Peak Road - A Short Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 10) Page 9

  I stepped out into the hall, and Mickey turned to face me. “Can you get a ride back with the sheriff?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Where you going?”

  “Las Vegas.”

  “Jon,” he called from behind me.

  I looked at him.

  “Justice is one thing, but revenge is another. Revenge is empty. Don’t cross lines you can’t come back from for revenge.”

  “Tell that to Jennifer.”

  I hurried out to the car.

  23

  Vegas was nearly two hours away, but I got there in an hour and a half. I sped the entire time and had arguments prepared to give the highway patrol trooper if I got pulled over, but it never happened.

  The sheriff had told me that Metro PD was keeping Roger in a precinct in North Las Vegas. I mapped it and got there quickly by taking back roads and avoiding the Strip. The precinct was nice, and I vaguely remembered being there before. I’d helped on a case years ago and knew several of the detectives. I had even, briefly, dated one.

  I stepped out of the car and hurried inside to the front desk. A uniformed officer sat reading a magazine. He glanced up at me then returned to the magazine.

  “Excuse me, is Alma Parr in this precinct?”

  He flipped a page. “What do you need to see the captain for?”

  Captain? That was better than I could’ve hoped for. “Can you please tell him Jon Stanton is here to see him?”

  The man sighed as he put down his magazine and picked up the phone. I paced in front of the desk. Too much energy was flowing through me, and I couldn’t have sat down if I’d wanted to.

  “You can go back,” the officer said. “Fourth door on the right.”

  The walls of the long hallway held plaques bearing the names of officers who had died in the line of duty. I didn’t look at them. Every police station had those plaques, and I never looked at them.

  Alma Parr was as big as I remembered. He had a smooth, bald head with muscles that bulged underneath a blue T-shirt. He looked up at me and smiled. “As I live and breathe. Jon Stanton back in the City of Sin.”

  We shook hands, but I didn’t sit down. I stood behind the chair and placed my hands on it. “Captain, huh? I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be. They owed me after I took a bullet last time. You here to apply for a gig? ’Cause I could always use a good gumshoe in Homicide.”

  “No. I need a favor, Alma.”

  I explained to him about Roger and Jennifer’s death. I told him I needed time with Roger to find out who had put him up to confessing for the Noels’ murders.

  “Seems good for it, man,” Alma said.

  “You’ll dig a little deeper and find some alibi that makes it impossible for him to have killed those families. And he certainly didn’t kill Jennifer. He was here. You’re gonna have to cut him loose sometime. I just want a few minutes with him first.”

  He thought for a moment, swiveling his chair one way then the other as he stared at me. “All right. No camera, and this stays between us.”

  “You got it.”

  He led me down the hall. Everyone said hello or cracked a joke with him. They not only respected him but liked him as well. I had never felt that camaraderie in any precinct. I was usually considered an outsider.

  We got to the back holding cell, and Alma told an officer to bring Roger to Interview Room Two. He opened the door, and I sat down.

  “Look familiar?” he asked.

  On the case I had worked in Las Vegas, I had been a suspect in a crime, and Alma had interviewed me in this very room.

  “I appreciate this.”

  “No worries.”

  He left me alone.

  Roger was brought in ten minutes later, looking disheveled and frightened. I don’t think he had planned to be held in a cage for so long.

  “You here to get me out?” he asked as he was sat down across from me.

  I could see the desperation in his eyes. I remembered what Jennifer had said: that he was mentally slow. I took a deep breath, as though I had bad news to tell him, then placed my hands gently on the table. I gave him a sad grin. “I’m sorry, Roger. I just came to see if you needed anything before tomorrow. If you wanted me to say goodbye to anyone, like your cousin Jennifer or anyone like that.”

  “Jen? Why would I want to say bye to Jen?”

  As I’d figured, he didn’t know anything about her death. “Well, in preparation for tomorrow, it’s customary to get a last meal and to watch a last TV show. I thought I would set that up for you.”

  His eyes, already filled with fear, shifted to absolute terror. “What do you mean last meal?”

  “I thought the officers would’ve told you by now. Have they not talked to you about the death penalty?”

  He shook his head. “Ain’t no one talked to me since yesterday.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, maybe I should let them explain it first.”

  “No, please. What about a last meal? What’s going to happen tomorrow?”

  I swallowed. “Roger, you killed multiple people. This has been certified a death penalty case. They’re going to kill you tomorrow.”

  His eyes went wide, and his mouth opened a few inches. “Wha… but I ain’t got no lawyer or a… or a…” He looked as if he were about to hyperventilate.

  “Sorry, Roger. You don’t get a lawyer in a death penalty case. Or a trial. That’s what makes death penalty cases so different. The judge reads over your file and decides whether there’s enough evidence. He did that yesterday. The execution’s been set for tomorrow at eight in the morning. I thought you knew.”

  His lower lip was trembling. His handcuffs clanked against the table as he pointed at the door then dropped his hands back onto the table. “They never told me that! Ain’t no one told me nothin’. She said if I did this, I would be let out. That I wouldn’t have to spend the night, even.”

  “Who told you?”

  He hesitated, realizing he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.

