by Sean Black
A woman’s voice called from inside: ‘Who is it?’
‘Señora Valdez?’
The door opened a few inches and a middle-aged woman peered out, her face lined with fatigue.
‘May I come in?’ Rafaela asked her. ‘I have news about your daughter.’
The door closed again, there was the rasp of a chain being removed and then it opened. Rafaela stepped into a low-ceilinged room. There was a sofa, a coffee-table and a television set, which was switched on with the volume turned down. Rafaela recognized a couple of popular soap-opera stars. Her eyes settled on a table behind the sofa. It was covered with framed photographs. Rafaela’s heart sank as she saw that every picture was of the same young girl; only the settings and the age varied. There was one of her as a toddler, dressed in white for her confirmation; the most recent showed her in her late teens. An only child.
Señora Valdez’s hands grasped Rafaela’s arms. ‘Tell me she’s safe.’
In such circumstances there was a procedure to follow, a series of steps, a liturgy of words to mouth. Rafaela believed in none of this. When she had to arrest someone, or interrogate someone, or shoot someone, she was a cop. But at moments like this she was a woman.
Rafaela touched Señora Valdez’s hands, feeling the calluses on her palms and the tips of her fingers, the result of all those hours in the factory. ‘She’s with the angels, Señora. I’m so sorry.’
The woman’s body slumped, her chin falling on to her chest as she began to sob. Rafaela put her arms around her. They stayed like that for a long time. Rafaela spoke to her gently, as she would to a child. She had never known what it meant to cry your heart out until she had made the first of these calls. Then she had been brittle, detached, professional. Afterwards she had realized that there was no harm in showing her humanity. If nothing else, she reasoned, it must comfort the bereaved a little to know that one other human being cared.
Slowly, the woman’s sobs ebbed away as, over her shoulder, the soap opera continued, with beautiful, wealthy people grieving over a missed promotion, perhaps, or an extra-marital affair. She peeled herself away from Rafaela, eyes puffy and glistening. She glanced at the photographs of her murdered daughter and something new came into her eyes, something far worse than the grief. Surrender. It disturbed Rafaela more than the blood and mayhem. Your daughter left the house. She never returned. And that was life in this city.
‘Shall I take you to see her?’ Rafaela asked.
The woman looked around the room, searching for her coat. Rafaela helped her put it on and then they walked out into the night.
Seventeen
ROSARY BEADS CLASPED in her right hand, Melissa’s mother, Jan, sat quietly by her daughter’s bedside. Although her face was lined with worry and her eyes were pouched from lack of sleep, Ty could see where Melissa had got her looks from. Watching her vigil, he was glad that she had her faith to sustain her.
Part of him wished he believed more than he did. His mother was a churchgoer and, as a child, he had gone with her on Sunday, sitting there listening to the preacher, swinging his legs and counting the minutes until he could get home and change out of the suit she insisted he wear. He had never really taken to it.
A nurse flitted into the room to check on Melissa. She spoke to Jan, scratched some notes on the chart at the bottom of the bed and made for the door.
‘How’s she doing?’ Ty asked her, as she left.
The nurse smiled. ‘All her vital signs are stable and she’s not bleeding now. That’s all in her favor.’
‘How long until she can leave?’
‘It’ll be a while,’ the nurse said, heading past him and into the next room.
Ty rose from the chair and stretched his long, lean frame. He tapped gently on the door and Jan Warner glanced up from her prayers. ‘If you need to take a break at any time just let me know,’ he said.
She smiled, got up and walked to the door. ‘Can I ask you something, Tyrone?’
Ty smiled. He probably only ever heard his full name from ladies who went to church, and Lock when he was being sarcastic. ‘Sure.’
Jan’s gaze fell away to the bed where her daughter lay sleeping. ‘Why are you doing this for us?’
Ty could have given her some story about how he was happy to help, but he wanted to be honest. Much as he felt for Melissa, he hadn’t welcomed her arrival in Lock’s life. ‘Because Ryan asked me to.’
