Run Away (8 page)

15

Stanton was in a car surrounded by darkness. As the vehicle sped down the road, the lines on the road became a blur. The harder he tried to peer into the darkness, the less he saw. He tried to brake, but nothing happened when his foot pressed the pedal…
Buzz…

Stanton opened his eyes and recognized the ceiling in his bedroom. The window was open, letting in the ocean breeze
, and he could hear the waves crackling outside. His cell phone was vibrating on his nightstand. He answered without checking the ID.

“This is Jon.”

“Jon, sorry to wake you. This is Laka.”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the sleep
from his eyes.

“We’re on
call tonight and just caught one up at Diamond Head. A young boy.”

“I’ll be right down.”

Stanton sat up then remained motionless on the bed. He counted five waves outside before getting to his feet and walking over to his balcony. The sky was still as black as tar during that odd moment in which night had passed, but morning hadn’t come. The ocean reflected the moonlight as a wet, wavy glow.

He dressed in a blazer and jeans
then grabbed his .45 Desert Eagle and its holster. The gun was never far away from him. He used to be able to leave it in the kitchen or living room, but not anymore. He’d taken to keeping it in his bedroom, no more than a few feet away from him when he slept. He felt different at night after a decade of being a cop.

He turned on the alarm
as he left the house. He started his Jeep, pulled out of his driveway, and headed toward H1.

Stanton was familiar with Diamond Head. Most people associated it with the beach
and surfing. But it was also one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Honolulu. Some of the beachfront properties there could run up to twenty million. He’d been there once with his fiancée, Emma. She had a friend there whose husband had made his money in derivatives.

The highway was clear. Only the occasional car passed him. The wind whipped through his hair and over his face. It screamed in his ears
, and he stuck his arm over the side of the Jeep and let it dangle.

The exit was surrounded by lush trees and yellow
-and-red plants. The streets were well kept, and none of the buildings suffered from the usual wear and tear of Hawaii’s rain damage, which made all the buildings appear twenty years older than they were. Everything was new there.

Stanton found the address and
spotted the police cruisers parked out front. The medical examiner’s van was already there. So was the Scientific Investigation Section’s SUV.

Stanton
sat in his Jeep for a moment. Every time he drove to the scene of a homicide, he had to prepare himself. No homicide was clean or neat. Nothing like on television or in Agatha Christie books. Homicides were always gory. Blood work.

He stepped out of the
Jeep and causally strolled to where Laka was standing with a uniformed officer. Neighbors were watching through windows.

In the bushes near
by, the legs of a child were sticking out.

“Hey,” she said when she saw him.

Stanton stood next to her. “Hey. What do we have?”

“The homeowner, Richard Miller, called in a
kidnapping. Said his wife and daughter were missing. The responding officers took a look around the lawn and saw this poor kid.”

“Do we know who he is yet?”

She shook her head. “No ID, obviously. We’ll just have to canvas the neighborhood. Unless he was shot somewhere else and then dumped here.”

Stanton kneeled over the boy’s body. He had a gunshot wound in his cheek. The round
had torn through the bone and exploded the back of his head. There couldn’t be much brain matter left in the skull, since most of it was on the sidewalk.

“No,” he said, “he was shot here.” Stanton looked up
at the trees and down both sides of the street. “One shot, up close. Definitely not a drive-by shooting. Someone specifically wanted him dead.”

“Why would you want a kid dead?”

Stanton stood and closed his eyes. He said a quick, silent prayer for the boy and his family before turning away. “If you thought you had something to gain.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Is Richard Miller inside?”

“
Yeah. He was hysterical when he found out someone had been killed.”

Stanton
headed toward the house. The home was massive—it had at least eight or nine bedrooms. Stanton stopped to peer through the passenger window of the brand new Cadillac in the driveway. The inside was spotless. Stanton turned back toward the house and ambled through the front door. He stopped in the atrium and scanned the house. The spacious layout was meant to keep people away from each other if they wanted. A family could live in the house for decades and not have to see each other.

T
wo officers and a man on the couch waited in the living room. The man’s shoulders were slumped, and he was sipping from a mug. The two officers were chatting. From the top of the staircase and to the right, other voices floated down—probably the forensic techs. He decided to head up there first.

The second floor was as spacious as the first. Stanton didn’t get lost only because he could hear the voices coming from the master bedroom.
He counted eight rooms as he passed them. The master was probably the biggest and most elegantly decorated of them all. He had to stop a moment and just take it in. The bed was the largest he’d ever seen, almost like three king-sized beds pushed together. French doors opened onto a large balcony, where a small fountain with koi fish was tucked away. Stanton strolled out and stood over the fish as they glided through the clear water.

“Detective,” a woman behind him
said. Debbie Cunningham from the SIS section was dressed in black with an SIS badge over her chest and latex gloves covering her hands. Stanton noticed her wearing a necklace he’d never seen before. A Tibetan symbol of peace.

“How are you, Debbie?”

“Fine, other than I’m hating having to go out and look at a young kid this early in the morning.”

“Every
vic has a story to tell. Without it, we can’t catch who did this.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t
gonna do it. I just hate having to.”

Stanton glanced once more
at the koi then stepped inside the bedroom. “What did you find?”

“Blood all over the carpets and a ski mask soaked from the inside. Looks like someone got a piece of him. Maybe broke his nose. The blood on the carpet was tail
-end pointing inward, which means he got hit in the closet and then backed out.”

