Dig Your Grave

by Steven Cooper

  Kelly says, “No. Sit down.”

  Mills can’t bring himself to acknowledge the other family, so he doesn’t. The lobby is playing Gus Parker’s kind of music—strange vibrations from India, rain falling, beads rattling, voices chanting. A woman comes through a door. “Hello, everyone, I’m Dr. Goodman. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a child psychologist, family counselor, and professional mediator. So, let me tell you how this will work.”

  She’s probably five-two. As lithe as a sparrow. She’s easily seventy, under that pleasantly styled dome of gray hair, her skin free of cosmetics, her eyes blue. “I will speak to each child individually, first. Then I’ll speak to them together. We will resolve this here, but it could take a few hours. Parents, you’re free to leave and come back.”

  “We’ll stay,” Dan Heathrow announces in a gust of testosterone.

  Mills squeezes Kelly’s hand. He’s going to go out of his mind.

  “Fine, then,” Bernice Goodman says. “Let’s start with Lily.”

  One shot rang out. One bullet pierced the air. Gus went deaf for a second or two. He picks his head up off the bar, and it feels as if a metal Frisbee is lodged in his skull, rattling in there, as if he suffered a concussion. He checks for blood. There’s no blood. When Richard Knight tore the gun from his hands, the man fired it merely an inch from Gus’s ear. The room convulsed. Gus felt a river of blood pouring from his nostrils, from both ears, too. It was vivid seepage. But it was only phantom seepage. He looks around. He sees the remains of Angel’s Envy, an eighty-proof explosion that also knocked Stoli and several glasses off the bar shelves. Shards rained into the sink, flew onto the bar. He picks a few pieces out of his hair. He supposes he’s lucky none of it pierced his skin. Richard Knight stands at the doorway.

  “Get up,” the man says. He waves the pistol. “We have a call to make.”

  He moves Gus into the kitchen, and Gus says, “Now what?”

  “Call her. Break it off.”

  “You’re going to plug the landline back into the wall, Richard?”

  The man snarls. “You think I’m stupid? I know they’ll trace the call and find us. You’re going to use one of my burner phones, Gus.”

  “You came prepared.”

  Sputtering, Richard says, “Of course I did. There’s never been more at stake for me. For Billie. For you. Call her!”

  As Gus is about to dial, he considers dialing 911 instead of Billie. But figuring Richard is even marginally intelligent, the three taps of 9-1-1 on the screen might be a fatal giveaway. “Come on, Gus. Make the call!” the man insists. “I know how much this must hurt you, but the sooner you get it over with, the better. Like ripping a Band-Aid. Just do it! Call Billie. Now!”

  Gus scrambles to remember Alex’s phone number, a memory problem for the technology age when everyone’s phone number is a stored contact.

  “Hello, you’ve reached the law office of Weissman, Antonelli, and Darymple, please hold for an operator—”

  Wrong number. Gus hangs up. “What happened?” Richard barks.

  “I got her voice mail.”

  “Try again.”

  He does.

  “Mitzi’s Dance Studio . . . We’re in a class, but your call is imp—”

  He hangs up again. “Jesus Christ, why won’t she pick up, Gus?” Richard cries. “Did you two have a fight? I bet you had a fight. You treat her like shit, don’t you? Man, I am so glad to come to the rescue. Now more than ever.”

  “Would you shut up, Richard? Would you?”

  Richard lifts a lavender-scented Yankee Candle from the counter and hurls it at Gus. It grazes Gus’s head and crashes to the floor behind him. In that split second, a numerical epiphany surges to Gus’s memory in ten perfect digits: Alex’s phone number. Maybe it’s the impact against his skull or maybe it’s sheer will; who knows and who cares? He dials Alex.

  His phone rings. The others look at him with low-grade disgust. Dan Heathrow points to the sign that says, “Please Silence Your Phones in the Waiting Room.”

  Mills looks to his wife. She nods. He picks up.

  “Hi, it’s Gus.”

  His eyes practically bounce out of his head. Gus Parker!

  “Gus fucking Parker!” Mills jumps to his feet.

