Mania - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 9)

by Victor Methos

  But some of the older folks, getting their black coffees to go, still had that rugged essence Stanton remembered. His father had worked in Seattle, and they’d lived out here until Elizabeth’s disappearance. A year or so after that, they moved to Seattle, his father telling him he wanted to be closer to his work, though Stanton knew it was because the home held too many memories of Elizabeth.

  He drank half the steamer and rose to leave. In the corner, he saw a couple arguing. The woman wept softly as the man spoke, explaining something to her that Stanton couldn’t hear. As he left the Starbucks, Stanton wished he could’ve heard what the man was telling her.

  Near the Starbucks was an old warehouse that had been abandoned when Stanton lived here. It was still abandoned, and he wondered if anyone had used it in the twenty-seven years he’d been gone.

  Outside it had started to drizzle, and he put on his black leather jacket. The jacket was worn and cracked at the sleeves. His ex-wife, Melissa, had bought it for him almost a decade ago. He got back on the road, rolled the windows up, and drove in the rain to a place that haunted his dreams: his childhood home.

  The house at 1276 Parker Lane was white with red trim. When he had stopped at the curb, he stared at it as though he didn’t know if it were real. Stanton wasn’t sure how long he sat in the Jeep, but when he got out, the drizzle had turned into a downpour. He listened to the drops hit his jacket and bounce away, his hair sliding into his eyes.

  A “For Sale” sign hung in the window, and another one stood in the front yard. Stanton stepped up to the front porch hesitantly and peered through the window. The interior was decorated as though the home were still lived in, complete with furniture, photographs on the mantel, and a television. Stanton knocked, but no one answered. He went around the house to the backyard. The gate was open, and he stood on the back porch. Three-foot stone pillars stood on either side of the porch, and Stanton hopped up onto one, grabbed the edge of the roof covering the porch, and pulled himself up to the second-story bedroom window: his old room.

  He sat on the porch roof for a moment, impressed that he could still climb up after nearly three decades, and then lifted the window and climbed inside. He had broken the lock on his window so someone couldn’t accidently lock it when he had snuck away for his outings or when he wanted to come home early from school. In twenty-seven years, no one had bothered to fix it. That summed up Rosebud in its entirety: no one believing the town would last long enough to warrant fixing anything.

  His room was almost exactly the same. Different furniture, of course, and in different locations—he preferred his bed next to the window rather than against the wall as it was now—but the paint, the floors, the scents were all the same. He opened the closet, which was empty, and then moved out into the hall. He leaned on the banister and took in the house.

  Photos of a family hung on the walls: a man in glasses with short gray hair and a woman with poufy, dyed-blonde hair. Photos of two children were displayed as well, whose lives Stanton saw in a series of just five photographs: their birth, what he guessed was their first day of school, their wedding, their children, and then their retirement. Each photo was hung neatly over the other in a sequence taking up the wall in the hallway. Stanton examined each before his attention turned to the one room in the home he didn’t want to go into: the bedroom next to his—Elizabeth’s room.

  The hallway seemed to close in on him, and his vision began to darken and fade, closing down to a tunnel. He had had enough panic attacks to know when one was beginning. He sat down on the top step, closed his eyes, and breathed, telling himself to calm down, focusing on the image of the beach on the North Shore as he drifted in with the waves. Early in the mornings, when the sun was just coming up, he liked to pretend he was lost on the ocean and drifting to a beautiful and isolated desert island where he could think without interruption.

  His vision returning to normal, his heart rate slowing, Stanton got up and went into Elizabeth’s bedroom.

  This bedroom was painted a different color than Stanton remembered, and he couldn’t recall if his father had repainted it after Elizabeth’s disappearance. He sat down on the bed. The carpet hadn’t been changed in all that time. For how old and threadbare it was, it had surprisingly few stains. He reached down and touched it with his fingertips—the same carpet his sister had walked on. Then he sat up and quietly stared at the walls.

  11

  Stanton sat in Elizabeth’s room so long the rain had stopped by the time he left. He didn’t much care if anyone came home while he sat in her room, but no one did.

  He didn’t need to see his parents’ bedroom, but he did stop in the kitchen and splash some water on his face. He dried himself with a paper towel and glanced at the backyard through the window above the sink.

  He wondered if any of his old neighbors were still around. Rosebud didn’t have much population mobility. The outside world hardly existed here. When Stanton’s family first moved to San Diego, it was as if the entire planet had opened up to him and revealed itself. Before then, the world consisted of a town with a population of less than three thousand.

  Stanton left the house through the back door and pushed the button on the doorknob to lock the bottom lock on his way out. The sun shone through the gray clouds, still swollen with rain, as he hiked up the sidewalk. Next door had been an elderly woman named Rosa. She was old even back then and had probably long since died. The next house over was a family whose daughter Stanton had had a crush on. Monique. He stopped in front of it for a few seconds, and it brought a grin to his face. All the memories of those awkward moments trying to get Monique’s attention, never quite succeeding because he didn’t have the courage to just come out and ask her out.

