Zachary’s face seemed to light up at the thought. “Angie can give you all of that information.”
“Speaking of Angie, she told the police she was coming out of a mall after closing when she got struck on the back of the head and woke up in that cabin on Crimson Lake Road. That was . . . May thirteenth. Where were you on May thirteenth around ten?”
“Asleep at home. I’d just finished a twenty-four-hour shift.”
“Can anybody verify that?”
“That I was home? I don’t think so, no.”
“What about Crimson Lake Road? Any connection there?”
“No. None. I didn’t even know it was a place until all this.”
Aster watched him a moment. “You looked away from me. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
“Doc, in my line of work, my main skill is reading people. You’re holding something back. What is it?”
“Nothing. I’m being honest with you. I have no idea why this is happening to me.”
Aster wrote a few more notes.
“I mean, what’s the case look like so far?” Zachary asked. “You said you could win. Are you sure?”
“I don’t have all the information on what they found at your house to tell you with a hundred percent certainty, but I didn’t get into this line of work to lose trials. When I get all the reports, I’ll come back and we’ll go through them and I can give you a better picture of how this will go down. For now, I need you to sign something.” Aster took out a document from his satchel.
“What is it?”
“You just subpoenaed me to court against my will, Doc.”
36
Packing was the activity Yardley most needed to do and the one she least wanted to do. Tara was out, and she was too wired for sleep, so now seemed like the perfect time. She grudgingly changed into sweats and turned on some music as she began in her bedroom.
She’d never been a hoarder, and anything that didn’t have an immediate use was typically donated within a week or two, so the task of packing wasn’t going to be as painful as it could’ve been. Her bedroom, other than the necessities she needed to leave out, was done in around an hour.
As she was getting ready to start on the kitchen, she walked by Tara’s room to go get some boxes out of the garage and stopped outside her door. Nothing had been packed. The room looked exactly like it always had. A twinge of sadness went through her: she wondered if her daughter was holding out hope they wouldn’t actually move. Now that she’d found some people she actually liked spending time with and who were kind to her, her mother was ripping her away from them.
Yardley sat on her bed and sighed, staring up at the paintings Tara had in her room. Paintings she had done herself, along with a poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue and one of a woman with the Milky Way galaxy coiled inside her.
She lay back on her daughter’s bed with her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling a few moments, remembering her own bed at that age: a mattress on the floor of her mother’s apartment. An apartment Yardley paid all the bills for. All the things Tara was now doing—going shopping for new clothes, attending parties, spending lazy days by a pool—none of them were things Yardley had been able to do. Her entire life from the age of thirteen to eighteen had been school and grueling work with a few hours of sleep in between, all so she could provide for herself and a mother who was slowly drinking herself to death.
Yardley sat up with a deep breath, getting ready to leave the room, when she noticed the open drawer in the night table by the bed. She was about to push it back in but caught a glimpse of something handwritten on a paper inside.
Without Yardley even knowing why, a cold revulsion descended on her. As though an icy wind had just blown through the room.
She pulled the paper out. It was a letter from Eddie Cal to her daughter.
Tara,
I so look forward to your visits. They add a stroke of color to such dreariness you cannot imagine. Waiting for a certain death is one thing, but waiting in limbo, uncertain of either death or life while my appeals grind through a bureaucracy that treats me as an item instead of a person—as you can imagine—had me in a bit of a depression. Until I realized of course that we all live in exactly this limbo. How many more times will you see a rose in your lifetime? There is some finite number. As there is some finite number to everything. How many times will you kiss a boy? How many sunsets will you see—how many times will you laugh—how many breaths will you take? . . . You have a set number left, and yet it all feels endless, doesn’t it? As though death won’t come knocking on our door one day to collect the debt we owe.
Don’t let yourself forget this lesson, the most important lesson in all of life: that it one day ends.
With love,
Your father
Yardley felt like she wanted to vomit. She sifted through the drawer and found at least a dozen letters, dating back almost two years. For two years Tara had been in contact with the one man in the world Yardley most feared her getting to know.
Rage seethed inside her. Not only at her daughter’s deception but at her betrayal. The fact that Tara had hidden their correspondence from Yardley showed she knew what it would do to her, and yet she’d done it anyway.
She paced the room a good ten minutes, debating what to do. She chewed so much on her thumbnail that it bled. She went to the bathroom and cleaned it with antiseptic before putting liquid bandage on it.
Then she went back to Tara’s room and arranged everything as well as she could to look undisturbed. When she was through, she left her daughter’s room.
Tara came through the front door around eleven at night and smiled at her mother when she stepped into the house.
“Hey. What’re you doing up?” she said.
“Couldn’t sleep. Where were you?”
“At Stacey’s studying.”
“Is that uncomfortable for her?”
Tara slipped off her shoes and dropped her backpack to the floor. “Why would it be uncomfortable for her?”
“You’re studying subjects her professors have probably never heard of. It might make her feel insecure to be around you. Don’t ever underestimate someone’s insecurity. It can cause them to do things they wouldn’t normally do.”
