The Exiled (8 page)

H
e lay in bed, sipping Scotch, reading the letters from Mavis's son. Over the years,
Mommy
turned to
Mom,
Mom
to
Mother
. The letters themselves were mechanical, written out of obligation rather than love. Still, a biography emerged. The early years included a trail of institutions and foster homes about which the less said, apparently, the better. Young Adler chose factual, detached adjectives. His foster parents were tall or short; the mothers had blond or brown or red hair; one father had muscles and another dressed in plaid suits. The homes they lived in were one or two stories tall. The yards were large or small, came with or without trees.

The adolescent letters featured a single recurring character: Miss Bailey, a social worker. Mavis must have been in touch with this woman; Kurt never explained why he'd been moved from one facility to another, one home to the next, and there was no indication that Mavis asked. Always it was Miss Bailey who picked Kurt up and dropped him off. She drove a purple car with scented strips of paper hanging from the mirror. She drove with the windows up or down. The trips were longer or shorter than an hour.

Mavis sent her son gifts, toys she'd ordered from catalogs. He thanked her in joyless phrases that never varied by more than a word:
Thank you for the spaceship; Thank you for sending me the dinosaur puzzle; Thanks for the astronaut action figures
. He shared a short burst of emotion when an older kid stole his basketball.
I ran after him
but he only laughed at me and then I cried so hard I couldn't see
. In the next letter, he thanked Mavis for the new ball.

Age thirteen: Miss Bailey mysteriously absent, Kurt's first stint in juvie. The circumstances were never discussed. He described his peers by size, crime, age: the tall kid who broke into a car but couldn't get it started; the fat kid who stole from the Salvation Army; the older kid who set his neighbor's house on fire. A brief admission:
They put me to live by myself because of the fighting
. No mention of whom he fought with or why, no comment on the merits and drawbacks of solitude, only:
My new cell is the same size as my old cell even though there's no one else in it.

Age fifteen: Kurt says outright,
If I came to live with you there would be no trouble for me to get into because you said there are only mountains there
. Next letter:
I would not mix with the boys from the reservation. I do not know why you think that I would
. Two months later, as if out of spite, the first and last confession of a crime, the first and last detailing of an arrest, the first and last flagrant recriminations:
Tommy [foster brother] smashed the camera with a baseball bat and I held a gun on the man behind the counter and didn't have to say anything—he just emptied the register. Tommy and I took a bottle of vodka each. We were careful and wore masks but we got drunk and Jack [foster father] found the bottles and gun in our room. He called the police and they came in body armor. And now I am done with you because you are just words on paper. Don't write or visit—not that you would
.

He kept his promise for twenty-one years. Twenty-one years during which Mavis must have continued to reach out. Twenty-one years during which she kept Kurt's childhood letters either out of hope or an unwillingness to let the wound heal. And then:

Today is my 36th birthday. My time is served and I'm a better person now. I have my GED. I have a job [no details] and am well protected [again no details]. I do not need your money, but I'm glad that you and Jack are doing well. If you write to me, I will write you back. I am a man now and my life is in order.

The letter was more than ten years old. Did Mavis's promise of money mark the beginning of her new partnership with Jack? Was she looking to lure her son to her, to compensate in the second half of his life for everything she'd deprived him of in the first half? Was Kurt her motivation for killing Jack? Treasure hadn't worked, so she gave him the opportunity to rescue her?
Kurt, I've gotten myself into an awful mess…Kurt, I need your help…I have nowhere else to turn
. Was it Kurt who'd cleaned out the bunker, torched the pickup?

Raney set the letters aside, took a long sip of Bay's gift, stretched out with his feet dangling from the edge of the bed.

Raney had been more absent than Mavis, but then his child had grown up in the care of a loving mother. What had Mavis hoped to achieve by merely staying in touch? Had she done anything more than keep the pain fresh?

But then, Raney thought, who am I to judge?

