Sin City Homicide Read online

  SIN CITY HOMICIDE

  A Thriller

  VICTOR METHOS

  The very great majority prefer to do good rather than to do evil, and would pursue a correct course, were it not for the evil power that subjects them to its sway.

  -Brigham Young

  1

  Jon Stanton tore up his palms as he leapt over the barbed-wire fence. He fell back in pain as the blood began to flow. Looking up, he could see the figure of a man wearing a jacket and baseball cap on the other side of the fence. He stopped momentarily, turned to him, and almost politely bowed his head before sprinting again.

  Stanton leapt to his feet and took off his jacket. He threw it over the barbed wire and jumped up onto it, using his legs to push himself over before letting himself fall to the pavement on the other side.

  Dashing through the alley, he spotted a stack of garbage cans next to a dumpster. He pulled out his .45 caliber Desert Eagle and spun around to the other side of the dumpster. No one was behind them.

  Stanton ran into the dark street. It was well past midnight, and few cars were out so late on a Tuesday night. He heard a crash across the street, where the figure was kicking in the flimsy door of an apartment building.

  Stanton sprinted over and held up his weapon as he entered the building. The light-blue carpets were worn, and the walls were stained. On his left, stairs led up to the other floors, and a second stairway to his right led down to what looked like a laundry room and the entrance to the parking garage.

  Loud thoughts ran through his mind. Indian gurus called a mind that couldn’t quiet itself the wild monkey. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, counting to ten in his head until his mind was calm. His sense of hearing was keen, but he couldn’t hear anything now. The building creaked and settled in for the night, but he couldn’t discern anything out of the ordinary.

  Stanton stepped gingerly down the stairs, remaining as quiet as possible. Then he heard a mumble for the floor above, hardly lasting more than a moment. But he had heard that sound before and knew instinctively what it was: a muffled scream.

  He bounded up the stairs two at a time. On the second floor, with his weapon in front of him, he went slowly from door to door, listening, looking for anything that could indicate the door had recently been opened. As he got to the end of the hallway, he looked toward the last apartment on the right. The lights were off, but the blue light of a television flickered under the door. The sound was turned completely off.

  Stanton held his breath and said a quick prayer. He lifted his heel and bashed it into the door just underneath the doorknob. The door flew open and slammed into the wall as splinters rained to the floor.

  In the living room stood Juan Roberto Gonzalez, holding a .32 caliber revolver to the head of a young girl, no more than twenty.

  “I’ll fucking kill her,” he shouted. “Back off. Back off!”

  “Where do you want me to go?” Stanton asked, his weapon aimed at the man’s head. Every time he had a clear shot, Juan pulled the girl up just a little farther.

  “I wanna car. I wanna fucking car. Ya hear?”

  “The whole state’s looking for you, Juan. Where are you going to go? They won’t let you cross the border. They’ll shoot out your tires before that happens.”

  “Fine. She got a baby, too. I’m a pop her and then the baby and then myself. How’s that, motherfucker?”

  Stanton lowered his weapon. “You win.” He pulled out his keys his other hand. “You can take my car. But leave the girl.”

  “No way. She comin’ with me.”

  “Okay, but leave the baby.”

  He was quiet a second and then nodded. Stanton threw the keys on the floor between them and began to back out of the apartment, holding his hands high, his weapon dangling loosely in his right hand.

  There were moments, he knew, when a person could see the future. Not fortune telling—he didn’t believe in that—but just moments where the outcome was certain, where nothing could change what was about to occur. He saw Juan’s eyes go to the keys. That was such a moment.

  His hand tightened over his Desert Eagle, and he lowered it to shoulder height. Juan’s eyes went wide as he saw the movement and began to raise his gun.

  Stanton fired. The round went through the girl’s shoulder and into Juan’s throat. He stumbled back as the girl screamed. Blood poured out of him, down his shirt, and onto the floor. He made an awful gurgling sound as he sucked for breath, but none came. He collapsed onto his knees and fell to his side.

  Despite his insistance that he hadn’t been hurt badly enough to warrant the attention, Stanton sat in the back of the ambulance as a very young paramedic performed a routine check and bandaged his hands. The kid noticed the burn scars on Stanton’s neck.

  “What happened?”

  “Wasn’t as lucky that time.”

  After the kid was convinced Stanton was fine, another detective informed Stanton that he would have to go down to the precinct the next day and provide a full statement about the shooting. The detective also took Stanton’s sidearm. Stanton then got into his car and drove to the Scripps Hospital nearby. He went to the ER, where the young girl was being treated. He waited until the doctors had cleared out before entering.

  “How you feeling?” he asked.

  “You? What the fuck you doing here?”

  “I just came to see if you were okay.”

  “I would be if you hadn’t fucking shot me. I’m a sue your ass and the police. My uncle’s a lawyer and says we got a case.”

  “Was he the first person you called?”

  “What? Fuck you. You better—”

  Stanton didn’t wait to hear the rest. He turned and made his way out of the hospital. He sat down on a bench near the entrance and watched the moon for a long time. He had left instructions with one of the rookies to notify him of any news about Juan Gonzalez. Twenty minutes later, he got a text—Juan had survived. He would live, but he would be in the ICU for at least a week until he could have reconstructive surgery on his throat.

