Fire Point (20 page)

68

The Audi skidded to a halt between two black Dodge Chargers fitted with tell-tale parcel-shelf emergency lights that signified some serious brass had arrived to supervise the crime scene, as well as any ongoing situation. The vehicles were issued to LAPD officers of captain ranking and above. Homicide scenes demanded a visit from the on-duty captain for the division. Two high-ranking officers signified something a little more serious.

Lock got out of the Audi, pushing through the crowds of students. He headed for the walkway that led from the street into Cardinal Gardens. He had spent the last twenty minutes trying to raise Stacy and her boyfriend with no luck. His calls had gone to voicemail.

At the end of the walkway two patrol cops stood with a couple of university security officers. Lock reached them. They weren’t about to let him pass. He scoped the open area behind them for any sign of the detectives he had spoken to previously but if they were anywhere it would be inside.

‘Excuse me,’ he said to the nearest cop. ‘I’m here to collect someone.’

The cop eyed him. ‘No one’s leaving right now. You’ll have to wait.’

The cop’s partner peered over Lock’s shoulder. ‘That your vehicle, sir? You’d better move it before it gets towed.’

Lock stood his ground. ‘I will. As soon as I’ve collected my friend. She’s in that building over there,’ he said, pointing to one of the dorm buildings where a bunch of cops stood checking the ID cards of some shaken-looking students. ‘Come on, the family’s worried. If I know she’s okay then I can come back, but I need to know.’

The cops traded a look. Lock was pushing his luck, and he knew it.

‘What’s the name? I’ll see if I can get you some information,’ said the taller of the two cops.

As soon as he gave them the name he knew it was bad news. One of the university security guards started to say something, only to be cut off with a look from the cops.

‘You’re family?’ they asked Lock.

‘A friend of the family.’

The two cops were stony-faced. If she was a victim, then who was informed of what and when was a procedural matter. Nothing spooked cops more than procedure.

‘Sir, we can’t release information to anyone other than family,’ said the taller cop. ‘Now, I’ve asked you once already to move your vehicle.’

Lock decided it was best to cut his losses. He already knew the news was almost certainly not good. EMS vehicles were parked on the concourse but the paramedics were sipping coffee rather than rushing anyone out. ‘Is there a number they can call?’ he asked, playing his concerned-family-friend card one more time.

A security guard palmed him the USC emergency contact number on a card. Lock thanked them for their help and walked slowly back to his car.

He got in, and moved a hundred yards down the block. He thought about circling back around and trying to gain entry on the other side but decided against it. It would be the same conversation, and overly persistent civilians hanging about crime scenes tended to make cops suspicious. Suspicion got you arrested. Lock didn’t have the time for that. He spun the wheel and headed back toward the freeway.

Snagged in traffic, he tried to unpick why someone would go settle an old score when Marcus was already dead. It made no apparent sense. Was it some kind of screwed-up apology for Krank and the others having killed him? That didn’t follow either. None of it did. There seemed to be no logic to any of this. Yet something told Lock that this wasn’t entirely random. It would have been easy to frame the events of the last few days as some Manson-Family style killing spree – an attempt to garner notoriety. There was more to it, though. He didn’t know what it was but, as red lights blazed him, he sensed it hadn’t yet begun. The Brentwood house, and now this? They came off like warm-ups for the main act.

69

Ty shouldered his way through the apartment door, laden with Tarian’s bags. Marines travelled lighter, he thought, as Tarian followed him inside. He walked through into the bedroom and set them on the carpet.

‘It’s basic, but it’s quiet and you’ll be left alone,’ he said.

The carefully choreographed journey from the hotel had passed in silence. Tarian had stared through tinted glass at the city streets, a ghost trapped among the living. Ty had known better than to try to comfort her with anything more than his presence. There was nothing he could say to make it right. If she wanted to talk, she would, and he’d listen. But she hadn’t wanted to talk until now.

‘Thanks for doing this,’ she said, unzipping a suitcase and pulling out clothes. ‘I don’t know how I would have coped if it hadn’t been for you and Ryan helping me.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Ty. He opened one of the closets and grabbed a bunch of hangers from the rail. He handed some to Tarian and began placing some of her clothes on the others.

