A Killer’s Wife

by Methos, Victor

  She went outside. It was abnormally hot today, and she remembered an article she’d read in a criminology journal about how crime, across cultures, tended to increase on hot days.

  At a nearby café that some of the lawyers and judges from the federal courts went to, she sat in a corner by herself and ordered a diet soda with a tuna sandwich. She took out her phone and called Wesley.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he answered.

  “Hey. How’s class?”

  “Just got done with an interesting discussion on the Old Chief case. How about you?”

  “I, um . . . I’m debating doing something I’m not sure is a good idea.”

  “Oh yeah? What?”

  She almost told him, and then she stopped. He would talk her out of it, and even though she told herself she hadn’t decided and was just mulling it over, she knew that was a lie. Baldwin was right. When that call came in, or when it was eventually on the news and she saw the faces of the couple, or the weeping children being taken out of the home and put into a police cruiser, it would slash at her. Maybe even ruin the prosecutor’s office for her. What, after all, was she in this for if not to protect people like the Olsens and Deans? Any line prosecutor in the office could get convictions. That wasn’t what this job was about to her. It was about something much deeper, and she had never really explained to herself what that was.

  “I’m debating getting a cheeseburger with fries for lunch.”

  A pause, and then Wesley burst out laughing. “That is a conundrum. Your figure is amazing, and you have nothing to worry about. YOLO.”

  “I really just wanted to hear your voice. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “All right. I’ll see you at home. Love you.”

  She leaned her head back against the booth and watched the way the sunlight refracted off the glass in splinters of light. Then she rose and paid for her order but told them to cancel it.

  “You sure you don’t want it boxed up?” the cashier said.

  “No, thank you. I’m not hungry anymore.”

  13

  The Low Desert Plains Correctional Institution sat in an empty valley forty miles outside of Las Vegas. The surrounding deserts gave it a postapocalyptic feel, almost like it didn’t belong in this time but instead three centuries from now, when laws no longer applied and the mass of men simply had to be locked up to keep them from destroying society. Maybe it was already starting to get that way now. She didn’t know.

  Yardley had called ahead and spoken to the warden, Sofie Gledhill, who’d brought several cases to Yardley. They had a mutual trust for each other. Yardley agreed that she would expedite any case Gledhill brought, and Gledhill agreed that she would never bring a case that wasn’t warranted. Over the years, she had given Yardley several sex crimes related to murders committed in the prison. Yardley had prosecuted every one, gotten convictions on two through jury trials, and cut deals on the rest.

  Gledhill met her at reception dressed in a suit, her Nevada Department of Corrections badge hanging by a lanyard around her neck. African American and with glimmering green eyes, Gledhill had always looked to Yardley as though she could be on the cover of any fitness magazine, and she had told Yardley that she in fact had been headed for the Olympics for track when a knee injury had derailed her athletic career at nineteen.

  “Love the shoes,” Gledhill said as she gave Yardley a hug.

  “A gift. Wesley’s always saying I don’t treat myself enough, so he got me a gift card.”

  “Well, he’s right. This business we’re in will eat us up if we don’t take some time to do things for ourselves. I meditate twenty minutes twice a day, rain or shine, and run an hour at lunch on a trail near here. You should come with if you’re looking for ways to stay fit.”

  “I take boxing classes.”

  Gledhill grinned. “Yeah, that does seem more your style.” She glanced at the corrections officer behind the front desk. “You sure about this? I can’t talk you out of it?”

  “There’s a reason I’m here that isn’t really public yet. The FBI is keeping it close to the chest to prevent any panic. But I promise I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t necessary.”

  “FBI? Cason Baldwin?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “He came in a month or two ago and saw Cal.”

  Yardley felt a pulse of anger, small and sharp, in her belly. “Did he.”

  “I assumed it was just a standard interview. You know how the field agents are. Superstitious like crazy. They think they need to pick up the scent like a bloodhound or whatever. I figured he wanted to meet Cal to get in the mind-set of catching someone like him. Is that not what it was?”

  She shook her head, trying not to show the anger she was feeling. “No, I don’t think so.” She cleared her throat, attempting to push Baldwin out of her mind so she could focus on what she had to do. She would deal with him later.

  “Well,” Gledhill said, “if you’re sure you’re sure, I won’t stand in your way. He’ll be cuffed and chained even with the partition, and I’ll have a guard posted behind you.”

  “No, I need privacy with him. He won’t talk with someone else there . . . and I need the camera turned off.”

  “No way. I need everything recorded.”

  Yardley glanced at the corrections officer, who was listening to them. She looked away when she noticed Yardley watching her. “Let’s talk on the way.”

  They were buzzed through metal doors and into another waiting room with a locked metal door at both ends. There was no camera here, and it was where Yardley said, “There’s a copycat. He’s killed two couples so far—that we know of. I’m here because Cason and I think that Eddie can help.”

  The door at the far end buzzed to be opened, but Gledhill didn’t open it. “Wow.”

  “If he’s being recorded, he won’t be honest with me.”

  She blew out a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll shut it off. You have my word.”

  “Thanks.”