  Stanton breathed a sigh of relief. He wouldn’t be sleeping that night, but at least he could lie in his bed and calm his thoughts. As he walked to his car, he saw a man in a suit carrying a briefcase enter the hospital with a younger man, who appeared to have just woken up. They were talking about what a great legal case they might have against the San Diego PD.

  2

  Stanton woke early in the morning and went surfing at Ocean Beach Park. Earlier that month, a couple had been canoeing not a hundred feet from shore when their canoe overturned. Only one body was recovered. He’d known them well. They had spent time together in the ocean, waiting for the waves to pick up. He had liked them, but he realized that he didn’t remember their names. It bothered him a few moments, then he pushed it out of his mind.

  After showering and dressing, Stanton dialed a number on his cell phone as he left his apartment on the eleventh floor of one of the poshest buildings in San Diego. He’d rented the place from an absentee landlord who had relocated to Florida. Stanton put a check in the mail every month, and the guy left him alone.

  “Hello?” A female voice answered the call.

  “Hey, Mel, it’s me.”

  “Hey, you just missed them. They headed out to their friend James’s house for a sleepover.”

  Stanton cringed. He had warned his ex-wife repeatedly that sleepovers weren’t permitted. His sons, who were eleven and six, were too young, and he had seen far too much happen at sleepovers during his time as a Sex Crimes detective years ago. Too often, mothers wounded from marriages that had fallen apart unexpectedly fell victim to the charms of predators. These stepfathers and boyfriends sought victims wherever they could find them.

&n
bsp; “I don’t know how many times I can say this, Mel. How many times do we have to have this conversation?”

  “If you don’t like it, we can go to court and have the judge decide if sleepovers are okay. I had them growing up, and nothing happened, Jon. You need to relax.”

  Stanton exhaled and closed his eyes as he waited for the elevator. Not even a semblance of a relationship was left between them. His words carried no more weight than a stranger’s; she showed no consideration for what he wanted.

  “I gotta go, Mel. I’ll call them tomorrow.”

  “Bye.”

  It was nearly ten o’clock when Stanton hopped onto the freeway and headed to the Northern Precinct. Traffic was light, and he listened to a Moby CD, skipping the songs that had lyrics. The day was turning out to be hotter than he’d expected, and he took his sports coat off at a stoplight, letting his badge dangle around his neck on a chain, a tactic he had picked up from Lieutenant Daniel Childs when Childs had been a detective. If he wore it around his neck, he was less likely to lose it. Few things were as humiliating for a police officer, and it was a constant worry of his.

  He pulled into Northern and parked. Uniforms were buzzing around like bees in a hive as he walked into the building.

  The secretary at the front desk saw him and smiled. “How are you, Johnny baby?”

  “Good, Candace. How’s Jake?”

  “He’s getting bigger every day. Pretty soon, he’s gonna have to be potty trained.”

  “Well, don’t go too hard on him. We tried to get Matty potty trained before two, and he got so scared of the toilet, he wouldn’t go in to the bathroom until he was almost four.”

  “We got a video with Elmo. It’s supposed to be the best thing out there, but we’ll see how it goes. Um, did you see that email?”

  “What email?”

  “IAD’s here to interview you.”

  “Yeah, I was in a shooting yesterday.”

  “Oh, no! You okay?”

  “I’m fine. The perp’s gonna live, too.”

  “Oh, just routine bullshit, then, huh? Well, they’re waitin’ for you in the interrogation room.”

  “Subtle. They couldn’t do it in the lounge?”

  She laughed. “Them boys are wound up so tight, I’m surprised they can walk with those sticks up their asses. Be careful with them, Johnny.”

  “Thanks.”

  Stanton walked down the hall, past the interrogation rooms, to his office. He placed his wallet and cell phone in his desk drawer before locking his office from the outside. Although it was a police precinct, thefts were reported every week.

  He went down to a storage room at the back of the building, found the thermostat, and turned up the heat to one hundred degrees. Then he went out front, where he opened all the windows and closed all the vents. Then he went to the lounge and waited. He was willing to bet IAD would never take off their suit coats during an interview.

  In about ten minutes, the building had heated up enough to make him sweat. He found the open interrogation room, where two men were sitting on one side of the large gray table.

  “Hi, I’m Jon Stanton. I’m here for an interview.”

  “Oh, yeah,” a tall man with dyed black hair said as he rose. “Please, Detective, have a seat.”

  Stanton sat across from them. The other man was hefty with a round, cherubic face and balding hair that was gray at the temples. He was smiling widely and had his hands folded in front of him on the table. Sweat was pouring down his shining forehead.

  “I’m Lieutenant Barkley, and this is Lieutenant Davis. I don’t think we’ve met before.”

  “No, not since IAD got transferred to the administrative offices. I don’t get down there at all.”

