A Killer's Wife (Desert Plains)

by Victor Methos

  “I am healthy. And I plan on staying that way. At least for a while. My final appeal will be resolved in four months. Once it’s over, I’ll be executed. I’m choosing hanging. I won’t be put down like some dog. I’ll die like a man.”

  “Real men aren’t executed for murdering helpless people.”

  The venom in her voice was too obvious. She’d tried desperately to mask it—she was only here to get whatever information she could out of him, and she’d never have to come back—but she’d underestimated how powerful a reaction she would have. She felt physically sick.

  “Did you ever remarry?”

  “I’m not here to talk about myself.”

  He watched her in silence for a while. “I never stopped loving you, you know. I realize everything changed for you when you found out, but nothing changed for me.”

  “Are you even capable of love? Do you know what it is, or is it some type of interesting abstraction for you?”

  He grinned. “Did you get the paintings I sent you?”

  Cal had been a popular painter and sculptor even before all this, and after his arrest and very public trial, the dozens of works he had created skyrocketed in value. The first painting Yardley had received came with a note that she should sell the paintings to provide for her and Tara.

  “Yes, I got them. Thank you.”

  “But you didn’t sell them, did you? Did you throw them in the trash?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. I burned them.”

  He smiled. “How many?”

  “All of them. And everything at your studio.”

  He chuckled. “That’s really too bad. They took away my paints about five years ago after a . . . misunderstanding in here. Those paintings would be worth a small fortune now.”

  “I didn’t want your money.”

  He nodded, and Yardley wondered how long she could last here. She felt like she was spinning in a gyroscope and a sudden halt could stop her heart.

  “My father says you spend a couple weeks up at the ranch every year for Christmas. I’m glad you’re still connected with them.”

  “Your parents are good people.”

  A slight pause.

  “How is she?” he said softly.

  Yardley couldn’t speak for a moment. The idea of him thinking about her daughter revolted her. “She’s well.”

  “Does she ever ask about me?”

  “No. She did for a few days when she was ten. She was curious who her father was. I didn’t think it’d be fair to lie to her, so I let her read about you online. She had a few questions and then never brought you up again.”

  He looked out a small window on Yardley’s side of the room. “Will you do one thing for me? I know I have no right to ask, but will you bring her to see me? Just once.”

  “No.”

  His eyes turned to her, the eyes she had fallen in love with in a different life, which she saw nothing but hate in now. “Whatever else I am, I am still her father.”

  “You lost that right the second you decided raping and killing were more important to you. Do you have any idea what she went through? Everyone at her elementary school found out who she was and they started calling her Bloody Tara. Even the teachers didn’t want to spend time with her . . . I had to move her to a new school. We had to do that twice. She’s been an outcast her entire life because of you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No you’re not. You’re not capable of knowing what that means.”

  He leaned back and exhaled. “You’ve read too many textbooks. The trifecta of serial murder, right? Animal torture, wetting the bed, and starting fires in youth. Did I do any of those things? You know I didn’t have a terrible childhood. You know my parents loved me more than anything. I’m supposed to be incapable of empathy. How many movies did you see me cry at? How many sunsets? Do you remember when I saw a real Jackson Pollock for the first time? I wept like a child. Does that fit the traits of what they’ve termed a psychopath? Or is human behavior maybe on a spectrum, and we’re all just somewhere on that spectrum? Some of us more one way and some more the other, none of us actually choosing where we fall but just being given our traits at birth?”

  “You are a psychopath. Most psychopaths don’t realize they are because they have no insight into themselves.”

  “I felt love for you. I felt empathy. I would’ve given you my life in a second if you asked for it. You can’t reduce me to one term and say that’s what I am. I’m not psychotic and I’m not dissociative. I did what I did because”—he blinked slowly—“I liked it,” he hissed.

  She swallowed and rose to leave. “Goodbye, Eddie.”

  “You didn’t even ask for my help yet,” he said as she turned away.

  Yardley stopped. She turned toward him. He had a smirk on his face. She sat back down.

  “I’m guessing Agent Baldwin has already asked you for help and you refused,” she said coolly.

  He nodded. “Pretty odd to have a copycat. Don’t know if I should be offended or flattered.”

  “I don’t think you can help. I just came here as a favor to him.”

  “That’s a pretty weak appeal, Jessica. You think I’m really going to help just because you told me I can’t?”

  “Why would you want to? Clearly all you care about is yourself. In fact I think it thrills you that someone is out there doing what you did.”

  “Not what I did. Not from what Baldwin told me. There’re subtle differences even beyond those your boy sees.”

  “What differences?”

  He shrugged, a grin on his face. “That’s what we’re going to bargain for.”

  16

  Baldwin’s home in Las Vegas, like all his homes, was temporary. He never bought, as he moved around constantly with the Bureau. The longest he’d lived in any one location had been five years, and that was in his first post. After that, it was a rotation every three years.

