Walk in Darkness - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries) (12 page)

26

Calvin Riley finished his shift and sat in his car for over an hour debating whether to go home. His mother had given him a strict command: be home by seven for dinner or you go to bed without it. He knew what that meant. For his mother, not eating dinner that she had prepared was a personal insult.

He remembered how suffocated he
’d felt at home when he was younger. School had bored him immensely so the only place he’d felt at ease was by himself on the streets. San Diego had some extraordinarily pleasant neighborhoods and Calvin would walk through them and stare at the large mansions and dream of one day living on his own in one of them. He would have a wife and they would have friends over and the friends would be interested in what he had to say — not just waiting for their turn to talk in the conversation but actually interested in him. And then after the friends had left he and his wife would have sex in their hot tub and watch television in bed until they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

But that wasn’t how it had worked out. The weight of reality
had fallen on him and he realized he would never have that life. He couldn’t even if he tried. His mother would never let him. She would never leave him alone.

He decided he didn’t feel like going home but there was someplace he did feel like going. He started the car and pulled out onto the main road before hopping onto the freeway.

Within twenty minutes he had pulled onto Cotton Drive and parked on the curb. The house was three stories and red brick with a driveway that circled in from the street past the front porch and out again on the other side of the lawn. A Mercedes was parked there now and Calvin knew that Brian Underwood preferred to park there when he got home late rather than going to their five-car garage.

Calvin looked into all the windows starting from the top and working his way down. There was no activity in most of the rooms but the light was on in the kitchen and the basement.

The thought of the basement make him uncomfortable and he looked away for a minute before turning back. That’s when he saw the family gathering around a massive dinner table. There was Brian, his wife Shelly, their two sons, Luke and Lance, and their daughter Lexi.

Lexi
was already sitting at the table playing on an iPod with earbuds in. Her brother Luke ran over and pulled the earbuds off and tried running away with them. She shouted something and chased after him. He saw them in the living room window. She tackled Luke on the couch and punched him in the kidneys.
Good for her
, Calvin thought.
Don’t take shit from anyone
.

Another car pulled up. It was unexpected and it made him nervous. He ducked low, just enough so that he could still see, and watched an elderly couple step out of an Escalade. The male held the door open for the female and they walked to the
house. The children scurried over to the door and opened it, throwing their arms around the couple. Grandparents.

Calvin thought of his own grandparents
, Grandpa Norman and his wife Belle. Calvin’s real grandmother had run off before he was born and no one knew where she was. But Belle filled the role of grandmother as best she could. She would cook for them every weekend and take them to free activities like farms or parks. They had grown up during the depression and even the thought of spending money unnecessarily made them go into a lecture about the value of a dollar.

Calvin remembered Grandpa Norman on the couch watching the football game. The kids
had been over there because their mother had a job interview; Calvin was in charge of seeing that his little brothers were fed and stayed out of trouble.

Calvin
had gone to the closet by the upstairs bedroom and retrieved a rifle. His grandpa had taken him shooting several times and he knew the feel of the rifle and knew that the ammunition was in a safe in the bedroom. Belle had been asleep in there so he was quiet as he went to the safe and put in the combo and retrieved the ammunition. He’d then walked downstairs to see that Grandpa Norman had fallen asleep.

Calvin
had lifted the rifle and placed the barrel against his grandfather’s head, right at the bald spot, and pulled the trigger. The sound had deafened him and the recoil knocked the rifle out of his hands. Blood had sprayed over the coffee table and the couch, and the television had been spattered in a pulpy mess. Walking to it, he’d run his fingers over the screen, tracing a drawing, as he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

He
picked up the rifle just as Belle ran downstairs. As she’d stood frozen and in shock, he’d lifted it and fired two rounds, both hitting her in the chest. Then he’d looked down at her face a long time. Her life had seemed to leave her and her eyes had looked like doll’s eyes. How strange that he could see that.

Afterward
, he’d made sure his brothers were okay and then called 911 and sat on the patio, waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

There was a knock on the car window and Calvin jumped. He looked over to see a man in a sweat suit standing there, making a motion for him to roll the window down.

“Yeah?” Calvin said.

“You’re parked in front of my driveway.”

“Oh, oh, hey I’m sorry. I’m waiting for my girlfriend to get ready. Here I’ll pull up.”

He pulled the car up about ten feet and waited for the man to get into a red jeep and drive away. When he was gone, Calvin looked at the house one more
time before pulling away from the curb and heading home.

27

E
arly in the morning, Stanton’s phone rang. He was brushing his teeth and ran over to the kitchen to his phone. He spit into the sink and answered.

“Hello?”

“Detective, it’s Taylor Rowe, your lawyer.”

“Oh, hey. What can I do for you?”

“Just got off the phone with Coop. We have our first deposition scheduled for this Wednesday at ten at his office.”

