The Perfect Woman (8 page)

John Stallings knew the town pretty well. The city of Jacksonville was traditionally good to visitors. It was essentially a Southern town both geographically and culturally. But it had a severe inferiority complex. The industry wasn’t large enough to support the town alone. Tourism wasn’t nearly as strong here as in South Florida, and the climate made it a lot more like Georgia than Florida. Jacksonville wanted to be a shining star in the Sunshine State, but felt more like a traffic tie-up on the way to Disney World.

The city dumped tax dollars into image control, hosting the Super Bowl, promoting the Jaguars and the annual Florida-Georgia game at the Alltel Stadium, which used to be called the Gator Bowl, but no one wanted to talk about the homeless and runaways who had to pretty much fend for themselves.
BusinessWeek
magazine listed J-Ville as one of the saddest cities in America based on stats like cloudy skies, crime and suicide rates, and unemployment.

John Stallings had spent a few hours checking some of the places that attracted runaways. It wasn’t like the old movies or stupid TV shows where everything happened at the bus station. Hell, the Greyhound terminal in Jacksonville on Pearl Street was relatively clean and comfortable, and it took people to other places. Teens who had left home were either gone or had come to Jacksonville from somewhere else. Finding runaways while at a transit point was like finding supermodels at the deli.

Teens who lived out on the street had hangouts. There was an old, abandoned hospital that homeless people found ways into and used as a shelter. Houses that offered some security either by an understanding adult or sometimes quietly by some foundation that figured having the teens safe was better than letting them loose on the streets, where they always ran into trouble. These safe houses may not contact parents or get the kids back home, but they were better than nothing. There was a place called the Trinity Rescue Mission that did a good job of looking after the homeless.

Years ago Stallings viewed them as an impediment to investigations, a group who thought they were above the law. He believed that teens should be dragged home if found and these safe houses were sending the wrong message. Part of that was hearing his father complain about Helen while she was gone and believing that she was better off with the family. Now he had the opposite sentiment and even tried to throw a little cash their way when he could. It was funny how his view of the world had evolved in the last few years.

Stallings had learned what it took for a sixteen-year-old to fend for herself and where she might do it. He also learned that it took a long time to build up trust with this subculture and shuddered at the thought of that idiot Mazzetti blundering into it thinking he could use his size and commanding voice to scare people into talking to the cops.

But Stallings knew better than to ignore the call to a meeting on the case just after lunch. Most meetings were useless and just a way for someone to show they could call a meeting to tell other cops things they already knew. Stallings had to admit that in this case he was interested in what they already knew and who was going to do the legwork.

Rita Hester had told him his role, but he wondered if they would abuse Patty. She was a sharp and tough detective, but also junior in the D-bureau. Patty’s looks could be deceiving, and he hoped the macho homicide dicks didn’t stick her on menial, worthless tasks. He wanted her to see if this was the kind of work she was interested in, and if she wanted to move on from missing persons, he’d support her. He was her partner; that was his job.

At the top of the staircase leading to the “D-bureau” or detective bureau, a tall road patrol sergeant named Rick Ellis stopped him.

“Stall, what’s shakin’?”

Stallings shook the bearlike hand and said, “I’m up in homicide for a little while.”

“I haven’t seen so many guys up in the Land That Time Forgot since Cernick was on the loose.”

Stallings looked down, not sure what to say. He didn’t know how public the task force was yet.

Ellis’s eyes popped larger. “Jesus, don’t tell me we got us another serial killer.” A good cop read between the lines, and Ellis was a damn good cop.

“I don’t know exactly what’s going on yet, Rick.”

“Days like this I’m glad to be working traffic and patrol. Let me know if I need to pass something on to my troops.”

“I promise.”

As they started to head in opposite directions the uniformed sergeant said, “You look good, Stall. I’m glad to see you’re back in the game.”

Stallings sat at his desk, writing down a few phone numbers as Tony Mazzetti prepared to address the group of detectives by looking down at a few pages of notes. Someone had already cleaned the sand out of his drawers and his few personal belongings were arranged on the desk next to the computer that looked like something out of the
Flintstones
. It resembled a stained, off-white boulder with a rounded, green screen. He never had a lot of things to move around whenever he changed units at the S.O.—a photo of the whole family from a trip to Six Flags four years ago, an old-style Rolodex with business cards and little notes crammed into it, and a penholder with a soccer ball that was a thank-you from Charlie’s team he coached last fall. It said, “Coach John. You Rock.” It might have been his most cherished possession.

