“It’s obviously another woman on your mind,” Gus Parker tells him.
“You think?”
“I know.”
Gary Potter is one of about twenty clients on Gus’s roster. A few come weekly; most come about once a month. Some of them refer their friends. Gus has never wanted to build a business, has never really acclimated to the cash-for-vibe arrangement. But the income does supplement his modest wage at Valley Imaging. He stares through his client, and the story begins to unfold.
“You are having grave anxiety about your girlfriend,” Gus tells the man, and as he does he watches Potter’s mouth open to an oval. Gus can see the very first traces of blood recede from Gary Potter’s face. Gus has a microscopic view of this that is probably a good minute ahead of the average naked eye. “Do you want to talk about this?”
“You think there’s something wrong with Jessica?”
Gus shakes his head. “No. I didn’t say that. I said you’re worried about her. You think there’s something wrong. Don’t you?”
The man puts his head in his hands. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Things are going too well.”
“And you assume they will soon go wrong?”
“I do. I guess.”
“You’ve been together for a year.”
“Right.”
Gus closes his eyes and searches. Something shudders. He hears a woman calling out for help. He can’t quite see her. But he sees a woman’s hand reaching for him. It’s a desperate hand piercing through the earth. “You’re afraid some harm will come to her.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Why would you be?”
“Like I said, it’s too good to be true.”
Gus opens his eyes. “She needs your help. I’m not sure why. Your relationship is not in jeopardy.”
The guy fidgets nervously. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I don’t have to worry about my relationship, but she is in some kind of trouble?”
Gus can only nod. “I don’t even know for sure if it’s her. But I do believe there is a woman in your life who may be reaching out to you. It’s not your mother. Do you have a sister?”
“No.”
Ivy is barking at something outside. It’s a root-root-root bark, and it’s playful. She likes to sing backup to the birds. Gus smiles.
“Is that it?” the client asks.
Potter is wearing sandals, perhaps optimistic about the weather. Gus studies the tattoos on the man’s left ankle. They’re symbols of something, he assumes, but he doesn’t know what. There’s an isosceles triangle, half shaded. Two dark circles, like moons. A star. And a “w.” “Those new?” he asks Potter.
“No. I’ve had them for a while,” Potter replies.
“Oh,” Gus says. “Do they mean anything?”
“Not really. Just a pattern.”
“I see. The ‘w’ stands for ‘west,’ doesn’t it?”
The man exhales a one-syllable laugh. “Okay. Something’s working here.”
“And you want to end up on the West Coast someday?”
“Damn,” Potter says. “Yes, I do.”
“I think you should go.”
Potter gets up to leave.
“No, no, no,” Gus says. “Sit down. I think you should go to the West Coast is what I meant.”
Potter draws a blank but sits.
“You will never know unless you go,” Gus tells him.
“But Jessica has made it clear that she won’t come.”
“Right,” Gus says. “Then I do think this darkness is about her.” He closes his eyes again, not waiting for a vision, rather for the message to come whispering. “You will end up in Los Angeles, Gary. But you are afraid to leave her behind. Not afraid that the relationship will falter but that harm will come to her without your protection.” He looks at his client.
His client looks back. Their eyes are locked. “You’re right,” Potter says. “You’re absolutely right. So what do you think?”
“What do I think?”
Either the room is spinning, or Gus’s visions are getting the psychic equivalent of vertigo. That happens sometimes.
“Is she in danger?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not totally sure. But I do know that now is not the time for you to head west. Not yet.”
“Wow.”
He knows he must stop. “That will be all for today,” he tells his client. Gary Potter hands him sixty dollars and leaves.
Two hours later Gus pulls into the Forty-Eighth Street entrance to South Mountain Park. He rolls down the long driveway and finds the parking lot empty, save for two cruisers and an unmarked car. Alex Mills is leaning against the unmarked, talking on his cell phone. There is yellow tape everywhere, like streamers, like a birthday party for the criminally insane. Gus steps out of his car.
Alex walks toward him, shaking his head. Elbow bent, phone to ear. “Shit for brains,” says the detective as he stuffs the cell into its holster. “City bureaucrat shit for brains.”
“I don’t need to go all psychic to figure something ain’t right,” Gus says.
“The sergeant is getting heat from the mayor about closing down the park. I mean, what do you expect? It’s a weekend. We’re turning hikers away. And they’re all complaining.”
“And you’re supposed to do what about that?”
The detective shakes his head again, looking at the ground. “Uh, solve the murder, make it go away, open up the park, and serve free punch.”
“Like pissed off hikers are more important than a murderer?”
The detective looks up and meets Gus square in the face. “It goes like this, buddy. We turn people away, we remind them of the murder. We remind them of the murder, Phoenix isn’t safe. Phoenix isn’t safe, then something is wrong with the cops and something is wrong with the mayor. You know how it works, dude. It’s like the shark.”
“The shark?”
“In Amity. I think his name was Jaws.”
“Wow. I see you took a break from the classics to read the Benchley masterpiece.”
“Who didn’t? It became a classic in itself. And yes, I know I owe you a book.”
