Mania - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 9)

by Victor Methos

“The ring we found. Elizabeth Stanton. I took her brother there. He’s Homicide, too, out in Hawaii. He wanted to look around.”

  “At what? She wasn’t one of the bodies.”

  “Thomas, don’t be a dick.”

  He stood up and stretched his back. “What’re you doin’ tonight? We’re goin’ out for drinks.”

  “I’m good,” she said, opening up a file on her desk. She waited until he left before closing the file and leaning back in her chair. Why had she taken Jon to Carter’s house? She’d never done that for anyone before. And now, somehow, she felt guilty for not giving him the medical examiner’s reports when he’d asked. Why would she care about that at all?

  She rose from her desk and paced the room a few times before deciding she needed to head home for a quick late dinner.

  Occasionally she would eat out for lunch and dinner, but nowhere near as much as the other detectives in her squad. For them, it was some ritual they needed to de-stress. For her, it was the opposite: social situations and a lot of people in a room always gave her anxiety.

  She drove slowly with the windows down. The temperature had increased to lukewarm, but the rain had stopped and at least some of the clouds had dispersed. Originally from Michigan, she had no problem with Seattle’s weather and had never really had her moods linked to the sunshine as she’d seen in some other people.

  Her apartment building was brown and only three stories. She lived on the basement floor and when she walked in, her cat, Patty, lay on the kitchen counter. Katie crossed the living room and kitchen and rubbed the animal’s belly, releasing a series of purrs. She opened her fridge and made a salad of couscous, onions, and tomatoes with spinach.

  When the salad was done, she set it on the table and stared at it. Eating was the last thing she felt like doing right now. A heavy, tight feeling sat in her gut and wouldn’t leave. It was guilt. She knew the feeling and knew what was causing it.

  Not that long ago, she had been Jon Stanton—scrambling from government agency to government agency, hoping the next one had the information she was looking for, praying someone friendly would pick up the phone when she asked about her son’s death. Katie looked over at the photograph of Brian on the counter next to the microwave. Every room had a photo, as did her office and her car. It’d been six years now, and she knew what people thought: that the grieving had gone on too long. Her own aunt had said as much. What the hell did she know? She hadn’t lost someone she loved. She couldn’t possibly relate to what that did to a person, to how it made her feel when she got up in the morning and, for a fraction of a second, forgot what had happened and still expected Brian to be in his room, and the crushing weight when she remembered she’d never see him again. No one knew what that was like unless they’d gone through it. As she had. As Jon Stanton had.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed the ME’s office.

  16

  As Stanton drove away from the police precinct, he realized he didn’t have a place to sleep. He hadn’t booked a hotel or even thought about where he should stay. He googled the nearest hotels, and the Marriott was closest, on a steep hill near downtown Seattle. A valet took his Jeep, and he checked in and went up to his room.

  One of his windows looked out on the ocean. But the ocean here was not the ocean in Oahu. Here it was gray and foreboding, churning violently. In Oahu, the ocean welcomed him like an old friend.

  He kicked off his shoes and lay back on the bed before pulling out the credit card statement from Carter’s house. On his phone, he found Alcatraz Storage was about twenty-five miles away from Rosebud. He slipped the statement back into his pocket, rose and checked the mini-fridge, decided against the twelve-dollar bottle of water, and put his shoes back on before leaving the room.

  The sky had cleared somewhat, but a dull grayness still enveloped the city. While the valet retrieved his Jeep, he stood in front of the hotel and stared at his reflection in a small stream of water flowing down the pavement.

  Once in the Jeep, he rolled the windows down again and checked his GPS before getting onto the interstate.

  Washington had some of the most beautiful scenery he’d ever come across. Lush, green trees and grass dotted with white-capped mountains and clear rivers and streams. But Seattle itself was like any other city: crowded, polluted, and with the distinct smell that could only be found where great masses of humanity congregated: smog and exhaust, with notes of mildew.

  The interstate was relatively clear, and it was a straight shot to the storage unit in Buxton. Once Stanton pulled into the town and found Alcatraz Storage, he was convinced Buxton was even more backwoods than Rosebud. The only place of any note in the town appeared to be a gas station with a Burger King attached. Just out of curiosity, he found the city on Wikipedia and saw that it had fewer than four hundred residents. The contrast amazed him: it was less than two hours from Seattle and yet felt like a different country.

  The storage units were gray brick with orange metal doors. Surrounded by a metal gate, video cameras, a security guard, and an alarm system, the storage units were as protected as most banks. Stanton parked and walked to the front office. Soft country music played, and an older woman in a flower-print shirt sat behind the desk. She glanced up at him but didn’t say anything. To be polite, Stanton quietly waited until she was ready.

  “Yes?” she finally said, not looking up from whatever form she was filling out.

  Stanton took out his badge and held it out, waiting. She looked at the badge, then at him. The Seattle PD badge was silver as opposed to the gold and blue Honolulu PD badge Stanton had shown her, but she didn’t seem to notice and didn’t ask to look any closer.

  “What can I do for you, Officer?” she said.

