Dig Your Grave

by Steven Cooper

  She is. Mills hears the tremors in her voice. His job right now is to calm her, not to freak out. Still, an electric current torques his spine as if he’s touched a high-voltage fence. Deflecting, he says, “I’m sure he’s okay, Billie. It would not be unlike him to forget to charge his phone.”

  “But I’ve been trying him again all day today,” she says. “And nothing. My assistant called his work, and they said he didn’t show up. Again, not like him. Really, Alex. We know there’s a stalker out there. . . .”

  The zaps spread from his spine to his shoulders, down his arms, to his hands. “He didn’t show up for work?”

  “No,” she replies, her voice cracking as if tears aren’t far behind. “Can you help us?”

  “Of course. Of course I will,” he says. “I’ll head over to his house now and see what’s up.”

  “Oh, God, Alex, that would be so great. My sister’s here with me in LA or I’d ask her to go do it. I know you’re busy, but if you could please go over there and call me back, I promise I’ll make it up to you. I really will.”

  Mills looks at his watch. It’s 5:30 p.m. He reaches in the top drawer for his keys. “No problem, Billie. I’m on my way.”

  “I asked the police in Paradise Valley to do it, but they said they couldn’t because Gus doesn’t live in their jurisdiction. I only called them because I kept getting your voice mail.”

  He’s not about to tell her this sounds like trouble or just feels bad in his gut, which it does. “Go get lost in your music. Let me worry about the Guster.”

  “Actually, I got to catch a flight, Alex. And I’m, like, panicking. I just booked a session in Nashville this weekend. But I’ll call as soon as I land.”

  “Don’t panic. Like I said, go get lost in your music.”

  “Maybe I should just come home.”

  “Is that what Gus would want?”

  She says, under the circumstances, she doesn’t care what Gus would want. And Mills believes her. “Billie, pardon me for sounding—I don’t know—a bit crass about this, but aren’t you one of those types who has the means to be wherever you want whenever you want?”

  “I guess . . .”

  “Then go to Nashville. And if anything happens here, turn around your plane and come back.”

  She agrees. She thanks him, her voice still trembling, and hangs up.

  On his way to Arcadia, he pulls Beatrice Vossenheimer’s phone number from a county database and dials. She answers on the third ring and flatly says, “You’re calling about Gus.”

  “Wow, Beatrice, has anyone ever told you you’re psychic?”

  She doesn’t laugh. “I know you’re calling about Gus because Billie contacted me a few hours ago.”

  “Oh. So I assume you haven’t heard from him.”

  “Not in this dimension,” she says with a curious chirp.

  “Okay . . . care to elaborate?”

  Beatrice goes quiet. He can hear her breathing. He imagines her summoning. And then she says, “I think he’s close by. I can feel it. I went looking for him, psychically speaking, and I think he’s here.”

  Her words are simple, factual, and without emotion.

  “Here?” Mills asks. “Where is here?”

  “Paradise Valley. My gut tells me he’s down the street at Billie’s house. I don’t know what’s going on there. I got mixed messages that he’s fine but also that he’s not fine.”

  “But I told him to stay at his own place,” Mills says. “I’m heading to his house now.”

  “Shall I stop by Billie’s?” she asks. “It’s only a few doors down.”

  “No, Beatrice. Please don’t go near there. Just don’t,” he warns her. “Thanks for the hunch. My next call is to PV Police. I’ll be in touch.”

  They’re in the kitchen. Water boils on the stove. Gus fetches pasta from the pantry and pours it into the pot. “I’ve served you three meals already. What happens when we run out of food?” he asks Richard Knight. “You’re going to take me to Safeway at gunpoint?”

  “No,” the stalker says, sitting there at the massive island in the middle of the kitchen, the pistol following Gus’s every move. “This is the last supper, Gus.”

  Gus can’t put his finger on this particular brand of derangement, but there’s something cinematic about the insanity that’s unfolded over the past twenty-four hours. It’s believable because it’s happening, but it’s also fantastical because the breakdown of the human mind he’s watching has a kind of time-lapse quality to it, its own metamorphic arc. He has watched his captor climb a staircase of emotions, a winding staircase for sure, where each step incites a different mood in Richard Knight. There’s no particular order to the anger, the glee, the despair, or the ecstasy, and at each step the crescendo of every mood takes Gus by surprise. He can feel it in his nerve endings. “The last supper?” he asks.

