Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  Beatrice has made the rare journey off the mountain to Gus’s house.

  These days it’s hard to get her to go out at all. It has something to do with the book tours she’s been doing. She says her publisher has her traveling so much in support of the book that when she’s home in Arizona, she doesn’t want to leave the house. She wants to isolate. Which is fine, Gus understands, because she has another book to write. She’s chipper, though, here in his house, his old brown couch encompassing her bum like a worn out catcher’s mitt. Ivy’s head is resting in her lap. She strokes the dog and says, “If you take her for a walk, you might even get me to join you.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  She bends her head to the side, like she’s stretching, but she’s not. She’s taking in Gus from this angle as he sits there in the matching chair kitty-corner to her. “You sounded worried on the phone.”

  “I am worried, Beatrice.”

  “When did the worry start?”

  “The minute I got the call from Billie.”

  “You said you don’t want her to come home.”

  He shakes his head. “No. What I said was I wish she didn’t have to fly. I’m very worried about the vision of that airplane going down.” “She’s coming to visit this weekend . . .”

  “Yeah. She’s flying, of course. Should I tell her not to?”

  “No. Different circumstances.”

  He plops his feet on the ottoman. “Different?”

  “Yes, doll. She’s not flying over water. She’ll be fine.”

  Gus takes her at her word because that’s how it works. “We’ll be staying at the Desert Charm,” he tells Beatrice. “You should come by for dinner.”

  “I have a book event in Tucson. Or Tuscany. It’s all a blur these days.”

  Gus smiles. “I have a feeling it’s Tucson.”

  “You two should come to the event. I’d love to have you.”

  He shakes his head. “We’d love to be there, but you know what will happen. Billie can’t hide from the fame thing. She’ll walk in that bookstore and all the attention is on her, not you.”

  “I don’t care,” Beatrice says.

  “Billie does.”

  Beatrice shrugs. Unlike most people, she knows more about what she can’t control than what she can. She likes it that way. Gus loves that about her, tries every day to live by her example. But Billie Welch is a challenge. Billie is in love with Gus, but Billie is in control of most things in her orbit. Gus is fine to spin there more often than not, but he gets restless sometimes for his own life. He has his own orbit to take care of. Which is why he knows he’ll never simply walk away from Valley Imaging, pack up the house, and move to LA.

  “That would take you out of your own skin,” Beatrice says. “You can’t survive out of your own skin. No one can.”

  He looks at her as dumbfounded as ever. “Wow, that’s some amazing telepathy.”

  “Not telepathy,” she says. “I’ve been getting these vibes from you for a while.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Only to me.”

  He tells her again how much he’s worried about the plane crash.

  “Billie’s fine,” she says.

  “I’m not just talking about Billie,” he insists. “Hundreds of people could die.”

  “Do you want to explore? Right now? Do you want to head to the crash site?”

  He pulls at his scruffy chin. He’s been growing out the facial hair for a few days, prompting people at work to call him Jesus. Never fails. “I don’t know if I want to go to the crash site,” he tells her. “But I’d like you to take me to the sky.”

  “Fine then,” she says. “Let’s have a few moments of silence.”

  Even Ivy seems to agree. Her snorting and whimpering and sloppy tongue go quiet. The only sound is the hum of Beatrice gathering the winds around her, the rustle of her skirt as she twirls the engines and ascends. And then a hush, a distinct powdery hush, and Beatrice says, “We’re in the blue. There are streaks of clouds and intersecting contrails. Off in the distance I can see the edge of night. There’s no danger here, Gus. Not yet.”

  “Not yet,” he repeats. “But it’s a very big sky.”

  “And I have a very big view. Can you see the expanse?”

  His eyes closed, Gus surveys the inner pictorial as it unfolds, and he sees that it, indeed, is a huge sky, above all the continents at once, above all the energy, good and bad, all the love and the hate, the beauty and the evil, because there’s a purity of perspective here. But the darkness is calling; Gus knows it. He can hear it ringing like an alarm. From here, the darkness is as wide and as deep as the sea. “Should we turn around?” he asks Beatrice.

