Authors: Victor Methos
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.
Bill James entered, wearing
an Armani suit with no tie. He looked at Mindi then at the officer on the ground. Then he saw Stanton standing in front of Orson. His eyes drifted to the gun in Stanton’s hand, and he quickly shut the door.
“What the fuck are you doing? You wanna get the fucking death penalty?”
Orson chuckled. “You forget the word ‘we’ pretty quickly, don’t you, Bill?”
“Fuck your ‘we.
’ Who told you to rape Emily Steed? You could have shot ’em both when they were getting into their car, and no one would have seen a damn thing.”
Stanton looked at Orson. “How much did he pay you?”
“A lot. But believe it or not, Jon, I went to him.” Orson’s face contorted briefly into a slight sneer on his lips that quickly disappeared. “I fucking loved her, man. I was gonna leave Wendy for her. I ain’t kiddin’. My kids would’a never forgiven me, but I didn’t care. She was the one—the one I wanted to grow old with. When I told her that, you know what she said to me, Jon? She laughed. She just fucking laughed right in my face. She said I wasn’t in her class, that it was fun, but her pool boy was as good a fuck as I was, and she wouldn’t marry her pool boy.” Tears streamed down his face, and he wiped them with the back of his sleeve. He laughed hysterically. “But, man, she got fucked in the end, didn’t she?”
“You stupid son of a bitch,” James said. “You gonna kill three police officers? They will never rest until they find out who did this. Never. They will fly every damn fed out here from Quantico until they
find us. You think I wanna look over my shoulder for the rest of my life?”
“You’re wrong about something there, Bill. I’m not gonna kill three cops. I’m gonna kill three cops and a casino owner.”
James didn’t move for a moment. Then, in a motion as quick and smooth as a gunslinger’s, he pulled out his Smith & Wesson .40 and pointed it at Orson’s head. “Put the fucking gun down.”
A voice bellowed from behind them. “Both you cocksuckers put
’em down.”
Alma Parr stood at the entrance to the kitchen. He was leaning on a cane
, and his waist looked crooked, as though he’d been twisted on purpose. However, he held his firearm straight, and the barrel was pointed at the back of James’s head.
As Orson glared at Parr, Stanton quickly stepped back and pulled out his firearm. He fell into the Weaver stance
, fixing his weapon firmly on Orson’s chest.
Orson laughed. “You gotta be shittin’ me
.” He called out to Mindi, “Hey, honey, you got a gun, too? Maybe you can join us.”
James glanced from Parr to Stanton. “This isn’t a good situation,” he said nervously. “This has the potential to go real bad real fast unless we all calm down and take a breath.”
“Take all the breaths you want,” Parr said, “I ain’t movin’ this fucking gun.”
Stanton said, “There’s no need for anyone else to die. Orson, it’s over. Drop your weapon.”
“No fucking way.”
“You killed innocent people. It’s gone too far. You have to go down.”
“Innocent?” he said incredulously. “Daniel Steed threw poor people out on the street just to make a few extra bucks. His wife fucked everything with a dick, whether it was married or not. How the fuck are they innocent?”
“What about Freddy Steed? You had him burned to death for nothing.”
“No, not nothing. I wanted Emily to feel what it was like to get your heart broken. Don’t matter, though. He was a piece’a shit Nazi. A fucking Nazi, Jon. Are you really trying to make me feel bad for taking him down?”
“He was a kid. He was barely old enough to drink. He deserved a chance to make his life straight.”
He scoffed. “You know, I am so sick of your bullshit. You really think there’s a God? Huh? And he cares about us and makes sure we’re doin’ okay and gives us our bottles at night and tucks us in? I had Freddy Steed burned for fifteen hundred bucks. Fifteen hundred dollars, Jon. That’s what it cost to snuff out a life. Where was your God then? He wasn’t powerful enough to put out those flames.”
“It’s not like that. We have agency, Orson. We get to choose. We choose who we are. I know you
. I know that this isn’t you. You can choose something different. Put your gun down. Turn yourself in. It’s the only way.”
Orson, fresh tears streaming down his face, sat up straight. He took a few breaths. “You believe in the devil
, too, Jon? I don’t mean a force of evil or anything like that. I mean an actual fucking devil who whispers in your ear and tries to get you to do bad things?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll tell him hello for you.”
“Orson, no!”
Orson lifted the weapon to fire at Stanton. James fired first, followed by the loud pop of Parr firing before Stanton got off two rounds, hitting Orson in the chest. James took a hit to the back of the head and collapsed. Orson fell against the couch, twisted around, and fired three rounds at Parr, hitting him twice. He toppled over.
Stanton stood with his weapon out, still in his stance. His hearing was muffled. He had temporarily been deafened
, but he could hear Mindi screaming. He felt an intense warmth that made him feel relaxed. He glanced down and saw the black blood flowing from a wound in his stomach. He heard the last gurgled breath of Orson Hall, then he fell to his knees, lifted his head, and dropped to his side.