Desert Remains

by Steven Cooper

  “Now you’re getting it,” she says, her voice clinking like a champagne toast.

  “Getting what?”

  “Oh, Gus Parker, must I write it out for you phonetically? I was setting you up.”

  “Huh?”

  “I. Was. Setting. You. Up.”

  She chuckles as if she’s high.

  “With Billie Welch? Are you crazy?”

  “No,” Beatrice replies. “She was over here the other day, and we were talking, and I suddenly got this vision of the two of you together. I just saw you walk into her life.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m not completely amused, Beatrice.”

  “Oh, please. How are you going to meet someone, Gus? You never get out of the house except to come see me. This asexual mystique of yours is a total fraud!”

  “Asexual?”

  Beatrice scoffs. “It’s a disguise, Gus Parker. And I’ve exposed it!”

  “You make me laugh. You really do,” he says, welcoming the smile that’s beaming across his face. “I may not have a black book full of hookups. But I get mine when I have to.”

  “Not the same thing, my dear. You are oblivious on purpose. No romance in your life,” she argues cheerfully. “You’ve fallen in love with that dog of yours. And while I love her, too, her companionship has limits.”

  He merges onto the highway and scans the morning sky. “Interesting,” he says. “The subject of companionship came up last night. There was a very strong signal.”

  “Of course there was,” she says.

  “I gotta go, Beatrice. I need a few moments before I face the day at work.”

  She ignores him. “Have you heard from the detective?”

  “Mills? No,” he replies.

  “Just wondering,” she says. “Now that he’s off the case he probably has some free time to go over our research.”

  Gus rolls his head and hears a crack. “Yeah, but like you said, he’s off the case.”

  “So what?” she barks.

  She rarely barks, but she’s right. “I know,” Gus tells her. “If I can sit him down and show him what we found, he’ll find a way.”

  “Exactly. I see him going rogue.”

  Gus laughs. “You’re whacked, Beatrice. I’ll call him now.”

  She disconnects, and he dials. He gets a recording and leaves a message. Just hearing the detective’s voice, even though it’s the same voice on the same recording as always, Gus gets the sense, a very potent sense, that the man is not going rogue; he’s going dark.

  Alex Mills walks the hallways of the Phoenix Police Department as if nothing has changed. He smiles, nods, and carries himself at an altitude uncharacteristically high for someone who has been reassigned. He’s killing them with his resilience, and the body count is mounting. Oh, yeah, look at me brewing a new pot of coffee in front of everyone. Look at me reading the paper. Look at me staring in deep thought at my computer screen (he’s actually searching Amazon for Henry James). The thing is, Mills has made the not-so-stunning realization that Woods’s talk of very important cases piling up, critical, high-profile cases, yours to pick from, was the sergeant’s very best attempt at mollification.

  Myers drifts into his office and shuts the door. “It’s still bugging me,” he says.

  “What is, Morty?”

  “Why would anyone call Willis and pretend to be me?”

  Mills looks up. “I have no idea.”

  “You believe me, don’t you?”

  Mills tries his best not to sound ambivalent, but he does. “Sure,” he says.

  Myers leans against the wall. “You don’t give a shit.”

  “I’m off the case.”

  “Right,” Myers says. He’s quiet for a moment. His eyes are probing. His lips move a few seconds before he speaks. “Do you have any advice for me? Huh, Mills?”

  “Turn in your phone. That’ll clear you.”

  “They already took it.”

  Mills shrugs. “Good. I honestly don’t think Chase suspects you of anything. Stay under the radar.”

  The portly cop nods and walks out, brushing by Preston who walks in.

  Mills just looks at him and says, “Jeez, I didn’t realize they installed a turnstile at my office.”

  “Sorry to bother you,” the older man says. His face is creased, tired, and unshaven. “I’m having trouble with Jane Doe.”

  “Squaw Peak?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why are you talking to me? Doesn’t anyone understand that I’m off the damn case?”

