by Sean Black
Based on what he knew about the vagaries of the American justice system, in which property was more valued than people, Lock guessed at the sentence: ‘Six to ten?’
‘Might have been, if the lead investigator hadn’t turned up a whole bunch of video tapes of other girls he’d raped. All of ’em drugged. The judge was so pissed that when the jury came back with a guilty verdict he gave Mendez life without.’
That meant he’d die in prison. No chance of parole, even if he found Jesus. It was a rare sentence for a man like Mendez but the crimes had been particularly venal and, as Ty had just said, he’d ruined the judge’s career.
Ty gave a wry smile. ‘Pretty awesome incentive to stay wherever he is, right?’
‘And to make sure that Melissa doesn’t complain too loudly,’ said Lock, pulling the door closed, but leaving enough of a gap that he could still see her.
Ty had a sip of orange juice, then opened the folder, took from it a bunch of printouts and handed them to Lock. ‘This dude Joe Brady was a bondsman working out of an office north of LA. Melissa talked him into going after our boy. Not that he needed much persuading. Two million bond means a bondsman gets two hundred grand for his safe return. He found our boy Charlie down in Chihuahua, Mexico.’
Lock started to flick through the printouts. They were mostly new stories from the wires. Any number of bail bondsmen and bounty hunters had ventured south of the border to find Mendez, bring him back and claim their share of the bond. Most had expended considerable resources, only to fetch up at a series of dead ends. Just one had come close to finding him. That was Joe Brady — the Joe, he guessed, that Melissa had mentioned.
Joe tried.
According to what was in front of him, Brady had gone to Mexico with a posse of men and a camera crew to capture the moment for posterity. But whoever was looking after Mendez had not taken well to Brady’s avowed desire to repatriate him. In the middle of the night, while Brady, his team and the camera crew had slept in a small hotel, a group of paramilitaries had arrived. They had taken the Americans and an Aussie soundman hostage. The following morning their bodies, including Joe Brady’s, were found hanging from a bridge in Santa Maria, the border town notorious for more homicides per head of population than anywhere else in the world, Afghanistan and Somalia included.
Lock handed the printouts back to Ty. ‘And now she wants me to go and get him,’ he said.
A silence settled between them. Ty broke it: ‘And what do you think?’
Lock looked again at Melissa. ‘I don’t know. I need some more information. And we have the small matter of someone out there wanting to kill her.’
Ty tilted his head back and sighed. ‘Maybe we could cut a deal. She drops it and so do they.’
‘These aren’t the kind of people who make deals, Ty. The kid I caught sneaking in here with a knife, she had some pretty heavy ink.’ He reached up to rub the back of his neck. ‘Right here. Gang name and the number thirteen.’
‘La Eme?’
‘You got it.’
A stint in Pelican Bay Supermax Prison as an undercover operative had given Lock a better working knowledge of prison gangs, and their outside support structures, than most law-enforcement officers would accumulate in a lifetime. The Pelican Bay administration enforced a policy of strict racial segregation. The Secure Housing Unit, which held a third of the institution’s three and a half thousand inmates, essentially served as corporate headquarters to the gangs. This was where their CEOs and boards of directors were held, and from where they ran multi-million- and, in the case of the Mexican Mafia, multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprises.
On the exercise yards, the Hispanic inmates divided into nortenos (northern Hispanics), surenos (southern Hispanics) and the so-called Border Brothers (who hailed from south of the US-Mexico border), but the overarching organization that ruled the factions was the Mexican Mafia. Capable of devastating violence, both within and outside the prison’s walls, what set it apart from the other gangs was its businesslike approach. It was run with the same efficiency and lack of sentiment as any Fortune 500 company.
If a Mexican Mafia member was coming after Melissa, she had been marked for assassination.
‘This Mendez guy,’ Ty said, fanning the printouts, ‘you think he’s connected?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lock said. ‘And I plan on finding out. But if I’m going down there to get the asshole, I want to know what I’m walking into. Can you stay with her?’
