Valley of Shadows

by Cooper, Steven

  “Gus, please . . .” That’s Billie pleading.

  Aaliyah shakes her head. “No, I was blindfolded.”

  “But you’re in prison? An actual prison?”

  “Figuratively and literally,” Aaliyah whispers. “I can’t let them know we’re talking. All I know is I’m in a small room, like a shoebox, and I can’t get out.”

  “I’m going to help you,” Gus tells her. He doesn’t know how. Has no clue. But what is he supposed to say?

  “C’mon, Gus . . . This is freaking me out.” Again, Billie.

  “Any chance you’re in a bunker, Aaliyah?”

  “Could be. But I don’t remember going underground . . .”

  Billie begins to sing. At first, gently, softly. Then she begins to climb the scales of rock ’n’ roll. Her voice goes from ethereal to mighty, from sweeps of sand to a percussive tsunami. Then Billie twirls around the room as she sings, like she’s performing, like she’s at the center of the stage under the lights, glowing like a phantom angel.

  And Aaliyah disappears.

  “Aaliyah . . .” Gus calls.

  “It’s me. Goddamnit, Gus!”

  “I’m sorry, Billie. I was having a visit.”

  “A visit or a vision?”

  “Both. This vision came in the form of a visit.” He tells her about Aaliyah’s disappearance.

  “Oh, God. That’s awful,” Billie says.

  “Yes. It is.”

  “And you know where she is?”

  “No. I don’t. I can’t get there. At least not yet.”

  “Dinner?” she asks.

  “No,” he says. “I don’t have an appetite. I think I need to leave.” She nods, smiles weakly. Her eyes, fully her own now, not Aaliyah’s, turn sad and almost mournful. She comes forward and grabs both of Gus’s hands in hers, as if she’s asking him to dance. But she’s not. She stands there holding him. Her hair falls forward, tresses of it cascading. “I don’t know what to say,” she says.

  “Don’t say anything. There are no words that need to be said.” “OK.”

  “OK. I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  He promises to be in touch, nothing else. She promises the same. Then he leaves. And he leaves most of it all in the room. With her.

  39

  Today is Friday. Either the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning. The morning Mills dreaded, the day he resisted. The clock and the calendar are ruthless. They go through the familiar maze of administrative nonsense: main registration, surgical registration—

  Do you have a living will?

  A healthcare surrogate?

  Repeat your date of birth.

  Please sign this form.

  And this form.

  Are you allergic to latex?

  Please sign this form.

  Please repeat your date of birth.

  And initial here.

  Now, here, in the pre-op room, they’re facing different faces. It’s as if the hospital called in a different crew. Different nurses, different techs, different people probing, all except Dr. Susan Waxler, who’s already come in to say “hello.” The dress under her lab coat was a gauzy free-flowing Sahara desert thing that fell just below her knees. It cinched at the waist with a thin piece of rope from which dangled tiny bronze bells. She ring-ringed softly as she came and went.

  Mills’s phone rings. It’s Powell. They have the warrant to search the C-ARC.

  “The judge looked at the gallery break-in, the Canning homicide, even the Aaliyah Jones details, and signed off,” she says. “With some limitations.”

  For whatever reason, the warrant prohibits the removal of any religious texts, as well as the removal of religious ornaments or artifacts from the walls or displays. Peculiar. But fine. Ornaments and artifacts are not exactly within the scope of the investigation. With the exception, perhaps, of the old skeleton key.

  “I’m taking it out of evidence,” Powell says. “I’m happy to bust down doors, but I’d rather see if this key fits.”

  “Of course,” Mills says. “What time?”

  “Sooner the better. I was hoping by noon. Maybe even 11.”

  “Shit. Let me get back to you.”

  “Don’t leave your wife,” Powell says. “I’ll never speak to you again if you do.”

  “Like you have a choice.”

  “You do,” she says and hangs up.

  Yeah. The choice. How can there even be a choice? Kelly in the bed next to him, the two of them in this box of a room, not even a room, a large cubicle with a curtain. It suddenly feels, even though Mills knows this can’t be true, that all the questions of life and death must be answered here. He can’t think straight. She doesn’t look like a victim. She’s very much alive, with her sparkling eyes, her indomitable smile. She’s not wearing makeup and she is so much more beautiful as herself, just like this.

