Crimson Lake Road (Desert Plains)

by Victor Methos

  He smiled at her. Though many people found his gaze unnerving, Tara didn’t. She knew exactly why he was staring at her: because in the two years since they’d met, he was amazed how much more she resembled him every day. Something that seemed to thrill him and disgusted her.

  Over the past two years, she’d been here eight times, and she didn’t enjoy any of the visits, but they were necessary. Cal had something she needed to secure her mother’s future so she wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore. She figured her father owed them that much at least.

  “How’s your mother?”

  “Fine. She’s retiring from the US Attorney’s Office.”

  “What for?”

  She shrugged. “Wants something with less blood and horror, I guess. We’re supposed to be moving to Santa Bonita, a couple hours from Vegas. It’ll be a pain in the ass since I go to UNLV, but we’ll make it work, I guess. I’m moving out next year anyway.”

  “And why do that?”

  “I think she’s not doing what she wants to do because of me. I want her to find somebody and fall in love, and I don’t think she will because she’s scared of who she brings around me. She doesn’t even have any friends. If I leave, it’ll force her to find other people to connect with. And it’ll be good to get away from some things.”

  “Away from me, you mean?”

  “Not just you but everything else that came with you. Everything that I’ve put up with my entire life.”

  He nodded. “You’re scared you’re like me, and you think running away, maybe altering your name and appearance, will change that. It won’t. Whatever problems you have, they follow you wherever you go. You’re like me, and you will have to face that at some point.”

  “I’m nothing like you.”

  He blinked slowly, then said, “Are you familiar with Greco-Roman mythology?”

  “I don’t read fairy tales, sorry.”

  “Fairy tales are everything, Tara. Every lesson you need in life is found there. Our so-called scientific knowledge is simply a revolution from one set of ideas that will eventually be found incorrect to another set. But fairy tales, fairy tales have been with us since the beginning, and they’ll be there with us at the end.”

  She folded her arms. “I assume there’s a point to this, Eddie?”

  He grinned. “The gods were having a debate about human nature. Can human nature be changed? Can a person choose who they want to be? Zeus said yes, but Aphrodite said no. To show her she was wrong, Zeus turned a street cat into a princess. The princess was taught manners and etiquette, given elegant clothing and a fancy title. She behaved impeccably and was married to a prince. At the wedding, all the guests were impressed by the charming new bride.

  “Zeus said, ‘You see, if a cat can be turned into a princess, surely human nature can change.’ Aphrodite simply said, ‘Watch,’ and released a mouse. As soon as the princess saw it scurrying across the floor, she leapt at it, chasing it on all fours. She caught hold of the mouse and tore it apart with her teeth in front of all her guests. Aphrodite was the goddess of lust and beauty, so she understood what was in people’s hearts. What was truly in their hearts, not what they pretend is in them.”

  Tara swallowed as she watched her father. She didn’t like seeing herself in him, particularly in the deep blue of their eyes. A unique hue that she could only figure was a genetic mutation, since she had never seen the color in anything else.

  “You see, my little princess, the gods were teaching us that we can’t change our nature. We can hide it for a short while, but it will always come out. All you need is to see your mouse, and you’ll know that we’re more alike than you could ever have imagined.”

  4

  “It’s Sarpong,” Yardley said, turning the computer screen toward Baldwin. He had to put a moving box filled with items from her desk on the floor so he could sit.

  On the screen was a painting. A figure in black with white bandages wrapped around its head; dark-red blood soaked the bandages where the face should have been. The figure’s arms and legs were human, but something seemed off about the angle of the neck and the shape of the head. Still, the bandages and tunic were unmistakable: it was the same attire Kathy Pharr and Angela River had been found wearing.

  “Who’s Sarpong?” he asked.

  “A Kenyan painter from the 1960s. He had a series of paintings called The Night Things.” Yardley tapped her mouse, and the painting changed. The same figure, the same dress and bandages, this time sitting straight backed in a wooden chair. “This is the first one.” She tapped her mouse again. The same figure, lying on a table. Its arms outstretched, its feet dangling off the edge. “This is the second one.”

  It was as if someone had stood over Angela River and painted the scene. Baldwin rose from his chair and came around behind Yardley to get a closer look.

  “This is the third,” she said.

  The next painting showed the figure inside a home, hung from its neck by something slick. It had been eviscerated, and the entrails were on the floor.

  The fourth painting was the worst, a twisted figure with scars over its body, its eyes and mouth sewn shut. Its rib cage spread wide. It barely looked human.

  “How did you find these?” he said.

  Yardley glanced at him and then back to the screen. “Eddie was obsessed with these paintings for a while. He wouldn’t talk about anything else. He actually repainted them himself at his studio and then threw them out when he was done and never brought it up again. He thought the fact that there were four was significant, but he couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t think Sarpong just stopped at four. There was a reason he chose that number. He also had four wives throughout his life and four children, so Eddie thought that number was important to him.”

