Arsonist (23 page)

CHAPTER 46 

Forensics, Stanton
, and Slim Jim ran over the entire condo in the course of several hours. Amber was taken to the emergency room and Stanton had gotten word that she suffered a massive concussion but that she would be all right.

The latent print team had managed to find over twenty-five different sets of prints in the condo. Stanton had them only run the sets found on the
windowsill. There were two: one was his, and the other was unidentified. Stanton found a number in his contacts and dialed as he sat down on the couch in the living room.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles,” a female voice said on the other line, “how may I direct your call?”

“Mickey Parsons in Behavioral Science please.”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Jon Stanton with the San Diego Police Department.”

“One moment.”

There was a long delay and then a click before Mickey’s voice came on the line.

“How are you, Jon?”

“Doing well. I haven’t seen you down at the gym in a while.”

“Been pretty slammed with paperwork these days.”

“I saw the news story about Evonich. That was good work.”

“Thanks. I wish we could’ve snagged him earlier. We searched one of his old homes in Lincoln County in Nebraska and found the remains of two girls. Sisters. We think there’s more, but no one’s coming forward with anything else.” Stanton heard some papers shuffling. “So I’m guessing this isn’t a call just to harass me about my fat ass. What’s going on?”

“I have a favor to ask. I was hoping you could run some prints through ViCAP for me?”

“No problem, shoot them over.”

“I need them as soon as possible. Preferably in the next couple of hours, Mickey.”

“Now that is a favor. Anything I can use to narrow the search? Locales or race?”

“Nothing. We know nothing about him other than a composite sketch we have from witnesses. They say he looked Caucasian but one of our witnesses saw him from relatively close and thought he might’ve been of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern descent.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can. Get me a print card couriered over and I’ll have my guys get on it.”

“You’re not even going to ask what it’s for?”

“I saw you on the news. I thought you might be calling us for something on this one. By the way, you looked
like shit.”

“Thanks. And I owe you for this.”

“Beer and a burger is fine. I’ll let you know.”

Stanton hung up and placed the phone back in his pocket. He rose from the couch and walked over to the entertainment center. There was a rack of DVDs and he glanced through them quickly. They were mostly Disney and Pixar films with a few romantic comedies thrown in.

“Detective?”

Stanton turned to see one of the forensics techs, a man named Lee Gyun, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Tell me you have something for me, Lee?”

“I have something for you.” He held out a small notebook with red leather binding. Stanton slipped on some latex gloves and then took it. “Found it in the bedroom upstairs on the nightstand. Could be our vics, I don’t know, I just flipped through it quickly.”

“Thanks.”

Stanton began going through the pages. The writings were in pen and they were so
illegible he couldn’t make much of them. But there were passages that rang out to him. There were no dates and no times. Many sentences would end without a period and the next one would start immediately afterward on a completely separate idea. There was no name on the journal and it was possible that it belonged to the victim or a past victim. On the inside flap of the back cover was an imprint that said, MSH. On the cover, which was bland and gray, was a number: 1842.

Stanton flipped through it again. There was one passage toward the front that was fully legible:

they walk through their lives like billboards their clothing has the name of their God corporations on them and they advertise for them as if they are remarking on something of consequence they watch television shows now that feign reality in a way that demeans it they neglect the poor and the weak in favor of the wealthy they are ruled over by a small class of tyrants and they fight for their system as if it would ever give them a fair chance I walked to the store today to feel the air on my face and hear the whisper of the birds but instead only received lungfuls of black exhaust and air that smelled so putrid it made me gag I won’t be walking out there again

Stanton flipped through the rest of the journal, reading the legible portions.
No names on any page. It was little more than rantings and some of them had apocalyptic predictions and spoke of cities turned to dust and brothers eating brothers. Stanton finished and placed it down on the coffee table. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out; it was Childs.

“This is Jon.”

“What you got for me?”

“Journal and a set of prints. FBI’s running the prints through ViCAP right now.”

“What kind of journal?”

“Personal. Still don’t know for sure that it’s his, but I think so. Nothing to identify him in it.”

“Keep me updated.”

“How’s everything up there?”

“Still running down some leads where we can. The calls are dying out, though. We’ve only gotten maybe ten the past hour.”

“Let me know if
there’re any good ones.”

“Okay.”
A pause. “Jon, I never doubted you. I want you to know that. That’s not why I was riding your ass and took you off this case. There’s going to be other cases like this, and there’s going to be other vics. I need to know that I can trust you to follow orders. Can I trust you to do that?”

“Yeah, you can trust me.”

“Good. Call me if you find anything else.”

Stanton hung up and placed the phone back in his pocket. He couldn’t take this anymore. There were no rules to bureaucracy. Even if there were, they were probably corrupt and he wouldn’t be able to follow them anyway. Every day
it was as if lead weights were being placed on his chest and he couldn’t get them off. They would just slowly accumulate until he couldn’t breathe anymore and one day would just suffocate him.

