The White Angel Murder

15

It was dark by the time Stanton landed back in Southern California. The air was different here, salty and warm like it had been exhaled from someone’s body. He found his car in short-term parking and drove to his apartment.

A neighbor was out on their patio when Stanton got home. It was an older gal, smoking a cigarette in the dark. He saw her silhouette and the bright pinpoint of red that would get brighter at her mouth and then darken when she lowered it.

“How are you, Suzie?”

“Doin’ fine, handsome. How are you?” she said. Her voice was grainy from the tobacco and alcohol she coated it in day-after-day.

“Not bad,” he said, taking a seat on the first step leading up to his apartment.

“Heard you workin’ with the cops again.”

“Who’d you hear that from?”

“Melissa stopped by tonight to see you. She told me.”

“Oh.”

“You miss her?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“I like her. She went outta her way to say hello to me.” She finished one cigarette and put it out in an ashtray sitting on a table next to her before lighting another one. “When you gonna have your boys over again?”

“Next weekend. We’re going to Disneyland. They say they’re sick of it but I know they always have a good time.”

She blew out a puff of smoke and took a sip out of a can of beer. “I ever tell you I got kids?”

“No.”

“I got three. One of ‘em, Cindy, my youngest, still lives round here. My two boys moved though. I think to Vegas but I don’t know. I ain’t talked to ‘em since Clinton was president. I remember that cause Clinton was on the tv last time I talked to ‘em lyin’ through his teeth about blow jobs or somethin’.”

“You know what the president of France said when he heard Clinton got a blow job in the White House?”

“What?”

“Why else would anyone want to be president?”

She laughed and then sat quietly, staring out into the parking lot as someone rode past, slowed, and then sped away.

“What happened with you two anyway?”

“I don’t know. It was so gradual I don’t think either of us noticed until it was too late. I know she didn’t like living on a community college professor’s salary. But there was more to it. At some point we stopped talking to each other. After that, we didn’t care if we talked or not. ” He rose and began walking up to his apartment. “I better hit the sack. Have a good one.”

“You too, hon.”

The apartment seemed cold though he checked the thermostat and it read 71 degrees. He placed his badge and wallet and keys on the kitchen table and saw his gun hanging from the holster on the chair. He lifted the holster without touching the gun and placed it in one of the cupboards.

He went to his bathroom and undressed. The bathroom was the place he least liked to be. While married he would spend a lot of time there; reading ebooks or newspapers or surfing the internet on his phone. He would hear Melissa outside, trying to gather the kids together long enough to serve breakfast and get them ready for the day. When Jon Junior was young he would pound on the door and yell, “Dada, dada!”

It made Stanton uncomfortable to think of these things here. There was one moment at the end where he closed his eyes and let the hot water run over his head and down his back. The splashing in his ears drown out the rest of the world and he could imagine he was in the ocean, being carried away on a current to some unknown place.

He put on fresh undergarments-the garments bought from the LDS Church for members that had been endowed-and took out a protein shake from the fridge before sitting on the couch in the living room.

He flipped on the tv and began going through the channels. There was nothing on except crime shows and reality television. One show was about the wives of criminals exploiting their husband’s notoriety for profit and he watched it a moment before changing the channel. There were over two hundred channels and he couldn’t remember why he had gotten that many since he was almost never home.

His cell phone buzzed and he answer it. The ID said San Diego Police.

“Hello?”

“Jon? It’s Jessica … Turner.”

“Oh, hey.”

“I just heard from Tommy that you went to visit our mutual friend. I just wanted to know how it went I guess. Or, just to call and check on you. I don’t know … I guess I don’t really know why I called.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you called. I wanted to apologize for not getting together for dinner with you yet.”

“That’s okay. I was married to a cop once.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“No, I don’t really like to talk about it. He wasn’t much of a guy. But I was eighteen and really wanted to get out of my house. At least he did that for me before I left.”

“How’s your case panning out?”

“Talked to at least ten people today. No one saw or heard anything and they refuse to cooperate with me. What the hell is wrong with these people?”

“There was a woman in New York once that was stabbed nearly forty times in daylight. There were over thirty witnesses watching from their windows, but not a single one called the police. A couple of psychologists interviewed all of them and it turned out they weren’t evil, they just all assumed someone else was calling the police. If there had only been one witness, he likely would have called.”

“You think that’s it? They think someone else will help me?”

“I don’t know, maybe. Mostly people just don’t want to get involved.”

“It’s funny though cause I don’t remember that when I was a kid. All the neighbors looked after all the kids so we could play at night. I went back through my old neighborhood once and I didn’t see any kids playing at night anymore.”

“No, I think parents would have to not care to let them out at night.”

She hesitated and then said, “Um, so do you want to get dinner tomorrow? I’m free.”

“Sure.”

“Sorry,” she said, chuckling to herself.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s just, I just moved down here and I know it’s only like two hours from where I used to live but it feels like I moved to a new state.”

“I know. It’s okay. I would love to have dinner with you tomorrow.”

“Okay. You pick the place.”

“No problem.”

“Okay, good night.”

“Night.”

Stanton hung up. He turned the tv off and went and lay down in bed. He stayed up another hour before dozing off, an image of a young blond girl in a University of Iowa sweatshirt burned into his mind.