Lock In (Lock In, #1)(75)

“I want to go after the son of a bitch,” I said. “Hubbard and Schwartz both.”

“You want to arrest them,” Vann said.

“I do,” I said. “But not just yet.”

“Explain,” Vann said.

I smiled at her instead and looked over to Tony. “Hubbard’s code,” I said.

“What about it?” Tony asked.

“Can you patch it?”

“You mean, close the hole in the interpolator?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure,” Tony said. “Now that I know it’s there, closing it up’s not a problem.”

“Can you do more than that?” I asked.

“Are you going to pay me to do more than that?”

I grinned. “Yes, Tony,” I said. “There is payment involved.”

“Then I can do whatever you need me to do,” he said. “Hubbard’s good, but I don’t suck either.”

“What do you have planned?” Vann asked me.

“So far we’ve been a step behind Hubbard on everything,” I said.

“That’s an accurate assessment,” Vann said. “Are we going to try to get ahead of him?”

“We don’t have to get ahead of him,” I said. “But I want us to arrive at the same time.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Vann asked.

“Well,” I said. “As our friend Trinh would say, it might require you to be a little sloppy.”





Chapter Twenty-two

AT ELEVEN FIFTEEN I called Klah Redhouse and asked for a meeting with him, his boss, the speaker, and the president of the Navajo Nation, to catch them up on the latest with Johnny Sani and Bruce Skow. The meeting happened at noon.

They were not pleased with my report. Not for how I’d been doing my job, which was not in dispute, but that two of their own had been victimized.

“You are working on this,” President Becenti said, in a manner that was not a question.

“Yes,” I said. “Johnny Sani and Bruce Skow will have justice. That is my word to you.” I waited.

“What is it?” Becenti said.

“You said yesterday that anything you could do to help, you would,” I said.

“Yes,” Becenti said.

“Did you mean that only within the parameters of the investigation, or would it extend further than that?”

Becenti looked at me doubtfully. “What do you mean?” he said.

“There’s justice, and then there’s sticking a knife in someone’s ribs,” I said. “The justice will come no matter what. Like I said, you already have my word on that. But the knife-sticking may come with an extra added benefit to the Navajo Nation.”

Becenti looked at the speaker and the police captain, and then back at me. “Tell us more,” he said.

I glanced over at Redhouse as I spoke. He was smiling.

* * *

At one thirty I was at my parents’ house, sitting with my dad in the trophy room. He was in a bathrobe and had a tumbler of scotch, neat, dangling from one of his long, large hands.

“How you doing, Dad?” I asked.

He smiled. “Perfect,” he said. “Last night someone broke into my house to kill my kid, I killed him with a shotgun, and now I’m hiding out in my trophy room because it’s one of the only rooms in the house that photographers outside don’t have a clear shot into. I’m doing great.”

“What did the police say about the shooting?” I asked.

“The sheriff came by this morning and assured me that as far as he and his department are concerned, the shooting was justified and no charges are coming and that they’ll be returning my shotgun to me later today,” Dad said.

“That’s good to hear,” I said.

“That’s what I said, too,” Dad said. “They also said the FBI came for the man’s body this morning. Does that have anything to do with you?”

“It does,” I said. “If anyone asks, the fact that you were about to run for the Senate meant that we had an interest in discovering whether the attacker had any ties with known hate or terrorism groups.”

“But it’s not really about that at all, is it?”

“I’ll answer that for you, Dad, but you have to tell me you’re ready to hear it.”

“Jesus, Chris,” Dad said. “Someone tried to kill you last night in our house. If you don’t tell me why, I might strangle you myself.”

So I told Dad the entire story, up to my morning visit to the Navajo Nation.

After I finished, Dad said nothing. Then he drained his scotch, said, “I need a refill,” and stepped out into the gun room. When he came back in he had considerably more than two fingers of scotch in the tumbler.

“You might want to ease back, there, Dad,” I said.

“Chris, it’s a miracle I didn’t just bring in the bottle with a straw,” he said. He took a sip. “Motherf*cker was in my house three nights ago,” he said, of Hubbard. “In this room. Acting all chummy.”

“To be fair, three nights ago I don’t think he had planned to have me killed,” I said. “Pretty sure that came after.”

Dad choked on his scotch on that one. I patted him on the back until he stopped coughing.