The Perfect Prey (34 page)

Then Jason snapped his fingers and said, “I think I know where the computer is.”

“Where?”

“The company owned the laptop, so I probably took it by there and left it.”

“You mean the company in the Maxwell House building?”

Jason Ferrell nodded his head.

Patty thought back to how she and Stallings had tricked the manager the last time they were there, thinking they’d never see the man again.

Patty swallowed hard and said, “Uh oh.”

Tony Mazzetti and Christina Hogrebe sat in the front room of the Residence Inn suite where the shooting victim’s family had been held as a precaution. Now things were looking less obvious, and Mazzetti had focused his attention on the seventeen-year-old daughter of the woman he’d moved from the house. At the moment, the mother and the younger daughter were at a meeting with county social workers. The social workers were not allowed to discuss their case with the police, but Mazzetti figured the woman had to explain why none of her children had ever attended a public school and why the only one under sixteen still wasn’t in school. She might be smart enough to claim she had homeschooled them, but he doubted it.

Both he and Christina had agreed they didn’t want to make this confrontational unless they had to. So now he sat back while Christina led the girl through a series of questions.

Christina brushed her blond hair from her face, leaned toward the scrawny girl, and said, “Tosha, now you’re saying you did see a carload of white men shoot your brother and his friends?”

The girl had a sleepy quality to her voice. “I seen on the news the police was looking for white boys and it make me think, and I remembered.”

“Your first statement said it was an SUV and you couldn’t see who was inside.”

“I started remembering I seen a white arm holding one of those big black guns.” She lifted a hand to play with the same piece of hair she always did. The red highlights swirled to make one red spoke out of her unruly head.

“Would you mind coming back to the house with us?”

“Why?”

“So we can see which window you looked out of and what you saw.”

The girl said, “Can you protect me from the white people?”

Mazzetti thought,
We’re the only white people you need to worry about now.

John Stallings met Patty Levine and a surprisingly coherent Jason Ferrell at the office where he used to work deep inside the Maxwell House complex. They’d been met by the same manager with the same attitude from their last visit, during which they’d said they were going to get a subpoena but never actually bothered after the man told them what they needed to know and let Stallings glance through Jason’s address book.

The manager pointed at Jason and said, “That man no longer works here and has no right to be here.” He looked at Stallings, adjusted his gaze for the height difference, smiled, and added, “I’d be happy to talk to you, Detective, once you got a subpoena.”

Stallings said, “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding last time we met.”

“It wasn’t a misunderstanding. You lied to me. I have since been in close contact with our legal department and know I need a subpoena from the state attorney’s office, compelling me to talk to you, before I say anything else.”

“We don’t actually need to talk to you. We just need
to let Jason get some information from his laptop computer.”

“That computer is the property of this company. Neither you nor Mr. Ferrell can have access to it.” The manager picked up a single sheet of paper with typewritten instructions printed on. “For something of that nature I would require a court order or search warrant. I’m sorry it has to be this way, Detective, but you left me with no alternative after our last encounter.”

Stallings knew pricks like him got off on the minor power that occasionally came their way, and everyone loved telling the cops to go to hell when they were in no danger of going to jail. He knew better than to waste time arguing with the man and instead grabbed his cell phone and explained the situation to Yvonne Zuni. He knew she’d get someone right to work on a search warrant. He gave a description of the building and what they were looking for.

The manager said, “I’ll be happy to talk to you when you have the appropriate legal documents.” His smile was his version of a bitch slap. He started to turn to walk back to his office, obviously expecting Stallings to leave.

“Hold on, cowboy.”

The man turned back slowly to face Stallings.

“Based on the importance of the information we’re looking for and the ability for you or anyone else in this office to erase data from the laptop computer, I’m afraid I’m going to have to secure your office to keep anyone from fooling around with the computer.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Stallings leveled a stare at him and said, “Do I look like I’m joking?”

Tony Mazzetti knew this girl was about to break. His partner, Christina Hogrebe, had masterfully pushed her into changing her statement several times and now was closing the deal by getting her to see the inconsistencies. It had taken almost the entire ride from the downtown hotel back into this shitty neighborhood west of the stadium.

Now the girl was getting a look at her house for the first time in daylight. Christina paused and let the girl see the random bullet holes in the front of the house, but that wasn’t what they were counting on. They opened the front door and ducked under the crime scene tape still secured across the entrance. He flicked on the light, and immediately the dank, musty smell of blood mixed with marijuana smoke assaulted his system. The house was clearly no palace even before more than a gallon of blood was spilled on the old cement floor. No one had been back in to clean the house, and he doubted the place was valuable enough to pay the exorbitant fees professional cleaners required for messy crime scenes like this.

Christina was a pro, so she waited while the girl got a good whiff of the smell and had a moment to study the bloodstains on the floor with one bloody handprint on the wall where a young man apparently tried to sit upright.

Christina said, “So your mama and your baby sister were two houses away at your auntie’s house?”

The skinny girl nodded her head as her eyes continued to focus on the bloody corner in the room.

“And you never saw the men when they entered the house?”

This time she shook her head, still staring at the blood.

“Why didn’t your brother or his friends try to defend themselves?”

The girl shook her head.

Christina let out a long, audible sigh. This was sort of her telegraph to Mazzetti she was about to spring a trap, or at least ask a hard question. She said, “Tosha, we know what happened. We’ve got too much evidence not to come up with a clear picture of how things went down. All I need to know is why. You tell us why, and I’m sure you had your reasons, it can really help me out. Haven’t we treated you real well this whole week?”

The young girl slowly nodded her head.

Christina knew not to interrupt or hit her with another question just yet. She wanted to let what she said sink in and the girl think about it. In fact, the forensics analysis had been very contradictory. The only thing she knew was the three men were shot in the head. It had to be three quick shots because there were no signs of resistance or defensive wounds. The theory was the shooter then walked outside and sprayed the house as he left.

