by Sean Black
Frisk smirked. ‘Sure Santa’ll catch up with you next year.’
‘OK, he really does need his rest now,’ insisted the doctor.
Frisk took the hint and eased out of the room. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said from the door.
When he’d gone, Lock’s hand reached up to his head wound. He ran the tips of his fingers over it, like a kid worrying a scab on his knee.
‘Pretty good-looking scar you’ll have there,’ the doctor said, perching next to him on the bed.
‘You think it’ll make me more attractive to women?’
‘Didn’t realize that was a problem for you.’
‘I’ll take any help I can get.’
‘Mind if I take another look?’
‘Be my guest.’
He bowed his head so she could get a better view.
‘You had a pretty lucky escape.’
‘So everyone keeps saying.’
‘You suffered a slight haemorrhage. We had to drill into your skull in order to take out some fluid. There’s a risk that you might suffer some additional blackouts. Oh, and there have been cases where trauma to this particular area of the brain can result in a raised level of-’
‘You can stop right there, doc. I think I know where you’re heading. So when can I get out of here?’
She stood up. ‘Head trauma’s a serious business. It’d be best if you stayed here for at least the next few days.’
‘Sure thing,’ he said, already planning his escape.
Nine
‘Don’t you have a home to go to?’
The doctor was back at the foot of Lock’s bed, busy looking over his chart as he lay back watching the tube. Even this early on in his convalescence he’d made a number of interesting discoveries, the most surprising being that with a sufficiently high dose of morphine daytime soap operas were damn engrossing.
‘Wouldn’t have had you pegged as a big daytime soap fan,’ she mused as Lock flicked the TV to mute, leaving a cleft-chinned Clooney wannabe to slap around an actress whose Botox-blank face ran the gamut of human emotions from A to B and back again.
‘I was waiting for the news to come on.’
‘Sure you were.’ That killer smile again.
‘Are you flirting with me, doc?’
She ignored the question, jotting down an additional note on his chart instead.
‘What are you writing?’ he asked, doing his best to peek.
She angled the chart so he couldn’t see. ‘Do not resuscitate.’
Lock laughed. It hurt.
She edged a smile herself. ‘Sorry, but I get hit on a lot, and I haven’t been home in two days.’
‘Who said I was hitting on you?’
‘You weren’t? OK, now I feel insulted. Anyway, isn’t this all a pointless discussion? You have a girlfriend.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well there’s certainly been a woman putting in a lot of calls since you were admitted. Carrie Delaney ring any bells?’
‘Lots, but unfortunately we’re just good friends.’
‘Unfortunate for you or her?’
‘Probably both.’
‘I see.’
Lock pushed himself up into a sitting position. ‘Y’know, I’d never really thought about it until now, but our jobs have quite a few things in common.’
‘Saving people’s lives?’
‘I was thinking more along the lines of unsociable hours and only getting any real attention when you screw up.’
‘What did you screw up?’ she asked him. ‘Janice Stokes wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t done what you did.’
‘And neither would I.’
She was staring at him now. ‘So why did you?’
‘This is going to sound like a line from a bad movie.’
‘I get lots of those too.’
‘I did it because it’s what I’m trained to do.’
‘So you make a habit of rescuing damsels in distress?’
Lock shook his head. ‘No, just a habit of walking through doors I shouldn’t. Listen, I didn’t even catch your name.’
‘Dr Robbins.’
‘I meant your first name.’
‘I know you did.’
Over her shoulder, Lock caught a glimpse of Carrie fronting the headline report on the TV. Seeing her hurt worse than getting shot. She was standing outside a green-canopied apartment building, a white-gloved doorman flitting in and out of frame behind her, apparently undecided between discretion and getting his mug on the tube.
‘That your lady friend?’ Dr Robbins asked, following Lock’s gaze to the TV and reading the bottom of the screen.
‘She was. For a time anyway.’
‘Looks too classy for you.’
‘I get that a lot. Would you mind if I. .?’
‘Go right ahead,’ said Dr Robbins, stepping out of his way.
Lock turned up the volume, catching Carrie mid-sentence.
‘. . the FBI remaining tight-lipped about this latest twist in the Meditech massacre story which has gripped America. But so far only one fact remains clear: three days after his disappearance, seven-year-old Josh Hulme remains missing.’
The screen cut to a picture of a young white boy with thick brown hair and blue eyes, smiling self-consciously for a family portrait.
Lock moved away from Dr Robbins as she attempted to get a fresh look at the back of his head. ‘What’s this got to do with Meditech?’
‘His father works for them or something.’
Lock felt a jolt of adrenalin. He started to get out of bed, earning a reproachful look from Dr Robbins.
‘I need to make a call.’
‘Fine, but do everyone a favour.’
‘What’s that, doc?’
‘Put on a robe first. Your butt’s hanging out.’
Ten
Dressed, and with a baseball cap covering what he’d come to think of as his lobotomy patient look, Lock stepped out into the hall. He still felt a little uncertain on his feet and he remained deliberately unshaven. Looking in the mirror as he’d washed his face, he’d figured that slightly altering his appearance might be no bad thing under the circumstances. Clearly the ‘Massacre in Midtown’, as the press had dubbed it, gleefully unearthing a neat piece of alliteration among the dead, was a first shot rather than a last stand.
