The Perfect Prey (27 page)

As soon as Patty told him their subject was on the move, Stallings sat tall in his seat to get a good view of the front door to the club. The parking lot had some
cars in it but was by no means packed. He’d already identified Palmer’s BMW and could see both the front door and the car. There was no way the pharmaceutical rep would spot him sitting a couple of rows away in his nondescript Impala.

The door opened, and Palmer, dressed in jeans and an untucked oxford button-down long-sleeved shirt, strolled out arm in arm with a cute, and possibly drunk, young woman. Stallings was good at estimating ages and he put this girl at nineteen, twenty at the most. About right for the college students in this area of town and the clientele of this little club. Now he was faced with the real question of what these surveillances were trying to accomplish. The girl was over eighteen and obviously walking with Palmer voluntarily.

Stallings considered the situation. Had he let the crime against a young woman affect his judgment? What was his plan? Wait for her to turn up dead tomorrow and then try and pin it on the pharmaceutical rep?

Stallings watched as the couple paused on the passenger side of the BMW. He had a clear view straight down the row of cars. Somehow the image of this girl reaching to kiss Palmer made him think of his own daughters. He hated the idea that they would ever have to deal with a slimy, manipulative prick like this. The idea of a man who was nearly thirty trolling for teenagers at bars made his stomach turn.

Then the movement caught his eye. It was the experience of sixteen years of police work in every unit from road patrol to homicide. The handoff. It happened every day in every city in America. Something changed hands, someone passes something off to someone else–whether it was a package, money, or drugs, it always had a certain look to it. In this case Palmer turned
his head in each direction, reached in his pocket, pulled out a small plastic bag, then placed it in the palm of the girl’s hand. She smiled, plucked something from the baggie, then popped it in her mouth. Had he really seen something so overt, or was he looking for a reason to intervene?

As he watched, he saw the girl hesitate as she swallowed, then look up and kiss Palmer again on the lips. The pharmaceutical rep’s hand slid down her body and rested on her butt. Something inside Stallings snapped.

He was out of the car and moving without conscious thought. Palmer’s head jerked up in surprise, recognition hitting his face an instant before Stallings’s closed fist. The girl squealed as Palmer made an odd sound and dropped straight back onto the hard parking lot with a thud.

Palmer shook his head and started to scoot to a sitting position, but Stallings kicked him hard in the chest, knocking him flat again.

Palmer moaned, “What the hell is going on?”

Stallings saw how frightened the girl was. All he could say was, “What did he give you?”

The young girl stared at him with her mouth open.

He raised his voice to a shout. “What did you just swallow? I saw you–don’t try and hide it.” He shoved Palmer back flat on the ground, only this time left his foot on the man’s chest.

The girl started to cry.

Stallings crouched down next to the bloody pharmaceutical rep and started to pat his front pockets, reaching in the last one and pulling out a baggie. He opened it and spilled the five pills into his open hand. Each of them appeared professionally made, and they were all a solid color.

Now the girl started to sob loudly. She was able to moan, “Who are you, and why are you doing this?”

Stallings realized his shirt covered his badge and gun. Still squatting next to Palmer, he reached in his pocket, and pulled out his ID so the girl could see the badge. All he said was, “JSO.”

The girl clutched her stomach and said, “Oh my God, are you going to arrest me?

Now Stallings took a moment. Palmer was quiet, lying flat on the ground trying to keep the blood flowing from his lip and nose to the minimum. Stallings said calmly to the girl, “I saw him give you something and you put it in your mouth. What was it?”

The girl pointed at the pills in the palm of his hand and said, “Just one of those Percocets. I’m sorry–I won’t do it again. Please don’t tell my parents.”

He looked down at the five commercially produced painkillers in his hand and then at the bloodied, whimpering pharmaceutical rep and quietly said to himself, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Patty raced up. “John, what are you doing?”

Stallings took a moment to look at the bloody man, then at the very young girl, and decided he didn’t regret anything he’d done.

