Beatrice winks back.
“Wait,” Gus says. “You guys know Alex Mills?”
The officer laughs. “Of course. Everyone knows Alex.”
“Okay, well, we’ve been playing phone tag all night. Can you get him on the radio or something?”
The officer looks suspicious. “What’s this in reference to, sir?”
Gus hesitates. “Oh, never mind.”
“Are you a friend of the detective?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“You got an ID?” the officer asks.
“Oh, shit,” Hannah says. “Don’t go pissing off the police, Gus.”
Gus hands the officer his driver’s license.
“It’s against policy for me to get someone on the radio for personal reasons,” the cop explains. “Sorry.”
“I understand,” Gus says, taking the license back. “We’ll be leaving now.”
It’s a beautiful Phoenix night. A breezy October evening. Not cold at all. Warm winds waltz around them. The air tastes good. They head for the car.
“Are you pleased?” Gus asks Beatrice.
“It went down like buttah,” she drools.
“Personally, I feel bad for that poor slob,” Hannah says. “He never knew what hit him.”
Then they’re interrupted by the officer who’s quickly approaching, his shoes slapping the pavement. “Parker,” he calls. “Detective Mills says you can meet him at Eli’s. I have the address if you need it.”
Hannah asks, “What’s this all about?”
Beatrice whispers, “The murder at South Mountain.”
Hannah says, “Oh, Lord, is Gus a suspect?”
Beatrice bellows a laugh, then catches herself. “Of course not.”
“I have to bring one of these ladies home,” Gus tells the officer.
“Nonsense,” Hannah says. “I drove here. I’ll take Beatrice.”
The officer, who can’t be more than twenty-five, eyes Gus with concern. Gus shrugs. “She has a license,” he tells the cop.
The name Hall is engraved on the officer’s badge.
“How long you been with the force?” Gus asks.
“Just a year,” the guy says sheepishly.
“One of the best departments in the country,” Gus says. “You should be proud, Officer Hall.”
“Thank you.”
And your girlfriend, no . . . make that boyfriend, no . . . make that wife; well, someone is cheating on you, Gus intuits. Right now, at this very moment, Officer Hall’s significant other is being fucked by a third party. In such cases, Gus has learned, ignorance is bliss. A dental hygienist once stabbed him in incisor number nine and canine number eleven when he told her that her husband would be arrested for soliciting prostitutes on McDowell, a zone known for its cross-dressing hookers. “I thought you’d want to know,” he begged, dabbing gurgles of blood from his chin. A few nights later there was a bust on McDowell that netted the arrest of thirty hookers and their johns. Gus could not have cared less, at that point, if one of the men apprehended was the hygienist’s husband. So he didn’t check. But he learned. Gus also learned long ago that psychics can’t necessarily sense other psychics at first sight. Which is why Beatrice goes through all the histrionics like she has gone through tonight to weed out the fakes. Unlike most psychics, however, Gus is virtually powerless with duplicitous people. He has a blind spot with liars.
A car roars to life. It’s Hannah in her Dodge Charger. One of the real ones. From the ’60s. Beatrice blows him a kiss and one to the officer and jumps in. The two women are cackling fiendishly as Hannah peels out.
5
Alex Mills is not the most patient man. He knows this about himself. He doesn’t suffer fools, has no time for small talk, does not believe in failure, and rejects mediocrity in all its forms. Even a bad cup of coffee makes him worry about humankind. He won’t watch episodic TV unless it’s on Netflix. The cop shows are all bullshit. Reality TV makes his blood boil. And yet, for all his struggles with reality, that is to say life on a daily basis and the general public with whom he shares Phoenix (particularly the douche bags), he loves his wife, he loves his son, he loves his small circle of friends, and he does battle every day against the loss of the man he emulated, or tried to—his time bomb of a father who exploded at the age of fifty-eight from a heart attack while prosecuting a former governor on corruption charges. Lyle Mills was the perfect man doing the perfect job with the kind of intensity Alex rarely found in others. Alex had no idea the intensity was killing him. No one did. At the time, Alex was a young rising star in the Phoenix PD, his gusty love for justice coming to him naturally, inherently, and the state of Arizona was even more fucked up than it is today, its politicians more brazen and criminal, and one prosecutor, Lyle Mills, more feared than anyone in the valley. Alex is not feared. He’s respected. But people said he had the same temperament as his father. Today he’s still doing the archeology of that temperament, digging for what was right and what was wrong. His father’s uncompromising nature was both. With integrity came obstinacy. With courage and discipline came a void of compassion. With the fervor of ambition came the quiet clasp of death.
