Crimson Lake Road (Desert Plains)

by Victor Methos

  The metal stool was warm today, and she wondered if someone else had been sitting there before she came in. She hadn’t seen anybody leave.

  Her father was brought in and sat down. The guard left the room. The glass-and-plastic barrier was freshly cleaned, and she could see her father clearly: the hue of his eyes, the wrinkles by his mouth, and the shine of his hair. His jawline was angular, as though drawn by an artist with extraordinary precision. When he smiled at her, his cheeks didn’t bunch up like other people’s but seemed to move at angles: every section perfectly proportionate to the rest.

  He blinked slowly, and his lids lowered just a little over his eyes. “How was my dear friend Vasili?”

  “Actually, he didn’t look very healthy. When his temper flared a little, his face grew too flushed. I think he has abnormally high blood pressure.”

  “He has a stressful career.”

  She nodded and watched him quietly. “Did you know for certain he would try to kill me, or did you just guess that’s what would happen?”

  “Why would I send you there if I knew that?”

  She exhaled through her nose. “He was my mouse, the one I was supposed to tear apart. You wanted me to kill him to show me we’re the same.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.” She folded her arms. “He had three other men there and they didn’t seem friendly. What if he’d killed me instead?”

  “I knew he wouldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t know that.”

  He grinned. “I knew.”

  She watched him in silence and wondered what her mother saw when she looked at him. Did she see his beauty, or was he the twisted mess Tara saw in front of her now? A weed that had disguised itself as a flower, but the flower had withered and died.

  “I thought you wanted the money,” she said. “That you needed it for lawyers, and that’s why you were splitting it with me. But you never cared about the money at all. It was always about me killing him. Is death the only thing you think about?”

  “Death and love. What else is there?”

  “Love,” she scoffed. “What do you know about love?”

  “A lot more than you could ever imagine, my little princess.”

  There was a single window in the room on her side of the barrier. A perfect square. It let in the sunlight, but only in a stream that didn’t seem to reach her father’s side. As though it was just darker wherever he was.

  “I realized something when I was standing there and I knew they were going to try to kill me. It was one of those things where you realize it, and then you can’t believe you didn’t realize it sooner. Like it’s something you should’ve known the whole time. Something so obvious that it was hidden from you.”

  He leaned back and tilted his head slightly to the side, like an animal watching something bizarre. “And what did you realize?”

  She stared into his eyes. They were cold and empty. “You’re going to get out of here one day. I don’t know how or when, but it’s going to happen . . . and you know it’s going to happen. You’re inhumanly patient, and once the opportunity presents itself, you’re going to attack it with everything you have, and you’re going to succeed. And then you’re going to try to kill my mother.”

  The grin came back to his lips, but he said nothing.

  “So I wanted you to know, Dad, that I’m inhumanly patient, too. I’ll be waiting for you on the outside . . . and I’m going to kill you first.”

  Cal leapt forward, his chains clanking against the metal stool and floor. A snarl came to his lips, and he bared his teeth like a predator about to tear into his prey.

  He got within an inch of the barrier, just a foot away from Tara’s face. She didn’t move, didn’t gasp, didn’t even flinch, and she knew that if anyone had taken her pulse, they would have seen that it didn’t speed up. She wasn’t afraid of him anymore.

  When he saw her calm, it made him laugh.

  “I have no doubt, my little princess, that you’re going to try. But trying is not doing.”

  Now she was the one who grinned. “Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  He leaned back again, the casual smile returning to him. “I suppose we will.”

  Tara rose and left the room.

  On the way out of the prison, she stopped at the front desk and wrote her name and phone number, her real name and phone number, on a slip of paper and slid it over to Ethan, whose smile revealed dimples that she thought were adorable.

  “Pick me up at seven on Saturday,” she said. “And don’t be late. It’s not polite to keep a girl waiting.”

  She lightly touched his hand and then left the prison. Knowing she wouldn’t see the inside of this place again—one way or the other.

  80

  The small beach led out into a sapphire ocean. The sand was golden and smooth, the type of sand your foot sank into and felt like it had slipped into a bed of silk. The water rolled in softly, crackling on the shore and foaming around the ankles of several children playing near where the surf broke.

  Yardley stood in a sundress with a wide straw hat and watched them. Some of them were locals and others the children of tourists. A dog, a black Labrador, bolted in and out of the water and chased the children until they dived into the waves. It was the most serene beach Yardley had ever seen.

  Someday, she would have to bring Tara to Belize.

  The bar was right on the beach. Stools were set up in the sand, and the bar was made out of bamboo and had a thatched roof. Yardley scanned the few people seated there. A large bartender, darkly tan and with a thick mustache, mixed drinks in a blender.

  A strong breeze lifted the brim of Yardley’s hat. She took it off and strolled to the bar. A woman was sitting on a stool in a red bathing suit with a black see-through wrap around her waist, a large purse at her feet. Her skin was now darkly tan, and the tattoos were even more vibrant somehow. A teenage girl stood next to her in a bathing suit and sunglasses.

  Yardley sat on the stool next to the woman and took the photograph out. She placed it on the bar between them.

