“On what grounds, Mr. Paul?”
Wesley stuttered. The anger had overwhelmed him and clouded his thinking. Yardley said, “Your Honor?”
“The exhibits are so admitted.”
Yardley turned back to Hill. “What happened after you spent the day at the racetrack?”
“Wesley came down and met me outside in the evening. He seemed really happy, relaxed. I asked him what happened, and he said he’d done it.”
“What did you take that to mean?”
“I took that to mean he’d killed her. I asked, too. He said she jumped out of his car when she realized what he was there to do, and he had to chase her down. When he got to her, he grabbed a rock and smashed in her head.”
“How did he convince her to go out into a secluded section of desert with him in the first place?”
“She wasn’t going to the gym—that’s just what she told her mother. Wesley had told her he had a surprise for her out there, and she didn’t fight at first.” Hill glanced at Wesley. “He said the most enjoyable part was seeing her eyes when she realized why they were really there.”
Wesley was on his feet. “This is a farce of everything our legal system stands for. You just vomited on every princ—”
“Mr. Paul,” Aggbi said sternly. “I have given you several chances. Marshal, please remove Mr. Paul from the courtroom.”
The marshals moved in. Wesley hurled his chair, and it slammed into a marshal’s face. He lunged at Yardley. Her purse sat on the chair next to her, and her hand was already inside. She pulled out a canister of Mace and sprayed into his face. He shrieked as his eyes slammed shut, the room filling with the acrid stench of burning chemicals. Another marshal leapt over the defense table and tackled Wesley to the floor.
76
The Red Sun Motel consisted of two separate buildings that faced each other. The investigator, Parker, had rented a room in the farthest one from the street under a false name with another person’s credit card. What he hadn’t done was change the license plate on his rented car. A street-view camera at a toll station had snapped a photo of the plate, which they had a BOLO call out for, and they’d tracked down the motel he was staying at shortly after. Parker had a flight scheduled for three hours from now to Mexico.
Baldwin slipped on his Kevlar vest. Several officers were already at the motel and had circled the property. Two agents from the Bureau took point, and Baldwin stayed behind a moment until he was ready. He checked the clip in his Glock and flicked off the safety.
The officers rounded the back, and Baldwin followed his two agents to Parker’s door. He glanced into the window, but the curtains were drawn. They took their places by the side of the door, and an officer ran up with the battering ram.
Baldwin held up three fingers and counted down: three . . . two . . . one.
The door burst open as Baldwin shouted, “FBI!”
The first shot rang like a firecracker exploding in his eardrum. Parker sat on the bed with a rifle. One of the police officers standing next to Baldwin collapsed. Baldwin held his breath as Parker turned the rifle on him. Parker fired, and the shot went wide and blew into the wall.
Baldwin fired twice, both rounds entering Parker’s head just above his right eye. He flew back onto the bed, the rifle flopping out of his hands. Baldwin kicked the rifle away. The blood flowed out of Parker like a stream and soaked the bed.
77
The next day the jury was recalled. Wesley had tried in vain to get a mistrial declared, but Yardley’s arguments and case citations had confirmed what the judge already knew: the defendant couldn’t simply ask for a mistrial because of their own misconduct; otherwise any defendant in any trial, sensing they were about to be convicted, could do something unexpected and trigger a mistrial.
Back in court, Hill finished his testimony, detailing how Wesley had shown him Jordan’s ring and hair. Wesley attempted to cross-examine Hill, but he was now in cuffs and chains and had lost his composure. It was apparent to everyone in that courtroom that the jury was not listening to a thing he said.
Once Hill was excused, Aggbi turned to Wesley and said, “Any witnesses, Mr. Paul?”
“I guess not,” he scoffed. “I suppose this is what justice is in this country now, right, Your Honor? Let a man get up there and lie through his teeth, let the government be complicit in it, and let an innocent man suffer for it. I assure you, Judge, this is not over, and the Ninth Circuit, not you or this jury, will be deciding my fate.”
“So noted, Counselor. If there’re no further witnesses, I’d like to take a break before we begin closing statements.”
Deliberations varied in time. Yardley had one that had run eleven days, and she had one that had taken less than five minutes. As the jury was led away to the deliberation room after both sides gave their closing statements, she watched their faces. A female juror looked back to Wesley, and the disgust on her face couldn’t have been clearer. Wesley noticed, too, and shouted, “What the hell are you looking at?”
Once the jury left, Yardley turned to him, a marshal there behind him, and said, “That wasn’t good trial work, Wesley. That jury hates your guts.”
“They’re worthless tadpoles. This isn’t over by a long shot. We’ll battle this out in the appellate courts for years, and if there’s even the slightest chance to do it, I will run this to the Supreme Court.”
She slung her satchel over her shoulder. “Looking forward to it.”
Baldwin waited for her outside of the courtroom. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and his tie hung loosely around his throat. He looked tired.
“Rough day?” she said.
“You could say that. We found Parker. Not his real name, by the way. He was a former NYPD detective that served eight years in Sing Sing for attempted murder and racketeering. There were allegations he carried out a couple hits for the mob while still a cop. Looks like he was the guy you hired when you needed some dirt done.” Baldwin glanced at his shoes. “He, um, didn’t go quietly.” He looked to the courtroom. “Wesley’s really become unhinged.”
