Ryan Green - Vampire Killer: A Terrifying True Story of Psychosis, Mutilation and Murder (Ryan Greens True Crime)

Nevada was a funny old state. Just a step away from the shining lights of Vegas and it became just like everywhere else. One step further into the shadows and the whole world became dark and weird in the starlight.

Out here by the Pyramid Lake Reservation, it was always too quiet. Working in the Bureau of Indian Affairs was a dull affair for the most part. Petty crimes, drink and drugs. Deportation back and forth between the authority of the Paiute Nation and the State was the biggest job, and even that barely filled a day a month. The rest of the time, there was just the open road and the roll of hours, day after day. The phone never rang until all the excitement was over. In the city, a cop would dread domestic disturbances and gunfights, but out here in the middle of nowhere, they feared the silence. Evil deeds were done in the dark, and few folk ever spoke of them. There were no missing people on the reservation. No murderers or thieves or any of the average sort of criminal. There were just familiar faces that suddenly werent there the next time a visit was required. The mob and their code of silence might have kept a hold on Vegas all this time, but they were rank amateurs compared to the Indians out on their reservations. Fear and hate of the police were bred into them, the latest repressed generation in a long and bloody history.

Tonight the asphalt shone in the light of a full moon, even where the full-beam of their headlights didnt reach a long curve of light in the dark of the night. Tonight, of all nights, the phone had rung, calling the Bureau men out of the tentative safety of their coffee at a diner and into the nebulous dark where anything might be waiting for them.

Few enough things troubled the Paiute enough to call in a complaint. After years of political clashes and less than equitable treatment under the law, the police were the enemy, and for most of them, the skeleton crew of Indian Affairs was the face of that oppression the only lawmen to dare step foot inside the reservation.

Unless the locals were completely certain that whatever was going on could not somehow be turned around and blamed on them, they wouldnt even pick up the phone. Which meant that whoever was playing the fool down on the beach by Pyramid Lake was going to be a white man. At this time of night, it was almost certain to be somebody poaching fish. The Paiute made most of their income doling out fishing licenses to tourists, and they took anyone sneaking around and trying to catch fish in their lake without one pretty seriously. More than once, the Bureau boys had come out to the lake first thing in the morning to help some sheepish fool find the wheels of their car, which had become mysteriously detached while they were out fishing through the night, and direct them to the office where they could sheepishly pay for their license for the day.

If there had ever been a fisherman that required more than that to scare them off, then the Paiute had done a good enough job of hiding the body and car that no investigation had ever been opened. The call tonight wasnt just unusual, it was the first that either man in the Bureau could ever remember having received outside of office hours.

The pick-up truck that they discovered around the curve of the lake had all of its wheels attached, but that was about all that could be said in favour of it. It loomed up abruptly out of the lakes thin night fog, an incongruous lump on the smooth sand at the side of the road.

It took a moment to decipher what they were looking at without daylit colour to rely on. The truck hadnt felt the gentle touch of soap or sponge for many a month; a thick patina of sand and dirt coated it halfway up its sides. It was only after staring out through their windshield for a solid minute that the Bureau boys managed to identify the truck by its silhouette as a Ford Ranchero.

Despite all this, neither man was compelled to arm themselves or even worry too much as they approached the vehicle. It was only when they rounded the side and realised that the drivers door was hanging open that their vigilance kicked up a notch. The interior light had been left on, draining the car battery and highlighting the desolation that had been left within. A heap of rubbish was crammed into the footwell on the passenger side, pushed down until it was flat. The mess on the passenger seat was not so well contained, sprawling out in every direction. It was such a confusing mess of fast-food wrappers, discarded cigarette packs, and long dried-up bottles of liquor that it took the police a solid couple of minutes of investigation before they came across anything more concerning than what appeared to be a car some homeless alcoholic was living in.

The first worry was a rifle. Only the barrel jutted up out of the morass, and it was slim enough that it took a couple of passes before the iron-sights on the end could be identified correctly. The barrel opened out into a hole just big enough to slip a fingertip inside, were they inclined to contaminate their evidence with their prints. It was a .22 calibre rifle in amongst all this chaos. They soon found a second rifle of a higher calibre beneath the strata of junk that had accumulated there. This one was smeared with filth that closer examination by the light of their torches revealed to be dried blood.

If they werent spooked before, the Bureau boys were now officially worried. Beside the rifle lay a white plastic bucket, surrounded by a pool of blood that was seeping out to stain everything it touched. It contained something brown and bulbous. It took one brave man giving it a prod with the barrel of his revolver for it to unfurl enough to become identifiable. A liver. It was a liver, carved out of somebody and left here like it was trash. It was only when they tried to slam the door shut in revulsion that the bloody handprints that had been hidden in amongst the rest of the dirt became clear to see.

Something bad was going on here. Not just fish poaching or petty crimes, but something seriously disturbing. Both men had their guns drawn now, fingers on the triggers and eyes darting around the dark.

That was when the screaming started.

At first, it could have been mistaken for the call of an animal. After all, no human being would scream like that. But as it dragged on and on, growing more and more guttural, it became clear that somebody was out there being tortured. Suffering through the kind of distress that would make a normal man drop dead on the spot. Without pausing to think of their safety or the horrors that they were going to find out there by the water, both men took off at a sprint. This evil had to be stopped. The victim had to be saved. The risk to them meant nothing in the face of not just their duty, but their morality.