“Are you on campus?” Mills asks.
“I was just about to head to a meeting,” she says.
“I really need to speak to your husband. It’s important.”
“I’ve told you I’m not his secretary.”
“I don’t want to cause him any trouble, I promise you, but we think he may be the missing link here. Please, if you could just reach out to him . . .”
She sighs. “He left last night on a trade mission to Brazil. Like I told you before, he’ll be back in Phoenix on Friday for a fundraiser. Goodbye, Detective.”
Holy fuckstick.
At 3:37 p.m., Preston, with Myers like a puppy at his heels, enters the conference room, carrying his laptop and files and a grin on his face. Powell, who’s already told Mills about a big score, is seated by Mills. “What’s with the big smile, Ken?” Mills asks. “You got good news?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘good’ news,” Preston begins, “but we’re accomplishing a lot and learning stuff.”
“Like?”
“Those guys were not on the same tour as Kimberly Harrington,” Preston replies. “We’ve reviewed the list of students provided by Go Go Mexico to the FBI legal attachés. There were four lists, one from the Kimberly Harrington trip, and the three manifests from other Go Go Mexico trips that overlapped at the same time. We don’t see their names on any list.”
“The congressman?” Mills asks.
“No. The agents also made a list of all guests staying at the Playa Grande hotel on the day that Kimberly Harrington disappeared,” Preston says. “It was a huge list, but of the guests staying at Playa Grande who weren’t affiliated with a spring break package, none matched the names of our victims.”
“That doesn’t mean they weren’t there,” Powell says. “Staying at a different hotel. These kids are known to cross-pollinate on spring break trips. I know I did.”
“Literally,” Mills teases.
The others laugh. Even Powell.
“Garcia, in Mexico City, has also started sending me abstracts from the investigation that include narrative,” Preston begins, deferring to his laptop. “This was reported on the news early in the case: ‘Mexican authorities believed they found evidence of foul play on the Playa Grande property.’ Apparently there were some bushes that were almost destroyed, some forensic evidence, too.”
“And what then? They couldn’t connect this to the girl’s disappearance?” Mills asks. “Instead, they’re content with the mystery?”
Preston shakes his head. “It’s not that simple. They found some hairs, a few shreds of clothing, and some blood in the bushes. But according to Garcia, hotel workers had trampled all over the scene in an effort to clean it up and consequently contaminated most of the evidence. The Mexican investigators, apparently, were not all that careful, themselves. The evidence would never prove reliable.”
Then it occurs to him. Gus Parker has been seeing a woman falling. He’s been seeing that image all along. She’s falling. There’s Spanish music.
“Could it have been evidence of a bad landing?” Mills asks. “From a balcony.”
Preston and Myers look at each other.
“Like she was pushed or fell,” Mills persists.
“We know what you mean, Alex,” Preston says. “We still have more of the report to go through, a lot more. But there is mention of a possible fall.”
“Right. But they searched the hotel and never found conclusive evidence of a fall from any of the balconies above the scene,” Myers says.
“Besides,” Mills speculates, “if she fell off the balcony, how did she survive and where in hell did she go?”
“Remember, she disappeared,” Myers says. “There’s no evidence that she’s dead.”
“Unless someone moved her body,” Mills says. “Any DNA from the scene that wasn’t contaminated?”
Preston opens a file, then reads a few lines to himself. “Not from the suspicious scene in the bushes. But it looks like the investigators were able to gather some DNA that matched Kimberly Harrington. From her hotel room, apparently. There isn’t much detail here. But I have to believe that with all the attention the case has gotten over the years, that they’ve preserved it if they ever had it. Or they would have gotten it from her parents.”
“Find out,” Mills tells him.
“Will do.”
“I want to compare that DNA to the DNA on the hairs we got from Gaffing’s car and fingernails,” Mills says.
“What? You think she’s come back from the dead to kill these men?” Powell asks.
