Dig Your Grave

by Steven Cooper

  “Obviously nobody wants that,” Mills concedes.

  “But if it comes to that, we’d still need consent from Ms. Welch. If we can get a hold of her, that is.”

  “If?”

  “We can’t reach her . . .”

  “Right,” Mills says. “She’s on a flight to Nashville to do some recording or something. Maybe you should try her in an hour or two.”

  Mills is the last one left. After all the others are gone, he stands there, his eyes locked on the house. He considers camping out here all night, watching the house, watching for a light to come on, or one to go off, anything, any sign of life. He eyes the gate. The bottom half is solid wood, framed in steel; the top is a crown of wrought iron with spike deterrents. The gate is connected to the walls at either side. He might be able to stand on his hood, reach the juncture of the gate and the wall, climb over the wrought iron south of the spikes, and slide down the other side. He moves his car. He hears himself say, “Here goes nothing.” Then Mills takes a leap to the metal brace connecting the wall and gate, goes flying, but instantly falls on his ass on the car. The hood seems to crumple, but he’s certain it’s his ass. Of course, there’s a gradient from the wall to the street, and the slope keeps the car lower against the wall than it looks. Fuck it. He tries again, recalculating the velocity it will take, the running start he’ll need to leverage this time to make it. He doesn’t have a lot of room to play with. He starts back at the windshield. Ivy barks at him, as if she’s begging him to stop, as if he’s making her nervous. Then Mills picks up a few running steps down the hood and up he goes, and goes, and he reaches, and his hand slaps against the top of the wall, and he plants a foot. He looks up. Still a ways to go, but at least he’s made contact. Mills pulls himself up, one leg scaling the wall, the other scaling the gate. After a few measly steps he loses his footing and chides himself. This is no fucking way to be a superhero. His legs scramble as he tries to replant his feet. It takes a minute, but he regains his climb and is able to pull himself onto the lowest branch of iron. He sees it won’t be as easy as it had looked from below to topple over this thing ; from this perspective, Mills can see the iron spreads rounder and higher than he had thought. Somehow he thought this would be as easy as flying horizontal over a high jump. Somehow he thought he was the track-and-field athlete who does this all the time. He’s never done it. He’s watched others do it. And they sure make it look easy. “Fuck,” he groans. He really thought he could do it by simply appropriating the skills of others. “Fuck this.”

  Just as he utters the second of the two “fucks,” he loses his footing again. Both feet. He’s dangling now, kicking at the wall and the gate. The more violently he kicks, the more he causes vibration in the wrought iron. With the vibration comes the tremors that bounce his hand on and off the iron; each time he narrowly catches himself, until ultimately he misses, losing his grip. No grip, no footing, he flails, then plummets. This Spider-Man thing is overrated. It feels like slow motion, but it’s a hard landing on his ass at the very front edge of the hood. He struggles to his feet and considers himself lucky that this hood did not add insult to injury by having an ornament.

  “Gus,” he roars. He knows it will do no good. But, he’s beyond logic. “Gus!”

  The adrenaline. The thumping in his chest. The labored breath, panting.

  “Gus! Come on, Gus!”

  He drifts to the front seat, slips in, then collapses behind the steering wheel. He’s not the praying type; that is to say it’s unlike him, as a very lapsed Catholic, to ask God to intervene in a tough situation. Instead, he mutters, “Please take care of yourself, buddy,” and takes off. Worn out from the commotion, Ivy is asleep now in the back seat. He doesn’t wake her when they arrive. Instead, he scoops her heavy mass in his arms and carries her inside. “Hi, honey,” he says to Kelly. “We have a guest. And I broke my ass.”

