Walk in Darkness - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries) (6 page)

14

Ransom Corvan Talano sat across from the weeping police officer in the small gray room. It was an interrogation room but wasn’t designated as such. There were blank walls with no decorations, a simple hardwood floor and gray ceiling. The door was thick gray steel and the table’s color matched it and the chairs.

Ransom slid the officer a box of tissues. He had not seen a grown man cry in a long time and it fascinated him. He watched for as long as the officer allowed. After a few minutes the officer looked up and wiped his tears away and sat straight, taking in a deep breath.

You’re trying to recover some of your dignity, Ransom thought. It’s too late, my friend.

“Lieutenant,” the officer said, “I was just doing what I thought was right. I never intended for any of this to happen or to be a black mark on the uniform.”

“Tell me your side of the story, Officer Hunt. I want to know it. I’m on your side but you gotta give me something to take to them.”

“It was just a normal bust. Some
piece’a shit wetback—” He looked at him. “You’re not Mexican are you?”

“No.”

“It was just some wetback cocksucker. Estefan somethin’. We busted him for a DUI and he said he had ten grand in cash in his trunk. If we took it and let him go on the DUI he wouldn’t say nothin’.”

“So what’d you do?” The officer looked away and Ransom leaned forward and held his hand. “What’d you do?” he said softly.

“We took it. We split it. My wife needed a new car. We only got one car and I can’t afford another one. I got a kid that’s starting college soon and medical bills are piling up. The county keeps cutting our benefits and we’re havin’ to pay more ourselves. I thought, ‘who would miss it?’ I wasn’t thinking.” He leaned forward. “This job is all I got, Lieutenant. Please, help me keep it.”

Ransom smiled and stood up. He came around the table and patted his shoulder before leaning down and whispering in his ear. “My mother was Mexican you piece of shit. And you’re going to jail.”

Ransom kissed the man on the head gently, like a priest absolving him of his sins, and then walked out of the room. He could hear the officer start crying again.

Another internal affairs investigator ran up to him with a file in his hand. Rodney
Kloves. He was sweating and his suit was disheveled; there was a stain on his tie from whatever he had eaten that morning.

“New case. I think you need to see it,” he said.

Ransom flipped open the file. A picture of Jonathan Stanton was pasted on the front inside cover. He looked up, a grin on his face. “Jon Stanton; the last man standing.”

Kloves
nodded. “He’s being sued for wrongful death for that pedophile that jumped off the roof.”

“That was two weeks ago. Why haven’t I been called in before?”

“He was cleared, sir.”

“What the fuck do you mean cleared? I’m the one that tells him when he’s cleared.”

“It was an order from Assistant Chief Ho himself, sir.”

“Order to who?”

“I don’t know.”

He slammed the file shut. “They
wanna let him slide and now they’re sendin’ it to me to cover their asses. Get me Ho on the line in my office.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ransom walked slowly down the hall, thoughts swirling in his mind. He stopped and got a drink from a fountain next to the drunk tank and took the stairs to his second floor office. The office was decorated with photos of him in various locations. There were no photos of his second wife or the two boys he had with her, but there were a few of his first wife. She had long since left him, leaving their eldest boy in his care. He glanced at her photo for a moment before his phone buzzed.

“Lieutenant
Talano,” he said.

“Lieutenant, this is Chin Ho. What the hell’s going on? I was in a meeting.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I just got a file placed on my desk and I needed to discuss it with you briefly.”

“So discuss.”

“It’s Jon Stanton, sir.”

“What about it?”

“My understanding was he was cleared of any misconduct for this incident.”

“He was, but that was before we had all the facts.”

“And what facts would those be, sir?” There was a slight pause; he had overplayed his hand. “No disrespect, sir. It’s just an unusual case. It shouldn’t have even been in sex crimes. Child abuse division handles all sex cases involving kids under fourteen.”

“I know. There were some . . . extenuating circumstances. It’s a mess; there’s a pending lawsuit. Regardless, it’s your mess to clean up now, Lieutenant. Now if that’s all, I have to get back with the Chief.”

“Of course, sir. Thank you for your time.”

