by Sean Black
Like the other kids Ty had seen at Broken Ridge the previous day, they all looked to be in good physical health. Again, Ty figured that a lack of junk food, and regular exercise, coupled with sunshine and fresh air, would take care of most things.
“Gentlemen, this is Mr. Cross. He’s going to be your dorm father, starting today.” Chris picked out the oldest-looking kid from the line. “Lewis, can you help Mr. Cross with any questions he might have?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lewis.
“Lewis here is at level six,” Chris explained to Ty, then turned back to the boys. “Mr. Cross here served our country in the Marine Corps, so he’s going to be firm but fair.”
Ty had suspected that Chris would work in that detail. It was kind of embarrassing. Some guys he knew went out of their way to mention their service. Ty wasn’t one of them. If someone asked, or it came up in conversation, that was one thing.
Chris tapped Ty’s elbow. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it. If you need me, just holler.”
“Thanks.”
Ty already had the schedule for the day. Apart from Sunday, when the students had to attend church and write letters home, it was the same schedule every day. The idea was to get the students into a routine. Whatever else might have been wrong with the place, giving young people a routine wasn’t the worst idea. The right routine created good habits.
The problem was that, in Ty’s experience, good habits that stuck were usually self-generated. When they were imposed on a person they tended to fall away when the imposition stopped. In other words, there was every chance the kids who’d been playing video games and eating Cheetos would go right back to that when they left.
Once Chris had gone, Ty led the boys from his dorm outside. They automatically fell into line, three steps apart, without him having to remind them. He saw them sneaking anxious glances at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. There was no question that he intimidated them. That was hardly a surprise. Most people he met who didn’t know him, and quite a few people who did know him, were scared of him. Never mind his specialist skills, his Long Beach background, or his status as a retired Marine, a six-foot-five-inch black man with muscles would usually have that effect.
Outside, he took the boys through a series of light stretches and warm-up exercises. As he did so, he explained the thinking behind each exercise and told them which area of the body or muscle group it was working. The warm-up finished, he led his dorm on a run. He kept the pace light. He also made a point of encouraging any stragglers rather than simply barking at them to go faster. He would save the barking for when it was needed. That way it might actually have some impact when he needed to deploy it.
On the way back, he changed up the gears for a hundred yards, making them alternately sprint, jog, then walk. The walking section allowed anyone who had fallen behind in the sprint the opportunity to catch up. He offered more encouraging words to those students he could see were struggling but making the effort.
“Good work,” Ty told them, as they stopped outside the dorm building.
He asked them to partner up and took them through a series of push-ups, burpees, sit-ups and planks. Each student took turns to do the exercise while the job of their partner was to count off the repetitions and encourage them along.
Where a student was struggling, Ty reduced the number of their reps. That drew some surprised looks. For some of the older boys, he increased the numbers so that they matched that person’s abilities.
Because there was an odd number of boys in his dorm, Ty partnered up with Lewis, the oldest and highest level of the students. If Broken Ridge had a model student, Ty figured that Lewis would be it. A husky, athletic kid, he was polite and deferential without coming across as an ass-kisser.
It was a reminder to Ty that whatever had gone wrong here, and he suspected that he and Lock had only skimmed the surface, a program like this one needn’t be all bad. It could get results, given the right material to begin with.
They finished up, and Ty let them go hit the showers, which was the next item on the schedule. He held Lewis back for a moment. “Lewis, is that your first name or your family name?”
“Family name, sir.”
“Your first name?”
“Aidan, sir.”
“How long you been here?”
“Three years, sir.”
“Mr. Fontaine mentioned something to me earlier. The time-out room. What’s that?”
Aidan Lewis looked uncertain, like he wasn’t sure if he should answer or not.
“I asked you a question, Lewis.”
“It’s not really a room, sir. It’s an old barn. You get put there if you really mess up.”
“Ever been there yourself?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lewis. “In my first month here. I was pretty out of control. Broken Ridge really saved me.”
“So what’s the deal with this barn? You get put in there and then what?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“So why is it a punishment?”
“It’s not the nicest place, I guess. Not very clean. And there’s nothing to do. I was only in there a couple of days, but it gets to you pretty quick,” said Aidan.
It sounded to Ty like Broken Ridge’s version of solitary confinement. “Okay. Well, let’s hope I don’t have to send any of the guys from the dorm there,” he said.
“I don’t think you will, sir. They’re a pretty good group.”
“That’s encouraging to hear. Okay, go shower.”
Ty watched Aidan leave. He took out his cell phone, and stared at the empty signal indicator on the screen.
37
Lock parked the Ford on a narrow side-street a block away from the Sheriff’s Department. He checked his cell phone. No update from Ty. Not even a brief text informing him that everything was running smoothly. Or that it wasn’t.
He had one message from Donald Price. He’d left it while Lock had been driving. He’d call him back after this meeting. As of right now, he didn’t have any fresh news, and he had a lot of ground to cover today, including a trip out to see the parents of a student who had died while attending Broken Ridge a few years back. Lock wanted to tally their story with the media reports surrounding the death.
