She doesn’t hear him.
He says, “Get in the car, Bridget.”
Still, she’s possessed. And he can’t indulge this. He has just fucking had it already. “Bridget, get in my freakin’ car and close the door. You’re coming with us. Day trip. We’re packing lunch.”
“Huh?”
“I said get in the car.”
And suddenly she goes limp and obeys his order without saying a word.
In the kitchen Mills tells his wife about their guest.
“You’re kidding me,” is her first response.
“Wish I were,” he concedes. “But, c’mon, we have to hit the road, babe, and I can’t waste time sitting here and playing her shrink.”
“Then call Timothy Chase. He’s trained for that.”
“Nice,” he says with a puff of disgust. “Call Timothy Chase because he’s the one to call when Alex fails.”
“You know I didn’t mean that.”
One nod, and then he says, “Yeah. I know. But still.”
“It was a stupid thing to say.”
“Besides I think they’re sleeping together,” he says.
“Oh, God,” she groans. “Of course they are. This just keeps getting better.”
“Or worse.”
“You can’t ask me to sit in a car with her for almost two hours.”
“I can make it in less.”
She rolls her eyes, and then raises her hands in surrender. “This is completely not cool,” she tells him. “But I don’t have any better ideas.”
“I wish you did.”
She smiles. “You do?”
He reaches for her and pulls her close. “Yes,” he says. “You’re the smartest woman I know. Let’s not argue.”
Timothy Chase is chowing down on a cowboy’s breakfast of steak and eggs and potatoes. He has a side of grits. Gus Parker on the other hand has ordered yogurt and fruit. With a side of granola. He can read Chase’s mind and not in the psychic way: Gus is a pussy. That’s how men like Timothy Chase think, and that’s how they talk. Gus hates that word, but in order to eat healthy, if he had to stand up and say, Yes, I am a pussy who eats yogurt, he would do it. The reality is Chase is a man’s man, with a huge body and practically no soul. In the limited exposure he’s had with Chase he’s picked up very little from the guy. Yes, he intuited Chase would elbow Mills out of the way, but that was probably obvious to the non-psychics in the room. And he intuited the sexual relationship between Chase and Bridget Mulroney, but that wasn’t such a stretch either. The guy is a concrete wall, three cinderblocks deep. Gus assumes the interior is hollow, but now watching the guy eat, Chase unaware he’s being watched, Gus acknowledges that maybe the interior is a black hole where stuff goes to die. Who doesn’t have a black hole?
Gus asks for a refill of coffee.
Timothy Chase pulls the file out and smiles. “Good research,” he says. “Now where do you see the connection to our killer?”
“Theodore Smith had a kid. The kid isn’t a kid anymore. From what we know he lives in the valley. We got his license plate.”
“So? That’s not motive. Not physical evidence. We don’t even know if the kid exists. Or whether he died in that fire.”
“Maybe there’s a connection to Willis,” Gus suggests. “Maybe they’re working together.”
The waitress returns and fills Gus’s cup.
“News flash,” Chase says. “We have no fingerprints of Willis at Crystal Ledge. We tried for a match. It doesn’t look like he ever entered that house where his wife was staying.”
Gus sips then says, “Wait a minute. How did you try for a match? Did you have the guy’s fingerprints on file or something?”
“Or something.”
Chase dives into his plate again, carving up the meat.
“What do you need me for?” Gus asks.
Without looking up the detective, in mid-chew, says, “To trace back these murders with me. After breakfast we’re going to South Mountain, then to Squaw Peak, then to Camelback, and so on. And I want you to concentrate, and I want you to focus, and I want you to lead me to evidence.”
“Against Willis?”
“Against anyone at this point, Mr. Parker,” Chase replies. “Look, between you and me, let’s say Willis isn’t behind this, then who is? This mystery man with the white pickup?”
“Yes,” Gus says. “That’s the vibe I get. You don’t have to believe me, but if you believe that I can pick up evidence on a tour of the crime scenes, then surely you believe my hunches are reliable. Let’s stop by the guy’s house.”
