The man was on top of him now and pummeling his face with his fists. He was grunting like a pig as he struck and the grunts grew louder and turned to screams.
Stanton’s face was a pulp of bloody, slick flesh. He felt teeth loose in his mouth and coughed as blood poured down his throat and over his chin. He was dazed and felt a pounding in his head that nearly blinded him. Heat was in his head just off to the side, heat where heat shouldn’t be. He rolled to his side.
The man stood up, out of breath, and heard a metal clink as he tried to bring his left hand up. He looked down to see the handcuffs that were locked on his wrist and on a small exposed pipe against the wall.
“No,” he screamed, “no no no no no.” He began pulling and ravenously jerking his hand, attempting to get it loose. The flesh on his wrist began to bleed. Realizing it was futile, he jumped at Stanton.
Stanton rolled again but felt the man grab his shoulder. He turned his head back and bit into the man’s fingers. There was a scream as he let go and Stanton rolled again over the floor, out of reach.
Stanton watched as the man was screaming and hollering and pounding the metal pipe with his feet and free hand. He reached down and tried to bite his wrist, not realizing the pain that would result. Stanton looked over to the laptop that was on the floor in the center of the room.
He crawled over, spitting blood in an attempt to keep it out of his mouth. He got to the laptop. It was a blank background image of a green hillside. It was the desktop. The images of Emma and the family were still on the two monitors. Stanton took out his cell phone and flipped through his contacts before dialing a number.
It rang four times before a male voice answered, “Hello?” He was out of breath and Stanton could hear a female voice in the background.
“This is Jon. I need you to do something for me,” Stanton said, speaking slowly and cautiously, the S’s slurring from the blood that was still pooling in his mouth.
“Jon Stanton? Jon, it’s fucking Sunday. I don’t work Sundays, man. You got the TV on or something? What’s that screaming?”
“I don’t have much time, Billy. Please.”
He sighed. “Fine, what is it? And stop fucking eating I can barely understand you.”
“There’re two monitors set up somewhere. They’re attached to a laptop. I need to find…I need to find out where the monitors are set up.”
“Hm, well, what program’s running on the laptop?”
“It’s just showing a desktop.”
“Any minimized windows?”
Stanton glanced to the bottom of the screen and saw an icon of a flying carpet with a genie on it. “Yes. I opened it. The program is Magic Carpet.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s easy. On the bottom of the home screen in MC there should be a settings tab. You see it?”
“Yeah.”
“Click on it. Now there should be a locations icon on there. Click that.”
“Got it. It’s a bunch of numbers.”
“It’s in longitude and latitude. Just type the numbers into Google Maps and it’ll give you an address.”
“I don’t know if this has Internet. I need you to do it.”
“Can this wait? I got someone here. And what the fuck is that screaming, Jon?”
“Do it now,” Jon said, as he spit a large glob of blood on the floor, “or I will come down there and put a bullet through your Mac.”
“All right, all right, chill out. What’re the numbers?”
Stanton read the numbers. Billy hummed and mumbled something to himself as they came up. He read the addresses off. One was about twenty minutes north. Another was…on this street.
“Thanks,” Stanton said.
“No prob but you-”
Stanton hung up and called dispatch. He sent a unit to the address up north and then rose to his feet. He called Slim Jim and told him what was happening. SWAT was called out.
The man was now on the floor, sweat pouring from him as he laughed. “They won’t put me in prison. They can’t kill me either. I have two Axis One disorders. I’m not competent to stand trial. They’ll put me in a state hospital and I’ll get out. And I’m coming to pay you a visit, Jon. Sleep with the lights on.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Stanton ran up the steps and slipped once, hitting his elbow hard against the stair. He got up again and continued up the stairs and went outside. The house he was in had the number 2275 and the address he needed was 2304. He walked up the street until he found it. A group of boys was across the street and they eyed him as he ran up the lawn and to the door.
It was locked and Stanton began kicking it near the doorknob. It wouldn’t open. He fired two rounds into the knob and kicked it again and it broke open. In the living room, hunched over, sat Emma Lyon.
Stanton ran to her and threw his arms around her. She began to weep as he moved to untie her. Gallons of liquid were set up around her; five containers in all with what looked like nylon rope sticking out of their openings. Stanton removed the nylon rope from all of them and followed the rope to another room where a fuse was slowly burning down. He stamped out the fuse and went back to the living room. Emma wasn’t there.
He went outside and saw her on the lawn vomiting, but nothing was coming up. He went beside her as sirens droned in the distance, growing nearer with every second.
CHAPTER 50
Jaime Spencer sat in the dining room booth with her boyfriend Travis and they shared a piece of key lime pie with two cups of coffee. The restaurant was upscale, far more than she was used to, but Travis had a good income through his contracting business and had pledged that she wouldn’t need to scrape by any longer. The restaurant had swirling yellow and black lanterns hanging from the ceiling that matched the lamps on the table. She watched the movement as Travis spoke with the waiter.
“What are you thinking about?” he said when the waiter had left.
“I can’t wait to move. I’ve lived in California all my life.” She looked out the large windows to the beach that was less than twenty feet away from the restaurant’s entrance. “I’ve never even left the state. Did I tell you that?”
He took a sip of his beer. “No, but you’re a woman full of mysteries. That’s why I’m crazy about you.”
She smiled and rubbed his hand. Jaime had been feeling a sense of contentment that she hadn’t felt in decades. It was calming and it began in her belly and moved up in warm waves over her face and down her arms to the tips of her fingers. Her whole life she had been striving for something. Trying to find something. She had never been able to define what it was exactly that she was looking for or why she needed it. Now she felt like the urge wasn’t as powerful. She hadn’t found what it was that she had been looking for, somehow she knew that, but at least it wasn’t consuming her. And Travis was a decent man; an honest man in a legitimate business. Sure, he was much older than her, but that hadn’t really been an issue so far.
“I have to run to the ladies room.”
She rose and gave Travis a kiss on the forehead as she headed past the booths and down a hallway to the women’s restroom. She glanced under the stalls and saw that she was alone. In her purse was a small vial of cocaine. She took the vial and tipped it against her wrist, pouring a small line, and snorted with one nostril. It felt silky going up. It was pure and nearly uncut.
Jaime wiped her nose and went back to the restaurant. She walked down the hallway and turned toward the booth and saw a man sitting across from Travis speaking with him. She thought it might have been a friend of his and then she saw the prominent nose set against the large boxer’s cheekbones.
Stephen Gunn looked up at her and smiled. “Hi, Jaime. How are ya? I was just talkin’ to Travis here. Seems you never mentioned me? Must’ve slipped your mind, huh?”
She glanced up at the door, thoughts racing through her mind.