Desert Remains

by Steven Cooper

  Beatrice is still staring at one of the articles.

  “I’m waiting for it to speak to me,” she says. “It has to. It must.”

  Gus understands exactly what she means. “It’s like my intuition is ready to dive off a cliff,” he tells her.

  “Take me with you.”

  He tells her he will.

  24

  The light is on in the hallway bathroom. Gus doesn’t remember leaving it on, nor turning it off. He doesn’t care. All he wants is sleep. He has to work in the morning. His shift starts at 7:00 a.m. He has to be in at six thirty. His yawn is a quiet howl. He inventories the workday to come. MRIs. There will be back pain, lots of back pain; there will be explorations of the spine, from disk to disk. There will be headaches and surveys for tumors. And shoulder pain. And neck pain. And there will be cancer patients. They will come to see how their disease has progressed. Maybe he’ll intuit something in a mass of tissue and spidery fibers. Maybe he’ll see another rope. Or maybe he’ll just watch and see nothing. He knows he won’t be able to take his mind off Theodore Smith.

  A candle flickers in the living room. He knows he didn’t leave a candle lit. He scans the kitchen, then the living room; there’s no sign of anything being disturbed. Ivy is sleeping in the corner singing a few melodious snores. His home is utterly quiet. Beautiful, but mysterious. Who lit the candle? Someone has been here. Or someone is here.

  It’s not a psychic hunch. It’s just a hunch. He bounds for the bedroom, flips the switch, the overhead light goes on, and he’s speechless. He can’t utter a word. Not even a groan. There she is splayed across the bed. There she is completely naked. There she is with flaming orange hair, pubic hair to match. With chopsticks twirled into her fiery tresses high up on her head. Heavy eye makeup, smudgy, her body limp.

  “Welcome home,” says Bridget Mulroney. “Did you have a good day?”

  He stands there trying to interpret the hair color. Why so drastic? And yet as he tries to fathom the fiery hair, he knows he is not trying to grasp anything in particular; rather he is doing what he can to avoid the obvious monster in the room: the vagina of a clown, the vagina of a crazy woman.

  Gus Parker is sweating.

  “You don’t look happy to see me,” Bridget says. “And that makes me sad.”

  “Bridget, get out of my house.”

  The woman has not broken her pose. Her porcelain breasts have not shifted, or jiggled, or bounced. “You don’t mean that,” she whimpers.

  “Seriously? Do you know how much shit you’re in now that you’ve broken into my house twice?”

  He backs himself away, shuffling toward the door.

  “I didn’t break in,” she tells him.

  “Of course you did.”

  “No,” she insists. “The other day when I was here I grabbed one of your keys and made a copy. So technically I did not break in tonight. I hope that clears things up so you can take off those clothes of yours and stuff your manhood deep inside me.”

  Gus sputters.

  “Don’t be so shy,” the intruder says.

  “Bridget, I think you need help. I don’t really know what you want. But I think you need help.”

  She sits up but spreads her legs even wider. The chopsticks wobble on her head. “I’ll tell you what I want, Gus Parker. I want you to come over here and fuck me like I’m your precious geisha slut.”

  He shakes his head. “What did you just say?”

  “You heard me, Gus Parker. Get in bed and fuck me like I’m your precious geisha slut. It’s my fantasy.”

  “It’s . . . disgusting. It’s . . . so . . . I don’t know . . . insane.”

  “You will come to love my fantasies.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  She clutches one of the chopsticks from her head and flings it at him. “Fuck your geisha and fuck her now. Damn you!”

  “Look at you,” Gus says. “You’re not only insane, but you sound like a freakin’ racist. And I don’t find that attractive.”

  “I love the Far East.”

  “This has nothing to do with the Far East.”

  “It’s a Far Eastern tradition.”

  This kind of reasoning is going nowhere. “Bridget, if you leave now, and you leave quietly, I promise to keep this between us,” he says.

  But she doesn’t leave. And she isn’t quiet. “Who is she?” she howls. “You have a girlfriend, don’t you?”

