator sunglasses. The lettering on his T-shirt read: ‘You Look Like I Need A Drink.’ Even with the sunglasses, Lock could tell that he was checking out Raven from head to toe. As Raven helped Kevin unload his overnight bag from the car, Lock went to talk to his partner.
‘Brought the Pimpmobile, huh?’ Lock said. Ty’s car was a source of constant irritation, undermining his belief that the first duty of a close-protection operative was to blend into the background.