‘How long have you and Ryan worked together?’ she asked him.

‘Long time.’

‘He seems pretty . . .’ she seemed to be searching for the best phrase ‘. . . self-contained,’ she said finally.

‘Yeah, he can be.’

‘Was he different before his fiancée was killed?’ Tarian asked.

Ty thought about it.
Was
he different? It was hard for him to recall. So much had changed. ‘I guess so. But he’s always been pretty tightly wrapped. Comes with the job. You try not to be cynical about life, but it’s difficult when you see some of the things we do.’

‘I think I can understand that,’ she said, as her eyes fell away from him.

Ty bet she could. Her worldview had changed radically and forever. Most people walked around assuming that life was broadly benevolent. Often it was. You could go weeks, months, often years and decades without anything bad happening to you. Then, from out of nowhere, Fate would strike. A car accident, a late-night knock at the door, blood in the bottom of the toilet bowl and bad news from your doctor. Or, in Tarian’s case, a son trying to find the answers many searched for and falling in with a dangerous set of people in his quest to find his place in the world. And yet, thought Ty, to accept that the world was malign wasn’t healthy either. The truth was, as far as he had seen, the world was indifferent.

‘He got better, though,’ said Ty. ‘He might never get over it entirely, but he’s better now than he was. You should remember that.’

She looked up again. ‘I’ll try.’

Ty’s cell chirped. Lock’s name flashed up. ‘Excuse me for a moment,’ he said, stepping out into the corridor to take Lock’s call.

‘How’s she doing?’ Lock asked.

‘She’s functional. Hasn’t flipped out yet. Probably still in shock,’ said Ty. ‘Might get real when the bodies are released and she has to start planning the funeral. What’s the deal at USC? False alarm?’

‘Not quite. The call about a bomb was a bust but Stacy and her boyfriend are dead,’ said Lock.

‘Damn. They have anyone?’ Ty asked.

‘Not yet, but from the rumors that are flying around I think it was the girl, Gretchen. Looks like she snuck into their dorm and offed them while everyone else was running around looking for a bomb or a live shooter or both,’ said Lock.

‘Think I should tell Tarian?’ said Ty.

‘No, she has enough to deal with right now, but I think we need to see if we can do some more digging on this Gretchen chick. I’m starting to think that perhaps Charles Kim isn’t the biggest bad ass among this crew.’

70

Krank used a crowbar to wedge open the wooden container. Inside were three specially modified .223 caliber Bushmaster XM-15 E2S rifles. They could each take a fifty-round clip. They were semi-automatic, capable of firing at least seven hundred rounds per minute. Not that this was a capability they would use. Neither Krank nor Gretchen nor Loser planned on a strategy of spray and pray. They had something far more methodical in mind.

Krank had used the last of his cash to purchase them using converted Bitcoin currency on a completely encrypted dark web marketplace. The sale would be traced but, like everything else, it would be too late by then. The deed would have been done.

Gretchen had argued for other weapons. Krank had argued against. The use of this particular rifle was symbolic. It had been the weapon used at Sandy Hook. The media would make the connection. Sales would surge, as they had after that mass shooting when the American public had peeled every single Bushmaster XM-15 that was for sale from the walls of the nation’s gun dealers.

They had discussed making their stand at an elementary school. Krank had argued that the younger the victims, the more emotive, therefore powerful, the message. But Gretchen was never going to allow it. Not because she had any moral objection, but because for her their target was personal. In the end they had agreed that volume would compensate for the reduced shock factor. Gretchen got her way. The irony of it hadn’t passed Krank by – the only female calling the shots.

71

Lock tucked his cell phone back in his pocket. He’d spent the past hour trying to contact anyone who might allow him an insight into Gretchen. Her mother had hung up on him after first denying, then eventually conceding, she had a daughter. It had been the same for a list of former friends, co-workers and relations. The overriding emotion Lock detected had been fear. Gretchen scared people.

Three-quarters of an hour in, he had found someone who wasn’t scared of Gretchen. A college professor who’d had a run-in with her while she was in her class. Not all college students got on with every professor, but this had been a pretty spectacular clash that had resulted in Gretchen’s expulsion and a restraining order. The professor’s name was Janet Cristopher. She had found the experience so upsetting that she had left her tenured position after an extended absence when she was treated for stress. She had only recently taken a new job, starting afresh in a different state.