  Gus says nothing. He considers sex as a tactic. What if he just fucks her and sends her home? Will that be the end of it? He spies her nakedness. There’s nothing stopping him. After all, Beatrice was just having visions of him getting laid. And here is Bridget Mulroney, her legs spread wide, her entry like a canyon, every detail of it in his face—like porn in IMAX. But he is just too repulsed to be aroused. Not even the slightest stirring in his groin.

  “Who is she?” Bridget screams again. “Do I know her? Where does she live? Where do you fuck her? I need to know, Gus Parker.”

  “Lord, Jesus, have mercy on me,” Gus cries, feeling nothing religious in particular, just a larger-than-life desperation.

  And then she pulls the bedside lamp down to her lap, aims the halo of light on her female parts. “Look at it,” she demands. “Look at it!”

  “Bridget, really . . .”

  Gus is drawn to her naked crotch again; as much as he’d like to, he can’t break away, for in a flash, he sees something there: he sees one man and another, and another, and another. He sees Bridget stifling tears, her eyes closed, her legs spread. A man is slamming at her. A man with tons of flesh.

  “You fucked Clayman Tarpo? You fucked the sheriff? What the hell is that about?”

  Suddenly modest, she puts her hands to her chest and lunges for the blankets. She slams up against the headboard. “What did you say?” she cries.

  “I’m having a vision of you getting fucked by Sheriff Tarpo.”

  “Oh my God. No. You can’t know that.”

  “Then it’s true?”

  She swipes the lamp, and it crashes to the floor. The bulb blinks off, then on again. The woman gasps for air. She seems on the verge of hyperventilating when Gus steps forward, extending a hand.

  “No. No!” she fires at him. “Who told you Tarpo fucked me? Who told you?”

  Gus lowers his head and stares at the floor. “No one told me, Bridget. I just know.”

  “Right,” she says bitterly. “Because you’re a fucking psychic. One look at my twat and you know my life story. Fine, then. Yeah, the sheriff fucked me. And so did the superintendent and so did the head of the school committee. And so did the president of American Bank, and the head of the airport authority, the CEO of Valley Computers, the pastor of Valley Church United . . . and the list goes on, Gus Parker!”

  “Really, Bridget—”

  “How do you think my father won all those construction bids? Huh? How do you think he made his millions?”

  Gus is horrified, his mouth agape. A chill rushes down his spine. He is thinking a thousand thoughts, a raceway of questions, but he can’t say anything. He doesn’t doubt her; there is no doubt. With great certainty he sees her life as the torture she has described; he sees the men. He sees the money, the machinery, the cranes, the ribbon cuttings, the suits, the ties, the champagne bursting ; the images are flashing at him like a life coming to an end.

  “My cunt built schools, jails, office towers, banks, terminals, churches! You name it, my cunt built it. There should be a monument to my cunt in the middle of Phoenix.”

  She’s not crying. She’s laughing hysterically.

  Gus approaches to lift the lamp.

  Bridget gets up and charges him. Bridget Mulroney is very strong. She flattens him against the wall. He pushes back. “Look, Parker, are you forgetting that you are the one who came forward to save me?”

  “Say what?”

  “I thought so! First you want to meet me with the pretense that I’m in danger. And now you want to cast m
e aside like some kind of geisha slut. After everything you know now?”

  Spit lands on his face.

  He takes a deep breath. “All I did was warn you that the killer might be stalking you,” he says slowly, carefully. “I had no idea about the rest of this. But now it makes sense.”

  “What does?”

  “That this is the only way you know how to operate. What happened to you defined you.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  “I think I sensed this all along, Bridget,” he says tentatively. “You weren’t flirting with me when we met. You weren’t coming on to me. You were begging me to see your life. You do need someone to rescue you. You’ve known it all along. And now I know it, too.”

  He’s out of breath.

  Bridget leans an elbow into his chest. “Well, now I have a vision for you, Gus Parker. I envision you going down. And I don’t mean on me where you might have enjoyed it.” She laughs. “Where you would have enjoyed it. No, I see you going down. I see you falling from grace. And I don’t see you ever getting back up again.”

