The Devil's bounty

Twelve

Twelve-foot-high black security gates slid open and Lock’s Audi nudged its way through. Next to him on the front passenger seat was Marcie Braun’s case folder. As he crested a rise leading up to the Mendez compound, he glimpsed Montecito laid out beneath him, the upscale part of already upscale Santa Barbara. A deep blue Pacific shimmered in the distance.

He wondered how the matriarch of the Mendez family had known he was in town. Not that it was much of a jump: the Santa Barbara Police Department was a small force. Santa Barbara, at the higher end, was probably a pretty tight-knit community. Word would have got round.

A minute and a half later he pulled his Audi on to a large motor court, which fronted the main house: a 1930s colonial mansion. To one side, Lock could see two tennis courts, one grass and one clay. Beyond them lay an Olympic-sized swimming pool with separate ten-person hot tubs at either end. A pool boy was fishing out a couple of rogue leaves with a large net.

He pulled into a space between a special-edition Aston Martin V12 Vantage Carbon Black and a Bentley Flying Spur and got out. He took a moment to check out the two automobiles. Neither looked as if they had ever been driven: they were showroom new. There was money, he thought, and then there was Montecito money.

Sunlight filtered through the sycamores at the edge of the house, dappling the steps leading up to the vast front door. Lock rang the bell and settled in to wait. His invitation was for four p.m. It was one minute past. He had no idea if that counted as fashionably late.

The front door opened and a maid ushered him inside. She offered to take his jacket but he declined. ‘Mrs Mendez is in the drawing room,’ she said.

He followed her down a long corridor, their footsteps echoing on the dark mahogany floor. Lock didn’t know much about art but he could pick out one or two names from the pictures on the wall. Carrie had dragged him around the Museum of Modern Art in New York a couple of times. There was a Klimt and what looked to him, from the angular face staring at him, like a Picasso. He doubted they were prints.

Glancing up, he saw the red orb of a camera tracking their progress. You didn’t spend that kind of money on an art collection without an efficient security system to protect it. He wondered what the cameras had witnessed, whether they had observed Charlie Mendez saying a final goodbye to his mother before he had taken off.

‘Mr Lock. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’

The corridor opened into a large sunny room, dominated by a vast marble fireplace. Miriam Mendez was standing by a set of french windows, which opened on to the azure swimming pool. Whatever Lock’s preconceived notions had been, she was not the woman he had been expecting. For a start, the perfectly coiffed blonde curls of a wealthy Santa Barbara matron were gone, reduced to a few wispy clumps at the side of her head. Her face was gaunt, cheekbones jutting, not unlike those in the Picasso he had passed. She was skeletal and drawn.

‘Cancer,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘Terminal. If there was a cure then, believe me, I would have found it — I have the money and access to the finest doctors in the world. Sadly, there are certain things that money can’t buy. Please, sit down.’

Lock eased himself into a club chair.

‘You’re looking for my son, I believe,’ she said, after a long pause.

Lock cleared his throat. ‘Like many people. The only difference is that I’m going to find him and bring him back to serve his sentence.’

Miriam Mendez smiled. It was a warm, open smile, which wrong-footed Lock. It wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting. ‘Good. I hope you do. I mean that. Charlie has brought nothing but shame to our family. Of course I don’t wish anything terrible to happen to him but it’s right that he should take his punishment like a man.’

‘So will you help me find him, Mrs Mendez?’ Lock asked.

‘You don’t know where he is?’ she asked, innocence personified.

Lock smiled. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Well, Mr Lock, if I knew where he was, I would fly down there myself and tell him to put an end to all of this nonsense. All the family knows is that he’s in Mexico somewhere, and even that’s a guess. He may have moved on from there for all we know.’

‘So if you don’t know where he is, why did you want to see me?’

‘You heard what happened to the other men who tried to find him?’ She allowed the question to hang in the air. ‘Charlie has obviously got in with a bad crowd.’

Lock bit back a smirk. ‘Bad crowd’ suggested kids who hung out late smoking dope and drinking beer, rather than narco-trafficking paramilitaries who butchered people in cold blood. ‘You think I shouldn’t go?’ he asked.

She did her best to look puzzled. ‘I’m certainly not trying to dissuade you, but at the same time I hope there’s no more senseless loss of life.’

‘Before he left, did your son give any indication that he was going to flee, Mrs Mendez?’

Miriam Mendez sighed. ‘If he did, I’d hardly make it public. But, no, Mr Lock, he didn’t. I think he just panicked.’

Yeah, right, thought Lock. ‘Is there anything else, Mrs Mendez?’

Her hand fell into her pocket and she pulled out a cream envelope. ‘I was hoping that if you find Charlie you might give him this for me. My time is limited and I’m not sure I’ll have the chance to see him before…’

Lock stood up, walked over to her and took the envelope. It was thick, maybe three or four sheets of heavy old-fashioned writing paper inside. On the front, in neat, cursive handwriting, was her son’s name. ‘I’ll make sure to pass it on,’ he said.

She clasped his hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong. ‘I know you will, Mr Lock. And, because I’m counting the days rather than the months, can you let me know as soon as you have? I mean, the very moment. It would give me such peace to know he had it before I depart this earth. Will you promise me?’

‘I promise you’ll be the first to know,’ said Lock.

Before he had made the trip to the Mendez estate to see the family matriarch, he had done a little more research. Miriam Mendez did have cancer, and any kind of cancer was a terrible thing, but the type she had wasn’t usually fatal. In fact, she was in remission. She had lost her hair but she was almost certainly going to be fine. There was only one reason she could have for asking Lock to make sure he contacted her first and that was to stop him delivering her son to the authorities.

‘Thank you, Mr Lock. You’re a good man,’ she said, with a wan smile

‘I’ll see myself out, Mrs Mendez.’

As he left the room, he stopped in the doorway and turned. She was still in the same pose.

‘Yes, Mr Lock?’

‘I was just thinking, Mrs Mendez. If by some chance you hear from your son before I do, could you give him a message from me?’

Her eyes widened, and he detected anger simmering just beneath the surface.

‘Tell him that no amount of money or muscle is going to stop me putting him behind bars with all the other animals.’

A hardness settled in her eyes but her smile didn’t fade. ‘Just be careful, Mr Lock. No one wants to see anyone else suffer.’

Outside, the all-American pool boy had been replaced by a thick-set Hispanic man, whose girth suggested he might have eaten the job’s previous incumbent. Presence of the abnormal, thought Lock. The man watched his every move as he got back into his car.

Lock tossed the letter on to the passenger seat. He started the engine, and headed down the driveway. The gates opened as he approached and he left the Mendez estate. About a half-mile down the road he pulled over. He stared at the letter, debating the morality of opening it. He picked it up, ripped open the envelope and pulled out three thick sheets of cream writing-paper.

They were blank.