You're Next (12 page)

Mike’s office, a modular-classroom-style prefab dropped in the middle of a dirt lot, had all the basics. Phone, fax, high-speed
Internet. Aggressively competent gum-smacking ‘front-office girl,’ rounded out with high hair and bosom. Fire-sale desks shoved
up against corkboard-covered walls, onto which were pinned various blueprints, permits, geological surveys, and Sears photos
of family members. It was a humming little operation, twenty-five by thirty-eight feet of efficiency, the nuts and bolts behind
the facades they constructed elsewhere.

Mike sat at his desk, massaging away an incipient migraine and pretending to review a bid for an insurance job. He’d been
preoccupied all morning, adrift on sour thoughts. He couldn’t stop imagining William’s black-flecked lips, the reek of his
gut breath, the way his face had appeared in the back window of the van, a disembodied head floating between the curtains.
Then there was the image of that oil-stained polar bear, rocking in slow motion on the parking lot’s asphalt between Dodge’s
massive feet.

He rose abruptly and headed for fresh air. Pacing the weeds of the yard, he tried Hank for the third time, and at last the
PI picked up.

‘Want a distraction?’ Mike asked.

‘From dying?’ Hank said. ‘Whaddaya got?’

Mike told him about his run-in with Dodge and William and how oddly the sheriff’s deputies had acted back at the station.

‘Not much to go on,’ Hank said, ‘but I’ll nose around, see what I come up with.’

Unsatisfied, Mike headed back inside. Andrés was at the copy machine, frustrated and pushing buttons indiscriminately. He
came over, sat sideways at the edge of Mike’s desk, and gazed across the office at Sheila’s cleavage as she argued an insurance
adjuster into telephonic submission. Andrés clicked down on Mike’s desktop stapler with the heel of his hand a few times,
just for fun. ‘A guy come by the site, asking about you.’

‘What do you mean, asking about me?’

‘When you around. When you at the office versus the jobs. That kind of stuff. Like he making conversation. Maybe he looking
to hire you.’

Mike’s face grew hot. ‘What’d the guy look like?’

‘Dunno. Just a guy. Scruffy beard. Walk funny.’

Mike’s heartbeat vibrated in his ears. That headache, picking up steam. He tugged open the top desk drawer to grab some Tylenol.
‘What time was he—’ The question caught in his throat as he stared down into the drawer. His calendar was to the left. Because
the drawer seam there had cracked, pushing up splinters, he always kept the calendar snug against the right side, the habit
ossifying over the past few months.

‘Sheila?’ He waited until she covered the phone and looked over. ‘Did you need to go in my desk for anything this morning?’

She shook her head. He lifted the Tylenol bottle up, regarded it, then tossed it in the trash can. He rose abruptly, Andrés
observing him with puzzlement.

Mike crossed to the front door, swung it open, and crouched to study the dead bolt. He’d selected the Medeco himself for its
six tumblers and the fact that it took a multidimensional key that was hard as hell to duplicate with a pick set. He’d learned
this, of course, from Shep. But he’d also seen Shep get one open with a can of spray lubricant and a pull-handle trigger pick
gun that, in Shep’s expert hands, could get the pin stacks to hop into alignment.

He hesitated a moment, almost fearful to know, then smeared a thumb across the keyhole. Sure enough, his print came away glistening
with spray lubricant.

Someone had prepped this lock for a pick gun. Dodge or William.

Mike’s mouth had gone dry. Getting through a Medeco was professional-level stuff, a job worthy of Shep. Which meant their
coming through Kat’s bedroom window wasn’t as far-fetched as Mike had been trying to convince himself.

Why would they break into his
office
?

‘Sheila,’ Mike said, his voice gruff even to his own ears. Everyone in the office, he realized, was staring at him, crouched
there in the front doorway. ‘Can you tell
when
certain computer files were looked at?’

‘Sure, Mr Wingate.’ No matter how many times he told her to call him Mike, she insisted on addressing him formally. ‘There’s
a “last accessed” time-stamp feature on most documents, though people usually never pay it any mind.’

He beckoned her to his desk, pulling out his chair for her. As he leaned over her shoulder, she clicked around, Andrés looking
on from the far side of the desk.

‘Was anything opened over the weekend?’ Mike asked.

‘I’m looking. But I have to go doc to doc. Anything in particular you want me to check?’

‘Green Valley,’ he said.

As she typed, Andrés tilted his head and said to Mike, ‘Our files are all clean on that.’

‘Why wouldn’t they be?’ Sheila asked, still focused on the monitor. Mike and Andrés exchanged a look. Before either could
answer, she said, ‘No, those files haven’t been opened since twelve twenty-one
P.M.
last Thursday.’

