Gridlock: The Third Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Ty started, ‘where’s that piece of shit you drive?’

  Lock nodded towards the black Range Rover parked across the street.

  ‘No way,’ Ty spluttered. ‘What happened to blending in?’

  ‘This is LA,’ Lock explained. ‘Here, this blends.’

  ‘Man, you’re full of surprises. Kind of young for a mid-life crisis too. Porn stars. Sweet rides.’

  Lock shifted uncomfortably. ‘Ty, can we keep the porn-star talk on the down-low for now? She’s a client. That means we have to treat her with a certain degree of respect.’

  ‘I’m all about the respect, Ryan, you know that, brother.’

  Behind the cordon, the last of the forensic techs were putting away their gear. The garage door was open and Lock could see that Raven’s BMW was already gone.

  ‘So? Wanna give me a sit rep?’ Ty was looking at Lock over the top of his shades.

  ‘Twenty-eight-year-old white female being stalked by a person or persons unknown. The cops think that whoever is obsessed with Raven is the same person who killed Cindy Canyon, and that this stalker has it in his head that he’s already in a relationship with Raven. That’s version one.’

  ‘And version two?’

  ‘That she did it,’ Lock said.

  Ty tipped his sunglasses up on to his forehead. ‘Man, that’s kind of hot. You think it’s true?’

  ‘If I did, I wouldn’t have taken the gig.’

  Ty looked around at the suburban street. ‘You know, brother, there are two kinds of crazy in this nation of ours.’

  Lock smiled. ‘Go on, Brother Johnson, preach it.’

  ‘Well,’ Ty said, ‘there’s regular crazy, and then there’s LA crazy. And LA crazy beats regular every time.’

  Ty wasn’t wrong, thought Lock, glancing up as two television helicopters buzzed overhead. A couple of the neighbors were gathered on their lawns, watching the show. A few more peeked through blinds from inside their homes. Lock watched a soccer mom snatch away a younger child from the front window of a ranch-style house that was opposite and a few doors down from Raven’s place.

  He wiped a hand across his face, the sweat beading on his brow dampening the back. What he really needed was a nap but he wasn’t about to get one. There was too much work to be done. ‘We have someone who’s very determined and capable of taking human life. We need to be on the top of our game here, Ty.’

  ‘So why don’t we get her the hell out of here?’

  ‘She won’t do it.’ Lock looked back towards his car where Kevin was still standing with Raven. ‘Her brother has Down’s syndrome. She doesn’t want his routine disrupted.’

  Ty filled his cheeks with air, then exhaled loudly. ‘Our boy comes through the window at two in the morning with a hunting knife, that’s going to disrupt everyone’s routine, not to mention create a whole bunch of other medical problems.’

  ‘Then we’d better do our job properly. I want to check the house. You go introduce yourself.’

  Ty straightened up. ‘Be my pleasure.’

  Lock called him back. ‘Ty?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Don’t go making things more complicated than they already are.’

  Ty gave Lock his would-I-do-that? smile and wandered off.

  Lock turned back towards the house. The SID team were finishing up, loading their gear into a panel truck. Contrary to the TV shows, most of their equipment, certainly at this stage of an investigation, was decidedly low-tech: swabs, plastic bags and digital cameras. The high-tech stuff was saved for the lab.

  He wanted to walk through the house while it was completely empty. Although nightfall was around nine hours away, it was very unlikely that Raven and Kevin would be taking their advice and spending the evening somewhere else, so he needed to make sure the place was locked up tight before the sun fell over the Valley.

  He walked around the property from the outside, approaching it as an intruder would. The front door was properly secured with a mortise-lock and separate chain. They could use a camera out here. He added it as the second item on his list, the first being a couple of motion sensors for the lawn area at the front. If anyone stepped on to the property, he would want to know about it. With the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains close by, they would have to adjust the sensitivity and height of the sensors for the coyotes that no doubt roamed the neighborhood after dark.

