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Chapter 53

The photo negatives – aside from the top one in the stack, which had disintegrated in Mike’s hands – had emerged from the water surprisingly intact. They had stuck together at first, which actually served to protect the ones in the middle. Mike had been eager to deliver them, but Shep had forced him to let them lie for a time after drying so the floodlights could bake out any hidden moisture. Now it was a few minutes past midnight, and Mike sat alone with Two-Hawks in a sealed room behind the fill bank at the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok Casino, where jackpots were paid out. The table between them was stainless steel, and a matching cart in the corner held a money-counting machine, an accountant’s calculator, a heavy phone, and a Polaroid instant camera. This was a room that changed the course of people’s fortunes, and tonight, Mike prayed, would be no exception.

Shep was waiting nearby, parked on an unlit road, prepared to unleash hell if Two-Hawks failed to deliver what he’d promised. On the way over, Shep and Mike had stopped to make an addition to the growing stash hidden behind their motel room’s heating vent – the Deer Creek tribe genealogy report. Back in the dank warehouse, with the footlights warming his shoulders, Mike had stared down in wonderment at his family tree, that official scalloped seal marking the top of the wet page. All those names and dates, the entanglements and forks, a history in which he was embedded. When he saw the place reserved for his own name, Michael Trainor, amid the vast and intertwined lineage, he had felt too overwhelmed to speak. But hours later, once the water had dried, leaving the pages stiff, it had struck him that the words were only ink on paper, that he’d already had a place in the world. The only path to reclaiming it ran through the man sitting opposite him now.

Two-Hawks raised each negative to the light and squinted up at it, his dark eyes moist. Wrinkles fanned through his cheeks. His tribe would keep their federal recognition, certainly, but it was clear that the images meant much more to him. He was soaking them in one at a time, and Mike’s patience had grown thin enough to put a fist through.

‘Thank you,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘These are amazing. I’ve dreamed about that settlement since I was a young boy. Did you see?’ He offered a fragile negative across the table, but Mike just stared at him.

Two-Hawks’s expression of wonder was replaced by sheep-ishness. He rode his rolling chair over to the cart and murmured something into the phone. A few minutes later, Blackie entered and set down a safe-deposit box on the table in front of Mike.

Though the room was cool, Mike felt sweat roll down his sides, tickling his ribs. He lifted the lid. What struck him first was how empty the box was – some papers sliding in the long metal case.

On top were surveillance photographs – Brian McAvoy with Dodge and William. Multiple meetings, each photo sporting a different time stamp. Mike looked up at Two-Hawks, unimpressed.

Two-Hawks said, ‘Our man smuggled out the material beneath.’

Mike lifted the final few photos to reveal a stack of photocopies – cramped handwriting and figures filling lined pages.

A ledger.

Mike’s heart quickened.

Two-Hawks’s finger appeared beneath Mike’s downturned face, one manicured nail tapping. ‘These represent payments issued through McAvoy’s personal slush account. Yes, that is McAvoy’s handwriting. He must not have wanted digital files’ – a note of irony – ‘as they’re too easy to copy.’

‘Your inside man?’ Mike said. ‘You said he’s an accountant?’

‘Ted Rogers. A specialist in offshore bookkeeping. McAvoy brought him in to expedite the cash flow between offshore entities. In the process Mr Rogers needed to clean up some wires that had gone astray between accounts. So he was given limited access to this ledger. The recipients are identified by bank-account number – see there? You can probably guess who the most frequent fliers are.’

‘Rick Graham,’ Mike said faintly. ‘Roger Drake. William Burrell.’

‘And, if you reach back far enough, Leonard Burrell. I guess he’s-’

‘William’s uncle.’

Mike riffled through the pages, the scrape on the underside of his arm throbbing. The dates trailed back through the decades. Next to certain payments were lengthy numbers without commas or dashes. Mike counted and recounted; each number had nine digits.

Mike said, ‘Are those what I think they are?’

‘Social Security numbers.’

Mike tried to swallow but found his mouth too dry to carry it off. ‘Belonging to?’

‘Your mother. Your father. Those brothers who wouldn’t sell their land. A councilwoman in the way of a zoning law. A high roller who couldn’t make good on a seven-figure marker. These payments are issued and the people corresponding to those Social Security numbers go missing a day or two later. To a one.’

Seeing it laid out so brazenly was sickening. Dollar and cents, human lives.

‘Which ones…’ Mike wet his lips. ‘Which ones belonged to my parents?’

Two-Hawks pointed out the entries. Mike ran a finger across the dates. Stared at the Social Security numbers. Just John. Danielle Trainor. Two-Hawks cleared his throat, and Mike realized he’d zoned out for a time.

He flipped to the end of the photocopies, but the dates ended about a week before Dodge and William had stepped from the shadows into his life. The thought of the actual ledger still out there, sitting in some safe or locked drawer, chilled him. He knew what would be written there now in the same strained penmanship – his own Social Security number, and that of his daughter.

His eye caught on the last big payment. It had no corresponding Social Security number. ‘What do you think that was?’

Two-Hawks bunched his lips, his stare dropping to the table. ‘One of Ted Rogers’s last acts was transferring the money to pay for his own murder.’ He flipped back a page, pointed to two more entries. ‘And the murder of his wife.’

The fact rang around the room for a moment or two.

‘A few days went by, no sign of any of them. Cops were called, found the house empty. No trace of anything aside from a missing couch cushion from Ted’s study. Dodge and William never leave a body behind.’ Two-Hawks rubbed his eyes. ‘Clearly, McAvoy had caught wind of something. For obvious reasons he left the Social Security numbers off the ledger, since Ted would have recognized…’ He slumped back in his chair, a cheek clamped between his teeth, his eyes gone moist. Mike understood now the man’s quick anger last night when Shep had pressed him on the topic of his inside man.

