The White Angel Murder Read online

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “Pelican Bay prison.”

  Stanton had been surprised how easy it was to secure funding for his flight here. He simply phoned Tommy and told him why he needed to go. Two hours later, a ticket was dropped onto his desk by a receptionist. Normally he would have to pay for it and then fight for months to get reimbursed by the department, if he ever got reimbursed at all.

  “Why you headed out to the prison, man?”

  “Just need to talk to somebody.”

  The driver nodded as he turned right at an intersection without looking if anybody was coming from the opposite direction. “Had some homies up there myself. Back in the day. Some near twenty, maybe twenty-five years ago.”

  “Oh, yeah? What were they in for?”

  “Psst, all sorts a buuullshit, you know. Robbery, dealin’ drugs, attempted murder. You run wit them gangs and go out and rob somebody they add damn near ten years to your sentence.” The driver pulled out a lighter and held it in his hand. “So who you talkin’ to out here?” He pulled out a small pipe with his other hand from the ashtray and Stanton got a waft of the unmistakable smell of marijuana. “You mind?” the driver said.

  “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

  The driver shrugged and put the pipe back. He took out a flask from his pocket.

  “My old partner.”

  “Partner? Like business partner or somethin’?”

  “No, I’m a cop. He was my partner.”

  The driver slowly lowered the flask and placed it on the passenger seat. He unwrapped a piece of gum and put it in his mouth. He didn’t speak the rest of the time they drove, mumbling the fare when his car stopped next to the prison.

  “Wait for me here,” Stanton said.

  The facility was massive. Buildings spread out over a large clearing in what was essentially a forest. He stood near the entrance almost ten minutes, quietly pacing back and forth, before going in.

  He walked to the X-shaped cluster of white buildings. They were surrounded by electrified barbed wire fencing and a small box was by the entrance. He pressed a button.

  “Yeah?” a voice bellowed.

  “Detective Stanton, San Diego PD. I have a visit scheduled with Noah Sherman.”

  “Yeah, I got you.”

  The fence slid open and Stanton stood a few moments, staring at the white steel door a guard had opened. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and looked to Stanton, motioning with his head for him to come over.

  He walked to him and the guard nodded and held the door.

  Prison, any prison, has a smell to it. Sweat and flatulence and rotting food and rotting flesh. The corridors and reception area held only the slightest trace of the zoo contained a few hundred feet away and Stanton was given a visitor’s pass by the front entrance guard and led to a small room. He was sat on one side of a glass partition on a cold stool that was bolted to the floor. There were phones on both sides of the thick glass and he pulled out a small digital recorder and began recording.

  He ran his hand along the glass and then over the concrete border. The ceiling had exposed water pipes and he followed them with his eyes to each wall. There were three other stools and glass partitions, but no one was using them.

  A bolt on a door on the opposite side of the glass slid open and the metal creaked at the hinges. A muscled guard with tattoos running up his forearms walked behind a handcuffed Noah Sherman, the handcuffs wrapped in chains that ran around his ankles. The guard sat him down and then held up his hands, indicating ten minutes, and Stanton nodded. The guard went back out through the door and left them alone.

  Sherman was in a yellow jumpsuit with white shoes, the laces removed. His hand went to the phone and he put it to his ear. Stanton picked up his end and could hear his breathing through the receiver.

  “How are you, Noah?”

  “You never ask a prisoner how they are. Then you put them in the position to either lie or talk about how miserable they are and they don’t want to do either. You’re supposed to say, ‘How you holding up?’ or ‘How are they treating you?’”

  “How are they treating you?”

  “I was raped my first night here. Do you know what it’s like to be raped, Jon? I bet you don’t. Two inmates paid a guard off with some weed and they were given a half hour with me. They took turns.”

  “I’m sorry,” Stanton said.

  “You’re sorry?”

  “I didn’t put you in here.”

  There was silence between them a long time.

  “What the fuck do you want, Detective?”

  “I wanted to talk.”

  “You haven’t been here for two and half years and now you want to see me? Bullshit. Did they find another one of my bodies? There are more you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Are they still looking?”

  “I don’t think so. Not in San Diego County. I heard they had a task force in Los Angeles.”

  “I heard that too.” Sherman spread his legs in a wide stance and leaned forward. “So, you got a few minutes. What do you want to talk about?”

  Deception or circumlocution, he knew, wouldn’t work. He would have to take a bold stance and stick to it. “Did you kill a girl named Tami Jacobs? Blond, twenty-three. A small apartment in La Jolla. It would’a been about a month before you went in.”

  “You really think I’d be honest with you if I had?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Pride maybe.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “I would need to look at a photo.”

  Stanton pulled a small picture from his pocket. It was of Tami with her family in her University of Iowa sweatshirt.

