Arsonist (22 page)

CHAPTER 43

It was nine in the morning when Stanton came into Northern and walked by the front desk with a quick nod hello to the receptionist, a manila folder under his arm. He found Slim Jim with his feet up and an iPod on, flipping through some reports in a brown file. Stanton lifted his earphones away from his ears.

“I’m meeting with Childs. I need you on this too.”

“What is it?”

“Arson cases.”

Slim Jim rose and followed him to Daniel Childs’ office. It was spacious but scarcely decorated. The only thing up on the walls were a few medals and his Marine Corps drill sergeant hat that was framed in a plastic case. Childs was reading over some documents on his computer and said, “Shut the door,” without looking up.

Stanton shut the door as Slim Jim collapsed onto the old couch in the corner. He pulled a sucker out of his jacket pocket and unwrapped it, thrusting it into his mouth and folding his hands on his chest.

“So,” Slim Jim said, “what’s up?”

Stanton took out some papers from the file under his arm and put them on the desk. Childs’ eyes went to them and he began reading through him. Stanton didn’t say anything until Childs pushed them away and then looked up at him.

“I told you you were off these cases.”

“I was right about them. I couldn’t let it go.”

“You were ordered to let it go.”

“Fine, suspend me. But fire Benny and follow up on these.” He took the two sketches out and placed them on the desk, Tabitha’s memory sketch on top of the other. “This is him, Danny. He’s targeting families and using an accelerant that most fire investigators can’t detect.”

Childs breathed heavily out his nose and lowered his eyes to the drawings. He glanced back up. “Slim Jim, you wanna keep these cases?”

“Hell no,” Slim Jim said, picking a piece of lint off his tie.

“It’s your case,” Childs said. “I’ll find another body to partner up with you.”

“Don’t need it. I’ll get Stephen when he gets out.”

“You kiddin’ me? He was shot and you’re gonna put him back to work?”

“I know him. He won’t lie in bed long.”

Childs leaned back in his chair. “All right, it’s your show. You run it. But if you fuck it up and this
is wrong, or if you’re right and this…thing, gets away. It’s your ass.”

“I know.”

“So what’s next?”

“I want to give these to the media and have them on the six and ten o’clock news and every website and blog we can.”

“Tricky move,” Slim Jim said, pulling the sucker out and looking at it as he twirled it in his fingers, “he could run.”

“I know. I want a phone bank with as many people as we can spare. The calls’ll come quick and we need to nab him.”

“What makes you say that?” Childs said.

“He’s disorganized. He was so frantic to get work done at the
Humbolts’ that he let a sixteen-year-old girl ID him. He didn’t care if neighbors of the girl he cut up saw him. He didn’t even bother to wear a wig or a baseball cap. The calls identifying him will come in quickly and we need to have people on standby to go as soon as we get the right call.”

“I ain’t got that many people, Jon. You can pull some interns and secretaries but that’s it.”

“What about the trainees at the academy?” Slim Jim said.

Childs shrugged. “You call over and see if they can send them.”

Slim Jim sighed as he stood up. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I thought it was going to be more work for me.”

Childs picked up the sketch. “Man, I hope you’re wrong about this. I hope it was a fucking accident. I don’t wanna know that people like this exist in the same world as my daughter.”

Within two hours, a room had been set up with twenty phones. Trainees had been pulled from their coursework at the academy on a volunteer basis; the volunteers having to make up the missed day on Saturday. Half a dozen interns from the local criminal justice programs at the city college joined them as did two secretaries. Stanton had run to Kinkos and gotten the sketches blown up. He pinned them to the wall at the front of the room. Childs and Slim Jim came in and stood by as Stanton turned to the people sitting on the folding chairs at the long tables they’d taken from the cafeteria. Slim Jim nodded to him, indicating that the sketches as well as an official statement had been sent to every media outlet in the county and even a few statewide.

“We’re going to get a lot of people claiming to be him,” Stanton said. “The accelerant he used was called naphtha. Ask them what type of accelerant they used in the fire and if they say anything else tell them the police are on their way to their location as we traced their number. They won’t be, but we need to get them off the phones as quickly as possible and make sure they don’t call back.”

One of the trainees, a young man, raised his hand. “What if he answers right?”

“Let any of the detectives in the room know and they’ll run a trace on the call. He won’t do that
, though, he’s too smart and he hasn’t shown any indication of wanting to make contact with us in the past.” He glanced around. “Any other questions?”

“Yeah,” one of the other trainees said, “can I be the one to take the fucker for a ride when we catch him? I’d hate for him to get hurt by someone else’s crazy driving.”

There was a murmured, forced laugh from the crowd. Stanton smiled but didn’t respond. He gathered a couple of pens and a legal pad, pulled out a folding chair, and sat at one of the tables, staring at the phone.

