‘So?’
‘So maybe I’m not the best man to be helping you out.’
‘You fit all three of my main criteria,’ Lock said.
‘Oh yeah, and what are those?’
‘I need someone I can trust. And investigating comes down to one thing those chumps back up there don’t possess. Common sense.’
‘That’s only two. What’s the third?’
‘If there are any more closed doors, I need someone in front of me.’
‘Now, that I can buy. I’m still getting a feeling there’s something else.’
Lock sighed. ‘OK, the political activists we’re going to be dealing with aren’t your right-wing Bill O’Reilly crowd, right?’
‘Meaning it’ll be a hell of a lot more difficult for them to tell a black man to go take a jump.’
‘Got it in one. We need to locate the enemy’s weak spots. If that so happens to be a liberal conscience, that’s what we use.’
‘So you’d use the colour of my skin to game someone?’
‘Absolutely.’
Ty thought about that for a second. ‘OK, I can be down with that.’
The elevator’s floor counter ticked down to single digits.
‘So, what do you think our chances are?’ Ty asked.
Lock thought about it. The doors opened into the lobby.
‘Well, we got no ransom demand, no sightings since the kidnap, and the one person who does know what happened was just confirmed dead. Apart from that, I’d say we’re in excellent shape.’
Twenty-three
‘We’ll take my car.’
Ty gave Lock a look.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You got something to say about my car, you’d better say it.’
‘OK, but if we take your car,’ Ty said, pulling out a black i-Pod, ‘we gotta dock my tracks.’
It was Lock’s turn to eye-roll Ty. ‘Maybe I should have picked Brand as my ride-along after all.’
Ty faked outrage. ‘That cracker listens to country. I got stuck in the CAT vehicle with him once. Made me listen to a tune called “How Can I Tell You I Love You With a Shotgun in My Mouth?” And they say rap lyrics are messed up? Damn.’
‘Point taken. My ride, your music.’
‘Calling your vehicle a “ride” is stretching it.’
‘So’s calling the shit you listen to music.’
Forty minutes later they pulled up at the gates of the cemetery, still debating the pros and cons of Lock’s car and Ty’s taste in music.
Ty scanned the other arrivals. ‘Don’t these folks look in the mirror before they leave home?’
At the top of the hill a Who’s Who of the animal rights crowd were gathering to watch Gray and Mary Stokes being laid to rest, alongside their long-deceased pets, dogs, cats, rabbits, and even a donkey.
‘Not an animal lover?’
‘Had a pit bull once. Loved that dog, man.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘Tried to eat my little cousin Chantelle. Had to shoot the asshole. I mean, she was pulling its ears and shit, so it wasn’t entirely unwarranted biting her, but family’s family.’
‘Ty, I get a lump in my throat listening to stories about your upbringing. It’s like the Waltons on crack.’
Ty smiled. ‘Screw you, white boy.’
‘Listen, you stay here with the car.’
‘Aw, man. Do I have to?’
‘What’s the problem now?’
Ty regarded the interior of Lock’s Toyota with a look of repulsion. ‘Someone might think this piece of shit’s mine.’
A familiar face greeted Lock as he started up the hill. The sergeant voted ‘most likely to be high on cholesterol but low on patience’ lifted a fillet o’ fish with extra cheese in greeting. Who the hell puts cheese on a fillet o’ fish? Lock wondered.
‘If it ain’t Jack Bauer,’ said Caffrey, swiping at a smear of mayonnaise, which slicked under one of his chins.
Lock was as pleased to see some variation in Caffrey’s diet as he was to hear that the cardiac time bomb’s sarcastic repartee extended to both sides.
‘How’s that sandwich?’
‘Food from the gods,’ Caffrey mumbled, mid mouthful.
‘You really get around, don’t you?’
‘JTTF seconded me,’ spat Caffrey.
‘That a new tactic? Al-Qaeda attack, we Spurlock them till their livers burst.’
‘Spurlock?’ Caffrey asked, missing the reference.
‘Guy who made the movie about eating nothing but burgers for a month.’
‘A month?’
‘Yup.’
‘Lucky bastard.’
‘Well, it’s been nice chatting.’
Lock started past, but Caffrey blocked him. ‘Don’t go upsetting any of these folks, Lock. I’ll be lucky to finish the last set of paperwork you generated by the time I retire.’
‘I’m just here to pay my respects.’
Caffrey stepped out of his way, and took a sloppy bite of mystery fish. To a man who’d missed breakfast, it looked pretty damn good.
Lock carried on up the slope towards a spot where he could see a couple of blacked-out SUVs. As subtle as a brick, the decals on the numberplate might as well have read ‘FBI Surveillance’. Then again, maybe that was the point: the FBI letting the stragglers of the animal rights campaign know they were being watched.
As he passed the FBI vehicle, Lock narrowly resisted a juvenile temptation to tap on the windows. He stopped fifty yards back from the funeral party as it gathered around the plot. Two graves. Side by side.
As Lock got closer he realized that he shouldn’t have worried about his attire. He was about the best-dressed person there. The mourners were a rag-tag mixture of decaying hippies and twenty-something New Agers. One kid in his early twenties had turned up in blue jeans and a brown faux-leather jacket, presumably hand-crafted from tofu. Lock would have forgiven him black, but brown?
A few of the mourners turned their heads at Lock’s approach but no one said anything. At the centre of the group he glimpsed Janice sitting in her wheelchair, staring into the void as the two coffins were simultaneously lowered into the earth.
A man in his sixties with an ashen pallor and long greasy hair stood, hands clasped and head bowed, and said a few words. As Lock stepped closer, he caught the last of it.
‘Gray Stokes goes to his grave a hero. A martyr for the cause of animal rights. He was a man who saw genocide where others chose to look away. A man who chose to confront those who ran the death camps. A man who chose to speak up for those who have no voice. But his death will not be in vain. The movement to liberate animals from suffering and torture will go on. And his spirit will travel with us on our journey.’
Martyrdom, sacrifice, struggle. Lock wondered where he’d heard all those words before. Maybe John Lewis, the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, had it right when he’d warned a Senate committee a few years back that animal rights extremists were becoming a real threat. But then al-Qaeda had leapt straight to the top of the terror charts with a boxcutter rather than a bullet, and most everyone had forgotten that terrorism wasn’t restricted to guys with a penchant for virgins in the hereafter.
People on the fringes of the group began to drift away back down the slope once the man had finished his eulogy. Lock approached Janice, a couple of the remaining mourners shooting him a dirty look as they passed him. The younger man in the brown jacket was speaking now, head tilted in defiance. ‘They’re gonna pay for this. You’ll see. They’ll be filling whole graveyards by the time we’re through.’ His dire predictions were aimed at everyone and no one. Janice shushed him as Lock came closer.
Lock reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ The words seemed inadequate. He braced himself for another outburst from the uber-casual hothead, maybe even a punch, but the young man drifted off as well.