  “The church warrant?” she asks him.

  “Yep.”

  “Ready?”

  “Yep.”

  “You going?”

  “Of course not.”

  He’s sitting in a chair as close to her bedside as he can without colliding. “Of course you are,” she says. “You’re no help in the operating room.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?” she asks, like the tough attorney she is.

  “I would never leave you here. What if something happens?” “Nothing’s going to happen,” she insists. “You don’t die from cancer in the OR.”

  “You don’t know that,” he says.

  “I’m pretty sure,” she argues. “Besides, even if I did die in the OR, what use would you be then? You’d rush in to revive me? Come on, Alex . . .”

  He grabs her hand. “Could we not talk like this? A husband doesn’t leave his wife alone in the hospital.”

  “She’s not alone,” says a nurse who comes through the curtain. She’s a husky woman with a husky voice. Contrary to what her profession might suggest, she obviously smokes. She has red hair pulled back into a frizzy ponytail, evenly pink skin, and a generously distributed constellation of freckles. She must be sixty.

  “I’m Nancy,” she says. “I’ll be your pre-op nurse. Everything good?” “Fine,” Kelly replies.

  “Good. Everything good with you?” the nurse asks Mills.

  “Yes,” he answers, nervous. She’s a good interrogator, this nurse named Nancy.

  “OK,” she says. “I just thought I heard the sound of two lovebirds arguing . . .”

  Kelly laughs. “My husband’s a cop. He has an important case he’s working on. He needs to leave but he won’t leave.”

  “Really?” the nurse asks, her eyebrows skyward.

  “She’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to leave her.”

  Hands on her hips, the nurse says, “Well, you’ll be here a while. The doctor’s backed up. What time was your surgery scheduled for?” “Eleven,” Kelly says.

  Nancy offers an ironic smile. “OK, sure. We’re looking at 12:30 or 1.” She has an accent. Shoowah. Wehyah lookin’ at twelve-thuhrty aw one.

  Mills looks at his watch. Ten forty-five. “I can’t execute a search warrant in two hours.”

  “Two hours is conservative,” the nurse says. “If the surgeon is running behind now, he’ll continue to run behind.”

  Ow-wahs. Consuhhvative. Suhhgeon.

  “Where is that accent from?” Mills asks the woman.

  “Boston. Can’t you tell?”

  “Yeah. I was thinking maybe New York or around there.”

  “Boston. Not New York,” she says with an emphatic nod.

  Nurse Nancy adjusts something in Kelly’s IV. Then she attaches something to Kelly’s fingertip and watches a small screen. Pulse, maybe. Mills can’t keep up, and he doesn’t care to ask. This stuff all looks routine. The scary shit happens in the OR. Nancy pats him on the shoulder. “If I can get you to move for a sec. I need to get in here . . .”

  Mills shuffles the chair ba
ck and watches as Nancy changes out a tube attached to Kelly’s arm. “What are you putting in her veins?” he asks.

  “Just electrolytes for now. She’ll get the heavier stuff later.”

  As Nancy backs away, Kelly turns to her husband and says, “Now, you need to leave, Alex.”

  He shuffles back. He addresses both of them, as if Nancy is an older sister or an aunt. “Look, I have perfectly capable people who can execute this warrant. My team is the best. I do not need to be there, especially if it means leaving you here alone with all your anxiety about the surgery.”

  Kelly rolls toward him. “What if I told you that you were making me more anxious?”

  Nancy bends forward, intervening. “I’ve seen that.”

  Mills says, “No.”

  “If you sit here worried about the search, you’re going to drive me crazy.”

  Nurse Nancy leans in again. “Forgive me for meddling,” she says. “But when you come into our house, you’re family. So, I’ll make a deal with you, Mr. Mills. You go. Give me your cell phone number. I will personally call you and text you when she’s ready to go.”

  Mills shakes his head. “I’d need a thirty-minute warning, at least.”

  “Fine,” Nancy says. “Thirty minutes.”

  “And in the meantime, she’s just going to lie here alone and worry?” “Who says I’m worrying?”

