Black Widow (21 page)

51

The county clerk’s office, where the recorder was, sat in a white building on King Street. Most government buildings Stanton had been to were ugly. The colors were off or the shape was displeasing or the architecture was about fifty years behind the times. The reason was that government buildings, from the architect to the guy pouring cement, were done on bids. If the bid process was clean, the lowest bidder—meaning the cheapest company willing to cut the most corners—won. If the bid process wasn’t clean, then whoever had the most pull won. Either way, neither company was ever the one most qualified for the job.

But the clerk’s office wasn’t bad. It had red Spanish tiles and was surrounded by palm trees. The doorways had ornate native designs carved into them. Few people were here and the streets were relatively empty.

Stanton parked in front. He leaned back in the seat. Fatigue was eating away at him. He was once used to long shifts. Frequently, at the San Diego Homicide table, he would pull thirty-six hour
shifts. If he had more than a couple of calls, that meant he was up the entire thirty-six.

But that seemed like a lifetime ago. Now, he felt age creeping up on him.

He set the alarm on his phone to wake him up in an hour. His eyes were closed no more than a few minutes before he drifted off, and was gone.

When Stanton woke to the beeping of his phone, he didn’t know where he was. He surveyed his surroundings as the memories from the last few hours poured into him. A woman was standing next to his car about six feet out, staring in. She had a look on her face like she was watching some perversion taking place. Stanton grinned at her as he stepped out of the car. She turned away and kept walking up the street.

Stanton strode into the clerk’s office and saw a sign for the county recorder. He followed it down a linoleum hallway, passing wooden double-doors along the way. Another sign pointed downward and he took the stairs. The recorder’s office was in the basement.

Opening the door, he was hit with the smell of coffee. So much of it that he thought his clothes would stink after he left. He stood behind the counter. A bell was on it with a slip of paper that had “Ring for service,” scrawled in marker across it. He rang the bell and waited.

Within half a minute, a woman came around the corner. She was larger and still chewing whatever she was eating back there.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to run some checks of properties, please. Two names.”

“That’ll be seven dollars each.”

Stanton pulled out his badge. “Even for law enforcement?”

The woman said sternly, “Yes, even for cops. Fourteen dollars.”

Stanton knew if he pushed the issue and asked to speak with a manager, he might be able to get around the fourteen-dollar fee. But he didn’t have the time for that now. He wanted this done as quickly as possible. He lay a twenty on the counter and she gave him back a five and a one and said, “It’ll be about ten minutes.” She shoved a clipboard with an information sheet to him. “Fill this out.”

He filled in his information and on the lines for the names he wanted searched, he spelled out TERESA HAYES and FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

The woman looked passively at the names and then walked away without a word. Stanton sat down in one of the chairs. An old issue of
Outside
magazine was on the table. He flipped through the articles and saw one about a failed trip to climb Mount Everest where two people had died. The author, a man named Dillon Mentzer, wrote that both of them left children behind. Stanton wondered what that drive was to be so reckless with children. When he thought of his own plunge back into law enforcement with two kids at home, he placed the magazine back on the table and leaned his head against the wall.

“It’s done.”

He jolted awake.

The woman had two printouts with her. One was for the condo he’d just been to in
Hawaiki Tower. The other was a house in Waikiki. It was cream with a red roof. The photo was taken from the front of the house and on the porch was a barbeque grill.

“That’s Florence Nightingale’s?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

“There were no other properties under that name?”

“Nope.”

He nodded and took the printouts. “Thanks.”

“Uh-huh.”

Stanton walked outside and got into the jeep. He placed the printouts on the passenger seat. He debated going back and getting Heather, but as he did so his phone rang. The precinct. Probably Kai, wondering where his suspect went. Stanton didn’t feel like explaining just yet.

He started the jeep and pulled away from the curb, heading to Waikiki.

52

Stanton drove the entire way without music. He felt no inclination to hear anything. The only thing on his mind were his children, tied up on some bare floor somewhere. The thought of music right now sickened him.

He got off the interstate and followed Maps until it brought him near the home. He parked up the street.

The neighborhood was upscale. He saw several Mercedes and Range Rovers. A few yard signs were up for candidates in an upcoming city council election, and the signs looked out of place here.

Stanton ran his fingers over his firearm. He tapped the grip a few times before stepping out of the jeep. He sat on the hood and looked down the street. Five houses down was the home that belonged to Florence Nightingale, bought two years ago with no financing. Paid in cash.