This was it, he thought. This was going to be his last case.

CHAPTER 47

It was almost midnight by the time Stanton parked in the underground garage and got out of his car to get some sleep. Tomorrow was Sunday and as much as he wanted to be back at that condo or in the hospital or interviewing the Richardsons, he couldn’t. It was the Sabbath and he fully believed that God had commanded us to rest on that day. So Slim Jim had taken over and would be contacting him Monday morning with the results of interviews and anything else they’d found in the condo.

He went inside and sat on his balcony before opening the journal found at the girl’s condo. There were passages that seemed to fade in and out of coherence but sometimes a lucid thought would come through. One passage stated that:

A baby screams when born and an old man screams when he dies how can anyone believe that a life that begins this way and ends this way is meant for anything but suffering?

He stared for a long time at the imprint on the back. MSH. They could have been the
owner’s initials, but the imprint wasn’t written in. It was stamped, like an old library card of the type he had in elementary school. He brought his laptop outside on the balcony and googled “MSH.”

Several businesses came up as did a hormone with “MSH” as its acronym. He brought up
a Word document and began typing in a column. He wrote:

HIGH SCHOOLS OR COLLEGES

FRATERNITIES

BUSINESSES

HOSPITALS

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

NOVELTY STORES LIKE HALLMARK

There was always the possibility that the owner
had simply ordered a stamp with their initials, and he couldn’t rule that out. But the stamp looked faded and old and the journal itself was something one would buy in bulk: a plain cover with cheap paper. It didn’t strike him as something a person would pick out while perusing a novelty store.

He limited his Google search to southern California and began searching for high schools with the
acronym MSH. He followed through with colleges, universities, and private schools. One school did come up: the Madison Selena Hollinger School for the Blind. He clicked on their website and cut and paste the address and phone number into his Word document.

He then moved on to hospitals. The third result from the top caught his interest: the Mckay State Hospital of California. Stanton clicked on the link. He went to the ABOUT US tab and read their mission statement. It was a hospital for the criminal
ly insane.

His guts tightened and his knees and belly had an icy feeling run through them. They were replaced by
the warm sensation that came with adrenaline running through his body and heightening his senses. He saved the link to his favorites and did the same on his phone before reading through everything about the hospital. The clock on his laptop said 9:53 p.m. He decided to chance it and called the main line for the hospital.

“Mckay,” a feminine male voice said on the other end.

“Yes, this is Detective Jon Stanton with the San Diego Police. I’d like to set an appointment to see, hold on…is it a Dr. Nathan Reynolds?”

“Yeah, he’s the administrator. I’m just the night security I don’t set the appointments. But if you come in Monday morning he’ll be here. Come in like after ten
‘cause he has rounds until nine thirty.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

Stanton hung up. He was about to decide what to do next when his phone rang. It was an unknown number.

“This is Jon Stanton.”

“Yes, is this the person that just called the Mckay Hospital?”

“Yes.”

“And who are you exactly?”

“I’m a detective with San Diego Police. Robbery-Homicide. Who am I speaking with?”

“Just one moment…hm, I just searched your name and phone number and it came back accurate. Well, Detective, this is Dr. Reynolds. I was told by night security that you’d called for me.”

“Yeah, they told me you wouldn’t be in until Monday.”

“Saturday nights are my call nights and I usually just spend them here. I prefer security not let anyone know.”

A flash entered Stanton’s mind. It was brief, no more than a second or two, but it encapsulated Nathan Reynolds life and gave Stanton a foundation that told him what type of man he was dealing with.

A man that had gone through multiple divorces, women marrying him for his status and realizing that being married to the ego of most physicians was full-time work. He saw a man that drank or gambled or womanized, or had some vice that he clung to that he felt was necessary. No matter the cost. Stanton saw loneliness and pain, and belief that the time he spent with madness eased that pain. He pictured Nathan Reynolds sitting in a cluttered office with the screams of the insane around him, saying,
At least I’m not them
.

“I’m glad to hear that, Doctor. I had a few questions.”

“Certainly.”

“I found a journal. It’s bland looking and the corners are rounded with a rubber coating on them. There’s a stamp that says MSH on the inside of the back cover.”

“Yes, that’s one of ours. We issue journals to our patients for therapeutic purposes.”

“This journal was found at the scene of a kidnapping and we think the owner might be responsible for several homicides.” The line went silent, and Stanton noted that the doctor had even stopped breathing. “Doctor? Are you there?”

“Yes. There should be a code on the cover of the journal on the lower left hand side. A number.”

“Yes, it’s 1842.”

“Just a moment…Detective, I don’t think I can release this information without a court order. You will simply have to secure one for me.”

“You have a name, don’t you? Doctor, this man targets families. He’s killed—”

“I know perfectly well what he’s capable of, Detective. But I won’t be responsible for any HIPAA violations and lose my license. You will have to get a court order.”

