Dig Your Grave

by Steven Cooper

  “Either that’s a gun under the suspect’s coat, or he’s got the world’s biggest hard-on,” Myers tells them.

  “I’m going with a gun,” Powell says.

  Mills just shakes his head.

  22:18:12: Suspect and UI #2 walk out of frame, UI #2 slightly ahead.

  “That’s it,” Myers says. “End of video.”

  Mills leans against the wall and says, “Shit.”

  “We got crappy video with two individuals we can’t positively identify, and it looks like one of them has a gun on the other,” Preston says. “In other words, an outtake from Law & Order.”

  “But it’s Klink’s SUV,” Myers reminds them.

  “We get that, Morty,” Mills says. “But now we have to believe that the killer marched Klink over to the graveyard on foot.”

  “And at gunpoint,” Powell adds.

  “It’s within walking distance,” Myers insists. “I told you, Preston and I did the walk. It’s easy. No major roads to cross. A few neighborhood streets behind Safeway connect to Valley Vista.”

  “How long did it take?” Mills asks.

  “We clocked it at nine minutes.”

  Mills shrugs. “And yet the victim, let’s call him Klink, doesn’t seem to resist. He obviously didn’t resist if we’re to believe they took a neighborly stroll to the cemetery and started digging.”

  “And where’s the shovel?” Powell asks.

  “I don’t know,” Myers replies. “Why are you asking me? I’m not saying what the video means. I just came in to show it to you.”

  Mills elbows the detective gently. “No one’s putting you on the defensive, Morty. We’re just thinking out loud. For example, I’m thinking about that stain on your shirt.”

  “I stopped at McDonald’s for lunch. Got a Big Mac. A packet of ketchup exploded,” Myers explains.

  “Happens all the time,” Powell says.

  “And since we’re thinking out loud, Mills,” the ketchup-stained detective says, “I’m thinking maybe the killer placed the shovel at the graveyard beforehand.”

  “He would’ve had to do that under the cover of darkness, which could indicate two trips to the cemetery that night,” Preston suggests.

  Mills looks at both of his colleagues and nods. “I think we’re good for now. I’m not so much concerned with the shovel as I am with the nearly seven-hour gap in Klink’s whereabouts, assuming that’s him,” he says. “His secretary says he got that call at three in the afternoon. This video is time-stamped ten o’clock. What’s he doing for seven hours instead of heading to the airport?”

  “Assuming he knew his killer, maybe they had dinner and hung out for a few hours,” Myers says. “And then, bam, it was a trap and the suspect takes him at gunpoint.”

  “Like I said, I think we’re good for now,” Mills tells them. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Morty. I’m saying we need to take a breath, stop speculating for a minute, and nail down where the fuck Klink went after leaving the office.”

  Mills stretches, then tries to stifle a yawn.

  Powell and Preston take the hint and head for the door. As Myers leaves, Mills thanks him and says he’s doing a great job.

  On Friday comes the news that the judge, as expected, laughed at Illumilife’s attempt to withhold Klink’s cell phone records. The court ordered the wireless account be released to the cops for review. Which is exactly what Preston and Myers have been doing. It’s late Friday afternoon before they have anything to tell Alex Mills. They’re in his office now, disorderly stacks of papers in their hands. They apologize for not having gone through each and every call yet, or each and every signal to the towers.

  “That wasn’t my expectation,” Mills assures them. “Actually, I’m surprised we have phone records this quickly.”

  “So are we,” Preston says. “We obviously looked at the last ding first. It most likely came from the intersection of East Thomas and Sixteenth. Or somewhere on Sixteenth between Thomas and McDowell.”

  Mills knows the map of Phoenix. He knows the precincts blindfolded. Give him the cross streets and he can do a rough illustration. The neighborhood at Thomas and Sixteenth is unremarkable. Mixed use. Apartments, outdated ranch homes, businesses. All unadorned. Mostly run down.

  “And then nothing?” he asks the men.

  “Right. Not another signal after that,” Myers says. “Eventually he lost his phone, ditched his phone, or the perp took his phone.”

  “I’m going with option two or three,” Mills surmises. “But neither option tells us when Klink left that neighborhood and drove to Safeway.”