“Like Morty said, she disappeared. There’s no evidence that she’s dead,” Mills replies.
“That would certainly be a sensational ending to a sensational case,” Powell says. “But unlikely.”
Mills shrugs. Ironically, sometimes the most sensational is often the most obvious, and nobody pays attention because it’s too sensational too believe. He turns to her and says, “Powell has a big break to announce. I forced it out of her while we were waiting for you two to show up.”
Preston and Myers both react with similar faces, slight pouts, a bit deflated, as if Powell is about to upstage them. Suddenly, she’s all businesslike, her hands clasped in front of her. “We have traced the cardboard grave markers conclusively to a real estate firm on Sixteenth,” she says. “The owners positively identified two of the items in evidence. They had just purchased a Whirlpool refrigerator and put the carton in the alley behind their office for recycling. The timing checks out.”
Preston squints at her, cocks his head, and says, “But I’m sure they weren’t the only ones buying Whirlpool refrigerators in Phoenix.”
She clenches her jaw, and, on the back end of a sneer, she says, “No shit, Sherlock. They identified another item, too. The cardboard sign left at the empty gravesite came from a computer monitor they ordered off Amazon. The box went in the alley along with the Whirlpool carton.”
“Wow,” Myers says.
“Yeah, wow,” Powell repeats. She holds up a document stapled at its corner. “Signed affidavits by the owners of the firm.”
“So where does this bring us?” Preston asks. “How does it advance the case?”
“Don’t be an ass,” Powell tells him.
“I’m not challenging you,” he says. “This is great work. But I’m thinking strategy.”
Mills clears his throat if for no other reason than to remind the room that he’s in charge. “This confirms that the neighborhood we’ve been focusing on is central to the investigation. Our victims can be tracked there. The signs can be tracked there. I’m not going out on a limb to say our killer lives or works there.”
“Exactly. I doubt he’d go far to rummage up his cardboard scraps. He lives there or works there and knows what kind of crap people leave in the alleys. That is, if it’s a he,” Powell says, a hint of histrionics in her voice. “Let’s not forget that the woman at the realty office is a blond. She had easy access to the cardboard.”
Mills asks, “What woman?”
“The receptionist,” Powell reminds him. “With the ample chest.”
“Yes, okay. She’s blond. Good to know.”
He dismisses the meeting, asking Powell to stay behind for a minute. “I’m stuck on Al Torento,” he admits to her.
“I think we all are,” she says.
“I know. But here’s the thing : He supposedly left last night on a trade mission to Brazil. When I called his office this morning, no one said a word about it. I know it’s been a long day, but I’d like you to do some digging around. Quietly. He can’t know we’re digging. Just make sure it’s a legitimate trade mission.”
“As opposed to?”
“Make sure he’s not fleeing the country.”
32
It’s a long day for Gus Parker. One exam after another. This must be the season for malady in the Valley of the Sun, because he’s never seen such an assembly line of patients walking in the door, a kind of conveyor belt of aches and pain
s and breasts. His shift started later, and his shift will end later.
He goes to take a leak. He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, and he’s covered in sweat. The sight shocks him. He doesn’t sweat like this unless he’s running with Ivy or doing a strenuous hike. He closes his eyes and meditates for a moment, calms the conveyor belt of images and voices and notions in his brain. There’s only an endless sea, still as glass, and breathing. A passing thought of Richard Knight ripples the water. Shut up, he tells the thought. Gus and Billie dip their toes in, wade to their ankles. Shh. Take me to my shut-up place. No voices. No images. Nothing. Yes. Gus is there now. He’s sailing now. The middle-aged man and the sea. Shut up, Hemingway. Really, shh! He’s floating. There’s not a sound. He’s weightless, improved. A crisp breeze cools him, dries his sweat. Gus opens his eyes. His reflection affirms him, says, “Man, that meditation was a good idea.” But as he turns to the door, something forces him to look back. It’s a sudden wave that rises from his gut. He can’t make out what he sees in the mirror now. It’s not his face. He sees a smile of missing teeth. He sees eyes that are red and fierce. Gus tries, just for a moment, to return to the sea of glass, to the calm, but he can’t get there. He just can’t. Now he’s probably late for his next exam, and something isn’t right.