“That seems quick.”

“It is. Not to intimidate you, Detective, ‘cause I don’t think it’s too big a deal, but Coop used to clerk with the judge we’ve been assigned.”

“You don’t think that’s a big deal?”

“No, because I know this judge. I think he can be impartial. Just make sure you’re there Wednesday. It’s not your deposition; in fact, you don’t need to worry about it for a while until we fully prep you, but it’s good to be there for all of them and hear what everybody else is saying.”

“If you think it’s important, I’ll be there.”

“I do. Do you need the address?”

“I’ll look it up online. Thanks.”

“Call me if you have any questions, Detective.”

“You can call me Jon.”

Stanton hung up the phone and finished brushing his teeth. He dressed in a blue button-down shirt with a white collar and black pin-stripe pants. When he was with Melissa, they would gather every morning in the walk-in closet and she and the boys would pick out his clothes for the day. A deal had been struck: the boys would make sure to do their chores but Stanton had to wear whatever outfit they chose. More than one incident of plaid shirt and pin-striped slacks haunted Stanton.

He headed down to the precinct afterward and parked behind the building next to some cruisers. A few uniforms were out and they gave him the cold shoulder. He had testified against the former police chief
, Harlow, and no matter what their sins, officers were expected to look out for one another. Someone who had testified against one of their own couldn’t be trusted.

The building was full of officers and detectives and staff and it brought a warm feeling to his gut. Something about a fully functioning police station,
each person doing their best . . . he had seen so much of the opposite. So much corruption and wickedness.

He got to his office and sat down a second, going through
in his mind what he needed to be doing. He played absently with the lighter in his pocket and ran his fingers over the engravings; he had decided they were words in a language he couldn’t identify. But he liked the smoothness of the silver and the easy glide of the roller before a flame ignited with a warm glow. Occasionally, he held onto things like napkins or pens and carried them with him to play with when he needed something to occupy his mind.

Two dozen
other cases were being neglected. He opened his computer and went to the first case. A twenty-one year old woman had been gang raped outside of a popular bar near La Mesa. Several witnesses had driven or walked by as the assault was occurring, but no one had called the police.

Stanton began with the sketch artist drawings given by the victim of her three assailants. What he was supposed to do next was interview the witnesses and attempt to get a name and track him down. He knew he didn’t need to do that in this case. Men that would openly rape a woman in public wouldn’t care about returning to the same bar. It was just a matter of getting one of the witnesses down there with some undercover uniforms every night until they showed.

“Hey.”

Stanton turned to see Danielle leaning against the
doorframe. She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless tight black shirt, her muscular arms exposed.

“Hey.”

She came and sat down across from him. “How’s the Putnam thing going?”

“Not good. I was taken off the case.”

Danielle hesitated a moment, staring at him with her cobalt eyes. She lifted up her shirt exposing the thin clip and piece of sports tape from the wire.

“Do you
wanna grab lunch later?” she said as she took a pad of paper and pen off his desk.

“Sure.”

She wrote down
Ransom Talano
.

“Should I just swing by here?”

“Yeah, come by around noon. I have some paperwork to catch up on.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then.”

As she left, Stanton got up and followed her. She went to her office and was in there for about five minutes before stepping out.

“I took it off,” she said.

“What the hell is going on?”

“He wants me to help him, Jon. He thinks you’re still part of that whole Harlow thing.”

“And you agreed?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Why not?” She glanced away and wouldn’t look at him. “Danny, why not?”

“He threatened to execute a search warrant on my house.”

“So what? Every cop’s house gets tossed. That’s part of the job.”

“He knows things about me, Jon.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t want to talk about it here. Come to my house tonight.”

As she left, Stanton went back to his office and sat in his chair, staring at the ceiling. He had known several cops like Talano; they never stopped coming at you. No matter what.

He stood and contemplated something for just a moment before leaving his office and heading down to HR. Though he was considered a snitch, there were still a few people that owed him favors.

Connie Penti was at the main HR desk filling out some paperwork when he came down. She was wearing her uniform; her long black hair clipped in the back. Stanton could smell her apple bodywash mixed with the distinct odor of vodka and the cigarette smoke that was meant to cover it up.

“Well
well,” she said, “look who comes down to pay us a visit.”

“How are you
, Connie?”

“
Nother day in paradise, you know. How you doin’ sweetheart? You holdin’ up okay?”

“Good as can be expected I guess. How’s Isaac?”

He’s almost done with his electrical engineering degree and should be outta school in another couple months.”

“No way? Congrats
. That’s exciting.”

“Hell yes it is. Then I can quit and get my ass home to take care of my kids.”

Stanton pushed a pen that was near the edge of the counter back and then glanced around to make sure no one else was here.

“Uh oh,” she said.

“What?”

“Don’t what me. I know that look. What do you need?”

“I could never fool you.”