Ransom hung up and leaned back in his chair. A lawsuit. That was what this was about. The county and police force were covering their
asses. They wanted Ransom to find misconduct and hang Stanton out to dry. If they found that he wasn’t acting within the scope of his employment, which is a determination IAD would make, they wouldn’t have to pick up the tab for the lawsuit. Stanton would be a hundred percent liable.

Ransom smiled to himself, and opened the file.

15

Stanton woke up in the middle of the night. He was soaked in sweat and his heart was pounding. He suddenly realized that he had been sleeping on his back and the burning pain of the wound shocked him
wide awake. He looked to the clock: 12:21 A.M. He sat up and found his clothes.

The moonlight was coming through the open window along with the symphony of crickets in the yard. He could see Danielle’s perfect body, her skin a milky white glow, her hair coming down over the pillow like gold-white waves. She was beautiful. More so than any other woman he had ever been with in his life. But when he was with her all he thought of was his ex-wife
, Melissa. There was something to familiarity that won out over beauty or charm. Melissa was familiar. She was his, and he was hers.

Stanton dressed and went to the window. This neighborhood was quiet and calm and you could scarcely hear anything other than crickets. Most affluent neighborhoods were quiet and he wondered if it was because they had less to worry about and were more prone to sleep earlier and more soundly. Despite popular culture’s warnings, money did solve most problems.

“Come back to bed.”

Her voice was silky in the night and it soothed him to hear it. He turned to her and kissed her on
the forehead, tasting the salt on her skin.

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be busy tomorrow and so will you. But we have right now.”

“I need to go somewhere for a while. Maybe I’ll come back in a few hours.”

“And where, Detective Stanton, do you need to be that is more important than here?” She sat up in bed, revealing perfect breasts; the ends of her hair came down over them and danced on her nipples.

He kissed her one more time and left.

Stanton
changed into a wetsuit and got into the warm Pacific at nearly midnight. He paddled out far, much farther than he usually did at night, and lay on his board, flat on his belly so as not to put pressure on his back. He checked to make sure his board was tethered to him by the ankle strap and then slid off and held his breath.

Face down in the ocean
, he opened his eyes. The moonlight illuminated the surface, but farther down below was deep blue and then black, a bottomless pit of darkness where things from nightmares roamed looking for prey. He flipped over onto his back, staring up at the stars. The waves were nonexistent and calm. He felt like he could sleep here. That would be something he should try sometime, though he knew he never would. Hypothermia would kill him before he awoke.

He thought of Danielle. He had violated what he believed was a commandment of God: no sex outside of marriage, but he knew no one was perfect. Everyone has their weaknesses and women had always been his. He had prayed for strength to overcome this flaw in him.

The salt water had dribbled into his wetsuit and was soaking through the bandage, burning the wound. He felt it run across his back and down his legs, up into his head. The pain melted with him, became one with him. He could control it, turn it off and on like an electric circuit.

He thought about Putnam. That last look he gave him.

I didn’t do it.

Stanton, down in the recesses of his mind, knew it was true. Which meant that whoever did
kill those girls was still out there and still hunting. The chosen would be a young girl of ten to thirteen years old. Athletic with blond hair and both parents still together. They would be poor or middle class, not rich, and she would be on her own a lot because both parents would be working. She would be naïve and pretty, trusting of others, and always willing to help. That would be what he would exploit. The willingness to help a total stranger move a box or open a door or give directions.

And if Stanton didn’t find him first, she would die.

16

The next morning Stanton ate a breakfast of eggs on a
whole-wheat tortilla with ketchup and listened to one of his favorite albums: Joy Division’s
Closer
. He had discovered the album in his days living in a shack on the beach rented with a dozen other surfers. The album was claustrophobic and haunting and it stuck in his head all day when he listened to it.

He left his apartment and got to the precinct around nine. There was a new girl manning the desk. He stopped and looked around for the old receptionist but didn’t see her. He went to his office and sat down, the three files he needed already open. He booted his computer and pulled up a document
, a map of the three victim’s homes, with Putnam’s mother’s house right in the center. The collar had been so easy. They just ran a search for registered sex offenders in the area and hit Putnam. These cases were never that easy and Stanton knew it, had always known it. But he had wished just this once that it was.

Sex crimes, especially child sex crimes, was an area he had never dreamed
he’d be in. He was a homicide detective and had always seen himself as a homicide detective. With sex crimes, most of the victims were still alive. The horrible interviews with broken and bleeding women haunted him in the quiet hours of night. Though he refused to admit it to himself, he was glad he wouldn’t have those interviews in this case.