He climbed the steps to the front entrance of the Sheriff’s Department. According to their website, they had a sheriff and four deputies, plus a support staff of another half-dozen civilians, to cover an area of approximately a thousand square miles. It seemed like a lot of ground to cover with so few people, but the population was sparse. In fact, the staff and students at Broken Ridge probably accounted for about ten per cent of the total number of people residing in the area. Apart from the town itself, and the school, most people were scattered, living in small family groups on vast ranches, or more modest small farms.
Pushing through the main door, Lock walked into a small, fairly informal waiting area. A row of plastic seats was lined up against a wall. They faced a long desk. Doors behind led to the offices.
Lock immediately noted two things that told him a lot about crime in the area—or, rather, the relative lack of it. The plastic seats weren’t bolted down. And there was no security screen or other barrier between the waiting area and the main desk where visitors were greeted.
A bored-looking deputy was busy tapping at a slightly dated personal computer. He glanced up as Lock came in. “Man, I wish I’d taken one of those touch-typing classes when I was in high school.”
“What stopped you?” Lock asked.
The deputy stared off into the middle distance. From the look of him, high school couldn’t have been all that long ago. But he seemed to be having trouble recalling the reason. “Guess I was worried about the other guys teasing me. Girls took that stuff.”
“It’s never too late,” Lock told him.
“Guess that’s true. Hey, so how can I help you?”
So far, so congenial, thought Lock. “I’m here to see Sheriff Dwyer.”
“You have an
appointment?”
“No, I don’t,” said Lock. “If he’s not around, maybe I can arrange to speak with him later.” He hadn’t wanted to telegraph his visit. He was hoping that if he arrived unannounced, the sheriff’s answers to his questions might be a little less guarded. If the sheriff wasn’t here, he’d see what he could get from the deputy sitting in front of him. He already had a hunch that this guy didn’t have all that much of a filter.
As a rule, the higher up the chain of command you went in any organization, the more circumspect people were about sharing information. Not only because they actually had it, but also because people who were guarded with the outside world tended to rise to a higher rank. At the top, the world was populated with politicians, whether they had that title or not.
“Oh, no, he’s around,” said the deputy, getting up from his computer.
He took the name Lock gave him, and wandered into the back offices while Lock waited. He took a seat, dug out his cell phone, and dropped Donald Price a quick text to let him know he would call him later with an update, but as of now he had nothing to worry about.
The deputy reappeared. He smiled. “The sheriff will be right with you.” He sat down at his computer and went back to pecking at the keyboard.
Two minutes passed before the sheriff himself appeared. It took Lock a moment to recognize him. The picture that was on the department’s website must have been taken at least fifteen years and a hundred fifty pounds ago.
“Come on through,” the sheriff told him.
Lock was a little surprised that he hadn’t yet been asked what he wanted to speak with the sheriff about. He followed the man through to the largest of four offices. The sheriff waved at the chair opposite as he lowered himself into a seat behind his desk. From the mess on it, they might not have had much actual crime in this area but they still appeared to generate a lot of paper. Now came the question.
“What can I do for you?”
Lock had his answer prepared. He was a private investigator from California. He had a wealthy client, who would remain nameless, who was considering sending his wayward son to a number of residential programs. He had been tasked with conducting some informal background checks on each one. More to get a feel for them than anything specific. One of those programs was operating at Broken Ridge.
Across from him, the sheriff shifted buttocks. “Shouldn’t you be asking the folks out there at Broken Ridge?”
Lock smiled. “Oh, I will be, but obviously they want the business.”
“I hear you,” the sheriff said. “Tell you the truth, I only have good things to say about the place. Not that I know everything that goes on, but the kids come into town to do voluntary work from time to time. They’re real nice. Good manners. Look like they’re well cared for. I’m afraid there’s not much to tell. That’s the plain truth.”
“But not the whole truth,” said Lock, shifting up a gear. “There have been some problems with the place.”
“Problems?”
Surely no one was this dumb, thought Lock. The three deaths were well documented. Broken Ridge had worked hard to push them down the main internet search engines if you used broad search terms, but they could be found with only a small amount of persistence and savvy. He didn’t say anything: he’d let the sheriff fill the silence. Or not. Either way, it would give him an additional measure of the type of man he was dealing with.
The sheriff spoke first. “Oh, you mean . . . the kid who died. Tragic, completely tragic. I really felt for the parents. Can’t imagine anything worse than that happening to someone. Y’know, I’ve had to go inform people of deaths in this job. Doesn’t get any easier.”
He sounded sincere to Lock, but he was also quickly shifting the discussion from the specific to the general. No doubt he was hoping that Lock would drop it. He was about to be disappointed.
“Are you talking about the death of Jennifer Oates?”
“Oh, yeah, Jennifer Oates,” said the sheriff. “That’s a name from the past.”