“He knows he’s going to be convicted. I also paid him a visit at the jail and brought up his parents and then told Hill to have a lot of eye contact with him during his testimony. He can control a lot about himself, but not his temper.” She watched him as they walked. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “He shot first. I’ll be all right. The Office of the Inspector General put me on paid leave until the shooting’s cleared, so looks like I have some free time.”
Yardley took his arm. “I think I’ll take you up on that dinner, then.”
78
The meal had finished, and Yardley and Baldwin strolled casually through a quaint neighborhood tucked away near some parks and an elementary school. They stopped at a little shop selling spiritual trinkets, and Baldwin bought her a mala bracelet of yellow and gold that the owner said brought protection. He put it on her wrist, and his touch lingered longer on her skin than it had to.
By the time they left the store, Yardley had received the call: the jury had a verdict. It had taken less than two hours.
Back in the courtroom, Wesley didn’t even attempt to hide his disdain. He watched the jury file in with the contempt of a man watching his executioners. When the judge said to rise, he remained seated and spit onto the tabletop. Yardley hoped the judge wouldn’t make a point about decorum by removing him; it would be best to just get through this.
“Will the foreman please rise?” Aggbi said. A man in a button-up shirt with gray hair rose. “It’s my understanding you’ve reached a verdict?”
“We have, Your Honor.”
The verdict form was passed to the judge, who read it silently and handed it back to the marshal before saying, “What says the jury in this matter?”
The man read from the verdict form.
“In the matter of the United States versus Wesley John Paul, a.k.a. Wesley John Deakins, on the sole count of murder in the first degree—”
>
Yardley’s heartbeat drowned out all other sounds, and everything slowed to a crawl in her vision. She didn’t want to move, but she also knew this was the moment she wanted to remember: watching only one thing while that verdict was read. She looked over to Wesley, and they stared into each other’s eyes.
“—we find the defendant guilty.”
The judge thanked them for their time and gave them some instructions on gathering their belongings. Yardley and Wesley stayed still. The marshal moved between them as the judge waited for the jury to leave before informing Wesley how sentencing was going to work, who he was going to meet with to prepare a sentencing report, and when they would be back.
“Forty-five days enough time, Ms. Yardley?”
“Plenty, Your Honor. Thank you.”
Wesley’s gaze didn’t shift from her until one of the marshals forced him to look away as they dragged him back into the holding cells to be transported to the jail.
Yardley saw Isabella Russo sitting in the pews. Yardley thanked the judge and then went and sat by Isabella.
“That’s it, then?” Isabella said.
“He’ll file appeals, but they likely won’t have any merit. Eventually, he’ll exhaust his appeals, and he’ll live in a cell until the day he dies.”
Isabella nodded and took her hand. “I’m glad you got what you wanted, Jessica.”
“This isn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was a normal life to raise my daughter in. To give her a childhood she can look back on fondly.”
“We can’t always protect our children from men like him.” She had a photo up on her phone, which she looked at. Jordan Russo hugging her mother at some sports event. “But I’m glad there’s people like you to fight people like him.”
They hugged, and then Isabella left. Yardley stayed in the courtroom after everyone had gone. She strolled over to the jury box and touched the wood banister in front of the seats. A grin came to her, and she inhaled deeply, wanting to remember the scent of the courtroom at this moment, and then she left.
79
Yardley jogged through the canyons near her home, a dust storm whipping her face as she descended the mountain back toward civilization. Tara texted her and asked if she could sleep at a friend’s house tonight.
Tara had come back from the ranch to take some placement exams for entrance into the UNLV mathematics program. She had tested at the doctoral level and was allowed into the PhD track, the youngest student ever admitted to a doctoral program in the state.
Yardley had asked for a hiatus from the US Attorney’s Office, and Lieu had granted it. She would be leaving for the ranch tomorrow with her daughter.
What she remembered most about the Cals’ ranch was a cold mist in the mornings that burned away quickly. The crisp air filled her lungs with an icy sting, and she liked the sensation of numbness in her face. She looked forward to leaving the neon and exhaust of Las Vegas.
Eddie’s mother, Betty, had once told Yardley that her son had loved the cold morning mists as a child, and she would frequently find him wandering around the nearby forest by himself. She’d said it with a sad fondness, as though he’d been out there collecting flowers. Yardley imagined him doing much more sinister things, hidden by fog and trees like a camouflaged predator.
The Cals had a guesthouse, which they offered to Yardley and Tara. Yardley had accepted, but it would only be temporary—she knew she wouldn’t leave Las Vegas behind. Not yet. But she’d let Tara decide for herself. It gave her a raw anguish to think of life without her, but the Cals were elderly, and she wanted Tara to have as much time with them as possible. Steven had informed her that they were leaving everything they had to Yardley, and she’d told them to leave it to Tara instead.
