Deadlock

72

‘Wait, I want to see how this guy’s doing,’ Lock said, parodying Ty’s only line as President.

‘Hey, I got into the role a little too much. Sue me.’

Treble-cuffed, Chance was being loaded into the back of a patrol car at the rear of the hospital, having been checked over by the medical staff to make sure that both she and her unborn baby were fine. The knife was already gone for forensic examination, but it looked eerily like the one that had been used on Ken Prager.

Lock hadn’t stopped to count the total dead, but with the family over in Oakland and bombings added in, it was well into double figures. Even if Reaper hadn’t achieved what he’d set out to, a lot of people had been sacrificed to his unholy war.

A voice from behind them: ‘Mr Johnson, Mr Lock.’

They turned to see the President. He had a cigarette in one hand. He took a puff, waved it in the air at them. ‘I think I’m allowed, just this once,’ he said. He switched the cigarette to his left hand and extended his right hand to each of them in turn. ‘Thank you. Both.’

Lock shook his hand first. In his line of work he was used to encountering celebrities, but this was a little different. This President had a movie-star halo with none of the accompanying ego.

‘How’s your family?’

The President closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, and Lock got a rare glimpse of a man who already had the weight of the world’s problems on his shoulders. ‘My wife and our eldest are both fine, and the doctor’s just told me that Ashley’s off the critical list and she’s going to be fine.’

‘That’s great news, sir,’ Lock said.

‘Gentlemen, thanks again.’

And then he was gone, his regular security detail falling in behind as he walked back into the hospital to resume his private vigil over his daughter.

A small phalanx of FBI agents was making its way across the parking lot towards Lock and Ty. This is going to be one hell of a debrief, thought Lock as they closed in.

The agent in front put out his hand. ‘FBI Agent Breedlove. We’d like to talk to you.’

‘And I’d like to talk to you,’ Lock said. ‘But I haven’t slept in a hundred years, so it’s going to have to wait.’

‘This can’t wait,’ said Breedlove, lifting his sunglasses, as if somehow this gesture conveyed the gravity of the situation.

Lock looked at him. ‘You can either arrest me or you can wait. If you arrest me, I won’t be cooperating. If you let me get some sleep, you can have everything my scrambled brain contains.’

Breedlove hesitated. His cell phone sounded — a James Bond ring tone.

‘Hey, 007, you want to get that?’ Lock said.

Breedlove killed the call, then turned to his colleagues. ‘We’ll speak to him in the morning,’ he said, trying to make it sound like it was his idea.

In truth, Lock was bone-tired, but he needed time to himself to order what had happened in his own mind. Even with Reaper dead, Chance in custody and the President safe, something was still bothering him. He understood Chance’s desire to see her father free. He got that Reaper would have used giving testimony as a way of allowing himself an opportunity to escape. He even got how Reaper saw liberty as a way of fulfilling his sick fantasy of sparking a race war. But there was something else, a piece of the jigsaw that hadn’t yet slotted into place.

Carrie stayed behind to call in reports from the scene while Lock and Ty walked back to the hotel. News of what had happened, and the fact that the President was fine, had spread through the city. People were out on the sidewalks, drawn together by a need to share their relief at a crisis averted.

But, Lock noticed, beyond the shock imprinted on people’s faces, a sense of togetherness seemed to pervade the air. Outside a grocery store, a wizened acid casualty in his seventies embraced an equally elderly Asian man. A group of female college students sat together in a small park a few blocks shy of the hotel, lighting candles next to a picture of the President’s injured daughter. A little further towards the piers that faced the bay, a good-looking young couple, the guy black, the woman white, hugged each other as they watched a couple of fighter aircraft sweep low over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Rather than the death, mayhem and hatred Reaper had so confidently predicted, events had served to bring the country together. When Martin Luther King was gunned down, it had plunged the country into spasms of violence. Maybe this time they had truly moved on.

Lock and Ty wandered into the lobby of the Argonaut and took the elevator to their respective rooms. They clasped hands for a moment, then headed off in opposite directions.

Lock opened the door into his suite and stepped into the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. There were dark patches under his eyes and a nasty bruise on one side of his face where Chance had kicked him.

He washed his hands and face and dried off with a towel. Then he walked into the bedroom area and lay back on the bed fully clothed. There would be time to sleep later. He had a strong feeling the game wasn’t over yet.