“Someone was hiding in there and hurt him,” Stanton said.

“That’d be my guess.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really. Some shoeprints in the atrium. I have Billy out with the vic. We’ll see if anything turns up there.”

“Keep me posted,” Stanton said, gently brushing past her
to look into the walk-in closet.

“I will.” She hesitated. “And Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“We went out bowling last night. You didn’t come.”

“No, not really my thing.”

“We’re
gonna head out for drinks with some of the boys from Vice tonight. That’s always a party. You wanna come?”

He grinned. “
I don’t drink.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean… I mean
, I meant it, but I thought—”

“I’d love to come,” he said.

She smiled, and he turned back to the closet.

16

Tate glanced back once
at the young girl. She was sitting in the back of the RV on the bed, with her arms folded and a scowl on her face. Sticks was sitting across from her in a chair, smoking a joint. He was eyeing her as though he were about to do something. Tate would have to watch him. Nobody got first before him.

“She’s mine,” Tate yelled.

“What?” Sticks asked. Hiapo, who’d been sleeping on the floor, also looked up.

“They’re both mine.
Nobody’s doin’ shit to ’em until I say so. I’m not getting sloppy seconds from you two gonorrhea-havin’ muthafuckers.”

Sticks mumbled some profanity and turned his eyes back toward the girl. Tate could hear him speaking to her.

“What’s your name?” Sticks asked.

“Eliza.”

“What are you, like in eighth grade?”

“Ninth.”

“Oh yeah? That’s when I dropped out. Ninth grade. You play sports?”

The girl didn’t answer
right away. “Soccer.”

“You like
playin’ with balls, huh? I got some balls you can play with.”

Sticks let out a high-pitched laugh. Tate watched him in the rearview and shook his head.

He’d thrown Sharon into the bathroom. She’d screamed and thumped against the walls for a few minutes, but she’d been quiet ever since Hiapo had gone in there.

Tate looked at the clock on the dash. It was almost daybreak. They were supposed to meet Lee around noon, but he decided he was going to wake him up instead.
Lee lived in a section of Oahu known as Princeville. Tate parked in front of Lee’s rundown house, which was away from the beach. He glanced around to see if anyone was out, but it was too early in the morning for people to be outside.

“Wait here,” Tate said.

He stepped out and looked both ways before sauntering up to the front door of the home and knocking. He knocked again then pounded with his fist. A light came on. Lee answered, looking groggy and wearing boxer shorts.

“Tate? What the fuck you
doin’ here?”

“I
wanna get these bitches outta here, yo.”

“Now? It’s like four in the
mornin’, man. Ain’t no one buyin’ bitches at four in the mornin’.”

“It’s cool
. I’ll wait.”

Tate pushed his way into the home and flopped onto the couch. A bong was on the coffee table
next to a baggie of weed. He packed some weed into the bong and took the lighter out of his pocket. Lee sat in the beat-up recliner across from him and rubbed his eyes.

After taking a long toke, Tate let it out slowly through his nose. “How much you think we
’d get?”

“I
dunno,” Lee said, rocking back and forth slowly. “You ever been in the pimp game?”

“Nah, man. I mean,
a little. I had this girl up in this apartment complex. She thought she loved me, and I’d get her out to the other dudes in the complex. Rent her out for a night an’ shit. But I ain’t been serious in the game.” He took another long pull. The weed was weak, but it’d been sprinkled with something. Coke or X.

“I been in the game
since back in the day. Back when I was a young buck, man, had me three girls. I’d sit on my ass in a hotel room and take ’em from city to city, ya know.”

“How much you make in a day?”

“Depend on the city, man. But if the girl’s fine, she get more. I had this one bitch that was like a model, ya know? She made me like two G’s a day.”

“Shit.”

“I know.”

Tate took another long pull
then said, “I’m really fuckin’ high.”

“Take it easy on that shit,
yo.”

“What’s in—
”

A scream
came from outside, loud enough that Tate and Lee both stared at each other.

“Shit!”

Tate jumped up and sprinted outside. He ran to the RV, opened the door, and flew inside. Sticks was on top of the girl, trying to get her shorts off. Tate ran up and wrapped his arm around Sticks’s throat. He lifted the man, who was foaming at the mouth, off the girl and threw him to the floor. Tate kicked him in the ribs as hard as he could then spun Sticks onto his back.

“What’d I say?” Tate shouted. “What’d I say, huh? Don’t touch ’
em ‘til I say so.” He looked at Hiapo, who was laying on the floor, looking up at them. “And where were you?”

Hiapo
closed his eyes again. “Ain’t my problem.”

Tate stepped over to the girl. She was shaking and crying. Tate stared at her but didn’t say anything. She
quieted but continued trembling, and he turned and left the RV. Lee was standing outside.

“Man, don’t be
bringin’ your rapist-ass muthafuckers up in my place.”

Tate took out his 9mm and placed it against Lee’s forehead. The two m
en’s eyes locked. Tate saw fear in Lee’s eyes. He didn’t know what Lee saw in his eyes.

“Hey, man, I’m just
sayin’. I got neighbors.”

Tate
tucked the gun back in his waistband. “Get your boy over here, and we’ll bounce.”

“
A’ight, man. I’ll call him. Just chill, a’ight. We cool.”

Tate watched him
walk into the house. He turned back to the RV, where Sticks sat at the table, scowling at him. Tate pulled out a cigarette and lit it, then leaned against the RV, smoking as he stared into the dark sky.