He wanted to kick the door down and run in there shooting. Rage seethed inside him. It was boiling underneath his skin. Hurting him was one thing. But hurting his children was something else. A line had been crossed and this didn’t involve law and order anymore. This was personal. Two organisms in a struggle in the jungle. He had a feeling one of them wasn’t going to live to see the morning.

Stanton began walking toward the home.

The sidewalks were clean. A neighborhood watch sign was up. Trees lined the street and gave him shade and he walked closely to them, his head held low.

First, he walked past the home. Then he doubled back and walked right up the driveway and to the backyard. He glanced around to see if any of the neighbors saw. They might call the police.

Stanton carefully navigated the backyard. It was done in a Japanese style, complete with Zen garden and koi pond. But no fence to protect it. In this neighborhood, it probably wasn’t needed.

A short bridge led over the pond and to a patio. Stanton carefully traversed it. It appeared, and felt, flimsy. Sliding glass doors were the only entrance into the house. He tried to look inside but
heavy shutters covered the glass from the inside. He couldn’t see anything but a sliver of carpet.

Stanton walked around the house, scanning for any way in. On the side of the house was a window at ground level. Probably something leading into the shower of the bathroom down there. He crouched low and tried it. It was locked. Without a fence to protect a yard that thousands of dollars had been put into, there likely wasn’t an alarm.

After covering his fist with the sleeve of his jacket, he struck the corner of the window near the lock. He struck it so softly it didn’t even crack. Slowly, he started increasing the power of the strikes until the glass fractured. He hit it one more time, and then pushed on the piece that had cracked the most, knocking it out. It tumbled down into the room but didn’t make much noise.

Stanton pulled bits of glass around the lock off, having them fall on the outside to make as little noise as possible. When the hole was large enough, he slid his fingers in carefully and flipped the lock, pulling the window open an inch. He grabbed the edge of the open window and opened it the rest of the way.

The window wasn’t large but it was big enough for him to snake through. He went in feet first and cut his hand on some of the broken glass. Blood rolled off his palm. He was standing in a bathtub and the red spatter stuck out like paint. He slipped out of the tub and took some toilet paper and pressed it to the wound.

He waited a few moments in the silence before taking out
his firearm. Sticking his head into the hallway, he could smell the scent of perfume. Someone was here.

He walked into the hallway. A thought struck him and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it: What if this wasn’t her house? But if he would have knocked on the door, if Heidi was in here with his boys, she could’ve hurt them. This was the only way.

The basement was complete with kitchen and front room. Stanton guessed it was a separate apartment.

The kitchen was clean and sparse. He could see doors leading to the backyard in the dining room. All the furniture looked like it had never been used. Several paintings were up. They were in the medieval Japanese style. Paintings of orchids and birds, the ocean and sky, little villages with people scurrying about. A large fan adorned one wall. It was intricately designed and painted with pink orchids. The edges were sharp metal. It was a weapon as much as decoration.

Stanton cleared the front room when he heard a noise from upstairs, and then footsteps creaking the floorboards. He went to the first step and looked up the stairwell. From the angle he was at, he couldn’t see all the way up. But that meant no one could see all the way down either. He took a few steps and came around a corner. He got down to his knees and crawled up the steps slowly.

The noise was much louder now. Water running and dishes clanking. Peeking above the top step, he couldn’t see much. But he could hear someone humming. He took the top step and swept around to the front room. Another path was open into the kitchen. He came from behind.

A woman stood over the sink in a black and red kimono. Stanton raised his firearm just as the woman glanced up into the glass of the cupboards. She saw his reflection and screamed.

The woman was middle aged and Asian. Stanton lowered his firearm and holstered it. He held up his hands as if in surrender.

“Calm down, ma’am, I’m with HPD.” He pulled out his badge but the woman was hysterical and didn’t look at it.

“Take what you want and get out!”

“Ma’am, I’m with HPD Homicide. I’m a police officer.”

She grabbed a butcher’s knife from behind her and held it up. “How did you get into my house?”

“I’m sorry, this was a mistake. I thought this was someone else’s house.”

The woman looked to the phone and then back to Stanton.

“I’ll just leave,” Stanton said. “I had to break out the window in the basement. The one in the shower. How much to repair that?”

“I don’t care, just get out.”