  Preston stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Because I respect you. How’s that for an answer?”

  Mills smiles his first smile of the day. “It’s a good answer,” he tells his colleague. “Nothing comes up on NamUs?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What about FBI or Interpol?”

  The guy rubs his eyes. “I haven’t heard back.”

  “You will,” Mills tells him. “I’m sure Chase has faith in you. I know I do, buddy.”

  Preston nods and smiles.

  “And you’re welcome at my turnstile anytime,” Mills says.

  Gus Parker pulls into his driveway, starving because an unusually high mammary volume usurped his lunch hour, and he hears Ivy barking rambunctiously inside the house. That never happens. She’ll leap all over him when he walks in the door, but the sound of his car rarely excites her. Maybe it’s the birds.

  When he enters the house the dog is still howling like a wolf but not running to him, not bounding at him to welcome him home with a frenzied tail and a sloppy tongue. He follows her bark and finds her in the office, standing on the futon, her paws on the windowsill. She’s yelping like a siren.

  “What is it, girl?”

  She turns to him and barks.

  “Ivy?”

  Her nose is at the window again.

  “C’mon, let’s go for a walk.”

  Responding to the magic words, the dog strikes an immediate silence, leaps off the futon, and into his arms.

  Outside the air is crispy as if maybe the desert is finally cooling into fall. Gus looks to the sky and sees a few gleaming stars even though the sky is still blue; it’s one of those afternoons. “I don’t know what’s bothering you,” he says to Ivy, “but whatever it is, I’m home now, and it’s nothing I can’t take care of.”

  She’s ignoring him, now, her face to the trees, searching for birds. She pads along beside him, and they walk quietly. About twenty minutes later, Gus’s head is clear and Ivy is panting. They head home. Halfway up the driveway, someone calls Gus’s name. It’s Elsa, the cleaning lady, emerging from the neighbor’s house. She’s wearing her standard uniform: a combo, seemingly, of men’s pajamas and surgical scrubs.

  “Hey, Elsa,” he says with a wave.

  “Gus Parker. Wait there for a second. I have to ask you something.”

  The woman, a canvas grocery bag in each hand, approaches, and he meets her at the street. “What is it?” he asks.

  “You know anybody with a white pickup truck?”

  The hair on his arms begins to rise. “No,” he says. “I don’t.”

  She looks at him. Her lips form a thin, grim line.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  She shakes her head. “I’m not sure. I’ve been here all day working for Mr. and Mrs. Russo, and I see this white pickup truck sitting at the end of the street. For a very long time.”

  “How long?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. I lost track of time. But whenever I check back I see it there.”

  “When did you first notice it?”

  “About noon.”

  “Was it still there at, say, two?”

  “I don’t know. I think it came back a few times,” she replies. “Whoever was inside had no idea I’m watching from the front window.”

  Gus rests his chin on his fist. “Okay,” he says, trying to intuit something, anything. “Did anyone get
out of the car?”

  “Not that I saw, Gus Parker.”

  He smiles briefly at her formality. “Did the car ever come into the cul-de-sac?”

  “I see it drive around twice. But the windows, they are so dark and tinted. I think maybe he roll down the window just a bit and take a picture of your house.”

  “My house?” His thoughts go immediately to Beatrice’s vibe about someone lurking, casing his house. The presence of a stranger would certainly explain Ivy’s unusual frenzy when he got home from work.

  Elsa puts a bag down, reaches into the pocket of her drawstring pants, and removes a slip of paper. She hands it to him. “It’s the license plate number. I write it down.”

  Gus says, “Thank you, Elsa. You’d make a great neighborhood watch lady.”

  “What? What’s that?”

  “Oh, just someone who protects the neighborhood.”

  She smiles. “No, remember, Mr. Gus Parker, you protect me. You saved my life.”

  He looks at her puzzled, but then she reminds him.

  “The crash on the highway, mi amor. I live today because of you.”

  She brushes his cheek with her hand.