‘So where’s she teach now?’ Ty asked Lock, as his friend finishing bringing him up to speed.

‘That’s where it gets interesting. She’s right here,’ said Lock.

‘Oh, yeah?’ said Ty.

‘Yup.’ said Lock. ‘Barnes College, private school out in Malibu. I’m going to go talk to her.’

‘You sure you don’t want to stay here with Tarian and I’ll go check this out?’ said Ty.

The bedroom door was closed. Tarian was sleeping. In a few hours, Lock had to take her downtown to get an update from the LAPD. For now, though, it was best to let her rest. She had a lot ahead of her. Funerals to plan. A million unimaginable choices to make as she planned them. Closed or open coffins? To bury her son with her husbands or separately? Decisions that, in the normal run of life and death, were hard enough but that violent death made close to unbearable.

‘Appreciate the offer,’ Lock told Ty. ‘But I got this one.’

72

Lock took a right off Pacific Coast Highway, and drove up the winding canyon road that led to the entrance of Barnes College. The main gatehouse was manned. He pulled in behind two other vehicles and waited his turn. He hit the button to lower his window and drove forward until he was level with the gatehouse window. He handed the guard his driver’s license and told him whom he was visiting.

‘You usually check everyone coming in?’ he asked the guard.

The guard shook his head. ‘Nope, pretty laid back usually. North Malibu isn’t really a crime hot spot, if you know what I mean.’

The guard made a brief call to check that Professor Cristopher was expecting him and waved him through.

Ahead of him, the road narrowed for a few hundred yards before opening back up again to reveal the clean-lined, white modernist campus buildings that were laid out on a huge flat pad with multi-million-dollar ocean views. Lock followed the directions he’d been given, parked and headed toward the main administration building.

Janet Cristopher was waiting for him in her office. She was a petite blonde in her early fifties with a pleasant manner, nothing like the ‘radical’ women’s rights campaigner suggested in the few newspaper articles Lock had found on her after a brief online search. After he had passed on her offer of coffee, she suggested they take a walk around the grounds while they talked. ‘It’s a shame to be cooped up inside on a day like today,’ she told him, as they stepped out into the blazing sunshine.

‘You seem to have landed on your feet,’ Lock said.

She shrugged. ‘It was time for a change. California’s not so bad. Although the Santa Anas are playing merry hell with my allergies.’

It hadn’t escaped Lock’s notice that the hot desert winds that whipped down through the canyons had picked up in the last couple of days.

‘Anyway,’ Janet continued, ‘I take it you’re not here to chat about the weather. You wanted to talk to me about Gretchen.’

‘You remember her, then?’ Lock said.

Janet smiled and swept a hand through her long white-blonde hair. ‘Oh, yeah. She made my life pretty damn miserable until she was finally expelled. This news about her being caught up in these murders in Brentwood, I’d like to say I was surprised, but I really wasn’t. It was only a matter of time before she really hurt someone. I didn’t think it would be this exactly, but . . .’ She stopped.

It was obvious to Lock that she wasn’t sure whether she should say what she was thinking. ‘Please, Professor, go on,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m supposed to be this big bleeding-heart liberal, bra-burning women’s libber. Which should mean I believe that people are a product of their environment. But let me tell you, Mr Lock, I think Gretchen was just bad to the bone. I don’t think I actually thought someone could be born evil until I ran across her.’

She looked at him, as if expecting him to be shocked by her outburst. ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ he said. ‘But that still doesn’t give me a sense of her.’

They had reached a grassy area.

Janet took a seat on a nearby bench. Lock sat down next to her. Students were sprawled on the grass, reading or just sunbathing. A frisbee whizzed overhead, and a young student loped past them on his way to retrieve it.

Janet folded her hands in her lap. ‘Okay, where do I start? Some students are argumentative, or difficult because they’re encountering a subject for the first time. Or they’re idealistic. But Gretchen was just openly hostile. She’d already made her mind up that she thought women’s studies was a bunch of baloney.’