Sometimes (too often, his wife might say), particularly when he’s exhausted as he is right now after staring into the eyes of a victim, after seeking out her family, Detective Alex Mills has no filter. And no patience. He’s sitting now at Eli’s, a diner about a block away from Fashion Square, drumming his fingers on the table and wondering where the fuck Gus Parker is. The place is manic with the clattering of dishes and the shouting of orders, and it smells defiantly of bacon. The waitresses are in polka dots. So is his headache. Mills stops drumming his fingers and cradles a cup of coffee with his hands. Decaf. Simmering. Waiting. The diner, itself, an amplification of every greasy notion America accepts as nourishment, for the body, for the soul, and the meek shall inherit, and so goes society. There he goes again, down that path. But he catches himself. And he grips the mug and releases a deep breath, a smile, and a Zen kind of decision to not give so much of a fuck. Often, telling the universe he doesn’t give so much of a fuck yields the results he wants. That is his version of Zen, and, behold, there is Gus Parker, on cue, walking through the door.
Mills, affirmed, waves the man over. He laughs to himself how Parker, though the guy migrated here from SoCal years ago, will always look like the consummate surfer dude, with that disheveled head of hair, that golden skin, those beaded bracelets. Mills is shocked that Parker is actually wearing long pants and a shirt.
“I was told you’d be waiting for me here,” Parker says, giving him a hearty handshake and a tap on the arm. He sits.
“I’ve waited less time for Godot.”
“Who?”
“Beckett.”
“Oh right. Of course,” Gus says. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. But, this is unofficial, Gus. Totally off the record.”
“No problem,” the psychic assures him. “Good to see you, man. How are things? How’s the wife?”
“Good and good,” Mills tells him. “Everything’s fine. How’s everything in Psycho World?”
Parker laughs. “Predictable.”
“Very funny,” Mills says. “So you have a vision about this case?”
“Maybe. I was watching the press conference during dinner,” Parker tells him. “I got a vibe on that woman. Who was she?”
“What woman?”
“The one standing with the sergeant. I figured she was one of your colleagues.”
“Was she in uniform?”
“No,” Parker replies.
A waitress comes by, and Parker orders hot tea. “Anything herbal.”
Mills rests his chin in his hands and surveys an image of the press conference. There were several women at the scene, a few of them officers, a few of them techs, but only one woman flanked the sergeant. “I know who you’re talking about,” he announces. “Bridget Mulroney. She does PR for the city.”
/> “Oh,” the psychic says. “I’ve never seen her before.”
“I don’t think she was around when you and I last worked together.”
“I think she’s in trouble,” Parker says.
Mills puts his cup down. “What do you mean?”
The waitress returns with Gus’s tea. He tells her that’ll be all and waits as she retreats. Then he leans in and whispers, “I got this vibe watching the press conference that the killer will be stalking that Mulroney woman.”
“Really?” He knows the pitch in his voice betrays his doubt.
“Really, Mills,” the psychic assures him. “I think we better have a talk with her.”
Mills shifts in his chair. “You got to give me more than that, Parker. We can’t just sit her down and give her some kind of vague warning. From what I hear, she’s a bit of a loose cannon. She’ll go right to the sergeant, and he’ll be all over my ass.”
“Tell him you want me in. He knows me.”
