Mania - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 9)

by Victor Methos

  MANIA

  A Jon Stanton Thriller by

  VICTOR METHOS

  “It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”

  —John Steinbeck

  1

  Jon Stanton sat down on the bench and pressed his elbow against the Desert Eagle in the holster on his hip under his leather jacket. The reassurance of the gun calmed him as he stared into the gray eyes across from him. The man wore a biker’s jacket, his white, greasy hair coming down over his eyes. He lifted a cigarette and blew smoke in Stanton’s face.

  “Money first,” the man said, his voice gravelly from a lifetime of smoking.

  Stanton lifted the gym bag by his feet and set it on the table between them. As he reached for the zipper, the man grabbed his hand and said, “I’ll look.”

  Stanton slowly withdrew his hand, holding the man’s gaze. He unzipped the bag and checked the rubber-banded wads of hundred-dollar bills that filled the bag. He zipped it up again with a smile.

  “You’re not going to count it?” Stanton said.

  “No need. If it ain’t all here, I’m gonna find ya and kill ya.”

  The man lifted the bag and motioned with his head for Stanton to follow him. At the park around the corner, three of his biker buddies were smoking a joint near their bikes, the sun glistening off their sweating foreheads. Honolulu had reached a record high of 101 degrees the day before and felt only slightly cooler that day, yet the bikers still wore their jackets.

  Behind the bikes, a white van parked in the stall nearest the exit. A man with a scraggly beard sat in the driver’s seat with a woman beside him. Neither of them paid any attention as Stanton was led to the back, and the man dropped the gym bag to open the doors to the van.

  Inside, three young girls squinted in the sudden light. Wearing only a hint of lingerie to cover themselves, they were dirty and bound together with rope. Stanton had to look away.

  “That bitch there, she like sixteen, fresh off the boat, brother. Taiwan or China or somethin’. She tight as shit. But that one, she like thirteen and she fights like a muthafucker. You gonna have to beat her down some. But she’ll get used to the cock after a while.” He spit on the concrete. “So Todd said you gonna sell ’em. If you want more, we can get ’em. Got the hookup back east, brother.”

  Stanton closed his eyes a moment. A breeze blew his hair softly and tickled his forehead. One word and this would be over. Twelve officers surrounding the parking lot would rush in. But then all of the bikers would surrender. This man who stood in front of him had kidnapped, raped, and sold hundreds of girls over the years. The youngest they’d found was four years old, an orphan from a province in China where half the population died of disease or starvation. The humanitarian volunteers who found her decided selling her sounded better than shipping her to an orphanage in one of the big cities. And that girl, who could barely speak, led them to this man: Randall Hersh, known as Switch in one of the most brutal biker gangs on the islands.

  “How many more can you get?” Stanton said.

  Randall grinned. “Many as you need. You can try ’em, too. Have a taste before buying. I ain’t got no problem with that. Just gotta wear a rubber so you don’t knock ’em up. Abortion’s, like, eight hundred bucks.”

  Stanton pressed his elbow to his gun again. If he gave the word, there wouldn’t be a fight. There would be arrests, lawyers, court appearances, sentences, prison time, and a release date, when he could walk back out into the sunshine to do it again.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Stanton pulled back his jacket. Just enough so that Randall could see the gleaming steel of his weapon. And then Stanton closed the jacket again.

  “Let’s put in another order,” Stanton said.

  Randall glanced at his buddies. “Sure. Hop in and we’ll talk.”

  “In the van?”

  “Yeah, man. Away from prying eyes and all that shit.”

  Neither blinked nor spoke. In his peripheral vision Stanton could see Randall’s three buddies lining up behind him.

  “Something wrong?” Stanton said.

  “Nah, brother. Just need to work a few things out.”

  “Yeah, and what’s that?”

  Randall smiled and turned as though he were looking at the girls. At the last moment he spun around, whipping out a Beretta. Stanton grabbed his forearm, aiming the pistol away from him. A shot went off. The three bikers rushed in from behind.