  “You either do as I say or I’m going to kill you and leave your body here in Billie’s house.”

  “I thought you were going to kill me either way,” Gus says as he rinses lettuce in the sink. “And for the record, it bothers me when you call her by her first name.”

  Gus hears the man violently push his chair from the island. He hears the man whip over to the sink. He feels the cold metal barrel of the gun probing his neck. “Fuck you! Shut up!” the man howls in his ear. And then, in a perverse whisper, he says, “We’re going to eat, Gus. And I’m going to tell you my plan. It’s very easy. In the morning it will be over. You’ll do what I say, and then you’ll be a free man.”

  Richard lowers the gun.

  Gus moves to the stove, where he stirs the pasta, his stomach as knotted as the bow ties floating in the pot. He tends to swallow his fear to keep his exterior calm, to keep his mind clean and agile, but like all things he swallows, the fear goes to his stomach, and in there it boils like the cauldron on the stove.

  “Just tell me what you want,” he says to Richard.

  The gunman has returned to his seat at the island. “I want to eat dinner. That’s what I want. So, let’s eat, Gus. Then we can talk.”

  On the way to Gus’s house, Mills puts in a call to the PVPD, where everyone, apparently, has left for the day. He gets as high up as he can get in the rather stunted hierarchy before someone forwards his call to Randy Obershan’s cell phone. The detective answers, says he heard from Billie Welch, as well, and that he knows she’s looking for Gus. “Just talked to one of the guards over there, and he says he thought he saw Gus drive in last night. Wasn’t one hundred percent positive, but said he’s fairly sure Gus went in through the residents’ gate.”

  “No cameras?” Mills asks.

  “Only on the visitors’ lane,” Obershan says. “I’m actually on the way to the Welch house now. I got a couple of officers meeting me there.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it.”

  “We’ll ring at the gate to her driveway,” the detective tells him. “If Gus Parker is in there, he’ll hear us.”

  “He may hear you, but what if Richard Knight has him holed up in there?”

  “I’m not going to crash her gate, if that’s what you’re asking,” Obershan replies. “I have nothing to go on.”

  “Call Billie Welch,” he says. “I guarantee she’ll authorize the destruction of her property. She can afford it.”

  “If it comes to that.”

  “Let me know what you find as soon as you get there,” Mills says. He recites his phone number. “Even if it’s nothing, man.”

  Over at Gus’s house, Mills hears the dog barking inside. He knocks on the front door. Puts his ear to the wood. He only hears the dog, otherwise just the hum of an empty house. No footsteps. No Gus. He opens the gate to the side yard and peers into each window, each one framing, in a way, a still life of purgatory. Nothing has changed in there; it has simply stopped. Mills has done this a million times, but never, or hardly ever, in search for somebody as close to him as Gus. For the third time, easily, he dials Gus’s number, just on the off chance.
Again, the call goes to voice mail. He’s in the backyard now, by the pool. He puts his face against the expansive slider and sees Gus’s kitchen as he had left it, and the family room, disturbed by mere living, but undisturbed by the day itself. Suddenly the dog, Ivy, comes bounding to the glass, yelping and pawing. Her barks turn to cries, then whimpers. She scratches for Mills. He bends down, touching the glass. “Hey there, girl,” he says. “Everything’s going to be okay. Don’t worry, girl. . . .” Gus could be in there but not the way Mills would hope to find him. There was no sign of forced entry at the front door, no sign back here either. As Mills turns to check the other side of the house, Ivy jumps at the glass, and she’s on her hind legs nearly pounding at him. She’s barking again, howling like a wolf, and he can hear her all the way to the front yard and even out in the driveway, where he sees a diminutive woman standing by his car.

  “Hello,” she says. Her eyes are curious.

  “Hello. Are you one of Gus’s clients?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Oh, you live in the neighborhood?”

