Walk in Darkness - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries) (9 page)

“Sorry,” he said, hurriedly closing the file.

She threw his food down on the table with a disgusted grunt and walked away. Ransom opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind. What was it that would justify that during his meal?

Instead he took a bite of his sandwich and decided he wasn’t hungry. He pushed the plate aside and looked around
, making sure no one else was near, and opened the file. He wondered how he had opened it before without noticing.

He skimmed through Stanton’s life, and his mental health record
, noticed his undergraduate degrees in biology and psychology, his master’s in neuroscience, and only glanced at his doctoral work in psychology. His doctoral thesis had been titled,
The Genetics of Sexual Perversion: Predisposition to Evil
. Ransom made a quick note that he needed to read his thesis and then moved on to the section he was looking for: Stanton’s associations.

He had an ex-wife that he was still close to. The divorce had been finalized
two years ago and they had joint custody of their children with visitation for him every other weekend. The wife was a personal trainer and made a decent living from it. Stanton had a brother, somewhere, and . . . no reported close friends. Ransom quickly re-read that line and then flipped through the rest of the report. How was it a thirty-four year old detective had absolutely no friends? Granted, these investigations were performed by IAD rookies and they occasionally missed things, but that seemed like a mistake they knew Ransom or some other senior detective would catch and ream them for.

He got down to the current relationships section and there was one name: Danielle Porter.

Ransom knew her. She was a detective with Vice, and a damn good one from what he had heard. But cases had come across his desk all too frequently with her name on it. Everything from excessive force in effectuating an arrest, missing cash after a drug bust, to drug use while undercover. There was never enough evidence to stick; she was too smart for that. It was one of those situations where Ransom had to be patient and wait for the break he was looking for.

But he didn’t have the time today. Today, he was going to make that break himself. He called Rodney
Kloves and told him to meet him at an address not far from where he was.

“One more thing, Rodney: I need you to bring something for me from the evidence lockers.”

“What’s that, boss?”

“Cocaine. Bring a
vial of it with you. Just enough for personal use.”

“Um . .
.”

“It’s for a case.”

“I’m still not sure we—”

“You’re either with me or you’re against me, Rodney. Which is it?”

There was a pause before he replied, “With you.”

“Good. Grab just one bag
gie or vial. Don’t get your prints on it. Bring it here and we’ll have it back in the evidence lockers by morning.”

“If you say so.”

Ransom hung up. Something his foster father had taught him: always be the first to hang up. It puts you in control. He tucked his phone away and pulled his plate near, a smile parting his lips as he took a bite of the sandwich, and looked to the photo of Stanton glued in the file.

Got you
, cocksucker.

20

Calvin Riley parked his car as far away from the Taylor’s Drugs as possible. Though most stores had their groceries together with photo development and pharmacy,
here, they were in a separate building next door. The space had been too small but in a good area with plenty of walk-by traffic.

He walked in to the tune of
Muzak and it churned his stomach. The music was coming from near the security booth and he went to it at the back of the store. The security officer was off somewhere, probably asleep, and Calvin turned it to the classical station. Mahler’s second symphony was on and he stood motionless a long time and listened before going to the employee break area.

He found his white smock
and nametag and put them on before going out to the photo booth.

Calvin clocked in and counted out the register before beginning his shift. There were a stack of undeveloped disposable cameras in the back that he
hadn’t been able to get to and he figured he should finish those before anything else.

Karen stepped out from back and smiled until she saw his face.

“Holy shit, Calvin, what the fuck happened to your face?”

“Nothing.”

She stepped over to him, inches away. Calvin could feel her breath on his neck.

“Oh my hell. Did you go to the hospital?”

“It’s nothing. It’s mat burn. We were wrestling and my face scraped against the mats.”

“Mats did that? No way.”

“A lot of guys get it sometimes. It’s no big deal.”

She looked the wound over and shook her head. “I’m getting Marty. I want him to look at this.”

“No,” he said too loud, startling her. “I mean, no, it’s fine. Really, I’m fine.”

“If you say so.” She walked around the counter and began to pick up the candy bars that children had pulled off the display. “So what’re you
doin’ this weekend?”

“Nothing. What are you doing?”

“You know Jack? He’s having a party. You should come.”

“Yeah, he invited me. Then he asked me to bring some pot.”

