The Devil's Bounty (6 page)

Lock cleared his throat. ‘Like many people. The only difference is that I’m going to find him and bring him back to serve his sentence.’

Miriam Mendez smiled. It was a warm, open smile, which wrong-footed Lock. It wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting. ‘Good. I hope you do. I mean that. Charlie has brought nothing but shame to our family. Of course I don’t wish anything terrible to happen to him but it’s right that he should take his punishment like a man.’

‘So will you help me find him, Mrs Mendez?’ Lock asked.

‘You don’t know where he is?’ she asked, innocence personified.

Lock smiled. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Well, Mr Lock, if I knew where he was, I would fly down there myself and tell him to put an end to all of this nonsense. All the family knows is that he’s in Mexico somewhere, and even that’s a guess. He may have moved on from there for all we know.’

‘So if you don’t know where he is, why did you want to see me?’

‘You heard what happened to the other men who tried to find him?’ She allowed the question to hang in the air. ‘Charlie has obviously got in with a bad crowd.’

Lock bit back a smirk. ‘Bad crowd’ suggested kids who hung out late smoking dope and drinking beer, rather than narco-trafficking paramilitaries who butchered people in cold blood. ‘You think I shouldn’t go?’ he asked.

She did her best to look puzzled. ‘I’m certainly not trying to dissuade you, but at the same time I hope there’s no more senseless loss of life.’

‘Before he left, did your son give any indication that he was going to flee, Mrs Mendez?’

Miriam Mendez sighed. ‘If he did, I’d hardly make it public. But, no, Mr Lock, he didn’t. I think he just panicked.’

Yeah, right, thought Lock. ‘Is there anything else, Mrs Mendez?’

Her hand fell into her pocket and she pulled out a cream envelope. ‘I was hoping that if you find Charlie you might give him this for me. My time is limited and I’m not sure I’ll have the chance to see him before …’

Lock stood up, walked over to her and took the envelope. It was thick, maybe three or four sheets of heavy old-fashioned writing paper inside. On the front, in neat, cursive handwriting, was her son’s name. ‘I’ll make sure to pass it on,’ he said.

She clasped his hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong. ‘I know you will, Mr Lock. And, because I’m counting the days rather than the months, can you let me know as soon as you have? I mean, the very moment. It would give me such peace to know he had it before I depart this earth. Will you promise me?’

‘I promise you’ll be the first to know,’ said Lock.

Before he had made the trip to the Mendez estate to see the family matriarch, he had done a little more research. Miriam Mendez did have cancer, and any kind of cancer was a terrible thing, but the type she had wasn’t usually fatal. In fact, she was in remission. She had lost her hair but she was almost certainly going to be fine. There was only one reason she could have for asking Lock to make sure he contacted her first and that was to stop him delivering her son to the authorities.

‘Thank you, Mr Lock. You’re a good man,’ she said, with a wan smile

‘I’ll see myself out, Mrs Mendez.’

As he left the room, he stopped in the doorway and turned. She was still in the same pose.

‘Yes, Mr Lock?’

‘I was just thinking, Mrs Mendez. If by some chance you hear from your son before I do, could you give him a message from me?’

Her eyes widened, and he detected anger simmering just beneath the surface.

‘Tell him that no amount of money or muscle is going to stop me putting him behind bars with all the other animals.’

A hardness settled in her eyes but her smile didn’t fade. ‘Just be careful, Mr Lock. No one wants to see anyone else suffer.’

Outside, the all-American pool boy had been replaced by a thick-set Hispanic man, whose girth suggested he might have eaten the job’s previous incumbent.
Presence of the abnormal
, thought Lock. The man watched his every move as he got back into his car.

Lock tossed the letter on to the passenger seat. He started the engine, and headed down the driveway. The gates opened as he approached and he left the Mendez estate. About a half-mile down the road he pulled over. He stared at the letter, debating the morality of opening it. He picked it up, ripped open the envelope and pulled out three thick sheets of cream writing-paper.

They were blank.

