Peak Road - A Short Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 10)

  PEAK ROAD

  A Jon Stanton Short Novel by

  VICTOR METHOS

  Copyright 2015 Victor Methos

  Kindle Edition

  License Statement

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy.

  Please note that this is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All events in this work are purely from the imagination of the author and are not intended to signify, represent, or reenact any event in actual fact.

  I’m not afraid of werewolves, vampires or haunted hotels. I’m afraid of what real human beings do to other real human beings . . .

  ― Walter Jon Williams

  1

  One of the primary traits of all sex offenders is an inability to admit to their crimes. And the worse the crime, the more defenses they put up—some of them actually block the crimes from their memory and believe they were wrongly accused. But more men are falsely accused of sex crimes than any other crime, and discerning the truly innocent from the delusional is sometimes impossible.

  I stood in the observation room, watching Interrogation Room Three through a two-way mirror. The observation rooms were always dark, and I was alone. Though it was March, in Honolulu that only meant additional rain, so the room felt warm. Outside the precinct, we called these rooms “interview” rooms, but internally, they were known as “interrogation” rooms. A subtle shift in phrasing was all anybody needed to change how that person viewed something.

  The man had been in Interrogation Three for over six hours. He stood and ran his hands through his shoulder-length hair before pacing the room like a bored child. Now was when I went in—the time when the suspect was teetering, off balance, almost angry at the police but not quite.

  I left the darkened observation room and entered Interrogation Three. My eyes took a moment to get used to the harsh lighting, and a few spots clouded my vision. I moved to the table and sat down. “Hello, Frank. My name is Jon Stanton. I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if that’s okay.”

  Frank thought for a moment then sat across from me. He had been reluctant to give a confession to two other detectives, and they’d asked that I come in.

  Getting a confession was more art than science, and it depended heavily on the psychology of the offender. Because Frank was resistant, I decided to use the Reid technique—a method of interrogation banned in some European countries, particularly when used against children, because it risked a false confession. But it was effective against resistant suspects.

  The technique involved an accusatory process where the interrogator does not give the offender a chance to deny the allegation. I would start with an assumption of his guilt.

  “Frank, your wife has already given us everything we need. She said she came home and found her daughter in her bed. Thinking she was asleep, she left her there for a few hours. When she went to check on her, she found her unresponsive and called an ambulance. The forensic techs told me they found bits of cotton in her esophagus. They also found the underwear you used to suffocate her. The sex was obvious, and I have no doubt we’re going to find your semen inside of her.” I paused, staring into his eyes. “She was an amazingly beautiful sixteen-year-old. It’d be hard to control myself around her. Seeing her cuddle up to me, or get out of the shower, get into bed every night—it’d drive me crazy to have to look.”

  He didn’t say anything, but I had his attention.

  “You’re a man—no one can blame you for that. It must’ve just been so hard to resist. I can’t imagine what you went through. And I think any red-blooded male is gonna feel the same way.”

  He stared down at the table without saying anything. I took his lack of objection as a positive response to my explanation of the crime. The next step was to give the offender a justification, to shift blame away from him.

  “Any man in your spot would’ve done the same thing. I saw some pictures of her, and she was always wearing those skimpy outfits—tight shorts, tank tops, yoga pants… I couldn’t imagine being around her every day. I bet she flirted with you, too. She seemed like she’d be into you. Was she always flirting?”

  I had to be careful. I couldn’t allow him to say something like “I didn’t do it.” Getting a confession would be much more difficult afterward. He opened his mouth, and I quickly added, “I’m sure it wasn’t rape, not like Detective Alamea is saying. She doesn’t get it. Doesn’t know what it’s like to be a man and have a beautiful girl flirting with you all the time. So you guys had sex. Tell me about it. Was it good?”

  He nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly.

  “I bet she was tight.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, man. She was somethin’ else.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “I blame the culture,” I said. “All these girls out there dress that way and act that way to get attention. And then when you give them that attention, they start screaming rape. It’s not rape if they wanted it. I don’t think they understand that.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, man. I could never rape her. That’s some bullshit.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah, we just, like, fuckin’ around. Ya know? And then she starts talkin’ bullshit like she gonna tell her mom.”

  Now I had to reinforce my sincerity.

  “It’s just women. They don’t get it, and they hold all the power. Do you know if a man and woman call about the same exact crime, the police are twice as likely to believe the woman? So if it’s a he-said-she-said, they’re gonna believe her. That’s why you’re here right now—because a woman detective thinks you raped this girl.”

  “Nah, man, that’s bullshit. She was into it.”

  “I know,” I said softly. “I know. I believe you, and I’m on your side, Frank. But we still got a dead body we need to explain. Now here’s what I think happened: you two were having sex, probably instigated by her, and then she wanted it rough. She liked it rough, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, man. Yeah, she did.”

