Desert Remains

by Steven Cooper

  “What point in time?”

  “I think they’ll have their killer by the end of the week.”

  “Why am I not seeing that, Beatrice?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m really not seeing anything.”

  “Well, I am. I got the sense of it when I read the paper this morning. I took one look at the photo a few pages in, and I just knew. I feel this in my bones,” she insists. “I see an arrest.”

  “Let me know if you get anything else. I’m running on empty.”

  “Exactly why you need a new client,” Beatrice tells him.

  “A new client? I’m not taking on new clients,” Gus says. “If anything, I’ll drop the few I have.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she argues. “You need a fresh start. I want to refer someone to you.”

  “Don’t risk your reputation,” he says with a snort.

  “Can you come by my house tonight?”

  “Who is it?”

  “You’ll meet her tonight.”

  Gus shakes his head. “I don’t know, Beatrice. Can we make it maybe another night once my head is clear?”

  “Let me know,” she says, and she’s gone.

  Gus stares at the phone and considers calling his sister, Nikki. What would he say to her? Would they laugh? Commiserate? Talk each other into feeling remorse of some kind? They don’t really know each other. Instead he pulls up his calendar, checks his appointments, and calls his clients to cancel. “A short vacation,” he says mostly to their voice mail. The only client he reaches is Gary Potter who says, “No problem, but I might not be here when you get back. Headed to LA.”

  “So, you made the decision.”

  “I did. The play wraps up in three weeks. Then I’m gone.”

  “Good for you,” Gus says.

  “Yeah. I’m stoked. An agent from LA was in the audience last weekend. Saw my acting. Told me he’d work with me if I came to Los Angeles.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know agents scouted Phoenix theater.”

  “Said he was on vacation. Called me a convincing killer.”

  Gus imagines Alex Mills at the theater that evening and wonders how to break the news to poor Gary Potter. “My sixth sense says he was a tall, fit, and thin man, wearing a tweed jacket, with a lovely lady hanging on his arm,” he tells his client.

  Gary Potter laughs. “Oh, no. Definitely not tweed. The guy was very LA. Leather jacket. Diamond ring. And gay. No lovely lady. A big, bald, Italian-looking dude with the same freakin’ diamond ring. Actually, they made a nice couple.”

  Gus swallows hard. Not a psychic. Not a sleuth. “Well, good luck to you, Gary.”

  “Thank you. Thanks for everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Form of speech.”

  A few minutes later Gus is staring at a gall bladder thinking this is his destiny when his uncle Ivan whispers in his ear, “Don’t be such an asshole, asshole.”

  28

  Mills is not surprised when he gets a call from Kelly. “You all right?” she asks.

  “Yeah. It’s done.”

  “I know. I saw it online.”

  “Sorry, Kelly.”

  She pauses. “Why are you apologizing to me?”

  “I guess this must be embarrassing for you.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she begs. “You know what I think about other people’s opinions.”

  Of course he does. Kelly does not live her life according to the opinions of others, not friends, not family, not colleagues, and certainly not strangers. How does he tell her that that’s what he loves about her, when he loves so many other things, too? Like her voice, for example. Like the healing clarity of her voice, right now, which kind of sucks all the malevolence out of the room.

  “Kill them with your resilience, Alex.”

  “One at a time I will,” he tells her.

  “Love you,” she says.

  He says he loves her too and hangs up.

  Bridget Mulroney is standing in his doorway.

  “What now?” he asks.

  She looks at the floor. “I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just that as far as the city is concerned, I have to inform you that you’re not at liberty to comment on your reassignment.”

  “I had no plan on asking the city’s permission,” he hisses. “But I also had no intention of commenting to anyone.”

  She looks up and smiles. “Whew,” she says, feigning relief. “I didn’t think so, but I had to be all official about it anyway. I mean, your phone will probably be ringing for the next day or so.”

  “I’ll refer all calls to Woods.”

