by Sean Black
The patrol officer reacted with a mixture of alarm and relief as he saw them. ‘You’re not supposed to leave without letting us know,’ he said to Richard.
Richard blanched, like a kid caught breaking curfew. ‘I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t get you into trouble.’
As Richard ushered Lock into the apartment, the cop was already on his radio, letting his superiors know that he was back — with a guest.
Like most of the rest of the building, the apartment lay in near darkness. It was close to midnight, and in this part of town the streets were quiet. Lock figured that the kind of money that had to be generated in order to afford a place in this neighbourhood required most of its residents to favour early nights over bar hopping.
Richard flipped on a light switch to reveal a narrow hallway, off which were three bedrooms and a bathroom. Beyond that it opened out into a large open-plan living area.
‘How long you lived here?’ asked Lock.
‘Since before I got married. It was Meg’s place from when she was a graduate student.’
‘Pretty swanky part of town for a grad student.’
‘Rent controlled. An aunt of hers died,’ said Richard as he went to turn on the main light.
‘You may want to close the drapes first.’
‘I forget sometimes. Plus, with Josh gone, I’m not sure I care any more.’
Like every other Meditech employee above a certain level, Richard would have gone through a security awareness programme and review. Lock knew that he would have been advised to alter his daily routine as much as possible, and to watch out for the absence of the normal, like a doorman missing from the front of the building. Ditto the presence of the abnormal, like a doorman suddenly appearing in a building which didn’t have one. All of the advice boiled down to remaining vigilant and employing simple common sense.
Lock wandered over to a tiny kitchen area at the far end of the room. Two couches. No TV. Built-in shelving ran along one wall, crammed with books and papers. A family portrait. Richard, Josh and a strikingly attractive blonde woman that he wouldn’t have put with Richard in a million years.
‘Meg,’ Richard said, saving Lock an awkward question about his dead wife. ‘There’s been no one since we lost her. I didn’t feel it would have been fair on Josh. Actually, that’s not strictly true.’
Lock said nothing. Let him continue.
‘There’s been my work. Maybe I’ve used that as my way of not confronting things,’ Richard added, before rubbing again at his eyes.
Lock was starting to feel Richard coming off a little too noble. ‘You mind if I look around the rest of the place?’
Richard shrugged his agreement.
Lock headed back down the corridor, the walls blank either side of him. He couldn’t help feeling that the place resembled more of a college dorm than a family home.
The first bedroom was similarly utilitarian, although the lack of personal touches was more easily forgiven here. Natalya clearly hadn’t brought much with her when she’d moved. A portable CD player lay on the bed, an already ancient relic. On the bedside table there was a picture of an older man and woman, presumably her parents. What Lock assumed to be her brother stood in front of and to one side of his father, edging him by a good foot in height, even though he couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Natalya stood next to her mother, long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes and smile bright and confident. No pictures of a boyfriend, nor anyone else for that matter.
An attractive young Russian girl, and, by her standards, a wealthy widower not past his prime. Lock wondered how truthful Richard had been when he’d claimed that there was nothing going on between him and Natalya. From the look of Josh’s mother, Richard could attract good-looking women. Perhaps he’d not wanted to complicate things for the sake of his son. Either that or he was lying.
Although the FBI would have been all over the place with a fine-toothed comb, Lock made a quick search of his own, coming up with nothing that seemed significant. He stepped back into the corridor and pushed open the door of Josh’s bedroom.
In contrast to the neat, almost antiseptic feel of the rest of the place, Josh’s room was a mess of toys, sporting equipment and comic books. A single sleigh bed was backed against one wall. Atop the duvet sat an FAO Schwartz teddy bear, the only concession to his tender years. A catcher’s mitt had been placed on its head at a rakish angle.
Lock’s mind flashed back to Osnabruck. He’d never been able to let go of the sense of failure he’d felt after the Greer Price case. Even though he’d known when he was handed the investigation that Greer was almost certainly long dead, it still gnawed away at him.
It was the loneliness of her death that had got to him more than anything. The feeling of abandonment she must have experienced in her last moments had left him hollowed out. Even at the end of the rope there was no act of vengeance that came close to balancing the murder of a child; if there had been, he would have put a bullet through the skull of Greer’s killer himself.
He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and walked out of Josh’s room.
In a corner of Richard’s room, a twirling strand of DNA bounced around a twenty-inch flatscreen computer display, which sat atop a desk. Lock moved the mouse and it disappeared, defaulting to a log-in screen.
‘The FBI have already been through everything on there,’ said Richard, framed in the doorway. ‘But if you think they might have missed anything. .’
‘You mean, in case you’re involved?’
The notion seemed ludicrous but Lock knew he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. It wouldn’t have been the first time a perpetrator had brought about his own discovery by trying to employ a private investigator as a smokescreen to bolster his appearance of innocence.
Richard looked shocked. ‘No, don’t be ridiculous. I mean, maybe there’s an email, something that might be a clue.’
It couldn’t hurt to look.
Richard pulled up Firefox. ‘I burned all my work emails to disk before I left.’
