Ivy comes back to Gus’s heels. She moans, then nuzzles into his leg.
“Okay,” Gus says. “I’ll be in touch.”
And that’s it. Gus shakes his head as he hears the line go dead. He considers the sound of nothing that replaced the sound of something. He studies the sound of detachment and understands it as the separation of life and death, and he doesn’t want to think in black and white right now, but that’s what he sees when he surveys the room. He nudges Ivy. “C’mon,” he says, “let’s go chase ghosts.”
Later, after a hearty walk into the dusky night, after a layer of the sky became a glowing pink mattress, each pocket a swirl of cloud in perfect formation, after Ivy yelped at the wind and the birds, Gus came home to a quiet, wordless house that stayed that way through dinner, through half a bottle of wine, through four chapters of Moby Dick, until the phone jarred him from his stupor.
“Honey, are you watching the news?” It’s the curly, shrilly voice of Beatrice Vossenheimer.
“Oh, shit, right,” he says, scrambling from his office, racing to the TV, lunging for the remote.
“There’s a murder,” Beatrice says. “They say it’s coming up on the news.”
Gus looks at the clock on the cable box: 9:59.
“Thank you, Beatrice. I lost track of the time.”
“Is this your murder?”
“My murder?”
She laughs. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, it’s the one that kept haunting me all weekend.”
Then he tells her about his mother.
“I’m so sorry, my dear. I know how complicated this is for you,” she says. “But I also know how strong you are. You’ll do whatever you think you have to. Call me after the news if you want.”
Trevor is in his bedroom absorbed in a video game. He had actually smiled a few times during dinner, and, for Mills, that was progress. Progress around the Mills dinner table did not mean, Hey, now you get to play video games because you smiled; it meant, Hey, we might be communicating better so I’m not going to come in your bedroom and hassle you tonight. Even if you are breaking the rules we issued when we grounded you. You fucking punk. Mills realizes, here in this moment, that you can only truly hate your son if you truly love him.
Kelly is curled up to him on the couch. They’re watching the ten o’clock news. The anchorman introduces a reporter who is standing in a parking lot surrounded by thick darkness.
“Earlier this evening the medical examiner removed the body from the scene,” the reporter chants. “Police aren’t naming the victim, but the scene is eerily familiar to the string of murders that have recently turned the valley into a killing ground for a monster.”
Mills rolls his eyes. His wife offers a disgusted laugh.
“The victim is described as a thirty-year-old female. She was stabbed six times.”
The reporter is no longer on-screen. Instead he’s talking over video from earlier in the day when cruisers were coming and going, and lights were flashing, and crisp uniforms were supposed to comfort viewers with the sense that somebody was in control.
“The Phoenix Police Department is the lead agency investigating the serial murders, and while Sergeant Jacob Woods would not confirm that this crime is linked to the others, he did leave that door open.”
Woods appears behind a small orchestra of microphones.
“We see some similarity in the appearance of the crime scene to the others we’ve discovered over the past week,” Woods says. “We’re not releasing any other details of the scene itself, and we have made no other connection at this point to the other murders.”
Then the reporter is back.
“We do know a woman was reported missing to the sheriff’s office over the weekend, but we don’t know if that woman is the victim found today. Again, authorities are not releasing the identity, pending the notification of next of kin. I’m Juan Carlos de Castillo, on the Nightbeat.”
The anchorman thanks Juan Carlos de Castillo and then turns to the anchorwoman sitting beside him.
“This is the fifth body found in the valley in little over a week,” she tells the viewers. “And investigators have made no arrests. They’re being pretty tight-lipped except to say they’ve been following up on multiple leads. But that’s not enough for one Scottsdale family. Elizabeth Spears was the first victim identified by police in this recent rash of killings. The twenty-seven-year-old’s body was found a week ago Friday. Tonight her parents held a last-minute news conference to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ Let’s go live to Scottsdale where Bhagyavi Gupta is standing by with the story. . . .”