“Can you tell me at least when he was last incarcerated?”

“We don’t incarcerate our patients, Detective,” he said, annoyed. “We treat them.”

“I apologize. When was he last in for treatment
?”

“He was released a little over a month ago.”

“May I ask why?”

The doctor exhaled loudly. “There was a woman that worked here. She no longer does, Detective. She advocated for his release.”

Stanton read exactly what he was saying: the woman, probably a treating psychiatrist, had been sleeping with the man.

“Doctor, without any violations, is there anything else you can tell me?”

“He’s extremely intelligent, Detective. Once I re-read his file without her sugar-coating it…look, get the court order and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“I’ll see you Monday then
, with a court order.”

“Very well.”

Stanton was too wired for sleep. He stood up and paced his apartment and then went back out on the balcony and sat down. He thought about going night surfing as the waves were high, but no one else was out there and surfing alone at night wasn’t something he ever did. Instead, he lay back and began trying to decipher the entries in the journal.

Stanton woke early on Sunday after only having slept a few hours. The journal entries had filled him with a gray weight that clung to him like heavy glue. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind by going for a jog. He ran the length of the beach in a long circle wearing trail
shoes that sunk into the sand. He ran for over half an hour before sprinting as long as he could, his breath leaving him, his heart tightening in his chest. Stanton walked for a few minutes and then collapsed on the sand, staring up at the blue, cloudless sky. He sat up and brought his knees to his chest and watched the waves lap the shore until he had regained enough strength to walk to his apartment.

After a shower and a shave, he went to his nearby church for service.

The pews were not crowded. Outside of Utah, Nevada, and Hawaii most Mormon churches were not filled to the brim with parishioners. It created a tighter-knit community, as their numbers were limited, but it also meant that each person had more obligations in the church to keep it running smoothly.

Stanton sat in the back
, listening to a sermon given by a young woman who was preaching on how to resist temptation when the doors to the church opened and a man stood there. Stanton had never seen him before but he wore a pressed, black suit and a baseball cap and scanned the room as he entered. Stanton turned away and back to the speaker when he saw the man make his way up the aisle and sit next to him.

“You know,” the man said without turning to him, “the thing that’s always amazed me about the faithful is that they preach everything in here but in the real world they’re no better than the rest of us. They sleep with prostitutes and they drink and have abortions. Some of them molest children or beat their wives. So they ask forgiveness. Forgiveness for things they can’t control.” He turned to him. “Your Heavenly Father must laugh himself into a coma every day. He issues us passions and then forbids us to give in to them. And these people,” he said, motioning with his hand over the pews, “they carry guilt with them and hand it off to their defenseless children. And to top it off, they give money for the privilege of subjecting themselves to this slavery. Religion is quite the racket.”

Stanton was about to say something when his pulse began to pound. He knew who the man was. He recognized the sleek jawline and the eyes that were set just a little too close. Though the hat covered his head he guessed he was bald underneath.

Stanton’s hand slid down to the firearm at his side.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the man said. “You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”

The young lady at the podium closed her talk and the man stood up and cheered. He whistled and hollered and everyone turned to him. He shouted, “Fucking A!” and sat back down.

“I don’t want to spatter your brains in a church,” Stanton said. “Come outside quietly and I’ll just arrest you.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “How’s Emma doing?” Stanton didn’t respond and he kept talking. “She’s quite the fighter. When I fuck her I bet she’s going to put up—”

Stanton had his throat and pressed him against the pew. The man tried to laugh but only a low hissing would escape his lips. Stanton pulled out his cell phone and dialed Emma’s number. It went straight to voicemail. He dialed again; straight to voicemail.

“What did you do?” Stanton
whispered.

He tried to speak but nothing would come out as he began to turn red. Stanton let go of the man’s throat and sat back, his hand on his firearm.

“She’s fine,” he said, coughing. “Oh, man. This is fun. I’m glad we did this.”

“Tell me where she is.”

“I’ll do better. I’ll take you there. But you can’t call anyone. Just me and you. Two buddies.”

Stanton shook his head. “No way. I’m hauling you in.”

“You’ll never find her and she’ll starve to death.” He held out his hands as if in surrender. “I don’t have weapons. You can keep your gun, I don’t care. I promise you, I’ll take you to her.”

After a couple moments of thought Stanton spit out, “Stand up and walk outside. If you run I’ll shoot you in the back.”

“Spoken like a true disciple of Christ.”

The man stood up and they headed out the double doors. Stanton walked behind him with his hand on the Desert Eagle at his hip. They got out into the sunlight in the parking lot and the man took in a deep breath and turned to Stanton.

“Let’s take your car, Jon. You probably wouldn’t trust taking mine. It’s a little bit of a drive.”

Stanton removed his firearm and held it low so not to cause panic. He led him over to his car and the man got into the passenger seat. Stanton climbed into the driver’s seat with the gun held to the man’s chest.