by Sean Black
‘Did you know Mendez before it went down?’
Marcie threw back her head and laughed. ‘Every cop in Santa Barbara knew Charlie and everyone in Santa Barbara knows the Mendez family. They’ve been here for a long time, lot longer than I have.’
‘The judge know them?’ he prompted, even though he knew the question was taking him on to dangerous ground.
Marcie’s easy smile fell away. ‘If you’re suggesting what I think you are then all I’d say is that’s a pretty serious charge to lay against a judge.’
‘So why’d he bail him?’
Marcie shrugged. ‘If you’re asking whether Charlie being from that family helped him, then of course it did. It would be naïve to think anything else. This is America, right? Land of equal opportunity, but having big bucks makes you that little bit more equal. I’m sure you know how it goes, Mr Lock. If you’re rich in this country you’ll be treated a little differently from the rest of us. Not because you’re rich – hell, with a jury that might work against you – but because you can pay for a better defense. Charlie had really good lawyers. The kind of people who could persuade someone that black was white and two plus two makes five. I mean, that’s why they cost a lot of money, right?’
‘And the judge?’ said Lock.
Marcie blew on her coffee. ‘There you go again. Why don’t you ask me straight out? Do I think the judge was bribed or someone called in a favor? No, I don’t. I think he was talked into making a mistake. There’s no small-town conspiracy here, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
He decided to let it go. He believed her and he wanted to get back to Charlie.
‘But the Police Department had come into contact with Charlie Mendez before?’
Marcie made a face. ‘Sure, when he was younger. He was a kid with everything handed to him on a silver platter. A player. He got into some scrapes. Nothing serious, though.’
‘What kind of “nothing serious”?’ he prompted.
‘Being drunk in public. Shooting off his mouth. A couple of assaults. Usually kids smaller than him or when he was with his buddies. Never liked the look of a fight he might lose.’
‘Anything of a sexual nature?’
Marcie took a sip of coffee. ‘That was what was weird when his name came up. I mean, like I said, he was a player, had an eye for the ladies, but he was good-looking, rich. You wouldn’t think he would have had to drug someone, although in my experience rape isn’t usually about the sex.’
‘So why do you think he did it? Some kind of power trip?’ Lock asked.
‘I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff, being a cop. And you want to know what all those years on the job taught me?’
He nodded.
‘When it comes down to the really bad shit, some people are just screwed up.’ She got up and emptied the dregs of her coffee into an old white ceramic sink, then turned on the faucet. Her eyes fell to the folder she had passed to Lock. ‘There’s some more recent material in the back.’
‘Concerning?’
‘Stuff that makes no sense to me.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as the last place he’s been seen.’ Marcie sighed. ‘I mean, if you skip bail, and you have more money than God, why not pick a country that has no extradition treaty with the United States?’
Lock decided to play devil’s advocate. ‘Not many of those left, and Mexico has worked out pretty well for him so far. Whoever he’s paying to take care of him down there seems to be doing a pretty good job.’
‘If he’s still there,’ said Marcie.
‘You think he might have left?’
‘I know I would have.’
He thought about it. If Charlie Mendez hadn’t been spooked enough by the first bounty hunter to relocate, he must have a good reason for staying where he was. Obviously he felt safe down there. ‘What about the family?’ he asked. ‘They have any ties to Mexico? Business interests?’
‘Apart from the name, none that anyone in the department knew about, although with old money like that it’s difficult to be sure. There are shell corporations and trusts and a bazillion layers you have to get through. Everything they have is privately held.’
‘You have any idea who’s looking after him?’
Marcie pursed her lips. ‘Well, from the way they dealt with Brady, it looks like narco-traffickers. But you probably guessed that. The girl you caught at the hospital was a Latina gang member?’
Lock wondered how she knew that, but not for long.
‘I made some calls when I heard Melissa had been shot,’ Marcie said.
‘Gang ink.’