  Sue Ellen Jones looked at the photograph of her and her brother in their Halloween costumes. She was a fairy and he a ghost. The fairy costume had no sleeves, revealing a massive dark-purple mark on the girl’s right shoulder.

  “Was it my birthmark?” she said.

  “Yes. Though I probably would’ve known it was you even without it. Your face hasn’t changed much since then.”

  Sue Ellen looked at her. “How long have you been here?”

  “Not long. There’s only one hotel right on the beach in San Pedro. The extradition division at the US Attorney’s asked to be notified of any single women with American passports checking in. They flew me out a couple of days ago. I told them you would’ve changed your appearance, and I’m one of the only people who could identify you.”

  The bartender placed a fruity red drink in a tall glass in front of her. “Gracias,” Sue Ellen said. The bartender raised his eyebrows to Yardley, who said, “The same, please.”

  “Harmony,” Sue Ellen said, “why don’t you go back to the hotel room and pack our things.”

  The young girl looked at Yardley. “I can stay.”

  “No, baby, you go get our things ready. Okay? I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Just go on back.”

  She didn’t say anything a moment, glaring at Yardley, before she said, “Okay.”

  Yardley watched the girl walk away. “She’s beautiful.”

  “She is.”

  “Is she all right?”

  Sue Ellen shrugged. “You have no idea what her father put her through. She wanted to be there when he died, but I wouldn’t let her. She didn’t need that in her head.”

  “What about her mother?”

  “Kathy was just as bad. She walked in on one of her boyfriends attacking Harmony once. Harmony cried for help, and Kathy turned around and shut the door.” She shook her head as she took a drink. “That girl has been abused by everyone that was
supposed to care about her. I wasn’t going to add to that. But when she found out what we were going to do to Tucker, she said something I’ll never forget.”

  “What?”

  “‘Let me help.’” She glanced back at Harmony walking away. She picked up her drink, sipped it, then set it down. “I didn’t know if you’d remember this place.”

  “I remember because I closed my eyes that night and tried to picture it. The way the water looked like blue crystals and the emerald rocks that you said lined the shores.” Yardley looked at the waves. “I still didn’t picture it as striking as this.”

  Sue Ellen watched her now. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  “Is that the only thing you’re sorry about?”

  “Yes.”

  “An innocent man is dead because of you. Leonard had nothing to do with this.”

  She lifted the straw from her drink, staring as it glistened in the sunlight. “Tucker likes to tie you down and cut you. From your legs up to your neck. Harmony has scars all over her back and thighs. She asked me why he cut her so much, and I told her that he likes to hear the screams.” She smiled. “Well, he liked to hear the screams, anyway.” She glanced at Yardley and then turned back to the drink. “I’m so sorry Jude tried to hurt you. If I’d known—”

  “Don’t. You knew exactly what would happen to me if I got close to discovering him.”

  “No, never. I would never have let him hurt you. I swear it.”

  The drink came, and Yardley took a sip. It was so cold and sweet it hurt her teeth. “Tucker held you in his grandfather’s house on Crimson Lake Road, didn’t he?”

  Sue Ellen’s face changed, and she stared off at nothing. “The grandfather was so drunk all the time he had no idea what was happening, or if he did, he never stopped it. Tucker had a place set up, that basement you were in. The first day he took me there, he carried me in. I was fighting him and trying to get away, and then I saw, like, scratch marks on the walls near the door. From other girls he had carried in who tried to grab at anything.”

  “How many were there?”

  She shrugged but didn’t move her gaze. “I don’t know.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  “After three months, he began trusting me. He would let me out into the backyard sometimes. One day, he trusted me enough to go to the store and get a few things for him. I ran away. All the way home. But it wasn’t my home anymore. I asked for my father, and the man who answered the door told me my father was dead and that Bobby had been taken away. I didn’t want to go to the police, I just thought Tucker would find me again, so I ran. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. I don’t even remember how I got to Vegas. I think this family picked me up and dropped me off at a shelter there. I gave them a fake name. They didn’t have anything that could prove otherwise, so I stuck with it. I thought it would protect me if Tucker came looking for me. Angela River. My mother’s name was Angela.”

  “When did Jude find you?”

  “He found Bobby first. Jude had a young sister who disappeared, Ivy. I’m guessing you know that. He was obsessed with her for a long time. That’s why he became a crime reporter. He thought maybe if he could develop enough contacts, find enough places to dig up information, there was a chance he would find out what happened to her one day. When he came across my case, he became obsessed with it, too. He saw a picture of me, and I look a lot like Ivy.” She paused. “Bobby didn’t really kill himself. I mean, it was drugs, and other things, too, but . . . it was really Tucker that did it. Tucker killed him more than the drugs. He had grown close to Jude, and after his death Jude wanted to prove what Tucker had done. Instead, he found me.”

  “How?”

  “I was looking for Bobby and we crossed paths. I called him asking a bunch of questions. I don’t even remember who I said I was, but we met and . . . I don’t know. There was something I trusted about him and something he trusted about me. We fell in love and didn’t leave each other’s side. Until now, anyway.”