  “No. That ringing sound is your purpose.”

  “My purpose?”

  “The reason you’re here,” she says. “It’s a helpful signal.”

  “Of what?”

  “Must I do all the work, Gus? It’s telling you that you need to look into the darkness. It’s giving you a direction.”

  “So we’re going over the edge?”

  “Be quiet and hold on.”

  Gus shakes his head, thinking this is too freaky even for me sometimes. But he clutches the fat arms of the chair and he follows. They bump over the edge of night like a ship crossing the Gulf Stream. A small but riotous hiccup and then drenching black. Soft, sharp, inkier than ink, misty and terrifying. He can’t see. He tells Beatrice.

  “Give it a second. Your rods and cones. Remember them?”

  He’d roll his eyes if they weren’t closed.

  “Transcontinental,” Beatrice says out of the blue, or the black, whatever, and it chills him.

  “That’s the airplane, the same airline.”

  “I know,” she says, her voice velvet soft.

  The logo. The colors. The shining behemoth hurtles through the night like a bullet. He can see everything now. He can see the passengers, most of them sleeping, some of them indulging in elegant wines under the dim purple light of the cabin, some soaking in luxury, some ambivalent. “This isn’t it,” he says, a sudden revelation.

  “What do you mean?” Beatrice asks.

  “I mean the airplane I saw go down went down in daylight,” he says. “This is a night flight.”

  “No, dear. Our daytime is their nighttime,” she tells him. “We’ve crossed the date line.”

  “But it was daylight. I’m sure of it.”

  “I know you are. But you were seeing it during your flight in from LA. You were flying during the day.”

  “So are you telling me that my vision is for real? That it’s a doomed flight?”

  “That’s what we’re here to see,” Beatrice says. “But I don’t think it’s doomed.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s just not a vibe I’m getting . . .”

  Gus watches as the aircraft trembles in a pocket of turbulence, but it quickly recovers. A flight attendant splashes coffee on herself. A man masturbating in the first class lavatory knocks his head on the mirror, stops the deed, and zips up. Turbulence as God’s way of saying that’s disgusting dude, not on a plane. In a lavatory in coach, the warble knocks the cigarette from the hand of a woman who’s been smoking in there despite the posted signs and all the warnings from the cabin crew. She bends over trying to find where it landed, but she can’t see it. It’s too late. The cigarette has already rolled to the door and set the edges on fire. The alarm screams. There’s a rush of feet toward the door.

  The smoker grasps for the handle, slides it back and frees herself from the slow inferno. She’s met by the extinguishers of the cabin crew. And shouting. Everybody is shouting. A cyclone of smoke escapes the lavatory. It billows and wafts, moving into the cabin, down the aisles, slowly creeping toward the front of the plane. Every few seconds something sparks from the ceiling, like an electrical short, and the aircraft seems to stall. Gus knows what’s next. He knows there will be a sharp bank and then a dive. He opens his eyes. He d
oesn’t want to see it. He says nothing. He leaves Beatrice there to witness it for herself. He watches her face go from confusion to alarm to terror. She holds her hands in the air, then to her heart. And she nods a few times before lifting her head to Gus and opening her eyes.

  “I sensed you got off the plane early.”

  “Yeah. I had enough.”

  “I understand,” she says. “I don’t think the plane crashed.”

  “Of course it crashed.”

  She shakes her head. “You’re taking too much from the images.” “It’s not just images. Everyone knows a fire can bring a plane down.”

  “You’ve been to Tahiti?”

  “Nice change of subject.”

  “I’m not changing the subject,” she says. “I recognized the aesthetics.”

  “It could have been anywhere in the South Pacific.”

  “True,” she says. “Maybe Fiji. But I got a vibe about Bora Bora.” “No. I’ve never been. To answer your question.”

