Gridlock: The Third Ryan Lock Novel Read online

  Lock exhaled. ‘I know you get in some major shit if you say too much, but the more I know, the better I can do my job. And if the FBI are getting involved there’s no way in hell they’re going to tell me anything.’

  Stanner motioned for him to move a little further away from the house and on to the sidewalk. ‘About four years ago an adult-film director by the name of Gary Fairfax was found dead at his apartment in Van Nuys. He was pretty rough with the female talent. Liked to knock them about sometimes.’

  ‘And this ties in with Cindy Canyon how?’

  ‘It doesn’t.’ Stanner hesitated. ‘Not exactly anyway. But it might tie in with Raven.’

  ‘She knew the guy?’

  ‘She knew him. She worked for him. She threatened to kill him.’

  ‘Was she interviewed at the time?’

  ‘She had an alibi. A good one. Watertight, in fact. It all checked out. Plus people who make threats tend not to be the ones who back them up with action.’

  ‘So we’re back to square one.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Stanner said. ‘I got a call yesterday from someone else in the porn business, another director who worked with Raven, an even bigger scumbag than the guy who got snuffed – if such a thing is imaginable. He said he’d been getting some fairly heavy-duty threats. Notes showing up in his mailbox.’

  ‘So what? He’s a porn director. Wouldn’t he be used to threats?’

  ‘Maybe so, but the handwriting was a direct match for the note that was left with the dress.’

  Nineteen

  Lock stood in the darkened living room, listening to the house creak and groan as, outside, the wind whipped up a storm of late autumn leaves. The first time he took residential guard duty at night he always tried to tune himself into the location. Every house or office building had its own little quirks: a squeaky floorboard or an air vent that whistled in the wind. The better you knew them, the easier it was to click when something was out of place. The same went for people.

  Upstairs, Raven, Kevin and Ty were asleep, sheer exhaustion trumping fear in the case of the first two. Being scared or on the edge for any length of time drained the body of energy. It was why men in his job quickly learned to take control of anxiety and fear. He visualized his response level in colors. Green was normal, amber corresponded to no immediate threat but a heightened level of awareness, and red was game on. If you stayed on red for too long, eventually you’d crash and burn.

  After dinner, he had agreed with Ty that he would take a first shift of residential security lasting four hours. Then Ty, who hadn’t had the early start Lock had had, would pick up a final five-hour stint. Four or five solid hours of sleep were plenty. Lock had gone days at a time on far, far less.

  Taking the first shift would give him the opportunity to think over the day’s events and settle them in his mind. As long as the intruder didn’t choose to come crashing through a window with something deadlier than an old house key. His recent appearance had ratcheted up the threat level. It wasn’t a question now of if he would be back but when. And, to make matters worse, he now knew that he would be facing opposition so he’d come prepared.

  Lock walked to the french windows at the rear of the house. Beyond the deck was the sweeping panorama of city lights and he wondered if the stalker was down there somewhere, planning his next move, or whether the spectre of something more sinister, which Stanner had raised, had substance. Could Raven be implicated in all of this?

  The fleeing figure Ty had chased said she wasn’t. Her threatening a movie director who had then turned up dead suggested she might be. The note with the dress could have been planted by anyone. And now another director was being threatened. The cops would be looking into it – but with how much manpower? Perhaps this was Lock’s opportunity to get off the back foot at last and start to make some progress of his own. He’d need help, and he had just the woman on standby.

  Walking back into the living room, he pulled out his cell phone and called Carrie.

  She sounded slightly groggy and he worried for a moment that he’d woken her.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘All shut down nice and tight for the evening. Listen, I know it’s late, but Stanner came by and he mentioned the name of someone I could use some more information on. He’s a guy who’s worked with Raven in the past.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He gave Carrie the name, then told her what Stanner had said and what had gone down at the house.

  ‘I’ll get right on to it,’ Carrie said.

