A Killer's Wife (Desert Plains)

by Victor Methos

  “Yes, I turned him down.” She hesitated longer than she meant to and knew he had picked up on it.

  “But you’re thinking about it.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are. You can’t lie to me, Jessica.”

  She exhaled loudly and watched the way the moonlight reflected in her wineglass. “Something about it . . . just . . . I don’t know. I don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s a choice if I want to or not. I feel like I have power over it after almost sixteen years. Maybe I could contribute something.”

  “I know you deny how much Eddie influenced you. You think your choices have always been your own, but it’s difficult for a person to look at themselves objectively. You were a photographer before Eddie, and then a year after his arrest you’re in a master’s program for forensic psychology, and then law school, and now, you’re not only a prosecutor but a prosecutor that specializes in domestic violence and sex crimes. Do you really believe that episode of your life doesn’t have power over you? And I’m not saying your life is a reaction—it’s not. I’m proud of everything you’ve done; what you’ve accomplished is amazing. But this is not where your mind needs to go. After so long, why would you want to risk going backward?”

  She swallowed a sip of wine. “I know you’ve told me a million times I’m not responsible, my therapist told me a million times I’m not responsible, the victims’ families told me I’m not responsible . . . but I feel responsible. I was his wife, Wesley. I was his wife. There were signs everywhere, and I was blind.”

  “Yeah, there were signs. All of them after. Hindsight is like that. It tricks your brain into thinking life is predictable. It’s not. Eddie Cal was one of those rare freaks of nature that are born every few years that look and act human. You can kiss them and feel their lips or talk to them and think they’re sympathizing with you, but they’re blank inside. A black hole. They simply are not there. No one in your position would’ve done anything different than you.”

  “You can tell me that all you want, I can even force myself to believe it sometimes, but the feelings don’t go away. Feeling is a type of intelligence, too. I feel like I could’ve stopped it.”

  “And what, helping Baldwin with this is some type of redemption? It won’t work. It won’t change how you feel . . . and I’m scared of what it will do to you.” He glanced out over the desert. “You had another nightmare last night. You started thrashing around like you were fighting someone. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was there. Do you really not believe those episodes are your mind telling you something? Do you think this will alleviate what you feel?”

  She said nothing.

  “Will you do me one favor? Will you talk to your therapist about it? I think she’ll say the same thing as me: Don’t do it. Don’t go backward.”

  She sipped her wine and got the distinct impression that Wesley already knew she had made up her mind to at least look at the case.

  After dinner, she called Baldwin’s private cell phone.

  6

  Baldwin emailed her the files and let the detectives at the St. George PD know that she would be heading down there tonight. An officer would meet her at the Olsens’ home.

  “You sure, Jess?” Baldwin said over the phone as she was driving. “I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to do.”

  “You brought it to me hoping that’s exactly what would happen, Cason. Don’t hide behind fake sympathy now. Besides, I’m just looking. I haven’t decided to help you yet.”

  The highway was empty, with the exception of a few cars and semis speeding up through the canyons from Nevada into Utah. During the day, the drive could be lovely for someone fond of deserts, which she was, but at night there was only empty blackness. Blackness and the shadowy monstrosities where mountains stood in daylight.

  St. George wasn’t far, and Yardley found the Olsens’ home quickly. The city sat in a flat valley encircled by red rock mountains and sand dunes. Yardley thought it looked like a massive bowl.

  The home was perched on a cliff overlooking the city. From this angle she could see the white eastern facade of the Mormon temple in the center of the city.

  She parked at the curb behind the patrol car. A plump man in a tight police uniform approached her as she exited her car.

  “Been waiting twenty minutes,” he said.

  As a federal prosecutor, she technically had jurisdiction over all territory in the United States, and federal court trumped state court. It created an unspoken tension with local law enforcement that a federal prosecutor, a female federal prosecutor, could come into their cases and decide to take them if she wanted to.

  She smiled. “Sorry. Don’t live in the state. I appreciate your help in this, Officer.”

  He frowned and handed her a key. “Drop it back off at the station when you’re done. Or I can wait here if you’re not going to be too long.”

  “Probably not long.”

