The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel (17 page)

There was a scrambling and scuffling as the man tried to find the key to the cuffs. A few seconds later, Ty felt them pop. He grabbed the driver’s door, and hauled himself back to his feet. He rubbed at his wrists. Tromso had made sure the cuffs were on good and tight. He checked out the road in both directions. It was still quiet. No one had passed but the odds were it wouldn’t stay that way for too much longer. He put out a hand and helped the man up.

‘You could have killed me.’ He stood there and rubbed at his chest. He was winded but unharmed.

Ty stared at him. ‘We had an agreement. You broke it. By rights, I should kick your ass.’

The man flapped at him as Ty put his hand out. ‘My money?’

The guy grumbled. Another look from Ty settled him down. He pulled out the roll and Ty took back his cash. He peeled off two hundred and handed it back.

The station wagon pulled up at the bottom of the track that led to the cabin. Ty took the keys, the man’s cell phone, and got out. The older guy was still rubbing his chest and grumbling about being ripped off.

Ty ducked his head back into the car. ‘Wait here and don’t speak to anyone. That’s another two hundred. If anyone does show, honk the horn.’

The other jerked his head up the track. ‘What’s up there anyway?’

‘Better you don’t know,’ Ty told him.

Ty left him to it and hiked up the track, staying close to the tree line. He was gambling on the sniper having cleared out. If he was still about, and decided to take a shot at him, there would be little he could do about it. But he wanted to take a look at the scene before the cops finally tracked down Tromso.

It was a short hike. Tromso’s patrol car was still where it had been, the fat cop slumped over the wheel. Ty took a quick walk around, trying to estimate the angle and direction the shots had come from. He retrieved his own weapon from inside the patrol car, but left Tromso’s service gun with the body.

He walked back to the cabin, keeping an eye on the ridge. Everything was quiet. What made the place perfect for a little quiet torture made it work equally well as a location to kill a cop. Ty took a couple of pictures of the blond guy and his ID with his cell phone. He didn’t have a signal here but as soon as he did he’d pass them on to Lock via encrypted email so he could run some checks.

From the size of the hole in the front of his face, the single shot that had taken him out was consistent with the rounds that had been fired at the patrol car. Ty peered back up the ridge at the angles: it didn’t look like the sniper had moved much, if at all. He, or they if he had a spotter, had scoped out his spot, set up, then picked off his targets with cool efficiency. If he’d stuck around, he could easily have killed Ty. So either he’d split after he’d finished Tromso, or Ty wasn’t on his agenda.

Ty left the cabin, and started toward the ridge. The trees, mostly silver birch with some spruce, were nicely spaced, and though there was a slope, it was easy ground to cover. He followed a line from the cabin door, tacking on a diagonal. The trees thinned nearer the top and the slope became more severe. Ty slowed, looking for signs of disturbance.

He found it about twenty yards further on. A glint of reflected light caught his eye. He bent to take a closer look. It was a brass shell casing. He picked it up, and laid it in the palm of his hand as, below, he heard a car horn sound a long single blast.

Ty watched as two patrol cars pulled in behind the station wagon. One had campus-police markings, the other was from the county sheriff’s department. Kelly Svenson got out of the campus patrol car on her own, and walked round to talk to the guy, who took about half a second to dime him out. Ty could see him patting his hand to his chest, and otherwise miming the ordeal he’d been through. No doubt any bribery or deception on his part wasn’t going to feature in his version of events.

A city cop in plain clothes joined her. He was a tall white guy, whom Ty recognized from outside the Becker residence. They stepped off to one side. Going by their body language, they seemed to be debating who would go on up the track to see what had happened to Tromso. They walked back to their vehicles. The city cop took the lead while Kelly hung back.

Ty decided that he wasn’t about to stick around. He already knew how the story had ended for Tromso. Kelly had been happy enough to see her partner disappear Ty from custody. He wasn’t going to trust her a second time. And certainly not with a dead cop in the mix.

