The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  ‘Still looking,’ said Becky. ‘But so far it checks out.’

  ‘She told us that she knew Tromso wasn’t right about five minutes after she walked into the job,’ said Lee. ‘But she didn’t have evidence until recently, and by then things were moving at such a pace that she wasn’t sure what to do. I thought the same thing you do, Lock, but her background is clean as a whistle. She’s worked in law enforcement for ten years and no one has a bad word to say about her. She’s a straight arrow.’

  Lock wasn’t convinced.

  Seventy-three

  As Lock walked out of the main administration building, Kelly Svenson pushed off the rear of the police cruiser she was leaning against while talking to one of her officers. ‘Mr Lock?’

  Lock kept walking. He wanted to check in with Ty, and then he planned on helping out with the search for Eve and Jack Barnes. He was also planning a detour back to the home of Weston Reeves to canvass some of the neighbors, and see if he couldn’t get anything on the mysterious third man, who was still on the loose.

  ‘Mr Lock?’ she called after him. Finally, he stopped and turned. ‘I’d like to talk to you. If I may.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll talk, all right. Once this is all done I plan on having a good, long talk with you. I’m sure Tyrone will too, seeing as how you sat back and watched Tromso drive him off into the wilds to meet Tromso’s buddy Reeves.’

  Her face hardened. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. It wasn’t what it looked like. Not at all.’

  ‘So what was it, then?’ Lock asked her.

  She folded her arms. ‘You wouldn’t believe me anyway so what does it matter?’

  Lock stepped toward her. ‘What is this? Junior high? You sat there and watched as your asshole boss took my partner out to the boonies to be tortured by some grade-A wack-job, who liked kids and torture, preferably mixed together. Listen, do me a favor, keep out of my way. You interfere with what I’m doing here, or Ty when he gets back, and that rinky-dink badge won’t save you.’

  Something flickered in her eyes. It was there, and then it was gone, but Lock had seen it. It wasn’t a look a cop gave someone: there was more to it. It was a look that spoke of hidden anger.

  ‘Just stay within the bounds of the law, Mr Lock, and we’ll be fine.’

  Lock smirked at her. ‘You too.’

  ‘I’ve asked the chancellor to organize a vigil at the stadium. Y’know, for the victims, the Shaw family and the others. The kids. It’ll be on Friday night. Hope you can make it.’

  She was waiting for some kind of reaction. He wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say. That a vigil made it all okay? That she was a good person for suggesting it? That everyone holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ would mean the students could go back to class and the college back to making money?

  Lock remembered Penn State’s footballers taking a knee while they prayed for Jerry Sandusky’s victims. It had struck him as hollow and self-serving, a public-relations exercise. He had wanted to throw up. By themselves, public shows of contrition meant little unless the regret was sincere. It was like tossing a fifty into the plate at church when everyone else had nickels. It told the world a lot about you, but perhaps not in the manner you had intended.

  When he didn’t say anything, Officer Svenson walked back to her patrol car without another word.

  He walked on across campus. Flakes of snow started to fall. They were tentative at first, almost apologetic. Up above, the sun was struggling to break through watery white-grey clouds. On the horizon there were darker clouds.

  Seventy-four

  Ty stood in the middle of the empty motel room. The TV was still on, the jovial game-show host navigating his way between two corn-fed Midwestern families as they tried to guess a hundred people’s answers to a question about things you could lick. The host faked outrage at a series of thinly veiled double-entendres as the audience laughed along.

  The motel-room bed was still made. The pre-paid cell phone that Lock had given Malik sat on a chipped night-stand that was bolted to the wall. Next to the phone was a Jim Beam bottle. It was empty. Ty picked up the pre-paid cell and put it into his pocket.

  He walked into the small bathroom. The supplies that Lock had left Malik were neatly stacked next to the shower. The toilet and sink were pebble-dashed with vomit. Malik was not a drinker. The most Ty had ever seen him consume was a glass of wine with dinner, and that was only if the kids weren’t present. Both of them had seen too many people in their old neighborhood being dragged under by alcohol and narcotics. They were an escape from real life, not a solution. At the same time, could anyone blame Malik for seeking oblivion after what had happened? Ty couldn’t.

