Descending Son

by Scott Shepherd

  He was working on it.

  17

  Jess had Googled three Tom Coxes and half a dozen Coxes with just the initial “T” in the Greater Palm Springs area. Phone calls established that the former were all alive and kicking, while the latter weren’t named Tom and also on the right side of the grave. Luckily, Maria Flores had given Jess her cell phone number and she picked up when he dialed it. She was concerned when he asked for Tom’s address and wanted to know what Jess was planning. He told her he wanted to swing by Tom’s place and check it out. The truth was Jess wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he got there, but it seemed like the logical place to start digging. Maria told him to be careful and let her know if he found anything. He didn’t make any promises but thanked her and headed for the suburban heart of Palm Springs.

  Tom’s neighborhood had tiny houses with lawns the owners were in a constant struggle to keep from turning brown. When Jess pulled up in front of 1536 Tamarisk, he saw that Cox had thrown in the towel on that battle and had planted a small cactus garden in the front yard. Sand was never in short supply in a desert community—just wait for the wind to pick up and a whole new batch got dumped outside your door for absolutely free.

  Jess parked a couple of doors down and checked out the neighborhood as he approached the house. It was early afternoon, so most people were still working and kids hadn’t gotten home from school. It was a good time to be the only person in sight on the block and easy to slip through a side gate and come around the back of the stucco house.

  The kitchen door hadn’t been updated since the house was built in the fifties and Jess put his credit card to use for something other than running up debt. He had seen doors jimmied open that way on TV cop shows, and figured it was worth the shot. At first he got nothing but resistance—along with the increasing feeling a neighbor would report him and a squad car would pull up, spilling out cops with pointed guns. Just when he expected the card to break in half, leaving his name and number wedged in the door, the lock actually clicked open. Shocked but pleased at his neophyte skill, he would have suggested Cox get a better security system, but a whole lot of good that would do a dead man.

  Jess was prepared to run for his car if an alarm sounded, but his presumption that a cook at a dive like the Oasis didn’t have anything worth stealing proved to be correct as he entered the house in silence. Jess eased the door shut and started to explore.

  The kitchen wasn’t going to win any Good Housekeeping awards. Dishes were piled in the sink. Architectural Digest wasn’t going to be popping by any time soon either: the décor was early Ward and June Cleaver.

  The unimpressive tour continued as he moved down a narrow hallway and entered the living room. The furniture appeared to be the kind of stuff that came in a box and needed to be assembled. He’d lived in similar apartments in Los Angeles. You make one call, a truck pulls up, drops a few boxes on your doorstep, you get a screwdriver, unfold some instructions and voila—you have the drabbest living room imaginable.

  Tom Cox’s bedroom was just as fashionable. The bed was hastily made. Clothes were stacked haphazardly in dresser drawers and a few pairs of shoes were tucked into a corner. The television wasn’t even digital—Cox had either owned it forever or had picked it up at a swap meet. There was one book on the nightstand: Mexico—Off the Beaten Track. Jess flipped through it. A few pages were dog-eared in a section detailing towns in Central Mexico. He wondered if Tom had been planning on leaving Palm Springs for a different life, one he wouldn’t be scared to go back to.

  There was one more room across the hall. Jess was surprised to find that the door was locked. So far everything he’d found in Cox’s house had a net worth of a used set of golf clubs. He dug out his trusty credit card and actually had more trouble with this lock. It took a good couple of minutes to get it open.

  The room was pitch black. Not a single stream of light came from the window. When Jess flipped on the light switch, he understood why.

  The window was boarded up. A heavy piece of plywood had been nailed over it.

  The rest of the room was just as bizarre. The walls were completely covered with papers and photographs. Most were pictures of elderly people. Jess had never seen any of them before. Next to most of them was a corresponding personnel file emblazoned with the Meadowland stamp.

