The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  The dummy alarm was another tell. Real alarms had a habit of going off without warning, which in turn attracted attention either from private security, law enforcement or neighbors. Fine, if you were home. Less so, if you weren’t and someone gained access to the property when you had something to hide. Either that or you were too cheap to pay for a real system, but the other security features told Lock and Ty it wasn’t that.

  Ty walked to the back of the property. Lock stayed out front, keeping watch for twitching curtains or concerned neighbors.

  A minute later, there was the sound of bolts being thrown back, and the front door opened. Ty’s face looked grim. ‘House is pretty regular, but I found a cellar.’

  Lock stared at him. ‘The kid?’

  Ty shook his head. That had been his first thought. It had likely been in both their minds since they’d got the name and realised the connection between Reeves and Becker. It had turned his stomach. He wanted to find Jack Barnes, and his mom, but he sure as hell didn’t want to find either or both of them here.

  Ty stepped out of the way to let Lock in, and closed the door behind them.

  The front hallway opened up into a living room. The walls were painted a sickly lime green. There was thick red carpet in every room, apart from the kitchen and bathrooms. The living room was dominated by a huge old projection TV. The place was neat and tidy but everything about the decor was dated to the point of retro.

  Next to the TV a stack of game consoles was neatly arranged in a metal rack with some kind of switching device that fed into the television. Reeves must have owned every games console going, from the very latest PlayStation to three or four that were no longer manufactured and hadn’t been for at least a decade.

  On the wall, shelves were filled with computer games and comic books. Ty could barely suppress a shudder as his eyes scanned them. He wondered how many kids like Jack Barnes had been in that room, drawn in by all the junk, not for a second suspecting its real purpose.

  In the kitchen, Lock began opening cupboards full of soda, potato chips and candy bars. ‘Jesus,’ Lock said, his features tight. ‘This guy was textbook.’

  In another cupboard there were pouches of protein and other supplements. Ty opened the refrigerator. The salad crisper was full of fresh produce going bad. A couple of packs of lean chicken breasts were stacked on the shelf above. Weston Reeves may have enticed his victims with the kind of garbage that kids craved but he ate clean.

  They continued their walk-through, giving themselves time to acclimatize and prepare for whatever lay beneath them, hidden away in the darkness of the cellar. The first bedroom they came to had been converted to an exercise room. Apart from a treadmill, essential for Minnesota winters, the equipment was mostly weights. A mirrored wardrobe ran the length of one wall. Ty pulled it open to reveal more weights and exercise gear. A gun safe was bolted into one corner.

  The next bedroom looked like a guest room. It had a double bed, and some cheap pine furniture. Pin-up girls and posters of wrestling stars tacked to the walls hinted at the possible nature of the guests. The third and final bedroom was the master, complete with a small en-suite shower room. Another gun safe stood next to the bed, and had been left open. Apart from a box of shells, it was empty.

  ‘Lot of guns for one man,’ said Ty.

  ‘Lot of people out there who might want to hurt him if they knew what he was,’ Lock said. Then he squared his shoulders. ‘So, where’s this cellar?’

  ‘Through here,’ said Ty, heading out of the master bedroom, and ducking into the main bathroom.

  Sixty-five

  The trapdoor down to the cellar was hidden in a corner, covered with a square of yellow linoleum. Reeves had tacked a bath mat over the top. Ty had found it by stepping on the mat while crossing to the window and noticing the hollow echo.

  He levered it open and, together, he and Lock stared down into the darkness. A narrow wooden ladder led into the gloom.

  ‘Flip a coin?’ Lock asked him.

  Ty took Lock’s Maglite. ‘No, I got this.’

  Lock drew his SIG to cover Ty as he started down the ladder. It was a tight squeeze but the drop was only around seven feet. He landed on a dirty wooden floor. He swept the torch around the cellar. He had already taken a good look around it when he had first discovered it. Now he took his time, his initial shock replaced by a deep, more disturbing horror that pinched at his flesh.

