Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

  The walls consisted of large logs, probably almost a foot and a half in diameter. They’d been haphazardly stained a deep, natural brown, giving them a worn look that complimented the flagstone floor. An elk antler chandelier provided the soft light from above that was periodically overpowered by camera flashes emanating from the next room.

  Beamon walked across a bright Navajo rug and stopped in front of a small antique table. It was covered with pictures in every size and shape conceivable, each with a simple frame of either gold or silver.

  His glasses still hadn’t quite cleared, so he hung them around his neck and bent forward, bringing his nose to within a few inches of the photos.

  It looked like sort of a family history. The pictures in back were all faded black and whites; their subjects uniformly dressed in well-starched suits or dresses with petticoats, and all staring out of the photo with the same stern expression.

  Beamon took a step back and jumped forward in recent work. “We assume that these are the remains of Eric and Patricia Davis. The maid that found them IDed them from their build and clothes. Obviously, she can’t be a hundred percent sure, though.”

  Beamon nodded, letting his eyes linger for a moment on the shattered head loosely connected to the body of a plump woman in a thick off-white sweater. He crouched down, careful not to dip the end of his new coat in the puddle of curdling blood at his feet.

  It didn’t look like their faces had been damaged by the bullet impacts, but the dried blood and brain tissue clinging to their skin had subtly distorted their features. Beamon wouldn’t swear to the fact that they were the couple in the picture, but it was probably a pretty good guess.

  “Mr. Davis was forty-four years old, Mrs. Davis was forty,” Michaels started, reading off a small pad of paper he had pulled from his pocket. “Apparently Mr. Davis owned a number of car dealerships.”

  “Biggest dealer in Arizona,” Beamon said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Someone told me he was the biggest dealer in Arizona. I met him at a party a couple of weeks ago. Briefly.” Beamon stood and carefully stepped over the puddle of blood at his feet. The plastic spikes on the bottom of his golf shoes that had served him so well in the snow were proving to be a little treacherous on the polished oak floor.

  He crouched down again and examined the scene from a slightly different angle.

  The Mrs. looked like she’d gotten it in the back of time. He picked up the eight by ten photo on the edge of the table and brought it up close to his face.

  He recognized the man in the tan sweater as Eric Davis. They’d met briefly at a cocktail party a few weeks ago. Beamon didn’t remember meeting the tall, heavyset women standing at his side but guessed that she was his wife.

  Beamon’s eyes wandered down to the girl sitting in the leaves in front of the couple. Her blond hair was the product of a calculatedly obvious dye job, contrasting the dark, uneven tan of an athlete. There was a slight glint on her left nostril that Beamon guessed was a nose ring.

  She was a pretty little thing, probably sixteen or seventeen—though that was really just a wild guess. By design, he really hadn’t spent much time around children.

  “Mark, I keep losing you. They’re in here!” Michaels said, reappearing suddenly in the doorway to the living room.

  “All right, all right,” Beamon said, putting the picture back on the table. He turned toward the young agent. “Lead on. I’ll stay with you this time. Promise.”

  He followed Michaels into a large, roughly octagonal room surrounded by windows that must have been fifteen feet high. The ceiling rose and disappeared into shadow at the top of an enormous log pillar that, until tonight, would have been the focal point of the room. Beamon shoved his hands in the pockets of his parka and looked down at the new focal point.

  Michaels stood next to the two bodies with the proud expression of a sculptor showing off his most the head. The blood had pooled and dried, leaving something that looked like a large scab over her hair. Beamon couldn’t see if there was an exit wound because of the body’s position.

  Eric Davis’s body was a little more perplexing. Based on its condition and the pattern of the splattered blood, it looked like he’d taken his bullet right under the chin. Beamon pointed to the broken window. “Did the bullet break that window? It looks like it should have gone straight up.”

  “Oh, I think it did. Looks like a piece of Mr. Davis’s skull broke the window.”