  Jess was disheartened that Edward Rice’s accusation of Tom Cox stealing files from the convalescent home seemed to be true. Someone, presumably Cox, had used a red Sharpie to scrawl a date on both the pictures and files, along with the notation D-O-D.

  Date of Death.

  Tom Cox had obviously swiped files that didn’t belong to him. But they substantiated his claim to Maria that an extraordinary number of elderly people had died within the past year at Meadowland. Jess lost count by the time he got past a dozen. This certainly didn’t do wonders for Edward Rice’s recent acquisition advertising itself as a “long-term” care facility.

  Above the desk was a different set of photographs, pictures of a small town. Some were snapshots. Others were either ripped out of books or magazines. A few featured a run-down Spanish church with bougainvillea draped over an ornate jeweled cross.

  The town was too small to be Palm Springs. At first Jess thought it might be one of the outlying cities, Indio or Blythe. But he didn’t recall a church like that in any of those places.

  Jess examined one of the photographs more carefully. A couple of cars lined the streets. Jess was able to make out a couple of license plates on beat-to-shit vehicles. Both were from Mexico. He suddenly understood why he’d never seen the town before. He had not ventured farther south than Tijuana in years.

  He considered taking some of the files, but he had already broken and entered. He didn’t think Thaddeus Burke would know he’d been in Tom Cox’s house, but he could only imagine the sheriff’s reaction if he caught Jess with stolen files from Meadowland.

  Jess decided to grab one of the Spanish church pictures instead. He stuffed it in his pocket and looked around for a pen and paper. He figured he could write down half a dozen names from the stolen files.

  That’s when he spotted the picture of Clark James on the desk.

  Tom Cox had used his red Sharpie again. He had drawn a big “T” across the actor’s smiling face.

  It was the exact same “T” (the one with the thick horizontal slash) that Jess’s father had scrawled in blood on the wall outside his motel room.

  Jess started to pick up the photograph when he heard a noise behind him. He whirled around just in time to see something swinging through the air toward his head.

  Too late to avoid getting smacked in the temple, he dropped to the ground, writhing in considerable pain.

  Jess looked up and saw the Motorcycle Man looming above. He wore the same black suit from head to toe. The scarlet helmet covered his head and one of his silver-gloved hands held the object that had clubbed Jess in the head.

  A gasoline can.

  The Motorcycle Man uncapped it and began pouring fuel all over the floor. Some of it splashed onto Jess, who tried to roll away.

  “Noooo!” he yelled.

  But the man paid no heed and emptied the can. He kicked Jess in the side of the head with his pointed black boot.

  The room went fuzzy. The last thing Jess saw was the flick of a match as everything went mercifully black.

  JESS BELOW

  The dripping was getting softer, but that didn’t give Jess any solace. He flipped open the cell phone and trained the light toward his feet. The water level had risen halfway toward the top of the casket wall. This confirmed his suspicions about the diminishing drip sound: As the water rose, the drops had less distance to travel from where they leaked in.

  He’d given up trying to staunch the flow about an hour ago. He had tried jamming his foot into the coffin corner where the water was coming through. The pressure against the sole of his foot had intensified immediately and water dribbled over the edge of his shoe. His instinct had been
to push harder. The coffin wood started to creak. Jess instantly lowered his foot, realizing if it remained there, the coffin would split open and a tidal wave would pour in.

  The dank cold from the water caused Jess to shiver. He lifted the cell phone off his chest, and checked the charge bar on the display—maybe fifteen percent left. He lashed out with his foot in frustration and got a mouthful of water for his trouble. And then dropped the phone. It splashed, gave the water a luminous glow for a few seconds, and then the display went black.

  “Damn it!” Jess frantically rooted around in the darkness and rising water. “Where are you? C’mon!”

  Finally, he felt it roll under one of his soaked thighs. He picked it out of the water and flicked the power switch. Nothing happened.

  “No!”