  There was no sign of a struggle. No lamps had been knocked over. There was no blood. No broken mirrors or scattered clothing.

  Malik had been taken by something more frightening to Ty than a kidnapper or the cops. His friend had been lost to despair.

  Ty walked out of the motel room. The manager was waiting for him.

  ‘He’s gone, right?’ the manager said. It wasn’t a question motivated by concern so much as business. The manager wanted to rent the room, even though Ty knew that Lock had paid him up front for the next week.

  ‘You sure you didn’t see him leave?’ Ty asked.

  ‘I didn’t even see a black guy go in there. It was a white guy rented the room.’

  ‘Where are the liquor stores and bars round here?’ Ty asked.

  The manager dug his dirty thumbnail at a sticker someone had slapped on the counter. ‘Take your pick. There ain’t any shortage. Y’know, seeing as this guy was hiding out here, I could have been in a lot of trouble. A small consideration might not be out of the way.’

  Ty stared at the guy. ‘Say what?’

  The manager held up his hands. ‘Okay, forget it.’

  Ty turned away and walked back to the street, leaving his vehicle in the parking lot. About a half-block down, he saw a flickering neon light advertising domestic beer. He started toward it.

  The empty bottle weighed heavily on his mind. He and Malik had escaped not just their old neighborhood, but the pattern of despondency and failure that seemed to be genetically coded into the people they had grown up with.

  When he reached the sign, he saw that the bar hadn’t opened yet. Ty slipped down a side alley and walked round to the back. A truck was unloading. A middle-aged woman with dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a thick plaid shirt and jeans, was counting off boxes of booze. Ty pulled out his cell and slid his finger over the screen, pulling up a picture of Malik. ‘Excuse me, ma’am, sorry to take up your time, but have you seen this gentleman over the past twenty-four hours?’

  She took a look. ‘This the coach from Harrisburg?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Ty. ‘You see him?’

  She took a step back and studied Ty. ‘You a cop?’

  ‘A friend who needs to find him.’

  ‘He was in here last night, but he didn’t stay. Came in, looked around, had a drink and split.’

  ‘You see which direction he headed?’ Ty asked.

  ‘Nope. Once a customer is out that door, my interest kinda wanes.’

  ‘You didn’t think to call the cops?’

  ‘Nope. If I had to call the cops on every one of my customers that they wanted to speak to I’d be out of business. It’s not exactly the Polo Lounge back there.’

  ‘Can I ask you how he looked? I know it’s a strange question.’

  She took a clipboard from the truck driver and cast an eye down the delivery manifest. She scratched something out. ‘There’s only one case of Makers Daniel here, not two.’ The driver mumbled an apology. Ty had the sense that not much got past this lady.

  ‘You’re his friend?’ she asked Ty, tilting her head back and studying him.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then I’d say you’d better find him fast.’

  Seventy-five

  Jack Barnes hunkered down and pee
red through the hole.

  ‘Do you see it?’ the man asked him. ‘Look, over there.’

  Jack’s eyes roamed the woods, but it was difficult to see anything through the tumbling snow. It was cold, even with the thick socks and hiking boots he’d been given. He was tired and hungry and he wanted to go back to his mom.

  That was when he saw it, circling a red pine no more than a hundred yards away. It was about the size of a large German shepherd dog with a thick mottled gray-white coat and piercing pale green eyes that held him spellbound. The gray wolf threw its head back and howled. The sound ran all the way through the carpet of snow, through his boots and along his spine. ‘I see it,’ he whispered.

  The man, whom he was starting to think of as a friend, had his rifle with him. Jack was afraid he might want to kill the wolf, but he seemed as transfixed by it as Jack was. Not that Jack trusted him entirely. After all, that was how things had started before. With someone who had pretended to be his friend, only for him to discover that they were his friends for what they could get or, rather, for what Jack would do or allow to be done to him.

