The woman looked away, then spoke again. ‘You know, it’s so weird.’
‘What is?’
The woman worried at her wedding band, twisting and turning it on her finger. ‘I’m not sure I should be telling you this.’
Lock moved closer. ‘Listen, it’s OK. No one can hurt them now.’ He clasped his hands together, mirroring the woman’s body language. ‘I really need some closure,’ he added.
The woman studied her driveway, and nodded silently. ‘The last time I saw her, she was hammered.’
‘Janet? Drunk?’ Lock was surprised. Ken’s wife had never been a drinker.
‘Yeah, as a skunk. I took her in. Tried to get some coffee into her. I didn’t want her son seeing her in that state.’
‘Something had upset her?’
‘She told me that she thought her husband was having an affair. I didn’t know he was undercover. All she said was that it was someone he’d met through work.’
Lock took in a quick breath, glancing back over his shoulder at the Pragers’ old house, the paint peeling from the eaves, the gutters choked with leaves. This changed everything.
Inside the car, the woman’s kids were starting to squabble, and Lock knew his time was about up.
‘She mention a name?’ he asked.
The woman sighed. ‘Not unless “that blonde bitch” is a name. She said that Ken had gotten her pregnant.’
48
Chance sat in the back of a Toyota Camry rented the previous evening at San Francisco International Airport and watched as Glenn Love emerged, yawning, from his house, clambered into his work truck and backed out of his driveway. She noted the time, the make and model of the truck, the reg and the decal.
An hour later his wife, Amy, opened the blinds at the front of the house. Three-quarters of an hour after that she emerged with their two children. Chance grabbed her handheld video camera and taped them getting into their car and driving off. If they had to take the kids at the school, she didn’t want any cases of mistaken identity. Killing someone was relatively straightforward. A kidnapping, however… well, a myriad things could go wrong.
Five minutes after Amy Love drove past them, Chance got out of the car and approached the house. She rang the bell, feigned surprise when no one answered and wandered round the back. There was no alarm system and no cameras. She noticed a plant pot near the back door. It was empty save an inch or two of moldy compost. Lifting it up revealed a key — an unexpected bonus. It suddenly occurred to Chance that the key could cut out most of the risk if they were clever about how they approached this part of the operation.
The key fitted the rear door, and she stepped inside. Breakfast dishes lay stacked in the dishwasher; a copy of the San Francisco Examiner was spread out on the table. She moved quickly through the ground floor and entered the children’s shared bedroom. She took several items of clothing and moved into a study-cum-office area in the hall with a desk and a filing cabinet. She jotted down Glenn and Amy’s cell numbers from old bills, along with the number for the house landline. She also noted their social security numbers and a couple of other pieces of information. All this would come in handy too.
Satisfied that she’d gathered everything they’d need, she exited the house, placed the key back under the plant pot and walked casually back to the car. This time she got in the front and drove off. She’d return later when it was time to move on to the next stage of the plan.
‘Damn, man, does this guy ever leave the house?’
Cowboy drummed his fingers on the steering column. Next to him, Trooper kept his head in his copy of Sports Illustrated.
‘He’s probably not even awake yet.’
‘It’s nine thirty,’ Cowboy said, staring across the road at the ivy-clad New England colonial which was the boyhood home and California residence of Supreme Court Justice Junius Holmes.
‘So? He’s old. He’s probably in bed by nine.’
‘Which means he should be up early. Old people need less sleep, don’t they?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
Cowboy started to open his door. ‘I’m gonna go take a peek.’
Just then a figure appeared at the gates. A man wearing tennis shorts, sneakers and a Harvard alumni T- shirt.
‘See,’ said Trooper. ‘Patience.’
The man broke into a slow jog on spindly legs that looked barely able to support the rest of him.
‘Holy shit, he might not live long enough for us to kill him.’
Trooper studied him from behind his magazine. ‘You think he jogs this time every morning?’
‘Guess so. Why, what are you thinking?’
‘Well, we were planning on shooting him, right?’
Cowboy shrugged. ‘That’s usually the quickest, most efficient way of killing someone.’
‘Draws a lot of attention too. Which, if you think about it, is something we don’t necessarily need.’
‘Where you taking this?’
Trooper grinned. ‘You’ll see.’
49
‘Hey, I’ve heard about deep cover, but that’s something else. You sure?’ Ty asked, maneuvering the Lincoln down another street of shattered sub-prime dreams.
‘That’s what she said Janet told her.’
Lock was finding it hard to reconcile the neighbour’s revelation with what he remembered about Ken and Janet’s marriage. They’d always seemed like such a solid couple. He guessed you never really knew what went on behind closed doors.
‘Kind of explains one thing,’ Ty said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why there’s no mention of this chick in any of Prager’s reports back to his bosses. I mean, you go undercover and fall into bed with a suspect, that’s one thing, might even be taken that you’re taking the job seriously. But then you go and get her pregnant? Damn! You imagine the kind of fun a defense attorney would have with that?’
‘You’d be lucky to keep your badge,’ Lock said.
‘And your pension.’
Lock stared out of the window. By the looks of where Aaron’s friends were living, they were surrounded by people clinging on by their fingernails.
‘That’s not the full explanation though, it can’t be,’ said Lock. Something about the whole scenario was chewing away at him.
Ty pulled on to a wider street, this one with more commercial property. On their left was a gas station, on their right a couple of fast-food joints. One of them was the one mentioned by the neighbour as a favorite hang-out for one of the local skinhead gangs. They’d head back here after visiting the school.
Lock rubbed his eyes, wishing that his lack of sleep wasn’t making it so hard for him to think clearly.
‘You know, at Pelican Bay I got a glimpse of how seductive the whole white supremacist rap could be.’
Ty sideways-glanced at Lock as he drove. ‘You got something you want to tell me?’
A pick-up truck pulled up alongside with two middle-aged white guys in it. They stared menacingly at Ty until Lock glared over at them.
‘It’s almost like a cult,’ he continued. ‘They have a way of seeing the world. They have a purpose. An ideology. And it’s a powerful one. Otherwise how would a whole country have been sucked in back in the 1930s, so
