Dig Your Grave

by Steven Cooper

  “Four hours? Where the hell was he?” Powell asks him.

  “In one of the bars,” Sloane replies. “Hammered.”

  “Fucking people,” Mills mutters.

  “Happens all the time,” Sloane says. “I thought I’d get back to my Maserati search, if you’d like.”

  Mills turns to him. “Why don’t you wait until we’re done with the video? If we see the car, we’ll know exactly where to search. We can go together.”

  Sloane nods, then retreats to another section of the office. Powell tells Mills that she’s done with the garage at terminal 4 and is ready to screen the East Economy lot. “Cool,” Mills says. “I just started West Economy.”

  Ford F-150 . . . eight minutes later Chevy Bolt . . . fifteen minutes later BMW 7 series . . . seven minutes later Nissan Pathfinder . . . thirteen minutes later Toyota Corolla . . . eleven minutes later Maserati.

  White Maserati. He hits “Rewind.” GR8LOOK.

  “Got it,” Mills says. “I fucking got it.”

  Powell rolls over to his side. “West Economy?”

  “Yup.” He’s nearly salivating.

  “What time?”

  “Twelve eleven a.m.” His skin’s on fire.

  “The killer was here,” Powell says, rolling back to her desk.

  “He was here. He might be long gone. Or this whole Sky Harbor thing could just be a smoke screen,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  Sloane jumps to his feet and offers to drive them over to West Economy. Mills rides shotgun, Powell in the back seat. Once they reach the parking lot, they begin a slow-motion reconnaissance mission to find the doctor’s car. They drift up and down every row, scouting the vehicles on both sides. The rows are long and numerous. Every space, it seems, is taken. An hour later, they’re only in row G, inching toward row H. Mills looks at his watch. Kelly is going to have a fucking fit. Up and down. Every row. He suspects a liver transplant would be faster than this operation.

  “Maybe I should get out on foot,” he tells the others in the car. “I’ll take the far end of the lot while you guys continue this slow march of death.”

  “Oh, come on, Alex. It’s not that bad,” Powell says.

  “You don’t have a wife,” he says.

  She mutters something under her breath, and he says, “What was that?”

  And she says, “Never mind.”

  Sloane stops the car. “Go ’head, Detective. We’ll meet up with you in a bit.”

  So, under a magnificent dome of blue, that warm desert breeze fluttering around him, Mills is on foot. There’s engine noise all around and the confectionary smell of citrus trees bearing fruit. And jet fuel.

  He duly notes every car he passes. His process moves faster than the crawling surveillance in Sloane’s cruiser. He doesn’t even glimpse at cars that aren’t white. He can accelerate accordingly. White cars only. Maseratis only. One vanity plate. This is like finding a haystack in a needle. He reaches the back rows of the lot where they join together in the cove of a “U.” Nothing here. So he works his way back toward the front, down the other side of the lot, still unexplored terrain. He’s surprised to see so many white cars here. As if they’re purposely goading him, mocking him. But that’s not it, he knows. It’s Kelly. He looks at his watch and realizes that if he doesn’t make it home within the hour Kelly is going to be pissed. And when he looks back up, a white Maserati is staring back at him. Staring him down. Daring him to celebrate a victory. He freezes for a moment. Row L, space 111. He texts Powell, telling her to meet up there. Yes. Oh, yes. You mother fucking Maserati.

  He snaps multiple pictures of the car. He approaches the vehicle, circles it. Confirms the ridiculous license plate. The gust of his sigh could change the wind direction. Powell and Sloane pull up and park in the middle of the lane.

  “Nice work,” Powell tells Mills when she gets out of the car. “I called to get some techs out here.”

  “Thanks. We’re going to have to control the crime scene as best as we can with people coming and going from the lot,” Mills says.

  “I’d close the lot,” Sloane says, “but Sunday is a big day for exits. And it basically would take a proclamation from the mayor to close anything.”

  Mills thinks about the crime scene in front of him, considers it possibly disturbed already by people who have come and gone since the killer abandoned the Maserati. “Or we just keep this in perspective,” he tells the others. “Let’s have the techs do basic processing here. It’s far more important to get it back to the lab where we can get inside it. I want every inch of the interior under a microscope.”