  “Of course you’re worrying,” Mills tells his wife. “You’re human. Yes, you won your case yesterday and that was a superhuman feat. But today you’re here, babe, and it’s OK to worry.”

  “Get him out of here,” Kelly tells the nurse.

  They all laugh, though Mills hears a resignation in his.

  “If it makes you feel better,” Nancy says, “I’m going to draw the curtain, and I’m going to give her something to relax anyway. A mild sedative. And she won’t give a hoot where you are. She won’t even notice you’re gone . . .”

  Kelly says, “I don’t need a sedative for that.”

  Mills says, “Very funny. Are you OK with this?”

  Kelly says, “I’m more than OK.”

  And Nurse Nancy says, “Give her a kiss. Tell her you love her. And get out of my way.”

  Mills gets up, leans forward, brushes her forehead with his hand, and plants his lips on hers for a kiss. He says, “I love you beyond reason. You are my everything of everything.”

  Then he leaves the room with an ache in his chest.

  Gus wakes as if from a fever dream. A morbid sense of dissolution covers him like sweat. He eyes the ceiling. It’s real. It’s permanent. There will be no passage. Next, he takes in the four walls and the thump of his heartbeat. At the same time, a loneliness descends. No. He wills the mortality of love away from him, back into the ether. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and resolves to snap out of it. And yet he walks in a cloud, barely steady on his feet as he steps into the bathroom, feels the coolness of the tile against his feet, the rest of his body pasty and damp. He looks in the mirror and recognizes the simplicity of who he is, just a man, a mortal, a living breathing sentence of subject, verb, predicate, and period. Everything has an expiration date.

  “Snap out it, August!” he says to the mirror.

  There is no response, but his reflection disappears. In its place, Kelly Mills. She’s weeping, sobbing really. A flood of tears washes over her face. There is blood everywhere. Rivers of blood. The vision startles him from head to toe. As his body convulses, it convulses with the recognition that he must go. He showers quickly, towels off, dresses. He runs Ivy outside. Then he’s off. He’s in his car, still in a trance. He’s racing a demon. His phone rings.

  “Dude.”

  “Morning, Gus.”

  “Everything all right with Kelly?”

  “That’s why I’m calling.”

  A chill swirls up his spine. “Oh shit.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing,” Alex says. “But today’s the day. And I’ve had to make the worst decision.”

  Alex tells him about the execution of the search warrant at the C-ARC, how he had to leave Kelly alone at the hospital. How he’s worried beyond belief. “It’s a huge favor, man, but if you could head over there and, you know, just be there on standby, I’d be indebted to you, like, forever.”

  Gus laughs. “I’m heading there now.”

  “To the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I just had a vibe. Like a vibe that I was needed.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I am. I’m calling in sick today and I’ll be there with Kelly. Now you can go focus fully on your job, Alex.”

  “I just love you, man.”

  “I know you do.”

  Alex lets out a cascade of “thank you”s, and Gus tells him countless times not to worry before hanging up and watching for the hospital exit. In an instant, his arm squeezes tight. Something jabs his shoulder, the pain radiating down his back. He tries to stretch out his arm to release the tension, but the movement only ignites a fire. He supposes if he’s having a heart attack, he’s heading to the right place.

  Mills takes the 10 to the 202. All he sees in the rearview mirror is angst and a towering hospital. Both loom. The billions of regrets hover. They’re following him, mostly asking him why he can’t fix Kelly. He’s used to fixing things. He wants to get under her hood and rewire her insides, rearrange the blood cells, give her a transfusion if that’s what it takes, but he doesn’t have the tools; he has to admit that. No tools and no words. He can’t even conjure up the right words to comfort her. Everything he says comes out sounding like Grey’s Anatomy, clichéd, cue the violins for fuck’s sake. The regrets sit in the backseat as he drives, second-guessing his every move. Truth is, uncertainty is uncertainty; there’s no way around it.

  At least there’s Gus. Gus to the rescue. Better than a brother.

  GPS has him at the C-ARC in thirteen minutes. He passes one of those signs on the highway that reports the time and temperature. 11:07 a.m.

  101 degrees.