  “Did he figure out why?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He was completely fixated on it for a long time, but then he dropped it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He got a text just then from Scarlett Chambers, a young woman he’d been dating. She asked why he hadn’t returned her calls the past couple of days. A stab of guilt went through him. Scarlett was perfectly pleasant and intelligent and seemed like she was caring, and they spent most of their time together talking about everything from politics to the cosmos . . . but there was that thing. There was always that thing.

  She didn’t see what he had seen. She didn’t build up a wall around it: gallows humor to save his humanity or sanity or whatever the hell it was people called it now. Scarlett had asked how his day had gone on their third or fourth date, and he described a case he was working: a young mother that poisoned her children. Scarlett had tears in her eyes, and Baldwin couldn’t understand why, but he did now: she didn’t have that thing. That’s why so many in law enforcement only dated and married others in law enforcement.

  He replied that he would call her later.

  Baldwin folded his arms. “This artist still alive?”

  She leaned back in her chair. “No. He died of a heroin overdose. This series of paintings is the only work he left behind. It took him six years to paint all four.”

  Baldwin stared at the third painting, the figure hanging from the ceiling, and realized it was hanging by its own intestines. “What do the paintings mean?”

  “They mean,” she said, opening a side-by-side view of all the paintings, “that you’re going to have two more of these.”

  5

  Baldwin had stayed late talking through the case file with her, but today was Saturday, and Yardley felt like eating out. Tara had gotten home late and been up early, announcing that she wanted to put in some extra hours at her internship, so Yardley decided to have brunch on the Strip.

  She went to the Bouchon at the Venetian hotel. They gave her a table overlooking the canal. Tourists occasionally drifted by in gondolas, the operators singing in Italian as the sightseers recorded on their cell phones.

  Tara had given her a
knowing look when she arrived home and found her mother’s head bent with Baldwin’s over the case files. He had gentle eyes and always a scent of ambergris cologne that Yardley found appealing. A smell like soft pears. She had dated him briefly and sometimes wondered what a long-term relationship with him would look like.

  But her last boyfriend was sitting in a prison cell. Her ex-husband on death row. It wouldn’t have completely shocked her if it turned out Baldwin was a serial killer.

  It touched Yardley that her daughter held out romantic hope for her. But she and Baldwin had their go once and were better off as friends. She’d lost the friends she and Eddie shared after his crimes came to light, and then the situation had repeated with Wesley. So she’d thrown herself into school and work and raising a daughter. She had no close friends she could call for brunch—but maybe that was a situation she’d rectify in her new life after she moved. For today, it was soothing that so many people were around.

  She stirred some Splenda into her coffee with a thin spoon, thinking about Kathy Pharr and Angela River. Kathy Pharr was forty. River even younger at thirty-three. Baldwin had found no overlap in their lives: nothing indicating where the women had first caught the attention of what might be a serial murderer. But River wasn’t even out of the hospital yet. It would take more time to find any commonality between her and Pharr.

  Yardley checked the time on her phone. Visiting hours at Saint Vincent’s Hospital started soon. She left cash on the table for her coffee and headed there.

  Angela River’s hospital room was on the fourth floor. At the open door, Yardley looked in. River was lying in the hospital bed with her hands pressed together as though praying, her eyes closed as she emitted a soft hum. Yardley considered coming back another time, but then she opened her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Yardley said.

  “It’s fine. I was almost done.”

  “My name is Jessica Yardley. I’m a prosecutor with the US Attorney’s Office. May I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  A nurse came into the room behind her, deposited a fresh pitcher of water, and warned River to press the call button if she felt faint again. It reminded Yardley that they still didn’t know what her abductor had used to attempt to kill her.

  Meanwhile, Yardley observed her tattoos. Flowers running down her forearms and nature scenes on her legs. A large blue-and-white lotus decorated her right shoulder. Her nose was pierced, and her green eyes shone with youthful energy, making her seem far younger than her years. A cast was on her wrist. Baldwin had stated that he thought she had been transported to Crimson Lake Road in the trunk of a car, and it was likely that her abductor had accidently slammed the trunk on her hand in his haste.

  When the nurse left, Yardley sat down next to the hospital bed—but not too close—and said, “I like your tattoos.”

  “Oh yeah,” River said, “little hobby, I guess. Some people collect stamps and I collect these.” She pointed to what looked like a chrysanthemum that wrapped around her uninjured wrist. “I got this one in India.” She then pointed to an orchid on her thigh. “This one in Japan, this crane on my calf in Shanghai . . . I get one wherever I go. It’s like I take a piece of the place with me, ya know? Do you travel much?”

  “No, unfortunately. I’ve never actually been out of the country. What’s the lotus?”

  “Oh, I just have a bad birthmark on that shoulder. It’s huge. Kids always made fun of me for it. So I got the tattoo when I was sixteen, and it was all sleeveless shirts from then on.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  River pushed herself up and sat cross-legged. Yardley had been avoiding looking at her brow but glanced now. A thick line ran from one eyebrow to the other where the razor had cut, and Yardley imagined it must have been excruciating when she woke up. She guessed at least ten stitches held the skin together. Her face was heavily bruised, one eye swollen shut and her lower lip split. Yardley thought she looked like she’d been in a bad auto accident.

