Dig Your Grave

by Steven Cooper

  They start at Fiesta Taqueria on Sixteenth. The waft of chili pepper hits them in the face. The place smells like heaven if heaven is Mexico on a hot, lazy day with fajitas sizzling, tortillas frying, margaritas flowing, and a cerulean blue sky that hangs like a partition between here and anywhere else. Mills needs a vacation. Fiesta Taqueria is virtually empty, but it’s very early. Mills counts four customers among the twenty or so tables and the bar. They talk to the proprietor, Jimmy Jimenez, and show him the victims’ photographs.

  “Hey, yeah, I think I recognize that guy,” the man says. He’s pointing to the photo of Davis Klink.

  “You think he’s been in here?” Powell asks.

  “I do.”

  “Can you maybe remember the last time you saw him here?” Mills asks.

  The guy scrunches up his face, then shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe a month ago. He wasn’t a regular or anything.”

  “Do you remember seeing him in here alone?” Mills asks.

  “I think so,” the owner says. “But I’m not sure. He might have been in here with a woman. What happened to him?”

  “He’s dead,” Mills replies.

  “Aw, shit. That’s too bad,” Jimmy Jimenez says. “If I can remember anything, I’ll let you know. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Mills tells him. “But what about this guy?” He holds up the photo of Joe Gaffing. “Could you look again?”

  The guy shrugs. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize him.”

  “That’s okay,” Mills says. “We thought we might have tracked him here. You think your employees could have a look?”

  “Sure. My main staff won’t be in for a bit, but, yeah, maybe you could send me copies.”

  “I can. And you can call me if anybody recognizes these guys.”

  Mills knows it’s a long shot.

  “No problem.” Jimenez recites his email address, and Mills hands him his card. The men shake hands, a hearty and heartfelt handshake.

  “Wish I could be more helpful today,” Jimenez says, “but while you’re here, can I get you something? I know it’s still early for lunch, but anything you want, it’s on me. It’s the least I can do to support our cops.”

  The offer brings a smile to Mills’s face, the placid smile of that hot, lazy afternoon in Mexico, not a phone, or a uniform, or a sergeant in sight. “We really appreciate the offer, but we’re a bit behind schedule,” he says. “But thanks.”

  The guy offers a rain check. Mills gladly accepts.

  Now they’re off to the residential area off Sixteenth, and if the first house, where no one comes to the door, is any indication, it’s going to be a long day. They get no answer at the second house either. Mills asks Gus to go ahead of them and stroll both sides of the street. He hands the psychic photos of the three victims. “I’m just giving you these to hopefully prompt a vibe or something,” he tells Gus. “Don’t approach anyone.”

  At the third house, Mills and Powell knock and hear a woman speaking from behind the door. “I don’t open the door to strangers,” she says. “Who is it?”

  “Phoenix Police,” Mills replies.

  “Police?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’ll have to put your identification up to the peephole, please.” Her voice is oldish, alarmed.

  Mills holds out his badge and his picture ID.

  The door opens slowly, revealing a little sparrow of a woman. She could be one hundred years old, standing there in her housecoat and with her wisps of white hair. Mills can’t imagine how she reached the peephole. “Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he tells her. “I’m Detective Alex Mills, and this is Detective Jan Powell. We’re just canvassing the area to see if anyone can identify a few men for us.”

  “I live alone,” she says, and it sounds like a preemptive strike.

  “That’s okay,” Powell replies. “We just want to know if you’ve seen any of these men coming or going from the neighborhood.”

  “I keep to myself,” the woman insists. Her eyes are moist.

  Mills offers her a beaming smile. “We understand.” He pulls out the photos. She studies them, one hand to her face. Then she shakes her head.

  “No. I’m sorry,” she says. “I really don’t watch the neighborhood. Maybe I should.”

