Sean Black - Lockdown

‘Should Katie Couric be worried?’

‘Peeing in her pants.’

‘Listen, can you do some digging for me? But I need an embargo on it.’

The request for an embargo was met by silence.

‘Carrie?’

‘Yeah, OK. What is it?’

‘The lowdown on a gentleman by the name of Cody Parker.’

‘You got it.’

‘Thanks,’ Lock said, ending the call.

Turning to Don, he asked a question he already knew the answer to: ‘So, where first?’

Don gave him an address. It wasn’t the one he had given him a few moments earlier.

Don glanced over his shoulder at the JTTF SUV. ‘Won’t they be able to hear us?’

‘Nah, they’re too far back,’ Lock lied, punching on the radio and turning up the volume as an apparent afterthought.

In the back of the black SUV, the comms member of the three-man surveillance team smiled broadly. ‘We got an address.’

The driver glanced back at him. ‘For what?’ he asked.

‘Find out when we get there, I guess. You might as well ease back. This is gonna be easy.’

Don glanced nervously over his shoulder as they stopped at a light.

‘Don’t worry about them,’ Lock said. ‘While we may be in a twelve-thousand-dollar Toyota compact and they’re in fifty thousand dollars’ worth of specially modified government-issue steel, we have a few things in our favour.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Well, for starters, I’m driving a stick,’ Lock explained, banging it into gear and accelerating away as the lights turned green.

Don glanced over his shoulder again to see the SUV also lurching forward. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be enough somehow.’

‘You didn’t let me finish,’ Lock said, continuing to accelerate as they reached the next intersection. ‘More importantly, the problem with what they’re driving is that not only is it an SUV, it’s also uparmoured. Which means. .’ He concentrated hard on his next manoeuvre, changing down as he came into the corner, braking at the apex and accelerating out again. ‘That it corners like a rubber brick.’

Behind them, the black SUV had dropped back. Too far back. As Lock had predicted, the driver sped up when he should have slowed in an attempt to reel in his target. He took the corner too fast and the wheels of the heavy high-sided vehicle lost traction. As the SUV lurched from one side to the other the driver eased down on the brakes to bring the vehicle back under control.

Behind them, Ty, driving the Yukon, took his opportunity, braking a second too late and rear-ending the FBI vehicle. It lurched forward suddenly, both front airbags deploying. Both vehicles came to a halt.

Ty made his way over to the FBI vehicle, pulling open the driver-side door as the driver pushed the airbag out of the way.

‘Sorry, man,’ Ty said, ‘you kinda slowed down too fast for me. Braking distance on these things is a bitch, ain’t it? Listen, you want to take down my insurance details?’

Ty peered yokel-mouthed into the back where the comms guy was pulling off a set of headphones while simultaneously trying to extract the front seat from his mouth.

‘Ah, shoot, you fellas ain’t cops, are you?’

Lock took a deep breath and charged through the apartment door. A blast of a very different kind almost knocked him off his feet. The air reeked of death and decay. His stomach lurched as he stepped down the narrow hallway, matted with old newspapers and other, less salubrious organic matter.

Outside, at the bottom of the stairs, he could hear the homeless man he’d passed on the way in, engaged in a one-sided philosophical discourse. ‘Damn bitches. Draining a nigga dry. Where’s the justice, brother?’

Don and Janice were in the car, Janice exhausted by the day’s events and Don unwilling to face Cody.

If Cody was here.

Lock toed open an already semi-open door leading into a living room area. An elderly woman, sat in an armchair, the TV still on, the volume turned down. She wasn’t breathing. Her eyes were closed.

A big ginger tom cat sat on her lap, gnawing away at her hand. From the scratches on her face, it was obvious her hand hadn’t been the only part of her body to get attention.

Lock stepped towards it. ‘Get.’

The cat waited long enough to show who was boss, then jumped back down on to the floor.

Lock left the body and checked the other rooms. Even with a Vicks inhaler up each nostril, a trick employed by cops and emergency medical technicians, no one could have borne the stench for more than a few minutes.

Back out on the walkway, his body got the better of him, and he threw up. Black shapes swam in front of his eyes. Here it comes, he thought. The first blackout. But it didn’t. His stomach stopped rolling in on itself and his head cleared enough to enable him to dial 911.

In this part of the Bronx, Lock guessed that a dead body alone in an apartment didn’t merit a dash to the scene, and the cops took their own sweet time. If the authorities didn’t care too much how this woman had lived, why would it change now that she was dead?

He walked back down to the car. Janice blanched when she saw him. ‘Are you OK?’

Concern from a dying woman made him feel worse. Don got out of the car and Lock told him what he’d found inside.

‘That’ll be Cody’s mom.’

Lock got Don to give him a quick description. It checked out. He didn’t want to ask Don to go inside and take a look. Not today.

‘Listen, Cody might be a little crazy, but there’s no way he would’ve-’

‘I know.’

There had been no sign of any major trauma, stabbing or bullet wounds.

‘Were Cody and his mom close?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘She involved in the movement?’

‘That’s what got Cody started.’

Perfect. Lock reached into his jacket for his cell and handed it to Don. ‘Start putting the word out. But don’t say anything to anyone about her being dead, just say that something’s happened. That she’s in a bad way. Oh, and get back in the car, we need to keep moving.’

If they were to find Cody Parker, he wasn’t going to do it in convoy.

Lock drove as Don made the calls in the back, Lock insisting it stay on speaker so he could hear both ends. Six calls in, they were getting warmer. A woman at an unofficial ‘animal shelter’ out on Long Island confirmed that Cody was out getting supplies, but that he’d be back.

As primed by Lock, Don told her to warn off Cody from going to his mom’s place. ‘The cops are all over the place.’

‘You found her?’ the woman asked Don.

‘Pretty much.’

‘Then Cody’ll want to speak to you.’

On the way, they dropped off Janice at a neat suburban house in Dix Hills, owned by a woman whose daughter had also suffered from MS and who had met Janice in a support group for families affected by the condition. The woman took one look at Lock and hustled Janice into her home, slamming the door without a backward glance.

Lock called back in to Meditech and got Brand, who informed him with delight that Ty was being held by the Feds, and that both Van Stratens were far from happy bunnies. Lock thanked him for the update. None of it mattered: they were getting closer to Josh. Lock could feel it.

On the way to the shelter, Don filled Lock in on Cody’s background. Run by volunteers, and used to house animals ‘liberated’ by the movement, there were shelters dotted around the country. A kind of Underground Railroad for quadrupeds, Lock thought. When animals were taken, they were still technically the property of the company that had been using them for experiments, so the shelters where they were kept tended to stay off the radar. Only the most trusted of activists knew their location, which made Lock wonder just where Don Stokes fell on the spectrum of extremism.