  “You can’t really know yourself unless you travel,” River said. “You gotta see how you react in places you’re not comfortable in. Like how you deal with people. I learned I trust people too quickly when someone in Bangkok stole everything I had.”

  “That’s terrible. What did you do?”

  She shrugged. “For a couple days, I just had to figure out how to survive. This really nice widow took pity on me and fed me, and then I had to hitch rides to the American embassy. It was an interesting experience, I guess. Maybe the universe was trying to teach me it wouldn’t be so bad to lose everything.”

  Yardley got a glimpse of another shoulder tattoo as River moved and the hospital gown dipped on that side.

  “What’s that one on your other shoulder?”

  “It’s a rune. It means someone who forges their own destiny.” She looked sad for a moment and then grinned. “Sorry, you get me talking about travel and tattoos and I could talk forever. You came here for a reason, obviously.”

  Every trauma victim had a different response. Some turned inward and wouldn’t speak for days or weeks—sometimes never again if the trauma was severe enough. Some put on a happy face and pretended nothing had happened. Others fell somewhere in between. Yardley thought that Angela River hadn’t yet processed everything that had happened to her, hadn’t allowed her mind to absorb and analyze it. Bringing it up might break her right now.

  “I just wanted to check up on you,” she said. “See if there’s anything you need.”

  “Oh, that’s so nice of you. But I’m okay, really. The nurses might think different, though. They’re having a hard time with me right now. I had a male nurse and I just kind of . . . I don’t know, froze. So I told them I only want female nurses and doctors and there’s only two on staff right now.”

  “Given what you’ve gone through, that’s a reasonable request.”

  She shrugged and said, “I guess.” She took a mala bracelet off her wrist and began rubbing the beads. “So you said you’re a prosecutor?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means you work with the police, right?”

  “I do. I was asked to take a look at your situation and see if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Situation? You mean my kidnapping and almost being killed?”

  Yardley said nothing.

  “Sorry,” River said. “People always say I’m too blunt. I don’t believe in pretending something isn’t the way it is. The truth is always better.” She looked down at the mala. “I know what happened to me. We can talk about it if you like.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked up at Yardley and gave a melancholic smile. “Hey, I survived. From what the cops told me, there was another girl that didn’t. I don’t think I have the right to feel shitty about it.”

  “I think you have the right to feel however you want to feel.”

  River grinned and said, “I’d like to do something with your permission. I’d like to read your aura.”

  “My aura?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. If we’re gonna talk, I should know who I’m talking with, right? Here, gimme your hands.”

  Yardley hesitated, then held out her hands. River faced her and took her hands and then looked slightly to the side, as though watching Yardley on the periphery of her vision.

  “Everything has an aura,” River said. “Plants, animals, the earth . . . everything. It says so much more than words.” She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she gazed directly at Yardley for what seemed like a long time.

  She spoke quietly as she said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “You have intense red around your chest. Almost like a blanket of red.”

  “What does that mean?”

  River squeezed her hands tighter. “It means a shattered heart.” She loosened her grip and lightly rubbed Yardley’s hands with her thumbs, as though comforting her. “There’s so much pain. I don’t kno
w how you took it all and kept going.”

  Yardley swallowed and slowly slipped her hands away. “I should let you rest. I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”

  “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “We all break sometimes. But if we know how to put ourselves back together, we’ll be stronger in all those places.”

  Yardley rose. “Better go.”

  “I’m getting out tomorrow. Do you do yoga? I got a yoga studio. Just a little place where I teach my own brand of joy yoga. You ever tried it?”

  “No.”

  “I think it’ll help with your heart. Come by sometime.”

  Yardley gave a little grin. “It was nice meeting you, Angela.”

  “Angie. And it was nice meeting you.”

  When Yardley was on the elevator, she leaned back against the paneled wall and felt a sickening heaviness in the pit of her stomach. River had said a shattered heart. Not a broken heart.

  Shattered.

  It was a word that pierced Yardley because it was so accurate. She had come here thinking she would have to comfort Angela River, and instead she left with River comforting her.

  6

  The federal building was a massive cube of steel and glass. Yardley parked underground and scanned her ID badge on two different doors before reaching her office. Roy Lieu, the chief prosecutor in the criminal division, nodded hello to her in the hallway. He had just accepted a position as an associate attorney general in Washington. Yardley hadn’t even been asked to apply for his job. The ex-wife of a serial murderer on death row would never be put in a position of authority at the most powerful prosecution agency in the world.

  She logged into her computer and ignored her forty-seven unread emails in favor of opening the electronic files for the trial she had coming up—the man accused of crushing his twenty-year-old stepson’s head with a hammer. A case that was only in federal court because the home it occurred in was on a Native American reservation.