Fire Point (3 page)

8

Sunlight sparkled on the water
as Lock strolled with Tarian Griffiths by his side. He had suggested they take a walk for two reasons. First, there would be less chance of their conversation being overheard, and second, walking made conversations like this easier. There was something about physical activity that helped people unburden themselves. And while Tarian Griffiths had what seemed like the perfect life, the reality was different. In Lock’s experience, it usually was.

According to Tarian, even though Marcus had been barely five when she had left his father, he had never recovered from his parents’ split. He was a quiet child, introverted, and had found it difficult to make friends. Later, when his behavior had become more difficult a psychologist had diagnosed Asperger’s, but Teddy Griffiths had flown into a rage at the very idea. He was old school. Didn’t believe in putting labels on kids. He definitely didn’t want people thinking his stepson was some kind of a (his words) ‘loony tune’.

For her part, Tarian had hoped that her first-born son was simply a late developer. That he would find his feet and place in the world at college. He was bright and attended the University of Southern California. But barely three months after starting in the fall, he had dropped out and moved to a place in Marina Del Rey. No amount of coaxing from Tarian or bluster from Teddy would get him to go back to college. His biological father, Peter, blamed Tarian.

A breeze picked up from the Pacific, sweeping Tarian’s long auburn hair back over her face. ‘So,’ Lock asked, ‘why don’t you speak to a mental-health professional?’

‘Marcus flips out if I even mention the idea. I thought that perhaps this way I’d have someone close to him who could keep an eye without any of that stigma. And, if I’m honest, I don’t think it would hurt to have a male role model around him who isn’t constantly telling him he’s a failure.’

‘You think that’s how Marcus will see it? Or do you think he’ll believe you’re interfering?’

‘He won’t think I’m interfering if there’s a reason for us to have called in private security.’

‘But there’s not,’ said Lock, not liking where this was going.

Tarian stopped and stared out across the marina to the ocean beyond. ‘A white lie, Mr Lock. And, given the unusual circumstances, I’d be happy to pay double your usual fee. If you can get Marcus back on track, perhaps even re-enrolled at USC, I’ll pay you an additional fifty thousand dollars.’

‘Fifty thousand dollars?’ Lock said, not entirely sure he’d heard her correctly.

‘If that’s too small an amount . . . I’d have to talk to Teddy, but I’m sure that I can—’

Lock cut her off: ‘First, let me talk to my business partner. If we think we can help, we will. But I don’t want to take your money without a good reason.’

Something approaching a smirk flashed across her face. ‘Well, Mr Lock, for someone like me, that’d be a first.’

9

Sitting in traffic on Ocean Avenue, Lock called Tyrone ‘Ty’ Johnson. They had crossed paths while serving in the military, and quickly established an unlikely friendship that had turned into a lucrative high-end private security business after they had both moved to civilian life. Lock took Ty briefly through his meeting with Tarian Griffiths, getting no great response until he reached her offer.
Ty cleared his throat. ‘Double our usual fee? What’s there to think about, brother?’

‘The money’s good, but it hardly qualifies as a job. I mean, what are we gonna be doing apart from making sure he eats his Wheaties and wipes his ass? That’s the beauty of it, know what I’m saying? And the mom’s smoking hot too, Ryan. I Googled her. Goddamn, that’s one good-looking woman.’

Lock flipped on his turn signal to take the Channel Road down to Pacific Coast Highway. He was heading back to the condo he was renting in Pacific Palisades. ‘Number one, she’s married. Number two, clients are off limits.’

‘Just saying. Listen, I’m driving up from Long Beach in the morning. Don’t turn it down before I get there.’

‘I wasn’t planning on it,’ said Lock, as the lights flipped and he joined the jostle of beach traffic and people heading back to the Valley from jobs on the West Side; the ocean shimmered to darkness on his left as the sun crashed hard into the Pacific Ocean.

As he pulled into a parking spot outside his condo, Lock’s cell phone rang. It was one of the ex-cops he’d tasked with checking out Marcus. He listened to what the guy had to say, asked a few questions and killed the call. If he’d been curious before, now he was worried.

He ditched his plan to head back to his condo, switched lanes, then headed through the McClure Tunnel and onto the 10 freeway, heading for the main campus of the University of Southern California near Westwood.