  They’ll all be indoors by the time the heat reaches 108 as forecasted by the local meteorologists, most of whom are still engaged in that frying-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk sideshow. Mills has called Powell to mobilize the squad and the additional units needed for the search. They’ll meet him at the C-ARC by 11:30.

  He dials Kelly’s cell phone. He gets her voice mail, doesn’t leave a message.

  When Mills pulls into the C-ARC parking lot, he finds his squad and six officers, a photographer, and a service van, which will be used for whatever might be seized.

  “Morning folks,” he says. “Let’s get out of the heat.”

  The others follow him into the lobby. He hears a flute, a violin, doesn’t remember the piping in of pacifying music here in the soaring atrium, but he appreciates the irony. He tells the receptionist that his team has come to execute a search warrant.

  “I’ll call the pastor for you,” she says.

  “No need,” Mills tells her.

  Mills advances for the main sanctuary/auditorium with the others in tow. The receptionist shrieks, “You can’t go in there!”

  She is uniformly ignored. Inside the massive hall, Mills choreographs the search, telling the others what to cover. Some will take the administrative offices; others will search the study and library areas. The rest will follow Mills to the underground described to him by the contractor, David Patrick. “Good luck,” he tells the team.

  As he’s approaching the expansive stage, Mills can hear a voice thundering in his wake, “Wait just a minute! Wait! Stop!”

  He turns and sees whom he expects to see. He sees the elegant Gleason Norwood racing down the aisle toward him. The man is wearing a shiny silk shirt with diamond cufflinks, the diamonds refracting the overhead light in a shower of shooting stars. Gone, however, is the diamond smile. “Just exactly what do you think you’re doing?” he bellows.

  “We’re executing a search warrant,” Mi
lls replies. “Exactly.”

  “For what?”

  Mills hands him a copy of the warrant. “Read it. It explains everything. We have work to do.”

  “Just because my son’s in custody doesn’t mean I’ve done anything wrong.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “How dare you implicate me!”

  Mills gives the man a hard stare, a fierce meeting of the eyes, and says, “I’m not the one implicating you, Gleason. Apparently you need to have another conversation with your son.”

  Mills climbs the stairs to the stage.

  “You can’t go up there,” Norwood insists.

  “Read the warrant,” Mills tells him again and crosses the stage. It occurs to him to look out to the audience and he can hardly believe his eyes. From this perspective, the place is cavernous. This is a stadium for believers, faithful, followers, or fools. Who knows? Who knows what brings thousands of people here to pray? He can’t fathom.

  Something squeezes the pit of his stomach.

  When the others are on the stage as well, he tells them to look for a break in the floor, a cutout, perhaps, a lift that rises from below.

  “Who’s your supervisor?” Norwood demands to know.

  “Just call the chief,” Mills replies without turning back to the preacher. “You’ve done it before.”

  “Found it,” the photographer says.

  Mills drifts her way, finds her pointing her finger in a circular direction to the floor. Sure enough, there’s a large oval cutout there, about five feet in diameter. He can’t begin to guess the circumference, and there’s no need; he can see that only one person at a time can ride the lift safely. At the front of the oval lay a button about the size of a taillight. “I’m going down first. I’ll send the lift back up. One at a time please. Take it all the way to the bottom.”

  “You absolutely cannot go down there,” Gleason shrieks. He’s now on the stage, pushing away the officers.

  “You touch one of my officers again, sir, and I’ll arrest you,” Mills warns him. “If you don’t think this search will end in your arrest, don’t tempt your fate.”

  Mills is proud of that remark. He doesn’t know if it means anything, but he quite likes the way it stops the preacher in his tracks. He probably has enough to arrest Norwood now, but he has a hunch that Norwood, unlike his son, will clam up after Miranda. He needs Norwood talking, blabbing, frantic enough to implicate himself. Mills taps his foot on the button of the oval cutout and down he goes. He’s in a grey cylinder tube. He’s whooshed one floor down. Then he taps the button again, and he’s lowered to the bottom. When the tube slides open, he exits into a narrow hallway which is dimly lit and dark at both ends, like a tunnel. He feels as if he’s much deeper below the earth than he actually is. It’s the reddish orange glow down here that gives this passageway a far-below-the-crust kind of feel. He reaches into the lift with his foot, touches the button and sends the thing upward.