Crimson Lake Road (Desert Plains)

by Victor Methos

  After a few minutes, she realized she had read the same paragraph in the autopsy report three times, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to get any more work done. She opened a browser and googled the kidnapping of Angela River.

  The Las Vegas Sun had a long story on the case, published this morning. The crime reporter, a freelancer named Jude Chance, routinely sold stories to the various newspapers, and his podcast was one of the most popular in Nevada and California. Yardley had used him several times to leak details of cases she needed public, and in exchange, she had given him bits of information he wanted on other cases.

  Chance had termed the killer the Crimson Lake Executioner, and Yardley knew the name would stick.

  Don’t know about you folks, but this reporter has seen his share of the Heart of Darkness. As a crime beat reporter for six years, I felt I had a good grip on what people were capable of. “Been there, done that,” I would think to myself.

  Well, the Crimson Lake Executioner has made me rethink my place in the hierarchy of criminal knowledge. The Executioner takes his time with his victims; he doesn’t rush. He cleans them first, a source near the investigation told me. Washes them with soap and scrubs their bodies with bleach. He trims their hair and manicures their nails. Like a young girl with her favorite and most precious dolls. And he does this in only one place: Crimson Lake Road. A place with a sordid history of corruption that collapsed an entire town and left nothing but empty cabins on its shores. A place filled with more ghosts than people. A place the Executioner calls home.

  Both women were found less than a mile apart in abandoned cabins. Their owners had left the cabins due to back taxes owed exceeding the value of the cabins themselves. The cabins sat there for years gathering dust and cobwebs, until the Executioner discovered them. And what a discovery he made: a place devoid of people, an hour away from the nearest police station, covered in the darkness of night. When your intrepid reporter went for a visit past the witching hour, I saw only one, just one, light on in a home, but when I knocked to interview this sole occupant, no one answered. The entire town, if you can call it a town, is nothing but shadows and rust.

  Chance went on to describe the details of how the two women were found: bandages around the face, cuts along the brow that soaked the bandages with blood, a black tunic covering the torso. No mention was made of the Sarpong paintings.

  Yardley opened another window on her computer and brought up the four paintings. The paintings were dark. Not just in theme but in lighting and shadow. Behind each figure, outside the windows, a city burned. The flames nearly reaching up to the sky. The sky itself glowed a bright orange. As if it, too, were on fire.

  What does he see when he looks at these?

  The FBI recognized four categories of serial murderers: dominance—those who needed power over another for sexual gratification; hallucinatory—those compelled by voices or visions; objective oriented—those on a mission to exterminate a particular class of people like prostitutes or a racial minority group; and lust—those for whom violence and sex were the same things.

  No dominance was involved, as the victims had been unconscious during the entire interaction, and dominance killers needed their victims to know they were being dominated. Pharr and River were not from any ethnic, racial, or religious minority groups.

  The possibilities were that he was being compelled by hallucinations he believed were instructing him to carry out the killings; that he was a lust killer, though the evidence for sexual assault was sparse; or that this was not serial murder at all but murder for money, for revenge, or for hire, with the allusions to Sarpong thrown in to deceive law enforcement. Or this was an entirely unique type of serial predator as yet unidentified by the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit.

  If he was a lust or hallucinatory killer, he wouldn’t stop until he was dead or in prison. Until then, all he could do was keep moving forward, which for him meant killing. Like a shark that couldn’t stop swimming or else they’d drown.

  Yardley went back to Chance’s article and read the few paragraphs devoted to Angela River. They were accompanied by a photograph of River with her boyfriend. She was dating a man named Michael Zachary, an emergency room physician she’d recently moved in with. When Baldwin interviewed him, Zachary said he’d fallen asleep early on the night River was kidnapped, and no one would be able to verify he was home. The night Kathy Pharr was abducted, he claimed he’d been out of state at a medical conference.

  In the photo, River had sunglasses pushed up into her hair and a broad smile, her arms wrapped around his neck.

  A shattered heart.

  Yardley sent an email to Roy Lieu, letting him know that there would be federal jurisdiction in what would be called the Executioner case because of the potential sexual assault, and that she would like to screen it and instruct Kyle Jax on how to work similar cases before she left. Then she set up a meeting with Jax.

  7

  Baldwin had a new ASAC who was giving him more and more white-collar cases and fewer murders. He had a few ideas about resources he could consult to find out more about the connection Yardley had suggested to this painter, Sarpong, but first he had to finish up some paperwork that needed to be time-stamped by the end of the day.

  His new boss came into Baldwin’s office in the afternoon and stood at the door. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dana Young looked like what the public likely pictured when they thought of an FBI agent: black suit, white shirt, dark tie. Thick glasses and hair impeccably combed to the side with a part in the perfect place. He was exactly the type of bureaucrat Baldwin disliked: a climber with no regard for the actual victims in his cases.

  “So I believe the Executioner case can be resolved fairly quickly,” Young said, looking at a scuff on his shoe. Baldwin noticed for the first time that his feet seemed too small for his body. “Which will be nice because it will free up some resources.”

  “How?”