  “Lovely,” Beamon said, standing up and shoving another piece of gum in his mouth. “What about the girl?”

  “Jennifer Davis is fifteen years old. Blonde. Tall—about five-eight or nine. According to one of the neighbors we talked to, she was competing in a bike race near Phoenix yesterday afternoon. They—the neighbors—were down there watching the race and went out to dinner with them afterward. The Davises would have returned here around ten o’clock.”

  Beamon flopped down on the sofa and stuffed a fourth stick of gum in his mouth. “So what happened here, Chet?” he slurred.

  The young agent looked confident. He’d obviously learned enough about Beamon in their month working together to know the question was coming and to prepare an answer.

  “They were waiting for them.”

  “Who?”

  “The perpetrators.”

  “Why?”

  “The garage door’s still open and the Davis’s car is outside. I figure it this way. The perpetrators get dropped off by an accomplice who takes the car they came in and drives around the neighborhood.”

  “Why doesn’t he just park it?” Beamon broke in.

  “The Davises would have been suspicious if there was a strange car in their driveway. And you can’t park on the street ’cause of the snow.”

  Beamon raised his eyebrows and rocked his head back and forth in a calculated effort to make the young agent nervous. Michaels was probably right but he needed to learn to defend his positions. Besides, what was the fun of being king if you couldn’t torture your subjects occasionally?

  “Okay, Chet. Go on.”

  His body language had its intended effect and Michaels started to sound a little hesitant. “Uh, yeah. So, anyway, they—the Davises—come in through the garage and are ambushed in the kitchen.”

  “I see.” Beamon stood up and walked through the open French doors that led to the kitchen. There was a light haze of fingerprint dust in the air and a man in a dark suit was hunched over the sink, working furiously with a soft brush.

  Beamon pointed to a picture lying in a halo of glass on the floor, then rapped on the kitchen table, which had been pushed haphazardly against the wall. A broken dish lay at the base of the refrigerator.

  “I’d say the hypothesis that the Davises met our friends in here is a reasonable one,” Beamon agreed.

  Michaels picked up where he had left off, looking relieved. “Okay, so they all reconvene to the living room, where the perpetrators line Mr. and Mrs. Davis up against the wall and execute them. Then they called their accomplice on their cell phone and have him pick them up.”

  Beamon peeked through the pantry/mudroom and out through the open door to the garage. “What if it was a car they recognized? Someone they knew?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Davises pull up and someone they know is in their driveway. They all chat while Jennifer takes her bike off the top of the car and then one of them pulls a gun. They come in through the garage, into the kitchen and Mr. Davis make a grab for the gun. There’s a struggle that he ultimately loses. They drag them into the living room and shoot them.”

  The young agent’s face fell and he stared at his shoes. “I guess that’s possible …”

  “How ’bout this?” Beamon continued. “Mr. and Mrs. Davis come inside while Jennifer takes her bike off the car. She’s too young to drive, so she can’t pull the car in, and her mom and pop aren’t anxious to go back out in the cold, so they put it off for a while. In the meantime, our perpetrators just drive up and
knock on the front door.”

  Michaels looked up from his shoes. “But then why would the struggle have taken place in the kitchen? It’s not between the front door and the living room.”

  “Maybe they were being forced to prepare omelets against their will.” Beamon broke into a smile and backhanded Michaels in the chest. “You’re theory’s best, Bud. You just shouldn’t be so damn sure about it. Keep an open mind.” Beamon paused “But not so open your brain falls out, right?”

  The bright beam of headlights washed through the windows of the living room prompting Michaels to lean through the kitchen door. “That must be the coroner.”

  Beamon nodded. “Go ahead and give him the tour. Oh, one more thing. Get someone to walk around the outside of the house with a flashlight and look for footprints. This could be nothing more than a botched robbery attempt, and if the little girl was an athlete she might have made a break for the woods. She’ll freeze her ass off if she’s out there lost.”