  “Roger, you are about to die. If someone put you up to this, you need to tell me so I can stop this execution.”

  He nodded furiously, his eyes darting around the room. Hands pressed hard against the side of his head, and he slowly rocked back and forth.

  “It was Aunt Kathy. She said if I did this that I’d be out of jail right away. That she wasn’t gonna let no one do nothin’ to me. But I spent the night. She said I wouldn’t have to spend the night.”

  “Aunt Kathy? You mean Kathleen Harken, right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, she said nothin’ was gonna happen to me. That I’d be helping out everyone if I did it.”

  “What did she mean by ‘everyone’?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know nothin’. She just said everyone. I’d be helping everyone, and I wouldn’t have to spend the night.”

  The rocking was violent now, and he was pressing so hard against his head, his fingers were turning white.

  “Roger, who really killed those people?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Aunt Kathy does.”

  24

  It was nearly afternoon when Mickey and I sped through the residential neighborhood. I checked my weapon and wondered when I’d last cleaned it. I was feeling too much adrenaline, and rushes of adrenaline affected both long- and short-term memory.

  “You sure?” Mickey asked as he spun the wheel and took a hard left.

  “I’m sure.”

  “I think we should have backup.”

  “The sheriff’s not answering her phone. They don’t have a SWAT team here, Mickey. Unless we want to wait for Las Vegas Metro, it’s just us.”

  “You could’ve told Metro while you were there and asked for help. You wanted this to just be us.”

  I didn’t respond as I holstered my weapon. “It’s gotta be her son,” I said, changing the subject. “Kathleen’s son is still alive, and I bet he’s Earl Kaiser. He’s the only one who’s been here for the original killings
and these. And he’s raped before. That’s gotta be why they’re in the same neighborhood. He wants to be close to his mother.”

  “Let’s at least get that deputy out here to have the semblance of legitimacy.”

  I didn’t object, and Mickey called over to the sheriff’s office and told the receptionist we were on our way to Kathleen’s home. He asked that both the sheriff and the deputy get there ASAP. He also called the FBI field office in Las Vegas, but they couldn’t get anyone out for a few hours.

  Mickey stopped the car just up the street from Kathleen’s house. He checked his weapon then said, “You know this is crazy to go in there like this, right? We’re not even cops here.”

  “If you want to stay, I understand.”

  He stared at me. At some point, the case had gone from his to mine. I knew my obsession had taken it away from him, and I wondered if that’s what he’d wanted all along. He had plenty of connections at the Bureau he could’ve asked for help. If he really wanted, the FBI would’ve taken this case and even put him back on some sort of temporary employment so he could work it legitimately. But that wasn’t what Mickey had done. He had come to me. I was unnerved to realize that he had known something about me that I hadn’t understood at the time.

  “No,” he said. “I’m coming.”

  We raced up to Kathleen’s house. The home I really wanted to get into was Earl’s, and that would come. But first, I needed to get Kathleen to someplace she couldn’t do any damage. We would cuff her, if we could find some cuffs, and place her in the back of the car. The town had a municipal court and a judge, so at least the deputy could apply for a warrant for Kathleen’s phones and Earl’s house without having to drive to a different city.

  We drew our weapons, though I knew neither one of us wanted to use them on an elderly woman. Mickey looked down at his then holstered it. I debated for a second then did the same. Rather than kicking down the door or breaking a window—things we could have been prosecuted for—I just knocked. Then I pounded with the side of my fist. Even arresting Kathleen would be tricky. Most states had a citizen’s arrest statute, a part of the law that covered private citizens stopping someone during or after they had committed a crime. That might protect me and Mickey from a lawsuit. But it might not. I didn’t really care at this point.

  No one answered, so I tried the door. It was open. Inside, the home was quiet. I slipped in, and Mickey followed.

  “Hello?” I said. “Kathleen? This is Jon Stanton. We’d like to speak with you again.”

  I stepped around the corner and looked into the living room. Searching a house felt too weird without my firearm, and I reached down for it. Then I stopped. If something did happen, if I killed this woman, it could be considered murder. I’d entered her home without her consent. Still, I felt naked.

  Mickey moved ahead. He looped around the couch to have a look in the study. I took the stairs to the second floor. I couldn’t stop myself from taking out my weapon. I had to have something, but I left the safety on.

  The second floor consisted of a few bedrooms. The home was large, meant for a family. One room hadn’t been touched in so long that I could see the thick layer of dust on everything from the hallway. Inside, the room smelled like a man’s cologne, just a faint fragrance that I could hardly pick up.

  “Kathleen?” I said. “I know Earl’s your son. I just want to talk.”

  I listened but didn’t hear a response. Back in the hallway, I noticed photos on the wall. The same ones were downstairs: her son in a military uniform, at the beach, and at the Las Vegas Strip. I glanced at each one before heading back downstairs.

  On the top step, I heard a shot.

  25

  Gun first, I ran down the stairs. The shot had been loud. It had echoed through the house, and I couldn’t tell where it had come from. I ran through the living room and shouted, “Mickey!”