  The truth was she had no idea how long she would be, but she liked the idea of him out here while she was in the home: she didn’t know how she would react.

  “All right, I’ll wait.”

  Yardley turned to the home. Most prosecutors never visited the scenes of crimes they prosecuted, and many didn’t even speak to the victims, leaving that to the social workers and victim advocates. Yardley gave her cell phone number out to every victim of every case she prosecuted and visited every scene at least once.

  The home itself was a tan, flat pueblo style with cacti near the doorway. Gravel instead of grass, a common trait in the desert, and a long driveway that led to a two-car garage. Yardley peeled off the yellow police tape across the front door and set it down on the porch.

  Inside, the air was warm and stale. No windows had been opened in three days. Soon, the family would hire crime scene cleanup crews and ready it for sale. Realtors in Utah were not required to reveal that murders or suicides had occurred in a home unless they were directly asked, and Yardley felt a twinge of sadness for the family that would move in and learn from the neighbors afterward what had happened here.

  She flicked on the light. The furniture was modern and the living room sparsely decorated. The carpets had the familiar pressed-down patterns of an electrostatic dust-print machine. The forensic techs with the FBI’s evidence response team would lay down sheets of Mylar and then turn the machine on, sending waves of electrostatic power through the material. Then they would take soft rollers and push them down over the sheets. Anything loose in the carpets—hair, fiber, sand, even shoe impressions made from dust or dirt—would get sucked onto the sheet. Whatever they found would then be sent to the FBI’s Trace Evidence Laboratory in Washington, DC, for analysis.

  Dozens of homicide and kidnapping cases had been solved because of matches made using the machine. People didn’t consider that the carpet fibers in their cars and homes were uniquely identifiable—and so easily transmitted from place to place. Once a person of interest was found, the laboratory could match any fibers located at the scene with the carpet from a suspect’s car or home.

  The techs usually only laid the sheets down in areas the unsub, the unknown subject, would have likely walked. Here, the carpet pattern extended to every corner. Baldwin had told the truth: he’d worked the scene as much as possible and found nothing.

  Yardley pulled out her phone and opened the files he’d sent: the initial St. George police reports; the FBI’s murder book on the case, including grid-search and blood-spatter-analysis results; and the toxicology and autopsy reports. The autopsy reports, though only preliminary, were over fifty pages.

  The pathologist’s initial conclusion was that both victims had died from exsanguination—they’d bled out. There were multiple lacerations on Ryan Olsen’s hands, running across palms and fingers. He had tried to fight, probably even after his throat had been cut.

  The direction of the knife wounds and type of blade used were unknown. Like Baldwin had said, there were indications the unsub had t
ampered with the wounds to make determining the type of blade impossible. Yardley wondered if he’d worn gloves to do that or if he’d wanted to feel the slickness of the injuries on his bare skin.

  The Olsens’ neighbors had been the ones to call the police after Isaac, the Olsens’ only child, had opened his parents’ bedroom door the next morning and seen what must’ve been his worst nightmare come to life.

  Yardley put her phone in her purse and walked into the kitchen. Hanging over the oven was a thick wooden plaque that read, THE KITCHEN IS THE HEART OF THE HOME. She opened the refrigerator, recognizing items that had filled her fridge when Tara was young: small pizzas, hot dogs, blueberry waffles, juice. She closed the door. She didn’t want to go into the bedroom yet, so she entered the family room at the end of the hall. There was a large television with a sound system and DVD rack. On the bottom of the rack, she noticed an electronic tablet. She took it out. It was unlocked, no password. Sticky with what she guessed was candy or chocolate. Isaac’s tablet. She clicked into the photos and videos. She opened the first video and watched.

  It was recorded from the height of a child as his parents prepared dinner. Ryan was telling Aubrey about an article he’d read in a magazine, and Isaac snuck around the corner. Ryan pretended not to notice him and said, “And I think we should give Isaac up to Grandma and Grandpa. He doesn’t clean up his messes, so he’ll be better living there.”

  “I agree,” Aubrey said with a grin.

  “Dad!” Isaac shouted.

  “What! Isaac, you’ve been there this whole time?”