The two held each other’s gaze. Tara’s frosty blue eyes fixed on her like she was a hawk analyzing the movements of a mouse in the distance.
“What are we really talking about?”
“What do you mean?”
“Give me some credit, Mom. What are we talking about? Just come out and say it.”
Yardley watched her daughter. One of Yardley’s greatest attributes, one responsible for so much of her success as a prosecutor, was her ability to read people. To surmise their true motivations quickly and with an accuracy that they themselves didn’t have.
There were only three people in her life she had never been able to read correctly. Tara was one of them. The other two wanted her dead. It was not what she wanted to think about when she thought about her daughter.
“It’s nothing, sweetheart. I’m just tired.”
Tara nodded. “Okay. Well, I’m gonna go to bed. Night.”
“Good night.”
She watched Tara head to her bedroom, and a sickening dread gave her butterflies: There was more to this than letters. Cal was having her do something for him. He wouldn’t correspond with Tara unless it benefited him somehow. And now Yardley would have to follow her own daughter to find out what it was.
37
The United States District Court for the District of Nevada was a much more modern-looking building than any courthouse should be. Yardley had always believed the law was a noble profession, the profession of the founding fathers. When she thought of courthouses, she thought of Corinthian pillars and wooden banisters; old, creaky chairs in windowless rooms.
The grand jury room was on the second floor. A marshal, who acted as bailiff in federal court, stood
outside the doors.
“How are we today, Ms. Yardley?”
“Fine, Peter. Thank you for asking.”
He held the door open for her as she went inside. No one from the public was allowed to sit in on grand jury proceedings, but everyone knew her here, and she didn’t think they’d object to her taking a seat in the audience benches. Most of them probably didn’t know she’d quit yet.
She sat at the very back, as far away from everyone as possible.
Eighteen people sat in the jury box. A federal grand jury needed a minimum of sixteen people to hold the proceedings.
All federal felony cases began with grand juries, and they were a completely one-sided proceeding. The rules of evidence didn’t apply, and the prosecution could introduce anything they wanted, as long as it was relevant to the case at hand. Most grand jury proceedings didn’t even have judges, but for occasional cases, like high-profile murderers or terrorists, a judge would sit in and ensure the process ran smoothly.
Today’s judge was an elderly man named McLane, and he nodded at her with a small smile.
Kyle Jax was sitting at the prosecution table. Two other prosecutors sat behind him, waiting their turn. Judge McLane noticed Jax’s sucker.
“Mr. Jax, I would appreciate if we didn’t partake of any candy in my courtroom.”
“Sure,” Jax said, tossing his sucker into a wastebasket next to the table.
“What matter may we call for you, Counselor?”
“The government would call the United States versus Michael Jacob Zachary.”
“Okay, let’s get Mr. Zachary out here, please, Marshal.”
Zachary was brought out in a white jumpsuit with shackles. The marshal sat him down at the defendant’s table. The door opened then, and the marshal let Angela River in. She exchanged glances with Zachary. It made her stop in her tracks, and it seemed like she would burst into tears right then. He appeared sympathetic to her, his eyes going down to the floor as though unable to look at her. Then he looked up at her and silently mouthed the words, I didn’t do this.
River noticed Yardley then. She joined her at the back of the courtroom. Neither said anything at first, and given their last encounter, Yardley wasn’t sure how River would respond. But instead of anger, she simply sat down next to her and held her hand. Yardley gave it a squeeze back.
“First witness, Mr. Jax.”
“The government would call Detective Lucas Garrett to the stand.”
The marshal went to get Garrett from the witness waiting room. Garrett was sworn in and took his place in the witness box.
“Detective, tell us how you came into contact with the defendant in this case, Michael Zachary.”
Garrett detailed how he’d first learned of Kathy Pharr’s death all the way through to what evidence they found and how the FBI came to be involved. He gave a succinct outline of the case and the evidence and then left an opening for Jax to ask the most important question:
“And who is that perpetrator, do you believe, Detective?”
“The defendant, Michael Zachary.”
Jax then showed a photo to Garrett and said, “What is this, Detective?”
“That’s a photo of Mr. Zachary and Kathy Pharr getting out of a car at a motel together. We obtained it from your office, from an assistant US attorney named Jessica Yardley, who obtained it from a reporter named Jude Chance.”
“And how did Mr. Chance have it?”
“He stated he obtained it for a fee from an anonymous source.”
“So someone was following around Mr. Zachary and Mrs. Pharr?”
“Possibly, yes. Someone may have hired a private investigator for whatever reason to follow and take photographs. But it’s also possible the motel owner or manager took it. Sometimes, the small, seedier motels take photos of couples who arrive and leave quickly, presumably for sex. They attempt to blackmail one or both of the people if they’re married, or if someone meets with a prostitute, they’ll tell them they’ll send the pictures to their employer unless they’re paid. It’s possible the motel owner or an employee took the photo and then saw Mrs. Pharr in the news and reached out to Mr. Chance to sell the photo.”
