“I was wondering if you could pull some strings and have a kid placed with a family.”
“For you, anything. Tell me about him?”
“He’s sixteen and his mother died some time ago. His stepfather took care of him since then and he just passed away in a fire. I think he needs a family that doesn’t have anybody else his same age. He’d do really well with a couple or a couple with young children.”
“Okay. I’m not at the office now but when I head back I’ll find someplace good. Can you email me his info?”
“Sure thing. I’m going to keep him here at the station for now. How quickly can we do it?”
“We could get him in tomorrow or the next day if I rush. You can place him in a group home for now.”
“No, I’ll put him up in a hotel. Can you let me know as soon as you have a place lined up?”
“You got it.”
“Thanks, Cami. Take care.”
“You too. Bye.”
Stanton walked out of his office and to the front desk. He checked the roster and saw that a young rookie named McManis was on duty at the front desk. He went and hunted him down, finding him in the break room, eating some Twinkies.
“Got a kid here that we’re putting up in a hotel. There’s a Marriott a couple miles west, near Greenview. I need you to take him there.” Stanton took out his credit card and handed it to him. “Use this to pay. Also tell the front desk to allow him any meals he wants.”
McManis rolled his eyes but took the credit card.
Stanton walked back to the interrogation room. Gunn was still standing there, his arms folded.
“So we gonna actually drill this little shit or what?” he said.
“No.”
“And, oh great and wise Jonathan, may I ask why not?”
Stanton ignored the sarcasm. “He didn’t do it.”
“What? You think you can tell that from a two-minute conversation about baseball?”
“I’m telling you, Stephen, he didn’t do it. I’m putting him up in a hotel for tonight, and tomorrow he’s gonna be placed in a good foster home. He’s got no relatives to go to.”
“Hey fuck that. He’s our prime-no-our only suspect in a homicide and you’re just gonna let him go?”
“I don’t think it was a homicide.”
“You heard the arson investigator just like I did.”
“He came to his decision too quickly. He was just processing the scene to match a hunch he had. It wasn’t objective; he wasn’t listening to the evidence.”
Gunn shook his head. “You don’t know shit about arson investigations, Jon. And neither do I. Let’s leave it to the experts.”
“I intend to.”
CHAPTER 7
Monique Gaspirini locked up the H amp;M store at ten, leaned against the glass, and sighed. It had been a long day. Two girls had cancelled on her and she had to open and close. And on top of that, the rush in the store hadn’t even given her time to grab lunch. The mall had been so packed that at one point they’d run out of bags and customers had to carry their items out by hand.
“Hey,” Dylan said as he walked up, “those guys left their number for you.”
“Which guys?”
“Those forty-year-old douchebags with the shiny hair. I think they were Iranian or something.”
“Oh, great. You can just toss it.”
“You’re on a roll, Mon. At least half the guys that came in today wanted to fuck you.”
She patted his cheek. “If you weren’t gay, you could totally have me.”
“Interesting offer, sweetheart, but you couldn’t handle this.”
He did the silliest impersonation of a sexy dance that she had ever seen. She burst out laughing and slapped his shoulder.
He said, “Jasper and Matt are still here. We’ll finish up. You go home.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, you worked since opening. Go home, bitch, and get some sleep.”
She kissed his cheek and then went in back and got her purse and cell phone and headed out the door, waving goodbye to Jasper and Matt who were goofing around on the escalator. Monique began walking out of the mall, stopping briefly at a kiosk to buy some liquorice, and had to ring the alarm on her car to find it in the lot. It was parked several dozen meters away in employee parking and she groaned at the thought of walking any more in her high heels.
The Toyota Prius looked worn out and she wondered if it was the best idea to always take it up in the canyons. Her younger brother had even tried four-wheeling with it once and it was stuck within a matter of minutes.
There were footsteps behind her as she opened the door and she glanced back.
A couple was making out by their Tahoe. She had her hand down his pants and he was grunting like a pig.
“Ew, gross. There are kids running around here,” she said, before climbing in to her car.
The air was cool and there wasn’t a single cloud in the darkened night. The sky sparkled with stars and she would glance at it whenever there was a break in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway home.
She eventually got off exit 197 and made her way down past Alejandro’s, a restaurant owned by the father of a friend of hers, and to her house on Maplewood Drive. She lived alone, as her parents preferred to travel and only when they were in town did she have others there. The house was a three-level, six-bedroom, old-west-style home packed with all the furniture her parents had decided not to throw out, even when the pieces had passed their prime. Something was comforting to her about having the same furniture she did when she was growing up and she just didn’t have the heart to get rid of any of it.
She parked and went inside. The ceilings were high and the space open with fine oriental rugs thrown over the old carpet. Monique placed her purse on the coffee table and collapsed on the couch, holding her arm over her forehead for a few minutes. She then took a deep breath and rose to go into the kitchen.
Opening the fridge, she didn’t really see anything she felt like eating so instead just took out a beer and had a long drink out of the bottle before pouring the rest into a glass. As she was about to go back in the living room to return some text messages, she noticed the kitchen door.
It was the backdoor of the house and had two locks on it and a doggie door, though she had gotten rid of the dog long ago. The door was slightly open.
She placed her beer down and walked over. It was definitely open, more than a couple of inches. She thought back to today; had she used this door at all? She was on a date last night and it was possible she left it open then as she had gotten drunk at dinner, but would she have forgotten it today when she left for work?
Monique shut the door and locked it. She glanced out the window to the backyard and didn’t see anything but grass.
As she made her way to the front hallway and the staircase leading to the second level, she decided she would have to be more careful. Though she lived in a safe neighborhood, there had been reports of thefts from a few of her neighbors.
She undressed before she was in the bathroom and hopped into the shower. The water took a moment to warm up and rather than stand outside and wait for it, she stood right under the water and felt the exhilaration of cold against her skin. She let it run down her back and over her legs as she lathered her hair.
She used bodywash and brushed her teeth before stepping out and wrapping herself in a towel. She walked down the hallway to her bedroom and past a window that looked over the backyard. There, under the light of the back porch, a man stood staring up at her.
She gasped as it caught her off guard. His face was pale and he was bald. A crooked smile came over his lips, and he waved to her.
She ran down the hall to the bedroom and leapt for the phone. As she dialed 911, she went to the staircase and stood on the top step. There were enough stairs that even if he were to sprint for her she could make it into the bedroom and lock the door.
Monique could see the kitchen from here. The backdoor was open again.