The morning traffic was light today. Hawaii, in a lot of ways, reminded Stanton of Europe. Life was more relaxed here. No one expected you to show up on time for work. On Fridays, no one expected you to stay your full shift. There was nature and sunlight and ocean all around that had to be experienced, and bosses that didn’t understand that lost their good employees quickly.
Stanton went to the precinct for morning roll call. Usually, it was held in a room called the War Room. He went there now and saw everyone drinking coffee and talking. He took a seat in the back, and the detective commander stood up and spoke about last night’s reports. Jones walked into the room. He spotted Stanton, came over, and sat next to him.
“Did you hear?” Jones whispered.
“I did.”
“She clammed up, man. I couldn’t get anything out of her.”
“If she’s as intelligent as I think she is, that’s the way we expected her to play it.”
Jones was quiet a moment as the commander’s eyes went to him and then away. “What’s the next move?”
“I’m going to tail her.”
“I want in.”
“One person is less noticeable than two. But maybe we could split it.”
“Solid.” Jones held out his fist, and Stanton assumed he wanted him to tap it with his, so he did.
When roll call was over, Stanton exited without saying anything to anyone else. Jones followed him out to the bullpen.
“We’ll split it eight to four and then four to midnight,” Stanton said. “I have my kids, so I’ll take eight to four if that’s okay.”
“Perfect, man. I’m a night owl anyway. You want me to check out some equipment?”
Stanton wasn’t looking to get her on video. She was too smart for that. What he wanted was to get a sense for her. A feel that she was whom he thought she was. So far, he had felt nothing but fear and anxiety from her. Two emotions that pure psychopaths were incapable of feeling.
“You can check out some video if you want. I don’t want any. I’ll text you at four.”
27
Stanton sat outside Queen’s Medical in the afternoon heat. Heidi had come to work at eleven and it was now past two. Stanton wished he’d taken the nightshift, but he couldn’t leave his boys alone. And it was unfair to ask Suzanne to watch them until the middle of the night.
He texted Jones that she was still at the hospital, and would be until eight o’clock. Stanton told him to swing by at that time. No use in him baking in his car for several hours, too.
As Stanton was about to pull away, he saw movement near the passenger seat. Heidi Rousseau stood on the sidewalk, looking at him through Calvin Klein sunglasses.
“How long are you guys going to follow me now?” she said. Stanton didn’t reply. “Well,” she said, “you might as well come to lunch with me.” She climbed into the passenger seat. “There’s a barbeque place up the street that’s really good. Fat Kahuna’s.”
Stanton waited a beat, unsure exactly what to say. She didn’t seem to notice his hesitation and was putting on her seatbelt.
He pulled away.
Stanton had never been to Fat Kahuna’s. It was little more than a shack with tables. But the food appeared greasy and delicious. There were no waiters, and you ordered from a cashier and then retrieved your food when they called your name.
Heidi ordered wings, two sodas, a pizza and an order of Hawaiian snowballs, a type of pastry coated in powdered sugar.
She paid before Stanton could offer and then walked out onto the patio. Stanton followed and sat across from her at a table under a rainbow-colored umbrella.
“So how long can I expect you to follow me?”
Stanton, for the first time he could remember in an investigation, did not know what to say or do. He had taken every precaution. He hadn’t even parked that close to the hospital. The only thing he could think was that she knew they’d be tailing her and was searching for them.
“You have to admit,” Stanton finally said, “the owner of an escort agency telling me that you were with both victims the night of their deaths is pretty compelling evidence.”
“I wasn’t there and I don’t work at an escort agency.” She folded her arms. “Have you thought that maybe she’s lying to cover for herself? Or someone else?”
“Of course I have. The problem is that I showed a photo of you to one of the employees of the agency and she identified you as working there. Except for the hair.”
Heidi sat quietly a moment. “What color did she say my hair was? Black, shoulder length?”
“Yes.”
Heidi nodded. “That’s not me. I promise you. It’s not me.”
“Everything’s pointing to you, Heidi. So unless you can give me a good reason, this investigation is going to continue until we find something.”
She leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table. Her hands went to her face and covered it a few moments before running through her hair. She leaned back in the seat and turned toward the ocean.
“I have a sister, Detective. A twin sister. And it looks like she’s found me.”
28
Stanton surfed in the evening at the North Shore. It was a good few sets before the waves died down. He lay on the beach afterward and stared at the clear blue sky. A few families of tourists were around him today and one asked if he would snap a photo of them. He rose and took the photo. They were a cute family. The parents and two kids. He handed them back their iPhone and gathered his things to leave.
Stanton had let Jones continue to tail Heidi. Although he had warned him that she had spotted the tail.
The story of a twin sister was far-fetched, and Stanton didn’t buy it. Not yet. So he had asked that they go somewhere quiet and she could tell him about her sister. He hadn’t been thinking they should go to dinner, but when Heidi suggested it, he didn’t say no.
