The Perfect Woman (16 page)

Stallings didn’t know why they were meeting in the lieutenant’s office. He felt that the information he’d gotten from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children needed to get out to the whole task force. Instead, he, Mazzetti, Lieutenant Hester, and the temporary homicide sergeant were sitting around Rita Hester’s elegant dark oak conference table.

The printout of the newest victim from the National Center lay in the middle of the table. Her name was Trina Ester. She’d run away from home in Ohio ten months earlier and had made no contact with her family. She’d been a good student, involved in school, then, around the midway point of her junior year, she showed signs of drug use: lethargy, disconnection with her family, mood swings, slipping grades. Her mother’s efforts to help her were met with defiance, and she made a choice to run for greener pastures. Stallings sadly knew that there was no such thing.

Mazzetti shook his head, “Can you believe this guy’s fucking luck?”

The lieutenant scowled at him, then turned back to Stallings. “You did a great job identifying her, Stall. The analysts were going to start scouring the country today. We had them pretty bogged down with local leads from the community college yesterday. The media doesn’t have the first clue about our resources and passes on that ignorance to the general public. They think we can snap our fingers for DNA or have enough people to cover every lead in a few minutes.” She shook her head. “I wish we were allowed to punch those assholes at Channel Eleven.”

Stallings just nodded, but sensed something else was going on in the room. They weren’t just here because of his ID of the victim.

The lieutenant sighed and said, “Stall, you got any idea how the media knew we were at the community college?”

He shook his head and said, “My guess is someone out there called it in.”

“That would be my guess too except that you were mentioned as the lead on this case. You by name.” Her voice took a slight rise in volume at the end.

“What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking. Detective Stallings, did you have any contact with the media in reference to this case?”

“No.” He knew not to elaborate. Just as he knew Rita Hester’s code for him to keep his mouth shut was to start a sentence with his title. On the street she used to say, “Officer Stallings, did we take a two-hour lunch?” in front of a sergeant and he knew not to fess up. There were times to admit things and times to keep your mouth shut. Right now he had nothing to admit to but knew this inquiry was serious.

Mazzetti slapped the table. “Bullshit. This has your name written all over it.”

Stallings ignored the excited detective and turned toward the lieutenant. “Is that all you needed me for?”

“You got any new leads?”

“I’m looking for a prescription drug dealer named Ernie.”

“You’ll keep Detective Mazzetti fully informed?”

“I have so far, haven’t I, Tony?” He contained a smile.

“I guess.”

The lieutenant said, “Can we support you in any way?” She gave him a slight smile to tell him she was enjoying torturing Tony Mazzetti a little.

“Yes, ma’am. Can I take Patty with me?”

Mazzetti sprang to his feet. “No, you fucking can’t.” His voice had more of an edge than usual.

The lieutenant said, “What Mazzetti means is that she’s on another assignment. She’s on her way to Gainesville to discuss some forensic aspects of the case.”

Stallings nodded, not asking for another partner. If he couldn’t have Patty he preferred to be left alone.

Patty Levine had driven her county-issued Ford Freestyle down 301 from I-10 to Gainesville earlier in the morning, saving a few extra minutes to have coffee with her gymnastics coach from her days on the team ten years ago. Unlike academic advisers in other areas, gymnastics coaches were never too disappointed you didn’t find a job in the field. Any occupation where you always peak before your twentieth birthday is a dead end anyway. Coaches are usually happy to see their former athletes healthy and happy and in this case she would’ve liked Patty to be married and having children by now, but she hid the disappointment about as well as Patty’s mother. It showed, but didn’t hurt their relationship.

Patty was a success in a field where it could be hard for a woman to excel. That success gave her a satisfaction most people missed in life. She knew what her mom and others expected, but she’d start a family when she was ready. Right now she liked how she could focus on an investigation and make a name for herself at the S.O. When the time was right she’d focus on her personal life, and she knew she’d be just as good of a mother as she was a cop.

For a change Patty didn’t openly flinch at the line of questions about her love life. She’d been on a date last night for the first time in months. She ate real food at a real restaurant. She’d even kissed a man she found attractive. There was some regret at ending the evening right there and sending the puppy dog–faced Tony Mazzetti home after a five-minute-long good-night kiss. He obviously wanted to stay but had been a gentleman and took a gracious exit. Patty noted that he hadn’t called her yet today. His tough luck.

