Desert Remains

by Steven Cooper

  “Let’s go!” Myers says almost jubilantly.

  Mills thinks about the proper pitch. About the open expression. About eye contact. He thinks about being them, the family, not the cop. The other detectives tell him he thinks too much. He tells them they don’t think enough.

  They approach the door. There is something very still here. Mills knows an empty house before he even rings the bell. It’s not just the static darkness within or the strategic placement of a lone light on a timer; it’s the absence of a pulse. A house always has a pulse.

  He rings.

  Myers peers through the glass window at the doorway.

  No one comes to the door.

  “Call their number,” Mills says.

  Dead silence from beyond the door. Then Myers says, “The phone is ringing.”

  “I can hear it,” Mills tells him.

  “No answer.”

  They hang there in silence for a few moments, a pair of prowling silhouettes, and then Mills says, “I’ll come back in the morning.”

  “I can wait here ’til they come home,” Myers tells him as they retreat from the house.

  “I know you really want to do this, Morty. But you’re not staying here.”

  “What about Scottsdale? We can have them watch the place and call us when they see activity.”

  “The family could be on vacation for all we know,” Mills says.

  Myers mumbles an unintelligible protest that Mills largely ignores because, as he gets behind the wheel, his phone vibrates. It’s dispatch.

  “I’ve got an officer at Fashion Square who’s looking for you,” the operator tells him. “Can I put you through?”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Hall. Something about a trespass. . . .”

  “A trespass? I’m working a homicide for God’s sake.”

  “Sorry, Detective.”

  Myers heaves himself into the passenger seat.

  “I got Myers with me,” Mills tells the operator. “I’ll have him call.”

  “Thanks.”

  They disconnect.

  “Call who?” Myers asks.

  “I need you to get a hold of Hall and see what’s going on at Fashion Square.”

  Myers nods, then says, “You think we should go back to South Mountain?”

  He does and he doesn’t. He thumbs through pages of notes. Did he capture everything with his own eyes? Did he record everything in his notes? Did he think as meticulously as the crime scene techs sifted? He has always had the capacity to do mental gymnastics. It comes naturally to him. He thrives on the acrobatics of the human mind, on the process of whirling the brain in a million directions and nailing the ultimate landing. The crime scene technicians meticulously mined for their version of gold. They combed and raked and dusted. And so did he. He’s sure of it. Mostly. Besides if there’s anyone more thorough than him, it’s Timothy Chase, his scene investigator, and he’d left Chase behind.

  “No. I don’t think so, Myers. Just see what Hall wants and we’ll call it a night.”

  4

  Here’s how it works:

  Gus, who has no psychic fame and no desire for such, plants himself in the audience a good twenty minutes before an event begins. With an accomplice (usually Beatrice’s secretary, Hannah), he begins to chat up a fictitious story about a dead mother or father, sometimes a brother; he discusses the death in detail as he and the accomplice wander the venue under the assumption that the fakers, themselves, plant informers in the room ahead of time to take notes. Then once the psychic takes the podium, Gus decides how he’s going to deviate from the story in order to completely upend the faker’s performance. The strategy works. It worked with Andrew Bresbin. And it worked with Candy Pellinger. Bresbin’s TV show was canceled. And Pellinger is working as a dental hygienist in Akron, Ohio.

  Tonight will be no different. Hannah meets them in the home-improvement section of the bookstore. She’s doing an “extreme makeover” of her condo at the Biltmore. She’s already lost a finger.

  “Darling,” she says to Gus, who kisses the woman on the cheek.

  “Hannah, you look great,” he tells her.

  She twirls. “Do I really?”

  Yeah, Gus thinks, for an eighty-two-year-old mother of twelve who still enjoys her liquor and her stash of “medicinal” marijuana, she really does look great. Hannah has a bald spot, but other than that her hair is nicely coiffed.

  “What color is that?” Beatrice asks, pointing to the woman’s head.