  “Or was driven,” Preston says.

  “All I know is the victim entered the neighborhood we identified around seventeen thirty,” Myers says. “I have no idea when he left for the Valley Vista area.”

  “Obviously something went wrong between the last ping on Klink’s phone at Thomas and Sixteenth and the first shot of him, assuming it’s him, on the surveillance tape from Safeway,” Mills says. “We’re talking about two neighborhoods miles apart.”

  “We’ve only just started to review the cell tower data,” Preston reminds him. “We want to see if the earlier pings tell us anything about where he might have been headed or what he might have been planning to do.”

  “Right,” Mills says. “But from what we know so far, it does appear that something significant happened at Thomas and Sixteenth. I think it’s worthy of a search there.”

  “Right now?” Myers gasps.

  “No, Morty. Go home. Enjoy the weekend, and I’ll try to do the same.”

  As he watches the two men shuffle out of his office, Mills can’t help but have a nagging feeling. He knows it plays to a stereotype, but the fortunate, coddled Davis Klink is not someone who’d drive outside the boundaries of wealth just to see how the other half lives. Klink had no business in that neighborhood.

  9

  Gus is sitting on the deck, looking out at the ocean. Ivy rests beside him, her tail flapping against the wood. Waves crash hard, and the vibration rolls beneath them.

  “You can tell it’s a full moon,” Billie says. “The surf is crazy.” She and Beatrice are sitting at a large round table under the canopy, shaded from the sun.

  Gus watches the crazy surf, and it all comes back to him, those days of rebellion, long days of surfing and late nights of partying; his life in Los Angeles swerved in and out of waves of glory and fear, freedom and despair. He was invincible, and he was broken. Banished by parents who considered themselves “too Christian” to indulge his psychic revelations, Gus recreated family here at the beach where everything and everyone was golden. He practiced his psychic visions on people who yearned for “inner truths.” He wrote lousy poetry and smoked too much pot. But who didn’t back then? He came to LA in his late teens and stayed until his midtwenties, supporting his lifestyle with the money people paid him to bring them closer to their destinies. It was strange. A friend knew a friend who knew a friend, leading to those late-night runs up Mulholland, or those early-morning sessions with that customer in Holmby Hills, a famous movie star who liked her visions told to her as the sun rose from the east. He remembers an all-night party at the Bel-Air home of a Warner Brothers executive where dozens of guests lined up for consultations, always offering him cocaine, which he declined, occasionally offering him a sexual favor (from the men, as well), which he also declined. He remembers returning to the beach at six in the morning, doing bong hits with the guys and sleeping until three in the afternoon. Some nights. Others were calm, deliriously peaceful. He listened to the music of Billie Welch back then, and he fell in love with her, as all boys did, unlike the way he loves her now. He might have even had a vibe about her back then, but he’s not sure. Even if he had sensed their destinies would someday intertwine, he would have dismissed it as a by-product of his infatuation.

  Today the temperature has hit the low seventies. Too cold for a swim. But the ocean is far from empty. Off to his right, farther north up the
beach, surfers are in a line. An occasional wetsuit will pass on the beach below. Others stroll the shore in linen pants and sweatshirts. A few clusters of children unearth the beach to build sandcastles. He closes his eyes and lets the sun soak his face. For a few minutes he listens to the chattering of Billie and Beatrice. They’re talking about saving the whales. And the elephants. Then Gus hears a backhoe. The noise erupts suddenly, roaring to life, the yearning arms of the machine screeching as they flex for the dig. Definitely not kids playing in the sand. He opens his eyes and sees, instead, two adults viciously shoveling out a hole. Not exactly a backhoe, but their strokes are fast, crazy, spastic. He blinks and they’re gone. He blinks again and they’re back. Again, and they’re gone. He’s somewhat inebriated by the sun, and feels himself slow on the uptake, so he turns to Billie and Beatrice and says, “Hey, ladies, someone’s shoveling out a big hole right below us. You see it?”

  Both women rise to their feet, drift to the railing, and look down. Beatrice has a glass of sangria in her hand.

  “No, dear, I don’t,” she says.

  “Billie?”

  “Me either. Unless you mean the kids building their castle.”