  “Because we’ll be shifting those resources away from Behavioral Science. This is just my humble opinion, but BSU has been a waste of assets. One murder is similar to the next and doesn’t deserve an entire unit to itself, particularly one practicing witchcraft like criminal profiling. I’m pushing the SAC of the Vegas office to abolish the liaison position and just get us two agents for general use. Once the Executioner case is cleared, we can move forward with that, which will help close all types of cases much more quickly.”

  Baldwin was used to the Behavioral Science Unit getting trimmed anytime the Bureau was undergoing budget cuts. The BSU focused specifically on liaising with local law enforcement when they needed help with serial murder investigations. The problem was that as of right now, there were only eight special agents assigned to the BSU. And not just for the United States but for the entire world. Eight agents, of which Baldwin was one, to cover dozens of requests for help received every month, and Young seemed to want to reduce it even further.

  “Out of curiosity,” Baldwin said, “why do you think the Executioner case will resolve quickly?”

  Young shrugged. “I’ve handled a plethora of murder investigations, and witnesses always turn up. Eventually, anyway. He’ll brag to someone about one of the killings, and that someone will pick up the phone and call us, and that’ll be all she wrote.”

  Baldwin had the urge to laugh but thought better of it, so instead he just held Young’s gaze. “Dana, I’ve worked with these types of offenders my entire career. You’re right, most murders are closed because of witnesses, even serial murders, but not with this type of killer. Sometimes, these guys don’t even know they’re doing it. How exactly are they going to brag to someone about killings if they aren’t even aware they’re doing them?”

  A flash of irritation crossed Young’s face and then disappeared just as quickly. “Look, I didn’t come to argue. I came to inform you that I would like the Executioner case cleared as quickly as possible. Our eyes are on you right now.”

  “Because it’s in the media, right
? I’m guessing you wouldn’t give much of a shit if nobody knew about it.”

  Young straightened his tie and said, “I would watch your tone, Agent Baldwin. With BSU getting trimmed, we’re going to have to find a new place for you, and where that place will be is up to me.” He checked his watch. “Cleared quickly, Agent Baldwin. Do we understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  When Young had left, Baldwin tossed his pen on the desk and rubbed his face. A friend of his had recently retired from the Bureau and bought a diving shop in Bermuda.

  Baldwin pulled up photographs of Bermuda on his desktop and stared at them a long time before getting his jacket and leaving the office for the night. He was the last one there.

  8

  Yardley ate a quiet lunch at a café near the federal building and watched the crowds. Some kids came in, probably no more than thirteen. Their clothes were dirty, and they asked the hostess for something and then left when the hostess shook her head and said, “Sorry.” The youth homeless population had been steadily increasing the past decade in Las Vegas, and vulnerable groups of teens attracted the worst types of predators.

  Serial murderers of all types preferred victims that wouldn’t fight, and young prostitutes were one group that went willingly with them to secluded locations. Someone like the Executioner, who chose victims who led regular, quiet lives, wasn’t as common.

  A young blond man parked a giant truck out front. He came into the café and looked around. He spotted her and came over.

  “Jessica?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Kyle.” He sat down across from her without being asked and without shaking hands. He took a sucker out of his pocket and unwrapped it.

  Yardley wondered if Lieu had his eye on Jax for a while and was just waiting for her to step down.

  She gave him a warm smile, despite his discourtesy. “Nice to meet you.”

  Jax glanced around the café. “Why’d you want to meet here?”

  “Just thought somewhere casual would be nice for a change.”

  His eyes darted around the room before he put the sucker in his mouth.

  “How are you liking Las Vegas so far?”

  He shrugged. “Came here a lot before this. I knew what I was getting into.”

  “I was actually curious about that. Why did you come here?” Yardley asked.

  “What d’ya mean?”

  “I mean Special Victims is a highly . . . specialized field of prosecution. Most prosecutors view it as a necessary evil. Something you have to put your time into for a few years if you want to move to Homicide or Major Crimes and then become a judge. No one specifically asks to be placed here. But you did. I’m just wondering why.”

  He shrugged. “Good opportunity, I guess. And I was sick of Wyoming.” He stared at her a moment and said, “I thought you’d be a lot older. They told me you were retiring.”

  “I am. At least from here.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “Maybe open a solo practice. Do something calm like wills or contracts.” Something without blood, she thought.

  “I want to show you something,” she said.

  She took her laptop from her satchel and pulled up the Executioner files.

  “This is the case we’re going to be working the next two weeks. A reporter in the Las Vegas Sun called him the Crimson Lake Executioner and I expect that name will stay.” She pointed to a list of files. “You can see the reports are ordered well, but I found a few errors on Clark County’s part and one from the FBI. The microscopic findings report from the autopsy was buried with the missing persons report for the second victim, the serological summary was stacked with a supplemental narrative, and a witness statement was embedded in thirty pages of notes from the evidence response team. All things that I fixed fairly easily, but it’s imperative to catch mistakes like this in case they turn out to be important.

