The Perfect Prey

by James Andrus

  Then the sorrow and despair sank in along with the realization that Jeanie might not ever come back. One of the hardest things was sitting down with Lauren and a very young Charlie to explain to them what happened. Why Mommy fell into such a deep sleep, why the police are around the house, and why Jeanie was gone. Nothing he told them was exactly true. Lauren had figured some of it out.

  He felt the familiar lump in his throat as the LT brought him back to reality.

  The lieutenant said, “What about the guy who works for Maxwell House?”

  “He might be a real mystery. We went by his apartment, and there’s nothing suspicious there. I’ll drop by his work after the meeting. It’s not really Maxwell House, but some kind of waste-removal company that they subcontract. I’d like to spend some time on this one.”

  She nodded. “Good, I’d like to see it resolved.” She paused for a moment, then, in a completely different tone, said, “What’s new at home?”

  He shrugged. The universal sign for cops who are separated from their wives. The lieutenant knew not to delve any further.

  Other detectives filed in, every one of them keenly aware that they’d been without a sergeant for more than five months due to personnel shifts and retirements. The right sergeant could make everyone work together well and get a lot accomplished. The wrong one could get a cop killed. The sergeant was probably the most important position in a police agency. A squad seemed to take on the personality of its leader. A cautious sergeant made for a slow, deliberate squad. A hyper one usually pushed everyone else into a frantic rush of activity. But the rare, even-tempered, fair, intelligent sergeant could positively transform any squad. From detectives to road patrol, a good sergeant made everyone shine.

  Stallings waited for Patty to pad over from her desk, then take a seat around the long conference table with the other detectives. Mazzetti and his crew were still finishing up at the medical examiner’s with the body of the Brackridge Park suicide.

  The lieutenant never had to raise her voice to get anyone’s attention; her physical presence and reputation were enough to quiet down any group of JSO cops.

  Luis Martinez, one of the hardest-working cops in the bureau, said, “What’s the scoop, LT? We got a new sergeant on the way?”

  “We do.”

  “Who is it?”

  The lieutenant just smiled.

  Tony Mazzetti had a headache. He’d missed lunch, and the goddamn ME blabbed his ear off about a nephew who is a starting nose tackle at FSU. Southerners and their football. Growing up in Brooklyn, all he cared about in football were the Jets. He did like that a Jersey school like Rutgers was starting to field a decent football unit, but the rednecks down here lived and breathed football. His headache was proof of that.

  His headache was exacerbated by thinking about Kathleen Harding from Columbia, South Carolina. He still hoped to find some of her friends to talk to and maybe attach a reason for her suicide. That usually shut the family up. At least it was cleared, and he didn’t have to worry about an unexplained death hanging over his head like a weight. If he wanted to stay as the lead detective in homicide he needed to keep his clearance rate high. Administration had overlooked what his desire to clear cases had done in the Bag Man case. He had been credited, along with Patty and John Stallings, with capturing the crazy shit. No way anyone in command staff would punish him for clearing the first victim as an overdose when the media was so positive right now.

  In the squad bay he saw the looks on a couple of detectives’ faces. What was it? Had someone died? Were they cutting back the D-bureau and sending guys back out on patrol? He glanced over and saw Patty quietly working at her computer. He purposely avoided too much conversation with her at work so it wouldn’t draw any attention. He hated gossip. But this was an exception.

  Mazzetti stepped over to her and kneeled so he could look her in the eye. He always took a second to appreciate just how pretty she was with blond hair framing a cute, cheerleader face and those magnificent blue eyes. He wondered how she ended up with a name like Levine, but hadn’t asked about it yet. He didn’t even know if she was Jewish.

  For her part she never made a fuss about him in front of the others. She turned and said, “What’s up?”

  “Why’s everyone seem so down?”

  “You haven’t heard yet?”

  “Heard what?”

  “We’re getting a new sergeant?”

  “Really? Who is it? Morris from traffic? O’Connor from the courthouse?”

  “Yvonne Zuni.”

  He swallowed hard. “Yvonne the Terrible?”

  “She’s leaving narcotics and should start here anytime.”

  “Holy crap, she’s a ball breaker.”

  Patty smiled. “Guess I’ll be okay then.”

  “Funny. I heard she doesn’t care if you got a dick or not, she’ll chew it off if she’s in a bad mood.”

  “If she were a man you’d say she was just tough.”

  “I heard she used to be a man.” He held his smile, but knew Patty got his humor. That was one of her strengths.

  She shoved him and said, “Get back to work, you moron.”

  John Stallings and Patty Levine followed the nervous little man through a string of corridors and staircases inside the Maxwell House coffee factory on Bay Street near downtown Jacksonville. Stallings had been raised in Jacksonville, but had never seen the inside of the factory. Of course it was rare for his father to take the family on any kind of outing. The career Navy man and amateur drunk spent most of his time either out at May-port or in a bar called the Blue Marlin off Blanding Boulevard. Stallings hated that place so much that he drove his patrol car over to it a few years after starting at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office just to see the place knocked down to make way for a new shopping center. His stomach still tightened when he drove past the little strip mall.