  Their knocking goes unanswered at the next two homes. He and Powell cross the street. He eyes a house painted baby blue with white trim. He thinks color reveals a lot about personality. Anomalies in color often suggest anomalies elsewhere. He’s staring at a street of mostly dusty brown homes, one fading into the other. Blue sticks out. They go to the blue. A spring y redhead answers the door. She says her name is Lucy Drill. “Like the dentist!”

  Lucy Drill, like the dentist, studies the photos but doesn’t recognize the faces.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I hate to spoil a real live episode of Law & Order.”

  Powell gives the woman a once-over and says, “That’s okay. Thanks for looking.”

  They cross Lucy Drill’s lawn and meet Gus in the middle of the street.

  “I got nothing here,” he tells them. “Didn’t pick up a thing, so I went around the block and across Sixteenth. I think you should hit a few places over there. Something’s askew.”

  “Askew?” Powell asks, her sarcasm not well concealed.

  “What he means is that everything is what it is—until it’s not,” Mills says. “Isn’t that right, Gus?”

  Gus laughs and says, “Something like that.”

  “It’s not that different from how we investigate cases,” he explains to Powell. “We look at all the pieces, and we focus on the pieces that don’t fit. That’s what Gus does.”

  She looks at him squarely. “So, we’re skipping the rest of Glenridge? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Mills replies and turns around.

  Gus directs them to East Paloma, where he points to a nearly dilapidated ranch house, its windows shielded by bedsheets. The wounded home is desperately in need of a paint job, maybe a wrecking ball. Mills rings the bell, thinking this book by its cover suggests a meth lab, but you never know. A shirtless teenage boy answers the door. “What?” he asks. He’s bronzed-skinned with a bundle of black curls on his head. He should probably be in school. His eyes are mean. Mills goes through the introductions.

  “You police?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Sheee-it, no,” the kid says and bolts. He pushes right between Mills and Powell and zips across the rocky yard.

  “Hey, wait, buddy,” Mills calls to him. “We’re not . . .”

  Then, from inside the house, Mills hears the bellowing voice of a woman coming toward them. “Who’s out there, Eddie? I told you not to answer the door, coño!”

  She’s short and thickset and pushes the detectives aside.

  “Eddie! Get back here! Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she screams. “Now! Pendejo!”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Powell says.

  She turns to them, fire in her eyes. “Who are you?” she asks.

  “We’re detectives, ma’am,” Mills says. “We didn’t mean to disturb the house.”

  She throws him the shadiest shade. “Right. You just hold on a minute while I drag my kid’s sorry ass back in here.”

  She marches down the lawn and starts screaming in Spanish, returning just about a minute later, dragging her son by his ear.

  “Hey, kid,” Mills says, “whatever you did is somebody else’s problem. I’m not here for you.”

  The woman shoves her kid through the door. “Get back in bed,” she orders. Then, to the detectives, she says, “He’s home sick from school today. Something’s going around.”

  “Again, we’re sorry to disturb,” Powell says, “but we’re canvassing the neighborhood, looking for some information about a few men.”

  Mills reveals the photos.

  “A lot of people ’round here, they got that no-snitch
thing going on,” the lady says. “Not me. I see something, I say something.”

  She has a Spanish accent, more likely from the Bronx than from Mexico.

  “Then maybe your son is hiding something from you,” Mills says. “If he’s scared of us.”

  “No, he ain’t hiding anything. He smokes pot sometimes, and when I catch him I bring him down to the precinct where the cops give him a good lecture. I don’t want him to get arrested, but I don’t want to ignore it, you know?”

  Mills laughs. “Yes. In fact I do. Personally.”

  She shrugs and eyeballs the photos again. “Yeah, this guy, I think,” she says, pointing to Davis Klink. “I think I’ve seen him at work.”

  “At work?” Powell asks.

  “Yeah, I work most nights around the corner at the taco place,” she says.

  “Fiesta Taqueria?” Mills asks.

  “You know it?”

  “We were just there,” Mills tells her.

  She smiles. “The real good stuff. You meet Jimmy?”

  “Yes,” Mills says. “He recognized this guy, too. But didn’t remember much about it.”

  She nods. “I’m sure I waited on his table before.”