“What the hell are you doing back?” Childs said as he walked in.

“Have some things I need to finish up on.”

“Are you shitting me? You were shot. Get the fuck outta here. I
ain’t kiddin’. I’m not watching you bleed out all over your desk.”

“I will. Just need a couple of hours.”

He shook his head. “People think I’m the crazy one but I think you’ve got some serious issues.”

“Hey,” he shouted as Childs walked out into the hall, “what happened to the receptionist?”

“Fired her. Process server paid her fifty bucks and she told him where you were.”

Stanton rose and shut his door before turning back to the files. He opened Sarah
Henroid’s file and a disk dropped out. He held it in his fingers a moment before popping it into his computer. His media player came on and the shot opened to the interior of a house. They were in the kitchen and he could hear laughter. The camera turned to the right and caught a glimpse of a woman in a striped shirt and jeans, setting a table. There were balloons and ribbons up around her. Behind her was a banner that read, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH. Stanton counted the candles on the cake; there were ten.

A young girl came into view and the family began to cheer. She waved to the camera as the voice behind it, her father’s, asked what she wanted for her birthday.

“A baby sister.”

The father turned to the wife and said, “Maybe we should get working on that tonight, honey?”

“Jack,” she said, turning red.

He laughed and she shook her head and continued setting the table as several other children came in from the living room.

Stanton turned it off. He felt embarrassed for them. Embarrassed that such a tender moment had to be shared with him, in this place at this time. He waited five more minutes and then flipped it back on.

Sarah took her place as the guest of honor in front of the cake, a wide grin over her face. Jack led them all from behind the camera in singing happy birthday and she blew out the candles in one blow. The mother began cutting up the cake and asked for Jack’s help. The video ended and turned to a blue screen with numbers on it. Stanton took it out and slipped it back into its jacket and placed it in the file.

I’m so sorry.

Stanton spent the day on the beach, lying around. He read for a while, James Joyce’s
Ulysses
, and then ate a meal of tacos and a diet coke at a roach coach that had parked near the beach. His back ached and burned and he tried to go into the water to cool it off but it didn’t help. Instead he went back to his apartment and took some of his pain meds and fell asleep on the balcony.

I
t was nearly four in the afternoon when he woke. He showered and dressed and headed out the door to his car.

The Fillmore Elementary parking lot was full when he came to a stop in between two rows of cars. He listened to
Bach on his CD player a while until someone came out of the school and pulled out. He parked and got out.

The day was hot
and bright and he put on his sunglasses. The elementary school had already let out but crowds of people were gathered on the soccer field. Two teams of young girls were battling on the field, the coaches on either side of the grass shouting instructions.

Stanton saw that one of the coaches was male and wearing the blue and gold colors of the home team. He walked over to him and stood quietly by as the coach finished explaining what he wanted done in the next few minutes to some of the players waiting to go in.

He saw Stanton, and his face turned white.

“I’m sorry about popping in like this, Doug.”

“I saw the news. You should’ve called me first. I don’t think I should’ve heard it like that.”

“I’m sorry. The past couple weeks have been a blur.”

“I’m glad you got him and that he’s gone. Truth be told though I wanted to be there when they executed him. To look in his eyes and tell him I’ll see him in hell and that we’d finish it there. But I’m glad it ended the way it did too.”

Stanton looked out over the field, watching the girls as they ran to one end of the field before a player from the visiting team stole the ball and tripped a young girl with the name TAPIAS emblazoned on her jersey. The girls began to argue and the referee had to step in and break it up.

“I want to be sure it was him,” Stanton said. “The evidence pointing to him is circumstantial. I want to be sure, everyone wants to be sure. I haven’t closed the cases yet because I’m still looking into it.”

“The news said his mother said he did it.”

“His mother has dementia. I’m not sure she knew that we were talking about these recent cases. She could easily have thought we were talking about the cases he was already convicted for.”

Doug
Henroid took in a deep breath and watched the action on the field. He withdrew two of his players and sent in replacements.

“For the first time I found some peace with this
… at least as much as a father could. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I need your help. There’s three girls attributed to Putnam and I think there’s a connection there we’re missing.”