“Later,” Chase says.
Gus has a hunch that it’s going to be a long day.
Kelly tells the woman in the back seat to relax. “I love this drive,” she says to Bridget. “It’s so beautiful. You don’t have to think of anything right now but the scenery.”
Bridget smiles.
They’re heading north out of Phoenix. Not north enough where the scenery truly inspires awe, but they’re on their way, and Bridget is restless, fidgeting from one position to another. Kelly has already promised legal services to Bridget, but that hasn’t pacified the woman; she needs medication, Mills suspects, and probably a new life. He can’t give her either, but Kelly has insisted on taking Bridget to a doctor tomorrow morning, and Bridget has acquiesced, at least, to that.
Mills wants to let the women talk for a while so he can tune out. He’d like to drift off and imagine the journey north as a thrilling adventure upriver. He’d like to hear something like the howl of nature rushing by and feel the constant awakening of water dousing his face. That’s his kind of therapy right now, but the car has fallen eerily silent, and he can hear the torture in the back seat, so much torture, and he looks to his wife beside him and sees a sort of helplessness on her face.
She’s amazing, but she’s not a magician.
She loves a challenge, but she also loves the harbor of a Sunday morning.
“Look,” he says to the woman in the back seat, eyeing her in the rearview mirror, “I’m going to let you in on something.”
She sits up and pokes her face between the front headrests. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Mills says, aware of how easily he can manipulate her lucidity. “We’re not going on a picnic.”
Kelly gives him a look. He shrugs. The face between the headrests features two bulging eyeballs. “Are you kidnapping me?” Bridget asks.
What he wants to say: No. You wouldn’t last the ride. I’d throw you out before I’d get your ransom.
What he says, instead: “No. We’re sort of on an exploratory mission. Can you keep a secret?” He’s fairly sure that she can’t.
“Of course,” she says. “I’ve been keeping secrets all my life.”
He explains that she owes him the secret considering he has promised to protect her. He looks straight ahead, directing his explanation to the road in front of him. He says he’s searching for a woman, a woman who might be the key to the murders. It’s a gamble, he concedes, but in the face of an overwhelming lack of evidence, it’s worth the trip.
“You think a woman did it?” Bridget asks, a lilt of excitement in her voice.
“No,” Mills says. “I do not think a woman did it. But I think there’s a woman in Prescott who might have some information about the killer.”
“I’m intrigued,” she says. “But you’re off the case. Does Chase know?”
Mostly he continues to speak to the vista ahead, but occasionally he pivots and speaks to her profile, like he does now, to explain he is not on official business. He says he’s simply doing some research, following up on a tip; he warns her that they may come home empty-handed. “And that’s your part of the deal, Bridget. This is a secret mission. I don’t want to interfere with Chase, but I also know I can’t sit back and let more women get murdered in the desert.”
“Wow, I applaud you, Detective. I really do,” she says.
“No applause necessary,” Kelly Mills tells Bridge
t. “If he weren’t doing this, he’d be home climbing the walls.”
Then Bridget announces that she’s getting cramps. “I think I’m getting my period,” she tells them. “Do you fucking believe this?”
Kelly asks her if she needs to stop.
“Well, yeah,” Bridget says, “unless you’d like a bloodbath in your back seat.”
Mills throws up a little in his mouth and says he’ll get off at the next exit.