Then Alex looks decidedly at Gus’s feet and shakes his head.
“What?” Gus asks.
“Sandals? Out here on the trails? Are you friggin’ kidding me?”
“I’ve hiked in sandals. No big deal.”
“Until you come toe-to-toe with a scorpion. Or toe-to-mouth with a Gila monster.”
“I’m fine, man.”
“Whatever. We’re going off the trail a bit.”
Gus follows the detective to the trailhead. A soft wind is stirring. Tumbleweeds, like visitors from an old cartoon, blow across the path and scatter. The sky is a simple blue shield, with no emblem but the sun. But as bold as it may be up there, it’s aloof today, keeping the desert mild, temperatures in the midseventies. They walk silently, Gus scanning now every few feet in front of him for critters. Gus has been stung by a scorpion once, and it felt like a fiery cattle prod had been soldered to his foot, only to be followed by an injection of battery acid, but it happened in his bathroom, not on a hike.
Alex leads him off the path toward a cave. Gus kicks a few rocks out of his path. “Someone vomited here,” Gus says.
“That’s the first vision you’re getting?” Alex asks incredulously.
“If by vision you mean I can see the vomit, then yes, Alex.” Gus indicates the splatter on the ground outside of the cave.
“Right,” the detective says. “That came from the guy who discovered the body. A jogger.”
Gus shakes his head. “He’s not a suspect.”
“So far you’re batting a thousand. We checked him out. Looks like he has an alibi through noontime yesterday.”
“And I’m guessing the body was here before that.”
“Safe to say.”
“The jogger was looking for something when he left the
trail.”
“Is that a question?”
“No,” Gus says. “That’s what I sense.”
“He told us he went off the trail in search of the petroglyph around back.” Alex removes a flashlight, shines it into the cave. He brings the sphere of light to the wall. “He found this instead.”
The two of them stand there on the fringe of the cave looking at the carving.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” the detective asks.
No, Gus has never seen anything quite like this. Nor anything like the visions that come at him now at shutter speed. He begins to hum softly to balance himself, to find his center of gravity.
This is the part Alex Mills likes best. He likes the quiet hum that often accompanies Gus’s reach into whatever world is out there. It’s a serious hum, but a soothing hum, and, while he would never tell a soul, not even his wife, Mills feels a bit more comfortable with mortality every time he hears the hum. He watches as Parker’s eyes scan the portrait. His eyes are wide and portentous. Mills came across that word, “portentous,” in Ezekiel’s Favorite Garden, a new literary masterpiece currently on its trajectory up the New York Times best-seller list; he’s been waiting for an excuse to use the word, but Gus’s eyes do it for him. Just look at him, all serious, probing, like a detective but not.
He really shouldn’t let Parker enter the cave, but when the psychic drifts inward, Mills holds his breath and slowly follows, placing an arm on the psychic’s sleeve to keep him away from the circle of evidence where the body fell.
“You have to put these on,” Mills tells him. He pulls a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and hands it to Gus.
Gus complies. He looks to the ground where Elizabeth Spears had lain, then back at the portrait on the wall of rock. He nods. Then shuts his eyes. He moves forward. Extends one hand and touches the wall. He leans into the wall rigidly, and then after maybe ten seconds his body goes limp. His other hand joins the first. One holds him in place while the other brushes against the carving. He brushes, his eyes still softly closed. He brushes first with the hand, then with individual fingers.
It’s like a blind man has come to the crime scene to search for clues in Braille.
He’s forgotten how meticulously Gus works. How seriously. He’s learned to respect whatever it is that Gus does, but he doesn’t fully understand it, so he isn’t quite sure he believes what he is supposed to believe about it. Kelly says that there is no way to understand a mind like Gus’s. “Stop trying,” she tells him. “It’s like trying to figure out the beginning of time. Accept the mystery.” Mills accepts it. But he’s a detective. He’s a man of reason. He can’t help thinking that somehow, someday, he’ll figure out exactly how Gus Parker unearths the truth.
Maybe Gus fell on his head as a baby.
Or stuck a finger in an outlet.
Or witnessed a murder. Maybe Gus saw his father slay his mother.
He knows he’s being watched. He can feel Alex’s eyes on him like breath on his neck. But that doesn’t distract him. The detective’s expectations and curiosities are white noise in this realm he explores. He creates white noise himself with a subtle, radio wave hum of concentration. He has retraced the image with his own paintbrush. The portrait is a different dimension than he’s accustomed to studying. It’s not an article of clothing. It’s not a treasured possession, a photo, or a scrapbook. It’s the intellectual property of the killer. He feels the killer, not the victim. He feels a rush of anger and pain. Anger and pain that belong to the artist. Two kinds of pain. His fingers go back and forth. He follows the route of the murder, a route that leads him not through the Southwest but through the Northeast. He’s suddenly navigating a map of New England and then a map of Massachusetts. And there, near the cold ocean, he knows he’s being watched. There are hollow eyes up there in that window in that house on that bluff. And there is rage. A light goes off now; somewhere a candle burns, and Gus sees other bodies. And he sees, to his dismay but not to his surprise, a flash of other etchings.