Now the girl shifted her gaze first to Mazzetti, then to Christina. In a very low voice she said, “It wasn’t right how they treated me. Then they started looking at my baby sister the same way. I couldn’t let that happen to her. She’s a sweet girl and she ain’t never given it up for nobody. At least I wasn’t no virgin the first time they did it to me.”

Christina looked over to Mazzetti slowly and then back to the girl. “Did they rape you?”

She shook her head. “I never told them no or nothing like that. But I didn’t want to do it either. It’s been going on three years. Since I was fourteen. And nobody done nothing about it. They didn’t even think anything
about it. If one of them got horny they jus come looking for me. Even my own brother.”

Mazzetti knew they had to get her on tape and video as soon as possible. But he also wanted to let her tell the whole story and maybe even lead them to the guns.

Christina wrapped an arm around her shoulder as the girl started to sob. “It’s okay. They were wrong doing that to you.” Then Christina showed why she deserved to be in the homicide unit. Without missing a beat, still in the tone of a concerned parent, she said, “Where’d you hide the gun? We gotta find it before some kid gets hurt by accident.” She kept her arm around the girl, murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

After a minute of crying and wiping her face on Christina’s pretty blouse, the girl looked up and said, “I buried two guns and some cash in the backyard.”

In the office of the small waste-management company housed in the Maxwell House building, John Stallings looked across at Patty Levine and Jason Ferrell sitting quietly in the corner of the reception area. He and the manager had come to an agreement that no one would enter Ferrell’s former office until the search warrant arrived. Sergeant Zuni had grabbed a couple of detectives, written a quick warrant, and was getting it signed by a judge now. The delay annoyed Stallings, but he didn’t think he’d get much more information than he already had.

Ferrell was a complete space cadet and said he never knew any customer’s last name. If it weren’t for the information he’d provided on Mazzetti’s triple shooting they’d probably be booking him into the county jail right now. But the laptop was evidence, and Stallings
didn’t want to risk losing anything that might help to determine if a serial killer was working the spring break crowd. And he still thought the killer might be Gary Lauer. It’d take him a long time to get past his idea cops were above crimes like that. Most people based their perception of police on news reports of bad cops usually in distant cities. No one ever took into account what a small percentage of the total profession that represented. Stallings knew it took a certain calling and attitude to make it through the police academy, let alone your first few years on the road. It was inconceivable to him that a cop could stray so far from his pledge to serve and protect.

Patty quietly nodded off next to Jason, and Stallings realized she had not really been to sleep since yesterday. Jason Ferrell sat quietly as he looked around the room, his eyes a little clearer than the day before.

Stallings’s phone rang, and he dug it out of his pocket. “John Stallings.”

Yvonne Zuni’s voice was clear. “We’re on the way with the warrant.

“Good. We need to get Patty home for some rest.”

The sergeant’s tone changed. “John …” She was very measured and careful as she continued. “I just got a call from Ronald Bell.”

Stallings didn’t like the sound of that. He wondered what had happened now and if he was about to be punished for one of his many steps outside the policy book. Cautiously he said, “Yes?”

“He’s at the scene of a suicide.” She paused again.

Stallings’s heartbeat increased and he felt sick to his stomach. Immediately he thought of Maria and the stress she’d been under with the separation and her
fight to stay clean. It felt like an hour before Yvonne Zuni said anything else.

“Gary Lauer put a bullet in his brain at his girlfriend’s apartment. No note, no last phone calls. I think all the guilt was starting to get to him.”

Stallings muttered, “Thanks,” and absently closed the phone and tucked it back into his pocket. He looked across at Patty and Jason. It wasn’t worth waking Patty, and Jason wouldn’t know who he was talking about. So he didn’t say a word. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it either. This did seem to point to the fact that Lauer was involved with the other girls’ deaths as well as feeling responsible for his girlfriend’s suicide. Maybe Stallings’s little pep talk had gotten through to him. Some part of Stallings felt relief at the news, and that made him feel guilty. Cops had a hard enough life and committed suicide too often for him to feel satisfied he’d pushed someone to do it instead of making a case on him. It was a complex situation about which no one would have any good feelings. Even if Lauer had distributed X and was responsible for the spring breakers’ deaths. This would leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.

By the time the search warrant arrived at the small office it was dark outside and Patty Levine felt as if she were in a dream. She caught a quick nap sitting upright in the lobby, but now, with the sergeant and Stallings watching Jason Ferrell access his computer, she couldn’t even consider going home. She’d been shocked when Stallings told her about Gary Lauer’s suicide. She was so tired she didn’t know how she felt about it

Jason tapped away on the keyboard, and, like a teenager whose parents were amazed by his skill, he couldn’t help but show off some of his security measures to Stallings. After a minute, the formula to the Ecstasy appeared on the wide screen.

Stallings said, “You can show me that stuff later, Jason–we’re seizing the whole computer. I just want to make sure we’re not missing something on your client list.”

Jason nodded as if that sounded good to him and opened the client list.

Stallings, staring over his shoulder, gave a visible start and said, “Jesus Christ, that’s your list?”

Jason nodded pleasantly.

Patty walked from the side to take a position behind Jason and see what Stallings’s excitement was about. It only took a second to see what had grabbed his interest.

Stallings said, “Jason, you didn’t tell us you had each of their cell phone numbers next to their names.”

“I didn’t know it mattered.”

“We can find out the last name if we have their cell phone number.”

“Really? You can do that kind of stuff?”

That’s when Stallings didn’t answer and Patty knew why. He lifted his hand and put his finger under the third name on the list. He leaned in close to see the name again and said to Jason, “Describe this man to me.”