Kelly Mills is a defense attorney, defending whom she calls, in full deference to Green Day, “American Idiots.” Mills loves her like a burst of adrenaline. They’ve been married, what, almost eighteen years now ? And every day he looks at her and his heart becomes some kind of g-force. She just completely astounds him. Still stunning at forty-two, still feisty and fit, still radiant as she was the day, while eating lunch on the courthouse steps, he asked her to marry him. He said, “Don’t ever cut your hair.” And she said, “That’s an odd thing to say after I’ve accepted your proposal.” And he said, “That’s the first of many odd things to come.” He still has a love affair with her thick waves and tangles of red hair. Her temptress hair. Her street urchin hair. She is the smartest woman he knows. Sometimes just her voice arouses him.
She’s handing him a cup of coffee (no pancakes, no eggs, no bacon) when his cell phone comes to life on the kitchen counter. It rings, buzzes, and Alex Mills reaches for it rolling his eyes.
“Mills.”
“Alex. It’s me, Gus.”
Mills exhales a huge yawn and then says, “Hey, Gus, what’s got you up this early on a Saturday?”
“The dog,” the psychic replies. “Have you seen the paper?”
“Yep. What about it?”
“Your picture’s in it.”
“Right. That’s not why you’re calling, I hope.”
“No. I mean, it’s your picture with the sergeant and the other officers and that woman.”
Mills returns to the bedroom, picks up the newspaper, and studies the picture again. “Oh, right. Bridget. What about her?”
“I’m telling you, Alex, she’s in trouble. I can see it even more clearly now. I’ve been staring at the picture all morning.”
“That troubles me, Gus.”
Gus says, “No trouble at all.”
Alex says, “That’s not what I meant.”
And Gus says, “I have to meet her.”
“Maybe Monday. Okay?”
Gus doesn’t answer.
“Is that too late? Is she in imminent danger?”
“No,” Gus concedes. “But I’d rather be safe. . . .”
Alex tells him he’ll be in touch. “I have to find my victim’s family.”
“Are you taking me to the scene today?”
Mills stops for a hearty sip of coffee. “Look, I’ll call you later.”
He throws the phone on the bed.
His wife comes up behind him and wraps her arms around his waist. “Who was that?” she asks.
“The psychic.”
“So early?”
“He’s insistent about the Bridget thing.”
“Wow. I thought you were kidding last night.”
“Nope.”
“I love the way you smell in the morning,” she says with sleepy, flirty eyes.
He turns around and pulls her close. He kisses her neck. She is different every time. Even if they have sex every night, which they rarely do these days, she opens up in a completely different way. He’d like to pull her down on the mattress and go crazy inside her. But he looks at her sheepishly and backs away. He has bad news to deliver this morning.
On his way back to Scottsdale, Alex Mills can really see the city’s voracious appetite for development. The Spears live way up there past Bell, where one subdivision after another has backhoed the Sonoran Desert. For Sale signs everywhere. And soldiers of cacti standing guard, it seems, against the next wave of construction. He finds the Spearses’ street, parks in front of their house, and hopes for life inside. The sun is bleaching out the sky, so much so that Mills is still shielding his eyes when a man answers the door.
His name is Peter Spears.
Yes, he has a daughter named Elizabeth.
Mills introduces himself and follows Mr. Spears inside. The man is hesitant but shows him to the family room. They sit. Peter Spears calls to his wife, who enters the room carrying a poster. “Peter, I want to frame this,” she says and then notices Mills. “Oh, hello. I thought I heard the door.”
Mills is steady and calm. Not stoic but cautiously plaintive. He renders the news to Mr. Spears and his wife, Claudia.
She rushes from the room.
