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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 ashtrays. Cocktail waitresses wore Indian-print shifts with dagger thigh slits. They circled with trays of vodka and Red Bull, Jack and Coke, bestowing cheer like debauched Disney Pocahontases. On the walls, oil paintings of soaring eagles.

A drop team shoved around a wheeled metal cart, collecting jingling cash cans from slot machines and lining them in the flat metal bed like mini trash barrels. It struck Mike that the drop-team workers were the only personnel not wardrobed by Sergio Leone. In their black slacks and white polos with Deer Creek logos on the breasts, they were meant to blend in so as not to remind you that the whole spectacle and experience was fueled by your cash, which was being conveyed back to the vault by the cartload.

The walkways blazing through the organized chaos had virile names like Strong Buck Path and Tomahawk Trail, but even these couldn’t match wits with the blinking destination signs – FIRE-WATER! WAMPUM! RAINMAKER ROOM! The Pow-Wow Palace welcomed Lockheed Retired and Friends of Yuba City Jazz; a glistening sign on an easel showed off a prime-rib special for $2.95; and Earth, Wind & Fire were playing the Grand Teepee next month.

An obese man motored by, overflowing his mobility scooter, his wife ambling beside him fingering a gift-shop dream catcher. The man’s gaze hooked on a bartender wearing a chieftain headdress serving up Woo Woos to a bachelorette party.

‘Christ our Lord,’ he boomed, ‘don’t this bug the Indians?’

‘Indians,’ she sniggered, ‘I ain’t seen a worker yet wasn’t a Mexican.’

Keeping a lookout for William or Dodge, Mike nearly tripped over an abandoned medical walker with tennis balls impaled on its back legs. Given his fatigue, the whole spectacle put him on edge. He had no idea what he was looking for.

Backing to a wall, he tugged the brim of the cap low over his eyes. A casino seemed a great place to disappear, but he was all too cognizant of the black domes in the elevated ceilings hiding the security cameras. His elbow knocked a glass pane, giving off a sharp rattle, and he turned to see Rick Graham’s face staring out at him from a photograph inside a wall exhibit.

His breath quickening, he confronted that face, here, on display.

Graham had an arm flung wide to indicate a row of computers, showing them off like a game-show prize. That dense salt-and-pepper hair, the pucker at the lips, his pit-bull build. Mike pictured him at their front door, Annabel bleeding out on the floor at Mike’s back. Dispatch sent a request. I was the closest responder. Bitterly, he remembered the blast of relief he’d felt at Graham’s appearance – help, at last.

The Sacramento Bee article accompanying Graham’s photo spelled out how Deer Creek Casino had donated facial-recognition software and multiple computers to the antiterrorism agency. Graham, a resident of Granite Bay, California, was praised as a local hero.

Dazed, Mike glanced up to the top of the display, where a cheery header proclaimed, DEER CREEK IN THE COMMUNITY!

He stepped back, overwhelmed by the newspaper articles wallpapering the bulletin board inside. POLICEMAN’S WIDOW FUND HITS JACKPOT WITH CASINO DONATION, TRIBE BACKS MEGAN’S LAW AGAINST SEX OFFENDERS, DEER CREEK PROVIDES STATE WITH SIX NEW DIGITAL FREEWAY BILLBOARDS FOR AMBER ALERTS. There were motorcycle helmets for CHP and gun lockers for sheriff’s stations. The casino had donated new SWAT tactical vests for Sacramento PD. And for SFPD. And LAPD. An 8 by10 showed a man wearing an expensive suit and a cowboy hat, shaking hands with the governor himself. The governor had one armed draped across the man’s shoulders and was smiling wide for the cameras just as Mike had. In Sharpie, across the photo – “To Deer Creek Casino, friends of mine, friends of California” – and then the intensive signature.

Even from the start, law enforcement had closed ranks against Mike and his family. Hank’s words played in his head: They will suspect who they’re supposed to suspect and alert who they’re supposed to alert.

Deer Creek Casino had the connections and the pull to unleash hell on Mike’s family. But what was the motive?

Why did these people want to kill him and his daughter?

The notion was like a snake, coiled deep around his brain stem. It twisted, and he felt it again down his spine.

A cocktail waitress emerged from an unmarked door to his side, revealing a glimpse of hall stretching back to offices. Her tray now empty.

‘Excuse me. Where can I find out more about the tribe?’ He wondered if he was standing close enough that she would notice the sunflower seeds tucked into his lips.

She smiled from beneath her Indian-princess headband, the side feather nodding over her red curls. Her skin was pale and freckled; she might have been Irish. ‘At the Tribal Shrine there off the stairwell landing.’

