The Perfect Prey

by James Andrus

  “About what?”

  “About me catching her at a bar?”

  “Oh, that. She said she wouldn’t drink. I’m not sure what the big deal is.”

  He paused, thinking he had misunderstood her. “You don’t think our fourteen-year-old daughter hanging out at a bar is a big deal?” He kept his tone steady and even, but she knew him well enough to realize how hard he was trying to maintain a calm façade.

  “She was with friends, not drinking, and it was only eight o’clock.”

  He stared at her silently, hoping it wasn’t a glare.

  Maria sat down on the couch in the living room. “I understand what you’re saying, and I’m trying to tell you my view of it. I don’t seem to be getting past your initial anger. I don’t want to come down too hard on her for little things. I don’t want to drive her away.”

  And there it was. He didn’t speak as a lump swelled in his throat at the insinuation that he had driven Jeanie away.

  The whole situation had happened mainly because he’d always thought of Lauren as a little girl. He knew that she was a beautiful fourteen-year-old who could dress up and look much older. But in his head she would always be the younger sister to Jeanie, and she had always been so quiet and obedient that this incident had knocked him numb. But he shied away from harsh punishment. That was a common side effect for parents who lost a child. It wasn’t just an effort to make the remaining children happy. He knew that in the back of his mind he wanted to make sure he gave her no reason to run away. It made disciplining children very difficult and stressful.

  Lauren always had been very much a little girl, whereas Jeanie had been more like his little buddy. She had come almost five years before the other kids, and like any father, he wanted someone to play sports with and roughhouse around the house with. That was Jeanie. Even when she was older, she chose a sport like lacrosse instead of something more feminine. She could throw a football as well as any boy and never shied away from delivering a block or knocking someone down when she had the ball.

  She looked like a perfect girl with lighter hair than the other two kids and beautiful creamy skin. But she had the attitude of a cocky, athletic boy, and Stallings always loved that. He could take her to any sporting event, and she’d stay interested and ask the right questions. She’d even ride her bike with him while he jogged. She’d been easy to deal with until she wasn’t.

  He had to look rationally at the last year she was still at the house, during which she’d rebelled and seemed uninterested in anything to do with the family. It was a slow evolution but one that had troubled him then and haunted him now. It was his first time dealing with a teenager in the house, and although he had heard all the horror stories about the crazy things teenagers said and did, he wasn’t prepared when he had to confront it himself. At the time he wondered how Maria had handled it so quietly and comfortably. It wasn’t till later that he realized she was too stoned most of the time to give a shit. Then he had asked himself a hard question: Were his punishments too harsh? Had something he’d said or done drove her from the house? Or had something else happened? Had she been kidnapped or fallen in with the wrong crowd? These were all questions that ran through his head on a daily basis and right now were hammering his brain like a machine gun.

  Finally Maria sighed and said, “John, we’ve been through a lot together, and I haven’t handled it well.”

  “That mean you want me back?”

  “I wish we had our whole lives back.”

  In her tone and words he felt the blow of how much they had lost. Maybe that was what was making him crazy about Lauren, but he didn’t think so.

  His cell phone rang, and out of habit he quickly dug it out of his pocket. The analyst from the detective bureau was on the line and said, “Stall, you said to call you if I found anything on Donnie Eliot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We got him listed in our intel database as dealing in prescription narcotics but no arrests. Want me to start checking some of the other cities with local databases?”

  “No, Faith, that’s okay. I know detectives in Daytona and Gainesville. I’ll give ‘em a shout and see if they know this knucklehead. Thanks.” He shut the phone and absently returned it to his pocket.

  Maria looked up and said, “See? Even when you’re at home, work comes first.”

  Stallings knew when he’d been dismissed, and this time he had been dismissed physically as well as emotionally. He kept his mouth shut, turned silently, and started for the door. But something made him look up over his right shoulder. That’s when he saw her. Lauren was sitting on the landing of the landing with a Kleenex in her hand and her eyes red and puffy from crying. He looked back over to the family room, where Maria continued to sit on the long couch, staring straight ahead. With just a flick of his head he motioned Lauren to follow as he opened the front door and like a ghost she appeared next to him on the porch.

  He closed the door and sat on the edge of the wooden porch with his foot on the steps leading up from the sidewalk. Lauren slid in right next to him, still not making a sound. He didn’t feel the need to talk either. He looked each way down the empty street, appreciating the old-style streetlights mounted on wooden telephone poles in the relatively quiet neighborhood, even though they weren’t that far from downtown Jacksonville. The temperature had dropped and felt nice out in the night air. The sky was clear, and a half moon cast a gentle light across the yard. He sat there in silence with Lauren, just appreciating the fact that she was next to him.

  After a few minutes she sniffled, cleared her throat, and said, “I never thought I’d run into you in a place like that. It just surprised me. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you drink a beer.”

  “I wasn’t there to drink, sweetheart. I was looking for someone. I was working.”

  “Is he dangerous?”

  “Is who dangerous?”

  “The guy you were looking for. Sometimes I forget how dangerous your job is.”

