Gridlock: A Ryan Lock Novel (7 page)

‘Are you a cop?’ Kevin asked.

‘Something like that.’

‘So how come you don’t have a gun?’

‘Because I don’t need one.’ Lock crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping this was true. ‘I’m like a cop who protects people.’

‘What do you mean?’ Wendy asked.

‘I guess it means that I make sure bad things don’t happen to good people.’

Raven shouted up the stairs, her voice sounding strained, ‘Kev, we gotta go.’

Kevin started down the stairs with Wendy, Lock to the rear, Kevin’s backpack slung over his shoulder. He caught a whisper of ‘Superman would so kick his ass,’ from Kevin to Wendy, and smiled.

Raven was waiting for them by the front door. She put an arm around her brother. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’ Then she looked to Lock. ‘Can you maybe call and see if that’s gonna be okay?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be okay?’ Kevin asked.

‘We had a little accident back at the house. Some water got into the garage. That’s all.’

Lock stepped out of the house and stood on the front porch. Not even midday, and the heat was building. It was like breathing soup. He called the Van Nuys Division headquarters. ‘Am I clear to bring them back to the house?’

‘Yeah, the techs are just finishing up. We had to take her car in as well.’

‘Understood,’ Lock said, hanging up.

He stepped back inside. ‘I just spoke to the plumber,’ he said to Raven. ‘You’re good to go.’

While Raven hustled Kevin out of the door, he took a quick check of the street and hung back for a moment.

‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’ he said to Wendy’s mother, handing his car keys to Raven. ‘I’ll be real quick.’

He watched Raven and Kevin walk slowly towards the Range Rover, then turned back to the woman. ‘I understand your concern with everything that’s going on. And I just want you to know that if you send your daughter over to see Kevin I guarantee you she’ll be safe.’

Wendy’s mother nodded, but avoided eye contact. ‘I appreciate that. However, I’m not sure that’s a chance I want to take. When you have a child like our daughter, they mean more to you than a regular kid, not less.’

‘You know what Raven does for a living, right?’ Lock asked.

Another nod and floor stare. ‘This is the Valley, Mr Lock. You’d have to be pretty na95ve not to know what goes on with some people around here. But she’s a good sister to Kevin. Most people would have put him in a home, walked away and not looked back, got on with their life. She has to get credit for that.’

‘And he’s a good kid. They both are. But this isn’t about what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, is it?’ Lock asked her, already knowing the true answer. He’d seen the subtle shift in her expression when Kevin and her daughter had talked about marriage.

She finally made eye contact with him. ‘This talk about them getting married. We laughed it off at first. But they’re serious.’

‘Then if that’s the reason you don’t like them seeing each other at least be honest about it. Right now it’s looking like it’s some kind of judgement on Raven’s lifestyle. You know she didn’t invite this crazy into her life.’

Wendy’s mother’s face hardened. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

11

When they arrived at Raven’s house, Ty’s purple 1966 Lincoln Continental was parked at the edge of the police cordon. Ty was slouched against one of the car’s huge, tapering rear fins, his eyes obscured by mirrored Aviator sunglasses. The lettering on his T-shirt read: ‘You Look Like I Need A Drink.’ Even with the sunglasses, Lock could tell that he was checking out Raven from head to toe. As Raven helped Kevin unload his overnight bag from the car, Lock went to talk to his partner.

‘Brought the Pimpmobile, huh?’ Lock said. Ty’s car was a source of constant irritation, undermining his belief that the first duty of a close-protection operative was to blend into the background.

‘Speaking of which,’ Ty started, ‘where’s that piece of shit you drive?’

Lock nodded towards the black Range Rover parked across the street.

‘No way,’ Ty spluttered. ‘What happened to blending in?’

‘This is LA,’ Lock explained. ‘Here, this blends.’

‘Man, you’re full of surprises. Kind of young for a mid-life crisis too. Porn stars. Sweet rides.’

Lock shifted uncomfortably. ‘Ty, can we keep the porn-star talk on the down-low for now? She’s a client. That means we have to treat her with a certain degree of respect.’