Stephen Kline, sixty-seven, five-ten, 190 pounds, allergic to penicillin, has been suffering dizzy spells. He’s pale, slow-moving, his pace subdued by the vertigo, no doubt, but also by a latent sadness that Gus intuits. “Have you ever had a CT scan of the brain?” he asks the man.
“No.”
“Well, it’s not as obnoxious as an MRI,” Gus says, smiling.
“My doctor says that’s next if the CT scan shows nothing.”
Gus guides the patient to the machine. “Have you been tested for inner ear problems?”
“Of course,” the man grumbles. “The inner ears are fine.”
After Stephen Kline’s CT scan, Gus walks him to the changing room and offers to stay if he’s not steady on his feet. The man declines. Gus has three more exams, including his next patient, Veronica Gomez, who looks like Sandra Bullock and is having trouble with her sinuses. “I can’t breathe,” she says. “And the pain, oh, my God.”
She’s forty-six but talks like a millennial on social media. She’s pleasant, calm through the procedure, punctuating her visit with Gus with jokes about her postnasal drip and morning phlegm.
Gus is done at seven thirty. He shuffles through the closing ritual and is out the door just before eight as the creep of nightfall is all but complete. There’s still a glow of dusk in the sky, but just a sliver on the western horizon. The streetlights are on, as are the store signs in the strip mall across the street. There’s no salvaging the day at this point. He climbs in his SUV and heads home. Something still nags at him, though. Casts doubt. There was something in that bathroom mirror he should have seen. He’s tired, spent. Sweaty again. The drive feels like an out-of-body kind of thing, as if he’s too self-aware for his own vessel. Could be he’s on the brink of a psychic breakthrough. Or he’s having an anxiety attack. Gus wouldn’t know. He’s never had one. Camelback at night, a silhouette in the distance, beckons. He’s happy to follow, to be beckoned. But he suddenly feels crowded in. He hears a faint rustling, like Ivy rising from sleep in the back seat. She can’t be in the back seat, but, instinctively, Gus turns to check anyway. That’s when a hand grabs his neck, crushing his Adam’s apple, squeezing his windpipe. He swerves. A car honks. His tires squeal. The grip around his neck won’t release.
“Gus, do not react. I have a gun.”
It’s a man’s voice, but kind of light and pudgy like a child.
“You’re going to keep driving, and I’m going to navigate, and you’re going to listen to my instructions.”
The man’s voice climbs up Gus’s spine. His sweat has turned cold. He glances in the rearview mirror, but he can’t make out a face. All he can see, besides his own, are fierce, bloodshot eyes that don’t blink. This is not a vision. In his gut, Gus knows the man’s name, but, shuddering, he grips the wheel, steadies himself, and asks, “Who are you?”
“Shut the fuck up and drive,” the man says, loosening the grip on Gus’s neck.
Gus catches his breath, considers his options, his eyes darting from left to right as if he can alert a passing car. Sweat trickles down his back.
“Take the Hohokam to Forty-Fourth. Then Forty-Fourth up to Tatum,” the man instructs him.
“To Paradise Valley?”
“You’re taking me to Billie’s house.”
When Gus attempts to turn his head and get a look, the man slugs him in the face. Absorbing the sting, Gus looks in the rearview mirror again and says, “You can’t hide from me. I know you’re Richard Knight.”
“How the fuck do you know my name?”
“The police in PV are on to you.”
“Shut up. Take me to Billie’s,” the man says, still in the voice of a pouty child. “You want to see my gun?”