The scenario in the Rogerses’ house was too close to the nightmares that had been playing out in Mike’s head for the past two weeks. He averted his eyes. In the bottom of the safe-deposit box was a final stack of photocopied papers. He reached for them.

The top pages bore shadows where the originals had been folded like letters. Each had a handwritten date, one of the Social Security numbers from the ledger, and a code of some sort. Midway through the stack, they switched to fax format, the codes scrawled in the middle of the page, the time stamp printed neatly across the top.

Grateful for the shift in attention, Two-Hawks said, ‘I guess those were tucked in the back of the ledger. Each date corresponds with a payment and someone’s disappearance. I figure it’s confirmation that the job was… completed. On these later ones, the “sent to” phone number on the header? That’s McAvoy’s personal fax line. But we couldn’t figure out what those codes mean.’

Mike glanced at a few of them. FRVRYNG. MSTHNG. LALADY.

Text messages? Nicknames?

The sealed room was making him claustrophobic. He was eager to get out and start formulating a plan with Shep and Hank for how to obliterate McAvoy and his men. Gathering up the papers, he slid them into the large gray envelope that Two-Hawks had provided.

He stood, leaning a hand on the table to steady himself. Two-Hawks gripped his arm in support. They headed to the back corridor, Mike continuing on ahead alone.

He reached the far door and shoved it open, the night air sweeping through his clothes, tightening his skin. He looked back. Two-Hawks was still there down the hall, standing in half shadow. He raised an arm, his palm out like that Indian healer from the painting.

Mike stepped out into the cold.

‘You need a body.’ Hank’s voice over the line sounded hoarse and weak.

Cell phone pressed to his cheek, Mike sat shuddering in the passenger seat of the Pinto, Shep looking on. They were parked outside an all-night diner down the hill from Two-Hawks’s casino, the gray envelope heavy across Mike’s thighs.

‘What?’ Mike said.

‘Why do you think McAvoy makes those people disappear?’ Hank said. ‘No body, no murder case. All that shit you got, damning as it looks, remains circumstantial. But a body, a body opens everything up.’

Mike was yelling: ‘You’re telling me that all this-’

‘Look, there’s no question this evidence changes the playing field. It’s way too big for McAvoy to cover up anymore. He’ll be stained – the payments to Graham alone. Once this gets out, it’ll drive a wedge between McAvoy and the law-enforcement community. You’re gonna have whole agencies scrambling to distance themselves from the guy. It’s all about appearances. And with that genealogy report, you can make a claim on the casino and put the asshole out of business. Dodge and William will be investigated and watched, and I can’t imagine that the cops won’t find something that’ll stick. But you asked if this hangs McAvoy, and no, it doesn’t hang him. A body would hang him.’

Exasperated, Mike pressed his temple to the icy window. A young couple in a vintage Mercedes coupe parked beside them and climbed out, so Mike resisted the urge to shout again. ‘What do I do?’ he asked quietly.

‘You’ve done enough,’ Hank said. ‘We get a lawyer, leak some evidence, negotiate who you turn yourself in to. I’m thinking FBI. There’s plenty you gotta answer for, too, Rick Graham’s body being foremost. But we can get you in the system now. Check on Annabel. Get your daughter back, safe.’

Mike’s head was tilted forward into the warm air blowing from the vents, his hand pinching his eyes.

‘You’ve been out in the cold a long time,’ Hank said. ‘It’s time to come in.’

Tears were falling through Mike’s hand, tapping the gray folder. He managed to get the words out. ‘How long? Until I can get Kat?’

‘We’ll get our footing with this as quickly as we can. A few days?’

‘No. By tomorrow night.’

‘Then let’s get started.’

Mike swallowed hard. ‘All right. I’m coming to you. We make copies of all this. Put them in different locations. Figure out a game plan, slow and smart.’

Hank agreed, and they signed off.

Mike tilted back his head and blew out a shaky breath. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay.’ Another breath, this one less wobbly. ‘Let’s hit the motel room, pick up the cash, the flash drive, and the genealogy report.’

‘Motel’s the opposite direction,’ Shep said. ‘I’ll go, meet you there.’

‘We only have one car,’ Mike said.

Shep scowled at him, disappointed, clearly, by Mike’s lack of imagination. Shep got out, swinging the door shut behind him. In ten seconds he was into the vintage Mercedes; in forty the engine roared to life.

He offered Mike a two-finger salute as he pulled out.

Mike slid across into the driver’s seat and drove off.

The freeway, at this hour, was quiet. A few miles down the road, a lightning bolt of hope shot through the vise of Mike’s chest, nearly splitting him in half. He steered off onto the shoulder, stumbled a brief ways into the brush, and bent over, hands on his knees, catching his breath. For so long he hadn’t dared to let himself hope, and the sensation of it ripped through his bloodstream, a drug he’d lost tolerance for. He fought off thoughts of Annabel’s touch, her hands intertwined in his against the bedsheets. The heft of Kat when he picked her up, that smooth cheek against his.

Not a husband. Not a father. Not yet.

The air was sharp and tinged with sagebrush, the wet dirt sticking to the bottoms of his shoes. He heaved twice, bringing nothing up, then returned to the car. He’d left the door open, the soft dome light spilling over the headrests. He buckled back in, put his hands on the wheel, and set off toward Hank.

As he exited the freeway, the Batphone vibrated in his pocket. He fumbled it out and open. ‘Yeah?’

‘I have to put through a call.’ Shep’s voice sounded weird.

‘What? Who?’

There was some background noise and then an electronic click.

Annabel said, ‘Hello?’