Black Widow (3 page)

7

The entrance exam to the Honolulu Police Department was the state certification exam and was almost identical to California’s exam that Stanton took over a decade ago.

The test consisted of knowledge about the most used statutory codes, reading comprehension, prioritizing tasks, logic games, estimating time and distance, interpreting maps, diagramming, recognizing patterns, controlling physical surroundings, and form completion.

Stanton had six hours to complete the test. He finished in an hour and a half, then left and grabbed a
puka
dog. The bun was holed out and filled with cheese, onions, mango ketchup, and relish. The hot dog then floated in this mixture and soaked it up. Stanton couldn’t get enough of them.

He sat at a table out on the patio of the strip mall and ate. Within two bites, his cell phone rang from a number he didn’t recognize.

“This is Jon.”

“Jon, it’s Kai. Congratulations, man, you passed.”

“You graded the test already?”

“Nah, I’m just
guessin’. I put in a rush and they’ll get your results tomorrow. You wanna come in then and get your badge and gun?”

“I have a firearm I like to use.”

“We use Smith and Wesson five nine oh six. What you got?”

“Desert Eagle forty-five.”

He whistled. “Big gun. Okay, just use your own. But we gotta run it through administration.”

“That’s fine.”

Silence for a moment. “I’m glad you’re doing this, ohana.”

“Why do I get the feeling you already have something in mind for me?”

He chuckled. “Oh, we got something for you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Kai.”

“Shaka.”

Stanton hung up and finished his hot dog and Diet Coke. An odd, peaceful feeling came over him, and he people-watched for a good half-hour. He didn’t feel like moving. The weather was perfect, the food was tasty, and he was closer to his boys than he ever had been in his life.

So why, he thought, despite all this, did he feel like a man standing on a mountain watching a storm race toward him, knowing he wouldn’t be able to climb down in time to avoid it?

After Emma left him he preferred solitude, with the exception of his boys. But now, when his boys were off doing their own things, he was completely alone. Sometimes the loneliness strengthened him, but not now.

Now it was a drain and a distraction. But it was probably for the best. Though both Emma and his ex-wife, Melissa, had been close to him, they hadn’t understood him. In addition to being a father, a provider, a churchgoing Mormon… there was something else too. Something buried deep underneath. And Melissa and Emma couldn’t touch it. In some ways, he felt as alone with them as he did by himself.

He wiped his fingers with a napkin and watched a few birds dance around the table, looking for crumbs. He threw them some and then rose and drove home.

8

In the morning, Stanton went out on the North Shore. The waves were nonexistent but he went just the same. The water was cold and dark as the sun was poking out of the horizon. Stanton sat out on the ocean a long while and then paddled back to shore.

When he got home, he showered and dressed in a white shirt with red tie. He wore slacks and Italian leather shoes he’d picked up at a second-hand store almost eight years ago. They had a few scuffmarks but with a little polish, they always looked fairly new.

As he got his breakfast, he thought about everything those shoes had seen.
All the crime scenes, all the blood, and the crying relatives. All the hours away from his family and the broken hearts… He stopped in the middle of pouring some orange juice and grabbed his car keys.

He drove down to
Kapiolani Boulevard and the Nordstrom’s there. He went inside and found the men’s shoes and bought the first pair of black leather shoes that he liked.

“Could you please throw these away?” he said to the cashier, handing her a box with his old shoes in them.

Stanton drove to Alapa’i Police Headquarters in downtown: the central precinct for all the island. He had read about the department and knew it was split along eight districts. Kai had sent him an email last night letting him know he would be assigned to district one, downtown Honolulu. The busiest district.

Across the street from the precinct was what appeared to be an old, defunct church. The street was clean and lined with palm trees. He realized he didn’t have a parking pass so he parked on the street and walked to the building.

He headed up to the main floor and found the sector one district offices. He stood in front of the gray door a long time. Thoughts and images flooded his mind. Things from the past he thought he’d forgotten about. His first day at San Diego PD, he’d been so nervous to go into the department that his hand slipped off the doorknob from sweat.

