“I heard your father introduced Rice to my dad.”
“I think that’s right. I can’t say for sure. He took care of my dad when he was in the hospital. It makes sense he would have met Walter during that time since he owned the place.”
“When was your father in the hospital?”
“Right after The Seventh Day shut down. He was really sick. We did a good job keeping it out of the tabloids.”
“I make a habit out of ignoring them, so I had no way of knowing.”
“There was so much bad publicity about the movie that Dad’s publicists were able to shift the focus from his illness to the film shutting down. When he finally got better, he did one press conference announcing his retirement and that was that.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“Dr. Rice never pinned it down. Dad got so weak during filming he couldn’t leave the tents they were camped out in. He finally collapsed and by the time Rice brought him back home, Dad’s blood counts were either off the chart or nonexistent…”
“What do you mean ‘brought him back’?”
“Edward Rice was the physician on the film. He finally stood up to the director and said if they didn’t get Dad into a proper hospital, The Seventh Day would be the great, late Clark James’s swan song. In the end, they shut the movie down, paid off the locals, and the rest of the crew came back from Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
Tracy smiled. “You sure you’ve been working in LA all these years? It was a really big deal.”
“My clientele isn’t exactly the Hollywood jet set. Mostly escrow companies and banks.”
“Well, Dad was hell-bent on making this apocalyptic Western that no studio wanted to finance. He put up half the money himself. He would tell you they went to Mexico because the look was perfect, but it’s no big secret you can get a crew to work for thirty cents on the dollar down there. Luckily, it saved him a ton of dough when he had to pay everyone off.”
Jess was rapidly processing all this information. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the picture of the church he’d taken from Tom Cox’s locked room. He showed it to Tracy.
“This look familiar?”
She looked at the photograph with great scrutiny. “Where’d you get this?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ve seen it before?”
Instead of answering, Tracy got to her feet. “Gimme a second, okay?”
“Sure. I think I need some fresh air anyway.”
Tracy disappeared into the bowels of the house while he headed outside. Even though Jess was hit by a blast of hot air the moment he opened the glass door, he had to repress a shiver. Things were folding on top of one another and he was feeling more uneasy than ever.
Jess sat at the edge of the Jameses’ pool and stared out at the desert night. So many things still bothered him. Clark James’s illness was front and center. It sounded eerily similar to what had befallen his own father—anemia, loss of strength, and a diagnosis that befuddled his physician, the same physician in fact. Jess was beginning to lose perspective. Was Edward Rice behind everything that seemed wrong in Palm Springs? Or was his dislike for the man so intense that Jess wanted to lay everything at the doctor’s feet?
The Mexico angle was equally troubling. Instead of tying things closer together, the strange events seemed to be spreading. What started as a man dying of old age in the desert was suddenly moving across the border and back five years in time. No wonder Jess’s head hurt so much.
He dipped his hand in the pool and dabbed the water across his singed forehead. The coolness stung a little, but still soothed. A hint of jasmine swept through the night breeze, then grew stronger. He turned around and realized that the scent was coming from Tracy, who had slipped up from behind and settled beside him while barely making a sound.
She put a tender hand on his shoulder, apologetically. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”
“That’s okay,” said Jess. “Daydreaming.”
He didn’t remember smelling the jasmine scent in the living room. She must have put the fragrance on since he came outdoors. Tracy placed her hand over his wet brow. Jess didn’t rush to remove it.
“You going to tell me why you decided to jump into a barbecue?”
“Let’s just say it wasn’t my choice and leave it at that?”
Jess smiled and could tell Tracy was happy for the olive branch. She offered up an eight-by-ten photograph in return. “It took a little while to find this, but I thought I’d seen it among Dad’s things.”
Jess studied the photo. Clark James had his arms around a curly-haired guy wearing glasses, a loud tropical shirt, and a crooked smile. Jess had never seen the other man, but the church behind them was the same one from Tom Cox’s photograph.
“It’s a publicity still from the movie. Since the film was never finished, none of these ever got released. I guess Dad kept a few for posterity.”
“The church is in Mexico,” Jess realized.
“It’s a small town called Santa Alvarado, about fifty miles inland from Puerto Vallarta. Dad’s character was a former preacher who became this mythic gunman.”
Jess pointed at the man in the Hawaiian shirt. “Who’s this guy?”
“The writer of the film. Had a strange first name. Tag, I think. I could easily find out. Is it important?”
“I don’t know what’s important right now.”
Tracy continued to gently stroke his brow. Jess was so exhausted that he didn’t stop her. He never imagined it would be his father’s death that would lead to a moment like this. It was so ironic that Jess had to wonder if he and Tracy were an inescapable force.
“What are you hoping to find out, Jessie?”
“I keep asking myself that. I guess I just want to know what happened to my father. Which is so damn strange that I’d even care. After everything? Doesn’t that strike you as being totally fucked up?”
“He was still your father.” Her finger continued to gently massage his brow. “I just think he was really sick and his heart finally gave out.”
