Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  “She was probably interested in buying another home to add to the Canning list of properties abroad.”

  “She has other homes?”

  “I’m just guessing. We need to look into their holdings more thoroughly.”

  Mills thanks Preston for the updates, tells him to be around for a three o’clock meeting with the squad. “I’ll send out an email to the others before I split for lunch.”

  “You want company?”

  Here Mills has to gamble with the truth. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ken, but no. I just need to think.”

  And that’s what he does. He thinks, oblivious to the burrito, the music, and the roar of the lunch crowd at Fiesta Taqueria. He just needed to get away from the building and all the badges coming in and out of his office, passing him in the hallway, everyone expecting something. He couldn’t concentrate with all the blue closing in on him. That’s how it is sometimes. The blue gets in its own way. Jimmy Jimenez, the restaurant’s owner, stops by with a crazy grin and a tray of samples. He does this all the time. He loves having cops around. “Hey chief,” he says to Mills, “what’s happening?”

  “I’ve told you a million times, Jimmy, I’m not the chief.”

  “I know, man. But you should be.”

  Jimmy is built like a snowman on a diet, which is to say rotund but trying. The kids sure got to his face, though. When they carved his mouth, they gave him a smile so upturned it reached his eyes at both ends. The result is a man who looks elated even when he tells you about his dead chickens. It was a trend, raising chickens in the backyard and on the roof, supplying your kitchen with eggs and meat, but it all went south for Jimmy when one of his kids left the chickens on the roof all day and they fried, every single one of them, in the blistering Phoenix sun.

  Smiling, Jimmy leaves the tray of samples on the table. “Hey, I see your lovely wife is on the Trey Shinner trial,” he says to Mills. “Saw it on the news. You know he broke in here once.”

  “I did not know that.”

  “It was a long time ago. We came in one morning and he was sleeping on the floor of the kitchen.”

  “Did he steal anything?”

  “Just what he could drink.” Jimmy laughs, raising his chin as he does.

  “He’s a nutcase.”

  Jimmy bends to his knee and, eye to eye with Mills, says, “He’s not a nutcase. He’s possessed by the devil.”

  This is the first time in the two years that he’s known Jimmy Jimenez that Mills has witnessed the man’s smile disappear. “Possessed by the devil? Maybe by Jim Beam or Jose Cuervo, but the devil seems a bit of a stretch.”

  Mills laughs at his own joke. Jimmy doesn’t. Instead Jimmy narrows his eyes and searches the detective’s face. “I’m serious,” he says.

  “About the devil?”

  “Oh yes.” Jimmy’s accent has the same Mexicali texture as many Mexican Americans of his generation. It’s more SoCal than Spanish, more Los Lobos than Latino. “Definitely, the devil. When we found him we was lying in the middle of one of those pentagram things. He drew it on the floor with a Sharpie.”

  Mills snickers. “I’m sorry, Jim, but I think a pentagram is a symbol for Wiccans.”

  “Symbol for who?”

  “A type of witchcraft,” Mills says. “I’m not an expert on religion, but I’m pretty sure that witches don’t worship the devil.”

  Jimmy peers around his dining room, as if he’s suddenly concerned someone might overhear. “Look, I don’t care who worships the devil, but when the cops woke Shinner up from his drunken stupor in my kitchen he was talking in tongues!”

  “I think those are certain Christians.”

  “Well, whatever, Detective, you tell your wife to be careful. Very careful. That dude is not from this world. I’m telling you. He’s dangerous.”

  Duly warned, Mills nods and dives into the tray of snacks. “Gotcha, man. Thanks for the tip. And thanks for the samples. What’s this one?” Mills asks, holding up a fried, round cylinder.

  “Chimichanga Menudo.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like a fried burrito of cow intestines.”

  Mills gags on instinct.

  “I’m just kidding with you, man,” Jimmy says, his smile bursting back on the scene. “It’s just a vegetarian Chimi.”

  He walks away laughing.