  At the other end of the line he could hear waves breaking against the shore and closed his eyes, wishing he was there with her. ‘It can wait until morning,’ he said softly.

  Carrie sighed. ‘It’s fine. I can’t sleep anyway.’

  ‘If you’re worried about me, don’t be. It would take a lot more than one crazy to take me down.’

  ‘I know,’ Carrie said, clearly unconvinced.

  ‘Is something else worrying you?’

  He heard her sigh again. ‘It’s nothing. Forget it.’

  ‘Carrie? I’m not here alone with her, if that’s what you’re worried about. Ty’s upstairs.’

  ‘You really think I’m that insecure, Ryan?’

  ‘No. I was only saying that—’

  ‘Well, don’t. You want me to look into this director? Because if you do, I should get going.’

  He reached up his left hand and worried at the scar on the back of his head, a souvenir from a door that had been rigged to a shotgun. ‘I don’t want to say goodnight like this.’

  A moment of silence passed between them. Upstairs, he could hear someone snoring loudly enough to compete with the Santa Ana winds. It sounded like Kevin but it might well have been Ty. In any case, he should probably go up and take a look, maybe close a bedroom door if one was open.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Carrie said at last.

  ‘So, we’re good?’ His heart rate speeded up as he waited for her to answer. No job was worth putting their relationship on the line for.

  ‘We’re always good, Ryan.’

  ‘I love you. You know that, right?’ he said softly.

  ‘I love you too, cowboy.’

  Twenty

  After the phone call, Carrie stepped out on to the deck, Angel padding after her. She hoped the fresh air might clear her head. Until now, with Ryan Lock, she had felt she was with a man truly as his equal. It wasn’t something they’d ever discussed; that was just the way it had happened. And now she was feeling like some kid who was worried her boyfriend was after the school slut behind her back.

  She hated herself for feeling jealous. She hated herself for acting insecure. But most of all she hated the way that, as soon as someone threatened her relationship with Ryan, especially a woman like Raven, all her feminist convictions, all her confidence, had flown straight out of the window.

  When Carrie thought about Raven she didn’t think about how women in the porn industry were treated like pieces of meat. Neither did she consider how amazing it was that Raven had not only survived that but made a life for herself and her brother. No. She had only one thought about the woman he was protecting: What a skank.

  Carrie walked back inside and crossed to the dining table, which faced one of the large floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the blue-black Pacific stretching to infinity. She flipped open her MacBook Air and sat down. Angel settled with a snuffle at her feet.

  She opened the browser, which defaulted to Google, plugged the name Ryan had just given her into the search engine and pressed enter. The search returned over a million results. She clicked on the Wikipedia entry first. Wikipedia might not always be completely accurate but it would give her a general overview. Both she and Lock were delving into a world that neither of them knew and, as a journalist, she wanted to be objective. As she read the entry, though, objectivity dissolved into a thick stew of revulsion.

  It began:

  Vince Vice (born Paul Aronofsky
on 6 August 1956 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an adult film performer, producer and director who gained notoriety with his gonzo-style movies which usually feature female adult film actors who are new to the industry. While all the performers in his movies are over the age of eighteen, the scenarios usually depicted in the films revolve around underage girls. Female performers in his movies frequently appear dressed as schoolgirls and Girl Scouts and he has said that he deliberately casts actresses who ‘look like they’re underage, like they’re your babysitter, because guys get off on that stuff even if they won’t admit it’.

  Vice has been criticized, even by people within the adult industry, for the simulated violence in his movies, which frequently feature actresses being forced to perform sexual acts apparently against their will. Choking, vomiting and simulated rape are frequent features of his movies. Some actresses have alleged that Vice has sexually assaulted them during filming but no charges have ever been brought.

  Vice’s production company, along with his freelance work, have made him a multi-millionaire.