Marcie picked up the folder and passed it to him. ‘A lot of people have been hustling to get Mendez returned. But you know how it goes – the more time passes, the more likely it is they’ve moved on to other things. We have a lot of border issues and, with everything that’s going on down there, Mendez is hardly a priority.’
The folder felt heavy in his hand. ‘Thanks for everything.’
Marcie smiled. ‘I sure hope you bring him back. He’s a dangerous man to have running around.’
Eleven
AT HIS HOTEL opposite the Greyhound bus terminal in the center of Santa Barbara, Lock ordered a club sandwich and some mineral water while he worked methodically in his room through the witness statements in the file Marcie Braun had given him. There was nothing new, although reading it in detail made what had happened seem more real – in a way that urged him to cause serious physical harm not only to Charlie Mendez but to his smarmy high-powered defense lawyers.
Halfway through, he found that he had lost his appetite. He put the sandwich on the tray outside the door, then returned to his work. With the file exhausted, he got out his laptop and opened up the web browser. He threw Charlie Mendez’s name into Google and waited.
On the second page of search results there was a link to a video clip from a local news channel. The heading read: ‘Mendez Bail Outrage’. He clicked on the link and a separate window opened. He hit Play. It was only when the footage rolled that he realized he had no idea what Mendez looked like. Although he had read several thousand words about the man, the file had contained no photographs.
On screen, dressed in a smart but obviously off-the-rack suit – probably chosen by his multi-million-dollar legal team to downplay his wealth – Charlie Mendez stood on the courthouse steps. He was about five feet ten inches tall, slim, with sandy blond hair, brown eyes and broad, handsome features. He had the healthy glow typical of those who had grown up wealthy.
To his left, with one hand resting on his shoulder, was his mother, Miriam, a pinch-faced WASP dressed in a twin-set and pearls. Her hair was blonde and perfectly coiffed. Charlie’s lead counsel was on his right: Tony Medina, a handsome, but prematurely greying middle-aged Hispanic, with serious political ambitions. Although the Mendez family were about as Hispanic as Ronald McDonald, Medina had done his best to introduce a racial element into the case, arguing that police and prosecution fervor had been heightened because the victim was a young white woman and his client was, at least in name, a member of a minority group.
Needless to say, painting the playboy heir to a multi-billion-dollar fortune as a victim was a tough sell in a country still reeling from a bitter recession. But, like any attorney, Medina was working with what he had: very little.
As a forest of microphones bunched around him, Charlie Mendez read from a prepared statement. His delivery was flat and almost entirely devoid of emotion. ‘I would like to thank my family, particularly my mother, for standing by me during this difficult time. I would also like to thank my attorney, Anthony Medina, and the other members of my legal team,’ Medina squeezed Charlie’s shoulder paternally, ‘for their hard work and dedication so far. I am also grateful to the judge for allowing me to return to my family for the remainder of this process.’
‘No kidding,’ Lock muttered, under his breath, and paused the clip. Less than two weeks later, Mendez had fled. A rapist and a coward.
The phone rang on his desk. It was a local number. He picked it up. ‘Marcie?’
‘Mr Lock,’ said a perky-sounding young woman, ‘I work for Mrs Miriam Mendez, the mother of Charlie Mendez. Mrs Mendez would like to speak with you. Do you have a pen so you can take down the address?’
Twelve
TWELVE-FOOT-HIGH BLACK SECURITY gates slid open and Lock’s Audi nudged its way through. Next to him on the front passenger seat was Marcie Braun’s case folder. As he crested a rise leading up to the Mendez compound, he glimpsed Montecito laid out beneath him, the upscale part of already upscale Santa Barbara. A deep blue Pacific shimmered in the distance.
He wondered how the matriarch of the Mendez family had known he was in town. Not that it was much of a jump: the Santa Barbara Police Department was a small force. Santa Barbara, at the higher end, was probably a pretty tight-knit community. Word would have got round.
