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Chapter 45

They’d put only a few miles between the car and the parking lot where Mike had left Kiki Dupleshney, but already his thoughts had migrated back to that look on Kat’s face when he’d left her on the bench. Guilt came alive as an itch under his skin.

You’re not a husband. You’re not a father. You’re a man with a task.

The red-tabbed file sat across his knees, “4YCH429” staring up at him.

‘How do we run this plate number?’ he asked.

They throttled along, Shep looking ridiculous crammed behind the Pinto’s wheel. ‘Hank Danville. License plates are a PI’s bread and butter.’

‘They’re watching him. Tapped lines.’

‘Call his cell. He’ll give you a pay-phone number.’

Mike dialed. When Hank picked up, Mike said, ‘Hey.’

‘Maurice,’ Hank said. ‘You’re looking for that shop number, yeah?’ He rattled off ten digits. ‘I hear they open in five minutes.’

Mike pocketed the phone. The file in his lap seemed to have taken on a weight commensurate with its potential significance. The air gusting from the vents smelled of hair spray. Cars flashed by. He stared down.

Shep said, ‘Open it already. The thing won’t bite.’

Mike complied. The glossy photo on top, the one Dana/Kiki had revealed to him at the café, captured his childhood house. And there were a number more beneath, taken from various angles. Some compulsion made him turn one over, as if checking the potter’s stamp on a china plate. Taped to the white rectangle was a cutout of an undated real-estate listing, the newsprint brittle and faded but still legible enough for him to read the address.

Chico.

He’d come from the town of Chico.

Which was an overnight drive – about seven hours in the family station wagon – to the Los Angeles playground he’d been left at as a four-year-old. He thought about waking up in his clothes, not his pajamas.

Shep looked over at him inquisitively.

Digging in the glove box, Mike found a map buried beneath a raft of cassette tapes and fought it open across the dash. ‘The house I grew up in. It’s about fifty miles from here.’

‘Which way?’

‘Southeast. On the 99.’

Shep wheeled sharply left, Mike nearly banging his head against the window. When he looked up, he saw the freeway sign fly past on the ramp entrance. Within the hour he’d be standing on the front porch of his childhood home. It didn’t seem possible.

A throb at his temples reminded him that he’d stopped breathing. He caught a glimpse of himself in the sun visor’s mirror. His different-colored eyes – one brown, one amber – peered back from a face that had gone pale. A few deep inhales brought back a bit of color to his cheeks.

He found a red pen in the glove box and circled the towns that had popped up in name since Dodge and William had fastened onto his trail. Sacramento, home to Rick Graham’s State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center. Redding, William Burrell’s last-known address. Red Bluff, Kiki Dupleshney’s stomping grounds. Chico, former home of Mike’s parents. All within a 150-mile span of Northern California.

Shep kept driving and kept silent, and Mike loved him for it. He pushed aside the map and flipped deeper into the file. That old Polaroid of his father, the sun-faded face so much like his own. And endless data on Mike and his friends and acquaintances, much of the same information he’d found in the folder he’d taken from the smashed-up van.

The bottom page featured a single typed note. No letterhead, no signature, no watermark.

Parent names: John and Danielle Trenley. Your cover: Dana Gage, the grown daughter of the Trenleys’ former next-door neighbors. You are the Trenleys’ will executor. You have significant assets to assign but can do so only once you’ve corroborated Michael Wingate’s heritage and family history. If he is our target, he should prove emotional and unpredictable on the subject of his parents. He was abandoned by them at the age of four.

Do not try to contact us.

We will find you.

Mike was gripping the page too tightly, his thumb leaving an indentation. He relaxed his hand and read the note a second time.

The language seemed too crisp to have been written by William or Dodge. Mike pegged it for a document generated by Rick Graham out of his impressively titled state agency. As for “Trenley”, Hank had turned up nothing for a John or a Danielle by that name. Had Graham given Kiki a fake name to foil any prospective searches?

Shep had said something.

Mike said, ‘What?’