  “Have a good night, Elsa.”

  He watches as she grabs her bag and heads for her Corolla parked in front of the Russos’.

  “C’mon, Ivy, let’s go get you some water,” he tells the dog. On his way in, Gus unfolds the piece of paper.

  ILMD 73.

  Gus is sitting in front of CNN in a sort of news stupor. He watches and listens, zombielike, but doesn’t really see or hear what’s going on in the world. It’s all white noise and a low-grade angst. There’s so much going on, he thinks; the valley is hot. That’s his gut feeling. The valley is hot. A fire burns not in the valley but under the valley. It’s a remnant of a tragedy, and it stews there in the belly. There’s a monster feeding off the stew, stalking the desert and maybe stalking him. He sees the letters, ILMD, like stencils now, cut from the air in front of him, across the screen of cable news, crawling at the bottom, now, a redundant ticker, I-L-M-D, I-L-M-D, I-L-M-D. . . .

  Then he remembers.

  Of course he remembers. Last week, Tucson. Charla McGregor and the initials. He checks his phone for the notes he took that night.

  ILMD.

  He shudders. A real involuntary shudder of his body. Those letters. Right there in front of him. A small, electrical charge buzzes through him, as if the pieces fit like a plug into a socket.

  Charla McGregor guessed a doctor. She might be right. Maybe it’s a doctor with a vanity plate. For the second time that day, he calls Alex Mills. The least the detective can do is run the plate. But for the second time that day, Gus gets the guy’s recording.

  30

  The third time Mills thinks, Jesus F. Christ, and answers. “I’m off the case, Gus,” he says.

  “Hello to you, too,” Gus retorts.

  “Sorry, it’s just you’re going to have to go through Chase now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about what happened, Alex. You should still be on the case.”

  Mills laughs. “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Yeah, well, I have lots of stuff to tell you. I’ve been trying to reach you, and leaving you messages, and—”

  “I know, Gus, I know. But the truth is, considering the circumstances, there’s not much I can do with your information. Let me give you Chase’s extension.”

  “No,” Gus insists. “You need to see what I have.”

  “Like?”

  “Like those news articles I’ve been telling you about. That old murder in New England and the guy obsessed with symbols,” Gus reminds him. “The woman who killed him might be living in Prescott. I think she’s somehow connected to the cave murders, too.”

  “You think?”

  “You’ll think so, too,” Gus tells him. “And I have a license plate. I was hoping you could run it for me.”

  “What license plate?” Mills asks.

  Gus says, “Remember that psychic I went to see in Tucson?”

  Mills says, “Yeah?”

  “Well, she came up with these initials, said they were linked to our killer.”

  “And you were waiting to tell me this when?”

  “Dude, why do you think I’ve been trying to hunt you down?”

  “What are the initials?”

  “I-L-M-D,” Gus chants, perhaps a bit too dramatically for Mills to believe.

  “I’ll run it, see if there’s anything to it. I got plenty of time on my hands.”

  “There is something to it,” Gus insists. He tells Mills about a white pickup truck stalking his neighborhood. About license plate ILMD 73. Mills taps his fingers on his desk like an impatient father; on one hand he’s trying to humor Parker, on the other he’s trying to detach himself from the case completely. But what the fuck? He’s intrigued by the plate, if nothing else.

  “Like I said, I’ll run it,” he tells Gus. “But I’ll have to pass the information on to Chase.”

  They make a plan to meet tomorrow for lunch.

  Gus Parker is staring at a pancreas, and he’s thinking about his mother.

  “Oh, that gel is so cold,” the patient says.

  “Sorry.”

  His mother’s pancreas is coming apart. What a horrible disease, he thinks as he glides around the patient’s belly. It’s out of her control, and Gus knows that must be the hardest thing for Meg Parker to accept. Life to her is an alphabetized spice rack. And Chivas. He wonders how Nikki is taking the news, if she’s making a pilgrimage to Seattle. In that instant he gets a whiff of jet fuel and sees himself on a plane, sitting over the wing. He thinks about weight and balance, and then the patient says, “Are we almost done?”

