by Sean Black
And what about Malik’s own guilt? Hadn’t Kim pleaded with him to walk away, once his attempts to draw attention to what was happening had been shunned? He had put his sense of justice above his own family, and for what? The world wasn’t a fair place. Every day of his childhood had taught him that. For all that was great about America, not everyone was dealt the same hand. The system was in place to keep people where they were. His beating the odds didn’t change that but it had made him forget how things worked. Playing ball had given him status. People listened to him. He had forgotten, though, that they only wanted to hear him talk about certain things, and those things revolved around the game.
He should have left it alone after he had spoken to Laird. He should have accepted the deal and tried to figure out his next move, instead of throwing it back in the chancellor’s face. What had he thought would happen? The rich and powerful didn’t get that way by refusing to defend themselves. Coach or not, to the likes of the Becker family and those around them he was still an uppity nigger from California who didn’t know his place.
He had to take his share of the blame for what had happened. Not that it mattered anymore. Not that anything mattered. He opened his eyes and looked down into the void, into the deep nothingness, and let the calm surround him.
No, Malik told himself. This way was better. A gentle lean forward until gravity took hold, a short drop into the water, and it would be over. No more pain. No more regrets. Only sleep.
From nowhere, Malik felt a hand fall onto his shoulder. He knew who it was before they spoke. He recognized the steel grip of the man’s fingers from their childhood.
‘You forget you can’t swim, brother?’
‘That’s what I was counting on,’ Malik said, his voice cracked from the booze and days of silence in which he had spoken only to ask for the next drink.
‘Mind if I sit down?’ Ty said, his fingers still tight on Malik’s shoulder. ‘My feet are pretty beat up from walking to Hell and back looking for you.’
Malik said nothing as Ty sat next to him. ‘I get it,’ Ty said finally. ‘I can’t say I wouldn’t want to jump either, if I was you. But if you’re gonna do it, then do it sober.’
Malik didn’t want to turn his head to look at his friend. He was scared to. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold back the surge of tears, or the fresh waves of grief he could feel rolling toward him. A nod was about all he could manage without falling apart.
‘Plus,’ Ty went on, ‘that river down there is probably only about five feet deep. More than likely, you’d break your neck, and I ain’t pushing your sorry ass round in a wheelchair until we’re both ready for the old folks’ home. So, come on now, let’s go get some coffee, get you sobered up. There’ll be other bridges.’
Ty stood and helped Malik back to his feet. Together, the two men climbed back onto the roadway and headed into town.
Much later, Malik would wonder how many times Ty had saved him, and how he could repay him. He’d come to the conclusion that he couldn’t, but that hardly mattered. True friendship, brotherhood, didn’t demand a ledger, or a running total of favors asked and granted. That was the point. That was what made it brotherhood.
80
Harrisburg was quiet. The few people who were out were driving, not that the weather allowed for much else. Drivers barely idled at the town’s few stop lights, throwing nervous glances as they waited to get moving again. At the local mall, folks parked close to the entrance, leaving the vast expanse of the parking lot empty. When they exited their cars, they did so deliberately, everything they needed already in hand. They speed-walked toward the doors where the Walmart greeter had been replaced by two armed guards.
Levon Hill watched it all from the passenger seat of Lock’s newly hired vehicle. Lock was supposedly driving him back to his hotel, but they had agreed a detour to some of the key points of the investigation to see if anything suggested itself to either of them. Lock knew that Levon might have insights into the psychology of killers that he didn’t. And he figured that maybe if he followed the trail of events from start to finish his subconscious would offer something that would bring this to an end.
Their first stop was the Shaw home. A chain-link fence had been placed around what was left of it. Lock stopped the car and they got out. He took Levon through what he knew of that first phone call to Malik Shaw, and the subsequent events that had led to the house being torched. This time, Lock decided not to bother the elderly woman who lived next door, but he could hear the Shaws’ dog barking at their presence inside her house.
When they had seen everything they could, which wasn’t much, they headed for the stadium. It was quiet and the parking lot was empty, just like it had been the evening Malik Shaw had found Jack Barnes. Tomorrow it would be packed. Not for a game. The PR team Laird had hired to do crisis management had made sure of that. No, tomorrow the stadium would be hosting a gathering of the college and town community. It was being billed as a memorial for the victims, more of whom were coming forward with every hour, many of them contacting the FBI team from out of state and even overseas. Becker, Reeves and whoever else was out there had been nothing if not committed and prolific.
Lock stood with Levon at half court. ‘What is it with sports and this kind of stuff?’ he asked, as his gaze swept around the bleachers, breaking down every detail of the layout, his question hovering somewhere between incidental and rhetorical.
Levon shrugged. ‘Kids love sport. They love kids.’
Lock squared his shoulders as a shudder ran up his spine. ‘Love?’ he asked.
‘You know what I’m saying. Y’know, a lot of pedophiles are victims of abuse.’
‘That makes it worse to my way of thinking,’ said Lock. ‘You’d think they’d know what kind of damage they’re doing.’
