by James Andrus
“Every day. Charlie seems to be adjusting because we still play games and I coach his soccer team. Lauren is harder to gauge. She’s got that moody teenage thing and she’s so mature. She’s been spending a few evenings with some girls from school.” He turned to her and said, “Older girls.”
“Don’t worry too much–older girls could be a good thing. Older smart girls are the best.”
“All I see are older pretty girls.”
Patty snickered. “All fathers are the same.”
Stallings considered his own childhood and thought, I wish that were true.
Patty Levine let her partner knock on the doors of the neighbors on either side of Ferrell’s apartment. Stallings had no idea the effect he had on most women. They’d take one look at that curly dark hair and kind eyes and tell him anything he wanted to know. That whole ruggedly handsome, intelligent look was hot right now, but she figured it was timeless and Stallings had always been charming.
Instead, Patty waited on the first floor. She needed a moment alone to pop one of her Xanax and swallow it dry. She’d been starting to control her prescription drug use until she’d gotten caught up in the massive Bag Man case, and the trauma she’d suffered at the end of it hadn’t help wean her from her regular regimen of Xanax for her anxiety, Vicodin for joint and back pain, then Ambien to sleep at night. Dating Tony Mazzetti had affected her use a little. She had to plan things better and sometimes lay awake at night with her head on his shoulder, staring blankly up at the ceiling instead of downing twice the recommended dosage of the sleep aid. Even Tony had no idea that she used the drugs. No one did and no one would. Unless disaster struck. No single doctor realized she was taking any prescription other than what he had prescribed.
Patty knocked on the building manager’s door. Then knocked again. Finally, as she was about to leave her card on the door, she heard someone inside say, “Hang on, hang on.”
The door opened and a man about fifty stood looking down at her. Instantly she made a cop’s assessment: This is an annoyed redneck who had one too many beers at lunch. The red face, sloppy comb-over, gut sticking out of his Dickies plaid shirt, and dirty jeans led her to this conclusion. When he said, “What’s the po-po want?” before she even showed ID, she added ex-con to her assessment.
Patty stayed professional and took the time to show her credentials, badge first. “I’m trying to find one of your residents.”
“Jason Ferrell?”
“How’d you know?”
“'Cause some other ol’ boys were by here yesterday and a couple of really big colored boys were looking for him the day before.”
“Really?”
“Do I look like I wanna waste time jawing with a cop when Jerry Springer is on and I got the couch just the way I like it?”
“Do I look like I want to smell your stale beer breath?”
The guy smiled. “I like cute, feisty cops.”
“Then we better get this over with because the next cop you’ll see isn’t nearly as friendly. What do you know about Ferrell?”
“Just a nerdy college boy. He pays on time and never has no problems. Smells funny in there once in a while, but he said it was just some project he was working on. The two that was just looking for him weren’t from around here. They were from one of the western counties, I could tell.”
“How could you tell?”
“John Deere caps, work boots. These were country boys. They wanted in his apartment, but I wouldn’t let ‘em. Even with the fifty bucks they offered.”
“Got a key?”
“Ain’t supposed to use it unless I think it’s an emergency.”
She looked at him. “What’d you do time for?”
He was about to ask how she knew, but it was obvious. “Beat up my ex-wife pretty good.”
“How long you do?”
“Two years.”
“And what else?”
“Five years federal time for off-loading coke back in the eighties.”
“So you don’t think me asking nice is enough to borrow the key?”
“Like I said, it has to be an emergency.”
“Is a broken arm an emergency?”
“Not really. What makes you think Ferrell is in there with a broken arm?”
“Not his, yours.”
Allie Marsh woke up to the sun slicing through the narrow opening of the motel drapes. She turned on her side and found her little Timex Ironman runner’s watch. Ten-fifteen. That was something new for her. At home, if she slept past eight she had her mom yelling for her to get moving. This trip was turning into an adventure.
She heard Susan say, “Hey, Allie.”