‘You were supposed to ring Danville ten minutes ago.’

Mike placed the call. Hank answered in the midst of a coughing fit.

‘You okay?’ Mike asked.

‘Pain meds have me shitting like a rabbit, but at least I’m not a terrorist on the lam.’

Mike gave him the broad strokes. He glossed over leaving Kat behind, trying to make it a fact like all the others. Nonetheless Hank offered a quiet, ‘Jesus.’

‘They still have an eye on you?’ Mike asked.

‘I checked the office phone yesterday, and it showed an extra voltage draw on the line. They probably have something up at the junction box. Which is noteworthy.’

‘Why?’ A highway-patrol car passed, going in the opposite direction, and Mike twisted to watch until it faded from sight.

‘Because if it was legit,’ Hank was saying, ‘they’d tap the line from the phone company’s switch or use electronic intercept, both of which are undetectable. So Graham’s doing this without a warrant. If you can produce some evidence – I mean concrete evidence of corruption in his investigation of you, or his link to William and Dodge-’

‘We’re working on it. And along those lines, we got the plate number of the truck Dodge and William drove when they hired Kiki Dupleshney. Can you run it for me?’

‘Course. I’ll see if I can access the databases through a colleague’s log-in so it won’t be traceable. Plate number?’

Mike read it off.

Hank said, ‘What’s your callback number? Don’t worry, I’ll use a pay phone.’

Mike gave it to Hank, who recited it back twice, committing it to memory.

‘Listen, Mike, with the medical costs and making my… arrangements, I’m running a bit low. And you can’t exactly mail me a check.’

‘Hank, I’m sorry.’ Mike tapped his head in reproach. ‘I have cash. Plenty. I’ve just been totally-’

‘Of course. Don’t worry.’

Mike opened the bag at his feet and surveyed the money. ‘Is twenty grand enough?’

‘Too much.’

‘Not even close,’ Mike said.

‘I was thinking of slipping out of town away from watchful eyes anyway. And… well, all roads lead north, don’t they?’

The windshield threw back the road guide’s reflection, the red circles Mike had drawn standing out like a cluster of hives. He couldn’t deny that he sensed it, too, a narrowing, as if the last thirty-one years were a funnel to this one square inch of map. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I guess they do.’

‘I’ll head your way, and we can settle up in person. Hell, maybe I can even be of service.’ Hank gave a wry chuckle. ‘A last hurrah. I’ll call you when I’ve sourced that license plate. I have to figure out how to go about it covertly, so it could take a little time.’

A sign flew past. CHICO – 47 MILES.

‘It’s fine,’ Mike said. ‘I’m gonna need the time.’

The walkway rolled out before Mike like a concrete arrow leading to the front door. Standing at the curb, hands shoved in his pockets, cool wind biting at his ankles, his neck, he confronted the house.

His house.

Much had changed, but he recognized the porch and the asphalt roof shingles and the fanlike spread of the driveway. The louvered shutters, he realized, he’d inadvertently duplicated on the dream homes of Green Valley. The memory of this place pulled up through the murk, an anchor rising, dredging with it more details from the depths. He knew that the gnarled pine in the side yard smelled like Christmas when it rained, that the back patio dipped on the left side, that the gutter over the window there on the east corner used to drip patterns onto his pane. He recalled the large volcanic rocks that had once dotted the front walk, how he’d tried to tip one over once to catch a lizard, and when he’d held up his palms afterward, they were covered with blood. His mother in the kitchen brandishing a magazine at a circling blowfly – Let’s wave him out of here, honey. This little guy’s a bad omen. He half expected to see his father sitting on the front step, sleeves cuffed, smoking a flaking cigar. If he was alive, what would he look like now?