A minute and a half later he pulled his Audi on to a large motor court, which fronted the main house: a 1930s colonial mansion. To one side, Lock could see two tennis courts, one grass and one clay. Beyond them lay an Olympic-sized swimming pool with separate ten-person hot tubs at either end. A pool boy was fishing out a couple of rogue leaves with a large net.
He pulled into a space between a special-edition Aston Martin V12 Vantage Carbon Black and a Bentley Flying Spur and got out. He took a moment to check out the two automobiles. Neither looked as if they had ever been driven: they were showroom new. There was money, he thought, and then there was Montecito money.
Sunlight filtered through the sycamores at the edge of the house, dappling the steps leading up to the vast front door. Lock rang the bell and settled in to wait. His invitation was for four p.m. It was one minute past. He had no idea if that counted as fashionably late.
The front door opened and a maid ushered him inside. She offered to take his jacket but he declined. ‘Mrs Mendez is in the drawing room,’ she said.
He followed her down a long corridor, their footsteps echoing on the dark mahogany floor. Lock didn’t know much about art but he could pick out one or two names from the pictures on the wall. Carrie had dragged him around the Museum of Modern Art in New York a couple of times. There was a Klimt and what looked to him, from the angular face staring at him, like a Picasso. He doubted they were prints.
Glancing up, he saw the red orb of a camera tracking their progress. You didn’t spend that kind of money on an art collection without an efficient security system to protect it. He wondered what the cameras had witnessed, whether they had observed Charlie Mendez saying a final goodbye to his mother before he had taken off.
‘Mr Lock. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’
The corridor opened into a large sunny room, dominated by a vast marble fireplace. Miriam Mendez was standing by a set of french windows, which opened on to the azure swimming pool. Whatever Lock’s preconceived notions had been, she was not the woman he had been expecting. For a start, the perfectly coiffed blonde curls of a wealthy Santa Barbara matron were gone, reduced to a few wispy clumps at the side of her head. Her face was gaunt, cheekbones jutting, not unlike those in the Picasso he had passed. She was skeletal and drawn.
‘Cancer,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘Terminal. If there was a cure then, believe me, I would have found it – I have the money and access to the finest doctors in the world. Sadly, there are certain things that money can’t buy. Please, sit down.’
Lock eased himself into a club chair.
‘You’re looking for my son, I believe,’ she said, after a long pause.
Lock cleared his throat. ‘Like many people. The only difference is that I’m going to find him and bring him back to serve his sentence.’
Miriam Mendez smiled. It was a warm, open smile, which wrong-footed Lock. It wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting. ‘Good. I hope you do. I mean that. Charlie has brought nothing but shame to our family. Of course I don’t wish anything terrible to happen to him but it’s right that he should take his punishment like a man.’
‘So will you help me find him, Mrs Mendez?’ Lock asked.
‘You don’t know where he is?’ she asked, innocence personified.
Lock smiled. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Well, Mr Lock, if I knew where he was, I would fly down there myself and tell him to put an end to all of this nonsense. All the family knows is that he’s in Mexico somewhere, and even that’s a guess. He may have moved on from there for all we know.’
‘So if you don’t know where he is, why did you want to see me?’
‘You heard what happened to the other men who tried to find him?’ She allowed the question to hang in the air. ‘Charlie has obviously got in with a bad crowd.’
Lock bit back a smirk. ‘Bad crowd’ suggested kids who hung out late smoking dope and drinking beer, rather than narco-trafficking paramilitaries who butchered people in cold blood. ‘You think I shouldn’t go?’ he asked.
She did her best to look puzzled. ‘I’m certainly not trying to dissuade you, but at the same time I hope there’s no more senseless loss of life.’
‘Before he left, did your son give any indication that he was going to flee, Mrs Mendez?’
Miriam Mendez sighed. ‘If he did, I’d hardly make it public. But, no, Mr Lock, he didn’t. I think he just panicked.’
Yeah, right, thought Lock. ‘Is there anything else, Mrs Mendez?’