The first day as a detective, Eli Sherman came up to him and put his arm around him. He told him that if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss
will stare back at you. And that you have to be prepared to accept what it shows you. “If you’re not,” Sherman had told him, “you shouldn’t be here.”

Stanton opened the door and walked in. He heard the click of the door behind him as he stood there. Expecting everyone to stop what they were doing and stare at him, he stood motionless. When no one even noticed, he looked for Kai’s office. He found it at the end of the hall with the door open.

“Jon,” he said with a big, toothy grin, “come in. Shut the door.”

Stanton did and sat down. “What’s that church across the street?”

“That ain’t a church, bra. That’s Iolani Palace. The king lived there. Only palace in the States.”

“Really? I’ll have to check it out.”

Kai tapped his fingers against the desk. Stanton could tell he had a lot of information to go over, but that he had something he really wanted to say or do. His brow furrowed in concentration and then flattened, and a grin came over his chubby cheeks.

“I’m a give this to you now,” Kai said.

He went to a filing cabinet in the corner and took out a thick accordion binder. He placed it on the desk and slid it toward Stanton.

“What is this?”

“Black Widow.”

Stanton shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

“What’chyu been smoking with them boys on the beach? A woman killed two tourists. We don’t have nothin’. She didn’t leave nothin’ behind.”

Stanton lifted the file. It was separated into two distinct binders. One was titled, HUGH ROBERT NEAL and the other one was ALEXANDER KEN WATERS.

“You want this to be my first case?” Stanton said.

Kai grinned and nodded. “Told you I got something for you.”

Stanton placed the file back on the desk. “Kai, I was kind of hoping to start small. I know I’m a detective, but what about property crimes?”

“You
wanna look into broken car windows and stolen checks instead of solving murders?”

“I mean… not always, but I thought you would start me slow at first.”

Kai’s brow furrowed again. “Tell you what, you take the file. If tomorrow, you don’t wanna do it, don’t. I’ll put you in property crimes.”

Stanton nodded. He lifted the file. “Where’s my desk?”

Connor Jones watched the new guy come out of Kai’s office and go to his desk. He got the one opposite him. The bullpen was just a grouping of desks in the middle of the floor, separated by dividers. They were little more than large cubicles. The four offices in this section were the senior detectives and captain. James was at least six years away from getting one. Or maybe, if he had enough clearances every month, he could do it in five.

The clearances were what the detectives lived and died by. Most departments had a Robbery-Homicide division, but Honolulu PD did things differently. They had a Criminal Investigation Division, which had nine “Details,” one of which was homicide.

Last year, the homicide detail had twenty-five murders with twenty-two clearances. A clearance meant the investigation was over and the case was referred to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for prosecution, or the defendant had passed away. Honolulu City and County had a nearly 90 percent clearance rate. One of the highest in the country. That clearance rate guaranteed them funding, community support, and an attitude among the legislature, city council, and mayor’s office to leave the department the hell alone.

But, they also had over a thousand “unattended death” cases, 305 of which were sent to the homicide detail for further investigation. These were cases where a body was found and the cause of death wasn’t immediately apparent.

Since these were classified as unattended deaths, they were not grouped with the homicides and therefore not counted in the clearance percentage. If at all possible, though officially frowned upon by the Chief of Police and the Police Commission, the detectives tried to classify a case as unattended death. Only the slam dunks were classified as homicides: cases where there were witnesses or the defendant was caught in the act.

That’s why the Black Widow case was so disturbing. It was clear to everyone that they were not unattended deaths. So if this killer racked up six or seven bodies, that could destroy their clearance rate if an arrest was never made.

Jones rose and walked past the new guy, and into Kai’s office.

“Who’s he?” Jones said.

“He’s the guy I told you about. Jon Stanton. I’m giving him the Black Widow case.”

“What for?”

“He can close it.”

Jones folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “I can close it.”

“Maybe, but he can close it faster.”

“It’s like that then, huh?”

Kai sighed and turned to him. “This isn’t ’bout measuring cocks. I’m going to give the case to whoever can close it. He has more experience than you. He was with San Diego Homicide for six years.”

Jones glanced back to Stanton. “How do you know him?”

