Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  He and Billie walk along the beach. They go to a party. They sit on the deck watching the sea. And they make love in her third-floor bedroom overlooking the endless ocean. They are all over each other like twenty-year-olds, though Gus, admittedly, could be a bit harder, but he’s hard enough; it seems to take him longer to get there, and for her too, but it still works for them, he at forty-seven, she at fifty-seven. She still bites at his neck, his little vampire woman. She still scratches his back with her fierce nails, her guitar-strumming nails, and she still grabs at his ass just the way he likes it. Sometimes when he’s with Billie he thinks she is simply a manifestation of one of his visions. As if he has dreamed her up too. As if she’s not really real. And sometimes he thinks they dwell inside this vision and that his late uncle Ivan, who bestowed upon him his otherworldly gifts, is smiling down on them from heaven.

  He has a plane to catch.

  “This visit was too quick, Gus,” Billie says, as they wrap up breakfast on the deck, the ocean roaring in front of them.

  “It just seemed that way.”

  “No. It was too quick. Come back next weekend.”

  “I’ll see.”

  As she clears the table, she stops behind Gus, wraps her arms around his neck, holds him close and says, “I love you, you know.”

  He knows. “I love you.” Then he looks out to admire the waves but, as he squints against the sun, he sees an apparition of many faces rising from the water. Out there, beyond the waves, a small population is surfacing. He blinks and they’re gone.

  CalAir Flight 1212 departs Burbank at 3:59 p.m. He’s among the first to board because he flies the route so frequently he’s earned some kind of Diamond Status privilege pomposity. It’s a single aisle aircraft, three-and-three, the typical sardine can of flying these days. No matter the Diamond Status privilege, his knees will be in his throat and his elbows will press on his kidneys (or the kidneys of his seatmate) all the way to Phoenix. Thankfully it’s not a long flight. He’s in a window seat. The takeoff is uneventful, though the path out of the Burbank airport always looks a bit challenging, surrounded as it is by mountains. He’s never quite sure the planes will clear the peaks. The light turbulence lulls him into a cushiony nap. For about five minutes. Then the cabin crew zips through with a beverage service and a special brand of impatience. “Flight time is only forty-seven minutes,” a flight attendant reminds the person in 7C who, apparently, can’t decide what he wants to drink.

  “This is an express service!” another attendant scolds.

  Billie once told him to drink eight ounces of water for every hour of flight (she insisted on thirteen servings of H2O when they flew home from Rome). So he orders water to stay hydrated and compliant. In between sips he rests his head and turns to the window. Out there, the sky’s aglow. A perfect stripe of orange and a perfect stripe of blue rest atop a wedding dress of clouds. The shadow of another plane glides across the layers of fabric, the shadow first, then the aircraft, itself, swooping into view. Had it bisected his flight’s path? Had it come from overhead? Was it too close? It’s a big plane, a bulbous jumbo jet, in rich, colorful livery. TRANSCONTINENTAL AIRLINES A380. The graceful ship banks a sharp left, like a salute to its smaller cousin, Gus’s plane, but nobody except Gus seems to notice the huge interloper out the window. He says, “Look at that,” to the person sitting beside him, and she says, “Beautiful sky,” but nothing more. Perplexed, Gus presses his face against the window, really screws his nose into the plastic so he can watch Transcontinental and assess its intentions. This must be too close. He can see the pilots waving from the cockpit window. The pilots bring the nose up, then down, then up again, like a dolphin saying hello. He can see the passengers now. The passengers! His oval window becomes a portal to the other plane and his face dissolves right through. He’s aboard now. The aircraft is brand-new. Polished. Fragrant. Crisp. He’s sitting on the upper deck in a window seat. He tries but he can’t see the CalAir flight anywhere. He sees the ocean, which means he’s no longer headed for Phoenix. This worries him but someone hands him a hot towel and a pair of slippers. “Your seat fully reclines to a flat bed,” she tells him. “When you’re sleeping we won’t disturb you.” She’s dark and lovely, a princess, a goddess, Polynesian, he suspects. As she wanders off, the plane does a slight shimmy and wobble, and then the huge beast lets out a howl, a scream, and Gus sits up straight and grips both sides of his seat. Everything goes quiet for a moment, a palpable absence of sound, and it is here, in the silence, that Gus knows he’s headed for disaster. The plane screeches again, a grinding noise, a deafening grinding noise, and it banks so sharply the angle defies logic. At its breaking point, it stalls, then dives toward the sea.

  Gus watches from the window, and watches from the window, and watches from the window, as people around him cry and holler, wail and screech, and the cabin becomes a pinball machine of flying objects. He watches from the window.

  His face against the fuselage.

  His nose screwed to the plastic.

  The oval a portal.

  CalAir Flight 1212. A single aisle, three-and-three, mundane and crowded jet. He’s back on the flight bound for Phoenix. And yet Transcontinental is still out there diving, at first hesitant, then fully committed, nose down, spiraling at cataclysmic speed, through layers upon layers of the wedding dress. The contrails of the A380, so beautiful out there, so perfect and white, rise from the impending doom like pillars to heaven. Gus watches, shaking his head, willing the other plane to steady, but it doesn’t recover from its tailspin. The jumbo jet plunges through a final layer of cloud, presumably to the enormous ocean waiting below. But Gus can’t see. TRANSCONTINENTAL AIRLINES simply disappears.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are on final approach to Sky Harbor International Airport. Please be sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their upright and locked positions, and that all carry-on items are safely stowed at this time. We will be landing momentarily.”