  “Sherwin-Williams Tangerine Dream,” the woman answers.

  “Perfect,” Beatrice says. “You two know what to do. Bye, dears.”

  When Beatrice retreats to a long aisle of tall shelves somewhere behind the religion section, Hannah turns to Gus and asks, “Who are we grieving tonight?”

  “Roxy Paddington.”

  “Oh, I never liked her.”

  “She’s not a real person, Hannah.”

  “I know that. But I don’t like the thought of her. She’s a family-wrecking whore, if you know what I mean.”

  Gus doesn’t but can guess. He grabs her arm and escorts her to the center of the store where the event will take place. Once there, he and Hannah assume the role of strangers, circulating the painful story of Roxy Paddington’s death.

  “What was your aunt’s name?” Hannah asks as they enter the seating area.

  “Roxy.”

  “Excuse me? I’m a little hard of hearing.”

  “Roxy,” Gus repeats loudly. “Roxy Paddington.”

  “Oh, that’s what I thought you said. That’s quite a name. Sounds like a movie star. Were you very close?”

  “We were. She was my father’s sister.”

  “Your father’s sister.”

  “Yes. My aunt on my father’s side,” Gus explains. They made short half circles of mingling as they talked. “She moved in with us when my father was in the Persian Gulf. She became like a second mom to me.”

  “Wow, a second mom to you. No wonder you were close.”

  “She had beautiful red hair. All natural. You know, the red hair and freckles.”

  “Well, I just adore red hair,” Hannah tells him. “Do you mind telling me how she died?”

  Gus hesitates for dramatic effect. The crowd is large but not so large that Gus can’t sense who might be incentivized to snatch pieces of his conversation. There are two of them. One, a large man with boulder shoulders dressed in black. The other, a pale-faced woman in pearls, about sixty; she could pass for a librarian, the shushing kind. Then, looking to the ceiling, Gus says, “Mountain biking. She went over the side of a cliff.”

  “Mountain biking!” Hannah shrieks, her hand to her heart. “How awful! To go over a cliff!”

  “Yes. A cliff.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “It was shocking.”

  “I bet,” Hannah says with a conspiratorial pout.

  As they take their seats, Gus’s phone vibrates. It’s the detective. Damn it, I can’t answer the phone now.

  He looks beyond the seating area and sees Beatrice now lurking in the Judaica section. She holds up a book. The History of Israel: Golda Meir to Present. He mutely forms the words what the fuck. She shrugs and pretends to read.

  “I sure hope you get to talk to your aunt Roxy Paddington on your father’s side,” Hannah says.

  Gus stifles a laugh. “Yes, me too. There will never be another Roxy Paddington.”

  About twenty minutes later, the store manager steps up to the podium and introduces Eric Young. “We consider ourselves very lucky to have Mr. Young with us tonight,” the manager says to the audience. “And all of you are about to experience a very special night. Please give a warm welcome to internationally acclaimed psychic and author, Eric Young.”

  Gus tastes bile rising in his throat.

  Young appears from behind a bookshelf, affecting the perfect entrance, a confident spring in his step, a few Hollywood nods to the audience, big open arms and a glit
tering smile. He’s wearing all black. Of course.

  He calls on a few people.

  His formula never wavers. Gus saw him a few years ago at the Turning Pages bookstore in Tempe. He brought many people to tears there and sold out his books.

  “I’m seeing the letter J,” he tells a lady in the third row. “Is there a letter J?”

  She shakes her head.

  “No J. Wow, I really feel a J.”

  She says nothing.

  “Maybe it’s a K,” he says. “Yeah, maybe I’m off a letter. That’s why I don’t play Wheel of Fortune.”

  The audience laughs at his faux deprecation.

  “No, wait,” the lady says. “I did have a neighbor named Janice. She died last year.”

  “Cancer?”

  “Oh my God, yes.”

  “Breast cancer?”

  “Uh, no. I think it was pancreatic.”

