Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  She opens the book, snuggles into him. He puts a hand on her lap. “Go on . . .”

  “‘First realm: no charge. All welcome. Prepare for Interview. Interview. Advancing: $500. Study. Prayer. Coaching. Review. Test. Second Realm: $1,000. Study. Prayer. Coaching. Service to Others. Personality Encounter with Committee. Review. Test. Third Realm: $3,500. Legion Wings. Study. Prayer. Sweat Equity. Work Assignment. Coaching. Review. Truth Analysis. Test. Fourth Realm: $7,500.’”

  “Stop.”

  “What?”

  “What the fuck does any of this mean?” Mills asks his wife. “Personality Encounter? Truth Analysis?”

  “I can read you the descriptions,” she says. “A personality encounter is a series of sessions with those on higher realms to determine if the pathway is clear for the lower member to move onward and upward to the next realm. The encounter, and I’m quoting here, babe, is a ‘robust, high-energy, volatile experience that identifies your inner core to you and, more importantly, to the church.’”

  “Holy fuck.”

  “I don’t think that’s what they have in mind, Alex, but yeah, this shit is nutballs.”

  He squeezes her, suddenly grateful for everything, but grateful mostly that they’ve been spared the madness that sucks so many people into the wilderness of idiots.

  “Can you define Truth Analysis?”

  She mocks a groan and says, “If you insist. ‘The Truth Analysis audits how honest your inner core has been during the Personality Encounter in the Second Realm. Before you rise to the Fourth Realm, you must pass multiple Truth Analyses in the Third Realm. It is a safeguard for you and the church. It strengthens the filaments we will use for your wings . . .”

  “OK! Enough! I can’t take it,” Mills begs.

  She tosses the book on the floor below them, and it lands with an ominous thud. But Mills laughs. He laughs his ass off, the effect of which is apparently contagious, because now Kelly too is roaring. And she collapses on him. She says she’s a little sore in the armpit from the surgery but otherwise feeling good. He doesn’t know if she’s saying that for his benefit or not, but it doesn’t matter; they’re staring into each other’s eyes and cracking each other up. They writhe there on the couch. He knows they could seamlessly slip from laughter to tears, but for right now, anyway, they’ve boldly reset the agenda. And the coffee’s ready.

  Beatrice Vossenheimer greets him at the door with a smile as wide as the valley. He realizes that’s hyperbole, but her face is worthy of the hyperbole. She’s wearing a beret and a lacy shawl. He eyes her, amused, but he doesn’t ask. Beatrice already knows what Gus is lamenting. He can tell. It’s in the soul of her eyes. He kisses her on the cheek and brushes past her. They sit in the room she calls her study, the one with a wall of books on one side and a wall of glass that looks out to Camel-back on the other. Gus appreciates the vast light in here. Part of it is the spill of sunshine through the window; part of it is the optimism that comes with learning. He hands her The Secret Garden.

  “Viveca Canning’s daughter gave it to Alex,” Gus explains.

  “What a strange selection.”

  “It was random, I think. She has an impressive library.”

  “I see . . .”

  First Beatrice flips through the pages, pausing here and there to read, as if she’s sampling the goods at a bookstore or library. Then she closes the book and runs her hands all over the front, the back, the spine, making a tactile kind of assessment of her vibes. “Wow, there are a lot of secrets here that have nothing to do with a garden.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been getting the same kind of vibe. Not just from the book. But from the woman’s house as well . . . and her life in general.”

  Beatrice peers across the room, beyond him. “I would say she was afraid of the secrets.”

  “Good guess.”

  She clears her throat.

  “You know what I mean, Bea.”

  She nods. “She knew things that she wasn’t supposed to know. Yet she was still obsessed with unearthing the truth.”

  “I’m confused,” Gus admits.

  “She discovered things she wasn’t supposed to discover, and she wasn’t done. What she discovered only forced her to look deeper.”

  “I keep seeing tunnels,” Gus tells her. “Strange tunnels that lead somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

  “There are tunnels.”