  Gus comes to. He’s sweating all over. He’s lightheaded and can’t catch his breath.

  3

  At this point in Detective Ken Preston’s career, he’s a fixture. At sixty-six years old, he’s been on the force for almost as long as Alex Mills has been alive. As far as Mills knows, the older colleague never put in for a promotion, never got a promotion. He’s just happy to do what he does. And he does it well. The guy’s a fucking reference book for crime. More than forty years of busting lowlifes will do that. With no mandatory retirement age, Preston will probably work until he croaks. And he’ll probably croak while reading Miranda to some toothless methhead who just sliced off a neighbor’s head in the west valley. Here, in Viveca Canning’s enclave of privilege, however, there are no headless neighbors, and Preston has availed himself of that advantage by wandering the community and coaxing information from people behind closed doors. He’s great at this. He knows how to handle people and get them to talk. He knows how to open doors. Mills is not surprised that Preston comes back with a wealth (ahem) of knowledge.

  “Looks like our victim lived in this house for about fifteen years,” Preston reports. “Her husband died five years ago. It was a tragedy but Viveca Canning was left with a handsome inheritance.”

  “Stop right there,” Mills tells him. “What kind of tragedy? How did her husband die?”

  They’re standing in the victim’s driveway, under the porte cochere to stay out of the sun.

  “Not sure. Most neighbors speculated it was a heart attack. Nothing newsworthy, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Of course that’s what I’m asking,” Mills says as he turns to Myers.

  “Make a note of that anyway, Morty. We need to check into her husband’s death.”

  “The neighbors say she was a socialite,” Preston continues. “The kind who chaired charity balls and galas. You know the type: gowns, hair, shoes, the see-and-be-seen crowd. According to neighbors, if you open any Phoenix magazine you’re going to find her pictures splashed acros
s the pages. Apparently, there’s not a month that goes by when she’s not holding a fundraiser for the arts, or spina bifida, or whatever, at the Phoenician or the Sanctuary. Like I said, you know the type.”

  “Children?” Mills asks.

  “As far as I can tell, two. Both probably in their mid-to-late twenties.”

  “We have to find the kids,” Mills says.

  “They stand to inherit a fortune now that Mom is out of the way,” Preston says. “If you know what I’mean.”

  Mills knows what he means and signals so with a jaded scoff. “Yeah, so let’s find them. If for no other reason than to notify them. ’Cause I’m going to want to release her name as soon as possible, hoping it might generate some leads.”

  Preston rubs his chin. “The neighbors say they don’t know the kids personally, so they can’t help there.”

  “Names?” Myers asks.

  “Nope,” Preston replies.

  Mills gives them a nod and says he’ll be back. He drifts out to the street and around the bend. In the distance he can see the media parked outside the gates of the community. Sergeant Jake Woods and the department’s public information officer, Josh Grady, will handle the reporters once they get the latest from Mills, even if the latest is thin on detail. He studies the gates separating him from them. The subdivision is called Copper Palace Estates, whatever the hell that means—this kind of wealth is the type of wealth that flaunts.

  To enter Copper Palace, the perp would have had to be cleared by someone in the guardhouse. There would be a log, a name (perhaps falsified), probably a license plate. Unless Viveca Canning brought someone home with her last night and the two of them drove in through the residents’ lane. But, if that were true, how did the perp leave the scene? In whose car? Was there a car missing from the garage? Was the killer driving off with a large painting? Mills shakes his head as he visualizes the list of unanswered questions, a kind of receipt of items he doesn’t recognize he bought. But he owns the whole thing now. Yeah. This again. It’s like the beginning of any case when he realizes a case is a case and there’s no turning back. Often the realization is met with the mental equivalent of fanfare, a charge of adrenalin; other times, it’s met with the heavy thud of dread, a lead fist to his stomach. But something propels him forward. It must be the adrenalin. He’s making a sudden beeline for the guardhouse, his instincts, alone, paving the way. The media sees him coming. The reporters think he’s coming for them. The crowd excites. It throbs to life. The amoebae move in pantsuits and khakis, hairdos and microphones, closer to the gate. The reporters shout questions. He only hears their noise, the collective voice of the amoebae, but he can’t hear what they’re asking and that’s fine with him, just a mechanism at work. Mills reaches the guardhouse, speaks to a uniformed woman named Florence who lets him see the log from last night. She has a tiny old mouth, but as big of a smile as the mouth can muster. She looks at him like a mother looks at a son, or like a cougar looks at her prey. He can’t be sure. His eyes run up and down the columns of the log: VISITOR; VISITING. No one for Viveca Canning.

  “It doesn’t look like she had company last night,” Florence says. “At least not through the visitor lane.”

  “Do the guards here keep an eye on the residents’ lane?”

