Gridlock: A Ryan Lock Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

star,’ she announced.
    ‘That so?’ he said, noncommittal.
    The phrase ‘headless corpse’ meant that Carrie was riding shotgun. A reporter is never officially off-duty, she’d explained to Lock, as they’d both thrown on their clothes. Angel had also insisted on tagging along and had taken up a position in the back, occasionally poking her head through the space between the two seats, hyped up at the prospect of an unscheduled road trip.
    ‘You want me to read you some of her credits?’ Carrie asked him.
    ‘Any of them win any awards?’
    Carrie scrolled down. ‘No Oscar nominations, but Yank My Doodle, It’s A Dandy is kind of a snappy title.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Are you really going to look after this woman, Ryan?’
    Lock glanced over. ‘You don’t think I should? Y’know, even porn stars have a right to be safe.’ He nodded towards Carrie’s BlackBerry. ‘What else you got?’
    Carrie studied the screen for a moment. ‘Wow.’
    ‘What is it?’ Lock asked.
    ‘Well, she’s not how I’d imagined.’
    ‘How’d you imagine her?’
    ‘Blonde, lots of silicon, huge boobs. Kind of plastic looking.’
    ‘She’s not?’
    Carrie’s brow wrinkled a little. Lock found it reassuring. After all these weeks in LA, he’d grown used to the complete absence of facial movement. Everyone out here seemingly had the Botox look, which left their faces a flat plane devoid of expression. Their happy face was the same as their sad face, which was almost the same as their angry face. Coupled with the habit of framing every sentence like it was a question, even when it wasn’t, it rendered the most mundane of daily interactions a veritable minefield.
    ‘No,’ Carrie continued. ‘She’s beautiful, not fake at all, and she looks… I dunno, kind of fragile.’
    On the dash, the fuel warning light pinged on. Lock checked the GPS for the nearest gas station and switched lanes, ready to pull off at the next exit.
    At the gas station on Fairfax, he slipped his credit card through the window to the cashier and went to fill up. Carrie leaned against the side of the Range Rover and watched him. ‘You know how you sometimes say that what people call a sixth sense is them adding up all the data but not being able to articulate the conclusion?’
    Lock glanced over at her. ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Well, if there’s a better than fair chance that something bad is going to happen to her, you have one question left to answer.’
    ‘Is she a good person or not?’ he said, smiling at her, liking the way she looked, and feeling lucky all over again that she’d decided to be with him.
    ‘And her job doesn’t make her a bad person,’ Carrie said.
    Lock stifled a yawn. Sharp autumn sunshine reflected back off the windshields of the cars traveling in the other direction. Carrie was right. But then she was always right. So why did he still feel uneasy about taking this job?
    Although it was daylight by the time they arrived, Raven Lane’s street was still awash with emergency vehicles – a couple of Scientific Investigation Division wagons, a van from the Medical Examiner’s Office and the requisite marked and unmarked cop cars. Lock parked up twenty yards shy of an LAPD police cruiser and got out. He flagged down a uniform. ‘You still have a watch commander here?’ he asked him.
    Lock knew from experience that with a crime scene like this there was usually a captain designated to co-ordinate the security of the scene so that everyone else could do their job without risking the contamination of any potential evidence. Ever since the O. J. Simpson trial, where footage was played of detectives wading through the front of the crime scene without the appropriate gear aimed at preventing cross contamination, the LAPD had been shit-hot about stuff like this. A clear chain of command at a crime scene was key to making sure there were no screw-ups a defense lawyer could pounce on later.
    The uniform looked at him. ‘And you