Mania - A Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 9)

by Victor Methos

  As she drove away, Stanton stood in the parking lot and watched her taillights. He should sleep, too, so he could give everything he had the next few days and then head home. But he knew that wasn’t where the case was going. There was no other home for him. No matter where he was, he was still here, chasing down the ghost of a girl who loved him unconditionally when no one else did.

  He pulled out the list of the six men receiving child pornography from Kyle, the ones who lived near Carter, and decided he wouldn’t be sleeping just yet.

  23

  The first home was a nondescript rambler with a white pickup in the driveway. Stanton parked across the street. The typical lower-class neighborhood seemed clean and quiet for this time of night, other than a Mustang filled with teenagers that sped by on the road, blaring metal. Stanton waited until the neighborhood was quiet again before getting out of his car.

  A breeze blew, and the air sent a chill up his back. He flipped up the collar of his jacket. He had a quick look inside the pickup and saw empty beer cans tucked under the passenger seat. Stanton went to the front door of the house and listened; a television was on.

  He knocked and waited and then knocked again. Before long, a man in overalls with a thick, gray beard came to the door. His glasses were so large they were almost comical, and even though Stanton could see the man was just watching television, he wore a baseball cap and boots.

  “Yeah?” the man said.

  “Are you Devin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Devin, I’d like to speak with you for a minute if that’s okay.”

  The man eyed him a second. “’Bout what?”

  “About the child porn you have on your computer.”

  The man’s face dropped, his skin instantly turning pale. Or at least, that was Stanton’s impression—the light from inside the home and the darkness outside cast shadows across the man’s face.

  “You need to leave my property.”

  “If I leave, my next call is to Seattle PD. Or you could give me ten minutes of your time.”

  Devin shifted his weight from foot to foot like a child who needed to pee. Stanton realized he didn’t know he was doing it.

  “Come in,” he finally said.

  Stanton shut the door behind him. The home looked as if a hurricane had been through it. Fast-food bags, empty milk cartons, beer cans, boxes of wine and pizza littered the living room like a rug. The odor was somewhere between wet dog and rotting food.

  Stanton couldn’t see a way to get to the couch without stepping in garbage, so he stood by the door.

  “So?” Devin said.

  “You were on an email list. The list was run by someone with the name PCTPMaster. You know the list I’m talking about?”

  The man began rocking again and had to sit down. He wrung his hands together. “I ain’t goin’ back inside. I did me twenty-three years outta fifty-six years of life inside. I ain’t goin’ back no matter what.”

  “I’m not here to arrest you. I’m not even a cop in this state. I’m from Hawaii. I’m here because of a case from a long time ago, a young girl who may have been one of Reginald Carter’s victims. Do you know about Carter?”

  “Yeah, I seen it on the news. They talked ’bout it damn near every day for a week.”

  Stanton nodded. “I’m just looking for people who knew Carter. Did you ever have any interaction with him?”

  “No, man. No. I ain’t like that. I keep to myself. I got my disability checks every month, I jerk off every morning and before bed, and that’s it. That’s my life.”

  “And that’s enough?”

  “Shit. ‘Enough’ is sometimes all you got.”

  Stanton glanced around the home. “I don’t suppose if I asked you where you were on a particular day you would remember.”

  The man looked at him a moment, and then laughed. “Shit, I don’t know where I was yesterday. It’s that medication they got me on. The ah… what you call it? Serakin.”

  “That’s a powerful drug.”

  “Schizophrenia,” he said, nodding. “Doctor inside told me it’s genetic, and I told him no one in my family ever had it. Not a one.” He began rocking again. “My daddy used to do things to me. That’s where it come from. I was just a kid before then.”

  “Do you know anyone else on that list?” Stanton said, trying to keep him focused. “Anyone who ever mentioned Carter or someone who was hurting young girls?”

  He shook his head. “No, man. I keep to myself. I see my mama and that’s about it. Go out for groceries sometimes. I don’t know no one.”

  Stanton knew one of the effects of Serakin was the inability to form emotional connections. Serakin was a powerful antipsychotic that left its users dulled. He doubted Devin would be much of a liar or have any friends or even acquaintances, given its side effects. In some ways, it mimicked a lobotomy.

  “Thanks for your time.”

  Stanton left the home and shut the door before sitting down on the porch. He stared up at the stars. This seemed like an impossible feat. He had to visit all these men and try to find out where they were on a single night twenty-seven years ago and whether they knew a dead man accused of serial murder. No one would admit to it. There had to be something else, some other link in Carter’s life that he was overlooking.

  He paused, holding his breath, and then released it slowly through his nose. He waited a minute then rose and poked his head into the home again. Devin hadn’t gotten off the couch. Something on the television had caught his attention, and he was transfixed.

  “Devin… Devin, could you look at me please?”

  “Yeah, man. Yeah.”

  “I know you weren’t heavily involved in the community, but were there others who were? A group that met at someone’s house or something like that?”