The chat with her former coach had brought up enough unpleasant memories of competitions that she took a Xanax with her second cup of coffee. The way things were going at work and at night, she didn’t even think about weaning herself from the pills just now. She realized it took more and more Ambien to knock her out at night, and that concerned her, but she felt as if she had a handle on everything else.

After wandering around the campus she had known so well, she found Williamson Hall across Stadium Road from Florida Field, known as the “Swamp” to every college football fan in the country. She’d spent many Saturday nights in the Swamp, her mood tied to the football team, like every other student caught up in the fall exercise in futility. No matter how much she cheered, win or lose, she discovered the Gators football record had very little impact on her life.

After asking several receptionists and students, Patty found the office of Jonas Fuller, one of the foremost experts on particles and commercial geological issues. Or as the detectives back at the office called him, “The sand guy.” Now she sat across from him with the two vials containing a few specks of sand each that had been sent down here as soon as they were collected from the last victim Monday.

The fifty-five-year-old professor had the tough, weather-beaten look of a man who had spent his life in the hot tropical sun of some country rich in geologic history. She could almost picture him in an Indiana Jones hat with a bullwhip wrapped in a tight ring on his belt.

The lean older man smirked and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cop that looks like you.”

“I guess you’ve never been to Jacksonville and crossed my patrol zone.”

He let out a laugh and stood up, showing his loose shirt and muscular forearms. “I usually do this kind of consulting for free. I like to work out fees in different ways.” He eased to the end of the table. “I can say without a doubt that these two separate sources of the particles are from the same area. It’s an ornamental sand produced in Racine, Wisconsin. I put all the manufacturing information in my report.” He stepped around the corner of the table and crept up next to Patty, who remained silent and still in her chair.

She could smell his cologne and feel the heat of his body as he leaned his face down parallel to hers. “Now it’s your job to find a way to get the report from me without costing your department a dime. Any ideas?”

Patty thought about this creep around freshmen coeds and what John Stallings would do to him. It made her shudder a little. She wasn’t Stall and didn’t always agree with his methods. She liked to teach people lessons another way.

She turned and said, “I’m not sure I catch your meaning, Grandpa. Do you mean like you want me to rub your bunions or help you trim the hair in your ears?” She could feel the heat from his face as it flushed red.

The professor stood, tried to compose himself, walked stiffly back to his side of the table opposite her, and said, “No, that’s quite all right. Sorry for any misunderstanding.” He slid across a three-page stapled report and added, “My bet would be the sand came from a big distributor like Home Depot or Lowe’s.”

Patty stood and smiled. “Thanks so much, Professor Fuller.”

“No, it was my pleasure, really.” He started to run his fingers through his long gray hair, then stopped short, realizing how Patty viewed him.

She said, “I’ll make sure you’re recognized for your work.”

“Anything to assist the police.”

Patty couldn’t help it and started to laugh out loud as she walked through the door to the front of the building. She had another lead.

William Dremmel tried not to act any differently toward Lori while he sorted bottles of newly arrived pills, but she was clearly uncomfortable around him right now. He had made it through most of the morning when she finally appeared in the back like a ghost. No noise or warning.

“Have you asked your waitress friend out yet?”

He played dumb. “Who?”

“That cute little curvy thing at the sports bar.”

“Oh, her. I like the food at the bar, but that’s it. Why? Did you think I wanted to go out with her?”

“Don’t treat me like an idiot, Billy. I can sense that kind of stuff. I always could. I know when people are made for each other. I know when married couples are gonna divorce. And I know you got a thing for Stacey the waitress.”

“You even remembered her name. Good for you. But I have no intention of asking her out.” He looked up at her and missed her usual smile. “Can you tell when
you’ve
met the right person?”

“No, it doesn’t work on me. I’ve made more bad choices than President Bush. But I thought…”

“What’d you think?”

She turned. “I got someone at my register. I gotta go.”

He felt relief at her sudden exit because his life was complicated enough without juggling a relationship with a conscious woman.

Stallings threw a plain, blue Windbreaker on to cover his gun and badge on his hip. He could’ve concealed them better, but he wasn’t undercover, just not advertising that he was a cop. This was where “Ernie” the prescription pusher was supposed to hang out as well as a good-sized group of street kids. In the light jacket’s pocket he had photographs of the dead girls. This was his specialty: missing girls. He’d turn up something.

