He opened the case, making sure only to touch the edges. The disc inside was labeled June 12.
41
Mindi Tiffany Morgan sat in the police cruiser. She was in the backseat, a uniform was driving, and Orson Hall was in the passenger seat. She stared out the window at the passing desert. She’d spent hours at that compound and found nothing linking it to the Steeds’ murder. Of course, she wasn’t a detective, but she was smart. She had earned a 4.0 in criminal justice with an emphasis in forensics. She would be a detective one day. But right now, she didn’t have that edge. Most of the detectives she knew-at least the serious crimes detectives, like the ones in Homicide and Sex Crimes-had something that other officers either didn’t have or hadn’t fully developed yet: an ability to make connections that normal people couldn’t. At the compound, she’d tried desperately to make those connections from what she saw around her, but it was no use. To her, every scene was just a bunch of junk.
Her cell phone rang.
Orson glanced back and asked, “Who is it?”
“It’s Jon.” She answered the call. “Hey… no way! Where?… okay… no, there’s a law enforcement media player called Integra. It’s probably coded on that. I have it on my home computer. Meet me at my house… no, I’ll text you the address. How long will you be?… okay… Orson’s giving me a ride home… all right. Bye.”
“What did he want?” Orson said.
“He found something at Marty’s house.”
“What?”
“A disc.”
He turned and faced her. “Mindi, he’s not a police officer here. He can’t go around to crime scenes on his own and mess with things. What if we find out who did this, and it goes to court? A defense attorney would have a field day with that tidbit.”
“Nobody else could find it, Orson. CSI went through that place with a microscope.”
He shook his head and turned back around. “You meeting him at your house?”
“Yeah, do you mind dropping me off?”
“No, that’s fine.” He shifted in his seat and laid his head back on the headrest. “So, you and Jon, you guys…”
“No.”
“Oh, sorry. I just figured ’cause of how much you talk about him. He’s a good-looking guy.”
“I know. It’s not that I wouldn’t. He’s just a lot different from the guys I’ve dated. I think he needs me to be the one to ask.”
“His ex, Melissa, was a lot like you. We went on a few vacations together. She was a spitfire, never taking shit from anybody. Jon seems to attract strong women. You know, though, he’d never sleep with you. Not unless you guys were married.”
“I figured that.”
“Could you handle being in a relationship with no sex?”
She shrugged. “What are showerheads for?”
The drive was long, and Mindi grew restless. She surfed the Internet on her phone, read through a few articles in the New York Times and Vanity Fair, and stared out the window at the endless expanse of desert. Under the night sky, it appeared little more than black with tall shadowy peaks breaking up the horizon.
Her house was located in a quiet suburb not far from the strip. A long driveway led to a two-car garage and a decent-sized lawn. By the time the police cruiser came to a stop in the driveway, she was asleep. Orson reached back and shook her leg. She woke up, thanked them for the ride, and went inside her home. She glanced back and saw Orson wave at her.
Stanton held the disc and carefully avoided getting fingerprints on it. He tucked it into his jacket as he got into his car and typed Mindi’s address into Google Maps. It was twenty-one minutes away.
The drive was brisk, and he drove down Las Vegas Boulevard at the height of the evening, before everyone had gotten drunk, had sex, or lost all their money at the tables. Exhilaration still tickled the air.
He didn’t notice the lights or the people. He kept lightly touching the disc in his pocket, eager to see the video that would put a face to the man he was after. The man had been nothing more than a shadow, an outline of a person. Now he would have an identity, parents, possibly a wife and kids, neighbors, and friends. He was a real person, not a demon. That was usually the most difficult part of Stanton’s job, and he never grew used to recognizing what normal people were capable of doing to each other… and that they enjoyed it.
He parked on the curb outside her house. A police cruiser was in the driveway. He figured Orson must have stayed, which was good. If Marty knew the person on the disc, the odds were that Orson knew him as well.
Stanton walked up the lawn, glancing once at the crescent moon, and knocked on the door. Mindi shouted to come in; he opened the door and stepped inside.
Mindi was on her knees, against the wall in front of him in the living room. She was staring down at the carpet; the fear and anger on her face spoke to him as loudly as a scream would have. About five feet to her side was an officer in uniform. He was lying on his back, and blood was trickling from a wound in his head. Stanton went to check on him, but a voice stopped him.
“Glad you came, Jon.” Orson was sitting on the sofa, a revolver pointed at Stanton’s chest. “Please, have a seat.”
42
Stanton froze next to the door. He felt the breeze on his back. A couple of steps backward would take him out of the house. He could easily run down the street and place a call. He looked at Mindi, who was trembling.
“Shut the door please, Jon.”
Stanton didn’t move for a full half minute, and Orson didn’t repeat what he had said. Instead, Stanton lowered his hand near his firearm.
“Jon, please don’t be stupid. If you run, I’m going to shoot her in the head. Then I’ll shoot myself in the shoulder, throw the gun outside somewhere, and say it was you. Forensics will eventually prove me wrong, but I’ll be long gone by then. They’ll arrest you first. You know that. Now please, shut the door and sit down.”
Stanton took a deep breath then closed the door.
“Now lock it.”
He twisted the deadbolt, walked into the living room, and turned to face Orson. He glanced down at his gun then back at Orson.
“Oh, man,” Orson said, “things went bad on this. Real bad. People I didn’t want to get hurt ended up getting hurt.”
“Kill me and let them go, Orson. Tie them up and leave them here and hop on a plane. Go to South America, and they’ll never find you.”
“Yeah, probably. I got a lot to lose here, though. I got a house, a pension, assets. I got power here. How can I go from that to living in some shack in Belize?”
“It’s better than a needle.”
He exhaled loudly. “Man, I should’a killed you in that basement when I had the chance. You have this fucking ability to get into people’s heads, don’t you? That’s probably why Melissa left you. You drove her crazy.”
“Why did you bring me out here, Orson? Was it only to try and blame me for all this?”
“What the fuck do you think I brought you out here for? I couldn’t blame one of my own. But an outsider? Hell, no one would give a shit about some academic from San Diego, especially one with a past like yours.” He laughed. “I told everyone that you’re psychic, Jon. I was bullshitting them, but now… I don’t know. Are you psychic? I mean you’re definitely a freak, but can you actually see things other people can’t?”
Headlights shone into the house as a car pulled up next to the cruiser in the driveway.
“Good, he’s here. Mindi,” Orson said, “unlock the door, please.”
She unlocked the door then hesitated for an instant as she looked outside through the open door. Orson cocked his revolver, and she went back to her spot by the wall.