‘Oh, it gets better. Want to take a wild guess at who she had representing her when she was arraigned?’
‘Johnnie Cochran?’
‘Where you been? Johnnie died back in ’oh-five, brother.’
‘Must have missed the obituary. So, who did she have in court?’
‘Junior attorney from Tony Medina’s office.’
‘You get their name?’
‘Working on it. I’ll email it.’
Lock could add another person to the list of people he’d like to speak to. While he couldn’t imagine getting anything out of a shyster like Medina, a new attorney in his office might give something away about who was paying the legal bill for a teenage gang-banger. Of course, it could be that the gang was paying, and that she and Charlie Mendez sharing a law firm was a coincidence. But as far as Lock was concerned coincidences were up there with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Believing in them might make you feel good, but that was about it.
‘So when you heading back?’ Ty asked.
‘Got one more call to make up here first.’
‘Okay, brother, but, hey?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Be safe.’
Fourteen
Her nose bisected by a sliver of brass safety chain, Joe Brady’s widow, Sarah, stared at Lock through the gap between front door and frame. It was a little more than three months since her husband had been butchered in Mexico. Lock knew from bitter recent experience that the first three months after the loss of a loved one were some of the toughest.
Your heart was put through a mincer. You didn’t sleep. Your brain tricked you: something would happen, and Lock would be about to share it with Carrie, then remember that she was gone. His gut churned even to think of it.
‘Mrs Brady?’ Lock asked, observing the social niceties. ‘My name’s Ryan Lock. I’m a friend of Melissa Warner. I’m here to speak to you about your husband.’
The door closed. He waited. He was hardly going to make her speak to him, not after what she’d been through.
There was the rattle of the chain being removed, and then it opened again, wider this time. ‘You’d better come in.’
He followed her into a living room. There was a couch, a television and a playpen in which a little girl was busy trying to find out if a wooden building block would fit inside her nostril. Sarah Brady motioned for him to sit down. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked.
‘No, thank you.’
She remained standing. ‘I have work in a half-hour, and I have to drop her at my mom’s, so if you could ask what you want to ask — I don’t mean to be rude but…’
Lock cleared his throat. A visit from someone like him was probably the last thing this woman needed but now he was here he would press on. ‘Mrs Brady,’ he began.
‘You can call me Sarah. Mrs Brady makes me sound old, and I already feel like a million,’ she said.
‘Sarah, Melissa Warner has asked me to find Charlie Mendez for her.’
Sarah bent over the playpen and picked up her daughter. ‘Two hundred grand is a lot of money, huh? But it’s no good to you if you’re not around to spend it.’
Lock guessed he had better get used to hearing that line. ‘This isn’t about money, I can assure you.’
She shot him a look of sheer scepticism. ‘Sure it’s not.’
‘I believe your husband had caught up with Mendez before he was killed.’
The little girl chewed at the building block and stared at him with wide blue eyes. Sarah tried to take it from her. She bunched chubby fingers tightly around it, refusing to give it up.
‘He had him in his vehicle. But they were pulled over by the cops and arrested before they got to the border,’ Sarah said. Twenty miles short. Twenty miles further on and he would still be here.’
This was news to Lock. ‘I thought he and the people he was with were abducted by narco-traffickers.’
‘Boy, you really don’t know too much about how things work down there, do you? Cops, gangsters. A lot of the time they’re the same thing.’
She was wrong in one regard. He wasn’t wholly naive about police corruption in Mexico. It was rife. That was all you needed to know. ‘You think the police killed your husband?’
She bounced the little girl in her arms and kissed her cheek. Distracted, the the child dropped the block, then struggled to get down, wanting to retrieve it.
‘They might have killed him themselves. They might have handed him over to the people who did. Either way, he’s still gone.’ She looked around the grubby apartment. ‘I begged him not to go down there but all he could talk about was what we could do with that money. Listen, I really do have to get ready for work.’
He raised a hand. ‘Did your husband leave any papers, any notes about Mendez?’
Sarah shrugged. ‘If he did they wouldn’t be here. He kept all that stuff at his office. I haven’t been back there since he left. He always paid a year ahead so I have a few more months before I have to deal with it. Guess I’m not ready to face it yet.’
He took a breath. ‘Would you mind if I did?’
‘Come on, baby,’ she said to her daughter, turning her back to him and walking through into the kitchen. She returned a few moments later with a set of keys, which she handed to him. ‘The alarm code’s written on the fob. Just drop them into the mailbox when you come back — I don’t get home from work until late.’
Lock felt the weight of the keys in his hand. A thought flashed into his mind that he should hand them back. But he didn’t. He thanked her, and promised to return them, then walked out of the dingy rooms into the mild California evening.
Fifteen
Bail-bond offices were generally grim, and Joe Brady’s was no exception. The final unit in a greying strip mall off a narrow two-lane road, its dirt-streaked windows were covered with metal bars, and there was a dent in the front door where someone had kicked it. A sign announced the nature of the business conducted within.
Lock fumbled with the keys until he found the one that fitted. He opened the door, and stepped inside. The alarm panel was to his right. He plugged in the code written on the key fob and the box chirped briefly, then deactivated. The interior consisted of a small reception area and a larger back office, a toilet and a small kitchen.
Posters adorned Reception, including one advertising the company’s services — ‘Brady Bail Bonds — Because Jail Sucks.’ A pen set, like the kind you find in banks, was secured to the long wooden reception desk with a couple of bolts, a reflection perhaps of the business’s client base.
In the main office there was a desk, a leather swivel chair and two regular chairs on the other side. A smaller table stood to one side with a PC and a printer underneath. Both pieces of equipment were secured to the wall with thick metal ties. Brady might have bailed criminals but he sure as hell didn’t trust them so he couldn’t have been entirely stupid. Three four-drawer filing cabinets sat against the far wall.
Lock checked the toilet (‘Employees Only ’), then the kitchen. A solitary Brady Bail Bonds coffee mug stood next to the sink. There were more mugs in the cupboard, and a pint of milk had soured in the small refrigerator. He held his breath as he took it out, poured it into the sink and rinsed it away.
Back in the main office, he found the key to the filing cabinet and started sorting through the drawers.