  She led Yardley through a long corridor before they turned down another one. The general visitation rooms were on either side of them, and at the end of the corridor were the visitation rooms for the prisoners in protective custody. Cal had committed—in addition to torture and murder—rape, and in prison, sex offenders had bull’s-eyes on their backs. Cal was in protective custody twenty-three hours a day and only allowed outside in the yard for one hour.

  The visitation room was split by a glass wall bordered by cement. Three layers of glass with an intercom on either side separated the visitor from the inmate. Yardley sat down on the steel chair. Gledhill stood behind her and spoke into the camera. “Shut it off, Tommy.”

  The red light on the camera turned dark.

  “Take as long as you need, hon.”

  “Thanks, Sofie.”

  She nodded and left the room. The metal door on the other side of the glass buzzed and slid open, and Yardley’s ex-husband walked in.

  14

  Baldwin’s office was small and cramped. He sat at his desk with his suit coat off and his sleeves rolled up, his tie undone. The small desk fan blew warm air over his face, and sweat rolled down his neck and dampened his collar. He checked the temperature: 110.

  A bottle of hydrocodone was open in front of him on the desk, and Baldwin popped two of the pills. He counted the pills he had left: only a dozen. He would need more soon. The pills had been in his medicine cabinet from knee surgery last year. He’d started taking them again three weeks ago, telling himself it was just to relax the muscle spasms he was having in his back. But it was more than that. It was an all-consuming stress he hadn’t felt since he’d been hunting Henry Lucado, a.k.a. the Beltway Butcher.

  Most of the Butcher’s victims had been strangled, but there was one who’d had her throat slit in a manner similar to Aubrey Olsen: ear to ear. From that entire case, the only image that had stuck with him was that young girl on the side of the road with her throat torn open, her mother hysterically fighting re
latives to get to her little girl’s body. A crowd had gathered, and Baldwin had seen nothing but a sea of cell phones recording when he’d arrived on scene. As if they were witnessing some interesting stunt at a carnival.

  It bothered him that he couldn’t remember the girl’s name.

  Ortiz came in just as Baldwin was slipping the pill bottle into a drawer and said, “Hey, got some funky stuff.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I told Detective Marsh over there with the St. George PD to call us on any reports filed for stalking or suspicious people in the area. He sent a few things over this morning. First one is some guy that said someone from the alarm company came up checking all his doors and windows, but when he called the company, they said his alarm was fine and they didn’t send anyone out.”

  “Huh. Where was this at?”

  “Gardner Avenue in St. George. I don’t know, though, ’cause it seems weird for him to hit the same city. It was North Vegas and then SG, so he should hit somewhere else, right? He’d be tryin’ to get a buncha different agencies involved and hopin’ we don’t work together.”

  “That’s true, but these guys get obsessed quickly. If he happened to see some couple that caught his eye, he might risk it for them. What else?”

  “Some lady said she saw a dude standing in front of her house at like midnight just staring in the windows, and a family said someone came to the front door and tried to get in but took off when the father came out of another room and saw him.”

  “Well, it all sounds like bullshit, but I don’t have anything else to do the rest of the day. Let’s go.”

  Baldwin parked in front of the Miles family home. An affluent area, just like the Deans’ and Olsens’ neighborhoods. A large home with several windows in front; a second story of almost all glass overlooking the valley.

  He knocked, and a woman with brunette hair answered; she was fit and trim.

  “Hi, is Jay here?”

  “Yeah, can I ask what this is about?”

  “I’m Agent Cason Baldwin with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re following up on a report he filed a week ago with the local police department.”

  “Oh yeah, hang on. We were just having dinner.”

  The woman disappeared into the house, and a man came to the door wearing sweats. He was chewing something and looked from Baldwin to Ortiz and said, “Hi, guys.”

  “Jay Miles?”

  “Yeah,” he said, holding out his hand. Baldwin and Ortiz both shook, and Jay said, “Did you guys find him? The guy that was checking my doors and windows?”

  “No,” Baldwin said. “We just had some questions about that, if it’s all right.”

  Miles stepped outside and shut the door behind him. “Shoot.”

  “We read your statement and were wondering if you’ve seen anything since you filed the report. Maybe the same van driving around up here.”

  “No, nothing.”

  “And your neighbor’s positive it was the alarm company he saw?”

  “I showed him a picture of the logo and van for the company, and he said that was definitely what he saw. My neighbor across the street saw it, too.”

  “This ever happened before?” Ortiz asked.

  “No. The officer at the police station said they make mistakes sometimes and go to the wrong house, but my neighbor talked to him. Seems like he might’ve figured out then he was at the wrong house.”

  “Which neighbor was it?”

  “Right there. Bill Cox. And Colleen Boyle across the street right there.”

  Baldwin took out a card and handed it to him. “If you see him again, or if anybody comes by your house that seems off, give me a call, would you?”

  “Sure. Um, can I ask why the FBI is involved in this?”

  “Just being careful. There’ve been some break-ins in the city and people were attacked. We need to investigate claims like this. I would probably have the alarm company come out and check everything. You may want to get a good dog as well.”

  He looked from one to the other. “Guys, you’re kinda spooking me here. What’s going on?”