  “Well, this is a formal interview about the shooting of Mr. Gonzalez. You should know that we spoke with the victim in this case…” He flipped through his files. “A Ms. Vicky Guler. Would you like to read her statement?”

  “No.”

  “Now, Jon,” Lieutenant Davis said, “we’re on your side. We just want the truth. Hell, I think this was a clean shot, and I’m embarrassed that we gotta even do this.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “The more truthful you are with us, the sooner this will be over.”

  “You guys haven’t read my file, have you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I have some experience with IAD. If you’ll pardon the insult, I don’t have a lot of faith that you’re on my side. Let’s just do this and get it over with.”

  Barkley pulled out a digital recorder and hit record. He placed it on the table between them. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No.”

  Sweat was forming on Barkley’s forehead as well, but mixed with the black dye in his hair, it looked like cola.

  “Good. Ah, for the record, this is interview number one with Detective Jonathan Nephi Stanton, conducted by Emmett Barkley and Mark Davis of Internal Affairs Division. February twenty-two, 2012.” He cleared his throat as he shuffled files and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. “Now, Detective, please tell us how you first made contact with Mr. Juan Gonzalez.”

  “Narcotics had gotten a tip from one of their CIs. They had been making controlled buys of heroin from Mr. Gonzalez for the past three weeks. One of the CIs who was making the buys said that when he went to the house for the pick-up, Mr. Gonzalez had a woman locked up in his bedroom. He asked the CI if he would like a ‘go’ with her. On the house.”

  “And this was a prostitute?” Davis interrupted.

  “No, this was a mother of four who had been kidnapped in a mall parking lot. He’d had her chained to the bed frame for three days when the CI arrived. She had been brutally—”

  “We don’t need to go into specifics, Detective. So, you still haven’t answered our question: how’d you come into contact with Gonzalez?” Barkley said, wiping his forehead with his fingers, leaving a black smear.

  “The CI told his handler in Narc, and the detective informed Sex Crimes, who informed us. The victim’s husband had been shot in the head during the kidnapping, and the case was active with Homicide. Sex Crimes and Homicide conducted a joint operation.”

  “What did that operation consist of?”

  “We raided Mr. Gonzalez’s home. We saved the victim, but Mr. Gonzalez jumped out of the back window and took off through the neighborhood.”

  “Was the back of the home not covered?”

  “It was. The window was next to a tall tree. He jumped into it and then leapt into his neighbor’s yard. By the time officers hopped the fence, he was already sprinting from yard to yard. We called for a chopper, but none were available at the time.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “I chased him on foot.”

  “You? By yourself, without backup?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you aware,” Davis said, fanning himself with a file folder, “that protocol requires that an officer have assistance in this type of scenario? Especially with a suspect considered so highly dangerous?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you chose to ignore it?”

  “I chose to catch him rather than lose him. He had cash and connections. He would’ve fled to Mexico, and we would’ve never seen him again.”

  “So, what happened when you caught up with him?”

  “He was in the girl’s home, Vicky Guler, and he had her by the throat, with a .32 caliber revolver to her head. He threatened to shoot her and her baby, who was in the apartment. He was asking for a car. I pretended to give in and threw my car keys to him. When his attention was diverted, I fired.”

  “And you accidentally hit Ms. Guler?”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “You shot her on purpose?” Barkley said incredulously.

  “I had to. I knew the round would go through the fleshy part of her shoulder and wouldn’t cause too much injury. I had to save her life. I made a call.”

  “And you stan
d by that call?”

  “Yes.”

  Barkley shook his head. The black smear had spread down his forehead, and Davis noticed but didn’t say anything.

  “Thanks for your time, Detective. We’ll be in touch.”

  Stanton left and went to the storage room to turn down the heat. He went back to the main floor, where he watched the two IAD officers leave the room, Barkley rubbing furiously at his head with a napkin. Neither had taken off their suit coats.

  He went back to his office and collapsed into his chair, staring at the ceiling. Glancing to his right, he saw the files for his open cases: fifty-seven in total. His pile was higher than the other detectives’ because he took the cases no one else wanted—the ones with no leads, no motives, and no suspects. The victims disappeared like ghosts but clung to life through him.

  Stanton began going through his emails. The forty-one unread messages were mostly departmental emails about policies, updates on cases, or notices for birthdays, retirements, new babies, and deaths. He scrolled down about halfway to a name he hadn’t heard in a long time: Orson Hall. He opened the email.

  Jon, long time, Brother. Please call me. I need your help desperately.

  Assistant Sheriff Orson Hall,

  Las Vegas Metro Police, Homicide Division

  The “Las Vegas Metro Police” and “Homicide Division” weren’t a tag on his email. He had typed them in. Orson was telling him something with that, but Stanton wasn’t sure what. He was sure of one thing: the message was important. Stanton hit the speaker on his phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the email tag.

  “This is Hall.”

  “Orson, this is Jon Stanton.”

  “Holy shit, Jon! How you been?”

  “Good. How’s Wendy and the kids?”

  “They’re great. Wendy went back to work ’bout eight months ago. It’s making life a little easier on me.”

  “That’s great. She was a nurse, wasn’t she?”