Ty put out a giant fist and they bumped. ‘You got it. Already spoke to Triple-C’s management. They know what time it is. Got them another company coming in. Where you headed, anyway?’
‘Santa Barbara. See if I can’t lift a few rocks and figure out what’s really going on here.’ He glanced at Melissa, still pale and fragile.
‘Then we heading down to Mexico to go get him?’
‘If he’s still there.’
‘You think he might have skipped?’
Lock shrugged. ‘I don’t know. And going down there without knowing
…’ He trailed off. ‘You saw what happened to the last couple of people who went down there looking for him.’
Ty grunted. ‘Wasn’t nothing pretty.’
Eight
Lock pulled up his Audi beside the hotel’s valet-parking stand and got out, still clad in his blood-stained clothes from the previous evening. A well-dressed Beverly Hills couple waiting for their car stared at him, open-mouthed, as he handed the keys to one of the hotel valets with twenty dollars. ‘Sorry, the interior’s kind of a mess.’ The kid peered inside and gulped. ‘Good job I went for leather seats, right?’
He pivoted away and headed for the lobby. The receptionist from the evening before gave him a shit-eating grin and a chirpy ‘Good morning’ as he headed to the bank of elevators that would take him up to his room.
Back in his room, he took a shower, changed into fresh clothes and dumped the others in the trash. He packed the rest of his gear into a bag, placed his laptop in its case and, forty-five minutes later, walked into the corridor leaving the door to close behind him. As he was in Los Angeles, where permits for private security consultants were next to impossible to come by (which was not necessarily a bad thing, given the number of cowboys in the business), he wasn’t carrying a gun. That would have to change if he and Ty went to Mexico. Maybe sooner.
The drive from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara along the Pacific Coast Highway was one of rare beauty. There weren’t many stretches of highway that people travelled from all over the globe to experience but this was one of them. For Lock, though, as he passed the turn to Topanga Canyon and ventured beyond into Malibu, it was a road of demons and ghosts.
Malibu was where Carrie had been abducted by Reardon Galt, the house she and Lock had been living in burned down to cover the kidnapper’s tracks. As he passed the site he slowed a little. The old structure had already been torn down and a new gleaming, post-modern home erected in its place. He jabbed at the gas pedal to make the lights at Big Rock before they turned red, and was stuck staring at his past.
He stopped at the mall at Cross Creek to get gas and some water. Then he was out of Malibu, driving through Trancas, a weight lifting from his shoulders with every mile. It wasn’t a long drive to Santa Barbara but it afforded him time to think. On the face of it, the Mendez case was logical. Rich kid gets charged with rape. When he realizes he’s not going to beat the rap, he uses a gullible judge and his money to get the hell out of Dodge. Once he’s south of the border he pays some heavyweight Mexican muscle to ensure that he stays there.
The only thing Mendez hadn’t reckoned with was Melissa Warner. The tapes in court had shown that she had been one of many victims but she alone had encouraged those with a financial interest to pursue him. That had pushed him into going after her — albeit by proxy. But it was also drawing the heat on to him. And that was stupid. At some point the Department of Justice would get tired of him thumbing his nose at them and put some pressure on
the Mexican government to catch him. It also raised another question. Who was looking after him down there? And, more crucially, why? Sure, he had money, but the execution of the bounty hunter had all the hallmarks of one of Mexico’s notorious drug cartels, and they weren’t short of cash. The downside to them protecting Mendez was extra media and government attention, which would far outweigh the financial boost he provided.
Something didn’t add up.
Nine
The desk Sergeant at the Santa Barbara Police Department was pleasant enough, while simultaneously managing to be entirely unhelpful. Santa Barbara was that kind of town and Lock understood his reticence. As far as the Santa Barbara PD was concerned, they had apprehended Charlie Mendez and gathered sufficient evidence to get a conviction. The fact that a judge had screwed up hadn’t been down to them. Lock sympathized, but he wasn’t about to go away.
