She strokes his shoulder. “You’ve told me that. And of course, you wouldn’t do all that work with the police if you didn’t have a sense of death.”
“But, no, Billie, I can’t see yours,” he says. “Why would I want to?”
“Just curious. I’m not asking because I’m scared. I’m asking because I’m fascinated.”
And he fully believes her. He knows her to be one of the most fascinated people he’s ever met. All that fascination with the universe finds its way into her music and into the way she loves, if the two are not the same.
As he rolls on top of her, the entire house erupts. A whirl of sirens surrounds them. Her body tenses. Normally when he slides himself between her legs, he hears a whimper and a soft, throaty growl of permission—not a house alarm. Bells are ringing; horns are blasting. His first reaction is to laugh. “What’s so funny?” she asks.
“Nothing. Just the timing. That’s all. It’s like the house is having an orgasm instead of you.” He rolls off her.
“Not funny.” She sits up.
They’re screaming to be heard above the roar of the alarm.
“A little funny?”
“Gus! There might be an intruder in my house!”
Her phone rings.
“That’s the security company. Will you get it?” she asks.
He does. “No, we didn’t trip it by mistake,” he tells the operator. “We haven’t moved all morning.”
“What’s your password?” the operator asks.
“Password?”
“It’s ‘masquerade,’” Billie says.
“Masquerade.”
“Do you hear an intruder?” the operator asks him.
“Are you kidding me? The alarm is so loud I can barely hear my own voice.”
“Okay, Mr. Welch, we can turn the alarm off remotely.”
Mr. Welch? That’s a first. “Please do.” There’s irritation in his voice that doesn’t surprise him, what with the piercing shrill of the alarm, the coitus interruptus, and the shrinkage of his dick.
The house goes silent.
“And, now, Mr. Welch, do you hear an intruder?”
A moment of fight-or-flight tingles his spine. “This place is a mansion. Hard to tell.”
“Would you like us to send the police?”
He covers the phone. “Do we want the police?” he asks Billie.
She’s wide-eyed, begging him.
He shakes his head, doesn’t understand.
She nods, finally, and pulls the blankets around her; Gus watches her do this, and it turns his flesh to ice. She’s frightened. He’s never seen her this way. “Yes,” he tells the operator. “Please send the police.”
He ends the call and hops off the bed.
“Where are you going?” she begs.
He looks at her, as if it should be obvious. “I’m going to check out the house.”
“Like hell you are. Sit down.”
“Billie, I’ll be fine. Lock the door behind me. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“No, you don’t,” she insists. “I can’t let you do that. You stay here until the police come.”
He looks back at her, this woman clinging to her velvet security blanket; she might be a frightened doe, but she’s ordering him around. Classic Billie. Vulnerable but headstrong. Lost in her music, in control of the world.
“If that’s what you prefer,” he replies, “but right now some robbers could be making off with your priceless guitars over in the music wing.”
She grabs his hand and pulls him back to the bed.
“This is a guard-gated community, Gus! First they’d have to get past the security booth, and then they’d have to get past my driveway gate.”
Her voice is gravelly. When she speaks and when she sings, her voice often sounds like the dry, hardscrabble desert that surrounds her. As if it were born of this earth. It’s a good effect, the huskiness, a sexual come-on that men and women, particularly men, find irresistible, and yet her obliviousness of it makes that voice all the more fetching.
“Chez Welch is not exactly Fort Knox,” Gus tells her.
“You’re adorable,” she says. “Trying to protect me.”
He pulls her close. “Are you saying you don’t need protection?”
They hold each other for a few minutes, listening to the stillness, listening for a trespass on the stillness.
“We all need protection sometimes,” she says finally.
It’s a line from one of her songs.
The intercom squawks, and they both stiffen, their nerves rattled. Billie rises and reaches for the keypad on the wall. “Hello?”
“Miss Welch, it’s Paradise Valley Police. Are you free and able to open the gate?”
