Purgatory (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 11)

  PURGATORY

  A Jon Stanton Thriller

  VICTOR METHOS

  Copyright 2017 Victor Methos

  Kindle/Print Edition

  License Statement

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book 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.

  1

  Blood trickled from the trunk of the car and pooled on the bumper, then dripped onto the warm pavement. The black stain could have passed for motor oil, but Stanton knew better.

  The silver Chevy was parked on the side of the road, in the dirt near a light post. This section of the island was little more than empty jungle, and the road connected two towns that had populations of less than three thousand. Stanton couldn’t even guess how long it took for someone to call the cops about an abandoned car on an empty road.

  The responding officer had called in a tow, and the tow truck driver noticed the smell when he bent down to hook up his rig. Decaying human flesh smelled like nothing else on earth. Even smelling it for the first time, some primal part of the human brain always recognized the horrible wrongness of it.

  By the time Stanton had arrived, the trunk had been popped by a shift sergeant. Several uniforms stood by the car, chatting and conjecturing about what had happened. Stanton stood a dozen feet back, watching the scene. He couldn’t take his eyes off the blood and thought how odd it was that a liquid coursing through the human body gave life, and when enough of it was drained, life left as well.

  “Detective,” the sergeant said, “you wanna take a look?”

  Stanton shifted his gaze from the blood to the chubby face of the sergeant and his closely cropped hair. Stanton had seen him before at a dozen crime scenes, and he always had the same expression: amusement hidden behind false anger. The sergeant enjoyed gruesome crime scenes. Stanton pictured him reviewing the crime scene photos by himself when no one else was around.

  “Yeah,” Stanton said. “Where’s SIS?”

  “On their way. They got a suicide they’re lookin’ at right now up on Komo Mai. Waste of time, I think. What you need forensics for on a suicide?”

  Stanton ignored him and approached the trunk. He hesitated before looking inside.

  The body had stiffened, and the eyes had gone milk-white. Blood dribbled out of the man’s mouth, a terrified expression frozen on his face. Death hadn’t been quick.

  Duct tape was wrapped tightly around his wrists, but his feet were free. The mottled dark blotches of pooled blood had already begun to stain his right side—the side he lay on—like one massive bruise. The discoloration was disturbing: half his face ghostly white and the other half dark purple from the settled blood.

  “Do you have an owner on the car yet?” Stanton asked.

  “No, we thought we’d wait for you.”

  You mean you wanted me to do the work, Stanton thought.

  He went back to his car and opened the fishing tackle box in the trunk with nearly everything the Scientific Investigation Section kept in their travel packs. He snapped on latex gloves before going back to the car.

  Running his hands slowly down the man’s pants, he found no wallet, nothing. He had to be careful as the scene hadn’t been recorded or photographed yet and SIS would give him hell if he moved anything, but it felt improper to do nothing while he waited.

  When he opened the glove box, scraps of paper spilled out. The registration he found in the pile said the car belonged to Melanie Dyches. He put the card on the dashboard and searched the rest of the car. On the back seat was a drawing of Santa Claus on a reindeer, drawn by a small child. He prodded along the floorboards before opening the center console.

  The console was full of watches, some of them expensive, each wrapped in a plastic bag. Stanton counted ten before getting out of the car.

  “Sergeant, run a check on Melanie Dyches, please. The birthdate is on the registration.”

  The sergeant groaned quietly and grabbed the card before heading to his cruiser. Stanton went back around to the car’s trunk. The victim’s look of horror would stay with him, he knew, and that expression would stay on the man’s face until the mortician went to work. By the time of the wake, the features would have been massaged into something more peaceful. Stanton always thought the dead looked like plastic dolls at wakes.

  Stanton took out his phone, opened a flashlight app, and went through the trunk in detail, noting the spatters of blood and how they had fallen. Mentally drawing lines to determine the trajectory, nothing added up. The lines were off.

  An SUV pulled up behind him, and Lorenzo Tate hopped out. The forensic tech was known for his tight shirts showing off his muscular arms, and even at two in the morning, he was still wearing one. Stanton wondered if Tate considered it part of his uniform—he never arrived at a scene already in the paper overalls required when he got down to work.

  “What we got, Detective?”

  “Single gunshot wound to the temple. Hands bound with duct tape. He’s probably been here three days, I’d guess.”

  “Well, let me do the guessing,” Tate said, lightly brushing Stanton aside while he looked into the trunk. “Hmm. Look at that distention. Those little buggers in there are having a feast. Can’t get that much bacterial gas in three days. I’d guess five. No one called in an abandoned car for five days, huh?”

  “He might’ve been killed and kept somewhere for a while, then brought out here just today.”

  Lorenzo nodded. “Well, I’ll work it up and give you what I got soon enough.” He looked at him. “You sleeping much, Detective? You look like shit.”