They were the only two in the room for the night. When Susan started feeling ill she asked Allie to come back to the room with her. What kind of friend would’ve let her leave alone? The other girls said they had rides and kept dancing with the cute young men from Holland. Allie was a little sorry to leave the guy she’d seen two nights in a row, but she’d see him again. She had pretended to take the little speckled pill he gave her, but had stuffed it into her jeans pocket instead. The slight headache from the rumrunner was a small price for her to pay for partying until midnight.
Allie stretched in bed, then leaned up and stood, pulling her long T-shirt down as she did. She opened the curtains slowly, letting the sunshine fill the room. This was the first day since they had arrived that the clouds had broken. In the other queen bed Susan still lay under the covers. Allie knew she was sensitive about her shape–wide hips and pretty but tiny boobs. Her face had a cute quality like a chipmunk’s, but so far the boys they’d met preferred the lithe bodies of Cici and Karen to a cute smile and wide hips.
Susan said, “I’m sorry I ruined your fun last night.”
Allie smiled. “Sweetie, you didn’t ruin anything. I’m out of Mississippi for a few days, and not one club has caught my fake ID. I’m having a wonderful time.” She crossed the room and sat at the edge of Susan’s bed. “Are you feeling okay today?”
“Yeah, but I want to get wild too. Cici and Karen are still with their dates, and I don’t want to be bored.”
Allie thought hard how she might be able to cheer her friend up. Then she remembered the pill. Without a word she popped up and found her jeans draped over a chair. She dug into her front pocket and found the small, funny-looking pill. She held it up. “We could try splitting this and see what happens.”
Susan’s smile gave her the answer.
Four
John Stallings spoke to three neighbors, but no one had seen Ferrell. No one really knew him. He had a few people over to his apartment now and then. He left for work most days or was just dead silent during the day. Not much to go on.
Patty came through the stairwell door dangling a key from a short chain.
“Ferrell’s?”
“Yep.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I did my John Stallings impersonation, and the guy saw the light.” She stepped to the door and unlocked it instantly. No inside chain caught, so his concern that the guy was dead inside lessened.
Stallings waited before entering and murmured his affirmation. “Is this the day that changes my life?” It was a little trick he’d been taught in the academy to make sure he never took any assignment too lightly and stayed sharp. It had probably saved him professionally a couple of times, but he’d recently learned it didn’t do shit for his personal life.
The entrance was a short hallway where they both paused. Stallings noticed the open curtains and sun filling the room. No specific smell attacked his nose the way a body decomposing would have. He called out, “Mr. Ferrell? Jason Ferrell? Hello, anyone here? This is John Stallings from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.” He waited, listening and watching for any movement beyond the hallway.
They split up and made sure the two-bedroom condo was actually empty. Then they settled down to see what they could find.
Patty pointed to a framed diploma. “Nort
hwestern, not bad.”
There was a framed photograph of Ferrell and a cute, young woman with long dark hair hanging on the wall next to the diploma. At the bottom of the photograph a small caption read, Jason and Alyssa forever.
Stallings said, “No messages on his machine.” He rummaged through some kitchen drawers until he found the one drawer every home has. Crammed with odd pieces of paper and pens, loose change, and errant business cards, it was a chaos pit of possible leads. He pulled it out and dumped it on the counter. Patty joined him to start going through the pile of crap.
They found a few phone numbers that Patty copied down on a sheet from her notepad, two tangled sets of stereo earbuds, a business card from a car detailing place, Jason Ferrell’s own business card that read Chemical Engineer, Commercial Waste Inc, and a hard, clear plastic bottle that held an ounce of light yellow fluid.
Patty held it up to the light and shook it gently.
“What’s it look like to you?”
Patty kept staring up into it and said, “I thought it was clean urine until I shook it. It’s thick like an oil.”
“Let’s check the rest of the house.” He didn’t say anything when Patty stuffed the bottle into the front pocket of her jeans. She was so curious that she couldn’t let something so simple go unanswered. He knew she’d talk some chemist at the SO into analyzing it. Before he’d finished checking the drawers in Ferrell’s bedroom his cell phone rang.
