The Perfect Prey

by James Andrus

  He reached down for his can of caffeine-free Diet Coke as a shadow fell across him. Stallings squinted into the sun to see who would bother him during lunch. In the bright spring sun all he saw was the outline of a large man in uniform with a holster on his right side and radio on the left. The patrolman said, “You’re not man enough to come talk to me directly?”

  Stallings immediately realized he was talking to Gary Lauer. In one quick motion he set down his sandwich and stood from his perch so he could face the motorman. “I did come talk to you face-to-face.”

  “Then why’d you talk to my girlfriend?”

  Stallings shrugged. “Where do you get your girlfriends, middle school?” He couldn’t resist baiting this asshole.

  Lauer edged closer, an old intimidation trick that Stallings wasn’t about to fall for. He casually brought up his hand in a fist with his thumb sticking out in front of his index finger. He held it in place so when the younger man moved closer it would strike him right in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.

  Lauer said, “I know someone was by my girlfriend’s apartment asking questions about my vacations.”

  Stallings knew to play dumb even though he wasn’t sure what the younger man was talking about. Besides, nothing provoked an irrational person like silence.

  Lauer looked him in the face but stepped forward quickly, and Stallings felt his thumb mash into the uniform shirt. But the motorman was wearing a concealed ballistic with a steel shock plate vest over his heart and solar plexus. The move had no effect other than to hurt Stallings’s thumb.

  Lauer raised his voice. “You think you’re better than everyone else because you put away a couple of big-time killers. But I got news for you, we all work hard around here, and I thought we all watched each other’s asses. Guess I was wrong.” Now he had Stallings’s back against a hedge.

  “Look, you douche bag, you brought this on yourself. You like to scare women, like to boss them around–I know your kind. Younger women are easier to intimidate. If I find out you gave Ecstasy to any spring breakers you won’t know what hit you.”

  “You got no juice left around here, old man. No one cares if you’re looking at me or not. I even got a decent overtime detail for a few nights. So you keep wasting your time while real criminals run loose around the city.” He started to edge closer, forcing Stallings back into the bush. Stallings let him push forward, then slipped to the side, turned, and smirked as the big motorcycle patrolman stumbled hard into the bush. He shoved his way back out and spun quickly to face Stallings.

  Lauer said, “You better hope I don’t see you away from this building. Out on the street, your ass is mine. I’ll have another trophy to show off.”

  Stallings smiled and replied, “You mean like a matching scar on your right eyebrow?”

  Patty Levine was better prepared for tonight’s surveillance. She knew exactly what to wear to blend in at the tiny club on the southeast side of Jacksonville. Today she had on shorts and a nice shirt with her glasses and a baseball cap changing the shape of her face. She looked nothing like the professional detective who’d spoken with Chad Palmer on Monday morning. As a result she was sitting a few stools away from him and was even able to hear some of his conversation with the young woman on the other side of him.

  She didn’t like watching Mr. Rich Kid, and she hated to see a guy like him attract so many very young women. He’d chatted with three different women in the short time she’d been inside. Maybe he’d do something tonight to expose his role in Allie Marsh’s death as well as the others.

  She kept a casual eye on Palmer from down the bar. Two young men took stools to the right of her. The overpowering odor of Axe Body Wash made her eyes water slightly. After only a minute, the guy closest to her turned her way and said, “You go to school around here?”

  Patty laughed involuntarily. She said, “UF.” Everyone in Florida understood that meant the University of Florida in Gainesville.

  The young man smiled. “No shit, me too. What’s your major?”

  Patty wondered if the young man was blind or just so drunk he didn’t notice the eight years’ difference between them. She knew how to end this quickly. With a casual turn of her head she said, “Physics.”

  As she expected, the young man sort of nodded his head and turned back to his friend.

  Her phone vibrated in her front pocket. She dug it out of the tight shorts, saw it was Stallings calling her, and flipped it open. She had to mash it to her ear to hear over the noise inside the bar. She knew to keep it very general on her side of the conversation and said, “Hey, what’s going on?” Her partner had been very quiet this evening. He mentioned a quick run-in with the detestable Gary Lauer at the PMB earlier in the day but didn’t go into any details. But she knew the confrontation had affected him. He didn’t want to admit a cop might be involved in any kind of crime against a young woman. As much as she disliked the motorman she wanted him to be cleared in this too.

  Stallings said over the phone line, “You doing okay in there by yourself?”

  Patty glanced over at the boy to her right, laughed, and said, “You’d be surprised how well I could do in here if I wanted to.”

  “What about our boy?”

  Patty turned slowly to see what Palmer and the young woman were up to. As soon as she faced his way he laid a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, took the young woman’s elbow, and they both started heading out the door. All Patty had time to say was, “He’s on the move now. He’ll be through the front door in about five seconds.” Now came the tricky part.

