“An application that was submitted to Ke Kula Maka’i.”
“That is odd.”
“Yeah. Thing is, under previous employment, they put San Diego Police Homicide Unit for six years.” He dumped the sand on the ground and slapped his hands together. “What you doing, Jon? You wanna go through the police academy again? You’re almost forty.”
“I need a job, Kai. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“You told me the job cost you your wife.”
“My wife, and then my fiancée last year.”
Kai nodded and took off his sandals, burying his fat toes in the sand. “I got Pua pregnant when she was fifteen. We ain’t been with nobody else since. I don’t even wanna be. I’m lucky, I guess.”
“Out of curiosity, how’d you know about the application?”
“The AC recognized your name. He emailed and asked if you was the same person. Then he said I should hire you. But not through the Academy.”
“A lateral hire?”
“You can test out of the Academy. Just pass the written and physical fitness tests… You look skinny.”
“I run every morning. You look good, too.”
“I’m too fat. I’m gonna die before fifty.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that Stanton was taken aback. “You can do something about it.”
“Nah. Food is evil to me, but evil is beautiful, too,” he said with a chuckle. “Nothin’ ugly to God, brother.” He lifted more sand and let it run through his fingers. “Lemme ask you somethin’, why you wanna be a cop again?”
“I have no idea. There’s a part of us that I don’t think our conscious mind can reach. It seems to be the part that dictates our life, but we can’t understand its motivations. We’re ruled by dictators we can’t even see.”
He chuckled again. “Better than ruled by a wife that throws plates at your head.” He placed his hand on Stanton’s shoulder and rose. “You wanna job, you come see me. We’ll get you tested out and get that badge back on you.”
5
The waiting room for Dr. Natalia Vaquer was like every other psychiatrist’s office Stanton had ever been to. His own father had been head of psychiatry at a hospital in the Pacific Northwest and then San Diego. Stanton had enough exposure to the field to last him a lifetime.
The door opened, and an attractive woman in a business suit came out. She smiled and wordlessly held the door open for him. Stanton went inside the office and sat down on a couch. She sat across from him in a chair and pulled out a legal pad.
“How do you feel, Jon?”
“Good.”
“You look good. How’s the Prozac working?”
“I think adjusting the dosage was the right move. I felt jittery at sixty milligrams. Twenty’s a much better fit.”
She wrote something on the pad and said, “That’s good to hear. So what’s going on in your life?”
He crossed his legs and slung one arm over the back of the couch. He knew that Dr. Vaquer preferred him to lie down; she was a traditionalist in many respects, but he preferred to sit.
“I got offered a job.”
“Really? You were searching for one last time. What is it?”
He hesitated. “Detective with the Honolulu PD.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
“You can say it,” Stanton said.
“Say what?”
“You have the same look on your face my wife used to get when I told her I was being promoted.”
She tilted her head slightly to the side and was quiet a moment. “You’ve been coming here for the better part of a year, Jon. What do you think I’m going to say?”
“I think you’re going to tell me it’s a bad idea. That police work tears me apart and I shouldn’t do it.”
“I wasn’t going to say any of those things. But do you think it’s interesting at all that you said them?”
“I’m self-aware, Natalia. I’m not one of those neurotics in self-denial over the most trivial things that are obvious to everyone else. I know how bad it is for me.”
She nodded. “You’ve catalogued an enormous amount of injuries to me. Last year you were put in a coma by some man you were chasing and nearly died. Do you want to die?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t want to die.”
“If I’m not mistaken, you also held the record at the San Diego Police Department for the most officer-involved shootings. Isn’t that true?”
Stanton bit the inside of his cheek. A nervous tic he’d been trying to get rid of for years. “I don’t know if I still do, but I did. That was because I had a certain skill set and I would be assigned a certain category of cases. Psychopaths of the type I chased don’t typically go into custody easy. They usually fight.”
She wrote something else down. “Did you notice the use of the past tense in your statement, Jon? You had a certain skill set. The psychopaths you chased… What does that tell you?”
“It tells me that I, on some level, know that part of my life should be over.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
Stanton put his arms over his head and placed his hands behind his neck. His feet fell flat to the floor. “It gives me an anxious feeling.”
“Why?”
“Because the work was cathartic for me. It was a release.”
“Release of what?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Jon, you told me once about your sister. Liz. You said that she was kidnapped from a movie theater she was at with her friends, and that they never found her.”
“No, they didn’t.”
Vaquer placed the pen down over the notepad. “Jon, is that why you get anxious when you’re not doing police work? Do you think that maybe, through police work, you’re going to find Liz somehow?”
Stanton pulled his arms forward onto his lap. He was quiet a long time. “I don’t know.”
6
Stanton sat on the beach at six in the morning while his two sons fought the waves. He had caught a few sets himself and then decided he wanted to watch his boys.