  “Let me know as soon as you have anything,” Stanton said, ignoring him. He went back to his jeep. His shift was up, and he was so tired he wondered if he was even safe driving home. He watched Lorenzo filming the scene for a moment, started his jeep, and pulled away.

  2

  Stanton pulled up at his house at three in the morning. Julie would be asleep in her own house, adjacent to his. Though they hadn’t moved in together yet, they had been engaged for five months. She had wanted to get married after a month, but Stanton kept putting it off. He made up excuses, but they both understood that he wasn’t quite ready for another marriage. Still, she was kind and patient and didn’t push him.

  The inside of his house always had the salty scent of the ocean, which was less than fifty feet away from his back patio. He made sure to leave open a window whenever he left for work so he would get that scent as soon as he walked in.

  Stanton stripped on the way to the bathroom and tossed his jeans and button-up shirt at the overflowing hamper. He got into the shower and let the water run over him, cascading down his back before he lifted his face to it and pretended it was the sea rushing over him.

  He pulled on some basketball shorts and went downstairs. In the kitchen, he fixed a plate of cheese and grapes before he flopped onto the couch. He went to Netflix and flipped through the list of shows in his queue, knowing full well he wouldn’t be paying attention to any of them. It was a ritual, one he hoped would induce sleep. He leaned back, put his head on the cushions, and turned on Stranger Things. He’d already watched the entire series, but that was
sort of the point.

  He took a deep breath and hoped he would be able to sleep tonight.

  In the morning, the sunlight streamed through the windows, and Stanton woke up to the sound of the surf. It was a good swell, one he would normally jump at, getting in some surfing before heading out to work, but exhaustion sapped him of even the semblance of strength. He checked the clock on his phone: he had gotten less than an hour of sleep. He said a quick prayer and got up.

  He had to be at the station for morning roll call in an hour, so he just got the same shirt and jeans he wore the day before out of the hamper and ate a Pop Tart before leaving the house.

  He went over to Julie’s. She came to the door a few seconds after he knocked, wearing a short robe and slippers as though she were a guest at a hotel rather than in her own home. The tattoo of the butterfly on her thigh gleamed from the lotion she had put on.

  Her face lit up, as it always did when she saw him, and he felt guilty because he knew his didn’t when he saw her.

  He leaned in and kissed her, and she took his hand and led him inside.

  She’d decorated her home with Buddhist statues and Eastern paintings, having gotten her degree in Near East Studies. That was before she opened her own retail clothing store, which now had locations throughout the island. She was wealthy, Stanton knew, though they had never talked about exactly how much she was worth, and they both understood that he didn’t really care. Money had never meant much to him. For a time, he’d lived in a shack on the beach with twenty other people, practically homeless. If he was honest with himself, it was probably the happiest time of his life: he had been very poor but saw the universe as a magical place of opportunity.

  “I made some egg-white omelets,” she said. “Want one?”

  Omelets, not omelet. She made him breakfast every morning, and he knew even on the days he didn’t come over she made it anyway. “Sure. Do you have any orange juice?”

  “Of course. I stocked up for you. Sit down.”

  Before he could sit, his stout pit bull, Hanny, jumped up at him. Stanton bent down and rubbed his head. He wasn’t home enough to keep him at his house, and Julie had become his de facto owner.

  “He hasn’t been causing trouble, has he?”

  “No. He’s sweet. In fact, some guys were hitting on me on my run last night, and a couple of growls from him backed them off. He’s really protective of me.”

  Stanton sat at the breakfast table, Hanny resting his chin on Stanton’s foot. From here, Stanton could see the ocean outside, the way the rising sun glittered in gold off the coming surf. At least twenty surfers were already out, and a twinge of jealousy went through him that he wasn’t there with them.

  “I talked to Christopher about renting the Wakea Cliff. He said we just need to reserve it a couple of months in advance. It’s perfect though. When can you come see it with me?”

  “Not today. I caught a case last night.”

  “What kind?”

  She set a glass of orange juice in front of him, and he took a sip. He had spoken little about his work to her—so little that he wasn’t sure she knew he was actually full-time Homicide. He knew he had to tell her before they got married, but he wanted to keep it away from her as long as he possibly could.

  “Nothing interesting,” he finally said. “But it needs to be worked up. The first two days are the most important.”

  She sat down across from him and sighed. “You don’t look well, my love.”

  She said it so kindly and simply that she must’ve known there was no way he could take offense. He just nodded and took another sip of his juice. “I know.”

  “Will you please talk to your psychiatrist about prescribing something? You need sleep.”

  “If I start with sleep meds, I won’t be able to stop. I’ll become reliant on them. I’d rather fight through it.”

  “But it’s a fight you’re losing.”

  “It doesn’t last.”

  “Have you had insomnia like this before?”

  The question made him uncomfortable. Only one time in his life could he remember insomnia of this degree: when he was ten years old and his sister disappeared.

