You're Next

The wind brushed a leafy branch musically across the slats of the porch.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I really must be going.’

His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. ‘And him?’ he asked. ‘What about the boy?’ His face burned. ‘Did they seem close to him? I mean, no matter what happened, that’s quite a thing to uproot a kid like that.’

She mused on this a moment, her back slightly curved, shoulders hunched into the breeze. She seemed to sense what was at stake, or maybe he was only imagining it.

‘He was well loved,’ she said.

The screen clapped shut behind her.

He stood a few moments, listening to the crickets.

Shep was waiting back in the car. Mike paused by the passenger door, looking across at his old house, pausing at the sight. The little girl stood on a stool before her bathroom sink, brushing out her hair before bedtime. Her motions were uncoordinated, the brush snagging on knots. She couldn’t have been six.

The phone vibrated in his pocket, though it took a few bursts to break his trance.

‘License plate traces to a GMC Sierra 1500 pickup.’ Hank’s voice was excited, driving. ‘It’s corporate-owned, registered to Deer Creek Casino.’

‘A casino?’ Mike repeated.

Hank said, ‘And guess where it is?’

‘Where?’

‘You’re in Chico, yeah? Look northeast. See that mountain?’

‘It’s dark.’

‘Right. Well, it’s Mount Lassen. The casino’s there on the slopes. I’m sure you’ll see billboards.’

‘My family name,’ Mike said, ‘is Trainor.’

A long silence. In the house the girl had managed to work out most of the tangles. Her honey-blond hair looked soft and fluffy. When she clicked off the bathroom lights, she paused, noticing him standing there by the idling car at the curb.

Hank said, ‘Trainor with an o?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m getting on the road while the getting’s good. But I’ll see what I can find.’

The little girl raised her hand in silent greeting. Mike waved back. ‘Me, too.’

Chapter 46

Deer Creek unfolded roadside, darting away and returning at flirtatious intervals, a freestone stream tumbling past lava shelves. Swaths of landscape bled by, the Pinto’s weak headlights barely able to keep pace with the shifting topography. First splotches of orchard with sprinkler streams arcing across walnut and olive trees like tinsel. Then came the rolling foothills, blue oaks staking down vast tracts of golden weed. Finally Mount Lassen closed in on them, dense sagebrush crowding the hub-caps, fir and pine shoving up from red-clay dirt, rocky plateaus encroaching overhead. The night breeze through Mike’s window cleared his lungs, his thoughts.

Signage was plentiful and traffic thick as they neared the Deer Creek Casino. At last the mall-like building floated into view, sprawled across a flat plane stamped into the terrain. The parking lot bustled, cars waiting on spots, community-center buses unloading seniors, workers on break gathering at the exits, staking out cell-phone reception. One van, labeled NEW BEGINNINGS ACTIVE LIVING CENTER and featuring a logo of a winking smiley- face sun, disgorged one wheelchaired patron after another on its mechanical lift. A few lonely picketers circled out front, smoking cigarettes, ignored by and ignoring the trickle of gamblers. There were no Vegas lights, no showgirl glitter; it might have been a Walmart.

Shep trawled the lot. To the side, next to the plentiful handicapped parking, was the section for employee vehicles, each space labeled by name and title. Shep parked in the CFO’s spot, and they climbed out and walked the rear bumpers. Nearly every vehicle sported law-enforcement plate frames and multiple shiny stickers – CHP Foundation, Sheriff’s Booster Club, Friends of Sacramento PD.

Mike would have plunked down money on one of the green felt tables inside that casino management had cultivated a close ally at the State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center as well.

He stopped before a black Sierra pickup and pointed at the license plate sandwiched between a D.A.R.E. bumper sticker and a fire-department reflective decal. The number matched the one Kiki Dupleshney had written down; here was the truck William and Dodge had driven to hire her.

Running a finger along the paint, Mike circled the pickup. A parking pass on a lanyard dangled from the rearview mirror. From a square passport-size photo stared William, his features softened by an affable grin. Model employee.

Mike said, ‘We should-’

But Shep was already into the truck, tapping a pick set back into his breast pocket.

Mike crouched to read the stenciling on the bumper block – WILLIAM BURRELL, SECURITY TECHNICIAN. Shep rifled through the glove box, came up with a paycheck stub. He angled it at Mike, his thumb underscoring the job title Mike had just read off the concrete. A chilling euphemism for what William really did.

Mike glanced at the slip. ‘No taxes taken out. Freelance makes for a tougher paper trail. That’s why Hank couldn’t find him.’

The faint chime of a jackpot carried across the parking lot, followed by excited squeals. ‘So this here’s the end of the trail,’ Shep said. ‘The place paying the killers who are coming after you and your family.’

Not an individual, Mike thought, but a goddamned casino.

‘Only question left,’ Shep continued, ‘is why?’

The yellow and turquoise letters announcing the casino stirred something in Mike’s gut, but he couldn’t put a name to it. One of the picketers mistook his gaze and angled the sign so he could get a better read – WHY ARE WE PAYING TAX SO CASINOS CAN RELAX?

Mike lifted a hand in acknowledgment – Thanks, got it – then tilted his head toward the entrance. ‘Should we go have a look around?’

‘I can’t,’ Shep said, poking around in the glove box. ‘Casinos got me dead to rights with their facial-recognition software.’

‘They run that stuff?’

‘Course. They’re looking for advantage players, card cheats, fast feeders, armed robbers’ – an artful pause – ‘safecrackers.’ Shep came up from the glove box with a John Deere cap and a bag half full of sunflower seeds. ‘But you.’ He slung the baseball hat onto Mike’s head and poured him a handful of sunflower seeds. ‘You’re not in the casino databases. Just in case they’re plugged into the law-enforcement watch lists, though, chew up these seeds, store ’em in your lips and cheeks. Just enough to change the shape of your face so the software won’t map it right.’

Chewing food intended for William’s mouth left Mike a touch queasy. He worked a bit of sunflower meal beneath his lower lip like tobacco dip. He finished, his stare pulling across to the casino. They were in there.

‘In case William and Dodge get me, I should tell you where Kat is.’

‘No,’ Shep said.

‘No?’

‘I don’t want to know,’ Shep said. ‘There’s just as good a chance they’ll catch me out here. Every man has his breaking point.’

‘And mine’s higher than yours?’ Mike asked.

Shep said, ‘I’m not her father.’

Mike nodded once and started for the building.

Popping lights and chiming slots, stale smoke and bracing air-conditioning, salty traces of the sunflower-seed mush tucked into Mike’s lips and cheeks – the whole adrenalized experience took on a disorienting hyperreality. Elderly folks jockeyed for position at the five-dollar tables. Wheelchair footrests clanked into overburdened standing