  “I work for the family across the street,” the woman says, pointing to a house on the other side of the cul-de-sac. “I do cleaning for Gus sometimes.”

  She speaks with a heavy accent, a Spanish accent. He flashes his badge. “Have you seen him today?”

  “No. Not today,” she replies. “Is Gus okay?”

  He nods. “Oh, yeah. I was just looking for him. That’s all. And he hasn’t returned my calls. We’re friends. It’s not really police business.”

  “You want to go inside? I have a key,” she says, removing it from her pocket.

  He nods and gestures for her to come forward.

  “My name is Elsa,” she tells him as she opens the door.

  “Alex Mills.”

  The dog rushes at them, then leaps at Mills.

  “Down, girl,” he says. “Stay down.”

  His commands prove ineffective, but all Elsa has to do is say, “Ivy,” and the animal sits in silence.

  “Nice touch,” Mills tells the woman as he kneels to the floor and puts his arms around the dog’s neck and hugs. “It’s going to be all right, Ivy. You’re a good girl. Gus will be home soon.”

  He searches the house, both Elsa and Ivy at his heels. The house has that gone-to-work kind of vacancy. Nothing seems trespassed. There’s no sign of a struggle. Gus’s office is meticulous. The kitchen anticipates another meal, maybe, or still digests the last one, but it, too, is clean. A few magazines litter the couch. A blanket sits there in a ball.

  “Since you clean the house, Elsa, can you tell me if anything’s missing?”

  “Gus is missing,” she says. “But everything else is here.”

  The guest room is undisturbed. The only disheveled room in the house is Gus’s bedroom. Mills sees shoes scattered on the floor and clothes piled on the chair and the unmade bed, and he thinks this aspiring mess is nothing more than Gus’s signature, certainly not any kind of home invasion. Back in the living room they find that Ivy has left a mess by the sliders. “I’ll clean it up,” Elsa says.

  “Thanks. I think I’ll take Ivy home with me until Gus gets back.”

  She nods and smiles. “That’s nice of you. I’ll lock up when I leave.”

  He finds the dog’s leash hanging from a hook in the kitchen. Ivy hears it jangling, and she’s immediately at Mills’s side. He and the dog are at the front door when Elsa calls to him. “You think you’ll find him?”

  “I will,” he replies. “For all we know he flew home to Seattle and left his phone with the TSA. People do it all the time.”

  He knows that’s not what happened. Gus is no more inclined to fly home to Seattle than he is to fly home to Pyongyang. Mills stuffs the dog in the back seat and, because he hasn’t heard from the cops in PV, makes a beeline for Billie’s house.

  “Sounds like we have a guest,” Gus says to Richard Knight.

  It’s the bell ringing from the driveway gate. The ring mimics a deep doorbell chime, and it repeatedly fills the house like a pipe organ with hiccups. Gus can tell the chime is sending shivers up the stalker’s spine every time the person out there presses the button.

  “Don’t let them in,” Richard says. “Don’t talk to them on the intercom.”

  “Can I go see who it is?”

  “You can’t open the front door.”

  “But I can see from the foyer balcony. Let’s go.”

  They climb the stairs, the bell still chiming, and when they reach the top Gus peers out the window and is not surprised to see three cruisers from the Paradise Valley Police Department. He thinks maybe he should hit a light switch, blink the lights to send a signal, but he has a gun at his back. Gus really has to wonder if Richard Knight would pull the trigger. His gut says no, but his mild spasms of anxiety say yes. “It’s the police,” he tells his captor.

  “I can see that, Gus.”

  “They’ve come here looking for me.”

  “Of course they have, Gus. But as long as you don’t answer the bell, they’ll figure you’re not here. I don’t think they’re going to jump the gate. Do you?”

  “I doubt it, Richard,” Gus replies. “It’s a very tall gate.”

  The landline rings.

  “Who’s that?” the stalker asks.

  “I don’t know,” Gus says. “It’s Billie’s house phone.”

  “Will it go to voice mail?”

  “Eventually.”

  In the meantime, there’s a manic orchestra with no conductor. The bell chimes; the phone rings. The sounds overlap, clash, and ricochet off one another. “I’m going to find that phone and rip it out of the fucking wall, Gus. Come on!”

