Sociopath Read online

  Stanton suddenly jumped up and ran out of the restaurant without a second look at me. I watched as he ran to a car in the parking lot.

  “That’ll be five-twelve, Tom.”

  As Stanton pulled away, I ran out, Amanda saying something behind me.

  You should buy Jon Stanton dinner, I thought. Because he just saved your life.

  JON STANTON

  I sped to the jail without realizing that I could’ve been pulled over. My phone buzzed as I jumped out of the car and began running in. It was a text with a single figure: $75,000.

  The clerk behind the counter eyed me up and down and said, “Visiting hours are over.”

  “I need to see Dale Christensen.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  I glanced to her nametag. “Jill, that girl that was killed. Tiffany Ochoa. Did you know her?”

  She was silent a moment. “No.”

  “But I bet you knew someone like her. I’ll bet you have a daughter or a niece that was her. She was tortured to death, Jill. And Dale Christensen knows who did it. Please let me speak with him.”

  She hesitated, making a sucking sound through her teeth and glancing to the guard in front of the sliding metal doors leading to the cells.

  “You got twenty.”

  “Thank you.”

  I ran past the guard, who didn’t search me, and went to the room I’d met Dale in before. It took them a while to bring him here and I couldn’t sit still. I paced the room. I stopped suddenly when something entered my thoughts: I was enjoying this. Maybe enjoying wasn’t the correct word, but maybe it was.

  Though Hawaii had been relaxing and pleasurable, I hadn’t felt in the moment. It was as if I were standing outside of myself and watching the actions I was going through.

  But right now, I felt in the moment. I felt my mind and body in sync with each other. I felt … at peace.

  The door on the other side of the glass opened and Dale Christensen sat down in front of me. I waited until the guard left before speaking.

  “Seventy-five thousand. I know it seems like a lot but I bet you would blow through it in less than six months.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know nothin’.”

  “You didn’t wake up in the morning. You woke up at night. You walked right on him when he had Tiffany tied to that tree. That’s why he had to hurry, why he rushed. But I don’t get why he didn’t kill you. Why not just put an arrow through your heart?”

  He swallowed and didn’t say anything.

  “This isn’t you, Dale. You got issues but you’re not a bad person. You don’t protect murderers. Tell me who he is. Let me stop him from doing this again.”

  He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled. “I didn’t … I—”

  “You were in the moment and you weren’t thinking.”

  “It wasn’t that, man. I saw what he was doin’ to her and he saw me. I took off. He chased me but I lost him in these woods, man. I know these woods. I live in a cabin in these woods.”

  “And you called him the next day and got paid.”

  “Yeah, man. Yeah, I got paid.”

  “How’d you know who he was?”

  “Everybody knows who he is. This is a small community up here, man.”

  “Tell me who, Dale.”

  “I want immunity, man. I don’t want no accessory charges. I don’t need that shit.”

  “Tell me who he is, and I’ll do better. It’ll stay between us and you keep that money.”

  “I got your word?”

  “You got my word.”

  He nodded. “All right, man. His name’s Thomas Fischer. He’s the mayor’s boy.”

  I ran out of the jail and dialed Melissa’s phone as I stepped outside. It went straight to voicemail.

  “Thomas Fischer, Melissa. His name’s Thomas Fischer and he’s the CEO of Helix Financial. The mayor’s son. Get some people down there now. I’m calling the Sheriff’s Office. Call me back.”

  As I went to the driver’s side door and unlocked it, I heard the door of the car next to me slide open: a van.

  I glanced back just as the cloth went over my mouth.

  2

  I saw my boys on a beach. They were waving to me as the surf was foaming around them. They appeared younger and I could hear something, like a high-pitched squeal of metal. The sun was reflecting off the water and it was bright and causing spots in my vision. The boys began to fade away and I reached for them but they were gone….

  The forest was speckled with light. I could see leaves and the rough bark of old trees. Birds were somewhere above, squeaking curiously at the invader in their home. The dirt underneath me was warm and soft and I didn’t want to move.

  My vision was blurry and I decided I wouldn’t stand until it cleared. When it finally did, I rolled to the side first, feeling the pressure in my back and ribs, making sure they weren’t broken. Then I sat up.

  The sun was nearly above me, which told me it was sometime just before or after noon. I stood and noticed for the first time I was barefoot. I looked around for my shoes but didn’t see them. I wasn’t on any type of path. It was as if I had been thrown from a plane in the middle of the woods.

  I was quiet and listened for the sound of any traffic, but there was nothing other than birds. In a different context they would have sounded beautiful but their mournful chirps and hoots now seemed ominous. I began walking forward.

  The trees were thick and several times I couldn’t get through and had to find a way around. I came to a small clearing and could see nothing around me but hills and trees and mountains. A small hill was not too far from here and I walked to it and began to climb. From up high, I figured I could see farther out and hopefully see a road.