After he waited for two hours, a young patrol officer, Ken Fossum, came to talk to him. He was on his way out to begin a fresh shift. ‘And if I could ask what your connection to the case is?’ was his opener.
‘Yesterday evening someone tried to kill Melissa Warner. I believe they were connected to Charlie Mendez.’
The patrol officer looked ruffled. ‘Here in Santa Barbara?’
‘LA.’
‘Well, I’m not sure why you’re talking to us, Mr Lock. That’s a matter for the LAPD.’
Lock choked back a sarcastic reply. ‘I realize that, Officer. But I was hoping to speak to the lead detective on the original case.’
Fossum assumed a pained expression. ‘She’s retired. Went a few months back.’
‘You know where I could find her?’
‘I do, but I can’t tell you. I’m sure a man in your line of work is aware of how that goes.’
Lock did. ‘In that case could someone pass a message along that I’d like to speak with her?’
‘I can do that. Doesn’t mean she’ll want to talk to you, though.’
Lock went back to his car, got in and called Ty. The news from the hospital was the same: Melissa was critical but stable. He finished the call, and looked at the empty passenger seat. Raped and then shot for her trouble. Just when you think the world can’t get any more messed up something comes along to surprise you.
He started the engine and pulled out into the traffic. He had an address for the beach house where the attack had taken place. He didn’t think it would yield anything, but he wanted to go there and see the place for himself. If nothing else it might give him a sense of who Charlie Mendez really was. If Lock was going after him, he would need that. Mendez would become Lock’s prey, and the better you knew your prey, the easier it was to catch.
The drive took about fifteen minutes. It was a pleasant afternoon. He guessed that most afternoons in Santa Barbara were. It was the kind of place where a young college student would find it easy to lower her guard.
He turned into the road where the house was and scanned the numbers until he found it. It had been sold during the run-up to the trial. No doubt the proceeds had gone towards the two million dollars cash that Mendez had had to raise as bail to secure his freedom.
Lock got out of the car and stared up at the outside of the house. He thought about ringing the bell but decided against it. Instead he walked down the road until he found a flight of steps that led to the beach. At the bottom, he took off his shoes and socks and walked along the sand.
The glass-fronted house was very similar to the one he’d shared with Carrie. In fact the resemblance was eerie. He scanned the decks but no one was sitting on them and all the doors and windows were shut. There had been no cars parked outside either. The new owner must be using it as a weekend getaway or vacation home.
Steps led up to a small wooden gate and the house. He climbed them, hopped over the gate and walked up to a side window. Inside, the house seemed cold and antiseptic. It told him everything and nothing about Mendez.
His cell phone rang. He clicked the answer button.
‘Mr Lock?’ said a woman’s voice.
‘Yes.’
‘I got a message that you wanted to speak to me.’
Ten
Marcie Braun’s retirement hadn’t taken her very far. She lived a shade off the beaten track, about thirty miles inland from Santa Barbara in a small Cape Cod-style house with stables and a paddock.
Lock found her clearing out a horse stall with a pitchfork. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She straightened when she saw him, one hand moving to massage the small of her back. ‘So, you want to go get Charlie Mendez, huh?’ she said, with a smile, after he had apologized for disturbing her. ‘You do know what happened to the other guy who went looking for him, right?’
Lock nodded.
‘But you still think it’s a good idea?’
‘I don’t know if it is or not, Detective Braun, but a girl is lying in a hospital bed in Los Angeles and she asked me to help her.’
Marcie Braun seemed unsure what to make of him. A long moment of silence passed. ‘Call me Marcie.’ She nodded to the horse manure. ‘I’ll finish up, then why don’t you come into the house and we can talk?’
