Purgatory (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 11) Read online

  “Open it,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll wanna see it,” he said, folding his arms and leaning against the jeep. “Open it.”

  She undid the metal clasp and saw some papers. She pulled them out and stared at the first one. Her stomach dropped.

  “How did you…”

  “How did I get it?” Dane said. “I wouldn’t worry about that now. That’s probably the least of your worries right now, Rachel.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  He laughed. “Do I look like any cop you’ve seen?”

  She swallowed. “What do you want? Money? I’ll have to talk to Kyle about that. He’s my boss. He has all of it.”

  Lightly, he touched her cheek. “No, sweetness, I don’t want money.”

  A sudden chill ran down her back, and she didn’t want him to touch her anymore. As she moved to take a step back, he grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her forward. She yelped in pain as he put a rag over her mouth, grinning.

  “I want something more than money. And I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

  14

  Stanton lay in bed, staring out at the sea through the French doors in his bedroom. Occasionally, his eyelids drooped but shot back open every time. Then they’d droop again as his body nearly shut down. He felt as though he would never sleep again. His lot in life was to be awake until he went insane.

  The medication did almost nothing. The muscle relaxant was pleasant, but the sleep aid didn’t touch him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something, some movement. Thinking it Julie, he turned and saw Eli Sherman staring down at him. His biggest failure, and his biggest fear.

  Stanton shot out of bed and went for his gun in the closet. Before he could take two steps, Eli was gone. Stanton, his heart pounding, unable to catch his breath, sat down on the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. The one thing the sleep aid did do was make him dizzy. He inhaled deeply, rose, and went into the bathroom.

  He filled a glass with water and drank it down before looking at himself in the mirror. The micro-naps slipped over him without a break in awareness. People could usually tell when they were falling asleep and the difference between dreams and waking, but for him, one switched to the other without him knowing. When he saw Eli, he was asleep and didn’t know it. Julie and Dr. Vaquer were right: he needed to leave law enforcement, at least for a while.

  As he went to get his phone to call Captain Kai, he stopped. An image had been bouncing around his mind for a while now: the blood-soaked floors and walls in a damp, dirty room under a warehouse. If it had had a body to go with the blood, he thought he might be able to pass on the case. If he’d had an image of the person who had died, he could hand it off to someone else and leave the island for a while. Go to the deserts of Arizona or Utah with Julie and camp somewhere where he wouldn’t have to think. He could just live for a while.

  Without a face to put to the blood, all faces flashed in front of him. Was it a Satanic ritual involving some poor woman kidnapped while she was out jogging? Was it a young girl taken out of her bedroom in the night, her parents waking up in the morning to a nightmare few others could understand? Was a young boy taken here under pretense, screaming in the dark until life left his body?

  The images kept coming, and he put his hands to his head as though that would slow them.

  He sat back on the edge of the bed, his forearms on his knees, his hands dangling toward the floor, and closed his eyes.

  He knew several meditation techniques, but none of them worked right now. Unable to think, he went out onto his balcony and collapsed into a chair. The blood-soaked floors wouldn’t let him enjoy a vacation away. He would think about it the entire time, obsess about it, and Julie would be able to tell.

  He texted Kai and told him that Laka would be taking his cases for a while as he did that favor for Nate Frost.

  Then he put the phone down and leaned back in the chair, watching the surf roll in.

  15

  After a breakfast of orange juice and pancakes with whipped cream, he said goodbye to Julie and Hanny and got into his jeep. He turned on some heavy metal music and pulled out of the driveway.

  He found the music was giving him a headache more than it was keeping him awake and turned it off. He thought about taking an Uber but decided he could handle driving another day or two before the micro-naps got to the point where he would have to give it up.

  He got a text from Laka that the police sketch artist had finished with his rendering of the man who had rented the space. Stanton pulled the jeep over and opened the sketch.

  The man was tall and lean, with a hoodie on. His face was slim but covered with massive glasses. His hair curly and brown. Stanton knew immediately it was a disguise. The hair was probably a wig, he didn’t wear glasses, and he might’ve even been a young woman posing as a man.

  Stanton set his phone down and debated what to do. He had little to go on, and no amount of sketches would get it right. The human face was too complex, too full of everything else that was going on in the mind behind it as well as the mind of the witness, to accurately portray at any given moment what the human face looked like. The witnesses who’d seen this person would be of no help. Instead of relying on the drawing, he decided to drive down to the warehouse to get his own description.

  The secretary who had rented the space out should be there that day. Stanton parked in visitor parking and swallowed four ibuprofen from his glove box, without water, before he went inside.

  The woman at the front desk was pursing her lips as she stared at something on her desk. There was no one else in the room, but Stanton felt she was putting on a front for some reason.

  “Hi,” Stanton said, taking out his badge. “Are you Nicole White?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Detective Jon Stanton. I’m looking into what happened in the conference room over the weekend.”