  He walked to the wall nearest to him, the one just behind the ladder. He took out a Gerber multi-tool, and dug into it with the tip of the knife. The blade pushed through green acoustic foam to two layers of sheetrock that had a single layer of neoprene rubber sandwiched between them. Reeves, and perhaps Becker too, if he’d used the place, had spent a lot of time, and gone to great expense, ensuring that the cellar was soundproofed. The rest of the room told Ty why that had been important.

  Taking out his cell phone, Ty pivoted around, capturing the room on video. As he filmed, he gave the address.

  The good news, if a discovery like this could be seen as good, was that there was no sign of Jack Barnes. And the traces of blood on the walls didn’t look fresh.

  Sixty-six

  Ty grabbed Lock’s hand as he breached the lip of the trapdoor. Lock pulled him up. It was a surreal experience to be standing in the small, mundane bathroom, with hell on earth a few feet beneath them.

  ‘You okay?’ Lock asked.

  Ty thought about it. He had seen plenty of horror in his life, starting out in Long Beach, moving on through his time in the marines, when he had served in Iraq, and on through a few joint nightmares with Lock, but this was beyond anything that had gone before. There was no other word for it than evil. What he had felt while he was standing in the cellar was something that passed any comprehension. He looked at Lock. ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Good,’ Lock said. ‘I’d be worried if you were.’

  Ty looked at his friend. ‘You figure he killed any of these kids?’

  Lock let out a deep sigh that signaled he might have been pondering the same question. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘The boy that’s missing?’ Ty asked him.

  Lock started out of the bathroom. Ty followed. They walked down the corridor. ‘He and Becker were getting desperate. Chances are it was this guy who killed Kim and the kids.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. Him and Becker might have been into this stuff together, but I don’t see Becker having the cojones to do that to Malik.’

  They moved back into the living room. Now that he had seen the cellar, the house itself had changed. The huge television and the rack of video games seemed even more sinister. Ty walked over to the shelves and ran a finger across the spines of the plastic cases.

  On the bottom shelf were a half-dozen books he hadn’t noticed before. He hunkered down to take a closer look. His hand found the tallest. He pulled it out from the shelf and his heart rate bumped up an extra notch. He opened it and frantically leafed through the pages.

  Lock was standing behind him. ‘Ty? What is it?’

  ‘When I was leaving the Becker house, I had a feeling like I’d missed something. Like it was right in front of me but I wasn’t seeing it.’

  Ty held up the book, the same high school yearbook as the one he had found on Aubrey Becker’s shelves. He jabbed a long finger at the group picture of Becker’s class. ‘Look there,’ he said to Lock.

  Lock and Ty stared at the husky-looking blond kid standing behind Aubrey Becker in the class photograph from his high school yearbook. Although he was a teenager, there was no mistaking Weston Reeves staring back at them.

  Sixty-seven

  Allan Laird tidied the papers on his desk ready for the morning. He crossed to the small closet, opened it, grabbed his raincoat from the hanger, put it on and grabbed his briefcase. His secretary had left hours ago, along with the rest of the administrative team. The only people in the building were the cleaning and security staff.

  Laird was looking forward to ge
tting home to his wife, having one of his favorite Scottish single-malt whiskies, a long soak in a hot bath and dinner. Today had been hard. The press were still in a frenzy, and he’d spent most of the day fielding calls from concerned alumni, and the parents of current students who were worried about their kids’ safety.

  Recent events had set back the college, and his work, a decade, at least. It was going to take a long time for people to get over what had happened here. But, as chancellor, he comforted himself with the fact that, eventually, they would. Time would pass. People would forget.

  The elevator opened and he got in. It was empty, and took him straight to the lobby. He wished the security guard on Reception a good evening, and walked outside. He skirted the building to the car park.