Lock was starting to get a little more suspicious. The sheriff was playing this down a little too much for Lock’s comfort. He would ramp things up, see where it got him.
“Seven years ago. It isn’t that distant.”
The sheriff didn’t take the bait. At least, not that it showed on his face. “I guess not. But to answer your question, there wasn’t anything suspicious. And, believe me, we looked.”
“You were sheriff back then?” Lock asked.
“Just elected. Learning the job.”
“So you may have missed something?”
That got a reaction. The sheriff shifted buttocks again. The chair he was sitting in creaked at the adjustment. “Are you sure you’re here asking questions for someone who’s looking to send their kid to Broken Ridge?” he asked Lock, elbows suddenly propped on the desk.
“A young girl dies, that’s going to be a cause for concern. Two die plus one staff member is murdered and that’s a major red flag. Wouldn’t you agree, Sheriff?”
It was the sheriff’s turn to try to stare Lock down. Lock let him have his moment.
“I’m just trying to ensure that the deaths weren’t suspicious and that it’s a safe environment for my client’s son,” said Lock. “That’s all. I apologize if it comes over any different than that.”
The sheriff appeared to be studying him from across the desk. “No,” he told Lock. “They weren’t suspicious. They were both accidents. Well, a suicide in one case. But what you or anyone else has to understand is that, the kids who get sent to Broken Ridge, they already have all kinds of problems. Otherwise they wouldn’t be sent there by their parents in the first place.”
It struck Lock as a slightly circular argument. But it was one that was well rehearsed by anyone connected to an institution like Broken Ridge that had run into a problem. It was simply an extension, as Lock saw it, of telling parents to expect horror stories from the letters home they received.
“Well, in that case, your word is good enough for me. Like I said, I’m sorry if I came off pushy, but this is a good client of mine, and he wants to make absolutely sure that he finds the right place for his son.”
The sheriff switched buttocks a third time, and nodded sagely. Lock rose from his own chair and reached out to shake the man’s hand.
“My client’s one of those guys that, as much as he doesn’t like his son’s behavior, if anything happened to him at one of these places . . . Well, let’s just say it would get real ugly, real fast,” said Lock, turning and heading for the door. “And he has the money to do it.”
“Hold on,” the sheriff called after him.
Lock turned back.
“Close that door for me, would you? Then come sit back down for a minute.”
Lock did just that, easing into the chair. He’d hoped that the suggestion of a scorched-earth reaction to any problems would get this kind of response.
“There was nothing suspicious about any of what happened. But, and this is completely off the record, and stays between us . . .”
Lock stretched his arms out. “Absolutely. It goes no further. All my client wants is a recommendation from me. He’s not big into the fine details unless he has to be.” Truth be told, Lock was starting to like the sound of his fictitious client. He thought he’d be a lot lower maintenance than the people who actually hired him.
“Here’s the thing. The lady who runs Broken Ridge, well, she inherited the place from her father. And he had some quite old-fashioned views about how kids should behave. He was real old-school.”
Given that this was all off the record, Lock wished the sheriff would get to the point. “I get it. Old-school.”
“And perhaps the place hasn’t quite moved on. Not that some of the kids they get don’t need discipline. They do. Otherwise they wouldn’t end up there. But Gretchen Applewhite can get a little heavy-handed. At times. Mostly she’s very pleasant.”
“What are you saying?” Lock pressed. “She has a tem
per?”
“Yeah, that would be it,” said the sheriff. “A temper. Sometimes.”
Lock didn’t want to push too much more than he already had. He could already sense the sheriff’s unease at talking about this. The unease was perhaps more revealing than what he was actually saying. “So perhaps Broken Ridge may not be the best fit?”
“Not what I said. Not my words. And that’s not for me to say, really.”
Lock rose and shook his hand again. “Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.”
He walked out past the deputy, who was still pecking away at the keyboard with two fingers. His cell phone rang. Ty’s name flashed up on the screen. Finally.
38
Ty stood at the edge of the blacktop, cell phone in hand. He was still sweating from having run all the way down there. He’d told Chris he’d promised to call his girlfriend today. Chris had offered the landline in the ranch house. Ty had politely declined.
Lock took a little time to answer.
“Where are you?” Ty asked him.
“Local Sheriff’s Department.”
Ty heart sank a little. “Shit.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you to let you know that the local sheriff and Gretchen are tight. Like related tight. Broken Ridge kicks money into the department.”
“That would make sense,” Lock said.
“They give you a hard time?”
“Not really. But he was kind of reticent about saying anything negative. Listen, I used a cover. Said I was a PI working out of California who was looking at various school options for a wealthy client. Made out that it was a standard background check.”
“He bought it?” Ty asked.
“Seemed to. Listen, you have to remember, this isn’t LA.”
Ty grimaced at that. “No, it’s worse. It’s easier to ping on these folks’ radar.”
“Ty, relax. It’ll be fine. They’re not going to make a connection between you working there, and my showing up to ask a few questions.”