Walk in Darkness - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries) (8 page)

19

The residents of Ocean Beach Park were fiercely protective of their local businesses, parks, playgrounds, and even surfers. Outsiders were regarded with a suspicious eye the moment they stepped on the sand and Stanton had been no different. It had even come to blows one night when one of the local surfers had slid across the bottom of his wave, knocking him off his board. He was willing to let it be forgotten but knew that if he did he could never surf this beach again.

The
man had been a thick Hawaiian named Kekoa. When Stanton came in to shore he found him in a group of other people near the cars. He walked casually by as if he hadn’t noticed him and Kekoa had turned around just long enough for Stanton to rush him. He could still replay it in his mind as if watching a bout blow by blow as it happened: he threw his arms around Kekoa’s waist and took him down. Kekoa wrapped his legs around him, trying to squeeze out the last of his breath; he then placed his elbow into the man’s throat and pushed down with his bodyweight. Kekoa spun his arm away and put his hands around his throat and he twisted his neck to the side, loosening the grip, and then bit down on the fleshy part of his hand, hard enough that the flesh tore and blood began to flow. Kekoa had then been distracted enough that Stanton landed a couple of elbows into his nose.

They
’d been pulled apart seconds afterward, but it was enough. Stanton had shown that even though Kekoa could clearly come out on top in a brawl, he was going to get hurt in the process. Maybe even hurt bad. Kekoa, and the other surfers stayed away from him after that.

Stanton felt the pressure shift in the
water as he couldn’t see it in the dark. The wave was only ten feet behind him now and he began to paddle toward shore as the water started to lift him higher and higher. When he was nearly at the zenith of the wave he jumped to his feet.

The wave pushed him toward shore with such speed that the wind howled in his ears. He pushed his board to the right, cutting across the wave, leaving a thin streak of white foam, and then cut back in the other direction. He crouched low enough that his fingertips touched the surface of the wave, dipping into the sea as if that was where they belonged. He rode it in to shore with his fingers in the water as far as he could.

The wave died down and he jumped off the board in a few feet of water and began to carry it back to shore over his head. He stuck the board in the sand and collapsed next to it, looking up at the moon that radiated white light like some bulb dangling from the sky. Then a sound nearby broke the peace of the moment: tires screeching, and he looked over and saw a Volkswagen Beetle tearing out of the parking lot farther down the beach.

He turned back to the sea and watched the waves come. There were twenty or so surfers still out there, catching wave after wave, hoping each set would be the one they would go back to their parties and talk about
, the one that flung them twenty feet or dragged them under and nearly drowned them.

His cell phone was next to him and he toweled off and dialed Melissa’s number.

“Hey, Jon.”

“Hey.”

“I hear waves. You at the beach?”

“Yeah, I’ve really gotten into night surfing now. You and the boys should come out with me.”

“You know I don’t surf.”

“I could teach you.”

“Like how you taught me to drive a stick?”

“That crappy seven hundred dollar car was all I had and you nearly destroyed the transmission. We had to stop.”

She laughed softly. “I’ll never forget your face after the first few times we heard that awful grinding sound. You were sweet to let me keep trying as long as you did.”

He looked up to the sky. “I wish you could see the moon the way I’m seeing it now. It’s so clear it feels like it’s taking up the whole sky.”

“I’m lying in bed. I can see it through the window. Is it true more crimes happen during full moons?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The moon seems to have some sort of psychological effect on us, but science hasn’t caught up to superstition yet. We’re not really sure why.”

There was silence between them a few seconds and she sighed. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“Are you coming to pick up the boys this weekend?”

“Yeah. I’d like for you to come with us. I thought maybe we’d hit the zoo.”

“I can’t, I have to work. One of the girls quit and I was given all her clients. It’s nice ‘cause it’s so much more money, but I don’t like having to work on the weekends.”

Stanton counted three waves as they sat quietly on the phone. But it wasn’t an awkward silence
, more a silence bred from the comfort they felt around each. “I better go. I just wanted to talk to you right now.”

“Okay. Be careful, Jon.”

“I will. I’ll see you when I pick up the boys.”

After he hung up he got his board and headed back to his apartment. It was Friday night and there was a line of cars all headed to beach parties that had barely gotten underway. A car full of girls hollered at him as he crossed the street and he waved.

When he got back to his building, there was a man sitting in one of the chairs in the lobby. He looked familiar though Stanton couldn’t place where he’d seen him. The man rose as he came in. He was chewing gum and he spit it out into an ashtray before walking over to him.

“Detective Stanton,” he said, holding out his hand, “Lieutenant Ransom
Talano. Pleasure, Detective. I’ve heard a lot of good things.”

Stanton shook his hand. “Have we met before?”

“No, not that I’m aware of. I’m just doing some follow-up on the Darrell Putnam case. I’m sure you know by now the family’s filed a lawsuit, so I’ve just been assigned to make sure all the T’s are crossed. You know how it is.”

“I didn’t know that’s all IAD did. Just cross T’s.”

He was silent a moment before saying, “Why would you think I’m with IAD?”

“Your firearm’s on your left side but you shook with your right and threw out your gum with your right. Most officers keep their firearm on the side of their dominant hand for a controlled draw. The only division I know that doesn’t is IAD, because it’s annoying to bump your sidearm while filling out paperwork.”