That had been Mike, perusing the vitrified-clay invoice to torture himself over lunch break.

‘But wait,’ Sheila said. ‘
This
was opened Saturday night, one thirty-two
A.M.
’

‘What is it?’ Mike asked.

‘The personnel files.’

A chill ran across the back of his neck. ‘They looked through our personnel files?’

She clicked around some more. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just yours.’

He took a step back. Andrés and Sheila turned to him, their mouths
moving but their words not registering. Dodge and William were digging for information not on some job but on
him
. Just as the sheriff’s deputies had been.

Dodge and William, it seemed, wanted to know who he was just as much as he did.

He became aware, slowly, of his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He wiggled it out and glanced at the screen, which showed
a text message from Annabel:
HI HON WHERES THE KEY TO THE SAFE DEPOSIT BOX AGAIN I FORGOT NEED TO GRAB SOMETHING OUT.

He stared at the message, that timpani thrum in his skull urging his headache to loftier heights. He and Annabel never texted;
they were old-fashioned and preferred to use phones for talking.

He called his wife right away. It rang through to voice mail. ‘
Hi, it’s Annabel. I’m probably digging around for my phone in that tiny space between the car seat and the door, so
—’

He signaled Andrés and Sheila to give him a minute and began pacing cramped circles around his desk as the home phone rang.
Voice mail.

It took him a moment to realize that Sheila was talking to him. ‘Mr Wingate.
Mr Wingate
. You’re due to walk that undeveloped land in Chatsworth at two. Which means you have to leave now.’

‘Can’t do it, Sheila.’ He barreled toward the door. ‘I’ve got to get home.’

She pressed an irritated smile onto her face as he swept past, his jog turning to a sprint.

Mike raced home, running red lights and stop signs, dialing and redialing the home line. Finally Annabel picked up. ‘Hi, babe,’
she said. ‘I just walked in, and that kitchen sink’s getting worse. I know, shoemaker’s kids and all that, but—’

He cut her off. ‘Did you text me?’

‘When have I
ever
texted you? I’m not fourteen.’

‘Where’s your cell phone?’

‘I’ve been looking for it all morning. I think I left it at school.’

He took a moment to level out his breathing, then said, ‘They stole it. I got a text from your cell asking me where the safe-deposit
key was.’

‘In the tissue box in your nightstand. I wouldn’t ask that.’

He told her quickly about the message, William’s coming by the
job site, and the break-in at the office. A dreary silence as she tried to catch up to the information. ‘Okay . . . so they
want into the safe-deposit box because that’s where people keep private stuff they don’t want to hide in the house.’ Her voice
trembled a bit. ‘Which means they’ve searched the house.’

‘They searched my office.’ He turned onto their street. ‘I’m here.’

Now, anger. ‘How would they even
know
we have a safe-deposit box? It’s not like everyone has one. Plus, bank records are confid—’ She stopped. He could hear her
breathing harder with the realization.

‘The deputies,’ he said. ‘Law enforcement could get clearance
to see those records, to know there’s a safe-deposit box at our bank in my name.’

She was at the front door, walking the key out to him as he pulled in the driveway. He could see her mouth moving an instant
ahead of the words in his ear. ‘You think they’re working together? These guys and the deputies?’

‘
Someone
’s prying around at a higher level, either officially or unofficially.’ He was still talking into the phone, though she was
now a few steps away.

He rolled down his window, and she leaned in, dropped the safe-deposit key in his lap, and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

When she pulled back, her gaze was tense, scared. ‘Whatever this is, how do we get free of it?’

‘Depends what they want,’ he said.

‘Seems like they want to know where you came from.’

He closed a fist around the key and put the truck in reverse. ‘Don’t we all.’

Walking past the gaze of his favorite prim-mouthed bank manager, Mike signed in and stepped into the privacy booth with his
safe-deposit box. A deep breath before lifting the thin metal lid. A mess of pictures and documents greeted him. An abandoned
child report. The county-issued form, three decades old, assigning him a new last name. Elementary-school transcripts. His
old Social Security card. The Couch Mother’s obituary. A few tattered photos of him and the Shady Lane boys. That college
acceptance letter he’d prized so. A probation report, documenting his sentence served.

A chronicle of the imperfect history of Mike Doe.

A flood of nostalgia almost choked him. Here, before him, was everything that remained of his former self.

He dug through the contents, his fingers striking something hard and buried. He lifted it carefully to the light. A Smith
& Wesson .357. Straightforward and easy to handle, it was the only
make of gun he’d ever been comfortable with. Shep had given it to him for home protection when Mike had first gotten his
own place. Mike had kept it in his nightstand drawer for years, finally moving it here at Annabel’s behest when Kat was born.
He’d never fired it away from a shooting range and hoped he never would. The heft of it in his hand felt familiar and dangerous.

