Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  “Right, Alex,” she says. “The surgery is Friday.”

  “What? This Friday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s that urgent?”

  “No,” she replies. “It’s not that urgent. The doctor made that clear. It can wait a few weeks, but it’s a scheduling thing. If I don’t go in Friday, I’ll have to wait five weeks.”

  “You’re not a wait-five-weeks kinda gal, are you?”

  She laughs. “You know me.”

  “I take it there was no verdict today.”

  “Correct,” she says. “And I’m hoping we get one before Friday.” “And if you don’t?”

  “We don’t.”

  “I’m proud of you,” he says, as he swerves to avoid another vehicle. The other driver gives him a pumping middle finger, a truly aggressive, road-ragey gesture, and a protracted honk.

  “You need to get off the phone, Alex, before you kill yourself,” his wife tells him.

  She’s right. He tells her he loves her, that he’ll see her at home.

  34

  Gus’s client arrives at 7:30. The man has the fierce baby face of The Incredible Hulk and boasts a similar physique as well, though not green. He’s a new client and his name is Diego Gladstone. Gus leads him into the office, asks him to sit on the futon. Gus notices that the fabric covering the mattress is wearing thin; it will only be a matter of time before it rips. He supposes he should grow up and buy a sofa for the office, but that would be like getting rid of his surfboard. Which still hangs in his garage. In the middle of the desert. “So, Diego, it’s nice to meet you. Relax and let me know when you’d like to get started.”

  “I don’t know how this works.”

  The man has bright blue eyes and the kind of unshaven shadow you see on a young movie star who’s between projects. Unlike the messy, harried growth on Gus’s face, this guy’s shadow is a style. “It’s actually a fairly loose process,” Gus tells him. “Let me ask, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  Diego Gladstone is wearing gray shorts that stop just below the knee, a bright green polo shirt, and sandals that Gus admires. “What can I help you with?”

  “I found you through that lady Beatrice,” Diego says. “I went to one of her classes. You know, a workshop she did at a bookstore, and she was amazing, and she helped out this guy because he was scared and having a hard time being who he was. And I wanted to talk to her afterward, and she was great but she didn’t have a lot of time. Which is why she referred me to you . . .”

  “I see. So, you are, maybe, having a hard time being who you are,” Gus says. “You identified with that other man. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “This isn’t psychic of me. That was easy to infer from what you described,” Gus tells him. “I sense that the guy at the bookstore had some issues with his sexuality, and I sense the same for you.”

  Diego nods. “I overdo it at the gym to compensate. Is it obvious?” “That’s not the first assumption I’d make. In fact, I don’t do assumptions. I do vibes and hunches and visions.”

  “That’s so cool,” the man whispers in a manner that’s cool itself. “Again, not psychic, but I’m guessing you’re gay. And I’m also guessing this isn’t news to you.”

  Diego laughs. “No. It’s not. I came out a few years ago to my friends. They’re OK with it. But my family doesn’t know. They suspect, I think. But I haven’t told them because I don’t know how they’ll react, and I don’t want anyone to get upset.”

  Gus leans forward. “None of us wants to get anyone upset, Diego. But that’s not how life works.”

  “I was told to go see a shrink about this,” he says, “but then I heard Beatrice Vossenheimer speak that night, and I got really excited about talking to someone like her.”

  “Am I correct to assume that one part of your family is Latino? I’m guessing because ‘Gladstone’ sounds Anglo, ‘Diego’ sounds Spanish . . .”

  “Correct.”

  “You’re worried most about your Latino side.”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t,” he says. “But I really don’t want to be, you know, thrown out of the family.”

  “Would they do that?”

  He shrugs, leans back, and sinks into the mattress. “Not the family I know, but they’ve never had to deal with something like this before.” Gus sits up straight again. He opens his chest, shoulders, and he takes a magnificent yoga breath. He says, “OK, Diego. I’m going to sit here and look at you for a few moments. I’m going to stare right into you. If that makes you uncomfortable, feel free to close your eyes. That’s perfectly fine. But I am going to read you as long as it takes me. I’m not sure I’d want someone staring at me for that long either.”