Finding a way to call Ty proved tricky. Lock’s cell phone was inconveniently back in the bottom drawer of his desk at Meditech and pay phones seemed to be in short supply. Dr Robbins had told him she could arrange for a phone to be brought to his room for a small charge, but he didn’t want to wait. Finally, he tracked one down on the ground floor, next to the gift shop.
Ty answered on the first buzz.
‘Where’s my fruit basket?’
‘If it ain’t Rip Van Winkle. I was wondering when you were going to surface.’
‘Sleep of the just, man.’
‘I hear you. Good to have you back.’
Lock was grateful for the relief in Ty’s voice. It was comforting to know that someone at the company gave a shit about his mortality.
‘Want to give me an update?’
‘We’re locked down tight. No further incidents. Everything seems to be cool.’
Cool?
‘And I thought I was supposed to be the one who took a blow to the head. How are things cool when one of our employee’s kids is missing?’
‘You heard about that?’
Lock held the phone away from his mouth and counted to three. Slowly.
Ty appeared to read his silence. ‘Listen, Ryan,’ he said, ‘things are a little bit more complicated than you might think. The FBI are involved, it’s being left to them to handle.’
‘So why the hell have we been paying kidnap and ransom insurance for all this time if we’re just going to hand everything over to the Feds?’
‘Richard Hulme, the father of the missing boy, resigned his position at the company two weeks ago, which means neither he nor his son are ou
r problem any more. Sorry Ryan, I had the exact same conversation when I heard, but the word’s come down from on high. We stay out of it.’
‘But the FBI won’t pay any ransom.’
‘They’ve got their policy and we have ours.’
‘And nine times out of ten our way gets the victim home safe and sound with the only damage being a dent in some insurance company’s balance sheet and a bit of actuarial adjustment for next year’s premium.’
‘I know, man, I know.’
Right on cue, a little girl was wheeled past him, a Magic Marker-adorned plaster cast covering her leg. She smiled at Lock.
‘Listen, Ty, I’m going to get out of here, but first I have to check on something.’
‘OK, man. Hey. .’
‘What?’
‘Be safe.’
Lock hung up and made a beeline for the gift shop. He grabbed a bunch of flowers that offered a seven-day ‘no wilt’ guarantee (Lock could relate) and a box of candy. As he paid the lady behind the counter, he glanced at the newspapers on the rack. Josh’s face stared out from every front page apart from the New York Times, which led on weightier matters in the Middle East: there had been a suspected biological attack on coalition troops on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He picked up a copy of the Post and flicked through it as he walked back through the lobby. On a double-page spread inside there was a picture of him pulling Janice out of the Hummer’s way. He didn’t like it: a good close protection operative stayed out of the limelight. A double-page spread in a tabloid wasn’t exactly staying out of the limelight.
In the elevator, Lock was squeezed to the back by a couple of hospital orderlies wheeling an elderly man on a gurney. One of them eyed him warily. Suddenly he regretted not dragging a razor across his face when he’d had the chance.
Lock handed the orderly the Post folded open at his picture. ‘Relax, I’m one of the good guys.’
The elderly man on the gurney reached out his hand for the paper. ‘Here, let me see that.’ His eyes shuttled between Lock and the picture. ‘That’s him all right.’
With everyone’s curiosity satisfied, Lock got out on the fourth floor, thankful that he hadn’t been asked to sign any autographs or pose for a picture. Janice’s room was easy enough to spot. It was the one with a cop standing outside, sipping from a Styrofoam cup.
Once Lock had run through the rigmarole with the newspaper again, and the uniform had spoken to someone at her precinct, who’d then had to speak to someone at Federal Plaza, he was allowed through the door.
The blinds were closed but Janice was awake, her face turned away from the door. The room was full of flowers and cards. A few bereavement cards were scattered among those wishing her a speedy recovery. Hallmark’s market research clearly hadn’t yet unearthed the ‘Glad You Survived and Good Luck with the Terminal Illness’ niche of the greetings card market.
Lock laid the flowers at the bottom of the bed and pulled up a chair. They sat in silence for a moment.
‘How are you feeling?’ Lock asked at last.
‘Terrible. How about you?’ The question was delivered with the hint of a smile.
‘I feel. .’ Lock trailed off, uneasily. ‘I’m good.’
She reached her hand across to his. ‘Thank you.’
The simple humanity of the gesture threw him a little. Because he worked for Nicholas Van Straten, Janice and her father had been the enemy for months.
‘I’m glad you made it,’ he said softly.
She glanced down. ‘For now.’
‘You don’t know that. There could be a breakthrough, some new drug or treatment for your condition.’
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Even if there was, there was more chance of a Jehovah’s Witness agreeing to a blood transfusion than of Janice taking something that would, in all likelihood, have been tested on animals first.