Stanton nodded and turned to leave.

“Two hundred dollars,” the woman blurted.

Stanton reached into his wallet and began counting the cash he had. Not enough. He’d have to go to an ATM.

“I’ll have to come right back. I don’t have enough cash on me.”

“No, I don’t care. Just get out. The owner can pay for it.”

“Okay, look, I’m really sorry about this. I promise you this was a mistake. I’ll leave now. I’m really sorry I frightened you.”

He began backing away when he stopped. It felt like his heart stopped, too. “Who’s the owner?”

“Just get out, please.”

“Ma’am, this is very important to me. Who is the owner?”

“
Ms. Nightingale.”

“Where does she live?”

“I don’t know. I only saw her one time.”

“How do you pay rent?”

“I send checks every month.”

Stanton felt the familiar tingling in his gut: the tightening circle around his prey. “Where do you send the rent checks every month?”

53

Stanton stopped in front of Baby Dolls. It took twenty minutes of driving, but once his GPS brought him to the neighborhood, he knew this was the address that the woman sent her rent checks to. He got out of the car and walked up the steps. The door was locked.

He went around back. The backyard was overgrown with weeds. The lone tree was withering away and large swaths of the grass were yellowed and dying. No one really saw back here, so there was no reason for them to keep it up. Glossy up front and rotting where no one saw.

The back
door was flimsy wood. Stanton glanced around before putting his shoulder to it and pushing. It cracked open almost without effort.

The back of the building was clean and well maintained, as opposed to the backyard.

Stanton walked past a fridge and stood in a hallway, listening. He couldn’t hear anything so he walked out to the front room. Expecting to see Autumn, all he got was an empty living room and a desk with papers strewn over it. He glanced through the papers. They were profit/loss statements. According to the most recent month, Baby Dolls had turned a profit of ninety thousand. A million-dollar-a-year business worked out of a dilapidated house with probably no more than a handful of employees.

Stanton checked the rest of the house. No one was there. He figured they would have at least one receptionist answering phones, but there was no one. Going back into the kitchen, he looked in the fridge. It was stocked full of light snacks like string cheese and ready-to-go protein shakes. He closed it and leaned against the counter. A thought struck Stanton just then. There was only one floor. When he walked around the backyard he saw windows on the ground level, but there was no door leading to a basement.

He scanned the floor in the kitchen and then the living room. He checked the bathrooms and bedrooms but didn’t see anything. Some of the older houses in Honolulu had hidden bunkers. Built after the war as a precaution against another Japanese attack.

A large door was down the hallway connecting the kitchen and the living room. He opened the door. It was a closet. On the floor were several bags of luggage, empty, and cardboard boxes. He moved them aside and saw the outline of a trap door. He lifted the metal ring connected to it and opened it. A set of stairs led down to another level.

His cell phone buzzed. He took it out but didn’t recognize the number. Turning the vibration off, he let it go to voicemail.

Stanton pulled out his firearm and stood still a moment. It was dark down there as the windows were covered in thick curtains, and he debated searching the house for a flashlight. Deciding that it wasn’t worth the effort, he began the descent.

Each step creaked on his way down. He tried to go down on his tiptoes, to walk on the edges of the stairs, the strongest part, but it didn’t help. He thought about slipping off his shoes, but it was too late. If somebody was down there, they would have already heard him.

As he got to the bottom step, gun first, he swept left, then right. He let his eyes adjust to the dark. The light coming through the trap door and past the edges of the curtains was enough to make out the items down there.

A couch, several coffee tables, dressers, rugs—both laid flat on the floor and rolled up against the wall—and on top of it all, a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. The space was perfectly square, with brick walls. It wasn’t a basement; it was a bunker, like he had first thought.

A thin door was across the room. Probably a food-storage closet. Stanton walked to it and leaned against it, his ear to the door. It was low, almost imperceptible, but he could hear something coming from inside.

Breathing.

Stanton touched the doorknob. He closed his eyes and said a quick prayer, begging that his children were unharmed and that this whole thing would end right now.

He twisted the doorknob and swung open the door. Getting down to one knee, he aimed his weapon, his finger on the trigger.

Mathew was gagged on the floor. Johnny was on the other side of the closet, taped to a chair. Stanton ran to his boys and tore off the duct tape around their wrists, mouths, and feet. No one said anything. They just held each other and cried.