  Lightning strikes in violet flashes. But it doesn’t make a sound. It just lights the night with its benign signature, white on purple. Gus can see it through the bedroom window. He likens the condition of the sky to his own fate. Not a word, not a soul, nothing. Outside it doesn’t rain; it’s a dry lightning, heat lightning. Richard Knight has left him here in one of the guest bedrooms, lying on top of the bed, his wrists bound. If not for the electricity outside, he’d be in complete darkness, so there’s something merciful about the languid storm, if you can call it a storm. He doesn’t know what to call it. He’s blind, or he feels blind. Except he did have some kind of vision or vibe about Alex. He thinks Alex was nearby, maybe down the road at Beatrice’s house. Alex was close. They have to know Gus is here. They have to know time is running out. Richard Knight doesn’t have long before he completely cracks. Gus is certain of it. He doesn’t know what the crack will look like, whether it will be sudden, whether it will be jagged, whether it will hurt, whether there will be blood, but this can’t go another day.

  Kelly draws the line when Ivy hops on the bed. “I love her, too, Alex. And it’s not like I care about the linens,” she says with a laugh. “But I’m allergic. I can tell.”

  Mills gives her a pout. “Fine.” He calls Ivy to come to his side of the bed and points to the floor. Obediently, she lies down and snorts, wagging her tail. He can tell why she’s Gus’s child. For the third time since he’s come home, he texts Obershan and inquires about Gus’s cell phone. Surely they’ve been able to track it by now. He had requested a signal retrieval from his own department, but he was told there was some kind of issue with the cell tower. A coincidence? Or had Richard Knight somehow scrambled Gus’s signal? He had called Billie and left her an update on her voice mail.

  “You’re obsessing,” his wife says. “I know that look on your face.”

  “Hon, Gus is missing. The longer he’s gone, the more serious this gets.”

  “I understand,” she says. “But I also know there’s only so much you can do.”

  “No. I swear there’s something I’m missing. . . .”

  “Sleep,” she says. “We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  He turns to her. “We do?”

  She turns to him, hell in her eyes. “Uh, yes, we do, Alex. The mediation.”

  “Oh, fuck. Oh, Jesus Christ. Right.”

  She rolls over.

  34

  Mills wakes up to a bark and a growl, and it startles him, paralyzes him, in his sleepy stupor for a second before he looks to his side and sees the dog’s head resting on the edge of the bed. “Oh, girl,” he says. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  Ivy shakes her head and barks again. That’s her cue to go outside. So, Mills jumps into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and goes for a walk with his friend’s best friend at his side. Kelly is already out of the shower when they get back. She moves about her morning, distracted, carrying a heavy weight, it seems. Mills reaches for her and says, “It’s going to be fine, Kel. We both know Trevor didn’t do what those people said he did.”

  “Do you believe a mediator will believe that?” She has that look, that clenched jaw, the gnashing teeth, her eyes gnashing too, if that’s possible.

  “The mediation was your idea,” he reminds her. “Because you knew it was the best option. Because you trusted it would settle this thing without harming Trevor. No reason to second-guess now.”

  She doesn’t say much else before she drifts out of the house.

  Now, as he leaves for headquarters, he finally gets a text from Obershan.

  “Sorry, Mills. We’ve been trying. Problem with the towers,” the text reads.

  “Sabotage?” Mills texts back.

  “Don’t think so. We think it’s a provider issue.”

  “Cell service is fine.”

  “Don’t know, Alex. We’re still working on it.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “K.”

  Oh. Obershan’s one of those with the “K.”

  Mills backs the car out of the driveway and heads to work. He swerves and nearly hits someo
ne on the highway, his thoughts completely elsewhere on the map. He takes a detour and drives over to Gus’s house. He does a walk around, then peers in through the windows, looking for any change since yesterday, any noticeable alteration in appearances. Through every window, not a sign of life. He puts his ear up against the glass sliders in the back. Just a hum. The static hum of yesterday. But in that hum, Mills hears his own voice. He’s interrogating the rhetorical witness. “When did you last see him? Where was he? Where was he going? When did he say he’d be back?”

  If he could, he’d go AWOL and hike the forbidding terrain behind Billie’s house and climb the wall. If Richard Knight could do it, surely so could Mills. And so what if it sets off the alarm? The more commotion, the merrier. He’d need tools. And rope. And his hiking boots. Water, too. Maybe a search party. At least one other person to help him navigate. Powell would probably do it. Then he shakes his head. Stop it, he tells himself. It’s a fucking fool’s errand. As is removing his phone from his pocket and dialing Gus. But he does it anyway. Because, why not?