She buzzes them in. Gus throws on a robe and tells Billie he’ll greet the cops at the front door while she gets dressed.
“Are you kidding me, Gus? I can’t get dressed that quickly,” she gripes.
“Billie, please. There are a dozen robes in the closet. Throw one on. And lock the door behind me.”
Before she can protest, he’s gone.
Even a year into his romance with Billie, Gus has not grown accustomed to her sleep-until-noon schedule (that’s noon on weekends, 2:00 p.m. often on weekdays), which would explain his hard squint at the uncompromising Arizona sky when he opens the door to greet the two cops out front.
“Hi.”
“Who are you?” one of them barks.
“Gus Parker,” he replies, offering a hand for a shake. Neither accepts, letting it dangle there in its rejection.
“Where’s Miss Welch?” the red-faced one asks. His head sprouts a ginger buzz cut, right above his bright red neck. The name engraved on his badge is Thelan. The other officer, more mundanely named Johnson, is leaning in the doorframe. Johnson is a tall one, towering over both Gus and Officer Thelan. What Thelan lacks in height, however, he makes up for in width, strong width, like-a-truck width, all muscle. The two of them could crush Gus into cactus pulp.
“She’s in her bedroom,” Gus answers. “Why don’t you gentlemen come in? I’ll get her.”
“Do you have any reason to believe there’s an intruder on the property?” Officer Thelan asks before Gus can step aside.
“Other than the alarm, I didn’t hear a thing,” Gus tells them. It’s so quiet he can hear birds singing in the distance. The air smells crisp. A cool breeze sneaks up his robe, and he backs away from the door. “Please come in,” he repeats.
“Damn, what a place,” Johnson says in a whisper as the cops enter.
“My partner, here, is a rookie, still impressed by all the money in PV,” Thelan hisses. “But I’ve been out here. Miss Welch threw one heck of a New Year’s party a few years ago. Loud and late. Noise complaints.”
When Gus returns to the bedroom, Billie opens the door, wearing a sweater-like robe that falls from her neck to her bare feet, with buttons the whole way down, her silvery blond tresses cascading around her shoulders to the small of her back.
“Are we headed for the log cabin?” he asks, hoping to get a laugh.
“No,” she says without one. “Where are the police?”
“They’re downstairs. I think they’re waiting for your permission to search the house.”
“Jesus,” she groans.
“You want to put on some socks or slippers?” Gus asks.
“No.”
The cops seem to notice her bare feet first. Johnson, puzzled, and Thelan, amused. “Hello, boys,” she says. “Go on, search the house. I’m making coffee. Want any?”
“Sure, ma’am,” says Officer Johnson.
Thelan elbows him. “Uh, no thank you, Miss Welch. My partner and I will get down to business and then be out of your way.”
While the officers inspect, Gus and Billie sip coffee in silence. She’s writing something in her journal, probably something about fear. He won’t ask; it’s none of his business, but here comes his intuition, shaken to life by the house alarm, now re
stlessly searching for a sign of something, anything, anywhere. Here in Billie’s residence, in her physical sanctuary, is a bald man around Gus’s age, his features too nascent to be descript in this sudden vision. He is the shadowy intruder in a dream. He’s a blur of malevolence lingering at the end of a hallway. He has stepped out of the wilderness, a man in a burly plaid jacket and a sneer on his face. He has come alive, and he’s a threat, a pickax in his hand.
“What’s wrong?”
Her voice brings him back.
“Nothing,” he answers.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You were standing there shaking your head like you do in your sleep sometimes.”
“Was I?”
She puts her pen down. “Don’t be evasive, Gus. It was like you just disappeared.”
He smiles. “I’m right here, babe.”
She scoffs. “Oh come on, Gus, don’t patronize me. I know when you’re having a vision.”
Yes, she does. He doesn’t hide it from her. He doesn’t slip out of the room anymore. “I wish I could explain what I just saw, but I can’t.”
She sidles up to him, grabs his hand. “Did you see an intruder?”