  Next he walked to the windows at the left of the property – the living room windows. They had locks on them and sensors that would trigger the alarm if anyone tried to jemmy them open. There was some sagebrush off to one side. It wasn’t planted close enough together to offer any great degree of cover so he determined that it could stay where it was.

  He took off down the side of the house, noting the position of every drain, every window. Any inanimate object made it on to his plan of the house. The large plastic wheel-mounted garbage cans would have to be secured and any paperwork shredded. Not only would they inevitably be trawled by the media but they were a potential treasure trove to a stalker. A misplaced credit-card or bank statement could tell someone where you shopped, the gym you worked out at and the stores where you bought your clothes and groceries. A carelessly discarded phone bill offered up your family and friends, as well as business acquaintances, who you spoke to, how frequently and what times you called them. Armed with these two items you could build a fairly comprehensive picture of someone’s life relatively rapidly.

  This reminded him of something else. He jotted down a separate note to ask Raven about any social networking accounts she might have. If she had a fan page on Facebook, which anyone could join, the stalker might be there already. By definition stalkers were obsessive by nature so it should be possible to run a search to see who was monitoring the fan page most frequently. He guessed that Stanner and the other officers at the Threat Management Unit would already have done this, especially given the events of the past few days, but there was no harm in double checking.

  There was a door at the rear of the house that led out on to a deck, which offered up an impressive view of the Los Angeles basin. Jumping off it, he used his Maglite, one of the big heavy torches used by cops, to check the crawl space underneath. It was clear but he would get a contractor in to seal it off.

  Beyond the deck a steep slope led down to the property on the street below. The front of the deck hung out over this space, and the property line was demarcated by a chain-link fence. It was climbable but it would take some effort.

  Lock started down the slope, walking sideways on the edge of his heels. Halfway down, he started as a dog appeared on the other side of the fence and barked, its teeth bared. It was smaller than a German Shepherd but had the same profile and markings. It was probably a Belgian Shepherd – not the ideal dog to have for security. In truth, small, yappy dogs were a bigger pain in the ass to intruders as they were more easily threatened, and tended to make more noise, thus warning the householder.

  Lock continued down the slope. When he got within ten feet of the fence the Belgian Shepherd, which had been backing up, suddenly lunged towards the fence, putting its paws up against the chain-link, throwing its head back and alternating a throaty growl with an I-mean-business bark. A woman in her early sixties, wearing slacks and a University of Southern California Trojans T-shirt appeared at the side of the house. She had gardening gloves on.

  Lock put his hands up by way of apology. ‘Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.’

  She called the dog back to her side. ‘I wish you people would just finish up what you’re doing.’

  Of course. She’d assumed he was with the LAPD. Presumably they had already been down here to take a look, keen to give the appearance of thoroughness.

  ‘Just one question,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll get out of your hair.’

  ‘I already told you I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Does the dog stay out in the yard all the time?’

  The woman looked to the skies like
it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. ‘No point having a guard dog if you don’t let him guard.’

  ‘Doesn’t the barking bother the neighbors?’

  The question earned Lock another withering look. ‘He’s trained not to bark at every little thing. He only goes off if there’s someone where they ought not to be. Like you right now.’

  He made his apologies and retreated. Like every other single security measure, guard dogs could be subverted, but the dog’s presence on that side of the house would make their job a little more straightforward.

  He reached the top of the slope, finished his external inspection, then walked into the house. There was one major detail he still had to plan for. Assuming the worst-case scenario of a homicidal stalker inside the house, they would need a plan B, and plan B came in the shape of a panic room.

  He moved through Raven’s home searching out the most appropriate room. Ideally, he would have had something specially designed and installed but there wasn’t time for that. He would have to pick a space and work around what he had.

  He climbed the dark oak staircase, noting the absence of pictures on the walls. That fitted with the rest of the place. Everything was neat to the point of sterility. The faint whiff of bleach hung in every room.

