Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  “Of course,” Mills says.

  “Someone came looking for that painting specifically.” It’s not a question.

  “That’s a reasonable theory, assuming it was stolen. We don’t know that. Your mother could have been in the process of rotating it out, as you say.”

  The guy glares at the wall, shakes his head. “I know who you should talk to,” he says bitterly. “My aunt Phoebe. Phoebe Canning Bickford. She fought like hell for that painting.”

  Finally, the first glimmer of a lead. “I’d sure like to know why and with whom,” Mills says.

  “With my mother, of course. Phoebe is my dad’s older sister. She gave the Dali to him for his sixtieth birthday,” Canning explains. “It came from her collection so she figured it was hers, not my mom’s, after my dad died. They’ve been feuding about it ever since, like five years.”

  “Technically I think the law would grant it to your mother,” Mills tells him, “but that’s a moot point now. Does the painting have a name?”

  “I don’t remember,” Canning replies. “It might be an untitled work. You can ask my aunt.”

  “And where can we find,” Mills says, looking down at his notes, “Phoebe Canning Bickford these days?”

  “Here. In Phoenix. She lives up on Camelback. If you give me your number, I’ll text you the address. It’s up on Hawkeye Ridge. I just don’t know the street number off hand.”

  Mills tells him not to worry about the address, that someone back at the PD will nail it down. “But what about close friends?” he asks. “To whom would your mother have confided if she was scared, worried, or threatened?”

  Canning stands there and mulls for a moment, his eyes shifting to the right, then the left. “I guess any of the ladies in her social circle, her gala crowd. But probably the church.”

  “Your mother was a religious woman?”

  The guy laughs. “Very,” he says. “She and my dad supported the church. They practically built it.”

  “Which church?”

  “Angels Rising.”

  “Where?”

  “Here in Phoenix.”

  Mills scribbles a few notes, nods, and leads the man from the house. “I’ll need your phone number . . .”

  Canning recites the number.

  “And your address . . .”

  “Which one?” Canning asks.

  “Which one?”

  “Yeah. The house in Arcadia or the pied-à-terre?”

  “The what?”

  “I also have a condo near the Biltmore.”

  Mills doesn’t hide the eye roll. “I’ll need both.”

  Bennett Canning looks beyond Mills to his dead mother’s house, as if he’s staring at the incomprehensible, and absently lists his two addresses.

  “Thanks, Bennett,” Mills says. “Two things you should know. First, the house is off-limits until we release it to the family. It’s still a crime scene. And, second, don’t be surprised to hear from us again. We’ll likely have more questions.”

  “That’s fine,” Canning says. “I have nothing to hide.”

  Of course he does, Mills knows. Everyone has something to hide. Everyone. Fact of life.

  6

  Later that afternoon Grady and Woods hold a press conference outside the gates to Viveca Canning’s subdivision. They’ve conferred with Mills and are releasing only surface details for now.

  “Not going to the media circus?” Powell asks him.

  He shakes his head and feels a smile emerge. “No. I have a fear of clowns.”

  “One of these days you’re going to find a reporter you actually like,” she says.

  “I like Sally Tobin from The Republic, but she’s about to retire.” They’ve gathered again under the porte cochere where they’re sheltered from the blistering sun. Lower in the driveway, Preston emerges from his car. He’s carrying his tablet. He steps into the square of shade and says, “Just a simple Google search tells quite a story about Viveca Canning.”

  Mills looks over his shoulder as Preston reads from various headlines. Seems the Internet is gushing about her. Praise for her philanthropy, her kindness, her compassion. Last year she went with church leaders to Africa to pray for children suffering a famine. She’s building a clinic in Bangladesh, another in Haiti. She’s featured in magazine articles and TV stories. She has a Twitter and a Facebook account. Her Facebook feed is a Who’s Who of gala life and gowns galore. Nothing about her family, Mills notices. Her tweets feature the See and Be Seen nonsense, as well, but ever since she created the Twitter account two years ago, she’s also been tweeting regularly about her church along with photos of functions and outreach; there’s a post about a church dinner at a homeless shelter; she sent a series of tweets from a literacy event where her church donated five thousand books. She tweeted a photo of her pastor shaking hands with one of the U.S. senators from Arizona.

