Peak Road - A Short Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 10) Read online

  “He didn’t do it, Jon. Roger’s my cousin. I know him. I’ve known him my whole life. He couldn’t even go hunting with my uncle ’cause he’d nearly faint at the sight of blood. He’s really slow and had to be in special classes his whole life. He didn’t do this, I promise you.”

  The sheriff glared at her, and for a moment, so did Mickey. They’d forgotten they were arguing, and the sheriff just turned and left.

  Jennifer grabbed my arm. “Jon, I promise you. Just talk to him. You’ll see he didn’t do this.”

  20

  The sheriff’s office seemed cold. I left my jacket on as we stood outside the holding cell. The department didn’t have interview rooms, so the officers did all the interviews either in the holding cell or the conference room in the back.

  The sheriff had called in Las Vegas Metro, one of the largest police departments in the country. They would take over the investigation and officially handle both the arrest and the press conference tomorrow, which had apparently been set even before Roger had given an official confession. Police agencies did love their media attention whenever they got a win, even if the win walked through the door on his own.

  “We have about two hours before Metro gets here,” Mickey said. “They’re taking him back to Vegas.”

  The sheriff had told us we could speak to Roger, but our conversation had to be recorded. They didn’t have a camera, so Mickey took out his phone and got the video recording ready.

  “You wanna do it?” he asked.

  “No. This is your case.”

  He nodded, hit the record button, and went inside the cell. I stood off to the side, where I could still hear them. Mickey’s voice was deadpan, as though he were speaking with an apparition he didn’t quite believe was there.

  Roger went into detail about the murders. What we were specifically looking for was a detail someone outside the investigation wouldn’t have known. About twenty minutes into his confession, we got it.

  “Mrs. Noel tried to get up and run. She slammed her foot into the nightstand damn hard, and she fell. That’s when I jumped on her.”

  Mrs. Noel had fractured the big toe on her right foot. That fact was never released to the public. The ME didn’t know how she’d gotten it, but he’d guessed it had happened before her death, not after. I thought it must’ve happened during the attack, after she was already down, but her attacker had been focused on her from the genitals up. He wouldn’t have had a reason to break her toe.

  Finally, after another half an hour of going through the details of what happened to all three families, Mickey asked the question I had been waiting for. “Why, Roger? Why would you do this?”

  “It ain’t me. It’s the wolf.”

  “You told me you’re the wolf.”

  “I am, in a sense. But it takes over. I turn into him, and he comes out. I ain’t got no control. I feel horrible ’bout what happened to them people—I do—but I didn’t have no control.”

  Mickey wrapped up the interview after a few more questions then stepped out of the room. We stared at each other without saying anything. Mickey’s face, usually worn like a shield so no one could see what he was thinking or feeling, broke into a grin.

  I hung out at the sheriff’s office until Las Vegas Metro got there. Two detectives, both dressed in nice suits, sauntered in and interviewed the sheriff, me, Mickey and Jennifer. They then sat in the room with Roger for about an hour. When they came out, they said they had their confession, which Mickey had already given them. Then they were gone, with the original murder book for the Noels, Roths, and Wyatts.

  Just like that, it was over.

  Mickey sat next to me on the beat-up couch in the lobby. He leaned his head back on the cushion and stared at the ceiling for a while.

  “Why would he just come in?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes they don’t want to keep going but they don’t want to die, either.”

  “You don’t find that odd that we speak to Kathleen, someone we both thought was hiding something, and then the killer just happens to come in and confess?”

  “He knew the detail about the toe. Only the ME, the sheriff, and we knew that.”

  “But why now? Why did he come at just this moment when we were close to a real, workable lead?”

  “I’m just as curious as you, and maybe the Metro guys will find out, but I’m tired. I’m tired of this case. I’m tired of chasing these sick bastards… I’m just tired.”

  “Mickey, listen to me, the only reason I can think of for him to waltz in here and confess is that whoever killed those families is going to run. Roger is a diversion. They’ll probably find out he has alibis for the nights of the killings. But they won’t find that out until later, when the man who actually killed those people is already gone.”

  Mickey looked pale and had dark circles under his eyes. He melted into the couch as though he couldn’t get up again even if he wanted to.

  “Maybe. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it.”

  Before I could say anything else, the sheriff, the deputy, and a man I didn’t recognize came out with a bottle of champagne. The sheriff said they were celebrating and introduced the second man as the mayor of Peak Road.

  They popped the champagne and poured it into plastic cups. Someone turned on Fleetwood Mac somewhere, and a few other people came in. Mickey didn’t get up, but he seemed to enjoy the company and the congratulations.

  I couldn’t celebrate. He’s going to run. I know it. I just didn’t know how much time I had before he was in the wind. My guess was probably no more than a day.

  I stood by while they drank champagne and congratulated themselves. I wasn’t like them. For me, it was the chase—the catch meant nothing. I wondered why I had never seen that before.

  This chase isn’t over.

  When we got back to the motel, I waited until we were out of the car. I had to think about how I could convince Mickey to see this my way. Ten years ago, he would have believed me, but now he looked so tired that I knew he wanted nothing more than to go back to his wife and rest.

