Jon Stanton 08 - Run Away Page 7

  Everything seemed in order as he rolled to a stop in front of his house. He parked in the driveway because he wanted to make sure all his neighbors saw that he was home. As he walked to his door, he took out his keys and glanced around. Lights were on in other homes, but no one was out. No one was ever out in his neighborhood. Before he turned around, he noticed a child’s bike on the sidewalk. No one stole anything there. He had no doubt he could leave money on the sidewalk, and it would still be there the next morning.

  As Richard slid the key into the lock, the door opened. He stood frozen, staring at the opening. He pushed it open the rest of the way. The house seemed untouched. He took a step inside. “Hello? Eliza? Sharon?”

  He stood in the middle of the large atrium, waiting for a response. But there was complete silence. No televisions. No laptops. No iPads. He shut the door behind him and turned to his empty house.

  He did a quick search of the house and found no one in any of the bedrooms, the den, the study, the kitchen, or the pantry. A few things were a little messy—drawers were left open and such—but all in all, the house looked the same as it always did.

  He headed upstairs and looked around. Still nothing. Richard took out his cell phone and dialed Eliza’s number. The call went to voicemail.

  “Hi, Eliza. This is your father. Please call me. I need to know whose house you’re staying in at this hour. If you’re going to spend the night, please give me or your moth—well, give me a call and let me know. We still have rules here, young lady.”

  With a sigh, he hung up. Eliza didn’t like sleeping at home, and Richard didn’t blame her. Once, Eliza had walked in on Sharon’s swingers’ party. Richard had arrived home to find people having sex on the couch, the kitchen counters, the floors, his antique chairs, the desk in his study, and even on the living room coffee table. As he searched the home for his wife, to have her kick everyone out—they paid no attention when he asked them to leave—Eliza walked in. Her eyes met Richard’s, then she walked out. She didn’t come home for three days. Richard had to track her down at one of her friend’s homes and force her to come back.

  Richard’s muscles felt tight, and his stomach was a ball of anxiety. He wanted to call Tate, but he knew he should give him some space and let the man work. It would get done. And if it didn’t, that wouldn’t be the worst thing. In fact, he already regretted acting on the urge. He’d been hurt one too many times, and the impulse just got the better of him.

  Maybe he could still call the whole thing off? Just pay Tate ten or twenty thousand to keep quiet and consider the deal a costly mistake? He decided a hot shower would help his thinking process.

  Richard walked into his bathroom and began to strip. As he was about to pull his shirt over his head, he saw something on the carpets—dark stains, as if someone had spilled coffee. The splotches and spatters led to a ski mask in the middle of his bathroom floor. Richard’s arms dropped, and he leaned against the sink.

  They had been here. The blood was… no. How could they be so stupid? The police would clearly find the blood. They couldn’t have been that stupid.

  Richard searched the closet. Nothing.

  A thought hit him, and he froze. He pulled out his cell phone. Tate answered on the first ring.

  “Thought you’d be callin’.”

  “Did you take my daughter?”

  “Yeah, she’s here.”

  “What the damn hell is going on? She wasn’t a part of this in any way.”

  “Yeah, well, things change.”

  “Things change? Things change? You kidnap my daughter, and that’s all you can say to me?”

  “Hey, chill out, man. We haven’t done nothin’ to her. She’s just insurance.”

  “Insurance for what?”

  “To make sure we get paid, man. We get our money as promised. You get your daughter back.”

  Richard sat down on the edge of the bathtub. “Is it…”

  “Nah, man, not yet. But we’ll get to it real soon. Probably tonight. We drivin’ out right now.”

  Richard stared at the carpet. He wanted to tell Tate to stop, that it was madness, and they were sure to get caught. But those words didn’t come. All that came out was, “There’s blood all over my bathroom.”

  “It’s cool, man. Call the cops. Tell them you came home, and that’s what you found.”