  “Hey there. It’s Gus. Leave a message.” Beep.

  Mills hangs up.

  He’s about to self-flagellate when an idea intervenes by mere seconds. The idea has a name. It’s Calvin Cloke. The insanely happy medical examiner who is also, and this is the best part, a drone enthusiast. Or an expert. Or both. It doesn’t matter; Mills remembers Cal telling him he bought a “really state-of-the-art” drone a few months ago. He remembers Cal saying, “Man, you got to come fly this thing with me.” Today’s the day to take the happy ME up on his offer. And Mills knows just the flight plan.

  Cloke is as groggy as a drunk pillow when Mills calls. “Yuh?”

  “I hope I woke you up.”

  “Why? And who the f-nut is this?”

  “Mills. Reporting for drone duty. If you’re sleeping it means you’re off today. . . .”

  “Shit, Alex. I’m working nights, so I’m sleeping in for a reason,” Cloke says. “What the hell can I do for you?”

  Mills explains. Suddenly, Cloke is wide awake, as chipper as that thing that decimates wood and, sometimes, bodies. “I’m in,” he tells Mills. “I can meet you in thirty, maybe forty.”

  They agree to meet at the Circle K at Forty-Fourth and Camelback. Meanwhile, Mills texts his squad: “Be in later. Working on something.”

  No one responds. Which is the best response of all. He grabs a mocha at Hava Java, then heads east to the Circle K, where he waits ten minutes or so for Cloke to show up. At the gate to Billie Welch’s community, Mills flashes his badge and says, “The guy in the Humvee’s with me.”

  In front of Billie’s gate, Cloke readies the mission from the back of the Humvee. Incredible how much this guy can do with one arm. Perched under the back hatch, Cloke fires up a laptop, and then from a built-in compartment, he withdraws an enormous carton that Mills helps him lower to the ground. Cloke pulls out, from the carton, a species of drone the likes of which Mills has never seen. It’s as if Star Wars had sex with Big Brother’s sister. A six-legged metal spider, it’s fucking monstrous.

  “How many cameras does that thing carry?”

  “I can switch between four cameras. Live.”

  “No shit. As we watch?”

  “As we watch. Mostly as you watch. I’ll be flying this thing.”

  “Zoom?”

  “Yes,” Cloke replies. “But I’ve yet to penetrate too far inside a structure. Besides, that’s illegal.”

  Mills snickers. Cloke flips some switches on the drone, adjusts some wires, then presses a remote. The drone lifts—seemingly by magic—from the ground and hovers about two feet, then three before Cloke brings it down again. “Just a test,” he tells Mills. “Don’t look so mesmerized.”

  Mills laughs. “I’m about five years or so behind technology.”

  Cloke types some codes into his laptop. A screen comes up, all blue, then separates into four quadrants. “Your cameras,” Cloke says. “You’ll monitor all four screens.”

  Then Mills watches with the glee of a ten-year-old as Calvin Cloke hits the remote again and the drone takes flight. “You want a full circle around the house?”

  “At least one, Cal. Low, high, as close to the windows as you can get.”

  And off it goes, rising and rising, against the perfect dome of blue sky, higher than Billie’s gate, then over the gate, into the grand entryway and courtyard. Mills realizes his eyes should be on the laptop, so he veers his attention to the screen, where he can see live video of the garage, the façade of the house, each window. Cloke maneuvers the thing slowly and sweeps back and forth. “You tell me if you want a zoom, a higher or lower shot.”

  “Can you try to shoot through a window?”

  “I’ll try, but there’s a lot of glare with the sun,” Cloke says. “Arizona is not always drone-friendly that way.”

  Today is no different. The drone treats Mills to beautiful shots of a beautiful home, to the roof lines, to the exquisite camouflage of a desert mansion and the succulent gardens that surround it, a home that by design disappears into the mountains, a burnt-clay exterior, a red tile roof, panoramic windows. There are fountains and waterfalls, not gaudy, just quiet and lulling. He feels like an intruder here, spying, but he knows Billie would be all for it.

  But he can’t fucking see Gus.

  “I don’t suppose you have speakers mounted on that thing,” he says to Cloke.

