Deadlock

50

They stood outside the principal’s office, unable to escape that sense of being back at high school themselves.

‘Bet this takes you back,’ Lock said to Ty.

‘Deja vu all over again, baby.’

‘Me too. I spent more time here than in class.’

The door opened and a severe-looking African-American woman in female school principal uniform of long heavy skirt and ruffled blouse stepped out. A brief thought crossed Lock’s mind, that he’d rather go back to the SHU at Pelican Bay than spend too much time in her office.

Her opening line didn’t exactly fill him with joy either: ‘I have three and a half thousand young people to look after, so would you gentlemen kindly explain what you want?’

‘May we step into your office, ma’am?’ Lock asked.

Ty shot him one of his trademarked ‘Are you out of your freakin’ mind?’ looks.

The principal stood aside.

‘Nice move,’ Ty whispered as they stepped inside. ‘Who knows if we’ll ever get out alive again?’

She gestured for them to sit. They did. She didn’t say anything, just stared at them — a tactic beloved of salesmen, interrogators and school principals. When neither Lock nor Ty said anything, she looked at her watch.

Lock swallowed. Yup, definitely worse than the SHU at Pelican Bay.

‘Aaron Prager was a student at your school,’ he said at last.

She didn’t give any of the standard responses, or at least any of the responses Lock had anticipated. She didn’t say, ‘I can’t discuss current or former students.’ She didn’t say, ‘What’s your interest in Aaron Prager?’ She didn’t even say, ‘Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, he was a fine young man.’ What she did first was stare at Lock’s right hip, where his 226 bulged under his jacket. Then she picked up her phone.

‘Yes, Jessica, could you call 911 and ask them to respond to the school?’

Then she calmly put the receiver down.

‘Now, unless you gentlemen can show me some bona fide credentials, which doesn’t mean some private investigator’s certificate you scammed off the internet, I’d like you to not only leave my office, but to leave school property immediately, and never return. Nor should you contact either me or anyone else at this school by any other means. Do you understand me?’

Lock nodded. Ty nodded. They both rose, and almost in a daze walked swiftly out of her office, down several corridors and out of the school gates.

Back in her office, the principal lifted her phone once more.

‘Jessica, you may call the police back and assure them that it was a false alarm.’

Out in the parking lot, Ty turned to Lock. ‘What was that?’

‘I don’t know, but if I ever land a job which requires the ability to garner total cooperation, I’m kicking you to the kerb and hiring her.’

Ty opened the driver’s door, then stopped. ‘Goddammit.’

‘What is it?’

Ty hunkered down and rubbed at the paintwork. Someone had taken something sharp, keys probably, down the side of the Continental, leaving a thin grey scar.

Lock looked up to see the white Snoop-wannabe staring at them.

‘It was some of those Hammer Skin kids,’ he told them. ‘They give everyone a hard time.’

‘You saw them?’ Lock asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘Wasn’t like they were trying to hide doing it.’

‘The cops are on their way,’ Lock said. ‘Will you tell them what you told us?’

The boy smiled. ‘Are you out of your mind? I like having my teeth in my head. Listen, bro, I got three more years in this dump, then I’m outta here. Anyways, what are the cops gonna do when the Hammer Skins are their own kids?’ The boy looked beyond Lock to the school. ‘What did the principal say?’

‘Nada.’

‘That figures. She’s scared of them too. She tried to make a stand a few years back and they put a pipe-bomb under her car.’

Lock saw Ty perk up to the extent that he lost interest in the damage to his car. He stepped towards the boy. ‘The cops investigate?’

‘What did I just say? No one wants any trouble.’ The boy air-quoted the last three words.

‘So the skinheads do what they want?’

‘If you don’t mess with ’em, they leave you alone. For the most part.’

‘What grade you in?’

‘Ninth.’

Same as Aaron. Even in a school with such a large number of students, Lock knew that they’d just caught a break. Rather than go the direct route, he took a different approach.

‘I guess some of the kids hang out with these skinhead gangs to stop themselves getting picked on.’

‘Some, yeah.’

‘You friends with any of those kids?’

‘Not once they join up,’ the boy said, spitting on the ground and jamming his hands into his pockets. ‘Man, why don’t you just ask me what you want to ask me?’

‘We’re trying to find out what happened to Aaron Prager.’

The boy choked back a grin. ‘I can help you with that. Bitch got shot.’

Ty moved in on the boy. ‘Have a little bit of respect. You wanna be ghetto, you’d better understand, you step to us wrong and you know what’s gonna happen.’

The kid’s eyes fell back to the sidewalk. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

Lock could see that what the boy aspired to, Ty simply was, with all that entailed. He decided to let Ty handle him.

‘Did you ever speak to Aaron after he hooked up with this gang?’ Ty asked.

The boy’s smirk was back, but there was a touch of something else there too. Lock guessed at a creeping understanding of how people could change, and not always for the better.

‘The only time he spoke to me was to call me a wigger.’ The boy kicked at the ground. ‘He used to be a nice guy.’

‘Do they have a leader?’

‘Roach, I guess.’

‘What’s he look like?’

‘Big sucker. Shaves twice a day. You’ll know him when you see him.’

‘He a student here too?’

‘No, he got kicked out last year.’

‘Where can we find him?’

The boy gave Ty the name of the same fast-food restaurant as the one provided by the Pragers’ neighbour.

‘Thanks for your help, bro,’ Ty said, bumping fists with the boy.

‘Just don’t mention my name, OK?’

Lock and Ty got back into the Lincoln, leaving the kid on the sidewalk. Lock waved a thanks but the kid was too busy jamming his headphones into his ears. Lock didn’t blame him. If he’d grown up here, he’d have wanted to shut out the world too.

As they pulled away from the school, Ty sideways-glanced at Lock. ‘This Roach kid sounds like a real charmer.’

Lock puffed out his cheeks. ‘Big fish in a small pond. Maybe if we drain the water a little we can get him flapping.’

‘You think he’s caught up in this?’ Ty asked.

‘I can definitely see him giving up Aaron. I’m not so sure about anything else. Although, if he wanted to make a name for himself, then who knows.’

Lock fell silent for a moment, his jaw clenched tight.

‘I’ll promise you one thing though, Tyrone.’

‘What’s that, brother?’

‘He’s gonna tell us everything he knows about what went down.’