He parked his unmarked county Impala in the vast, crowded lot of the Gateway Shopping Center and started walking over to Carlton Street. Although most of the homeless people didn’t hang out on the actual street, Stallings knew there were a number of camps in the bushes and brush just off the road as well as a couple of houses in the area that attracted street people for different reasons. He knew because he had entered several of them over the past two years looking for runaways.

A group of eight young people were gathered near the road in front of a house known for its drug traffic and high occupancy. He heard the young man closest to him say, “Look out, it’s a cop.”

There was some movement, then a female voice said, “Don’t worry, it’s Detective Stall. He’s looking for someone and it’s none of us.”

Stallings eased up to the crowd and smiled. “Hey, Sallie.”

“Hey, Stall. Who you looking for?”

“All I got is a couple of photos.” Some of the others had backed away from him. A tall, wiry youth had eased back to the house. Stallings took a moment to memorize his face and clothing. Anyone moving away from him like that needed a second look. It might even be Ernie, but he didn’t want a dustup out here, so he let the youth leave. He pulled out the photographs of Trina Ester and Lee Ann Moffitt and gave them to Sallie to pass around the crowd. A request to look at the pictures coming from her was more productive than if he had sent them around. All he needed was someone who knew them and saw them get in a car.

After a few minutes and a decent examination by everyone, Sallie looked back up at him. The leathery skin around her eyes and neck showed how the sun had aged her the last couple of years. He had once thought she was a runaway; now the street dweller looked more like the mother of a runaway.

Sallie said, “Nope, none of us has seen either of them. These girls look a little older than your usual runaways.”

“I’m helping out on another case. Someone killed these two. I don’t want him to get the chance to hurt anyone else.”

Someone muttered, “Bullshit.”

Sallie got right in the pudgy young man’s pimply face. “Back off, Kyle. Stall says he’s trying to help, he’s trying to help.”

“Thanks, Sallie.” He looked toward the small, flat-roofed house. “Who’s inside?”

“Just a few of the boys. They don’t get out much.”

“I better say ‘hey’ anyway.” He had started toward the house when Sallie called to him.

“Darryl Paluk is in there.”

He waved and nodded, appreciating the heads-up, but kept his steady pace to the front door. At the door he paused and mumbled, “Is this the day that changes my life?” Stallings knocked, then turned the handle and immediately opened the door and stepped in. The smell of pot smoke almost knocked him off his feet. The haze was so thick that sunlight coming in behind him barely made it to the nasty Oriental-style rug in the front room.

Darryl Paluk sprang up from a La-Z-Boy with surprising speed for such a muscular man. Then, as soon as he was standing, he relaxed.

“It’s just Stall. You said a cop was out front.”

Stallings looked over at the person Darryl was talking to. It was the same guy who’d slipped away. Stallings handed the photographs to Darryl, but kept his eyes on the young man. “You seen either of these girls?”

Darryl took the photos and studied them before handing them to a near-comatose Latin man sitting on the couch next to him.

Stallings pointed to the man he was interested in. “What’s your name, son?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.” He stepped closer.

“Ernie.”

“Ernie what?”

Ernie stood up from the couch. “Why?”

Stallings looked at him. He wasn’t used to queries like “why,” and he didn’t want to give up that Peep Morans had identified him.

Darryl shot Ernie a glare and said, “Chill out, man. He’d have already popped you if he was gonna.”

Stallings nodded to the big, dark-skinned man. “How’s the nose, anyway, Darryl?”

“Feels okay, but now I snore. You think if you hit me just the right way you’d set it back the way it was?”

“Hate to risk making it worse.”

“I guess.” The big man rubbed his nose. “Taught me to hide a runaway. Never do it again, I swear.”

Stallings turned back to Ernie, but before he could say anything, the trim, young man bolted to the back of the small house.

By the time Stallings rushed to see where he was headed, all that pointed to the man’s exit was the open rear door swaying in the breeze and more sunshine cutting through the smoke.

Tony Mazzetti fumed as he sorted through a stack of leads that had come into the office since the news had started covering the killings. His anger stemmed from that news coverage. Not that there was coverage, but that they said John Stallings was the lead on the case. Then to have that asshole deny it and the L.T. let him slide. No one ever called that guy on his bullshit. From kicking someone’s ass on the road to the disappearance of his daughter, there were questions that hung over him like storm clouds, but no one ever came down on him. It couldn’t be just that everyone liked him. Mazzetti knew he wasn’t too well liked, but that’s because he put the job first. Someone had to. But what kind of magic did Stallings have that kept him safe?

