by BV Lawson
Wyse leaned forward a little more. “I’ve thought of you every day since, Scott. I found myself scanning crowds of people, looking for you.”
Drayco recalled the folder he’d seen earlier showing pictures of the serial killer’s victims, including Barry Favata. All of them were tall, with light blue eyes and dark hair. All could pass for younger versions of Drayco. Wyse’s words might be another chess gambit, the physical resemblance a red herring, but why else would Wyse have asked to speak only to him?
“I find it hard to believe you’d go out of your way to kill young men because they reminded you of me. That’s giving me far too much credit for your own monstrous behavior.”
“We’re still very much in the realm of the hypothetical, Scott. I think your constabulary friends who are watching us right now are going to be terribly disappointed if they’re expecting a confession. I hope they’re enjoying our tête-a-tête as much as I am.”
Drayco was certain there was absolutely nothing about this man or this case his “constabulary friends” were enjoying. Drayco was no stranger to crime and on a first-name basis with the darkest demons of human behavior he’d crossed paths with in his career. When he was in the FBI’s BAU, he’d developed some profiles of killers like Wyse.
But none of that experience could soften the blow of being the catalyst—the model—for a series of brutal murders.
Drayco steeled his features despite the beads of sweat forming on his face. He pulled his jacket tighter around him. “Is your conscience trying to find a scapegoat? You know what Gandhi said. ‘Cowards can never be moral.’”
“But what is morality? In some cultures around the world, torture and cannibalism are considered moral. Rape is considered de rigeur in others. Perhaps the person who raped and murdered those young men is from such a place. Of course, experts say rape isn’t about sex. It’s all about power or revenge. People don’t rape those they admire.”
Wyse turned his palms upward. “I would never hurt you personally, Scott. I need you too much.”
“Why?”
“You are my inspiration.” Wyse fell back against his chair, a broad smile on his face.
His words were like scattered echoes in a dense fog. Drayco held onto the arms of his chair for support as a wave of lightheadedness hit him. Years ago, he’d played a concert in some forgotten auditorium in the dead of winter with a 101-degree fever, puking his guts out during intermission. The show must go on.
“You look comfortable, for an inmate chained to a table. Since you’ve been trapped for years in a prison of your own making, maybe this feels like home.”
Wyse rattled the chains around his feet, “It’s like harp pedals. With those pedals, I can control pitches of strings and change them to anything I wish.”
“If you’re telling me this is all about control—controlling your victims, controlling your destiny, controlling me—I don’t buy it. This has the veneer of revenge.”
Wyse had given up tracing figures on the desk, giving his full attention to Drayco. “I don’t suppose, Scott, you can tell me when the first of those murders they’re attributing to this serial killer began?”
“Five years ago, as I’m sure your attorney told you.”
The FBI database had also turned up more unsolved murders with the same MO. Those dated back fifteen years—not long after the trial and conviction of Martin Hafften, Wyse’s son, not long after Drayco had testified against him. No similar cold cases had been linked back any farther. If none were found, that would mean . . . Drayco truly was the model for Wyse’s victims.
“Why did you say I was your inspiration, Wyse?”
“We both know the answer to that question, don’t we Scott?”
“You brought me here for what purpose? To make me feel guilty? To suffer?”
Wyse’s voice turned soft, chiding. “I think you’ve suffered already.” He smiled a smile that on someone else might be called beatific. “I want you to remember. To think of me. Every day, as I remember you.”
Drayco rubbed his temples, reminding himself it was the game of a serial killer, nothing more. He was so deep in the fog and lacking his usual situational awareness, the door that opened to reveal the returning sergeant startled him.
“Thirty minutes. Time’s up.”
The officer unlocked the table handcuffs constraining Wyse. As the sergeant led his shuffling prisoner out of the room, Wyse turned around briefly. “I hope to see you at the trial, Scott. When I’m released, I’ll come find you. Something for both of us to look forward to, yes?”