1
0

Next morning, Lock
took a seat on the hotel terrace where he had agreed to meet Tarian. It was a table in the far corner. His seat backed onto a wall and gave him a view not only of his fellow guests but the deep stretch of beach. Unfeasibly tanned and healthy-looking folks biked or rollerbladed past on the concrete path. Further down, a group of young men who looked like they’d stepped off the cover of
GQ
magazine were getting ready to play beach volleyball.

Lock glanced at the file he’d begun to assemble on Marcus Griffiths, then up at the perfect blue sky. Everywhere he looked all he could see were beautiful people busy being beautiful. He had a sense of why this young man might have felt he didn’t fit.

Ty strode toward Lock’s table, pulled out a seat and sat down. Boot-cut jeans, a grey-marled T-shirt that revealed tree-trunk arms, and Oakley sunglasses that only a six-foot-five-inch African-American Marine could pull off without looking like he was trying too hard.

The two men fist-bumped as a waiter appeared. ‘Ice water’s fine,’ said Ty, his elbows resting on the table. He glared at Lock from behind his Oakleys. ‘Trying to e-con-o-mize.’

The waiter left them to it. ‘You need a loan, Tyrone?’ said Lock.

‘No need of a loan when we got a primo gig ahead of us. Right?’

Lock slid the file over the table to his partner. Ty took off his sunglasses, opened the folder and began to flick through the pages.

‘This is an upscale place, so try to read without moving your lips,’ said Lock.

Ty flipped him off by way of reply.

‘How’s Malik?’ Lock asked. Malik was the friend Ty had been visiting with in Long Beach.

‘About how you’d expect a man to be after what went down,’ said Ty, flipping to a fresh page.Malik’s family had been killed after Malik had uncovered a case of serial child sex abuse at the college where he worked as basketball coach in Minnesota. Ty and Lock had come to his aid, but too late to save Malik’s wife and kids.

‘He knows he can call me anytime,’ said Lock.

Ty gave a curt nod. ‘I told him. He appreciates it.’ He paused as he flipped another page. ‘How you doing?’ He shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Y’know, being here.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Ty, as he got to the section of the hastily assembled file where things got interesting. The letterhead read: ‘County Court of Los Angeles’.

Ty’s ice water was delivered with the flourish befitting an eight-hundred-dollars-a-night beachfront hotel. He took a sip, put it to one side and went back to reading the court document. After a time, he looked up. ‘Who’s the girl?’‘Don’t know for sure, apart from what it says there. Freshman at USC. Grew up in Orange County. Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Had some of the same classes as our boy. Guess that’s where he ran into her.’

Ty rubbed at his face. ‘If they were in the same classes and he has a restraining order that prohibits him being within two hundred yards of her, that might explain him dropping out. You think the mom knows?’

Lock glanced past Ty to the white-painted french doors that led out onto the terrace. ‘I don’t know. Let’s ask her.’

11

More than a few male guests, including those seated with wives and girlfriends, checked Tarian out as she crossed the terrace toward them. Lock guessed that, behind his Oakleys, Ty was one of them. If she was fazed by the male attention, she didn’t show it. Lock guessed she was used to that kind of reaction to the point where it barely registered.

He and Ty stood as she reached them. Lock did the introductions. Tarian sat down. The waiter was dismissed with the back of her hand and a curt ‘In a moment.

‘So?’ she began. ‘Do we have an agreement that you’ll help my son?’

Lock picked up the folder and tossed it across the table at her. ‘We did. But I can’t work for someone who lies to me.’

‘It was stupid of me not to tell you,’ said Tarian, her eyes fixed on Lock. ‘I thought that if you knew you might not be prepared to help. I didn’t think you’d be amenable to helping someone who’d been accused of stalking.’

‘A little more than accused,’ said Lock, tapping a finger down on the folder. ‘Judges don’t hand those out for nothing.’

‘And I’m taking it seriously, Mr Lock. Though I do have to say that . . . Well, Marcus gets obsessional about things. And sometimes he doesn’t realize the effect that can have on other people. He never actually threatened this young woman. He was just overly persistent.’

Ty was looking at Lock. ‘That so?’

Lock nodded. ‘I went out and spoke to her last night. He never threatened her, but she still felt threatened. Not sure how useful a distinction that is, Mrs Griffiths.’

‘What else did she say?’ Tarian said. ‘Only we’re trying to sort something out with the administration at USC to see if Marcus might be able to return in the spring.’