  “Is there any way I can help you? That’s all I want to know,” he says. The sympathy is warming his chest, flooding him.

  “Rescue me, you mean? Your words, not mine.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” he admits. “But I can help you put the past where it belongs.”

  She laughs. Her eyes are on fire. “You can’t do a damn thing for me. I hope the sedative wears off soon.”

  “Sedative?”

  She smiles wickedly. “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t you notice how deeply your mutt was sleeping on the couch?”

  It takes a moment. And then he says, “Ivy? You gave her a sedative?”

  “I didn’t want our fucking to be interrupted,” she tells him. “You understand. Don’t you?”

  “Are you really that nuts?”

  “Yes.”

  He grabs her wrists and flings her away. “Get out of my house,” he shouts, pushing her from the bedroom. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  He listens as she escapes into the living room. He hears her throwing on clothes. And then the front door slamming. Gus can hear the woman sprinting down the street. She has playground feet, and her playground noise finally recedes around a corner; in the distance a car engine comes to life.

  Then he rushes to Ivy. He shakes her, but she won’t wake up.

  25

  Alex Mills wakes up to Led Zeppelin.

  There’s steam coming from the bathroom where Kelly is showering.

  He looks at the clock.

  It’s 6:00 a.m.

  He shakes his head. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he shouts.

  The bathroom door opens, and out pops Kelly’s face. “What is it?”

  “Who told him he could play music at six o’clock in the morning?”

  She shakes her head. “You want to have another confrontation with him?”

  Mills rolls over. “Damn it, Kelly. I’m not the reason he’s having problems. Would you get that through your head?”

  “You know what? Go fuck yourself,” she tells him, then retreats to the bathroom and shuts the door. He hears the shower surging again. He juggles his options, to kill his son or not? To shove a fist in his mouth? Or put him through a wall? To explode or implode? He’s aiming for eight o’clock. He’s got a meeting with the squad at 8:30. He gets out of bed and brews the coffee.

  “Turn the music off,” is all he says to Trevor when he sees his son rummaging through the refrigerator.

  The kid nods and disappears into his bedroom.

  Mills sips coffee and waits for his wife to join him. They languish over breakfast in silence. When he gets out of the shower, she’s gone. But there’s a note on the kitchen counter.

  Took Trevor to school. This morning never happened.

  Sorry. I love you, K.

  On his way to work Mills notices that he missed two calls from Gus Parker last night. He listens to the messages. First, Gus says he has new information but doesn’t elaborate. The second call came hours later; it’s breathless, and it’s about Bridget breaking in again, something about chopsticks and drugging his dog.

  “Jesus Christ,” he groans.

  He dials Gus. But the phone tag continues.

  At 8:30 he joins Chase, Preston, and a breakfast-chomping Myers in the sergeant’s office.

  “We’ve got the best crime lab in the whole state,” Woods begins. “But it’s no use to us if we have no evidence to analyze.”

  The detectives look at each other, but no one replies.

  “Where’s the damn evidence?” Woods demands. “The chief is breathing down my neck ’cause the mayor is breathing down his. The FBI wants in. The state prosecutor wants his investigators in. Let me put it this way, gentlemen, we’re on a short leash. A very short leash.”

  Mills clears his throat and says, “We’ve collected plenty of evidence from the crime scenes.”

  “You’ve collected bodies,” Woods hisses. “There’s no trail to the killer. There’s nothing that leads us to him. No trace of a weapon, no traceability at all on anything.”

  “It’s been a week,” Mills reminds him. “Does the city actually expect us to wrap this thing up in a week?”

  “Yes,” Woods replies. Then he turns his eyes to Timothy Chase and says, “And you? Anything?”

  Chase stiffens. “Like Mills said, Jake, it’s barely been a week, but—”

  “A week with four murders,” Woods snaps.

  “I was working on a report all weekend, and I’ll share what I have so far.”

  Mills eyes Woods, who sits there and makes a gesture with his hands, a sweeping one that says, Well come on, let me have it.