Lock pulled into the parking lot of Walmart. He parked well away from the front entrance. He left Malik in the car, his head resting against the window, a sweatshirt cushioning him from the glass and obscuring his face. Inside, Lock bought Malik everything he’d need for the next week, including clothes and food, stuff that didn’t require a refrigerator and wouldn’t spoil, like protein bars. He also picked up three cases of water, a pre-paid cell phone, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo and soap.

He wheeled his cart out of the store, and loaded the supplies into the back of the Audi. He pulled out of the parking lot, and headed a half-mile down the road to a motel he had scoped out on TripAdvisor. It had the worst reviews in the greater Madison area, which made it perfect for his purpose, as long as Malik didn’t mind roaches.

At the motel, he parked at the back, got out and walked to the manager’s office. A woman in her late fifties, who must have applied her makeup in the dark, greeted him cheerily enough. He kept the conversation to a minimum, paid in cash for a week, and explained that he would clean his own room.

‘No hookers. No drugs,’ she said, licking her finger and thumbing through the roll of bills he had just handed her.

Lock agreed politely to the terms, took the room key and headed back outside. As he walked to the car, he saw the empty passenger seat.

He scanned the area. Malik was nowhere to be seen. Then he noticed him by a Dumpster. He was standing there, hands in his pockets, staring out at the road.

Lock went over to him. ‘You do know you’re supposed to be hiding out, right?’

Malik turned, as if he had only just noticed him. ‘Sorry.’

‘Listen, Malik, we’re both taking a risk in helping you. Not that I’m complaining. But you have to hold up your end. And, right now, your end is staying out of sight. If you’re having second thoughts, if you don’t think you can stay put, I need to know. I can organize an attorney, and they can speak to the authorities. You’d still be taking a risk handing yourself over, but it would be better than getting picked up by whoever happens to find you first.’

Malik looked at Lock, and for the first time Lock got a glimpse of the man he had been before his family was slaughtered in their home. ‘It won’t happen again. I promise.’

A half-hour later, with Malik set up in his room, Lock peeled back out of the motel parking lot. Malik had been sleeping when Lock had left the room, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign swinging gently from the handle. He headed for the highway, moving north, back toward Harrisburg, hoping for some answers.

‘Jack?’ he said quietly.

The boy stared at him from under a fringe of brown hair. He got up. Jack’s mother tried to grab her son’s hand but he brushed her away.

Jack followed him out of the room. Jack understood. They were brothers. Bound not by blood but something much stronger: bound by pain and torment and, more than anything, their controlling emotion. Bound by rage.

‘If you touch him …’ Eve shouted after him.

‘You know I’d never do that, right?’ he said to Jack. It was important Jack knew that. Vital.

Jack shrugged, like he didn’t care one way or the other. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You’re not like them. You’re like me.’

‘Was like you,’ he corrected the boy. ‘Not anymore. That’s the good news, Jack. It’s important you know that all this changes. You don’t have to be stuck feeling the same way.’

Jack followed him outside into the sunshine. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth on his face. He took pleasure in the simple things. Sunshine. Fresh air. The smell of the pine trees. The pretty college town laid out beneath them, the people in it oblivious of what lay ahead.

‘You have any news about the coach?’ Jack asked.

Jack asking questions was a good sign. A very good sign. He was making progress. He had started to see the larger picture.

‘He’s safe, as far as I know,’ he told the boy.

Jack said, ‘That’s good. I’m glad. He tried to help me.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He did. And look at the thanks he got. That’s what we’re dealing with here, Jack. An honest man tries to tell the truth, and look what they do to him. That’s why they have to be punished.’

Lock pulled up in a silver Chevy Blazer. A second later Ty emerged through the woods at the side of the road. He opened the passenger door and climbed in.

‘What’s with the new ride?’ he asked Lock.

‘Rental. Thought I’d let the Audi cool off. We had a little static on the trip down there.’

‘How’s he holding up?’ Ty asked.

Lock didn’t know how to answer that one. As he knew too well, when someone had been through what Malik had, there was no way of someone measuring how they were holding up. Your head could be clear one moment and the next you could have a gun in your mouth with your finger on the trigger. You were in the middle of the storm and there was no way of knowing how long it would last.