  The man nods. “I’ll keep them open as long as I can,” he says. “This is kind of amazing.”

  Gus studies his client’s face, looks for the openings, the opportunities to go beneath the skin; he hopscotches from pore to pore. Then he observes the man’s hands, the wide hands from which Gus infers a softness, an abiding need to touch with care—to a fault, perhaps. Back to the face, to the full lips that speak a message of kindness and love; Diego’s face articulates the exquisite geometry of love, loss, and loneliness. Just like Billie’s music. It’s uncanny. It’s almost as if Diego Gladstone could break out any minute in song.

  “I’m going to close my eyes now,” Gus tells Diego. “I’ll be back with you shortly.”

  The darkness lasts only a minute.

  And then a dove swoops into view. Against a placid, blue sky, the dove flies and loops. This is not the caricature of a dove with an olive branch. This is not a cartoon. This dove is real and she flutters like an angel, as if her movement inscribes a message in the sky, like billowy skywriting. Gus tries to read. At first he doesn’t understand the language. It looks like an ancient text, like Hebrew or Aramaic, but as Gus follows the trail of the white bird, he sees her message morph into a language he understands.

  “Do not be afraid. Do not fear.”

  “Are you talking to me?”

  Gus hears a voice, then watches as the dove lands atop a soaring saguaro. “Do not be afraid.”

  “Mr. Parker?”

  Gus opens his eyes. “Oh yes. That was for you. That was a message. I trust the angels. Do you?”

  “Huh?”

  Gus shakes his head vigorously. “I’m sorry. That was a very vivid vision. Very real. And it came to me as if it were coming from an angel. I don’t know why. All I know is that your family loves you, adores you. Regardless of their strong Catholic convictions, they will embrace you, Diego. I know they have strong faith, but they will use that faith to accept you for who you are, not to fight you and try to change who you’re meant to be.”

  “I never got around to discussing their religion with you . . .”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s fascinating.”

  “Are you asking me how to come out to them, or when to come out to them?”

  Diego shakes his head. A huge smile emerges on his face. “Not really. But I welcome any psychic suggestion you have . . .”

  Gus laughs. “You don’t need a deadline, Diego. You do it when it feels right. Now that the angels have told you not to fear, you are free. I know this all sounds kind of ridiculous, I do, but trust me, I would rather say nothing than give you a load of bull. I really feel you have some lovely souls watching over you, taking you by the hand, walking you through this . . .”

  A solitary tear spills from Diego’s eye and slides down his cheek. “It will all be fine,” Gus tells him. “Have you thought about writing a book?”

  Diego shudders, a quick spasm of his shoulders, and says, “I am writing a book.”

  “That was an instant vibe. It was like filling in a blank.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gus says. “I think it’s great. I see you doing really well with the book. I mean, I see you writing for life.”
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  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Gus smiles. “You will.”

  “It’s a coming out story,” Diego tells him. “So much of it is still unwritten.”

  “Finish it,” Gus says.

  “Wow. Can I come back for more?”

  Gus nods gently. “Of course. I can put you on the calendar,” he replies. “But one more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m suddenly getting a vibe about something else.”

  “What?”

  “Part of the reason you’re here has to do with Billie Welch. Isn’t that right?”

  Diego Gladstone fidgets, smiles coyly. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re a huge fan and you know I’ve been dating her. It’s not exactly a secret these days.”

  Diego puts his head in his hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m not going to lie. It was a factor in coming. I was curious.”

  “You’re hoping I’ll introduce you to her, that you’ll meet her through me.”

  Diego’s bronze skin turns red. “I’m so embarrassed. But yeah, I’m a huge fan. I grew up with my parents listening to Billie Welch. She’s, like, everything to me.”

  “I see,” Gus says. “But it doesn’t really work that way. My practice here doesn’t really intersect with my private life. I hope you’ll understand.”

  “What if I gave you something for her to autograph? Is that something you might do?”