  “I’m calling to break up with you, Billie.”

  “Billie?” Mills asks. “What the fuck, Gus?”

  “I’m sorry Billie, but I have to break up with you. Check your email.”

  “Gus? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “Not really.”

  Mills goes as calm as a hostage negotiator, but his insides are a storm. “So, you’re calling to break up with Billie. But you’re not. You’re with that stalker. He has you.”

  “Yes. I am. I’m serious.”

  Mills hears things crashing on Gus’s end. “What’s that noise? Tell me where you are, Gus, and I’ll get help.”

  A pause, then, “I can’t do that, Billie.”

  “Are you at your house? I checked there, and you weren’t home.”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not blindfolded, are you?”

  Another pause, and then Gus says, “No, I’m sorry.”

  Mills can hear a man cackling in the background. “Are you at her house? Just tell me. Yes or no.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. You’re better off with Richard.”

  Then the line goes dead. There was no caller ID. For a few sickening seconds, Mills stares at his phone as if it should tell him what to do. “Fuck!”

  “Have some respect and take it outside,” Dan Heathrow hisses.

  Mills ignores him. He dials the Paradise Valley Police and tells them to get out to Billie’s place. He then turns to his wife, who looks at him shell-shocked.

  “Thank God,” she says. “What a relief.”

  “A relief? A relief? It’s not a relief until someone gets there and gets him out.”

  “You called Paradise Valley.”

  He rubs his temples. “I gotta go, hon. I’m jumping out of my skin.”

  “Go.”

  “What about Trevor?”

  “Let me worry about Trevor.”

  “But how do you think it’ll look?” he whispers.

  “Don’t worry about them,” she whispers back.

  “How do you think it’ll look to Trev?”

  Trevor gets up, then leans in to his parents. “You guys don’t know how to whisper. Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’m fine.”

  The room tilts. The lights go fuzzy. His throat tightens. A strangling at his neck.

  “Dad? I haven’t even been called in yet. And then there’s a joint session after that.”

  “I’ll be back,” Mills says as he steadies himself. “I’ll be back within an hour, no matter what happens to Gus. I promise.”

  Kelly grabs his arm. “If you don’t go, I will,” she says, her voice quivering. “It’s Gus. He’s family. Get going. My stomach’s in knots.”

  Mills can’t untangle his own intestines. As he moves past them, Corinne Heathrow looks away. Dan smirks and rolls his eyes. Mills doesn’t give a fuck. His blood runs cold.

  His hands shake just a bit too much as he grabs the steering wheel and whips into traffic, still not giving a fuck as he drives, the whole world a gauzy make-believe, all the way to Paradise Valley.

  35

  Gus is mighty proud of his ruse when he hears the approaching sirens, though he’s not entirely relieved because Richard Knight can hear the sirens, too, and the man has turned to fury and panic, wildly racing from one end of the house to the other, his arms extended over his head, clasping the gun. Gus uses Richard’s sprawling mania as an opportunity to sprint into the garage, where he flips the circuit breaker for the driveway gate to On. On his way back in, he hits the panic button on the alarm system, and now the house is quaking with sirens, itself, which adds to the confusion and to the gunman’s implosion. He wails, Richard does, like a man who’s lost his only love, not because she’s
left him but because they’re being torn apart by a dark and evil enemy. Gus figures this loss must be very real to Richard, as disturbed as the man is, and feels just a little bit of sympathy for him. Even as he roars. Even as he throws over more furniture. Gus makes for the front of the house. He inches open the front door and steps out onto the driveway courtyard and sees the first cruisers barreling toward the gate.

  He has only a glimmer of relief before he’s hooked by the neck. Richard presses the gun against his head, just above his left temple. “Come back inside,” his captor says. “Don’t make a fuss for me, Gus. Not now.”

  The man drags Gus into the house by the clavicle, but, as he does, Gus reaches for the button to open the gate. He nearly misses it with his flailing hand but slaps it on the second try. Knight apparently doesn’t notice and continues to drag him across the foyer, through the family room, knocking over a few tables in there, and out the French doors to the pool. Just then, Gus can hear the stampede of cops crash into the house, a whole army of feet advancing, expanding, and then pouring out the doors to the back of the estate, to the pool, as well.