  “Then sleep on it,” she says.

  “Last thing I want to do.”

  “Funny that you think you have a choice.”

  Later, after Beatrice’s Karmann Ghia is puff-puffing down the street, after Gus takes a quick, hot shower and hops into bed promptly followed by Ivy, he closes his eyes and inhales a deep, deep breath of air. The smell of jet fuel lingers.

  Kelly doesn’t look up when he comes in. “I tried calling you.”

  “Oh shit,” he says. “I know. I meant to call you on the way home. But forgot. Sorry.”

  She’s sitting in the living room, on the far corner of the couch, farthest from the light. Her face is lost in a shadow. “It’s fine.”

  She’s not convincing. “Really, I’m sorry. I had a reporter there and it threw me off.”

  “Oh, right. That reporter Gus told you about. How did it go?”

  He shakes his head. “Never mind that,” he says. He sits beside her, tries to see through the dark mood on her face. “What’s up with you? Something with the trial? I’m guessing it was important.”

  “Good guess,” she says.

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “Not angry. Scared.”

  He reaches for her hand. “Scared?”

  She faces him now. “Last week I felt a lump in my breast when I was showering.”

  “A lump?”

  “Yes.”

  “Last week?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re only telling me now?”

  She takes him in from an angle. “Are you interrogating me?” “No,” he says with a pang of guilt, a kind of nonspecified guilt. He just feels fucking stupid for not knowing how to react.

  “My gynecologist referred me to a place called the Central Phoenix Breast Center,” she tells him. “For a mammogram and a needle biopsy. To make sure it’s not cancer.”

  He knew the word was coming, particularly down the gauntlet of her last sentence. He lets it sink in, the word, but it can’t; he doesn’t have room for it, wasn’t prepared for it, will have to rebuild his house for it. He has no clue what he’s thinking because the room is sort of spinning. “Oh my God, Kelly. Oh my God,” he stutters. “We’ll do whatever we have to do. You’ll be fine. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He’s aware of how freaked out he sounds but then he adds, “You should quit your job and get some rest.”

  She laughs. “I’m not tired. And I’m not quitting my job. I’m scared, but right now I don’t feel sick or anything.”

  “I’m coming with you for the mammogram and the needle thing.” “Biopsy.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “It won’t be comfortable, according to my doctor,” she concedes. “I’m trying to put it off because of the trial.”

  “You won’t put it off, Kelly.”

  “This is not your cue to order me around, Alex.”

  Jesus. He doesn’t know what the fuck to say, or how to say it, or when to say it, or when to shut the fuck up. How’s that for being the perfect husband?

  Mills’s phone dings with a text from Morty Myers.

 

  “Jesus...”

  “What is it?” Kelly asks.

  “Nothing. Just a text from Myers. It can wait.”

  “No. Text him back, Alex. My breast isn’t going anywhere.”

 

 

 

 

  He shakes his head again. Stress always attracts stress. “Sorry,” he tells her. “Let’s order in.”

  “I cooked.”

  “You cooked? With this news?”

  “First of all, Alex, it’s not cancer news yet. I have to prepare for the possibility that it will, in fact, be cancer news. But I had to do something to get my mind off of it.”

  He smiles, pulls her forward and kisses her cheek. “Of course you did. Let me do the final preps and I’ll serve.”

  “Was it important? The text message?”

  “Yes. Seemed so. It was Myers. Something about the case.”

  “You need to call him.”

  He shakes his head. “No. I already debated this in my head. It can wait,” he says. “In fact, if this turns out to be cancer, babe, I’m going to have to bag this case.”

  She laughs with a growl. “No you won’t.”

  “No. I will,” he insists. “I’ll stop everything.”

  She gets up. She pulls his hand. “Come on, let’s put dinner out. We’re going to act as if everything is fine. We’re going to be normal. We’re not deviating from routines.”

