Black Widow (19 page)

45

Baby Dolls was extremely busy for a Tuesday night. As Autumn checked the appointments and made sure the girls were where they were supposed to be, she thought about how much the business had grown in the years she’d been here. It started as just a two-woman operation. One manager and one employee. Maybe that’s how all these types of businesses had to start.

She sat at her desk and looked through the log of appointments for tomorrow night. None of the girls had called in sick, and she logged in to send email reminders to the girls to text their johns.

The door broke with a thunderous crash. She had locked it, as it was after hours. The detective from before, Jon Stanton, stood at the doorway. Anger bubbled within her and she rose to say something when he ran at her like an animal.

“What the hell are you doing!”

He flung her on the desk, twisting her arms behind her. She felt the slap of handcuffs before he lifted her and threw her on the couch. He leaned down over her, fury in his eyes.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know who—”

Stanton pulled out a gun, a large one she’d never seen before. He fired and she went deaf, a dull ringing in her ears growing in pitch. The shot had exploded her computer and flung it off the desk.

“Are you crazy!”

“Where. Is. She.”

“You arrested her,” Autumn said, pushing herself away from him into the couch.

“Not Heather, Heidi.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

Stanton shot into the floor by her feet and she screamed. “You two knew each other when I was here with her. I just couldn’t see it. Where is she?”

Her heart seemed to be pounding so fast she thought it might give out. But she swallowed and looked him in the eyes. “You’re a cop. You won’t kill me.”

He sat up and she thought she had him. This was all a show. Impress her with vandalism and firing a gun indoors. But there was no bite to him, she thought. He wouldn’t really hurt her.

“You’re right, I won’t kill you. But I will arrest you.”

“I’ll be out in an hour and then I’m going to file a complaint against you. I have friends in that department. Regular customers who aren’t going to like you coming in and shooting up the place.”

“You didn’t let me finish. I’m going to arrest you right now and call my friend at KITV for an exclusive. I’m going to tell him we’ve cracked the Black Widow murders and that we did it with your help. I’m going to tell him you’re working in conjunction with the police to track down Heidi Rousseau, the killer. After the broadcast and every blog and paper on the island picks it up, I’m going to release you.” He bent down and looked her in the eyes. “How long do you think you’ll last before she finds you?”

Her throat was tight. She felt like she was underwater and trying to breathe but couldn’t. For a long while, neither of them spoke or moved.

“She’ll kill me.”

Stanton nodded. “She has my kids. Don’t test me on this. Tell me where she is.”

Autumn looked to the floor. Either way she went, this wasn’t going to end well. “She stays at a condo at the Hawaiki Tower.”

“Those condos are two million, easy. How does she afford it?”

“She’s wealthy. How do you think she bought this place?”

“She owns Baby Dolls?”

Autumn nodded. “She bought it from me almost two years ago. When her sister started working here. She said she didn’t want her sister to know it was hers, and that I would be listed as the owner. But the place is hers.”

“And you let her buy it?”

“I didn’t… I didn’t know what she was when I first met her. And when I found out, it was too late. She has me, Detective.”

“Has you how?”

“She’s made me do things. Things that I would go to prison for. And she did it just so she’d have things over me.”

“I can help you with that if you help me find her.”

“Really?” she said with a smirk. “You can help me with years of tax fraud? Or how about methamphetamine distribution? I don’t think the IRS and DEA are going to care much what you say.”

Stanton reached back and unhooked the handcuffs. Autumn pulled out her hands and rubbed her wrists. They didn’t necessarily hurt, but she felt like making some kind of motion right now and that was as good as any.

“You’re going to ask me why she did all this, and I don’t know.”

“No, I wasn’t going to ask that. The
why
doesn’t matter. I just want my kids back.”

As he left, Autumn rose and went to her desk. She took out her cell phone and pulled up the private cell number she had for Heidi. She sat staring at the number for a long time, and then closed the cell phone and put it in the desk.
The hell with both of them
, she thought.