  Richard, his arm still around Gus’s neck, fires a shot into the air to warn them.

  The cops shout at him. “Drop your weapon! Drop it, Richard.” But Richard doesn’t flinch. Gus pulls at the arm around his neck. Richard tightens it. Gus tries an elbow to the man’s stomach. Richard barely buckles, but in the one instant that Richard shifts on his feet, Gus throws his hands up and wrestles for the gun. The two of them twist into each other like coiling human rope, and in the intertwining of friction and frayed nerves, muscle and madness, Gus is unsure who’s coiling whom. They struggle and grunt, and a cop yells, “Gus, don’t do that.” It’s Detective Obershan. But Gus doesn’t listen. At this point he’s pissed. And he’s done. This nutcase has done enough damage. Gus knees the guy in the stomach, then the groin, doesn’t care if he’s fighting dirty. Richard Knight flips backward, losing his grip on Gus. But the gun is still in Richard’s hand, and he fires into the air again.

  Obershan yells, “Gus, get back. Get back!” This time Gus complies, retreating from the standoff, moving behind the line of cops, who stand there with their guns drawn. The cornered man scrambles to his feet, waves the gun, and spins a 360 as if looking for Gus. That’s when Obershan shoots. He strikes the stalker in the butt, and Richard rolls into the pool—knees, then ass, then head, an almost slow-motion quality to the tumble—where he lands facedown in the water. The sound reverberates. A firecracker, a growl, a splash. The pool becomes a small pond of blood. The sight turns Gus’s stomach, so much so he assesses a proper place to vomit (a potted plant, maybe). Then there’s a hand on his shoulder. A firm hand that shakes him, and for a split second the ground spins and Gus sways. He turns.

  “You okay?” Mills asks him.

  “Hey, Alex . . .”

  “C’mon, let’s get out of the way.”

  Gus looks back, reflexively, just to confirm he has seen the end. As he does, he sees the suspect being fished out of the pool like an injured beluga. Mills leads Gus inside. Gus glides in disbelief through the crime scene and then out the front door to the driveway, where the glare of freedom hits him. Beatrice is standing there. She opens her arms. She shuffles toward him, pulling him into an embrace.

  “Oh, Gus!” she cries. “Oh, my Gus!”

  “He’s a little dazed,” Mills tells her.

  “I’m fine,” Gus says.

  “PV will want a statement from you,” Mills tells him.

  “They can talk to him at my house,” Beatrice says. “I’m taking him away from here.”

  Mills shakes his head. “They’re probably going to need him to do a walk-through, you know, room to room to describe what happened over the past few days.”

  Beatrice narrows her eyes, then puts her hands on her hips.

  “Oh, fuck it,” Mills says. “Just go. I’ll handle things.”

  As Gus and Beatrice turn toward her house, an ambulance barrels past them up the driveway to take the criminal away.

  36

  Mills zips back to Chandler, again breaking every speed limit in the book. He had promised to be back within an hour. He’s ten minutes late. He’s relieved about Gus, but he can’t think about Gus. He shouldn’t have left Trevor, but he had to leave Trevor. There was no good option. His muscles ache, now, his whole body clenched. But when he arrives at Bernice Goodman’s office he’s happy to see that the session is ongoing. In fact, it’s about another twenty minutes before the mediator steps out into the lobby. She sits in a wicker chair opposite them. The kids remain in her office.

  Dan Heathrow protests. “I don’t want my daughter alone with that boy.”

  Bernice folds her hands in her lap. “I don’t believe he’s a threat to her,” she says softly.

  Mills takes that as a good sign. Dan laughs an acidic laugh but says nothing in return. The doctor smiles. “As you know,” she continues, “I’ve spoken to each child individually, and also in joint session. I’ve listened very carefully and have used my skills to draw out the truth. I’m confident I’ve reached the truth.”

  “We’re all ears, ma’am,” Dan says.

  She clears her throat and says, “There was no forceful act here.”