  In the kitchen, I saw him facedown on the linoleum. Blood was coming out of his shoulder, and he groaned. I ran up to him—and heard the click: a gun’s hammer cocking.

  I didn’t move.

  “Kathleen, we just came here to talk.”

  “Kathleen’s dead.”

  I couldn’t place the voice at first, but when I did, my heart sank. Slowly, I turned around to find Sheriff Briggs pointing her weapon at my face. I swallowed. I had been wrong: Earl Kaiser wasn’t Kathleen’s son.

  “Sit down, Jon.”

  I took a step back from her. The dining table was right there, and I pulled out a chair. As slowly as I could, so as not to startle her, I sat down. She pulled out a chair, too, but sat about ten feet away from me, far enough that if I rushed her, she could probably get off four or five shots.

  “I thought Earl was her son. I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

  The sheriff leaned back. I still couldn’t see it. Not only did she look like a woman, but she was a beautiful one at that.

  Transsexuals were generally passive and non-violent. A psychopath in the transgender community was rare. They tended to be strong introverts, escaping into their own world from the cruelty the outside world imposed on them.

  “Your mother told us you were dead, Michael,” I said.

  She lifted the gun. “That’s not my name anymore.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. But you will be.”

  I thought for a moment as the two of us stared at each other. “When you killed the first family, you must’ve been sixteen.”

  “Fifteen, actually. See, Sheriff Briggs wasn’t my real father. Kathleen wasn’t my real mother, either. I was adopted. Though they didn’t ever tell me. I found out when I became a cop and could search my records. Odd thing, finding out something like that. You don’t know whether to be happy that you’ve got parents out there you haven’t met, or sad that you’ve been lied to your entire life.”

  “Did your dad know?”

  She nodded. “That’s why Mickey here could never find anything. Whatever evidence there was, my dad scooped it up and got rid of it. Can you imagine that? He was as honest a cop as you’d ever find, and he destroyed evidence of multiple murders to save his son. I mean, how excruciating must that have been, right?” She shook her head. “I was scared there for a second. When Mickey remembered Sheriff Briggs’s son getting his driver’s license. I thought you two might look a little more into me, but that one slipped past ya, didn’t it?”

  We were silent for a long time.

  “Give me the gun, Dolly. It’s over. You can rest now.”

  She chuckled. “Detective, I’m about to blow your brains all over my mother’s table. Then I can rest.”

  “If you were going to kill me, you would’ve done it that night you broke into our motel room. You don’t want me dead. You want to die, and you want me to do it for you. But you don’t need to die. I can help you.” I started getting up from my seat.

  She jerked her arm straight. “Sit the fuck down!”

  “No. I know you. I know you don’t want to kill me. Give me the gun, Dolly. Something’s wrong with you, and you don’t know what it is, so you want to die. But you don’t have to. I can help with the pain.”

  Tears came to her eyes, but her face was like stone. “You can’t help. No one can. I go crazy. I’m possessed by demons. I just go crazy some nights, and people have to die. How you gonna fix that, Jon? Huh? You gonna put me on Prozac? Have me start exercising three times a week? I kill and eat people. There’s no cure for it.”

  I took a step forward. “Yes there is. Everything has an explanation. Even evil can change. It’s just a choice, as easy as any other. You just have to choose not to do this anymore.”

  The tears streamed down her face. “I’m sorry, but you have to die.”

  I took another step toward her. “You won’t shoot me.”

  “Don’t you fucking test me.”

  “You won’t shoot me,” I said softly, taking another step. “I’m being protected. That’s why you chose me, isn’t it? You can sense it,
too. I’m special.”

  “No, nobody’s special.”

  “I was sent here just for you.” I took another step and glanced at Mickey. He wasn’t moving. “I was sent to help you.”

  “Stay away!”

  She fired a shot, but it went wide. I knew it wasn’t meant to kill me. I took another step toward her, then another. I was within five feet of her.

  “I can take all that pain away.” I took another step, and reached out slowly for the gun. “All of it will be gone. You can rest now, Dolly. You can have peace.”

  Her hand was trembling as my fingers nearly reached the gun. It was pointed at my face. If she fired, I wouldn’t survive.

  “You’re still a human being, Dolly. You don’t need to live like this. You can rest… you can rest.”

  In a flash of movement, I grabbed the gun from her. I slammed my fist into her jaw, sending her back against the wall. Pressing my body against hers, I pushed the gun against her throat.

  “Do it,” she whispered. “Do it, please. I can’t stop. Do it, do it, do it, do it…”

  I saw Jennifer and the life we could’ve had. I saw the Noels, the Wyatts, and the Roths. I saw children, barbecues, and picnics… but I saw it through a hazy lens. I was looking at a video of something from a long time ago that didn’t exist anymore.

  “Do it,” she said, closing her eyes.

  I felt the trigger against my finger.

  “Do it.”

  I closed my eyes. So much rage writhed inside of me that it felt uncontrollable, as if the decision were out of my hands now. I pictured pulling the trigger and seeing her head explode—blood over the white walls, oozing down to the floor. She was a monster as real as any werewolf. She needed to die. Revenge was the only way Jennifer could have some peace. It was the only way.

  I fired.