  She nodded and glanced down at her desk. “I already spent two hours last night at the police station with that artist and told everybody everything I know. I don’t know anything else.”

  “Could I just ask a few questions?”

  She didn’t reply, and Stanton sat down.

  “I don’t know what the big deal is,” she said. “It was probably some animal they killed. We had some of those voodoo people once, and they killed a chicken. Cut its head right off in the room.”

  Stanton nodded. “You told the responding officers that the man who rented the room told you he needed it for a conference on investment banking, is that right?”

  She nodded. “He said it was for people who wanted to change banking. That there’d be some really good people there. Nice man, very polite, smiled a lot. He gave me no reason to think he did anything wrong. I think you people are wasting your time.”

  Stanton grinned. “Maybe we are. What’s the cut from?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The cut on your neck. It looks fresh.”

  She reached up to the right side of her neck and put her hand over the cut, which was clearly fresh.

  “Nothing. Just an accident.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said, rubbing her neck uncomfortably.

  “Looks like a really sharp knife or razor. What happened?”

  “Just cut myself. Had a paring knife in my hand and wasn’t paying attention. Went to move my hair out of my face and did this.”

  Stanton nodded. “Odd that it didn’t cut your face.”

  The woman cleared her throat. “I think I’ve said all I have to say to you. I’d like you to leave, unless you’re going to arrest me or something.”

  Stanton watched her a moment in silence and clicked his tongue against his teeth. He wouldn’t be getting anything from her, even if she did remember.

  “Just one more question: any cameras at all?”

  “No.”

  “Seems weird, doesn’t it? That you don’t have a secu
rity guard or a camera system?”

  “Saves money. And we’ve never had an issue. The alarm is enough.”

  Stanton watched her a second. “Well, thanks for your time.”

  He left and stood outside. Slowly strolling around the building, he looked at the roof for any evidence of a monitoring system but didn’t see anything. The front of the building was quite ugly: something from the industrial era. Soot had settled into it, and the metal roof was rusted, ready to fall apart at any moment. He looked across the street at the businesses there. Mostly warehouses and small factories, a paint store, a tire store… the tire store had a camera just above the front door. The responding officers should’ve checked that. They must have wanted to get out of here, since there was no actual body and no witnesses.

  Stanton crossed the street and went inside. A man behind the counter smiled. “What can I do for you?”

  Stanton glanced at his nametag. He flashed his badge and said, “Is that camera out there working, Jeff?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “On twenty-four hours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me you still have the video from Saturday night.”

  “I don’t know. I can check.”

  He went to the back, and Stanton followed him to a small room with video equipment. Most businesses hired outside security firms to handle their video monitoring, but small, struggling businesses sometimes did it in-house, buying used equipment online or at swap meets.

  Jeff fumbled through a box and said, “Hey, look at that. We got it. We usually erase ’em after a few days.”

  It was a VHS tape, which Stanton hadn’t seen for about twenty-five years. He couldn’t even think of a place that would have a VCR for him to play it on.

  “Mind popping it in?”

  “Um, sure.”

  Jeff sat down as Stanton stood behind him. The monitor on the desk flickered after the VHS tape went into the slot and then came to life. It was a view outside the store. Stanton could see the warehouse across the street.

  “Could you fast-forward slowly?”

  “It’s only got one fast-forward button. I don’t know how fast it is.”

  Jeff hit the button, and the image streaked with grey as everything sped up. A few cars zipped past on the street in front of the camera, a couple of guys left the paint store next door and marched by, the last of the employees left the tire store.

  The time stamp on the video moved at about a minute every few seconds. There was no chair for him to sit in, so Stanton leaned against the wall and kept his eyes on the screen.

  16

  The stickiness of dried blood held her eyes shut. Rachel tried to open them, but it hurt, so she gave up. She felt motion and a rumbling sound underneath her. She was in a car. Her hands felt heavy, and her wrists burned. It took her a second to realize her wrists were bound together. Her elbows weren’t tied, though, and she lifted her hands and touched her eyes.

  She realized then it wasn’t blood. The dried fluid had a chemical smell, like burnt plastic. Then she remembered what had happened.

  Dane held her mouth closed and sprayed something on her face. The chemical instantly slammed her eyes shut, and she couldn’t breathe. The air seemed to get sucked out of her lungs, and she was coughing and choking.

  Dane flipped her around as a car came screeching to a stop next to them. Someone grabbed her, and that was the last thing she remembered before she passed out.

  “Look who’s up,” Dane’s voice bellowed. “Morning, sunshine.”

  “Please… please. I’ll give you all the money. You can have all of it.”

  “I told you I don’t want money. I don’t care about money, and that’s what makes me dangerous, don’t you think? When a man is freed from money, he can do anything.”

  She tried to open her eyes again, but they burned. She tried to sit up but felt the duct tape around her ankles.

  “What do you want?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, Rachel. We just gotta make a quick stop and pick something up. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “My eyes hurt.”