“I started in San Diego as a patrol officer. Jon started with me. I ain’t seen any cop like him.”

“
What’dya mean?”

He turned back to his computer. “Watch him. You’ll see.”

9

Stanton found out at eleven in the morning that he had passed his entrance exams. On the physical exam, he had nearly set a record on the obstacle course. The instructor, a former Navy SEAL, held the current record. His written exams were passed with flying colors.

The rest of the morning was spent filling out employment forms and attending a seminar on what it meant to be an employee of the city. After that
was a sexual harassment seminar and then more paperwork.

In the afternoon, Stanton came back to his desk and there was nothing there but the Black Widow file. He sat staring at it a while and then checked the clock on his iPhone. He rose and left without taking the file with him.

Tomorrow would be more orientation, and he would let Kai know he wanted property crimes. He got all the way down the elevators to the first floor before he stopped and went back. He grabbed the Black Widow file and left.

A coffee shop was nearby and he walked to it and ordered a vanilla steamer with skim milk. He sat at a table against the window and opened the file as he took a sip.

Alexander Waters was a thirty-five-year-old investment banker from Manhattan. The police report outlined a man that was married with two kids, successful, and from a successful family. His father had hired a gold-tie law firm to keep track of the case and make sure the department was doing everything it could to find the person responsible for his death.

He had been tied to a bed at the Dale Koa Hotel and died from an injection of potassium. Once the injection was given, he had passed quickly. But not before going through a hell that Stanton couldn’t even imagine.

His skin from the lower portion of his neck to his belly button had been removed. His penis had been excised and shoved into his mouth before death. Several nails on his fingers had been pulled off and thrown on the floor, as had a few teeth. His Achilles tendons had been severed with what the medical examiner guessed was a hacksaw.

Unexplained slices covered his arms and legs. Stanton quickly flipped to the autopsy report prepared by the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office. He found the “gross findings” section and scrolled down until he came to the lacerations in the dermis.

The ME described them as gashes caused by a thin, smooth material. Something similar to strong fishing wire. The victim had this material wrapped around a body part and then pressure was applied, causing the material to cut through the skin and into the muscle.

Puncture marks had also been found in the feet, tongue, and fingertips. Most likely caused by a thick needle. Stanton knew, without any evidence to back it up, that the needles were heated before insertion. The heating would cause more pain.

The feet, tongue, and fingertips held enormous amounts of nerve bundles. More than anywhere else on the body, with the exception of the genitals. Most people probably didn’t know that. The killer either did research before the murder, or had medical knowledge prior.

The skin on the palms had been ripped away in a similar fashion to the chest.
The nails had, according to the ME, been pulled off by pliers or another similar instrument.

Stanton skimmed the clinical summary. The injection was given around three in the morning, based on the progression of bruising around the puncture wound in the bicep. But three in the morning was after what the ME estimated, based on histamine levels in the blood, was at least five hours of torture.

Stanton pushed the file away a moment and stared out the window. He could only take small doses at a time right now. Like a swimmer dipping a toe in the ocean before jumping in. Or maybe, he thought, like a heroin addict that can’t tolerate the same dose as he used to.

He sipped his steamer and then flipped through the Hugh Neal file. It was almost identical. The injuries were not only the same, they had occurred in the exact same spots on the body. Whoever killed these men wasn’t someone that flew by the seat of their pants. These were planned and executed according to an outline.

Stanton closed the thin binders with the autopsy and toxicology reports, and went to the police narratives holding the biographical information.

Hugh Neal’s biography read almost like Alex Waters’. Both men were married with children; both were affluent and had gone to good universities. Both were on their second marriages.

Hugh was Catholic while Alex was unaffiliated. A note from one of the initial detectives said that Alex’s wife was engaged within seventeen days of her husband’s death.

Seventeen.

Clearly, she was having an affair. But did the death just occur at an opportune time, or did she have something to do with it?

Stanton pulled out his phone and dialed the wife’s number. Then he froze. He hung up, realizing this wasn’t actually his case. An automated response had taken over. He replaced the phone in his pocket and closed the case file.