Gridlock: A Ryan Lock Novel (19 page)

A gurney was flicked out, the stretcher laid on top, and they wheeled Vice out towards the street. They passed the car on the way and Lock glimpsed the bandages covering Vice’s eyes, medical tape holding them in place. One hand dangled free, clenching and unclenching into a fist, a hint of the agony he must be feeling beneath the cloud of morphine.

Waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Lock had tried to get a name or a description out of Vice but Vice had incanted Raven’s name like a mantra before lapsing into unconsciousness. It didn’t help Lock much.

The officer in the front of the radio car in which Lock was sitting shifted round, shooting a smirk in his direction. ‘He fight you, huh?’

Lock gave him a grim smile in return. ‘If this had been down to me, he’d be dead.’

As the gurney shifted from sight, Lock noticed a cluster of LAPD officers at the gate, suits from Robbery Homicide Division starting to appear among all the uniforms. Lock recognized one from television. Strickler. Strickling. Something like that. He was about five foot ten, with cropped grey hair. From his body language and that of the other men around him, Lock guessed he was the head honcho. He was looking at Lock now, and made his way over to the radio car.

Next thing Lock knew the officer was taking the cuffs off him and pulling him out of the vehicle.

‘Mr Lock, I’m Lieutenant John Strickling, Special Homicide Division. You want to tell me what’s going on here?’

Lock squared his shoulders. ‘I can tell you everything I saw and heard since I got here, sure.’

Strickling gave the briefest of nods. ‘I’d appreciate that.’ He waved over a couple of other detectives and together they formed a small huddle around Lock as he took them through his journey to the house. He pinned down times, knowing that would put him in the clear for any involvement with what had happened to Vice.

‘So you wanted to speak to Mr Aronofsky about how he had treated your fiancee?’ Strickling asked, when he had finished.

‘Something like that,’ Lock agreed.

The front door of the house was open and Strickling glanced towards the bloody entrance foyer. ‘Only someone beat you to it. Do you know when your girlfriend, Ms Delaney, was here?’

Lock told him. Strickling went quiet for a moment. ‘And you’re sure on both those times?’

‘Give or take five minutes either side.’

‘Huh,’ said Strickling, frowning.

‘It gives us a problem, doesn’t it, Lieutenant?’

Strickling stared at Lock, deadpan, too much of a pro to say anything. ‘You think?’ he asked Lock finally.

‘I don’t think so, I know so. Between Carrie seeing him alive and me finding him, Raven Lane’s been in custody. Which also means that unless we find whoever’s responsible for these killings fast, more people may end up dead.’

37

Carrie had spent all day on the phone, filling in some of the gaps relating to the Cindy Canyon murder and chasing down what she could about the Russian businessman Raven had seen in Vegas. Cindy had last been seen alive at her apartment in Marina Del Rey, an upmarket area just south of Santa Monica, which had grown popular with singles over the years, since international cabin crew from nearby LAX had begun to spend their layover days in the area.

The LAPD believed that, as well as her work as an adult-movie star, Cindy had done some escorting on the side. She also stripped, working rarely and always as a featured dancer.

The three activities were commonly intertwined. Adult movies didn’t pay well but they gave a young woman a profile that meant she could charge ten times the amount she would normally earn by escorting and stripping. And although the stripping was common knowledge, the escorting was usually hotly denied by the women involved.

Carrie also learned that, along with Las Vegas and, to a lesser extent, New York and Washington DC, Los Angeles was the epicenter of the American sex industry. Huge sums of money were involved. The adult-movie industry was worth billions, amounts that actually exceeded the revenue generated by Hollywood. Of course, ask any man on the street whether he ever consumed pornography and the answer was invariably in the negative. This meant that the men involved were even more elusive than the consumers of movies. Someone who was capable of paying an escort like Cindy Canyon several thousand dollars for an evening’s companionship wasn’t the type of man who would wish to have his identity known. The LAPD also told Carrie that girls like Cindy attracted not only Hollywood’s A-list but also heavyweight figures from the world of business and politics. Any vice-related murder in Los Angeles was always handled with care: once you started turning over rocks, there was no knowing who might scuttle out, blinking, into the sunlight.

