The White Angel Murder by Victor Methos Read Free Book Online Page B

and flatulence and rotting food and rotting flesh. The corridors and reception area held only the slightest trace of the zoo contained a few hundred feet away and Stanton was given a visitor’s pass by the front entrance guard and led to a small room. He was sat on one side of a glass partition on a cold stool that was bolted to the floor. There were phones on both sides of the thick glass and he pulled out a small digital recorder and began recording.
    He ran his hand along the glass and then over the concrete border. The ceiling had exposed water pipes and he followed them with his eyes to each wall. There were three other stools and glass partitions, but no one was using them.
    A bolt on a door on the opposite side of the glass slid open and the metal creaked at the hinges. A muscled guard with tattoos running up his forearms walked behind a handcuffed Noah Sherman, the handcuffs wrapped in chains that ran around his ankles. The guard sat him down and then held up his hands, indicating ten minutes, and Stanton nodded. The guard went back out through the door and left them alone.
    Sherman was in a yellow jumpsuit with white shoes, the laces removed. His hand went to the phone and he put it to his ear. Stanton picked up his end and could hear his breathing through the receiver.
    “ How are you, Noah?”
    “ You never ask a prisoner how they are. Then you put them in the position to either lie or talk about how miserable they are and they don’t want to do either. You’re supposed to say, ‘How you holding up?’ or ‘How are they treating you?’”
    “ How are they treating you?”
    “ I was raped my first night here. Do you know what it’s like to be raped, Jon? I bet you don’t. Two inmates paid a guard off with some weed and they were given a half hour with me. They took turns.”
    “ I’m sorry,” Stanton said.
    “ You’re sorry ?”
    “ I didn’t put you in here.”
    There was silence between them a long time.
    “ What the fuck do you want, Detective ?”
    “ I wanted to talk.”
    “ You haven’t been here for two and half years and now you want to see me? Bullshit. Did they find another one of my bodies? There are more you know.”
    “ I know.”
    “ Are they still looking?”
    “ I don’t think so. Not in San Diego County. I heard they had a task force in Los Angeles.”
    “ I heard that too.” Sherman spread his legs in a wide stance and leaned forward. “So, you got a few minutes. What do you want to talk about?”
    Deception or circumlocution, he knew, wouldn’t work. He would have to take a bold stance and stick to it. “Did you kill a girl named Tami Jacobs? Blond, twenty-three. A small apartment in La Jolla. It would’a been about a month before you went in.”
    “ You really think I’d be honest with you if I had?”
    “ Yes, I do.”
    He grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. “Why?”
    “ I don’t know. Pride maybe.”
    “ Maybe.”
    “ Do you remember it?”
    “ I would need to look at a photo.”
    Stanton pulled a small picture from his pocket. It was of Tami with her family in her University of Iowa sweatshirt.
    “ Pretty girl,” Sherman said. “Do you have any of her after the deed was done?”
    “ No.”
    “ You didn’t bring any?”
    “ No.”
    “ Why?”
    “ Because you would masturbate to them later.” Stanton noticed that Noah began gently rocking back and forth. He had seen him do this before, and had never paid attention to it until now. “Was it you?”
    “ Do you ever ask yourself why I would send you to that closet knowing what was there?”
    “ Yes.”
    “ And why do you think I did that? I wanted to be caught?”
    “ No.”
    “ Then why?”
    “ Your first murder was probably immaculate. Little evidence, never told anyone … but by your fifth and sixth you started forgetting things. Little things at first and then it just became more and more chaos. Eventually you couldn’t remember anything. You probably had forgotten what was in the