He set it gently on the counter.

He pulled the empty plastic liner from the trash can beneath the counter and dumped the box’s contents into it. Bag slung
over his shoulder, he stared down at the revolver for a beat.

He pocketed it on the way out.

Mike crouched in a deserted alley, the shadows stretching dusk-long, the whine of traffic thrumming off the brick walls. The
door to his Ford stood open, casting a triangle of light onto the ground. He leaned forward, broken glass crunching beneath
his shoes, and touched the end of a lit match to a corner of the trash bag. His eyes glassy, he watched the flames catch and
flare, peeling away the plastic and eating through all those photographs and documents.

There is no past
.

And yet, clearly, there was.

It ended with a sad little pile of ash, which he kicked to the dead air, scattering it. He stamped out the embers, climbed
into his truck, and drove away.

Dinner preparation on pause, Annabel sat on the kitchen counter and stared down at the .357 clutched nervously in her lap.

‘It’s a revolver,’ Mike said. ‘Easy to handle.’

She spoke in a hushed voice so Kat, busy with homework in her room, wouldn’t hear. ‘I’m worried about having it around her.’

‘Let me show you how to use it.’ As the pasta water boiled, he
positioned his wife’s slender hands around the grip, but she pulled back, leaving him with the revolver.

‘It makes me uncomfortable.’

‘We’re past comfort now.’

Kat trudged in, eyeing her workbook. ‘How annoying is long division? I mean, if they’re teaching us to be smart, wouldn’t
smart people just use a calculat—’ She looked up, her eyes pronounced behind the red frames of her glasses. ‘Why do you have
a gun? That’s a gun, right? I mean, a gun in our kitchen? Is something wrong? Have you ever shot it? Can I hold it?’

‘Go back to your room,’ Annabel managed. ‘Give us a moment here.’

Kat backed away, eyes on the Smith & Wesson.

Annabel turned to Mike. ‘And there you have it.’ She slid off the counter, turned down the stovetop heat, and eyed the lesson
plan splayed in the cookbook stand, her feminine scrawl brightening the page margins. She was the only person he knew who
could study and prep puttanesca simultaneously.

The phone rang. Mike snatched up the cordless.

Hank sounded burned out. ‘I can’t get anything on a Dodge or a William being at the award ceremony, but that’s to be expected.’
He cleared his throat, which turned into a coughing fit. ‘Now, listen, there’s something I gotta lay out for you here.’

Mike found the pause as unnerving as the tension in Hank’s voice. ‘What?’

Annabel turned, and he drew her toward him, turning the phone so they could both hear.

‘Well, I don’t know what,’ Hank said. ‘Yet. I called my hook at the sheriff’s, and it seems there’s some kind of alert out
on you.’

‘Alert? What does that mean?’

‘Don’t know. But your name’s been flagged.’

‘Flagged for
what
?’ Mike’s voice was rising.

‘I already told you. I don’t have those answers.’ A deep rasp of a breath. ‘Look, this could be local, limited to L.A. County
Sheriff’s. Or it could be some other agency that’s monitoring anything around your name, that wants to be informed if you
have any run-ins.’

Mike thought of Elzey and Markovic’s hushed conversation in the back office after she’d gotten off the phone, and how they’d
come back out gunning for him.

‘Like who? The FBI? CIA?’ Mike choked out a laugh. ‘How widespread is it? I mean, every station?’

‘I can’t get more just yet,’ Hank said. ‘Everyone’s being a bit coy. Obviously, it’s classified. I gotta massage this thing,
nibble at the edges, come in at the right angle. Gimme a day or two.’

‘Is there any agency that
doesn’t
have me flagged?’ Mike asked.

‘I’m sure there are plenty. Agencies – and individual stations within agencies – are understaffed
and overworked. So unless you went to sleepaway camp in the rugged northwest of Pakistan, it’s not like you’re at the top
of morning roll call. We don’t know the extent of this thing, but there’s no reason to assume you’ve become public enemy
numero uno
.’

‘What if we need help?’

‘Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Until we determine how widespread the alert is and who put it out, how can you know who
to trust?’

Mike swallowed dryly. ‘And if Dodge and William make another move in the meantime?’

‘From what I can read at this point, I wouldn’t count on the authorities lending you a friendly ear.’

He signed off, and Mike and Annabel stared at each other.

Annabel reached down, took the revolver from Mike’s hand. She raised
it clumsily, waiting, her gaze steady. He exhaled a heavy breath, moved forward, and shaped her hands properly around the
grip.