“John Stallings,” he said in his usual professional phone greeting.
“Stall, Lieutenant Hester says for you and Patty to come back to the Land That Time Forgot by three for some kind of squad meeting.” Stallings recognized the secretary’s voice. A lot of the staff referred to the detective bureau on the second floor of the PMB as the Land That Time Forgot because of the lag time in new equipment and nice furnishings. Even though the unit had made strides under the guidance of Lieutenant Rita Hester, it fit a cop’s natural tendency to bitch to call the office by its nickname. All Stallings said to the secretary was, “See you then.”
Administrators always found a way to screw up real police work.
Allie and Susan giggled uncontrollably at the Tiki Bar of the Hide-a-Way motel. The cold wind had chased everyone away from the outdoor bar, but they still insisted on getting margaritas outside, then joining the other visiting students inside the room overlooking the closed swimming pool. The little pill they’d split had relaxed Allie, but it positively transformed Susan. Wearing a skirt to hide her butt and bikini top, inside and out in the freezing gale, she had already kissed a University of Georgia marching band drummer, danced on an empty space in front of the bar by herself, and downed about six bottles of water.
Susan said, “Whatever that pill was, I like it.”
Allie grinned. “I know. I hope he has one if I see him tonight.”
“You like him?”
“Yeah, I guess, but I wanna keep my options open. If we go to the Wildside again I’m gonna dance with at least five different guys. That’s a promise.”
“Wish I could be that confident.”
Allie put her arm around the shorter, plump girl. “Are you kidding me? Girl, you can have any man you want.”
Susan looked up at her. “Really, any man at all?”
“I guarantee it.”
“Good, I got one in mind.”
“Who is it?”
“The guy who gave you the pill.”
He finished a set of thirty push-ups, then hopped up and rattled off six pull-ups on the bar set into his bedroom doorframe. He had a few more sets, then a thirty-minute run before he would cool down, catch a nap, then clean up for his evening out hunting. This was his version of baiting the field. He knew that with his body and face it was almost too easy to attract women. That was one of the reasons he liked to focus on blue eyes and blond hair. It gave him a goal.
His job helped him stalk his prey too. He had the chance to meet a lot of people and talk with them. No one would worry about him if they saw him working; it was too natural. He made enough money to live comfortably and still maintain the two different places to live even if one was a cheap apartment and one was shared, so no one would ever know he had two lives. It was a sweet setup.
He had a talent of dealing with people, and he made the most of it.
On the wall behind him was a corkboard framed in wood with photos of most of the girls he’d met in the last five years. A two-foot-square montage of light hair, big smiles, and him, the silent predator with an arm around one or on the dance floor with another. Most made it back to their hometowns, but some he had claimed for himself. Claimed forever. They were part of him now. Psychologically as well as physically. That’s what drove him. He never hinted about his needs. No ordinary person would ever understand. He’d be considered a monster. That made sense because the antelope viewed the lion as a monster. No, this was a solitary task, and he liked it that way.
On this blustery afternoon he couldn’t get cute Allie from Mississippi out of his head. She had that look. Bright, wide smile, pleasant Southern accent, and healthy naturally blond hair. He would’ve had her last night if the little chubby one hadn’t needed her. But he’d be ready tonight. If she came to him at the Wildside, then he knew she was his. Just like all the others before.
He let out a whoop as he flopped back onto the ground to do some crunches.
Five
The Police Memorial Building, or PMB, sat on Bay Street looking out toward the St. Johns with ugly new condos blocking what was once a good view. John Stallings and Patty Levine trudged up the inside stairs to the second floor where the Land That Time Forgot, or the detective bureau, was located.