  Ortiz started to say something, but Baldwin interjected. “Like I said, just being careful.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Well, yeah, I’ll have them come and check everything.”

  The two agents walked across the lawn to the neighbor on the south side. When they were far enough away, Ortiz said, “You don’t think we should tell him?”

  “What will that do? Other than get him to maybe shoot his teenager coming home late at night.”

  “I’d wanna know.”

  “Know what? Some guy in an alarm company uniform came out and checked the alarm. It’s probably nothing. They’ll hear about the murders soon enough anyway. And I told him there’ve been break-ins and attacks. He doesn’t need to know the details.”

  An elderly man wearing a robe answered the door, his hair wet like he had just stepped out of the shower.

  Baldwin showed his badge and said, “Bill Cox?”

  “Yeah. You guys finally here about them damn cars that come speeding up here? There’s this one boy right over there that has a Camaro, and he comes—”

  “Mr. Cox, we’re here about the alarm company representative you saw at Jay and Rosalyn’s home next door.”

  Cox lowered the hand that was pointing across the street. “Oh. Yeah? When was that?”

  Baldwin and Ortiz exchanged a glance. “Couple of days ago. Can you give a description of who you saw?”

  Cox thought a moment, and Baldwin saw the glazed-over look in his eyes, a look his grandmother had had much of the time later in life, just before she’d started talking about the World Series game her father was planning to take her to for her twelfth birthday.

  “I don’t remember,” Cox finally said. “He was white, I think.”

  Ortiz said, “Do you remember his hair color? Did he have any tattoos or anything like that? Something we could use to identify him?”

  Cox waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t know. Who remembers stuff like that?”

  Baldwin said, “If you see him again, will you do me a favor? Will you take a picture of him? If you do that, I’ll have a talk with the teenage boy across the street about his speeding.”

  Cox looked at him suspiciously and said, “All right.”

  The men left and crossed the street to talk to Colleen Boyle, the neighbor who’d also seen the alarm company serviceman, but a teenage girl answered the door and said her mother would be home later tonight. Baldwin left his card.

  The two men got back in the car. Ortiz said, “I’ll get a sketch artist out here for Cox.”

  “He’s gone, Oscar. Dementia. I’ve seen it before. He can’t help us. Maybe call Marsh over at the PD and ask if he’s got the man power to have some extra patrols up here, but that’s all we can do. The officer was right: servicemen get the wrong address all the time. We chase these down over the city, that’s all we’re going to be doing.” He rubbed his hands across his face. “Besides, our guy wouldn’t be so stupid to come out during the day. He’d be here in the middle of the night when everyone’s asleep.”

  Ortiz looked at the Mileses’ home. “Hope you’re right, man.”

  “Well, if I’m not, we’re going to feel like shit for a really long time.”

  15

  Yardley’s heart seemed to miss a beat. She glanced down at her arms and saw gooseflesh, though the room was warm.

  Eddie Cal looked different. His once-long hair had been cropped short and was now speckled with gray. The scruff on his face was white, though he was only a few years older than her thirty-eight. His forearms, the only part of him other than his face and neck not covered by the white prison jumpsuit, were pale and muscular.

  The last time she had seen him, he’d dazzled her. Even as he’d said goodbye. That same irresistible charm he’d possessed from the first moment she had met him.

  He told her he’d tried to stop. He kissed her. And then he ran for th
e window in the bathroom of their apartment and jumped onto the carport below. He must have prepared for that moment, because he went straight to a manhole in the parking lot, climbed in, and disappeared. Leaving her to be thrown on the floor by the SWAT team while she screamed that she was pregnant.

  Cal then went on a crime spree across two states lasting three weeks. First he killed an elderly couple at a gas station. He struck the husband so viciously with a large rock that it shattered his skull. He stole the car, and the wife was found on the side of the road later that night, strangled to death. A few days later he broke into a home and drowned a single twentysomething woman in her bathtub before taking her cash and jewelry. The one that really got to Yardley was the family whose minivan he ran off the road. He robbed them, killing the father and causing injuries to the mother and children inside.

  Yardley could only read about the crimes months after his capture, unable to face the fact that she had shared the deepest parts of herself with him. In addition to his prearrest spree, he was convicted of the murders of three couples—of breaking into their homes at night, binding and gagging them, sexually assaulting the wives, and then slitting the couples’ throats.

  A month after his conviction, a jury had recommended the death sentence, and he had been on death row ever since.

  Cal sat down. His eyes were the color of dark-blue rose petals—Tara’s eyes—and his lips had a thin red sheen to them. The guard turned the intercom on and then left the two of them alone.

  She swallowed. “The camera is turned off. I know you still have appeals pending, so you don’t need to worry about this being recorded.”

  “You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”

  His voice had a raspy quality to it now, a grainy harshness from disuse.

  She felt faint, like the ground had been ripped from underneath her. She closed her eyes and counted backward from three. At one, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

  “You look healthy,” she said.

  “I am healthy. And I plan on staying that way. At least for a while. My final appeal will be resolved in four months. Once it’s over, I’ll be executed. I’m choosing hanging. I won’t be put down like some dog. I’ll die like a man.”