Thirteen

BACK AT THE
hotel, Lock drove past the valet stand to a far corner of the hotel parking lot. He pulled in between two oversized SUVs. The nose of the Audi was facing a brick wall so the only view of the car for anyone watching him was from behind. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been followed from the Mendez estate but he wanted to ensure that he wasn’t observed in what he was about to do.

He got out of the car, and walked slowly around it. On the second circuit, he checked the inside of the wheel arches using his fingertips. Next he clambered under the car to inspect it. Satisfied, he wriggled out, then opened both doors, searched the interior, and ran his fingertips over every inch of the trunk.

He found what he was looking for hidden at the very back, a black box the size of a pack of cigarettes. He went back into the car, pulled out his Maglite and shone it into the dark recess. Using his Gerber, he levered the box out of position, and turned it over in his hand.

It was a Real-Time Asset GPS tracking device. They were commercially available and retailed at around five hundred bucks. He knew the price because he had recommended this very gizmo a while back to a trucking company: they had been concerned about a couple of their drivers, who were losing a lot of cargo.

Lock guessed the device had been placed inside his car while he had been inside the house, talking to Miriam Mendez. He had suspected something was going down when he had come back out to find the pool boy replaced by the older Hispanic man. The change of personnel had jarred, and anything that jarred was worth checking out.

He looked around the parking lot. He thought about planting the device on one of the cars with out-of-state plates, but dismissed the idea. If someone was prepared to send gang members out to kill a teenage rape victim, who was to say they wouldn’t cap a couple of hapless vacationers from Oregon? For now, the tracking device could stay put. If they wanted to know where he was, they could – for now.

Back in his room, he put Miriam Mendez’s blank pages into Marcie Braun’s case file and texted Ty for a situation report.

A few seconds later his cell phone chirped.

‘How is she?’ Lock asked.

‘She’s conscious but they kicked me out of the room,’ Ty said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sitting right outside.’

‘You had a chance to speak to her yet?’

‘I tried but she wants to see you.’

Lock glanced out of the window to the Greyhound bus terminal. ‘I have a couple of people still to talk to. The cops been back yet?’

‘Doctor’s holding them off. He wants her to rest some more before she talks to them.’

‘He tell you anything?’

‘Sorry, brother, I tried to ask him about her condition but I can’t fake being a relative, if you know what I mean.’

‘Speaking of which, any of her family show up yet?’

‘Her mom’s on the way. Should be here any minute,’ said Ty.

‘Okay, talk to her for me.’

‘You got it. Oh, and, Ryan, I do have one piece of news but you ain’t gonna like it.’

‘What is it?’

‘That kid you caught with the knife?’

‘Yeah?’ Lock asked, although he already had a pretty good idea what was coming.

‘She got bailed.’

‘She could have pulled the trigger, for all they know.’

‘Oh, it gets better. Want to take a wild guess at who she had representing her when she was arraigned?’

‘Johnnie Cochran?’

‘Where you been? Johnnie died back in ’oh-five, brother.’

‘Must have missed the obituary. So, who did she have in court?’

‘Junior attorney from Tony Medina’s office.’

‘You get their name?’

‘Working on it. I’ll email it.’

Lock could add another person to the list of people he’d like to speak to. While he couldn’t imagine getting anything out of a shyster like Medina, a new attorney in his office might give something away about who was paying the legal bill for a teenage gang-banger. Of course, it could be that the gang was paying, and that she and Charlie Mendez sharing a law firm was a
coincidence. But as far as Lock was concerned coincidences were up there with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Believing in them might make you feel good, but that was about it.

‘So when you heading back?’ Ty asked.

‘Got one more call to make up here first.’

‘Okay, brother, but, hey?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Be safe.’

Fourteen

HER NOSE BISECTED
by a sliver of brass safety chain, Joe Brady’s widow, Sarah, stared at Lock through the gap between front door and frame. It was a little more than three months since her husband had been butchered in Mexico. Lock knew from bitter recent experience that the first three months after the loss of a loved one were some of the toughest.

Your heart was put through a mincer. You didn’t sleep. Your brain tricked you: something would happen, and Lock would be about to share it with Carrie, then remember that she was gone. His gut churned even to think of it.