Her hand fell into her pocket and she pulled out a cream envelope. ‘I was hoping that if you find Charlie you might give him this for me. My time is limited and I’m not sure I’ll have the chance to see him before …’
Lock stood up, walked over to her and took the envelope. It was thick, maybe three or four sheets of heavy old-fashioned writing paper inside. On the front, in neat, cursive handwriting, was her son’s name. ‘I’ll make sure to pass it on,’ he said.
She clasped his hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong. ‘I know you will, Mr Lock. And, because I’m counting the days rather than the months, can you let me know as soon as you have? I mean, the very moment. It would give me such peace to know he had it before I depart this earth. Will you promise me?’
‘I promise you’ll be the first to know,’ said Lock.
Before he had made the trip to the Mendez estate to see the family matriarch, he had done a little more research. Miriam Mendez did have cancer, and any kind of cancer was a terrible thing, but the type she had wasn’t usually fatal. In fact, she was in remission. She had lost her hair but she was almost certainly going to be fine. There was only one reason she could have for asking Lock to make sure he contacted her first and that was to stop him delivering her son to the authorities.
‘Thank you, Mr Lock. You’re a good man,’ she said, with a wan smile
‘I’ll see myself out, Mrs Mendez.’
As he left the room, he stopped in the doorway and turned. She was still in the same pose.
‘Yes, Mr Lock?’
‘I was just thinking, Mrs Mendez. If by some chance you hear from your son before I do, could you give him a message from me?’
Her eyes widened, and he detected anger simmering just beneath the surface.
‘Tell him that no amount of money or muscle is going to stop me putting him behind bars with all the other animals.’
A hardness settled in her eyes but her smile didn’t fade. ‘Just be careful, Mr Lock. No one wants to see anyone else suffer.’
Outside, the all-American pool boy had been replaced by a thick-set Hispanic man, whose girth suggested he might have eaten the job’s previous incumbent. Presence of the abnormal, thought Lock. The man watched his every move as he got back into his car.
Lock tossed the letter on to the passenger seat. He started the engine, and headed down the driveway. The gates opened as he approached and he left the Mendez estate. About a half-mile down the road he pulled over. He stared at the letter, debating the morality of opening it. He picked it up, ripped open the envelope and pulle
d out three thick sheets of cream writing-paper.
They were blank.
Thirteen
BACK AT THE hotel, Lock drove past the valet stand to a far corner of the hotel parking lot. He pulled in between two oversized SUVs. The nose of the Audi was facing a brick wall so the only view of the car for anyone watching him was from behind. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been followed from the Mendez estate but he wanted to ensure that he wasn’t observed in what he was about to do.
He got out of the car, and walked slowly around it. On the second circuit, he checked the inside of the wheel arches using his fingertips. Next he clambered under the car to inspect it. Satisfied, he wriggled out, then opened both doors, searched the interior, and ran his fingertips over every inch of the trunk.
He found what he was looking for hidden at the very back, a black box the size of a pack of cigarettes. He went back into the car, pulled out his Maglite and shone it into the dark recess. Using his Gerber, he levered the box out of position, and turned it over in his hand.
It was a Real-Time Asset GPS tracking device. They were commercially available and retailed at around five hundred bucks. He knew the price because he had recommended this very gizmo a while back to a trucking company: they had been concerned about a couple of their drivers, who were losing a lot of cargo.
Lock guessed the device had been placed inside his car while he had been inside the house, talking to Miriam Mendez. He had suspected something was going down when he had come back out to find the pool boy replaced by the older Hispanic man. The change of personnel had jarred, and anything that jarred was worth checking out.
He looked around the parking lot. He thought about planting the device on one of the cars with out-of-state plates, but dismissed the idea. If someone was prepared to send gang members out to kill a teenage rape victim, who was to say they wouldn’t cap a couple of hapless vacationers from Oregon? For now, the tracking device could stay put. If they wanted to know where he was, they could – for now.