“After crawling halfway across the desert to find me?” Jess stared at the valley below. “I’m having a hard time getting past what he whispered to me the day I got back here.”
“Which was what?”
“He said ‘they’ were killing him.” Jess turned to look Tracy in the eye. “I’m now wondering by ‘they’ if he meant Edward Rice and your father.”
“That’s crazy sounding,” Tracy said.
“I know. I know.” He shifted around, uncomfortable in his own skin. “I never should have returned my mother’s phone call. Then maybe none of this would have happened.”
Her hand traced the side of his face. “You don’t know that.” Tracy’s fingers dropped further and moved down his neck. “Besides, if you hadn’t called her back, I wouldn’t have gotten to see you again.”
Jess raised his own hand to meet her groping fingers. And just held them.
“I’ve missed you, Jess. I really have.” She let out a gentle sigh as if just saying it out loud had lifted a huge burden off her shoulders. “Have you missed me?”
Jess let go of her hand. He didn’t avoid her eyes and answered with the truth. “I miss what we once were.”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t try again.” Her hand moved back to his face.
“I’m not sure. The only thing I know is that I can’t stay here.”
“Maybe I could come with you.” Jess flinched as her finger hit a singed sore spot. “You’re really hurt, Jess.”
“I don’t feel much of anything.”
“I haven’t either. For a real long time.”
Tracy brought her lips close to his cheek and barely grazed the burn mark.
Then, she broke away and cried out.
“Noooo!”
Jess turned to see two men emerge from the darkness.
Both wore jeans and dark long-sleeved shirts. They had ski masks over their faces. One carried a
baseball bat.
Jess tried to get to his feet, but the man with the bat swung first. The Louisville Slugger bounced off the side of his head and Jess tumbled to the ground. He could hear Tracy screaming for them to stop—right before a second swing knocked him out cold.
It was either a big-assed bump or his head smashing off a wall that made Jess come to.
He tried to straighten up and got another head clobbering for his trouble. Moaning softly, Jess turned to see a sliver of moonlight pouring in through a tiny hole. He reached out and traced its shape, then shuddered when he realized what the hole was.
The opening in the lock of a car trunk.
Jess tried to throttle down the ensuing wave of panic that came with extreme claustrophobia. Not bad enough that he was crammed into a space for someone half his size; his plight was worsened by the driver navigating a road with a billion potholes.
Fiddling with the lock proved worthless; it was jammed on the outside and didn’t have a mechanism inside to pop the trunk. Jess tried to swivel onto his back, which proved anything but a cinch. There was no wiggle room. Plus, his right shoulder was killing him. It took a good five minutes to flip over, all while his body continued to be pounded by the bumpy road.
Once on his back, Jess found his nose was less than three inches from the trunk lid, which made an MRI seem like a spacious condo and ratcheted his freaked level up a few notches.
The car wrenched to the right and slowed down.
The bumps got even nastier, rattling the scrambled eggs that filled his brain.
Then the vehicle braked to a thankful stop, giving Jess one more good head jolt.
Jess suddenly realized whoever was driving might open the trunk. He needed to figure out what to do if that happened.
What if it didn’t open? Maybe they were going to dump the car in a river. He immediately dismissed that notion. What river? They had to be in the middle of the desert. And, wouldn’t they be moving still, rolling down an embankment so that the car could sink? Jess shook off that horrible thought and tried to come up with a game plan.
After being jammed into the tight space for God knows how long, he didn’t think he could move fast enough to attack whoever put him in the trunk. His best bet was to act like he was still unconscious. Let Whoever-It-Was drag him out of the car. Once he was in open space, he could make his move.
He heard a car door open. He waited for what seemed like forever, and then it slammed shut. Good. Only one guy. And Jess had the element of surprise on his side.
A second door opened.
Shit. The odds just got a whole lot worse. Jess shut his eyes and did his best possum impression as footsteps approached from both sides. Words were murmured that he had no chance of making out. A key scraped, fiddled in the lock, and then clicked. The trunk lid started to open.
Jess allowed his eyes to flicker open a microscopic inch—just enough to make out two shapes. Framed against the moonlight and stars, two ski-masked men loomed over the open trunk.
One guy reached in and grabbed him. The hand brushed against Jess’s burnt shoulder, resulting in the greatest acting performance of his life—pretending to be unconscious when he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs.
The man hauled him out of the car and onto his feet. Jess purposely let himself slump like dead weight onto the man’s body. Not a big reach—he felt like shit.
He heard the other man slam the trunk shut and figured this was it—catch them by surprise, jump in the car, and take off.
Now or never.
“I think he’s awake,” one of the masked men mumbled.
Jess’s eyes snapped open.
Just in time to see a blunt object coming straight for his head.
The next thing Jess knew, he was being dragged across the desert to his own private hell.
JESS BELOW
Tracy.
What happened to her after he’d been knocked unconscious? Had she been able to evade his attackers? What if there were others lying in wait for her after he was dragged away? He tried to think positively. Maybe she had been able to race off and call the police.