  They file into the conference room at three o’clock, one after the other, three of them, Preston, Powell, and Myers, clutching cups of coffee.

  “I asked Jake to join us,” Mills tells them.

  “Why did you do that?” Powell asks.

  “Preemptive strike. Better to loop him in now than get called on the carpet later.”

  The sergeant has earned a reputation for quarterbacking on Monday mornings. They all know it. They’ve all experienced his indifference give way to sudden blame and disapproval. Mills almost looks forward to it, like a kid who knows if his daddy’s drunk, all is right in the world. Almost. He preempts it whenever possible.

  Jake Woods enters the room, gives them all a nod, and takes a seat without saying a word.

  “All right, everyone,” Mills begins, “I guess we’re still in that phase of the investigation when the case presents more questions than answers. But we’re not without a roadmap.”

  He tells them about the change Myers discovered to Viveca Canning’s will.

  “I need a warrant to search Bennett Canning’s house,” he says. “With half the estate going to him, he had a motive to kill his mother. Remember, we got him taking the jewels from her house. That should help with the warrant.”

  “What about the daughter?” Powell asks.

  “Same motive,” Mills replies. “But she has no house to search here. And she’s been far more straightforward with us than her brother.”

  “But we should question her again,” Preston says.

  Mills nods and says, “Yes. We should.”

  Myers raises his hand.

  “Myers, you don’t have to raise your hand. You should know that,” Mills says. “The floor is yours.”

  “I’m still dumping data from the victim’s computer, but I found something else that could be interesting,” he says.

  Powell leans forward and rests her chin in her hands. “All ears,” she sings.

  Mills clears his throat. Myers ignores them both and says, “I found a file that inventories her art collection. It’s a long, boring list of paintings and painters and dates. Dates for everything. The artist was born on this date, died on this date. The painting was acquired on this date, loaned on this date, stored on this date.”

  “We get the point, Myers,” Powell tells him.

  “No you don’t,” Myers retorts. “She has three Dalis catalogued in this file. And one says, ‘Untitled,’ and in parenthesis it says ‘key.’ I’m thinking this is the Dali that’s missing from her house, ’cause the other two say they’re loaned out.”

  “What does a key have to do with the painting?” Powell asks him.

  He says, “I don’t know. But of all the artwork she has inventoried, and she has hundreds of pieces, only one has a notation like that.”

  “But what key is she referring to?” Powell persists.

  “No clue,” he says.

  Mills and Preston look at each other. They share an eyeful of acknowledgement. “If I had to make a guess, maybe a wishful thinking guess, I’d say it’s the key to the chest.”

  “What chest?” Woods asks, the question abruptly surfacing from the veil of boredom on his face.

  “Something Preston and I stumbled upon last week,” Mills says. “Could be anything, but we went to the gallery where Viveca stored pieces of her art collection, and we saw an old chest, an ancient chest in her vault. And it was locked. With a padlock. It was weird because you wouldn’t expect to see that kind of lock on a piece of art from the 1400s.”

  “What’s in the chest?” Woods asks.

  Mills looks at the sergeant, incredulous at
the man’s inattention.

  “Keep up, Sarge. The chest is locked,” Powell says so Mills doesn’t have to. “Which means it’s as important to find the Dali as it is to find the killer. Though I suspect we’ll find one with the other.”

  Mills mouths the words ‘thank you’ to Powell. “That’s true,” he says. “But let’s not wait ’til we find the painting or killer to find out what’s in that chest. Consider it a clue. I’ll get a warrant to break the padlock.”

  “Be careful,” Woods says. “You could destroy evidence.”

  “I’m aware,” Mills assures him. “We’ll try to disengage it first.”

  Then Woods rises to his feet, his way of saying the meeting’s over, whether or not Mills has more to say to the squad.

  Ten minutes later Mills is at his desk when his phone rings from the lobby. “You have a guest. Aaliyah Jones from Channel 4.”

