by James Andrus
“Where are you from?”
“Right here. I go to North Florida.” The University of North Florida sat in the southeast section of the city of Jacksonville.
He started to focus on the tiny nose stud, thinking what a great memento it would make. Then he said, “You don’t have to come far for spring break.”
“But it’s more fun to travel.”
“Do bookworms like to travel?”
She had a sly smile when she said, “Bookworms like a lot of things.”
He had found his prey.
Fifteen
John Stallings knew this was a big deal because the meeting was held in the lieutenant’s plush office. Although Rita Hester supervised the detective bureau, among other things, her office was not in the Land That Time Forgot. She did not have a shitty linoleum floor or scuffed beige walls, nor did she have thin, industrial carpet.
Today she sat at the head of the conference table opposite her wide oak desk. The sergeant sat immediately to her right and Mazzetti to her left with Stallings, Christina Hogrebe, Patty Levine, and an assistant to the sheriff filling the rest of the table. This was either something big or someone had fucked up in a big way.
The lieutenant looked down the long table at the sheriff’s assistant, then cast a broader glance across the table and said, “This comes from the colonel, who got it from the sheriff, who got an earful from the state attorney. We will treat the overdose of the girl from Mississippi"–she looked down at the notepad in front of her–"Allie Marsh, as a homicide. We will find out who gave her the Ecstasy and what led to her death. And even though we’re flooded with robberies, shootings, fatal domestics, and all other kinds of fire-and-brimstone shit, we’ll work this overdose until we have found her supplier.” Lieutenant Rita Hester was never particularly good at hiding her true feelings about certain things. She was political as anyone else in a command position at the sheriff’s office, but at heart she was still a street cop who wanted to put people in jail. She stared down the sheriff’s assistant until the thin man nodded his approval.
Of course no one was going to argue with her, but she continued. “We don’t need the negative media about any deaths, accidental or otherwise, while Jacksonville is trying to build a reputation as a spring break destination. Daytona and Fort Lauderdale can handle the occasional jumping off a balcony, but we can’t risk even a simple overdose. This girl’s family has money and clout and so we will treat this like it’s the fucking Lindbergh kidnapping case.” She glared up and down the table, then said, “Are there any questions or comments?”
Every detective at the table knew that meant, “Shut up and get to work.”
And that was just fine with John Stallings. He had already decided he’d find out who would leave a girl like that in the field without even a call to fire rescue. He didn’t think he’d ever get away from being drawn into cases like this.
Tony Mazzetti fidgeted during the final minutes of the autopsy. The procedure didn’t bother him–he’d seen hundreds performed on everyone from shot-up drug dealers to babies that had been shaken too hard. At this point it was just business. It had to be. If he looked at each body that rolled through these doors as a person with family and hopes, he’d have gone crazy years ago. Instead he observed and provided any pertinent information the medical examiner wanted, like surroundings where the body was found, theory of how the victim died, and history that might have contributed to the death. It was this kind of relationship between a veteran homicide detective and a good ME that led to the quick, successful clearance of most deaths.
He liked the young assistant medical examiner who was currently examining the remains of Allison Marsh. Mazzetti hated to think of the names attached to the bodies while they were on the table because once again that made them more real to him. It felt like an invasion of privacy. He not only saw the dead people naked, but past that into their innermost places. Physically. As layers of skin were peeled back and organs removed and examined, he learned things that no one knew about themselves, like the weight of their livers, the degree of plaque built up in their arteries, and if tumors were growing deep inside their seemingly healthy bodies.
The assistant ME said, “Look at this.”
Mazzetti didn’t see anything unusual; he never did at these things. Sometimes he felt as if these pathologists were just showing off. He said, “What are you looking at?”
“She had a belly-button ring.” He pointed at her pale stomach. “See the discoloration around the edges?”
Mazzetti looked closely and nodded. He made a note in the file.
The young assistant ME looked up from the body and said, “Tony, she seemed pretty healthy except her heart is shredded. Just blown out.”
“Ecstasy?”
“We have to wait for toxicology, but that would be my guess.”
“We have a witness who said she had a source and had recently tried it.”
“What spring breaker doesn’t?”
Mazzetti nodded, making a few notes.
The assistant ME said, “She had sexual intercourse with someone using a condom. I took a sample of the residue when she came in and already sent it to the lab.”
“Did you do any preliminary checks?”
The ME nodded.
Mazzetti knew the drill here. “What was the chemical residue?”
“We still have to do analysis, and it’s not an officially accepted form of detection yet.”
“I know, I know, but you’ve helped me before with it. What does the preliminary analysis look like?”
“Polyethylene glycol.”
He knew what brand used the chemical. “Durex.” The brand of condoms had played a role in a recent case.
“That would be a decent guess at this point. The only reason I could make the call so quick was the suicide earlier in the week had it in her as well.”
Mazzetti nodded.
“That girl also had some X in her system.”
He stopped writing and looked up at the assistant medical examiner. “You saying the deaths are connected?”