The man raises a pistol in the back seat. It’s visible for a flash, and then it’s gone.
“It’s loaded,” the passenger says. “Now give me your phone.”
“My phone?”
“Hand it over.”
Gus fidgets, then does a show of looking for his phone. “Damn. I must have left it at work.”
A hand grabs his shoulder and squeezes. “You fucking liar. You think I’m stupid? Give it to me now, or I blow your brains out the second we stop.”
Gus doesn’t see that happening, but then the man lunges forward from behind and grabs the steering wheel, jolting it sharply to the right. The car squeals as it careens into the next lane, narrowly missing an airport shuttle bus; drivers all around lean on their horns, and Gus, fighting for the wheel, whips back into his original lane, where, with all of the force he can muster, he brings an elbow down on the arm of Richard Knight, jabbing the man so hard Knight loses his grip on the wheel and withdraws. Gus estimates he swerved a full ampersand before he finally regained control of his car.
“Jesus Christ,” Gus says with a massive sigh. “You almost got us killed.”
“That was my point,” Knight says. “Now give me your phone.”
Gus relents, handing the nutcase his phone. He doesn’t know what’s going on in the back seat, but he can hear the man rummaging through a bag or a box. He can hear metal against metal and the chirps of a few phone keys. “What are you doing, Richard?”
“A little trick I learned in prison recently,” the man replies. “I’m scrambling your phone to be sure no one can track it. Just to be sure it pinged its last ping.”
“Oh, come on, man. . . .”
“Just shut up and let me concentrate.”
And then, as he gets on the Hohokam Expressway, Gus suddenly goes calm. He sinks back, breathes normally, and takes in the view of Camelback, now tinged by the urban glow. He’s okay. He contemplates bolting from the car when they hit a red light on the surface streets. He considers speeding excessively until a cop pulls him over. But both outcomes are uncertain.
“You’re going to wave to the guards, and you’re going to drive through the residents’ gate when we get there,” Knight says. “You understand?”
“I do,” Gus replies. “Would you like to stop somewhere for dinner?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Huh? You think I’m stupid?”
“No, of course not, Richard. I think you might be hungry. I know I am.”
“You can cook up a feast at Billie’s. Okay?”
Gus says that’s fine and drives. They hit Tatum, and the city light recedes. All is black and quiet. He rolls down his window, and the warm desert air soothes him, this night air pungent with citrus, blowing past him, the light winds lulling. As instructed he waves to the guard booth, but there’s no guard in sight, and he drives through the residents’ gate, then through Billie’s private gate. Knight tells Gus to park in the garage. Gus considers telling the man he doesn’t ha
ve a remote, but the remote is clipped to his visor. He also considers saying all four bays are full but can’t calculate the consequences if the stalker discovers that three bays are empty. So in they go. Knight gets out of the car first, comes around, and points the gun at Gus’s window. “You can get out,” Knight tells him. “Don’t put your hands up. Just get out.”
Gus complies, and the man’s weapon is at his neck. “Where’s the circuit breaker?” Knight asks.
“The circuit breaker?”
“Yeah,” the man says, tapping Gus with the weapon. “The circuit breaker. Don’t play dumb. It’s probably here in the garage.”
“Probably,” Gus says, but he doesn’t know for sure. The overhead bulb is still on, but its glow is feeble at best. Seconds later, the far wall in front of them lights up. Gus turns and discovers Knight holding a flashlight.
The nutjob fans the flashlight back and forth, searching all four corners of the cavernous garage until it sweeps back and illuminates a box hanging from the wall by the doorway to the main house. “There,” he says. “Go on.”
When Gus reaches the box, Knight orders him to open it. Once the box is opened, Knight’s flashlight inspects a mini keyboard of breakers—for what Gus hasn’t a clue. But when Knight stops the cone of light on the breaker labeled “GATE,” Gus gets it. “Turn it off,” the man orders him.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Dig Your Grave Page 32