46

Stanton went to the precinct. It was now well past two in the morning, but the dull ache of sleep didn’t touch him. He felt wired and awake, but with a gray melancholy that stuck to him like moisture. This was his fault. On a theoretical level he blamed Heidi, but Heidi wasn’t the one that had decided to join the police force again. To expose himself to the madness that seethed underneath the surface of civilization. She wasn’t the one who brought his kids out to expose them to that. In a lot of ways, she was just a pawn, manipulated by forces she probably didn’t even understand. But Stanton understood those forces. This was his fault.

He took the elevators up. The glass doors were locked. He peeked in and saw someone behind the desk. The nightshift on Wednesday morning couldn’t have been more than one or two dispatchers actually in the precinct. He knock
ed on the glass and waved. A dispatcher with gray hair and a belly said something under her breath and then walked over. She unlocked the doors and opened them.

“Yeah?”

“Detective Stanton. Sorry, they didn’t give me a key card yet to get in.” He brushed past him.

“Working late, huh?”

“Always.”

Stanton walked to the bullpen and sat down at his desk. He turned on his computer and pretended to be intensely studying whatever was on his screen. He glanced back to the dispatcher and
she’d already gone back to her desk.

Stanton rose and went into Kai’s office. He knew Kai, as a bigger guy, didn’t like to keep anything in his pockets. The extra weight always pulled down his pants even further. He hoped he would have left some extra keys rather than putting them on his keychain, but there was nothing like that.

But the computer was there, on and unlocked.

Stanton opened the
intramail and emailed himself. He then went back to his desk and printed off the email he’d just received from Kai’s account before heading out the door. He took the elevators down to the first floor, the holding cells.

A list was up outside with the names of inmates in process of being transferred to the county jail. Heather Rousseau wasn’t on it yet. That meant they still had interrogations planned for her and she hadn’t yet asked for a lawyer. It meant she was still there.

Stanton walked in. The guard had his feet up on the desk and was reading a magazine. He looked up, scanning Stanton’s face. There was no recognition so Stanton put on his widest smile. He showed the man his badge.

“I’m here for Heather Rousseau.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. I’m taking her up to five for an interview.”

The guard checked his watch. “It’s almost two in the morning.”

“I know. We wanted her nice and sleep-deprived.” Stanton looked down the hall and whispered, “She’s the Black Widow killer.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah.”

He took his feet off the desk. Opening a document on the computer, he then took his glasses out and put them on. Then he scanned the document for a good minute.

“I don’t see her here, Detective.”

“Captain Kai sent an email out. You should have gotten it.” Stanton reached into his pocket. The paper had been folded several times. “Yeah, this is it right here.” He handed it to the guard.

The guard read it and then shrugged. “Never do understand your little mind tricks. Just rough ’
em up a little, I say. You want me to bring her up?”

“I can take her. I’ve been at my desk for almost sixteen hours. Could use the walk.”

Stanton followed the guard back. He pounded on the small window framed inside a steel door. Another guard on the other side saw him and the door buzzed open. Stanton was right behind him as he walked to a row of cells.

In one of the cells, Heather Rousseau lay on her pillow. Her legs were bunched up near her stomach and her hands were by her head. She looked like a child taking a nap. Stanton was going to go into the cell and gently wake her, but the guard hit the bars with a retractable baton that was on his belt. Heather jolted awake.

“You’re leavin’, come on,” the guard bellowed, opening the cell door. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back. I’ll mace you if you give me any shit.”

“She has a dislocated shoulder,” Stanton said. “No need for cuffs. I can handle her.”

The guard looked disappointed, and Stanton got the feeling he knew her shoulder was dislocated but didn’t care.

Stanton took her arm and led her out of the cell and down the hall. He nodded to the guard and said, “Thanks. I’ll call you up when we’re done.”

He took her out of the holding cells and waited a few moments in the hall to see if the guard watched them. But he went back to the desk and put his feet up again.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“You’re going to help me find your sister.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because all the evidence in this case is pointing to you. She’s going to let you take the fall for this. And because she has my kids.”

Heather thought a moment. “I don’t know where she is.”

“I do.”

47

Stanton parked half a block away from
Hawaiki Tower. He sat in the car a moment and looked at Heather. She was staring out the window.

“I need you to get her
to open the door. Tell her you were released because we’re looking for her, and that Autumn told you where she was. That you need to talk.”

“Why don’t you just do it?”