  “Are you crazy? The husband’s always the prime suspect in these things. At least that’s what I see on the news.”

  “You’re a suspect regardless, man. At least this way, you’re the one that call them. Ya see? Besides, they gonna find a present outside. Best this way.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I guess that makes sense. So I just call them and say there’s blood everywhere and my wife and daughter are missing?”

  “Yeah, man. And you’ll get your daughter back. Don’t sweat it. Just insurance. I won’t touch a hair on her head.”

  He swallowed. “You should’ve told me. This wasn’t our deal.”

  “It is what it is. Now we both got work to do. Better get to it.”

  Richard hung up and placed the phone down on the tub. He rubbed his face and ran his fingers through his hair. He stood up, slammed his fist into the mirror, and screamed. The mirror cracked, and his hand began to bleed.

  “Ow. Shit. Shit, shit, shit!”

  He picked up his phone again and dialed 9-1-1.

  15

  Stanton was in a car surrounded by darkness. As the vehicle sped down the road, the lines on the road became a blur. The harder he tried to peer into the darkness, the less he saw. He tried to brake, but nothing happened when his foot pressed the pedal… Buzz…

  Stanton opened his eyes and recognized the ceiling in his bedroom. The window was open, letting in the ocean breeze, and he could hear the waves crackling outside. His cell phone was vibrating on his nightstand. He answered without checking the ID.

  “This is Jon.”

  “Jon, sorry to wake you. This is Laka.”

  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “We’re on call tonight and just caught one up at Diamond Head. A young boy.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Stanton sat up then remained motionless on the bed. He counted five waves outside before getting to his feet and walking over to his balcony. The sky was still as black as tar during that odd moment in which night had passed, but morning hadn’t come. The ocean reflected the moonlight as a wet, wavy glow.

  He dressed in a blazer and jeans then grabbed his .45 Desert Eagle and its holster. The gun was never far away from him. He used to be able to leave it in the kitchen or living room, but not anymore. He’d taken to keeping it in his bedroom, no more than a few feet away from him when he slept. He felt different at night after a decade of being a cop.

  He turned on the alarm as he left the house. He started his Jeep, pulled out of his driveway, and headed toward H1.

  Stanton was familiar with Diamond Head. Most people associated it with the beach and surfing. But it was also one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Honolulu. Some of the beachfront properties there could run up to twenty million. He’d been there once with his fiancée, Emma. She had a friend there whose husband had made his money in derivatives.

  The highway was clear. Only the occasional car passed him. The wind whipped through his hair and over his face. It screamed in his ears, and he stuck his arm over the side of the Jeep and let it dangle.

  The exit was surrounded by lush trees and yellow-and-red plants. The streets were well kept, and none of the buildings suffered from the usual wear and tear of Hawaii’s rain damage, which made all the buildings appear twenty years older than they were. Everything was new there.

  Stanton found the address and spotted the police cruisers parked out front. The medical examiner’s van was already there. So was the Scientific Investigation Section’s SUV.

  Stanton sat in his Jeep for a moment. Every time he drove to the scene of a homicide, he had to prepare himself. No homicide was clean or neat. Nothing like on television or in Agatha Christie books. Homicides were always gory. Blood work.

  He stepped out of the Jeep and causally strolled to where Laka was standing with a uniformed officer. Neighbors were watching through windows.

  In the bushes nearby, the legs of a child were sticking out.

  “Hey,” she said when she saw him.

  Stanton stood next to her. “Hey. What do we have?”

  “The homeowner, Richard Miller, called in a kidnapping. Said his wife and daughter were missing. The responding officers took a look around the lawn and saw this poor kid.”

  “Do we know who he is yet?”

  She shook her head. “No ID, obviously. We’ll just have to canvas the neighborhood. Unless he was shot somewhere else and then dumped here.”

  Stanton kneeled over the boy’s body. He had a gunshot wound in his cheek. The round had torn through the bone and exploded the back of his head. There couldn’t be much brain matter left in the skull, since most of it was on the sidewalk.