  Forty-one

  Tony Mazzetti sat in the dark office alone, wishing he’d become a fireman instead of a cop. No one expected anything of firemen except the obvious: spray water on a fire. The rest of the time they could work out, train, and sleep. Three things he liked to do anyway.

  Instead he hunched at his desk, puzzling over the cryptic comment Pudge, the street prophet, had made. When the odd fat man said to look closer rather than farther, did he mean the neighborhood? The drug trade? The fucking Hess Party? He hated riddles like this. Good investigations were logical, direct, and straightforward. That’s why he was in homicide and not narcotics. Shit, he’d rather be in fraud than narcotics. At least he could still identify scumbags and know exactly what the crime was with fraud. In narcotics, victims were other scumbags and the targets were more scumbags trying to make a buck off dope. Usually in his homicide investigations he had forensic information to corroborate witness testimony. It was simple: Someone saw Joe Blow shoot Sam Citizen and the medical examiner pulls a thirty-eight slug out of Sam Citizen. Case fucking closed. But all he had in this triple shooting were nine-millimeter slugs inside bodies and a lot of holes outside the small house. Sure, the forensic weenies could tell that the killers used at least two guns and one of them had to be some kind of automatic weapon. They had fired from the front door and hit all three victims immediately. The only wounds in common were a single nine-millimeter shot to the head. They’d all been riddled with body shots, but each had a bullet in the head. Probably after this occurred, the outside of the house and a Lincoln Navigator parked in the driveway were hit a total of nineteen times. The crime scene guys counted thirty-four shots fired. None by the victims.

  Now, for some reason, Mazzetti was concerned about something some crazy street guy had to say. The rumors on the street had all been conflicting. Some people saw a Camaro before the shooting; others saw a Cadillac Escalade with dark windows. Once the rumor about white men started, everyone jumped on board.

  Mazzetti stared at his desk hoping some kind of answer would pop into his head. It wasn’t as if he had anything to do other than work right now anyway. Patty was stuck on some kind of bullshit surveillance with Stallings. He didn’t count on seeing her again until late. They said they would eat a very late dinner at her condo. It was kind of nice to look forward to spending time with someone for a change.

  Mazzetti muttered a few curse words as he fixed hi
s eyes on the file and thought, I hate open cases.

  As soon as Patty told him their subject was on the move, Stallings sat tall in his seat to get a good view of the front door to the club. The parking lot had some cars in it but was by no means packed. He’d already identified Palmer’s BMW and could see both the front door and the car. There was no way the pharmaceutical rep would spot him sitting a couple of rows away in his nondescript Impala.

  The door opened, and Palmer, dressed in jeans and an untucked oxford button-down long-sleeved shirt, strolled out arm in arm with a cute, and possibly drunk, young woman. Stallings was good at estimating ages and he put this girl at nineteen, twenty at the most. About right for the college students in this area of town and the clientele of this little club. Now he was faced with the real question of what these surveillances were trying to accomplish. The girl was over eighteen and obviously walking with Palmer voluntarily.

  Stallings considered the situation. Had he let the crime against a young woman affect his judgment? What was his plan? Wait for her to turn up dead tomorrow and then try and pin it on the pharmaceutical rep?

  Stallings watched as the couple paused on the passenger side of the BMW. He had a clear view straight down the row of cars. Somehow the image of this girl reaching to kiss Palmer made him think of his own daughters. He hated the idea that they would ever have to deal with a slimy, manipulative prick like this. The idea of a man who was nearly thirty trolling for teenagers at bars made his stomach turn.

  Then the movement caught his eye. It was the experience of sixteen years of police work in every unit from road patrol to homicide. The handoff. It happened every day in every city in America. Something changed hands, someone passes something off to someone else–whether it was a package, money, or drugs, it always had a certain look to it. In this case Palmer turned his head in each direction, reached in his pocket, pulled out a small plastic bag, then placed it in the palm of the girl’s hand. She smiled, plucked something from the baggie, then popped it in her mouth. Had he really seen something so overt, or was he looking for a reason to intervene?

  As he watched, he saw the girl hesitate as she swallowed, then look up and kiss Palmer again on the lips. The pharmaceutical rep’s hand slid down her body and rested on her butt. Something inside Stallings snapped.

  He was out of the car and moving without conscious thought. Palmer’s head jerked up in surprise, recognition hitting his face an instant before Stallings’s closed fist. The girl squealed as Palmer made an odd sound and dropped straight back onto the hard parking lot with a thud.

  Palmer shook his head and started to scoot to a sitting position, but Stallings kicked him hard in the chest, knocking him flat again.

  Palmer moaned, “What the hell is going on?”

  Stallings saw how frightened the girl was. All he could say was, “What did he give you?”

  The young girl stared at him with her mouth open.

  He raised his voice to a shout. “What did you just swallow? I saw you–don’t try and hide it.” He shoved Palmer back flat on the ground, only this time left his foot on the man’s chest.

  The girl started to cry.