  “No. Sorry. Everything but,” Cloke says. “Were you planning on broadcasting to the kidnapper in there?”

  “I’d like to.”

  The drone has now done a full swing around the estate, providing various shots at various angles. “Around again?” Cloke asks.

  “Yes.”

  This time Cloke operates the drone to circle the house in the opposite direction. He finds a shaded area, like an inner courtyard, a few small tables, and another fountain. Cloke lowers the device and zooms through a window. Mills recognizes the studio immediately. He remembers the first time Billie and Gus gave him a tour of the house. “That’s where she writes most of her music,” he tells Cloke.

  “Sweet. I like my rock ’n’ roll a little harder than Billie Welch,” he says. “But she’s still the queen.”

  “I need to see shadier areas like this,” Gus tells him. “The rest of the windows have too much glare.”

  “You’ll have to bring that up with the sun.”

  “Okay, here, Cal. Here at the pool, there are all those doors that should give us a good view into the house. If you can get under the covered area, start from the left, go to the right.”

  “Dude, I can get under the covered area, but I don’t know if I can get out. A bit risky.”

  “Do the best you can.”

  Cloke pilots the thing close, does a low sweep, just outside the covered area, and hovers from one door to the next. The zoom works well. There’s no glare. But there’s also no sign of life in there. Nothing stirs. “Fuck,” Mills says. “Great video, but we got nothing.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault. It’s a huge house. He could be anywhere. Lots of interior space.”

  “Should I bring this thing in?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Mills can taste the bitterness of his frustration. This was such a good idea, and yet it failed. He failed. What the fuck must Gus be thinking now? That is if Gus isn’t dead. Mills hasn’t entertained that outcome, and yet it loiters in the dark corners of his consciousness; of course it does. If it didn’t, why would Mills be here trying to penetrate Billie Welch’s private fortress? Why would he be haunted by the thought that leaving here, right now, is equivalent to signing Gus’s death warrant? The whirring of a flying beast interrupts his morbid thoughts. He looks to the sky and follows the slow approach of the drone as it swings into view from the left side of the house, skimming the tops of vegetation, and dipping over the wall. It totters for a moment, then begins its descent, as if pushed and pulled by invisible hydraulics, to t
he ground. A perfect landing.

  An imperfect mission.

  He woke up to a constellation of acne. Or rather the dying stars of acne. Richard Knight’s scarred face hovered over Gus. “Rise and shine,” the lunatic said.

  Gus uttered a grunt.

  “Sleep well?”

  “About twenty minutes here and there,” Gus said. “Thanks for asking. Now how about untying my wrists?”

  The man laughed. “Uncomfortable?”

  Gus gave up trying to move around midnight. First his muscles seized up. He couldn’t twist. He couldn’t turn. Then came the throbbing in his bones from his shoulders to his knees. “Dude, just untie me.”

  “Of course I’m going to untie you. You have to make me breakfast.”

  “Can I take a shower? Please?”

  “Yup, you smell. But I don’t know . . .”

  “What don’t you know?”

  Richard surveyed the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom. “I’ll be sitting on this bed, Gus Parker. Don’t you dare try to crawl out a window.”

  Gus struggled to sit up. “There’s no window in there big enough to climb out of. Untie me, please.”

  Gus took his time in the shower. He turned the room into a steam bath and cleansed himself of Richard Knight’s residue. He watched the water swirl into the drain and wished that were his way out, too. He’d have liked to go with the water, that kind of escape, as if he were surfing to freedom, as if the drain led straight to the ocean. He was obviously lost in thought because all of a sudden he heard the voice of Richard Knight roaring, “Get the fuck out of there already! It’s been twenty minutes!”

  Gus had not noticed the man entering the bathroom. He didn’t think it had been twenty minutes, but he wasn’t going to argue. “Okay, Richard. Just get out of here so I can dry off. I don’t need an audience.”

  “I make the rules. Remember?”

  “Richard, I am not getting out of this shower until you leave the bathroom. We can stand here all day at an impasse, but I’m not moving. And I don’t think you’re going to shoot me over this. You need me.”