  “But cancer, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You too were close?”

  “No. Not really,” the lady replies.

  “And that’s okay,” Young assures her. “Janice wants you to know that that’s okay. That even though you weren’t close, she thinks you were a good neighbor.”

  The lady in the third row, small and round, just kind of looks at Young emptily. His smile fades, and he asks, “Honey, what’s your name?”

  “Barbara.”

  “Barbara, who did you come here to connect with tonight?”

  “My husband.”

  “Your husband,” Young repeats. “What was his name?”

  “Bill.”

  “Bill. Bill. Bill. Let’s see. . . . Was he a tall man?”

  “Not really.”

  “Yeah, I’m seeing kind of an average-size guy. But for an average-size guy he certainly had a big heart, didn’t he?”

  Barbara begins to weep. A friend hands her a tissue. “He did. He really did,” Barbara says. “A really big heart. That ironically failed him.”

  “It was a heart attack that killed him, wasn’t it?” Young inquires.

  She nods.

  A few people in the audience gasp. They really do. Like they just saw Jesus perform a miracle.

  “He had more than one?”

  “How did you know?” Barbara begs.

  He smiles like a game show host. “You know how I know. Let me tell you now, Barbara, that his heart is fine where he is now.”

  Now she truly sobs.

  Shamelessly Young continues. “He has recovered on the other side. He is fine, and he is happy. He wants you to know that he misses you. That his heart, yes, his healthy, strong heart, is full of love for you.”

  Barbara dabs her eyes and blows Eric Young a kiss.

  Young proceeds through a few more robberies of hapless souls in similar fashion and then surveys the room and says, “I’m seeing a great lady. A woman of strong character and conviction. She was very important to someone in this room. Does this ring a bell with anyone here?”

  About six people, including Gus Parker, raise their hands.

  “Well, I need to be more specific, because I am having a very specific vision that means something to only one person here tonight. There will be others, I promise you, before we’re done tonight. But right now I am seeing a redhead. Maybe a feisty redhead. Maybe a woman who was a helper, a giver.”

  No one says anything.

  “Nothing?” Young asks the crowd. “I know this as well as I know my own name that there is a redhead on the other side who wants to talk to someone in this room.”

  Gus raises his hand.

  “Yes,” Young says. “I knew I was dealing with a man. This woman, she wasn’t your mother, was she?”

  “No.”

  “But I’m feeling that she was like a mother.”

  Gus feigns a smile and nods.

  “Not a friend of the family?”

  “No,” Gus replies.

  “I think she was your aunt!”

  “Wow!” Gus shudders. “You’re right.”

  A quiet circle of applause.

  Again, the phone. It’s Alex Mills. For fuck’s sake.

  “What is your name, sir?”

  “Joe.”

  “She died young, Joe,” the psychic says.

  “Well, not that young. But younger than most. She was sixty.”

  “And courageous,” Young assures the group. “I’m seeing a woman who was courageous, who, at the age of sixty, did things most thirty-year-olds wouldn’t do.”

  “You could say that.”

  “She traveled the world.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Gus says. “But she helped raise me when my dad was on the other side of the world.”

  “Right. That’s what she’s telling me now. I think she moved in with you and your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “Extraordinary,” Young says. “This is a wonderful but tragic story. Here we have this woman of great strength and many talents. But perhaps she was too adventurous.”

  “How do you mean?” Gus asks.

  “Her death was an accident. That’s what I’m sensing.”

  Gus nods. His eyes widen. He looks away for a sliver of a second to see Beatrice watching peripherally. She’s shaking her head, disgusted.

  “I don’t know why I see a mountain. But I do.”

  Gus draws in a sharp breath.

  “I don’t think it was a car accident on that mountain. Or was it, Joe?”

  Gus says, “No. It wasn’t.”

  “But I’m seeing a cliff.”

  “Yes.”

  “Joe, this is really brilliant. Your aunt died doing something she loved. Didn’t she?”