  “No. He wasn’t dangerous.” When Stallings turned, she was staring him down like a veteran detective trying to make him tell the truth. It was such a good, intense stare he had to add, “Really, sweetheart, it was a fairly routine interview.”

  “But not everyone you interview is routine. I saw the news coverage of that guy William Dremmel you caught last year. Your job is dangerous. You’re paid to take risks. It scares me. A lot. The way mom is, I have no idea how we’d make it without you. I already miss Jeanie so much it’s hard to comprehend what it’d be like if something happened to mom or Charlie or you. And you’re the only one who has to be dealing with dangerous people.”

  It had never occurred to Stallings that his kids looked at things in those terms. Certainly Lauren had never given any indication that she was worried about him. In the last couple of years she’d barely acknowledged him, let alone shown any concern. He was so touched he felt his own eyes start to water.

  Lauren wrapped her arm around his back and said, “You know that Mom really needs you. I think she’s just a little confused right now.”

  He was so choked up he couldn’t say a word. Instead, he wrapped both arms around his daughter and squeezed her tight, thanking God for little moments like this. The sad thing was he knew a half a dozen cops who would feel the same way if only they could have a moment like this.

  Twenty-six

  Patty Levine felt a pang of guilt at the sight of the lab tech’s cheerful face as he greeted her.

  “Hey, Patty, how’re you?” His brown eyes big with excitement and face flushed enough to hide some of his acne.

  “Good, Lee. Sorry I’m so early.”

  “Are you kidding? When you texted me last night I was thrilled to be able to start my day by seeing you.”

  “That’s sweet, Lee. Did you have any luck?”

  The tall young man in casual clothes was the only one in the wide, clean lab deep inside the Police Memorial Building. She didn’t expect anyone else to be there at seven-thirty in
the morning. Even Patty was dragging at that hour, the effects of the late-night Ambien hanging on a little longer than usual.

  Lee scurried around, collecting files and reports for Patty. She knew his efforts were based on her looks and flirting more than anything else. All she heard from most of the detectives was how long it took for lab results to come back, but she’d befriended this young man with a degree in forensic science from the University of Central Florida, and he’d been remarkably helpful for the past two years. She tried not to lead him on but worried about the day when he finally screwed up enough courage to ask her out for lunch. Until that day she gladly accepted the fact that she could work a little more efficiently than others. It made up a little for her not being part of the good old boys network that often cut through bureaucratic bullshit and got reports or other kinds of help for the seasoned male detectives. She didn’t begrudge them the shortcut. Patty was in favor of anything that sped along justice and helped people. She just wished everyone had access to it. At least that was the justification she used to get her lab results much faster than anyone else.

  In this case, Mazzetti had submitted the request as part of the autopsies of the two spring breakers. The idea that there would be links between them set off an alarm in Patty’s head and made her push the limits of her flirting to find out the answers fast. Patty had added to the young lab tech’s workload by providing him the three pills found in Kathleen Harding’s purse. Two were obviously prescription pills, but the third was a curious speckled pill she thought had to be X.

  He photographed each pill through a magnifying glass and gave her a good copy of each. The speckled pill had J2A stamped into it.

  Lee stepped back to her as he studied the pages. “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “There was a chemical residue found on both bodies that indicated the possibility of sex with a condom before death.”

  Lee nodded. “Polyethylene glycol. I see the note here.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “Ecstasy. Looks like at least some of it was from the same source.”

  “What’d you mean?”

  “There’re a couple of ways to make X. No recipe is quite the same. Both these girls took some of the same batch, but the second one, Allie Marsh, also had some other X in her. Probably what killed her.”

  “Could it have been intentional?”

  “You mean did she know she was taking it?”

  Patty said, “I mean if someone wanted to kill her, he could keep giving her the drug.”

  “I suppose.”

  Patty looked at him and said, “Okay, Lee, why the big, shit-eating grin?”

  “I got the results of the yellow liquid you submitted.”

  “From our missing persons case?”

  “The same.”

  “And?”

  “Safrole oil.”

  “What’s that?”

  He just kept grinning.

  John Stallings sat across from Sergeant Yvonne Zuni in the conference room. He was a little uncomfortable without Patty next to him, and he’d expected her. Since her run-in with the serial killer known as the Bag Man a few months back, Stallings had become a little over-protective of his partner and started to panic if he couldn’t reach her. But this morning she had sent him a text message, which he hated, that said she was busy in the building and would be up shortly.

  He looked at the new sergeant, trying to get a fix on her. Despite her reputation as a tough veteran, he didn’t think she could be much older than thirty. But there was nothing soft in that pretty face. She didn’t shy away from his gaze.

  “Stall, you and Patty will have to handle the death investigations Mazzetti and Hoagie had before they caught the triple.”

  “Anything new on the triple?”

  “Just that it was gang related. Rumor is that it might have a racial undertone, and that means there’s gonna be retaliation. You know how when someone starts saying they saw a carload of white kids it morphs into being a truckload of Klansmen. Just like a lone black kid in a white neighborhood gets called in as a gang. I swear street rumors waste more of our time than anything else. That’s why the administration wants every effort put into it.” She paused and added, “Every effort that doesn’t require a lot of overtime.”