“I got the hook-up on that. Some Hawaiian dude who has it shipped in. Primo stuff.” She hesitated a second, just long enough that he picked up the debate in her mind. “Why don’t we pick it up together and head over there?”

“Cool.”

She suppressed a smile. “All right, cool.”

Calvin spent most of the day in the darkroom developing photos. It wasn’t like it had been a short while ago, at least from what he had read. He knew that even thirty years ago each individual photo had been developed and looked over, examined to make sure it was sufficient to satisfy the customer. There was pride in the job then and people understood that they were doing something important: taking care of people’s memories. If they did their jobs poorly those memories would be wiped away forever.

Now, a machine developed the photos en masse and the photo booth employees rarely saw what was on them. But he was different. Even if no one else did, he took pride in his work and looked at each and every photo to ensure the customer did not receive any imperfections. It took enormous amounts of time and several
days a week he would have to stay late without pay to catch up on the work he was supposed to be doing. But that was changing. People were switching to digital more and more. Soon, his job would be obsolete.

He went to the employee break room around eight and changed. He looked at himself in the mirror over a sink and turned on the water. The water was warm and he let it run over his fingers before applying it to his hair. People had told him he looked like Ethan Hawke but he never saw it. He had always thought of himself as ugly and asymmetrical. Symmetry was important. People with more symmetrical faces had sex sooner in life, had more partners, were married sooner,
and were loved sooner. They had better lives. When he had the money, he would get surgery that would make him symmetrical. That would make him perfect.

He headed out to his car and it started on the first try. When he pulled out to the streets the sun was gone and night had overtaken the city. Though he’d grown up in
various places, he had adopted San Diego as his home. The city was an odd place. Any family in the world would be lucky to raise their children here; but at the same time there was something else: a current that ran through the streets where people were shot for giving the wrong looks, and bars where people fought for spilling a drink, and alleys where hookers were giving blow jobs for two dollars.

There was degradation here but it was like
an energy. You could feel it as you drove through the streets and it lifted you up if you knew what it was you were looking for: raw humanity, unfiltered by tradition or morals or conscience. He thought that maybe being a gangster during the twenties might have felt the same. That feeling of freedom and the ability to take advantage of the law because the law was too wrapped up in itself to see the world as it was.

Calvin got to Karen Jensen’s apartment and texted her that he
had arrived. He waited on the curb almost five minutes before glancing across the street and noticing for the first time that a group of teenagers was staring at him. He smiled but one of them held out his arms wide, challenging him to a fight. Calvin thought he looked like some silly bird trying to protect his domain and he laughed.

“What the fuck you
laughin’ at son?”

The youngster ran over. Though only sixteen or seventeen, he was big and Calvin saw the bulge of the handgun down his pants. He jumped out of the car and stepped toward the boy.

It was enough. The boy stopped for a second, probably confused as to why he wasn’t afraid, Calvin guessed. But he looked back to his friends who were shouting to kick his ass and Calvin knew the boy couldn’t back down.

The boy ran up to within a few feet and held up his shirt, showing him the handle to what appeared to be an old 9 mm. Calvin, in a motion too fast for the boy to react to, leapt forward and grabbed the
grip of the firearm and spun around with the gun firmly pointed at the boy’s throat.

The boy’s eyes reacted only with surprise, not fear, and Calvin knew the gun wasn’t loaded.

“Coming at me with an unloaded weapon is a good way to get killed.” Calvin dropped the firearm and reached back to the FN 57 tucked into his waistband. He brought up the weapon and pointed it to the boy’s head. “This gun and the ammo I got inside is meant to fire through forty layers of Kevlar and soldier’s helmets. What do you think it would do to your throat?”

The boy swallowed and looked back to his friends who were staring blankly at what was going on. They looked to each other and then broke into a run. Calvin heard the door to the apartment building behind him open and he quickly tucked the gun away.

“Get outta here.”

The boy ran off as Karen stepped out and climbed into the passenger seat of his Volkswagen.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing,” Calvin said
, as he got in and pulled away from the curb.

They drove for a few minutes with Karen flipping through the radio stations before finding a rock station she liked. She sang to the song as she pulled down the mirror on the sun visor and began applying make-up to her face from a small bag she had in her purse.

