In Your Name, page 17
‘It’s not her. It’s not Mechanic.’
‘Fuck.’ Harper slapped his hand hard against his thigh.
‘Abort, abort,’ Lucas said into his walkie-talkie. The transit skidded to a standstill on the wet grass. Bassano could clearly be seen through the windshield, his mouth wide open and a ‘What the fuck?’ look on his face.
Harper scurried away across the park.
Lucas limped as fast as he could up the hill to the tree line.
Bassano swung the van into reverse and disappeared in the direction of the car park.
The woman lay on the ground, her face buried in the dirt screaming, ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.’
Harper trudged his way through the wet grass. With every step he uttered the word ‘fuck’.
42
Harper and Bassano were pacing around Lucas’s room shouting at each other.
‘How the hell did Mechanic not show?’ Harper was not a happy man. ‘We need to get over to Victorville and start slicing bits off her sister.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t get the paper or something.’ Bassano was trying to defuse Harper’s rage.
‘She got it alright. We need to teach that bitch a lesson.’
‘Let’s talk it through with Lucas when he gets back.’
The door burst open and Lucas threw the latest edition of the Bulletin onto the bed.
‘Read it,’ he said bluntly.
Harper picked it up and flicked over the pages. There in the personal section was an ad meant only for them. It was short and to the point:
LUCAS
PUT HER BACK
He passed it to Bassano, who read it and flung the paper onto the floor.
‘She’s playing us,’ Lucas said. ‘Mechanic was never going to show. She doesn’t believe we’ll hurt Jo.’
‘It’s like you said, boss. We took her, so we have to return her. That’s the game.’
‘We got to seize back the initiative.’ Harper was stomping around, furious with the events of the morning. ‘We need to go to Victorville and make Jo pay for her sister’s actions.’
Lucas shook his head.
‘How are we going to achieve that? Check her out of the nursing home, hack a couple of fingers off and put her back? That doesn’t work.’
‘We don’t have to hack anything off,’ said Bassano.
‘Yes we do,’ shouted Harper. ‘Mechanic has to know we’re not fucking around. She needs to learn a lesson. She needs to know we mean business.’
‘Yes she does. I agree. But we only have to tell Mechanic we’ve chopped her fingers off. She has no way of knowing if we have or not.’
‘Go on,’ said Lucas.
‘We place an ad stating that because Mechanic didn’t show this morning we’ve taken it out on her sister. She has no way of verifying it.’
‘What do you think?’ Lucas looked at Harper.
‘I think we should go to Victorville, remove her fucking head and mail it to Mechanic.’
‘That’s plain stupid. Bassano’s right, we can fake it. We can make it look as though we’ve retaliated.’ Lucas was beginning to think rationally at last. ‘We place another ad and set up a second exchange.’
Lucas left the room to get some coffee while the others continued to argue. He needed time to think and the place was filled with a heady mix of confusion and rage, neither of which helped him work out what to do next.
The hotel reception contained a large line of people checking out. Like most hotels in Vegas the management had not yet figured out the inverse relationship between the length of the line and the number of reception checkout staff.
Most of the queuing tourists looked exhausted, broke and happy. Pretty standard for people leaving Vegas.
Detective Moran sat at a table drinking tea.
Lucas spotted her and tried to backtrack. She called him over.
‘Morning, Mr Lucas, how are you today?’
‘Good thanks. Yes, I’m good.’ Lucas wanted to run for the nearest exit.
‘Enjoying your break?’
‘Yes, it’s fine thanks. Who wouldn’t enjoy themselves in Vegas.’
‘Glad I’ve bumped into you, I was meaning to have a little chat. Do you have a couple of minutes, I wouldn’t mind running something past you?’ She had accidently bumped into Lucas only because she’d been waiting for forty-five minutes for him to show up for his morning coffee.
Moran patted the seat next to her. Lucas complied.
‘I wouldn’t mind getting your advice, in a professional capacity.’ Her tone was soft and gentle.
‘A professional capacity? I’m not sure that’s quite ethical given my circumstances.’
‘Don’t worry it’ll be fine.’
‘How can I help, Detective?’
‘I have a problem and you might be able to provide some insight.’
‘Okay, what is it?’
‘You see, Lucas, I’ve recently moved into a new place, and like most people who move into a new property, I’m constantly seeing things that need fixing. The bathroom needs re-tiling, the kitchen worktops could do with changing, you know, that kind of thing.’
Lucas nodded but had no idea where this was going. He wanted to get the hell away from this woman.
Moran sipped her tea and continued. ‘Now I’m not what you might call a DIY type of girl. I work long hours and the last thing I want to be doing when I finally knock off work is to be on the business end of a circular saw. So I figure I need to find some local tradesmen who can do that for me.’
Lucas interrupted. ‘Detective Moran, I’m sure you and I have more important things to do than discuss home improvements.’ He got up to leave, every sinew in his body screamed ‘run’. She put her hand firmly on his arm for him to sit back down.
‘Stick with me on this one, Mr Lucas, I think this is important.’
‘I don’t see how?’