Having sons was an odd feeling. He had a moment when they were born that he had never admitted to anybody. For each one, he didn’t feel a connection to them. Not at first. He took care of them and loved them as best he could but knew that strong connection that should have been there, wasn’t.
Then one day, out of the blue, the connection was there. His oldest, Mathew, was walking around at the age of two and hugged his leg and said, “I love you, Dada.” That single moment bonded them together. In a fraction of a second, that link was there, and it overwhelmed him to the point that he picked up his boy and wept.
The boys came into shore. Mathew pushed his brother down and then ran as Johnny chased him. They tackled each other in the sand. Mathew flipped him onto his stomach and pinned Johnny there until he gave up.
“Come here a sec, guys,” Stanton said.
The boys flopped down next to him as the sun rose to its full height. A half-circle of bright orange in the sky, the ocean lighting up gold.
“I’m thinking about taking a job and I wanted to see how you two would feel about it.”
“What is it?” Mathew said.
Stanton hesitated. “It’s as a detective.”
“Back in San Diego?”
“No, here. How would you two feel about that?”
The boys looked to each other.
“Mom said that job’s not good for you,” Johnny said.
“I don’t know if it is or not. There’s something… I never told you guys. I had a sister once. She was a teenager, fifteen, the last time I saw her. We were very close, as close as you two are now. My parents couldn’t really deal with me, so she basically raised me.” Stanton looked out over the ocean. “She was kidnapped when she was out with her friends, and I never saw her again. The police searched for her for almost a year before closing the case. I searched a lot longer than that
but I didn’t know what I was doing. I was a kid at the time.”
“We had an aunt?” Mathew said.
Stanton nodded. “I want to know what you guys are thinking.”
“Mom’s just got brothers. I think it would’ve been cool to have an aunt.” Mathew’s eyes widened a little and locked onto Stanton’s. “Is that why you were a cop?”
Stanton shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m working through that right now.” Johnny was staring at the sand. “Johnny, how do you feel about it?”
“I dunno. I feel bad.”
“Why do you feel bad?”
“I feel bad that you had to have that happen. I’m sorry, Dad.” Stanton felt emotion rise in him and he had to push it down. That his boy didn’t think of himself but only how it might have affected his father.
Johnny thought a moment. “So they never found her?”
“No.”
“So she could still be alive?”
Despite the years that had gone by, the counseling and the medication, Stanton’s heart dropped. “I…”
“Don’t be stupid, Johnny,” Mathew said. “It’s been like a zillion years.”
“I’m not that old,” Stanton said, lightly smacking the back of Mathew’s head.
“You’re ancient, old man.” Mathew jumped on him. “And I can take you now.”
Stanton wrapped his legs around Mathew’s hips and rolled him over. “I still got some fight left in me.”
Johnny jumped on him from behind shouting, “Banzai!”
Stanton pinned Mathew as he tried to deal with Johnny with one arm. The boys worked together and took him down. He rolled away, then stood and ran into the surf, the boys chasing after him.
7
The entrance exam to the Honolulu Police Department was the state certification exam and was almost identical to California’s exam that Stanton took over a decade ago.
The test consisted of knowledge about the most used statutory codes, reading comprehension, prioritizing tasks, logic games, estimating time and distance, interpreting maps, diagramming, recognizing patterns, controlling physical surroundings, and form completion.
Stanton had six hours to complete the test. He finished in an hour and a half, then left and grabbed a puka dog. The bun was holed out and filled with cheese, onions, mango ketchup, and relish. The hot dog then floated in this mixture and soaked it up. Stanton couldn’t get enough of them.
He sat at a table out on the patio of the strip mall and ate. Within two bites, his cell phone rang from a number he didn’t recognize.
“This is Jon.”
“Jon, it’s Kai. Congratulations, man, you passed.”
“You graded the test already?”
“Nah, I’m just guessin’. I put in a rush and they’ll get your results tomorrow. You wanna come in then and get your badge and gun?”
“I have a firearm I like to use.”
“We use Smith and Wesson five nine oh six. What you got?”
“Desert Eagle forty-five.”
He whistled. “Big gun. Okay, just use your own. But we gotta run it through administration.”
“That’s fine.”
Silence for a moment. “I’m glad you’re doing this, ohana.”
“Why do I get the feeling you already have something in mind for me?”
He chuckled. “Oh, we got something for you.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Kai.”
“Shaka.”
Stanton hung up and finished his hot dog and Diet Coke. An odd, peaceful feeling came over him, and he people-watched for a good half-hour. He didn’t feel like moving. The weather was perfect, the food was tasty, and he was closer to his boys than he ever had been in his life.
So why, he thought, despite all this, did he feel like a man standing on a mountain watching a storm race toward him, knowing he wouldn’t be able to climb down in time to avoid it?
After Emma left him he preferred solitude, with the exception of his boys. But now, when his boys were off doing their own things, he was completely alone. Sometimes the loneliness strengthened him, but not now.