  “You saw them too?”

  She nods slowly, then she takes a deep breath and gets up. She crosses the room to the windows and says, “Yes, I saw them.”

  “But you attribute them to Viveca?”

  “Yes,” she says. “To whom do you attribute them?”

  “I thought Viveca, at first. But I get a stronger vibe about Francesca Norwood, the preacher’s wife.”

  “The Church of Angels Rising?”

  “Yes.”

  Standing there at the glass, still in her beret and shawl, Beatrice is a street urchin in silhouette. “Well, it is the church.”

  “You say that so matter-of-factly.”

  “It is a fact,” she says. “You don’t need to be a psychic to know that the church looks suspicious.”

  “That’s what the cops assume,” Gus says. “So what are we doing?” “Validating those assumptions.”

  Gus shakes his head. “I don’t know. The pieces don’t add up for me yet.”

  “You told me about a painting, the Dali, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Has it been recovered?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “The Dali is key,” she says.

  “Right. I kind of assumed that. The cops kind of assume that. I think we’re going around in circles.”

  In silhouette, she twirls in front of the window. “Don’t begrudge a psychic her circles,” she says and returns to her chair opposite Gus. “I’m sorry I don’t have all the answers right now.”

  “I wasn’t expecting you would.”

  “Maybe the Dali is in a tunnel.”

  “Or buried underground,” Gus says.

  “But how would that benefit the killer?”

  “Burying the evidence?”

  “I don’t know,” Beatrice says. “Unless Viveca Canning hid a message in the painting . . .”

  “And destroy a masterpiece?”

  Beatrice shakes her head, closes her eyes. “No, no, no. Not in the painting. Maybe under the painting.”

  Then he too closes his eyes, feels his head roll. He marches down a hallway of possibilities, searching. “No, not in the painting. Not under the painting. Behind the painting.”

  “Behind the painting . . .” she repeats.

  “Yes,” he says. “Definitely behind the painting.” He opens his eyes. “Thanks for the prompt, Bea. I have a really good hunch that it’s not the painting that has something to do with her murder, it’s something behind the painting. I was there. I was staring at the wall.”

  “In your visions?”

  “Yes. But also in the house. I stood right in front of the spot where the painting hung. Maybe there’s a secret in the wall.”

  “In the wall? Or on the wall?”

  “In the wall. I would have seen something on the wall. Maybe there’s some kind of secret note, or map, or weapon stashed inside the wall.”

  “Then why steal the painting in the first place?” Beatrice asks.

  “Oh, damn,” he says. “You’re right. Then maybe there’s a note or something attached to the back of the Dali. Or instructions scrawled across the back of the frame.”

  She smiles her valley-wide smile again. “Yes. That’s it. I think you’re getting closer.”

  “We’re getting closer.”

  “To dinner.”

  It’s only about 5:00. So, it’ll be an early dinner. Gus drifts into the kitchen after her. She’s pulling vegetables from the refrigerator. “What are we having?” he asks.

  “It’s too damn hot to cook,” she says. “So I bought some grilled chicken this
morning from AJ’s. I’ll put it on a salad.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He sets the table. He peers out the windows of the dining area at the changing colors of the valley. It’s too early for sunset for this glow of orange and pink. Gus searches for the wind and, sure enough, he sees it out there scooping up dirt and dust in curvaceous funnels, creating a racket of pebbles on the patio and against the glass. “I think a dust storm’s coming,” he says.

  “I got caught in a dust storm a couple of weeks ago and it almost blew me off the road,” she tells him from the kitchen. “It’s been an active monsoon season. Wine with dinner?”

  “Nah, just water for me.”

  “Put on the news in the family room. Maybe we’ll catch the weather.”

  Gus doesn’t see the point in catching the weather. Either there will be a dust storm or there won’t. There’s not much they can do about it anyway. It’s not like in LA where you can stand under a doorway during an earthquake or hide under a table so you won’t get crushed. Unless the table collapses. Which it probably will. But they don’t tell you that. They just tell you to get under a table. Because there’s only room for so many people under a doorway. Earthquakes never bothered him. He thinks it’s a good thing to be shaken to the core.

