The Perfect Prey

by James Andrus

  “That’s the truck that ran from us,” said Patty.

  Stallings took another second to scan the entire open area and especially the corners of the trailers and truck. He said quietly, “Is this the day that changes my life?”

  He parked right in front of the double-wide and didn’t waste any time pounding on the thin door. He stepped to the side and appreciated that Patty stood at the corner of the big trailer so she could see anyone coming from the rear.

  After a few seconds the front door opened, and the man that had run from him, in the same green John Deere hat, poked out his head and looked down at Stallings standing at the base of the three metal stairs that led into the trailer.

  Stallings said, “Thought you could run from us, didn’t you?”

  “Goddamn, you’re the five-O from J-Ville.” He started to ease back inside, but Stallings jumped onto the landing to block the man from closing the door.

  Stallings said, “You Leonard Walsh?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, we need to talk.”

  “I got nothin’ to say to you. This here is Baker County, not Duvall. You got no juice here.”

  Stallings smiled. “And the local cops don’t know me either. I think that might be worse for you.”

  He stared, open mouthed, trying to figure out exactly what Stallings meant. He stepped back all the way into the double-wide, and Stallings followed.

  Stallings said, “Why’d you run from us, Leonard?”

  “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Neither do I. All I want is answers. If you tell me what I need to know, then we’ll be gone in a few minutes. But if you don’t …” Stallings knew to leave the threat open. Imagination was worse than anything he could’ve said. He watched Leonard Walsh’s face closely, knowing he’d sufficiently scared the man when he saw his Adam’s apple bob in a deep swallow.

  Leonard bowed his head. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why were you at Jason Ferrell’s apartment?”

  “How’d you know that’s who we were going to see?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  Leonard hesitated, then said, “He was doin’ some work for me.”

  “C’mon, Leonard, speed this along. Get to the point. What kind of work?”

  “He said he could find a new way to make meth without using the ingredients that are on the watch list so we don’t have to show no driver’s license just to get cold medicine.”

  “That’s why you have the small trailer, isn’t it? That’s your cook shack.”

  Leonard nodded.

  “All I really need to know is where Jason is now.”

  Leonard shrugged.

  “Why were you at his apartment?”

  “We owed him some cash.”

  “He come up with the recipe?”

  Leonard remained silent.

  Stallings said, “I think I’ll take a look around the property.”

  “You can’t do that. You got no warrant. You don’t even got jurisdiction.”

  Stallings looked over to Patty at the door in a signal to get ready in case this guy did something stupid.

  Then he turned and stepped back out into the yard.

  It was early, but he enjoyed getting out to someplace different. No one knew him here and no one knew he liked to come here. Closer to the University of North Florida in the southeast part of town, this little club featured a live band later in the evening but cheap beer early. That meant it was crowded. Really crowded.

  Lisa, the girl he had met in the food court at the mall, grinded her hips up against him. She wasn’t technically a spring break visitor because she had flunked out of a junior college in north Georgia, but she had a great smile, blue eyes, and straight, long blond hair. Her hips were strong enough to bump him over a few inches.

  He had agreed to meet her in the little club but now was sorry because of all the blond heads he saw. He could go wild in a place like this. He wondered what would happen if he did something really crazy like use a gun to kill five or six of the blondes. Would the cops think all the blond victims were a fluke? The thought made him chuckle.

  Lisa said, “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.” He liked her big, curvy frame in perfect time to the music. This chick could dance.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “I could never tell.”

  “Maybe I can figure it out later. At your place.” Then she winked.

  Was he wrong or were the hunts getting easier?

  Lisa was glad she’d seen him in the club. Even though it was much less of an accident than he suspected. She had scanned the giant club with kids crammed into it like chickens at a commercial chicken farm. She didn’t much care for the stuck-up college girls, and it had nothing to do with her having flunked out of community college. Who cared if she knew who wrote the Odyssey or how to figure out the outside distance of a circle? She could never remember if it was called the radius or the circumcision or maybe it was the circumference. She got a lot of worse things confused. She felt that she was basically a decent person and always tried to do the right thing. And the right thing in this case was letting this good-looking guy know that she was interested and he couldn’t ignore her.

  Ever since her first boyfriend, Lucas Martin, had started to ignore her until he finally ended up sleeping with that bitch Peggy Lynn, she’d made it a point to keep a man’s attention. It usually didn’t work out that well, and she had two restraining orders to prove it. That didn’t mean she couldn’t keep trying. And that meant using the assets and talents that God had given her. That’s what the pastor had said at the Hahira Baptist Church. He had a whole sermon about using God’s gifts in the best possible way. God had given her a big, beautiful butt. It was so perfect it was a legend in Hahira, Georgia. In fact, there was no black man under the age of thirty who didn’t dream about her ass on a regular basis, and she knew it. Right now she was using the great ass God had given her by grinding it against this guy’s crotch on the dance floor of the giant club.