Mills can hear a gush of water, then a toilet flush. Claudia Spears is in the bathroom sobbing, heaving. Her husband, Peter, rugged, tan, in his sixties, Mills guesses, is sitting opposite him with a face of stone. The man hasn’t blinked in minutes. No one has said a word since Mrs. Spears bolted. A cat scratches across the Saltillo tile, claws ticking like feline Morse code. A refrigerator hums. “Mr. Spears,” he says, hunched over, leaning forward, offering more human, less official body language, “I know this is a shock. And there is probably nothing that I can say that will make this any easier. But I’m here not only to notify you. I need to ask you questions.”
Peter Spears remains in a trance.
“What kind of questions?”
Mills hears the wife’s voice entering the room from behind. She circles around him and sits beside her husband. Her eyes are swollen. Her lips dry. “Are you okay?” Mills asks. “I mean, physically.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “You have to tell me this is a mistake. I want you to bring me my daughter.”
And now that, just that statement hangs in the room, hovers all around them, packing a punch, it seems, and sucking the life out of the house.
“We tried to notify you last night,” Mills tells them. “We came by here, but no one answered the door.”
“We were at the Herberger,” the husband says. “A premiere.”
Mills clears his throat. “I need you to verify some things.”
“Like what?” the woman asks.
She, like her husband, must be in her early sixties. She has almond-shaped eyes; Mills has always liked that shape because it just seems to rest easily on the face. And Claudia Spears’s face is an easy one, plain, smooth, a sunspot here and there, but beautiful in a natural way. It seems as if she is the one with questions. And why shouldn’t she be? Who the hell killed my daughter? Why would anyone do such a thing? That’s what Mills sees in those almond-shaped eyes now; they’re hazel and mournful.
“Mrs. Spears,” he says, “how long was your daughter renting that house in Ahwatukee?”
“About a year.”
“Did she like the area?”
“She loved it. Particularly for the hiking.” Her voice starts to break.
“Yes,” Mills said. “She was in walking distance to the trails at South Mountain.”
“Every so often Peter and I would walk with her into the preserve. Very peaceful. Isn’t that right, Peter?” She gently taps her husband’s knee.
Peter Spears suddenly shakes his head as if he’s waking up from a deep and unplanned nap. “Absolutely,” he says. “Very peaceful.”
“And did she get along with her roommate okay?” Mills asks.
A smile that can’t help itself emerges briefly on Mrs. Spears’s face. “They were like sisters.”
“Does Elizabeth have any sisters, or brothers?”
“No,” Mr. Spears replies.
“How did your daughter and her roommate meet?”
“In college,” the woman answers. “They met at University of Arizona, and Liz convinced her to move back here when they graduated.”
“Did they work together?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me what your daughter did for a living?”
Elizabeth Spears had been working for John Carroll Investments. Mills can’t remember if that is the one with the bull or the rock or the helicopter, but he has heard of it, a big finance company with offices everywhere. Elizabeth had been a business major at U of A and had started at John Carroll as an intern. She worked day and night. She ingratiated herself to everyone—from the cleaning crew to the CEO. She got results. She was particularly talented at setting the stage for new clients, making them feel really good about choosing the company. “She was hired in less than a year,”
Claudia Spears tells Mills. “And promoted a year after that to full advisor status.” The mother looks around the room, her head turning in different directions until her eyes rest on a photograph of her daughter. She brings both hands to her mouth as if to hold in a scream.
“Did she have any problems with her coworkers?” Mills asks them.
Claudia Spears shakes her head abruptly. “No. Like I said. Everyone loved her.”
“Until she got her latest promotion.”
Mills does a double take. “What do you mean by that, Mr. Spears?” he asks.
“I mean, that Elizabeth has toiled now for several years as an advisor with her own stable of clients. Growing stable, I should say. And while she loves the work, she’s been feeling stagnant. So she put in for a promotion to management a few months ago. And found out just last week that she got it.”
Turns out that the promotion prompted some scathing jealousy in the office with overt resentments pouring out as ugly remarks. And, so of course, Mills wonders about the coworkers, makes a mental note to send Myers over on Monday.
Mills asks about a boyfriend. An ex, the parents say.