“No.”
He hates lying to her. It feels like a sting to his throat, a barbed wire kind of guilt. But it’s better than scaring her.
They both turn when footsteps approach.
“Are we interrupting anything?” Thelan asks, his passive-aggressive intent loud and clear.
Billie waves them into her massive kitchen. “No,” she says. “The coffee’s still hot.”
“Okay,” says Thelan, taking a seat across from them at the big tiled island. “All we have is a good guess. Looks like someone might have hopped the wall behind the pool.”
Gus and Billie look at each other. She’s spooked; it’s all over her face. His heart is racing. “So there was someone here?” he asks.
“We think so,” Johnson replies, still standing, his head partially obscured by the light fixture above.
“But that’s a huge wall,” Billie says. “It’s a security wall.”
“But it backs up to the mountain,” Thelan reminds her. “The other side is public. Not popular among hikers. But not inaccessible.”
“We found some dirt at the base of the wall tracking through your pool area to one of your French doors back there,” Johnson explains.
Billie is a deer in headlights. Gus pulls her close. Her expression doesn’t change.
“Could be an animal,” Johnson continues, “but we doubt it.”
“Looks like there was some intent to enter,” Thelan says. “Probably scared off by the alarm.”
Gus looks from one officer to the other and says, “Look, guys, I’m not a cop, but if there’s evidence that someone approached the house, wouldn’t there be evidence of someone leaving?”
Something about “look, guys, I’m not a cop” amuses Thelan.
“It’s likely all the dust on his shoes was loosened by the time he turned around,” Johnson tells Gus. “Again, that’s assuming we’re right.”
“Or that he entered the house and is hiding somewhere,” Gus says.
“Stop it, Gus,” Billie pleads. “He’s a psychic, so he has his own hunches, you know.”
Thelan crosses his arms and smiles. “Maybe he should go search the house, himself. We did and found nothing. No one came inside this palace of yours, Miss Welch.”
“Please call me Billie. And, if you don’t mind, it’s my home.”
Thelan rises, his neck redder, his chest puffier. “You got a safe room? In your home?”
“A what?” Billie asks.
“A place where you can safely retreat if you hear an intruder,” Johnson tells her. “A secret room. With locks. Secure. Out of the way. A lot of the newer mansions out here are putting them in.”
Billie shakes her head. “No.”
“You might consider,” Thelan begins.
“No. Not now. Not ever,” she tells him.
Thelan puts his hands up as if he’s directing traffic. “Hey, no problem, Miss Welch, just a suggestion.”
“It’s Billie,” she reminds him. “I don’t suppose you want to check the other side of the wall for footprints. You know, to prove your theory.”
“Yeah, what about that?” Gus asks, moving closer to Thelan to equalize the machismo. It reminds him of his surfer days, of the territory wars and the testosterone-fueled competitions.
“Look, Billie, that’s easier said than done,” Thelan scolds her. “It would take us hours to go on foot and reach the other side of your wall. I said the mountain behind there is not inaccessible, but it’s far, far removed from the road, with no marked trails and very rugged terrain. That’s why people like you choose to live in places like this.”
Gus and Billie let their silence speak volumes.
The mutual disdain at this point is palpable. The refrigerator whirs to life, and the ice-maker roars as several new cubes are hatched.
“If there will be nothing else . . .” Thelan says.
“There will be nothing else,” Gus tells him. “We have a ladder. I’ll take a look for myself.”
“Gus . . .” Billie whispers.
“No, it’s fine,” he says. “Thanks, guys, for coming out. Let me show you to the door.”
Johnson hesitates. “Now, it can’t hurt to climb a ladder. I’m happy to do it.”
“Johnson,” Thelan hisses. “The gentleman just offered to show us the door.”
“I know that,” Johnson tells his brutish partner. “But I’d like to see for myself. Just to satisfy my own curiosity.”
“Or to finish the damn job,” Billie interjects, glaring at Thelan.