  There was more but Carrie stopped reading. She got up and slid back the glass door to let some air in, then walked back to the computer, scanning as quickly as she could through the rest of the entry. It didn’t get any better. Even with the sanitized descriptions of a Wikipedia entry she felt ill. Then she realized that this man’s name (if the term ‘man’ could be applied to someone like this) had generated more than a million results and that he’d grown rich producing movies that deliberately set out to degrade and debase women.

  There was a long list of some of the performers he’d worked with, women with improbable names, like Candy and Kitten. Raven Lane’s was near the bottom. She clicked on Raven’s name, which defaulted to her Wikipedia entry so she pulled the Google home page up again and did an image search, hoping for a picture of this guy.

  There were lots on the first page.

  The first took Carrie to a head shot of Vince Vice. He had a gaunt face, as if his skin was stretched way too tight over his skull, short-cropped peroxide-blond hair, and cold blue eyes. His lips were parted over his teeth in a theatrical snarl.

  Not all the pictures were of Vice: some were of his co-stars, if that wasn’t too grandiose a term. One in particular caught Carrie’s eye. The actress had her hair in pigtails, and makeup had been plastered on to her face as if she was trying lipstick and mascara for the first time. It was smeared by the tears that had left thick black streaks running down her cheeks. Her eyes were dead.

  Over the woman’s shoulder, and slightly out of focus, stood Vince Vice, with the same snarling expression. This time you could see more of him: he had a powerful, sinewy physique, a broad chest and bulging biceps. He looked exactly as he was: a man who clearly delighted in inflicting humiliation on women.

  Carrie felt simultaneously sick and angry. If someone had threatened to kill him, she thought, good for them.

  Twenty-one

  FBI profiler Levon Hill hunkered down in the back of the Arizona State Police radio car and watched as an angry red tinge blossomed on the edge of the eastern horizon. Sunrise was minutes away and the SWAT team was already creeping into place, ready to storm the house and braced for a fight. Reports from Los Angeles suggested the target was already gone, but at this stage nothing could be taken for granted. They had a suspect. They had an address. It was worth checking it out, and making assumptions with someone like this was always dangerous.

  His right hand shielding his eyes from the rising sun, Hill studied the target location. If the man inside was responsible for the murder of Cindy Canyon they had to be prepared for the worst, although in Hill’s experience serial killers were often surprisingly meek when they knew the game was up. Oftentimes, they played a part in their own capture, their ego driving them to be discovered so that they could then share more fully in the glory of what they’d done. At least, those were the theories.

  Ten years into his work with the Bureau, Hill had been present at the arrest of a serial killer only once before. That case had ended in a shack near an abandoned cattle ranch in Montana and the uncovering of a gory collection of trophies. Years later, Hill still had nightmares from the images of that morning. He was hoping that this time they were wrong, that the man they believed was threatening Raven Lane was just a regular asshole. He could deal with regular assholes.

  Hauling himself up, Hill stared down the street at the target location: 1425 Rattlesnake Trail was so far on the wrong side of the tracks in Tempe, Arizona, that even if the trains had still been running you wouldn’t have been able to hear them. Clapperboard houses spoke of hasty construction and decades of neglect. Weeds filled every yard, snaking over rusting engine blocks and decrepit children’s climbing frames.

  No one was about. No one was walking drowsily to their car, or to catch a bus and head off to work. This was a community on the wrong end of the American Dream, a place devoid of ambition beyond the last toke of marijuana, or slug of malt liquor, a place where the small hopes people harbored of a stable family life, or of a child attending college, or of a house where both parents raised their kids with love and respect, had come to die. This block was smalltown ghetto to its core.

  A black-gloved hand tapped the windscreen. The SWAT team was getting ready to make its dynamic entry. Four men stood by the front door, two of them hefting a battering ram. Other SWAT officers were fanned out around the house, squatting low beneath windowsills and folded in tight against exterior walls, body armor making their movement seem strained and lumbering.