  ‘You see, Jack, there are wolves and there’s prey. Which would you rather be?’

  Jack didn’t have to think about it. ‘A wolf.’

  ‘Me too, Jack. I started as prey and then I turned myself into a wolf. You can make that journey too.’

  The wolf froze. Either it had heard them or it had picked up their scent. It turned its huge head toward them. For a magical second it stared straight at Jack. The eyes of boy and beast met, and Jack felt a sudden, perfect peace. He knew exactly what the man was talking about. It was his choice. He could be prey or he could be a wolf.

  The wolf stuck its muzzle into the snow, then took off with long, bounding strides. In a few seconds it had faded into the pine trees.

  The man reached down and flipped open the locks of the hard plastic gun case. ‘Ready to get some target practice in, Jack?’

  ‘We’re not going to shoot the wolf, are we?’

  ‘No, Jack, we’re going to kill the sheep.’

  Seventy-six

  The snow made navigating the rough terrain tough. Lock was at the end of a line of local people who had turned out to look for Jack and Eve Barnes. They had been assigned an area of woodland near to the cabin where Tromso had taken Ty. Kelly Svenson was co-ordinating the search as part of a joint college/town police operation, with advice from the FBI, who already had their hands plenty full. Still, there was something about the search that made Lock feel like it was busy work.

  The people of Harrisburg, including a large section of the student population, had turned out en masse. Beneath the somber mask that the searchers felt duty-bound to wear, like so much makeup, Lock detected a certain giddiness. Finally, Harrisburg could prove that it cared, when all along at least two, and possibly three, serial child molesters had been going about their business under the town’s nose.

  Lock didn’t believe that people here hadn’t known about the activities of Becker, Reeves and the third man. In Lock and Ty’s job of close protection, Lock knew that most people walked around with their eyes wide shut. They looked but they were too lazy, or distracted, to see, and when they did see, it was often too late. And of those who saw, few chose to make the connections. Of those who did join up the dots, very few then took the next step and confronted what was taking place.

  Individuals like Becker and Reeves weren’t invisible. They had wives, partners, colleagues, workmates, relatives and neighbors. Since the truth had surfaced, more and more people had revealed to the media that they had seen Becker ‘hanging out with young boys’ or that they’d heard ‘a lot of screaming’ one night from Reeves’s home. And no one had pursued it. No one apart from Malik Shaw. An outsider.

  Lock was at the end of a line of about a dozen people. To his left was a beefy frat-boy type, who looked like he was no stranger to a Big Mac or ten, to his right a blonde coed who was wearing enough makeup for Lock to suspect she had recently run away from a circus. The two kept shooting glances at each other as they inched over the snowy slopes toward the tree line. Love or lust was in the air among the misery. Never one to stand in the way of true romance, Lock tapped the frat boy’s elbow. ‘Switch with me. I’ll take the end.’

  He shuffled over as Lock stepped around him. ‘Thanks, bro.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  As the two fell into conversation, Lock looked back down the slope. Officer Svenson was waving at a small group of newly arrived townsfolk to join the line.

  Lock shook his head. Unless Jack and Eve Barnes were dead, and the woods had been chosen as a burial site, which was possible, there were two chances they would find the boy and his mother here – zero and none. For a start, if Becker and Reeves had used the cabin with the third person involved, after what had happened that location was now dead. A kidnapper wasn’t about to hole up anywhere close to it. It was too obvious, and if this person had eluded capture so far, they weren’t dumb.

  He started back down the slope toward Svenson. Maybe there was something she knew about this location that he didn’t.

  Lock was about ten yards from her when the first shot rang out. A sharp crack followed by an echo. He looked back up the slope to see the frat boy he had switched places with moments before fall forward. His face was planted in the snow. The coed next to him screamed. Everyone else in the line started looking around, startled and unsure of what had just happened.