Then, the negatives took over. What would she tell them? Two unknown men had attacked her old boyfriend, thrown him into a car, and driven off into the darkened desert? Even if she had taken down a license plate, hours had passed since Jess was thrown in the grave. For Jess to be saved, someone had to have spotted the car on the highway, tailed it to the middle of the desert, and known exactly where to dig.
None of that had happened.
Jess began to accept his fate. He could only hope Tracy had been able to avoid a similar one.
As the water reached the bottom of his chin, Jess knew he had precious minutes left before it would cover his face. The fight had gone out of him. All that remained were questions. What would the end be like? Would he feel anything? Would anyone ever find him—and if they finally did, would there be anything left to identify who he was?
And then there was the most gnawing question of all. As the old Pet Shop Boys song went, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”
For someone to go to such drastic lengths to get rid of him, Jess must have been on to something. Ironically, his premature burial meant that he was probably right that Walter had been murdered. You don’t get rid of the Boy Who Cried Wolf unless he had something to back it up. But Jess had nothing concrete, only suspicions.
Then he thought about Tom Cox’s house.
The mystery motorcyclist had set the place up in flames. If he had wanted to just kill Jess, he could have done it in a less destructive way. The cyclist must have wanted everything in Cox’s locked room burned to a crisp. That included Jess. That way anything he’d found would die with him when the house went up in smoke. But then Jess escaped, so the cyclist came to the Jameses’ house to finish the job.
Was it because Jess had seen something on those walls? If so, what? The missing patient files from Meadowland? Was it the pictures of Santa Alvarado and the church? Or Clark James’s photograph with the mysterious “T”? Some, none, or all of the above?
This train of thought was interrupted by water lapping into his mouth. Jess spit it out and tried to back away again. But there was nowhere to go. He could barely lift his head above the rising surface.
“Oh God…”
This was met with another blast of water in his face. He choked this time and the ensuing coughing fit made him lose the boost he was getting from his hands on the coffin floor. Jess sunk under the water, started gagging, and tried to kick his way back up.
But water was sloshing everywhere. A giant thud rocked the coffin. The water pressure got stronger and Jess felt his head begin to cloud over.
Disjointed images bopped around his brain as he started to flit in and out of consciousness.
“… Your father’s dying, Jess,” Kate said on the phone.
…Tom Cox lying on the bloody desert sand begging Jess, “… don’t make me go back…”
… Walter Stark grabbing hold of Jess’s arm on the lanai. “They’re killing me.”
The coffin thudded again. Jess’s head bobbed above the surface for a second but another thud caused the wood to splint. The increase in pressure sucked him below the surface again.
More images assaulted his head.
… The bloody “T” on the wall of the Sands Motel.
… “… too many people were dying,” Maria said.
… The windshield with the bloody message: “LEAVE.”
… Harry on the bridge. “… I heard him…”
Jess felt the world slipping away. He thrust himself up from the bottom using his hands, and his head smashed against the coffin lid.
The wood cracked in half.
Jess sputtered as water poured off his face. The thudding gave way to banging. Another crack appeared in the coffin lid.
And then the cover began to slip aside.
Jess was able to raise his head above the water and enough cobwebs cleared for him
to realize someone was trying to open the coffin.
“Help! Help! Please help!” His screams were compromised by coughs, so they sounded garbled.
The coffin lid cracked in half. Dirt fell on top of Jess and sent him sinking under the water again. It was so unexpected he gulped down a huge amount of water and started to lose consciousness.
Something slapped him across the torso, enough to snap him awake. He reached out and his hand grabbed the business end of a shovel. Whoever was above pulled on the other end—enough so Jess cracked the water surface. He sputtered, gagged, and coughed.
A familiar voice called from above. “You’ve got to help.”
Jess could see dirt covering the remaining half of the casket cover. It needed to be cleared away for him to squeeze out. Jess was able to shove some dirt away.
His silhouetted rescuer scooped up a bunch more with the shovel. Finally, enough was removed so Jess could break part of the coffin lid away. His savior lowered the shovel for Jess to grab onto once again. The man yanked and was able to pull Jess up enough so he could grip onto the grave’s edge.
Jess hung there for a moment and then pushed with all of his might. He went up over the edge and rolled onto his back. He lay there, panting on the desert sand.
The sky was lavender. Early morning stars were beginning to lose their twinkling luster as the first glimmers of an orange dawn winked above the far horizon. Jess had never seen anything so lovely. He turned the other way to thank his rescuer.
And almost fell back in the grave.
Standing over him was his father.
“Whha—?”
“Sssh…” Walter inched toward him.
“Dad? I don’t understand…”
Walter didn’t look like the man Jess could have sworn died outside his motel room. He had regained most of his color. His father looked as strong as Jess remembered him when he hit the road for Los Angeles seven years before.
Which was impossible.
“I tried to warn you. I left a message for you.”
Jess shook his head incredulously. “On my car? Telling me to leave?”
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