  “Feels like I’m waking from an afternoon dream,” Gus tells them.

  “Oh, wow,” Billie says. “You’re seeing something, aren’t you? A vision . . .”

  “Yes,” Beatrice tells her without waiting for Gus to answer. “He is.”

  Gus gets up and joins them at the railing. “I’m either seeing what happened to that CEO in Phoenix. Or I’m seeing another murder about to happen.”

  Beatrice rests her glass on the railing and grabs Gus’s hand. “Can you concentrate on this, Gus?”

  “I can,” he says. “And I think it’s the latter.”

  Billie just looks at him mesmerized, a wicked smile emerging on her face.

  He nods, pulls out his phone, and sends a text to Alex Mills.

  He waits, but Alex doesn’t respond.

  What does one dead man have to say about another? Anything? One dead man is quiet, so quiet, lying there in a cradle of dirt, invoking the Fifth. One dead man, his head bashed in, must have something to say about the other.

  Alex Mills stares at the dead man.

  The details of Davis Klink’s murder had not leaked to the press, so this is not a copycat. But the similarities are obvious.

  He looks again to the cardboard sign, the backside of a shipping box:

  I should have guessed

  It would come to this

  That I would dig my own grave

  That I would pay for my sins.

  Here I rest. Never in Peace.

  The call came in around eight thirty this morning. The sun is now tethered at noon. Mills guesses the death happened in the late evening prior. Cielo de Santos, a small, unadorned graveyard in a tract of Phoenix between Southern and Baseline, is swarming with cops. Patrol officers have set up a perimeter at East Twenty-Fourth and blocked surrounding streets to the west. The techs have combed and sifted while two photographers buzzed around them documenting the process, capturing the crime scene in its midday glare. The crude grave. The loosened dirt. The broken eyeglasses. The errant shoe.

  From the looks of it, today’s John Doe occupies a similar demographic as Davis Klink, the John Doe who came before him. White, late forties or early fifties, well-dressed. No wallet, no ID, but a gold watch and diamond ring have been left untouched by the killer; that all but rules out robbery as a motive. John Doe and Davis Klink blazed virtually the same trails to their deaths. They dug their own graves presumably with the same shovel used to bash in their skulls. This victim has lost the back of his head. All that’s left is a hole the size of a cantaloupe and a lava flow of brain matter. But for all the similarities, one thing puzzles Alex Mills. Why here? This neighborhood is a pocket of authentic Mexico swept to the south of Phoenix mostly by prejudice and economics. A poorer neighborhood—fuck it, let’s call it what it is, a barrio—that largely keeps to itself, its people are welcoming but reticent, trusting but hesitant. It’s no secret some lawmakers in Arizona, shortsighted and handcuffed by their own bigotry, would enjoy deporting the entire village.

  “Hey, Mills, look at this,” a tech says to him. It’s Roni Gates, kneeling on the ground opposite Mills, the grave between them. She’s pointing at the victim’s hand.

  “I saw the ring,” Mills tells her.

  “No, no, no,” the tech says, her words as spastic as her shaking head. “Not the ring. The dirt. Look, there’s dirt under all of his fingernails, both hands. Can you see?”

  Mills lowers himself to his knees and looks closer. “Yes,” he says. “Indicating what, in your opinion?”

  Crime scenes like this are what techs live for. Nearly salivating over the corpse, Roni, a collegiate-looking blond with ruddy cheeks, says, “I think it indicates that the victim was digging his grave with his own hands.”

  “Or trying to dig himself out,” Mills suggests. “Maybe he was trying to escape before the final blows.”

  Either way it was a crappy way to die.

  “But we got his prints,” Roni assures him. “Sent them off about a half hour ago.”

  “Great.”

  This parcel of land sits on a full city block. The backside of a strip mall, the shape of a “C,” surrounds it, holding the graveyard in the hug of the letter. It’s entirely possible that a murder could take place here in the middle of the night without disturbing the neighbors. Mills gets up off his knees when he sees his scene investigator approach.

  “The lady who looks after the place discovered the body when she was out this morning planting flowers,” Powell tells him. “She says there’s no money for cameras. And nobody in the community wants a gate.”