“I told you last time; Sarah didn’t know those other two girls.”

“Is there any chance she had a circle of friends you didn’t know about? A group or club she belonged to and you didn’t really check up on, anything like that?”

“Not really.”

“She got straight A’s in school. Did she belong to any study groups or anything?”

“Not that I can recall. I know she got tutoring in math but that was always a tough subject for her.”

Stanton scanned his memory about the case. It was something he had found since youth that came easily to him. He could picture in his mind as clearly as video where he would be sitting when he viewed something and replay it in his head
, like hitting rewind and then play on a DVD. He had read about memory palaces in which the ancient Greeks and Romans used to memorize speeches and treatises by envisioning them in rooms in a palace. There was an entire system associated with the usage of memory palaces, but he had never required them.

From what he remembered, there was never any mention of a tutor.

“What was this tutor’s name?”

“Um, I don’t know. You’ll have to call my wife. She was the one that handled all that stuff.”

Stanton gave him one of his cards though he knew he had a few at home. “If you think of anything else we haven’t discuss, call me anytime, Doug.”

“I will.”

He turned to leave and was nearly hit by a soccer ball. One of the girls came and picked it up and whispered under her breath, “Watch where you’re going.”

He went back to the car and dialed the number for Sarah’s mother.

“Hello?”

“Mrs.
Henroid?”

“Yes.”

“This is Detective Jon Stanton. How are you, Betty?”

There was a slight pause. “I’m fine.”

“I just spoke to Doug. He told me that Sarah was taking tutoring lessons in math. I was wondering if I could get the name and number of that tutor.”

“What for?”

“Just tying up some loose ends.”

“Okay, well, hang on . . . okay, you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Her name’s Tracey Aviary. She lives in La Jolla.
I just texted you the number. Do you have it?”

“Got it. Thanks.”

She hung up without saying goodbye. Stanton dialed the precinct and gave his call-in code. He asked dispatch to run a check on Tracey Aviary in La Jolla. He pulled out and started heading back to his apartment when the phone rang and dispatch gave him an address in La Jolla near the beach, twenty minutes from here.

He drove on the interstate, his windows down to let the wind run through his fingers and up his arm, tussling his hair. The interstate was packed though it wasn’t rush hour. The city seemed to be getting more crowded. He had seen the urban hell of central Los Angeles and knew there was an exodus occurring. The residents that had any means whatsoever were moving
away in all directions, and many were coming here to settle. That left only people that didn’t have the means to move in the neighborhoods of central LA. A growing mass of the unhappy, desperate and poor. Throw money at a problem and you only work at the edges. There was only so much that funding could do. There had to be a better solution, something that struck at the core of the problem. But what it was, he couldn’t say. For now, he knew that, periodically, Los Angeles would shatter and then be put back together again until the next detonation.

The street Tracey lived on was an upscale neighborhood filled with mansions
, massive homes where the occupants scarcely used the space they had. Waste was a statement, as Stanton had always guessed it was.

The address led him to a large white home with
a manicured lawn and hedges. Three stories with a driveway that looped around a fountain and back out to the road. He came to a stop at the curb and got out.

The neighborhood was quiet except for two children at the end of the block riding bicycles. The ocean was just far enough away to give the air a crisp, clean smell but not close enough to dampen it. He walked to the front door and knocked.

A woman in a tennis outfit with long, bleached blond hair answered.

“Yes?”

Stanton flashed the tin. “Detective Jon Stanton with San Diego PD. Is Tracey Aviary home?”

“It’s pronounced AV-AH-REE.”

“I apologize. Is she home?”

“What do you want with her?”

“I just need to ask her a few questions about one of the students she was tutoring.”

The woman got a look of surprise on her face and it turned to anger. “It’s about that little whore that went missing, isn’t it? Well you can’t talk to Tracey. I’m her mother and I’m not giving you permission to talk to her. You can just call our lawyer and talk to him.”

She slammed the door in his face. Technically, she was right. Any child under the age of fourteen required parental consent to be interviewed and Tracey was thirteen years old. He went back to his car and asked dispatch for the nearest middle school. Then he cancelled that and asked them to find the nearest private school.

The nearest one was
the Huntington Academy, eight miles north of La Jolla.