‘And I hope you do,’ said Lock. ‘But I’m afraid we can’t help you.’

‘Can’t?’ asked Tarian. ‘Or won’t?’

‘We protect people from others, not from themselves,’ said Lock. ‘You need a mental-health professional, not private security. And I don’t say that to be unkind.’

Tarian leaned forward, lowering her voice. ‘Teddy’s spoken about that. About having Marcus . . .’ She hesitated. Lock had noticed that, unlike cancer or heart disease, when people spoke about mental illness they tended to be more careful about their choice of words. It was as if, even after all this time, the stigma wouldn’t go away. ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘my husband thinks Marcus might be better off if he was placed in some kind of secure facility. For his own good. But until he does something . . .’

Right now, Lock couldn’t shake off his unease. The girl he’d spoken to at USC, the one who had been stalked by Marcus Griffiths, had told him way more than he was going to share with Tarian.

‘By which time it will be too late,’ said Lock.

‘I don’t want that to happen,’ said Tarian. ‘Please, if you would just meet with my son. Perhaps if someone such as yourselves were to recommend that Marcus needs residential care it might be taken more seriously.’

12

Ty got into the passenger seat of Lock’s R6 and closed the door. They were waiting for Tarian. They would follow her car the short distance to her son’s apartment in Marina Del Rey.

It was hot. High eighties. That was well above average for Santa Monica, where the ocean breeze tended to keep things nice and pleasant. A heatwave was predicted. It would get up to the nineties here on the coast and the hundreds out in the Valley.

A grey Mercedes with tinted windows appeared. Tarian had the driver’s window lowered so they could see it was her. She cruised past them. Lock pulled out behind her and into the traffic on Ocean Avenue.

‘So we assess him like we would any other external threat to a principal?’ said Ty, one arm dangling out of the window as they drove past a couple of young women in denim shorts and crop tops rollerblading down the sidewalk.

Lock buried the gas pedal to make a light and stay with Tarian’s Mercedes. ‘Something like that,’ he said.

‘What’s going on here, Ryan? Is there something you’re not telling me about this?’ What did that co-ed at USC tell you?’

Lock’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and the black BMW sedan that had been following them since they’d left the hotel. He glanced at his partner. ‘It’s more what she didn’t say than what she did.’

13

Lock pulled in behind Tarian’s Mercedes as she talked to the lone security guard manning the entrance to the apartment complex. Every non-resident visitor had to be signed in. They had to give details of who they were, and whom they were there to see. Their vehicle details were recorded too.

Thirty seconds later it was Lock’s turn. The security guard was Hispanic, in his late forties, with an easy smile and a professional manner. It was a feature of Marina Del Rey that if you saw someone who wasn’t white they were likely working rather than living there. Lock nudged the Audi past him and followed the Mercedes past a series of boat docks and jetties. The BMW had fallen away.

The Mercedes turned right, and disappeared down a ramp into an underground parking lot. Lock followed, pulling into a visitor’s spot as Tarian got out.

He and Ty walked her to the elevator. ‘Does your son know we’re coming?’ he asked.

‘I called ahead to tell him,’ she answered.

‘And what did you say about who we are and why we’re here?’

She snapped off her sunglasses as the elevator doors opened. ‘He knows who you are, but I said the family’d had some kidnapping threats and that you were here to talk about that.’

Lock didn’t like it. He wasn’t opposed to telling a white lie once in a while, but in general he believed in being honest with people. For a start, the truth was a whole lot easier to remember. And if Marcus had issues, trust would be key. Lying to a volatile person meant you were taking a risk.

He put a hand across the elevator door, preventing it from closing. Tarian had already stepped inside and was waiting for him and Ty.

‘That’s not gonna do it. You tell your son the truth or we’re out of here,’ he said to her.

She looked like she was about to argue, but decided against it. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I’ll tell him I’m worried about him, and you’re here to make sure he stays safe. How about that?’

Lock let the door go and stepped into the elevator with Ty. Tarian hit the button for the third floor. The doors closed.

‘And the kidnapping threats?’ Ty asked. ‘You already mentioned those, correct?’

‘A family like ours always has some level of threat.’

‘Okay, that works. But from now on in, the truth?’ said Lock.

‘Absolutely,’ said Tarian, as the elevator stopped, the doors opened ‒ and somewhere down the corridor a gunshot rang out from behind an apartment door.