  Thanks to @SenWayneGooding for helping @CAR with our #AbstinenceforTeens campaign.

  A #righteous effort. #Purity #Chastity #Elevate

  “Okay . . .” Powell says. “Looks like we have a holy roller on our hands.”

  Mills just stares at the screen and says nothing for a moment. The holy roller thing is obvious, and while he doesn’t want to overlook the obvious, he also doesn’t want to neglect that which hides beneath. He remembers the days before social media when virtually everything hid beneath. There was no immediate window into anyone’s life, no gaping wide window, no selfies. And yet, even in this era of oversharing, Mills is mindful that social media only shows what people want it to show; it’s the Greatest Hits of someone’s life, the Profile of a Winner, the Resume of a Star, the Happiest Family on Earth. And dogs. Dogs that are never quite as entertaining as their owners think. The only person in the world he knows without a Facebook or Twitter account is Gus Parker. But that doesn’t surprise him. Mills, himself, is on social media. If you can call one post every two months a social media presence. And it’s mostly dedicated to his son, Trevor, winning games at U of A. “If you notice,” he tells the gang, “she stopped tweeting about church sometime in May. It’s August now. Does church go on summer break?”

  “No, but apparently she did,” Preston says, scrolling down. “Looks like she was having a busy summer of travel. There are all kinds of photos here from Greece, the Canary Islands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland . . .”

  “Maybe she just got home,” Powell says. “Which would explain why her shit’s all over the place. Maybe this isn’t about someone trying to make it look like a robbery. Maybe she just got home from summer vacation and dumped everything everywhere.”

  Mills shrugs, indicating he’s not convinced one way or another. He asks Preston to go back to Google and search the son’s name. He watches as the other detective types in V-i-v-e-c-a by mistake, and before Mills has a chance to stop him, Preston hits “search.” A page of bright blue headlines appear. Bright blue and brand new.

  VALLEY SOCIALITE FOUND DEAD IN HER PHOENIX HOME

  “Wow, that was fucking fast,” Powell says.

  POLICE SAY SOCIALITE’S DEATH LIKELY HOMICIDE

  The press conference hasn’t even ended and reporters are already pumping out news copy.

  WHO KILLED VIVECA CANNING? THE FAMOUS PHOENICIAN GUNNED DOWN

  Three stories from an ongoing press conference and it won’t stop there. Reporters are now primed to post from the scene, tweet from the yellow tape, and Instagram the instacrime. The competition is as hot as a fever. In the old days Alex Mills was not affected by the competition. But now his boss expects him to be faster than an iPhone because technology, after all, has reset the speed of society. Now, not later. This second, not this minute. Yesterday, what the hell is that? Yeah, he gets it. If the average person can find all the answers in less than .46 seconds on Google, surely we can solve cases faster. “At least that’s the expectation,” Sergeant Woods had warned him a few years ago. “People don’t understand the concept of waiting anymore.”

  Yeah, he g
ets it. The case of dead valley darling Viveca Canning will spin exponentially into a shitstorm before he even leaves the scene. His jaw aches from grinding his teeth.

  7

  Now that Beatrice’s book, Memoir of a Psychic: I Told You So, has been sitting on the bestseller list for almost a year (in it she references Gus too many times for his liking, his modesty, and his privacy), her phone doesn’t stop ringing. Everybody wants to meet Beatrice, know Beatrice, ask Beatrice, and tell Beatrice, and that doesn’t even include the media. The media is relentless. Everybody wants a piece of her. She’s doing a media tour but that’s only resulted in more requests for consultations from prospective clients. Beatrice’s assistant, Hannah, a sweet and misty-eyed lady of eighty-eight, can’t keep up with all the requests. So, when people can’t book with Beatrice they ask for Gus. Which would explain why his client list is growing rapidly and almost uncontrollably, and why his phone is ringing at 7:00 a.m. with a chirping Hannah who needs to refer a client.