  Stanton twisted around, his back pressed against Randall, the biker’s Beretta still in its owner’s hand, which was now caught under Stanton’s arm. He squeezed the trigger. A round drilled into one of the bikers’ chests and knocked him back. Stanton fired twice more. The other two, still standing, pulled out their weapons and Stanton spun back and held Randall in front of him, forcing the man’s gun up under his own chin.

  “Easy, brother,” Randall said, his free hand coming up in surrender. “Just friends here. Just talkin’.”

  The cars screeched to a stop across the parking lot, detectives and uniformed officers with Kevlar vests jumping out. Stanton loosened his grip on Randall, but he didn’t move. He didn’t attack, and he didn’t try to get away. Stanton let him go.

  The officers screamed for everyone to get on the ground. One of them called in emergency services for the man Stanton had shot. The others overwhelmed the other three men, throwing them to the ground, slapping cuffs on them, and hauling them away as they spit and swore. A police truck pulled up, and the officers piled the men and the one woman inside.

  Kai, Stanton’s captain, sauntered over—three hundred pounds of surly Hawaiian. “You okay?”

  “Fine. Thanks.”

  Kai looked back at the police truck. “You gettin’ too old for this, hoaloha. We got younger detectives.”

  Stanton put his hands on his hips. Sweat dripped down into his eyes, and he let it sting. “I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  Stanton nodded. “I want to know who they’re getting their girls from.”

  Kai shrugged. Stanton knew this bust was all Kai had wanted: some media attention, a homicide off the board—a young woman Randall had sold to a man who beat her to death—and a few of the biker gang behind bars. But that wasn’t enough for Stanton. He was tired of working on the peripheries, throwing resources at the problem and never getting to the core. Not ever.

  Kai looked into the truck. “Shit, hoaloha, maybe sometimes it’s better not knowin’ how everything is, ya know?”

  2

  The police precinct in Honolulu’s first district looked more like an office building than police headquarters. Stanton parked his Jeep at the curb. Across the street sat the only palace still standing in the United States, which had belonged to the last queen of Hawaii. There were two stories of what had happened: either she sold Hawaii to the United States and Britain, or she was forced out of power and the islands conquered. Stanton could believe either, and it wouldn’t have surprised him.

  He took the elevator to the fifth floor, the detectives’ floor, or what the precinct called “the detectives’ table.” Unlike most major police agencies, although Honolulu PD did have specializations, detectives were expected to cross into other fields. A Homicide detective might have to deal with a property crime and a Missing Persons detective might have to investigate money laundering. For the most part, Stanton had been left alone to work homicides. He and Kai went back a long way, and Kai knew what Stanton specialized in: the cases no one else wanted.

  Stanton sat down in the bull pen and logged on to his computer. He’d have to get a psychiatric evaluation because of the sh
ooting, but Honolulu didn’t have mandatory leave after an officer involved shooting like San Diego PD had. He only needed a clearance from IAD, which he’d gotten within three hours, and Stanton could get back to work the same day.

  The browser opened to an article in the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry on necrophilia, profiling a woman who could reach sexual climax only after bathing her lovers in ice during intercourse to mimic a corpse. Stanton had seen the phenomenon before.

  “That looks interesting,” his partner, Laka, said. She pulled her hair back with an elastic band and leaned down, reading a few lines over his shoulder. “Have you ever tried just checking Twitter or reading a gossip blog or something?”

  He grinned. “Only if they talk about necrophilia.”

  She slapped his shoulder. “You’re so weird.” She straightened up. “Your collar’s here. He’s in three.”

  Stanton closed the article and rose. Though interrogation room five, farthest away from everything, was Stanton’s favorite, three was the only one with a window looking outside the building. He found it distracting during an interview, but the blue skies helped to counteract the horror he sometimes heard spewing from the mouths of men in that room.

