He filled in his information and on the lines for the names he wanted searched, he spelled out TERESA HAYES and FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
The woman looked passively at the names and then walked away without a word. Stanton sat down in one of the chairs. An old issue of Outside magazine was on the table. He flipped through the articles and saw one about a failed trip to climb Mount Everest where two people had died. The author, a man named Dillon Mentzer, wrote that both of them left children behind. Stanton wondered what that drive was to be so reckless with children. When he thought of his own plunge back into law enforcement with two kids at home, he placed the magazine back on the table and leaned his head against the wall.
“It’s done.”
He jolted awake.
The woman had two printouts with her. One was for the condo he’d just been to in Hawaiki Tower. The other was a house in Waikiki. It was cream with a red roof. The photo was taken from the front of the house and on the porch was a barbeque grill.
“That’s Florence Nightingale’s?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
“There were no other properties under that name?”
“Nope.”
He nodded and took the printouts. “Thanks.”
“Uh-huh.”
Stanton walked outside and got into the jeep. He placed the printouts on the passenger seat. He debated going back and getting Heather, but as he did so his phone rang. The precinct. Probably Kai, wondering where his suspect went. Stanton didn’t feel like explaining just yet.
He started the jeep and pulled away from the curb, heading to Waikiki.
52
Stanton drove the entire way without music. He felt no inclination to hear anything. The only thing on his mind were his children, tied up on some bare floor somewhere. The thought of music right now sickened him.
He got off the interstate and followed Maps until it brought him near the home. He parked up the street.
The neighborhood was upscale. He saw several Mercedes and Range Rovers. A few yard signs were up for candidates in an upcoming city council election, and the signs looked out of place here.
Stanton ran his fingers over his firearm. He tapped the grip a few times before stepping out of the jeep. He sat on the hood and looked down the street. Five houses down was the home that belonged to Florence Nightingale, bought two years ago with no financing. Paid in cash.
He wanted to kick the door down and run in there shooting. Rage seethed inside him. It was boiling underneath his skin. Hurting him was one thing. But hurting his children was something else. A line had been crossed and this didn’t involve law and order anymore. This was personal. Two organisms in a struggle in the jungle. He had a feeling one of them wasn’t going to live to see the morning.
Stanton began walking toward the home.
The sidewalks were clean. A neighborhood watch sign was up. Trees lined the street and gave him shade and he walked closely to them, his head held low.
First, he walked past the home. Then he doubled back and walked right up the driveway and to the backyard. He glanced around to see if any of the neighbors saw. They might call the police.
Stanton carefully navigated the backyard. It was done in a Japanese style, complete with Zen garden and koi pond. But no fence to protect it. In this neighborhood, it probably wasn’t needed.
A short bridge led over the pond and to a patio. Stanton carefully traversed it. It appeared, and felt, flimsy. Sliding glass doors were the only entrance into the house. He tried to look inside but heavy shutters covered the glass from the inside. He couldn’t see anything but a sliver of carpet.
Stanton walked around the house, scanning for any way in. On the side of the house was a window at ground level. Probably something leading into the shower of the bathroom down there. He crouched low and tried it. It was locked. Without a fence to protect a yard that thousands of dollars had been put into, there likely wasn’t an alarm.
After covering his fist with the sleeve of his jacket, he struck the corner of the window near the lock. He struck it so softly it didn’t even crack. Slowly, he started increasing the power of the strikes until the glass fractured. He hit it one more time, and then pushed on the piece that had cracked the most, knocking it out. It tumbled down into the room but didn’t make much noise.
Stanton pulled bits of glass around the lock off, having them fall on the outside to make as little noise as possible. When the hole was large enough, he slid his fingers in carefully and flipped the lock, pulling the window open an inch. He grabbed the edge of the open window and opened it the rest of the way.
The window wasn’t large but it was big enough for him to snake through. He went in feet first and cut his hand on some of the broken glass. Blood rolled off his palm. He was standing in a bathtub and the red spatter stuck out like paint. He slipped out of the tub and took some toilet paper and pressed it to the wound.
He waited a few moments in the silence before taking out his firearm. Sticking his head into the hallway, he could smell the scent of perfume. Someone was here.
He walked into the hallway. A thought struck him and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it: What if this wasn’t her house? But if he would have knocked on the door, if Heidi was in here with his boys, she could’ve hurt them. This was the only way.
The basement was complete with kitchen and front room. Stanton guessed it was a separate apartment.
The kitchen was clean and sparse. He could see doors leading to the backyard in the dining room. All the furniture looked like it had never been used. Several paintings were up. They were in the medieval Japanese style. Paintings of orchids and birds, the ocean and sky, little villages with people scurrying about. A large fan adorned one wall. It was intricately designed and painted with pink orchids. The edges were sharp metal. It was a weapon as much as decoration.