  Stanton had learned that the child pornography and pedophile communities were tightly knit, routinely swapping video files and actual children. Adoption was the preferred method of acquiring victims, but nephews and nieces and the children of neighbors were more readily at hand. Pedophiles had no sense of familial bonds; their own children or grandchildren were victims in their eyes as much as strangers. Stanton had even had a case of a father who passed around his eight-year-old daughter to more than twenty men in his group. When Stanton found him, the man had put a bullet in his head, choosing to die rather than live a life in prison being raped and passed around the same way he had raped and passed around his daughter.

  “A group?” Devin said.

  “Yeah, a group. People who got together and talked about how much they loved kids. Shared videos and tips. Things like that.”

  “I guess. I was invited to that bar down there in Clearfield a few times. Never went, though.” Devin’s rocking had reached feverish proportions. The questions were bringing up memories that were stimulating him too much.

  “What bar?” Stanton said.

  “Trap’s. Or Rap’s. Somethin’ like that.” He rubbed his beard. “You need to leave now.”

  Stanton nodded. “I will. But first I need you to make sure. Is it Rap’s or Trap’s?”

  “Trap’s. It was Trap’s.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Stanton shut the door. He googled Trap’s in Clearfield, Washington, and got a hit. No website, but there was an address and a map listing. He hurried to his Jeep, glanced back once at Devin’s home, and sped away.

  24

  Trap’s looked just as Stanton thought it would. Twenty stone steps or more led below to the basement level of a two-story building. The building housed a sports supply store and a retailer that sold four-wheelers and Jet Skis. Stanton parked away from the other cars and watched, hoping to observe some of the people going in and out, but no one did. So he left his Jeep and headed down the stairs.

  The interior of the bar was as dark as he had ever seen in a public place—no windows, not that that would help, but not even any attempts at extra lighting. A few lights at the entrance, and a few at the back
leading to the bathrooms, and darkness in between. Each table was so dimly lit that Stanton could barely make out the faces of the few men who were there. Trap’s wasn’t a place to mingle away the hours; it was a place to get away from the eyes of everyone else.

  In the back of the large space was an oval bar, and Stanton went over and sat down on the end. The bartender wore a green polo shirt and had a mustache so thick it covered his upper lip. He didn’t pay any attention to Stanton.

  A man came up to him then from the darkness. Thin and with a multicolored baseball cap turned to the side, he sat down next to Stanton. He had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Ain’t seen you here.”

  “No.”

  “You a cop?”

  Stanton looked at him. “No, just… lonely, I guess.”

  “No shit. Name’s Stewart.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Stewart whistled to the bartender and said, “Two beers, Jack.” He turned to Stanton. “So what can we do so you ain’t so lonely?”

  “I don’t know. What do you have?”

  The man grinned and dipped into his pocket. He came out with several types of pills. “Whatever you want. Downers, uppers, mescaline, ’ludes, whatever.”

  Stanton pulled out his wallet and laid a hundred on the bar. “Whatever that will buy me in Quaaludes. For now.”

  Stewart nodded and laid two pills on the bar before taking the bill and shoving it into the same pocket the pills had been in.

  “You need anything else, you ask me,” Stewart said, rising.

  “Actually, these will help, but there’s other ways to alleviate loneliness.”

  Stewart grinned again. “You like cock or pussy?”

  Stanton took the two pills off the bar and held them in his palm while the bartender placed two mugs of beer in front them. “Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s… not too old.”

  Stewart chuckled. He took one of the beers and drank it down in a matter of seconds. “Can’t help you there. Sorry, compadre.” He began walking away.

  “Wait,” Stanton said. “Maybe you can’t help, but I bet you know someone who can.”

  Stewart waved his cigarette up and down using his lips. “Ask Jack.”

  With that, the man disappeared again into the darkness, an apparition that came out only to serve its purpose and then climbed into the darkness again. Stanton turned toward the bartender, Jack. The man had heard the exchange but hadn’t made a move to come over to Stanton. He was cautious, and Stanton couldn’t simply ask for information and get it. There would be another way.

  Stanton pretended to nurse his beer, but he just gazed into the glass. The dim lighting brought out sparkles of gold. Froth seeped over the lip, and he set it on a napkin and watched intently as the froth dripped down.

  An hour passed, and he didn’t move. Not until Jack said something to another bartender and headed toward the bathrooms. Stanton rose and followed him.

  As he passed the booths and the tables, he could see the hard, unkind faces of the men who had gathered there. Some of them grinned at Stanton, and some of them just stared with eyes glazed over like marbles, alcohol and apathy slowly killing their souls.

  The men’s bathroom was off to the right down a small hallway. Stanton stepped through the door and saw Jack at the urinal. Stanton went to the far end, urinated, and then went to the sink to wash his hands as Jack did the same.

  “Hi,” Stanton said.

  “Hello,” Jack said, not taking his eyes off his own face in the mirror.

  “This is my first time here. I like how quiet it is.”

  Jack turned the water off and grabbed a paper towel. “I figured that.”

  “I was told you were the man to see, though.”

  “See about what?”

  “About anything I might need.”

  Jack turned to him, his hands in his pockets as he stared into his eyes. “You didn’t drink your beer. You sat there for over an hour and didn’t touch it.”

