Walk in Darkness - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries) (10 page)

He stepped away from the doors and into the kitchen. The fridge was a large stainless steel with French doors.
Full of food, he began sifting through it until he found some beer and popped it open, taking down half the bottle in a few gulps. There was a white styrofoam container and he opened it and found some old spaghetti with meat sauce and a roll. He took it out and walked to the microwave when he noticed the small pair of eyes watching him from the hallway.

A young girl stood there, staring at him. He placed the food down on the counter.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“No.”

“I’m your uncle.”

“No you’re not.”

“Sure I am. I can prove it. What’s your name?”

“Jennifer.”

“See, I knew that. That’s what I was going to say. That your name was Jennifer.”

She smiled and he smiled back and walked toward her. He leaned down. “Are those your parents in the backyard?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I think—”

“Calvin,” Karen shouted in a whisper, “get your ass out here and let’s go.”

Calvin turned away from the young girl and took a large handful of the spaghetti, shoving it into his mouth before walking to the garage. He opened the door and pulled out. The street was quiet and he turned back to the main road and disappeared into the congested traffic of rush hour.

21

Ransom awoke and saw that he was in the driver’s seat of his car. Next to him on the passenger seat was a small baggie of coke covered with the Stanton file. He remembered that Danielle hadn’t come home and that he had told Rodney to call it a night; he, though, had decided to stay.

He sat up and checked his watch before leaning back in the seat and putting his head against the headrest. His eyes closed and he swore it was to rest but he soon fell into a dreamless sleep.

Ransom jolted awake to the sound of a powerful engine roaring up the street and coming to a stop in front of Danielle Porter’s house.

Danielle stepped out of the car, disheveled and with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Ransom thought she looked like the girlfriend of some strung out rock star. She climbed the steps and went inside her house.

Ransom waited half a minute and then stuffed the coke in his pocket and got out. He walked to her front door and knocked and waited what seemed like a long time before she answered.

“What the hell do you want?” she said.

“Can I come in?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

She left the door open as she walked back inside and collapsed onto the couch, her hand over her eyes to keep the light out. Ransom came over to her and sat on the end of the couch near her feet. He noticed that she had on high heels and reeked of cigarette smoke and sex.

“Who’d you fuck last night?”

“None of your damn business, Ransom. What the fuck do you want anyway? I got a shift in a few hours.”

“No you don’t. You’re on administrative leave pending an Internal Affairs investigation.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

He pulled out the baggie of coke and held it up. Her eyes went to it and then to him.

“You’re a fucking—”

“Might want to be careful what you say just now. It’s part of the official questioning that’s going into the report.” She didn’t respond and he couldn’t suppress a smirk that came over his lips. He scooted over on the couch and put her heels up on his lap, removed them, and began to massage her feet. “I don’t give a shit about busting you with coke. What it does though is
gimme probable cause to call out some uniforms and search your house. What they gonna find here, Danny?”

“I’ve never done anything to you. Why are you fucking with me?”

“Because I want something from you.”

“What?”

“Your boyfriend.” She said nothing so he took a deep breath and leaned back on the couch, enjoying the quiet of the house. “I know your father. We’re not friends or anything, but I know him. We’ve met at a couple of political functions. He told me about you. Said that he got you into Harvard. It’s amazing what money can do, isn’t it? A straight D student getting into Harvard cause her daddy made a couple of calls? So I thought why would she turn that down and choose to be a cop? Hell you could probably just lay around the beach all day and have daddy take care of you, so why would you bust your ass as a cop for six years? Do you even know why you did what you did?”

“I wanted to make a difference.”

“Bullshit. You would’a joined the Peace Corps or Green Peace or some other hippie organization. Becoming a cop wasn’t your style. You’re afraid. That’s why you did it. You’re afraid that the world just pushes you around. Little Danielle Porter had no power over her life. But now you do. That gun and that badge give you power, don’t they? Helluva a rush the first time you pull that gun out and see the look of terror in the piece a shit’s eyes that you had to draw it on. I got an erection the first time. Was it arousing for you?”