  She’d taken the X tab that he’d given her, and between dancing with this guy’s tight, hot body next to hers and the drug, her heart felt as if it were about to jump out of her chest. Sweat had made her hair dampen and hang down into her eyes, but she kept grinding and moving to the beat. This was why she’d come with her friends on spring break even though she wasn’t really on spring break. This was more fun because she didn’t have to worry about getting back to some dreary class on writing or mathematics. She wished she could stay longer than a week, and if she had her way, that’s exactly what this guy would ask her.

  Leonard Walsh trailed Stallings, yammering in his ear, “Wait, I’ll talk, I’ll talk.”

  “I know you will.”

  “Then why don’t you stop walking around?”

  “Because now I want to know what kind of setup you have. Might be dangerous, and I don’t want to risk you getting hurt by substandard lab practices.” He stopped just short of the small trailer. He’d already made sure Patty was well back, ready to respond if he had to tussle with Leonard and far enough back to be safe if the little trailer blew for some reason. Meth production was a tricky, dangerous business, and more than one redneck had bought the farm trying to get rich in the competitive meth market.

  He placed his hand on the trailer’s flimsy doorknob.

  Leonard said, “Wait.”

  Stallings paused.

  “You don’t need to look in there.”

  Stallings jerked open the door, and the smell, like rotten fruit, almost knocked him over. The trailer had four huge tubs and a barrel in one corner. The rear windows, open to the wide, empty field, provided rudimentary ventilation.

  “Damn, Leonard, I’m impressed. This is a good setup”

  The rangy redneck smiled, showing his yellowed teeth. “Thanks.”

  “You don’t have any matches, do you?”

  Leonard pulled out a frayed book. “Why?�
��

  “Can’t have any possibility of an open flame.”

  “Yeah right, good idea.”

  Stallings turned and pushed him back outside, taking the matches out of Leonard’s hand as he did.

  “Now, did Jason give you the new recipe?”

  “Not yet. We were paying on installment. I still owe him sixty-five hundred bucks.”

  “Do you know how to find him right now?”

  Leonard shook his head. “It’s not like he owes me money. I owe him. He should be easy to find, but he ain’t.”

  “Any ideas where he might be?”

  “Nah. The manager of his apartment told me some black fellas was looking for him. I think he might have promised too many people things, and now he’s laying low.”

  “He ever make anything else for you, like Ecstasy?”

  Leonard nodded, digging into his pocket. He pulled out a small vial with three speckled tablets in it. “He tried to convince me that these were more profitable than meth. He said this X was cheap to make and easy to sell. I think that dumb-ass college boy didn’t understand that out here there ain’t no spring break partiers. Out here we need meth.”

  “No idea where he might be?” Stallings said, casually collecting the vial from Leonard.

  Leonard shook his head. “Said he had a girlfriend, but never said where.”

  “Mention a name?”

  “Called her Miss something. Baxter or Barnes. Hell, I can’t remember. All I cared about was our meth recipe.”

  Stallings turned to Leonard and said, “Okay, you’ve been helpful. Now run.”

  “What?”

  “Run, Leonard, run.”

  “Why?”

  Stallings struck a match from the pack Leonard had provided. He looked over his shoulder at the meth trailer and smiled.

  Leonard yelled “No!” but turned and started loping away toward his double-wide.

  Stallings tossed the match inside the door, watching it ignite the cheap synthetic rug.

  He jogged away; then the first of the tubs ignited.

  On the ride back toward Jacksonville, Patty Levine looked across at her partner. “Why’d you light the trailer on fire?”

  “Couldn’t leave an active meth lab intact.”

  “But it’s Baker County. We had no jurisdiction.”

  “Even if we did, we had no PC.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit concerned he might make a complaint?”

  “What’s he gonna do? Call in and complain someone blew up his illegal meth lab?”

  Patty grunted and focused on the road.

  Twenty-eight

  On the drive back from blowing up the meth lab, Stallings stopped in a subdivision near Jacksonville called Normandy. He hoped to catch one of the other men in the Wildside video at home. Chad Palmer was a pharmaceutical rep who looked as if he made a lot of money. He was twenty-nine years old, appeared to be in good shape, was good looking, and shouldn’t have been hanging out at a bar that catered to college kids. That was enough to make Stallings want to talk to this guy.

  The one-story, ranch-style house, with a perfectly manicured lawn and a load of plastic toys sitting on the front porch, wasn’t showy but seemed comfortable. He let Patty take the lead, knowing that the sight of her often set people at ease. The idea that a cop like Gary Lauer could be involved in giving drugs to young college girls gnawed at him. Stallings hoped someone like this guy Palmer might be their man.

  Patty mashed the doorbell and waited. That detail demonstrated the difference between her and Stallings. He would’ve pounded on the door as he had a thousand times before. He stepped to one side and muttered his little mantra to himself, “Is this the day that changes my life?” Patty rarely even reacted to it anymore.

  The door opened a crack, and a pretty young woman with green eyes peered out at them. She was in her mid-twenties, wearing just shorts and a T-shirt. A boy, about five, peeked around one of her shapely legs, but didn’t say a word.

  “Yes?” the young woman said.

  Patty knew to take this one. “Mrs. Palmer, is your husband around?”

  “I’m not Mrs. Palmer.”

  “I’m sorry. Does a Chad Palmer live here?”

