Sean Black - Lockdown

‘And what if they don’t hold up their end of the deal?’

‘They will,’ said Brand. ‘If they don’t I’ll scour the earth for every last one of them. They know that.’ He flashed a reassuring smile at Richard. ‘It’s all over. We’re gonna get your boy back real soon.’

From his vantage point three floors above, the driver watched as a beat-up ’96 Ford pick-up drew parallel to the lot and parked. The driver switched his cell back on and made another call. He said three words: ‘We got it.’ Then he hung up.

Down below, he watched as all four doors of each Yukon flew open and men rushed towards the town car. The first man to reach it threw open the rear door with such force that he bent it back on its hinges. Then his head and upper torso disappeared inside. He re-emerged with a small bundled figure and raced back towards the Yukons. A man in a sports jacket and chinos he guessed was Richard Hulme grabbed the little boy from the man’s grasp. The other men pulled him, still carrying the boy, back to their vehicles.

Across the street, Cody Parker pulled up just in time to secure a ringside seat for the transfer.

‘Son of a bitch.’

He threw the transmission of the truck into drive just as the first FBI vehicle car swept down on him, its nose cutting across the front of his pick-up. He looked in the rear-view mirror, ready to back up, as another car ploughed into him from the rear.

Up above, the driver waited until the doors of both Yukons were closed and then he made his final call.

Inside the town car, the cell phone stashed under the seat barely got the chance to chirp into life. The car exploded, sending a cone of fire into the sky. The windows shattered, glass fragments spinning out in every direction. The blast wave pushed the main body panels off the car, and they spun up and out, one of them slamming into the nearest of the Yukons. A second later a secondary explosion shot another burst of flame from the rear of the town car as the gas tank ignited.

In the back seat of the lead Yukon, Richard watched the windowless shell of the town car burn as Josh buried his head in his father’s chest. Sobbing with relief, he leaned down and kissed the top of his son’s head, his fingers running quickly through his hair. Across the street, he could see a well-built man with a greasy ponytail being dragged out of a pick-up truck by four men wearing blue windcheaters emblazoned with the letters JTTF. The man mouthed a stream of obscenities as his arms were wrenched behind his back and he was lifted up to his feet.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Brand said.

Hizzard needed no prompting to press down on the gas and accelerate away from the town car’s smoking carcass.

In the back seat, Richard held on tight to his son. ‘It’s OK, Josh, you’re safe now. You’re safe with me.’

‘In a new twist to the Josh Hulme abduction case, self-styled animal liberator Cody Parker, also known to police as Lone Wolf, will be arraigned Monday on federal kidnapping charges for the alleged abduction of seven-year-old Josh Hulme.’

Carrie stopped, flicked back some hair which had worked its way loose and fallen over her left eye. ‘Sorry, Bob, let me try that again,’ she said to her cameraman, straightening up and setting her face to concerned.

‘In a dramatic twist to the Josh Hulme abduction case, thirty-seven-year-old animal rights activist Cody Parker, also known to the authorities as Lone Wolf, is due to be arraigned Monday on federal kidnapping charges. Parker is also being investigated over the exhumation of the body of seventy-two-year-old Eleanor Van Straten. He is, however, denying any involvement in the Hulme kidnapping.’

She held her expression for a count of three. ‘How was that?’

‘Great, if that’s what actually happened,’ Lock said, skirting round the fountain outside Federal Plaza.

They hadn’t spoken since dinner at her apartment. For Lock, it had been a night spent with Paul, Carrie’s new squeeze, gloating at him from the sideboard. Even Angel the rescue dog had deserted him for the plusher confines of Carrie’s bedroom, where she’d nestled herself into the pillows and steadfastly refused to budge. Between then and now, Carrie had been busy trying to keep up as the Josh Hulme story unravelled at breakneck speed, while Lock too had been doing more digging. They’d played phone tag a few times but Lock wasn’t willing to trust anything he’d discovered to voicemail.

As her cameraman broke down his equipment, Carrie joined Lock at the fountain. ‘So what did happen?’

‘I don’t have all the pieces yet, but I can tell you one thing: Cody Parker didn’t have anything to do with the kidnap of Josh Hulme.’

‘The FBI don’t agree. They seem to think they have a pretty strong case. He’s lucky New York State doesn’t have the death penalty, if you ask me.’

‘New York doesn’t have it because of cases like this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What gets someone strapped into old Sparky, or a big syringe of potassium chloride these days?’

‘How come I feel I’m about to be on the receiving end of one of your little lectures?’

‘Humour me.’

‘OK. A crime which horrifies. Child murder, abduction.’

‘And in cases like that there’s one hell of an amount of pressure on the authorities to bring someone before the courts.’

‘Hey, it’s not like they picked Cody Parker from the phone book. They’ve got some pretty strong evidence.’

‘And I’d bet all of it is circumstantial.’

‘I can’t believe you’re standing up for this guy! You heard what I said a moment ago. He’s sure as hell guilty of digging up a little old lady and dumping her body in the middle of Times Square.’

‘And he should go to jail for that. For a long time. But what they’re doing,’ Lock said, glancing over at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, ‘is railroading him for the kidnap.’

‘So if Cody Parker didn’t do it, who did?’

‘Meditech.’

She burst out laughing. Lock held her gaze.

‘Oh my God, you’re being serious.’

‘OK, it wasn’t a collective effort. I’m guessing very few people even knew about it. I’m not even sure Nicholas Van Straten knew.’

‘But he’s the CEO.’

‘Precisely. Look, Carrie, the reason people think you’re nuts when you mention something like this is that they have a picture in their mind of some big boardroom meeting with Van Straten sitting in a high-backed chair stroking a white cat. Shit like this doesn’t go down like that. The company needed Richard Hulme back at work for them.’

‘So why not offer him, I dunno, ten million bucks?’

‘Because someone like Richard is every company’s worst nightmare.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘A guy with principles who can’t be compromised by a big set of zeros.’

‘So they kidnap his child?’

‘In my opinion, yes. Hulme was a problem to be solved. Someone did some out-of-the-box thinking.’

‘Don’t you mean out-of-the-stratosphere?’

‘The cover was already there. The kid goes missing, everyone’s going to be looking at the animal rights people. After everything that had gone on, who wouldn’t believe they’d be involved? Especially after their beloved leader got smoked right on the front steps of the company.’

‘And Meditech did that too?’

‘You’re looking at it the wrong way. You think Nicholas Van Straten ordered Gray Stokes’ assassination.’

‘Isn’t that what you’re suggesting?’ Carrie said.

Lock sighed. The truth was that it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him either. Yet neither did the official version. In fact, that made even less sense.