Fire Point (19 page)

65

Krank’s index finger ran over the contours of the map. Gretchen and Loser followed the movement from over either shoulder as he traced his way across ridges and down into the canyons around northern Malibu and beyond. He plucked a red marker pen from an empty coffee mug and began to circle the locations he’d spent months selecting. There were eighteen in total. Six per person. Together they formed a rough circle. He had scouted each one personally. He’d used online satellite maps to check for any major changes. He’d also kept an eye on things like applications for building permits.

Over his right shoulder, Gretchen sighed. He shot her a glance. ‘Problem?’ he asked.

She jabbed at a winding line on the map that curved its way down from the mountains to the ocean. ‘What about that?’

‘Don’t worry. I have it covered,’ he said, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice. As if he would have missed something so obvious. ‘I’ll need your help on it, though.’

‘Of course you will,’ said Gretchen.

Krank decided to ignore her tetchiness. Since the house, they were all a little more on edge. It was to be expected. Not that there had been any going back before but now everything was set in stone. All they could do was move forward and hope they reached their final objective before they were caught.

‘What about you?’ he asked Loser.

Loser shrugged. ‘I got it. Set, move, set, move. You need any more recon?’

‘No,’ said Krank. ‘I think we’re good.’

66

A wall-mounted television beamed live coverage from outside the Hollywood Hills house where a forensics team was busy at work completing the grisly task of unearthing what the LAPD was calling ‘a significant number of victims’. Tarian, still dressed in a bathrobe, had planted herself in front of the screen. From her blank expression it was hard for Lock to tell precisely how much she was taking in. In a lower corner of the screen some of the footage that had been culled from Marcus’s hard drive played on an endless loop. The footage had been leaked online a few hours previously. The LAPD press office had vehemently denied it had come from them, and Lock tended to believe them. The leak had served to keep the story at the top of every bulletin.

Lock poured a cup of black coffee and took it over to Tarian. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it to her.

She took it from him. Her eyes never left the screen.

Lock crossed to the couch, and picked up the remote. He turned the volume down. She turned and stared at him. Her look suggested she was seeing not just him but the world for the first time, and that it was a terrifying place.

‘Marcus must have helped killed those girls. Or at least he knew about it,’ she said, a statement of fact that sounded like a question.

‘Yes,’ said Lock. ‘He was involved.’

‘My son,’ she said.

Lock held up the remote. ‘Want me to switch it off? I’m not sure watching all of this is helping you. Why don’t you go take a shower and get dressed?’

She didn’t answer. He tossed the remote control back onto the couch. Tarian didn’t react but he knew what she was thinking. She was asking the questions that any decent person would ask under the circumstances. Was she somehow culpable? Had her parenting contributed to what had happened? Might she have done more to help her son, or at least to stop him hurting others?

Lock walked over to her. He put his arms around her and brushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘The only person responsible for what Marcus did or didn’t do was Marcus. You can’t blame yourself.’

‘But if I had—’

He cut her off. ‘You did what you could. Kids grow up. They have to take responsibility for their own actions.’

Tears welled in her eyes. ‘He was so angry, Ryan. Where did all the rage come from?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lock said. In reality, he could have made a fair guess. Lock wasn’t a therapist, or a shrink, but he hardly needed to be. Marcus Griffiths had grown up with a sense of entitlement that was larger than he was. Rather than make peace with the fact that he couldn’t force girls to like him, he had made it about them. Then he had run into Krank, a young man who had taken Marcus’s sense of unfairness and alienation and twisted it to his own ends.

When you’d seen as much of human frailty and plain old stupidity as Lock had, you understood that no amount of rationalization or amateur psychology could explain that some people were just assholes. Spoilt assholes, who lashed out when they couldn’t get what they wanted. That was why they were busy pulling young women out of the ground in the hills above the Sunset Strip. But none of that helped Tarian.

‘We need to move you,’ Lock said to her.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Someone leaked the fact you’re staying here. Ty and I have found an apartment for you in the Palisades. It’s not perfect but it’ll do for the next few days until you decide what you want to do.’

“What about the children?” she asked.

“We can take you to see them any time, but it might be better if they stayed with Teddy’s cousin for now. Just until some of the media craziness settles down,” said Lock. “That decision’s up to you of course. If you want them with you, we can arrange that too.”

She nodded. ‘Thank you. I don’t how I would have coped with all this if you hadn’t have been here for me.’

Lock smiled. ‘All part of the service.’

His eyes snapped back to the TV screen. It had cut from their reporter outside the house. The running ticker at the bottom of the screen heralded ‘Breaking News’. ‘Go get in the shower. I’ll pack for you,’ he said to Tarian.

As she headed to the bathroom, Lock grabbed the remote from the couch. He waited until he heard the hiss of water from the shower before turning the volume back up.

The two anchors in the studio were talking breathlessly about ‘new footage’ that had appeared in the last few minutes on social media. Lock racked the volume up two more clicks as Ty walked into the suite. He was holding up his cell phone.

‘You see this? Just appeared on YouTube,’ Ty informed him. ‘Already got like fifty thousand hits.’

The anchors in the studio cut to the footage. Lock recognized the face of Charles Kim filling the TV and Ty’s cell screen. He was shot from the chest up. His hair was cut short and he was dressed in military fatigues. He looked a million miles distant from the one-time party animal and pick-up artist that Marcus had run into. He was reading from some kind of prepared statement in a droning monotone.

Lock turned to Ty. ‘You watched this already?’ he asked Ty.

Ty nodded. ‘Five minutes of pure crazy.’

‘Okay, give me the Cliff Notes,’ said Lock.

