The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel Read Free Page A

the locker room. The boy visibly flinched as Malik knelt down next to him.
    ‘It’s okay,’ Malik said. ‘You’re safe. The cops are on their way.’
    There it was again. That tensing of the boy’s body, the squeezing shut of his eyes as he heard the word ‘cops’.
    ‘I’m Coach Shaw,’ said Malik, starting over, trying to find some point of contact. It was only now that he realized the kid was wet, and so were his clothes. He was small for his age, and skinny, the kind of kid you’d expect to see bullied in the schoolyard. Putting all that together just made it worse, as far as Malik was concerned. He got up and went to the shower stalls. One of the heads was still dripping from recent use. Lord help me , he said to himself, grateful for the first time that whoever had been with the boy had fled because he would have beaten them to death right there.
    ‘What’s your name, son?’ Malik asked. He couldn’t bring himself to ask what he really wanted to know. It wasn’t that he couldn’t form the words. It was more that he wasn’t sure he could live with hearing the answers.
    The boy shook his head, eyes closed.
    Malik tried another tack. ‘Who was here with you? I mean, I know someone was here. I saw their car.’
    The boy’s eyes screwed up tighter until they were little more than two lines above his nose. He didn’t answer. Instead he shook his head. Some of the water from his hair splashed onto Malik’s polo shirt.
    Malik let it go. He wasn’t a cop. There was a vending machine out in the hallway.
    ‘You want a Coke?’ he asked the boy.
    A nod. Malik walked out into the hallway. He wanted to call Kim, his wife, but he didn’t like to wake her and the kids. He dug some change out of his pockets and got a Coke. He took it back into the locker room, and gave it to the boy.
    The boy took a sip. ‘Am I in trouble?’ he asked Malik.
    ‘No, of course not.’
    Malik glanced at his watch. Where the hell was security? Maybe he should have called the city cops, after all. Just then he heard someone calling from the area of the side entrance.
    ‘In here,’ Malik shouted, relieved not to be alone with the boy any longer.
     
     
    The cop who showed up was the same kid he had seen earlier. Malik gave him the basic facts. He’d come to visit the stadium while it was quiet. He told him about the grey sedan, and about hearing a noise, then seeing someone flee and finding the boy in the locker room, all wet. The cop seemed even more freaked out by it than Malik had been.
    As he talked to the boy, Malik stepped outside, and called Mike, one of his assistant coaches. It was a while before he answered. When he did, he sounded groggy.
    ‘Hey, Mike, it’s Malik. Did you text me earlier?’
    ‘Huh,’ said Mike. ‘Yeah, about the line-up. I thought we should maybe keep Darius on the bench for the first quarter.’
    ‘No,’ said Malik. ‘This was just before midnight. You texted me about a problem at the stadium.’
    ‘Not me, Coach,’ said Mike. ‘Why? What’s happened? You want me to come down there?’
    ‘No, it’s fine,’ said Malik. ‘Go back to sleep.’ He ended the call, and walked back inside the stadium to check on the boy.
     
     
    Five minutes later, further reinforcements arrived in the shape of the five-foot-six-inches-tall, 250-pound head of campus police, Captain Keith Tromso. Malik had met him a couple of times, once to discuss a frat party attended by some of his senior players that had gotten a little rowdy, and again when a freshman had been pulled over for a DUI. The partygoers had been let off with warning, but the DUI had led Malik to end the freshman’s time at the college. Tromso hadn’t impressed him on either occasion.
    The head of campus police seemed to have a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder. Maybe it was his height, or that he was head of a campus police force rather than state or federal, but he seemed to regard even the most insignificant discussion as some