  “No,” he said. It was the first time he had ever lied to her, and guilt bore down on him.

  He finished half his juice and rose. “I better get going.” Hanny whined as he got up and trotted over to stand in front of the door, preventing him from leaving. Stanton bent down again and said, “Let’s go for a walk tonight. Okay?”

  He rubbed Hanny behind the ears and kissed Julie. He could see the crease in her forehead that appeared whenever she was worried about something but didn’t know if she should discuss it with him.

  “I’m fine,” he said, forcing a grin. “Promise.”

  3

  Stanton arrived at the station a little past eight. He headed up to the fifth floor and the Homicide table. His cubicle had no decorations beyond a photograph of his boys, Mathew and Jon Jr., but now there was a photo next to them of Julie holding Hanny near the top of a mountain on Hawaii, the Big Island. They had hiked for three hours that day and took a nap at the top before heading back down. He remembered her scent as she lay on his chest and a sky so intensely blue and clear that if he had seen a photo, he wasn’t certain he’d be able to tell what it was.

  Laka, his partner, thumped a container of tea onto his desk in front of him.

  “Orange mint,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  She leaned against his desk and watched him for a second as he logged on to his computer. “Thanks for covering for me last night.”

  “I was up anyway.”

  “Still can’t sleep, huh?”

  Stanton shook his head.

  “Just a body in a trunk?”

  “Nothing’s ‘just’ anything.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “I did. Sorry, I’m agitated.”

  “I can cover. Go surf or run or whatever shit you do to clear your head.”

  “I just need to work for a while. It’ll pass.”

  Stanton found the electronic case file. The sergeant had gotten a hit on Melanie Dyches. She worked at a mall not too far from the station. She was unmarried, and both parents were living, but she had no siblings. In her DMV photo, Stanton saw she had what appeared to be a dark red, scaly burn on her neck.

  Roll call was just the morning meeting. Something about calling it a “morning meeting” didn’t seem to sit well with the brass, so they made it sound like a military exercise.

  The deputy chief of the Criminal Investigations Section stood up in front of a group of twenty-two detectives and went through the previous night’s reports and what was expected for the day. Stanton stood in the back, his arms folded as he leaned against a counter, and he felt the slow haze of his lack of sleep dribbling over him, but sleep itself wouldn’t come. It would push him to the brink of the fantasy world between waking and dreaming and then flit away, leaving him more exhausted than before.

  “Detective Stanton,” the deputy chief said, “care to join us?”

  “Sorry. I’m here.”

  “I asked you what progress was made on your body from last night.”

  “Vehicle was registered to Melanie Dyches. I’m going to check her home and workplace this morning. My guess is her vehicle was stolen and used for the homicide.”

  “Well, keep your guesses to yourself, and get me some facts.”

  The deputy chief moved on, and Stanton rubbed his face and closed his eyes again.

  4

  By the time roll call was over, Stanton guessed Melanie Dyches would already be at work, so he went straight there.

  The mall was just opening, and as Stanton entered he could see associates pulling open the gates and straightening displays. He had worked in a mall once, briefly, as a teenager. He didn’t remember the store, but he had sat at the register and read while a secret shopper had come in to evaluate him. The next day, the manager had asked him what was
so important that he had to read it at work. Stanton replied, “The Undiscovered Self.” The manager shook his head and fired him on the spot.

  Stanton approached the Victoria’s Secret where Melanie worked. She was at the front straightening a display, and he waited until she turned around to speak so he didn’t startle her.

  “We’re not open yet.”

  “Are you Melanie?”

  “I am.”

  Stanton held up his badge and said, “I just had a few questions, if that’s okay.”

  “Oh my gosh, did you guys find my car?”

  “We did.”

  She seemed about to burst into tears. “Holy shit! Thank you so much!”

  She hugged him, and it startled Stanton. He didn’t move until she let go. Then he said, “I didn’t see a stolen vehicle report. Did you report it stolen to the police?”

  “Yeah. Well, my mom did.”

  Stanton watched her but didn’t detect any deception on her part. He made a quick note to follow up on the stolen vehicle report. “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Sarah Dyches. She said she called last night.”

  Stanton nodded. “Your car’s not damaged in any way. It should be fine.”

  She put her hands over her heart, a smile spreading on her lips. “Thank you so much! I don’t have much money, and there’s no way I would’ve been able to get a new car. Where’d you guys find it?”

  “It was abandoned on the side of the road about twenty miles from here.”

  “So when can I get it back?”

  “Not for a while. We found someone in your car.” Stanton watched her reaction. “It was a body, actually.”

  She didn’t respond for a second, and he could almost see her mind trying to work through what he had said. “Like, dead? Like, you found a dead body in my car?”

  He nodded. “I should have an identification on the body today. I’ll come by with a photo and see if it’s someone you knew. When did you notice your car missing?”