  “The woman sounded urgent, Gus. She says she needs to see someone soon. Like today!” Hannah gushes. “She actually requested you, said she read about you in the book and remembers your name from a case on the news.”

  Gus feels the first twist of a headache in his skull. He had begged Alex to keep his name out of the news, but more than once the detective had dropped Gus’s name to give Gus credit he had not asked for and, no doubt, to give the chief and the sergeant the chagrin Alex had thought they deserved for being pricks. Mentioning the psychic always gave the brass the grief of dubious inquiries from a skeptical public.

  “I don’t go back to my real job until tomorrow,” he tells Hannah. “So have her come by at 10:15.”

  She offers him a mwah and disconnects.

  So he dashes into the shower and then into the kitchen, puts on the coffee and lets it brew while he takes Ivy for her morning walk. She’s in good shape, this dog, still rushing and yelping at the birds, still inclined to leap at Gus just because she can’t get enough of play. She’s seven years old. The vet says she’s one of the healthiest golden retrievers he’s ever seen, and he says Gus gets all the credit. Again, the credit! Gus doesn’t understand all the clamor about credit. Who really gives a shit? He remembers his old days on the beach, meeting a Buddhist surfer dude who told him the difference between the biggest wave and the best wave; the biggest wave was for the ego while the best wave was for the soul. The ego needs the credit for attempting the biggest wave, but ego surfers often miss waves of enlightenment that rise around them all day long. They were both a little stoned at the time, but Gus remembers the beauty of being in the moment with any wave he chose, closing his eyes as he rode the crest, being there, alone with the sun, being there, drowning in the golden light that seeped through his lids, being there, if only for a moment without a single thought, without a single word, without a memory or a plan. He sailed in transcendental bliss. He learned Surfing as Meditation from this Buddhist buddy who one day gave him a hug for no reason and a soaking wet slap on the back, and never returned to the beach. He simply vanished from Gus’s life. Gus wonders if he ever truly existed, or whether he’d been a visitor from Gus’s imagination, or a vision, or a bit of both. It was more than twenty years ago. He can’t remember, through the haze of those days, the name of that Buddhist surfer.

  Her name is Aaliyah. “Two ‘A’s at the beginning, one at the end,” she tells him. She’s punctual, arriving precisely at his door at 10:15. He’s on his second cup of coffee. He offers to brew more for her but she declines. They sit in his office and Gus observes her impossible face. He knows nothing about makeup and can’t infer anything about cosmetics but assumes the flawlessness of her skin is natural. Her brown eyes are lighter than Billie’s; instead of dark moons, they’re orange flames. Like a tiger. She smiles and Gus is in that light again, on that wave, drowning for a moment. Aaliyah Jones is a messenger. Gus can see it. He knows it. She is here for answers but she comes with answers. She crosses her legs, her long, thin legs. She’s a foal. With turquoise-beaded anklets.

  “Welcome,” he says.

  “Do you always do the once-over of your clients?” she asks.

  I’m sorry?

  “You undressed me with your eyes.”

  Gus feels the color drain in a whoosh from his face. “Oh no,” he begs, “no, no, no. I promise I wasn’t doing that. I’m sorry if that felt like undressing, but you’re a new client.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was trying to read you. And I guess that feels like undressing. I apologize for making you uncomfortable.”

  She laughs, like the joke’s on him. “Never mind. It takes a lot to make me uncomfortable.”

  Gus nods, allowing the blood to return. “I see,” he mutters to buy another moment. “What brings you here this morning?”

  “It’s important,” she says, sitting up, squaring her shoulders, balletlike. “I might know something about a murder.”

  That lands like a big box of surprise. Gus swallows hard and looks at the box between them. It’s wrapped and bowed. Like a gift, but not. Unexpected gifts.

  “What are you looking at?” the woman asks.

  “Nothing. Everything. I see things differently than you,” he tells her. “That’s why you’re here. Tell me about the murder.”

  “It’s been all over the news. The socialite who was shot in her home, did you see it?”