  Gus takes a deep breath, inhaling, in a way, Billie’s stardom and the omnipotence of her music; it’s all too much. Too much. In the exhale comes something cruel but true. He can’t articulate it, but it comes out like sorrow and grief and sediment. “Yeah, sure. I can probably do that,” Gus tells his client. “But we can talk about it next time.”

  Later that night, curled up on the couch with Ivy, he’s watching the National Geographic Channel and sipping a glass of red wine. Rising ocean waters threaten the Maldives. Islands of plastic are floating across the seas. The earth is choking itself. But the next show features the Emperor Tamarin monkeys in the Peruvian Amazon, so that’s uplifting. Except their habitat is disappearing due to development, so that’s alarming. Still, these little creatures with their huge white mustaches and their humanlike faces are fetching Gus’s affections, and he shoots a guilty look at Ivy, because it’s clear by the look on Ivy’s inquisitive, if not interrogating, face that she’s jealous. “Come on, they’re on TV, girl. It’s not like I can bring one home.”

  The program cuts to commercial. Alex Trebek is selling some kind of insurance. Charmin is softer than ever. Hilton invites you to stay three nights for the price of two. Flights to Australia and New Zealand on sale now! With Transcontinental Airlines!

  The name hits him in the chest with a singular drumbeat.

  It rocks him like an earthquake, like a sudden tremor, and he feels something else coming on. Like a wave of affirmation, or in the case of this sudden seismic event, a tsunami.

  He puts the wine glass down on the coffee table and sits back, closes his eyes, and there it is—the same plane, the same livery, the same flight, flying high above the Pacific. The aircraft is deceptively steady in this inky sky, in these hours before disaster; the passengers lulled into their safe bubble at 32,000 feet. The only difference he sees from the other visions of this flight is two passengers seated in first class whom he had not seen before. They might have been there, but he’s not sure; his auditing of the manifest had been fleeting. But they’re here now: Viveca Canning and Francesca Norwood. They’re sitting side by side, lounging under duvets, their lie-flat seats half-extended. Viveca grasps a magazine in one hand, a teacup in another. Francesca wraps her fingers around a svelte glass of champagne. Gus shakes his head. There’s nothing more to see.

  He gets it.

  They’ve been on this flight all along. For the plane to go down, they will have to be on this flight together. And they won’t be. They can’t be. Viveca is already gone. Her death has already altered the fate of the flight and its passengers. The foiled premonition gives Gus a chill, then a cold sweat. Viveca Canning’s death has completely changed a future reality. She, in the context of his vision, has been a salvation. Could it be that she really was an angel rising?

  He bends to grab the glass of wine from the coffee table, but as he does he’s propelled in another direction, crashing, it seems, through funhouse doors and down a long tunnel until the ride comes to a stop in front of an elegant dining room where two couples hold their goblets high and toast to something fortunate and celebrated. Gus can’t hear their words. But they’re living charmed lives, or the masquerade of charmed lives. One woman, in fact, hides behind the veil of a crepe hat, the kind you’d see on a 1930s starlet. She tips her neck back, but that’s all you see, a long porcelain neck and ruby red lips. Down goes the wine, and they’re all smiles and insouciance. Except for one of the men. He turns away from them and points a finger, his whole arm, actually, further into the funhouse tunnel. He wants the strangers to move on, to get away, to get out. He shakes his head. He mouths the words. Gus reads his lips.

  Death has come and you must go.

  Death has come and you must go.

  You will survive the Madeira.

  What the f—

  Then Gus hears a phone ring. A funhouse of phones. The rest of it fades away, and Gus comes crashing back through those doors and lands on the couch, with just a little bit of whiplash and a little bit of nausea, the turbulence of his visions so severe. Ivy tilts her head and gives Gus a bewildered look, as if to say, “Will you answer the damn phone, you psychic freak?” He swears she’s crossing her eyes at him.

  It’s Billie.

  “Darling I do want you to come on the tour to Australia and New Zealand, but I know it’s a lot to ask. I know . . . and I know why you can’t come . . .”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  He shakes his head just to check. “Uh, no. Just staggering out of a few visions.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  Not necessarily cool. “What’s up with you, Billie?”