  Later in their careers, many special agents were given the option of which posts they preferred and slowly began to wind down and establish themselves so they could have families and some stability. That had never been his experience. He wasn’t a pencil pusher, and he wasn’t the guy the Bureau wanted in front of the cameras or testifying at congressional hearings, so he was the guy they used to fill holes in places that needed filling.

  That was how he’d ended up catching the Beltway Butcher.

  The Butcher had been killing high schoolers, both boys and girls, along a stretch of highway in Texas when Baldwin was stationed at the Austin Bureau offices. Catching him had been difficult because he committed the murders in his van and then dumped the bodies on the side of the road in different locations. Because the highway stretched for hundreds of miles, they could never find enough commonalities between the victims’ lives to determine how he was choosing them.

  The Bureau’s theory had been that the Butcher was a trucker or other type of long-haul driver, but Baldwin didn’t think so. He thought it was the killer’s attempt to cover his tracks and that there had to be a pattern in the dumping sites. Humans, he had always believed, only thought in patterns. Whether they were conscious of it or not.

  He traced all the dumping sites to within roughly equal distance of one city: Austin itself.

  From there, Baldwin honed in on registered sex offenders, particularly those with convictions for kidnapping. He found Henry Lucado because he had attempted to kidnap a twelve-year-old girl waiting at a school bus stop. Something the girl had said in her statement to the police piqued his interest. She’d told them that Lucado had offered her a ride and said he gave rides to kids her age all the time and the kids enjoyed it.

  Baldwin pictured a man with a malicious grin and rotting teeth, like some evil sorcerer in a fairy tale. When he looked at a DMV photo of Henry Lucado, he just knew he’d found the man he’d been looking for.

  Lucado surrendered without a fight. When he opened the door to his apartment an
d saw Baldwin standing there, he just said, “Took you long enough.”

  When Baldwin had slapped handcuffs on him, the first thought he’d had was of his mother’s funeral, something he hadn’t thought about in fifteen years.

  Had he told Yardley about what had happened to his mother? He didn’t think so, but he was sure she knew. He wondered if it was one of the reasons they hadn’t worked out, why he’d pulled away from her, eventually standing her up and leaving the door open for Wesley. Because if anyone would understand the motivation he had to catch the monsters, it was her, and he wasn’t sure he could stand seeing that understanding reflected back at him every day.

  He sat on his couch, sipping beer and watching a baseball game, but the television might as well have been off, since he couldn’t pay attention. The only thing he could focus on was the next house. The next bedroom bathed in blood, the next child he would have to tell that their parents were dead.

  He remembered the moment he’d found out his mother had died. The detective at the station where he’d waited for his father to pick him up had said it was an accident. That her boyfriend, Felix, saw her trip and fall down the stairs to the basement because she was too drunk. The detective said sorry and then left Baldwin alone in a room with no windows.

  It wasn’t an accident. Baldwin, though only seven at the time, recalled Felix shouting at his mother that he would kill her if she didn’t shut her mouth and treat him with respect. Baldwin didn’t remember what the argument was about, but he thought it had to do with the fact that Felix didn’t work and relied on his mother for food and a place to live.

  Before his father picked him up, Baldwin saw Felix as he was leaving the station. They stared at each other, and an understanding passed between them: Felix had killed her, and Baldwin knew it.

  He joined the San Francisco PD right out of the navy and made detective only three years later. His first act as detective would be to pull his mother’s case out of the archives and work it on nights and weekends. But before he had a chance to do anything, Felix died in a drunk driving incident. He ran his car off the road and crashed into a ravine. Baldwin had visited him in the morgue, his skin white as marble, lips the color of blue chalk. He’d bent down to Felix’s ear and whispered, “Burn in hell, you piece of shit.”

  From the coffee table, he grabbed the bottle of hydrocodone and popped two pills.

  Someone knocked on his front door. He shoved the bottle of pills underneath a pillow and answered the door. Yardley was standing there. She rarely revealed what she was thinking through body language or facial expressions, something Baldwin was trained to look for. He wondered if she’d always been like that or if it was a protective mechanism she’d only developed after Eddie Cal. It threw him off to not be able to read her like he could most people.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “You’re a liar, and I can’t trust you anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to work this case with you. Find another screening prosecutor.”

  She turned and started down the driveway.

  “Jess, wait. Wait.”

  He ran in front of her. “Would you please just wait.”

  She stopped. “I visited him, Cason.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh? That’s all you have to say to me? Oh?” She shook her head. “I’m so stupid. When you showed up at the courthouse, I actually thought you wanted my help. You just wanted his help, and he’d already turned you down flat. So you thought maybe the ex-wife could sweeten the deal and get him to open up. No matter how painful you knew this would be for me, you used me to get him to help you.”

  “Jess, that’s not what happened.”

  “You can seriously stand there and lie to me again?”

  “I’m not lying. He didn’t turn me down. He agreed to help, but he said he would only do it if you were involved.”

  She shook her head, looking toward the passing traffic. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I knew you’d say no.”

  “So our relationship, all the future cases we would’ve worked, you burned that all for this one case? Just so maybe you could get Eddie Cal to help you? And by the way, he’s not helping anyone. He’s doing this because it amuses him. He’s going to play with you until he gets bored or until they execute him, and you won’t be any closer to catching who murdered those people.”

