The White Angel Murder

by Victor Methos

  As he walked along the beach he came to a convenience store and went inside. The lighting hurt his eyes and the bright tile of the floor was aggravating. He saw a man behind the counter reading a Hustler and it made him sick. He bought a Sprite and some Tums and left and went back to the safety of the beach.

  He sat and buried his feet underneath the sand. The moon was a bright crescent in the sky and he stared at it a long time. In the distance he could hear a whale, or at least what he thought was a whale, and it delighted him for a reason he couldn’t name.

  He took out his cell phone and dialed Melissa’s number. She picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Jon, what are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I figured you might be up.”

  “No, I took an Ambien. Hold on a sec.” He could hear sheets rustling and then footsteps as she went to a different room. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you. How are the boys?”

  “They’re good. They miss you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. You’re too hard on yourself, Jon. They love you. They just don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “How’s Lance?”

  “You don’t want to hear about him.”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Because you want to accuse me of something but you don’t want to say it. So just say it, Jon. I already know you’re thinking it.”

  “I never would’ve brought someone else in to raise our kids.”

  “I was lonely. You wouldn’t understand because you like being alone. I thought for a long time that’s how you handled pain but I think maybe it makes you stronger somehow.”

  “Maybe, but I’ve never liked it. I understand why you did what you did. I just needed to say it.”

  “I know. I’m not mad.” She hesitated. “I miss you.”

  “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “Tell me you miss me too.”

  “You know I do.”

  “I … I talked to Lance the other day about the wedding and I think I need some more time.”

  “For what?”

  “You know what.”

  “Yeah, I do. How much time?”

  “I told him I want to put it off until next year. He seemed upset but he said he understood. Why do you think I did that?”

  “We’ve shared a lot of time, Mel. I think eventually you’ll move on, but now might not be the time.”

  “What about you? Will you move on?”

  “No, you were my first love and you’ll always be my first love.”

  “I hate how you do that. How you always know just what to say to make me feel like shit.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  She sighed. “I know. I better get back to bed. Lance already doesn’t like you.”

  He grinned. “He’s a tool.”

  “Jon,” she said with a giggle, “he is not.”

  “Yes he is. Look up what tool means and you’ll see.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Stanton put his phone on the sand and waited a long time, as long as the phone call had lasted, until he closed his eyes.

  Hearing her voice and talking about something other than the dead made him feel light and happy, but it didn’t last. Tami and Pamela had burned themselves into his mind and that was all he saw. Their pleading faces as they were torn apart while still alive. In that last moment he wondered if they cried for fathers that had left them long ago. They had died alone, and lived alone. Discarded by everyone that should have cared about them.

  But he wasn’t going to be one of them.

  He took his cell phone and texted Harlow:

  I’ll do it.

  Though he wasn’t expecting it, a text came back within minutes:

  I knew you would.

  59

  Noah Sherman sat on the plane back to Pelican Bay State Prison and thought about the last time he had been on a plane.

  It was almost ten years ago. He had been dating a girl that loved to travel and though he lived on a meager detective’s salary, she was independently wealthy. An inheritance given to her by an uncle that she talked about incessantly. Sherman had always suspected they had been lovers in her youth.

  He remembered sitting next to her on the plane and the child across the aisle. He was perhaps ten and reading a book quietly to himself when his father knocked the book out of his hand and said something about not being a “faggot.” The child then leaned back and stared at a spot on the chair in front of him and didn’t move. Not when his little brother kicked him and not when the stewardess brought out drinks and peanuts.

  Sitting now in a four passenger plane, shackled from ankles to wrist, he wondered what had happened to that little boy. What he had grown up to become. A father like that could either break you or make you stronger. He hoped that the boy had been made stronger for it.

  The marshal sitting next to him jabbed a finger in his ribs. “Excited to get back you piece of shit?”

  Sherman stared forward, to the horizon before him. He had been cut out of the loop and would not be given anything Harlow had promised. He suspected as much and was not surprised. The trip was worthwhile anyhow. Even shackled, the sunlight and the ability to walk without walls made a man feel free.

  The plane landed after scarcely an hour in the sky and he was placed in a Department of Corrections van and taken back to the prison. It was smaller, he thought. Smaller and more gray and the sounds were louder than he remembered. There was wailing and laughing and crying and maniacal conversations that made no sense. Seemingly out of the ether, Sherman’s mood changed. His persona had to go back up. His chest puffed out, his chin tilted upward. It was all an act, as was everyone else’s. Hardened criminals all acting like they were harder than they are. And only for the benefit of each other.

  He was led back to his cell but no one was there. Sherman sat on the bottom bunk and stared at the floor. He was waiting for someone. To pass the time, he flicked on the television and watched cable news. Something about a military strike in the Middle East. He followed the Iraq War closely. Thousands upon thousands of people dead over a lie. How was it that politicians could get away with killing so well?