According to a neighbour, the last person to see Cindy had been a security guard at the complex when she had returned home in the late afternoon. After that there was no record of her leaving and her phone records, at her apartment and for her cell phone, had yielded nothing of value. Cindy, it seemed, had simply vanished into thin air – until her head had appeared in a newspaper vending machine in downtown.

The LAPD had canvassed everyone who lived in the apartment complex and run their names through local and national databases but, apart from the usual Driving While Under the Influence convictions, and some minor drug or assault charges, no one had seemed suspicious. Of course, now the LAPD had a link back to Raven, they were playing it as some kind of adult diva rivalry gone nuclear. It wrapped everything up nice and neatly. But Carrie wasn’t so sure.

The evening had brought a chill to the air and a swell to the ocean running in underneath the house. Lock walked into the kitchen from the garage, throwing a set of car keys on to the marble counter. He looked like hell.

‘You okay?’ Carrie asked him, concerned.

‘Vice was attacked. I just spent the last two hours convincing Robbery Homicide that it wasn’t me. Other than that, I’m terrific.’

Carrie scrambled from her place on the couch, grabbed the remote for the TV and clicked it on. The glass and steel house came immediately into view, crime tape, ochre yellow in the fading light, marking its boundaries. ‘How bad?’

‘Bad. And I think whoever did it left him just about alive as some kind of warning.’

‘You think Raven did it?’

Lock shook his head. ‘Not unless the cops drove her there from custody. She was with me in Vegas and then she was arrested.’

Carrie whistled as she sank down on the couch. ‘So she’s innocent?’

‘Looks that way.’ Lock rolled his shoulders. ‘You find anything on the Russian she met in Vegas?’

Carrie picked up a yellow legal pad from the table. ‘Gregori Istanyovich. Fifty-four-year-old Russian oligarch. Richer than dirt. Various business interests. Not straight-up Mafia but connected. Likes beautiful women. That’s what you already had, apart from the name.’

‘And someone didn’t like him seeing Raven either. Sounds like he got off lightly if all he had was threats.’

‘I’m not sure that’s how he sees it, Ryan. I spoke to a contact in the Justice Department. Istanyovich is pissed about getting dragged into all of this. He wants to find out who’s behind these threats as much as we do.’

‘Well, good luck to him,’ Lock said. ‘Because right now none of us has a goddamn clue who that is.’

38

It was late by the time Lawrence Stanner finally got on the freeway for the long drive home. He’d called his wife to see if she wanted him to pick up dinner but there had been no answer and then her cell phone had gone straight to voicemail. After that he’d gotten the call about Vice. They were right back at square one and Raven’s attorney was already doing some major grandstanding, pressing for her client to be released, even though they still had some fairly solid evidence tying her to the first two vics.

Turning into his street, Stanner noticed the white contractor’s truck behind his wife’s red Suburban. Perfect. Company was the last thing he needed. He didn’t recognize it as belonging to anyone they knew. God, he hoped she wasn’t having someone give them a quote on the kitchen she wanted.

There was no space to park behind the truck so he pulled up alongside his wife’s Suburban and got out. Something jarred in him.

His twenty-five years as a cop meant that he knew when something was off kilter. Stanner’s right hand immediately fell to his service weapon as he glanced back at the strange truck. The hairs at the back of his neck were on point. His heart was beating a little faster.

He ducked under the big bay window at the front of the house, then took a quick peek. The living room was empty, and everything was as it should have been. Oprah Winfrey’s face filled the forty-inch TV screen that he’d had mounted on the wall. Oprah was like a living goddess to Marilyn. She never missed an edition. But Marilyn wasn’t sitting on the couch watching this one.

Stanner pulled back the slide on his Glock and dropped the safety, keeping the gun at his side, out of sight of the casual observer. He glanced back across the street to Doug Preston’s house. Doug was recently divorced and worked for the county sheriff but his car was absent from his drive. If he’d been home, Stanner could have asked him for help. Better to appear paranoid than dead – that was one lesson he’d taken away from his work with the TMU. Safety first.