Of course the comparison worked both ways. In the early years, Raney asked for photos and received no response. Eventually, he stopped asking. Sophia gave him nothing more than a name to go on: Ella. In place of memories, Raney had a bank of hazy imaginings: Ella as a toddler, Ella in grade school, Ella in her prom dress. When she was first born, he would lie in bed at night picturing the color of her hair, the complexion of her skin, based on the genetic makeup of her parents. The possibilities overwhelmed him; the effort helped him stay clean.

Raney shut off the light, then switched it back on. He pushed himself out of bed as though he'd forgotten something important. He dug the dimebags from his suitcase, balanced them on one palm, carried them into the bathroom. Setting them side by side on the vanity, he took a slow visual measurement, then opened the second bag, tilted and tapped until its contents came level with the first. He felt a quiet satisfaction, like that of a penitent lighting a candle.

He drifted off thinking of his estranged daughter, but it was Luisa Gonzalez he saw in his sleep.

B
ay's office featured large windows interrupted by thin strips of laminate paneling. There was a fern in the corner (secretary? girlfriend?), a stuffed bass from his trip to Alaska, photos of his nephew's son and daughter. Great-Uncle Bay: the kids ran riot over his ranch two weeks out of every spring. Raney found it easy to picture. It was a shame, he thought, that Bay never had children of his own.

They sat on opposite sides of a sprawling desk. Bay set his laptop between them, clicked on a microphone icon.

Silence.

“That's it?” Raney said.

“Uh-huh. You get anything off it?”

“It's like she took a drug to calm herself, then fought the drug in order to sound like a woman who just found her husband murdered.”

“Or like someone was coaching her,” Bay said. “Standing there, telling her to turn up the hysterics.”

“Someone like her son,” Raney said.

“Speaking of which…”

Bay pushed a copy of Kurt Adler's postjuvie record across the desk. Raney skimmed, paraphrased the main points out loud:

“Payback,” Raney said. “The drunk and disorderly was a phony. The cops probably meant to kill him. Or have him killed.”

Four years older than Raney.

“Jesus,” Bay said. “This is Mavis's son?”

“Biological son.”

“He's been quiet for thirteen years. You think he went straight?”

“I'm guessing he was promoted. Somewhere above street level. Maybe the beating he took finished him as muscle. Or maybe he was given his own crew to run. The cop killings would have been a rite of passage. In his last letter to Mavis, he said he was
protected now
.”

“Don Corleone protected?”

“Some kind of organized crime. It's not unheard of in Boston.”

“Let me see if I've got this straight: Mavis locks her husband in a bunker with the Mexie twins; the three of them turn on each other; Mavis sees the mess, calls her long-lost mobster kid to come clean up; he obliges, probably enticed by the free dope, then ends up tussling with a cartel blade man; the son and the assassin come out even, and both drive off.”

“That plays. But the missing Jaguar still bothers me. There had to be a third party.”

“Question: Why didn't Mr. Adler get rid of the bodies altogether? There's plenty of scrubland around here. Plenty of wild mouths to feed.”

“He would have needed a small crew for that. He figured he had us beat. How do you prove murder by padlock? If Mavis stuck to the script, they'd be fine. She might even collect insurance.”

“As long as she didn't get her throat slit. You think Adler has the drugs now?”

“Nothing else makes sense. But if he was here, he's a ghost. There was no sign of him at the house.”

“So he holed up somewhere else with the coke.”

“Someplace close by,” Raney said.

“The casino?”

“Maybe. We couldn't look for him there. And he could see the Wilkins ranch from his window.”

“No way to confirm it.”

“Not officially.”

Raney tore Adler's mug shot from the top page of the file, folded it into his pocket.

“You won't get much in the way of cooperation,” Bay said.

“No, but I know someone who might.”

“Someone who gives art classes up at the reservation?”

“Maybe.”

“Deputize the eye candy. You're a clever son of a bitch. Tell me, did you go as hard on her as you did on Mavis?”

“The killings didn't happen on her property. She wasn't married to one of the killers.”

“No, but if Mavis had an inner circle, Clara was it. Her knowing nothing don't figure. I could see Mavis holding quiet about the drugs, but about her son? A woman doesn't keep that secret from another woman.”

“Maybe not. I'll press harder.”

“Good. What do I do in the meantime?”

