room’s position would have made Jalicia hard to spot as she came and went, Lock thought. Perhaps she’d chosen it for that very reason, thinking that the lower a profile she kept the safer she would be.
He opened the door and stepped inside. The room itself was basic. A double bed dominated the small space. It was still made up, although Lock noticed that the sheet stretched over the red-patterned comforter was wrinkled at the bottom right-hand corner, as if someone had sat on that part of it. Opposite the bed was a desk. Next to the desk was a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. A small portable television was perched atop the wardrobe.
Lock closed the door behind him, crossed to the desk and opened the first of three drawers. A Bible. In the second drawer were a couple of leaflets on local tourist attractions. Nothing looked like it had been moved. Lock couldn’t imagine that Jalicia would even have glanced at the leaflets. Thinking about it now, he couldn’t even imagine Jalicia outside work. She must have a family, he thought. Did they know she was dead? He opened and closed the final drawer, which was empty, thinking of the bitter blow it would be for them. From what little he knew, Jalicia had clawed her way up from a disadvantaged background. He could only imagine the sacrifices both she and they must have made.
Lock stood there for a moment, allowing his anger at the injustice of it all to settle, cold and hard, at the base of his stomach, then he took a few steps and opened the wardrobe. Her clothes were still on the hangers. He’d never really registered her perfume when he met Jalicia, but he could smell it now. It was feminine, but understated. You wouldn’t have been aware of it unless you were up close, which he guessed not many men had been.
He quickly rifled through her clothes, then ran his fingertips along the bottom of the wardrobe, although he wasn’t sure exactly what he was hoping to find. Closing the wardrobe door, he moved to the chest of drawers. The top drawer contained Jalicia’s underwear, which was mostly black and lace-edged. For the first time since he’d walked into the room he felt like he was being intrusive. He closed the drawer and went quickly through the others. Everything was folded neatly.
Finally, he moved into the small bathroom. A make-up bag lay open on the counter, and the shower curtain was pulled back. A vaguely damp towel was folded neatly over a rail. He walked back out of the bathroom and stood next to the bed. Nothing disturbed. Nothing out of place. The room told at least part of the story: Jalicia had left of her own accord.
Lock exited the room and stood outside the motel, his back to the wall. Jalicia’s car was a pale blue Volkswagen Jetta. He was sure he’d seen her get into it after Reaper’s testimony had come to an abrupt end.
He walked to the front of the motel but couldn’t see it. He retraced his steps back to Jalicia’s room and beyond, to an area at the back of the motel. There it was, parked in a row of five lined spaces that were marked out next to two huge commercial trash containers. But her keys hadn’t been in her room, and neither was her handbag. She must have left with them, Lock thought, but not used her car.
So, she would have walked out of the room some time after nine but never made it as far as her car — a distance of maybe twenty yards. Yet there were rooms all around, and people in them. If there had been a struggle, surely someone would have heard something?
Of course, maybe they had. Lock walked towards the middle of the parking lot and turned to face the building. It was a low-rent motel late at night. If Jalicia had made a noise, the other guests might have put it down to any number of things.
Even with all that, he couldn’t imagine Jalicia being abducted without putting up a hell of a struggle. She was a fighter; that was her nature. He walked slowly towards her car, hunkering down, looking for something, anything; a speck of blood, something dropped from her bag. But there was nothing.
He stood back, his hands still on his knees, his head down. From close by came the trill of a cell phone. Not from a room, but outside. Just feet away. Lock looked around to see if there was anyone to whom it might belong. Maybe Dale the desk jockey had come to check on him? But no, Lock was still alone.
It kept ringing. It was coming from one of the big trash containers. Lock grabbed at the top of the first container, hauled himself up and looked down into it, spotting the flashing display almost immediately. He let go, stepped back, and this time took a running jump, almost falling into the container head first. His elbows over the lip, he swung over a leg, reached down and managed to pluck out the cell phone just as it stopped ringing.
Extricating his leg, he dropped back down to the ground and jammed the phone into the back pocket of his denims as two Medford Police Department cops rounded the corner.
‘Sir, place your hands where we can see them, and do not make any sudden movements.’
43
For a full five minutes Lock argued with the cops that they didn’t have probable cause to search him. But they did, they both knew it, and they took the cell phone before he had the chance to confirm that it was Jalicia’s, never mind run through it properly. They also took back the borrowed key. That done, they let him go with a warning not to interfere any further in what was now a federal investigation.
Lock assured them that he wouldn’t. And he might have actually meant it too, if it wasn’t for the fact that the more Coburn and the cops told him to back off, that it wasn’t his problem, the more determined he became to find out what the hell was really going on. Plus, Lock had a problem with authority. It was a personality trait that made for a bad soldier but a great military cop. It was also, Lock had grown to realise, a piece of his character inherited directly from his father, which inevitably had brought them into so much conflict over the years that they rarely spoke. Lock’s father had, like so many parents, held to the dictum ‘do as I say, not as I do’. But Lock was incapable of that. Once he got hold of something, he worried at it like a dog with a bone.
The cops stood in the parking lot and watched him get into the car he had rented that morning from the Avis representative at the Rogue Valley airport. He waved them a friendly goodbye and headed back in the direction of Carrie’s hotel.
When he got there, Carrie was perched on the bed in her room, wrapped in a white cotton robe, wet hair up in a towel, answering her cell phone. She looked exhausted, having been on air pretty much all night, reporting live from the scene almost hourly, the entire nation rising from east coast to west and tuning in to see a reporter who was still several steps ahead of the competition. Meanwhile, her newsroom back in New York had been working their law enforcement contacts hard, filling in the gaps for both her and, by extension, Lock.
She waved at Lock as he walked in, held the phone away from her ear and mouthed, ‘Ty.’
‘Ty?’ Lock asked, taking it from her. ‘How are you?’
Ty’s voice came through loud and clear. ‘I’m watching the news is how I am. What the hell happened?’
‘Ask him how he is,’ Carrie said, fighting back a yawn.
‘I already did.’ Lock tapped her bare knee. ‘Get some sleep.’
Carrie swatted at him. ‘Then ask him again.’
Lock cradled his cell between his ear and shoulder. ‘Carrie wants to know how you are.’
‘Stronger by the day, and just as good-looking as before.’
Lock looked at Carrie and sighed. ‘Seems that being shot has left Ty suffering from delusions of adequacy.’
‘I heard that,’ Ty protested. ‘Any news on Reaper?’
‘Thin air.’
‘What about the guys who sprung him?’
‘Nada.’
‘That helicopter they were using was military,’ Ty said.
‘That’s what I thought too.’
‘Hard to pick one of those up on eBay.’
Carrie was scribbling something on a piece of paper which she shoved under Lock’s nose. He read it, then relayed the information to Ty.
‘One of Carrie’s sources has had word that a Little Bird assault helicopter went missing from a base in San Diego three days ago.’
‘They know who took it?’
‘If they do, they’re not saying. You know what the Army’s like.’