  The man turned his head on what appeared to be very little neck at all and said, “You have to understand that since we’re contractors we don’t get the nicest or most convenient offices.”

  Patty said, “What exactly does your company do?”

  “We ensure that the factory disposes of waste properly and efficiently. Sometimes we design systems to eliminate the waste, and sometimes it’s as easy as contracting with a collection service.” The man stopped and opened a door with a hazy glass pane and a smeared sign that was unreadable. Inside were four offices and a lobby. A large, surly-looking woman at the reception desk barely glanced up at the visitors.

  The manager offered them the only two chairs; he leaned on his ancient, nicked-up wooden desk.

  Stallings said, “We’re looking for Jason Ferrell. He’s not in trouble, just missing. His mother’s worried, and he doesn’t appear to have been home recently.”

  The manager nodded. “He strolled in here last week for one or two days, but I haven’t seen him since. We’re processing his termination now.”

  “What if he’s been hurt or has a reason?”

  The manager shook his head. “He’d be gone anyway. He’s been sliding downhill for months now.”

  “How do you mean, like depressed? Suicidal?”

  “I’m not sure what I can say.” He looked at each detective, then over their shoulders to the reception area. “There are confidentiality issues, I’m sure.”

  Patty set down her gray metal case and held up a hand. “Mr. Ferrell isn’t in trouble. He’s missing.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to say something that could get me sued later.”

  “Would a subpoena make you feel better? You know, legally speaking.”

  The man relaxed and smiled and said, “Yes, it would.”

  Patty immediately stood up and said, “Let me make a quick call and I’ll be right back.” Stallings caught her quick look at him.

  Once she had left, he stood and stepped over to the man. “While we wait, tell me why you think Jason was on a slide.”

  The man leaned in and said, “I think it was dr
ugs. He got paranoid and then started coming in later and later. He was forgetful and barely completed any of the chemical work he was supposed to.”

  “Chemical work?”

  “He was our chemist. Quite smart actually. Went to Northwestern.”

  “He have any friends here?”

  The manager shook his head.

  “You have his file out already, right?”

  The manager turned and plucked it off the top of his messy desk. “I was just going through it.”

  “Can I take a look?”

  The manager handed it to Stallings, who thumbed through the few pages. He noted a couple of past addresses and several phone numbers. He didn’t want to scribble them down in front of the man, so he locked them in his head as best he could.

  Stallings said, “Thanks very much.” He stood and got ready to leave.

  “But I thought the lady detective was getting a subpoena to cover me?”

  “I think you might have read too much into that. She said, ‘Would you feel more comfortable?’ Then she asked to make a call. The statements weren’t connected.” Stallings loved doing things like this. It made him feel smart once in a while. It also saved time because he knew he’d never have to deal with this squir-relly little man again.

  He grabbed Patty’s notecase and wrote down some addresses as he left. The manager had given them a few leads to work.

  Six

  Allie Marsh used all her powers of persuasion, some learned in rhetoric class, some developed during her two-week stint on her high school debate team and some of it from her gut, to convince the other three girls to go back to the Wildside and stay there a while. She knew the loud, crowded dance club was her best bet to meet up with him. She’d already decided that tonight was the night. Allie couldn’t go back to Mississippi if her only experience of note was trying half a speckled pill one afternoon. She’d felt jittery as an aftereffect of the pill, but a two-hour nap and decent dinner had convinced her the little pills held no real danger.

  Susan had just gotten back to the room after spending the entire afternoon up in the UGA student’s room. Her broad smile told Allie that her friend didn’t mind the half a pill either. The other two girls had been snoring in separate beds, still in their clothes from the night before when Allie had returned from the downstairs bar.

  Now they were all on the same sheet of music. Dressed nicely but casually in jeans and each of them in a different kind of blouse. That was part of Allie’s brilliant plan. A couple of the places didn’t let you inside with jeans. She was narrowing the field. Karen’s Chrysler 300 was headed west toward downtown with the other girls quietly taking in the scrub brush and occasional house. This wasn’t a crowd ready to party; this was a crowd who already had. Except Allie, and she was anxious. She remembered the odd feeling that had crept through her after she had taken half the speckled pill. It was warm and electric, and it made her think that no one would judge her or care what she did. It made her want to dance, and that was in the relative calm of the hotel bar in the middle of the afternoon. What would she do tonight?

  Her cell phone chimed to the University of Southern Mississippi fight song. It made her realize just how few calls she’d received this week. The small Verizon screen showed her mom’s number. She hesitated, then decided to let the call go directly to voice mail. She didn’t want to talk to her mom while she was thinking of what the night held for her.

  As she stuck the phone back in her small purse, a broad smile spread across her face. Tonight was all about her.