The sun had just risen as Stallings woke. For a few moments, as he lay still in the small bed of his rented house, he had the slightest of hopes everything had been a dream. The irrational beating of Chad Palmer. The discovery that he wasn’t distributing X. The expression on Sergeant Zuni’s face. His right hand throbbed slightly, and he saw the cuts on his knuckles where they had dug into Chad Palmer’s teeth and knew it had been no dream. He’d fucked up in a big way this time. And there was no one to blame but himself.

As soon as Yvonne Zuni had arrived at the hospital where Chad Palmer was getting stitched up, she looked at Stallings and said, “Go home until I call you.” She had taken charge, but it didn’t sound as if she cared about his reasons. The sergeant was looking at facts, and the fact was he had no right to hit Chad Palmer in the face. It didn’t matter now. He doubted he’d be working for her or anyone else at the sheriff’s office. A flood of thoughts rushed through his head. How do I tell Maria and the kids? How do I explain my behavior?
Do I need to retain an attorney? Why didn’t I kill the son of a bitch once I’d started?

He rolled over and stared at the ceiling, realizing for the first time he was still in his clothes from the night before. The whole evening was a blur for him, but he knew he’d had a late dinner, and after a brief ride near Market Street, looking for his dad, he’d come home and collapsed, the weight of the last few weeks catching up with him.

Incredibly, his cell phone hadn’t rung all night, and now he wondered if he should call the sergeant and see what kind of shit he was in. He’d never had a complaint filed against him. Most cops suffered numerous frivolous claims of brutality and excessive force. The funny thing was Stallings used his fists much more than most cops. But he knew when to hit and what to say afterward. That was the gift God had given him to carry into his chosen profession: the ability to make people like him even after he kicked their asses. But now he’d finally gone too far with the wrong guy at the wrong time.

Patty Levine didn’t like the expression on her boyfriend’s face as they shared a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts near the PMB.

Tony Mazzetti almost beamed when he said, “How much blood was there? I mean, was it from several wounds or just one massive head wound?”

“Mainly from his lips. Stall really only punched him the one time.”

“Holy shit, the nut job finally went over the edge. I knew it was just a matter of time before Mr. Squeaky Clean cracked.”

“You don’t have to be happy about it. I mean we all
work on the same squad and it wasn’t like he went postal and shot someone indiscriminately. He punched a guy giving drugs to a nineteen-year-old girl. Given his history, it didn’t seem outrageous at all.”

Mazzetti waved off her criticism. “I’m not happy about it. It’s just he tends to be a little self-righteous.”

“Why? Because he’s had to go back and rework two of your cases?”

Mazzetti looked hurt but focused on his coffee for a moment. “I’m glad you’re not in trouble with him.”

Patty didn’t know if she was in trouble or not. The whole thing had been handled very quietly. Yvonne Zuni stepped right in and was on the phone to IA immediately. Patty only caught snippets of the conversation, but it sounded as if this was how Yvonne the Terrible had gotten her nickname. She had wasted no time sending Stallings home and bringing in investigators from the internal affairs unit to handle the questioning of Chad Palmer and his young friend.

Patty had protested she should be there, but the sergeant told her she was a witness, and now all she had left to do was go home and wait till she was called back. But Patty hadn’t exactly waited. She was headed back in at nine sharp, and she didn’t intend to keep her mouth shut. Not only did she owe a lot to John Stallings, but the guy had been through too much to get crushed over something like this. She didn’t know what she could do, but she knew she couldn’t just sit at home.

He’d come by his sister’s house to say hello and maybe grab one of her really good grilled-cheese sandwiches for lunch. But he also enjoyed spending time with his nephew even if it was only watching him watch
TV. He could see their shared genetics in the boy’s keen eyes and quick movements.

But now, sitting at the counter with his sister, he faced one of the many barrages of questions she fired at him from time to time. It wasn’t an inquisition, like when his mother would clearly be worried about his outside activities. He finally realized what his mother had suspected, and he’d had no real contact with her in several years. He figured dear old mom was just as happy with that arrangement.

“I’m not saying you
have
to settle down, I was just wondering why you don’t,” his sister started. “I mean you spend most nights away from here anyway, but you never give me any clear idea of whether it’s with one girl or a hundred different ones.”

