Crimson Lake Road (Desert Plains)

by Victor Methos

  When they got home, Yardley stopped the car out front and said, “I have to meet with someone for a minute. Turn on the alarm as soon as you get in.”

  “I’ll probably crash at Stacey’s, if that’s cool. Her house is closer to the lab, anyway.”

  “That’s fine. Just make sure to—”

  “Call you if I go anywhere else. Yeah, I know the drill, Il Duce.”

  “Tara, that’s not funny.”

  She smiled as she got out of the car. Yardley watched her until she was inside and then watched the alarm app on her phone. She didn’t drive until Tara had set the alarm.

  As she pulled away, she felt crushing angst. She was about to visit someone who was going to bring up a lot of memories she’d buried deep and didn’t want dug up. But the Executioner hadn’t given her a choice.

  18

  The reports weren’t long. Baldwin read them on his phone, sitting at a table on the outdoor patio of a burger joint. Night had fallen and the moon was out.

  He absently dipped fries in ketchup and chewed much longer than he needed to, fully aware that he didn’t even taste them. His mind was elsewhere: inside the Pharrs’ home. Trying to picture what life was like between Harmony and Tucker, and if he was actually the man who’d taken Sue Ellen Jones.

  Baldwin took out the photograph Tucker had given him of Harmony. She had a wide smile, sapphire eyes, and curly hair. Baldwin had known the second he’d seen her who she reminded him of.

  Baldwin had been the youngest person ever to make detective in the San Francisco Police Department, and once there, he cleared case after case to get to where he really wanted to go: Robbery-Homicide. After the death of his mother at the hands of her boyfriend, something the man was never prosecuted for, Baldwin couldn’t imagine being anywhere but at the Homicide table.

  One of his first cases involved a thirteen-year-old girl, Anne Gordan. The SFPD had their own Child Abuse Unit that handled crimes involving children, but Baldwin had inherited her disappearance as part of the murder investigation of her aunt, who Anne had lived with. After Anne’s drunken father murdered her aunt, she ran out into the street and to a nearby public park to get away from him. She was never seen again.

  Baldwin had hunted for her like a bloodhound with a scent. During the day, he kept her picture up at his desk, and at night he began to dream about her. He saw her places he went: grocery stores and movie theaters and shopping malls. One time he even grabbed a young girl by the arm, thinking she was her.

  The break came seven weeks after her disappearance. A narcs detective had arrested someone who said he had information about “the pretty girl on the milk cartons.” Baldwin interviewed him. He said she’d been sold overseas. The first time he said it, Baldwin asked him to repeat it because he thought he had misheard.

  “Sold, man. You know, like a car or something. She just merchandise.”

  Baldwin grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the desk. The other detective in the room had to pull him off, or he would’ve done worse.

  In exchange for dropping his drug charges, the man gave them the last location he’d seen Anne Gordan. At a storage company that rented units out to pimps and human traffickers who needed somewhere to stash their victims until they could arrange passage to Mexico or the Middle East. Baldwin was the first to open the storage unit, without waiting for a warrant, and was hit with the stench of feces and urine but no Anne. The traffickers had cleared out the unit. Baldwin later learned that he had missed her by two hours. Two measly hours could have saved her a life of torture and slavery.

  Two hours, he thought as he stared at Harmony’s photo.

  He put the photo down. He had to get his mind off the past and focus on the present.

  He returned to the reports on Sue Ellen Jones.

  The reports were only five pages because they had nothing but circumstantial evidence, and weak circumstantial evidence at that. Sue Ellen’s backpack was found in a dumpster behind a grocery store two and a half blocks away from where Tucker Pharr lived. Some of her clothes were found there as well, but not in the same dumpster. Chief Wilson knew Tucker lived nearby and immediately took Bobby, her brother who had seen the kidnapping, to Tucker’s trailer. No request for a warrant, no lineup, no photographic lineup; nothing other than taking him to the house and pointing to Tucker, who was in handcuffs already, and saying, “That him?” A clear violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and about a century of caselaw. The police couldn’t just point to someone and say Is that him? because the likelihood of a false ID was too high, and any subsequent ID, even if done in a lineup, would be tainted because the witness had already seen who they were supposed to pick out.

  The chief was upset with the public defender, but the evidence had been suppressed because of sloppy police work.

  When the chief and two detectives from a nearby city searched Tucker’s truck, they found one long blond hair on the floor mat. The DNA analysis done could only identify it as human. No certainty on gender or age. But it was the same length of hair Sue Ellen had at the time of her disappearance. No other evidence had been found.

  Baldwin read Tucker’s statements during the interview after they’d searched his trailer and truck. It was an odd series of “I didn’t do it, but if I had, I would’ve . . .” He seemed to be saying it was possible he would have killed her, but he hadn’t, because he’d do it differently if it were him. According to Tucker, he wouldn’t kidnap a girl in broad daylight at a bus stop. He would wait until she was out at night sometime and pick her up on some pretense involving her parents. Maybe show her a fake badge.