‘You have a copy?’
‘Here,’ Richard said, pulling a DVD from a carousel next to the computer.
‘Any other email account?’
‘Hotmail, but I hardly use it.’
‘Did the FBI look at your Hotmail account?’
‘Why would they? I didn’t get any threats through it.’
‘You mind if I do?’
‘Go right ahead.’
Richard opened Firefox, which defaulted to Hotmail. He typed in his username and password, handed Lock the disk with his work emails, and left him to it.
Lock doubted that the email threats would yield anything. Or the letters, for that matter. Anyone who went to the trouble of mailing a death threat wasn’t likely to sign their name, either directly or by licking the envelope and leaving their DNA all over it. And the emails would have been sent from an internet café or via multiple proxy servers. One of the things he’d learned about the animal rights people who’d targeted Meditech was that they were savvy as well as motivated. Many of them were college-educated and as up on the science involved as anyone Meditech had to offer.
A half-hour later, Lock was no further forward. There were no specific threats to anyone by name, apart from Richard. Family was mentioned in a catch-all manner; there was no reference to a son, or even a wife, deceased or otherwise. As poison-pen correspondence went, it was all fairly insipid.
He switched back to the web browser. Idly, he clicked on the deleted emails folder and scrolled through the spam offering to enhance the recipient’s sexual performance or asking to use their bank account to rest millions of dollars.
Then he spotted it. Unopened, like most of the rest of the spam. No subject line. A Gmail address. It had arrived the day of the shooting, maybe an hour before Josh was last seen with Natalya. He clicked it open.
Now you will feel the pain you have inflicted on others.
Lone Wolf
When he walked back int
o the living room, Richard was standing by the window with the lights off. Lock considered asking him about the email. Richard had been pretty adamant that the threats had ceased once he’d stopped working for the company so he decided to let it go. It had made no reference to Josh or the kidnapping, and crucially it registered as unopened.
A car drew up directly opposite the apartment block and Lock watched as a man got out. As he darted across the street and passed under a streetlight, Lock’s gut instinct was confirmed. It was Frisk.
Lock met the FBI agent at the door.
‘Get the hell out of here, Lock,’ Frisk grunted, ‘we can handle this.’
Lock was still riled from their encounter back at the hospital. When Frisk had given him that bullshit speech about no charges being pressed as if he was doing Lock some kind of personal favour.
‘You seem to be doing a bang-up job so far, Agent Frisk,’ observed Lock.
‘It’s early on.’
Lock pulled the door closed, so Richard wouldn’t hear the rest of the exchange. A pissing contest meant some hard facts might come to light, and Lock wasn’t sure Richard was ready for them.
‘Early’s when you put it to bed. You know that and I know that. But seeing as you’re here, Hulme came looking for me, not the other way round.’
‘Fifteen minutes of fame not enough for you, huh?’ said Frisk aggressively.
‘OK, we can stand out here and compare dicks, or we can try and help each other out,’ Lock said, lowering his voice.
‘And what possible help are you going to be?’
‘Well, for a start, you might want to take another look at his computer.’
‘One of our tech guys already did a data dump from the hard drive.’
‘Which wouldn’t help you with a web-based email account. Check the spam folder. You’re looking for an email from someone calling themselves Lone Wolf. Arrived the day it all went down at Meditech.’
Frisk’s stony face reddened. Some tech was going to get his ass chewed when he got back to Federal Plaza, Lock could tell.
‘Anything else?’
Lock shrugged. ‘That’s it. . for now.’
‘So what’s your take on all this? Come on, if you’ve got some dazzling insights, I’d love to hear them.’
‘Find the au pair and you find the boy.’
‘Get with the programme, Lock. We already did. The harbour unit pulled her out of the East River a half-hour ago.’
Fourteen
A visit to the morgue was a grim affair at the best of times, and this was a long way from the best of times. The fact that there was still no sign of Josh, dead or alive, counted as good under the circumstances, although the river could have been waiting to offer up its misery in instalments. The bad news was that the task of identifying Natalya’s body had fallen to Richard Hulme. As if the poor bastard didn’t have enough to deal with, thought Lock, as he listened to Frisk make the request.
Richard had been stoical about it, agreeing without argument. Even if he hadn’t already offered to help, Lock figured it was the least he could do to tag along as a shoulder to cry on. That, and there might be something to glean from Natalya’s recovery. Something that might just help them to find Josh. If he was still alive.
It was hot in the corridor outside where the identification took place. Lock’s head was still pounding. He found a solitary chair, sat down and made the mistake of closing his eyes.
He came to as Richard was led in, eyes rimmed red, hands trembling, the heavy weight of realizing that very bad things could happen to good people bearing down on him. Things that a person might never wholly recover from. Lock had seen that look before, when he’d stood across from the family of Greer Price as her coffin was lowered into the ground. He’d hoped never to see it again, but now here he was, offering a silent prayer that history wasn’t about to repeat itself.