  Fumbling in his overcoat pocket, he found the clicker for his car and hit the button twenty yards from it. The lights flashed, the car beeped. He opened the driver’s door, threw his briefcase onto the passenger seat and got in. He started the engine, and began to reverse out of his spot.

  That was when he saw someone sitting in the back seat. The man smiled at him. ‘Drive normally,’ he said, raising a handgun and pressing the end of the barrel against Laird’s face.

  ‘If you want money, look, here,’ said Laird, fumbling for his money clip. ‘I have four hundred dollars.’

  There was something familiar about the man with the gun. Laird was sure their paths had crossed before. Or maybe he just had one of those faces that were bland to the point of familiarity.

  ‘You can’t buy me, Chancellor. Now, drive.’

  ‘Where?’ Laird asked him.

  ‘Home.’

  Laird didn’t follow. ‘My home? Why? This is all the cash I have. If you want more you're out of luck.’

  ‘I already told you,’ the man said, irritated. ‘I don’t want your money.’

  Laird decided that it was probably best if he played along. Then it hit him. Of course. This wasn’t about money. It had to be something to do with Becker or Reeves, that whole mess. But he didn’t want to ask in case it set the man off. It was better to remain silent.

  He finished backing out of his parking spot, then headed out of the car park and onto the road. He didn’t say anything. He kept his moves slow and deliberate. The man seemed jumpy, and he had a gun. Laird wasn’t going to risk antagonizing him.

  The biting wind howling its way down from Canada had taken people off the streets. Laird drove in silence. He could feel the presence of the gun behind him. His heart was beating faster but he was surprised at how little real terror he felt. Perhaps he was too exhausted to be scared. The last week or so had brought so many horrors that his life had taken on a surreal quality. Allan Laird had never known anyone who had been murdered before. Now he seemed to be surrounded by them, with the chance that he might be next.

  ‘Looking forward to seeing your daughter, Chancellor?’

  The question snapped him back to the present. He whipped round to look at his abductor in the back seat, and almost went head on into a car coming the other way as he drifted over the white line in the middle of the road.

  He had a daughter, but she was twenty-one and at college out of state. ‘What are you talking about? My daughter’s in Rhode Island.’

  ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ the man said. ‘She was. But she’s on her way home. In fact, she should be getting there about now. She was worried about the heart attack you had this morning.’

  Laird was getting angry. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘She got a message about it this morning from a cardiologist at Mercy. She spent today rushing home to be with you and your wife.’

  ‘This is ridiculous. Why are you dragging my family into it?’

  ‘Into what?’ the man asked. He seemed to be enjoying Laird’s discomfort. Laird reminded himself not to lose his temper. He had to stay calm.

  Laird’s cell rang. He dipped into his pocket. ‘Home’ flashed up on the screen. Before he could say anything, the man reached over and grabbed it from him. Laird started shouting, ‘Call the police. Linda, honey, get out of there. Now.’

  The man held the phone up. ‘Sorry, Allan. Too late. I already hung up. Don’t worry, though, you’ll be seeing them soon enough.’

  ‘Why? Why me? Why my family?’ Laird shouted. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘I think you just answered your own question,’ said the man.

  Gun or not, Laird wasn’t going to deliver this lunatic into the heart of his family to torture and brutalize them. If the sicko wanted to kill him, that was different. But he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Allan Laird had never considered himself brave. His life had been dedicated to smoothing things over and avoiding conflict. This time, though, there was no way round it.

  In his head, he said a quiet goodbye to his wife and daughter, and the world itself. When he was done, he threw himself forward, out of the immediate line of fire of the gun, and yanked down hard on the steering-wheel. As the car began to lose its grip on the road, he took his foot off the gas and stood on the brake pedal.

  Sixty-eight

  As the weight shifted to the front of the car it started to fishtail. Despite himself, Laird panicked and yanked down hard on the steering-wheel, trying to bring the car back under control. The kidnapper was thrown back into his seat as the car continued to veer violently across the road.