  “I have a man who has a storage unit here. I wouldn’t expect that he used his own name, but he did use his own credit card. The card on file would be for Reginald Carter with an address in Rosebud. You mind looking that up for me?”

  “You have a warrant? Cause I can’t let you search without a warrant.”

  Stanton leaned forward on the counter. “See, the thing is, I could go get a warrant right now, but that’s going to take me at least three hours. And I’ve got better things to do than search some storage unit. I’d rather just get this outta the way, file my report, and we can both go back to our lives. If I get the warrant, I gotta bring other officers down here and we might have to search more than just his unit. I just want in and out.”

  She stared at him a moment. “In and out, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  She exhaled. “Fine. In and out.” She turned to her computer and said, “You got the card number?”

  Stanton handed her the credit card statement. She typed it into the company’s software and a page of information came up.

  “That card’s linked to a unit leased by Reagan Cliff… oh, the R and the C, huh?”

  “That’s right. I’ll just bet that’s him,” he said with a smile.

  She smiled back, impressed with her own cleverness. “All right, well, lemme go open her up. In and out, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Stanton followed the woman through the offices to a back door leading to the storage units. She grabbed some keys out of a locked drawer and led him up one of the rows before turning left down another long series of storage units.

  “My brother wanted to be a cop,” she said.

  “That so? Why didn’t he?”

  “Had some pot convictions back in the seventies. Ain’t that the stupidest thing you ever heard? Man can’t serve his community ’cause he smoked some dope when he was nineteen?”

  “It certainly is.”

  She shook her head. “This country’s goin’ to hell.” She stopped, looked around, then walked up to a unit and unlocked it. She reached down and lifted the door with a grunt of effort, rolling it to the top.

  “This is it,” she said.

  “Thank you. I’ll be out of here as quickly as I can.”
<
br />   “Uh huh,” she said, returning to the office. “Just pull down the door when you’re done and I’ll come out and lock it.”

  When she’d left, Stanton turned on the single lightbulb in the space. Piles of junk sat a couple of feet deep: another mess room. He wished he’d brought latex gloves with him, but he hadn’t even been sure he’d be let in, much less that he’d find anything. So, without the gloves, he began kicking aside the piles of trash with his foot. Within a few minutes, he was down on his hands and knees sifting through the old trash.

  Very quickly he saw that it was nothing but refuse—discarded items like fast-food bags that Carter brought with him and didn’t bother taking out to a trash bin. Stanton rose and looked over the space. Against the walls were some filing cabinets and several school desks for junior high or high school kids. He walked over to the first filing cabinet; it was locked. He set his shoulder against the edge, gripped the handle on the first drawer, and pulled and pushed at the same time. The force tore out the rickety drawer, revealing papers and file folders. Stanton flipped through them. The papers consisted of descriptions:

  Five four, a hundred and five pounds, blonde hair with purple highlights. Has softball practice Tuesdays and Thursdays and Cheer Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Parents divorced, lives with mother who works 11a.m. to 11p.m. Monday thru Thursday. A boyfriend. Boyfriend has swim practice…

  The entries went on and on, even going into what they liked to eat and drink. No names, birthdays, or any information that could identify who he was referring to were written anywhere. They had to have been memorized. Stanton counted two hundred and eighty-seven files. He’d memorized the lives of two hundred and eighty-seven young girls over the course of two decades so that he could better pick the right ones. Just off this information, Stanton didn’t see a pattern. He couldn’t tell why one girl was chosen and another not—not yet, anyway. But the pattern was there. And when he found it, he would understand Carter’s obsession, and why Elizabeth was chosen.

  He pulled the drawer out completely and reached down into the next one, unlocking it from the inside. When he opened this one, his heart beat faster and he lost his breath.

  Stacked in neat little piles were Polaroid photos. No drives to save the photos, just the Polaroids—something Stanton hadn’t seen since he was a kid. The top photo was of a young girl, maybe fifteen, screaming, nude, and tied down to the metal table Stanton had seen in Carter’s basement.

  The photos were caked with dust, and Stanton decided he couldn’t handle them without latex gloves. Also, if he happened across a photo of Elizabeth like that… it would be too much. He needed time to prepare himself.

  He stepped outside and looked around before rolling the door down. Back at the office, the woman was working on the form again and looked up without saying anything.

  “I’m going to need some supplies. I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “Supplies for what?”

  He stepped close to the woman. “I’m going to go ahead and assume you didn’t know there were photographs of dead children in that storage unit, and you’re going to go ahead and not ask me any questions. Because if I thought for a second that you knew what was in there and didn’t call the police, that would be felony obstruction of justice, maybe even accomplice to murder. Understood?”

  The woman swallowed. She looked as though she wanted to say something but didn’t have the courage. Instead, she just went back to her form and said, “Do whatever you want. I don’t give a shit.”

  The closest store was a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. The lighting in those places always gave Stanton headaches, and he moved quickly to avoid staying in there for any length of time. He bought a box of latex gloves and some ibuprofen and left.

  He got back to the storage unit and walked past the woman without a word. Other than a quick glance in his direction, she didn’t say anything, either. He stood outside the storage unit, held his breath as long as he could, then slowly released it before rolling up the door and stepping inside. He carefully made his way over to the filing cabinet, snapped on some gloves, and then began thumbing through the photos.