Jan gave a tiny nod, apparently satisfied. ‘You must be good friends.’
He shrugged. ‘We’ve been through a lot together. Makes you close, I guess.’
‘Not one of Melissa’s college friends stayed in touch with her after what happened.’ Ty noticed that Jan’s eyes were moist. ‘The damage that man did to her. She was such a beautiful young woman.’
‘She still is,’ Ty said. ‘That don’t change.’
Jan took a pack of tissues from her handbag, took one out and dabbed at her eyes. ‘But it does. Not on the outside, maybe. But inside. She trusted people. She assumed they were good. He robbed her of that.’
‘You know she wants us to go after him? She talk to you about finding Ryan?’
Jan nodded again. ‘She thought he’d understand.’
‘She tell you why she thought that?’ Ty pressed.
‘She said his fiancée had been killed by a man like Mendez. Is that right?’
Ty tilted his head so that he was staring at the ceiling. ‘There was more to it but, yeah, I guess that’s what it came down to. Ryan and I were looking after a woman who was being stalked. One of them kidnapped Ryan’s fiancée as a way of getting him to back off. He didn’t and she ended up dead.’
Jan Warner didn’t say anything.
‘We were out trying to find her,’ Ty went on. ‘It was dark and the weather was real bad. She’d escaped from where he was holding her. She ran out into the road in front of our vehicle. I was driving but Ryan still blames himself.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jan.
Ty rubbed his face. ‘I sometimes think that if she hadn’t escaped, if the guy had killed her before she had the chance to get away, it might have been easier. Then I hate myself for thinking that.’
Jan reached out and touched his arm. ‘Life doesn’t always give us nice neat endings.’
‘But that’s what your daughter’s looking for,’ he said. ‘An ending.’
‘I suppose it is. She feels that until he’s behind bars she can’t move on with her life.’
‘And what do you think?’ Ty asked.
Jan blew her nose. ‘I just want my baby back to the way she was before. I don’t care about Mendez or what happens to him. I’m not interested in revenge. I only care about Melissa.’
Of course she did, thought Ty. She was a mom. But, sadly, the people who were hunting her daughter, who were seeking vengeance for her continued pursuit of Mendez, saw it differently. For whatever reason they believed that the only way of stopping the pursuit of Mendez was to murder his victim. Even if Melissa or Jan could speak to them directly and tell them that Melissa was scared enough to drop their crusade, Ty doubted it would have any effect. Once the word came down to street level that an individual was to be taken out, nothing else mattered. When you were marked, you were marked, not because the people giving the orders were unable to change their minds but because word came down and was difficult to reverse.
Ty was wary of Melissa overhearing them. He took Jan’s elbow and moved her a little further down the corridor. ‘You know these people aren’t going to stop now.’
‘But if I take her home with me …’
‘The kid who came in here to finish the job, she was a gang member. They got gangs all over the country. Every city, every small town, there’s no hiding-place if they want someone.’
‘You’re saying there’s nothing we can do?’
Ty looked at her, his jaw tight. ‘Nothing you can do. But we can find Mendez.’
‘And Ryan? What does he think?’
‘I think your daughter did her homework pretty well.’
Eighteen
THE SUN SET low over the Pacific as Lock threaded his way back down the Pacific Coast Highway towards Los Angeles. His mood was lighter. He knew a lot more than he had before he left, and Ty had called with the news that Melissa had regained consciousness. She had been able to tell him a little of what had happened to her up to the night she’d been shot.
After months of trying to contact Lock and getting nowhere, she had seen a paparazzo picture of him escorting members of Triple-C into a West Hollywood restaurant. At first she had tried to get in touch with him via the group’s management, who had given her the brush-off. When she had seen they were playing a gig in LA, she had bought a ticket.