  “Mickey,” I said as we walked through the parking lot, “he’s not done. He’s going to keep doing this until someone finds him.”

  Mickey stopped and turned to me. “We have a confession with a detail only the killer would know. I don’t know what else you expect us to do.”

  “Are you kidding? Mickey, you eat guys like this for breakfast. Ten years ago you wouldn’t have stopped until every stone was turned and every possible angle worked. Now you’re just giving up at the first sign of an easy out?”

  “Do you have any plausible explanation as to why Roger knew about the toe? Because if you don’t, then he’s our guy. We got our collar, Jon. Sometimes knowing when to stop is more important than starting.”

  “Hey, you asked me, remember? You came to me and asked me to help. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be out here. And you knew that by showing me the Noels, I would see the rest of them. The ones that don’t even know they’re dead yet. You got me into this, so you don’t get to back out.”

  He watched me for a second. “I’m sorry, Jon. I’m on the next plane out in the morning. I suggest you go, too.”

  21

  I couldn’t sleep, so I drove. Though the town was small, every town looked the same at night—all the dark corners, shadows that raced across walls and pavement, and stares of people who didn’t want others to see them. I went to an all-night pharmacy. The lighting inside hurt my eyes and began to bother me right away. A single cashier was there but no pharmacist. I scoured the aisles for ibuprofen and found a small bottle of Advil. I took four right there and washed it down with a few sips of a Diet Coke I opened.

  “You gonna have to pay for that,” the cashier said.

  “I will.”

  I was still hungry, but nothing sounded good. I went through the other aisles and got a bag of chips. When I paid for them, the cashier was staring at me like I was about to ru
n off with them.

  “Hey, wait a sec. You’re that cop, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Yeah, you tryin’ to catch the werewolf, right? You got him yet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  I drove around a little more. There was a park, of all things, near the edge of town. I don’t know why a town surrounded by forests would need a park, but there it was. I sat on a bench and stared out over the playground equipment. A swing moved gently back and forth with a breeze.

  My cell phone buzzed. It was Laka.

  “Miss me already?” I asked.

  “Jon”—her tone told me this wasn’t a social call—“you have to come back.”

  “Why?”

  “The Meyer case. We got a collar on it, but no one can break him. I know this is the guy.”

  I hadn’t thought about any of my open cases since coming to Peak Road. Bella Meyer had been killed in her apartment by a single stab wound to the abdomen. She was a student at the University of Hawaii and had lived on the island for only eight months before she was killed. I thought the boyfriend was good for it, but we’d never had enough to hold him.

  “The boyfriend?”

  “Yes. Got a friend that says he told him he did it. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer, but we can’t hold him much longer. How quickly can you get back here?”

  “I don’t know if I can. I’m not done here.”

  “Jon, this is your case. I need you here.”

  “And I said I can’t do it,” I said angrily.

  I wanted to shout into the phone and felt the flush of resentment in my face. Then I got embarrassed that I had allowed myself to get rattled so easily. “I’m sorry.”

  She was silent for a few seconds. “I don’t know what could be more important than finding that girl’s killer, but I hope it’s worth it.”

  She hung up without saying goodbye.

  The morning light pierced my eyelids and lit the world a bright red. I put my hand over my eyes. I felt the hard bench underneath me and remembered deciding to sleep in the park. I’d wanted to sleep outside underneath the open sky. Maybe to prove to myself that there was nothing to fear; that there wasn’t a monster roaming around in this town.

  I checked my phone. I had left the location services and Bluetooth on, and it had died sometime during the night. I stuffed it into my pocket and rose. Stretching my neck from side to side, I felt the weight of age. That’s what getting older always felt like to me. I hadn’t gained any physical weight in twenty years—my body never worked that way—but I felt a lot heavier, as though the world were pressing down on me. And those little old hunchbacked men always gave me an uncomfortable feeling, as though the world had pressed down on them so hard, it had broken them.

  The chase. That’s what this is about. What it’s always been about. I knew I should let go and leave. Mickey had been living with this case for two decades. If he can let go, why can’t I? What is it about me that won’t let it go?

  I got into the car and drove. My stomach growled, and I felt the dull ache of intense hunger. I stopped at the diner—a part of me was excited to see Jennifer. The way she smiled when she saw me gave me butterflies—the same feeling I got in junior high school when a pretty girl would speak to me in class for the first time or knew my name.

  The diner was busy, and I had to wait by the entrance for a booth. Jennifer wasn’t there, but it was still early. Her shift might have started later in the morning.

  I ordered a vegetarian omelet with salsa and an orange juice. I ate slowly, savoring the food. It was good, though a little greasy, but I could tell the ingredients were fresh, even the eggs. After breakfast, I sat on the hood of my car and stared up at the blue sky. The sky above me was cloudless, but I could see them farther out on the horizon. I would be gone before they got here.

  I went back to the motel, expecting to say goodbye to Mickey, but he wasn’t there. I thought he had already headed to the airport, but his clothes were still in the room. I showered, shaved, then began to pack. A while later, I remembered that my phone had died, and I plugged it in. I let it charge for a few minutes before turning on. Then it dinged, indicating I had voicemails and text messages.