  Hill opened his door and got out. Once they were inside, and the suspect was in custody, he would be able to take a look around. He raised first one foot off the ground, then the other, slipping on blue plastic shoe covers. Nervous, he ran a hand through his hair. He waited, a man given to going about his work in a quiet and methodical manner without making too many waves. His nature reflected itself in sombre brown eyes and a loping gait, which seemed designed to minimize his six-foot-four-inch frame. A full beard provided him with further camouflage. Levon Hill was about as far as from the clean-cut preppy types the FBI usually attracted as it was possible to get.

  At the front door of the house, a member of the SWAT team counted down from five with his hand. At one his thumb folded down, forming a fist, and he stepped back, out of the way of the battering ram. The door flew open on first impact. The SWAT team poured inside, guns drawn, an officer hoisting a pump-action shotgun leading the charge.

  Behind them, Hill listened intently but all he could hear were the barks of the SWAT team calling to no one in particular.

  Shit.

  He’s gone.

  We’re too late.

  He started walking towards the house. The shouts went on. Then he half caught someone scream, ‘In here!’ and quickened his pace, hope rising with every step, only to fall away as he reached the entry and stepped into the dark stump of a hallway. Helmets off, guns reholstered and shoulders slumped, a couple of the SWAT team stood in what passed for the living room. A TV in one corner crackled with static.

  The metallic smell of blood filled the air. At the opposite end of the room, their target, Larry Johns, slumped in an armchair. His trousers and underwear were missing. Hill could see them lying in a heap behind the chair. It didn’t take a genius to work out that Larry hadn’t been watching Good Morning America.

  His head was still attached to his body but, from the blood patterns on his body, the chair and the floor, he was far from intact. Both testicles and his penis had been hacked off, leaving a gaping wound in his groin. The missing items were nowhere to be seen.

  Outside, beyond the front yard, more law-enforcement vehicles were starting to arrive as word seeped out that the main suspect was dead – a victim, one could presume, of the real killer.

  Hill glanced back to Larry Johns’s body. The head was attached but the killer had made a pretty unambiguous statement, if in a less graphic way than he had with Cindy Canyon.

  A blin
dfold masked the eyes.

  Hill didn’t dare touch it but, skirting the wads of congealed blood on the floor, he moved closer, then leaned down so that his face was level with Johns’s. The gap between the blindfold and the eye socket confirmed his hunch. The killer had gouged the man’s eyes from their sockets before blindfolding him.

  The contradiction made no sense. Why remove someone’s eyes and then go to all the trouble of placing a blindfold over the empty sockets?

  He pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket and made a note of it, then snapped a few quick pictures of the scene. One thing was clear: the killer wasn’t simply interested in killing Larry Johns. They were sending a message. A screwed-up, garbled, crazy message, but a message all the same.

  He walked out of the house and stood on the sidewalk, his gold-on-blue FBI windcheater ensuring he was left alone. People were slowly emerging from their houses, bleary-eyed, in ragged bathrobes or shorts and T-shirts. Local cops were fanning out to secure the area around the house. A couple were beginning to canvass the neighbors. Doors were being closed now. In places like this the cops were viewed with distrust and suspicion, and no one wanted to be seen speaking to one.

  There was, he thought, an obvious explanation for what had happened to the man inside the house. The motive was one of the most powerful: revenge. Larry Johns had threatened and humiliated Raven Lane at the club. Then he was found dead. And not just dead but mutilated. The cutting off of his genitals emasculated him, rendered him impotent.

  That still left the eyes, though. Where did gouging them out fit in? Was it something about the very act of looking? Feminist theory talked about objectifying women, about the male gaze and how it reduced women to objects of desire rather than human beings. Could that be something to do with it?

  Removing the man’s genitals and eyes suggested one thing quite strongly to Hill. That the person who had done this was a woman.

  But how did Cindy Canyon fit in with it? Was there a link between her and Larry Johns after all? Their bodies had been altered after death, which was significant. But the ways in which they had been altered were very different.