  She looks around the room, as if she’s searching for broken pieces of him. She shakes her head. There are tears in her eyes.

  “Bridget? You okay?”

  “I just hate seeing good people get knocked down.”

  He gets up. “I’m not knocked down. I’m fine.”

  “Really?”

  He reaches for the football sitting on the windowsill, the football autographed by former NFL quarterback Jake Plummer, and tosses it at Bridget. She goes all spastic but catches it.

  “Nice,” he says. “This job . . . life, actually . . . is a game of football. Sometimes you’re up. Sometimes you’re down. Sometimes you make that special play. Sometimes you fuck it up and there are people like pigs piling all over you and you get dragged through the mud and you just get your ass up because tomorrow’s another game.”

  Bridget studies the football in her hands. “Jesus, Alex, this is signed by Jake Plummer.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “In his heyday I came very close to f—”

  “Please don’t say it, Bridget. It’s not flattering.”

  She recoils. “I’m sorry.”

  “Please tell me you weren’t responsible for the stadium.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Of course not.” And then she adds, “Well, maybe.”

  He walks to the door and closes it, returns to the desk, and gestures for his visitor to sit. She does, and as Mills sinks to his chair he says, “This is hard for me to tell you, Bridget, but I have to notify the state attorney about your father and his business dealings.”

  Mills watches as the woman crumbles. Her head does a wide roll and collapses forward. He hears the shuffle of her shoes coming off her feet. She begins to sob.

  “I’m sorry, Bridget.”

  “No. You can’t do this,” she begs. “I told you my life might be in danger.”

  “If you cooperate, there will be protection for you.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Bridget, look at me,” he says. He waits for her eyes to meet his, and he says, “I will insist on that.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “First of all, to free you. And then, of course, it’s my duty. As a law enforcement official I’m obliged to report this. Particularly because it involves the abuse of a child.”

  Her arms go flailing. “Who’s the child, Alex? Who’s the freakin’ child? I’m an adult, goddamnit.”

  “You were a child when the abuse took place.”

  “It was consensual,” she says with a spit.

  “It was rape,” he tells her. “You know that. I know you know that.”

  She says nothing. She breathes heavily.

  “Besides, your father bribed officials. They subverted the bidding process on who knows how many projects. . . .”

  “Lots.”

  “They’re all criminals. And they’ll all go down, Bridget.”

  She covers her face. “No, no, no, Alex. I can’t go through this.”

  “I’m not promising it’ll be easy.”

  She pulls herself to her feet. She grabs a tissue from his desk and blots her eyes, dabbing her makeup, leaving behind smudges that look black and blue.

  “I want to help you,” Mills tells her.

  She coughs, then clears her throat. “Yeah, right.”

  “No. I do. You need to talk
to someone. We can get you a name of a good doctor.”

  “We?”

  “My wife and me.”

  She says nothing.

  “I promise you, Bridget, I won’t report this until you’ve seen a doctor. I won’t say a word until I know you’re getting help.”

  She turns away from him. “What if I leave town? What if I disappear?”

  “I’ll find you.”

  She opens the door and walks out. The phone on his desk rings. Off the case? Why should he answer? But his diligence forces him otherwise. It’s Cal Dixon, from the medical examiner’s office. “Just thought you’d like to know,” Cal begins, his voice crisp and official, “the remains at Squaw Peak were probably there a month. So—”

  Mills interrupts him. “But I had fresh maggots on me.”

  “You did, and you didn’t. That body had been decomposing for a while, and the insects likely appeared in waves, with new generations appearing in cycles,” Dixon explains. “The environment was conducive. The first adults that hatched after two weeks probably laid eggs, themselves. The corpse was a family affair, my friend. We see evidence of fly eggs, maggots, pupae, and adults. I’d say three to four weeks. I’ll send you the report.”

  “Don’t bother,” Mills tells him. “I’m off the case. Send it to Chase.”