  Laird looked up to see a set of headlights coming toward him. From the position of the lights relative to the road surface, it was something big. Laird took his foot off the brake as the car began to slow.

  The man in the back seat launched himself forward. The gun caught the side of Laird’s head, smashing into his cheekbone. He yelled with pain as the lights grew brighter, and he made out the squat shape of the huge rig bearing down on them, its air horn blasting a warning. Jamming his foot back on the gas, Laird set a diagonal course across the roadway.

  The sudden acceleration sent the kidnapper back into his seat for a second time. The front of the big rig clipped the rear of Laird’s sedan, which spun round as it continued to hurtle off the road. The passenger side slammed into a metal stop sign, folding the pole over as easily as if it had been a lollipop stick.

  The impact triggered the airbags, front and rear. Both Laird and the kidnapper were pressed back, their arms out by their sides. The kidnapper rocked back and forth, desperately trying to free himself and get an angle to shoot Laird.

  Steam rose from the hood of the sedan. The smell of leaking gasoline perfumed the air. Allan Laird sat trapped in the front seat, closed his eyes and waited to die.

  Lock was driving them back into town when he saw the car that had smashed into the stop sign. The front half was up on the sidewalk, the rear still on the road, hanging over the edge of the curb. A big rig truck was stopped about a quarter of a block further down the road, the driver pacing back and forth on his cell phone as he called in the accident.

  Next to him, Ty’s hand fell instinctively to his weapon. Lock pulled up fifty yards short of the crash and both men bailed. As they started toward the crashed vehicle, the rear passenger door popped open and a man clambered out. He was white, about five eleven, slim, dressed in dark clothing, and apparently in no mood to stick around. He took a quick look at the truck driver on his cell, the people gathering on their porches, as well as Lock and Ty, and took off.

  Without thinking, Ty started after him. He had no idea who the man was, or why he was fleeing the accident, but something told him it was off. Innocent people weren’t in the habit of running, unless they had good reason.

  As Ty set off in pursuit, Lock ran toward the car. He checked the back for other passengers, then moved to the front. There was a late middle-aged white guy in a suit in the front. He was bleeding from a cut on the side of his head and looked dazed.

  Lock wrenched open the door. It was only then that he recognized Laird, the college chancellor.

  The stench of gasoline pouring from the car’
s tank was overpowering. Lock grabbed his Gerber and used the blade to slash at the already deflating airbag.

  ‘Can you move?’ he asked Laird.

  Laird nodded, the neck movement more encouraging than the weak ‘Yes, I think so.’ Lock reached down and shoved the seat back to give him more room, used the knife to cut the seatbelt and helped him out of the car. He was banged up, and pale with shock, but he was mobile.

  With Lock’s help, Laird hobbled gingerly away from the car. ‘My family. I have to contact them. My cell phone’s in the car.’

  He started back toward the vehicle but Lock stepped in front of him. ‘Not a good idea.’ He grabbed his own phone. ‘Here, tell me the number.’

  Laird got it together just enough to remember his wife’s. Lock punched it in and handed his cell off to Laird. The cut on his face was pretty nasty, but other than that he seemed to be in pretty decent shape for what he’d just been through. Lock stepped away and left him to the call. He turned around to see Ty emerge from between two houses and jog over to him. ‘I lost him. You figure out what was going on?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Lock. ‘But I think the chancellor here might finally be ready to do the right thing.’

  Sixty-nine

  Standing in Allan Laird’s home office, Lock punched in the number for the home of the FBI’s head of staff in Minneapolis and handed the phone to the chancellor. Laird’s hands were still shaking as he took it and said quietly, ‘I’m very sorry to disturb you at such a late hour, but it’s important.’ Through a gap in the door, Lock could see Ty standing with Laird’s wife and daughter. The drapes were drawn, and he was keeping them clear of any windows. The house and garden had already been searched and, despite Lock’s distrust of them, the local police were on the way to provide additional security.