Stanton cleared the front room when he heard a noise from upstairs, and then footsteps creaking the floorboards. He went to the first step and looked up the stairwell. From the angle he was at, he couldn’t see all the way up. But that meant no one could see all the way down either. He took a few steps and came around a corner. He got down to his knees and crawled up the steps slowly.
The noise was much louder now. Water running and dishes clanking. Peeking above the top step, he couldn’t see much. But he could hear someone humming. He took the top step and swept around to the front room. Another path was open into the kitchen. He came from behind.
A woman stood over the sink in a black and red kimono. Stanton raised his firearm just as the woman glanced up into the glass of the cupboards. She saw his reflection and screamed.
The woman was middle aged and Asian. Stanton lowered his firearm and holstered it. He held up his hands as if in surrender.
“Calm down, ma’am, I’m with HPD.” He pulled out his badge but the woman was hysterical and didn’t look at it.
“Take what you want and get out!”
“Ma’am, I’m with HPD Homicide. I’m a police officer.”
She grabbed a butcher’s knife from behind her and held it up. “How did you get into my house?”
“I’m sorry, this was a mistake. I thought this was someone else’s house.”
The woman looked to the phone and then back to Stanton.
“I’ll just leave,” Stanton said. “I had to break out the window in the basement. The one in the shower. How much to repair that?”
“I don’t care, just get out.”
Stanton nodded and turned to leave.
“Two hundred dollars,” the woman blurted.
Stanton reached into his wallet and began counting the cash he had. Not enough. He’d have to go to an ATM.
“I’ll have to come right back. I don’t have enough cash on me.”
“No, I don’t care. Just get out. The owner can pay for it.”
“Okay, look, I’m really sorry about this. I promise you this was a mistake. I’ll leave now. I’m really sorry I frightened
you.”
He began backing away when he stopped. It felt like his heart stopped, too. “Who’s the owner?”
“Just get out, please.”
“Ma’am, this is very important to me. Who is the owner?”
“Ms. Nightingale.”
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know. I only saw her one time.”
“How do you pay rent?”
“I send checks every month.”
Stanton felt the familiar tingling in his gut: the tightening circle around his prey. “Where do you send the rent checks every month?”
53
Stanton stopped in front of Baby Dolls. It took twenty minutes of driving, but once his GPS brought him to the neighborhood, he knew this was the address that the woman sent her rent checks to. He got out of the car and walked up the steps. The door was locked.
He went around back. The backyard was overgrown with weeds. The lone tree was withering away and large swaths of the grass were yellowed and dying. No one really saw back here, so there was no reason for them to keep it up. Glossy up front and rotting where no one saw.
The back door was flimsy wood. Stanton glanced around before putting his shoulder to it and pushing. It cracked open almost without effort.
The back of the building was clean and well maintained, as opposed to the backyard.
Stanton walked past a fridge and stood in a hallway, listening. He couldn’t hear anything so he walked out to the front room. Expecting to see Autumn, all he got was an empty living room and a desk with papers strewn over it. He glanced through the papers. They were profit/loss statements. According to the most recent month, Baby Dolls had turned a profit of ninety thousand. A million-dollar-a-year business worked out of a dilapidated house with probably no more than a handful of employees.
Stanton checked the rest of the house. No one was there. He figured they would have at least one receptionist answering phones, but there was no one. Going back into the kitchen, he looked in the fridge. It was stocked full of light snacks like string cheese and ready-to-go protein shakes. He closed it and leaned against the counter. A thought struck Stanton just then. There was only one floor. When he walked around the backyard he saw windows on the ground level, but there was no door leading to a basement.
He scanned the floor in the kitchen and then the living room. He checked the bathrooms and bedrooms but didn’t see anything. Some of the older houses in Honolulu had hidden bunkers. Built after the war as a precaution against another Japanese attack.
A large door was down the hallway connecting the kitchen and the living room. He opened the door. It was a closet. On the floor were several bags of luggage, empty, and cardboard boxes. He moved them aside and saw the outline of a trap door. He lifted the metal ring connected to it and opened it. A set of stairs led down to another level.
His cell phone buzzed. He took it out but didn’t recognize the number. Turning the vibration off, he let it go to voicemail.
Stanton pulled out his firearm and stood still a moment. It was dark down there as the windows were covered in thick curtains, and he debated searching the house for a flashlight. Deciding that it wasn’t worth the effort, he began the descent.
Each step creaked on his way down. He tried to go down on his tiptoes, to walk on the edges of the stairs, the strongest part, but it didn’t help. He thought about slipping off his shoes, but it was too late. If somebody was down there, they would have already heard him.
As he got to the bottom step, gun first, he swept left, then right. He let his eyes adjust to the dark. The light coming through the trap door and past the edges of the curtains was enough to make out the items down there.
A couch, several coffee tables, dressers, rugs—both laid flat on the floor and rolled up against the wall—and on top of it all, a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. The space was perfectly square, with brick walls. It wasn’t a basement; it was a bunker, like he had first thought.