  “Makes sense,” Powell says. “Want me to call for a flatbed?”

  “No, I’ll handle that after the techs get here,” Mills replies. “But I do have another call to make.”

  He wanders down the last row, no particular aim in sight, and settles arbitrarily against a Lexus. Leaning there, he dials Kelly and begs forgiveness. It doesn’t come easily, only after he promises to build her a castle and do the dishes forever.

  22

  Within a half-mile radius of the PetroGo gas station at Thomas and Sixteenth, there are fifty-two residential homes, six apartment complexes, fourteen businesses, and eight empty storefronts. The report sitting in Alex Mills’s email inbox Monday morning is unremarkable. Patrols had spent much of Thursday and Friday knocking on doors. They interviewed forty-six residents between the homes and the apartments, as well as eight business owners. Many of their knocks went unanswered. Mills scrolls down from page to page of the PDF attachment, mining for any morsel of truth, but there are no truths, at least none pertinent to the case. People often lie to cops in situations like this, not because they have something to hide about the case, more often because they have something to hide about their lives. Squatters, drug addicts, undocumented immigrants, whatever.

  The report is mostly useless. Not one person interviewed by the patrols raises a red flag. No one reports anything suspicious or remembers seeing a vehicle matching the description of Davis Klink’s or Barry Schultz’s automobile. Maybe the BMW, several people told the officers, because those are more common. But certainly not the Maserati. Carl Thompson, owner of Fixit Fast, a computer and cell phone repair shop on Sixteenth, said there might have been an abandoned car or two at PetroGo across the street. A manager at PetroGo, Walt Hardy, disputed that, stating, “A BMW or Maserati wouldn’t just sit here for days.” Steven Ellis, a resident at 1568 East Glenridge, said a Maserati was up on blocks for about a week two doors down. Two doors down, Monica Crowning at 1566 East Glenridge offered a statement telling officers that Mr. Ellis is a meth addict who can’t be trusted and that, at her wages as a Wal-Mart cashier, she could no more afford the front right tire of a Maserati than put up an entire car of that kind on blocks.

  Okay, he’s done. He knows the Maserati was in the neighborhood. And he knows where it ended up. Same for the BMW. He had hoped someone would have seen or heard an argument or, at the very least, seen if either vehicle visited a specific house or business. Both vehicles are now with the lab. He closes out of his email. Logs off the computer. Shakes his head in mild disgust at humanity. Then he calls Gus Parker. “Wakey, wakey,” he says.

  “What time is it?” Gus groans.

  “Eight forty. Are you late for work?”

  “Nah. Just sleeping in. Flew in late last night from LA.”

  “All right, jetsetter, go take a shower and meet me down here at headquarters. I think we should pay a visit to the doctor’s office.”

  “Your doctor?”

  Mills laughs. “Uh, no,” he says. “Schultz. The dead guy. Thought you could conjure something up. If you have the time.”

  “I have to be at work at one,” Gus says.

  “Then I’d get a move on it,” Mills tells him and hangs up.

  Gus arrives in the lobby about forty-five minutes later, clutching a cup of coffee.

  “You awake yet?” Mills asks.

  “This is my first cup,” Gu
s says, lifting his coffee as if he’s making a toast.

  They drive in Mills’s car. On the ride out there, Gus tells him about Richard Knight and Billie’s reaction. At her Malibu house over the weekend, she told Gus she was thinking of selling her Paradise Valley estate.

  “She’s that scared?” Mills asks.

  “I think she’s that fed up.”

  “Do you really think she’ll sell?”

  “I think once Billie puts her mind to something, it’s pretty much a done deal.”

  Mills slows for a stoplight. “So, it sounds like a rather tense weekend in LA.”

  “Yeah,” Gus says. “That’s an adequate description.”

  “Well, fuck.” It’s all Mills can offer for the rest of the drive.

