Halfway through, he found that he had lost his appetite. He put the sandwich on the tray outside the door, then returned to his work. With the file exhausted, he got out his laptop and opened up the web browser. He threw Charlie Mendez’s name into Google and waited.
On the second page of search results there was a link to a video clip from a local news channel. The heading read: ‘Mendez Bail Outrage’. He clicked on the link and a separate window opened. He hit Play. It was only when the footage rolled that he realized he had no idea what Mendez looked like. Although he had read several thousand words about the man, the file had contained no photographs.
On screen, dressed in a smart but obviously off-the-rack suit — probably chosen by his multi-million-dollar legal team to downplay his wealth — Charlie Mendez stood on the courthouse steps. He was about five feet ten inches tall, slim, with sandy blond hair, brown eyes and broad, handsome features. He had the healthy glow typical of those who had grown up wealthy.
To his left, with one hand resting on his shoulder, was his mother, Miriam, a pinch-faced WASP dressed in a twin-set and pearls. Her hair was blonde and perfectly coiffed. Charlie’s lead counsel was on his right: Tony Medina, a handsome, but prematurely greying middle-aged Hispanic, with serious political ambitions. Although the Mendez family were about as Hispanic as Ronald McDonald, Medina had done his best to introduce a racial element into the case, arguing that police and prosecution fervour had been heightened because the victim was a young white woman and his client was, at least in name, a member of a minority group.
Needless to say, painting the playboy heir to a multi-billion-dollar fortune as a victim was a tough sell in a country still reeling from a bitter recession. But, like any attorney, Medina was working with what he had: very little.
As a forest of microphones bunched around him, Charlie Mendez read from a prepared statement. His delivery was flat and almost entirely devoid of emotion. ‘I would like to thank my family, particularly my mother, for standing by me during this difficult time. I would also like to thank my attorney, Anthony Medina, and the other members of my legal team,’ Medina squeezed Charlie’s shoulder paternally, ‘for their hard work and dedication so far. I am also grateful to the judge for allowing me to return to my family for the remainder of this process.’
‘No kidding,’ Lock muttered, under his breath, and paused the clip. Less than two weeks later, Mendez had fled. A rapist and a coward.
The phone rang on his desk. It was a local number. He picked it up. ‘Marcie?’
‘Mr Lock,’ said a perky-sounding young woman, ‘I work for Mrs Miriam Mendez, the mother of Charlie Mendez. Mrs Mendez would like to speak with you. Do you have a pen so you can take down the address?’
Twelve
Twelve-foot-high black security gates slid open and Lock’s Audi nudged its way through. Next to him on the front passenger seat was Marcie Braun’s case folder. As he crested a rise leading up to the Mendez compound, he glimpsed Montecito laid out beneath him, the upscale part of already upscale Santa Barbara. A deep blue Pacific shimmered in the distance.
He wondered how the matriarch of the Mendez family had known he was in town. Not that it was much of a jump: the Santa Barbara Police Department was a small force. Santa Barbara, at the higher end, was probably a pretty tight-knit community. Word would have got round.
A minute and a half later he pulled his Audi on to a large motor court, which fronted the main house: a 1930s colonial mansion. To one side, Lock could see two tennis courts, one grass and one clay. Beyond them lay an Olympic-sized swimming pool with separate ten-person hot tubs at either end. A pool boy was fishing out a couple of rogue leaves with a large net.
He pulled into a space between a special-edition Aston Martin V12 Vantage Carbon Black and a Bentley Flying Spur and got out. He took a moment to check out the two automobiles. Neither looked as if they had ever been driven: they were showroom new. There was money, he thought, and then there was Montecito money.
Sunlight filtered through the sycamores at the edge of the house, dappling the steps leading up to the vast front door. Lock rang the bell and settled in to wait. His invitation was for four p.m. It was one minute past. He had no idea if that counted as fashionably late.
The front door opened and a maid ushered him inside. She offered to take his jacket but he declined. ‘Mrs Mendez is in the drawing room,’ she said.
He followed her down a long corridor, their footsteps echoing on the dark mahogany floor. Lock didn’t know much about art but he could pick out one or two names from the pictures on the wall. Carrie had dragged him around the Museum of Modern Art in New York a couple of times. There was a Klimt and what looked to him, from the angular face staring at him, like a Picasso. He doubted they were prints.
Glancing up, he saw the red orb of a camera tracking their progress. You didn’t spend that kind of money on an art collection without an efficient security system to protect it. He wondered what the cameras had witnessed, whether they had observed Charlie Mendez saying a final goodbye to his mother before he had taken off.
‘Mr Lock. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’
The corridor opened into a large sunny room, dominated by a vast marble fireplace. Miriam Mendez was standing by a set of french windows, which opened on to the azure swimming pool. Whatever Lock’s preconceived notions had been, she was not the woman he had been expecting. For a start, the perfectly coiffed blonde curls of a wealthy Santa Barbara matron were gone, reduced to a few wispy clumps at the side of her head. Her face was gaunt, cheekbones jutting, not unlike those in the Picasso he had passed. She was skeletal and drawn.
‘Cancer,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘Terminal. If there was a cure then, believe me, I would have found it — I have the money and access to the finest doctors in the world. Sadly, there are certain things that money can’t buy. Please, sit down.’
Lock eased himself into a club chair.
‘You’re looking for my son, I believe,’ she said, after a long pause.
Lock cleared his throat. ‘Like many people. The only difference is that I’m going to find him and bring him back to serve his sentence.’
Miriam Mendez smiled. It was a warm, open smile, which wrong-footed Lock. It wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting. ‘Good. I hope you do. I mean that. Charlie has brought nothing but shame to our family. Of course I don’t wish anything terrible to happen to him but it’s right that he should take his punishment like a man.’
‘So will you help me find him, Mrs Mendez?’ Lock asked.
‘You don’t know where he is?’ she asked, innocence personified.
Lock smiled. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Well, Mr Lock, if I knew where he was, I would fly down there myself and tell him to put an end to all of this nonsense. All the family knows is that he’s in Mexico somewhere, and even that’s a guess. He may have moved on from there for all we know.’
‘So if you don’t know where he is, why did you want to see me?’
‘You heard what happened to the other men who tried to find him?’ She allowed the question to hang in the air. ‘Charlie has obviously got in with a bad crowd.’
Lock bit back a smirk. ‘Bad crowd’ suggested kids who hung out late smoking dope and drinking beer, rather than narco-trafficking paramilitaries who butchered people in cold blood. ‘You think I shouldn’t go?’ he asked.
She did her best to look puzzled. ‘I’m certainly not trying to dissuade you, but at the same time I hope there’s no more senseless loss of life.’
‘Before he left, did your son give any indication that he was going to flee, Mrs Mendez?’
Miriam Mendez sighed. ‘If he did, I’d hardly make it public. But, no, Mr Lock, he didn’t. I think he just panicked.’