She put her hand in his and didn’t say anything as she drove to a coffee shop down the street.
The coffee shop was packed. Stanton sat at a table by the window and glared at the people coming and going. It was odd that they would be having coffee in the evening, he thought. But caffeine didn’t affect everyone the same way.
“You sure you don’t want anything?” she asked as she sat back down.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“So have you come up with something?”
“Can you put out a BOLO just in case? All the airports and bus stations, too?”
“Sure. Why ‘just in case’? You said he was fleeing the state.”
Stanton shook his head, keeping his eyes glued to the window. “I don’t know. This is a man who lied to everybody his entire life. He wouldn’t tell me the truth, even in a roundabout way. I think he wants me spinning my wheels trying to work with other law enforcement agencies while he hides out somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” He paused, tapping his finger against the table lightly. “He has a son I used to be friends with, Niles. Mind running a search on him?”
She shrugged, taking a sip of coffee. “Sure, why not? Anything else?”
“I need to visit someone else.”
When Katie pulled to a stop in front of the house, Stanton didn’t get out right away. He looked over at her and gave her what he knew was a sad little smile, just letting her know he appreciated this. Then he stepped out of the car and took the steps to the front door. He was glad Katie didn’t follow.
Stanton pulled open a screen door and knocked. A baby was crying inside, and then he heard footsteps and a pause, probably looking out the peephole, and several locks slid open. A portly woman with a baby on her hip looked out over a chain at him.
“Yes?”
“Are you Claire?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t remember me?”
She stood there a second.
“Jon Stanton. I was… I am Elizabeth’s brother.”
Her eyes widened, and by the quick movements of her chest Stanton could tell she was breathing harder.
“Jonny?”
The shock dimmed, and as it did so, another little girl, perhaps eight, came around the corner behind her and said, “Mom, who’s that?”
“Go to your room, Beth.”
“But who is that?”
“I said go to your room.”
The girl grunted and turned back around, disappearing from view. When Claire looked at Stanton again, he said, “You named her Beth.”
She smiled shyly, then shut the door. Stanton heard a chain slide off, and the door opened wide.
“Come inside,” she said.
Though the home was messy, Stanton could tell a lot of care went into it. Photos were aligned perfectly, and several spaces had been set aside for toys. A large color photo of four children took up the wall in the living room, and Claire sat underneath it on an old couch.
“I never thought I would see you again.”
Stanton sat down in a recliner. “I didn’t come back very often. How have you been?”
“Good. I married David Glenner. You remember him?”
He nodded. “I do. He and his buddies threw me in a garbage can once when he ran into us at a movie theater.”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s him. He always liked you, though.”
“He’s fine. It’s funny now.” He paused. “I’m sorry to just pop in like this. I never talked to you about what happened.”
She swallowed, rocking the baby in her arms gently. “I was interviewed by the police a couple times. I thought there’d be more than that, but there wasn’t.”
“I read the interviews.”
Stanton remembered the anger he had felt the second time he read them. The first time, he hadn’t been a detective and didn’t know what police reports were supposed to look like. When he went back almost ten years later and read his sister’s file, he found that the Missing Persons detectives assigned to her case hadn’t even interviewed all the witnesses, and the ones they did interview were asked the most basic questions and hurried through as though the detectives had something more important to do.
“You’ve heard about Carter?” Stanton said.
She nodded sadly, averting her eyes. “One time, in gym, he tried to come into the locker room when I was changing. He said sorry and pretended like he left, but I could see him peeking around the corner watching me. I never told anyone. Maybe if I had told someone, they woulda done something. Maybe I coulda saved some lives.”
“You were a kid,” Stanton said. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I still feel bad.”
Stanton’s eyes went down to the baby. He couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy; it was so chubby the rolls covered up its face, and only its eyes poked through the puffy white flesh.
“She wasn’t one of his victims. Dale Brown killed my sister.”
Her brow furrowed. “Dale Brown? Niles’s dad?”
He nodded. “He’s gotten away and the police are searching for him. He’s the one who picked her up from the movie theater that night.”
She hesitated. “That makes sense. We were all just waiting for my mom to pick us up, and this car pulled up and she ran over there. She ran back and told us she had another ride home.” She swallowed. “That was the last time I seen her.”
“Did my sister say anything else? Anything that Dale had told her?”
Claire shook her head. “No, nothing like that. She just ran back and told us she was leaving.”
Something hit Stanton right then that made his heart beat faster, something he couldn’t believe he’d never thought of before. “What door did she get into?”
“Door?”
“Yeah. Did she get into the passenger seat or the backseat?”
“Oh. Um, I guess it was the backseat.”
If she got into the backseat, then that meant someone was in the passenger seat. Someone that would’ve made Elizabeth feel more comfortable. It had never sat well with him that his sister just hopped into someone else’s car. Even someone she knew. She was smart, the smartest person Stanton had known. There was no way she would willingly do that, unless…
“I gotta go,” he said, standing up.