  The five-story building that houses Associated Surgeons at Better You Center reminds Gus of a lavish spa. It’s as if the doctors determined to build a façade worthy of the facelifts engineered inside. That is to say, a layer of beauty, beneath which hide the blood and guts. On the right side of the entryway, a wall of glass block symbolizes to Gus the distortion of the truth while a trough of gushing fountains to the left suggests to him the promise of timeless beauty. A fountain of youth.

  “Are we going in?” Gus asks.

  They’re sitting in the front row of parking spaces with an unobstructed view of the nearly perfect patients going in for more perfection. This isn’t what Gus had expected; he had expected much older people looking to turn back time, or heavier people hoping to trim their waistlines, lose their extra chins, and maybe lift their butts. And there are several of those, to be sure, but most of the women coming and going look like fashion models showing off the spring line of designer boobs.

  “We’re not going in,” Alex tells him. “These people don’t want to talk. Preston’s been here a few times. They’ve completely lawyered up.”

  “You’d think they’d want to help find the doctor’s killer.”

  “This place is all about image,” Alex says. “They don’t want the bad publicity.”

  An image flashes before Gus’s eyes. Suits. An amoeba of suits displacing a corporate lobby. “You’re right,” he says. “It’s the lawyers.”

  “And just to fuck with them we’re going for a search warrant. I’ll take extra delight in turning this place upside down.” Alex snickers. “Even though Schultz probably didn’t leave that night to see a patient, we can’t rule out a link to his practice. But that’s why I brought you here, to see what you can confirm . . . if anything.”

  Gus shifts in his seat. “So we’re just going to sit in the parking lot?”

  “You can get out and walk around,” Alex tells him. “Count the Mercedes, the Porsches, the Jags, if you find that kind of thing fun.”

  Gus opens the door. “See you in a few,” he says.

  He walks the perimeter of the building. His assumption, more so than his clairvoyance, tells him that the patients inside are being pampered beyond belief and that every staff member has his or her own ingratiating gimmick to up-sell the desperately insecure on even more procedures. He stands at the south side of the building, and his attention is drawn to an upper floor. He fixates his gaze on a wall of glass up there. He doesn’t see a vision as much as he senses some kind of trouble the higher his eyes climb. But the glass yields nothing. A Lexus glides into a space nearby. Its door opens, then closes with a cushioned thud. He moves to the east side of the office. The signs say, “Physicians Parking Only,” and he inventories two Mercedes, a Tesla, and a Porsche Cayenne. The vehicles reveal nothing. He tries. He hyperfocuses. But nothing here. Nothing to suggest that Schultz’s partners had any connection to his death. Gus wouldn’t sign an affidavit absolving them of his murder, however; there’s not enough here to be sure either way, just a strong feeling that Schultz’s demise did not intersect with his working life. On the north side of the building the parking lot is deserted. There’s a delivery entrance and a door to a mechanical room. He looks up five stories and sees a rooftop terrace capping the back end of the building. Just as his eyes rest at the pinnacle, he hears someone screaming.

  He looks to his left, then to his right, then to the roof, again. The screams stop. He can’t find the source. He closes his eyes, silently calls for a connection, and listens. First comes a howl, like a tornado storming across a deserted prairie. Then they begin again, the screams. They tumble at him, a cascade of screams, coming down the side of the building. He wants to open his eyes, to study this place more closely, but he keeps them shut and searches more deeply for a vision within. He really has to squeeze his eyes closed to concentrate. The screams persist for a few moments here, and then, like stones skipped from the water’s edge, their echoes fade until the screams are just the plink of a teardrop.

  Gus lifts his arms to the sky.

  He doesn’t know why, but his arms are pulled upward, stretching his muscles. He’s not praising Jesus. This is not exaltation. And then, oh God, he’s meant to catch something. Someone. He’s meant to be the hands of deliverance. A power forces his eyes open into a blinding white light. And there, amid the white light, she falls from the terrace. She flies, she floats, and she falls. It happens in slow motion. Gus rushes for her. He scrambles to catch her. She cries and screams, but she doesn’t make a sound. Gus can’t hear her. The white light is too loud. The light is banging like drums, drowning her out. He can’t catch her. She’s an angel, she’s a child, she’s an apparition.