  Right. His four o’clock meeting. He looks at his watch. It’s 3:45. He could make her wait or he could get this over with. The latter seems more practical, so he heads downstairs. In the lobby he finds a striking woman waiting to shake his hand. She comes forward and shakes firmly. “Thanks for meeting with me,” she says, with a smile so blinding Mills thinks about averting his gaze to save his retinas. He has a gut reaction to her, something visceral; he senses the smile is genuine, that it conceals nothing. Mills laughs at himself. He, too, can get vibes about people. He wouldn’t be much of a detective if he didn’t. But there’s something about Gus sending this woman to him that seems fated, as if Gus has sent him a vision to behold, not a person to talk to. “Let’s go up to my office,” he tells Aaliyah Jones, snapping out of his initial stupor. “I don’t think I’ve seen you on TV before,” he says on the way. “Have you worked for Channel 4 long?”

  “Under two years, so I’m still fairly new.”

  “Sorry. That was probably rude of me to say I didn’t recognize you from TV.”

  “Not at all,” she says convincingly. “I’m not on every night. And there are five other stations in town.”

  “Not on every night?”

  “I’m an investigative reporter, Detective Mills. I work on more time-intensive stories. So I’m not on regularly, and it’s actually better that way. The fewer people who recognize me, the easier it is for me to work undercover.”

  Mills bristles before he can think. “Undercover? You’re not playing detective on me? Or PI?”

  “I don’t play anything,” she says.

  Mills lets the conversation go quiet until they reach his office. He closes the door, offers her a seat. “It was just a joke,” he tells her. “About playing detective.”

  She looks at him, her face finely sculpted, not a blemish on the surface, not a blemish below it either. “I can take a joke. But just in case you were serious, I wanted you to know that my work is not a game to me.”

  “I know it isn’t,” he says. “I can tell.”

  She’s wearing a sleeveless black dress that hugs her body to midthigh. It’s simple and uncomplicated. Gold buttons parade from her neckline down the length of her cleavage. No other adornments. “You were vague on the phone.”

  “Sorry. Had to be. I should have called from my landline. My cell might be hacked.”

  “By whom?”

  “The Church of Angels Rising. Viveca Canning’s church.”

  Mills nods slowly. “Why would the church hack your phone?” “Because I’ve been poking around.”

  “About what?”

  “About church practices. This predates Ms. Canning’s murder. I’ve been investigating for a while.”

  Mills sits up, straightens his posture. “Let’s cut to the chase. What are you investigating?”

  “Tips I’ve received about abuse in the church.”

  “Child abuse?”

  Aaliyah crosses her legs, rests an elbow on a knee. “Not exclusively. A few independent sources have come forward to tell me they were abused by the church both as children and adults. There’s some kind of mandatory camp for children between the ages of six and twelve. They live away from their families. They study and do projects for the church. They reunite with their families on weekends for prayer.”

  His cell phone rings. He ignores it. “Okay,” he says. “I think this has been reported before. Doesn’t sound like news to me.”

  “I’ve got photos of injured children at the camp.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  Aaliyah looks down for a moment and shakes her head. “I can’t reveal my sources. Not yet. I promised.”

  His landline rings. He lets it ring, talks over it. “We’re checking Viveca Canning’s phone records. Was she in touch with you for any reason?”

  Her eyes meet his. “Yes. It was mostly phone tag, though. Ultimately, she declined to comment.”

  “How old are the photos?”

  “Ten years. Five years. Some are as recent as two years ago. From what I’m told, adults who fail to recruit their yearly quota of church members are subject to something they call ‘Second Calling.’ It’s like a prison camp of forced labor. And intensive brainwashing.”

  Mills laughs.

  “Don’t laugh,” she warns him, her voice unapologetically grave. “People believe so fervently in Gleason Norwood, they’ll do whatever he tells them to do to stay in the church. Except for the defectors.”

