“Or maybe what you want to see.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
He sped up a winding road to the affluent suburb of Cottonwood Hills and came to a stop at a large three-story home. It looked much like a well-manicured log cabin, with the exception of the yellowing lawn and the untrimmed bushes and flowers.
“I’d like to go in by myself.”
“I know,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“I read that about you-that you’re solitary. It was in an article about Sherman.” She handed him the key. “I’ll be here.”
Stanton grabbed the Steed file from the backseat and got out. “I’ll be out soon.”
He walked up the driveway and stood on the porch, staring at the front door before inserting the key. He opened the door then stepped inside and shut it behind him. All the blinds had been shut, and the place smelled like dust. He slowly took to the stairs up to the living room, glancing at the plush white carpet decorated with a pattern of blue diamonds. At the top of the stairs, he could look into the kitchen, which was directly in front of him. The living room was to his right, along with the bedroom. He walked over to the sofa and sat down.
A massive projector hung from the ceiling, and the handcrafted furniture was chocolate-colored wood. A large portrait of Daniel Steed standing behind his wife, who was seated in front of him, took up half a wall. A few photos of them with friends and family sat on a side table. He didn’t see anyone who resembled Emily or Daniel enough to be their son. He scanned the photos then opened his file and found the photograph of Fredrick Steed. The young man wasn’t in any of the family photos. Stanton made a note of that in the file.
Stanton rose and walked around the house. He peeked into the bedroom, the kitchen, and the main bathroom. Mrs. Steed’s robe was hanging over the shower rod. Rather than giving the room a homey feel, it made it feel empty.
He walked back to the living room. He skimmed the discs in the entertainment center DVD rack. Two had blank spaces where the titles should’ve been, and he took them out of their cases. One was labeled Family Reunion, 1998. The other had no label. He found the remotes to the projector and the DVD player and fiddled with them until they turned on. He inserted the family reunion disc.
As it turned on, Stanton saw a bird’s-eye view of the massive casino showroom that had been rented to host the Steed reunion. Then the camera shifted, shut off, and turned back on. It was now held low, about shoulder height, and he knew a child was filming. He was going around to the different guests, asking them questions and grilling them about what they were wearing. He asked one guest in a hideous blue dress what it felt like to have the ugliest dress at the reunion. Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes, and she turned away from the camera and began to ignore the child. The boy behind the camera smelled the blood in the water and continued antagonizing her until her husband threatened him. Then he ran off, laughing.
Next the boy harassed a young waitress. When she began to get upset, he said that his father had paid for the reunion, and she had better not piss him off, or he would tattle on her. The waitress, clearly fearing for her job, took the boy’s abuse, which consisted of teasing her about her appearance. Stanton was about to fast-forward when the questions the child was asking turned sexual.
The waitress appeared shocked and turned back to someone who looked like her boss standing a few feet away. He noticed her discomfort, came over, and asked what was going on.
“I just asked if she would show me her pussy,” the boy said.
The boss, shocked, looked out over the crowd. The boy continued to film and giggle. He turned back to the girl, asking more questions about her genitals. Then suddenly, the camera shook, and Daniel Steed’s face appeared on the screen.
“What did you say to her, you little shit? Huh? What did you say?”
Mrs. Steed’s voice was in the background. “Danny, take care of this later. Not here.”
“Get the hell outta here before I paint your backside red.”
The boy pulled away but left the camera on. Before he got more than a few feet away, Daniel Steed said, “His father was as big an asshole as he is.”
Stanton rewound the disc and played that part again. He guessed that Daniel wasn’t talking about himself. He flipped through the police reports. Nothing mentioned that Fredrick was Emily’s son from another marriage.
Stanton watched the rest of the disc, but it consisted of Fredrick playing outside the reunion and sneaking back in to steal drinks from the bar. When the video ended, Stanton made a few notes in the file and put the unlabeled disc into the DVD player.
The disc was blank. He fast-forwarded through it a bit then stopped it. Wondering why they would keep a blank disc with the others, he took it out and slipped it into the file. He scanned the living room for other clues before leaving.
Mindi was surfing the Internet on her phone and looked up when he got back in the car. He pulled out of the driveway without a word.
“So?” she said.
“We need to pay Fredrick a visit.”
12
Sitting on the hood of his Mustang in the middle of a rundown apartment complex, Captain Alma Parr lifted his Browning.45 caliber handgun. The gun was the 1911 model. Browning had designed it for the army, and it had passed the Ordnance Department’s highest level of testing for reliability, including the continuous firing of six thousand rounds without jamming. It was the most reliable handgun ever made. The army had dumped it because NATO refused to approve its use. Parr had bought as many as he could find and required his detectives to carry them.
He looked at the fresh tattoo still healing on his right biceps. A dragon ran across his collar bone, over his shoulder, around his biceps, and down his forearm to the tip of his wrist. He flexed the bulging muscles beneath it a few times, and waves spread through the ink, stretching and contracting it.
Parr glanced around him. This was the barrio, MS-13 territory. They were one of the most dangerous gangs in the world. None of them would think twice to pop a high-ranking cop in broad daylight.
The red-brick complex made a U shape around the courtyard where he was parked, right in the middle. He had no backup, no officers undercover. No one even knew he was there.
The tingling of fear in his belly excited him. It made him want it more, to fight harder. Fear was his old buddy, and he looked forward to reuniting with it. It reminded him of his time in the burned-out buildings of Fallujah, left alone with his rifle and only enough rations for one week. Take out as many sonsabitches as possible. Those were the only orders he could remember.
He heard voices nearby and looked over. Three men came out of one of the buildings and headed toward an El Camino parked at the curb. They were laughing, and one of them threw his head back. Parr could see the outline of a handgun in the front of his pants, tucked in tightly against the belt.
Parr slid off his hood and ducked behind his car. The El Camino was about thirty feet away. He waited until they were closer… just enough. When the men were ten feet from their car, Parr bolted out, his sidearm drawn. He was there so quickly that the men stood frozen. Then the man with the handgun went for it, and Parr fired.
The round went clean through the man’s hand, and he screamed and doubled over, pressing on the wound, trying to stop the flow of blood.