He took a moment to catch his breath. One of the problems was that he hadn’t gone to the gym this morning. He had steam he hadn’t blown off. Since he’d stopped using muscle-building supplements, he had hit the gym twice as hard. He didn’t want anyone to notice him shrinking. He didn’t want to end up looking like his uncle Vinnie, all hunched over and frail.

His mind was usually on work. This was a change. Everyone had problems. For the first time in a couple of years Mazzetti worried about one of his personal problems and he knew the role his sexual history had played in his predicament. His anger was only partly due to Stallings’s grab for glory.

He snatched his cell phone from the holder on his shiny leather belt and flipped through until he saw Patty Levine’s number. He felt a lift just looking at her name. Last night was the first night in a long time that he didn’t want to be so exhausted all he could do was fall asleep. Holding Patty in his arms, feeling her hard, small body against his, even if it was only outside her door, made him forget about work for a few minutes and gave him a glimpse of what other guys search for so desperately.

But now he didn’t want to look weak and annoying, so he set the phone back on the table. A few minutes later when it rang, he pounced, hoping that Patty had made the call to him. He could picture her on her way to UF to talk to the geologist. It may not be the lead that broke the case but neither would the stack of leads he held in his hands right now. Like any huge case with public interest they’d have to cover everything.

With so many real police stories on every channel from truTV to Bravo, juries expected all sorts of investigative tasks completed. It was no longer enough to follow the good leads. You had to follow up on the weak ones as well. Not only did a cop have to prove a suspect was guilty, but he had to prove no one else is guilty too. It had become a game of being able to say that no one suspect was looked at too hard until there was evidence. This was a catch-22, because it was hard to develop evidence without looking at a suspect really hard.

He slapped his hand onto the pile of lead sheets and sighed. No one was around the Land That Time Forgot right now because he had them out on all kinds of tips. No matter how fast things were rolling or how much praise he was getting from the bosses, he couldn’t shake his jealousy, and he knew that’s what it was, of John Stallings.

If only he could catch the guy passing on info to the media. Then he’d get the credit he deserved.

Stallings didn’t chase people on foot anymore. He preferred to use his car and head them off like he had Peep Morans. It was unseemly for a detective of his age and experience to run. But it was more than that. It used to be suspects stopped when confronted by a police officer. Now people acted edgier. He didn’t know if the street cops were tougher on people or the courts easier. Either way he hadn’t had two people run from him in the same week in years.

He’d caught a glimpse of Ernie as he cut through the scraggly bushes in the rear of the house. It’d be a matter of time before Ernie returned to the house, but Stallings didn’t have that kind of time.

He walked back to the shopping center and picked up his car, then headed east to the last remaining topless bar on the road. Pulling into the Venus Fly Trap, he parked directly in front of the door, then popped out as the top-heavy doorman rumbled off his stool to challenge him.

“This ain’t no valet, Holmes.” The giant black man stopped short and said, “Hey Detective, what’re you doing here?”

“Relax, Terry,” said Stallings, walking toward the door. “I’m not here for an underaged dancer. I’m looking for a guy that just ran from me.”

The big man backed away and opened the door for him.

Stallings patted him on the arm and said, “Did a tall, thin fella come in here in the last ten minutes?”

“Yes sir. He’s in there now.”

“Thanks, Terry. Just wait here. I won’t be too long.”

The doorman nodded and quickly slipped back onto his stool by the front door.

Inside, Stallings paused a minute by the front door so his eyes could adjust to the dark room with lights above the two small stages. The bartender looked up and smiled. “Hey, Stall.”

He nodded to the older, topless woman all the girls called “Auntie Lynn.”

On stage an agile young lady held herself upside down on the pole. She saw him, smiled, and waved from her awkward angle. He could see three heads in the audience. Two were small Latin men, but the third looked around nervously. As soon as he saw Stallings, Ernie sprang up and headed for the rear of the building.

Stallings darted toward the exit to cut him off, but before he could reach the man, a large round tray flew from behind the bar and struck the fleeing man in the head, knocking him onto the hard cement floor.

Stallings stopped, looked over at the bar, and said, “Thanks, Auntie Lynn.”

“If you were chasing him, he must be an asshole.”