They’re standing in the cave at South Mountain where the body of Elizabeth Spears was found just over two weeks ago. The trail has reopened, and a moderate stream of hikers passes by, crunching the ground beneath them, some of them stopping to point and whisper. Gus tunes out the curious humanity and tunes in, once again, to the artwork of the murderer. This place is dead; that much is obvious. And yet Gus senses that the crude petroglyph has life, as if it’s crawling from the wall, to the floor, up his leg, etching itself into his skin. Gentle carvings, innocent droplets of blood. It advances to his torso. His first instinct is to swat it away as if it’s a fly, but he lets it linger, feels it circle his neck. The petroglyph whispers into his ear; it recognizes Gus, recognizes Chase; it remembers all the cops. Then the whisper becomes a hiss, and it says, “He might be messing with you, Gus,” and Gus stands there uncertain whether the voice is the voice of the artwork, or the voice of his uncle Ivan. And then the cave surrenders little else, except the suspicion that Gus has been brought here for entertainment and nothing more. And while it takes a lot to piss off Gus Parker, he’s nobody’s chump. If Chase is messing with him, then Gus, on an inconvenient Sunday morning, can certainly mess with Chase.
“Oh, God,” he says, “the murderer has been back here. He comes to pay respects. He may be close right now.”
Chase nods. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Fits the profile?”
“Quite possibly. Anything else?”
Gus considers his fable and says, “Oh, yeah, much more. I know his footsteps now. His shoe size. Ten and a half D. No, make that C. He’s married to an opera singer.”
Chase steps forward. “Wow. This is getting interesting, Parker.”
“He loves her very much. He wants to confess. Really he does. But he doesn’t want to destroy her world, Detective. You see the jam he’s in? How do you love and lie? This cave tells me so much. He’s clean-shaven. Uses roll-on, occasionally a stick. Likes Mexican food, particularly fajitas.”
Chase belts out a good laugh, then pulls Gus by the arm. “Enough,” the detective says.
“No,” Gus insists. “I’ve just started. You want to hear the rest, don’t you?”
“Do I?”
He’s messing with you. Remember that.
“Of course you do, Chase. You might want to know that our killer is on to you. He knows you’re profiling him. He knows all about you. I wonder if he eluded you during your FBI days. Could this be personal?”
A thump in Gus’s chest, a sudden tug between fact and fable, a discovery that the killer, indeed, knows all about Chase, knows all about both of them. He’s about to say something when the detective grabs him by the shoulders and says, “Enough, Parker.”
“No, wait. I think he’s wearing a mask. Very hard to see the truth behind the mask.”
“Not as hard as you think,” Chase hisses, his face blistered with anger at Gus’s subterfuge.
Their eyes are fixed. Neither flinches. The energy rises; there’s fire and heat embedded in this ocular standoff. Each man quietly invades the other’s brimming cosmos, their eyes like vortices of both mystery and revelation. Chase throws a cerebral punch; Gus hits back twice as hard.
Get the fuck out of there.
Unlock this.
Move.
Gus slowly inches backward, eyes still locked, and as he does he can feel the puzzle pieces disassembling on his face. This all could be over. He sees flashes of an apprehension, a fingerprint, a box of steel bars, and a sliding door.
“Something wrong?” Chase asks.
Gus takes a deep breath and exhales. He can’t seem to find his compass, which is usually as instinctive, if not banal, as breath itself. Even the outline of the cave against the shockingly dependable sky is wary and unfamiliar.
“Do you already have another suspect?” he asks Chase.
“Of course not,” Chase says defiantly. “Why would I be wasting my time with you if I did?”
He’s fucking with you.
The look behind Chase’s eyes, the one that only Gus can see, is a slow, emerging shadow of malevolence. The eyes won’t let go, and Gus knows he’s cornered. And, suddenly, he knows it’s his fingerprint. He knows it’s his prison cell.
“I’m your new suspect,” he says. “Aren’t I?”
Chase folds his arms across his chest. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you don’t care about my research. This was just a ploy to get me out here and work me over.”
Chase smiles. “Is that your psychic intuition speaking, or just your paranoia?”
Still fucking with you.
Gus shakes his head. “Seriously, Chase, you are dead wrong.”
“But maybe all your ‘research’ about Theodore Smith was simply a ploy to distract us from the truth. . . .”
They’re whispering now, gravely.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Gus replies.