Yardley stopped her run and cooled down with a slow walk. She checked her phone and saw a photo had been sent to her by Oscar Ortiz. Emilia at her second birthday party, with a text that said, Sorry, but plan on getting pics all the time. It made Yardley smile.
Not long after Wesley Paul’s trial, Yardley had pushed the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI to go house to house again and put up flyers everywhere they could between Ortiz’s home and Wesley’s condo. She’d constantly harassed every reporter and news anchor she could to get Emilia more airtime and had even secured a half-hour special about her disappearance on a cable news network.
The FBI helped as much as they could, but resources were slim, and the search was a massive undertaking. On top of that, nobody but Yardley seemed to believe Emilia was still alive.
Yardley put together volunteers to help in the search in her spare time, and Tara began a social media campaign that provided more. Soon, they had over two hundred people knocking on doors and hanging flyers in the evenings and on weekends.
A woman living twenty minutes from Wesley’s condo saw one of the flyers and called the police. She was a single mother who ran a home day care and told the police she had been paid $7,500 by a young girl’s father to watch her for a couple of months. The father had stated he had an emergency trip to Europe for work. After two months and no word, she’d attempted to reach him. His phone number had no longer worked, and the home address he’d listed didn’t exist. She’d been too scared to contact the police because she didn’t have legal immigration status, something Wesley had no doubt counted on.
The woman said the father had contacted her a month before dropping the baby off and made the arrangements, telling her he could get the call to leave at any moment.
She hadn’t known what else to do with the child, so she’d kept her, hoping the father would return.
The woman identified Wesley Paul in a lineup as the man that had dropped Emilia off. The US Attorney’s Office had filed kidnapping charges against him, and the case was still pending.
Ortiz had been allowed to keep his badge. He’d been transferred to the bank fraud division, where he would be sitting behind a desk all day, and Baldwin had told her that Ortiz couldn’t have been happier for it.
Wesley Paul’s planning and attention to detail stunned the FBI. It didn’t stun Yardley. She just wished he had put a mind like that to a different use.
Wesley was the last monster haunting her, but he was only there because of the first.
She showered after her run and drove to the prison.
When she got there, she sat quietly, staring at the building for a long while.
Yardley had gotten permission from Warden Gledhill to use the warden’s office for this meeting. The warden’s office had no recording devices and was soundproofed, so no one could hear what was said. But the reason she wanted it was that it had a lot of light coming from several windows, and Yardley didn’t want to be in a dungeon again with Eddie Cal.
She stood at the window overlooking the parking lot, watching the way the sunlight danced off the windshields of the cars in the lot. Glinting like a secret wink. She heard the door open and the rattle of chains.
Eddie Cal sat in front of her. He seemed thinner and had let his scruff grow back. He grinned at her as she sat down across from him.
“How’s Tara?” he said.
“She’s well. We’ll be leaving tomorrow to see your parents and staying there awhile.”
“And you came here just to see me before you left? I’m flattered.”
Yardley reached into her satchel and took out a digital recorder. She hit play, and Wesley’s and Cal’s voices came on, discussing the details of Cal’s crimes.
“Wesley recorded the conversations you two had in here. I found several of these in his condominium in a little space he’d carved out in the floor of the kitchen. We found the DVDs of the Dean and Olsen murders there. It was really difficult to find, actually. The FBI had to use a probe because there was no indication the floor had been tampered with. We found a lot of photographs of me and Tara, as well. Some journals he’d filled with notes while he watched us through the years.” She sighed. “So many lives ruined, Eddie, just to give you a slim chance at an appeal. Those famil
ies deserved better than to die for you to maybe have a little more life.”
“His parents died in a very similar way. Perhaps in time he would have picked it up without me.” He rested his forearms on his thighs as he leaned forward and glanced at some papers on the warden’s desk. “I didn’t tell him to do that to the children, though. I also said he was to protect you and Tara, never harm you.”
“You knew he was unstable,” she said, “but you still asked him to watch me. What if he decided to kill me and Tara? Would you have felt any remorse? Would you have felt anything?”
He blinked but said nothing.
“The only reason I’m here, Eddie, is to let you know that I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure your execution isn’t stayed. I won’t let you disgrace those families by using their deaths like this. You’ll be dead by the end of the year, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
She rose to leave, and he said, “You think he was the only one? I told you, I have a lot of fans.”
She folded her arms, staring into his eyes, and thought that if there was any justice, Isaac Olsen would grow up in a world where Eddie Cal and Wesley Deakins were both dead.
“They can’t help you now,” she said.
He smiled. “There’s one that can. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
She scoffed, “I wouldn’t help you if my life depended on it, Eddie.”
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
She held his gaze just a little longer and hoped it would be the last time she would see those eyes, the eyes she had so easily fallen in love with, that she only saw now in dreams that would wake her trembling in cold sweats.
“Goodbye, Eddie.”
80
Yardley had some paperwork to submit to the court on a few ongoing cases before she could relax for the much-deserved hiatus going into effect tomorrow. In her years at the office, she had never taken a single vacation.
As she drove from the prison, she kept replaying what Cal had said. There’s one that can. She just doesn’t know it yet.
A Killer's Wife (Desert Plains) Page 28