The low ceilings and stained fiber panels that hung between dim fluorescent lights made Mazzetti’s clean, crisp suit look impressive. The other eleven detectives took life in the Land That Time Forgot more casually. Patty and the other two female detectives had on jeans and professional blouses. One of them, Christina Hogrebe, or “Hoagie,” as she was commonly known, wore a pullover with the JSO badge and her name embroidered on the left chest.

The male detectives seemed to pattern themselves after Mazzetti, only with less taste and cash to throw into their wardrobes. Short-sleeve shirts with cheap polyester ties were the average, with Stallings at the low end of the scale in a simple polo shirt. What he needed to do on the case didn’t involve undercover or trying to impress anyone with his clothing.

Mazzetti began, “We’ve got a lot of forensics and lab work to decipher. So far we’ve found some black cat hair that may match on both victims. There are other factors that might tie the victims together.”

Someone called out, “Like what?”

“Their size, for one thing. Both women were five feet give or take an inch and a little over a hundred pounds. That may mean a lot.” His dark eyes scanned the room to see if anyone had any theories to throw out there. “I think it might mean this guy has his own height complex. That may be how he targets his victims. The fact that both victims were found stuffed inside some kind of luggage is also a detail that connects them.”

A lean, hard-nosed guy named Luis Martinez, pulled in from auto theft, said, “What’s with the first victim? I didn’t even realize we had another homicide like it.”

Mazzetti fumbled. “I-I,” he paused, took a moment, then said, “we were handling it quietly.” He cut his eyes to the silent Rita Hester sitting at the rear of the main group of detectives, but she didn’t offer any help. “That’s not important anymore. What’s vital is that we’re all on the same sheet of music and hit these leads hard.”

Stallings chuckled quietly, knowing the subject of how Detective Perfect screwed up would not go away. If anything, as the case wore on it would become more of a concern and subject to scrutiny.

Mazzetti looked down at his notes. “Right now we’re just gonna call this a homicide case. No nicknames or operations.”

Martinez said, “C’mon, Tony, I already had a perfect name for the investigation.”

Mazzetti sighed, “Okay, Luis, I’ll bite. What do you want to call it?”

“Son of Samsonite.”

The laughter around the squad bay was typical of cops who were exposed to the worst of society everyday. They could make jokes at horrific crime scenes, laugh at car accidents, and basically ignore things that would drive the average person insane, but for Stallings that shit had gone by the wayside a few years ago. He wanted to hit the street and find who had killed these girls. He wanted to start right this fucking minute, before the killer had a chance to strike again. He didn’t have time for jokes anymore.

He raised his hand and said, “Tony, now that we know about the linked deaths, what are we gonna do about it?”

“Good, at least someone is ready to get out there.” He looked down and started writing a few comments on his note pages. “We gotta see if we can identify someone named ‘Jamais.’ Moffit had his name tattooed on her upper right shoulder.” He pointed at a few detectives. “You guys are gonna fan out through the city.” He turned to another pair of detectives. “You two are going to check tattoo parlors to see if anyone local drew it.” After a few more assignments he looked at Patty Levine. “I need you to see if you can track down the manufacturer of the luggage to see if there is any way to get an angle on it that way.

“We’ve got a mountain of other things. Each of you has a photo of the first victim. We’re putting a drawing of her out to the media today. We gotta find a name to go with the body.” They often used the drawings of photographs to spare showing a dead body on TV, especially if there was a family out there that was unaware of the death. He clapped his hands. “Let’s get to work.”

Stallings stood up from his desk and grabbed his beat-up pad folio. Mazzetti stepped right over to him. In a quiet voice that made his slow speech more labored, he said, “No bullshit, Stall. You need to keep me filled in on anything you come up with.”

“Do you want to catch this guy as fast as possible?”

Mazzetti nodded and said, “More than anything.”

“Then I’ll keep you completely filled in.”

John Stallings didn’t usually work after sunset, at least for the Sheriff’s Office. He worked at providing his kids with a comfortable place to grow up. He worked at keeping the pressure off Maria so she could stay sober if not completely sane. He coached soccer, drove Lauren and her friends to gymnastics, and generally lived the life he had taken for granted years before.