To her credit, she let it slide. Instead she studied Lock’s face long enough to make him shift uncomfortably in his seat, before asking, ‘Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?’
For a second, he thought of telling her about the six months he’d spent in Sierra Leone, where Charles Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front had embarked on a systematic campaign of amputating the limbs of the civilian population, including babies. At least killing animals to eat them served some purpose, he thought now. Much of what Lock had witnessed over the years was borne out of a darker human impulse.
He sighed, rubbed the back of his head, finding stitches. ‘I’ve seen a lot of death.’
‘Death’s inevitable, though, isn’t it?’ Janice said, her voice rising. ‘I’m talking about murder. The animals know they’re about to be killed. When they’re in the trucks, they know. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in the noise they make.’
Lock leaned forward and touched her arm. ‘Janice, I need to ask you a few questions. You don’t have to answer them but I need to ask them all the same.’
‘Gandhi said that you can judge the morality of a nation by how it treats its animals,’ Janice continued, undeterred.
She was rambling now, her mind on a loop, or so it seemed to Lock. She grasped the bars of the bed frame and pulled herself up into a sitting position. He tried to help her but she waved him away.
‘Janice, this is important. I don’t think whoever killed your father did it by accident. What I mean is, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I can’t help feeling that this wasn’t someone trying to assassinate Nicholas Van Straten and getting it wrong. This was someone trying to kill your father and getting it right.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ Janice asked, suddenly focused. ‘We’d already had threats from your side.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Phone calls, letters, saying that if we didn’t stop the protesting we’d be killed.’
‘You tell anyone about this?’
‘And who were we going to tell? The FBI? They were probably the ones doing it.’
‘Come on.’
‘My mom and dad were saving animals twenty years before a bunch of anorexic bimbos took their clothes off for a photo shoot because it was fashionable. I grew up with our phone being tapped and our mail opened. There wasn’t one Christmas went by that I didn’t know what my grandma had gotten me because those assholes opened everything. What’s changed? Apart from the fact that nowadays there’s a hell of a lot more money at stake. For all I know,you could have been the one making those phone calls.’
‘OK, you got me. Must have been the suppressed guilt that got me to risk my ass pulling you out of there,’ Lock fired back, angry now.
Grandma’s presents, gimme a break. Talk about brainwashing. Ma and Pa Stokes had done such a nice job that their only daughter was prepared to die a martyr for the cause, rather than compromise her principles and live, while they’d been only too happy to stand by and watch. And for what? To prove their moral superiority over the rest of us.
‘Thanks for the flowers, but maybe you should go now,’ Janice said, turning away from him.
Lock stood. He took a couple of breaths. ‘OK, I’ll go. But I’ve got one last thing I need to ask you.’
‘Fine, but make it quick, I’m getting tired.’
‘Your father said something to Van Straten when they were outside. Something about him getting his message.’
Janice looked blank. ‘I already told you,we didn’t make threats.’
‘I’m not suggesting it was a threat. But if there’d been some kind of back channel discussions going on-’
‘With Meditech? No way.’
‘So what was the message?’
Janice’s voice shook with emotion. ‘I don’t know. And now I never will. My parents are dead, remember?’
Lock got to his feet, his irritation replaced by remorse. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. .’
But her eyes had already closed, and by the time he reached the door she had fallen fast asle
ep. The uniformed officer checked on her before allowing Lock to leave. She looked up at Lock as she performed a cursory pat-down, although what he would have wanted to remove from Janice’s hospital room was a mystery.
‘Must feel pretty good,’ she said.
‘What must?’
The rookie smiled up at him. ‘Saving someone’s life like that.’
Lock shrugged his shoulders. He hadn’t saved Janice’s life, merely postponed her death. He turned his back on the cop and walked back to the elevator.
Eleven
Brennans Tavern was about as authentically Irish as a bowl of Lucky Charms, but it was dark, which suited Lock fine. Even with the painkillers he’d picked up from the hospital pharmacy taking the edge off his headache, bright light was still making him wince.
Getting out of hospital had proved almost more time consuming than leaving the military, with about as many hours of form filling involved. Dr Robbins had warned him that in his present condition he was a danger not only to himself but also others. He’d declined to tell her that his commanding officer had said the same thing.
Eyes adjusting slowly to the gloom, he took a sip of beer. The label on the painkillers no doubt contained a warning about not taking them with alcohol but his vision was still a little blurred, and who could read that kind of small print in this light anyway?
The door swung open, and in strode Carrie. Seeing her, Lock felt suddenly buoyant. And even more light-headed. Without stopping to look around she made a beeline for him, throwing down her jacket and bag on the table, all business, like they’d never broken up.
‘Tough day?’ Lock asked her.
‘About average.’
‘How’d you pick me out so quick?’
‘Corner table with your back to the wall, a view of the door, and easy access to the back exit. It doesn’t take a genius.’
‘See, you did get something out of dating me after all.’ He stood and pulled out a chair for her.
She pantomimed a curtsy and sat down. ‘You always did have good manners.’
They looked at each other across the table, Lock suddenly wishing that the lighting was better.
‘Glad you made it out in one piece.’