“Wait. We need the troopers to turn up that Jaguar. Preferably with the son and drugs inside.”

“You think he'd be that sloppy?”

Raney shrugged.

“What about the Mexican?” Bay said. “I want the bastard who killed Junior.”

“We've got uniforms searching hospitals and clinics. We've got eyes on the border. It won't be long.”

“A mobster and a Mexican assassin,” Bay said. “Things are getting a little too lively around here. Might be time for me to cash in my forty.”

“You hear Alaska calling?”

“Louder every day.”

“There is something you could do for me before you go.”

“What's that?”

“See if you can find anything on Kurt's father. And his mom, for that matter. What was Mavis up to before she married Jack?”

C
lara came to the door in a turquoise bathrobe, her hair fresh off the pillow. She appeared soft in the early morning, as though the haze through which she saw the world were somehow reflected back on her. Like an actress in an old Hollywood movie, Raney thought.

“What is it?” she said. “Have you found something?”

“Maybe. I'm hoping you can help.”

She stood in the doorway, one bare foot on the pavement, pulling her robe tight over her chest.

“With what?”

“The children you teach at the reservation—are you friendly with any of their parents? Specifically, parents who work for the casino's hotel? Cleaning staff? Reception?”

“I'm friendly with a few of the mothers. Or at least they seem to like me. Why?”

“Would you mind asking them some questions? Just one question, really. A question I should ask you first.”

He showed her Adler's mug shot.

“Have you seen him before?”

She took a corner of the photo between her thumb and index finger, held it at eye level. Raney watched her examine Kurt's face, caught no glint of recognition, only fear, a suspicion that she was looking at Mavis's killer.

“Is he the one?”

“He's a person of interest. I think he might have been staying at the casino, but I have no authority there. I can't ask directly, or if I did, chances are slim anyone would talk to me. All I want is confirmation that he's been here sometime in the last week.”

“All right,” she said. “I can do that.”

“Now?”

“Give me an hour. Mrs. Hardin isn't here yet. And I'd rather not prowl around the casino in my bathrobe.”

Raney walked the only commercial street, an east-west thoroughfare with residential offshoots running a few houses deep. The town did what it could to maintain its pioneer charm: raised wooden platforms in place of sidewalks; bishop's-crook lampposts; diagonal parking, as if the vehicles were tethered to troughs. The squat brick buildings differed in size and shape, as though they'd been constructed to fit the dimensions of the town's original makeshift structures.

He turned his back to the sharp morning sun, strolled past a hair salon, a used-car lot, a mechanic's shop, the sheriff's office, a semiabandoned movie theater that still showed revivals every Saturday afternoon, a megastore that sold everything from baby formula to guns and ammo. Why, he wondered, had this town survived instead of any one of the ghost towns within a ten-mile radius? It wasn't situated off a major highway, wasn't en route to any tourist attraction. There was no local specialty, nothing to be had here that couldn't be had anywhere else.

With the exception, maybe, of the casino. Facing east, he could see its top floors buried in the foothills, a rectangular stucco peak mounted with satellite dishes and antennae, an alien structure making a halfhearted attempt to blend in.

Clara had brushed her hair, wore a draped halter top and jeans. The rings, absent when she first answered the door, were back in place. She had a habit of tugging on the pendant around her neck. The motion of her fingers drew Raney's eyes from the road.

“Are you going to tell me who this guy is?” she asked.

“A person of interest.”

“You already said that. What makes him so interesting?”

“He has a record. He fits the profile.”

“Do you ever just answer a question?”

“For now, it's better if I don't give you all the details.”

He knew as soon as he said it that the phrasing came out wrong.

“I see,” she said. “You think because I cried for my friend, I'm—”

“No, that's not it.”

“How's this? Tell me who he is, or I won't help you.”

Raney hesitated, remembered his promise to Bay.

“All right,” he said. “I'll tell you. But first I have to make sure you aren't holding anything back.”

“Like what?”

“Anything you might know about Mavis. Her past.”

“Like I said, it never came up. I didn't want to ask.”

“I thought the two of you were close.”

“You're being mean.”

“No, I'm being a cop.”

