Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  “Fair game, I would say,” Jake tells him. “It’s all done in the interest of finding her.”

  “Are we going to have a turf war with Missing Persons?”

  Jake laughs out loud. “Aw, come on, Mills, don’t be a drama queen. Of course not. Share it with them. End of story.”

  Drama queen? Mills grits his teeth. “OK, Jake. Thanks.”

  “I take it you’re not making much progress to date?” the sergeant asks.

  “I don’t think that would be a fair assumption.”

  “Care to explain?”

  Mills looks at him squarely. “Go down to the conference room, Jake, and take a look at the whiteboard. That’s our progress.”

  Then, with a nod, he exits the sergeant’s office.

  The thumb drive contains thirty-four folders. Mostly document files, some photos. Just looking at the folder names he can tell Aaliyah Jones used the device for both personal and professional storage. Charter School Investigation. Lt Gov Travel Expenses. Head Shots. Resume. Angels Rising. Blog. Peru Plans. San Diego pics. Hawaii pics. Animal Charity Investigation.

  “As much as I’d like to see a Hawaiian sunset, open the Angels Rising folder,” Powell says. She’s sitting beside Mills at his desk. He is very conscious of the two of them gawking at the screen.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” he tells her. Then he clicks on the folder. About two dozen files pop up. He opens the first one.

  Ruth Adams

  602-555-1919

  Won’t go on the record. Says she married into the church twenty years ago before it became a megachurch. Thought it was a cult. Claims she was beaten during a Truth Analysis for questioning origins of church. Husband beat her too. She fled. Filed for divorce. To save marriage, husband renounced church, reported Norwood to sheriff’s office and contacted newspaper. Then husband disappeared. “I know they lock people up. Because I know people who’ve been locked up and let out. But I think they silence the true dissenters. I think they kill them. I have no proof.”

  Agnes

  Adm1970@mymail.com

  Will not meet in person. Refuses phone interview. Says she grew up in child camp. Not so bad. Treated well. Some discipline. As adult, joined church staff as a bookkeeper. Left the church as adult, claims she spent time in a “dungeon” for giving IRS financial data.

  JP

  602-555-1688

  jpmarcophx@phxnet.com

  Email: “Hello Ms. Jones. Ruth Adams said I should get in touch with you about construction work I did at the church before I left . . .you can reply to this email or call me at . . .”

  Karl

  480-555-0227

  Won’t go on record. Left church two years ago. Says he ran out of money and could not pay to go to a higher realm. Says church tried to pressure him to stay, promised a higher realm if he earned it through sweat equity at the children’s camp in Sedona. Says he tried working there but he saw counselors and guards beat the children. Children separated from parents at early age to study nothing but church doctrine, views of the world as seen through Angels Rising. Says parents are instructed to tell neighbors, nonchurch friends and family that children have been sent to boarding school. They lock dissenters up if they can. “If you can flee, great. If you can’t, you get locked up, maybe killed. And your family goes along with it if they’re true believers. They’re instructed to tell outsiders that you’re on a permanent mission overseas. It’s totally fucked up.”

  Mills clicks out of the folder. “I think most of the files here are probably similar,” he says. “We can check the rest later.”

  “We can call these people,” she says.

  “We have to be careful about that. They’re anonymous sources to a reporter. It would be different if we were investigating her death.”

  “We might be.”

  “I’m not saying no. But one death for today,” he says. “Viveca Canning.”

  After Powell is gone, Mills chows down on leftovers for lunch. He dials Kelly to see how closing arguments went.

  “Better than expected,” she said. “I’m surprised.”

  “I’m not,” he tells her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Great. That’s the strange thing.”

  “Don’t question it, hon. If you feel great, you feel great. I’m proud of you.”

  “Wait until the verdict.”

  “I said I’m proud of you. I don’t need a verdict for that.”

  “The case will go to the jury this afternoon.”

  He tells her he loves her, then he hangs up and heads for the elevator, where he meets up with Preston and Powell.