Drayco rubbed his temples some more, trying to ease his growing headache. As he waited for the agents to join him, he mumbled to himself in the empty room. “You want me to remember, Wyse? How could I forget the two-way looking glass of death you’ve left me?” He shivered and hoped the agents would think to bring a cup of very dark, very hot coffee. Preferably with a shot of bourbon.
Valley of the Shadow of Death
Ordinarily he’d admire the unusual layered patterns in the rainbow sandstone of Antelope Canyon—if only he weren’t clinging to handholds above the fragile rock platform, which by some miracle he and his companions had banged into when flood waters swept the three of them downstream. Instead, Scott Drayco glanced over at his fellow clingees who were looking like a pair of partially drowned prairie dogs.
This wasn’t what he’d had in mind when rancher Will Pichford hired him to find out who was laming his cattle. Not Drayco’s kind of case anyway, he would have turned it down if he hadn’t promised a mutual friend of theirs to take it on as a favor.
He remembered when he first saw the poor beasts in pain from corium abscesses caused by the lacerations. It hadn’t been pretty, but the damage was minor enough to prevent the animals from being culled early. Just enough to add expensive veterinary fees to the ranch’s bottom line and cause Pichford himself to go nearly apoplectic. “It’s a warning. Has to be,” he’d argued, to everyone he knew.
Drayco had pressed him further, “What kind of warning?” Pichford might be a little too fond of the local “cactus wine,” made from a mix of tequila and peyote tea, and would bet on everything from llama races to boxing. But among friends and other members of the Cattlemen’s Association whom Drayco interviewed in nearby Page, the man didn’t seem to have an enemy in the world.
Pichford had looked over in annoyance at Drayco’s question. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have hired you.”
Fair enough. But after a week of investigating the case from every angle, Drayco hadn’t found any evidence to link someone to the crime. Even the local veterinarian wasn’t any help, saying the wounds could have been inflicted by any small instrument, as long as it was sharp enough. Drayco’s sense of failure was eased only slightly by the warm welcome Pichford and his wife Natalie gave him, insisting he stay at the ranch.
As Drayco had learned, Pichford was the quintessential self-made millionaire, from a broken family whose mother had cheated on his father and left the two boys in his care, never to return. After a stint in Vietnam, he’d settled in northern Arizona and built up his cattle ranch from scratch to over five hundred head of cattle, one of the first to breed Gelbvieh and Balancers. He managed his spread with the help of a Navajo foreman John Kinlichee, two full-time ranch hands and a few seasonal part-timers.
But the bright spot in his life was the charming Natalie, who’d been open and helpful to Drayco from the start, not seeming to mind his prying questions. “How’d the two of you meet?” Drayco had asked, having heard whispers from one of the neighbors that Natalie hadn’t been quite as happy to leave her former life as Pichford had indicated.
“It was a little over ten years ago.” She’d shaken her head, seemingly amazed at the passage of time. “I was touring in a rodeo.”
“Were you a performer?”
“You’re looking at a former IPRA barrel racing champion, four years running.” She’d smiled briefly, then quickly looked down at the leather purse she was maki
ng, a side business of hers. “You probably can’t tell it now, though.”
Twenty years younger than her husband, she certainly wasn’t over the hill. She was a foot shorter than Drayco, and her braided blond hair with wind-blown wisps falling down over her forehead gave her a pixie look. And she always wore something with the color purple.
Drayco never felt suave enough to handle female self-deprecation without getting himself into trouble, so he’d settled for humor. “Oh, I don’t know. I think you could still ride circles around Annie Oakley.”
That had elicited a full-blown smile, and she’d taken her hand away from her lacing needle long enough to squeeze his hand, her thumb brushing across his knuckles. She’d jumped back when Pichford and Kinlichee entered, although they hadn’t seemed to notice.
Kinlichee was another enigma. He’d been the ranch foreman for three years and was good enough in his job that others jokingly called him “the cattle whisperer.” Drayco hadn’t seen him crack a smile once, and the man kept mostly to himself. Kinlichee was rarely without a handful of pistachio nuts he cracked one after the other.