  An hour passed and he noticed someone standing by the cell. A female guard. She was overweight by at least sixty pounds and her hair was long and brunette. She had a pug’s face, he thought.

  “I missed you,” she said.

  “I missed you too.”

  “I kinda thought that maybe you wouldn’t be back.”

  He rose and walked to the cell door. “And how would I manage that?”

  “I don’t know. You’re smart. I didn’t think you would let them bring you back.”

  She reached into his cell and down his pants, pulling out his penis and beginning to stroke it. She glanced around and made sure there was no else on the floor and then began kissing him through the bars, their tongues rolling over each other. He reached out of the cell and between her legs and began caressing her.

  “I need something from you,” he said.

  “What is it?” she said, her breathing heavy.

  “I need you to send a letter for me.”

  “Okay,” she said, her eyes closed and her head tilted back.

  “And then I need you to bring me something.”

  “What?”

  “A new belt.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m going to trade it for something.”

  “What are you trading it for?” she asked, her strokes speeding up.

  “I’ll tell you when I have it.”

  He bit down hard into her lip as he ejaculated and he tasted blood. She groaned, and climaxed as well, tasting the ejaculate on her hand before wiping it on her shirt.

  “I’ll get you some paper,” she said.

  60

  She felt dampness at firs
t. Like being wrapped in a wet towel. Then there was the sensation of the hard floor against her back and the thick dust in the air that made her nostrils itch.

  Zoe’s eyes fluttered open. The light hurt and she squinted until her eyes adjusted. The first thing in her view was an unfinished ceiling. Water pipes and electrical cords in between thick wooden panels and fiberglass. She felt the pounding of her head on the right side and instinctively reached her hand up to find the stickiness of dried blood behind her ear.

  She looked around, her neck stiff. It was dark but there was light coming through a door at the top of a set of stairs and she sat quietly and stared at the light. She remembered the mall and closing the registers … she went to her car … and then she woke up here. As she tried to sit up she felt pain in her feet and looked down to see that they had been tied together securely with a length of plastic. She tried pulling it off but it was wrapped so tightly she couldn’t get her fingers underneath the straps to get a good grip. She worked at it for a long time before giving up and crawling over to the wall. She pulled herself up using a built-in shelf.

  There was a children’s bike in the corner, red with white trim. It was covered in dust and the wheels were flat. Behind that was a shelf packed with all manner of things. Glass jars filled with nails and screws, tools, old books, broken photo frames … it appeared to her to be more like garbage than storage.

  She ran her fingers along the edge of the wall and a splinter broke off a shelf and embedded itself in her thumb. She put her thumb in her mouth and sucked on it and as she did a loud thud made her jump.

  Her back was flat against the wall and she held her breath. There were more sounds and then something being dragged. It was coming from the ceiling and she realized she was in a basement.

  The sounds stopped and she felt the warm trickle of urine down her leg. She choked back tears as she realized what had happened and continued to run her hands along the wall; looking for a door, though she knew now that she wouldn’t find one. As she made her way to the other side of the room, she felt something hard and loose and it jingled. They were chains hanging from the ceiling.

  She collapsed onto the floor, her hand covering her mouth, and began weeping. She cried and then prayed. She hadn’t always been good about going to church or following any commandments. But she prayed now harder than she ever had before. She promised that if God took her home, she would start going to church more and stop having sex with Brian.

  After what seemed like hours all the noises upstairs stopped and she stood up. Slowly, she made her way to the stairs. The steps were wooden and creaked loudly as she crawled flat on her belly.

  There were maybe twenty and it took her a great length of time to get to the top. She looked underneath the door. The crack between the floor and the bottom of the door was wide and she could see red carpet. There was a couch against the back wall and to the right, maybe six or seven feet, was a thick door.

  Zoe reached up and tried the doorknob. It was heavy and greasy to the touch. She tried turning it one way and then another but it wouldn’t budge. She put her face back down to the bottom of the door and tried to look to the far edge to see if she could see anything.

  A pair of boots suddenly appeared in front of the door and made her gasp and pull away.

  61

  Stanton sat at his desk. He had the pathologist from the Imperial County Medical Examiner’s Office on the phone and was discussing the autopsy of Pamela Dallas. He asked if fecal matter had been found in her throat and the pathologist asked why he would’ve checked for that. He said he did look to see if it was clear of obstructions, but no scrapings were taken.

  From the way he spoke, Stanton guessed it wasn’t him that had actually done the autopsy. Salton City was small, a population of less than a thousand, but Imperial County as a whole had one of the worst epidemics of meth in the entire nation. He dealt with plenty of corpses and may just have assumed Pamela was some junkie before giving the project to his assistant. Or, as Stanton had seen in smaller towns, he knew he was not qualified to perform forensic investigations of homicide victims and he passed the buck to someone else that could catch the blame.