  “No,” he said, “he was shot here.” Stanton looked up at the trees and down both sides of the street. “One shot, up close. Definitely not a drive-by shooting. Someone specifically wanted him dead.”

  “Why would you want a kid dead?”

  Stanton stood and closed his eyes. He said a quick, silent prayer for the boy and his family before turning away. “If you thought you had something to gain.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Is Richard Miller inside?”

  “Yeah. He was hysterical when he found out someone had been killed.”

  Stanton headed toward the house. The home was massive—it had at least eight or nine bedrooms. Stanton stopped to peer through the passenger window
of the brand new Cadillac in the driveway. The inside was spotless. Stanton turned back toward the house and ambled through the front door. He stopped in the atrium and scanned the house. The spacious layout was meant to keep people away from each other if they wanted. A family could live in the house for decades and not have to see each other.

  Two officers and a man on the couch waited in the living room. The man’s shoulders were slumped, and he was sipping from a mug. The two officers were chatting. From the top of the staircase and to the right, other voices floated down—probably the forensic techs. He decided to head up there first.

  The second floor was as spacious as the first. Stanton didn’t get lost only because he could hear the voices coming from the master bedroom. He counted eight rooms as he passed them. The master was probably the biggest and most elegantly decorated of them all. He had to stop a moment and just take it in. The bed was the largest he’d ever seen, almost like three king-sized beds pushed together. French doors opened onto a large balcony, where a small fountain with koi fish was tucked away. Stanton strolled out and stood over the fish as they glided through the clear water.

  “Detective,” a woman behind him said. Debbie Cunningham from the SIS section was dressed in black with an SIS badge over her chest and latex gloves covering her hands. Stanton noticed her wearing a necklace he’d never seen before. A Tibetan symbol of peace.

  “How are you, Debbie?”

  “Fine, other than I’m hating having to go out and look at a young kid this early in the morning.”

  “Every vic has a story to tell. Without it, we can’t catch who did this.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t gonna do it. I just hate having to.”

  Stanton glanced once more at the koi then stepped inside the bedroom. “What did you find?”

  “Blood all over the carpets and a ski mask soaked from the inside. Looks like someone got a piece of him. Maybe broke his nose. The blood on the carpet was tail-end pointing inward, which means he got hit in the closet and then backed out.”

  “Someone was hiding in there and hurt him,” Stanton said.

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not really. Some shoeprints in the atrium. I have Billy out with the vic. We’ll see if anything turns up there.”

  “Keep me posted,” Stanton said, gently brushing past her to look into the walk-in closet.

  “I will.” She hesitated. “And Jon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We went out bowling last night. You didn’t come.”

  “No, not really my thing.”

  “We’re gonna head out for drinks with some of the boys from Vice tonight. That’s always a party. You wanna come?”

  He grinned. “I don’t drink.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean… I mean, I meant it, but I thought—”

  “I’d love to come,” he said.

  She smiled, and he turned back to the closet.

  16

  Tate glanced back once at the young girl. She was sitting in the back of the RV on the bed, with her arms folded and a scowl on her face. Sticks was sitting across from her in a chair, smoking a joint. He was eyeing her as though he were about to do something. Tate would have to watch him. Nobody got first before him.

  “She’s mine,” Tate yelled.

  “What?” Sticks asked. Hiapo, who’d been sleeping on the floor, also looked up.

  “They’re both mine. Nobody’s doin’ shit to ’em until I say so. I’m not getting sloppy seconds from you two gonorrhea-havin’ muthafuckers.”

  Sticks mumbled some profanity and turned his eyes back toward the girl. Tate could hear him speaking to her.

  “What’s your name?” Sticks asked.

  “Eliza.”

  “What are you, like in eighth grade?”

  “Ninth.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s when I dropped out. Ninth grade. You play sports?”

  The girl didn’t answer right away. “Soccer.”