“Leland Blankenship. A pompous little asshole, if you ask me,” Elizabeth’s father adds.
The couple had broken up about a month ago. Leland worked for a pharmaceutical company. He, too, had received a promotion a few months back. His promotion, however, had required him to transfer to San Francisco, and Elizabeth, or Liz, as her parents call her, was adamant about staying in Phoenix.
“She had professional hopes of her own, and knew her own promotion was imminent,” Claudia Spears explains. “But Leland wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“What does that mean?” Mills asks.
“It means a few knock-down, drag-out fights.”
“Was he violent with your daughter?”
“Liz said he never hit her,” the mother replies. “But I guess he had a thing for punching in walls and breaking things.”
“Where is he now?”
“For all we know he’s in San Francisco,” Peter Spears says. “I mean, after Liz made their breakup final, we had no further contact with the boy.”
“Do you know where in the valley he lived?” Mills asks.
“Oh, yes,” the mother replies. “We’ve been out there quite a bit. He threw some lovely parties. And, well, Liz was out there a lot. Especially on weekends.”
“I’ll need that address.”
Claudia Spears says it out loud twice, and Mills writes it down.
“Will there be anything else?” she asks.
“Not unless you can think of anyone else who might want to harm your daughter?”
Husband and wife look at each other blankly. Both turn back to Mills, shaking their heads. Peter Spears says, “No one would do this to Liz. No one who knew her. Even if someone had an issue with her over something or other, no, she just was the kind of person people appreciated.”
“When is the last time you saw your daughter?” Mills asks.
The two of them look at each other and shrug. “Was it last Sunday? Or the Sunday before?” Peter asks his wife.
“The Sunday before,” she replies. “She was out here for brunch.”
“And the last time either of you spoke to her?”
“I don’t think I talked to her since then,” Peter says.
“She and I talk, well, we talked almost every day,” Claudia answers. “I spoke to her I think on Wednesday.”
“Had she seemed upset to you? In any way?”
“No,” Claudia says. “Not at all.”
“What if you have the wrong girl?” the father asks. “How can you be sure?”
“I wish I were wrong, Mr. Spears, but we found her license on her.”
“Someone could have stolen it,” he insists.
Mills would probably do the same damn thing. He would debate and negotiate and just fucking deny it was his kid. That’s every parent’s right. “We don’t do this as a procedure anymore, but you’re welcome to go to the morgue and identify her for yourself. She’s with the Office of the Medical Examiner. I can give you the number.”
They both look like they’ve been shell-shocked. Again. They just stare at him dazed. Peter’s eyes are filling. He grips his wife’s hands, and Mills sees a tremble in her chin. She wrenches away and rushes back to the bathroom. She is sobbing and heaving again, and Mills wants the man to get up and go to his wife. He wants the man to be a man and bring his wife a remedy for pain. The man should be the remedy. But the man is broken. Mills can tell just by looking at him.
“In the meantime if you have a photo of Liz, or anything that belonged to her, I’d sure appreciate borrowing it.”
The father shakes his head, looks quizzically into Mills’s eyes. “I’ve got a photo you can borrow. But most of her stuff is in Ahwatukee.”
“I see.”
“Unless you want, like, her diploma from high school.”
“I don’t think so,” Mills says as he rises. He turns to the front door.
“Wait there,” Peter tells him.
Mills waits and studies the desert capture of the foyer. An aloe plant, several cacti, all stuffed into clay pottery, canvas paintings with colorful renditions of adobe villages. A huge, woven blanket hangs the two stories of the foyer, the phoenix rising from its fibers. Turquoise and brown. Sky and earth. Spears returns.
“Here’s the photo,” he says, handing it to Mills. “And I found this.” He holds up a kachina doll, a miniature, about eight inches tall. “It belonged to her. She bought it in Sedona. It was among the things she left behind in her old room. Don’t know why.”