  Yardley smiled.

  Ryan grabbed Isaac and started tickling him. Isaac laughed and dropped the tablet, and the recording stopped.

  Yardley put the tablet back. She knew she would’ve liked the Olsens.

  She inhaled deeply, then walked to the bedroom.

  7

  Yardley stood outside the bedroom doors. Double doors, white with copper trim. She pictured Isaac in the morning opening both doors and what he must’ve seen. She took both knobs and pushed the doors open, the way a child might.

  Inside, the room seemed to scream to her.

  The duvet had been taken for analysis, but the mattress had been left behind. Blood, after it had dried, turned a dull gray.

  The yellow numbered placeholders documenting various angles of blood trajectory had been removed, but the carpets were crusted dry with blood around the bed. Spatters of blood clung to the ceiling, to three of the four walls, and to the windows looking out over the valley.

  The first time Yardley had seen blood jet from a major artery being cut quickly was at a crime scene of Eddie Cal’s. After the numbness of his arrest had worn off, she’d forced herself to look at the crime scene photos. To visit the grave sites of the families and watch the interviews with surviving victims. It was, her therapist later told her, self-punishment. Yardley had punished herself so thoroughly that it had caused a schism in her psyche. One that had required years to heal from.

  Baldwin’s report indicated they’d been thorough. Beneath the copper scent of blood, she picked up traces of magnetic fingerprint powder. She had no doubt Baldwin had also asked for fluorescent powder just to be sure there were no prints. But if he was truly a copycat, the unsub wouldn’t have come in without gloves. He’d probably shaved his entire body and worn a cap to prevent leaving hair at the scene. Eddie Cal had done those things.

  Forensic investigation wasn’t the way they would catch someone like that.

  Inside the closet, the Olsens’ clothing looked as if it belonged in a morgue. The harsh fluorescent light cast a green tinge that gave the impression that the clothes were rotting, that they would decompose and disappear along with the Olsens’ bodies.

  Yardley had to tell herself that was impossible and that her perception was skewing. It was probably time to go.

  On the top shelf were packages of unopened toys.

  She left the room and turned off the light. Heading back to the kitchen, she spotted Isaac’s bedroom. It wasn’t more than ten feet from his parents’ room. Yardley pulled up a transcript of his interview at the Children’s Justice Center. He’d said he hadn’t heard anything that night. Yardley wondered if Ryan Olsen had thought the unsub would kill Isaac next and that was why he’d fought even while bleeding to death.

  Yardley sighed quietly as she stared into the child’s room.

  She learned from the caption above the transcript that Isaac’s birthday was next week. She went back to his parents’ room and took the toys down, all three, then turned off the lights in the home.

  Once she’d returned the key to the officer and he’d left, she sat down on the front steps and looked out over the city. A football game was going on at the local high school, and she could hear the bellowing of the announcer and the occasional cheer from the crowd. She dialed Baldwin.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I’ll let Roy know tomorrow that I’d like to be the screening prosecutor for this. I don’t have any other trials coming up, only a few pending cases that are going to settle.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Jess.”

  “I’m assuming Isaac is staying with a foster family. I’d like their address. I have some birthday presents for him.”

  8

  The next morning, Yardley let her supervisor, Roy Lieu, know that she wanted to be the screening prosecutor for the Dean and Olsen cases. He agreed.

  Yardley knew she was lucky to be a federal prosecutor. The state prosecutors were overworked and had little time to help in any investigations or interviews. Federal prosecutors could pick and choose their cases and take all the time they needed. Whereas a state prosecutor might interview a victim once before a trial, Yardley could interview a victim ten times if she wanted. She could send the FBI to collect evidence she required and turn down cases she felt didn’t need to be prosecuted. As a state prosecutor, she wouldn’t have had the time to help Baldwin.

  Yardley checked her watch. The St. George Police Department would be holding a briefing on the Olsens in an hour, and Baldwin had asked if she would be there with him.

  She waited outside the building for him.

  The black Mustang came to a stop in front of her. Ortiz was in the passenger seat, so she got into the back. The car smelled of warm leather and a cherry air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror.

