“Then help me find our daughter. Do you know who this man is? If you don’t, then tell me how he’s choosing his victims.”
“I have no idea.”
“How did you choose them?”
There was silence while he thought, and then he said, “I told you what I want in exchange for my help. I want my reprieve.”
“The only way to reprieve a federal death row inmate is through appellate courts or the president, and it’s nearly impossible for someone that’s killed as many people as you have.”
He shrugged. “Those are my terms.”
“Even to save your own daughter?” She shook her head. “I thought maybe there was something human left in you. Some flake of mercy. But I guess that died in this place, if it ever even existed.”
She rose to leave, and he said, “If you had gone to the Deans’ home, do you think he would have written you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. If it had been reversed and you went to the Deans’ and not the Olsens’, would he have written you? If the answer is no, then there’s something about the Olsens that worries him. Something he doesn’t want you to see.”
Yardley stared at him a long while. “If you change your mind and want to help me save our daughter, I’ll tell the warden to get you a phone whenever you need, and you can call my private cell number. My own number, Eddie. I’m trusting you with that. That’s how important this is to me.”
He tilted his head. “A husband on death row and a daughter in a grave . . . that wouldn’t speak very highly of you at the US Attorney’s Office, would it?”
A slight curl to her lip was the only hint of emotion she allowed in front of him. “Help me find her,” she said, “and I’ll see about getting you a reprieve. Your life for hers.”
34
Despite the late hour, Yardley drove straight to the Olsens’ home. She called the St. George PD and got a lieutenant on the phone. The lieutenant said the keys had been given to the Realtors but that the Realtors had had some people go through it today and it might be open.
She parked out front and watched the house a long time before going to the front door. It was locked, but the windows had been left open. An attempt to get the smell of death out of the home, though she doubted the Realtor had thought of it quite that way.
The backyard fence was unlocked, and the large back window leading into the kitchen was open, so she removed the screen and crawled through.
The home was cool and smelled like lemon. On the kitchen table lay a stack of flyers with a description of the home and contact information for the Realtor. Decorations that hadn’t been there last time Yardley had visited filled the home, and photos of some other family took up the rooms and hallways. This was no longer the Olsens’ home, and nothing remained of them here.
Yardley did a walk-through and stopped before Isaac’s bedroom door. She opened it and found new furniture and decorations like in the rest of the home. On the new nightstand was a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. It even had a bookmark placed in a random spot to give the appearance of life.
She sat on the bed and glanced around. The smell had left—the smell of Isaac she had experienced the first time she’d been here. It smelled of wood polish and air fresheners now. She thought it stank like a funeral home.
The entire home had become a deception. A temporary light over a horrific silhouette.
The master bedroom doors were open, as was the window. Though the sheets, blinds, carpets, and closet doors had all been replaced, the bed frame hadn’t. It was the same dark-wood one the Olsens had lain on the night they’d died. Likely, it was an expensive bed and difficult to take apart and move, so the family had decided to leave it. Or maybe they didn’t want it, and the Realtor didn’t care.
The closets held clothes, but they were not the Olsens’ clothes. The drawers in the bureau were empty. The mirror was new. Only one thing Yardley noticed spoke of what had happened here: the ceiling fan. On one of the blades, she saw a dark-brown splotch the size of a dime. She wondered if it would ever be cleaned or if it was just a scar on the house that would never be removed.
She sat on the bed and touched the pillow on the side where Aubrey Olsen had died. A shiver went up her arm and gave her gooseflesh: the pillow felt warm.
Yardley exhaled and rose, looking around one more time. If Cal was right and the copycat thought he had left something behind, it was gone now.
As she was leaving, she gripped the knobs on the double doors to close them and noticed a difference of pressure as she pulled the doors closed. Something she hadn’t paid attention to the first time here.
One of the doors, the one on the right, was just a fraction harder to close. She opened them again and then peered at the hinges on that door. The hinge on the top looked newer than the ones in the middle and bottom. It had been replaced. It was surrounded by scratches in the paint. As though someone who had never replaced a hinge had grown frustrated and attempted to hurry, becoming sloppy with the haste.
Yardley leaned in close: the hinges had three screws each. The top screw on the upper hinge was a different color than the rest. The two screws underneath it were polished silver, but the top screw was a dull metallic color. She touched them and felt a difference between the top one and the bottom two. Could be that Ryan Olsen simply hadn’t had a screw of the same type as the others and had used a different one.
Yardley took several pictures of the hinge and the screws with her phone. She’d show it to Baldwin. Ask if the evidence response team had cataloged it and found anything unusual about it.
Yardley looked at the bed one more time and then shut the doors.
35
“Bill was here again this afternoon,” Rosalyn Miles said with a yawn, as she turned on her side in the bed. “He thought he’d borrowed our ladder, but I told him it was his. His memory is just getting worse and worse.”
“I wonder if we should call someone,” Jay said, not looking up from the paperback novel he was reading next to her. “Between that and the alarm company guy last week, he might be getting to the point he needs a nurse over there or something.”