  They have dinner. They watch The Walking Dead. They hold each other. They don’t deviate from routine. In bed they open their books. But Mills can’t concentrate on the mice or the men. He’s read it several times, knows it inside out. Maybe that’s why. That’s not why. Kelly has drifted off to sleep. He stares at her, the meaning of his life. Sorrow creeps into his chest and it blooms, gently, tenderly, until a shiver of panic makes him freeze. He can’t blink. He tries to drift but can’t sleep. And when he finally does, three hours later, his dreams are haunted.

  18

  The following morning, sitting in his office, he broods over a cup of coffee. His brooding is dark. His coffee is a surprise.

  When did I stop for coffee? Starbucks. I went through the drive-thru? Jesus.

  He looks up at the shuffle of feet. Myers and Preston are hulking in the doorway. Myers is nearly foaming at the mouth. “Come in, boys. Have a seat.”

  Myers barely has his ass in the chair when he says, “Viveca Canning was searching the terms ‘exhuming bodies’ and ‘autopsy after many years’ on her computer.”

  “No shit,” Mills says.

  “No shit,” Myers says, smiling ear to ear.

  Mills reaches for his phone, texts Powell. “How recently did she do these searches?” Mills asks.

  “In the two weeks leading up to her murder,” Myers says. “And a little further back than that.”

  “How much further?”

  “Maybe a month.”

  Powell enters the office, pulls up a chair. Mills gives her a brief update on Myers’s discovery. “Whose body would she want to exhume?” Powell asks the room.

  “I don’t know,” Myers says. “Maybe her own.”

  “Her own?” Powell challenges.

  “Yeah. You know, maybe she figured someone would rush to bury her before we could find the truth.”

  “Maybe,” Mills says. “But that assumes she knew her life was in danger. I think we need to stick with what we know, not with mere speculation.”

  “What do you mean?” Myers asks.

  “You know what I mean, Morty. We have to stick to what we know about the dead people in her life.”

  Myers laughs. “Well, the
only dead person she refers to on her computer is her husband. She saved his obituary. She emailed a cemetery, a funeral home, a florist, you know, to make all the arrangements. She saved photos of them together.”

  “Nobody else close to her died?” Mills asks.

  “There are no files that reference anybody else who died,” Myers replies.

  “I’m guessing it’s her husband,” Mills says, aware of the annoyance creeping into his voice. “Let’s go with that proposition. Maybe someone rushed to bury her husband, or maybe she was rushed to bury him. And now she regrets it.”

  “Wasn’t it a heart attack?” Powell asks.

  “It was,” Preston says.

  “I think I need another visit with Jillian Canning,” Mills tells them.

  For the balance of the meeting, Mills alternates between paying attention and imagining the lump. The lump. Kelly’s lump. It sits in the corner of the room, behind everyone else, banished there on a stool. It throbs and pulsates. Sickening and sickened. Purple, veiny, and bruised. He looks at it, looks away. He looks at it a few minutes later, still there. It goes like that while they reconstruct, at least in theory, access to the Canning home. If the perp went in through the residents’ lane, he’d need a remote. If the perp is a resident of the community, which just feels unlikely, he’d have a remote. If not, perhaps the perp drove in with a resident or with Viveca herself. Unless she gave a remote to someone else, like the housekeeper, a house sitter, someone. If. Unless. If. If. If not. Unless. Unless. “The Dali,” Mills says. “It’s gone. According to her kids it disappeared upon her death. Someone wanted it. According to the victim’s own files, there’s another layer of possibility. There is likely a key associated with the painting. Presumably the key has gone the way of the Dali. How are we coming with the warrant for the gallery?”

  “Probably tomorrow,” Preston says.

  “You think someone stole the painting to get at the key?” Powell asks. “Or just took the painting for its intrinsic value, unaware of the key?”

  Mills leans back in his chair, goes palms up with a half shrug. “I have no fucking clue. We don’t even know if there is a key. But I’m curious about that old chest in the gallery and whether the key fits the lock. And I don’t mean that metaphorically.”