Lock sipped coffee as the retired detective settled at the big pine kitchen table and spread out a thick folder. She sighed as she flicked through the thick stack of papers inside. ‘Funny, this was the only case where I took a copy of the paperwork when I left the job. Guess it was Mendez skipping bail like he did. Made the whole thing feel unfinished.’
‘How long were you with the job?’ he asked her.
‘Too long. I thought coming to work in Santa Barbara would be a nice way of making the transition to retirement after the LAPD.’
‘It wasn’t?’ he probed.
‘I guess it was until the Mendez case. Lot of good cops in the department. Good people to take care of too. But you didn’t come out here to listen to me reminisce, did you now?’
‘Did you know Mendez before it went down?’
Marcie threw back her head and laughed. ‘Every cop in Santa Barbara knew Charlie and everyone in Santa Barbara knows the Mendez family. They’ve been here for a long time, lot longer than I have.’
‘The judge know them?’ he prompted, even though he knew the question was taking him on to dangerous ground.
Marcie’s easy smile fell away. ‘If you’re suggesting what I think you are then all I’d say is that’s a pretty serious charge to lay against a judge.’
‘So why’d he bail him?’
Marcie shrugged. ‘If you’re asking whether Charlie being from that family helped him, then of course it did. It would be naive to think anything else. This is America, right? Land of equal opportunity, but having big bucks makes you that little bit more equal. I’m sure you know how it goes, Mr Lock. If you’re rich in this country you’ll be treated a little differently from the rest of us. Not because you’re rich — hell, with a jury that might work against you — but because you can pay for a better defence. Charlie had really good lawyers. The kind of people who could persuade someone that black was white and two plus two makes five. I mean, that’s why they cost a lot of money, right?’
‘And the judge?’ said Lock.
Marcie blew on her coffee. ‘There you go again. Why don’t you ask me straight out? Do I think the judge was bribed or someone called in a favour? No, I don’t. I think he was talked into making a mistake. There’s no small-town conspiracy here, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
He decided to let it go. He believed her and he wanted to get back to Charlie.
‘But the Police Department had come into contact with Charlie Mendez before?’
Marcie made a face. ‘Sure, when he was younger. He was a kid with everything handed to him on a silver platter. A player. He got into some scrapes. Nothing serious, though.’
‘What kind of “nothing serious”?’ he prompted.
‘Being drunk in public. Shooting off his mouth. A couple of assaults. Always k
ids smaller than him or when he was with his buddies. Never liked the look of a fight he might lose.’
‘Anything of a sexual nature?’
Marcie took a sip of coffee. ‘That was what was weird when his name came up. I mean, like I said, he was a player, had an eye for the ladies, but he was good-looking, rich. You wouldn’t think he’d’ve had to drug someone, although in my experience rape isn’t usually about the sex.’
‘So why do you think he did it? Some kind of power trip?’ Lock asked.
‘I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff, being a cop. And you want to know what all those years on the job taught me?’
He nodded.
‘When it comes down to the really bad shit, some people are just fucked up.’ She got up and emptied the dregs of her coffee into an old white ceramic sink, then turned on the faucet. Her eyes fell to the folder she had passed to Lock. ‘There’s some more recent material in the back.’
‘Concerning?’
‘Stuff that makes no sense to me.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as the last place he’s been seen.’ Marcie sighed. ‘I mean, if you skip bail, and you have more than money than God, why not pick a country that has no extradition treaty with the United States?’
Lock decided to play devil’s advocate. ‘Not many of those left, and Mexico has worked out pretty well for him so far. Whoever he’s paying to take care of him down there seems to be doing a pretty good job.’
‘If he’s still there,’ said Marcie.
‘You think he might have left?’
‘I know I would have.’
He thought about it. If Charlie Mendez hadn’t been spooked enough by the first bounty hunter to relocate, he must have a good reason for staying where he was. Obviously he felt safe down there. ‘What about the family?’ he asked. ‘They have any ties to Mexico? Business interests?’