  “I have to try.”

  “Why? You’ve worked cases worse than this without batting an eye.”

  They were standing next to her car. A bit of dirt had caked onto the side-view mirror, and he rubbed it off with his thumb. “I talked to the Deans’ children. I’ve told parents before that their children were dead, but it’s never been the other way around. Ever. They had this look in their eyes I’ve never seen. It broke them in such a permanent way. They’re just starting their lives, and they’re already broken because of one prick that couldn’t control himself.” He was silent a moment. “Someone had to tell me the same thing once.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Cason. I really am. But if I see your name on a future case, I’m going to conflict myself out and give it to another prosecutor.”

  “I understand.”

  “When did you know this was a copycat?”

  “I, um . . . right away. With the Deans. I went and visited Eddie a few nights after.”

  She took her keys out of her purse. “I’d like to go home now. Please move.”

  “There’re going to be more, Jess. Eddie can help us. He hasn’t talked to anyone about what he did or why, not even his lawyers. We have no idea how he chose his victims. What if he has insight into that? What if he knows how this guy is choosing them? Shit, what if he knows who the copycat is? I don’t want to see another couple in a bed like that and know I didn’t do everything I could to stop him. You want our relationship to end, fine. I get it. But help me this one last time. Help me catch him. I can’t do it without you. Not until he screws up, and who knows when that’s going to be. Will it be couple three or couple eight or nine or twenty? How many people will have to be murdered for you to pick up the phone and call me and say, I was wrong, I’ll help. Just help me now, Jess.” He stood close to her. “I don’t want to tell any more kids their parents are gone.”

  She let out a long breath, and when she spoke, he knew he had her. That was the one benefit to how well they understood each other. “He wants a deal in exchange for his help. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. But I’m sure neither of us is going to like it.”

  17

  Tara resisted family dinners lately, but Yardley had insisted the three of them eat together tonight. She knew she’d need it after the visit to Eddie Cal today. She wanted desperately to give her and her daughter a sense of a normal family life, when they had anything but.

  As she came inside, Wesley, standing in the kitchen, raised his brows, about to say something, warn her, but just then Tara’s bedroom door opened and Kevin came out. A slim boy with skin so pale it had a greenish hue, he constantly wore a gray beanie on his head no matter the temperature outside. He had the distinct odor of marijuana and the bloodshot eyes of recent use.

  Tara said, “Hi, Mom,” and giggled.

  Rage circumvented any rational thought. “In my house?” She stepped close to Kevin. “You come into my house high, and into my daughter’s bedroom without me home?”

  “Whoa, Jessica, chill. I just—”

  “Get out.”

  “Mom!”

  “Get out, Kevin. Or I’ll call the police and have you escorted out.”

  He smirked and waved a peace sign at Tara before brushing past Yardley and leaving.

  “Mom, how could you embarrass me like that?”

  “You’re never seeing him again, Tara. Ever. You’re breaking up with him.”

  “You can’t make me do that!”

  “You were grounded and disobeyed me, and then you brought him into my home while he’s high. By the way, how did he even know to come over? You don’t hav
e a phone.”

  She shook her head. “This is bullshit.”

  Yardley stepped closer to her daughter and stared her in the pupils. “You will never see him again. Is that clear? Or my next step is to withdraw you from school and homeschool you.”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, right. When are you ever home to spend time with me?”

  The words cut.

  “I don’t want to fight, Tara. You’re not seeing him again. End of story.”

  Tara tried to push past her. Yardley pushed her back.

  Wesley came over. “Ladies, let’s—”

  “This is none of your business, shithead,” Tara said.

  “Tara!” Yardley shouted.

  Anger rose in Tara’s face. A helpless anger. The anger of a child who knew, ultimately, they didn’t have the power to fight the parent yet, and so they had to destroy as much as they could in impotent rage instead.

  “I’m moving in with him. His father said I could.”

  “I’ll have him arrested for kidnapping.”

  Wesley said softly, “Jess, this isn’t—”

  “You can’t stop me!”

  Tara stormed out, pushing Wesley aside. She ran out the front door. Yardley chased after her and saw her running into the night.

  “Tara! You get back here right now. Right now!”

  She covered her eyes with her hand, trying to calm her heart. Wesley came up behind her.

  “Have a glass of wine on the balcony and try to relax. I’ll go get her.”

  “No, I should go.”

  “It’ll be worse, trust me. I’ll go. Just try to relax.”

  She watched him put on some slippers and pull his car out of the garage.

  It was an hour later when Wesley and Tara got home. Yardley had been sitting on the balcony, staring at the stars and sipping a Long Island iced tea, with a bit too much gin. She’d been thinking back to when Tara was a little girl. Yardley had thought it would be the most difficult time of being a parent, the time when Tara was helpless and required her for everything. By the end of each day, especially when she’d been working full time to support them and going to law school, Yardley had felt like she could collapse and never get back up again.