The Devil's Bounty Read Online Free PDF Page B

at the outside of the house. He thought about ringing the bell but decided against it. Instead he walked down the road until he found a flight of steps that led to the beach. At the bottom, he took off his shoes and socks and walked along the sand.
    The glass-fronted house was very similar to the one he’d shared with Carrie. In fact the resemblance was eerie. He scanned the decks but no one was sitting on them and all the doors and windows were shut. There had been no cars parked outside either. The new owner must be using it as a weekend getaway or vacation home.
    Steps led up to a small wooden gate and the house. He climbed them, hopped over the gate and walked up to a side window. Inside, the house seemed cold and antiseptic. It told him everything and nothing about Mendez.
    His cell phone rang. He clicked the answer button.
    ‘Mr Lock?’ said a woman’s voice.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I got a message that you wanted to speak to me.’

Ten
    MARCIE BRAUN’S RETIREMENT hadn’t taken her very far. She lived a shade off the beaten track, about thirty miles inland from Santa Barbara in a small Cape Cod-style house with stables and a paddock.
    Lock found her clearing out a horse stall with a pitchfork. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She straightened when she saw him, one hand moving to massage the small of her back. ‘So, you want to go get Charlie Mendez, huh?’ she said, with a smile, after he had apologized for disturbing her. ‘You do know what happened to the other guy who went looking for him, right?’
    Lock nodded.
    ‘But you still think it’s a good idea?’
    ‘I don’t know if it is or not, Detective Braun, but a girl is lying in a hospital bed in Los Angeles and she asked me to help her.’
    Marcie Braun seemed unsure what to make of him. A longmoment of silence passed. ‘Call me Marcie.’ She nodded to the horse manure. ‘I’ll finish up, then why don’t you come into the house and we can talk?’
    Lock sipped coffee as the retired detective settled at the big pine kitchen table and spread out a thick folder. She sighed as she flicked through the thick stack of papers inside. ‘Funny, this was the only case where I took a copy of the paperwork when I left the job. Guess it was Mendez skipping bail like he did. Made the whole thing feel unfinished.’
    ‘How long were you with the job?’ he asked her.
    ‘Too long. I thought coming to work in Santa Barbara would be a nice way of making the transition to retirement after the LAPD.’
    ‘It wasn’t?’ he probed.
    ‘I guess it was until the Mendez case. Lot of good cops in the department. Good people to take care of too. But you didn’t come out here to listen to me reminisce, did you now?’
    ‘Did you know Mendez before it went down?’
    Marcie threw back her head and laughed. ‘Every cop in Santa Barbara knew Charlie and everyone in Santa Barbara knows the Mendez family. They’ve been here for a long time, lot longer than I have.’
    ‘The judge know them?’ he prompted, even though he knew the question was taking him on to dangerous ground.
    Marcie’s easy smile fell away. ‘If you’re suggesting what I think you are then all I’d say is that’s a pretty serious charge to lay against a judge.’
    ‘So why’d he bail him?’
    Marcie shrugged. ‘If you’re asking whether Charlie being fromthat family helped him, then of course it did. It would be naïve to think anything else. This is America, right? Land of equal opportunity, but having big bucks makes you that little bit more equal. I’m sure you know how it goes, Mr Lock. If you’re rich in this country you’ll be treated a little differently from the rest of us. Not because you’re rich – hell, with a jury that might work against you – but because you can pay for a better defence. Charlie had really good lawyers. The kind of people who could persuade someone that black was white and two plus two makes five. I mean, that’s why