Chapter 4
Shaw
Istood at the east shore of Lake Mead, the taste of gas station coffee turning sour in my mouth as dawn tried and failed to get its shit together over the Nevada desert.
The cup was half-empty, cardboard sleeve gone slack from the hour I’d spent rolling it between my fingers.
The air smelled like wet concrete and penny-bright blood.
Three crows patrolled the lumpy brown shore, hunched like undertakers waiting for a family to leave so they could get started.
“Been pulling bodies outta this lake since I started the force twenty years ago,” a local cop said as he passed by.
“And will be for the next twenty,” I said and moved toward the water.
I stepped around a young recruit who was losing the last meal he had eaten. I remembered those days.
Crime scenes lost their edge over time. The difference between a rookie and a lifer was that the lifer recognized the moment the horror started to feel like a spreadsheet.
This—this was casework. If you let the brutality stay personal, you’d go home and put a bullet through your temple by year five.
So I sipped my coffee, ignored the sour, and watched the forensic tech work his way up the bank.
He was built like a gym rat who’d taken a side gig as a mortician.
He hunched over the body with a slow, deliberate care, plucking at the evidence with gloved hands.
At the water’s edge, you could see where the dead man’s hair stuck to the mud, strands glittering with flecks of mica and—harder to look at—something pearlescent that the killer had painted in arcs along his scalp.
I didn’t get closer. I’d already seen enough through the digital camera’s eye.
The sun made it just over the horizon and stopped, haloing the forensic tech in a flat, sterile light. The crinkle of evidence bags sounded too loud in the stillness. I let it run, let the morning hold onto its silence, and surveyed the rest.
No sign of a struggle. Shoes lined up at the edge of the water, the laces retied in a bow.
The jacket had been folded and placed on top, arms crossed at the chest. Whoever did this wanted the world to notice the arrangement.
There were no defensive wounds, no torn fingernails, no hesitation marks.
The incisions were surgical, parallel, running from wrist to elbow with the precision of a man who’d cut living flesh before. The only mess was in the details.
This was the third body in eighteen hours.
Last night, I’d walked the alley behind Fremont, flashbulbs popping against damp cinderblock, a homeless woman crying into her fists while uniforms tried to talk her into a statement.
Same M.O.: two men, both sexual assault priors, both opened up and displayed like science projects on cold steel.
The photos on my phone didn’t do it justice.
The artistry didn’t come through on a screen.
The tech straightened up, evidence bags rustling in one hand, the other steadying the weight of the guy’s wrist. I watched the camera flash as he documented the ligature marks—light, almost decorative, not the frantic red lines of someone fighting for their life.
The last cut was always the cleanest. That was the mark of a patient killer.
My jaw clicked as I ground my teeth. The cold didn’t help.
I turned away from the water and scanned the perimeter again, looking for any sign of the press, but the scene was still cordoned off, and the only movement was a highway patrol unit parked down the access road, its engine idling.
I flicked my badge at the rookie leaning against the hood, and he nodded, more interested in his phone than in whatever I was doing.
That was fine. I liked being left alone with the mess.
In my jacket pocket, a folded printout cut my knuckles.
I pulled it out and flattened it against my thigh: two grainy stills from the surveillance cameras near last night’s murders.
The first was a long shot of a gray sedan parked under the purple shadow of a bill—Motel 6, letters burned out but still legible if you squinted.
The second was tighter, aimed down the alley.
You couldn’t make out the face, just the way the figure moved: deliberate, steady, unaffected by the puddles or the city’s stink.
I compared the stills to the scene in front of me.
Lake Mead wasn’t exactly the Vegas strip, but the careful, ritualized arrangement of the victim made it clear the killer wanted an audience.
The geography didn’t track, but the timing did.
No cooling off period, no escalation—just a clockwork pace, like someone working their way down a checklist.
The tech zipped the bag over the man’s face, sealing him up in a yellowed plastic shroud.
He peeled off his gloves with a practiced snap and lobbed them into the bin at his feet.
He didn’t look at me when he said, “We tag and bag, Detective,” but the undertone was there.
You’ve seen enough. Time to let us handle it.
I didn’t answer. My brain was already doing the loop: locations, times, victim profiles, body positioning, the odd delicacy of the wounds.
I thumbed through the photos on my phone, matching every cut to the ones on the men in the Fremont alley.
The pattern was too tight, too meticulous.
Whoever this was, they’d planned out every step before the first body even hit the ground.
I walked up the shoreline, coffee cup still sweating in my hand, and let the wind slice at my ears.
It was going to be a long fucking day. Somewhere out there, the killer was already moving, already selecting the next name for their list. If I’d learned anything, it was that monsters didn’t wait for the cops to catch up.
They set the pace, and everyone else ran in circles behind them, gathering up the carnage like so many lost coins in the street.