He didn’t answer directly, but he had to smile about keeping his apartment secret for so long. He’d met his landlord, Lester, at the Wildside when Lester was delivering alcohol from his beverage truck. He’d struck up a mild friendship, and Lester had offered him the detached apartment behind his house for a few hundred dollars a month. He wasn’t nosy and asked no questions, which made him a great landlord.

His sister said, “Mom worries because you live with me. I have no idea why. What happened with you two?”

“Same stuff that happens in all families. She doesn’t approve of some things I do, and I don’t give a shit.”

“She said she had a psychiatrist she wanted me to take him to"–she lowered her voice and nodded toward his nephew watching TV in the next room–"to see about expanding his vocabulary.”

He looked over at the boy and nodded his head. He didn’t talk much either when he was a kid.

His sister continued. “Of course she doesn’t have any money to help with the evaluation.”

“I got some cash if you need it.”

“You already do too much for us now. Let’s see what happens with him in the next few months, and then I’ll decide if we need to be more proactive.” She patted his hand, stood from the stool, and turned to finish making their lunch.

He sat on his stool at the kitchen counter and gazed at his nephew. The sound on the cartoon his nephew was watching was turned down to almost nothing as usual. The boy didn’t like to crowd his senses with unnecessary sights and sounds. It was quiet enough to hear the heavy trucks behind the commercial buildings on Cleveland Street. He saw a movement through the sliding glass door in the backyard. The neighbor’s cat was strolling through as if he owned the place.

He caught his nephew’s eyes tracking the cat. He didn’t move his head or show any interest other than his sharp eyes assessing the cat and the terrain.

The boy was a predator himself.

Yvonne Zuni was utterly exhausted. She’d been called out from her home shortly after Stallings had been involved in a fight outside a club in southeast Jacksonville. At least that’s how she was phrasing it to anyone she talked to today. She grabbed a few hours of sleep in her office because she wanted to head off the inevitable Internal Affairs investigation into the incident. Now, still at the PMB, she sat across from the senior IA investigator, Ronald Bell, in the small snack bar near the main entrance.

The sergeant wanted to stress the point one more time that Stallings had observed what he believed to be a serious crime and acted in the safety of himself and the female with Chad Palmer. She knew Stallings and Bell had a history and realized it had something to do with the disappearance of Stallings’s daughter a few years ago. Personally, she liked the handsome, older detective because he’d never filed an official report when she had to crack Gary Lauer in the head with an ASP. It’d been a stressful time and a stressful night. When Lauer started to scream at his pregnant girlfriend, Yvonne
Zuni had snapped. Although she liked to think she’d given him a warning, in reality she popped the ASP and swung it before she or Lauer knew it was coming.

If it hadn’t been for the nine stitches and the hospital visit, she doubted anyone at the sheriff’s office would have ever heard about the incident. Lauer was embarrassed he’d lost control, and he was embarrassed a woman half his size had knocked him off his feet and sent him to the hospital. But cops being cops, stories were told, and rumors ran rampant through the department. Finally Ronald Bell had knocked on her door and asked a few simple questions. He could’ve made it into a big deal but instead wrote it off as a personal conflict and had Lauer moved from his temporary duty assignment in narcotics back to the motor unit where he figured everyone would forget about it and Lauer would have no chance to bother anyone else while he wrote tickets on the expressways headed east from the city or any other direction to somewhere nicer.

Bell looked over his coffee at Yvonne Zuni and said, “We can probably write this whole thing off. Mr. Palmer is not interested in losing his job over distributing samples of a narcotic. We searched his house pretty carefully and all we found were other manufactured pharmaceutical samples. We found no homemade Ecstasy or any signs he ever tried to make it. This incident could be a notch in my belt, but I’m willing to let the whole thing slide for the sake of that crazy son of a bitch you call a detective.”

Yvonne knew not to say anything, but a smile crept over her face.

Bell continued, “I strongly recommend you send that unstable moron home for a few days to cool off. We can’t have him think he can get away with this kind of
shit all the time.” He rubbed his eyes and looked at Sergeant Zuni. “Even though he’s been doing it for years.”