CHAPTER 44

Nehor Stark sat quietly in the recliner as the young girl across from him woke up. He had cleaned and bandaged her head as well as he could with the supplies he’d found in the condominium. At present, the wound on the back of her skull had stopped bleeding and he was confident she hadn’t suffered any permanent injury. He didn’t say anything as she came to and looked around the living room.

“Where am I?” she said, her voice thick from grogginess that hadn’t left yet.

“You’re home, dear.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m your friend. Don’t you remember?”

“No.” She leaned her head back. “My head hurts.”

“Would you like some medication? I found quite a stash of Percocet pills in your bathroom.” He rose and took two pills out of an amber bottle that was on the coffee table. He held them up and she opened her mouth without protest. He placed them on her tongue and grabbed the plastic water bottle that was on a side table, putting it to her lips and allowing her to drink.

“What happened?” she said.

“Apparently you fell down and hit your head. Quite hard I’m afraid.”

“Shouldn’t I go to the hospital?”

“Not yet, but you will.”

“Who are you again?”

“Dear, I swear, you’re going to start hurting my feelings.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her head only to have it collapse back down. “I don’t feel good.”

Nehor rose. “Get some sleep. I’ll be back to check on you.”

As he walked around the couch he checked the cuffs on her ankles locking her to the chains that had been wrapped around the massive entertainment center. They gave her almost nine feet of slack, but it didn’t matter. All the phones had been smashed and the two entrances to the condo were at least twenty feet away.

Nehor stepped outside and got into Amber’s BMW. It purred to life and he pressed the accelerator a few times to hear the engine. He smiled to himself as he pulled out of the parking stall and onto Balboa Avenue. Pacific Beach wasn’t far and he briefly considered going there and putting his feet in the ocean. It’d been so long since he’d seen the ocean he had forgotten what it looked like. He had an image of it in his mind, but he knew it wasn’t accurate any longer.

He drove for a long time and got on Interstate 15 for a while, putting the top down and enjoying the blasts of warm air over him. He pulled off when he spotted a police cruiser behind him and came to a quaint neighborhood he hadn’t been to before. There was a yoga studio on one corner and a coffee shop next door with an alternative jewelry retailer across the street. He parked behind the yoga studio and went inside the coffee shop.

It never ceased to amaze him how much the style of clothing had changed since he was young. Then again, his memories were little more than fragments and even those had been altered in the time he’d spent in the little square room with no window. He didn’t trust his memories anymore to give him accurate information and he considered himself lucky. He was a man that wasn’t bound to anything.

He ordered a coffee with milk and argued with the cashier who quoted him four dollars for it. He paid with a five and went to a little station, mixing in sugar with a thin straw before finding a seat by the window. He watched the passing traffic, the monstrous SUVs and trucks that swallowed the road. Cars had gotten larger, more shiny, more a status symbol and less transportation. He remembered suddenly the smell of his mother’s Buick as they drove from Nevada to California, stopping only once a day to eat at greasy fast food restaurants to save money.

A man sitting across from him at the next table was staring at him. Nehor caught his glance and smiled and the man turned away. When he thought Nehor wasn’t looking he turned back, and then his eyes lifted to the television screen. Nehor glanced up to see a drawing of his face.

His heart began to beat in his ears and the world seemed to slow. There was no sound and the television had writing across it in white lettering, something he knew well but didn’t know the name for. Many times, as punishment at the institution, they would turn off the sound to the television or leave the sound on and turn off the picture. They weren’t allowed to starve or beat them, so it was the little things they used as punishment. He watched in amazement and phrases caught his attention.

…
LEAD DETECTIVE JON STANTON…MASS MURDER OF…SEVERAL FIRES IN THE LA JOLLA AREA…MULTI-JURISDICTION MANHUNT…REWARD OFFERED

Jonathan Stanton. He spoke on the television and Nehor watched him with wonder. He was lean and Caucasian with a light olive skin. As if part of his heritage
was Mediterranean. He had soft eyes.

Nehor flipped over the table he was sitting at to the shock of the patrons before storming out of the coffee shop. One man tried to get in his way, saying something about the cost of the table before Nehor grabbed a glass bottle out of a girl’s hand and smashed it into his head, the man instantly toppling over into a heap.

The sun was high and bright as Nehor hopped into his BMW and pulled away. Led Zeppelin, a band he was fond of, was playing but the music was far away in the background and he didn’t really notice it. There was only one thought on his mind now: Jon Stanton.

CHAPTER 45

Stanton checked the clock on the wall behind him rather than pulling out his cell phone. Six and a half hours had passed since he’d sat down and started taking calls. By his estimation he’d handled over a hundred and fifty of them. Most were nutcases calling and pretending to be responsible for the fires or claiming they were married to the man in the sketch. A couple asked if there were any female officers they could speak with, probably hoping to talk dirty.