‘I’ve been reading this local paper where businesses advertise that sort of work. It’s fantastic, there’s all sorts in there, it’s called the Bulletin. Looks like whatever I want to do there’s a guy who can do it.’ Lucas flinched.
‘I got bored looking through the classifieds and started to look through the personals. There’s a lot of busy girls in Vegas that’s for sure.’ She laughed and gave him a theatrical wink still holding his forearm tight. ‘I came across this one advert and it stood out from the others because it wasn’t really advertising anything. I notice things like that. I notice when things look out of place. Take a look, Mr Lucas. It’s a little odd, right?’
She pushed the paper in front of him. Midway down on the left, circled in red marker pen, he read:
LUCAS
WHAT COMES NEXT IS IN YOUR NAME
‘What do you think, Mr Lucas?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before.’ Lucas wanted the ground to swallow him up.
‘That’s strange because when I came back to your room the other day and we had our little disagreement about what was relevant, I saw the same newspaper. Your friend Harper was reading it.’
Lucas shrugged his shoulders.
‘So here’s where I need your help. Can you tell me how your name appears in a newspaper and underneath are the very words which are written in blood above the bed of a murdered couple? A couple who are killed in the very same hotel that you’re staying at. How does that happen?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know about which part?’ She let go of his arm. Lucas was going nowhere now.
‘Any of it. I can’t give you an explanation for any of it.’
‘I know we had problems with relevance last time. Do we have a problem with coincidences this time?’
‘I have no idea what the advert means and I have no idea who the shot couple were. Harper got the paper because he wants to include a little female attention during our stay. You have an over-active imagination, Detective.’ He made a half-hearted attempt at a laugh.
‘Yes I do, Mr Lucas. It helps me join dots up where others don’t see it.’
‘But I’m afraid that’s what it is, Detective, an unfortunate coincidence. There must be hundreds of people in Vegas called Lucas. I have no idea where this came from, or what it’s about.’
‘I contacted the paper and they don’t know who placed the ad. Items for print are placed over the phone so they couldn’t help. That’s why I wondered if you could shed any light on it.’
‘I understand your concern and you’ve done the right thing discussing it with me, but as I’ve already said, Detective, I know nothing about this. It’s an unfortunate set of coincidences. Have you got any leads on who might have killed that poor couple?’ Lucas tried to deflect the conversation.
‘No we’re still digging.’ Moran recognised the change in direction in the same way she recognised his facial twitching and rapid eye movement. Lucas was a poor liar.
‘It’s a difficult one, I’m sure.’ He got up to leave, successfully this time. ‘Sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Detective.’
‘Thank you for your time, Mr Lucas.’
‘That’s fine. I’m glad you felt you could come to me and talk. You did the right thing. See you around.’
Detective Moran watched Lucas scurry back through reception.
I’m so pleased you think I’m doing the right thing, she thought to herself.
Lucas returned to the room without coffees. He was about to impart the news that life had just become a lot more complex.
43
Mechanic lay on the sofa listening to the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon in D through the headphones as she visualised her next move. This was a game she loved. The exquisite feeling of wrong-footing your opponent was almost as satisfying as crushing them to dust.
She envisaged the mayhem caused by her non-appearance at Centennial Hills. Harper crashing around, Lucas quaking in a corner and the one-armed wonder boy … well, he should be dead anyway.
It was a huge gamble but that was the point – take away the potency of their trump card, and the balance of power shifts. They weren’t going to hurt Jo, they wouldn’t do it.
She glanced at the clock, 8.35pm.
Mechanic smiled to herself thinking of the hapless trio flailing around in a state of chaos. They were amateurs playing a professional game and completely out of their depth.
She savoured the feeling a little longer, then went to shower. The ad was placed and there was work to be done.
It was 11.05pm when Mechanic pushed the column shift into park and turned off the engine. Thirty yards away was the Crimson Lake motel. It didn’t have much going for it, with threadbare towels, Styrofoam cups and dirty carpets. It was very much at the budget end of the scale, but its most attractive feature was its location. It was next door to the Lucky 6.
Mechanic crossed the street and strolled onto the parking lot near reception. She was parked directly opposite, at a closed-down fast food joint, and needed to find a suitable room facing the road.
The motel was on two levels, decorated in an odd patchwork of blue and beige, which suggested an acquisition of cheap paint rather than a carefully designed colour scheme. The ground-floor rooms had parking bays directly outside, which made it easy to see which were occupied and which were not. The outside lighting was virtually non-existent.
Mechanic veered off left and walked along the front, hands in pockets, head down, glancing through windows.
About halfway along she spotted what she was looking for, a couple lying on the bed watching HBO and drinking beer. She stopped and bent down to adjust her shoe. They were both in their thirties with a pack of ten beers on the side table. Mechanic returned to her car and waited with her eyes firmly fixed on room 112.
Ideally she would have paid the Lucky 6 another visit, but because the investigation was ongoing, there was still the occasional police presence outside room G46. That was a shame but the Crimson Lake would do just fine. It was far enough away not to give Mechanic any unnecessary complications but close enough to make the point.