Inside, a young family was pulled up to a kitchen table, the scene glowing out at the dark street like something festive. Mike could see that there were no more yellow tiles sage incense and the mother clearing the dinner plates was smiling and joking her skin, tan even in winter, scented faintly of cinnamon. A minivan was parked in the driveway You like our new station wagon, champ? They have wood paneling, see, but it’s not real wood. Run your fingers there and he turned his face into the teeth of the breeze, eyes drifting across the Gages’ house mint trim Doberman bit the Sears repairman and taking in the old lady rocking on the porch swing, patient and lined like time itself. He looked down the length of the planned-community street to a fenced lake – yes, there was a lake he slips on a mossy rock and his father’s hand clamps down on his shoulder, firm and steady, saving him from a wet spill and it carried the odor of algae, giving the breeze its wet weight. The other way a hill fringed with dense stands of trees was crested by a yellow sign, rusted and battered with age. The sign proclaimed DEER X-ING, that broad black X hooking something buried in Mike’s thoughts and reeling it squirming to the deck Hey, Joe, you know any street names start with the letter X? How ’bout Fuckin’ Xanadu?

Shep was at his side, long forgotten. He spit in the gutter and kicked at the curb. Mike’s legs tingled. How long had he been standing here?

The old lady on the Gages’ porch set aside her knitting and rose, grimacing into the effort of it. Mike hurried over. ‘Ma’am, excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you. Have you lived here long?’

The woman paused, bunch-mouthed and wizened, at the screen door. Despite the prominent veins, her hands looked young and strong, and the crocheted shawl thrown across her shoulders gave off the pleasing aroma of coffee and cigarette smoke. ‘What’s long enough for you?’

‘So you’re Mrs?’

‘Geraldine Gage.’

His throat clicked dryly when he swallowed. ‘I’m a reporter looking into-’

She let go of the screen, which snapped closed, and gestured next door. ‘Saw you looking there. Been years since anyone came asking.’

‘About the incident?’ Mike asked carefully.

‘Is that what they’re calling it?’

‘How would you describe it?’

‘More like a non-incident. An entire family just up and vanishes one day? Not a trace left behind? After a while the bank quietly reclaimed the house, and then there was a new family in there, and then another. Life goes on. I suppose it has to.’

The porch swing jagged in the wind, creaking softly on its chains.

‘Do you think…? Did they seem the types to get tangled up in trouble?’

‘You mean, did they bring it on themselves?’ A dry chuckle. ‘If life’s taught me anything, it’s that you never know anything. But no, they sure as hell didn’t act like folks who played with fire. If they had any enemies, you’d never know it. That’s what was so shocking about the whole thing. They just didn’t seem the type that something like this would happen to.’ She shook her head, annoyed at herself. ‘Whatever that means.’

‘What was my-’ He caught himself. Cleared his throat. ‘What was their last name?’

‘Shouldn’t you know that,’ she asked, ‘if you’re writing an article?’

‘I’m doing a retrospective on a few cases like this. I sometimes get them mixed up.’

‘Their name was Trainor,’ she said. ‘With an o.’

Trainor.

He’d said it out loud, he realized, just to taste it in his mouth.

John and Danielle Trainor.

Michael Trainor.

After all these years, the childhood interrogations, the X-rays and dental assessments to determine his age, after the private-investigator bills, the database searches, the cemetery walks, after all that and more, at last: a name.

His.

The fake name given Kiki, “Trenley”, was kept close enough to the real one that it might ring a bell. But the real name was just as unfamiliar, and Mike was crestfallen over his inability to make it resonate.

Geraldine Gage had turned again to tug open the screen door.

‘What were they like?’ he blurted.

She paused, one slippered foot on the threshold. ‘Normal-type folks, like I said. Quite in love – they’d hold hands on walks, like honeymooners. We were fond of them. She was graceful, a little hippie-ish, and… I guess these days you’d say spunky. Long, beautiful black hair. And he was a nice fella. Used to lend Glen a hand with… you know, moving a couch, holding a ladder. A handsome guy. Looked a bit like… a bit like you, if memory serves.’ Her gaze intensified. ‘They had a boy.’

Mike nodded, since he didn’t trust his voice.

‘He’d be about your age now,’ she observed. ‘Michael, was it?’

‘I think that’s right.’

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.’