‘I’m all about the respect, Ryan, you know that, brother.’

Behind the cordon, the last of the forensic techs were putting away their gear. The garage door was open and Lock could see that Raven’s BMW was already gone.

‘So? Wanna give me a sit rep?’ Ty was looking at Lock over the top of his shades.

‘Twenty-eight-year-old white female being stalked by a person or persons unknown. The cops think that whoever is obsessed with Raven is the same person who killed Cindy Canyon, and that this stalker has it in his head that he’s already in a relationship with Raven. That’s version one.’

‘And version two?’

‘That she did it,’ Lock said.

Ty tipped his sunglasses up on to his forehead. ‘Man, that’s kind of hot. You think it’s true?’

‘If I did, I wouldn’t have taken the gig.’

Ty looked around at the suburban street. ‘You know, brother, there are two kinds of crazy in this nation of ours.’

Lock smiled. ‘Go on, Brother Johnson, preach it.’

‘Well,’ Ty said, ‘there’s regular crazy, and then there’s LA crazy. And LA crazy beats regular every time.’

Ty wasn’t wrong, thought Lock, glancing up as two television helicopters buzzed overhead. A couple of the neighbors were gathered on their lawns, watching the show. A few more peeked through blinds from inside their homes. Lock watched a soccer mom snatch away a younger child from the front window of a ranch-style house that was opposite and a few doors down from Raven’s place.

He wiped a hand across his face, the sweat beading on his brow dampening the back. What he really needed was a nap but he wasn’t about to get one. There was too much work to be done. ‘We have someone who’s very determined and capable of taking human life. We need to be on the top of our game here, Ty.’

‘So why don’t we get her the hell out of here?’

‘She won’t do it.’ Lock looked back towards his car where Kevin was still standing with Raven. ‘Her brother has Down’s syndrome. She doesn’t want his routine disrupted.’

Ty filled his cheeks with air, then exhaled loudly. ‘Our boy comes through the window at two in the morning with a hunting knife, that’s going to disrupt everyone’s routine, not to mention create a whole bunch of other medical problems.’

‘Then we’d better do our job properly. I want to recce the house. You go introduce yourself.’

Ty straightened up. ‘Be my pleasure.’

Lock called him back. ‘Ty?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t go making things more complicated than they already are.’

Ty gave Lock his would-I-do-that? smile and wandered off.

Lock turned back towards the house. The SID team were finishing up, loading their gear into a panel truck. Contrary to the TV shows, most of their equipment, certainly at this stage of an investigation, was decidedly low-tech: swabs, plastic bags and digital cameras. The high-tech stuff was saved for the lab.

He wanted to walk through the house while it was completely empty. Although nightfall was around nine hours away, it was very unlikely that Raven and Kevin would be taking their advice and spending the evening somewhere else, so he needed to make sure the place was locked up tight before the sun fell over the Valley.

He walked around the property from the outside, approaching it as an intruder would. The front door was properly secured with a mortise-lock and separate chain. They could use a camera out here. He added it as the second item on his list, the first being a couple of motion sensors for the lawn area at the front. If anyone stepped on to the property, he would want to know about it. With the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains close by, they would have to adjust the sensitivity and height of the sensors for the coyotes that no doubt roamed the neighbourhood after dark.

Next he walked to the windows at the left of the property – the living room windows. They had locks on them and sensors that would trigger the alarm if anyone tried to jemmy them open. There was some sagebrush off to one side. It wasn’t planted close enough together to offer any great degree of cover so he determined that it could stay where it was.

He took off down the side of the house, noting the position of every drain, every window. Any inanimate object made it on to his plan of the house. The large plastic wheel-mounted garbage cans would have to be secured and any paperwork shredded. Not only would they inevitably be trawled by the media but they were a potential treasure trove to a stalker. A misplaced credit card or bank statement could tell someone where you shopped, the gym you worked out at and the stores where you bought your clothes and groceries. A carelessly discarded phone bill offered up your family and friends, as well as business acquaintances, who you spoke to, how frequently and what times you called them. Armed with these two items you could build a fairly comprehensive picture of someone’s life relatively rapidly.