  It was an odd way to say he was innocent, but Baldwin had seen it plenty of times before. Tucker had likely been high at the time. And the scenario he described, patiently waiting for the child to be in a vulnerable position and using a pretense of parents in trouble to get the child into the car, was found in a pamphlet that had been circulating in pedophilia circles. This wasn’t a one-off: if Tucker had read the handbook, it meant he was going to the dark net pedophilia forums online, and Baldwin had a feeling the two girls weren’t the only victims.

  He ran through some possibilities: Either Tucker Pharr was the Executioner and wanted to get caught and thought this was the best way, or he was just too dumb to realize that killing his wife and daughter would put the focus of the investigation entirely on him. Or this mystery man that Harmony’s testimony had gotten put away really had been released and decided to come looking for the Pharr family. Though that wouldn’t explain why Angela River was mixed up in this.

  Baldwin sighed and mumbled, “I’m so sick of you psycho pieces’a shit.”

  He had turned his phone to airplane mode to concentrate better and changed it back now. It buzzed with a text. From Scarlett.

  “Shit,” he said. He’d forgotten they’d made plans to have dinner at her house. He hurriedly gathered his trash while he read the text.

  Since it seems like you’re not going to bother to make it over here, I guess I’ll just tell you over text. I’m pregnant.

  Baldwin froze, one hand above the trash can. “Shit,” he said again.

  19

  Yardley hadn’t been to the Little SoHo neighborhood for years. Named after the bohemian mecca in New York, Little SoHo in Vegas boasted yoga studios, bars, art studios, chic salons, and a couple of sex toy stores.

  The art studio was in the same space it had been for twenty years. It moved into the area when this was still a run-down, drug-centered neighborhood where tenants couldn’t move out fast enough. The owner of the studio, Jill Perry, had known the area would be revitalized at some point, so she’d bought the building for pennies on the dollar. She’d used it to showcase up-and-coming artists that had caught her eye. The place looked empty now, and Yardley guessed it wouldn’t be long before it was sold to a Starbucks or H&M.

  The last time Yardley had walked into this building, she was holding Eddie Cal’s hand, and they’d kissed before they went ins
ide.

  Yardley felt her heart in her throat. She had to swallow and then close her eyes, picturing a calm stream with sunlight coming through trees lining the riverbank, a stick of bamboo drifting lazily by. Once she’d counted to ten, she opened her eyes and went in.

  The studio was empty of customers and had closed half an hour ago. The doors were unlocked. The space was open and wide: hardwood floors with white walls. Paintings hung equal distance from each other, interspersed with sculptures. One painting caught Yardley’s eye. A young girl reaching for the sun, her face serene. But her other hand had been seized by something coming up from the ground, preventing her from grasping the sun.

  “That’s an exquisite piece,” a female voice said.

  Yardley turned to see Perry come out from an office. She folded her hands in front of her as she stood beside Yardley.

  “The artist suffered from schizophrenia. She said that this is what she feels like. That she’s fully aware how she needs to behave and can identify the behaviors she knows are dangerous and spurred by false beliefs, but that she’s helpless to stop them. As if something is holding her back. A prisoner in her own mind.”

  Yardley turned back to the painting. “It’s beautiful . . . and tragic.”

  “Wouldn’t you describe all of life that way?”

  Yardley fully faced her now. “You haven’t aged much.”

  “No stress of a husband or children. I’d heard you had a daughter.”

  “I do. She’s seventeen now.”

  Perry nodded. “It’s strange: I’m starting to forget what my father looked like. He’s becoming just a hazy face, but I remember perfectly the last time I saw you. Edward had his arm around you, and you told him how proud you were of him. Odd what the mind chooses to remember and what to forget, isn’t it?”

  Eddie Cal’s paintings and sculptures had frequently been featured at Perry’s gallery before his arrest. In a review in the Las Vegas Sun, she had once called him an unparalleled genius and said that he would go down in history as America’s Picasso. Perry and Cal had developed a close relationship, and Yardley had always worried that they might have been having an affair. It seemed almost funny now to think that that was the secret she was concerned about with her husband.

  “I need your help with something, Jill,” Yardley said.

  Perry folded her arms. “I’m listening.”

  “Sarpong. His The Night Things series. I need to know about it. And I don’t just mean what I can read on Wikipedia and art history blogs. I need to know what it signifies.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a prosecutor now. I’m helping in the investigation of a case where someone is copying The Night Things with real victims.”

  Perry’s eyebrows rose. “Those wouldn’t be easy to pull off.”

  “May we sit down in your office?”

  Her office was small and cramped but tasteful. White walls with only one blue painting behind the glass desk. Yardley took out her phone. She opened it to photos of the Kathy Pharr crime scene, and then an artist’s rendering of how Angela River’s body had been found.

  “The second victim survived.”

  Perry took a long time examining each one. When she was through, she quietly said, “Incredible.”

  She was impressed, and it sickened Yardley, though she kept her face passive.

  “Sarpong was a misogynist,” Yardley said. “That much is clear. It could be what the killer’s doing, identifying with a kindred spirit by making his art come to life, but I don’t think that’s the angle he’s taking. There’s something about these paintings that resonates with him, and I need help figuring out what that is.”