From what little Frisk had told him about the FBI’s investigation, Lock had gathered that they’d garnered the same amount of significant information Lock had managed to glean in his few hours talking to Richard. Almost nothing. So, Lock did something which went against every fibre of his professional being: he made a phone call to a member of the media. A phone call which he knew in all likelihood would get him fired, and might even ensure that he never worked private security again.
That said, he didn’t flinch from it. His approach when backed into a corner was always the same: fast, aggressive action with determination. Which didn’t have to mean using your fists.
‘I need a favour.’
On the other end of the line, Carrie sounded bleary. ‘Ryan?’
‘You know how I said I’d think about giving you an interview. .’
He could see her sitting up, reaching over for the pad and pen that lived on the left bedside table.
‘You’ll do it?’
‘No.’
‘You woke me up to tell me that?’
‘No, I called to make you an even better offer.’
Frisk’s voice echoed so loud against the tiled walls of the mortuary that one of the orderlies actually asked him to keep it down.
Lock wasn’t entirely sure what decibel level had to be reached to wake the dead, but between Frisk’s outburst and the retina-busting strip lights, the headache he’d been feeling since discharge was about to go nuclear.
‘Are you out of your mind? Whackjobs like this love this kind of attention,’ Frisk shouted, poking a finger into Lock’s face.
Lock didn’t react. ‘It’s already out there in the public domain.’
‘So you want to put him on national TV?’
‘International. I’m sure other countries will pick it up.’
‘And what if this pushes the kidnappers over the edge?’
‘If they were going to kill him, if that was the plan, they’d have done it by now.’
‘And what if they haven’t?’
‘Someone has to have seen something. Someone must know where he is. At the very least we’ll get their attention.’
‘You say that like it’s a good thing.’
‘So what’s the alternative? Sit back and wait for a break?’
‘You’re interfering in a federal investigation.’
‘So arrest me.’
‘Don’t be too sure I won’t,’ said Frisk, heading back through to check on Richard Hulme.
As the freezer cabinet clanged shut on the body, Richard shivered involuntarily. ‘I can’t tell.’
Even with the work that had been done to piece together what remained of Natalya’s face, the hollow-point bullet and the river had done their work. It might be Natalya. Likely it was. But he couldn’t be certain.
Frisk put an arm on his shoulder. He was used to this type of uncertainty with witnesses, less so at the morgue. ‘Don’t worry, Dr Hulme, we can do a match with the DNA we picked up back at your place. It’ll take a little longer, but that’s OK.’
*
Outside, Lock paced the corridor. If he’d been a smoker he’d have been breaking open his third pack of the day by this point. He thought about the body laid out a few feet away and tried to reconcile it with the photograph in Natalya’s room. He thought too about her parents and the phone call they’d be getting. Your daughter, the child whose nose you wiped and tears you dried, the one who grew up into a beautiful young woman, the one who had her chance of a new life in America. . she’s been murdered.
Lock took in a lungful of air. He knew he had to pack away such thoughts. He couldn’t afford them right now. There’d be plenty of time for all that later. Too much time. Now he had to focus on the living.
He was still sure that Natalya, even in death, was the key. Perhaps even more so in death. If she had no significance, why take the trouble of killing her? Natalya was the last person seen with Josh. Natalya had led him into the car. Active accomplice, or unwitting rube, Natalya’s story was the story of this abduction. He was sure of it.
The door down the corridor clicked open, and
Richard emerged alone. He saw Lock and shook his head. ‘I couldn’t tell. She’d been. .’ His knees folded under him, and he sank to the floor.
Lock wished some of the animal rights people were here to witness this, given how ready they’d been in the past to caricature men like Hulme as heartless vivisectionists who got a kick from inflicting suffering on helpless animals.
Richard looked up at Lock, his skin dishwater grey. ‘They shot her in the face.’
Lock helped him back to his feet. ‘Listen to me, you have to believe that Josh is still alive. If someone had wanted him dead, they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.’
‘But say something went wrong? Like they tried to escape and that’s how it happened? Josh can be pretty wilful at times.’
‘In a situation like this, wilful’s not necessarily a bad thing. Wilful might just keep him alive.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely,’ Lock lied.
Fifteen
The room was white and smelled of fresh paint. The door was grey and so heavy that the driver had struggled to open it when they’d arrived. Josh had heard him grunting with the effort, although he couldn’t see him. He’d put a hat over Josh’s head and pulled it down over his eyes for the last part of the journey.
The floor was grey as well. It always felt cold when he stepped on it. There was a bed. It was longer than the one he had at home but not much wider. There was no window, but there was a light. It was a clear plastic dome and was mounted on the ceiling at the farthest end of the room from the door. It never went off. Next to it was a camera, like the kind he had seen in stores sometimes. There was a television, which was hooked up to a DVD player and a selection of DVDs. All stuff for little kids. Stuff he would have watched when he was maybe six.
There was a toilet and a sink. Both of these were silver and shiny. The toilet was directly under the camera so he didn’t think anyone could watch him pee. That was something at least.
And that was it. The entire contents of his room. Apart from him of course. And his clothes. And the photo album. But he didn’t like to think about the album. He didn’t even like to touch it.