But there was one call that stuck out. A fifty-one-year-old woman who believed that her son was the man in the sketch. Stanton pressed her and she offered a few details. He was a loner at school and kept to himself at any social events. He seemed interested in girls as the mother had caught him watching pornography several times, but he couldn’t speak with them without stuttering or looking away. The other day his mother saw him starting fires in the backyard.

“How old is he?” Stanton asked.

“Sixteen.”

“I highly doubt it’s him. The man we’re looking for is probably mid to late twenties. But I’ll still send down an officer to speak with him.”

“Please hurry, Detective. I think he’s going to really hurt someone.”

Stanton stretched his arms and stood up, arching his back as far as it would go before twisting his neck from side
to side and spinning his arms. It was all in an effort to appear like he was limbering stiff muscles, but in reality, he was trying not to fall asleep.

He
went around the makeshift call center and listened to everyone’s phone calls. Some of them were diligent and actually calling to try to help, many were not. Stanton walked the room once and went for the door to hit the vending machines for a Diet Coke when one of the interns said, “Detective, I think you should hear this.”

Stanton turned and walked to him. The intern put the call on speaker. It was an older woman stating that she had seen the man coming and going from the condominium next door. There was a young woman that lived there and she never had men over so it was odd to see him there.

“How old is the young lady?” Stanton asked.

“In her twenties I think. Pretty young thing. She’s in pictures she said.”

“Have you ever seen the two of them together?”

“No, he just comes and goes. He may be housesitting because I haven’t seen her lately.
He looks just like the picture I saw on the news.”

Stanton got the address and thanked her for her call. They hung up and Stanton stood quietly a moment before saying, “I’m running down there myself. Tell Danny where I am when he comes by.”

“Sure.”

The condominiums were well kept and most of the cars in the ports were old Cadillacs and Lincolns and Buicks. Easily fifteen or twenty years old but appeared new, freshly cleaned with few dings and scratches. There were colorful flowers next to the common walks and a few of the windows had American flags hanging from them.

Stanton found the condo he was looking for and parked out front. Joy Division was playing on his CD player and he turned it down as he listened for anything around him.
An elderly couple was up the private road a bit, arguing about something as they made their way to their car. Stanton waited until they had driven away before stepping outside and sitting on the hood of his car, looking around.

When he was satisfied that he wouldn’t hear anything he went to the front door of the condo and knocked. He rang the doorbell and put his ear to the door. There was no sound from inside. He walked around out front and noticed that the window leading to the kitchen was broken out and the shattered glass hadn’t been cleaned. He pushed through the shrubs and looked through the window. The kitchen was clean except for a few bowls that were lying out. All the drawers and cupboards were closed. He was about to turn away when he quickly glanced at the floor.

With murder scenes in homes and apartments, most landlords don’t tell prospective buyers and renters about the space’s history. As they pass by stains on the floors, most people assume they’re from wine or fruit juice. But when you see blood stains enough, you learn to recognize them. Blood is very unique. Blood from veins is bluer and darker than the red arterial blood and a good homicide detective can tell the difference right away. Stanton knew the small trail of droplets on the kitchen’s linoleum floor was of arterial blood, at least a few days old, that no one had bothered to clean up.

He looked both ways and saw that no one was around. He called into dispatch on his cell phone and gave his
CAD call number for the homicide unit and requested back-up. The nearest unit was at least ten minutes away at another scene. He decided he couldn’t wait ten minutes.

Stanton hopped up onto the window and crawled into the home. The window was right above the sink and he put his palms down on the counters and pulled himself through before jumping onto the kitchen floor.
He brushed off the shards of broken glass that had cut up his knees.

He waited quietly until he couldn’t hear his heart beating so loudly in his ears. He took out his firearm, a Desert Eagle .45, and held it low as he followed the trail of blood to the carpet of the hallway.

The condo smelled of apple blossoms. A bodywash or shampoo a teenage girl might select. A portrait of a family was up on the refrigerator. Three young girls and a mother and father. They were at Sea World in front of the walrus exhibit and the mother was making rabbit-ears on the father. Stanton went gun first down the hallway.

Creaking came from upstairs
but not in a way that suggested someone was walking on the floor above him. More like the floorboards were settling in. He scanned the living room. Nothing out of the ordinary and he saw the stairs leading to the second floor. He took them gingerly as he made a slow ascent and heard a groan behind him.

He spun around, his weapon aimed at the origin of the sound coming from the living room, and noticed the bare feet sticking out from near the coffee table. The nails were painted red and the skin was tanned almost to the point of being orange. He leapt off the stairs and ran to the table, his weapon still in front, as he saw the young woman sprawled on the carpet in between the couch and the coffee table.
A white bandage was wrapped around her head and near the back was a dark red stain on the gauze.

Stanton came and sat by her and soon heard sirens outside. The girl was only semi-conscience and a chain was binding her to the entertainment center. But Stanton didn’t remove it. Instead, he held her hand. She looked up at him once and said, “Can I go home now?”

“Yes.”