‘Los Angeles, right where we just were,’ Ty said.
‘So how’d she hook back up with Dad?’ Lock asked.
Carrie shook her head. ‘No idea. But clearly she got curious. It wouldn’t take much digging to find out he was in jail.’
‘So Chance grew up in California?’
‘Until she was about twelve, when Mom died of a drugs overdose. No grandparents around, so she went into foster care. Ended up with a family called the Grisaldis.’
‘You’re shitting me, right?’ Ty said.
‘What?’ asked Lock.
‘You never heard about the Grisaldi case? They fostered dozens of kids. Molested them too. Papa Grisaldi was convicted about four years ago and sent to Corcoran.’
Lock knew that Corcoran was one of California’s heavy-duty prisons. Not as hardcore as Pelican Bay, but still pretty tough. ‘How long did he last there?’ he asked Carrie.
‘Less than a week,’ she said. ‘He was murdered by a two-man Aryan Brotherhood hit squad.’
Ty leaned forward from the back seat. ‘And here’s the kicker, Ryan. Papa Grisaldi was a black man.’
‘And her long-lost father’s a race warrior. Perfect,’ said Lock, pinching at the bridge of his nose. ‘So we got her psychology. But how do we find her?’
‘I’m not so sure that we will. All the regular checks seem to indicate that she dropped off the grid some time last year.’ Her eyes still on the road, Carrie dug in her bag and tossed over a wad of printouts. ‘This is everything I have.’
Lock quickly riffled through the papers. He stopped at one particular page and held it up to Carrie. It was a crumpled colour printout of a young woman in her mid-twenties. ‘This her?’
‘Only picture I could find. Of course it was taken a few years back so she might have changed her appearance since.’
Ty leaned forward and studied the picture of Chance. ‘You can see how Prager got drawn in.’
Carrie laughed. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Ty. Somehow I don’t think you’d be her type.’
‘No shit,’ Ty said.
‘You pass this on to the FBI?’ Lock asked her.
‘Via Coburn,’ Carrie said.
‘He’s speaking to you?’ Lock asked. ‘He seems kind of pissed at me.’
Carrie’s cell phone trilled. ‘Speak of the devil,’ she said, plucking it from her bag on the dash. She flipped it open and listened for a moment. ‘OK, where?’ she asked. There was another pause. ‘What else?’ she said, before killing the call and turning to Lock. ‘They’ve had a sighting of Reaper. Traveling north on PCH about fifty south of us. California Highway Patrol stopped a vehicle he was traveling in. At least they think that’s who it was.’
‘North?’ Ty said.
Carrie nodded.
‘So why don’t they have him in custody?’ Lock demanded.
‘He came out shooting, Coburn says. Destroyed the patrol car, and shot the two officers inside.’
Lock slammed the palm of his hand against the dash in frustration. ‘He kill them?’
Carrie nodded. ‘One of them. The other’s pretty badly injured.’
Lock sighed. This sounded more like the Reaper he knew. Whatever he was planning, he clearly had no intention of going back to prison, even if it meant killing anyone who got in his way.
And there was something that worried Lock even more. Any fugitive looking to flee justice should have been heading south. But Reaper was heading north, straight towards them.
56
Carrie had a suite for her and Lock, and a room for Ty, booked at the Argonaut Hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf. Pulling up on the street outside, she handed the keys to the valet, then headed up to the suite. The hotel itself was beautiful, with a hell of a view out across the bay to Alcatraz. These days, reflected Lock, he couldn’t seem to avoid prisons.
As Carrie ordered some coffee and sandwiches to be sent up, Lock laid out the pictures Carrie had amassed of the key players on the nautically themed king size bed that dominated the room. There was one of Reaper. One of his daughter, Freya, aka Chance. One of Ken Prager. One of Jalicia Jones. And, finally, one of Junius Holmes. Three of them dead. Two on the run.
Ty put his cup of coffee down on the nightstand next to the bed. ‘You getting anything?’ he asked Lock, rubbing his injured shoulder.
‘Not apart from the obvious.’
‘Which is?’
‘Junius Holmes had a track record of going after these guys. That’s one score settled right there for Reaper. Ken — that’s a slam-dunk too. And, Jalicia — revenge works as a motive for her as well, just like Coburn said.’ Lock picked up the picture of Reaper, tapped the edge of the paper against the desk. ‘So why the hell is he heading north when anyone in their right mind would either be staying put or moving south or east?’ He shuffled the pictures around like he was playing three-card Monte, then looked up to see Carrie filtering back into the room from the bathroom.
She tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Ryan, you need to get some rest.’
‘I think we all do,’ Ty said, with a grimace. Lock knew that his injured shoulder was playing him up.
He glanced back at the pictures. The clue to what was going on lay in front of him. But why couldn’t he see it?
‘You can play detective tomorrow,’ said Carrie.
Lock stood up, gathered the faces into a pile and put them on the desk. Carrie was right. He was exhausted. Maybe some rest would clear his mind a little.
Carrie’s cell rang again, Coburn’s name flashing up.
‘He wants to speak to you,’ she said.
Lock took the phone from her. ‘Reaper?’ he asked.
‘Maybe,’ Coburn said. ‘We got a tip-off a few minutes ago that someone saw an individual matching his description entering a building in the Tenderloin.’
‘Credible witness?’
‘Little old Vietnamese lady.’
‘The Tenderloin would make sense,’ Lock said slowly.
The Tenderloin had originally gained its name because cops patrolling its streets were paid more for the privilege, thus being able to afford a better cut of meat than their colleagues who patrolled more salubrious parts of the city. It was the kind of place where the mice wiped their feet on the way out of the apartment buildings. Now a haven for the destitute, deranged and the desperate, as well as a burgeoning influx of Vietnamese, most San Franciscans gave the relatively small area a wide berth, unless they had people visiting who wanted to pack in some gritty reality as well as the tour of Alcatraz and a snap of the Golden Gate. Given how paranoid the majority of residents were, not to mention the dim view they took of law enforcement, it was a place where a raid had the potential to go badly wrong.
Lock frowned as he worked through the implications. If they went in heavy, especially with racial tensions running high in the city and beyond, it could be the spark that provoked a riot. Even if they didn’t go in heavy, these things had a habit of getting out of hand rapidly. Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t want anything to do with such an operation unless they were being paid to do it.
‘So, you want to tag along?’ Coburn asked him.
‘I didn’t think you wanted me involved in this any more.’
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. ‘Like that’s going to happen. At least this way I know where you are and what you’re doing. Plus, you’re good at sneaking around. That’s the kind of expertise we could use right now.’