‘He’s safe,’ Lock said. ‘Had to change the safe-house last minute so I put him in a fleabag motel outside Madison. As long as he stays put, he should be fine. If he’s picked up it’ll be by the cops in Madison, the feebs or state. Either way it’s better than being pinched here. I told him that if he’s arrested, he’s to lawyer up immediately and explain the situation he was facing in Minnesota so that at least the cops there are aware of what’s going down here.’

‘If we can figure out what actually is going down because, right now, I have no idea,’ said Ty.

Ty had already taken Lock through his abduction from the police station by Tromso, Kelly’s involvement as she, at very least, had turned a blind eye to Tromso taking him, and the events at the cabin.

‘Okay,’ said Lock. ‘So we know Tromso was involved in the cover-up, if not the abuse itself.’

‘I wouldn’t rule it out either,’ said Ty. ‘That first night when he rolled up at the stadium after Malik called it in, he must have had an idea it was Becker.’

Now they were on Wolf Road, the stadium over to their right, rising out of the open ground. Lock headed back toward the main college campus. ‘We don’t know that for sure. Worst thing we can do right now is rush to conclusions.’

They kept driving until they reached the edge of the campus. Knots of students walked to class, backpacks slung over their shoulders or cellphones in hand. They seemed subdued, but maybe not much more so than usual. Lock pulled over and parked.

‘What we doing here?’ Ty asked.

‘Malik told me about the chancellor, Laird, that he was someone else who was keen on getting him to stay quiet. He was using a new contract as bait. Different bait, but the intent was the same. Thought I might talk to him.’

Lock pulled on the parking brake and started to get out. ‘I want you to check out the Becker residence. Should be clear by now. They only have the homicide investigation, according to Salas. They’re not running anything about Becker’s previous activities. Do some snooping. Phone bills, computers, anything you can find.’

The chancellor’s office was situated in a red-brick building housing mainly administration offices that faced a grassy quadrangle in the middle of the campus. On the other side was the main college library. In the middle of the quadrangle a grey statue was mounted on a granite plinth. Students were scattered around on the grass. A couple of jocks threw a football to each other, shooting glances at a gaggle of sorority girls setting up a booth for some charity fundraiser.

Lock walked past them toward the red-brick building. He jogged up the steps, and went inside. As he checked a building directory, a middle-aged security guard wandered over.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked Lock.

‘Chancellor’s office? I’m kind of in a hurry. Supposed to be meeting him five minutes ago. Couldn’t get parked.’

‘Fourth floor. Elevator’s kind of slow. Stairs might be quicker.’

‘Thanks.’

Lock pushed through a set of double doors into a stairwell. He climbed the stairs, and exited through another set of double doors on the fourth floor. He walked down a corridor, following the signs for the chancellor and vice-chancellor’s offices. He pushed through a heavy wooden door with a brass handle into a small waiting area. A secretary was performing the usual gatekeeper function. He leaned close to her, keeping his voice low. ‘I’m from Celltech Security. Could you let the chancellor know I need a moment of his time? It’s urgent. If you emphasize I’m from Celltech, I’m sure he’ll see me.’

Lock had barely had a chance to scan the first mahogany-framed graduating-class picture on the wall before the secretary was putting down her phone. ‘You can go straight in,’ she told him.

Laird was pacing by the window as Lock walked in. He closed the door gently behind him as Laird turned. Lock registered Laird’s lack of recognition. ‘Given that your head of security, chief of campus police, or whatever title he had, has just been killed, you might want to do something about your personal security.’

‘Who did you say you were from?’ Laird asked.

‘That’s what I’m talking about.’ Lock walked around the desk to the window that faced out over the quadrangle. ‘Chancellor, it might be an idea if you kept your blinds closed. At least for the next few days.’

Laird looked round as Lock closed them, shutting out the sunlight, leaving them both in the gloom. ‘I don’t follow. Why would I—’

‘Tromso was killed from a distance by a sniper,’ said Lock.

Laird began to reach for his phone. Lock grabbed his wrist. ‘I’m here to help you, Chancellor. If you’re not already beyond help. Now, look at me.’