Lock wasn’t sure that she might not have had a point, but chose to keep his opinion to himself. ‘So why’d she take it as a course?’ he asked.

‘Not just as a course. It was her declared major. And by the time she was kicked out, pretty much the entire faculty and most of the students were asking the same question. I guess she saw herself as taking the fight to the enemy.’

‘The fight being?’ Lock asked.

‘Gretchen believed that feminism and equal rights have destroyed the country. She’s not alone either. There’s a lot of people who would agree with her. The men’s rights movement has been growing over the past decade. And some of its most vocal supporters are women. They want a return to traditional values, whatever those were. Gretchen was way out on the extreme edge, though. To her, I was the Antichrist.’

‘And she made that clear?’ said Lock.

‘At first it was just arguing with me in class, which was fine up to a point. But after a while it became personal. The tires on my car were slashed. Someone killed one of my cats and nailed it to my front door,’ said Janet.

‘Gretchen?’ said Lock.

‘She wouldn’t admit it, but she dropped enough hints.’ She turned so that she was facing him. ‘She wanted me to know it was her. Finally, she tried to attack me one night. With a knife. I managed to lock my office door and stay inside. The college didn’t want the story making the news so I agreed not to press charges if they expelled her. That was that. Until now.’

‘Has she been in touch since?’ said Lock.

Janet shook her head. ‘I don’t even know if she’s aware I’m here.’

Lock got to his feet. ‘For your safety, it’s best if you assume she does. Make sure you have someone walk you to your car. If you think someone’s following you home, call the Malibu Sheriff’s Department or the LAPD. Don’t take any chances.’

Janet got up. ‘Let me walk you back to your car.’

‘Actually, before I go, would you mind doing me one more favor? If I could, I’d like to speak to whoever runs campus security.’

Together, they went back to the main administration building. It turned out that the head of security was out of town at a conference in Arizona, but Janet arranged for Lock to meet with the deputy, a former sheriff’s deputy from Ventura called Bob Dersh. Janet gave Dersh a brief run-down of why Lock was there, and left the two men to it.

Lock sat across from Dersh in his office. It was law-enforcement neat. Papers carefully filed or stacked. Everything laid out just so. No personal touches, apart from a couple of framed photographs of a wife, and grown-up kids with their spouses and Dersh’s grandkids.

‘So you were helping out the Griffiths family?’ said Dersh.

As an opener it lacked tact. Lock let it go. ‘Trying to,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anyone saw what happened coming. I’d like to think no one here will make the same mistake. The woman that’s mixed up with them, Gretchen Yorda, she and Professor Cristopher have history.’

‘She’s mentioned that,’ said Dersh, his eyes darting back and forth to the computer screen on his desk. ‘We’re making sure that everyone on campus is on the lookout for anyone they don’t recognize.’

‘You haven’t had any incidents so far, then?’

Dersh shook his head. ‘Right now, I’m more concerned about this,’ he said, reaching over and spinning his computer monitor around so that Lock could see the screen. ‘Two wildfires up in the mountains.’

Lock stood up and took a closer look at the screen. It showed a map of the immediate North Malibu area from Trancas all the way down Cross Creek. Two pulsing red dots showed the position of the fires. They were, Lock estimated, several miles away, but wildfires were no joke in the area
. The last really bad ones, back in 2007, had burned almost a million acres, and cost dozens of people their homes.

‘Any word on how they started?’ asked Lock.

‘People get careless. Campfire. Even a glass bottle dumped in the wrong place can do it. Land out there is bone dry, and now with the winds . . . Believe me, Mr Lock, when it comes to raw destructive power, Mother Nature makes human beings look like amateurs.’

‘How close do they get before you evacuate?’ Lock said, noting the position of the two fires. One was on a ridge line to the immediate north-east, the other in a canyon to the south.

‘Oh, we’re a ways away from that. Listen, I appreciate the heads-up. Thanks for stopping by.’

Dersh tilted the computer screen back round, and started to usher Lock out of the office. Lock dug into his pocket and pulled out a photo-montage of Gretchen. He handed it to Dersh. ‘Some of these pictures aren’t public domain yet. You might want to have your staff take a look at them.’

Dersh took the paper and laid it on his desk. ‘Sure will.’