He smiled and pointed at him with his index finger. “You are good. I heard as much. One of the best on the force is what everyone keeps telling me.”

“Why are you here, Ransom? Is it to give me rope to hang myself? If it is, at least come upstairs so I can get a drink
. I’m dying of thirst.”

Stanton walked to the elevators and Ransom, reluctantly, followed. They were silent in the elevator but when they got into his apartment Stanton went to the fridge and got out a bottle of orange juice and poured two glasses. He handed one to
Ransom and then sat down on the couch. The bay doors were open, letting in the salty breeze from the ocean. He could hear the teenagers honking and laughing and shouting eleven floors below. Friday night at this time was their purview.

“I know what you want, Ransom.” Stanton knew he probably preferred Lieutenant, but continued to use his first name
, putting them on an even playing field. “But you’re not going to find it. The incident was clean. There was probable cause and a warrant for his arrest. I was just trying to bring him in and he chose to jump instead. The only way to challenge it is to challenge the warrant, and that’s gonna piss off Judge Kwan. He’s known as being temperamental and doesn’t like when people second-guess him. Doesn’t seem like the kind of guy I would want to piss off.”

“You’re Mormon, aren’t you?”

Stanton sipped his orange juice. Ransom was good; he didn’t take the bait and respond. He immediately put Stanton back on the defensive. “Yes.”

“Now I heard Mormons believe they’re going to be
gods one day, that you all are polytheists. A lot of people, not me mind you, but a lot, would say that’s not Christian. What do you say when people tell you that?”

“I tell them that they need to come to a few sessions of church and listen in. The entire church is built around the teachings of Christ. The most important thing in my church is to follow his example; everything else is just details.”

“Details? Details. It’s all in the details, Detective. Everything important. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

“No. I’m more of a big-picture guy.”

Ransom took a sip of his juice and raised his eyebrows. “Good juice.”

“I make it myself. It’s orange and
clementines.”

He drank half the glass down and then placed it on a coaster on the coffee table. “I like your apartment. The view of the ocean alone is enough to make the rent worthwhile. How much do you pay here if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I do mind, actually.”

Ransom smiled softly and then finished the other half of his juice, not taking his eyes off Stanton.

“Well, Detective, I can see that everything is probably in order, like you said. Seems I would be just spinning my wheels here.”

He rose and Stanton rose as well and walked him to the door. He held it open as
Ransom stepped out without a word and walked to the elevators. As Stanton shut the door, he thought for the first time that he might want to call his union lawyer. Ransom was too good. Even the time and place he’d chosen for the initial meeting—his apartment late at night after he was relaxed from surfing—showed that he was a consummate professional.

Internal Affairs officers, the good ones anyway, were cut from the same
cloth: obsessed with rooting out corruption, but occasionally that obsession crossed the line into that gray area where some cops lost themselves. Stanton decided he should give his lawyer a call. Ransom Talano was dangerous.

The second Ransom heard Stanton’s door shut behind him he bit his hand so hard he broke the top layer of skin. Then he kicked at a garbage can by the elevators, and when the elevator dinged and opened an older lady with a little dog saw him and was startled. He smiled as widely as he could to cover up the anger that was pouring out of him, but she just looked down to the floor and stepped past him.

He took the elevator down, feeling foolish at letting his emotions get the better of him. At the same time, he felt a rush and it put a smile on his face. Most officers, even seasoned homicide detectives, became stammering teenagers when under an IAD investigation. They would respond with pure emotion: either absolute anger or absolute despair. Many would cry; some would grow so enraged they would throw things or threaten his
life, enough of a reaction that after the dust settled Ransom had them where he wanted.

But Jon Stanton was different. He was calm and even. Unafraid. Ransom even thought that maybe he actually believed that he had done nothing wrong. One thing was for certain though: he wouldn’t be giving IAD any help. There had to be another way to get to him.

Ransom got outside and a waft of ocean air hit his face and nauseated him. He had never enjoyed the sea, never seen its draw. Some of the other detectives in IAD went boating every other weekend but he never joined them and would comment that it reminded him too much of bathing.

He noticed there was a diner nearby. It looked like a dive and had a surfboard up over the entrance with the words, “BIG KAHUNA’S” painted on it in bright red, lit up with Christmas lights. He went to his car and got out Stanton’s file and headed there.

The interior was in worse shape than the exterior, but the place was filled with the smell of roasting pork and burnt onions and peppers. It reminded him that he had skipped dinner and he ordered a pulled pork sandwich and a Sprite and sat down in a booth next to a window.

He sat quietly, not opening the file until his food came. Outside were several teenagers eating burgers in the bed of a large truck
, two male and two female. They were laughing and sharing French fries; music was playing from the truck, some sort of ska band he had never heard before.

It threw him back to when he was a kid and his foster father would take him for burgers a couple times a week. They would eat inside without really saying anything and Ransom would watch the teenagers in the place having fun and pretend he was part of the group
, though they would never interact with him. He thought their outings were because his foster father cared about him. Later, he learned that his foster mother was an escort and hooker and taking him out for burgers was how they got him out of the house so he couldn’t see anything and report it to the Department of Child and Family Services.

“Holy shit!”

He looked up and saw the waitress standing next to him with his plate in her hand. He looked down to the table and saw that he had opened the file to a page exposing a photo of a woman in a bed, nearly torn in half from her attacker’s blade. A case Jon Stanton had closed several years ago.