  “Pretty girl,” Sherman said. “Do you have any of her after the deed was done?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t bring any?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you would masturbate to them later.” Stanton noticed that Noah began gently rocking back and forth. He had seen him do this before, and had never paid attention to it until now. “Was it you?”

  “Do you ever ask yourself why I would send you to that closet knowing what was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why do you think I did that? I wanted to be caught?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “Your first murder was probably immaculate. Little evidence, never told anyone … but by your fifth and sixth you started forgetting things. Little things at first and then it just became more and more chaos. Eventually you couldn’t remember anything. You probably had forgotten what was in the closet until you told me.”

  Sherman made a sucking sound through the gap in his front teeth.

  “Was it you, Noah?”

  “No. It wasn’t me.”

  He put the photo back in his pocket and rose to leave. He hung up the phone and Sherman said something through the glass but he couldn’t make it out.

  Stanton stepped into the hallway, the door slamming shut behind him. He leaned against it and saw the sweat rings under his arms and wished he’d brought a shirt to change into. He could hear the madness contained just a few feet away. Men that had become ghosts to their families and friends, and animals to each other. He wanted to put his hands to his ears but instead he began walking toward the exit.

  On his way out the guard at the front entrance said, “Them two boys that cornholed him, they ended up dyin’ some months later.”

  “How?”

  “One was burned in his cell. The other had his junk bitten off or somethin’ and bled out in the showers. We know the muthafucker did it but there ain’t no good proof.”

  Stanton nodded to the guard and stepped outside. He had specifically asked for a room that wasn’t being monitored. If Noah knew their conversation was being listened to, he would’ve l
ied. Stanton would have to speak to him again. But he decided it could wait.

  He looked around and realized the cab had left.

  15

  It was dark by the time Stanton landed back in Southern California. The air was different here, salty and warm like it had been exhaled from someone’s body. He found his car in short-term parking and drove to his apartment.

  A neighbor was out on their patio when Stanton got home. It was an older gal, smoking a cigarette in the dark. He saw her silhouette and the bright pinpoint of red that would get brighter at her mouth and then darken when she lowered it.

  “How are you, Suzie?”

  “Doin’ fine, handsome. How are you?” she said. Her voice was grainy from the tobacco and alcohol she coated it in day-after-day.

  “Not bad,” he said, taking a seat on the first step leading up to his apartment.

  “Heard you workin’ with the cops again.”

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “Melissa stopped by tonight to see you. She told me.”

  “Oh.”

  “You miss her?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  “I like her. She went outta her way to say hello to me.” She finished one cigarette and put it out in an ashtray sitting on a table next to her before lighting another one. “When you gonna have your boys over again?”

  “Next weekend. We’re going to Disneyland. They say they’re sick of it but I know they always have a good time.”

  She blew out a puff of smoke and took a sip out of a can of beer. “I ever tell you I got kids?”

  “No.”

  “I got three. One of ‘em, Cindy, my youngest, still lives round here. My two boys moved though. I think to Vegas but I don’t know. I ain’t talked to ‘em since Clinton was president. I remember that cause Clinton was on the tv last time I talked to ‘em lyin’ through his teeth about blow jobs or somethin’.”

  “You know what the president of France said when he heard Clinton got a blow job in the White House?”

  “What?”

  “Why else would anyone want to be president?”

  She laughed and then sat quietly, staring out into the parking lot as someone rode past, slowed, and then sped away.

  “What happened with you two anyway?”

  “I don’t know. It was so gradual I don’t think either of us noticed until it was too late. I know she didn’t like living on a community college professor’s salary. But there was more to it. At some point we stopped talking to each other. After that, we didn’t care if we talked or not. ” He rose and began walking up to his apartment. “I better hit the sack. Have a good one.”

  “You too, hon.”

  The apartment seemed cold though he checked the thermostat and it read 71 degrees. He placed his badge and wallet and keys on the kitchen table and saw his gun hanging from the holster on the chair. He lifted the holster without touching the gun and placed it in one of the cupboards.

  He went to his bathroom and undressed. The bathroom was the place he least liked to be. While married he would spend a lot of time there; reading ebooks or newspapers or surfing the internet on his phone. He would hear Melissa outside, trying to gather the kids together long enough to serve breakfast and get them ready for the day. When Jon Junior was young he would pound on the door and yell, “Dada, dada!”

  It made Stanton uncomfortable to think of these things here. There was one moment at the end where he closed his eyes and let the hot water run over his head and down his back. The splashing in his ears drown out the rest of the world and he could imagine he was in the ocean, being carried away on a current to some unknown place.

  He put on fresh undergarments—the garments bought from the LDS Church for members that had been endowed—and took out a protein shake from the fridge before sitting on the couch in the living room.

