Black Widow (15 page)

37

After driving to Heidi’s home, she sat in his jeep a few moments. She wanted to say something but was struggling to articulate it. Stanton didn’t rush her. He let her take as much time as she needed.

“Please be careful,” was all she said before stepping out.

Stanton watched her walk back to her house before he drove to the interstate and Heather’s condo.

The attendant let him in again without saying anything and he parked farther from the building. He leaned the seat back and took out his phone. Eleven unread emails. Going through them, he saw one from an old friend back in San Diego, Daniel Childs.

Childs was wondering if he wanted to meet up. He had a few days of leave from the San Diego PD and wanted to come out to the island. Stanton emailed back that he would enjoy that. Then he dialed Mathew’s cell.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey. I’m gonna be a little late getting home. Get some dinner for you and your brother, okay?”

“Sure. I don’t have any money, though.”

“There’s some in the kitchen drawer at home. Just grab that.”

“Cool.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

Stanton hesitated as he hung up. This would be the first time he left his children alone without a sitter. But there was nothing he could do about it now. Matt was probably looking forward to a night without adult supervision.

He next checked the weather forecast. Tomorrow would be clear skies with a high of eighty. After turning on some music, he placed the phone down on the passenger seat. The air was muggy and damp and it comforted him. His eyelids grew heavy and he knew he could sleep right now.

The weather reminded him of his childhood in Seattle. He hadn’t been back to the city in twenty years and wondered how much it had changed.

The time seemed to drag slowly. At one point, he had to urinate so he got out and found a communal laundry. Without a key, he had to wait until someone happened by and opened it for him. The bathroom was spotless and the entire space had the smell of several dryers running at once. He stayed there a moment. His wife and he had to go to laundries while he was in graduate school. They never had enough money to wash all the clothes, so they had to choose which ones were necessary and which ones were luxury. He remembered himself then as being extremely poor and extremely happy.

Walking back, he kept his eyes low. The leaves were wet and the grass was glistening with rainwater. The clouds were parting, and patches of blue sky shone through the gray. His mood instantly started improving. He had always been amazed how intimately his moods were tied to the weather.

Sitting in the jeep another two hours, he grew restless and his back ached. He got out and stretched. A reflection of himself was in the windshield. He saw the elevated scar that ran along his collarbone. The place where two slugs entered him, fired from the gun of his partner and best friend, Eli Sherman.

He looked away and touched his toes, and then stretched from side-to-side. Checking the clock on his phone, he saw a calendar reminder that he had a psychiatrist’s appointment at four thirty.

As he got back into the jeep, a car pulled up. A black Cadillac CTS. A woman got out and Stanton’s heart dropped.

She was identical to Heidi in every respect, except her hair. It was jet-black and came to her shoulders. She was also wearing more makeup than Heidi would ever wear.

The woman was in heels and a dress and she walked away, setting the alarm on her car without looking back. She climbed the three flights of stairs and unlocked her door. After she disappeared inside, Stanton picked up his phone.

He held it and debated what to do. The takedown would happen tomorrow and was planned out in detail. If he called for backup now, he’d get a few officers and maybe the SWAT team, if they could scramble quickly enough.

But he’d miss tomorrow. If she was as intelligent as Heidi said she was, she’d keep her mouth shut and ask for a lawyer if they took her down today. Stanton would have missed his opportunity to speak with her. To find out who she was. As he’d told Jones, to see her aura.

He placed the phone down. This would be handled between them.

Stanton left a message at Dr. Vaquer’s office that he would have to miss his appointment. Then he sat quietly and watched Heather’s condo. His stomach growled, and he wished he’d had time to grab something before she got home. But it was too late now. He wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.

Another hour passed. It was into the evening when Heather came out again. She was dressed in workout clothes with sneakers. She got into her Cadillac and pulled away. Stanton followed.

There were several methods of tailing a suspect, but they all involved more than one officer. The different cars would take turns behind the suspect. Rotating out every few minutes or so. The point was that the suspect not see the same car behind them at every turn.

But by himself, he decided to leapfrog. It was a technique where the law enforcement vehicle would overtake the suspect, pass them by completely, and maintain a good distance ahead. Then the law enforcement vehicle would give way and fall behind. This could be done numerous times, so the suspect wouldn’t think the vehicle was following them.