Mike drifted dreamlike up the stairs, through an archway labeled THE STORY OF THE DEER CREEK TRIBE and into what appeared to be a gauche history exhibit. The lights were dimmed reverently, faded photographs and museum-like captions set into black velvet fabric panels. A few tourists made their way around grudgingly, as if fulfilling some educational requirement. Through hidden speakers issued crackly chanting, sounds Mike associated with sweat lodges and Sunday-morning cartoons. The room, like the rest of the casino, recalled nothing so much as a Disneyland attraction.

A copper-faced Indian greeted comers from a mounted television. A computer-generated simulation, he seemed the archetypal Native American – high cheekbones, generous mouth, formidable nose, erect bearing. The stoic, lined face glowed with earth-baked wisdom. Mike found himself staring at the braided blue-black hair with disbelief and horrified recognition. All those fragments and inklings slid into shocking alignment.

‘Welcome, friends. Follow the trail and I shall tell you the tale of the Deer Creek Tribe.’

Mike trudged along, his head thick and soupy, as if he were emerging from general anesthesia. Pinned photos and clippings related the promised tale.

‘The Deer Creek people,’ the Indian intoned from a new flat-screen, not missing a beat, ‘have been in Northern California for nearly four thousand years.’ As the stilted voice continued, Mike did his best to focus on the exhibit pieces. Various sketches showed tribesmen hunting with bows and arrows, setting snares, using harpoons and fishing nets. The women were depicted gathering and grinding acorns and weaving their hair into figure-eight loops at their napes.

Mike’s feet moved at a normal pace, but his blood had quickened, surging in his veins.

The next section covered the tribal member’s beliefs. Woodpeckers symbolized wealth and good luck. Sleeping with one’s face exposed to the moon was thought to be unwholesome. ‘And a blowfly in the thatch house,’ the virtual Indian informed, ‘meant evil was stalking the family.’

A tingle crawled along Mike’s skin.

A waft of tribal incense from the back reached his nostrils. Sage. The smell of his childhood.

His legs had locked up, but the digitized tour guide continued. ‘At their peak, these proud Hokan-speaking people, distant relatives to the Yana tribe, numbered nearly two thousand. But then came the white man. Many of the Indians in this region were relocated in forced marches. Measles, typhoid, smallpox, tuberculoses, and dysentery thinned the ranks of those who remained. The 1860s saw endless raids and counterraids between Native Americans and white settlers, and many tribes were exterminated. But fortunately, a remnant group of the Deer Creek Tribe survived into the next century.’

More sketches – Indians mourning, their hair shorn, heads covered with pitch. The burning of the dead. Woeful faces. Mike willed the Indian to drop the cigar-store shtick and speak at a normal clip, but there was no speeding up animation. ‘They were granted their own humble reservation, the government holding in trust for them title to two thousand acres. Then came the modern scourges. Suicide. Diabetes. Alcoholism. Over the decades the land was broken up and parceled out until precious little remained. By the 1950s many assumed that the Deer Creek Tribe was no more.’

Dusty maps and laminated government treaties organized neatly in binders composed a history section. Agreements between sovereign Indian nations and the United States were public domain, and Deer Creek’s were on proud display here. It took no time for Mike to zero in on a trust agreement buried inside a compact between Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc., and the federal government. The casino – and the attendant corporation – were being held in trust, just as what remained of the reservation was held in trust by the U.S. government.

He skimmed, legal phrases jumping out at him, confirming what he’d already grasped. Casino management had been appointed as trustee ‘with all attendant general powers’ concerning the land and assets. Management would remain in charge as long as there was ‘no member of the tribe able and willing’ to serve. Any tribe members who materialized would become the sole trustees and would enjoy ‘full power and discretionary authority’ over the entire business.

Mike’s mouth was bitter and dry with sunflower-seed residue.

With shaking hands he flipped furiously back a few pages to the definition of terms. ‘ “Tribe Member” shall mean a person, as defined in the tribal bylaws, with a combined minimum of one-eighth (1/8) Deer Creek Tribe blood quantum.’

Mike’s insides had gone cold.

The robo-Indian had been speaking for some time, Mike realized, his words repeating on a loop. ‘One cold April morning in 1977, a hiker discovered a woman living quietly in a lean-to cabin. Her name was Sue Windbird. She was the last of the Deer Creek people.’

Nineteen seventy-seven – just a few years before Mike was abandoned at that playground. His head abuzz with anticipation, he stepped around a small partition and beheld a photograph portrait of an ancient Native American woman. His breath left him.

Her hands curled like claws, resting on the woolen blanket drawn across her knees. Her sun-weathered face retained an impish liveliness. Teeth better than one would have thought. But it was her eyes that left Mike clutching for air.

One brown. The other amber.