She rose. “I’m so sorry, Jonny. I wish…”
“I know. Thanks for your time.”
They hugged, and Stanton sprinted down the steps and out to the car. He jumped inside and said, “Did you get an address for Niles?”
“Yeah.”
“Get there as fast as you can,” he said, putting on his seat belt.
37
Niles Brown lived in a condo tower overlooking downtown Seattle. Katie sped there, but not as fast as Stanton would’ve liked. He kept checking the clock on his phone: in sixteen hours, the girl could be dead. The nagging feeling that wouldn’t let Stanton go was that she might’ve already been dead, or Dale might not have plans to kill her at all. But he couldn’t risk guessing. He had to move on the assumption that he would kill her and dump her somewhere they would never find her. Maybe the same place Elizabeth was.
Stanton hurried out of the car, not waiting to see if Katie was coming, too. She got out and followed him this time. They waited in the lobby as a security guard checked them in. He called up to the condo and said, “Mr. Brown? The police are here to see you.”
Stanton took in the clean, upscale lobby with nearly untouched furniture, the type of place a wealthy bachelor or elderly widower would live. On a table in between two leather couches was an architecture magazine he’d never seen before, with a building on the front cover and a man hanging out his apartment window at least five or six stories up.
“He’ll see you now,” the guard said.
They took the elevator up nine floors and stepped off. The carpets were beige and clean, and Stanton kept his head down, thoughts whirling in his head until they reache
d unit 906, Niles’s condo.
“I need to talk to him alone,” he said.
She looked to the door and then back to him. “Fine. But I hear anything crazy, I’m coming in.”
“Just give me five minutes.”
Stanton knocked. The door opened and Niles Brown stood there.
He had aged. He was only five years older than Stanton, but Niles looked at least fifteen years older. He had a large belly that hung over his belt, and his hairline receded to nearly past his ears, though he wore his hair forward and down to make up some of the slack. At first he looked annoyed, and then recognition hit him and his mouth nearly fell open. He forced a smile.
“Jon?”
“How are you, Niles?”
“Um, good, man. Good. Come in.”
Stanton stepped inside, taking a quick glance at Katie before shutting the door. The condo was elegantly decorated, and soft music played from speakers Stanton couldn’t see. Niles lightly touched a black remote on a glass dining table, and the volume decreased. As Stanton crossed over to the living room, he saw a woman wrapped in a sheet and nothing else poke her head out of the bedroom.
“Hope I’m not interrupting,” he said.
Niles said. “Not at all. We were done.” He went out to the balcony and sat on a chair, and Stanton followed. From the balcony, he could see the entire city sparkling before them as the sun began to set and the man-made lights came on, the sunlight reflecting off the smooth surfaces at sharp angles.
“I thought you’d come back here when I heard about Reggie.”
“Yeah, it was a surprise to everyone, I think.”
“No shit. My mom just about had a heart attack.”
Stanton paused a moment. “Your mother’s still alive?”
“Yeah, man. She lives in Tacoma. Why?”
Stanton leaned forward. “Do you remember the night my sister disappeared, Niles?”
Niles pulled out a package of Swisher Sweets and lit one, looking out over the city. “Yeah, man. I remember. I couldn’t think about anything else that entire summer. Really fucked me up for a while. I had a huge crush on your sister. We went out once.” He smiled. “I kissed her at the Space Needle. I wanted to do more but she wouldn’t let me. She wasn’t like that.”
Stanton put his hands on his thighs, his right hand closer to his firearm in case he needed it, though given the state Niles was in, he didn’t think he would. Niles was jittery, sickly, and his eyes were rimmed red. Stanton could smell the strong odor of freshly burnt marijuana, and out on the kitchen counter, he had noticed a bottle of prescription pills.
“One thing that had always bugged me about her disappearance that no one had a good answer for was why she would get into that car willingly. My sister was smart, smarter than me, smarter than my mom or dad. The detectives told us that the driver probably offered her something, or that maybe she knew him. That wasn’t enough for me. Even if she knew him, she wouldn’t have gotten into that car alone.” He paused. “Someone else was in the car with him. Someone who would’ve made my sister feel safe.”
The two men glared at each other a long time. Niles was finally the one who looked away. He set the Swisher down on a small glass table and leaned back in his chair, looking out over the city. “I’ve tried to kill myself twice, Jon. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I can’t have a decent relationship. I’m rich and I’ve never been so miserable. When you do something that eats you up, you think it gets better over time, but it actually gets worse.”
Stanton, his heart in his throat, managed to gasp, “What did you do?”
He fidgeted with his hands, twirling his fingers, rubbing them, pulling on them. Stanton noticed the pads of his fingertips worn away. Several powerful antidepressants had been shown to cause ticks so severe the patient would rub away parts of their flesh, sometimes all the way down to the bone.
“I, ah… My dad… You guys all thought he was so great. You’d come over, you and Shiney, remember him? We called him that because he was bald. He would—”
“Niles,” Stanton said, moving closer to him, “what did you do?”