Stanton did this several times to the Cadillac. The jeep would race ahead, almost out of view, with Stanton keeping an eye on the rearview, and then he would drop back behind her.

Finally, they reached a gym.

Stanton watched her go inside and check in at the front desk. He got out and followed her. Smiling to the clerk, he said, “I might be interested in a membership. You have someone that can show me around?”

A large black man with muscles that nearly tore his shirt open approached. He was bald and wearing a baseball cap. Stanton noticed that his calves were extraordinarily underdeveloped considering the rest of his body.

“Jimmy, howya doin’?”

“Jon. Good to meet you. So you mind showing me around?”

“Not at all, come on, man.”

Stanton followed him around the gym. The man was pointing out various pieces of equipment and talking about their effect. He must have assumed Stanton knew nothing about weights because he spoke to him like a child. A result of his underwhelming physique.

Heather came out of the locker room. She skipped the cardio machines entirely and went to the free-weights. Stanton watched as she loaded a bar and did bench presses with more weight than he could probably do.

“So let’s check out the pool.”

Stanton smiled and nodded, following after the man.

After a tour of the pool, the sauna, and the locker rooms, they were back out on the floor. Heather was doing pull-ups now, and Stanton counted at least twenty before he had to turn away and pay attention to the man showing him around.

“So what you think? No contracts. But if you do sign a contract it’s twenty percent off the total fee.”

“I’ll think about it. Thanks.”

“Well, why don’t you fill out a—”

“I’m good. I’ll be in touch.”

He walked out of the gym and back to his jeep. He waited until Heather came out and then followed her again. Her window was down and Stanton could hear music but couldn’t place it. It was in another language.

Stanton’s phone rang. It was Dr.
Vaquer.

“This is Jon.”

“Jon, hi, it’s Natalia. I got an email from my secretary that you cancelled your appointment today.”

“I did, yeah
.”

“Well, I think it’s very important for us to keep our appointments. I would really like if you could come in a little later this afternoon. Maybe around seven. I’ll still be here catching up on a few things.”

Heather turned at an intersection, and Stanton got cut off by a Nissan. He quickly made the decision to go up onto the sidewalk and turn. The jeep jerked up, then slammed down, the shocks creaking.

“I’ll see if I can. No promises, though.”

“Certainly. I’ll be here.”

Stanton couldn’t see the Cadillac. He sped up and hit a stoplight. Looking down both sides of the street, he didn’t see it. He turned right and followed the road past several condominiums and apartment buildings. A grocery store was nearby, and he scanned the parking lot before continuing on.

He flipped a U-turn at the next intersection and went the opposite way. Driving for a good ten minutes, he didn’t see the car.

Stanton drove quickly back to Heather’s condo. The attendant let him through again, with an admonition that guests should be put on a list by the residents. Stanton said he would next time and then parked in front of her condo. The Cadillac wasn’t there.

He waited a good hour, but it never showed. He’d lost her.

38

Stanton stopped at home and made dinner for his boys. Pizza, with pepperoni and extra cheese. He ate and then told them he would be back in an hour. Turning on the home alarm before leaving, he glanced back to his boys, who were watching television in the front room. He didn’t want to leave them alone, but knew he had to teach himself that they were independent people apart from him.

He drove down to the medical offices near his home and parked up front. Only a few other vehicles were there.

When he went inside, there was no receptionist in Dr. Vaquer’s office. The double doors were open, and Dr. Vaquer sat at her desk filling out paperwork. She smiled at him and said, “Come in, Jon.”

He didn’t feel like lying down on the couch, so he sat across from her.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

She lifted a pen in her hand and leaned back in the chair. “So, what would you like to talk about?”

He shook his head. “Nothing, really.”

“How are your boys?”

“Good. Mathew, I think I told you, was caught with a girl in his room. I took him down to Waikiki to meet some of the street girls there.”

“Prostitutes?”

Stanton nodded. “I wanted him to see that it’s a slippery slope.”

“Do you think what you say to him will have an impact?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t with me when I was his age. But I have to try.”

Her phone rang and Dr. Vaquer pressed a button, quieting it. “Sorry. No receptionist.”