  “You like playin’ with balls, huh? I got some balls you can play with.”

  Sticks let out a high-pitched laugh. Tate watched him in the rearview and shook his head.

  He’d thrown Sharon into the bathroom. She’d screamed and thumped against the walls for a few minutes, but she’d been quiet ever since Hiapo had gone in there.

  Tate looked at the clock on the dash. It was almost daybreak. They were supposed to meet Lee around noon, but he decided he was going to wake him up instead. Lee lived in a section of Oahu known as Princeville. Tate parked in front of Lee’s rundown house, which was away from the beach. He glanced around to see if anyone was out, but it was too early in the morning for people to be outside.

  “Wait here,” Tate said.

  He stepped out and looked both ways before sauntering up to the front door of the home and knocking. He knocked again then pounded with his fist. A light came on. Lee answered, looking groggy and wearing boxer shorts.

  “Tate? What the fuck you doin’ here?”

  “I wanna get these bitches outta here, yo.”

  “Now? It’s like four in the mornin’, man. Ain’t no one buyin’ bitches at four in the mornin’.”

  “It’s cool. I’ll wait.”

  Tate pushed his way into the home and flopped onto the couch. A bong was on the coffee table next to a baggie of weed. He packed some weed into the bong and took the lighter out of his pocket. Lee sat in the beat-up recliner across from him and rubbed his eyes.

  After taking a long toke, Tate let it out slowly through his nose. “How much you think we’d get?”

  “I dunno,” Lee said, rocking back and forth slowly. “You ever been in the pimp game?”

  “Nah, man. I mean, a little. I had this girl up in this apartment complex. She thought she loved me, and I’d get her out to the other dudes in the complex. Rent her out for a night an’ shit. But I ain’t been serious in the game.” He took another long pull. The weed was weak, but it’d been sprinkled with something. Coke or X.

  “I been in the game since back in the day. Back when I was a young buck, man, had me three girls. I’d sit on my ass in a hotel room and take ’em from city to city, ya know.”

  “How much you make in a day?”

  “Depend on the city, man. But if the girl’s fine, she get more. I had this one bitch that was like a model, ya know? She made me like two G’s a day.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know.”

  Tate took another long pull then said, “I’m really fuckin’ high.”

  “Take it easy on that shit, yo.”

  “What’s in—”

  A scream came from outside, loud enough that Tate and Lee both stared at each other.

  “Shit!”

  Tate jumped up and sprinted outside. He ran to the RV, opened the door, and flew inside. Sticks was on top of the girl, trying to get her shorts off. Tate ran up and wrapped his arm around Sticks’s throat. He lifted the man, who was foaming at the mouth, off the girl and threw him to the floor. Tate kicked him in the ribs as hard as he could then spun Sticks onto his back.

  “What’d I say?” Tate shouted. “What’d I say, huh? Don’t touch ’em ‘til I say so.” He looked at Hiapo, who was laying on the floor, looking up at them. “And where were you?”

  Hiapo closed his eyes again. “Ain’t my problem.”

  Tate stepped over to the girl. She was shaking and crying. Tate stared at her but didn’t say anything. She quieted but continued trembling, and he turned and left the RV. Lee was standing outside.

  “Man, don’t be bringin’ your rapist-ass muthafuckers up in my place.”

  Tate took out his 9mm and placed it against Lee’s forehead. The two men’s eyes locked. Tate saw fear in Lee’s eyes. He didn’t know what Lee saw in his eyes.

  “Hey, man, I’m just sayin’. I got neighbors.”

  Tate tucked the gun back in his waistband. “Get your boy over here, and we’ll bounce.”

  “A’ight, man. I’ll call him. Just chill, a’ight. We cool.”

  Tate watched him walk into the house. He turned back to the RV, where Sticks sat at the table, scowling at him. Tate pulled out a cigarette and lit it, then leaned against the RV, smoking as he stared into the dark sky.