  Mills thinks of Jillian Canning. She was banished, but she left willingly. “It’s run like a cult,” he says as much to himself as to the reporter sitting in front of him. “Or so it seems. One woman I know who was banished says they call it ‘erasing.’”

  “When people leave the church, voluntarily or not, they’re called ‘untouchables.’ I’ve met with several of them. People who remain in the church can have no further contact with an ‘untouchable,’ therefore they call it ‘erasing.’”

  “Why haven’t your sources come to the police?” he asks. “About the abuse? About anything?”

  Aaliyah folds her arms across her chest. The high beams of her eyes turn on. “They’re scared,” she says. “Some of the ‘untouchables’ have gone missing.”

  He makes a mental note to check with state authorities. He stares into her high beams and says, “Do you mean they’re kidnapped? That seems to be consistent with what I’ve been reading online.”

  His phone dings with a text message. It’s Kelly.

 

 

  “They vanish,” Aaliyah replies after Mills puts his phone down. “I don’t know much more. They just disappear.”

  At first he offers her a slow contemplative nod. Then he feels the doubt rising on his face, twisting at his mouth, scrunching at his eyes. His nod fluidly becomes a shaking head, a rejecting gesture he can’t help but articulate. “That doesn’t add up, Ms. Jones,” he says. “How do all these people end up missing and no one reports it to the police? One person, two people, maybe. But you make it sound systematic. I just can’t believe that many people can vanish and it all goes unreported.” She smiles in the warm, reassuring way that he’s seen shrinks smile at lunatics. There’s nothing patronizing there, just patience and understanding. “My sources tell me there is protocol for all this. If a kid vanishes, his family tells friends, neighbors and nonchurch relatives that he’s been sent to boarding school. If a wife vanishes, the husband says she’s on a church project in Africa. If a husband vanishes, it’s the same believable explanation. The speculation is there are bodies buried somewhere out in the middle of the desert.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Mills whispers.

  “It’s not that kind of church.”

  “Yeah. I’m beginning to realize that,” he says. “But I need to remind you I’m not investigating the church, even if it is some kind of crazy cult. I’m investigating the death of Viveca Canning. I’ve found no evidence, so far, that her death had anything to do with the church. That could change, of course. But I hate to tell you that the nefarious activi
ties of the church, as alleged by your sources, are irrelevant to my case. Unless I can link the church to her death. Was she an untouchable who vanished?”

  “No,” she says, her deflation visible. He can tell she’s not easily deflated, and he instantly regrets treading on her mojo.

  “Look, I think your investigation of the church matters,” he tells her. “It matters a lot. It should be a good piece of journalism. And it could expose things that need to be exposed. If there is some kind of connection to the death of Viveca Canning, I assure you I’ll be in touch.”

  He gets up. She rises, too, if a bit reluctantly. “I think you will be,” she says. “Are you interested in hearing more if I get more?”

  “As it pertains to the Viveca Canning case, yes,” he says. “Have you tried talking to Gleason Norwood?”

  “Yes, I’ve tried,” she replies, following him to the elevator. “But I’m told he doesn’t do interviews under any circumstances.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “I have a book,” she says as the doors slide shut. They descend.

  “What kind of book?”

  “Their book. The book of their religion,” she replies, removing the book from her satchel. “One of my sources gave it to me. Would you like to borrow it?”

  He smiles. “Sure. When do you need it back?”

  “End of the week would be fine,” she says. “I’m working some other stories as well. But please guard the book. It’s not allowed outside the church. Members are prohibited from removing it and sharing it with nonmembers.”

  “Wouldn’t that make it hard to recruit?”

  The ding of the first floor comes too fast.

  “We can talk about that next time, Detective Mills.”

  “Thanks for coming by,” he says as they step out of the elevator. He shakes her hand in the lobby. “This has been refreshing.”

  She peers at him with an odd smile.

  “I mean, it was nice to meet an actual journalist for a change.”

  He watches as she slips out the door and into the bombardment of sunshine.

  17