  Mickey had texted and called several times. I called him back.

  “Where are you?” he said as a greeting.

  “The motel.”

  A pause. “Jon, something’s happened to that girl. I’m down here with the sheriff and…”

  He didn’t have to finish—I knew who he was talking about. I ran out of the motel room and to the car.

  22

  The first car I saw was the sheriff’s. She must’ve picked Mickey up from the motel. A forensic CSU van from Baxter was there, as well as a couple of police cruisers. Mickey was standing on the sidewalk, speaking with the sheriff, when I came up to them.

  “I’m sorry,” Mickey said.

  “How did you find out?”

  “The mother called it in when she woke up this morning. Says she didn’t hear a thing last night.”

  “I wanna see her.”

  Mickey nodded, and the sheriff didn’t say anything. I brushed past them and went toward the house. I took the steps slowly, and the officer at the door looked to the sheriff, who nodded, before letting me past.

  Jennifer’s home seemed untouched, no different than it was the last time I’d seen it, except for the energy. After a murder or suicide, the energy in a place was always different. I could never put my finger on it, but something just felt off. I heard the voices of two men upstairs. I took the stairs and found them in a bedroom. On the floor were Jennifer’s bloodied remains.

  It wasn’t the brutal savagery that had descended on the Noels. One massive bite to the throat—almost surgical, directly over the jugular—had killed her. The carpet was wet with her blood, and it had soaked the blue booties the two forensic techs were wearing.

  I didn’t go into the room, but I stared at her face. Her eyes were open. Next to her hand was her cell phone. She had been trying to call somebody for help.

  “Can you please see what the last number she called was?”

  One of the techs gave me a quizzical look, but then he checked. He picked up the phone with his gloved hands and said, “Just three numbers. Eight oh eight.”

  That was a Honolulu area code. She had been trying to call me.

  I walked down the hallway and into the other bedroom. Instead of her own room, she’d been killed in what looked like a spare bedroom. She’d probably fought him off and gotten all the way there before he caught up with her. Scratches on the door meant she had tried to close the door on him.

  Jennifer’s room was bare, with the exception of a poster of Mauna Kea, a volcano in Hawaii, hanging behind her bed. I wondered if she’d printed it off herself from online.

  I sat down on her bed. I had told her that she wouldn’t want to be with me because every woman who got close to me got hurt. I put my elbows on my thighs and brought my hands up under my chin. I stared at a spot on the carpet. It was dark brown, like spilt coffee.

  I swallowed and gazed at that spot. Eventually, my eyes burned from not blinking, and I looked away. I rose and went over to her closet. She didn’t have a lot of clothes, but she definitely had a particular taste—revealing. I touched a blouse I’d seen her in at the diner. I reached up and pulled a notebook down from the shelf above her clothes. Dates and notes were scribbled inside—it was a journal.

  I flipped through to the final entry, describing her shift at the diner and how her mother was bugging her to go to community college and learn a trade like cutting hair or massage. At the very end was a sentence that made my heart drop: “I don’t want to go to college. I want to move to Hawaii and marry Jon Stanton.”

  The rest of the pages were blank—lots and lots of blank pages. Those pages should’ve been filled with a life of joy. Of a husband and children and old age. Of heartbreak and sadness. Of love. Everything she had learned through living. Instead, there was n
othing but white paper.

  I closed the journal and put it back on the shelf. I had to put my hand on the wall because my knees felt weak, as though I could pass out at any second.

  On the way to her house, my thoughts had drifted. I’d thought about just crashing the car—then it would all be over. Without a seatbelt, one turn of the wheel into a tree or barrier would end everything. The reason I couldn’t leave Peak Road was the same reason I had destroyed everyone near me and why I wanted my kids to live thousands of miles away from me: my obsessiveness destroyed anyone I cared about.

  “You okay?” Mickey was standing by the door. He leaned against the frame with his arms folded. He had an air of authority to him, real authority that I hadn’t seen in too many other people. People wanted to make him happy.

  “No, not really.”

  “You couldn’t have prevented this.”

  “We both know that’s a lie. If I hadn’t come out here, she’d still be alive.”

  “He could’ve targeted her months ago.”

  Mickey was being generous to ease the sting, but we both knew that Jennifer’s death was a message. Jennifer was his way of telling me I wasn’t the one in control.

  “He did this for me,” I said. “There’s no one else to blame. But we were leaving. If he would’ve waited a day, we both would’ve been gone and this case closed.”

  Mickey thought for a moment. “Maybe he doesn’t want us to leave.” Mickey turned and began speaking with the forensic techs.

  He was right. This didn’t make any sense to me, but that’s because I wasn’t thinking like him. I was thinking like me. He didn’t want us to leave. He wanted to stop but didn’t know how. He might have rationalized killing Jennifer by thinking he wanted to antagonize the police, who he likely viewed with contempt, but that wasn’t what he really wanted. Jennifer’s death was his effort to get caught. He was crying out to me to not give up.