Levon open-palmed a mea culpa. ‘I wasn’t making excuses. I’m paid to understand why people do the things they do.’
They lapsed back into silence. Lock started to walk toward the door that led to the locker room. Levon followed. When they got there, Levon asked, ‘This was where the coach found the boy?’
‘Yup,’ said Lock. ‘Becker had taken off but he’d left the kid behind. My guess was that Weston Reeves was there too, and he drove Becker away.’
Levon slapped a hand against the tiled wall. A drop of water shook itself loose from a leaky shower head and splashed onto the floor. ‘So either there was a lot of panic or they were pretty certain that the boy wouldn’t name them.’
‘Or,’ said Lock, ‘they knew it wouldn’t matter if the kid did tell the cops because the cops, the campus cops at least, were unlikely to do anything about it.’
‘Apart from tell Becker to be more careful in future,’ Lock added. ‘How many folks round here you reckon had suspicions about these guys? I mean, when one of these stories breaks a ton of people crawl out of the woodwork to say they knew something wasn’t kosher. So how come they don’t say anything?’
Levon pushed off the wall and walked back into the locker area. ‘Because it’s a pretty big accusation to actually make without proof? Because they fear reprisals?’
Lock joined him, and Levon took a seat on a bench. ‘Because we don’t like to believe there are monsters like this who walk among us?’ he continued. ‘If you ignore something, Ryan, then maybe it doesn’t exist.’ He worked at a knot in his neck with his fingers. ‘Now, you throw a bunch of money into that equation. Hell, I’m amazed our friend Coach Shaw went as far as he did. Took some balls.’
‘And look where it got him,’ said Lock, unable to conceal his bitterness. Even though he only knew Malik through Ty, it didn’t matter. It sickened him to think of how the man had received a biblical punishment for having the courage to confront evil.
A cell phone trilled. ‘I’d better get this,’ said Levon, plucking it from his jacket and going into the corridor.
Lock took out his own cell. He called Ty. It defaulted to voicemail. He left a brief message, asking Ty to ca
ll him with an update. A second later Ty’s name flashed up on the display. Lock hit the answer icon.
‘Ty?’
‘I found him.’
Lock felt one of the knots in his stomach begin to unravel. The damage couldn’t be undone. It rarely could. But at least one small part of the universe was tilting back toward an uneasy equilibrium. He had been to the place where Malik was. He knew the jagged, pain-ridden landscape. ‘How is he?’ he asked Ty.
‘About as good as I’d expected,’ Ty said, ‘but he’s breathing. I’m driving him back there so he can talk to the feebs. Plus I’m gonna help him make the arrangements.’
Lock felt his own throat tighten a little at the reminder. He remembered helping to arrange Carrie’s funeral. If it would serve as any consolation to Malik, he had found it helpful, or at least a useful distraction. He had been forced to make choices when all he had wanted to do was crawl into the ground next to her. Life was a process of choice. Being made to choose between a thousand different details had forced him back into the realm of the living. Refusal to engage hadn’t been an option.
Levon walked back into the locker room. His eyes studied the floor, his brow furrowed. Something told Lock that his call hadn’t been good news.
‘Just be careful,’ said Lock, wrapping up the call. ‘We still have someone out there with a bad attitude and a decent shot. Malik could be in the firing line.’
‘I hope they do try something,’ said Ty. ‘Later.’
Levon cleared his throat. ‘That was Dennis Lee. They’ve found Eve Barnes.’
81
Snow tumbled from the grey Minnesota sky as Lock pushed open the front door of Weston Reeves’s home with the toe of his boot. Levon Hill was up in the hills above Harrisburg, taking a look at where they had found Eve Barnes’s dead body. The news was that she too had been shot in the back of the head, execution-style. Lock pondered the detail, wondering if it somehow tied in with how Malik’s family had been killed, as he walked into the living room.
Inside the house was the evidence that Weston Reeves’s name had hit the news. The place was a mess. Most of the books and video games had been stripped from the shelves and strewn over the floor. The couch had been upended. The carpet had been stripped back in one corner to expose dirty floorboards. Graffiti was scrawled across the walls in red spray paint. ‘Sicko!’; ‘Monster!’; ‘Burn in Hell’. Lock hoped that the FBI had gathered all the evidence they needed. He knelt down next to a pile of books. The high school yearbook that linked Reeves to Becker was long gone, but there was still some material from the college – yearbooks and a couple of annual reports, some of which dated back twenty years.
He dug out his cell phone and called Dennis Lee. It went to voicemail. He tried the college and was bounced around until he had one of Lee’s other agents on the line. He asked the woman a couple of questions about who had taken care of the forensics and evidence-gathering from the Reeves house. A minute later, the agent came back with the answers. Lock thanked her and killed the call. He went back to the material at his feet.
Reeves didn’t seem like a compulsive hoarder ‒ in fact, quite the opposite. Lock began to work through what was there. If Reeves had kept something, it struck him that there had to be a reason for it. If the FBI hadn’t taken it, there was a reason for that too, and after his brief conversation with them, Lock had an idea why that was. They had out-sourced the task.