  At the end of the block was a house with a nicer lawn—the home of Dale Brown, his wife Jaclyn, and their two boys, Nathan and Niles. Stanton had been Nathan’s age but had been close to both of them. The Browns would come over for dinner to his own house frequently, and he remembered that Dale and his own father had been fishing buddies. Nathan had come to Elizabeth’s funeral and was the only reason Stanton could be there without having a breakdown. Niles didn’t show up to the funeral, which Stanton thought was odd because he and Elizabeth were close.

  He went to the front door and knocked. Dale had been a carpenter, and with business doing well, he was sure the Browns didn’t live here anymore. It would’ve been nice to see a familiar face.

  A man answered in a plaid flannel shirt tucked into Dockers. The large eyeglasses were new, as were the wrinkles and gray hair, but Stanton recognized Dale Brown. Dale must’ve recognized him too because his eyes widened, and his jaw nearly fell open.

  “Jonny?”

  “How are you, Mr. Brown?”

  He’d called him Mr. Brown instead of Dale. He thought it odd how people reverted to the rules of authority from childhood. The same reaction had manifested when he was around teachers from his youth.

  “I think you can call me Dale now.” He opened the screen door and stepped through, setting his hand on Stanton’s shoulder. “Boy, you have really taken on your mom’s looks, haven’t you? A knockout, just like she was.”

  Stanton, despite himself, blushed. “I’m sorry to bother you. If it’s a bad time—”

  “What’re you, crazy? Come inside. You want some coffee?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  The interior of the home was just as Stanton remembered. Nothing out of place, and there were more photos on the walls. Dale led him into the kitchen and sat him down at the table. He set out two cups of coffee and a plate of pastries before sitting down.

  “I’m so sorry about your mama,” Dale said. “When I heard about that, it broke my heart. She was such a sweet lady. Always there for everyone that needed it. Cancer sneaks up on you like that, gets the best of us.”

  Stanton nodded. “Some aboriginal cultures think cancer’s a curse on our species for our lack of respect for the earth.”

  “Shit, you
don’t need a curse to die, son. Everything in nature’s tryin’ to kill us.” He took a sip of the coffee. “How’s your old man?”

  “He passed about six years ago.”

  Though Dale clearly hadn’t heard, he didn’t seem surprised. His gray eyebrows lowered and he nodded, taking another sip of coffee before staring out the window for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard. Don’t get much news up here, and after you guys moved he didn’t really stay in touch.”

  “My father didn’t really understand friendship. He told me friends were just people you could tolerate in short bursts. Everyone else was intolerable.”

  Dale chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds like him.” Dale looked him up and down. “So how you been?”

  “I’m good. I’ve got two kids, Matt and Jon Junior. One’s in college and the other’s in high school.”

  “Yeah? Who’d you marry?”

  “No one you’d know. I met her in San Diego. We’re divorced, though.”

  Dale took another sip of coffee and then pushed the cup away. “Jaclyn died about ten years ago. I tried to get ahold of your father so you all could come, but he never returned my calls.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. She was always kind to me.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s life, ain’t it? It gives you somethin’ and then takes it away.”

  Stanton hesitated. “Dale, the reason I’m here is because of Reginald Carter.”

  Dale’s countenance changed. In an instant, anger bubbled up within him somewhere and he grimaced. “Why the hell would you spend even two seconds thinkin’ about that no-good son of a bitch?”

  “I just—I remembered that you, he, and my father went out fishing a couple of times.”

  Dale’s eyebrows went up. “I see. You think Elizabeth…”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was in such shock when they discovered all them bodies in his house I didn’t even connect the dots. It would make sense, I guess. If she was one of them.”

  Stanton swallowed. “What happened, Dale? How did no one see this?”

  “Hell, you knew the guy. Did you think anything was off about him?”

  Stanton thought back to his few interactions with Reginald Carter. From what he remembered, his father, Dale, and he had gone fishing twice and out for beers a couple of times. Stanton had met him on the return from one of those trips. He was a tall man, bald, with a wide smile that went from ear to ear. Looking back on it now, he knew he hadn’t sensed anything odd about the man. He was active in his church, a high school teacher and coach, and volunteered at the women’s shelter—although he had heard his mother comment that it was odd Carter wasn’t married by then when he was in his late forties.

  “No,” Stanton admitted, “I didn’t think anything was off about him.”

  Dale nodded. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. He had all of us fooled. I saw this show once about Bind Torture Kill, BTK, that killer in Kansas. They had friends of that bastard on, and they was saying how they didn’t see it coming, and he was the last person they would’ve suspected. I thought it was bullshit at the time. How could you be friends with someone, spend time with them, and not know they was killing people when you weren’t around?” He shook his head. “And then all this. Enough to make a man wanna just lock up in his own house and not come out.”

  Stanton shifted in his seat. “How many were there really? The news said sixteen.”

  Dale shrugged. “I haven’t kept up with the story. The whole thing makes me so sick I just can’t stomach it.” He ran his finger around the lip of his coffee cup. “But I can see why you’d want to know. Is Elizabeth one of the bodies?”