  The chapel at Valley Vista Memorial Garden overflows in unruly tentacles of black and tears. Mills and his colleagues manage to squeeze into the last row, and he looks with great sympathy at the mourners forsaken to the outdoors. The heat alone is enough to make you cry. The socialites have flocked to the service in their royal fascinators as if it were a freaking fashion show. He recognizes a few of them, the friends and fellow philanthropists he interviewed earlier in the investigation. Both Bennett and Jillian stand front and center in the hall, guarding the casket with eyes full of protracted sorrow. The kind of sorrow that comes to visit and can’t seem to leave. Her eyes notwithstanding, the rest of Jillian’s face is stone. Bennett looks drunk with misery, his face sagging from the weight of grief. The officiator, notably not Gleason Norwood, enters from a side door, his white robe trailing behind him. He welcomes the mourners. Mills can’t hear much of the eulogy or the blessings because the sobbing around him is so boisterous. Clutching roses, Bennett Canning bends over the casket and howls. His body shudders, and his sister goes to him with a tentative caress on the shoulder. Even in the tenderness, the estrangement is obvious. As her brother backs away, Jillian lays one hand on the casket and the other on her heart, her lips moving as if in prayer. This lasts about a minute, then she pulls back, stoic again.

  A woman approaches the podium. Mills recognizes her. Doesn’t remember her name. But as soon as he hears someone say “Liz,” he remembers her as Viveca’s best friend, Liz Livingston. One of the first people he interviewed. Through the yelps of sorrow, he strains to listen to this woman’s version of remembrance. He hears a few vague strands of her tribute, her words greeted by the vigorous nodding of ladies in black, by some of the men too, though most of them seem fairly aloof to the funeral happening around them.

  “My life was not the same because of her. My life will never be the same without her,” Liz Livingston concludes, then steps down.

  After the service, the black amoeba creeps over to the Canning family’s marble mausoleum, where Bennett offers sincere clichés of no surprise. “And here she will join my noble father, Clark. And here they will rest together for eternity.”

  A harpist harps. A flautist does whatever a flautist does. There’s a keyboard. A woman sits behind it and plays. And then she opens her mouth and she sings “The Greatest Love of All” with the fullest conviction, indifferent or oblivious to the cliché. She belts it out as if she’s trying to rouse Whitney Houston from a nearby grave. Mills doesn’t understand it, finds himself stifling a laugh and nudging Powell to stifle hers.

  The three of them, Mills, Powell, and Preston, pull back from the crowd as the service ends.

  “That’s Francesca Norwood,” Mills says, pointing to a svelte woman in black standing by a palm tree in the distance. She’s wearing huge black sunglasses and a massive hat that, while sporting a floppy brim, still exposes her face. “Follow me,” he tells the others.

  The woman offers a wan smile as Mills approaches.

  “Hello, Detective.”

  “Francesca . . .”

  “I take it you’re not mourning,” she says.

  Mills shakes his head. “No. We’re investigating.”

  “You really think your killer would be so brazen as to show up here?” she asks.

  “It happens,” Powell tells her. “So we have to be here just in case …”
/>   “Find anybody?”

  “Not yet,” Powell replies.

  “But we need to talk, Francesca,” Mills tells her. “We found more emails on Viveca’s computer. She knew something. Maybe about the church. About your husband. And we know she shared it with you.” Francesca folds her hands, stares downward, freezes for a moment. She’s a sculpture, posing here among the other statuary. She and the marble deities line the promenade, all of them whiter than the sun, as still as their secrets, as majestic as their powers would convey. Mills thinks of ancient Greece. This section of Valley Vista Memorial Gardens looks like Athens had too much to drink and threw up its mythology all over the place.

  “She didn’t share anything with me,” Francesca says suddenly. “Not the details. She said she wanted to protect me.”

  “Like I said, we need to talk,” Mills prods her.

  She makes a sweeping gesture with her arms. “Here? You can’t possibly be serious. Let’s have some dignity.”