Drayco tried using his own one-eighth Navajo ancestry to cut through Kinlichee’s reserve a bit, without success. “It Pichford a good boss?” he’d asked, to which Kinlichee had replied, “Good enough.” One pistachio, crack, then two.
“You spend more time with the cattle than anyone. Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary? Sounds of distress, perhaps? I know the mutilations happened at night, but your bungalow isn’t far from the pen.”
“I’m a sound sleeper. Don’t hear much.” Other than more pistachios being shelled and the husks thrown at Drayco’s feet, that had been that.
Pichford himself didn’t suspect his foreman. “Nah, he’s a two-hundred-fifty pound teddy bear. He loves those animals. He’s even a vegetarian, if you can believe it.”
Drayco hadn’t, at first. “How could a vegetarian possibly be happy working a ranch of cattle that are raised to be slaughtered?”
“I guess he figures it’s his way of assuring they’re treated humanely beforehand. I mean, he can’t get the whole world to stop eating beef, so this is the best he can do.”
The more Drayco had gotten to know Kinlichee, Pichford and Natalie, the more he liked them, and that had made him worried. They were almost too good to be true.
It’s funny how extreme stress has a way of focusing the brain into a single moment of clarity. Now, as he clung to the rock face, he could still recall the exact second he realized he’d been set up. After Drayco had expressed an interest in touring Antelope Canyon, Pichford suggested Kinlichee take him, since tourists needed an authorized Navajo guide. And it just so happened the foreman worked part-time for an outfitter providing such tours.
Then Pichford surprised Drayco at the last minute by suggesting he himself tag along and was especially adamant about the exact time they should take the tour. The local resident collecting admission warned them of a storm in the area, but Pichford, an amateur meteorologist, shrugged it off. “It won’t be a problem.”
Pichford also insisted they dawdle in a section of the slot canyon where the walls of red, gold, and orange sandstone were so narrow, hikers could touch both sides. He’d goaded Kinlichee into giving Drayco the long, detailed history of the canyons, even chipping in his own commentary—much to Kinlichee’s annoyance, whenever it seemed like Kinlichee was ready to move on.
It was half-past three when the first sounds of a low rumble reached their ears. Kinlichee’s knowing eyes had grown wide, and he’d yelled, “Flash flood!”
Leading the way, Kinlichee darted toward one of the permanent metal ladders the Navajo installed after a drowning tragedy in that very canyon years ago. It was about a hundred feet away, and Kinlichee could have easily made it to safety.
If Pichford hadn’t stuck out his foot and tripped him.
Despite their imminent danger, this was the moment Drayco remembered the new hand-made leather pouch on the bed in Kinlichee’s cabin. The one with a purple cactus flower design, the symbol for courtship among some native tribes. He really should have paid more attention to the neighbor’s tales of Natalie’s unhappiness.
As Drayco bent down to help Kinlichee, he cast a glance back into the canyon where they’d been only moments before and saw a roiling stream of brown foamy liquid tumbling their way. By the time the wall of water was up to Drayco’s waist, all thoughts of reaching that metal ladder were swept away as cleanly as the bodies of the three men would be very soon.
Pulled under by the onslaught, Drayco somehow managed to push against the canyon floor, giving a little prayer of thanks for his six-four frame, and hauled himself up on a ledge. Kinlichee soon surfaced near the ledge, and also managed to get hold of a piece of it. Then the two men grabbed Pichford as he bobbed by, helping him up to their precarious refuge.
Kinlichee glared at Pichford and managed to gasp out between deep breaths, “What the hell did you do that for, kicking me like that?”
Pichford couldn’t answer, busy coughing from the mouthful of brackish water he’d swallowed, so Drayco spoke up. “As bizarre as it may seem right now, I think he was aiming to get back at you for the affair with his wife.”