“That’s not my call. I’m giving you all the relevant information. I’m gonna take another gander at the report on the other girl from South Carolina. My guess is that it’s a coincidence. Different methods of death, every one of the kids uses X during spring break, and Durex condoms are not exactly rare.”
Mazzetti nodded as he breathed a little easier. It was probably the X that killed her. The drug was technically known as MDMA, or a variation, and was a man-made stimulant with hallucinogenic properties. It usually came in tablet form and could resemble anything from a commercial aspirin to something a kid made in his basement. The Dutch were big on it and sometimes seemed to have an endless supply for the willing students both in the United States and Europe.
Finally Mazzetti worked up the nerve to ask, “So what about this girl? What precisely are you saying killed her?”
“Pending toxicology, I’d say an overdose of Ecstasy and related effects. You know, extreme dehydration, overheating, and stress on her heart.”
His clearance rate was still good.
Sixteen
John Stallings and Patty Levine had been at the Wildside all afternoon and evening. Patty had caught on immediately as the young corporate manager had explained the digital video surveillance system inside the club. The cameras each recorded a night’s activity and stored it as a file on a main computer. Patty had sat in front of the computer and printed out images of Allie Marsh and the men she talked to during the evening. Stallings spoke with a lot of the staff, finally narrowing his focus to a couple of bartenders and waitresses.
Stallings conferred with Patty, and she showed him some of the more interesting video she had found. It was hard to see Allie unless she was close to one of several cameras. One showed the center part of the main bar, and after a few minutes of fast-forwarding and scanning different angles, Patty found her twice. Each time talking to a different man. Both a little older with
dark hair and nice clothes. Another clip showed her laughing with a scraggily-looking young man near the small stage. The camera got a clear view of him, and Patty printed out each of the men’s faces so they were easily identifiable.
During a slack time on the dance floor they saw her again talking with a funky-looking kid with long hair. This was also the first time they noticed a bottle of water in her hand. Did that mean she had already started on the X by then? They printed out the frame of the longhaired young man talking to her.
Patty had searched and searched but could not find footage of her leaving with anyone. Patty took the counter up to midnight and could still see Allie hovering on the left side of the club near the small bar on the side. But after that there was no sign of her in the club, exiting the doors, or in the parking lot. As the club emptied, it became easier to spot individuals, and Allie clearly was no longer there.
The manager breezed back in a couple of hours later, surprised to see them still working at the computer with a short stack of frames printed out on the high-quality laser printer.
He smiled, “Find anything useful?”
“Yeah, a few things,” started Stallings, wondering how much to trust the sharp-dressed man. “We’re gonna need to talk to two of the bartenders on the floor now and look at some credit card receipts as a way to identify a few suspects.” Stallings handed him the printed photos Patty had retrieved, and the manager thumbed through each one, studying it carefully, shaking his head, then moving on to the next one. He stopped at the last one and stared. He looked up at the detectives and held the photo for them to see it. “I know this guy.”
Stallings said, “Who is it?”
“He’s the drummer for the band. His name is Donnie Eliot.”
He waited with a nervous and giddy chill running through him. Holly was supposed to meet him at a little deli by ten. It was less than ten minutes away, so he could handle what he had to do now and still make it in time. He never gave out his cell number or tried to get a girl’s because that was a link he just didn’t need. This hunt had been an easy one with the cute young junior at UNF offering to meet him. The fact that it had been so easy had taken a little of the fun out of it. The element that had changed was the frequency of his hunts. Holly would be the third one in a week. He usually went months, a few times more than a year, between hunts, but this was his season. He’d never bagged prey outside the traditional spring break period of roughly March through mid-April. One year he’d given up hunting for Lent. He’d learned that was something he didn’t want to do again. To make up for it the following year, he’d singled out a girl at Mardi Gras and hunted and bagged her in the same day. He hadn’t even tried to make it look like a suicide.
He felt an erection bloom as he recalled Fat Tuesday the year after Katrina had hit. He saw her on the corner of Bourbon and Conti Street in jeans and a tight midriff shirt. He could tell by the way her head hung down and long, blond hair floated in the breeze that she was alone and sad about something. It started with a simple lunch of a muffuletta and then an afternoon of hearing how she was visiting in town with her family from Oklahoma City and was bored. Her younger brother and sister were out on the town with her parents, but she had brooded until she was allowed to stay at the hotel alone for the day.
He took the young woman on a tour of the city, which he knew pretty well, leading her farther and farther from the more crowded tourist area with each stop. He bought a couple of hurricanes and let the alcohol work its way though her system until she swayed when she walked. He cut her off before she got sick. He’d seen too many college students barf in the street to buy her a third rum-infused red monster.