“So you still living with your mom?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I hated living with my parents. Go left here.”

“I have two little brothers. I don’t think I could leave them alone. Did you get the pot?”

“Nah, we gotta pick it up. Turn right at the next light. So what’s it like living with your mom? Is it weird?”

“No, I love my mom.”

She laughed.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know. It’s just weird to hear someone say that out loud. I guess everybody does; it’s just weird.”

“I don’t think it’s weird.”

“Trust me, Cal, it’s weird. It’s right up there next to that gas station.”

They stopped in front of a dilapidated building that had a
‘For Sale’ sign up in the window. The front entrance was boarded up but two Hispanic males stood in front smoking. One of them said something to the other and then glanced down both sides of the street before walking up to the Beetle.

“What’s up
homie? Whatchyu need?”

“Three ounces,” Karen said, pulling some cash out of her purse. She handed it to the man and he counted it and stuffed it into his pocket.

“Be back.”

They waited in the car and Calvin stared forward. He knew the mentality here; a few wrong looks and a fight would break out. Not that he was frightened; he never was. But he had noticed the two other Hispanic males across the street that had come behind the car.

“You always buy your pot here?”

“Yeah, don’t let ‘
em scare you. They’re cool. They’re businessmen.”

“They don’t look like businessmen.”

“They fuck me over and I go back and tell all my friends and they tell all their friends and they tell all their friends and these guys are outta business. They know that. They won’t fuck with us. Just relax.”

After a few minutes another male came up to the car. He was no more than fourteen or fifteen years old but already had the hardened eyes of someone
who had seen too much of life. 

He silently handed Calvin the weed and ran back in between the gas station and the building. Calvin was about to pull away when he looked to the second floor of the house. A white male in a black
-collared shirt was speaking into a phone. He was maybe in his forties with curly hair and a soft, almost baby face.

“Fuck,” Calvin shouted, his tires screeching as he sped away.

Karen was thrown back into the seat, her make-up smearing on her face. “Calvin, what the fuck?”

“They’re cops.”

“What?”

The sound of sirens closed in behind them as the two cruisers pulled out of thin air. One was on the east side of the street and one on the west. The cruisers came up behind the Beetle, their sirens blaring, as Calvin cutoff a Ford and swung the car around onto the opposite side of the street.

“Calvin! Stop!”

He pushed the pedal as far as it would go and got up to seventy miles per hour before the cruisers had even turned around. In front of them, two of the cops, the males that had been standing in front of the door, had their guns drawn and were in the middle of the road.

“Duck,” he said calmly.

“What! What the fuck
! Stop!”

He lowered his head to the top of the steering wheel so they couldn’t get a good shot and edged the car over to the center of the road. The cops were shouting at him to stop and then the high-pitched
twing of slugs hitting his car echoed in his ears, and he laughed.

They sped through the two cops as they jumped out of the way to avoid the car. Calvin sat up as they fired from behind him and he turned down a residential street. The cruisers weren’t anywhere near him and he saw an open garage with a truck in it. He pulled in next to the truck and waited.

“What the fuck!”

“You say that too much,” he said, pulling out a package of gum and taking a stick.

“It’s like a two hundred dollar fine. Why the fuck would you do that?” she said, punching him in the arm.

He laughed and popped the gum into his mouth. “It was fun. Nobody got hurt.”

She punched him again. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Relax, we’re fine. Nothing’s
gonna happen.”

“Well what are we supposed to do now? We’re in someone’s garage.”

Calvin rolled down his window and heard voices coming from the backyard. “They’re busy. We’re cool for a minute.”

He got out and saw the control panel for the garage and shut the door.
The door was slow going down and the sounds of sirens grew louder. When it touched the cement floor, three cruisers shot by. He went to the small windows on the doors and looked out, watching as they sped past them.

“What if they find us here?” she said.

“Then they find us. No big deal.” He looked to the door leading into the house. “Let’s go see what’s inside.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not going into someone’s house.”

“Don’t go anywhere.”

“Calvin, where are you going? Calvin!”

He walked to the door and tried the knob. It turned and he opened the door and stepped inside. The house was quiet except for music and voices in the back. He walked to the sliding glass door and looked out to the backyard. There were several people mingling in front of tiki torches with drinks in their hands, Pink Floyd playing over some outdoor speakers.