“Get out of my house.”

He shrugged. “If that’s what you want. But I’ll just be waiting out there and calling in the warrant. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes for me to email a judge asking for an e-warrant and maybe ten minutes after that to get all the uniforms here. Can you flush everything you have in this house that quickly?” He placed his hand over hers. “Are there things here that won’t flush?”

She closed her eyes as if saying a prayer and then opened them again, refusing to look at him. “He’s a good cop. You won’t find anything.”

“Leave that to me. And if you’re telling the truth, that’s good too. I just want to know for sure, that’s all. I’m not looking to lock him up if he hasn’t done anything. But Harlow and that whole mess, that’s gotta end. Jon’s one of Harlow’s. Like our new assistant chief, but I heard through the grapevine he’s a favorite of the chief and not going anywhere. That leaves Jon as the last man on the force to be one of Harlow’s guys.”

“If he’s clean, will you leave him alone?”

“Absolutely. I’m not looking to bust good cops. We got few enough of them in this city as it is.”

She pulled her feet away and rose. She walked to the kitchen and pulled a cigarette from a pack, lighting it with a lighter she had in a drawer. Leaning over the counter, she
ashed into her sink and watched as the small particles of gray faded and disappeared on the wet surface.

“What do you want me to do?”

22

Stanton awoke at three in the morning with a severe migraine. His vision was blurry and colors appeared in the darkness around him. He stumbled out of bed and took several prescription ibuprofens out of a drawer, swallowing them without water. He went to urinate and then drank a few handfuls out of the faucet before going back to bed.

He couldn’t fall back asleep and just lay there, staring at the ceiling. The moonlight came through the blinds on his window in slits that lit up his walls and he watched them so long that the moonlight turned to sunlight and his alarm went off.

Stanton pounded the alarm with a fist as he did nearly every morning, promising himself that he wasn’t going to use alarms any longer. Something about the jarring sound, especially when he was still asleep, sent waves of pain through him. He knew it was in his head but the pain seemed so real that he broke his clock every month or so and had to buy a new one.

He rose and showered and had juice and a breakfast
-bar on his balcony, watching the surfers sit idly out on the sea, waiting for any wave that would propel them back to shore, but none came. Eventually they gave up and paddled back, laying on the beach a while longer to see if anybody else caught any waves before they got into their cars and headed off.

Stanton’s phone rang and he walked in
and saw Assistant Chief Ho’s number on his screen.

“Hey Chin.”

“Morning. Not a bad time I hope?”

“No, just finishing breakfast. What’s going on?”

“The suit’s been filed by the Putnam family, Jon. It’s not good. It’s a wrongful death suit blaming you for Putnam’s death.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“They’re asking for twenty-six million dollars.”

“We guessed it was going to be high.”

“Not that high. They haven’t talked settlement yet but word is they want at least two mil to make this go away. The county doesn’t have two mil to spare right now, Jon. We need to win this thing.”

“I understand. What do you need from me?”

“We’re hiring outside counsel for this. It’s a law firm downtown: Stoll Cran & Wilson.”

“I know them.”

“How?”

“They were Melissa’s attorneys during the divorce.”

“Oh. They didn’t mention anything about that. Do you think that’s going to be a problem?”

“Not for me. They’re good.”

“Okay, well, we’ll deal with it later I guess. Meet them as soon as you can. Ask for Taylor Rowe.”

“It’s Saturday. I’ve got the kids.”

“Sorry, Jon. They’re making a special meeting just for you today to get things up and running. Can you pick up your kids after?”

“I guess. I’ve got one thing to follow up on this morning and then I’ll head down. Thanks, Chin.”

“You’re welcome. Just get this going; their lawyer’s a real asshole with connections so the faster this is over with the better.”