“So they were having an affair?”
“That is the most likely assumption that we can draw, yes.”
Jax then dug into the holes in Zachary’s alibis, and it was clear to Yardley that they were going to be a tough burden for the defense to overcome. It just wasn’t plausible that no one at a large conference would remember him.
After half an hour describing the kidnapping of Kathy Pharr, Jax glanced toward the jury, then took a step around the lectern, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “The defendant’s live-in girlfriend is Angela River, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Please tell us what happened to her.”
“One month after Mrs. Pharr’s death, on May the thirteenth, we received a call of suspicious activity at 612 Crimson Lake Road. Not far from the scene where Mrs. Pharr’s body was found. A neighbor saw a car parked outside a home that had been unoccupied for two years. A figure, we assume a male, took someone out of the trunk of a vehicle. The neighbor said they then went into the cabin, the larger figure pulling the smaller figure by the arm in an aggressive manner, and later only one of them walked out. The neighbor had never seen the car before, and he couldn’t identify the figure, as it was too dark.”
“Could he identify the car?”
“No, other than it was a black or dark-blue sedan. There’s minimal street lighting on Crimson Lake Road.”
“What does Mr. Zachary drive?”
“A dark-blue Lincoln Continental.”
“So what happened after the neighbor contacted 911?”
“Dispatch let us know about the call. Normally, a patrol deputy would be sent out to investigate. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation had taken an interest in Mrs. Pharr’s death. Our contact there, Special Agent Cason Baldwin, believed her death to be the work of a serial murderer who had just started a cycle of killing.”
“And what is a cycle, Detective?”
“A cycle’s a period where the killer engages in fantasy, and then in the actual killing before going into a cooling-off period, and then finding another victim and starting another cycle. So Agent Baldwin had requested he be contacted immediately about any suspicious activity on Crimson Lake Road.”
“What happened then?”
“Myself and three other uniformed deputies met Agent Baldwin at the location about an hour later. We found Ms. River on a table, wearing a black tunic and bloody bandages around her head exactly like Mrs. Pharr.”
Jax handed photos to the jury of both crime scenes, as well as blood spatter pictures, sketches from the forensic technicians, and a DVD containing video taken at both scenes. He walked Garrett through what had occurred after they discovered River was still alive, how they discovered the ricin, and what the Department of Homeland Security had explained to them afterward. Finally, Jax pulled out photos of the Sarpong paintings and handed them to the jury.
Yardley had to give Garrett credit. His testimony about the paintings and how it was discovered the killer was mimicking them was succinct. He didn’t try to impress the jury with legal or investigative terms they might not have understood in order to seem more competent than he was. He got the information across quickly, and the jury didn’t seem bored.
The hearing was pushing four hours, and it was apparent to everybody that the jury’s attention span was waning, when Jax said, “Thank you, Detective Garrett, that’s all I have for now.”
Zachary turned toward River with a pleading expression on his face, as though begging her to believe him, until the marshal said, “Eyes forward.”
“Next witness, Mr. Jax,” the judge said.
“We would call Dr. Mathew Carrey with the Clark County Office of the Coroner and Medical Examiner.”
Jax introduced more documents, photographs, and videos of both crime scenes as well as gruesome a
utopsy photos through Dr. Carrey. He introduced a narrative statement Baldwin had written out instead of having him testify, as it was customary to only have your lead law enforcement officer testify at a grand jury proceeding—in this case, Garrett—and then he rested.
After a quick break, McLane said, “Mr. Zachary, you now have the opportunity to present evidence or witnesses or to testify yourself, if you wish. Please understand, sir, that you are not required to incriminate yourself and do not need to testify. However, if you choose to do so, anything you say here can be used against you in subsequent court proceedings. Do you understand that, sir?”
“I do. Yes.”
“With that in mind, do you wish to testify?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Do you have any witnesses or evidence you would like to present?”
“Um, yes, Your Honor. One witness. Mr. Dylan Aster.”
One of the prosecutors behind Jax leaned forward, whispering in his ear. No doubt telling him that Dylan Aster was a defense attorney. Jax shot to his feet.
“Your Honor, we would object to Mr. Aster even being allowed into the grand jury room. It’s my understanding he is Mr. Zachary’s attorney.”
“Mr. Zachary, is he your attorney?”
“Yes, Your Honor, but that’s not why I’m calling him. I subpoenaed him as a character witness.”
Yardley smiled and instantly knew what Aster was about to pull off.
Clever boy, she thought.
Jax chuckled. “Judge, that’s ridiculous. There’s no way he can testify as to Mr. Zachary’s character. The defendant was arrested less than two days ago, so unless they were childhood friends, Mr. Aster knows nothing about the defendant’s character.”
“Peter, is Mr. Aster here?”
The marshal said, “Yes, Your Honor, he’s in the witness waiting room, and he does have a subpoena apparently signed by Mr. Zachary.”
“Okay, well, let’s bring him in here and see what’s going on.”
Crimson Lake Road (Desert Plains) Page 15