  “They don’t know yet. They found her ring in his basement.”

  He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Jonny. If I’da known, Lord as my witness, I woulda put a bullet in that son of a bitch’s head. I swear it.”

  “I know.” He paused. “I just wanted to see a familiar face, I guess. I’m going to head back up to Seattle. I’ll probably be out again soon, though.”

  “Oh, yeah. I did see the Seattle PD was handling this, not the local sheriffs. Why’s that?”

  “If a case is too complex, a lot of smaller agencies kick it up to bigger ones. They have more resources and manpower. When you’re POST-certified as a police officer, technically you’re certified in the entire state, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “How you know that?”

  “I’m a homicide detective.”

  Dale first looked shocked, and then he chuckled. “You’ve got to be shittin’ me. George Stanton’s son is a cop? Your father hated the government in a way no Tea Party flag waver ever could.”

  “I know. He was less than pleased when I told him.” Stanton glanced around the home. “I appreciate your time, Dale. I better get going.”

  “You haven’t touched your coffee.”

  “I’m Mormon, but I appreciate it.”

  Dale pushed his glasses back up, eyeing Stanton. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  He grinned. “Sons tend to become the opposite of their fathers or identical to them, I guess. Hey, what’s Niles up to nowadays?”

  Dale’s face sagged and he looked away. “Honestly, I don’t really know. We don’t talk much. He was a real estate man up in Seattle, but that was ’bout ten years ago. When his mother died, we never talked. Same with Nate.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.”

  Stanton pulled out one of his business cards and wrote his cell phone number on the back. He slid it to Dale and said, “Let me know if you talk to Nate or Niles. Give them my number. I’d love to catch up with them.”

  He nodded. “Sure thing, Jon. I appreciate you stopping by. Gets lonely sometimes.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  12

  From the interstate, Stanton could see the Space Needle. He remembered it fondly. When his parents had taken Elizabeth there for her fourteenth birthday, some guy climbed out onto the ledge and stole a lightbulb. Nine-year-old Stanton had wondered what it would take for a man to risk his life for a lightbulb. Did he have such joy in life that it made him do things that seemed reckless to everyone else? Or did he hate himself so much that losing his life for something so insignificant didn’t really matter?

  Within half an hour, Stanton was near the Seattle Police Department. It was one of the most advanced and innovative in the country. Stanton used to teach seminars on forensics and profiling across the country, and the detectives who attended from SPD were always educated and articulate, asking good questions and providing feedback on what they’d like to see in the next seminar.

  Some of the most innovative trends in law enforcement had begun there. The broken-window theory that helped clean up New York’s streets in the nineties had originated in Seattle. If people thought there was a lot of crime, they would commit more crimes. Researchers had found that the best indicator of the crime rate of a neighborhood had nothing to do with the makeup of the population and everything to do with windows: the more broken windows in a neighborhood, the higher the crime rate. In Seattle, they began fixing broken windows and stationing old police cruisers that were not in use in easy-to-spot locations. Every day, officers would move the cruisers around, giving the appearance that the police were there and watching. Once a week, a crew would go out to the abandoned or run-down buildings and fix the windows. In some neighborhoods, these two tactics lowered crime by almost 40 percent.

  Stanton parked in guest parking across the street and crossed the intersection on foot. The sky was still overcast, and it gave him an uncomfortable numbness in his stomach. He always forgot how much he needed sunshine until he visited somewhere that didn’t have any.

  The interior of the building was clean and modern, with glass used everywhere it could be. Stanton guessed the track lighting was of a luminosity that mimicked sunlight. It made the interior feel airy and elegant.

  He waited at the reception desk until the uniformed
officer behind it got off the phone and looked up at him.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Katie Wong, please.”

  “She expecting you?”

  “Yes, I’m Detective Jon Stanton. Thanks.”

  Stanton sat down in the waiting area. The magazines, unlike at every police agency he had ever worked for, were all the current issue. He’d begun flipping through a Scientific American when he heard the click-clack of high heels on linoleum. He looked up to see a slim woman in a white button-front shirt and a black skirt. She smiled and held out her hand. Stanton shook it.

  “Katie Wong.”

  “Jon Stanton. Nice to meet you.”

  A small, sympathetic smile moved her lips. “I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  “It’s okay. I just want to close this part of my life.”

  She hesitated. “I’m afraid that might not happen right away, Detective.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because we’ve identified all sixteen bodies from Reginald Carter’s home. None of them are your sister.”

  Stanton followed Katie to her office. To his surprise, it actually was an office and not a cubicle like the one he had. She sat down behind a black desk, and he sat across from her. Behind her on a table were a series of photographs of her with a few celebrities, basketball stars and the like. On both ends of the row were photos of her with a young boy, clearly her son.

  “How old is he?” Stanton said.

  She grimaced and then swallowed. “He would be thirteen this year.”

  Immediately, Stanton understood he had overstepped his bounds. The boy had died. The look of pain on Katie’s face made Stanton nearly wince at his stupidity, though he knew it was an innocent question anyone would’ve asked. Changing the subject would demean what she had just told him.