The Exiled by Christopher Charles

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?”

16
    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