Stanton hung up and placed the phone down. He walked back to the balcony and looked out over the sea, stretching his neck, still feeling a slight burn as the skin pulled on his back over the wound. He went inside and called Melissa and the boys and told them that he would have to pick them up later for their day at the zoo.

Stanton went and changed into a wetsuit. While his shirt was off, he saw the scar beginning to develop over the wound on his back. It looped around his ribs and hooked up to the middle of his back. He had a lot of scars and they were all reminders; each of them told him he had lived and had survived. They were positive in the sense that they represented mistakes that he wouldn’t be making again.

Stanton went down to the beach with his board and paddled out about fifty feet. He turned back to shore and watched the people on the beach. A few of the girls were topless and a group of men were leering at them from a dozen yards away. Stanton could see even from this far that they were drunk.

He turned over on his back and stared up at the sky, squinting from the bright sun. There were no clouds, just an endless landscape of sky. A plane streaked crosswise and left a trail of gray smoke across the perfect blue and it reminded him of his scar except that it began to slowly fade to nothing.

He lay on the water as long as he could, but once he started shivering he headed back to shore. The
crowd of men were still staring at the girls, guzzling beers to build up their courage, and Stanton walked by them on the way to his apartment.

“They’re fourteen,” he said, “touch them and you’ll all go to prison.”

As he walked away, one of them shouted, “It’d be worth it.”

After a quick shower and a change of clothing, he headed downtown to the law offices of Stoll
Cran & Wilson. They were in the Advanced Equities Plaza building and Stanton parked curbside rather than going into the building parking garage. The building was twenty-three stories of dark glass and precisely cut steel carving out space at sharp angles. Designed in a post-modern style and meant to give a viewer the sense that the building jutted from the ground naturally, like a mountain of steel and glass.

He went inside and the floor gleamed from a recent mopping though it was the weekend. The lighting was minimal as most of the walls were glass and natural light poured in and filled the entire lobby with a warm glow. A security guard sat behind a large desk and looked up at him as he approached.

“Hi,” Stanton said, “I’m here for Stoll Cran and Wilson.”

“Sign in here,” he said, handing him a sign-in sheet. Stanton signed it and handed it back. “Twenty-first floor on your left. I’ll buzz you up when you reach the elevators. When you’re ready to come down you’ll have to have one of them use their pass
code.”

Stanton took the elevator up and it came to an abrupt stop near the top of the building. He stepped off into the plush lobby of the law firm. A young girl sat at the receptionist desk surfing the
internet.

“Hi, I’m Jon Stanton.”

“Yeah, hi, Taylor’ll be out in a sec I’ll buzz her right now.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want anything to drink?”

“Diet
Coke would be fine.”

“Sure.” She walked to a vending machine down one of the hallways and inputted a code, retrieving a bottle of Diet Coke and bringing it to him.

“Thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

“So do you guys always work Saturdays?”

“Nope. We’re actually here just for you.”

“Sorry about that. It wasn’t my choice.”

“No worries, I get pay and a half.”

Stanton flipped through one of the
Time
magazines on the coffee table and a few minutes went by before Taylor Rowe walked out. She was slender with muscular legs tightly wrapped in a red skirt. She wore a white blouse with a silver bracelet and necklace to match and had her hair pinned in the back.

“Detective Stanton,” she said, holding out her hand. “Taylor Rowe.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, standing and shaking her hand.

“You seem surprised.”

“No, I had been given the impression you were male is all.”

“My father actually was convinced I was a boy and he wanted to name me Taylor
James Rowe. When I was born, the name had grown on them too much to abandon.”

She gave a slight smile and he returned it
, appreciating the minor revelation she had felt comfortable enough to share.

“Come on back to my office, Detective.”

He followed her through the hallways, admiring the abstract art on display. The interior walls were a deep gray and all the art was red, white or black. There was a particular piece he paused at a few moments. The painting was a man in a room, surrounded by black. Meant no doubt to be a man in an office, but that’s not what came across.

“Interesting piece,” he said.