  “Nothing,” she says, her voice sailing at him through the night. “I know I’ve been so self-absorbed lately, but if you would consider coming with us as far as Tahiti, that would be great. We’re doing the stopover on Miranda’s insistence. We’ll land in Tahiti and then charter a plane over to Bora Bora. We won’t go ’til the end of September, but come. And we’ll spend four days, maybe five there.”

  He tells her he’ll think about it. He tells her he’d really like to go. “I’ll see if I can get Beatrice to watch Ivy, if I can get off work, you know the drill . . .”

  At the mention of her name, Ivy raises her head. Gus pets her, pulls her close.

  “Of course,” Billie says. “But it’s paradise there. I promise you.”

  They chat for a few minutes. The words, his words, anyway, are a patchwork of uncertainties, and he can’t seem to stitch the patches together. He ricochets off her and she him. He looks at the time on his phone. He tells her he needs to get to bed. She says, “I love you. I do. Sleep well, angel.”

  And he says something similar, but different.

  Then he turns to Ivy, who takes his regard as an opportunity to have a wish granted, her eyes begging, hopeful. He tells her it’s late. But she doesn’t give a shit. She wants to go for another walk. That’s the least he can do, she hints with a particularly sly look, for making her sit through another crazy night of visions and verbal contortions. Fine, he indicates to her with a nod of the head. We’ll go, girl.

  Mills had copied the files from Aaliyah’s thumb drive onto his laptop before leaving work earlier in the day. Now, after a dinner for dinner’s sake, he and Kelly are both sitting at the table, their laptops open, their eyes glued. She’s doing some kind of research for another case. Mills worries that moving from one case to the next might create an undue burden for her as she faces another surgery and the treatment ahead; he also worries that if she d
oesn’t stay engaged in work, then all she’ll think about is the cancer. He thinks the latter would have a more withering effect. So, he just keeps his mouth shut. He realizes, looking at the files on his screen, that his attempt to open and read each and every file is proving inefficient and, well, he’ll admit it, stupid, so he’ll try what he should have tried first. He’ll run a search through the batch of files all at once.

  C-o-n-t-r-a-c-t-o-r

  No results found.

  B-u-i-l-d-e-r

  No results found.

  C-o-n-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-o-n

  Three hits:

  Church of Angels Rising

  Constructionworker(s).docx

  ConstructionUnderground.docx

  He clicks on the last item and finds a file of notes similar to the ones he had exhumed earlier from Aaliyah’s thumb drive:

  Unconfirmed reports of underground construction

  See architectural plans/zoning/permits ≫ phx planning & development

  Project completed: 11 Feb 2003

  Mulroney Construction Company: 602-555-2221 ≫ out of business/closed ≫ sec of state

  Sec of State: MCC dissolved 2018

  LinkedIn profiles (3)

  1) Salvador Reyes

  Sun Valley Construction (current) Mulroney Construction (prior)

  2) Helen Destille

  Royce Engineering (current) Mulroney (prior)

  3) David Patrick

  Patrick Construction & Design (current) Mulroney (prior)

  Reyes: left message at Sun Valley 2/24, 3/2, Reyes calls back 3/3, will not comment

  Destille: Will not comment 2/28

  Patrick: left message at Patrick Construction 2/24, 2/28, 3/4, Meet on 3/11

  Mills opens the second file that came up in the search, constructionworker(s).docx, and finds the digital equivalent of scrap paper.

  David Patrick

  480-555-1818

  Owner, Patrick Construction and Design. Previously worked for Mulroney Construction contracted to build C-ARC.

  3/11 Meeting at station. DP says he worked the entire C-ARC project in various roles, says I’d have to get architectural plans/blueprints from city or the county. Confirms underground construction. Not unusual for a facility that large. Figures it’s used for storage. Unfinished walls, doors, floors, just basic drywall, beams, etc. Large area. Half a football field. DP left Mulroney in 2012, started own company. Never saw anything unusual at C-ARC through construction process. “It’s all just a building to me. Just floors and doors and hallways. And a ton of windows!”