By the time Jay flipped to the next page, Rosalyn was already snoring. He envied her ability to drift off so easily. Depression had hit him hard last year when his mother passed from a stroke, and though for a time he hadn’t had the energy to get out of bed, there were nights now when he was plagued with insomnia. Tonight, that meant he’d still been awake when his youngest, Abe, had had a bad dream. Jay spent a half hour with him, holding his hand while surfing some social media sites on his phone with his other hand.
Jay felt his eyelids grow heavy. He turned off the light and laid his book on the nightstand. Within minutes, he was fast asleep.
Jay felt a hand shaking him. A shot of adrenaline went through him. Fear was always the first thing he felt on being woken from a deep sleep. He saw Rosalyn’s face near his, and it calmed him.
“What is it?” he groaned.
“I heard something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something from the kitchen.”
“It’s probably Doug getting some water or something.”
“Will you go check?”
“It’s nothing, Ros. That’s why we have an alarm.”
“It was really loud. Please?”
He sighed and tossed the comforter off himself as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. Rubbing his eyes, he yawned and then rose and went out into the hallway.
The living room was still and quiet. It was far enough from the kids’ rooms that they wouldn’t see the light on. Jay flipped the wall switch. Nothing looked out of place. He went through the living room and saw several toys by the TV. He mumbled, “Damn it, Abe,” as he picked up the toys.
The toy bin was in the playroom in the basement, and he headed there, turning on the light. He tossed the toys in the bin and turned to walk back upstairs when he saw that the bathroom door was cl
osed. Two of his five kids slept down here, and Rosalyn always left the bathroom door open with a night-light on to ensure they didn’t trip or pee all over the toilet.
Jay figured one of them was in the bathroom. He knocked softly, but no one answered. Inside, the bathroom was empty. Several more toys lay on the floor. He shook his head as he bent over to pick them up. When he rose, the knife swept down and slashed a fiery pain from his shoulder to his elbow.
Blood spattered against the wall as the figure jumped out from behind the shower curtain. A black stocking pulled over his head blocked any view of his face, and he wore a black shirt and pants. Jay screamed as the knife came down again. He stumbled backward. It missed his face and embedded into his collarbone.
Terror, agony, and adrenaline hit him like a bolt of lightning. Jay Miles fought.
He leapt at the figure and tackled him around the waist. They hit the side of the tub hard, the attacker’s back slamming against it with Jay’s full body weight on top of him. Jay was bigger, but the attacker was stronger.
He pushed Jay off, and they were on their feet again. The attacker swung in a wide arc with the knife, barely missing Jay’s throat. The knife slashed across his chest, leaving a warm trail of blood that flowed down his shirt.
Jay knew he was going to die if he couldn’t get the knife.
He tried to grab the handle, but his hands were too slippery with blood. The figure wore latex gloves, giving him a better grip. Jay pulled his hands up onto the blade. The steel cut into his flesh, causing him to howl in pain as he tried to pull the knife away.
Rosalyn came running down the stairs. She screamed.
“Set off the alarm!” Jay shouted, losing his grip on the knife.
Rosalyn ran to a window and opened it. The alarm beeped upstairs, a warning that allowed time to input the code. The boys came out of their rooms. Rosalyn grabbed them and sprinted up the stairs.
Jay put his full body weight onto the blade, pushing it back toward the attacker. The blade cut so deep Jay thought it had nicked the bones in his hands. He shrieked in pain but kept pushing until the blade’s tip was near the attacker’s throat.
The alarm finally set off after twenty seconds, and a deafening screech coursed through the house. So loud that Jay knew it would wake the neighbors.
The attacker let go of the knife. He bashed his fist into Jay’s face. He got in three punches before Jay could readjust his position. He felt dizzy. One of the blows had cracked his jawbone.
The attacker ripped the knife out of Jay’s hand. He bolted out of the bathroom and up the stairs.
“Rosalyn, run!” Jay shouted, before consciousness dimmed, and he saw nothing but black.
36
It was early morning when Yardley got the call. She hadn’t even tried to sleep. Instead, she’d sat on her balcony and sipped wine and tried to distract herself by reading a novel. She’d now read the same paragraph three times.
Wesley hadn’t been able to sleep either. He’d left earlier to drive the neighborhoods of Tara’s friends, looking for her. She’d insisted he stay home, that he had classes to teach in the morning, but he’d said that he couldn’t sit idly by while stress ate away at her. She’d worried that he was leaving because he was still upset about their exchange earlier, but he’d kissed her and told her he loved her.
The call was from Baldwin.
“Yes,” she said, trying to suppress the excitement that swelled in her that Tara had been found.
“Jess, sorry to wake you. I thought you would want to know right away.”
“What is it?” she said, her excitement turning to cold fear.
“There’s been another attack.”
Revulsion, and then nausea. A powerful wave of nausea that seemed to permeate even her skin. She saw blood dripping from ceilings, cold eyes like marbles, and the flesh surrounding them pale and drained. The scent of death filling rooms like poison gas.