Now Gus Parker backs off the wall. He turns to face Alex. His hands go to his head as he pushes his hair behind both ears. “Well,” he says, “the etching is all about the killer, not about the victim. I don’t know what happened to her, but I might know what happened to him.”
Alex studies him quietly and then says, “How do you mean?”
“I mean I won’t understand this murder until I can really feel something about Elizabeth Spears. But I think this killer is a man. A man with a horrific history.”
The detective steps closer. “A history of what?”
“I’m not sure. Something that happened in his life might inform us of what happened here.”
“That’s pretty textbook, Gus.”
“True,” he says. “But I think I’m talking about both long-ago history and recent history. I’m pretty sure he’s killed before or will kill again.”
“How recently?”
“Not sure. But I see more etchings like this in the desert.”
“Please don’t say that,” Alex says, his voice deep and grave.
Gus stuffs his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I’m just telling you what I see.”
Alex kicks the dirt. “I know. I know. I just can’t go back and tell the sergeant we got more murders on our hands based on . . . you know, based on . . . these visions.” The word “visions” comes out like a theatrical question mark.
Gus just looks at him and sees the discomfort take shape on the detective’s face.
“I’m sorry,” Alex says. “But we can’t go investigate what might happen or what might have happened. We have to find out what happened here. You know?”
Gus nods. “I do. I’m just suggesting that what happened here is giving me a sense that it’s happened elsewhere.”
Alex shakes his head. “Okay. I get it. But I have one murder to solve right here. And if I can’t solve it, well, I might as well give the case away to Preston or Chase.”
“That easily?” Gus asks.
“Yeah. I sound like an ass, right?”
“Hey, I don’t know, Alex.”
“Preston’s old as detectives go. Great guy but feels like he still has something to prove before he checks out. And Chase . . . that guy, smart as anyone I’ve ever worked with, and he knows it. Always second-guessing me, trying to undermine me, wants to be king of the jungle if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know either of them,” Gus says.
“Yeah, I think Ken Preston was on the hospital case with us. The psycho nurse, remember that?”
“Of course I do.”
“And Chase has only been around for maybe a couple of years. Came since you worked with us last.”
“Young ones are always the most ambitious. You’ll end up teaching him more than he ever planned on knowing.”
Alex laughs. “No, he’s not a kid. He came to us from the FBI.”
“Isn’t that a step down?”
“Thanks, Gus. That’s a terrific thing to say.”
Gus feels the blood rush to his face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you did,” the detective insists. “It’s called a lateral hire. Not a step down. Chase was stationed in Virginia. Came here to care for his dying mother. But I guess the FBI was cutting staff in the Phoenix office.”
“So you hired him instead?”
Alex laughs. “I didn’t hire him. The department did. He’s a forensic psychologist. Expert profiler. Huge ego.”
“Good. Maybe he’ll teach you something.”
“We’ve almost come to blows a few times, so I doubt it.”
“Come to blows? Over what?”
“I don’t remember specifically,” the cop says. “I think he’s had a harder time getting over his mother’s death than he admits, you know, and he compensates for that by being a prick.”
“Maybe he just needs a little sympathy,” Gus suggests.
Alex responds with a grimace and turn
s to leave the cave. Gus follows. “So, do you think our killer has a fascination with petroglyphs?” the detective asks.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? All I’m getting from this little trip is a maybe?”
“Okay, if I had to testify on the witness stand I’d say, yes, the killer has a fascination with petroglyphs.”
“Follow me,” the detective tells him.
They quickly arrive at a blackish boulder. On the rock’s face, front and center and purposeful, as if its bravery out here should be no mistake, is the rendition of an animal of some kind, most likely a mammal, most likely a mammal on the hunt. It is beaten by weather and time, the lines ragged, like a fanciful chalk drawing from the hands of children of an age long ago fossilized. Gus has seen petroglyphs like this before. They’re not uncommon, and while they’re fascinating, he’s never really given them much thought. If he stumbles upon one of them on a hike, he’ll stand there for a few moments of abstract and wide-open wonder, really appreciating a certain mysterious history, and he’ll move on.
“Well, I don’t know,” Gus says. “This petroglyph may just be a coincidence.”
“But you see more etchings like the one in the cave? Newly drawn?”
“Definitely.”
“Can your vision evolve?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like can you go home and then, I don’t know, when you’re eating dinner suddenly get more details? Is it possible that out of nowhere you’ll actually see another murder? Another crime scene? The exact location?”
“Yes, it’s possible. You know that. But I don’t think I work well under pressure.”
Alex Mills has changed, Gus thinks. He’s way too nervous, way too amped. Something’s not right.
Alex says nothing. Gus looks at him and sees that in only two years or so the detective has aged. Gray is flecking his temples. There is less hair to buzz. He still sees Mills’s youthfulness, but from the corners of the detective’s eyes there are deeper fault lines brought on by the faults of life: worry, stress, and chagrin. The detective is Gus’s age, a fit man, lean; he reminds Gus of a handsome jackal, one that’s been around a while, knows the hunt as well as anyone.
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