  His desktop dinged and he looked to see that he had received a new email. It was from Anderson. It was a scanned file of a missing persons report with a note that said, “You may want to check this out.”

  Stanton opened the file, and his heart stopped in his chest. He told the pathologist he would call him back and stared at the photo on his computer screen. It was Tami Jacobs, but not quite. This girl was younger but the resemblance was striking. Same color eyes, same height, big breasts, they even styled their hair the same.

  It was also Pamela Dallas.

  He read the report quickly as it was only a page and a half. The investigating detective had written that the boyfriend grew hostile and seemed unconcerned about the girl’s disappearance. Stanton checked to make sure the email had also been sent to his Android and then took off out the door.

  He saw Jessica in the hallway.

  “You’re going to want to come with me.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Might be nothing.”

  “Hang on, let me get my badge.”

  She went to her desk and pulled out her badge and firearm with her holster and took off her jacket before placing it on. She met him at the elevators and saw that he looked excited and agitated at the same time.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Missing person.” He pulled up the file on his phone and let her read the report.

  “Looks just like—”

  “I know.”

  “We going to pay Brian a visit?”

  “Yes.”

  Stanton got on the elevator. She followed and pressed the button to the first floor.

  “I called you last night,” she said.

  “Yeah, I saw. Sorry, I meant to get back to you. What was it?”

  “Nothing important. I just wanted to talk.”

  “About the case?”

  “No, just … talk.” She cleared her throat. “I saw George Young today.”

  “Oh yeah, what did he say?”

  The elevator stopped and they got off. “Nothing much. He got off of his suspension today so he’s back at his desk. They didn’t find any misconduct; just that he had identified the wrong witness. He did mention you though. He said for me to tell you to keep the hell away from him.”

  “No problem there.”

  They climbed into Jessica’s Jeep Wrangler and pulled out of the parking lot. Stanton noticed that the CD playing in the car was Yanni.

  “You like Yanni?”

  “Don’t laugh. A lot of people like Yanni.”

  “No, that’s not what I was laughing at. I like him too. I just never pictured you liking him. You seem more like a Led Zeppelin girl.”

  “I can like both. But you’re right. When I was ten I went to a Led Zeppelin reunion concert with my grandfather of all people.”

  “How’d he like it?”

  “He hated it. He was strictly a Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard guy. But he took me cause he knew I liked them.”

  “Were you guys close?”

  They turned onto the interstate and Jessica sped past another car on the onramp.

  “When he was around. He was actually in and out of jail most of my life. Nothing serious, he was just always drunk and getting into fights. He was Irish though so it’s hard to blame him I guess. But he could be a real asshole too. He sold all of his kids’ Christmas presents once and took the money to a bar and got drunk.”

  “It’s difficult to know what other people are going through. He may have had some demons that wouldn’t let him go unless he was drunk.”

  “I guess. It wasn’t all bad though. Scared the crap out of my dad so he never touched so much as a beer.” She turned the music down. “So why are we going to interview Brian? I thought we had our guy and he’s under surveillance.”

  “I checked
on that this morning. He hasn’t left his house. Surveillance hasn’t even seen him to snap a photo. If he has her she could be in his house. Brian may know something.”

  They came off the interstate onto Maple Drive and Stanton directed her down a residential neighborhood and then up a hill. Near the top of the hill was a convenience store and gun store and across the street was a barber shop. They parked in front of the convenience store and then walked down to the gun store.

  The first thing they saw when they came in was a giant poster of the statue of liberty with a holster and a gun and a giant stamp on the bottom that said SECOND AMENDMENT: USE IT OR LOSE IT.

  An older man was at the counter showing some handguns to a family and Stanton walked over to him and flashed his badge.

  “I need to speak to Brian please.”

  “We got two Brians. Which one you need?”

  Stanton flipped through the report on his phone. “Newman.”

  “All right, hang on.”

  He went in back and came out with a young man following him. Brian appeared malnourished he was so skinny and he had the floppy, disheveled haircut of a stoner.

  “Are you Brian Newman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice to meet you, I’m Jon. We’re from the San Diego Police Department. We just need to ask you a few questions about Zoe.”

  “I already talked to the cops.”

  “I know, but we have some follow up we’d like to talk to you about. Won’t take more than a minute or two.”

  “All right, let’s talk in back.”

  They followed him through a door to the back area. It was filled with boxes and firearms. A few deer and moose heads adorned the walls and there were two other people cleaning pistols and rifles on a metal table.

  “So what’dya need?”

  “The night she disappeared, you said she ran out to her car in the parking lot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could you see her from where you were?”

  “No, I was inside the mall.”

  “How long did you wait for her?”