She thought she might vomit.
“Jess, you there?”
“Yes. Tell me who the victims are.”
“Jay and Rosalyn Miles. Oscar and I talked to them a few days ago. Jay reported someone from the alarm company at his home when no one was scheduled to be there. This one’s different, Jess. They survived. His wife heard someone in the kitchen. Apparently some toys were left out there, and the killer must’ve tripped over them and rattled the pots and pans that hung over the island. He ran downstairs to hide in a bathroom and that’s where Jay found him. They fought, but he got away. Jay’s in the hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s alive.”
“I’m coming down.”
“No, I just called to let you know. I know it’s a terrible time to put this on you, but I thought you’d want me to loop you in. I have the ERT here, and some of my best people are flying down from Quantico today. One of them is an expert on lacerations from NYU medical school we’ve used before. The killer didn’t have time to alter the wounds, so we’ll know what type of blade he used. If our man can get it down to a specific type of knife, we might be able to trace knives like that purchased recently. It’s a long shot, but it’s something. And who knows what else he left behind that he didn’t have time to clean up? Anyway, we’re working it; there’s no reason for you to be here. You just stay there in case Tara comes home, and I’ll send you updates as I have them.”
He paused. “I have someone following up with all of Kevin Watson’s friends. If Tara’s with him, they’ve got to sleep somewhere, and without much money I’m guessing that’s a friend’s couch. And my agents haven’t taken their eyes off his father’s home. He still has his motorcycle gang over. It’s unlikely he would do anything with them there. Jess, I won’t let up until she’s back home.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for calling me.”
“Try to get some sleep if you can.”
She hung up and stared at her phone before placing it on the glass tabletop before her. She felt someone behind her and glanced back to see Wesley. He shook his head and said, “I didn’t spot her anywhere. Anything from your end?”
“No.”
He sighed and looked out over the desert. “Another attack?”
“Looks like it.”
“And you were just ready to run over there?”
“I was.”
He stood in front of her, leaning his back on the railing. “Why on earth would you think that was a good idea?”
“I’m the screening—”
“Do you think I don’t know what a screening prosecutor does, Jessica? They sit in an office and go through paperwork. Sometimes, sometimes, they go out into the field and interview witnesses after the police to get in questions that were missed, or they maybe visit a crime scene, or something along those lines. Being this involved in the case, where you run to a fresh crime scene . . . it doesn’t happen.”
“That’s an exaggeration. I’ve done it on other cases. They need warrants, they need advice . . . a prosecutor can make sure everything is covered constitutionally and can’t be challenged later. Law enforcement gets sloppy when they think only of the capture and not the court process.”
“Jessica, you interviewed a serial murderer on death row for information. That’s not investigation; that’s obsession.” He squatted down in front of her and took her hands. “I can’t watch this. I won’t. I feel like my opinion means nothing to you.”
“Of course it does. It—”
“No, it doesn’t. Not really. You are putting yourself in danger when I asked you not to. That’s not how this works. Not if we’re trying to make this long term.” He kissed her hands and rose. “I don’t want you working this case anymore. I’m asking you as your partner to give it to someone else. If you don’t . . .”
“If I don’t, what, Wesley? You’re not going to stay with me? Are you threatening me right now?”
“No, nobody is threatening anyone. I just want you to know that this is serious. If you were to ask something of me this seriously, I would do
it in a heartbeat. And I expect the same from you. If you’re unwilling, well, then maybe we need to consider the nature of our relationship going forward.”
He went inside. Yardley decided she would be sleeping on the couch in the den tonight.
37
In the morning, Yardley woke in the den and went upstairs. Occasionally, Wesley would leave a little note for her, just letting her know he didn’t want to wake her and that he loved her. No note here now.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to end this case for her. To bury it like it should’ve stayed buried in the first place.
As she went to the fridge to make something for herself, her strength failed her. She slumped down against the fridge and put her face in her hands. Tears would have come if she’d let them, but a thought kept going through her head: I’ll be damned if I let them make me cry.
Perhaps it was time to give up the case, and probably her career as a prosecutor, too. She knew, just knew, that when she abandoned this case, the work would lose meaning for her and become a slog every day. Better to cut her losses and do something else, maybe even move somewhere else. She’d made a mess of everything here, and starting fresh might be just what she needed. It had been a mistake to stay in Nevada, so close to where she and Cal had shared a life. She should’ve picked up and moved to Europe or Australia the second the divorce had finalized.
A deep sadness descended on her. There was a whole life she could’ve had. And if she’d left after, Tara wouldn’t be in the danger she was in. Yardley had failed her daughter. And the pain of it stung like an ice pick in her heart.
When she finally rose, she realized she had left her phone downstairs and went to retrieve it. She’d missed a text. All it said was an address and then a line that made her heart skip a beat: please help me mom.
A Killer's Wife (Desert Plains) Page 14