“Maybe you’ve been kidding us all along,” Chase says, moving closer to Gus until their faces are mere inches apart. “You seem to know when these murders will happen. You seem to pick up these so-called vibes. Nice cover for a killer who isn’t actually a psychic.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it? You do know I’m a forensic psychologist, Gus. And it’s not uncommon for killers, particularly serial killers, to come forward and in some way help the cops.”
“Does Mills know about this?”
Chase shakes his head. “No,” he says. “If he did, he’d be out here too.”
“Then arrest me,” Gus says flatly. “I’m not playing your game. We’re done with the crime scene tour.”
Chase spins Gus around and grabs his wrists together. Gus can hear the jangle of handcuffs, and he takes another deep breath. His visions, his memories, his psyche go dark. All he senses is the fragrance of a naked desert, that toasty, sunbaked emptiness of a valley. And fear. Not his fear alone, but the fear that resonates here, that will forever remain in this cave as an artifact of murder. Gus is waiting for the clasp of the handcuffs. But his wrists go free.
“Gus Parker,” Chase says, “you are not under arrest for the murders of Elizabeth Spears, Lindsey Drake, Andrea Willis, Monica Banfield, or any other woman found dead around the valley. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of humiliation.”
Then Chase cackles wildly. His shrilly laughter echoes from wall to wall of the cave. He’s practically out of breath when Gus turns to him and says, “What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry, man. I couldn’t resist. I’m so sorry,” he begs, doubling over.
Gus bolts from the cave, stumbling into a trio of hikers.
“C’mon, Parker,” Chase yells to him. “Can’t you take a joke?”
Gus walks briskly back to the car. He can hear Chase advancing behind him, but he doesn’t turn back once to look.
35
Bridget Mulroney hops into the back seat and says, “False alarm.”
They’re at a truck stop that sits right below the highway ramp. Kelly let Bridget use the bathroom first, then darted in to pee as Bridget returned to the car.
“I like your wife, Mills. She’s a very good woman.”
“I’m lucky,” he says.
“She’s lucky.”
“We’re all lucky,” Mills tells her.
“I’m not,” Bridget laments, flouncing back in the seat.
Mills can’t engage. He’s reaching a delicate breaking point with Bridget. He can reach out to help, so long as he doesn’t get sucked into
her vortex; crazy people are known for their vortices. Kelly returns.
“Anybody want something from the cooler while we’re stopped?” she asks.
“No,” Mills replies. “Let’s hit the road.”
Bridget leans across the seat holding a tampon. “No menses,” she tells Kelly. “You want this back?”
Kelly shakes her head. “Oh, no, Bridget. You keep it. With my compliments.”
They’re back on the highway. Forty miles to Prescott.
“What’s our first stop? The PD?” Bridget asks.
“No,” Mills replies. “I’m not on official business, remember?”
“Right,” she says. “So where then?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mills replies. “Sometimes the best plan is no plan.”
He tells her the news about Coach Hadley, that the rest of the charges against Trevor will likely be dropped, that everyone, at some point in life, needs protection. And then the car is quiet until they enter Prescott where Mills hears Bridget coming to life again with short, spastic fidgets of anticipation in the back seat. She’s humming scales, as if she’s scoring the music to intrigue, a kind of thrilling soundtrack that is probably just a beat or two from bursting out in song. As a preemptive strike, Mills swings the car into a diagonal parking space on the main drag, and the sudden motion evokes a “whoa” out of Bridget, and not an aria, which is good.
Perfect place. A craft show just across the street in a park. They wander over, Mills telling the women to stay close. It’s turquoise and silver galore, the clichés of southwestern jewelry that every bored housewife believes will rocket her to gallery status, or QVC. There are all kinds of dream catchers and fake kachina dolls and belt buckles. In stall after stall are Santa Fe motifs, images of pueblos and horses and pottery. Once Mills has scoped the place out, he says they should split up, each of them taking a radius of ten booths in each direction.
“Just ask if they know Priscilla Smith. Nothing else,” Mills says. “If they don’t, move on. If they do, come get me.”
Thirty booths later they come up empty-handed.
Desert Remains Page 33