  Kelly exhales a sigh of relief that fills the room.

  “This is something the Heathrows will have to deal with as a family,” the mediator continues. “Lily was afraid of how you, Mr. and Mrs. Heathrow, would regard her unless you thought the sex was forced upon her. She was terrified of being ostracized in her own home. She also thought the punishment would be far less severe if you thought the sex was not consensual.”

  “That’s nuts,” Dan says.

  “Whatever it is,” the woman says patiently, “it was not Lily’s idea to lie.” She turns directly to Mills and Kelly. It’s an oh-shit moment like no other. “It was Trevor’s idea.”

  “What?” Kelly begs.

  “Trevor didn’t want Lily to get in trouble. So he told her, persuaded her rather, to lie to her parents. To make it his fault entirely. Neither he nor Lily ever thought it would lead to the threat of pressing charges. They were naïve, misguided. But considering their age, not unusual.”

  “Which is why they shouldn’t be having sex in the first place!” Dan erupts. “What they did is wrong.”

  “That’s not for me to judge,” the mediator says. “But I can tell you it’s normal. I encourage both families to talk it out. It’s a family matter. Trevor and Lily both made serious mistakes.”

  She excuses herself and returns with Trevor and Lily. Trevor is about to hug his mother when Dan gets up and cuts him off. That’s Mills’s cue to intervene. “What do you think you’re doing, Dan?”

  “I’m gonna tell your kid that even though we won’t be pressing charges, he better keep away from my daughter. Do you hear me?” he yells at Trevor, the man’s face purple with fury. “In God’s name, stay away from her.”

  “Done,” Mills says. “Let’s all go home.”

  Trevor rides shotgun with him. Kelly is behind them in the rearview mirror. His son’s lack of judgment stuns him, but Mills will have that conversation with Trev at another time. For now, he lets some of the relief sink in.

  Gus sleeps. Through the day, through the night. He wakes up at Beatrice’s the following morning.

  “Richard Knight is in custody,” she tells him. “They sewed up his butt in the ER and took him to jail. He’s staying there ’til his arraignment.”

  “And probably a very long time after that,” he says. “Was it on the news?”

  “All over the news. But the nice thing about living here is that news crews can’t get past the security booth. They do have choppers, though,” she reminds him. “But look at you, my dear, you have a black eye! Your hands are swollen. We need to get you to the hospital.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m fine. No hospitals.”

  She cooks breakfast.

  He takes a shower, scrubs
like crazy. When he gets out, Billie is there waiting. She’s sitting on the bed and rises when she sees him. Her eyes fill with tears. He pulls her close against his damp body. She runs her hands down the length of his back. She won’t let him go. His towel almost comes undone. “I flew in yesterday,” she tells him, “but I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “That’s okay,” he says.

  “Honey, you’re all bruised,” she says, choking up. “I insist you come to LA.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” she asks, stepping back from the embrace. “After what happened here yesterday, I will never live in that house again. Never. It was my dream home. And that’s gone.”

  Gus knows somehow, someway, and at sometime, the loss will find its way into her music. She’ll write a song about it. “I understand,” he replies.

  “I’m selling it,” she says. “LA will be home full-time.”

  “I don’t know that I can say the same for myself.”

  “What’s keeping you here?”

  He looks at her as if she’ll never understand. Because she probably won’t. “My job. My clients. My life, Billie,” he says. “I’ve planted roots here for many years. After all the years of touring, you’re used to uprooting yourself. I’m not.”

  “I don’t want to let you go,” she tells him.

  “I don’t want to let you go either.”

  “Same old story,” she says. “I can never seem to have a man in my life because of my life.”

  He grabs her hands. “How about we don’t figure this all out now?”

  She nods.

  “I’m supposed to go give a statement to the cops,” he says.

  “Beatrice said you did that yesterday.”

  “I did. But I have to meet them at your house to do a walk-through of the crime scene.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” She gulps. “Well, I’m coming with you, Gus.”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t think you should. I’ll meet you afterward.”

  “I’m staying at my sister’s.”

  He kisses her lips and holds her face to his.