‘Mrs Brady?’ Lock asked, observing the social niceties. ‘My name’s Ryan Lock. I’m a friend of Melissa Warner. I’m here to speak to you about your husband.’

The door closed. He waited. He was hardly going to make her speak to him, not after what she’d been through.

There was the rattle of the chain being removed, and then it opened again, wider this time. ‘You’d better come in.’

He followed her into a living room. There was a couch, a television and a playpen in which a little girl was busy trying to find out if a wooden building block would fit inside her nostril. Sarah Brady motioned for him to sit down. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked.

‘No, thank you.’

She remained standing. ‘I have work in a half-hour, and I have to drop her at my mom’s, so if you could ask what you want to ask – I don’t mean to be rude but …’

Lock cleared his throat. A visit from someone like him was probably the last thing this woman needed but now he was here he would press on. ‘Mrs Brady,’ he began.

‘You can call me Sarah. Mrs Brady makes me sound old, and I already feel like a million,’ she said.

‘Sarah, Melissa Warner has asked me to find Charlie Mendez for her.’

Sarah bent over the playpen and picked up her daughter. ‘Two hundred grand is a lot of money, huh? But it’s no good to you if you’re not around to spend it.’

Lock guessed he had better get used to hearing that line. ‘This isn’t about money, I can assure you.’

She shot him a look of sheer scepticism. ‘Sure it’s not.’

‘I believe your husband had caught up with Mendez before he was killed.’

The little girl chewed at the building block and stared at him with wide blue eyes. Sarah tried to take it from her. She bunched chubby fingers tightly around it, refusing to give it up.

‘He had him in his vehicle. But they were pulled over by the cops and arrested before they got to the border,’ Sarah said.
Twenty miles short. Twenty miles further on and he would still be here.’

This was news to Lock. ‘I thought he and the people he was with were abducted by narco-traffickers.’

‘Boy, you really don’t know too much about how things work down there, do you? Cops, gangsters. A lot of the time they’re the same thing.’

She was wrong in one regard. He wasn’t wholly naïve about police corruption in Mexico. It was rife. That was all you needed to know. ‘You think the police killed your husband?’

She bounced the little girl in her arms and kissed her cheek. Distracted, the the child dropped the block, then struggled to get down, wanting to retrieve it.

‘They might have killed him themselves. They might have handed him over to the people who did. Either way, he’s still gone.’ She looked around the grubby apartment. ‘I begged him not to go down there but all he could talk about was what we could do with that money. Listen, I really do have to get ready for work.’

He raised a hand. ‘Did your husband leave any papers, any notes about Mendez?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘If he did they wouldn’t be here. He kept all that stuff at his office. I haven’t been back there since he left. He always paid a year ahead so I have a few more months before I have to deal with it. Guess I’m not ready to face it yet.’

He took a breath. ‘Would you mind if I did?’

‘Come on, baby,’ she said to her daughter, turning her back to him and walking through into the kitchen. She returned a few moments later with a set of keys, which she handed to him. ‘The alarm code’s written on the fob. Just drop them into the mailbox when you come back – I don’t get home from work until late.’

Lock felt the weight of the keys in his hand. A thought flashed into his mind that he should hand them back. But he didn’t. He thanked her, and promised to return them, then walked out of the dingy rooms into the mild California evening.

Fifteen

BAIL-BOND OFFICES WERE
generally grim, and Joe Brady’s was no exception. The final unit in a greying strip mall off a narrow two-lane road, its dirt-streaked windows were covered with metal bars, and there was a dent in the front door where someone had kicked it. A sign announced the nature of the business conducted within.

Lock fumbled with the keys until he found the one that fitted. He opened the door, and stepped inside. The alarm panel was to his right. He plugged in the code written on the key fob and the box chirped briefly, then deactivated. The interior consisted of a small reception area and a larger back office, a toilet and a small kitchen.

Posters adorned Reception, including one advertising the company’s services – ‘Brady Bail Bonds – Because Jail Sucks.’ A pen set, like the kind you find in banks, was secured to the long wooden reception desk with a couple of bolts, a reflection perhaps of the business’s client base.