  “You’ll find that many detectives bulldoze their cases, and for the majority of murders, where the perpetrator is obvious or there were witnesses, like a drive-by shooting or a convenience store robbery, that can work. But in serial homicides, where the motive is unclear and the perpetrator did his best to avoid detection, everything has to be slow and methodical. I like to start from the ground up, and I suggest you do the same.”

  Yardley opened a spreadsheet that had twelve cells filled with headings like Elimination procedures and Geographic analysis and Forensics (trace, transient & tangible).

  “These are the primary areas you need to go over yourself. The police and FBI can gather the evidence for you, but they can’t organize it in a way that a jury can easily under—”

  He took the sucker out of his mouth and interrupted her. “Yeah . . . look, no offense, but that’s not how I work these. I did Narcs for a long time and prosecuted a shit ton of homicides. We all got our ways of doing things, and honestly, that just doesn’t sound like it would help me much.”

  “These cases won’t be drug deals gone bad, Kyle. These are typically killers of high intelligence. You have to reconstruct their thinking from the evidence you have. It’s the only way to work these cases.”

  Jax leaned forward. “I graduated law school at twenty-one, and ever since it’s been a fight to prove I know what I’m doing. I don’t wanna get into a pissing contest. You’re on your way out, and I totally get the urge to tell the new guy what you think you’ve learned—”

  “What I think I’ve learned?”

  He sighed. “Relax, okay. I just mean I have a certain way of doing things that’s always worked for me, and filling in spreadsheets ain’t it.” He bit his sucker and chewed, then rose and placed the plastic stick on a linen napkin. “I’ll look at the files and give you my thoughts.”

  Jax swaggered out the door; the Rolex on his wrist told Yardley he liked flash.

  She could leave now. The new house was waiting for her. Just hand her existing cases over and go. She doubted either Jax or Lieu would mind.

  Her fingers hovered over the track pad. She clicked on the personal history Baldwin had included for Angela River.

  There wasn’t much there. Her place of birth was Santa Monica, California—the same place Yardley had been born. She’d dropped out of Davis Port High School and later earned her GED before attending college. No relatives listed. Zachary was a year older than her and had no criminal history. River had a conviction for resisting arrest. Yardley pulled up the original case file. Officers had tried to arrest River for smoking pot at an outdoor concert, and when they went to cuff her, she mooned them and ran off. It made Yardley grin.

  Yardley logged onto Instagram and found River’s profile. Photos of her rock climbing, swimming in the ocean, mountain biking, doing yoga, and receiving something around her neck from what looked like a Buddhist guru. The quote under her profile picture was Be the change you want to see in the world.

  She stared at the profile picture: River in a yoga pose on the edge of a cliff with the sun glowing behind her.

  What did he see when he looked at you?

  9

  Family dinners at least a few nights a week were something Yardley insisted on. Tonight, Tara came home with Stacey, a friend and neighbor she’d been hanging around with the past year. Tara had never found friends easily—due not just to her background as the child of an infamous killer but also to her piercing intelligence. She’d had to change schools more than once after kids found out about her father, and for a while she’d fallen in with a bad crowd.

  The girls were laughing about something as they grabbed sodas out of the fridge.

  “Smells good,” Stacey said.

  “It’s almost done. Have a seat.”

  She made up three plates and sat down with the girls.

  “How was your day?” Yardley asked.

  Tara shoved a forkful of spaghetti in her mouth and said, “The internship is killing me. It’s all about putting in hours. Everything takes so much freaking time.”

  “
You can always cut back.”

  She shook her head. “They’re for sure gonna hire me after graduation. I want that job.”

  “How cool is that?” Stacey said. “She’ll be barely twenty when she graduates and making so much money.”

  “I’m very proud of her,” Yardley said, looking at her daughter. Tara blushed.

  When they were through eating, the girls ran off to a friend’s house, and Yardley was left alone. She decided the walls felt like they were closing in on her, and though she had already worked out today, she dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and went to the gym. She ran so fast on the treadmill her legs felt like they would give out, and she had to sit at the juice bar until she had the strength to get to her car.

  When Yardley was driving again, she twisted her back from side to side and stretched her neck. Though young, she was feeling the tug of age in her joints and didn’t recover as quickly from workouts or illness as she used to. The ache in her back made her think of Angela River’s offer to come to the yoga studio.

  Yardley debated a few moments and then looked up the address.

  The yoga studio was a small space on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Through the glass, she saw about ten people in poses on yoga mats. River ambled around the space, occasionally helping a person with a stretch or speaking to them briefly. Yardley scanned the parking lot, expecting to see a deputy waiting in an unmarked car, but there was no one. River should have been assigned a protective detail for at least a few days: if the Executioner thought she could identify him, he might be back to finish what he started.

  She waited until the class was over before going inside. River was speaking with a student when she saw Yardley and waved. She finished her conversation and came over.

  “I’m so glad you came. You missed the last class, though.”

  “I just wanted to check in with you. How are you holding up?”

  She shrugged. “It hurts to walk, breathe, and move, and I can only see out of one eye, but other than that I’m fine.” She paused and looked down at the floor. “Um, my boyfriend, Zachary, said I was crying in my sleep last night.” She forced an awkward smile. “But hey, could be a lot worse, right?”