  I didn’t think much about who had grabbed me or what had happened. Instinctively I knew. And I didn’t think twice about it. It was, from his standpoint, the correct move only if he were to kill me and then flee the country. Otherwise, he’d get caught. I had informed Melissa and the FBI should already be at his door.

  The hill became steep up top and large patches were nothing but jagged rock. My feet got cut twice and I had to finally sit down and let them rest a second before cautiously trying to climb up again. I had to rest and then move, rest and move. It took so long to get to the top that I had nearly forgotten why I’d climbed up here in the first place.

  I sat down and looked out over an expanse of treetops and grassy hills. No roads that I could see. I turned the other way and then another and another. There was nothing.

  Waiting what I thought was a long time, I finally heard something. A buzzing. I looked up to see a small puddle jumper plane flying overhead. I stood and began frantically waving my arms and shouting but they couldn’t see me. It was flying what I guessed was north. I headed down the hill, and in that direction.

  3

  Surprisingly, the forest could actually grow hot. Or maybe it was the humidity that stuck to my skin like watered-down glue. It was always there, and as the sweat rolled down my cheeks and the tip of my nose I hoped that I would come across a stream. You could survive for weeks without food but even two days without water could force your kidneys to shut down.

  I had never been comfortable in forests. I’d grown up in Seattle and moved to San Diego when I was young. An affinity for the ocean was the only thing that I had with nature, particularly the Pacific. I couldn’t leave its crystal waters for anything. I’d been to the east coast and surfed at some of the major spots along the coast, but it wasn’t the same. The waters had a greenish tint and were colder. I had to stay near the Pacific.

  My feet were cut badly now and I was relieved when I heard a stream up ahead. The dirt turned to soft mud and it cooled and soothed my soles and toes. I stood in it for a while before sitting next to the churning water and putting my legs in up to my calves. I didn’t know how sanitary it was to drink and I tried to look far up to
see if I could observe its source, but the trees only allowed me to see maybe fifty feet.

  I cupped my hand and thrust it in and came up. The water was clean and cold, so cold that I surmised it must have come from the mountains and wouldn’t contain too many parasites. I drank and then lay back in the mud.

  Leaves crunched behind me. It was soft, like the wind blowing it around and knocking it into a tree, but it was there. I had nothing on me: not even my cell phone or keys. I slowly looked toward the noise behind me.

  A figure was there.

  I spun around to my stomach and jumped up. I ran at it as fast as I could, waiting for the arrow that would enter my heart and end my life in this damp, dirty forest. But it didn’t come.

  “Jon!”

  Melissa slipped out of the trees. I stopped, my heart pounding so hard it was a thump in my ears. She was wearing a tattered business suit, her hair disheveled, her shoes missing. Though we had never once touched, she ran to me and put her arms around my neck and I put one arm around her, trying to catch my breath.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you get here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I was walking into my apartment and I heard something and then woke up here. I saw someone up on that hill. It must’ve been you.”

  “It was. Have you seen anybody else?”

  “No.”

  I glanced around. “I saw a plane going north. I was heading that way.”

  “I saw it too.”

  I nodded. “You don’t happen to have your gun on you, do you?”

  “No. My badge is gone too.”

  “That stream is probably safe to drink from. Grab a drink if you need one and let’s go.”

  The day only seemed to grow hotter until the sun was finally setting and night began to descend. The forest got louder as darkness descended as most of the animals were nocturnal. Or maybe they felt the fear that we were sharing and instead of thinking and talking all they could do was make noise.

  We stopped underneath a large sycamore and I looked for something to make a fire with. I had never been in scouts and hated camping. I gathered some bark and twigs and then didn’t know what to do next. So I sat against the tree with Melissa next to me and we watched the moon. Hanging over the mountains like a wound, it seemed to bleed black-gray clouds. The stars were sprinkled over the sky in uneven patches and I could see another plane, a commercial jet, flying by. Neither one of us bothered trying to get its attention. We were shadows in the dark.

  “I hate the forest,” she said. “When I found out I was coming to Utah, I cried.”

  “Not a country girl, huh?”

  “City through and through. I grew up in Los Angeles and then moved to San Francisco. I didn’t even see a forest until I came here.”

  “You’re a lot safer here than in a big city. The chance of a snake or mountain lion attack is slim, but the chance of getting mugged or shot or hit by a drunk driver is much higher.”

  She was silent a moment. “What are we doing here, Jon? Why does he want us here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But that was a lie. I knew exactly what we were doing here: we were prey.

  We sat under that tree long enough to recover and we talked the entire time. Mostly just to have something to do, something to take our minds off of what was coming, the inevitable sound of someone trying to sneak up behind us and the quiet buzz of an arrow as it raced toward us.

  “You ever miss it? The streets? Helping to make a difference?” she said.

  “I don’t know if I ever made a difference.”

  “I’ve seen your file, you made a difference. Your partner, the one that killed those two girls and escaped, what was his name?”

  I found I had to spit it out, forcing the words. “Eli Sherman.”