  Gus learns about the reassignment of Alex Mills while watching the six o’clock news over a sloppy dinner of beans and rice and some Cajun shrimp he had left over from lunch.

  “As we first reported at noon today, the Phoenix Police Department, under mounting pressure from community leaders and at least one victim’s family, has reassigned the detective who was leading the ongoing serial murder investigation across the valley.”

  Just as Gus had expected. Just as he had sensed. More intuitively, he reasons now, than psychically. Ivy’s head is in his lap. He strokes the dog gently, turns off the TV, and looks at the empty bowl in front of him. A wave of laziness washes over him; he just doesn’t want to move, clean up, put away, or, God forbid, mop and vacuum. He can’t ever see himself picking up a vacuum again. And, once again, he thinks about hiring Elsa, the cleaning lady, stealing her from the neighbors, eating Bolivian fish stew, and never ever scrubbing a toilet again. But there’s more to Elsa. He can see it. She has a secret layer of soul, like a haunted messenger. Ivy lifts her head and sniffs.

  “What is it, girl?”

  She lets out a bark, and then the doorbell rings.

  “Even my dog is more psychic than me,” he says to himself as he rises from the couch.

  He half expects to find Elsa when he opens the door. At least that would affirm his ability to predict. There’s a woman standing there, but she’s not Elsa; he recognizes her, but he’s not sure who she is. She stares at him doe-eyed and smiles softly.

  “Hi,” she says. “I’m Billie Welch.”

  Of course she is. Gus Parker is staring at a rock n’ roll icon, a face he would probably know under any other circumstance, but not here, on his front porch, without a guitar strapped around her neck, a microphone to her mouth, stage lights, some kind of context.

  He takes a deep breath. “Hi,” he says. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here for my appointment,” she says, her voice dusty like the air.

  “Appointment?”

  She smiles demurely. “Oh, no. Maybe I have the wrong address.”

  He looks to his driveway and sees a black SUV parked there.

  “This is so strange,” he says, still mesmerized. “My friend was just playing your CD.”

  “Beatrice?”

  “Ah, that’s right. Turns out you know Beatrice Vossenheimer,” he says. “Just turned down an invitation to have dinner with her tonight.”

  “Still have to work on that last name,” the woman says with an easy laugh. “But, yes, she’s the one who set up the appointment. Are you Gus Parker?”

  He shakes his head, as if he doesn’t understand, but then quickly nods. “Yes, yes. I’m Gus Parker.”

  She looks down and grabs the tails to her shawl and swoops them around her shoulders. “Okay,” she says, “this is strange. I’m here for a consultation. Beatrice referred me. Did I come on the wrong night?”

  He lies. “Oh, no, I was expecting you. I’m sorry. But Beatrice just said she was sending someone over named Billy. I was expecting a guy.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “No you don’t. You’re famous,” he says. “Please come in.”

  He is going to kill Beatrice Vossenheimer.

  Gus ushers Billie Welch to his office, tells her he needs a minute to finish up something in the kitchen, and then heads to the bathroom where he looks in the mirror and sees a train wreck staring back at him. There he is in a fraying T-shirt and sweatpants. His face is whiskery, and his hair is a skirmish. “Fuck,” he says. He brushes his teeth, runs a comb through his hair, and dashes into the bedroom and into a new set of clothes.

  “You didn’t have to change for me,” Billie tells him when he enters the office.

  “First impressions, and all . . .”

  She stares at him. Gus tries to do the math. Billie Welch spilled onto the national stage when he was still living in Seattle, when he was in high school and living with his friends. He figures that must make her about six or seven years older than him, but he looks into her face and sees no age, not a wrinkle, not a crease; she is frozen in time, a chanteuse, a surfer girl from the old school.

  “Beatrice didn’t tell you I was coming,” the woman says.

  “Is it obvious?”

  She smiles. “I really have never consulted with someone like you before,” she tells him. “And I don’t have any particular questions. I just wanted to see what it would be like.”