  They return to the first floor. Twice the phone has stopped ringing and started again like the insistent calls of a jilted lover. The driveway bell persists. True to his word, Richard finds one of the landline phones in the kitchen, picks up the base, rips it from the wall, then, almost foaming at the mouth, snatches the cordless handset from the counter and smashes it on the floor. It crumbles to smithereens under his foot.

  A few minutes later the bell goes quiet. The cops have given up. They probably came by as a courtesy check, found no one home, and left. Or maybe they’ll be back. Certainly Billie is looking for him. And she’s made a career, and maybe a relationship, out of refusing to take no for an answer. That had to be her calling the house last night and again today. Or maybe it was the cops. Or Beatrice. Or maybe God. His thoughts, as fruitless as they are, are now interrupted by the sight of dangling ropes.

  Richard, awash in sweat, his hands wringing, has removed the rope from his bag of supplies. Last night with his hands bound tightly, Gus had been taken to the pillow room and told to sleep. But Gus discovered that he doesn’t sleep so well with a crazed gunman in the house, or with rope binding his wrists. And now it looks as if Gus is in for the same deprivation tonight.

  “You think maybe I could sleep in a real bed this time?” he asks.

  “I don’t see why not,” Richard says. “This could be your last night to dream. It’s up to you, Gus.”

  Mills counts three marked cruisers and one unmarked flanking the gates at Billie Welch’s driveway. He cracks a window to give Ivy air and gets out of his car. Obershan turns and sees him. “Nothing,” he says. “We were just about to leave.”

  “Leave? You sure he’s not in there?”

  “As sure as we can be without bulldozing the gate.”

  “What about the emergency code? PV requires that, right?”

  “Of course,” Obershan says. “But it’s not working. It won’t open.”

  His stomach churns. “What does that tell you?”

  “It tells me either Ms. Welch disabled her security code or the alarm installers somehow messed up the circuitry to the gate.”

  Mills has to be careful here not to tread. But still. Can this dude be that stupid? “With all due respect, Billie didn’t disable the security code. Richard Knight did.”
/>   “You make it sound like that didn’t occur to us,” the detective says, his voice deep with offense.

  “No. You made it sound that way,” Mills tells him. “We don’t need any more proof that Gus is in there with that lunatic.”

  “Actually we do if we’re thinking of storming the place,” Obershan argues. “Besides, Richard Knight would have had to get inside to mess with the gate. The codes are set from the house. The circuitry is all inside. There’s really no way he could have gotten in now that the property is really a fortress, Alex.”

  “You try the bullhorn?”

  “Uh, no. We rang the bell at the gate about a dozen times.”

  “Try the bullhorn.”

  “And say what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about, ‘Knight, we know you’re in there and we have you surrounded’? Something like that?”

  “If this was your jurisdiction, you sure as hell wouldn’t do it, Alex. We have no probable cause to disturb the peace. And in this neighborhood bullhorns aren’t appreciated.”

  Mills offers a wicked scoff. “Are you fucking kidding me? Of course you have cause. You afraid of wounding the delicate ears of the elite?”

  Obershan puffs out his chest and squares his jaw. “Enough, Alex.”

  Ivy barks. Mills turns to his car and sees the dog flouncing in the back seat. She’s pacing from one window to another, yelping.

  “You call that a K-9 patrol?” Obershan quips.

  “I call that Gus’s dog, smartass. And, by the looks of it, she can detect her owner inside.”

  “Or maybe she just needs to take a dump, Alex. It’s your car. You decide.”

  The decision has nothing to do with Ivy’s bowels. The decision has everything to do with staying or leaving. It’s not an informed decision to make.

  “Look, we want to help you find your friend,” Obershan assures him. “But we’ve got nothing to go on. I don’t think Knight would be stupid enough to come back here. And neither one of us is going to get a SWAT team out here based on a guess. If we can get clear evidence that Gus is in the house, we might consider storming the place. But you know the downside, Alex. An assault like that could trigger something crazy in our suspect. Knight might do something stupid, and Gus could get hurt.”