Mills feels a coil of rope tighten around every muscle. He sits up, and Kelly whispers, “Oh, shit.”
Bhagyavi Gupta stares into the camera like a deer that has noticed the headlights just a fateful second too late. The microphone shakes in her hand. There is no escape, and so she opens her mouth and speaks.
“The aching, grieving Spears family has finally come forward to speak about the death of their daughter, Elizabeth. Her body was the first one found linked to the current string of murders in the valley.”
Gus Parker is transfixed. He has no real psychic vision of what the parents will say, just plain, easy intuition. And he knows it does not bode well for the Phoenix Police Department, particularly for Case Agent Alex Mills. Gus imagines the kachina doll from the Spears’ Scottsdale home, and he sees faces streamed with tears; he sees a bedroom door that has remained closed for just about a week and a ghost that comes and goes, unable to connect, unable to let go; it is there, and then the ghost is gone.
“Our daughter’s body was found almost two weeks ago,” Peter Spears tells the group of reporters gathered at the sidewalk. “My wife and I called this press conference to call for action. We’ve seen no progress in the police investigation. They were out here to talk to us once, then nothing. Except more bodies. How many women have to die before they catch this killer? Where’s the urgency?” The man steps aside and lightly guides his wife, a bereft woman, her arms wrapped around the cocoon of herself, to the microphones.
“Naturally, we’re frustrated,” she says, her words sedated, her eyes heavy. She scans the members of the press slowly. “Every time we hear of another murder, we relive the murder of our beautiful, beautiful, little girl. How come there’s been no arrest?” She chokes up, takes a deep breath. “We’re losing faith in the ability of the Phoenix Police Department to do the job, here. It’s hard for everybody. We know. But where’s the FBI? Why is the police department going it alone? Why is a man who can’t even control his own kid in charge of the investigation?”
“Claudia,” her husband says tentatively.
The camera zooms in closer. This is one of those moments television news cannot resist. Real human misery and drama, as if viewers need the aperture of agony fully opened, the grief fully exposed to understand it, as if members of the TV audience can’t figure out for themselves that the mother of a murdered woman might be, well, sad. It’s a slow and steady zoom. Gus shakes his head.
“No, this needs to be said,” Claudia Spears tells the reporters. “The lead detective of this investigation has too much on his hands. Read the newspaper. His son is on trial for drug trafficking. Drug trafficking! Talk about a distraction. If he cared as much about finding justice for our daughter as he must for his son, he should step aside and let someone else take over.”
“That’ll be all,” Peter Spears announces as he steps forward.
Reporters dispatch questions, but the couple turn their backs and head inside.
Bhagyavi Gupta reappears on the screen. “We’ve reached out to the Phoenix Police Department for a response to Mrs. Spears’s comments. But we haven’t heard back at this time,” she reports. “We did check, however, and while it’s true that the son of Detective Alex Mills has been arrested on drug charges, the boy is not accused of trafficking and is not currently on trial. Back to you in the studio.”
The anchorman offers
a somber nod and says, “Chilling either way. Truly chilling.”
Yeah, Gus Parker thinks, very chilling for Alex Mills. Very fucked up and very chilling.
Mills says nothing. Neither does his wife. She takes him by the hand and leads him to the bedroom where they lay together staring at the ceiling. She strokes his arm, then his shoulder.
He doesn’t even try to sleep.
The next morning the White Tanks murder is on the news again. It’s in the paper. He hears a replay of the Spears press conference and turns on the coffee grinder to drown out the resounding inevitability of his fate. The couple’s picture appears below the fold in the Republic.
VICTIM’S PARENTS DEMAND ACTION
Kelly swipes the paper from him, shaking her head.
Trevor pokes his head out of his bedroom. “Dad, I saw the news.”
Mills ignores the boy. Kelly turns to Trevor and says, “Your father doesn’t want to talk about it. Now get a move on. You’re not making me late again.”
“No, really, Dad, I saw the news. I got bored gaming and turned on the news last night and—”
“Trevor,” his mother warns.