  “How long ago?”

  She shakes her head. “I couldn’t say. Maybe January.”

  “Did he come in alone?” Powell asks.

  “I think so,” the woman says. “But, hold on, I think he might have been in a couple of times with a woman. A blond or a redhead, maybe.”

  “Can you remember anything else about her?” Powell asks.

  “Like what?”

  “Like the color of her eyes,” Mills tells her. “Or the way she dressed. Or if she had an accent, or a tattoo . . .”

  “Yes!” the woman cries. “I think she had a tattoo. I’m not sure, but I think she did, and I remember thinking that this very elegant man was kind of mismatched with this tattooed woman. But, hey, who am I to judge?”

  “Do you remember how old she might have been?” Powell asks.

  “No. But she wasn’t young. She wasn’t, you know, his younger woman.”

  “Got it,” Powell says. “Do you remember the placement of the tattoo?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe her shoulder or her arm. I think she’d come in wearing something without sleeves. She had pretty eyes.”

  The lumbering trucks and screeching buses on Sixteenth are making it hard to hear. Mills leans in closer. “Do you recall how they behaved with each other? Affectionate? Angry?”

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman says. “I think I’d remember if they were fighting, but they were just two customers out of hundreds, you understand?”

  “Of course we do,” Mills replies. “Thank you for your time.”

  “I don’t recognize the two other guys,” she says.

  Mills points to the picture of Gaffing. “We think he may have been at the Taqueria even more recently.”

  She peers, does a subtle shake of the head. “No. I don’t recognize him.”

  “That’s fine,” Mills assures her. “You’ve been a great help. Really.”

  They meet Gus down at the bottom of the driveway.

  “You must be onto something,” Mills tells him. “You’ve connected a couple of dots already. That woman? She works at the taco place. Recognized Klink.”

  They’re barely on the sidewalk when Gus abruptly stops and waves his hands in the air. “Wait. Wait. Wait,” he says. “Just wait.”

  Powell rolls her eyes. Mills pretends not to notice. Instead he says, “What is it, Guster?”

  “Speaking of Mexico . . .” Gus begins.

  “Who’s speaking of Mexico?” Powell asks.

  Gus points emphatically to Sixteenth Street. “The Taqueria! Did either of you see the story about that girl who went missing in Cancun?”

  Powell shakes her head. Mills tries to think but reluctantly mimics Powell’s response.

  “Yeah, it’s the anniversary of her disappearance,” Gus tells them. “She was on spring break.”

  “And this has what to do with us?” Powell asks.

  “Nothing, necessarily,” Gus replies. “But I’ve been getting a vibe about Spanish stuff all along.”

  “Piñatas?” Powell asks.

  “Jan . . .”

  “Never mind,” Gus says. “Her name was Kimberly Harrington. Google it.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Powell says.

  The name is familiar to Mills. He thinks it was one of those famous cases. There have been more than a few of them. Pretty girl vanishes. Unsolved for years. Haunting. It’s coming back to him.

  “‘Next Friday will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kimberly Harrington’s disappearance in Mexico,’” Powell reads from her phone. “‘The Northern Arizona University student, who hailed from Michigan, went missing on a spring break trip to Cancun and was never found. Her disappearance, never ruled a homicide, has become one of the coldest cases known to US law enforcement officials.’”

  “Of course,” Mills says. “Huge case. Kimberly Harrington. It was all over the news, you know. Especially here ’cause she went to NAU. They thought she was kidnapped, maybe sold into the sex trade, or something.”

  “Oh, right,” Powell says, as if a bell just went off in her head. “I remember that. I was barely a teenager when it happened, and it scared the shit out of me.”

  “Just gone without a trace?” Gus asks. “No witnesses? No body ever found?”

  “Correct,” Mills tells him. “You don’t remember hearing about it? It was all over the news. There were even shows about it, like Dateline and 20/20.”

  Gus doesn’t answer. He tilts his head, squints, and shudders from the shoulders down.

  “What is it?” Mills asks.