Kinlichee’s eyes were dark with anger, but there was also something else. Guilt, perhaps? He shook his head. “We broke it off.”
Pichford finally managed to quiet his coughs, his newly-raw throat giving his voice a harsh, rasping quality. “That’s a pretty story, if I ever heard one.” With a look over at Drayco, he added, “He’s not the first, you know. And I’ve also seen the way she looks at you. Did my oh-so-friendly wife take you out back of the calving barn for one of her private tours?”
It couldn’t get more surreal. Three men having a conservation about who did what with whom as roiling flood waters threatened imminent doom mere inches below.
Drayco looked at the water, then back at the other men. Before being swept away into oblivion, he had to get the answer to one burning question. “So the cattle laming was a smokescreen? I’m guessing you used one of your wife’s leather-working tools to do the deed.”
Pichford coughed a few more times. “I was too proud to admit my wife was cheating on me. During the course of your investigation, I’d counted on you finding out about the affair. And who the bastard was so I could get evidence for a divorce. As it turns out, I discovered it on my own. When I saw you were the latest among her conquests, I realized I was going to have to take care of the problem myself.”
Drayco’s hands were beginning to shake from clutching the rock face while simultaneously grasping Pichford’s arm to steady the man. He didn’t have much energy left to argue his innocence with Pichford, and it hardly seemed to matter right now.
When Pichford’s coughing suddenly grew quiet, Drayco turned to check on him. He was just in time to watch as Pichford kicked Kinlichee off the ledge.
“Good God, man, you’re insane!” Drayco watched helplessly as Kinlichee disappeared downstream. “Couldn’t you have just settled this in a bar brawl?”
Pichford was surprisingly subdued, despite having just committed murder if Kinlichee didn’t survive. “I really loved Natalie, you know,” he said, almost too softly for Drayco to hear above the roaring flood. “More than I’ve loved anyone or anything else in my entire life. I can’t live without her.”
Drayco sighed and looked up at the sky, the deep cloudless blue belying the storm that had formed miles away. Probably somewhere near Le Chee Rock, dumping the fateful rain into the canyon wash that was acting like a funnel. “Pichford, for what it’s worth, I never—“
“I know. I guess I knew all along but was too angry to admit it. Obviously, I’m not the best judge of character. Deep down, I do believe you’re an honorable man. It’s not your fault my wife doesn’t love me.”
His jaw was set in a firm line, his eyes slightly unfocused, as he turned toward Drayco and raised his free hand. Taken by surprise, Drayco braced himself for a fi
ght, but Pichford flashed a grim smile, called out, “Good luck,” then wrenched his arm from Drayco’s grasp and launched himself backward into the debris.
Drayco watched in horror as Pichford’s head bounced into chunks of rock and scrub brush before he sank below the muddy water. Emotionally and physically drained, Drayco sagged back against the cliff and took in his surroundings. The sandstone was quite spectacular. A lot like Georgia O’Keeffe’s red canna painting. As he waited for the waters to recede, he counted the rings of the sandstone layers, trying not to think about the spirits of all those who had perished in these canyons over the millennia, watching along with him.
Acknowledgements
“The Devil to Play” was first published in Static Movement in 2008.
“Valley of the Shadow of Death” was first published in Midnight Screaming in 2009.
This is the debut publication of “Blood Antiphon.”
About the Author
Past career hats BV Lawson tried on include maid, super-speedy typist, classical musician, radio announcer, being in TV commercials (for all of one day), research assistant, TV features writer and working for the Discovery Channel. Now a full-time freelance writer, she's penned articles for various publications and won awards for her many published stories and poems.
Thanks to the influence of library genes handed down from her mother, she created the blog In Reference to Murder, which contains over 3,000 links for mystery readers and writers. She's working on a series of crime fiction novels set in various locations in and around the mid-Atlantic, and when time permits, BV and her husband enjoy flying over Northern Virginia and the Chesapeake in a little putt-putt plane. Visit BV via her web site, bvlawson.com. No ticket required