The boy shuts the door.
About an hour later Mills is at his desk, his eyes heavy. He senses the eyes of everyone else focused on him, and he’s not wrong. People pass by, pause, and stare. Others look up, watching. The silence seals around him; suddenly he’s a crime scene. So many bystanders, but nobody wants to get involved.
Except Bridget Mulroney. She’s all tragedy mask this morning, standing there in his doorway, pouting, chin to the floor, hands folded. “I’m so sorry, Alex. I don’t know what to say,” she tells him.
She’s wearing a lime green headband that matches her lime green heels.
Her eye shadow is a frostier green.
“Can I help you?” Mills asks.
Bridget advances. “No. But can I help you?”
“With?”
She stands there halfway between his desk and the door. She and her staged compassion. Nothing is real to this woman; her life is too fucked up even for a reality show. “With anything, Alex. I know you’re going through a hard time.”
“Do you?”
She stiffens. She blanches. “Oh. I guess you . . . I guess they . . . I mean . . .”
“You mean you’ve already been asked to draft a press release about my reassignment.”
Again, the sad face. “Look, Alex, forget I ever came in here. I just thought . . . Well, I didn’t think. So we can talk later. Okay?”
She’s backing out of the office, her heels clicking in reverse.
He sits for about ten minutes after her withdrawal and then strides the gauntlet to the sergeant’s office, scrutinized by everyone, as if he’s taking a perp walk.
The sergeant looks up from his desk. “You’re early,” Woods says.
“Early?”
“I asked Chase to call you at ten thirty.”
Mills looks at his watch. It’s 10:17 a.m. “I guess I’m psychic.”
“Sit down, Alex.”
Mills complies, and Woods launches into a speech of admiration that cuts a swath as wide as Mills’s career has been long. Integrity. Respect. Trust. Rinse. Repeat. The verbal anesthesia offers no comfort to Mills, for when the appendage is cut, he feels it. He feels the slice through his skin, the teeth of the blade eating through his flesh, grinding through his bone, and the rest peeling away as the appendage begins its descent to the floor.
“Surely, you understand, Detective,” Woods says. “It’s a PR move. That’s it.”
Mills will be reassigned. Chase will be named case agent. Effective immediately. There are lots of very important cases piling up, critical, high-profile cases, yours to pick from, blah, blah, blah, integrity, respect, trust, blah, blah, blah.
“I think you’re making the wrong decision. But I understand,” Mills tells his boss.
“Look, Alex, maybe it’s not a permanent reassignment,” Woods says. “Maybe things will die down, and, if time allows, we’ll get you back on the case. But, to be honest, we better find a suspect before that.”
“Is this your decision alone?” Mills asks.
“Of course it is.”
Of course it isn’t. Mills knows the short leash between Woods and the chief, between the chief and the mayor. It’s not difficult to triangulate the points of his reassignment.
“Unless you have any questions,” the sergeant says, “that’ll be all.”
Mills leans forward. “Why wasn’t I the first to know?”
Woods leans back. “What do you mean?” Not a denial.
“I mean Mulroney.”
“Oh, that,” Woods says, waving a hand like a lazy conductor. “Just a matter of efficiency. The city wants this released before the TV stations broadcast at noon.”
“Yes, sir,” Mills says. And then, sarcastically, because he really can’t help it, “I imagine the whole valley is tuning in waiting for this announcement. Because it will make everything that much better.”
“I’m sorry,” Woods says. “Really I am.”
It doesn’t matter to Alex Mills how sorry Jacob Woods is. He doesn’t blame Woods. If anything, the sergeant has always been Mills’s cheerleader. Still, there’s something (Mills can’t quite get it on the radar) perverse about what has just happened on the gurney of his career.
Not as perverse as what awaits him in his office when he returns.
The morning edition of the Republic is spread open across his desk, its wingspan almost as wide as the desk itself.
Timothy Chase is standing by the window, blocking a chunk of sunlight with his silhouette. “Did you make it past the first page this morning?” Chase asks.