  “Right. Dignity,” Mills says. “I assume your husband’s not here.” “Correct. Under the circumstances. Knowing that Viveca was leaving the church and all . . .”

  “Then why the big show at the church for her memorial?” Powell asks her. “All that drama, all that spectacle.”

  “That’s exactly what it was. It was a show. All for the sake of the members,” Francesca says. “It was my husband’s way of showing that nothing was awry. That Viveca was still very much a part of the church.”

  “Even though she wasn’t . . .” Mills says.

  She turns and watches the lingering crowd. “What did I just say? I don’t want to be seen talking to you people here.”

  “No, you said it was a matter of dignity.”

  “Well, both, then,” Francesca snaps. “Tomorrow morning, Detective Mills, you can meet me at the Desert Charm.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And one more thing,” she says, stepping away. “I thought I could blend in here today underneath this hat, behind these sunglasses.

  Obviously, I wasn’t successful, since you people found me. But please, if he doesn’t know already, I don’t want my husband to know I’m in town or where I’m staying.”

  Mills assures her that’s not a problem. He watches as she walks away.

  When Alex walks in the door, he can sense from the light in the house, or lack thereof, the malaise that has beset his wife. She’s not a cave dweller who lives with just a single source of illumination. Typically, her house is a bright one. An optimistic one. The curtains are open in the daytime; prior to bedtime, the bulbs, all of them, are bright, the utility bills be damned. So, when the house goes dark, as it is now, when the dimmers are one notch from the “off” position, and when the only real source of light is the feeble yellow glow over the stove, Mills is not surprised to find his wife curled up in bed at 6 p.m., her hair matted against the pillow, her skin sallow and clammy.

  “Hon, you awake?”

  “Umm, hmm,” she murmurs.

  “You don’t feel well?”

  She hasn’t lifted her head. “No,” she says with a labored breath.

  “Do you need to go to the doctor? Should I call the doctor? Take you to the ER?”

  She’s still looking at the wall. “Not so many questions, Alex. I’ll be fine.”

  He sits on the bed at her side. “You have to tell me what’s wrong. Are you in pain? Are you nauseous?”

  She reaches for his hand. “Nothing like that. Just exhausted.”

  She’s more exhausted than he’s ever seen her for a Monday, and he can’t imagine how she’ll make it through the week. “Did the case go to the jury?”

  “Yup,” she says.

  “You went back to work too soon. We have to get you better for the verdict.”

  She squeezes his hand.

  “If you’d like me to pamper you, I will,” he tells her.

  “Let me take a rain check. I’m going to need it.”

  He asks what she wants for dinner, but she says she’s not hungry. He goes through the lecture of how she has to eat, needs to eat, must get stronger, but she says she’s too tired to eat. He says he’ll put on some soup for both of them. She murmurs something that he can’t understand.

  “It’s canned soup,” he says. “But it’s better than nothing.”

  Then he’s in the kitchen. He turns on the news and rummages through the pantry. Puts the soup on the burner. The label says, “do not boil,” but it boils. He can never catch it before it boils. Someone at Campbell’s will probably issue him a violation. Mills relates this to Kelly when she shows up at the table, but all she offers is a meager smile, a kind of shrug of her bare shoulders, not even a syllable of a laugh.

  “Phoenix police say they have no leads in the disappearance of TV reporter Aaliyah Jones. She was last seen about a week ago before failing to report to work. Police aren’t commenting on their investigation at this point, but Jones’s news director at Channel 4, Sam Robatelli, provided a brief statement.

  ‘At this time our focus is on Aaliyah’s whereabouts. If anyone has any information that could help police find her, please call the Phoenix Police Missing Persons detail, or call us by dialing the main number for Channel 4. Someone will be answering the phones 24/7. Aaliyah is an important member of our family. Her work is some of the best we’ve ever produced. We’d like her to come back to her family and the work that she loves. Whether you’re a friend, a relative, a viewer, a fan, please help us find her.’ Robatelli would not take questions. At times like this we don’t feel like Channel 4’s competitors. We feel like family. Aaliyah has many friends at the other media outlets in town. We all pray for her safe return.”