But tonight he was on the street with a real purpose.

The analyst in the detective bureau had tried searching for anyone named Jamais arrested for procurement in the last five years but came up dry. This was a long shot like most leads on a big case, but it was real, and Stallings knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he didn’t make an effort to find this guy and see what he had to say.

The other detectives were searching for Jamais as if it were a competition, and they all seemed to play by the same rules, looking in the same kinds of places, talking to the same kind of people in the same stupid, cop way. It was more like talking
at
someone. There wasn’t one working girl on Arlington Avenue who would admit to knowing Jamais to one of the homicide guys if they didn’t have a reason to. And no one had a reason to give up someone to the cops. Not in J-ville or any other town with a street community. Talking to the cops was bad for business and bad for your health. That was why Stallings decided to go at this in a slightly different way, only talking to people he already knew—specifically former runaways who had reached eighteen and still lived on the street.

He headed into the Springfield area because he happened to know that Lee Ann Moffit had hung in the central Jacksonville neighborhood a lot. One of the times he found her she’d been in a house on North Liberty Street.

Prostitutes walking the streets were not as obvious as when he started on patrol as a green twenty-three-year-old. Back in those days of unbridled enthusiasm and endless energy he’d arrest prostitutes and their clients parked in the rear of Publix shopping centers or in dark, quiet parks. Slowly he started to prioritize his duties, and prostitution usually didn’t rank up there with robberies or drive-by shootings in his daily professional life. But Stallings, like most cops, had a particular distaste for pimps. The popular stereotype of a flamboyant, benevolent manager could not be further from the truth. The world of street prostitution is filled with violence and mistrust. Pimps essentially enslave women, usually young women, and use threats of all kinds to keep the girls out working and giving them the lion’s share of the money.

Rolling into the lot of a shopping plaza that shut down at sunset, he waited like all lonely and desperate men did who were looking for a woman. He knew that parked here in the innocuous, unmarked Impala he’d probably have a lead on this Jamais in a few hours. This was an area where Stallings had spent a lot of time. He’d know someone on the prowl.

The activity on the street, which might not be obvious to the average driver, blinked like a neon sign to cops. The three men sitting on a bus bench were selling crack to a specific group that knew who they were and what they were doing. An undercover couldn’t buy from them because the dealers wouldn’t know them. A man sitting in a car across the lot was looking for a prostitute. A young man on a park bench across the street was available for sex. It was a parallel universe to normal life that most people chose to ignore and Stallings liked to avoid at this stage in his career. He didn’t want to think that his oldest daughter might be part of this subculture in some other city.

After fifteen minutes of sitting in the car with the windows down, he had ignored two different women because he didn’t know them. They were older than the crowd he had caught as runaways and he didn’t want to broadcast what he was doing if the likelihood of success wasn’t good.

Finally a young woman approached the car slowly, high heels slowing her progress over the uneven asphalt, sounding like an old telegraph, tapping out an uncertain message. She leaned into his open window and said, “Hey there…” Then stood up, “Oh shit, Stall.”

Stallings eased out of the car so the girl wouldn’t start running in those high heels and break her leg.

“Don’t worry, Tabitha. I’m looking for someone. You’re not done for the night yet.”

She placed her hand over her large fake breasts and smiled. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were a real cop.”

Stallings smiled at the comment. Many of the young people Stallings looked for in missing persons got to know him as a person, not just a cop. He always talked to them before bringing them into a shelter or back to their parents. It was as much for him and his efforts to understand his own Jeanie as it was to help the kids. But they realized he was doing what he thought was best for them and they told their friends. After three years in the missing persons unit, he had a network in the city unlike any other cop. He may not have been able to work drug cases with informants like this, but he damn sure could find anyone that was in the city whether they wanted to be found or not.

Stallings said, “What’re you doin’ out here anyway? I thought you were dancing over near Fernandina.”

“I lost the gig and can’t renew my adult entertainment license yet.”

“Why not?”

She hesitated.

“I won’t do anything, just curious.”

She nodded and said, “I got paper on me.”

“What for?”

“Possession, failure to appear.”

“Why didn’t you go to court, Tabby? You’re smarter than that.”

“Just got caught up in things. I’m gonna take care of it, I swear.”

He shook his head. “I’m out here because I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“All I have is a name—Jamais.”