  “Why not let Beatrice show you?”

  “I asked, but she deferred to you. I think she wants to keep our friendship neighborly.”

  “Of course,” Gus says, remembering. “You’re neighbors.”

  “We are.”

  And then a silence. A long protracted silence. He hears Ivy flopping around nearby. A neighbor starts a car. Billie wears a Zen-like smile on her face. And a chain around her neck. And a lightning bolt on the chain. The lightning bolt! The Andrea Willis lightning bolt! The charm that almost knocked him off his feet with its heavy implications. He has it right there in his top drawer. He shivers. He can’t say anything. He just can’t. He closes his eyes, and for some reason he sees himself at the side of the stage waiting for Billie as she leaves her fans in awe; some of them are crying, and there are tears in Billie’s eyes as well as she flows off the stage in her diaphanous gown. She takes his hand. And then he sees them on a narrow street in London, and they’re talking to Dickens, and Billie is taking notes, and the night is foggy; you can’t see people’s eyes.

  He opens his and finally says, “I liked the CD. A lot.”

  “Thank you, Gus. I’m touring with it now.”

  “Where should we begin? Can I call you Billie?”

  She leans forward and touches his hand. “Of course.”

  The light in the room has an orange glow, like a distant flame, like a burnt sunset, and the muskiness of her perfume suggests a burning, too. She has been everywhere, this star that occupies his office, this woman who makes his skin all goosey and hot.

  “I don’t really have any questions,” she reminds him. “I just want to see if anything comes to you.”

  All of a sudden, something does. “Your family,” he says. “They’re very important to you.”

  “They are.”

  “Your parents are still living, and they adore you.”

  “They do. They still treat me like I’m their little girl.”

  “They’re worried about you.”

  “I thought so.”

  Gus sees them now. Two older people with the same expectant eyes as Billie’s, the same gratified smiles on their faces, the same soft energy and glowing intensity. “They want you to go back to Los Angeles.”
r />   “I keep a place there,” she says. “But right now I want the solitude of the desert.”

  “Speaking of solitude, I think they’re worried that you’ll end up alone.”

  “True. My mother, especially.”

  “They’d like to see you settle down.”

  “They know better.”

  “Still, they worry that when you retire from music you’ll turn around and have nobody.”

  She tilts her head and gazes up at Gus. “First of all, I’m never retiring. I’ll still be singing when I’m old and gray. Second of all, I have the greatest friends in the world, all over the world.”

  Gus nods. “Of course. But the only thing I sense about you right now, Billie, is a missing piece,” he says. “I wish I had something more to tell you, but right now that is the strongest message I’m getting.”

  “Maybe next time,” she tells him. “I’m intrigued.”

  He nods and smiles. He can’t believe he’s been allowed to gaze into the life of a legend. He offers to walk her to her car. Before they get to the door, he stops and turns to her. “That was rude of me. I should have offered you something. I opened a bottle of wine with dinner. Can you stay for a glass?”

  She reaches out and grabs his arm. “You offer a girl a glass of wine before she gets behind the wheel? I had you figured for more responsible.”

  He feels himself blush. He knocks his fist against his head. “Of course. My bad. Some decaf?”

  “Next time,” she says and continues toward the door.

  “So you are coming back?”

  “Absolutely, Gus,” she replies.

  He watches her drive away.

  Damn, he thinks to himself. What the hell was that?

  29

  Gus calls Beatrice Vossenheimer on the way to work the next morning. Billie Welch music had been drumming in his head all night. “What were you thinking?” he asks Beatrice.

  “It had nothing to do with thinking,” she replies.

  “Which means you weren’t thinking.”

  “I was sensing.”

  “Sensing what?” he asks, frustration with her edging into his voice. “That I was completely unprepared for a new client to land at my door? Especially someone like Billie Welch who, if you don’t mind me saying, is completely out of my league. Why would you set me up like that?”