“My dad was a… monster. Remember when I broke my arm right before basketball camp? We were both supposed to go and you said you wouldn’t without me and Nate. I told you I fell off my bike, but that’s not what happened. At the dinner table, I took a bite of food before my mom was done saying grace. So my dad got his hammer. He held my arm down on the table, right there in front of everyone, and smashed it. Then he sat down and ate.” He snorted. “He ate like nothing in the world was wrong, man. What kind of man could do that to his son and then just sit down and eat and talk about work?”
Stanton didn’t blink or move. He wasn’t entirely sure he could if he wanted to. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, man. Yeah… So I moved out when I was eighteen, made a bundle in real estate, became a big shot… and here I am. Still the little boy with the broken arm.” He swallowed, his gaze turning to the city before them. “I was there, man. I always wanted to tell you, but my dad said he could hurt my mom and my sister. When I got older, he knew he couldn’t threaten me as much anymore, so he’d threaten them. He said if I told anyone about it, he would kill them.”
“Tell anyone about what?”
Niles picked up the cigar and took a long puff. The scent was sweet, but had a bitter edge. It had been laced with something. “He picked up Elizabeth from the movie theater that night. I was with him. He made me tell her that we’d just watched a movie and were going for ice cream. When she ran back to her friends, I hoped she told them who she was going with. But she didn’t. I don’t know what my dad would’ve done if she had done that. Maybe just had me lie for him, I guess.”
“What happened to her, Niles?”
“We have a cabin on Puget Sound. It overlooks the water. Real pretty.” He seemed to be elsewhere for a moment. “He never told me what happened. We got to my house and he told me to get out. He grabbed Elizabeth and said he needed to talk to her in private. Then he drove off.” Niles looked into his eyes. “It killed me not to tell you. That’s why we stopped being friends. That’s why I didn’t come to her funeral or anything. I couldn’t look at you. It’d make me sick and I’d run to the bathroom and throw up.”
Stanton’s hand slowly slid back to his weapon. He felt the pattern on the metal, the ridges and dips. He opened his fingers wide and pulled his hand away. He stood up. “You’re going to tell me exactly where this cabin is.”
Niles nodded. “I hope you fucking kill him.”
38
Stanton sat in his hotel room alone. He had told Katie bits and pieces, but not the whole picture. He didn’t really care if Dale Brown was caught. This was something else, something that had linked the two men forever. Something twenty-seven years in the making.
He cleaned his Desert Eagle then holstered it before getting his jacket. As he checked the fridge for a bottle of water, someone knocked on the door. He waited to see if they would knock again, and they did. Stanton answered the door. Katie stood there, Thomas behind her.
“What’s he doing here?” Stanton said.
“He’s come to help.”
Stanton looked at him. “Help with what?”
Katie folded her arms, as though letting him know he wouldn’t be getting past her. “You know where he is, don’t you? I could see it on your face when you came out of Niles’s condo.”
Stanton didn’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “We’re going to help.”
“You can’t.”
“Oh, what, is this some macho bullshit about it being between the two of you? You out for revenge, Jon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well what’s your plan? Just go running up to him and hope he doesn’t see it coming? That’s crazy.”
Stanton relented and took a few steps back, settling into a chair by the door. He stared at the carpet, the way it looked brown in the dim light. “He has a cabin. It�
�s where he took my sister. I bet it’s where he has this girl.”
Katie came over and bent down, looking him in the eyes. “You don’t have to be alone.”
“I don’t want SWAT or anybody else.”
“Why not?”
Thomas said, “Because he wants to kill him.”
Stanton looked at him, and then back down at the carpet. He hadn’t put the thought into words. It had been more like an urge, like some push inside him that put things in motion to get an outcome. But what that outcome exactly was, Stanton hadn’t thought about concretely until just now.
“Seriously?” Katie said. “You would risk everything just for revenge?”
He shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t know. I just have to go there.”
She stood up. “Well, we’re coming with you.”
The address Niles had given him led up a winding road. The darkness in this section of Washington was nearly complete, with no street lamps, no moon, and no lights on in the homes they passed. The headlights illuminated about twenty feet, and past that was nothing but black: a forest with a few homes thrown in.
Stanton had never been here. He’d never even known this section of the city existed. It covered a massive hill, and the homes looked to be enormously expensive. Considering how modest the Browns’ home was, he guessed that Dale Brown had spent more on this cabin than he had on his family’s home.
Thomas was driving a black BMW, and the inside was cleaner than almost any car Stanton had ever ridden in. Freshly washed, maybe even washed and vacuumed every day. Katie sat up front with him, and the two leaned toward each other rather than away from each other. Stanton guessed there was either a relationship there that had fizzled out or one that went unrecognized.
Thomas pulled the car over to the side of the road. They were at the peak of the hill, at least a hundred feet away from any other homes. The cabin had a manicured garden out front, the lawn freshly mowed though it must’ve been done in the rain. Dale would want to keep this home looking like every other. Nothing out of place, not even the grass.
Mania - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 9) Page 14