  “She did. She was mountain biking when something happened and she went over a cliff.”

  The room buzzes with electricity.

  “Joe. Joe. It’s okay. We know what that something was. Your aunt is talking to us now.” Young’s eyes water up. “She is right there in the corner behind me, right up there. And she says a wild dog got in her way. She overcorrected, Joe, and went off the cliff.”

  “God,” Gus says with a hearty exhale. “We always wanted to know. We thought my uncle did it.”

  Young shakes his head, looks perplexed. “Your uncle?”

  “Yeah. He was with her on the ride. Never said anything about a dog. Always acted very mysterious about it.”

  Hannah kicks him, and he can hear her seethe with trapped laughter.

  Young looks to the corner of the room behind him. He twists his mouth, juggles his hands, and then stands up straight and smiles. “Oh, Joe. No, don’t you worry. She says there was no foul play. She says your uncle had gone way ahead on the trail. She wants you to know she’s okay and that she—”

  Beatrice bursts forward from Judaica.

  “Stop right there,” she cries.

  Young looks to his left, then to his right. Then squarely at Beatrice.

  “My name is Beatrice Vossenheimer,” she tells the crowd. And there’s rousing applause for her. Gus sees a small twinkle in her eye, and it’s clear Beatrice enjoys the fanfare. “I’m here to tell you to save your money,” Beatrice announces. “Mr. Young is a crook. That man Joe works for me. He made up the story about the aunt and the mountain bike, and he shared it with a companion before Mr. Young’s appearance.”

  Gus can see how the crowd is arrested, the way the people shift back in their chairs. Two men approach Beatrice from the back. As soon as Gus sees them he stands up and steps into the aisle. He body blocks Beatrice. She continues to address the crowd. “Joe shared the story, and he shared it throughout this area of the bookstore. And it would seem that Eric Young had some plants in the audience who fed the information back to him before he took to the podium.”

  Young holds up his hands, warding off nothing in particular. “Please, if the store manager is around. I think we need to remove this disruption from our event. I’m sorry, folks. I’m really sorry.”

  “No worries,” Beatrice says to
the crowd in a saccharine voice, “I am on my way. But be warned. He’s not psychic if he’s repeating a ruse. His books are lies. Read more about it on my blog.”

  Amid the bemused and confused attendees, Hannah stands up and extends a hand in Young’s direction. “You, sir. I came here to see you.”

  While she speaks, Beatrice and Gus hand out business cards that provide the address to Beatrice’s blog.

  “What is it, my dear?” Young asks Hannah. Sweat is creating estuaries on his face.

  “Can you please tell us who murdered that young lady at South Mountain?”

  Again, the crowd is roused. To many of them news of a murder is a surprise.

  “It just happened today,” Hannah explains to the group. “I just saw it on the evening news.”

  “But . . .” Young stumbles.

  “But what?”

  “But I can’t say that I knew of a murder.”

  “Well, can’t you do your psychic thing and find out?” Hannah begs.

  “I’m so sorry, my dear. It doesn’t work that way. It really doesn’t. I would need someone here who was close to the victim, who knew her.” Then he turns to the rest of the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “I apologize for the unusual interruption, but that will be all for tonight.”

  A few people boo. They actually boo him as he bolts for the back of the bookstore.

  “You know,” Hannah calls after him, “you’re a complete and utter douche bag.”

  Gus returns to gather Hannah and escorts her from the building.

  “Well, I was just starting to have fun, you know,” she tells him.

  Beatrice is waiting outside by two police cruisers. “You two were brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.”

  “What’s with the cops?” Gus asks.

  She smiles coquettishly. “They’re here to see me. Something about a disturbance.”

  “Tell me we’re not getting arrested,” Gus says.

  An officer emerges from one of the cars. “No, sir, no arrests. We got a complaint. But we’ve got no grounds for an arrest. If you’ll all just be on your ways, we’ll call it a night,” he says with a wink.