  Randall Hersh sat handcuffed at the gray table. Stanton shut the door and sat down across from him. He glanced at the red light on the camera in the corner, indicating it was on.

  “Your friend is gonna live. I missed his heart by two inches.”

  Randall shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “You don’t care.”

  “He wasn’t patched yet. Didn’t have his colors. He wasn’t a Black Sun.”

  Stanton glanced out the window at a plane leaving a white contrail as it streaked across the sky. “I want to know where you get your girls from.”

  “I bet you do. But that ain’t gonna happen. See, this ain’t my first go ’round. You gonna call my lawyer and press charges then he’s gonna get me a short sentence. Maybe three years. Maybe two when the prosecutor realizes how much money the Suns donate to his reelection campaign every four years.”

  Stanton smirked. “Donating to campaigns? You don’t sound like any biker I’ve talked to, Randall.”

  “Different world. Them days of ridin’ ’round shootin’ at cops is over. There’re better ways to get things done.”

  Stanton rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed audibly. A coming migraine thumped inside his head, and he wished he’d had a Diet Coke and some Advil before going in. “Just between me and you, why didn’t you run or fight back? I gave you a chance.”

  Randall chuckled. “’Cause I ain’t some punk outta high school. I been doin’ this a long time. Met a lotta cops. And I know when a cop wants me to give him an excuse. You was hopin’ I’d run so you could pop me. And I didn’t feel like dyin’ yet today.”

  “I didn’t kill your friend.”

  “You was firing with me holding the gun and you only missed by two inches. You meant to kill him, too.” He leaned back in his seat. “Nah, I know when you fight and when you give in. I ain’t goin’ up against some maniac cop just to die.”

  Stanton bit down, flexing his jaw muscles. He left the room silently and shut the door behind him. Laka stood in the observation room, watching Randall through the one-way glass.

  “What d’ya wanna do?” she asked.

  “Get him his lawyer.”

  3

  By four p.m., Stanton had left the precinct and headed to his psychiatrist’s office for his biweekly session. Despite his own PhD in psychology, Stanton had been in therapy off and on since the age of ten. His father, himself a psychiatrist, believed therapy was as much a necessary part of living in modern society as having a Social Security number and a place to live.

  Dr. Natalia Vaquer was standing in front of her receptionist when Stanton walked in. She wore a brown suit with glasses that made her look like a professor or librarian. Dr. Vaquer smiled. “You’re early, Jon. But as it happens, my last appointment cancelled.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I come early sometimes. I just like the quiet.”

  She stepped over to the double doors leading into her office and opened them. Every time he went through those doors, he felt transported to another world in which he could be totally and completely honest. He had never had that relationship with anyone before. Not his wife, not the fiancée he’d lost, not previous therapists, no one… except for maybe one man: Eli Sherman, a partner convicted of killing two women and later escaping police custody. The last Stanton had heard, he had disappeared somewhere in South America.

  “You look good, Jon,” she said, sitting down in her leather chair. “I meant to tell you last time.”

  “Thanks,” he said, settling into the couch. “I’ve lost about twelve pounds. Started jogging again. I think it calms me… maybe gets some of my nervous energy out.”

  “I often recommend exercise to my patients. It permanently boosts endorphin and norepinephrine levels in the brain. It makes you a happier person.” She paused. “How’s the Prozac?”

  “It’s fine. I think we’re at a good dosage. Not enough to have any real side effects.”

  “It’s not supposed to have any side effects.”

  Stanton shook his head. “There’ve been some instances of psychotic breaks in younger patients taking fluoxetine long term—schoolyard shootings, murdering parents, suicide, sadism. I sometimes think the mind is too complex to fully predict what a substance will and won’t do to us. Anyway, the insomnia’s more of a problem now.”

  “When you do sleep, do you dream?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What do you dream about?”

  Stanton looked over at her desk. On the edge was a statue of a dancing man in a mask—African, maybe Maasai. “That’s new,” he said.