  On the upstairs level there was a master bathroom and three large bedrooms off a long rectangular hallway. One bedroom was set up as a home office-cum-junk room. It was on the left-hand side of the house adjacent to the master bathroom. He ruled it out. One of the most important attributes of a panic room in a small domestic setting was how quickly you could gather everyone and get to it. If an intruder was halfway up the stairs before you knew they were inside the house, the last thing you wanted to have to do was make a mad dash across a hallway.

  He checked the room and the bathroom, then walked into one of the other bedrooms. This, he guessed, was Kevin’s, although the décor was more appropriate to a child than a teenager. Superman dominated the walls, from an elaborate mural emblazoned by the bed to the posters tacked up everywhere else. Even the bed sheets and pillow cases had a Superman theme. There was one window, which overlooked the rear yard. One window was good. Just off to the left there was a small en-suite bathroom. No evidence of Superman here, although on opening the bathroom cabinet Lock was confronted with an array of prescription medicines. Clearly Kevin had some fairly heavy-duty secondary health issues. He could understand why Raven was insisting on staying put.

  Standing in the middle of Kevin’s room, he wished she had just told him about her brother from the get-go. He guessed, however, that to live the life she did, Raven had built defense upon defense around herself, and didn’t see the need to explain or justify her decisions. The stalker’s intrusion must have made things doubly difficult.

  Lock closed the door softly on Superman, and walked into Raven’s bedroom. Here, the style was decidedly feminine. The bed was a California King with crisp white Egyptian sheets. In fact, pretty much everything in the room was white, including the walk-in wardrobe next to the en-suite. With a change to the wardrobe’s door, it would make an ideal panic room, even though there was barely space for Raven, Kevin and whichever bodyguard was on duty at the time. But it would only have to hold them safely for an hour at most. Even if the stalker was in the house, an hour was more than enough time for the LAPD SWAT team to move in and take him out.

  Pulling out his cell phone, Lock made a call, arranging for someone to come round and replace the door.

  He took another look around the closet. All of her clothes were arranged neatly on hangers or in drawers, and many items still had the plastic dry-cleaner wrappings covering them. Replacing the door would be a messy business. Some of this stuff would have to be moved into another room.

  Lock heard footsteps behind him and looked over his shoulder to see Raven come into the bedroom.

  ‘Kevin seems to be hitting it off with your partner,’ she said.

  Lock smiled. Everyone got on with Ty. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to need to clear this closet out so we can make it into a panic room.’

  Raven looked nervous. ‘I thought I was paying you guys so it wouldn’t come to that.’

  ‘We already know that your stalker is violent and determined. We need to plan for every eventuality.’

  Raven hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

  ‘You want to help me clear it? Maybe move it into a spare room?’ he asked her.

  ‘Sure.’

  Stepping past him into the closet, she scooped up a half-dozen outfits from the rail and dumped them on her bed. ‘I kind of need to go through this stuff anyway. Get rid of some of it.’

  She stepped back into the closet, then looked away from the rail, where she’d just removed a bunch of clothes, to Lock. ‘Is this someone’s idea of a joke?’ she asked, her violet eyes cloudy, her face taut with fear.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about this,’ she said.

  Lock noticed that her voice was shaking, as she passed him a short black designer dress. A note was pinned to the front. Neatly etched in printed letters was a short message.

  I thought you’d look nice in this.

  Twelve

  The cops were back. Not in the same numbers that they’d been when Raven had discovered Cindy Canyon’s body in the trunk of her car – a dress with a handwritten note didn’t have quite the same pulling power as a headless corpse – but they were back just the same. A forensic tech removed the dress and note for further examination while a couple of detectives spoke to Raven in her bedroom. Lock let them get on with it. Feeling uneasy, he went downstairs to check on Ty and Kevin. The discovery of the dress took things to a whole new level. For starters it meant that someone had been inside the house. Worse, there was no sign of a previous break-in, and no evidence of their presence, apart from the dress and the note. The police had already checked the doors for signs of someone picking the lock, but there were none of the telltale scratch marks left by an amateur. If that method had been used it had been used by someone who knew what they were doing.