  The young woman smiled. “Can I ask what this is about?”

  Stallings, feeling a little impatient, said, “Ma’am, we’re with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. And we need to talk to Chad Palmer.”

  “Oh. I’m his sister, Debbie. He actually lives over near the beach.”

  Patty said in her usual calm tone, “This house is listed as one of his addresses.”

  Debbie smiled. “Technically he owns this house, but I’m the only one who’s ever lived here. Well, me and the rug rat here.” She ruffled the silent little boy’s hair.

  “That sounds like a good brother.”

  “Yeah. He’s a pretty good guy. What’s this all about?”

  “He may be a witness to something, and we need to talk to him. No big deal.”

  “Where? He travels all over with his job.”

  “Where’s he travel?”

  “From Miami to Atlanta.”

  “This has to do with Jacksonville.”

  “He spends a lot of time in Daytona, but he has an office in Jacksonville too. What did he witness?”

  Patty hesitated, then said, “Just a routine investigation. I’m sure we’ll get hold of him soon.”

  “What kind of investigation?”

  Patty looked over to Stallings, who nodded. “It’s about a Mississippi college student who died from an apparent drug overdose.”

  “What kind of drug?”

  “Ecstasy.”

  Stallings noticed the woman relax a little, as if the fact that it wasn’t a pharmaceutical drug relieved her.

  As they walked back to the car, Stallings looked over his shoulder at the cute boy staring through the window at them.

  Stallings said, “A pharmaceutical rep has access to a lot of drugs.”

  “So why would he need to make his own?”

  “That, my young partner, is a very good question. I hope we can get an answer from Mr. Palmer in the very near future.”

  Since the uncomfortable incident with Holly he’d been a little more careful. He hadn’t told Lisa where he’d be tonight because he wasn’t ready to make his move. Still, the music, the crowd, and the girls were giving him an erection that drew so much blood from his head it was making him dizzy. He knew he had to be more careful and that people were looking at Allie Marsh’s death. He didn’t know why the cute girl from Mississippi deserved so much attention, but he didn’t want to do anything stupid now.

  He knew that moving too quickly with Lisa, no matter how exciting her blond hair and blue eyes were, could get him in trouble in the long run. Besides, he liked the thrill of the hunt. He almost wished she weren’t so accessible. It had been hard convincing her he couldn’t give her his cell phone number. She’d been all too quick to give up hers, but he mumbled some half-assed excuse. Now she was convinced that he was married. But she didn’t seem bothered by the excitement of an older, married man. Somehow the prospect of a guy who might have a little money, was in pretty good shape, and could dance blinded her to the problems that arose from him not giving her his phone number.

  To be on the safe side, he’d called her in the afternoon and told her that he was busy tonight, but that he’d make sure that they got together tomorrow. That would give him the whole night to dream about her and what he might do to her. The image of Holly with the steel knife stuck in her head was still in his brain. The excitement and enjoyment he’d gotten out of that was on a whole new level. He wondered if that was going to be his new standard: quick, bloody, devastating. Perhaps it was a kind of evolution he was undergoing. The problem was it was so much easier for the police to detect those kinds of crimes. Another issue was that he was getting low on Ecstasy tablets. Usually his source would come by and he could pick up a couple of tablets quietly, with no one asking any
questions, and usually no money changing hands. There were things he could barter. Favors, friendship, drinks. Ecstasy was a fluid currency, as well as the best hunting tool around. He paid a lot for the first, large batch, but it had proven to be worth the investment.

  Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice as the young woman approached him. She said, “Excuse me.”

  He gazed up into perfectly clear, blue eyes. A wisp of blond hair hung over a cute face. His heart raced as he tried to answer her.

  As far as he was concerned it would be spring break for another couple of weeks. And he had at least two targets to focus on. Lisa and this girl.

  He straightened up and smiled. “Hey, what’s your name?”

  She focused her blue eyes on his and said, “Ann–why?”

  “Because I want to ask you out on a date, Ann.”

  The hunt was on.

  Twenty-nine

  It was Saturday morning, and John Stallings was alone in the crimes/persons office. Budget cutbacks and tax shortfalls had reduced the detectives’ overtime budget to almost nothing. That wasn’t why Stallings sat here alone; this case had started to eat at him. And he had nothing else to do. Maria had taken Charlie and Lauren to visit her sister in Orlando for the day. Stallings had scheduled an outing with them in the morning. It was almost as if he and Maria had already gotten a divorce.

  In front of him, he held the glass tube with three Ecstasy tablets that Leonard Walsh had given him. Somehow he felt Jason Ferrell could be a link in this case, but he had to consider the suspects for now. Gary Lauer and Chad Palmer were high on his list. Donnie Eliot had all but convinced him that he had no part in Allie Marsh’s death. It seemed prudent to let him rot in jail a while longer and focus on suspects he thought were viable. One thing he wanted to do was make certain the goofy drummer wasn’t known in other spring break towns as a serious troublemaker who distributed Ecstasy on a large scale. There were hundreds of different police databases, but the best way to find out things like this was through contacts. Usually cops from local jurisdictions who could talk to people and know what the word on the street was.