  “I bet. So she likes it rough, and you give it to her, but it went a little too far. Just was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  He clammed up for a moment, then tears came to his eyes. “Yeah, man. Just an accident. I didn’t mean nothin’. We was just fuckin’ around, and it was just an accident.”

  “When’d you put the underwear in her mouth? Before or after you started having sex?”

  “After,” he said, wiping the tears away on the back of his hands. “After we started.”

  I had to offer him the loaded alternative—provide two alternative explanations for what happened. The offender was bound to choose the more socially acceptable one, even though it still meant admitting to his guilt.

  “So the way I see it,” I said, “either that woman detective is right, and you raped your stepdaughter and then killed her because it turned you on, or you two were having sex and you accidentally killed her because she liked it rough.”

  “Yeah, man. It was an accident. We just havin’ sex, and I put the underwear in her mouth ’cause I knew she’d like it.”

  “And you were still having sex with her when she died, weren’t you?”

  He was crying now. “She was screamin’, and I just thought she was into it. I thought that’s all it was. I didn’t know she couldn�
�t breathe. It was an accident.”

  I sat still for a moment. The ME would confirm whether or not the sex was consensual, but that ultimately didn’t matter. She was underage, and Frank would be charged with statutory rape even if the sex was consensual. But as for the killing, Frank Motta had admitted to putting the underwear in her mouth and watching her die. Hawaii didn’t have the death penalty, and his charges would be plea-bargained down a notch, but he would serve at least twenty in prison. By the time he got out, he would be an old man who wasn’t as likely to hurt anyone else.

  I leaned forward, close enough to him that the camera couldn’t pick up what I said, and whispered, “Don’t go to hell, Frank. Pray every day and repent. For the next twenty or thirty years, while you sit in a cell, you repent.”

  Then I rose and left the room.

  2

  I went out to the bullpen, where several desks and cubicles were shoved together. The building we were in sat across the street from an actual palace, the last palace standing on American soil, which had belonged to a Hawaiian queen. She was the last royalty the islands had seen before the United States annexed them.

  The sugarcane conglomerate had fooled both the Hawaiian people and the United States government into the relationship. The islanders agreed that whites had taken the island by force, and the number of incidents of native Hawaiians attacking and beating whites ticked up slowly every year. Frustrated whites had begun to band together, taking the top government jobs, filing lawsuits, and fighting back. White-on-native crime was also on an upward trajectory. But the simmering chaos of the population was not visible in the natural terrain. The islands’ beauty and serenity transcended the petty squabbles of the people. That was the reason I’d stayed when I could’ve gone back to San Diego and started up a lucrative private investigation firm again.

  Several detectives, including my partner, Laka, sipped coffee or tea from Styrofoam cups. As she did almost every day, Laka was wearing a sleeveless shirt that revealed the myriad of tribal tattoos covering her arms.

  “Well?” she asked.

  I had asked her not to watch. I didn’t perform as well when I knew people were watching an interrogation. The camera was enough. The footage would be the ultimate arbiter that the twelve men and women on the jury would rely on while deciding Frank Motta’s fate.

  “It’s done. You have a confession.” I sat down at my desk and stared at the floating screensaver on my computer screen.

  Laka kissed me on the cheek then ran back to the interrogation rooms. My muscles felt pulled in several different directions at once. I stretched as much as I could from one side to the other, but the movement didn’t help much. Checking my phone, it was past seven in the evening.

  Laka and another officer returned with Frank. They led him around the corner to the cells, then Laka came back and sat on my desk.

  “We might be able to put him away for life,” she said.

  “No, it’ll plead out. I think at most he’ll do thirty years. Enough so he’s too old to hurt anyone.”

  “Eighty-year-olds can hurt people, too.” She folded her arms. “I want life for the bastard. Revenge, Jon. Just good old revenge for that beautiful young girl.”

  “Revenge doesn’t bring her back.”

  “No, but it can bring her peace if she’s still watching.”

  I turned back to my computer. Several of my files required follow up, and now that I had interrogated him, I was part of Frank’s case—and that would require writing up a narrative supplemental report. It would probably also require attending a preliminary hearing six months down the line. But I didn’t feel like diving into any of that right now.

  “I’m taking off.” I rose and stretched my back.

  “Thanks again.”

  “No worries.”

  I headed outside. Though the air was warm, rain had prevented me from surfing over the last few days. I got to drive by some of the most beautiful beaches in the world on the way home to the North Shore. The view wasn’t the same as being in the ocean, but it would hold me over until the rain stopped.

  Tomorrow was Sunday. I worked one Saturday every month, but that was enough to make me hate working Saturdays. Working the weekends meant losing the main thing people look forward to during the week, and the job could turn into a grind for anyone who didn’t have a release.