Methodically, he began to flip through the pages. After about half an hour, he at least had a picture of how Aubrey Becker had slowly worked his way to near the top of the college’s structure. In the early years there were mentions of donations. At first they related solely to Aubrey. Later there were others from the Becker family, including Aubrey’s brother, the now governor and, until a week or so ago, presidential hopeful.
The pattern set off alarm bells for Lock. He would have expected it to be inverted. If the Becker family had been close to the institution, wouldn’t they have been the initial donors? Not a younger son, who was busy building his business. Their money, the big money, had come in later, once Aubrey was firmly ensconced within the fabric of the college. It suggested to Lock that perhaps they were lending their greater financial muscle to buy silence. It would be next to impossible to prove, but that was what it looked like to him. He had been around enough of the very wealthy to know that there was rarely such a thing as a no-strings-attached charitable gift. Especially not when it came to old money.
Lock kept scanning. As he picked up a college report from 1994, a pamphlet fell out. He almost jammed it back inside. It looked like Reeves had been using it as a bookmark. But something about it caught Lock’s eye. He opened the pamphlet and scanned the pictures. His eyes slid over the text, reading the names written under the main picture, taking in the smiling children’s faces and connecting each one to a name, starting on the right and working left.
Ten seconds later, the twelve-page faded pamphlet tucked inside his jacket, Ryan Lock ran outside into what was now a blizzard. He raced toward the main road. As he ran, he pulled out his cell phone and called Ty.
82
Allan Laird palmed two blue Xanax pills into his mouth as his office door opened and Kelly Svenson showed herself in. He chased down the Xanax with a glass of water. The pills had been his wife’s idea. He hated drugs of any kind but rationalized that anti-anxiety medication was more than justified under the circumstances. All he needed to do was hold things together for the next few months, and then he would likely be able to slip into retirement. His legacy was tarnished beyond repair, but that mattered less to him now than it once had. He had come within minutes of being slaughtered by a lunatic: a perspective changer.
He waved a hand at the chair across from him. Kelly Svenson sat down. She looked exhausted. Her skin was pale and she had dark, scaly patches under her eyes. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and the front of her uniform was stained with a blob of what looked like ketchup. ‘We’re all set, Chancellor,’ she said. ‘Nineteen hundred hours at the stadium. The college pastor will speak first. Then you. Then a couple of people from the student body, including the captain of the basketball team, and finally the governor.’
The event she was talking about had been the idea of the PR consultants that Laird had called in to deal with the fallout. The college had already suffered from a hundred or so students looking to transfer out, and applications for the new academic year had come to a grinding halt.
The college was a business, and it needed customers. The scandal and its bloody aftermath had tainted their brand, and now it was time to begin the repair. That was how he saw it. Perhaps if he began the process, history would judge him a little more kindly.
‘The governor’s coming?’ Laird said. He knew there had been an approach, but he was still surprised. It was a bold move, coming to the place where his brother’s deviancy had finally been uncovered. Then again, thought Laird, what better way to deal with it than head-on? ‘And the candlelight procession?’ he asked her.
The student body and faculty marching with candles to the stadium had been Svenson’s idea. She had explained to him that this would be more important than anything that was said: it would be the key image and would run on the news. The candles were loaded with all kinds of symbolism. They hinted at contrition and remembrance. They also suggested forgiveness. She said, ‘All set. It’s going to look amazing.’
Laird managed to smile at this. She might not have been up to much in a shoot-out but in terms of planning the event his new acting chief of security had been outstanding. She was totally on board, far more so than Tromso would ever have been. She got it. She understood, as he did, that what mattered to the great American public was the perception more than the reality. ‘How many students?’ he asked.
‘I’d say the majority,’ Svenson said. ‘Just like a home game.’
83
Lock strode into the reception area, and headed toward the athletic-department offices. The receptionist called
after him, ‘Sir, you have to sign in first. That area is for authorized personnel only.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m authorized,’ Lock said, pushing through the doors, and coming face to face with a white-faced assistant coach. The coach was staring at the gun on Lock’s hip.
‘Relax,’ Lock told him.
The coach stayed frozen to the spot.
‘What’s your name, son?’ Lock asked him.
‘Mike.’
‘Okay, Mike. The athletic department here runs a summer camp for troubled kids. Do you keep records of all the children who’ve attended? I need to go back a ways.’
Mike started to speak. ‘That information is—’
Lock cut him off. ‘Listen to me really carefully here, Mike.’ He met the young coach’s eyes, never blinking or breaking his gaze. ‘If I have to ask you again, or you try to impede me in any way, you and I are going to have a problem. Now, where are those records?’
‘I ‒ I don’t really . . . They might be down here.’
Lock followed Mike down the corridor to a storeroom full of old athletic equipment and benches. Along one wall there was a row of olive-green metal filing cabinets.
‘There might be some stuff in there about it, but that program stopped running a while ago.’
‘When? When did it stop?’ Lock asked.
Mike shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I was here as a student and I think it might have been running then, but not since I’ve been on staff.’