  Ty glanced at Lock from the couch.

  ‘How’s everything upstairs?’

  ‘All good,’ Lock said, aware of Kevin’s presence.

  Ty clapped a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. ‘See? I told you, K-Lo, nothing to worry about.’

  Kevin retreated into his TV show. It was impossible to know how much of this he was taking in but Lock guessed it was more than he was letting on.

  Lock hadn’t been around someone with Down’s syndrome for any length of time before. In some instances they might have the mental age of someone much younger. At seventeen, Kevin came off like a nine-year-old, but anyone who knew anything about nine-year-olds was aware that they were far from dumb, and they picked up on stuff. In many ways they could be far more perceptive than adults or, at the very least, more willing to share their perceptions.

  The front-door bell rang and Lock went to answer it, leaving Ty with Kevin. He was hoping it was the locksmith. The dress and the attendant note meant that changing the locks and improvising a safe room were priorities if they were to stay where they were.

  Outside, Stanner, from the LAPD’s Threat Management Unit, stood sweating, his curly hair glistening in the afternoon sun. Lock opened the door.

  ‘Sure as hell doesn’t feel like late fall,’ Stanner said.

  Lock stepped outside, waving towards the inside of the house. ‘We’re trying to keep as much of this from the kid as possible.’

  ‘I got you,’ Stanner said.

  At that moment a van bearing the logo Valley Locksmiths drove up, and Lock gestured for the guy to pull into the drive before turning his attention back to Stanner.

  Stanner combed his hair with his fingers. It sprang right back into place. ‘So, it looks like someone’s been inside the house,’ he said.

  It was revealing that Stanner framed it as a statement rather than a question. ‘Sure does,’ said Lock, noncommittal.
‘But the question is, when are they coming back?’

  ‘You think they will?’ Stanner asked.

  Lock didn’t buy Stanner’s doubt. He was doing what smart cops did sometimes, playing dumb.

  ‘He’s fixated,’ Lock said. ‘And determined. And he’s upping the stakes.’

  Stanner made another futile pass at his hair. ‘We do have one lead.’

  ‘What happened to procedure?’

  ‘There’s some things I might not be able to share, but this is something I think you should know,’ said Stanner. ‘Her last appearance at the club out in Arizona. The guy who tried to get to her when she was on stage. She told you about that, right?’

  ‘You pick him up?’

  ‘Not yet. But we will. We have a name. I can’t give it to you right now.’

  ‘There’s only one thing that bothers me about it being him,’ Lock ventured.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘There was also a guy in the parking lot who threatened her, but she told me he looked taller.’

  Stanner shrugged. ‘It was dark. She was scared.’

  ‘So you think they might be the same guy?’

  ‘It’s all we have right now.’

  Lock had to concede that it made some sort of sense. The guy in the parking lot could have transitioned from his fantasy to making contact with her, and he’d certainly been around to plant Cindy’s body in Raven’s car. And he supposed that the dress could have been put in Raven’s closet at any time in the past week without her necessarily noticing it, though how the culprit had managed to get into her house without leaving any other trace was anyone’s guess.

  So that was the case for the prosecution. But the case for the defense was even more compelling. Lock was no profiler, but if you started from the point of view that criminal profiling, like close-protection work, boiled down to the rigorous application of common sense, then the guy was a million miles away from the person behind all this.

  For a start, the person who had killed Cindy Canyon, then planted her head in a newspaper vending machine and her body in the trunk of Raven’s car, was extremely accomplished at what he was doing. He was methodical, a planner. Bat-shit crazy but bright. Trying to assault Raven in a packed strip joint was none of those things. And if he’d been in the parking lot, why hadn’t he hidden inside the car and abducted her there and then?