  Stallings nodded, knowing that meant virtually every other victim in the city would be ignored for a while until the news media backed off the triple murder near the stadium.

  “I have Allie’s mother calling me every hour about the case.” The sergeant started to say something, then looked at Stallings and stifled it. Cops often made callous comments to vent their frustration. Stallings sometimes overheard cops make comments about runaways or young female deaths, then realize his situation and get embarrassed. He was getting used to it, but the new sergeant obviously wasn’t. She just said, “Anything new on her?”

  He looked down, unsatisfied with their progress. “The drummer we chased is still in the can. We talked to the cop, Gary Lauer, and he was less than helpful, but I still wouldn’t call him a suspect. Just an asshole.”

  He caught an odd expression on the sergeant’s face.

  “Am I missing something?”

  Sergeant Zuni hesitated, then said, “This is not official. Just you and me.”

  He nodded.

  “I know Lauer pretty well.”

  Stallings still kept quiet.

  “I don’t want to go into detail, but he’s got issues.”

  “You think he could be a suspect?”

  “I’m saying that with a young pretty girl in the mix and knowing him, I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

  He finished his Chick-Fil-A sandwich in the food court of the small mall. After a brief post-activity letdown he had found his groove and his predatory instincts returned. He had real power. He hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d placed Holly’s nose stud in his souvenir box. The surprise on her face for that instant after he shoved the knife into her brainpan had been the sweetest surprise of his whole life. He’d thought that Allie from Mississippi squealing under him as her heart exploded was one of the most exciting things he had experienced. But now he had to put Holly’s expression at the top of the list.

  He leaned back, satisfied. No one could connect him to anything here in Jacksonville. He was originally reticent to hunt in his own valley. In the past, he liked to travel and carve the occasional weak one out of the spring break herd in other cities but not here where people knew him.

  His hunting season would draw to a close soon. The girls of the cheaper southeastern schools would start heading back home in beat-up cars with bad sunburns and lasting hangovers. He felt confident he could score a few more kills. Just something to last him until next year. He had no idea where to hunt for the moment. The beach made him a little skittish after Holly. The Wildside was done, at least for a while. He had to work this problem out in his head.

  His eyes drifted up until they caught the blue eyes of a young woman sitting with two friends, eating a salad. She smiled and flipped her blond hair.

  He smiled back, realizing his problem had just been solved.

  John Stallings gawked at the lab results spread over Patty’s desk.

  He said, “You believe these two girls got their X from the same source.”

  She nodded.

  “You think there could be more to the girls’ deaths?”

  Patty was cautious. “Could be.”

  “Then we need to investigate it, Detective Levine,” he said in a mock-formal tone. He glanced over the notes and added, “I wish we had a lead that was common to the girls.”

  “We might.”

  Stallings just stared at her.

  Patty said, “And this might be a long shot.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know that yellow liquid we found at Jason Ferrell’s apartment?”

  He thought about their search for the missing chemical engineer, then nodded. “It’s safrole oil.”

  “And
you’ll explain what this is to me.”

  “It’s the precursor and main ingredient in homemade Ecstasy.”

  Twenty-seven

  John Stallings hit the accelerator on his Impala a little hard as he tore west on Interstate 10. He knew the logical move was to find the next suspect on the list provided by Larry, the bartender at the Wildside. Patty had determined that Chad Palmer was a married pharmaceutical rep with a house west of Jacksonville in a little area called Normandy. But Stallings zipped past the exit for Normandy on his way to Sanderson and Leonard Walsh.

  The redneck and his friend had given him the slip at Jason Ferrell’s apartment, and it had bugged him ever since. Now that Mr. Walsh might have information that could help on the case, he was happy to pay him a visit.

  Patty seemed a little anxious, and based on his history she had reason. But all he really wanted was to solve the mystery of what these morons were doing at Ferrell’s. If the guy was making bathroom X, then Stallings wouldn’t be as bothered about his disappearance. It was a karma thing. If you worked in the drug business you got what you deserved. He’d still feel bad about Ferrell’s mother. If he was an amateur pill maker he could be hiding from any number of lowlifes or one of them could have found him.

  Twenty-five minutes later they pulled off the interstate onto the maze of state and county roads crisscrossing North Florida. The edge of the Osceola National Forest bordered the north side of the road, and what seemed like endless, empty cow pastures spread out to the south. One dirt road cut east into a field in desperate need of some maintenance. Stallings took it as if he’d been down the rocky road a thousand times.

  He slowed the Impala as they approached a broken-down wooden gate permanently propped open.

  Stallings said, “Getting a little lax on security.”

  “Who’d want to come back here to steal anything?”

  A double-wide trailer, up on blocks, sat near the rear of the cleared section of the field. A smaller travel trailer in terrible disrepair was parked about fifty yards from the double-wide with a new Ford F-150 parked in between.