At the concert, the gang members had begun to cause trouble. At first she had thought it was a random event. Gang problems or fights at rap concerts were hardly unique. Then she had realized that they were looking for her. She had fled to her car, been chased and got away. Or, at least, she’d thought she had.
She’d been on her way to the hotel where the after-party was taking place when she had stopped for gas. As she was getting back into her car, another car had pulled in front of her, blocking her in. The girl had got out and shot her through the driver’s side window, leaving her for dead. But Melissa was alive. Delirious with pain, she had fixated on reaching the hotel and finding Lock.
The rest they knew.
Ty’s voice echoed in the car from the speaker on Lock’s cell phone. ‘Cops are in with her now.’
‘You ask them not to say anything to her about the girl being released?’
‘I did,’ said Ty. ‘Don’t know if they’ll tell her or not. You find anything up there?’
‘Some. Nothing that makes our job any easier. Think Brady had a contact in Mexico but they’re not answering their phone.’
‘Know who it is?’
‘Nope. All I got so far is a number.’ Lock drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel. ‘Listen, can you talk to one of our data-mining guys and see what they can dredge up about the Mendez family’s business interests?’
‘Sure.’
‘Especially anything related to business activities across the border in Mexico, subsidiary companies, suppliers, stock interests, business partnerships, anything of that nature.’
‘You got it. So, are we going after this asshole or not?’
Lock sighed and glanced at a pale blue slab of ocean. ‘Let’s just see where this takes us, Ty. I’ll be with you soon anyway.’
‘Okay, brother.’
Lock killed the call and switched his focus back to the road. He tried the Mexican number he’d found on Brady’s phone records one more time. This time he got a message in Spanish and English to say that the person was out of coverage area. He’d try again later.
He made one more call as he drove.
Sarah Brady answered on the second ring. He thanked her for her help and apologized for disturbing her at work.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked.
He wouldn’t tell her about the phone number until he knew whose it was. But something from the office had nagged away at him as he had snaked his way south. ‘This might sound stupid, but Joe had scribbled some stuff on his desk pad. Nothing that seemed to mean anything but maybe you’d know. Did you ever hear him use the words “The Devil’s Bounty”?’
There was a bitter laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Yeah, I know what that means. It’s just a shame Joe didn’t take it to heart.’
‘What does it mean, Mrs Brady?’
‘It’s dumb, really.’ She paused, seeming to search for a way to put it into words. ‘When Joe started out he worked for an old guy called Daniel Front. Front Bail Bonds. Danny had been in the job, like, for ever and it was one of his little phrases. I guess everyone thinks that bail bondsmen and skip tracers deal with bad asses all the time, but from what I know about it, it’s mostly people who’re just plain dumb or unlucky or a combination of the two. Anyway, from time to time they’d get someone who really was bad news. Joe would cut them some slack, but Danny had been around long enough that he’d send them to someone else because he knew they’d skip or they’d be too much trouble if he had to go after them. So, if he didn’t want to deal with someone because he was a real bad guy who had a habit of skipping out, that was the phrase he’d use. He’d say that he didn’t want to go after the Devil’s Bounty. He was right too. If he’d still been around, there’s no way he would have let Joe go after Mendez.’
The Devil’s Bounty. Lock chewed it over. It made sense. He often turned down clients because he knew that they were going to be way more trouble than they were worth. And when he gave them the benefit of the doubt, it almost always ended in tears – and in his last major job, protecting Raven Lane, there had been an ocean of them.
‘Is Danny still around?’ he asked.
‘He died ten years ago. Joe kept the name until he was established, then went with Brady Bail Bonds.’
‘So, it was just an old-timer’s phrase?’
‘Pretty much. Good advice, though.’
As Lock thanked Joe’s widow for her help and wound up the call, he glanced across at the tracking device. He had moved it from the trunk to the front passenger seat as a reminder that someone, somewhere, perhaps at the Mendez estate, perhaps in Santa Maria, was tracking his every move in front of a computer screen, watching the little dot that represented his car crawling across a map. He was glad of that. They thought they had the upper hand. Right now, that suited him just fine.