  Baldwin reached back and handed her a coffee. They merged onto the freeway and sped toward Utah.

  “I owe him twenty bucks,” Ortiz said.

  “For what?”

  “I bet him you wouldn’t do it. Most prosecutors don’t take extra work when they don’t need to.”

  The St. George Police Department was in a square brick building up on a hill surrounded by office buildings.

  The interior was clean, without the raucous shouting from arrestees in holding cells that many police stations in more populated cities had. In a large room sat about twenty police officers in the half desks used in school classrooms. The watch commander and a sergeant stood at the front of the room and shook hands with Baldwin and Ortiz. Yardley leaned against the wall, trying to remain inconspicuous.

  “All right, everyone, settle down,” the watch commander, a large man with a potbelly, said. “We got Agent Ortiz and Agent Baldwin here with us today to talk about the Olsens. And before they get into it, I want to say something: I heard some of you referring to this as the work of a serial killer. I do not want that said anywhere near this case, you hear? The last thing we need is for people to panic that we have a serial killer loose. This is not a Dark Casanova killing. As far as the media knows, and as far as our reports are concerned, as of right now, this is an unsolved murder—that’s all.” He nodded to Baldwin. “What d’ya got, Agent Baldwin?”

  Dark Casanova. Yardley hadn’t heard that term in a long time. It was Eddie Cal’s nickname. A reporter for the Los Angeles Times had come up with it, because of Eddie’s good looks. The reporter had said Eddie looked
like James Dean, had he lived past the age of twenty-four.

  She remembered a headline from after his arrest that said, “Dark Casanova and His Blonde Bombshell Are the Modern Bonnie and Clyde.” It showed a photo of her and Cal from years earlier, relaxing on a beach. She remembered having to take a shower after seeing it; she had scrubbed herself so raw her skin had burned.

  Baldwin stepped forward, his hands on his hips, spreading his suit coat apart and revealing the .45 in its holster. He had done it purposely: Law enforcement was a gun culture, and the type of gun you carried spoke about you. A large .45 was his way of telling them, Mine is bigger than yours.

  “As of right now we don’t have much to go on. I agree with Lieutenant Ubanks that we can’t have this labeled as a Dark Casanova case. I’ve heard rumblings of the name Dark Casanova Junior, which is probably even worse because it’s demeaning and might piss this guy off and spur him to act sooner rather than later. While it’s true that these have most of the hallmarks of a Dark Casanova slaying, and we are working under the assumption that this in fact is a copycat, we don’t want that released to the public yet. Sometimes a copycat doesn’t realize they’re a copycat, and when they see something like that on the news, they change their tactics and methods. We need him to think we know nothing about him for right now.”

  One of the officers in the front raised his hand.

  “Yes, Officer Clark.”

  “I saw that we don’t know how he got into the house. Do you got anything on that?”

  “We have a guess. Granted, it’s a good guess, but a guess nonetheless. No locks or windows were damaged; no neighbors saw anyone hanging around the property that day or night. At this point we think he may have had a key, or more likely a universal lockpick. There are ones you can buy from novelty websites that open nine out of ten locks in the world.”

  “What about the alarm?” another officer said.

  “We checked with the alarm company, and they had a false alarm at eight twenty-seven in the p.m. Aubrey Olsen answered the alarm company’s welfare check call and said it had just gone off but that they were home and nothing had been opened. The alarm company told her to check the front door since that was where the alarm had been set off, but she said she was within twenty feet of the door the whole time and didn’t see anything. Our theory is that the unsub broke the connection on the front door just enough that it would set off the alarm—maybe by inserting a credit card or blade between the sensors or using a lockpick to open it a couple inches—to distract the Olsens, and then ran around the home and entered through the door on the side of the garage, which didn’t have a sensor. Most people don’t put sensors on doors in the garage. The time of death is around midnight, so he would’ve hid somewhere in the garage or home for about four hours. We don’t know the significance of this chain of events yet. It would’ve been far less work for him to just wait until they were asleep and enter through the garage door then. So that’s my long-winded way, Officer, of saying we’re still working up theories as to why the alarm was set off, because as of right now we’re not certain.”