Mills tosses the guy a deadly look and says nothing. He aims for the desk, reaches for the newspaper, but stops when he sees the photograph of Petroglyph Plaza in a box that nearly covers two inner pages. No, he hadn’t made it this far into the paper before Kelly intervened. He reads now through the articles stacked around the photo. One suggests the murders have become like a ritual; the reporter, Matt Segal, points out the pattern of desert locations:
Some of the trails in these areas are known for the presence of petroglyphs. A spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department would not comment on any link between the murders and the Native American art. However, the Republic has confirmed that the police are looking into that link. “I was contacted by a detective,” said Professor Romero Lincoln of the ASU Department of Native American Studies. “We haven’t had a chance to speak, but the message indicated an interest in the history of petroglyphs.” Lincoln declined to say whether the Native American renderings suggest anything about the murders.
Chase steps out of the light. “It’s about time someone in the media made the connection. I mean, it’s not exactly brain surgery.”
Mills thinks hard for a moment and then says, “You told us you spoke to the professor.”
“I did.”
“Not according to his quote right here in the paper.”
“I told him it was off the record.”
“So he lied to the paper?”
“I don’t know,” Chase says with a dopey grin.
Mills nods. “Yeah, I see how it’s done in the FBI.” Then he stares Chase down, a face-off that has all the percolating anger of a hockey brawl. “I’m not on the case, Tim,” he says. “You can take your fucking newspaper.”
“You talk to Woods?”
“I said I’m not on the case.”
“Tough press conference last night.”
Mills folds his arms across his chest. “Whatever,” he says sharply. “It’s your case. Congratulations.” He sits, logs on to his computer, and tries to tune into white noise.
“We’re going to get Willis one way or another,” Chase tells him.
Mills could not feel any more ambivalent. He just stares.
“The more I think about it, Mills, the more I’m convinced,” Chase continues. “The guy is cla
ssic. He’s so full of rage at his wife, and he just falls in hate with any random woman.”
Mills looks up. “Falls in hate?”
Chase sits on the edge of the desk, peering down at Mills with stormy eyes. “Yeah. It’s a behavioral thing with these guys. They take their rage with them wherever they go. Any woman is vulnerable. They’re on a random search to project their hate, to find a body who will define it, take responsibility for it.”
“Right,” is all Mills says.
“Damn right,” Chase tells him. “Like the guy is just living his raging life, and if there’s a woman in front of him at the checkout line who’s taking too much time, he hates her. He turns her instantly into the enemy. And he wants to kill her. Or maybe it’s a woman who is talking too loudly on her cell phone in the post office. He falls in hate swiftly and wants to kill her. He assigns her his rage and feels justified in killing her.”
“Well, I’ve felt that way before,” Mills says with a laugh.
Chase doesn’t acknowledge the humor. “Sometimes it’s just a chick he thinks is ugly. Her ugliness offends him in some primal way, and she’s as good as done.”
“Wow,” Mills says. “You really know your shit.”
“Right,” Chase says. “I’m all over Mr. Willis.”
“Then tie him to a fire.”
“A fire?”
“Yeah,” Mills says. “Our psychic friend keeps seeing fire at the crime scenes. Remember?”
Chase smirks. “Our psychic friend,” he repeats. “Of course. I remember. I’ll get right on that. A fire.” He sniffs the air and laughs.
“Maybe the fire will give you the evidence you need to really bring him in,” Mills says, turning back to the screen, his voice passive, his thoughts aggressive.
“Fire or not, Willis fits the profile.”
Then go arrest him, you fucking jarhead, Mills thinks. “Get out of my office, Chase,” he says instead. “And don’t come back unless you’re asked.”
Chase offers a strangely timed thumbs-up and leaves the room.
Between patients, Gus gets a call from Beatrice. She says she’s quite upset by the press conference last night, how it stirred her in such a worrisome way. “It’s way too dramatic for my taste,” she says. “Especially at this point in time.”
Desert Remains Page 28