“Look, Parker, if this is really about you looking for a payday, you should just say so. . . .”
Gus Parker, mellow, Enya-loving, stargazing, herbal psychic, does a full throttle, full body whiplash. “Huh? You think I’m looking for money? Dude, you’re going to need me on this.”
“You sure about that?”
Parker drops his jaw for a moment. His eyes pop out like light bulbs. “Yes,” he says. “I’m sure. Sure as I am that your legal pad has more illustrations than notes. Am I right, Detective?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “And page after page is full of your scribblings of the murder scene. And that legal pad is sitting in the back seat of your car right now?”
“Stop it, Gus,” Mills insists. “I get it. I’m sorry I said anything about a payday.”
“And your notebook?”
Mills nods. “You’re a genius,” he says. “So, what’s up with Mulroney? Is she going to die tonight or something?”
“No,” the psychic says emphatically. “But he’s watching her. He saw her at the press conference tonight, and I just sense that he has her on his radar. Nothing imminent. But I think she should be warned.”
“Duly noted,” Mills says. “If the killer’s really going after Bridget, he’d better be wearing a cup. She’s a ballbuster.” Mills pays the check, and the men head out to the parking lot.
“Can you take me to the crime scene?” Gus asks him.
“Now?”
Gus laughs. “No, man. Tomorrow. How about lunchtime?”
“I don’t know, Gus. Let me talk to the sergeant.”
“Come on, Detective. Just take me over unofficially. It’s a Saturday. Don’t give the sergeant a chance to say no.”
“I’ll call you in the morning. I got to go find the victim’s family first.”
“I don’t envy you.”
Again, Mills thinks about how many times he has had to track down a victim’s family. The scenes sort of flash by him in seconds like a career death reel, and all he can do is exhale because he realizes that somewhere in between those frames of sorrow he has really acquired a kind of emotional neuropathy. “You shouldn’t,” he says grimly to Gus.
“If you find them. Can you bring me something?”
“Bring you something?”
Gus tilts his head. “You know how it works. Get me something that belonged to her.”
Mills stuffs his hands in his pockets. “That ought to make a good impression on her family.”
“Hey, I’m trying to help you.”
“I can’t promise anything.”
Mills turns to his car.
“I’ve never seen a murder in a cave before,” Gus tells him.
Mills feels himself stiffen, senses a slight but building shiver up his spine. He looks back at Gus Parker. “No one said anything about a cave. Not during the press conference. And not since.”
The psychic nods. “I know. The longer I am in your presence, Detective, the more I see. You’ve been drawing caves in your notepad.”
Mills doesn’t say anything else. He gets in his car and drives away. He doesn’t know how he gets home, doesn’t remember the drive at all. Doesn’t remember the traffic, the stoplights, the intersections. The night itself had become a cave, yielding little in its darkness. He must have been dangerously lost in thought because here he is sitting in the driveway, staring at his garage door, thinking it should open on its own.
6
Gus Parker grew up in Seattle and never planned on leaving Seattle. That was until he heard from his dead uncle, Ivan. One night in a dream he saw Ivan diving from the heavens carrying in his hands a shimmering box the color of seafoam. The box was fastened in silver ribbon. Ivan had come with a gift, which seemed perfectly reasonable considering it was Gus’s sixteenth birthday. He and Ivan had been very close. After all, they were so close in age, six years to be exact, given the late-in-life surprise for Grandma and Grandpa Lally. They had been practically raised as brothers. But a few months before Gus turned sixteen, his mother came to him, sat him down, and with tears rolling from her eyes told him some very bad news about a brain tumor.
“They can’t operate, Gus,” she said. “Ivan is not going to make it.”