They crossed Rampart into Louis Armstrong Park and enjoyed the quiet outdoors as the sun began to set. He knew he had to make his move quickly before her parents made a fuss. That became obvious when she dropped the bombshell that she was only seventeen. In the recesses of the park, near one of the ponds formed by the running brook, they started a hot session of kissing and petting. When he realized she didn’t want to go past a certain point he became much more excited and let his predatory instincts run wild. God, it was glorious and liberating as he ripped her shirt from her, exposing small, firm breasts, then yanked her jeans and panties off at the same time. He’d always remember the look on her face when she saw the size of his dick. Because of the situation he knew he didn’t have time for a condom, but he’d already planned her disposal and didn’t think leaving evidence on her was going to be a problem.
He entered her despite her pleas to stop and after a very, very short time felt himself starting to lose all control. He was on her back, mounting her like an animal should when he popped the blade on his nice Browning knife and ran the razor-sharp edge across her exposed neck. The move silenced her to a slight gurgle, and he felt the life run out of her as he came into her. It was the best of his kills so far.
But he had been lucky that day and he knew it. No one saw him with her. Few people wandered into the park, and no one heard her cries. He used a length of nylon rope some homeless person used for a clothesline and two loose cinder blocks to weigh the dead girl down and send her to the bottom of an impossibly small pond. It was so small no one would think to search for a body there.
Two days later he read a tiny article about the missing girl that implied she had run away. That was the only story ever printed about her. Now she held a place near the center of his prey collage.
He sipped a bottle of water and was glancing out at the near-empty dance floor when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw the smiling face of pretty Holly.
He used his tongue to check the inside of his mouth. His fangs were ready for the hunt. He smiled, feeling the surge of wildness pulse through his body.
Even if it was nearly nine o’clock at night, John Stallings had analysts at the sheriff’s office running Donnie Eliot’s name through every possible criminal index. While they waited for information on their first suspect, they talked to waitresses and bartenders in the spacious administrative offices of the club. Photos of Allie Marsh and the three unidentified men who had talked to her sat on the table. Credit card receipts were laid out next to the photos to help anyone with a cloudy memory.
The father in Stallings had a nagging feeling that there was more to Allie’s death than a simple overdose. He couldn’t explain it, but maybe it had to do with the connection he felt with her mother. Diane Marsh had elected to stay in town, at least for a few days, while information was still being sorted out by the detectives. Stallings knew he was hooked and couldn’t let things drop now.
The door to the office opened, and a lean, muscular man of about thirty poked his head in.
Stallings looked down at a sheet of paper and said, “Larry Kinard?”
“Yes, sir.”
Stallings motioned the bartender in and to a seat. “Thanks for taking a break to talk to us.”
“I’m not on break, I’m off today.”
“Why were you in the building?”
“Picking up my check and seeing if anything was happening. You know how it is. Work at night, you can never just sit at home.”
Stallings knew exactly what he meant. He looked at the younger man and said, “We’re hoping you might be able to identify a couple of photos for us from the other night.”
The lean man nodded his head and smiled at Patty. “I heard it had to do with a girl who died.”
“That’s right. From an overdose of X. You see much of that in the club?”
“I see signs of it, you know, the sweating and heavy water use. The flaky behavior. But truthfully this place hops so hard that I’m usually just slinging drinks and collecting money.”
Stallings set down Allie Marsh’s photograph. “Recognize her?”
The bartender nodded. “Yeah. Real cutie. I saw her a couple times recently. Probably in the last week.”
Stallings nodded and laid down the first photograph of one of the men Allie had chatted with.
“A what?”
“A spring break student who’s flat broke and orders three cheap beers for the whole night.” The bartender looked at the photo again and said, “More likely a break runner.”
“Excuse me?”
“Break runner. A guy who slips into spring break crowds and tries to hook up with younger students. See ‘em all the time. Not too old. Fit and with more cash than the students. Girls love these kind of guys.”
“So they’d go for an older guy?”
“Like a Cajun for crawfish.”
Stallings smiled, then said, “If you saw the credit card receipts could you remember his name?” He slid over a stack of receipts.
Larry the bartender started at the top and within a minute pulled a slip and said, “This is him. Chad Palmer. I remember because he tipped me twenty bucks on a fifty-five-dollar tab. See.” He pointed to the tip line.
Patty said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Stallings shoved the next photo of a fit, dark-haired man in his early thirties. The photo wasn’t that clear.
“Oh, I know him.” Larry the bartender looked up at the two detectives. “What is this, a test?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because this guy is a cop.”
Seventeen
Holly’s bright smile accentuated her beautiful and nodding blond head when she agreed to leave the deli with him. It had happened so fast he had to plan things on the fly. First of all she wanted to leave her car there and ride with him. That’d be too much of a hint to anyone looking for her. He told her the little Toyota wouldn’t be safe there and had her follow him to a parking garage near the Modis Tower. Then she jumped in with him as he considered all the places they could go to be alone. So far his predatory instincts had been perfect. No one had noticed them together. She’d told him about her wild experiences with other drugs, so he knew that she wouldn’t turn her nose up at the X when he offered it to her. All that was left was the location.