  Again, the smile. “That depends, Detective. If the visitors’ lane is slow, then sure, we’ll be watching for residents. We like to wave, you know.”

  “So it’s possible someone saw Ms. Canning come home last night?”

  “Oh sure,” she says. “But it’s harder to see at night. So sometimes we just wave at a dark window. But our company knows who comes and goes just by the signal from the residents’ remotes. Plus we have cameras.”

  “I’ll need the contact information for your management, ma’am.” “No problem.”

  She retreats into the booth and returns moments later with a sticky note. “Here. If you need anything else, you just let me know, Detective.”

  “And if those reporters start bothering you, you let me know.” “Okey dokey,” she says with a wink he can’t infer. The silver-haired woman either wants to feed him or fuck him.

  Mills reconvenes with his colleagues in the leathery and gilded library of Viveca Canning’s home. “No one signed in as a guest in the past twenty-four hours,” he tells them. “Has anyone recovered a cell phone?”

  “Yep,” Powell tells him. “It’s bagged.”

  “Anything else in plain sight?” he asks.

  “Just all the jewels that snuck out of their boxes last night to have a party,” she says.

  “We need to check her social accounts,” Preston says. “If she’s a socialite, she’s gotta be on social media.”

  “At her age?” Mills asks.

  “Yes,” Preston replies. “These dames love the attention of being socialites. Give ’em a new platform, and they’re on it.”

  “Did you just say ‘dames’?” Mills asks.

  “I did. I’m an old man. What do you want?”

  Mills laughs and grabs the guy by the shoulder. “I want you and Myers to work on a warrant for her computer, laptop, iPad, whatever.” “Yes, sir.”

  The doorbell rings. “Was anyone expecting a pizza?” Mills asks his squad.

  They all laugh, except Myers who says, “Pizza? What kind?”

  Mills, followed by Preston, heads to the front door. There they find a gum-chewing patrol officer snapping and popping away. He looks stunned when caught in midbubble. “Yes?” Mills asks him.

  “Got a visitor.”

  “Oh?”

  “Says he needs to get in the house, and wants to know why all the cop cars are here.”

  “Does he have a name?” Preston asks the officer.

  “Bennett Canning.”

  Mills looks to the street and sees a gleaming Mercedes. Out of the car steps a man behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Bennett Canning, for all the mystery behind the lenses, has the posture of an impatient, inconvenienced child. Mills says, “Let’s go” to Preston, and they move down the lawn. Seeing them approach, the man meets them at the curb.

  “Can someone please tell me why I can’t get into my own house?” He’s tanned and athletic-looking, his hair purposely tousled, as if he swung by the hair salon on his way to Copper Palace. “What’s happening here? What’s with all the cops?”

  “Who are you?” Mills asks.

  “Bennett Canning. You can call me Ben.”

  “Ben, I’m Alex Mills, homicide detective with the Phoenix PD. This is my partner Ken Preston.”

  The man almost loses his footing. “Homicide?”

  Mills explains.

  Bennett Canning puts his head in his hands. He turns away and utters a strangled scream, like he can’t breathe. Neighbors turn to look. All eyes are on the man in the linen blazer and deck shoes as he gasps for air. “He’s hyperventilating,” Preston shouts to the ogling crowd. “Someone get me a paper bag!”

  Preston lightly takes the young man’s arm, but Ben Canning stumbles backward. Mills steadies him.

  “I want to see her,” Ben says. “Take me to see her.”

  “We can’t do that quite yet,” Mills tells him. “The scene needs to be completely processed.”

  A neighbor rushes forward with a brown lunch bag. Preston puts it over Ben’s mouth and says, “Come on, now, just breathe normally. Just breathe.”

  It takes a few breaths for the gasps to subside.

  “Do you live here?” Mills asks him.

  “No.”

  “But you referred to the house as your own,” Preston reminds him.

  “Form of speech,” he says. “I mean, you don’t have to be a Princeton grad like me to understand that.”

  “What is your relationship to Viveca Canning?” Mills asks.

  “Jesus, did you guys even get your GEDs? She’s my mother. Isn’t it fucking obvious?”

  Mills would like to punch this brat in the face. Instead he says, “It isn’t until you tell us. We
deal in facts and facts only, Ben. What may appear obvious to others, doesn’t necessarily mean shit to us.”

  Preston nudges him.

  “I need to see her,” Bennett Canning pleads.

  “I know you do,” Mills concedes, “but we can’t have you contaminating the scene. That might compromise our investigation, and we’re sure you want us to find the person who killed your mother sooner than later.”

  “Killed?”

  Mills squints at the man behind the shades. “Yeah. I told you what happened here.”

  “I know you did. But you can’t possibly be right about that. No one would do that to my mother.”

  “Precisely our first question for you,” Mills says. “Are you aware of anybody who’d want to harm your mother?”

  Tears fall symmetrically to the corners of his mouth. He wipes them away and says, “No. Quite the opposite.”

  “The opposite?” Preston asks.

  “Yeah. She was loved by everyone, even by people she never met. She did more for the valley than all the organizations combined. I mean, come on, I’m sure you’ve heard of her, of our family. We’re huge in philanthropy.”