  “Gus, are you obsessing about something?” Beatrice calls to him.

  “Obsessing? No. Why?”

  “You’ve gone awfully quiet in here,” she says, entering the room, carrying a huge glass bowl of salad. “Sit.”

  They dig in. The newscast in the next room babbles on about nothing. The windows sustain a punch of wind and Beatrice nearly jumps from her chair. “It’ll pass,” Gus assures her.

  “Look at the sky,” she says.

  He can’t really see the sky. But that’s her point. All that’s out there is a billowing wall of dust. “It’s a good thing they had caves out here.”

  “Who?”

  “The ancient tribes of the desert.”

  She smiles. “Always looking out for others, Gus. Even when they’re ancestral.”

  He laughs.

  “Aaliyah Jones remains missing tonight, and her family here at Channel 4 is asking for your help. If you’re a frequent viewer, surely her face is familiar to you. If not, please watch the following images as we tell you what we know.”

  Gus turns to the television, craning his neck.

  “What is it?” Beatrice asks.

  “That reporter. She’s the one you referred to me.”

  “I referred her?”

  “Well, Hannah did. Same thing,” Gus says. “She’s the one who was investigating the Church of Angels Rising. She hasn’t been seen in about a week.”

  “Phoenix police first announced her disappearance on Thursday, though she had failed to report to work several days prior,” the anchorwoman continues. “We’ve learned that her car has been recovered at a vacant business near Thomas and 44th Street. Police are not offering any theories about Aaliyah’s disappearance, and we cannot speculate about the reasons behind it. As you can see, she’s an African American woman, about 5-7, brown eyes, and shoulder-length wavy brown hair. She sometimes wears it pulled up and sometimes she applies gold highlights.”

  Beatrice pours herself another glass of wine. Gus likes the gulping sound the wine makes when it sloshes into the goblet. He doesn’t know why. He thinks it reminds him of Billie, maybe, the way she pours wine with abandon, like it’s a way of life, not a ceremony.

  “It’s chilling,” Beatrice says. “I heard about it a few days ago, but I didn’t make the connection.”

  “Billie?”

  “No,” she groans. “The woman on the news.”

  Gus shakes his head vigorously, coming back to the moment. “Right. Aaliyah. She came to me. I connected her with Alex. And then she disappeared.”

  “The church,” Beatrice says, shrugging.

  “Yeah, the church. Or anyone else who felt threatened by her investigative work.”

  “I’m going with the church.”

  “Please, if you have any information regarding Aaliyah’s disappearance, we urge you to call Crimestoppers at 1-800-555-1177, or call us here at Channel 4 at 1-800-555-4444.”

  Gus pushes back from the table.

  Beatrice looks at him, a sagacious gleam in her eyes. She knows what’s coming next.

  He turns his chair around, away from the approaching storm. “Now I’m getting something,” he says to Beatrice. “I’m absolutely getting something.”

  “Where are you?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know yet. But it’s strong, this vibration, whatever it is.”

  “Close your eyes, Gus.”

  “They are closed.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “Oh.” He does as he’s told. He closes his eyes. He lets the vibration rise the full length of his body, and inside this vortex he sees her. I see her. “I see her now in a dark room,” he tells Beatrice, “on the floor, in the corner. She’s weeping. She’s beautiful, but frightened—I don’t know. I don’t know. She and I . . . she and I . . . There’s something deadly calling. I have no effing clue what this means . . .”

  “She’s dying?” Beatrice asks him.

  He feels his foot tapping the floor. “She will die. They have her.” “Who?”

  “The church, I think. That’s my gut more than my vision.”

  “But did they know about her investigation?”

  “Of course they did. They know everything.”

  “Can you see where they have her?”

  “No.”

  “Go back to your vision.”