He used the showers nearby on the beach and then dressed in jeans. After sitting in his jeep a good hour and watching the sunset over the Pacific, he started his vehicle and drove to the restaurant they had agreed to meet at.
The restaurant was another that Stanton hadn’t been to. French fusion. Some of the best chefs in the world came to Hawaii to ply their trade and he wouldn’t be surprised if it was the best French he’d ever had.
The restaurant itself was sparse and simple, with wooden tables, white tablecloths, and candles. Stanton saw Heidi already seated, sipping at a glass of wine.
He sat across from her. She watched him as she took a long drink and then placed the glass down. She wore a white dress that exposed her shoulders. Stanton was about to comment that she looked nice, but caught himself.
“Do you mind if I take notes?” Stanton said.
She shook her head. “It’s up to you.”
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“Heather Rousseau. Though I doubt you’ll find anything on her that way. I don’t think she’s used her real name in fifteen years.” She finished the wine and then held up her hand to the waiter and pointed to her glass. “We’re identical twins. I don’t remember a lot from my childhood but I remember Heather. Larger than life.”
“Where is she now?”
She shook her head as the waiter walked over and poured her more wine. “I have no idea. Here, on the island, obviously. But she hasn’t contacted me. She won’t until she feels like it would be more fun to taunt me.”
The waiter asked Stanton if he wanted a drink and he ordered a Diet Coke.
“Taunt you how?” he said.
“I assume you’ve seen my criminal record?” Stanton nodded. “All those expunged cases, that was her. She uses my name and then it takes me months of work to clear it up. She’s doing it here, too. That’s why the escort agency would have my name.”
“That doesn’t sound very twinlike.”
Heidi swallowed some wine and then placed the glass in front of her. She tapped the glass lightly with her fingernail. “My sister… hates me, Detective. She was�
� when she was young, she began displaying traits that terrified my parents. She started hurting and manipulating other kids. She became promiscuous at eleven years old.”
Another drink of wine. Stanton almost felt like telling her to slow down but then realized she might be willing to talk more freely with alcohol.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“She stabbed a boy one day at school. She was twelve, I think. Stabbed him in the genitals. She was transferred to an alternative school and got even worse there. The more authority tried to tell her what to do, the more she rebelled. A girl got into a fight with her there. I don’t know what it was about, but I know my sister cut her eyes out with a razor blade. We’re talking about a twelve-year-old girl. She cut the eyes out and then stood there laughing. The teachers told us that she thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”
The Diet Coke came, and Stanton wanted to wait a beat. To let Heidi get lost in thought and allow the alcohol to take effect. He opened a straw and took a few sips.
“What happened to her after that?” Stanton said.
“She was taken from us at that point. She was put in the system. Psychiatric hospitals. She was committed until she was eighteen. When she got out, I thought she would be happy to see me. I went and met her at the gates. It was a frightening place. Nowhere a kid should be. She told me… she told me about the hell she went through. She was sexually abused by the guards. Starved and beaten… she blamed me.”
“Why would she blame you?”
“You have to understand how different I was from Heather. Where she was impulsive and brave, I was shy and quiet. We never really bonded. I was close to my parents because I was just home more. She wasn’t close to them at all. Heather thought I had been the one to talk my parents into allowing her to be committed. She thought I wanted her out of my life to get all the attention. But I never did that. I loved my sister. I would never have wanted her to go away.” She inhaled a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “So, it began there. In college. I came to my dorm room one day to find that she had slept with my roommate. A girl who wasn’t even bisexual. Heather had drugged her. It just got worse from there.”
A pang of sympathy went through Stanton. He could see it in his mind’s eye. A shy girl trying to get by while a force she didn’t understand slowly and systematically destroyed her life. He knew now why Heidi didn’t talk at the lunch table.
“I moved everywhere,” Heidi said. “Whenever I could. I never left forwarding addresses. It worked for a while, but she would always find me. And obviously, when I got into medical school, I had to be in one place for four years. Do you know what she did? She killed my boyfriend. Of course, there was no proof. He just vanished one day and everyone thought that med school had been too much for him. But I knew, I know, that’s not what happened.”
“Why is she killing johns?”
“Who knows? Maybe that’s her latest thing. She’s insane, Jon.”
Stanton noticed that she had called him Jon instead of Detective. For some reason, he was glad she did.
“If you’re telling the truth, why didn’t you come to the police? The FBI? We could’ve helped you.”
She shook her head, staring down at the table. “I went to the police once. After my boyfriend. While the investigation was pending, a friend of mine disappeared. It was a message to me. That she could get to anyone she wanted. I withdrew my witness statement after that.”
He sipped his soda. He was leaning toward believing her. Most of the facial cues he had studied on deception weren’t present. Then again, a pure psychopath was typically a perfect liar. No method of dishonesty detection, including polygraph machines, had ever worked on them.
“Let’s say I choose to believe you,” he said. “How do I find her?”