  Gus punches a few notes into the computer and says, “Yes. You’re all set.”

  At 12:25 Alex calls and says he’s waiting for Gus at a diner down the street. Gus changes into his street clothes and is out the door.

  “How long do you have?” he asks Alex as he sits opposite him in the booth.

  “I’m fine,” Alex says. “Nobody’s looking for me.”

  A waitress stops by and asks if they’re ready. Alex orders a burger. Gus hasn’t opened the menu but tells the woman he’d like a club sandwich. When the server is gone, Gus reaches down to the bench and retrieves a file folder. He pushes it across the table.

  Alex looks but doesn’t touch the file. “Your news clippings?”

  “Yeah,” Gus says.

  Alex takes an index card from his chest pocket and, with a bit of melodrama, drops it on the table and slides it with one finger to Gus. “An exchange of information,” he says. “The license plate.”

  Gus turns the card over and reads. He instantly gulps.

  Smith, Theodore.

  3589 N. Angel Gem Rd.

  Phoenix, AZ

  He can’t find his voice, but he finally whispers, “Read the file. Read it.”

  Alex opens the folder and begins to scan the pages. Gus follows the man’s pupils as they meander from line to line. He watches the crease begin to crawl across the detective’s forehead, and he sees the man, subtly but visibly, grip the pages tighter. Alex finishes one page then quickly jumps to the other, and then the next, and then he goes back, and his face seems to be calculating an equation of evil and disbelief. He keeps reading like that, one page to another, then back, as if he’s taking an open book exam. And then Alex puts the papers down neatly in front of him, raises his face to Gus, and they sit there staring for a few moments across the island of the table, isolated, the two of them, in a warp of affirmation. The truth penetrates. Gus begins to smile. Alex says, “Holy shit, Parker.”

  “Yeah,” Gus says. “There’s a Theodore Smith who isn’t dead.”

  “The son. . . .”

  “Right.”

  “Apparently he survived the fire.”

  “And he drives a white pickup.”

  Mills twists his face and races through the pages again. “And, it looks
like Priscilla Smith was released a month ago. As far as we know, that would coincide with the first murder.”

  “What?” Gus begs.

  “The ME thinks the remains at Squaw Peak have been there about a month.”

  “So there’s your connection!”

  “That’s not a connection, Gus. That’s a coincidence.”

  “You know how I feel about coincidences.”

  Alex shakes his head. “No, this is actually a coincidence, a good coincidence. But who are we trying to tie to the murders, her or her son?”

  “Whoever has a motive. . . .”

  “That’s just the thing,” Alex says. “I can’t go before a judge and get a warrant to search the guy’s house based on a few old news articles and a coincidence. There’s no connection. This isn’t sufficient evidence.”

  “What about the truck that could be connected to the Camelback victim?”

  “It’s not solid, Gus.”

  Gus leans forward. “Exactly why you have to search the house. You have the address. You’ll find evidence there. I’m sure of it.”

  Alex shakes his head. “C’mon, Parker, this isn’t your first go-around with this. I can’t secure a warrant based on your visions or your hunches or even your research. With all due respect.”

  “What if I prove there’s a connection?”

  “How you planning to do that?”

  “Maybe a trip to Prescott to talk to Mrs. Smith.”

  Alex puts his hands up as if he’s directing traffic to stop. “Hold on there, captain, I can’t have you doing that. Totally against protocol. I’m already ‘reassigned.’ You want to get me fired?”

  “So I never told you.”

  “No. You can’t go to Prescott.”

  “Then you go talk to her.”

  Now he’s waving his hands, dismissing the whole stretch of ideas. “No,” he says. “I have to get Chase in the loop.”

  “You do,” Gus tells him. “Or you don’t.”

  “Huh?”

  “You want this case back, don’t you?”