Reaper’s eventual escape wasn’t an ending but more of a beginning. And that there was more to come.
‘You ready?’ Coburn asked him, pushing open the bullet-pocked door.
‘I’m ready,’ Lock said, stepping through into the blood-soaked area where the six members of the Aryan Brotherhood had been held for the trial.
‘Guess Jalicia got her wish in the end,’ Coburn said, as Lock took in the carnage.
Against the back wall of one single holding cell the bodies of the Aryan Brotherhood lay piled up, their arms and legs entangled. The floor of the cell was slick with congealed blood. A forensic photographer hunkered down, clicking away with a digital SLR camera, capturing the scene for posterity. Even at this early stage, the bodies were starting to reek.
‘Live by the sword, die by the sword,’ Coburn said, almost respectfully.
Lock took his time, studying the heads, mouths gaping, eyes staring vacantly or with a measure of surprise. There was something off about this as well. Even raking the cell with an M-4 would have eaten up precious seconds. Revenge seemed too slender a motive for someone associated with Reaper.
‘And dead men tell no tales,’ added Lock, stepping in closer to the slaughter and counting off limbs. ‘There are only five bodies.’
‘What?’ said Coburn, startled.
‘Count ’em if you don’t believe me. Someone’s missing.’
The photographer maneuvered round Lock, the camera still to his face. ‘Yep, one of ’em made it,’ he said, matter-of-factly.
Coburn looked startled. ‘No one told me. Where’d they take him?’
The photographer finally lowered the camera from his face. ‘Craziest thing I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘They must have fired a couple of hundred rounds into that cell, but one guy crawled in under the other bodies, played dead. There was barely a scratch on him. Freaky, right?’
Coburn grabbed the photographer by the arm. ‘Where is he now?’
The photographer looked down at Coburn’s arm, clearly not appreciating the attention. Lock was spooked by it too. Coburn was upset about Jalicia — hell, so was he — but there was no point taking it out on some forensic tech who was only doing his job.
‘The Marshals took him.’
‘Where?’ spat Coburn.
The photographer bristled. ‘Take your hand off me, buddy, and I might tell you.’
Lock put a hand on Coburn’s shoulder. ‘Take it easy, huh?’
Coburn seemed to snap out of it. He mumbled an apology.
‘They said something about shipping him back to the SHU at Pelican Bay, seeing as how it’s the nearest Level Four facility to here.’
Lock walked back downstairs with Coburn, and sat out on the steps of the Federal Building with him. Coburn offered him a cigarette, which Lock declined.
‘What the hell’s going on here, Coburn?’ Lock asked.
Coburn sighed. ‘I wish I knew.’
‘Bullshit. First these people kill Ken Prager, a federal agent.’
The muscles in Coburn’s face tightened. ‘He was undercover. What d’you think they were going to do to him? Throw him a party?’
‘They took his family. Lured him out to the middle of nowhere so they could torture him and his family. Then they recorded the whole thing and mailed it to you. That seem like normal behaviour to you?’
‘There is no normal when you’re dealing with people like this, only levels of abnormal.’
‘So why send Jalicia the footage?’
Coburn struck a match off the step and lit up. His face was lined and haggard, the grey hairs at his temples seemingly more numerous than when Lock first met him. Lock guessed he was still trying to come to terms with what had happened to Jalicia.
‘I’d guess they were trying to send a message,’ he replied after blowing out his first lungful of smoke.
‘And killing Prager and his family wasn’t sufficient?’
‘If a federal agent gets killed in the forest and no one hears it, did it really happen?’ Coburn asked rhetorically.
Lock sighed. It had been a hell of a twenty-four hours. ‘They handed Jalicia a case. And if that wasn’t enough, Reaper got in touch to make sure it moved ahead.’
‘And then he pulled the rug out from under us. See what I’m saying, Lock? You’re looking for some master plan here, when there isn’t one.’
Lock thought it time to voice something that had been nagging away at him since he’d first met with Coburn and Jalicia. It made no sense to him then, but had seemed not to trouble anyone else, even though it left a huge cartoon question mark above the entire investigation.
‘Prager was feeding back information to you while he was with the Aryan Brotherhood. So what was he saying? I mean, he must have known who these people were.’
‘You think they’d still be out there if he had?’ said Coburn.
Lock was incredulous. ‘An investigation that went on for months and you don’t know the identities of any of the people involved?’
‘They were super-careful. Prager never visited their homes, never got their real names. Nothing. Not up until the end, when he confided some of it to Jalicia. We had a debrief planned for the night he was murdered. He was going to give us a lot of it then and we were going to pull him out.’
Lock wasn’t convinced. He leaned in towards Coburn, trying for some kind of personal contact. ‘Level with me here, Coburn. There’s something you’re not telling me.’
But Coburn turned away. ‘Listen, Lock, this isn’t your problem. None of this is.’
Lock thought of Jalicia, burned alive in the truck. ‘That’s not how I see it.’
‘Clearly.’
‘So humour me.’
‘You’ve been an investigator, right?’
‘For a time.’
‘And how did you like it when other people started interfering in one of your cases?’
‘I didn’t. But then this isn’t your case either any more, so we’re kind of in the same boat.’
‘You want to know what I think?’ Coburn asked, looking at Lock properly for the first time since he’d lit his cigarette. ‘I think they killed Prager and his family because they’re sick individuals who didn’t like the idea that they’d been betrayed by someone they thought was on their side. I think Reaper used his testimony to get himself out of the Bay so his buddies could try and spring him. When that was foiled they knew they’d already crossed a line so they gave it one more try to get him out. And I think that Jalicia was killed because she went after them in the first place, and to make matters worse, she’s black. Revenge is motive enough without us needing to go any deeper. Listen, Reaper and his buddies are probably halfway to Argentina by now. The whole thing’s a mess, but there’s no great mystery here, so take my advice and leave it alone.’
Coburn ground out his cigarette with his boot, got up and walked away.
Lock watched him go, more convinced now than ever that Reaper’s jailbreak was the beginning of something, not the end. But what? Knowing Reaper, Lock could be sure about one thing. Whatever it was, it was bad.
41
Cowboy and Trooper were eating a breakfast of pancakes and bacon at the small circular pine table in the kitchen when Reaper walked in sporting wrap-around sunglasses. His eyes were still getting used to long periods of natural sunlight. Chance drifted in a moment later, wearing white sweatpants and a fleece — the antithesis of the hellcat that had been on display the night before.
Reaper snuck a piece of bacon from a plate set down on the counter and popped it into his mouth. ‘Damn, it’s good to be free,’ he said with a broad grin. ‘Boys, I want to thank you. You’ve taken a lot of risks for me.’