“I got six boys, Johnny, you
ain’t foolin’ me ‘bout anything.”

“Ransom
Talano. He’s after me for whatever reason, thinks I’m cut from the same cloth as Harlow. He’s gotten Danielle to flip on me.”

“Lord help us when we got cops
turnin’ on cops.”

“I just need to know what I’m dealing with, Connie. Nothing
hush hush, just what he’s investigating me for and what he wants.”

She exhaled loudly and crossed her arms. “We need this job right now you know.”

“I know. And if it puts you in any sort of risk of losing it don’t do it.”

She looked him up and down. “You saved my ass
a bunch a times when they was gonna fire me. Wait here.”

It took her a few minutes to get what he wanted and she came back out with a file. She handed it to him across the counter and said, “
His personnel file. You didn’t get this from me.”

“Of course not. Thanks, I owe you one.”

She mumbled something to herself as she walked away and Stanton tucked the file under his arm and headed out of the station.

The beach was crowded but not loud, mostly young men and women sunbathing or surfing. Stanton sat in the sand and took his shoes off, letting the warmth penetrate the skin on his feet. He opened Ransom Talano’s file and began to read.

All the documents were copies and some of them smeared at the edges. There were over fifty pages in there. There was an employment history of the many transfers he had had in his career, and his disciplinary history. Apparently he had been brought up twice on brutality charges and both times the investigation
s had been dropped because the victims stopped being cooperative. There was a history of cases in an Excel spreadsheet and he quickly flipped through those until he got to something he wasn’t expecting: a brief psychological history.

In 1983, after his divorce, Ransom had
had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. He took a bottle of painkillers and washed it down with whiskey. He’d slipped into a coma for three days and was suspended from the force for nearly a year before he got a clearance to return to work. Some years later, he met his current wife and had two boys. There was one child, a son, from his first marriage but there wasn’t anything listed about him.

Stanton flipped through the rest of the file and then returned to the beginning and went through it again. With any attempted suicide, an officer had to complete a full psychological work-up but that wasn’t in there. He guessed that Ransom had taken care of that a long time ago. IAD had power in the force unlike any other division.

When he was finished reading everything in the file, Stanton headed back to the station and worked a few of his other cases, following up leads and making calls to the toxicology labs and asking them to hurry things along. On the rape case at the bar, he got two undercovers from Vice to go down with one of the witnesses every night for the rest of the week. He fully expected a positive ID and would bring them down to the station and interview them himself.

When the day was over, he walked out and saw that the sun was still bright in the sky and wondered if he had enough time to surf for an hour, but decided against it. He headed straight to Danielle’s house and found her front door open.

“Hello?” he shouted at the door.

“Hey, I’m in here.”

Stanton walked into the house and up the stairs to find her in the kitchen making something over the stove.

“What are you cooking?”

“Chicken gumbo. You want some?”

“Sure.”

He got a soda out of the fridge and sat down at the dining room table. Because her house was on a hill he had a view of the valley underneath and he saw some of her neighbors out on their back porch barbequing. He thought of his own barbeques with the boys and Melissa: Matt helping flip the burgers and Melissa getting onions and tomatoes ready. They’d say a prayer before eating; Matt would emulate the way his father crossed his arms and when it was done he would always say Amen the loudest.

“Here
ya go.”

She placed the food down in front of him and got some rolls out of the oven and quickly made salads with vinaigrette dressing. They sat down and began to eat.

“This is delicious. I didn’t know you could cook.”

“One of the only things I actually learned at home. I liked spending time with the help more than my parents so I was always in the kitchen.”

Stanton wiped his mouth with a napkin and took a long sip of his drink. “So what’s going on, Danielle? Why are you wearing a wire?”

She placed her fork down, not looking at him. “I have some things I haven’t discussed with you.”

“Like what?”

“I . . . when I was with Vice I did undercover work and I reached that point, you know? That point where you have to make a choice how far you’re willing to go to keep up the bullshit. I was offered some coke by some of the other working girls and I thought it would be really weird if I didn’t have some. We were trying to bust this really vicious pimp named
Hidalgo. He was picking up fourteen and fifteen year old girls and forcing them to have sex with ten or twenty guys in one weekend. That’s what they do with new girls … to get them over their repulsion of sex at that age.

“After
he raped them for weeks he would send them out into the streets and in cities they didn’t have any contacts in. All they had at that point was him. A lot of the girls ended-up dead before they could get their driver licenses. I really wanted to bust his ass and I didn’t want to raise any suspicions. I wanted them to trust me. So I did the coke.”

“And you got hooked?”

She nodded.

“How often do you do it?”

“Not much. Really, not that much. Maybe once or twice every other day. But it’s enough to land me in prison and never be a cop again. Being a cop’s the only thing I was ever good at, Jon. I can’t lose that.”

“How’d Ransom find out you
were using?”