  He does. There’s that amber light again. The amber light of the tunnel. But he looks to the left, and then to the right, and he can’t see her. He doesn’t know which way to follow. He tries to get back to that room where she’s sprawled on the floor but he’s lost. His visions are getting crossed, as they tend to do: the tunnel, the room, her fear, his apprehension, her beauty, his darkness, and the inevitability of everything. He feels something land in his hands. He recognizes it. It’s the key Alex had taken into evidence from Viveca Canning’s vault. He knows viscerally that this key, this old brass key, is the tangible link between Viveca Canning and Aaliyah Jones.

  “She’s in prison,” he says aloud.

  “Who?”

  “Aaliyah.”

  “Prison? Like a criminal.”

  He opens his eyes. “No. Not criminal. A hostage.” He tells Beatrice about the key.

  “Now all you have to do is find the door, Gus. Find the door.” “Jesus,” he mumbles. “Maybe it’s all a metaphor. I think the vision’s a metaphor. She’s already dead, I think. But the key. It unlocks whatever it was she was looking for.”

  Beatrice rises. She comes to his side. She cradles his head in her arms. And she rocks him. “So much, Gus. It’s so much. Why don’t you just call Alex and step back?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

  “I have a big event in Atlanta next weekend,” she tells him. “A book signing and a workshop. You should come.”

  He gets up, starts clearing the table. The wind outside is crazy and disorganized. “I can’t, Bea. I’m heading back to LA for the weekend to pick up where we left off.”

  “What does that mean?”

  There’s no wriggling out of a conversation with Beatrice, so he tells her about Cam Taylor’s visit with Billie.

  “She’s not sleeping with him, if that’s what you’re worried about.” “Is that a psychic thing, or a woman thing?”

  “It’s both,” she replies.

  “That’s not even the point. Whether or not she’s cheating on me, she’ll always be married to her music. She’ll never marry me.”

  Beatrice turns on the disposal and it starts to ravenously chew. “Is that what you want, Gus? Really?” she asks as the discarded remains scream for dear life.

  He shrugs and says, “I think so.”

  “Then you d
on’t know so . . .”

  “What?”

  “You wouldn’t just think so if you knew so. There would be that voice inside you that just says, ‘Yes, Gus, this is what I want.’ It affirms.” “OK.”

  The disposal grinds to a stop.

  “Marrying her won’t change the dynamic. It won’t remove the other lover.”

  Gus returns to the dining area where he wipes down the table. “I don’t want to remove her music. Her music is everything. And I love it. It’s really the only thing she knows to do, and she does it well, and this is who she is. She is that and nothing else. And I get that. I get who I’m with.”

  Beatrice approaches from behind. “You want to be a husband?”

  “I . . . the voice inside me says . . . I’ve been a lone adventurer for a long time.”

  “But you two have been together for a couple of years.”

  He faces her. “Right. You know, I don’t want to talk about this, Bea.”

  “OK. How about you help me rehang a mirror in my gym?” “Sure.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a good glimpse of yourself.”

  He shakes his head. “You don’t have a mirror to rehang, do you?” She drifts away without answering.

  “And let’s get back to Buck Aaron at Severe Weather Center 4 for an update on the destructive dust storm passing through the valley at this hour. Buck, should people still be sheltering in place...?”

  32

  They re finally burying Viveca Canning.

  Jillian had texted Powell this morning, and this is the news waiting for Mills when he gets off the elevator. “One o’clock. Valley Vista Memorial Gardens,” Powell tells him.

  Mills is familiar with Valley Vista, the luxury cemetery and crematorium serving the valley’s ultrawealthy and ultradead; it figured briefly into a case last year when bodies started turning up at area graveyards, the victims forced to dig their own plots before they were bludgeoned to death.

  Nice memories. Around every corner.

  “Let’s leave at 12:30,” Mills tells her. “I’ll let Preston know. Myers can stay here on cyberpatrol.”

  In the meantime, Mills drinks a cup and a half of municipal coffee, wincing with every sip, and meanders to the office of Jake Woods, where he asks the sergeant about Aaliyah Jones’s thumb drive.