  Kelly puts her spoon down. “That’s so scary,” she says. “I’m worried for her.”

  “So am I.”

  “What does your gut tell you?”

  He hesitates for a second, recalibrates his optimism, and says, “I think she’s alive. I do. But I think she’s in trouble. I don’t think she has a lot of time.”

  “That’s rather concerning.”

  “But whoever has her wants information. She’s a reporter. That has to have something to do with her disappearance. She won’t be killed until she gives them the information they want.”

  “Do you think she will?”

  “I don’t know her well enough.”

  They slurp in unison. The soup tastes more like can than soup.

  “In other news, valley socialite Viveca Canning was laid to rest today at Valley Vista Memorial Gardens. The 62-year-old philanthropist was murdered in her Phoenix home earlier this month. Police have no suspects in her death, but Josh Grady, a spokesperson for the department, says the police are focusing on her life at her church...”

  “What?” Mills pushes back from the table. “What! What the fuck?” He lunges for the phone and calls Grady. “What the fucking fuck, Josh? I just watched the news. What were you thinking?”

  “Hey, I’m out having dinner, dude. Chill the fuck out.”

  “‘Focusing on her life at church’? Really? Why not just let the media into the conference room to take a shot of our whiteboard?”

  “Look, I only gave that information because Woods told me it was OK.”

  Mills’s next call is to Jake Woods.

  “It was time to say something. Anything. We have to at least look like we’re doing something tangible and not just sitting around on our asses.”

  His forehead pounds. “We’re doing lots of something tangible, but nothing public.”

  “You think this will spook the church.” Not a question.

  “Damn right, it will spook them. I’m going to need a warrant, like, tonight.”

  Woods scoffs. “We simply said we were focusing on her life at her church. That doesn’t say we’re focusing on her church.”

  Now Mills scoffs. “You expect the church to appreciate that nuance? Really?”

  Woods says, “I think you’re getting a little carried away, overr
eacting. ‘Her life at church’ could mean anything to anybody.”

  “To the preacher, it means the church. Period.” From the corner of his eye he can see Kelly rise from the table and drift toward the bedroom. “You know, man, I got a sick wife and I don’t need this stress.”

  Oh. Shit. It just came out.

  “A sick wife? Is Kelly OK?” the sergeant asks.

  “No. But I don’t want anyone in the department to know. She has breast cancer. She had surgery on Friday.”

  “This past Friday?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should at least tell your squad.”

  “Because?”

  Woods does a wireless sigh and says, “Because they need to be ready to jump in. You know, cover for you.”

  “They’ve already jumped into the case as much as they’ll need to,” Mills tells him. “I don’t need anyone to cover for me.”

  “All right, just a suggestion,” Woods says. “Give Kelly a hug for me. I’m sorry to hear the news. But I know she’ll pull through.”

  And you know this how?

  He doesn’t say that. He just says, “Thanks. Goodnight.”

  Then he goes into the guest bathroom and throws up.

  33

  As he glides down the long driveway of the Desert Charm, Mills sees a family of crows circling overhead like a warning. By the time he reaches the entrance, one of the birds has swooped from the sky and is sitting on a stucco wall by the guard booth. The crow leers at him but doesn’t leave his post as Mills, cleared by the guard, rolls forward. The bird’s animosity could not have been as bad as Mills imagined. He dials Gus Parker.

  “It’s Alex . . . You up?”

  “Yep. Just came in from a walk with Ivy.”

  “I’m on my way in for a talk with Francesca,” he says. “You got anything I can use on her? Any vibes? Visions? Anything?”

  “Yes. I’ve had time to contemplate and conjure . . .”

  “The napkin you stole?”

  “The napkin I stole.”

  Mills laughs. “And?”

  “I’m coming up with wild experiences.”