This reminded him of something else. He jotted down a separate note to ask Raven about any social networking accounts she might have. If she had a fan page on Facebook, which anyone could join, the stalker might be there already. By definition stalkers were obsessive by nature so it should be possible to run a search to see who was monitoring the fan page most frequently. He guessed that Stanner and the other officers at the Threat Management Unit would already have done this, especially given the events of the past few days, but there was no harm in double checking.

There was a door at the rear of the house that led out on to a deck, which offered up an impressive view of the Los Angeles basin. Jumping off it, he used his Maglite, one of the big heavy torches used by cops, to check the crawl space underneath. It was clear but he would get a contractor in to seal it off.

Beyond the deck a steep slope led down to the property on the street below. The front of the deck hung out over this space, and the property line was demarcated by a chain-link fence. It was climbable but it would take some effort.

Lock started down the slope, walking sideways on the edge of his heels. Halfway down, he started as a dog appeared on the other side of the fence and barked, its teeth bared. It was smaller than a German Shepherd but had the same profile and markings. It was probably a Belgian Shepherd – not the ideal dog to have for security. In truth, small, yappy dogs were a bigger pain in the ass to intruders as they were more easily threatened, and tended to make more noise, thus warning the householder.

Lock continued down the slope. When he got within ten feet of the fence the Belgian Shepherd, which had been backing up, suddenly lunged towards the fence, putting its paws up against the chain-link, throwing its head back and alternating a throaty growl with an I-mean-business bark. A woman in her early sixties, wearing slacks and a University of Southern California Trojans T-shirt appeared at the side of the house. She had gardening gloves on.

Lock put his hands up by way of apology. ‘Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.’

She called the dog back to her side. ‘I wish you people would just finish up what you’re doing.’

Of course. She’d assumed he was with the LAPD. Presumably they had already been down here to take a look, keen to give the appearance of thoroughness.

‘Just one question,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll get out of your hair.’

‘I already told you I didn’t see anything.’

‘Does the dog stay out in the yard all the time?’

The woman looked to the skies like it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. ‘No point having a guard dog if you don’t let him guard.’

‘Doesn’t the barking bother the neighbors?’

The question earned Lock another withering look. ‘He’s trained not to bark at every little thing. He only goes off if there’s someone where they ought not to be. Like you right now.’

He made his apologies and retreated. Like every other single security measure, guard dogs could be subverted, but the dog’s presence on that side of the house would make their job a little more straightforward.

He reached the top of the slope, finished his external inspection, then walked into the house. There was one major detail he still had to plan for. Assuming the worst-case scenario of a homicidal stalker inside the house, they would need a plan B, and plan B came in the shape of a panic room.

He moved through Raven’s home searching out the most appropriate room. Ideally, he would have had something specially designed and installed but there wasn’t time for that. He would have to pick a space and work around what he had.

He climbed the dark oak staircase, noting the absence of pictures on the walls. That fitted with the rest of the place. Everything was neat to the point of sterility. The faint whiff of bleach hung in every room.

On the upstairs level there was a master bathroom and three large bedrooms off a long rectangular hallway. One bedroom was set up as a home office-cum-junk room. It was on the left-hand side of the house adjacent to the master bathroom. He ruled it out. One of the most important attributes of a panic room in a small domestic setting was how quickly you could gather everyone and get to it. If an intruder was halfway up the stairs before you knew they were inside the house, the last thing you wanted to have to do was make a mad dash across a hallway.

He checked the room and the bathroom, then walked into one of the other bedrooms. This, he guessed, was Kevin’s, although the decor was more appropriate to a child than a teenager. Superman dominated the walls, from an elaborate mural emblazoned by the bed to the posters tacked up everywhere else. Even the bed sheets and pillow cases had a Superman theme. There was one window, which overlooked the rear yard. One window was good. Just off to the left there was a small en-suite bathroom. No evidence of Superman here, although on opening the bathroom cabinet Lock was confronted with an array of prescription medicines. Clearly Kevin had some fairly heavy-duty secondary health issues. He could understand why Raven was insisting on staying put.