Back in the car Mechanic sipped water from a bottle and watched the lights go out in 112. The clock on the dashboard said 1am. The movie must have finished, along with the beer.
At 1.50 she was kneeling down outside the room pushing the picks into the lock. The occupants were sound asleep as the lock disengaged and Mechanic slipped inside, closing the door. She watched the couple as they slept. The guy was sprawled naked on his front while the woman had rolled herself up in the covers, hugging the edge of the bed. The room stank of smoke and bottles were stacked up on the floor beside the bed. Mechanic was tempted to shake the headboard to see which one woke first but she snapped out of it. This was business, not pleasure.
Mechanic drew her gun.
The Lucky 6 would have been better but the Crimson Lake will do just fine.
Lucas woke with a start as the sunlight poured through the drapes. It was gone eight o’clock and he needed to get to the news-stand. He’d tossed and turned all night unable to sleep, the troubles of the day playing on his mind. He’d last looked at the clock at 4.20am and then must have dropped off – shit, he was late.
He threw on some clothes and dashed from his room as fast as his dodgy leg and stick would carry him.
The Bulletin was dispensed from a standalone box located about one hundred and fifty yards away at the side of the road. Lucas made his way out of the hotel and along the sidewalk. He was eager to see his latest ad, keen to get things back on track.
He reached the stand and pulled a copy from the pile flicking through the pages looking for the personals.
As he scanned through the columns, a siren whooped and an ambulance swung into the road about sixty yards ahead. Lucas looked up and could see the red and blue lights through the trees. He was torn between searching for his ad and looking at the lights. After a frantic scrabble with the pages he found what he was looking for:
PRECIOUS POSSESSION BROKEN
MECHANIC URGENTLY REQUIRED TO PREVENT FURTHER DAMAGE
CENTENNIAL PARK AMPHITHEATRE TOMORROW 7AM
Lucas read the advert over and over with a renewed sense of determination. This would shake Mechanic up for sure. He folded the paper under his arm and walked back to the hotel.
A second ambulance whooped and pulled onto the road behind him.
A chill ran through his body.
He turned and watched the vehicle disappear in the distance and his stomach sank to his boots. It can’t be, not again.
Lucas walked to where the ambulance had emerged and came to the Crimson Lake motel. In the car park were two police cars and a crowd of people talking excitedly. He pulled his jacket collar around his face and walked towards them.
He arrived at the taped-off area.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked the woman next to him, desperately trying to get a better look.
‘Don’t know for sure, but it looks like someone’s been shot.’
The man on his other side wanted to get in on the act.
‘I heard someone say it was two people.’
‘Oh my,’ said the woman straining on tiptoes for a better view.
Lucas fought to stay calm. He needed to know.
Pushing his way to the front he could see into the room through the partly opened door. Figures dressed in white moved around inside but that was all he could make out. Then there was a bright flash of light from inside the room. There was no mistake.
Through the window Lucas could clearly make out the words written on the wall:
IN YOUR NAME
His head spun and he needed to get away. He turned and elbowed his way through the tight knot of people. He had to get back to the hotel.
‘Lucas,’ a familiar voice called after him.
He turned to see Detective Moran getting out of her car.
‘Is that today’s copy of the Bulletin under your arm?’
44
‘Are you sure?’ asked Harper. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘I saw it, I tell you. It was written on the wall. I said she’d kill again, I knew it.’ Lucas was stomping around banging the ball of his fist against the furniture.
‘We gotta hand her back,’ Bassano said.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have Jo and that’s our main advantage. The new ad in the paper tells Mechanic we’ve done Jo some damage. That’s gotta make her see sense.’
‘You don’t get it do you, Harper? It’s over. We have hand Jo back and make this stop.’ Bassano sounded desperate.
‘We can’t risk any more killings and that girl-guide detective is constantly sniffing around. She called me over at the crime scene. I say we give Jo back and get the hell out of here,’ said Lucas.
‘No, no, no. We stick to the plan,’ Harper said wagging his finger. ‘We’re so close to nailing that bitch we can’t jack it in now.’
‘We’re not close to anything. We’re no closer to her now than if we’d stayed in Florida.’
‘We stick to the plan!’ Harper punched the table.
‘Damn it, we have no plan,’ Lucas shouted back thrusting the crumpled pages of the Bulletin into Harper’s chest. ‘Read it, damn you, read it.’
Harper didn’t have to read it.
In the personal column was written:
LUCAS
IN YOUR NAME
‘We don’t have a choice. It’s finished. We need to get her back to the Huxtons today.’ Lucas got up and made for the door. He needed space.
‘Where are you going?’ called Harper.
‘Out.’ He slammed the door behind him.
The bar was empty as Lucas lifted himself onto a stool and ordered a whisky.
‘It’s a little early for that isn’t it?’ Came a voice behind him, it was Moran.
‘You stalking me, Detective?’
‘I could say the same about you, Lieutenant. Everywhere I go, you seem to be there.’
Lucas huffed. His drink arrived and he took a large gulp.