Nineteen
IT WAS DARK when Lock reached the UCLA Medical Center. This time he parked in the structure that was officially designated for visitors. He took the elevator up to the ICU and got out, hearing the shouts of a medical team, a doctor barking orders, nurses yelling back. He shrugged it off. It was Intensive Care: medical emergencies were hardly a rarity.
He walked down the long corridor. Unless she had been moved, Melissa’s room was the sixth door on the left. He had counted before, not just the room but the steps to it from the elevator – an old habit acquired over years of close-protection work. Any time he found himself in a location that was unfamiliar to him, he would work out exit and entry points so that he would know exactly how long it would take him to reach them if there was a fire or a power outage.
Up ahead, medical staff were rushing into and out of a room on the left. He counted the doors. He checked his count. Then he broke into a run.
He looked around for Ty but couldn’t see him. A nurse was rushing past. Lock grabbed her arm. ‘Melissa Warner? Has she been moved? Is that her room?’ he asked, clinging to the hope that he was mistaken.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, brushing him off with a scowl.
He kept moving. Suddenly Ty was there, although Lock hadn’t seen where he had come from. A woman screamed, the sound dissolving into a wail of denial. ‘No! No!’
Ty had his arms around her. One look at her told Lock that this was Jan, Melissa’s mother. She was trying to fight her way past Ty and into the room. He was struggling to stop her without hurting her. ‘Let the doctors do their job. Okay?’ he said.
Gradually she began to still until he took his arms away. She slid down the wall, wrenching at her hair with both hands, panic and fear overwhelming her.
‘What’s going on?’ Lock asked him.
‘I don’t know. One minute she was sitting up, looked fine, the next I’d come out so she could get some rest and all those machines went crazy. Her heart, I’m guessing. I saw them going for a defibrillator and they got a crash team in there.’
Melissa’s mother was getting to her feet. Lock and Ty helped her up. ‘I need to get some fresh air.’
‘You want me to come with you?’ Ty offered.
She shook her head, rosary beads falling over her knuckles. ‘That’s kind of you, but I’ll manage.’
Lock stood with Ty and watched her walk unsteadily towards
the elevator. They glanced back at the room. The commotion seemed to be ebbing away. Voices were lowered but no one came out. Lock stared at his partner, both men thinking that wasn’t a good sign.
They waited. A nurse drifted out, eyes on the floor. A resident in green scrubs was next. He looked at Lock. ‘Are you the father?’
The question shook Lock. What was he to her? He wasn’t any kind of family. He wasn’t a friend. He had only met the girl when she had stumbled bleeding into the hotel two nights before. He was a stranger she had turned to for help. ‘Her mother just stepped outside. You want me to go get her?’
‘If you would,’ the doctor said.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ Ty said, striding past them, shoulders down, long legs stalking towards the elevator.
‘She’s gone?’
The doctor bit at his lower lip. ‘I’m very sorry. Sometimes …’ He trailed off. ‘Sometimes when there’s been a trauma like she suffered, the body just overloads.’
Lock’s gaze drifted towards the room where a dead twenty-year-old girl was lying on a bed, her heart literally broken beyond repair. ‘I brought her in after the shooting,’ he said to the doctor. ‘Would you mind if I saw her?’
The doctor didn’t say anything so Lock moved past him and into the room.
She was laid out on the bed. A nurse pulled the gown over her bare breasts as Lock walked in but he could see the raw, livid scar that arced across her abdomen, the stitches still visible from where she had been pieced together after the bullet had been removed. Lock crouched next to the bed, recent history rushing at him. He wasn’t at fault for this death, not in any way, but it still weighed on him. Melissa Warner had left him a legacy as sour as any family debt.
He reached up and his hands fell over her forehead. His fingertips drifted down, and he closed her eyes.