Mills takes it. It stands in his hands, an elaborately painted wooden sculpture of a warrior spirit. A blue face with huge, protruding teeth and carved blocks for ears. The doll is feathered and is postured in some kind of tribal dance—at least that’s the inference. Mills turns it over. It says, almost predictably, “Warrior Dancer.” He looks at the man appreciatively. “Thanks,” Mills says. “This is really quite a piece.”
“May I ask how that figures into your investigation?”
“It might be of interest to one of the psychics we work with.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Mills shakes his head. “Uh, no. If you’re uncomfortable with that, I completely understand.” He holds the warrior in the air between them.
Peter raises his hand. “Keep it,” he says in a deep, resonant voice. “I’m sure my wife would tell you to do the real detective work you need to do to find the killer. You know, none of the psychic nonsense. But as far as I’m concerned you can have Elizabeth’s whole damned wardrobe if you think it will help.”
Mills hands the man his card. “I wrote the number for the medical examiner on the back. If you think of anything, or remember something, or if you just have a question, please call me.”
“Is the medical examiner there on Saturdays?”
“Someone should be available.”
The door opens. Mills takes that as his cue. Outside, he’s sitting in his car finishing up his notes when he hears the grinding of a garage door opening. From one of the bays emerges a white Volvo. The car backs out of the driveway. Peter Spears is behind the wheel; the passenger seat is empty.
8
Gus Parker’s dream veers off course to the southeastern tip of Costa Rica. He’s in a lineup just off the shores of Puerto Viejo, the surf roaring as he waits behind the break. The waves are mighty, and he’s jonesing for that barrel of solitude, and then suddenly something is banging, banging, banging, like another board smashing into him. He feels himself dart to the left, then to the right, and he feels the sea crashing down and he wakes up. It’s 10:06 a.m., and someone is banging on his front door.
“Jesus,” he mutters as he tries to collect himself. He had drifted back to sleep after calling the detective.
He pulls on a bathrobe and runs a hand through his sleep-addled chaos of hair. Then he remembers. Damn. A cli
ent. At some point yesterday Gary Potter had called and asked for an appointment and Gus had said, “Sure, come over at ten.” And then Gus had gotten caught up with a kidney or a gallbladder and forgotten all about Gary Potter’s request, had never written it down, and now realizes the banging is the fist of Mr. Potter growing more impatient with every imploring knock at the front door. “Coming,” Gus shouts to the hallway. “Coming.” He scrambles into a pair of clean underwear, hoists up his sweatpants, and swishes a capful of Listerine around in his mouth.
“I’m so sorry,” he tells his client when he finally swings the door open.
“Did I wake you?” Gary Potter asks.
There’s nothing worse than a lying psychic with all kinds of hair sprouting out of his head; it’s all about credibility, so Gus just smiles and says, “Sorry I was up late working out all sorts of crazy vibes.”
Potter just shrugs and follows Gus inside.
Twice Gus has called him Harry by mistake. Gus leads the client to a small office just to the left of the front door. Gary Potter takes a seat on the futon. Gus sits opposite him in a low chair, one of those linen slings made by Scandinavians.
“Let me see,” Gus says. “When you were here a few weeks ago you were worried about your mother. I told you she was fine. But you said her voice was breathless over the phone. You thought it was her angina.”
“But you were right,” Gary says.
“You should have believed her when she said you had called in the midst of an amorous encounter.”
Gary Potter laughs. “Who wants to believe their seventy-year-old mother is having an amorous encounter?”
“And what seventy-year-old woman answers the phone during sex?”
“My mother. If she sees my name on caller ID.”
Gary Potter is in his midthirties. He is a short, well-built man, with enviable biceps. He hasn’t shaved yet this morning, so Gus feels a sort of brotherhood with his client. Gary Potter is wearing khaki shorts, fading and almost threadbare, and a tight T-shirt of the same colorless palette. He is the hue of the desert at midmorning.
Desert Remains Page 6