She thought about it, her pretty face running through the database of names and aliases she’d learned while living in Jacksonville. Finally she shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

He made a note, then looked back at the young woman and noticed the makeup covering a mark on her neck. “What’s that from?”

She looked at the ground.

“Tabby, I’ve known you since you were sixteen. Tell me what happened.”

“I was light on the take Monday night. My manager wasn’t too happy about it.”

“Who’s your manager?”

She looked up at him. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Who is it?”

“Davey Lambert.”

Stallings knew the name and could picture the atypical pimp. He wasn’t known for his rough stuff and had some kind of computer sideline. He combined the two professions to become the wealthy king of Internet prostitution.

“Why’s Davey got you out on the street? I thought he only worked online?”

“He had trouble with someone and they knocked Davey off-line for a while.”

“Knocked him off-line? How?”

“Smashed up all his computers, tried to burn down that house he owns over on Beaver Street. He always thought it was funny selling pussy from a house on a street named Beaver.” She still had an engaging smile.

“Hysterical.”

“He ain’t so bad.”

Stallings looked at her. “C’mon, Tabby. You were light, so he choked you.”

“I’m tellin’ you, Stall, it wasn’t nothin’.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m gonna kick his ass.”

She smiled. “And you won’t tell him it was me?”

“You know better than that.”

She hesitated but not for long. Her smile spread at the thought of her pimp meeting up with someone like Stallings. “He’s at the house now trying to get the computers up and running. And he’s plenty pissed off. That’s why this happened.” She pointed to her discolored neck.

Stallings smiled, handed her half the cash in his pocket, and said, “Take the night off, Tabby. Your manager is going on vacation.”

William Dremmel stopped at a Wendy’s off Beaver Street after the pharmacy closed at nine. It had been a quiet night, and he’d spent the last three hours organizing one of the storerooms and tossing the newspapers and magazines that the vendors didn’t pick up after the periodicals were out of date. He liked that kind of work because it gave him a chance to acquire different pharmaceuticals for his experiments. No one noticed while he rooted around in the rear with crushed cardboard boxes. He could easily open a commercial tube of Percocet and Oxycontin while he was in the secure controlled-substance area because the fat pharmacist never bothered to lock up like he should.

He also got his pick of three-month-old magazines, so tonight he grabbed two copies of
Muscle and Fitness
and a
Playboy
that featured the “Girls of the Southeast Conference.”

Now he lingered over a Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich hoping his mother would be fast asleep by the time he got home. Sitting in the grubby fast-food joint, watching the diverse parade of humanity stroll through, gave Dremmel a sense of his own accomplishments. These poor slobs would never get the chance for a decent education or to advance science like him.

Outside the wide glass window he watched a roach scurry along the metal frame. This was not the part of town where the nicer restaurants stayed open long or the young business crowds gathered for a drink after work. This was the kind of area he would find a test subject some day. But it was someone inside that caught his attention. One of the workers had slipped out from the back with a burger and fries, eating quietly in the corner. She looked up and caught him staring. Even in the frumpy uniform he saw her perfect, small frame and cute, wide face. She had brown eyes with thick brows, and her hair had six or seven different colors dyed into it. On one side were patches of blue and pink and the other had white, red, and yellow. A rat-tail–like length in the back was pure black.

Instead of looking away when she saw him or ignoring him like most women would, she smiled, displaying the line of bright, if not completely straight, teeth. Dimples formed at each corner of her mouth. Then she said, “You work over at the pharmacy, right?”

Dremmel was surprised and just nodded. “I work at different branches on different days.” How had this girl slipped into his store and he not have noticed her?

She picked up her tray and ambled over to him, plopping in the other seat at the tiny tabletop. “I’ve seen you behind the counter a couple of times when I’m checking out up front.”

“So you’ve never come back to the pharmacy section.”

“Never had to, yet.”

She shot him a smile that showed a lot of intelligence and something else. Maybe a brashness he wasn’t used to. His thoughts of Stacey Hines faded for a brief moment as he looked into this girl’s face.

She said, “I’m Trina.”

“I’m, uh, Bill.”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

He forced a smile. “I’m sure.” Dremmel let his gaze turn toward the window and watched a black Impala slow down and pull into the lot.

Trina leaned across the table toward him and whispered, “So, Bill, can you get any drug you want?”

It was a question that threw all his carefully laid plans for Stacey Hines into a holding pattern.