  Perry glanced through the photos and drawings once more, then leaned into her high-backed leather chair. “Sarpong’s a difficult one. He gave no interviews, none of his four wives gave any interviews, none of his mistresses talked, and he had almost no close friends. The only things we know about him are written by his competitors at the time. It’s almost as if Sarpong said to history, No comment. Everything you’ve read about him online is pure conjecture. We just don’t know enough about his life to say what this work means.”

  “You have a doctorate in art history and are the most knowledgeable artist I know. You have to have some idea.”

  Perry grinned and said, “I am not the most knowledgeable artist you know.”

  Yardley suddenly felt nauseated. A similar feeling to trying to read in a fast-moving car. Vertigo almost.

  Perry was right. Eddie Cal had insight into the artistic works of others in a way Yardley had never seen in another person. It was as if paintings were windows into the minds of the artists for him.

  “Getting his opinion is out of the question.”

  Perry exhaled through her nose and watched Yardley a moment. “You look luminous. You have pain inside you, that’s clear, but it only adds to your allure. I would love to sculpt you some time.”

  “Help me catch him and you can sculpt me all you want.”

  She chuckled. “I’m afraid I can’t help you much there. Sarpong’s paintings are lost on me. I just see torture and death. None of the scenes seem linked in any way except that the victims are wearing black and have those bloody bandages wrapped around them. If you were asking my expert opinion—say, for a review in a magazine—I would write that the artist conjures images stolen from our nightmares that grip us with both dread and enchanting mystery and yet somehow seem so familiar as to be almost comfortable. It insinuates that the artist is expressing not just his nightmare but our collective nightmare as a species. The fact that many psychotherapists own replicas of these paintings and hang them in their offices testifies to that fact.”

  “And what about your real opinion?”

  “My real opinion is that he was batshit crazy and these paintings are the ravings of a lunatic. They don’t mean anything. I’m sorry, but you won’t find the man committing these crimes by exposing some hidden theme in these paintings. Whatever theme the man sees in them is written there by himself.”

  Yardley took back her phone. “I appreciate your time.”

  Just as she rose and turned to leave, Perry said, “It might be worth it.”

  Yardley turned to her.

  “It might be worth it to visit with him, Jessica.”

  “I did. Two years ago on something else. And it almost got me killed.”

  Perry nodded and put her feet up on the desk, white heels clicking against the glass. “You want to ask me if we were having an affair, don’t you? I know you wanted to know back then.”

  “I don’t think it matters now.”

  She smiled. “Doesn’t it?”

  They were silent awhile.

  “We weren’t. I wanted to. I tried one night, actually. He said no. That he was faithful to you. Quite rare in a man to be able to deny someone who is so connected to him, heart and soul. Do you know about twin souls? It’s a theory that we all have a twin soul, a soul identical to ours that we meet out there in our lives when we’re ready. We fall for them because we connect so deeply on a physical, spiritual, and mental level, but the twin soul is not a sexual relationship. Sex is crude. Primitive. The twin soul is far deeper, and the train wrecks of marriages you see are from people trying to make a romantic relationship work with their twin souls, rather than recognizing it’s deeper than that. Your soul mate, who you should be in a romantic relationship with, and your twin soul, who you should be in a spiritual relationship with, are not the same thing. But when you meet your twin soul, it’s like the rest of the world disappears, and there’s nothing you want more than to be with them.” She paused and seemed lost in thought a moment. “I was Edward’s twin soul. You must have really had a hold on him for him to not even be tempted to make love to me.”

  “You say he’s your twin soul with pride. Do you still admire him?”

  Perry raised an eyebrow. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for the disturbed artist. Caravaggio was a murderer. Cellini murdered multipl
e people and the local villagers let him go unpunished because they were such admirers of his art. Banksy today is greatly admired, and yet he’s truly little more than a criminal.”

  “If you don’t see the difference between putting graffiti on a building and slaughtering families, then you’ve crossed into a place I can’t follow.”

  “I’m simply saying that great art occasionally comes from great insanity. I don’t hold what Edward did against him. I doubt he had any more control over it than we do breathing.”

  She smiled, a smile that Yardley sensed came from a place of enjoying the pain she knew she was causing.

  Perry took her feet off the desk. “We were the two people in the world who were closest to Edward. His soul mate and his twin soul. And you and I know the truth: that we knew what he was. Must’ve been difficult for you to act like the surprised wife after he was caught.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Such a shame. He was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. Do they allow conjugal visits in prison for nonspouses, you think?”

  Yardley watched her a moment and grinned. “You know, I used to be jealous of you. Of your confidence and the fact that you had a successful business, and I was just a struggling photographer. Of your intelligence and pedigree. But what I see now when I look around your gallery that no one probably comes to anymore, and the extensive nips and tucks that’ve made your face appear like plastic over a skull? I see a woman terrified of the world and hiding here to seem like she’s not. I envied you when I should have pitied you.”

  Perry’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Goodbye, Jill. Hope business picks up.”

  Yardley was out the door when Perry shouted, “If you want to catch your man, you’ll have to visit Edward. Tell him hello for me.”