  Chase exhales deeply, squares his muscular shoulders, and says, “Here’s what I surmise. The killer doesn’t know all of his victims. He may know one of them. But not all. He’s raging at women because his wife walked out on him, which I think makes Mr. Willis the strongest suspect. He’s the only one we know linked to the crime who has a motive.”

  Woods nods. Chase’s profile, so far, is consistent with what the detectives have discussed and completely plausible, Mills thinks. Still, it sounds like ass-covering.

  “We have nothing actually linking Willis to the crime,” Woods says. “And his motive is really singular. A crime of passion against his estranged wife. He would have no motive to kill the other women.”

  “Unless, the rage unleashed something uncontrollable in him,” Mills suggests. “Something psychotic.”

  “But the sequence bothers me,” Woods says. “Why kill the other victims before killing his wife?”

  “Because he couldn’t find her. She was hiding from him,” Chase replies. “Besides, if his wife turns up dead first, then the finger points to him immediately. But if she shows up dead in the camouflage of the cave murders, she’s the victim of a serial madman.”

  “And he breaks into the Glendale house to kill her?”

  “We think so,” Chase says. “Sign of forced entry.”

  “Unless Andrea Willis brings a guy home for the night and the guy kills her and he makes it look like a break-in,” Woods argues. “You’ve considered that, right?”

  “We’ve considered it,” Mills tells his boss because he has to say something even if it means making shit up as he goes along. Then, another spontaneous declaration. “But we’re focusing on Willis.”

  “And that’s it?” Woods asks, cupping his hands to the ceiling.

  Chase shakes his head. “Not exactly,” he answers. “Let’s go back to the night his wife was murdered. The Crystal Ledge subdivision has cameras at the gates. Five white trucks were seen at the gates in the twelve hours prior to the woman’s estimated time of death. Five in, three out. The three out match the five that went in. We know the makes and the models.”

  “No license plates?” Woods asks.

  “No,” Chase replies. “These cameras are cheap, low quality. We’ve tried brightening the picture adding
filters, but no plates.”

  “What’s the point of having cameras that don’t snatch license plates?” Woods asks the room.

  “Deterrent,” Mills says. “It’s a subdivision, not a military base.”

  “Thank you, Alex,” Woods snaps.

  “But, I’m planning to go up to Glendale today and go door-to-door looking for white pickups, getting plate numbers,” Mills tells his boss.

  Chase turns back to Woods. “On the videotape you can see that one of the trucks entered Crystal Ledge with its lights off. At ten thirty at night. Figures into the time of death.”

  “Does Willis own a white truck?” Woods asks.

  “No,” Mills tells him.

  Woods pounds the desk. “Goddamnit, would you guys get your stories straight!”

  Mills leans forward. “Look, we have a possible link between a white truck and the death of Lindsey Drake at Camelback.”

  “And even if Willis doesn’t own a white truck he could have borrowed one or rented one,” Myers adds, suddenly waking up from his Pop-Tart stupor. “I’ve been reaching out to Budget, Hertz, and all the others. Avis and Alamo already told me I’ll need a subpoena.”

  “Then get one,” Woods says, his jaw clenched. “For every damn rental car company in the valley.”

  “It’s in the works,” Myers assures.

  “Meanwhile, I am pretty sure I’ve figured out how this guy’s handling the victims,” Chase says. “He doesn’t kidnap them and bring their bodies into the desert. The evidence we do have doesn’t support that. The blood and other matter at the crime scenes suggest it’s been there as long as the victims have been expired. There’s no trail of fluids entering the caves, or leaving. The killer grabs his victims from a trail, drags them or carries them into these caves. They put up whatever struggle they can, which is to say not much considering we don’t see evidence of the attacker’s skin or hair under their fingernails or foreign objects in their hair, or evidence of any blood other than their own. And he stabs them to death. It’s not that complicated.”

  “And no one witnesses this?” Woods asks. “The victim doesn’t kick or scream?”

  “He waits for a lone hiker, obviously,” Chase replies.