Now it was a drain and a distraction. But it was probably for the best. Though both Emma and his ex-wife, Melissa, had been close to him, they hadn’t understood him. In addition to being a father, a provider, a churchgoing Mormon… there was something else too. Something buried deep underneath. And Melissa and Emma couldn’t touch it. In some ways, he felt as alone with them as he did by himself.
He wiped his fingers with a napkin and watched a few birds dance around the table, looking for crumbs. He threw them some and then rose and drove home.
8
In the morning, Stanton went out on the North Shore. The waves were nonexistent but he went just the same. The water was cold and dark as the sun was poking out of the horizon. Stanton sat out on the ocean a long while and then paddled back to shore.
When he got home, he showered and dressed in a white shirt with red tie. He wore slacks and Italian leather shoes he’d picked up at a second-hand store almost eight years ago. They had a few scuffmarks but with a little polish, they always looked fairly new.
As he got his breakfast, he thought about everything those shoes had seen. All the crime scenes, all the blood, and the crying relatives. All the hours away from his family and the broken hearts… He stopped in the middle of pouring some orange juice and grabbed his car keys.
He drove down to Kapiolani Boulevard and the Nordstrom’s there. He went inside and found the men’s shoes and bought the first pair of black leather shoes that he liked.
“Could you please throw these away?” he said to the cashier, handing her a box with his old shoes in them.
Stanton drove to Alapa’i Police Headquarters in downtown: the central precinct for all the island. He had read about the department and knew it was split along eight districts. Kai had sent him an email last night letting him know he would be assigned to district one, downtown Honolulu. The busiest district.
Across the street from the precinct was what appeared to be an old, defunct church. The street was clean and lined with palm trees. He realized he didn’t have a parking pass so he parked on the street and walked to the building.
He headed up to the main floor and found the sector one district offices. He stood in front of the gray door a long time. Thoughts and images flooded his mind. Things from the past he thought he’d forgotten about. His first day at San Diego PD, he’d been so nervous to go into the department that his hand slipped off the doorknob from sweat.
The first day as a detective, Eli Sherman came up to him and put his arm around him. He told him that if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss will stare back at you. And that you have to be prepared to accept what it shows you. “If you’re not,” Sherman had told him, “you shouldn’t be here.”
Stanton opened the door and walked in. He heard the click of the door behind him as he stood there. Expecting everyone to stop what they were doing and stare at him, he stood motionless. When no one even noticed, he looked for Kai’s office. He found it at the end of the hall with the door open.
“Jon,” he said with a big, toothy grin, “come in. Shut the door.”
Stanton did and sat down. “What’s that church across the street?”
“That ain’t a church, bra. That’s Iolani Palace. The king lived there. Only palace in the States.”
“Really? I’ll have to check it out.”
Kai tapped his fingers against the desk. Stanton could tell he had a lot of information to go over, but that he had something he really wanted to say or do. His brow furrowed in concentration and then flattened, and a grin came over his chubby cheeks.
“I’m a give this to you now,” Kai said.
He went to a filing cabinet in the corner and took out a thick accordion binder. He placed it on the desk and slid it toward Stanton.
“What is this?”
“Black Widow.”
Stanton shook his head. “Never heard of it.”
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“What’chyu been smoking with them boys on the beach? A woman killed two tourists. We don’t have nothin’. She didn’t leave nothin’ behind.”
Stanton lifted the file. It was separated into two distinct binders. One was titled, HUGH ROBERT NEAL and the other one was ALEXANDER KEN WATERS.
“You want this to be my first case?” Stanton said.
Kai grinned and nodded. “Told you I got something for you.”
Stanton placed the file back on the desk. “Kai, I was kind of hoping to start small. I know I’m a detective, but what about property crimes?”
“You wanna look into broken car windows and stolen checks instead of solving murders?”
“I mean… not always, but I thought you would start me slow at first.”
Kai’s brow furrowed again. “Tell you what, you take the file. If tomorrow, you don’t wanna do it, don’t. I’ll put you in property crimes.”
Stanton nodded. He lifted the file. “Where’s my desk?”
Connor Jones watched the new guy come out of Kai’s office and go to his desk. He got the one opposite him. The bullpen was just a grouping of desks in the middle of the floor, separated by dividers. They were little more than large cubicles. The four offices in this section were the senior detectives and captain. James was at least six years away from getting one. Or maybe, if he had enough clearances every month, he could do it in five.
The clearances were what the detectives lived and died by. Most departments had a Robbery-Homicide division, but Honolulu PD did things differently. They had a Criminal Investigation Division, which had nine “Details,” one of which was homicide.
Last year, the homicide detail had twenty-five murders with twenty-two clearances. A clearance meant the investigation was over and the case was referred to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for prosecution, or the defendant had passed away. Honolulu City and County had a nearly 90 percent clearance rate. One of the highest in the country. That clearance rate guaranteed them funding, community support, and an attitude among the legislature, city council, and mayor’s office to leave the department the hell alone.
Black Widow Page 2