  Jess tapped it against the coffin lid. The first couple of times didn’t change anything. He was about to smash it hard when the display flickered. He shook the phone back and forth—and miraculously the light clicked back on.

  “Thank you, thank you.” Jess laughed, realizing the insanity of the situation. It wasn’t like anyone would hear him. Certainly not God. If a higher deity was listening, the first thing Jess wanted to ask was why did he end up down here in the first place?

  The phone charge was visibly decreasing; it was twelve percent and Jess sighed as it dropped to 11. He shut off the phone before it hit single digits. Not that it made much difference—permanent darkness was on the way.

  The water continued to drip as Jess weighed his choices. He could wait for it to fill up the coffin and gasp for air till the last possible moment, or he could plunge down into the cold liquid and see if he could pass out and let nature take its course.

  He thought back to the swimming lessons he took at the Stark mansion when he was eight years old. The swim teacher his parents had hired was having trouble getting Jess to hold his breath underwater for the entire length of the pool. He had nothing against the woman. She was actually quite attractive and sweet, a college student making money between semesters. He just wasn’t ready to try the entire distance underwater. Jess liked the fact that the girl didn’t push him. She was encouraging as long as he swam a little farther below the surface each week.

  But this didn’t sit well with Walter Stark when he checked in on one of the lessons. The swim teacher tried to stick up for Jess, but his father wouldn’t hear of it. He made his son swim the entire length of the pool underwater by using the pool scooper to shove his head under each time he tried to come up early. The first time Walter tried this, Jess dodged out of his reach. Walter told him if he did that again, he’d fire the swim teacher. Jess made it all the way across the second time and broke the surface huffing and puffing. He hugged the wall and was still gasping for air when his father dismissed the college student anyway.

  The terror of that trip across the pool had stuck with Jess ever since. The thought of willingly forcing himself under the surface till he couldn’t breathe filled him with dread. He realized he was determined to cling to every last breath of air possible, even though he knew it was only a matter of time until the water swallowed him up whole.

  At least when that happened, Jess figured he wouldn’t have to listen to the monotonous dripping sound.

  He laid back and gratefully took in another breath.

  The drops got softer and softer as the water continued to rise.

  18

  Tracy was giggling as she led Jess down the hallway toward her bedroom. She was wearing a string bikini that could double as a postage stamp, her hair still damp from the pool. Jess was also wet and concerned he was leaving footprints on the plush carpet. Tracy shut him up with a long kiss and then fiddled with the door. Jess yanked her back. Smoke billowed from under the doorframe. As they fell to the ground there was a gigantic smash of glass.

  Jess snapped back to reality.

  Tom Cox’s house was in flames and Jess was lying in the middle of it. He began coughing and rolled away from the approaching flames. He bumped into a scalding hot table as he heard more crashing glass. It came from the living room windows, not that Jess could see them. Giant flames and black smoke obstructed his vision. He got on all fours and crawled toward the tinkling glass.

  Tom Cox’s furniture was already burned beyond repair. The television exploded as Jess crawled by. Glass shards sliced his face and hands. The flaming drapes were fit for a Hieronymus Bosch canvas, flickering, daring Jess to run their gauntlet. He collapsed on the floor in another coughing fit, about to lose consciousness once again.

  There was another burst of glass. A silhouette loomed amongst the drapes, towering over him like the Devil himself ready to escort a doomed man Down Below. An arm reached for him. He didn’t care whom it belonged to. Jess grunted and grabbed it with a superhuman effort.

  The fact the arm was smooth and feminine was worth bonus points.

  Maria Flores screamed at Jess through the roaring flames. “C’mon, Jessie! C’mon!”

  The draperies started to fold into themselves as she tried yanking him over the window threshold. He was halfway out when the curtains collapsed over the lower part of his body. Flames licked at his jeans as the two of them tumbled outside in drapes of fire.