  Sue Ellen was silent a long time, lost in her memories. “I don’t think we talked about Tucker much. Not until one day when Jude came home and said he’d found him. That he was in prison and wouldn’t be getting out for a while. He asked if I wanted to come forward and try to have him prosecuted . . . but I said no. That there was no amount of time he could spend in prison that would make up for what he did. And so he said that we should kill him. That’s how much he loved me. He thought it would bring me some closure, so he was willing to kill someone for me.”

  She paused and put her elbows on the bar, her gaze drifting until it landed on her hands. She straightened her fingers and then curled them again.

  “You have no idea what he did to me, Jessica. You can’t understand unless you’ve been through it. He would use me and then put me away like a toy. Like something that wasn’t human. By the end, I didn’t believe I was human. It took me so long to know I was a person again. I don’t know. Maybe I still don’t.”

  “Jude said Michael Zachary’s parents had a home next to Tucker’s grandfather. We looked into it, and it was a lie. Did he have anything to do with this?”

  She shook her head. “No. Zachary was just convenient. Jude convinced me that we needed someone for you guys to blame, otherwise we’d be caught. He knows how your offices work since he reports on you. He said if it got out that you had arrested someone, the pressure would be so great to get a conviction you wouldn’t bother looking for anyone else.”

  She took another drink.

  “I feel for him. Zachary isn’t a bad person. I figured eventually you would sort it out and his charges would be dropped. It was a necessary evil. I needed to know what was going on in the investigation, how close you were to finding us, so making it seem like the Executioner was my boyfriend and I was the one that got away was perfect. All the pieces just fell into place.”

  Yardley watched the Labrador run out of the water and shake himself off near the bar. She felt a few droplets land on her bare legs.

  “How long did you know you would use the paintings?”

  “I don’t even know. It was almost like they were always there. Remember when I told you I was in graduate school? We studied those paintings in a mythology class. I remember a professor telling us nobody knew what the paintings meant, but I knew right away. Vengeance. And they haunted me for weeks after I saw them. I couldn’t get them out of my head. I kept seeing Tucker in each one of them, and the more I could picture him there, the happier I became. It was like the pain went away only when I thought about killing him. That’s when I knew it wasn’t just me and Jude fantasizing. We were actually going to do it one day. And it felt good to wait. I knew somehow that the anticipation of it was better than the act, and it would definitely be better than the memory. I wanted the anticipation of it to last as long as possible.” She looked at Yardley. “I’m not a bad person.”

  Yardley watched her but didn’t say anything.

  She nodded and looked away. “Leonard. I know. But that was Jude, not me. He didn’t want you to keep looking into Harmony’s kidnapping, so he paid Leonard to make up that story. I told him there was no way Leonard could ID him and to leave it alone, but no one ever tells Jude what to do. Always the tough guy. He’s not a monster, though. He thought he was doing it for me—for us. And the life we were going to build together after this was all over.”

  She paused a moment and looked out over the water. “I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  “What about you? You could’ve died from the ricin. Was this worth dying for?”

  “Yes, it was. And I knew I wouldn’t die. We diluted it well. The only reason they thought it was the same amount as Kathy Pharr is because Jude left identical empty syringes at both houses. I researched it a long time and found out the labs can’t test for exact amounts in the body unless they excise a piece of your liver, and I certainly wasn’t going to let them do that to me.”

  She let out a deep breath, and they sat in silen
ce as the waves lapped the shore.

  Yardley took a sip of her drink and, without looking at her, asked, “Is that story about the Hells Angel and the drug deal in the desert true? Are you really not able to have children? Is anything you told me true?”

  She didn’t respond for a long time. “That day you came over to my house, when you thought I was going to kill myself, I really did think about it. I drank that wine and took those pills because I just couldn’t take it anymore, Jess. What he did to me happened almost two decades ago, and when I close my eyes, it’s like I’m still there in his basement. It feels like I’m untangling wreckage that just won’t be untangled. I thought it might be better if I just did it and got it over with. So I called you hoping . . . I don’t know, maybe that you’d talk me out of it. You’re the only person in my life who cares about me other than Jude. The tears were real, the pain was real, and you helped me through it . . . our relationship was real.”

  Silence passed between them, enough to hear several waves.

  “Are the police here?” Sue Ellen asked.

  “They’re waiting for my text identifying you for them. The FBI has an extradition order for you.”

  “You can’t let them take me, Jess. I won’t live in a cage. Tucker put me in a cage, and I will never go back.”

  “What am I supposed to do? What choice have you given me?”

  “I won’t do it. I have a gun. I’ll try to shoot my way out.”

  “You won’t last five seconds. What would be the point of surviving Tucker if you just die out here on some beach?”

  Sue Ellen looked out over the water and didn’t say anything for a long time. “I don’t think you should retire. It won’t help you to run to that small town. I ran for a long time, but you can’t run from anything, Jess. It all just follows you.”

  Yardley watched her, the way her hair whipped her face when the breeze grew. Her bright eyes and the colorful tattoos that seemed to dance in the sunlight. “I canceled the sale of my house. I took the DA’s offer to be a special victims prosecutor for the county. They’ll let me choose which cases to take without anyone looking over my shoulder.”