Thelan throws his hands up in the air and shrugs. “Whatever.”
Gus insists on going up the ladder first.
“Gus, you can’t climb a ladder in your robe!” Billie cries.
“I got my gym shorts on,” he tells her. “No one’s going to see my junk.”
“That’s not what I meant. You’ll fall off.”
He laughs and grabs the ladder with both hands. As he climbs, the sun hits his face, reminding him just how fierce the desert is and how scorching the light can be, illuminating and uncompromising. He scans the rocky gullet of the camel, unforgiving territory at best, and he looks below at the other side of the wall: there is a puzzle of footprints down there. Indeed, there was an intruder.
“Footprints,” he shouts to those below.
“Okay, Gus,” Billie calls to him, “why don’t you let one of the officers up there now to investigate?”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” he assures her.
“Really, Mr. Parker, come on down and let us finish up,” Thelan insists.
But he ignores the man and steps off the ladder to a spot atop the wall where he sits down and closes his eyes.
“Gus, what the hell are you doing?” Billie shrieks. “Get the fuck down here.”
Again, he sees the pickax. He doesn’t understand it, can’t intuit it, but the image is a clue. Then he opens his eyes, leans over, and studies the side of the wall that faces the desert.
“Oh, my God, Gus!” It’s Billie again. “I am so mad at you right now!”
He swallows a laugh and inventories the assault on the wall below him. Whoever was here was a skilled rock climber because the evidence shows a pathway of divots and dents from the bottom to the top of the wall. Somebody scaled the thing. Somebody was damned determined.
Gus descends the ladder and is met with a look from Billie as fierce as the sun.
“So?” Johnson asks.
“Go on up,” Gus tells him. “We definitely had a climber.”
Later in the kitchen the officers toss out a few theories. Billie is visibly more angered than scared.
“Why would someone do this?” she asks no one in particular. “It seems like an awful lot of work to break into a house. And then what? Grab some things and toss t
hem back over the wall?”
“They probably weren’t here to steal big things,” Johnson says. “Most likely they were looking for cash and jewelry.”
“They?” Billie begs. “You think there were more than one?”
“Just a form of speech,” Thelan says.
“You think they targeted me, specifically?” Billie asks them.
“There’s no way of knowing that,” Thelan replies. “But I doubt it. The intruder probably just landed on your property randomly. But, heck, I can think of plenty of easier places to break into.”
“Me, too,” says Johnson with a burst of zeal. “I don’t even know how you’d get back there unless you were either in top shape or super determined.”
Thelan prods his partner by the elbow and leads him to the front door. “We’ll write up a report and call you when it’s ready,” he tells Billie. But she’s not listening. She’s in a zone. She’s far away. And Gus knows the look. It’s him when he disappears.
She’s pacing, and she doesn’t snap out of it until the men are long gone.
“I don’t think I’m safe here,” she says.
He doesn’t think so either. He doesn’t know why. But he fully understands, perhaps more than Billie, that there’s more to the intrusion than money and jewels.
3
The manager of Valley Vista Memorial Gardens is a man dressed for his clientele—not the dead ones but rather the living ones who are here shopping for plots. He’s wearing one of those impeccably tailored Italian-looking suits, diamond cuff links, and a diamond wedding ring. His shoes have ties to the Mafia. He has adult acne, asymmetrical, Mills notes, the way he’d note the complexion of a corpse, but otherwise a dapper man in his late thirties. His name is Ronald, and his voice is nasally.
“The media is gathering out front,” he tells Mills. “They’re asking if I can get a spokesperson from the police department.”
Of course the media is here. Always on cue for murder. “Tell them it’ll be a while.”
The two of them are standing about fifteen feet downhill from John Doe’s grave. The cemetery manager gestures to Powell and the small army of technicians. “How long do you think you’ll be out here?”
“Probably into the evening,” Mills replies. “I’ll be gone before that, but the crew will stay until the scene is completely processed.”
Dig Your Grave Page 2