Stallings marveled at how fast Patty could walk with her petite frame. Without ever telling him, Patty had conveyed that if he ever slowed down for her or showed her any preference because she happened to be female, she’d beat his ass. As far as he was concerned, she never had to prove anything to anyone. He’d seen her use good judgment, be decisive, and be brutal when needed. She backed him up and kept her mouth shut about their own business. That made her a great partner. He dreaded the day she made sergeant and they moved her to the road on midnights in some lonely section of Duval County. For now he was happy things were going so well at work.
His mother used to say, “It’s always something,” and now it was his family life that had gone to shit. It felt as if he couldn’t have both work and home life going well at the same time. He hadn’t accepted it either, and that’s what hurt. He spent as little time as possible alone at night in the little duplex he had rented a few miles from his family. He tended to stay at the house as if he still lived there, helping the kids with homework and practicing soccer with Charlie until he felt Maria had seen enough of him. Then he’d excuse himself and dread the rest of the evening watching baseball on the Sun Channel or NFL Replay on the NFL network.
As they crossed the threshold between crimes/property and crimes/persons he heard Lieutenant Rita Hester’s voice from across the squad bay.
“I’ll be damned, John Stallings is early for a meeting. I should play the lotto tonight.”
He had a long history with the tall, large-framed lieutenant. She’d been another good partner on the road and now did a decent job as an administrator. He was pretty sure that once they had a permanent sergeant she’d be like every other lieutenant in the agency and feel like a ghost. She’d show up when you didn’t expect her, but no one would able to find her most of the time.
Stallings smiled as he walked toward her. His eyes scanned the immediate area so he knew who was around. Just before he was about to address her by her former nickname, the Brown Bomber, he noticed a staff assistant working at the end of the conference table behind her. He just nodded and said, “I hate to hold things up.”
The lieutenant smiled. “What’s the spring break patrol look like?”
“Dammit, that name is catching on.”
“What can you do, even Mazzetti comes up wi
th a good one once in a while.”
“We cleared three of the missing college kids. The kid from Boston College is in the can for possession of alcohol by a minor, then taking a swing at a cop.”
Lieutenant Hester shook her head. “Bad judgment.”
“The young man from Auburn found true love with a forty-year-old secretary from Fernandina Beach until her husband came home early from a fishing trip.”
“Any casualties?”
“Nope. He called his parents, who had the sense to call us. He’s not even coming back through J-Ville.” He thought about the other student and lost any good humor he had talking with an old friend. “The last missing kid was the girl Mazzetti is working over in Brackridge Park.”
The lieutenant looked down. “The suicide. That’s a tough one to tell the family about. The Columbia, South Carolina, cops are going to make the notification. Still gonna be tough. The report of her missing came in before we found the body. I’d hate to hear news like that.”
Stallings knew that was true. Even worse than him hearing that there were no leads on his missing daughter three years ago. He still hadn’t recovered from it.
He remembered that Friday afternoon. It was one of those days that stood out in his life. Everyone had those days. Most adults have four or five days that stick out in their minds and maybe affect how they live the rest of their lives. Some are good, like hitting your first home run or your first serious kiss. Some are traumatic, like a car accident or a parent’s death. Those days fuel most people. But Stallings’s day, the day his life took a serious turn off the path he’d been traveling, ground down his heart and soul every day. It was about three years ago, coming home after a long day stuck on a drug homicide with no witnesses who were talking and no administrator who really cared if he solved it or not, finding Maria passed out on the couch and Charlie playing quietly in his room completely unsupervised. All of that wasn’t even the problem. It hadn’t even dawned on him that Jeanie was missing.
It wasn’t till later, much later, that he noticed his oldest daughter had not made contact with the family in any way for almost a whole day. Then it took time to check with everyone from his mother to all of her friends before he sounded the alarm. He still remembered it as if it was just yesterday. That shocking fear. The terror that your baby, no matter how old, was gone. Then the anger at Jeanie for being gone, the cops for not finding her, and Maria for distracting him. It was still an issue he’d never resolved. Anger. It boiled out of him at the most inappropriate times, when he wanted to remain calm or appear professional. It seemed as if Jacksonville was awash in broken noses and black eyes from Stallings’s anger issues.