He ducked back under the bay window and returned to his car. For a moment he thought about calling the local Moorpark deputies but he checked himself. He was a cop. He was armed.

He skirted down the side of the house, listening hard for his wife’s voice. Flattening himself against the wall, he took his time, waiting until he reached the corner before he stepped out.

There was a sudden movement behind him. He went to turn but before he could face whoever had been lurking around the corner he felt a slashing pain and his neck was suddenly wet.

A man’s arms wrapped around him from behind and he took another blow, this time to the side of his head. The last thing he saw was the fading sunset on the horizon, a soft orange ball settling itself above the swimming pool at the rear of the house. Then came sudden night.

39

Day was breaking in Malibu, and while Carrie was taking her turn in the shower, Lock sat on the end of the bed and watched live coverage of a man and a woman’s bodies being removed from a quiet suburban street in Moorpark. If the window of opportunity for Raven to kill Vice had been wafer thin, and hinged on Lock knowing about it, there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind that she couldn’t have committed what the media had already dubbed the Copland Killings.

The TV coverage was deliberately vague, but Carrie had already been told by one of her recently acquired sources that the victims were Lawrence Stanner and his wife, Marilyn. Feeling depressed and frustrated, Lock waited until the news report started to loop round on itself, and then, having extracted as much information as there was, began to get dressed.

Although he and Stanner hadn’t always been in agreement, he’d been a good man and a good cop. To murder anyone was bad enough but it was more of an outrage against society when the crime was committed against a man because his job was to safeguard society. The wife’s murder took it to new levels of depravity. It was a spit in the face to decent people, but it gave Lock a new sense of purpose.

Carrie stepped from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her. She glanced at the television. ‘They definitely letting her out?’

Lock shrugged. ‘They’ll have to.’

‘She can’t go back to her place. Not after this. You’re gonna have to tell her that, Ryan.’

‘If she’ll listen to me.’

Carrie bit down on her bottom lip. ‘They could come here.’

Lock rose from the bed. ‘No. No way.’

‘Just for a few days.’

‘It’s not a good idea. Not with this maniac out there.’

‘Who’s even going to know? I mean, how many people do we even see out on the beach here during the day? A dozen, tops? And they’re neighbors A stranger would be noticed.’

‘Carrie…’

‘She needs somewhere she can feel safe. She needs us. I’m not even arguing with you. Ask her.’

Ten minutes later, having lost the argument with Carrie, Lock pulled out on to Pacific Coast Highway, heading for the main LA jail facility in downtown, the Twin Towers. Today Raven had been due to be arraigned on two charges of murder in the first degree, the first being that of Cindy Canyon, and the second being Larry Johns in Arizona. The killings in Moorpark had changed that, with Fay Liepowitz having led an all-out media blitz on the LAPD. Word was that the high-powered team of attorneys and investigators she had assembled was already punching big holes in the LAPD’s case, and the DA’s office was getting the jitters even before they’d got to the arraignment phase.

Raven Lane was about to be released from custody and her stalker had just sent a blood-drenched message to the entire city that there was no one he was scared of and no lengths to which he wouldn’t go.

On the way towards downtown, Lock checked in with Ty. With the killer busy in Moorpark, Ty had endured a sleepless but uneventful night babysitting Kevin. Per Raven’s wishes he was about to get him out of bed, make him breakfast and take him to the day centre. Ty could report, however, that the area was crawling with law enforcement. There were at least two LAPD patrol cars now parked opposite the house.

Lock killed the call with the jab of a finger as he rolled on to the Santa Monica freeway. Traffic was heavy, the airwaves clogged with news of the Stanner murders. The chief of police, the head of Robbery Homicide Lieutenant Strickler and the mayor were due to speak at a press conference at ten o’clock.

Lock’s cell phone rang.

It was Raven. She sounded as choked as she had when she had first called him. ‘Did you see the news? I can’t believe it.’

Lock didn’t want to offer the usual platitudes. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘They’re releasing me.’ She sounded more sombre than relieved. ‘I need someone to pick me up.’

‘You’re asking me?’ Lock said.