  They were about as horrible as he’d imagined on the drive over. Moments of agony caught on film for Carter to revel in later. Stanton counted twenty-one girls, which meant Carter hadn’t buried them all at his house, or the police hadn’t searched thoroughly enough. He got to the bottom of the stack. No photos of Elizabeth.

  As he went to put the photos back down, something caught his eye. It was in the middle of the stack. He stared at the photo. A blonde girl with wavy hair was on the metal table, her face contorted in pain. Her arms were tied over her head, but what drew Stanton’s attention were her feet. The photo was a body shot, taken from above her, either on a chair or a ladder. Her feet were included. And over the ankles, something covered them. Stanton squinted and stepped closer to the lightbulb to make out what it was.

  Hands.

  Someone was taking the photo, and someone was holding her down. There were two of them.

  17

  Painstakingly, Stanton went through every photo several times under the light. Only one other photo had a body shot taken from above. It wasn’t as clear in this photo, but he could see the tips of fingers on her ankles. He placed the photos back in the drawer.

  He knew he couldn’t leave them here. Not while the police thought there were only sixteen victims. The parents of those other five girls deserved to know what happened. Or did they? Maybe their lives were better not knowing. Better having a sliver of hope that somewhere, their little girls were still alive. Stanton didn’t know if that was true. All he knew was that he would want to know.

  Rolling down the door, he turned to see the woman hurrying toward him, shaken, wringing her hands. “I didn’t know anything that was in there. I don’t know what’s in any of these.”

  “The police will be here soon. Let them see what’s in the storage unit.” Her eyes widened. “You won’t get in any trouble,” Stanton quickly added.

  He turned away from her and dialed Katie’s cell phone number from the back of her card.

  Stanton sat across from the storage unit and leaned his head back against another, his eyes glued on the sky, waiting. He had forgotten how deeply gray the clouds would get here, a gray unlike any he had ever seen before. Staring at it, he felt as if it could suck him up into the sky. As much as he liked Seattle, he knew he couldn’t spend too much time there. His mood had always been affected by how much sunshine he got. Whether it was seasonal affective disorder or something else, he couldn’t go without the sun for very long.

  Katie was the first to arrive, two police cruisers not far behind her. Stanton didn’t rise as Katie and a Hispanic man in an expensive suit hurried up to him. Her partner barked, “What the hell? You go rifling through our evidence like some fucking rookie? What if I came down to Hawaii and did that shit to you?”

  “Thomas,” Katie said, “it’s all right. Jon told me he didn’t touch anything important without gloves.”

  “How do we know? What if CSI finds his prints in there? How we supposed to explain that in the news?”

  “They’ll find my prints on some of the trash, nothing else,” Stanton said. He rose, facing the man squarely. “I didn’t know if I had anything until I looked. I didn’t want to call you out and waste your time if there was nothing in there.”

  Thomas swallowed, his face turning red from either embarrassment or anger he was holding back. He turned away and stormed over to the storage unit, barking orders at the uniforms coming out of the police cruisers.

  Katie took a step forward, lowering her voice. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I did.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Stanton looked over at the storage unit as the uniforms fumbled with the light. “I had to look for myself first,” he said. “I needed to be alone in there for a minute.”

  “Jon, this isn’t your investigation. I told you that.”
<
br />   “Is there anyone that has more invested in this than I do? If there is, I’ll step aside.”

  She sighed and glanced over her shoulder. “It doesn’t look good for us. What would your boss think if a vic’s family member kept showing up at crime scenes?”

  “I’m not looking to get in your way, I’m really not. But I know how these are worked. This is a high-profile case. The administration is going to want it cleared and closed as fast as possible. They don’t want any messes when the news crews have their eyes on them. They’re not looking for additional evidence, and anything you present to them is going to be mocked and set aside.”

  “What’re you talking about? I don’t know how it works in Hawaii, but no one puts pressure on us. We work the cases how we see them.”

  He shook his head, his eyes never leaving one of the uniforms as he joked with another officer about something. “That’s not how any government agency works. The top runs the show and only lets you think you’re independent. When you tell them anything not in line with their plan, they’ll turn on you.”

  “What would I tell them that’s not in line with their plan? Carter’s dead. The cases will be closed as soon as CSI’s done at the house.”

  Stanton hesitated. “The case isn’t done. Inside one of those filing cabinets is a stack of photos. Old Polaroids. Twenty-one girls, all taken at Carter’s house. Two of the girls have something you need to see in the photos.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to bias you. I want to know that you see what I see. Just look through the photos. I’ll be at the hotel.”

  As Stanton strode to his Jeep, her partner hurried up to him and walked beside him. “Katie’s got a soft spot. That’s about what I’d always expect from a woman, but don’t expect that from me. Vic’s family or not, I see you at another one of my crime scenes, you’re leaving in cuffs.”

  Stanton climbed into the driver’s side of his Jeep and slipped on his sunglasses. “This wouldn’t have been your crime scene if I hadn’t found it. You’re welcome.”