A thin door was across the room. Probably a food-storage closet. Stanton walked to it and leaned against it, his ear to the door. It was low, almost imperceptible, but he could hear something coming from inside.
Breathing.
Stanton touched the doorknob. He closed his eyes and said a quick prayer, begging that his children were unharmed and that this whole thing would end right now.
He twisted the doorknob and swung open the door. Getting down to one knee, he aimed his weapon, his finger on the trigger.
Mathew was gagged on the floor. Johnny was on the other side of the closet, taped to a chair. Stanton ran to his boys and tore off the duct tape around their wrists, mouths, and feet. No one said anything. They just held each other and cried.
54
Heather Rousseau stood on the patio. A beer was in her hand and she sipped at it slowly. She took a pill out of her purse and popped it into her mouth, before washing it down with another swig.
The ocean was churning in the noon wind and the heat was pleasant against her face. The sun felt good on her skin. It wasn’t something she was used to. She worked nights and slept during the days.
Boredom had set in, along with the anxiety of Stanton not answering his phone. She debated whether to go watch television to pass the time but decided against it. It would probably just aggravate rather than distract her.
Going back inside the house, she shut the sliding glass door behind her. A bookshelf was up behind the entertainment center and she scanned the books. They were mostly books on surfing and the ocean, a few tomes on conspiracy theories thrown in for good measure. One was black with red lettering and titled The Death of Freedom. She picked it up and began thumbing through it.
“It’s the conspiracy of the twelve,” a voice said behind her.
Heather gasped and dropped the book. It slammed shut and she spun around. Heidi stood in front of her. She walked over and sat down on the couch, watching Heather with passive eyes. Eyes that had been burned in Heather’s mind. That haunted her when she slept.
“That book,” Heidi said, “is about the conspiracy of the twelve. That there’s a special council of twelve of the most powerful men in the world, who really determine the direction of politics and economics. That human history is planned in advance by the elite. And the rest of us are just here for the ride.”
Heather looked at the sliding glass doors.
“You won’t make it,” Heidi said. “I’ll shoot you in the back before you get it open.”
“What do you want from me?”
“You’re my sister. Can’t I just come see my sister without her thinking I want something?”
“How did you even find me?”
“Oh, I have a GPS tracker on your phone. I put it in there when you were asleep one night. You really should have an alarm in your condo. You never know what crazies could break in.”
Heather took a step back against the bookshelf, afraid her knees might buckle without its support. “Please, Heidi, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t. I’m so tired. I just… I want to die.”
“There’s no fun in death, Heath. It’s much more fun to be alive. You haven’t learned that?”
Emotion choked Heather and she felt the warmth of tears on her cheeks. “Please, just kill me. I just want this to end. I can’t handle anymore. I don’t have it in me. Heidi, please, if you ever cared about me, just let me die.”
Heather collapsed onto the floor, sobbing. Decades of emotion poured out of her in that moment. Everything she had hidden away. Bawling like a child, she felt strands of drool leak out of her mouth and onto the floor.
“Seriously?” Heidi said, leaning forward. “I haven’t seen you in two years and this is how you’re going to greet me? Stop crying.” She rose and walked over, lifting Heather’s face by her chin. “I said, stop crying.”
“What do you want!”
“I want you to suffer.”
“Why? What did I ever do? What could I have done to you to deserve this life, Heidi?”
�
��You were chosen. You were chosen by them to be the good one. The one that they would take their time with and love and make sure that you turned out well. And now you’re a whore addicted to pain pills. How do you think they would feel about that? Their prize daughter a whore?”
“Prize daughter?” she said, holding back the tears long enough to speak. “What are you talking about? You were sick. You needed help.”
“I was a confused kid. I knew I was better than other people and I didn’t know how to express it. So instead of nurturing that, massaging and cultivating it, you threw me in an institute with psychotics. Do you know what they did to young pretty girls there?” She shoved her finger into Heather’s neck and pressed. The pain was excruciating and Heather yelped. “They raped me. They raped me for years, sister. And not just the patients, the guards, too. Have you ever been raped, Heather? Have you ever been sodomized when you were twelve by a fifty-year-old guard?”
“I… I didn’t know. No one ever told us.”
“They knew how to keep us in line. I told Mom when she came to visit me. She went to the administration and the police, and of course no one believed me. They said I was making it up to get back at the administration and that it was quite common. Do you know what they did to me for that little confession? They put me in sensory deprivation for two weeks. I would see a sliver of light everyday when they brought fetid food in so that I wouldn’t die, and other than that I was immersed completely in darkness. The first few days I was terrified, but after that, I didn’t care. The darkness didn’t scare me anymore. It comforted me.”
“I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.”
“Oh, there’s a lot of things you didn’t know. Things they didn’t tell you. They didn’t want to expose their princess to the real world. So they didn’t tell you about me. They were hoping you would forget. And then I would come home. I’d remind all of you of the little secret you wanted to forget about and then I’d be sent back to hell. That’s what it was, sis, hell.”
Black Widow Page 19