  When I got home, my neighbor Julie was out with my dog, Hanny, who ran up and jumped on my leg. She had her own business and didn’t need to go in every day, and she loved watching him. I let her, rather than putting him in a doggy daycare.

  “Hey, boy.” I bent down and rubbed his head before wrestling with him for a few seconds. What is it about pets that makes us revert to children around them? I looked up at Julie. “How was he?”

  “Fine. We went to the beach and he ran around in the water. Mostly, he slept. I don’t think he likes being apart from you.”

  “I miss him, too.”

  She hesitated. “Any dinner plans tonight?”

  Julie was lovely. She looked as though she could’ve been in any black-and-white movie from the forties. She was always dressed modestly, avoiding the revealing styles women her age seemed to favor, and that actually made her more attractive.

  We’d had similar conversations before—conversations that should’ve led to dates. But I never followed through. My job had destroyed every relationship I’d ever had. It was always the job. I had seen detectives—good, solid men—put bullets in their heads out of the blue, and I knew there was only so much depravity a man could see before he snapped. How much a person could stand varied. Some detectives and FBI agents could function for forty years on the job and not blink. Others became alcoholics and wife-abusers within a year. I didn’t know where I was on that spectrum, but if it ever became too much, I didn’t want anyone else around when I finally decided enough was enough. I hoped I would have the sense to get out of police work entirely, rely on my doctorate in psychology, and go back to teaching. But who knows? I’d seen too many cops crack to believe that I wouldn’t be the same.

  “I’m just going to grab something quick and go to bed. I’m beat.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at Hanny. “Well, if you need some company, like to watch a movie or something, shoot me a text.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  She smiled and lightly touched my hand. “You’re welcome.”

  I watched her walk back to her yard. How could this be so difficult? Why do I have to choose between affection and the job? Is every cop in the same boat, or do others manage it better than I do? It was hard to tell. Police work involved a real machismo culture, and no one ever quite knew what cops were thinking or feeling.

  Hanny whined at my feet.

  “Let’s go inside and make a couple burritos. What d’ya say?”

  He made a grunting sound as if he approved, and we headed into the house.

  3

  My first call in the morning was to my sons. Jon Junior, a junior in high school, didn’t answer, but his older brother, Mathew, did.

  “How are ya, buddy?” I said.

  “Doin’ good. I got your gift card. Thanks.”

  I knew he needed money while living in Boston and attending college, but I never liked sending him cash. So I sent him gift cards he could use to buy whatever he might need. I didn’t know if he appreciated it or not, but he always said thank you. “You’re welcome. So, you datin’ anybody these days?”

  “Nah, not really. There’s a couple girls I’m hanging out with. I got so much work, it’s hard to do anything else.”

  “Anthropology’s that hard, huh?”

  “Not too bad, but I actually wanted to tell you that I’m doing a double major. I’m also pre-med.”

  I hesitated. My father had been a physician, and he had planned for me to go to medical school after I completed my doctorate. Our relationship had never been the same after I’d chosen law enforcement instead.

  “I think that’s… great, Matty. Be
ing a doctor’s a noble profession. Any particular field you’re interested in?” Please don’t say psychiatry.

  “Psychiatry.”

  Of course. Everything he’d seen and everything he’d been through with me had had a profound impact on him. He could have wanted to heal, but I had a feeling he wanted to understand—understand how people could do the horrific things they did without knowing why.

  “That’s great,” I said again. “Do me one favor, though: go intern somewhere. Somewhere you can see firsthand what you’ll be doing.”

  “I’m going to. There’s a care center close to my apartment. I’m gonna put in an application to be a CNA there. They’re mostly people suffering from dementia, stuff like that, but it should be good experience.”

  “I’m proud of you.” I hesitated. “How’s your mom?”

  “Fine.” He paused, and the silence lasted a little too long.

  “What is it, Matty?”

  “She should tell you herself.”

  “Tell me what? Just tell me.”

  “Her and Tom. She’s pregnant, Dad.”

  My heart sank. Our relationship had ended years ago, but we still had a bond—a deep bond—because of our children. Whatever else happened, wherever else we went in life, Matty and Jon Junior linked us forever. And now she was going to have that link with another man.

  “Oh… are you excited to have a little brother or sister?”

  “I mean, yeah. I’m not around that much to really see them, but, yeah. I think it’ll be fun.”

  My throat felt dry, and I swallowed. “Well, tell her congratulations for me.”

  “I will, Dad.”

  “Matty, I love you.”

  “I know. I love you, too.”

  I hung up and stared at the phone. The news cut—and much deeper than I had thought it would. For a second, I thought about calling her and telling her congratulations, but she knew me, almost better than anyone had ever known me. She would see through that. She would hear the pain in my voice.