‘Are you for real, brother? Stokes and everyone else in the movement had been yanking Meditech’s chain for months. The way we saw it, if we could get them to stop using animals, a big power-house corporation like that, all the others would fall into line. But they dug their heels in. Just kept hiring more and more guys like you. Then, out of the clear blue sky, they cave. How come?’
Lock was silent.
‘Man, I might not have all the answers, but at least I’ve got some of the right questions,’ Cody said.
‘Say they got tired of the intimidation,’ Lock offered. ‘It happens.’
Cody burst out laughing. ‘To individuals, sure. But to a company who’re going after a big contract from the Pentagon?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, but nobody’s supposed to know about that, are they?’
‘So how come you do?’
‘You think we don’t have people on the inside too? People might join a company like Meditech, buying into all the soft soap about curing cancer, but some of them open their eyes. It’s all about the money. Always has been. Always will be.’
‘So what’s this got to do with Josh Hulme? Or Gray Stokes, for that matter?’
‘Like I said, I’ve only got the questions. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure that settling should have been the last thing on Van Straten’s mind. Big contract like that means more testing. More animals tortured, like your new best friend there.’ Cody nodded towards Angel, who’d now fallen asleep with her head on Lock’s lap. ‘But call a truce is what they did, and next minute Janice is picking her pa’s brains off the sidewalk. He knew something, my friend. Knew something big enough to get them to back down and get him killed at the same time.’
‘OK, so what did he know?’
Cody clapped his hands together. ‘Bravo, Mr “Take the Corporate Dollar”. Now you’re asking the right questions. Listen, I got some stuff around here somewhere, might help you out. Let me get it for you.’
‘Thought all your stuff was stolen.’
Cody’s lips parted, forcing a smile. ‘Not all of it.’
Cody stepped out of the room. Less than five seconds later there was the sound of a screen door slamming shut and Cody running. Lock was immediately up and on his feet, turfing Angel on to the floor. Angel righted herself and slammed into Lock’s legs. He stumbled, but stayed on his feet.
As he hit the doorway, Don made a point of blocking his way. Lock shoulder-charged him to the ground and bolted outside, just in time to see a red pick-up take off down the driveway, snow and mud spinning up from its rear tyres.
Lock pulled his gun, but the truck was already out of effective range to hit the tyres, and he didn’t think shooting an unarmed civilian, even a wanted fugitive, without proper authority would go down too well. He re-holstered the Sig as Don came outside.
Don read the look Lock gave him. ‘I’m sorry I got in your way, but Cody’s my friend.’
‘And you’d make a sacrifice for your friends, right?’
‘And for the movement.’
‘Well, I admire your principled stand,’ Lock said, grabbing Don’s wrist and finishing what he’d started. It snapped with a dull crack.
Don screamed in agony. ‘Son of a bitch! You broke it! You broke my wrist!’
‘Do something like that again and I’ll break your neck.’
Thirty
Lock pulled away from the house with an ageing yellow Labrador riding shotgun in the front passenger seat, instead of Josh Hulme. Angel had followed him and Don out to the car, jumped in, and then refused to budge. Lock had stared at her, and she’d stared right back. Screw it, Lock had thought, what’s one more damaged case in a car full of them?
‘Where we going now?’ asked Don from the back seat.
Lock flicked down the button to secure the rear doors. ‘You, asshole, are going to jail.’
‘I found him for you.’
‘And then you helped him get away.’
‘He doesn’t have the kid.’
‘So why’d he run?’
‘He’s wanted, that’s why. But not for this.’
Lock swivelled round. ‘He is now.’
‘You should have listened to him,’ Don pleaded.
‘Gimme a break. You people think everyone’s out to get you.’
‘OK, fine, so why did my dad know he was going to die?’
‘He told you that?’
‘He didn’t have to.’
As Angel stuck her head as close to the climate control vent as she could get it, Lock studied Don in the rear-view. ‘Keep talking.’
‘You ever hear that speech Martin Luther King gave in Memphis before he was shot?’
‘The “I Have a Dream” one?’ Lock ventured.
‘No. This one was about climbing to the top of the mountain, about how the civil rights movement was winning, but about how he might not be there to see the final victory. Something like that anyway. But the thing about it is, when you see the film of it, it’s like he knows that he doesn’t have long left.’
‘People had tried to kill King before.’
‘Yeah, but this was different.’
Lock’s anger at Don had settled enough to rekindle his interest. ‘So what’s that got to do with your father? You think he knew someone was going to try and take his life?’
‘No, nothing that specific, but, well, it’s like he knew something was up. Just the odd thing he’d say. About how things were about to change, that we had to stay strong.’
‘Janice told me you’d had threats. You get any in the days leading up to it?’
‘No, everything had gone really quiet on that front.’
‘Maybe your folks didn’t want to say anything,’ Lock suggested.
‘Believe me, I would have known. What’s the point of making a threat otherwise?’
‘Maybe you should ask your sister that. Or your buddy Cody.’
Don had a point, though. Lock had to acknowledge that. In a crowd, he never worried about the crazy guy shouting obscenities, working himself up into a lather and making all sorts of threats. You only had to worry when they went quiet. There was an ocean of difference between someone telling you they were about to commit an act of violence and someone resolving to do it. Someone who’d resolved to do it wouldn’t feel the need to tell the world about it. In fact, the last thing they would do is broadcast the fact and give the other person the jump.
As Don sulked in the back, Lock dropped back down on to the Long Island Expressway. Angel had somehow managed to push her head under the steering wheel and rest it on Lock’s lap again. It made shifting gears tricky. Lock rested one hand on the steering wheel and stroked the dog’s head with the other, grateful for the relative calm and the time it gave him to decide what to do next.
He’d leave the FBI to chase down Cody Parker. They could have Don too. That left him back at square one. And neatly etched inside that square was a dead woman.
Lock stopped off at a convenience store next to the West Jericho Turnpike and picked up a bag of dried dog food, bottled water, and two bowls. Angel dined al fresco in the freezing parking lot before sauntering over to a patch of grass at the rear of the store and carefully selecting the right spot to take a leak. Then she followed Lock back to the car and jumped on the front seat.
‘This is a temporary arrangement, so don’t go getting any ideas,’ he told her. ‘And if they somehow need you to cure cancer I’m kicking your ass to the curb. Comprende?’
Angel cocked her head.
‘And you can knock off cute shit like that.’
Don leaned forward through the gap between the front seats. ‘So where are we going now?’
‘We aren’t going anywhere,’ Lock replied. ‘I’m going back to work, and you’re going to jail.’