  “I’ve been traveling for a couple of weeks. Just got home, so no . . .” She leans forward, her athletic arms folding, elbows to her knees. “Oh. I’m a news reporter. On TV, Channel 4.”

  “Wow. You are a messenger,” Gus chants.

  She tilts her perfect face. “What is that supposed to mean? Have you never seen a black reporter before?”

  Oh God. Gus puts his head in his hands and groans. “Of course I have. I’m sorry you misunderstood. I just got a vibe about you when you first sat down. I sensed you were full of knowledge, or information, or something materially important. It would make sense that you’re a journalist.”

  “Really?”

  He looks up. “Yeah. Really. Maybe we should start over.”

  She laughs, again at his expense. “It’s okay. I was half-kidding.” “Half?”

  “There are more Circle Ks in the valley than black people,” she says. “We do sometimes feel alien.”

  “Ah, I see. Of course.”

  “Just so you know, I didn’t cover the murder. I was working on something else. But some of my colleagues did. All the stations and newspapers did. She was kind of well-known.”

  “And you think you know why she died?”

  “I think I might know some background that others might not consider,” she says. “I don’t know what to do.”

  She’s a tough one. Aaliyah Jones may be a messenger, all right, but her vibe is an otherwise complicated mix of danger and thrill he can’t quite fathom. It’s too soon. They’ve only just met.

  “I’m not sure what you should do either,” he concedes. “Do you want me to visualize what you should do? Or do you want to tell me what you know, and I can try to intuit whether it’s really linked to the murder you’re talking about?”

  “The latter would be perfect, but I can’t tell you what I know, at least not yet. I just can’t,” she tells him. “So, maybe the first thing. Maybe you should just visualize what it would look like for me to go to the cops.”

  He sits back. “Okay, but first I have some basic questions about you.”

  She sits back, as well, apparently sensing Gus’s ease. “I’m ready.” He asks how many years she’s been a reporter. Seven. Has she always worked in Phoenix? No. Where has she worked before? Jacksonville, Florida. Albany, New York. He asks if she’s from Phoenix originally.

  “No,” she says. “I came here for the job three years ago. I was born and raised in Atlanta.”

  “And your family is still there . . .”

  “Wow, you really are psychic.”

  “Uh, no. J
ust a good guess.”

  “I know,” she says.

  She knows. She’s messing with him. Powerful woman. She’s all electric around him, like a storm. She’s thunder and lightning and a swirling sea.

  He takes a deep breath, exhales, and says, “What’s stopping you from going to the cops with your information?”

  She narrows her eyes and says, “Journalistic ethics. I’m not against helping the police. Reporters will informally coordinate with cops from time to time. But I’m not sure if I can reveal what I know to them because it could reveal my sources, and these sources fear for their lives.”

  “Fear for their lives . . .” Gus nods as he tries to conjure up a vibe. He shakes his head. “I think you need to wait a few days before you do anything, because the law, the investigation, moves much more slowly than you see on Law & Order. And you need to see what information becomes public. What becomes public could relieve you of your need to come forward. Also, I fear for your sources,” he tells her. “I’m getting a strong vibe about that.”

  Even as she goes, as she rises to her feet later and moves to the door, the ballet of her arms as wispy as reeds of Ocotillo in a crisp desert wind, even as she retreats down the driveway and slides into her car, even as she disappears around the corner, Gus is standing there, still standing there, sensing strong vibes about a dangerous wave that’s coming for people who are nowhere near the sea.

  8

  To no avail, Mills has been trying to reach Viveca Canning’s daughter all morning. Jillian is her name. Bennett had given Mills his sister’s contact information, but Mills had sensed a certain estrangement, so for all he knows the info is outdated. And so he has sent Powell and Myers back to the scene while he and Preston pore through details about the victim’s associates, mostly gained through social media, some from magazine and news stories. Viveca Canning has been profiled by the valley’s big glossy magazines (particularly the ones that dwell on luxe life and privilege) a dozen times (no exaggeration), and with every article comes soaring praise from her friends/fellow socialites as well as the recipients of her charity. Mills and Preston are gathering names. Contacting most.