  “I don’t like mixing alcohol and ’ludes.”

  Jack nodded. “What is it you think I can do for you?”

  He shrugged. “I was just feeling lonely tonight.”

  Jack lightly bit his lower lip, his eyes never leaving Stanton’s. His barrier wasn’t going down.

  “Forget it. Sorry I bothered you.” Stanton began walking toward the exit, his heart beating a million miles a minute as he grabbed the door handle. If Jack didn’t stop him, this was it. He would have to leave.

  “Hold on,” Jack said from behind him. “Come back around closing at two.”

  Stanton held the door open as Jack walked out and back to the bar. He checked the clock on his iPhone; he still had another three hours. He left the bar, threw the pills into the nearest trash, and got into his Jeep.

  25

  Stanton drove down to Puget Sound, a massive connection of waterways and basins, all coming from and leading to the Pacific Ocean. In his youth, his family used to rent a cabin nearby. One morning when Stanton was maybe nine, he left the cabin before anyone else woke up, and he headed out to the beach. A canoe was lashed to a pier, and he got in just as he heard footfalls behind him. He turned to see Elizabeth hurrying across the rocky beach.

  “You’re not going out alone,” she said, jumping into the canoe.

  “I’m fine,” he insisted.

  She lay back, crossing one leg over another. “Start paddling, ’cause I’m not doing it.”

  Stanton grunted futilely and then picked up an oar. Untying from the pier, he paddled through the choppy greenish-blue water until they were far from shore and drifting out in the open. Lush forests covered the distant shoreline, interspersed with homes and cabins. In this particular section of Puget Sound, an inlet led directly out to the Pacific, and Stanton tried paddling there.

  “You won’t make it,” Elizabeth said.

  “I can try.”

  “What was that?” she gasped.

  “What?” he said, not stopping.

  “Stop paddling, Jon.”

  He stopped, and set the paddle down. He couldn’t hear anything but the water and, somewhere off in the distance, a bird of some sort.

  Then he heard it.

  The mournful cry, low at first. Then building up in a crescendo of sound until it ended in almost human sounding clicks: a whale.

  “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh—”

  “They’re not sharks,” Stanton said. “They’re not going to hurt us.”

  Elizabeth gripped the sides of the canoe until her knuckles turned white. Stanton scanned the water around them but couldn’t see anything. They sat out there a long time, hoping to see or hear the whale again, but they never did.

  As Stanton parked the Jeep near shore, he thought about that memory and wondered if, of the three of them who shared that experience, he was the only one that was still alive.

  The moon had come out of hiding, and the clouds dissipated enough to fully illuminate the water in a soft white glow. Stanton sat down on a log past the tree line, watching the waves as they rolled in, bringing with them bits of driftwood and debris. Puget Sound wasn’t as clean as he remembered as a child. Several companies dumped waste into it, and he knew there had been a major problem of killer whale deaths from the toxicity of the water. Still, right now, with the moon shining over it, the water was beautiful.

  His phone buzzed. It was Katie.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Sorry to bug you. Just checking in about our game plan for tomorrow. I’ve cleared it with Thomas, and he’s going to be helping us. I’m going to try to get a few uniformed officers to run down names on the list, too.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, why?”

  “I thought you’d be more excited. We’re going to have help.”

  Stanton stared down at the rocks by his feet. If she knew what he was doing tonight, she would cut off her help and maybe even charge him with a crime. “I’m ju
st tired,” he lied. “Can I call you tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” she said. She sounded disappointed, as though she’d wanted something else from him.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine. That sounds great. Just call me tomorrow.”

  Stanton hung up and stared at his phone for a few seconds before putting it away and turning his gaze back out to the water. Perhaps she wanted him to ask if he could come over tonight. Katie had loneliness in her eyes that seemed to dissipate the more they talked. He recognized it because he had the same loneliness.

  Stanton lay back. Several small rocks and pebbles made it less comfortable than it could’ve been, but he ignored the discomfort and stared at the moon before closing his eyes and disappearing.

  When Stanton woke, it wasn’t of his own volition. He heard something farther off in the forest, the broken rhythm of an animal dashing through vegetation. Stanton sat up and then he got to his feet before scanning the forest around him. He decided he didn’t need to know what animal had shown interest in him and instead got to his Jeep and went back to the bar.

  The interior had less smoke and fewer people. Jack was at the bar. He mumbled something to the other bartender and then sat down in a booth and motioned for Stanton to sit with him. His gut in knots, Stanton complied.

  “How did you hear about this place?” he asked.

  “Devin told me.”

  “Devin doesn’t talk to nobody.”

  Stanton leaned back in the seat, striking a more casual pose. “I’m his nurse. Or at least the nurse his mother hired. He doesn’t like me taking care of him so I just check up on him. Make sure he’s eating, stuff like that. He told me about a group I might be interested in when we discussed some of our mutual preferences. I’m Jon, by the way.”

  He nodded. “What exactly do you need, Jon?”

  “Girls. Young, but not too young. Thirteen to fifteen. I’m not a pervert.”