  John Stallings waited in his county-issued Impala outside the house he’d lived in for fourteen years, wondering if he had the guts to say to his wife, “Where are we going?” It might be the catalyst to move back or more likely, at least for the moment, Maria telling him she was filing for divorce. This thought occupied his mind more and more as the days stretched into weeks, then months, of living in a one-bedroom duplex over in Lakewood. He had yet to miss a day of visiting the kids. Thankfully it had been slow around the office and he’d made use of the easier schedule to show up most days in the afternoon and really try to connect with the kids. He thought he’d been doing that for years, but it took Maria pointing out his obsession with police work, and his justification that if he worked hard he might somehow help find Jeanie, to make him realize he hadn’t.

  His oldest daughter had disappeared three years earlier at sixteen, and to this day no one was certain if she ran away, was dead, or had any number of other things happen to her. It had eaten at Stallings day and night, and not until Maria showed him so clearly had he realized how working in missing persons had soothed the ache of a missing daughter.

  His own sister, Helen, who now lived in the house with his wife and kids, had disappeared when she was a teenager. Everyone knew she’d run away. The way his father had bullied and beaten them as children, it was probably a smart move. Then Helen showed back up a couple of years later and barely acknowledged her absence. She still lived with their mother most of the time. He thought she liked feeling needed and helping out around his house. He just wished he was experiencing the same thing.

  He slipped out of the car and slowly made his way up the walkway, then paused at the front door. It didn’t feel right to just barge in, and it felt equally awkward to knock at his own front door. He had this debate with himself every day. Today he turned the knob as he knocked, announcing himself as he stepped into the foyer that led to either the family room or a small formal dining room. He turned to see his daughter Lauren at the end of the couch, engrossed in a thick hardcover book. She glanced up and mumbled, “Hey, Dad.”

  He was struck by how mature she seemed with her dark hair straight down and a casual, long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt. There was something else he couldn’t quite grasp. Oh shit, she was wearing makeup. He wasn’t a conservative dictator that outlawed makeup and dancing, but he was a father, and the first time your daughter is involved in either of those things it rattles you. He’d seen her dress up for nighttime school functions, but not just for reading in the house.

  Before he could comment, which was perhaps for the best, Charlie came barreling down the stairs, using his left hand to hook his momentum and send him into a wide arc directly into Stallings’s arms.

  From the instant hug the boy said, “Ready to kick?”

  “You bet.” Kicking the soccer ball with the seven-year-old was about the best exercise he got right now. How had he slipped from a potential pro baseball player to a cop who stayed in shape with a half an hour of kicking a youth-sized soccer ball everyday?

  Stallings looked over to Lauren. “Where’s your mom?”

  She shrugged.

  “Aunt Helen?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  He was about to ask her if everything was all right, a dangerous question for a teenager, when he heard a car horn outside and Lauren popped up off the couch and said, “Gotta go, my ride is here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To study.”

  He peeked over her shoulder as she opened the front door and was only slightly relieved to see two girls in the front seat of a new Nissan Altima. They appeared to be a little older than Lauren, maybe seventeen.

  He said, “Good-bye,” even though he knew he wouldn’t get an answer and it broke his heart just a little every time it happened.

  Patty Levine slid into the booth across from Tony Mazzetti. She was ten minutes late, had just popped half of a Vicodin to ease the throbbing in her lower back, and knew what his first comment would be.

  Mazzetti shook his head and said, “Yvonne the Terrible is gonna screw up my whole caseload.”

  Patty smiled and said, “Hello, Tony, I’ve been looking forward to our date too.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ve just been wound up about it all day.”

  “You’re always wound up.”

  He smiled and said, “Yeah, but usually it’s about nothing. I like my assignment, and now that you’re working s
o close, the squad is great. We all learned to work together with no sergeant around to interfere.”

  “Maybe things won’t change. Too much.”

  “Are you kidding me? Yvonne completely revamped narcotics. They make half the arrests they did a year ago. She had community policing for two years and those guys griped all the time. You don’t get a nickname without a reason.”

  “Your nickname is the King of Homicide.”

  “That’s a compliment.”

  “You really think other cops would give you a complimentary nickname?”

  “You mean that’s a joke?”

  She took a moment and sighed. “Tony, to people who don’t know you or haven’t taken the time to get to know the person you are, you come off as a little pompous.”

  He took a swig of water from the dirty glass in front of him.

  Patty smiled and said, “Hey, what about our rule not to talk work outside the office?”

  He looked up at her. “Pompous? Really?”

  Seven

  Allie Marsh let the music rattle her teeth as the live band on the center stage cranked out Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the older people in the crowd. And tonight it was a crowd. In addition to throngs of students from across the South, there were a lot of nice-looking, clean-cut men who were obviously out of school and a few women too. But not nearly as many.

  Immediately Allie noticed that Susan had hooked up with the drummer from the UGA marching band. She must’ve tipped him off to where they were going. She smiled at her friend’s excitement. Cici started talking to a tall black guy who looked like he should play basketball. Karen settled in with two of the Dutch exchange students she had met the night before. As Allie scanned the place to see if her guy was there, Karen pulled her toward the group of young Dutch men.