  They landed in a heap on a grassy patch below the window. Maria was thrown free and scrambled to her feet. She carefully grabbed the portions of the curtains that weren’t lit and quickly used them to smother the flames on Jess. Then she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up.

  “We’ve got to get away from here.”

  Jess kept coughing but was able to move under his own power. A few minutes later they were leaning against Maria’s car across the street.

  She asked him half a dozen times if he was okay. Jess said yes and thanked her repeatedly. Finally, when his coughing subsided and his eyes cleared from the smoke, he was able to ask what she was doing there.

  “When you called me for Tom’s address, I got worried you might get into some kind of trouble.”

  “Good thinking.”

  He asked about the motorcyclist. She told him the street was deserted when she arrived. No motorbike, no rider. Jess quickly brought Maria up to speed, telling her about Tom Cox’s eerie rogue’s gallery of pictures and files.

  “You think that’s why the guy set fire to the place?” she asked.

  “Most likely. If he just wanted to get rid of me, he didn’t have to burn down the entire house.”

  “Too bad none of that stuff will see the light of day.”

  Jess wholeheartedly agreed. But something jogged at his smoked-out memory. He looked back at the burning house and suddenly reached in his back pocket to pull out a crumpled photograph.

  It was the picture of the Mexican town he’d grabbed off the desk.

  “That church looks familiar,” said Maria. She was peering over his shoulder at the photo.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not around here.”

  Maria was fairly certain it wasn’t either.

  Minutes later the entire house was engulfed in flames. Neighbors congregated on the sidewalk. At least one thought to call 911. The fire department showed up within five minutes.

  By then, the house was long gone.

  “Trespassing. Then there’s breaking and entering.”

  “That’s going to be really hard to prove, Sheriff, considering there isn’t a house anymore,” Jess said.

  This gave Thaddeus Burke pause. It was the first time Jess had been in his office—the other encounters had been at crime scenes and a bereavement call. Since this was Burke’s home turf, Jess was willing to try almost anything to gain an upper hand. Maria, who sat in the chair beside Jess, took up the protest.

  “What about the man who attacked Jessie?”

  “We’ll do a proper investigation, ma’am.”

  Jess let out a derisive snort; Burke turned a shade of red.

  “Got something on your mind, son?”

  “I want to know who killed my father.”

 
“And I want you to stop looking for a zebra in a pack full of horses,” Burke retorted.

  “What about the papers in Tom’s study?” asked Maria.

  For the first time the sheriff looked surprised. “What papers?” he asked Jess.

  “Files. Photos. Stuff Cox was collecting.”

  “Could you be a little more specific?” asked Burke.

  “I didn’t get a good look. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything was destroyed in the fire.” From the corner of his eye, he caught Maria staring at him, obviously remembering the photograph in his pocket. “Not that you give a shit about anything I have to say.”

  Burke got up from his desk and began pacing. Photographs of dignitaries lined the walls. Like Jess’s father, the sheriff wanted anyone who walked in his office to be aware he knew powerful people. Jess wondered if that was just the man’s ego—or did Burke actually have an inferiority complex that needed bolstering by the pictures? He suspected a little of both.

  “Let me set things straight for you, son.”

  Burke sat on the front edge of his desk directly between the two of them.

  “Tom Cox had a car accident. Your father died of a heart attack. That’s it, pure and simple. I need you to quit trying to turn this into something it’s not.”

  “Are you ordering me to stop questioning my father’s death?”

  “Ordering? I wouldn’t say that. More like… strongly suggesting it…”

  “Does that sentence end with ‘for your own good’?”

  Burke stared him down. The man was clearly trying to hold onto what was left of his temper. He responded with enough ice to service a frat party.

  “I don’t make idle threats, young man.”

  Jess nodded. “I think that’s the first thing you’ve ever said that I actually believe, Sheriff.”

  It went back and forth like that for another fifteen minutes until Burke finally kicked them out of his office. They were halfway down the corridor when Maria asked Jess about the photograph.