  Seventy-seven

  As a second shot rang out, Lock powered back up the slope. In the confusion it was next to impossible to tell where the gunfire was coming from. He threw a glance down the slope to Svenson. She was still standing by her vehicle, rooted to the spot. Lock shouted to her: ‘Help me here.’

  She seemed to snap out of it. Most of the search party of a dozen people were scrambling down the slope. An elderly man tripped and fell. Lock ran toward him, and helped him back to his feet.

  The tree line was about forty yards ahead. The road at the bottom of the slope was about ten times that distance. Lock was close enough now to see that the shot had hit the frat boy in the back. Unless there was another shooter, the gunman was up on a ridge to the left of where they were standing.

  The contours of the immediate landscape meant that the slope and the road beneath it were directly exposed and within range. The only cover available was in the woods, yet people were spilling back down the slope where they could be picked off easily.

  The elderly man was back on his feet as another shot cracked, missing them by feet. A puff of snow marked the entry point to their right. Lock shouted at people to head for the woods. They were still in shock, overwhelmed and disbelieving.

  Lock reached down for his SIG. He fired off a round in the direction of the ridge where he thought the gunman was. At the very least, incoming fire would give the shooter something to think about. It would also draw fire to him rather than to the unarmed civilians, who had slowly begun to change direction and head for the line of pines.

  Lock began crawling toward the frat boy, who was still down. The blonde coed was kneeling next to him, asking if he was okay, as the snow around them turned red. The frat boy’s eyes were flickering. He was starting to lose consciousness. Lock took off his jacket as the rifle cracked one more time from the ridge. This time, Lock saw the muzzle flash nice and clear. The shot slammed into a man with grey hair, who was helping the stragglers into the woods. It caught him in the right thigh, spinning him off balance. He went down with a yell. Lock handed his jacket to the coed as he sat the kid up, and slashed at his clothing with his Gerber.

  ‘Okay, see the wound,’ Lock said to the girl. ‘Take my jacket and press it against it as hard as you can. You understand?’

  She nodded and jammed it against the entry point. The frat boy yelped in pain. ‘And keep him conscious,’ added Lock. ‘Keep him talking. Make sure his eyes don’t close.’

  Glancing back over his shoulder, Lock saw a pick-up truck with
a serious gun rack pull up. Two townies in hunting gear got out of the cab, each hefting a Bushmaster, the gun that had done so much damage at the school in Newtown. By the way they were carrying the guns, safety off, muzzles pointed out at waist height, fingers on the triggers, something told him that these individuals had not been trained for such a situation.

  The sniper must have sensed the same thing because, as the driver of the pick-up stepped off the road and onto the slope, he took a single shot to the head. It smashed into his mouth. His body jerked, as if he’d been plugged into the power grid, and he fell. As his buddy went to his aid, another shot rang out. This one caught him in the shoulder, spinning him round. He duck-walked behind the truck, crying with the pain.

  ‘Lord, give me strength, and save me from amateurs,’ Lock muttered, under his breath, looking back up toward the ridge, where it had fallen quiet. Hunkering down, he ran over toward one of the fleeing search party, his eyes never leaving the ridge. He had noticed that one of the searchers had a pair of binoculars. He took them from the man’s neck, and ran in a zigzag from the group, drawing fire from the ridge as he moved.

  He found a bump in the terrain, and lay belly down, using the contour of the ground to provide him with cover. As he raised the binoculars to his eyes and racked the focus wheel, a muddy, battered SUV pulled in behind the truck. The driver’s window slid down, and the business end of a semiautomatic popped out and let off a three-round burst toward the ridge.

  Lock used the haphazard and unwelcome covering fire from the ridge to take a peek. He narrowed his eyes to make sure that he really was seeing what he thought he was. Next to the sniper, whose face was covered with a ski mask, was a young boy with a fringe of brown hair that fell over his eyes.

  All four doors of the SUV were flung open, and four men in hunting gear, each wielding an assault rifle, began to rake the ridge with gunfire. Lock waved at them, shouting to be heard over the barrage of rounds. ‘Hold your fire! There’s a kid up there!’