  “My husband brought it from Kenya. He’s a photographer. But I’d like to stay on point. What do you dream about?”

  He swallowed. “Same as everyone else. Sex, memories from childhood, work…” He hesitated. “My sister.”

  She leaned forward. “I know we’ve talked about this before, but the last time we spoke of your sister, you were considering flying back up to Seattle to see if you could find out how she went missing and what happened to her. And then you never went. Why?”

  “They, ah… they found a house in a suburb up there. Belonged to a schoolteacher who’d passed away and didn’t have a family, so the heirs sold the house. The new owners decided to gut the house and remodel before reselling it. Under the floorboards in the basement, they found a body wrapped in a garbage bag. The police were called out, and they tore up the entire house and the backyard. They found sixteen bodies total, all young girls.” He paused. “The teacher taught at my sister’s high school.”

  Dr. Vaquer held his gaze. “Was one of the bodies her?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I read about the story online. Never followed up.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged.

  “Jon, your sister’s disappearance even according to you is the most important event in your childhood, the thing everything else is connected to. Probably the reason you became a police officer, why you have trouble in committed relationships… everything ties back. And you’re telling me you have an opportunity to find out what happened, and you didn’t follow up on it?”

  “I can’t… I’m not sure I could handle knowing what happened, knowing what she went through.”

  “I’m sure whatever you’re imagining happened is probably worse. In my experience, knowing the truth is cathartic. No matter how painful that truth is.”

  He hesitated. “There’s something else, too. Today, I busted a human trafficker. Just some low-life, the same type I’ve busted dozens of times. We had a homicide of a woman who was killed by a man who claimed he had bought her from someone else. And then Juvenile Crimes found a four-year-old girl who gave us the location and physical description of the man who’d kidnapped her and forced…”

  He stopped. Somet
imes he forgot that other people, even psychiatrists, weren’t accustomed to seeing and hearing what he saw and heard every day. Frequently Stanton shocked other people who only casually asked him how work was or what he had done that day. He had learned not to discuss it unless necessary.

  “She’d been forced to do things, and she had a fantastic memory. Smart little girl. She described where it happened, and the detectives recognized the location. So we tracked this man down. I volunteered to fake a purchase. Three young women, that was the deal, and today was the day. I was supposed to signal the other detectives when we had the evidence and the girls were safe. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t give them the signal.”

  “Why not?”

  “I… I wanted them to fight. I even let him go. He’d tried to shoot me, and I let him go, hoping he’d try it again so I could put a bullet in his head. I shot one of his buddies, too. I tried to kill him but missed. He survived.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Jon, that’s very serious, what you just told me. I’m concerned.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I’m concerned, too.”

  4

  After the session, Stanton drove home. He lived near the North Shore not far from the beach in a house he’d bought when he was making piles of money as a private investigator, and his fiancée was making just as much as a consultant. Now it seemed too big for one man: six bedrooms, a balcony, a basement… All he ever used were the living room, the kitchen, and his bedroom. As he walked in, he wondered if it was time to sell. The only thing stopping him was the proximity to the ocean. He could see it from the patio or the balcony, and at night he could hear the surf rolling in to shore. When he left the balcony doors open upstairs, it lulled him to sleep.

  Stanton left his gun on the dining room table with his wallet. He stepped onto the patio and stared at the crystal blue water. Before moving to Hawaii, he’d seen images online of beaches where the water was so blue it looked like melted gems. He thought at the time that the photo had simply caught the water at the most opportune time, and then someone had doctored the photo a little. But when he got here, he saw that the photos were accurate. There were beaches where the water was completely transparent. Looking down from a boat, he could see to the bottom. The beach near him reflected the sun in a vibrant sapphire. He sat down and watched the waves foam as he called his sons. Mathew was now at Boston College studying anthropology, and his younger son, Jon Junior, was still in high school. He tried both their cell phones, but neither one answered, so he left messages.