Behind me, the sun climbed higher and lit up the water, turning it a sickly orange.
I finished my coffee, tossed the cup into a trash bag with the same neatness the killer had shown, and headed for the car.
The seat was still warm from the drive out.
I sat for a minute, head against the rest, and let the silence settle.
Then I dialed the dispatch number and asked for a full records pull for the last 36 hours.
I gave them my name, my badge number, and a time frame that would ruin my week.
The coffee lingered on my tongue, bitter and cold. I watched the forensic tech load the bagged body into the van, watched the crows circle down, and thought about what kind of person could make art out of pain and not blink.
The answer, I suspected, was someone a lot like me.
The drive back toward Vegas was an hour of nothing punctuated by roadside relics.
Empty water towers, billboards half-skinned by wind, the occasional coyote watching traffic from the median with a gambler’s indifference.
I let the road unspool and tried to keep the images from Lake Mead out of my head, but the morning had already written itself behind my eyes.
It would be days before I could drink a cup of coffee without thinking of blood on silt.
The low fuel light blinked on as I hit the flats, so I pulled into a gas station advertising three-for-one fountain drinks and “Espresso For Real Men.” The place looked like it hadn’t seen a mop since the Carter administration.
Fluorescents flickered overhead, and the canopy outside buzzed in a way that made my fillings ache.
I topped off the tank, then went inside, badge clipped to my belt where it would do the most good.
The man behind the counter had a neck like a sack of wet sand and a face built for silent movies: all hangdog jowls and pale, mistrustful eyes.
He clocked the badge, frowned, and reached under the counter.
I imagined he’d already checked the placement of whatever bat or shotgun he kept there.
I gave him my best tired-cop smile and gestured at the security camera mounted just above the register.
“Need to see the pump lane for the last twenty-four,” I said, sliding a ten across the counter to get things started.
He made a show of being put out by it, but the bill disappeared quick enough.
He ducked into the back and came out with a battered Lenovo that looked like it belonged in a museum.
He dropped it on the counter, spun it around, and tapped at keys with the careful disgust of a man entering someone else’s password.
“Doesn’t have sound,” he said, as if that would be my problem and not his. “Camera’s a piece of shit.”
“I just need eyes,” I said.
He scrolled through endless hours of cars, trucks, and the odd lost RV, timestamp spinning in the upper corner.
The clock read 10:54 when a gray Honda Accord slid into frame, lane three.
The car didn’t stop for gas. It just rolled past the pumps and turned toward the highway.
There was a woman in the driver’s seat, alone.
Her face was washed out by the glare, just a smudge of pale and a line of dark hair tied up behind her head.
But the posture got me: hands on ten and two, eyes forward, the set of her jaw hard enough to be visible through the blur.
“Back it up,” I said.
He did, irritation baked into the click of every key.
We watched the segment three more times, frame by frame.
The Honda’s plates weren’t readable, but the make and the year matched the one in the Fremont still.
The shadow on the left rear panel was the same: a scrape or a dent, maybe five inches long.
I tapped the screen, more for my own benefit than his.
“Can you email me this?” I asked.
The man scowled, then shrugged. “Don’t get paid for tech support,” he said, but he opened a mail client and punched in the address I wrote on a sticky note.
I watched the file upload and ping my inbox, then closed the laptop with a soft click.
I left the ten, and walked out with the same slow, methodical pace the woman in the Accord had used to exit the frame.
The lot was empty except for a faded Silverado idling by the air pump, windows up and music throbbing.
I got into my own car and locked the doors, then pulled out the two printouts from this morning—one from the alley behind Fremont, one from the ATM camera across the street from the second body.
Both images were grainy, full of artifacts and ghosting, but the car was always there: gray Accord, battered, inconspicuous.
I opened the email on my phone and stared at the gas station screenshot.
Even with the pixels fighting me, I could see what mattered.
It wasn’t the color or the make or the dent.
It was the way she looked straight ahead, ignoring everything except the road, as if being seen was a risk she’d already accounted for.
Some part of me recognized the discipline, the refusal to make a mistake when you were being watched.
I lined up the three images on my steering wheel: the ATM still, the alley, the gas station. Same car, or close enough. Same woman, or close enough. I sat there, phone in hand, until the glass fogged with my own breath and I could feel the numbness working up my fingers.
Through the window, the gas station attendant watched me for a while, then turned away, satisfied I wasn’t about to start something.
He didn’t understand the kind of stillness that settles in when you’re close—when the hypothetical turns flesh, and you can finally see the outline of the thing you’re hunting.
I didn’t have a name yet. But I had a pattern, and a vehicle, and a woman who didn’t fit any of the databases but would, soon. I had the kind of certainty that made you skip meals and sleep with your phone on your chest.
I put the car in gear and waited for the next move.