“Look, Mavis didn't open up to me. We were close, but not in that way. Sometimes I felt like a child around her. Sometimes I felt she was playing parent. Letting me into her home, letting me be around Jack, was the closest she came to confiding in me.”

It rang true: all signs pointed to Mavis as someone who told people what she wanted them to know and nothing more.

“Now it's your turn,” Clara said. “Who is it I'm asking about?”

Raney braced himself.

“He's Mavis's son. From before Jack.”

“That's insane. I saw Mavis nearly every day for three years. She may not have told me everything, but—”

“She didn't raise him. As far as I know, she never laid eyes on him before last week.”

Clara turned, stared out the window.

“You think he killed her?”

“No, but I believe he was here. He may have fought with the man who did kill her.”

“You said he had a record. What kind of record?”

“A long one,” Raney said. “Long and violent.”

“So you think Mavis told him about Jack's business? You think she enlisted him?”

“I don't think anything. I'm following a lead.”

“That's just something you feel you have to say. You've made up your mind, but you're wrong. You've overlooked something. I would at least know what Mavis was capable of. She didn't have her estranged son kill her husband and make off with a drug stash. She owned a crafts store. She was sixty-two. It's fucking absurd.”

“I've been doing this job a long time…”

He felt her eyes gloss over.

“Spare me the
things I've seen
speech. Your years as a cop don't make you clairvoyant. I knew her, and you didn't.”

Raney let it pass.

He locked his gun and holster in the glove compartment, watched Clara cross the parking lot, counted to a hundred, and followed.

No Sims, no jolly-giant bartender. There was a peace about the place in the morning; the frenzy hadn't yet begun. He dug in his pockets for loose change, walked the aisles of slot machines, hoping the right one would somehow call to him. There were nickel slots, dime slots, quarter slots; cherries, spaceships, full and half moons. He settled on one with an unlikely theme: cowboys and Indians, top prize for tomahawks straight across. He dropped in a nickel, pulled the lever. Lasso, peace pipe, stirrup. Prize: the chance to play again. Two pulls later, he won five dollars, a hundred nickels to keep him entertained until Clara came back. He found the random nature of the game liberating; with poker or blackjack you could trick yourself into believing there was skill involved, a system to be conquered. Slot machines demanded a total submission to chance. Raney understood why they were so popular with the elderly.

The action of feeding the machine turned mechanical. His mind drifted. He thought of Bay's comment:
cash in my forty.
For eighteen years, Raney's expenses had been subminimal. His car was state-issued, his gas paid for. He was even given a clothing allowance. Sophia, or, more likely, Sophia's father, had refused all child support; the checks Raney sent were either returned or never deposited. No mortgage hung over his head. Little of what he liked to do required much money. If he continued to live as he had been living, he could resign tomorrow. So why didn't he? There were days, more and more of them, when he could imagine starting over, at age forty-two, as a photographer, a park ranger. But he had no doubt that ten years from now he would still be Detective Raney. Why? To continue with something implies hope.

His phone rang. The sound startled him. Bay's name lit up the caller ID.

“Sheriff?”

“Raney, this is weird. Real goddamn weird.”

“What is?”

“I ran Mavis's background like you said. I used the name on her son's birth certificate: Mavis Adler. I even called up a fed buddy to make sure I had all the databases covered.”

“And?”

“There is no Mavis Adler. There never was. Not our Mavis.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there are plenty of Mavis Adlers out there, but not one comes close to Mavis Wilkins. Either they turn up deceased, or the age is all wrong.”

“Huh.”

“Is that the best you can offer? Where are you, anyway? Sounds like a video arcade.”

“The casino. Look, you know what to do. Run her Social against the dead Adlers. And send her prints to Interpol.”

“Could it be some kind of witness protection thing?”

“Maybe. There was more to her than a crafts store, that's for sure.”

“Forty years in a town this small and no one knew a goddamn thing about her. How's that possible?”

“Practice,” Raney said. “And luck.”

“I guess her luck ran out.”

“I guess it did. What does the birth certificate say about the father?”

“Unknown.”

“We'll have to ID Mavis before we can track him down.”