“Because she won’t open the door for me. And she’ll probably…”

“She will. Don’t think she won’t just because they’re kids. That doesn’t mean anything to her.”

“I didn’t think it did.”

They stepped out of the car. Stanton waited for her by the bumper and she walked over.

“How did this start between you two?” Stanton asked as they walked up the sidewalk.

“She blames me for her life. Thinks I influenced my parents. They committed her early in her life. Eleven. She thinks it was because of me.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, it was. I was the one that told them everything that she had ever done or said to me. She was… vicious. I felt like I was living under a tyrant my entire life. Once, when I was sixteen, she was let out. That’s what they would do. She could fool them into thinking she was fine and they’d release her back to us. They did that when she was sixteen. I had this boyfriend and we were having sex. She strolled into the room, grabbed me by my hair, and flung me to the floor. She had this, like, bat or something that she hit me with. Then she got into bed with him and had sex. With me on the floor, bleeding.”

Stanton didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. They came to an intersection and stopped.

“I’m sorry she’s put you through this,” Heather said.

“It’s not your fault.”

“She follows me. She thinks it’s funny. I’ll go somewhere for a year or two and think she’s
forgotten about me and then my life will slowly start falling apart. And I know it’s her. Even though she doesn’t always show herself to me.” She shook her head, pulling her arms tight against her body though it wasn’t cold. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

“There’s two explanations. The first is that she’s a pure psychopath. Psychopathy is on a spectrum. We didn’t used t
o think it was but now we know that it is. Certain people can display some tendencies here and there, but by and large live a normal life. The low end of the spectrum. A pure psychopath is someone on the extreme end of the spectrum. Someone who has no empathy or joy in life. They live for thrills, and nothing else. And typically the only thrills that stimulate them are the pain of others. You don’t learn to be a psychopath. You’re born that way. It’s a malfunction of the amygdala. A pure psychopath only dreams in black and white. That’s every pure psychopath ever studied. If it was learned behavior, that wouldn’t be true. It wouldn’t affect dreams that way. So they’re born with a different brain. They literally can’t feel human.”

The light turned and they crossed the street.

“What’s the other explanation?”

“She’s evil.”

After a few minutes of walking, the Hawaiki Tower stood in front of them. Stanton glanced to her and back at the tower. An intercom was set up to let people enter. But a building like this had to have a security guard. Somewhere.

Stanton tried the door but it was locked. He went around to the side of the building and didn’t see anyone. As he was coming back, he saw a camera mounted inside looking out to where he was standing. He waved his arms to it and then went back to Heather.

“What’re we doing?”

“They have to have a security guard. And I think I just got their attention.”

They waited quietly before she said, “You really do love her, don’t you?”

“I barely know her.”

She scoffed. “I don’t think love cares about stuff like time.”

Stanton didn’t respond.

“She’ll use it against you. Don’t let her.”

As he watched the doors, a security guard in a white uniform strolled up and opened them.

“Aloha,” Stanton said, with his best fake smile.

“What can I help you with?”

Stanton flashed his badge. “I need a list of tenants for a case I’m looking into. What I’m looking for is a single female. One that looks just like her.”

The security guard stared at Heather. “Ms. Hayes?”

“This is her sister. Where is Ms. Hayes?”

“Teresa up on the tenth floor. Ten fourteen.”

Stanton said, “Do you have a key to the condos?”

“No, they don’t let us have that.”

Stanton didn’t think they did. In the more upscale condos, they didn’t trust security enough to give them master keys.

“We’re going up,” he said.

The security guard looked confused. He wasn’t certain what to do. Stanton guessed he’d been given orders not to let anyone up and was trying to decide if the police counted as
anyone
.

“What’s your name?” Stanton said.

“Um, Bryan.”

“Bryan, don’t make me place you under arrest for impeding a murder investigation. Please just go back to your desk and wait for me to give you further instructions, okay?”

“Well, okay, it’s just—”

“I know, you’ve been told not to let anybody up. But trust me, your bosses would not be happy if I had to call a bunch of police cruisers down here and make a scene with a court order and all that. I just want to go up nice and quiet and come back down a few minutes later.”

He thought a beat, and then nodded. Holding the door open for them, he said, “She really nice. I don’t know what you think she did, but she really nice.”