“Our senior partners pick all the art. Well, one of them anyway. He’s really into the abstract thing. Travels all over the world to find them. I think we got that one in Moscow. Just up here on the right, Detective.”

Her office was spacious with leather furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city. She sat down and put her feet up on a small leather footstool she had behind her desk and Stanton sat across from her. There were no decorations or photos anywhere. The only thing letting someone know that the office was occupied
were her degrees hanging by the door.

“I heard you have a PhD in psychology,” she said, “impressive for a cop . . . sorry, that came out wrong. It’s impressive for anybody. Just unexpected in a cop.”

“I suppose the same could be said for someone with an undergraduate degree in dance.”

She smiled. “I wasn’t even going to hang that up but I thought it would be weird to just have a law degree.”

“What made you give up dance?”

“Reality and the thought of not being able to eat. No money in dance.”

“If you really loved it, you wouldn’t have cared.”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and Stanton knew he had inadvertently hit a nerve. It was something he usually controlled
, but occasionally his guard would drop and he would press on the shatter-point in someone’s psyche, that point whose existence they denied even, or maybe especially, to themselves.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, your perception’s accurate. I thought I did love it. I followed it all my life and then gave it up because I thought that maybe it’d be too hard. It’s not something I talk about very frequently.” She put her feet down and opened a file on her desktop. “Let’s talk about you though. You know what the suit is and what they’re looking for, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a straightforward case. The complaint alleges negligence but that’s not what Coop is going for. That’s not his style. When and if we ever do get to a trial, he’s gonna make it seem like you purposely pushed Putnam off that building.”

“The Crime Scene Unit and the ME’s Office cleared me and said there was no evidence to suggest that.”

“He fell from too high to really have much left to analyze.”

“When people are thrown or pushed from a building they go farther out because of their momentum. When they jump, they usually jump closer to the building. Darrell landed seven feet from the building’s entrance; far too close to be thrown.”

“That may be so, but Coop is gonna try his best to paint you as a psycho-cop that’s finally taken the law into his own hands. It’s what he does. A lot of juries buy it. The general public doesn’t really know what it’s like to be a cop and they expect you to be perfect all the time. It’s a tough presumption to overcome. One drunk and disorderly ticket, too many divorces, missing some child support payments, and the jury thinks you’re not fit to wear that uniform.” She took a pen off her desk and bit the tip. “But, Putnam was about as horrible a person as you could find. I think Coop’s overplaying his hand on this. He’s got his defense attorney glasses on and doesn’t realize how much the public really hates child molesters.”

“What would you like from me?”

“We need to go into your history, particularly your disciplinary record, any drug use, sexual perversions you’ve shared with other people, stuff like that. We also have some interrogatories that I just sent general denials on. The next step is going to be to schedule a deposition in a month or so.”

“That fast?”

“Knowing Coop, he’s going to want to capitalize on the publicity this case has already gotten. He’ll try and move this along to trial as fast as possible.” She opened a Word document that had a long list of questions and pulled the keyboard near her. “So, let’s begin.”

Stanton answered questions in Taylor’s office for nearly four hours. They took no breaks and miraculously it didn’t seem to affect Taylor at all, but by the end his head was throbbing from a coming migraine. Lately, he’d been feeling the sting of age for the first time in his life.

“Are we almost done?” he asked.

“Do you want to be done?”

“I wouldn’t mind. I’m supposed to take my kids to the zoo.”

“We can stop here I guess. But at some point you’re going to have to come in and finish and then we need to begin the preparations for the deposition.”

“Sure. I’ll come by during the week some time.”

“Fridays work best. There’s usually no court appearances.”

He rose. “I appreciate your help in this.”

“My pleasure. My mom was a cop. I volunteered for this case actually. I probably shouldn’t tell you this but I followed that stuff in the papers with you and Eli Sherman and Chief Harlow. Intriguing stuff.”

“Opinions vary,” he said. “Thanks again.”