  Gus can’t catch his breath.

  He watches her final moments as she whooshes, not to the ground, to his surprise, not to a bloody end on the pavement, but instead she falls, as if from a cliff, into the roiling ocean, the water closing all around her, and closing, and closing, until she is gone and the white light recedes.

  “Excuse me, sir. Are you okay?”

  Gus turns around. A woman stands at the delivery entrance. She’s wearing scrubs.

  “Sir? Do you need some help?”

  It takes him a moment, as it often does, to come back. “Uh, no,” he tells her. “I’m fine.”

  She gives him a dubious nod and disappears behind the door.

  Back at Alex’s car, Gus recreates the entire vision for the detective.

  “I know you enough to know this means something,” Alex says.

  Even now, even after all these years since his estrangement from his family, those words for Gus carry more weight than gold. “Can we, maybe, analyze this a little later?” Gus asks. “I feel a little inside out. If you know what I mean.”

  “Like I said, I know you enough.”

  “It’s like I fell from that building, too.”

  “I’m sure in a way you did,” Alex says. “Let’s head back to headquarters.”

  They drive in silence, but back at police headquarters, idling in the parking lot in a space beside Gus’s SUV, Mills says, “My son got caught having sex with his girlfriend.”

  “Rite of passage.”

  “You think?” Mills asks.

  “Yeah,” Gus says. “But, you know, you can influence the passage. Talk to him. Give him a reality check about the consequences. He’ll be fine, maybe even more responsible.”

  “We did. But I’m not sure whether anything we say will change his behavior.”

  “You can’t control his choices,” Gus says. “He’s growing up now. You’ve been great parents. And no parents are perfect, trust me.”

  Mills takes that in for a second. Mulls it over. “Fine. I will,” he says. “But now you trust me. Here’s the plan to avoid your stalker: You need to stay at your house in Phoenix. I’ll get PV to send me copies of their files, and I’ll make a case to get you a ‘special watch.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means putting some extra patrols in your neighborhood,” Mills explains. “I don’t know what the cops in PV are willing to do for you, but if you stay in Phoenix I’ll get you some coverage.”

  Gus nods, wide-eyed. “Thanks. Let me know when I can help you next.�
�� He opens the passenger door.

  “Wait,” Mills says, looking straight ahead. “I’d like you to reconsider carrying a gun.”

  Gus turns to him. “Wow, you too. The cops in PV think I should have a gun.”

  Mills taps the steering wheel with his hands. “They’re right,” he says. “Unless you’re thinking of moving to Malibu full-time, you’re in danger here.”

  Gus sighs heavily. “You really believe that?”

  “Yup.”

  Gus seems to let that soak in for a minute, but then he says, “I don’t do guns. I don’t want one in my house.”

  “What about Billie? Does she carry?”

  Gus laughs. “Absolutely not. She’s even more of a pacifist than me.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “It is, man. For some people.” Then Gus offers him a handshake and hops out.

  Mills knows he’s not a psychic, himself, but deep in his gut, not his general gut, but that other place where he worries about the people he loves, he knows Gus should have a gun.

  23

  In the parking lot, Mills receives a text message from Powell: “We’re in the conference room. Have stuff to show you.”

  They’re practically salivating when he enters. Myers leaps from his chair. “We finished inventorying the Schultz stuff,” he says.

  Sure enough, they have. Pieces of Dr. Barry Schultz’s memorabilia cover the entire table like a mosaic of his life. That’s the thing that makes death the great equalizer; all the little pieces of your life, and the banalities that stitch them together, tell your entire story. The leftovers on the floor, the odds and ends poking out of boxes, deemed insignificant to the investigation, give proof to the banality. Mills finds himself staring into that proof for just a minute too long.

  “We found three outdated passports,” Myers gushes. “Tons of photographs. Old letters. Postcards. Travel souvenirs, by the looks of it.”

  Powell reaches to the center of the table and picks up a small stack of old photos. “These came from the trunk. We broke the lock. You need to see them.”