  The huge wad of gum in Beamon’s mouth was starting to make his jaw ache and he could feel that the smell of the bodies was about to break through his makeshift spearmint barrier. Time for plan B.

  He stepped over the print guy, who had sunk from the counter to the lower cabinets, and pushed hard on the door at the back of the kitchen. It scraped against the snow and ice on the deck, stopping dead after moving about a foot. Beamon looked dejectedly at the small gap, then down at his bulging waistline. It wouldn’t be easy, but then, what in his life ever was? He grabbed the edge of the counter and the doorjamb and forced himself through the opening.

  It was a beautiful spot. Large pines filtered the starlight, giving the clean white snow an ethereal glow. There was no wind and the muffled sounds of the investigation that managed to filter through the broken window in the living room were almost completely swallowed up by the forest.

  Beamon retrieved a bag of tobacco and papers from his jacket and began rolling a cigarette. The cold numbed his fingertips, making the process even more arduous than normal.

  “What are you doing?”

  Beamon jumped, dropping the half-rolled cigarette in the snow and almost losing his balance. Steadying himself against the house, he looked in the direction of the voice.

  Less than ten feet away, a small Hispanic woman, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, sat in a lawn chair. She leaned forward and pulled her knees closer to her chest. “What were you doing there. Aren’t you a policeman?”

  He looked down at himself and chuckled. With the green and red pants and the new parka, he must look like a giant Christmas ornament rolling a joint. “My doctor told me I have to give up cigarettes, so I started rolling my own. It’s such a pain, I smoke half as much.”

  The woman’s hand appeared from behind the blanket and pointed toward the scattered tobacco at Beamon’s feet. “But those don’t have a filter. They’re probably twice as bad.”

  Beamon thought about that for a moment. “No such thing as a perfect plan.”

  He walked toward her and held out his hand. “I’m Mark Beamon. I work with the FBI. I didn’t know anyone was out here.”

  She took his hand. “Carlotta Juarez. I am the Davis’s maid … was the Davis’s maid.”

  “You’re hand feels like ice, Carlotta. Would you like to go inside?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about a car? You could go sit in my car and run the heater.”

  “No, I like it out here.”

  Beamon leaned against the house and followed her gaze toward a grove of aspen glowing pink in the starlight. “Are you all right?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her turn back toward him. “I came here from Bogotá. I’ve seen so many horrible things.”

  Beamon nodded and was silent for almost a minute.

  “How long have you worked for the Davises?” He said finally.

  “Eight years.”

  “Do you live here at the house?”

  “No. In town with my husband and five sons. I come every day, though.”

  Beamon slipped his hands under his armpits. “Five sons? That must be a handful.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Have you had a chance to walk through the house, Carlotta? Does it look like anything’s missing?”

  “Nothing that I could see.” She paused. “Only Jennifer.”

  Beamon looked up at the stars. “Tell me about her.”

  “She’s a wonderful girl. Bright, kind, thoughtful.” Her voice trailed away. “How could someone do this?”

  He ignored the question, having asked himself that same thing at crime scenes all over the country and never coming up with a good answer. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “Jamie Dolan. He’s a senior at Jennifer’s high school.”

  “Anything unusual going on lately, Carlotta? Strange phone calls? People you didn’t know coming over?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about between Jennifer and her parents? Were they angry at her for something? Maybe they didn’t like her boyfriend?”

  “Mrs. Davis always wanted Jennifer to see their neighbor’s son, Bill. But I don’t think she disliked Jamie.”

  Beamon peeled his back from the frozen side of the house. “I appreciate your help, Carlotta. Oh, and I apologize in advance for the people who are going to ask you all the same questions.” He turned and began tugging at the door to the kitchen. “Don’t freeze out here, okay?”

  A wave of heat washed across Jennifer Davis, instantly covering her in tiny beads of sweat. She kicked the covers off the bed and for a moment the cool air meeting her damp skin fought back the nausea that had gripped her since she woke up.