“It’s fine.” He glanced out the window to the darkening sky. “I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately.”

“What’s that?”

“About whether evil can be beautiful. What we talked about before.”

She tilted her head slightly, and it reminded Stanton of a curious puppy. “I don’t think there’s many people in the world that deal with as much evil as a homicide detective. You’re the expert. Do you think it’s beautiful?”

Stanton thought a beat before answering. “The blood and gore is horrific. So are the interactions with the family of victims afterward. The terror the people go through just isn’t human. But there might be something about it that has… I don’t know if beauty’s the right word. But there’s something about it that could be alluring.”

“What?”

“The pattern. A man kills in a certain way every time and he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. It’s a pure expression of his unconscious.”

“You use that term a lot. Unconscious. What is the unconscious to you, Jon?”

“I think it’s the part of the mind that all our wounds go to. Everything that our consciousness can’t deal with is placed there and shown to us in our dreams. In moments where we aren’t paying attention. I think it directs us in ways we haven’t even begun to understand yet.”

“Most neuroscientists and behaviorists don’t believe in an unconscious anymore. That it was conjecture by the psychoanalysts that’s been refuted.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think so. When someone is hypnotized and given a command, and then woken up to carry out that command later, they have no idea why they’re carrying out that command. Their conscious mind is aware of what they’re doing but it doesn’t know why. That means there’s a part of the mind that’s outside consciousness. Neuroscience can’t explain hypnotism in a satisfying way.”

She crossed her legs, maintaining eye contact with him. “So these killers you see, what they’re doing is an expression of their unconscious?”

He nodded. “Yes. You would be amazed how many serial murderers have no recollection of their killings.”

“Like the hypnotism patient carrying out a command and they don’t know why?”

Stanton had never thought of that connection. It was so obvious now that it seemed silly, and he wondered why it hadn’t come to him before. “I think that’s a valid analogy.”

The phone rang again, and she turned it off this time and placed it in a drawer. “Well, I think we should talk about you specifically. You mentioned this new person you’ve met. Who is he?”

“She. She’s a pediatrician.”

“How did you meet her?”

Stanton thought back to that moment he saw Heidi in the hospital. The way his guts balled up like fists and in an instant, he knew they could bond. “During an investigation.”

“How?”

He hesitated. “You won’t like it.”

“Well, now I have to know. How did you meet her?”

He looked to his shoes. “She was the suspect in two homicides.”

Dr. Vaquer was silent. “Homicides of whom?”

“Two men.”

Another long pause in the conversation before Vaquer placed the pen down and leaned forward. “Jon, do I even need to say it?”

“No, you don’t.”

“Then
why?
”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not good enough. Did this woman actually kill people?”

“No, I don’t think so. In fact, she’s been cleared, and we’re taking down the
perp tomorrow.”

She thought a moment. “Isn’t that unethical? To date someone considered a suspect in a homicide?”

“No, there’s no regulations against it. I think. It doesn’t matter. We’re not really dating. I just like spending time with her, and I think she likes spending time with me.”

“Listen to that rationalization, Jon. That’s dating. You just described dating to me in trying to convince me you weren’t dating.”

Stanton saw the flaw and felt embarrassed. “I can’t describe it.”

“You have a PhD. Try.”

He thought back to that first time he saw Heidi again. He wanted to be perfectly honest with Dr. Vaquer. In some respects, just his talking about it brought things to light that would otherwise remain hidden to him. He didn’t want to keep anything back.

“You go through an entire relationship,” he said, “sometimes an entire life, not feeling anything for the person you’re with. I mean, you care about them and love them, but you don’t feel what the
world tells you that you should feel. So you fake it. And then one day you meet a person and all those feelings you’ve been faking come rushing in all at once. And you realize what people were talking about… Anyway, that’s the closest I think I can describe it.”

Vaquer’s
office phone rang before she could respond. She glanced to the drawer and her brow furrowed. “Sorry, must not have turned it off all the way.”

“It’s alright, my kids are alone anyway.”

“No, please stay. I’d like to finish this.”

Stanton rose. “We can spend some extra time later, if you’d like. I’m really tired anyway.”

As he left, he glanced back once. Dr. Vaquer was staring off into space, the phone still ringing.