Arsonist

CHAPTER 46

Forensics, Stanton, and Slim Jim ran over the entire condo in the course of several hours. Amber was taken to the emergency room and Stanton had gotten word that she suffered a massive concussion but that she would be all right.

The latent print team had managed to find over twenty-five different sets of prints in the condo. Stanton had them only run the sets found on the windowsill. There were two: one was his, and the other was unidentified. Stanton found a number in his contacts and dialed as he sat down on the couch in the living room.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles,” a female voice said on the other line, “how may I direct your call?”

“Mickey Parsons in Behavioral Science please.”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Jon Stanton with the San Diego Police Department.”

“One moment.”

There was a long delay and then a click before Mickey’s voice came on the line.

“How are you, Jon?”

“Doing well. I haven’t seen you down at the gym in a while.”

“Been pretty slammed with paperwork these days.”

“I saw the news story about Evonich. That was good work.”

“Thanks. I wish we could’ve snagged him earlier. We searched one of his old homes in Lincoln County in Nebraska and found the remains of two girls. Sisters. We think there’s more, but no one’s coming forward with anything else.” Stanton heard some papers shuffling. “So I’m guessing this isn’t a call just to harass me about my fat ass. What’s going on?”

“I have a favor to ask. I was hoping you could run some prints through ViCAP for me?”

“No problem, shoot them over.”

“I need them as soon as possible. Preferably in the next couple of hours, Mickey.”

“Now that is a favor. Anything I can use to narrow the search? Locales or race?”

“Nothing. We know nothing about him other than a composite sketch we have from witnesses. They say he looked Caucasian but one of our witnesses saw him from relatively close and thought he might’ve been of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern descent.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can. Get me a print card couriered over and I’ll have my guys get on it.”

“You’re not even going to ask what it’s for?”

“I saw you on the news. I thought you might be calling us for something on this one. By the way, you looked like shit.”

“Thanks. And I owe you for this.”

“Beer and a burger is fine. I’ll let you know.”

Stanton hung up and placed the phone back in his pocket. He rose from the couch and walked over to the entertainment center. There was a rack of DVDs and he glanced through them quickly. They were mostly Disney and Pixar films with a few romantic comedies thrown in.

“Detective?”

Stanton turned to see one of the forensics techs, a man named Lee Gyun, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Tell me you have something for me, Lee?”

“I have something for you.” He held out a small notebook with red leather binding. Stanton slipped on some latex gloves and then took it. “Found it in the bedroom upstairs on the nightstand. Could be our vics, I don’t know, I just flipped through it quickly.”

“Thanks.”

Stanton began going through the pages. The writings were in pen and they were so illegible he couldn’t make much of them. But there were passages that rang out to him. There were no dates and no times. Many sentences would end without a period and the next one would start immediately afterward on a completely separate idea. There was no name on the journal and it was possible that it belonged to the victim or a past victim. On the inside flap of the back cover was an imprint that said, MSH. On the cover, which was bland and gray, was a number: 1842.

Stanton flipped through it again. There was one passage toward the front that was fully legible:

they walk through their lives like billboards their clothing has the name of their God corporations on them and they advertise for them as if they are remarking on something of consequence they watch television shows now that feign reality in a way that demeans it they neglect the poor and the weak in favor of the wealthy they are ruled over by a small class of tyrants and they fight for their system as if it would ever give them a fair chance I walked to the store today to feel the air on my face and hear the whisper of the birds but instead only received lungfuls of black exhaust and air that smelled so putrid it made me gag I won’t be walking out there again

Stanton flipped through the rest of the journal, reading the legible portions. No names on any page. It was little more than rantings and some of them had apocalyptic predictions and spoke of cities turned to dust and brothers eating brothers. Stanton finished and placed it down on the coffee table. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out; it was Childs.

“This is Jon.”

“What you got for me?”

“Journal and a set of prints. FBI’s running the prints through ViCAP right now.”

“What kind of journal?”

“Personal. Still don’t know for sure that it’s his, but I think so. Nothing to identify him in it.”

“Keep me updated.”

“How’s everything up there?”

“Still running down some leads where we can. The calls are dying out, though. We’ve only gotten maybe ten the past hour.”

“Let me know if there’re any good ones.”

“Okay.” A pause. “Jon, I never doubted you. I want you to know that. That’s not why I was riding your ass and took you off this case. There’s going to be other cases like this, and there’s going to be other vics. I need to know that I can trust you to follow orders. Can I trust you to do that?”

“Yeah, you can trust me.”

“Good. Call me if you find anything else.”

Stanton hung up and placed the phone back in his pocket. He couldn’t take this anymore. There were no rules to bureaucracy. Even if there were, they were probably corrupt and he wouldn’t be able to follow them anyway. Every day it was as if lead weights were being placed on his chest and he couldn’t get them off. They would just slowly accumulate until he couldn’t breathe anymore and one day would just suffocate him.

This was it, he thought. This was going to be his last case.