Bay clucked his tongue, hung up.

A half hour later Raney's forty dollars had dwindled to fifteen. A church congregation occupied the machines around him, adults of all ages wearing T-shirts that read
IN CHRIST
WE ARE WON
. They called across to each other as though Raney weren't there. The day's frenzy had arrived.

Clara tapped him on the shoulder.

“I don't know if it's good news or bad,” she said.

“Was he here?”

“He still is. Or at least he never checked out.”

“You get a room number?”

“Seven thirteen.”

“That's good,” he said. “Very good.”

“So what do we do now?”

Raney handed her his depleted stash of nickels.

“Your turn,” he said.

“I'm not coming with you?”

“You're too pretty for the cameras.”

He walked away wishing he'd said something—anything—else.

He stopped in the gift shop, bought a baseball cap featuring a Zuni sun and an oversize sweatshirt with the name of the casino painted across the front. He changed in the men's room, bent the brim of the cap and pulled it low, folded his shirt and blazer into the gift-store bag. He kept his eyes on the carpet as he walked to the bank of elevators, mugging tourist for the cameras.

A
DO NOT DISTURB
sign hung outside room 713. Raney knocked just in case, then jimmied the door with a credit card, slipping the hard plastic between latch and frame quickly enough to pass for lawful entry.

The room gave an immediate impression of slovenliness: bed unmade, pajamas in a heap on the floor, iron and ironing board left out, towels scattered around the bathroom, power cord on the desk plugged into nothing. A second look revealed someone who was orderly to the point of obsession. Unlike most people, Kurt used every space the hotel provided. A half dozen identical salmon-colored dress shirts hung in the closet by the door, neatly pressed, buttons facing in the same direction; perfectly creased pants lay draped over the tiers of a slacks hanger; argyle socks, black T-shirts, and patterned boxers filled the dresser drawers. None of Kurt's clothes showed the slightest sign of wear, as though he mail-ordered a new wardrobe every few weeks.

A picture began to form. Kurt had been preparing for his day, ironing his shirt, still in his pajamas, when…had Mavis called? Did she make Gonzalez's man before he reached the house? Unlikely: Mavis and Junior had been killed in the early morning, somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. And Mavis had been murdered in the kitchen, with no sight line to the driveway. If she'd seen the man coming, she could have raced out the back, run for the bunker.

Still, Kurt had left the hotel in a hurry. He'd grabbed anything incriminating and vanished. Raney found no weapons, no ID, no dope, no ledger. Something had spooked him. What? When? His bedside alarm was set for 8:00 a.m. Raney crossed to the window, discovered a perfect bird's-eye view of the Wilkins ranch. Only one scenario made sense: Kurt, standing at the ironing board, had spotted the sirens, the swarm of reporters. He fled, most likely in the Jaguar given to him by Mavis. He'd have traded it for something less conspicuous by now, would be on his way back to Boston with Jack's coke in the trunk.

But then who had tangled with the cartel boy?

Maybe Wilkins's buyer grew tired of the delay.

Or maybe there was a third party, as yet unknown. Whoever shared coffee and wine with Mavis the night she died.

Raney picked up the phone, called reception.

“Hi. I'm in room seven thirteen, and I need to check out. I'm running late. I was hoping you could send someone up with the bill.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

“I might be in the shower, so if they could just slip it under the door, that would be great.”

“You bet.”

Meanwhile, he continued searching: under the bed, between the mattresses, inside the air ducts. Nothing. He picked up a pack of Gauloises from the side table and flipped open the lid. The cigarettes sat high in the box. He emptied them onto the table. A clump of tinfoil tumbled out. Raney unfolded it, discovered a small rock of heroin. He worked it back into its wrapping, left the pack as he'd found it.

A sheet of paper came sliding across the carpet. Raney took it up. Adler gave a fake name, fake address. The contact number was a long shot. On impulse, Raney took out his phone and dialed. An automated message, no name given. Pique his curiosity, Raney thought.

“Hello, this is Detective Wes Raney calling for Kurt Adler. I was wondering if you have any idea who killed your mother or where her drug stash disappeared to. You can reach me at this number, day or night.”