Gus remembers the feeling of an elevator in freefall. He had heard what his mother had said. He had been slammed out of his normal consciousness and had come back numb from the collision. The pain would catch up with him, but not until he actually went to visit his uncle in the hospital and sat there in the bed beside him. He would do that for days. Ivan would say, “I’m going to visit you after I die.” And Gus would ask, “What the hell does that mean?” And Ivan would just unpeel the layer of tragedy off his face and stare at his nephew with an impish smile. Sometimes Gus would just bury his head in his uncle’s chest, inhale the smell of Ivan, and weep. Ivan would hear the tears and mitigate them with laughter.
“I’m having a lot of delusions,” Ivan told Gus. “I actually saw you graduating from high school. And we know that’s never going to happen.”
Gus was actually a very good student, an all-around everything kind of kid who was adored by just about everyone except that fuck of a math teacher, Mr. Brim. Still, Gus laughed at his uncle’s joke; he laughed not so much at the content but at the intent. He found it seriously comic that a dying man with something like a piece of dried-up shit growing on his brain could conjure up shtick on his deathbed.
“And then there was that vision of you on a date with Barbara McAllister,” Ivan said. “Another thing that’s never going to happen.”
“It may,” Gus retorted.
“You are still a virgin, nephew.”
“No I am not. I lost it before I turned fifteen.”
“Your hand doesn’t count.”
His uncle died four months later.
But in the dream there was Ivan, looking as handsome as ever, muscular and statuesque, like Michelangelo’s David with dark brown hair and a happier, more thriving face, diving to the earth with a gift in a box. “It will be there tomorrow for you,” he told Gus. “Under the back porch.”
Of course Gus rushed to the porch the following morning, feeling a bit foolish but determined, a bit misguided but equally hopeful, and, of course, there was no box and no ribbon and no evidence of Ivan.
His mother, who apparently had been watching from the kitchen window, opened the sliding door and said, “Gus, what in the world are you doing? Your breakfast is ready, and you’re not even showered.”
Meg Parker was a desperate housewife before desperate housewives became fashionable. She had been raised by a Stepford mother, and it was her destiny, it seemed, to mother in a detached but bemused sort of way. She indulged her children (there is Gus’s sister, Nikki, as well, four years younger) but only so far; there were categories and compartments for affection, compassion, and even love. She had rules. She had lists. She allowed only two drawings per child on the refrigerator at any one time (that included awards, ribbons, and report cards). She allowed carbonated beverages only
on Saturdays and only twelve ounces maximum per child. She dabbled in real estate. She used Avon products. She never slept late.
Gus looked at his mother and shrugged. “I was looking for my skateboard.”
“What on earth would your skateboard be doing under the porch?” She stood there in her floor-length robe, one foot tapping the floor, her fingernails perfect as she gripped her waist with her hands.
“Sometimes I stash it there,” he said meekly. “I don’t know. I’ve looked everywhere else.”
His mother rolled her eyes and turned away.
That’s when it happened.
He saw his mother lose her grip on a shopping cart and go reeling backward, hitting the floor. He wasn’t sure which aisle. But he thought it was probably near pickles and olives. Why was he seeing this? He had no idea. Was he half asleep? Good chance. Would she die? No, she would not die. But she’d slam her head pretty hard, and the people at Safeway would call paramedics, a crowd would form around her, and she’d be humiliated beyond belief.
Was this subconscious anger toward his mother? Likely. He loved her, but through his teen years he had come to understand and resent her limitations. He had come to hate her distance, her feigned interest, and her bony emotions.
But the least he could do was warn her. He entered the kitchen, sat at the table, took one gulp of OJ, and said, “Mom, are you heading to Safeway today?”
“Gus, it’s Thursday. You know I always do food shopping on Thursday.”
He bit into a bagel. “Right. Well, I think I just had a weird feeling about that.”
She had been turned from him, standing at the sink, sorting dishes. Now she faced him, again with hands on hips. “What are you talking about?”
“I’d stay away from Safeway today, Mom.”
“Did you see something on the news?”
“No,” he replied. “I just saw this scene in my head where you get hurt.”
“Finish your breakfast. I don’t have time for this.”
Desert Remains Page 4