  “Yeah, it’ll do that. Here.”

  A plastic water bottle was thrust into her hands. She smelled and tasted it, hoping it was actually water, and then started a slow, steady stream over her eyes. Wiping at it with her shirt, she was able to open her eyes without as much burning.

  She was in the back of a van. Dane was in the passenger seat up front, along with Mackie in the driver’s seat. The other one, Bobby, had earbuds in and his eyes closed, sitting on the floor near her.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Dane ignored her and turned on some Jimi Hendrix.

  “Please, I don’t want to die.”

  “Who said anything about dying?”

  An icy fear went down her spine. “Are you… going to rape me?”

  Dane laughed. “No, darlin’, that’s not my style.”

  They were on the freeway, H-1 near Halawa. She’d driven this route. The door handle wasn’t more than two feet away from her. She glanced at Bobby and thought he might be asleep. She could make it. But if she opened the door and flipped out, she might really hurt herself. The van was probably going about seventy miles an hour. She would have to wait until they slowed down.

  Pushing with her elbows, she managed to get into a sitting position. She leaned back against the wall of the van and stared at Dane. He smiled.

  “You’re damn beautiful, you know. Don’t know what you’re doing with that asshole Kyle. If you were my woman, I’d take care of you. Guys like that don’t take care of anyone but themselves.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “A reckoning,” he said somberly. “Just a plain old reckoning.”

  She hesitated. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “Don’t have time to stop.”

  “Then I’m going to piss myself right here.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s just what you’re going to have to do. We don’t have time to stop. We got a schedule to keep.”

  She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it when he turned around. She slumped down again and wept into her hands.

  17

  “Stop,” Stanton said. “Right there. Stop on that.”

  Jeff stopped the video. A sedan had pulled up to the warehouse and parked. Four men got out and waited while a van pulled up behind them. The driver hopped out wearing a grotesque Halloween mask of a disfigured monster. Someone in a werewolf mask got out next, and they opened the back doors to the van. Stanton counted six more people.

  The video was too dark and grainy to make out much, but he counted three women and three men from the van, and three other men in masks. Once they were inside, the one in the werewolf mask came back out and opened the trunk to the sedan.

  He pulled out a man, bound around the wrists and ankles.

  “Holy shit,” Jeff said.

  The man fought, but the werewolf was too strong for him. He struck the man several times in the face, and he went limp. The werewolf grabbed his arms and dragged him inside.

  Stanton’s mouth went dry, and he had to swallow and take a step away from the screen.

  “So, I mean, what is that?” Jeff said. “Is that why all the cops were over there the other day?”

  “I’m going to need this tape. And any tapes from the Wednesday before.”

  “I doubt we have Wednesday. I’m surprised we have Saturday. But I’ll look. Why Wednesday anyway? Did this happen twice?”

  “One of these men was there on Wednesday to arrange renting the room. If there’s any way to get a tape of that day, I’d consider it a personal favor. A detective owing you a favor is a very nice thing to have.”

  Jeff nodded. “Wish I could help you, but there’s no way I didn’t erase it. I got seven tapes, one for each day of the week, and I’m sure I already recorded over Wednesday. You can have Saturday, though.”

  Stanton took the tape and went back to
his jeep. The license plates were too difficult to make out, but the department had tech experts that could clean it up. He had a feeling the cars were probably stolen. If they knew to wear masks, they knew not to bring their own cars. Still, it was much more than he’d had before.

  Six people were helped out of the van. Not thrown out, not grabbed… but helped out, as though they were guests. The man in the trunk was beaten and dragged. Stanton had no doubt the blood in the room belonged to that man, and the six bloodied chairs were for the six in the van who had watched him die. The question was, was he looking for three perpetrators or nine? Did the six in the van have any idea what they were about to see, or were they coerced but treated differently for some reason?

  He always felt a rush of excitement when he started making progress, and he felt he couldn’t go home yet. In the Homicide division of the San Diego PD, when there was a big collar, detectives and officers would hit a Denny’s or IHOP late at night, all of them understanding that no one would be sleeping anytime soon because of the adrenaline. He missed that comradery. He’d only had it a short while before he’d earned the reputation of someone who played it straight and expected other officers to as well. A lot of clean officers knew about the shady dealings of the dirty ones, but they turned the other way. Not protecting them, but not informing on them either. Stanton wasn’t like that. In his book, there were few things more deplorable than someone sworn to protect the public who decided instead to betray them.

  Still, he understood it. The pay police officers received for the job they did was measly, and many of them, because of the stress and psychological trauma of the job, had one or even two ex-wives along with alimony and child support. With the few bucks left over for themselves at the end of the month, being offered a little extra by a drug dealer was a serious temptation.

  Stanton stopped at an IHOP and went inside. He was seated right away as the place was nearly empty. Being vegetarian, he skipped the sandwiches and burgers, scanned the pancakes, and decided on a cheese omelet.