  He flipped on the tv and began going through the channels. There was nothing on except crime shows and reality television. One show was about the wives of criminals exploiting their husband’s notoriety for profit and he watched it a moment before changing the channel. There were over two hundred channels and he couldn’t remember why he had gotten that many since he was almost never home.

  His cell phone buzzed and he answer it. The ID said San Diego Police.

  “Hello?”

  “Jon? It’s Jessica … Turner.”

  “Oh, hey.”

  “I just heard from Tommy that you went to visit our mutual friend. I just wanted to know how it went I guess. Or, just to call and check on you. I don’t know … I guess I don’t really know why I called.”

  “It’s okay. I’m glad you called. I wanted to apologize for not getting together for dinner with you yet.”

  “That’s okay. I was married to a cop once.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  “No, I don’t really like to talk about it. He wasn’t much of a guy. But I was eighteen and really wanted to get out of my house. At least he did that for me before I left.”

  “How’s your case panning out?”

  “Talked to at least ten people today. No one saw or heard anything and they refuse to cooperate with me. What the hell is wrong with these people?”

  “There was a woman in New York once that was stabbed nearly forty times in daylight. There were over thirty witnesses watching from their windows, but not a single one called the police. A couple of psychologists interviewed all of them and it turned out they weren’t evil, they just all assumed someone else was calling the police. If there had only been one witness, he likely would have called.”

  “You think that’s it? They think someone else will help me?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Mostly people just don’t want to get involved.”

  “It’s funny though cause I don’t remember that when I was a kid. All the neighbors looked after all the kids so we could play at night. I went back through my old neighborhood once and I didn’t see any kids playing at night anymore.”

  “No, I think parents would have to not care to let them out at night.”

  She hesitated and then said, “Um, so do you want to get dinner tomorrow? I’m free.”

  “Sure.”

  “Sorry,” she said, chuckling to herself.

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s just, I just moved down here and I know it’s only like two hours from where I used to live but it feels like I moved to a new state.”

  “I know. It’s okay. I would love to have dinner with you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. You pick the place.”

  “No problem.”

  “Okay, good night.”

  “Night.”

  Stanton hung up. He turned the tv off and went and lay down in bed. He stayed up another hour before dozing off, an image of a young blond girl in a University of Iowa sweatshirt burned into his mind.

  16

  Stanton went into the office on Friday morning and found Chief Harlow sitting at his desk, quietly staring out the window. He was dressed in a polo shirt and blue jeans with Italian leather shoes that gleamed from a recent shine. The photos of Jon Junior and Mathew were turned slightly off center and Stanton knew that Harlow had been looking at them. A copy of the Herald was spread on the desk.

  Harlow saw him and pushed the paper across the desk and said, “Read this.” Stanton picked it up. On page five was a caption that read:

  NEW COLD CASE UNIT FILLED WITH TROUBLED PASTS

  Next to the caption was a photo of Stanton. It had been taken after he was released from the hospital when Noah had shot him. Reporters were hounding him as he was being pushed to an awaiting taxi in a wheelchair. His face was contorted with anger and bits of spittle were visible on the edges of his mouth. His eyes had fury in them. Anger was not an emotion he felt often and he hadn’t realized until now how awful it suited him. He sat down in the chair and began to read:

  The San Diego Police Department has made an effort in recent years to begin solving the c
ounty’s enormous backlog of unsolved homicides. Chief Harlow’s latest attempt is the formation of the Cold Case Unit. In conjunction with the FBI, NCIS, LAPD and the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, the unit is assigned cases older than one year that have no active leads. The theory is that with nothing else on their plates, the detectives can focus their absolute attention to a single unsolved homicide and the likelihood of an arrest should increase. A noble goal, but with one problem: some of the detectives assigned to the unit should not be writing parking tickets, much less solving homicides … .

  Stanton read the article in its entirety as Harlow waited. There was mention of Chin Ho having legal trouble with the IRS. Nathan Sell had had an affair with a superior officer at the San Diego PD and was demoted and transferred three years ago as a result. Philip Russell was responsible for a botched home entry by the FBI where two unarmed civilians were shot and killed, one of them sixteen years old. He was sent to San Diego afterward, the article claimed, as punishment. Jessica Turner had taken a leave of absence from the LAPD due to “familial stress” and issues with domestic violence. The article listed Zoloft and Prozac as medications she was currently taking. But Stanton got the lion’s share of the article.

  It discussed the time he had spent in 5 North, the county’s psychiatric unit, after the shooting with Noah. It discussed his inability to see Noah for what he was and it leading to more deaths. It talked about the fact that he had left the police force to teach and was brought in on a whim by the Chief because none of the established detectives wanted the job. It talked about the fact that he didn’t carry his gun with him.

  The article was written by Hunter Royal.

  “What do you think?” Harlow asked.

  “I think it’s an op/ed, but it’s not in the opinion section. Hunter must know some of the higher-ups at the paper.”