  “Yeah. He had a badge and gun. How many more girls could he have killed if you didn’t stop him?”

  “I stopped him by accident. I looked in his closet one night when I was sleeping there ‘cause my wife and I got into a fight. He had a little box with photos and panties, mementos. When I turned around he was standing there, looking at me. Without a single word we both knew everything about each other. He knew I would kill him, and I knew he would kill me.” I looked to her and she was watching me. “There’s a fierce storm coming. It’s made up of a million little evils and it’s going to swallow us whole. Before we know it, we’ll be standing in carnage and wondering what happened. And the people that are supposed to lead us are the biggest perpetrators. You have to become a certain type of cop if you want to stop that storm. I know one, his name’s Alma Parr. I’m not like him. I can’t stop it.”

  “But you tried. That’s all you can do.”

  “One of the last cases I remember in Homicide was an elderly disabled woman who was beaten to death. Her purse was stolen and we thought it was a mugging gone wrong. But when we traced a credit card purchase online, we found three kids. Twelve year olds. They beat her to death with their baseball bats they used at practice in school and then sodomized her with a butter knife from one of their houses.

  “Evil has a purpose. Whether it’s power, or revenge, or pleasure. This didn’t bring them pleasure. None of them thought about the purse until after the murder. There was no agenda. It was just an act done because they could do it.” I stretched my legs out in front of me and leaned my head back against the tree. The bark was rough and uncomfortable. “I don’t understand this new phenomenon. They have no discernible motivations, nothing that drives them. Not even an aversion to boredom. It’s not evil in the traditional sense, it’s something else. A black nothing. Like they’re just irrational, unthinking clumps of meat drifting through the world. You have to be a very specific person to understand that and to choose to fight it. I can’t anymore. I don’t understand it. I’m just as lost as anyone else.”

  She sat silently and watched the sky with me a while and then she said, “You found this guy in three days, Jon. Without a single witness stepping forward and with one of the worst police investigations I’ve seen. Three days. I think saying you don’t understand it is you trying to convince yourself of something, but I don’t know what.”

  Suddenly there was a change in the air. A slight twist in the air pressure, almost imperceptible.

  It wasn’t until the arrowhead had scraped my scalp and embedded itself into the tree that I realized what it was. I fell to the side, a burning streak across my skull. Melissa didn’t scream. She was instantly on her feet and dragging me around the tree as another arrow exploded. Bark flew into my eyes and stung my neck.

  “Get up,” she shouted, “get up!”

  I stood but was dizzy and confused. Warm blood flowed down from my scalp and over my cheeks and down my neck. Melissa had my hand and was pulling me as I heard a puff of air and an arrow flew past us and was lost in the darkness of the forest.

  Melissa cut through a thick patch of trees. Even if he fired several arrows at once, he couldn’t hit us here. We were surrounded by too many things that would absorb the impact.

  The more we ran, the more my senses were returning to me. I’d taken a blow to the head and I didn’t know how bad the injury was. I could only sense the blood that was beginning to slow and the pain in my feet as we ran over rocks and dirt and branches and twigs.

  We ran until our legs hurt and neither of us could breathe. The darkness seemed to close around us and the trees caved in. The branches were reaching for us in the night and we couldn’t see them as they pulled at our skin and clothes. I stumbled once over a log and fell flat on my face and Melissa helped me up.

  She nearly ran into a tree but I could see it coming and pulled her out of the way. A look of surprise came over her face but she didn’t say anything and continued along what seemed like a short path.

  No more arrows and I began to pull back.

  “We can rest here,” I said.

  “No we can’t. Keep moving.”

  “I don’t se
e anyone here.”

  “You have a head wound, Jon. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “I need to rest, Mel. Please.”

  Mel was what I had called my ex-wife. It sent a wave of icy surprise down my spine just to say it. I stopped and she stopped too.

  “Please, I need to rest.”

  She looked around and helped me down as I sat in a cross-legged position. She checked my wound. Ripping off part of her shirt, she used it as a makeshift bandage and tied it as tightly as she could.

  “I can’t see how bad it is in the dark,” she said.

  “It’s bad. I can’t feel my toes.”

  “That’s ‘cause you’re not wearing shoes. I have that too.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come on,” she said, rising and taking my hand, “we can’t stop.”

  4

  I felt cold and we ran as long as we could, then we walked. The forest at night was not as welcoming as the day; every noise was a predator and every glimmer of light fearsome eyes. It felt as if everything was aimed at us, every tree a hiding place and broken branch a joke.

  We ran so long that neither one of us had any clue where we ended up. The same forest scenery, the same moon, but nothing else felt the same. Even the air was heavier and harder to breathe.

  Finally nearing exhaustion, Melissa stopped and collapsed close to a tree. She leaned against it and closed her eyes and tilted her head back and then forward.

  “Can you hear that?” she said.

  I listened. A crashing noise from up ahead. Something like static from a television … water crashing against rocks.

  “A waterfall,” I said, sucking for breath. “There might be a trail by it.”