  A text message dings Mills’s phone: “Interesting Vision. Maybe another murder. Call me.”

  He laughs and shows the message to Powell. “It’s from Gus.”

  “Isn’t he supposed to see things in the future?” she asks. “As in, your mother is going to be hit by a truck?”

  “He does. But he also sees things in real time,” Mills says. “And he can see things that have played out in the past.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “You know he can do it.”

  She just looks at him.

  “You’ve seen him do it.”

  She kicks the ground and says, “Yeah, I guess. But it’s such a leap for me sometimes. Are you going to call him?”

  “Not now,” Mills says. Within an instant his phone dings again and so does hers. They look at each other, spooked. A ding of an iPad echoes, and Roni looks up.

  “There’s a match,” she announces.

  The prints are back. Simultaneously they open their emails. Mills, even after all these years, gets a thrill from the anticipation. First he looks for the name. He’ll read the report in a moment, but he has to have a name; he has to look at the corpse and give the wretched thing a name, and it’s almost a “nice to meet you” moment when Mills can stare at the body and say, “We know who you are.”

  Nice to meet you, Barry L. Schultz.

  We know who you are, Barry L. Schultz.

  Turns out Barry L. Schultz’s fingerprints showed up in two databases. He had recently applied to teach at U of A, and he had purchased a membership in the TSA PreCheck program. He had to provide a print for both.

  “Damn, I love how fast the system works,” Mills says to no one in particular.

  He looks at the man’s date of birth, then does the math; Barry L. Schultz is forty-six years old. His birthday is next month. Is. Was. Tenses don’t matter at crime scenes. The report lists Schultz’s current address: 2899 N. Palma Vista Circle, Scottsdale. Occupation: physician.

  Mills pulls up Google on his phone and searches for “Dr. Barry Schultz Phoenix Scottsdale.” Apparently the guy is a prominent plastic surgeon known for discount breast enlargements (Two for the Price of One!). Mills pulls up images of Barry Schultz, Breast Enlarger, and march
es back to the grave. The Office of the Medical Examiner has arrived.

  “You may be a doctor examining a doctor,” Mills says.

  “Huh?” says the man who pivots and looks up from where he’s kneeling.

  “Hey, Calvin!”

  If one can have a favorite medical examiner, Calvin Cloke is Mills’s. Cloke is a crazy fuck who bowls like a pro, plays guitar in a local metal band, and is built like a Humvee. He had one arm blown off in the first Gulf War and wears a permanent smile on his face.

  “Good to see you, Mills,” Cloke says when he gets to his feet.

  The men shake. “Our John Doe, here, is a famous plastic surgeon in town. Barry Schultz. Ever hear of him?”

  Cloke shakes his head, then points to the corpse. “I’d say a lot of my patients are good candidates for plastic surgery. Trouble is getting them to pay.”

  Mills nods and rewards Cloke with a laugh.

  “As for me personally, you think I’d be looking for someone to fix this beautiful face?” the medical examiner asks, mugging.

  The man has a big face, wide enough to accommodate that nearly psychotic smile. But beautiful? Probably not. His skin is a battlefield of acne trenches and roadside bombs. His face has been to war. It bears the scars. But the arresting blue of his eyes calms everything. They neutralize the territory, and Mills guesses that some women find the gentle warrior thing attractive, maybe sexy.

  “Obviously blunt trauma,” Cloke says, turning again to the dead man. “I haven’t documented that, per se, but that’s going to be my finding, unless you can tell me that the excavation of his skull has absolutely nothing to do with his death.”

  “I’m not going to tell you that,” Mills says. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  “If you want to call it work,” the man stage whispers, followed by a cackle of laughter.

  Cloke is still laughing as Mills drifts away in search of the crime scene photographer. He finds the photographer at another corner of the graveyard and asks the guy to email him pictures of Schultz’s ring and the watch. “The best close-ups you have,” he says, then heads for his car, where he dials Scottsdale police and asks for help identifying next of kin. Mills heads out in that direction, toward Scottsdale, toward the doctor’s address. He’s on the highway for barely five minutes when one of Scottsdale’s finest calls back and says he has a phone number for the wife.