“You can’t. She’s been running and hiding her entire life. The homicide cops in San Francisco couldn’t find her, I can’t find her… not until she wants to be found.”
He thought a moment about whether he should tell her. In the end, he decided it wouldn’t really matter. “I may not know where she is right now, but I know where she’ll be on Tuesday night.”
“Where?”
“On a date with me.”
29
For most of the dinner, Stanton and Heidi discussed her sister. Heidi was insisting that she come along on the date and Stanton declined. This was an exploratory mission for him. Something to get a feel for Heather, and nothing more.
But once the decision had been made, they spoke about other things. About why she’d become a doctor—her father had been one and she had seen him save a man who had suffered a stab wound on the streets of Manhattan—why she moved to Hawaii, and, a subject that she brought up, why she wasn’t married.
“Just never found the right man,” she said, taking a bite of a dish of Kobe beef with cream and carrot shavings. “What about you?”
“Married once, engaged once.”
“What happened with the engagement?”
Stanton hesitated, pretending that he was concentrating on cutting his prosciutto-wrapped salmon. “She didn’t like the line of work I was in.”
“Really? I would think all women would want to be with a man that knows how to protect them.”
“Not if they work eighty hours a week and then bring their work home with them.”
She took a sip of wine, not removing her eyes from his. “That must be hard. Seeing what you see. I mean, I see a lot, too. But I couldn’t even imagine dealing with crime scenes every day.”
“The crime scenes aren’t the difficult parts. The hospital visits with survivors are hard. Seeing what these men have done to them, tried to do to them. But the worst of it is the videos. When you actually have to watch it happen. Those are images that never leave you.” He took a bite of his salmon, and it tasted like lemon rind. “I’d grown desensitized, but didn’t realize how desensitized, until this jury trial I had. It was a rape of a six-month-old baby that the pedophile had filmed. Back when I was in Sex Crimes. We played the video for the jury, and they all cried. Every one of them. Even this big trucker with marine tattoos over his forearms. Afterward, on another case, the judge told us on a break that one of the jurors on that case had to be committed, and the juror had called and asked if the court would be willing to pay for it. It hit me then that I deal with things that, not only people don’t see, they don’t think exist. They don’t know what people do.”
“But there has to be some joy in it, too. When you finally catch the monster.”
“I was just discussing this with… someone else. I don’t think there is joy or beauty in evil. How can there be? Even after I catch him it’s a momentary release for the family. It doesn’t heal. That type of wound doesn’t go away.”
“But in that moment, there’s beauty. And that’s all life really is. A series of beautiful moments.”
They were silent a long while.
“You should know, my sister is smarter than you. She’s smarter than me. Her IQ, when she was committed, was tested at over two hundred. Do you know what they call someone with an IQ over two hundred?”
“An unmeasurable super-genius. Meaning their intelligence quotient can’t be measured by the current tests we have.”
“That’s right. How did you know that?”
“I have a doctorate in psychology.”
She stared at him. “You have a PhD and you’re a cop?”
“I got sick of grading papers,” he said with a grin.
When dinner was over, they said goodbye and Stanton got into his jeep. That final moment outside was awkward and Stanton knew she felt it, too. Neither of them comprehended whether this was a type of date or not, and they talked outside the restaurant for a long time. Stanton guessed neither of them knew how it should end. He considered a quick kiss on the cheek. He stopped himself, and he wondered if she noticed.
As he drove home, he couldn’t help but think that if they’d met somewhere different…
He flipped around and headed toward Baby Dolls.
As Stanton drove on the interstate, his cell phone rang. It was a 772 area code.
“This is Jon.”
“Jon, Clyde, man. How are ya?”
Stanton took his exit and had to wait at a light at the bottom of the off-ramp. “Good. What is it, like midnight over there?”
“I was up anyway. Listen, I interviewed your chick today. Mrs. Alex Waters. Or the former, I should say.”
“And?”
“Solid alibi, man. She was at a high school reunion with her current husband. At least fifty people could verify it. So she was having an affair, but don’t think she’s good on the murder.”
“Did she say why Alex was in Hawaii?”
“In her words, ‘to visit his whore.’ I don’t think they were on the best of terms when he passed. She said they had an open marriage and she was in love with her current husband. He was in love with someone else.”
“Who?”
“The whore. She was pretty colorful describing her.”
“It’s not hyperbole. He was visiting a prostitute.”
“Oh, well, that makes more sense.”
The light changed, and Stanton drove forward and turned down a street with several fast food restaurants. “Anything else you picked up that could help me, Clyde?”
“She did have access to his calendar on his iPad. He forgot to take it with him. She said on the day he was killed he had an appointment set for eight p.m. with an ‘HR.’”
“HR? Were there any notes or anything?”
“Nope. Just HR.”
“I really appreciate this, Clyde. If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.”
“Hey, cops are cops. No matter where we are. But I’m serious about Alaska.”
Black Widow Page 10