  And how long ago had that been? An hour? Two?

  The comforting glow of the clock on her night-stand and the gentle creaking of her house as the immense logs dried and settled were gone. Everything was gone. There was no blue/white glow from the snowdrifts beneath her window, no light filtering in from under the door. Just a dizzying blackness.

  Jennifer felt another surge of heat overtake her and she rolled on her side, clenching her teeth and struggling to not throw up.

  The memories returned slowly, retracing themselves in her mind over and over again until she could see faceless black and white outlines moving purposefully across the background of her home. She could feel the strong arms holding her and the adrenaline-surge panic as her air was cut off by a hand damp with perspiration.

  It didn’t take long for the outlines to sharpen and collect color and sound. The pale woman with black eyes kneeling in front of her. The shadows crisscrossing her father’s face as he raised the gun to his wife’s head. The explosion of the gun and strangely insignificant jerk of her mother’s head before she fell, doll-like, to the ground.

  No. It couldn’t have happened. It was just a bad dream. She must have been coming down with a bug before the race and the effort and dehydration had played tricks on her in her sleep.

  She reached out for the lamp beside her bed but her hand just hung uselessly in the empty air, confirming what she already knew, but hadn’t been able to fully face. She wasn’t in her room. She had no idea where she was.

  She tried to stifle it, but the long mournful cry still escaped as she tried to stem the tide of memories projecting themselves onto the darkness that surrounded her.

  Her father’s image appeared a few feet away, pressing the barrel of the gun under his own chin and speaking his final, meaningless words to her. Then her mind replayed the sting of the syringe as it broke the skin, turning the room into quivering mush and then finally to nothing. She felt a tear make its way across the bridge of her nose and down her cheek. Then another. And another.

  Once she started to cry, her sobbing just grew in intensity, melding with her nausea and leaving her choking and coughing uncontrollably.

  She didn’t know how long she went on like that. Only that the sobs finally subsided when the muscles in her stomach and sides exhausted themselves
and her mind decided it had had enough and let her drift off into unconsciousness.

  When she awoke again, her head still hurt and her throat was painfully dry, but the nausea was gone. When the image of her parents’ death began creeping back into her mind, she pushed it off into the emotional numbness that was quickly overtaking her.

  “Hello?”

  Her voice was little more than a harsh whisper, but it seemed impossibly loud in the darkness and silence that surrounded her.

  She waited for some reply, some indication that she wasn’t completely alone in the world, but there was nothing.

  She cleared her throat painfully. “Is any one there?”

  Louder this time, but still weak. She sounded like a frightened little girl, even to herself.

  Nothing.

  She sat up slowly and swung her feet onto the cold floor. The blood rushed from her head and she had to bend forward at the waist for a moment to keep from passing out. After a few seconds, she raised her head slowly and slid off the bed.

  She tried to crawl but the bruises and cuts on her knees were too painful against the hard floor and she was forced to turn over and slide on her butt until her back reached the wall.

  Feeling along it, she finally came to the smooth wood of a doorjamb. Using the doorknob, she steadied herself and stood. It took only a few moments to find the light switch.

  She covered her eyes with one hand and flipped the switch with the other. The flare of light worked its way between her fingers as she pulled them slowly away from her face.

  When she finally she opened her eyes, she fell against the wall and screamed.

  A black clad woman sat motionless in a chair less than a foot from where Jennifer had slept. The woman’s head turned slowly toward her as Jennifer backed into the far corner of the room and sunk to the floor. The brief surge of adrenaline overloaded her weakened system and her breath came in short, useless gasps as the woman stood and moved across the room.

  The pounding of her heart seemed to be robbing her of her strength. Her arms felt impossibly heavy as she raised them in front of her face.

  The woman paused and looked down at her, then opened the door and disappeared through it without a word.