67

Wearing Aviator sunglasses, a grey USC Trojans sweatshirt, with the hood pulled up to cover her face, Gretchen quickly ended the call she’d just made, using the code word they’d established with the LAPD that would allow them to separate official communication from some random civilian trying to crash their party. She pressed both thumbs down on either side of the back of the cell phone, and slid off the panel. She dug a long fingernail inside, pulled out the long black battery and tossed it into the trash can along with the tiny SIM chip. She got up from the bench and began to make her way slowly toward the apartment entrance.

As students milled around Cardinal Gardens, either waiting for friends or heading to and from classes at the main campus, she counted down slowly from thirty. She had guessed it would take twenty seconds for USC’s TrojanAlert system to activate. Krank had gone for fifteen seconds. Loser had hedged his bets at twenty-one or over.

Out of the corner of her eye, Gretchen could see the happy couple in their usual spot. She wondered how dumb they were to be still on campus with everything that had happened. If the situation had been reversed, she would have been on a plane to Europe long before now.

The countdown had reached seventeen when she heard the first pings as the incoming text message started hitting people’s cell phones. She took a moment to savor the reactions as they shifted from puzzlement to a creeping alarm. People’s bodies stiffened. They began looking around. If they were walking, their pace quickened. If they had been sitting down they began to get up. A blonde co-ed was already calling someone and shrieking into her phone like a complete drama queen. Gretchen almost regretted that she was here to do a job. She would have relished the chance to give the blonde airhead something to actually scream about.

A campus security patrol car rolled past, the window down, the rent-a-cop hanging his arm out, scoping out the area. She adjusted her course so that her back was to him and all he would see was a frightened little student heading back to her dorm building as instructed.

The system was a thing of beauty. If you were in a classroom, dorm or other building you had to stay there. If you were outside you had to move inside. The rationale was obvious. Shooters roamed. If you weren’t in their path, they couldn’t stumble across you. If they couldn’t stumble across you, you would be safe. It made sense. Unless . . .

A jock college-athlete type guy was holding the door open, shooing people inside. He wasn’t taking time to check anyone’s ID. He was just standing there being a good little white knight. She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. Sure enough, Stacy and her dumb-ass frat-boy boyfriend were making a beeline toward her. She hurried through the open door and made a dash for the stairwell. She ran up the stairs until she hit the third floor, pushed out through the door and into the corridor.

She knew where Stacy’s room was. She headed straight for it. A couple of students were crowded in the corridor but they were so busy chatting about the security alert that they didn’t appear to see her. She swiped a cloned key card across the door handle. It clicked open. She walked inside, taking an immediate left into the bathroom. She stood behind the door and waited.

The wait wasn’t a long one. Stacy and her boyfriend were obedient little sheeple, Gretchen thought. The door opened and they walked in. She had kept the bathroom door half closed, at the same angle it had been when she had walked in. The gap between the door and the frame allowed her to watch them as they walked into the tiny studio.

Stacy told the boyfriend she needed to pee. Gretchen tensed. As she walked in, Gretchen grabbed her round the neck. She made sure she could see the blade of the knife. Stacy’s eyes went wide. The boyfriend must have had his earphones on because he didn’t react to the slight scuffle. Gretchen had to walk Stacy back out before he realized what was going on.

He got to his feet. He raised his hands. ‘What is this? What do you want?’ he asked.

Stacy wriggled and Gretchen had to strengthen her choke hold. ‘Sit down,’ she said.

He did as he was told, then reached into his pocket and dragged out his wallet. ‘Here, if it’s money you want, you can take this.’

When he started pulling out credit cards like so much confetti, Gretchen poked the tip of the knife into Stacy’s cheek just enough to draw blood. ‘I’ve not come here for money.’

This seemed to shatter his worldview – as if money was the only motivation on offer in his universe. He looked up at her. ‘So what do you want?’

Gretchen dug out the small handheld Flip camera and threw it over to him. He caught it one-handed. ‘Your girlfriend here is going to put the record straight about Marcus Griffiths, and you’re going to record it.’

Stacy began to struggle. Gretchen let her see the blade again. ‘You didn’t tell the whole truth, did you?’ she said.

‘What’s this about?’ he demanded.

‘Just hit that red button when I’m clear,’ said Gretchen, sheathing the knife and coming back up with a handgun. ‘I’ll ask the questions. The little princess here will answer and I’ll be on my way.’ She loosened her grip, and stuck her face right next to Stacy’s. ‘Are you ready?’

Stacy nodded. ‘Yes.’

Gretchen stepped away from her and moved toward the window. She quickly closed the curtains, and raised the gun so that it was aimed at Stacy. ‘Okay, so tell us about the first time you slept with Marcus Griffiths when you were dating your shit-for-brains boyfriend here. Then tell everyone how you changed your mind and told everyone he was stalking you so that everyone wouldn’t see you for the little slut you truly are.’

Twenty minutes later, Gretchen slipped out of the studio-sized dorm room, and closed the door behind her. There was a slick of blood on one sleeve of her sweatshirt. Now that she was outside in the corridor it worried her. Someone was bound to notice it. She checked her watch. She was leaving a little early. The dorms, along with the rest of the campus, would still be locked down. She had time.

She wanded the card past the door and walked back in. As she passed the bathroom she could see the blood-covered bodies lying in the tub. She kept walking, opened a drawer and found a suitable replacement sweatshirt. She took off hers and put it on, making sure that she still had the Flip camera on her as she walked back out into the corridor.

It was empty. The door leading to the stairwell opened and a security guard walked through. Gretchen raised the gun and fired three shots, two at his chest, and a final shot at his head as he fell. She stepped over him and kept walking. No one came out of their room. They stayed where they were, just as they’d been instructed. This time it would save their lives. Next time would be another matter.