  “I don’t know,” Gus says. “Just one of those chills.”

  “And there’s another connection to Arizona besides NAU,” Powell tells them, and then again reads from her phone. “‘The tour operator, Go Go Mexico, a Phoenix-based travel agency, tells the FBI that while it organized the trip and had personnel on the ground in Cancun, it did not consider itself a chaperone to monitor or supervise student activities after-hours.’”

  “I think they were sued anyway,” Mills tells them. “Let me see.” Powell hands him her phone. He reads for a few moments and says, “Yes, they were. Doesn’t say much about the suit here, but wow, I can’t believe it’s been twenty-five years. I’m getting so fucking old.”

  Gus gives him a throaty laugh of commiseration.

  “Wait,” he says. “A quote from my father!”

  Powell puts a hand on his shoulder, perching herself to read along.

  “Damn,” Mills says, his mind drifting back. “I think I remember him doing interviews with the media about this. ‘“I can’t confirm or deny any local investigation into Go Go Mexico, but my office would be interested in any activity by any persons locally that might suggest conspiracy or premeditation in the woman’s disappearance,” said County Attorney Lyle Mills. However, Mills said he had no cause to believe at this time that any activity of that nature took place.’”

  “Wow,” Gus says. “A voice from the past.”

  A ghost. The voice of a ghost has crept inward, become one with his skin, with his blood. Exhumed from the grave, Lyle Mills stands larger than life and, as always, casts a shadow. In an instant, Mills sees every room of his childhood home and hears his father calling his name, down the hallway, the voice disembodied. Alex.

  “You got your tablet?” he asks Powell.

  “In the car,” she says. “Where’s yours?”

  “Same, with no juice.” They share an eye roll. He picks up his phone, then sends a text to Myers: “Pull Sec State Report: Go Go Mexico.”

  “You’re connecting the dots,” Gus says, staring off into nowhere.

  “What’s that?” Mills asks.

  “Connecting the dots.”

  “Is that a suggestion or an observation?” Mills asks.

  “It’s
both.”

  Gus then directs Mills and Powell to two more homes on East Paloma, but their knocks go unanswered.

  “How about we go north of Thomas?” Gus asks. “I mean, since we’re doing this randomly.”

  They get in their cars and ride two blocks north of the PetroGo gas station and turn left on East Mountain Shadow. There the whole process begins again. Mills and Powell knock on a few doors; Gus patrols the area for a vibe. Mills and Powell get a series of guarded residents who don’t know anything or won’t say anything.

  Gus leads them to the other side of East Mountain Shadow, across Sixteenth. There at the corner sits a real estate office (Cohn and Drake Desert Realty), and Gus suggests the detectives go in and inquire while he continues to wander the neighborhood. On the way inside, Mills feels his phone vibrate. He looks at the screen. It’s an email from Myers. Subject: “Sec State Report Go Go Mexico.” A woman says, “Hello. How can I help you today?” Mills looks up and sees an attractive blond sitting behind a reception desk. The office looks like it’s auditioning for Architectural Digest. Mills knows pretense when he sees it. A spiral staircase here, subway tile there. Furniture that makes a statement (“We’re beautiful and expensive, but murder on your ass”), and accessories that hail from the exotic land of HomeGoods. The reception desk is a circle in the middle of everything. Above it hangs a doughnut-shaped chandelier, lights dripping from the hole and illuminating a path to the woman’s cleavage. Mills does the introductions, explains the reason for the visit, and says he’d like to pass around a few photos. The receptionist gives him a double take. “Let me see if I can get one of the owners out here.”

  About a minute later, a well-coiffed man emerges from one of the larger glassed-in rooms at the back. The guy’s probably six feet tall, and his abusively tight dress shirt suggests he knows the way to the gym. His face is smooth and tanned, and he seems astutely aware of that. He wears a diamond pinkie ring. Mills tells him why they’ve stopped by. The man, Josh Drake of Cohn and Drake, bids them to follow. “Nice place you got here,” Powell says.