  Stallings crouched down next to the bloody pharmaceutical rep and started to pat his front pockets, reaching in the last one and pulling out a baggie. He opened it and spilled the five pills into his open hand. Each of them appeared professionally made, and they were all a solid color.

  Now the girl started to sob loudly. She was able to moan, “Who are you, and why are you doing this?”

  Stallings realized his shirt covered his badge and gun. Still squatting next to Palmer, he reached in his pocket, and pulled out his ID so the girl could see the badge. All he said was, “JSO.”

  The girl clutched her stomach and said, “Oh my God, are you going to arrest me?

  Now Stallings took a moment. Palmer was quiet, lying flat on the ground trying to keep the blood flowing from his lip and nose to the minimum. Stallings said calmly to the girl, “I saw him give you something and you put it in your mouth. What was it?”

  The girl pointed at the pills in the palm of his hand and said, “Just one of those Percocets. I’m sorry–I won’t do it again. Please don’t tell my parents.”

  He looked down at the five commercially produced painkillers in his hand and then at the bloodied, whimpering pharmaceutical rep and quietly said to himself, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

  Patty raced up. “John, what are you doing?”

  Stallings took a moment to look at the bloody man, then at the very young girl, and decided he didn’t regret anything he’d done.

  Forty-two

  The sun had just risen as Stallings woke. For a few moments, as he lay still in the small bed of his rented house, he had the slightest of hopes everything had been a dream. The irrational beating of Chad Palmer. The discovery that he wasn’t distributing X. The expression on Sergeant Zuni’s face. His right hand throbbed slightly, and he saw the cuts on his knuckles where they had dug into Chad Palmer’s teeth and knew it had been no dream. He’d fucked up in a big way this time. And there was no one to blame but himself.

  As soon as Yvonne Zuni had arrived at the hospital where Chad Palmer was getting stitched up, she looked at Stallings and said, “Go home until I call you.” She had taken charge, but it didn’t sound as if she cared about his reasons. The sergeant was looking at facts, and the fact was he had no right to hit Chad Palmer in the face. It didn’t matter now. He doubted he’d be working for her or anyone else at the sheriff’s office. A flood of thoughts rushed through his head. How do I tell Maria and the kids? How do I explain my behavior? Do I need to retain an attorney? Why didn’t I kill the son of a bitch once I’d started?

  He rolled over and stared at the ceiling, realizing for the first time he was still in his clothes from the night before. The whole evening was a blur for him, but he knew he’d had a late dinner, and after a brief ride near Market Street, looking for his dad, he’d come home and collapsed, the weight of the last few weeks catching up with him.

  Incredibly, his cell phone hadn’t rung all night, and now he wondered if he should call the sergeant and see what kind of shit he was in. He’d never had a complaint filed against him. Most cops suffered numerous frivolous claims of brutality and excessive force. The funny thing was Stallings used his fists much more than most cops. But he knew when to hit and what to say afterward. That was the gift God had given him to carry into his chosen profession: the ability to make people like him even after he kicked their asses. But now he’d finally gone too far with the wrong guy at the wrong time.

  Patty Levine didn’t like the expression on her boyfriend’s face as they shared a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts near the PMB.

  Tony Mazzetti almost beamed when he said, “How much blood was there? I mean, was it from several wounds or just one massive head wound?”

  “Mainly from his lips. Stall really only punched him the one time.”

  “Holy shit, the nut job finally went over the edge. I knew it was just a matter of time before Mr. Squeaky Clean cracked.”

  “You don’t have to be happy about it. I mean we all work on the same squad and it wasn’t like he went postal and shot someone indiscriminately. He punched a guy giving drugs to a nineteen-year-old girl. Given his history, it didn’t seem outrageous at all.”

  Mazzetti waved off her criticism. “I’m not happy about it. It’s just he tends to be a little self-righteous.”

  “Why? Because he’s had to go back and rework two of your cases?”

  Mazzetti looked hurt but focused on his coffee for a moment. “I’m glad you’re not in trouble with him.”

  Patty didn’t know if she was in trouble or not. The whole thing had been handled very quietly. Yvonne Zuni stepped right in and was on the phone to IA immediately. Patty only caught snippets of the conversation, but it sounded as if this was how Yvonne the Terrible had gotten her nickname. She had wasted no time sending Stallings home and bringi
ng in investigators from the internal affairs unit to handle the questioning of Chad Palmer and his young friend.

  Patty had protested she should be there, but the sergeant told her she was a witness, and now all she had left to do was go home and wait till she was called back. But Patty hadn’t exactly waited. She was headed back in at nine sharp, and she didn’t intend to keep her mouth shut. Not only did she owe a lot to John Stallings, but the guy had been through too much to get crushed over something like this. She didn’t know what she could do, but she knew she couldn’t just sit at home.

  He’d come by his sister’s house to say hello and maybe grab one of her really good grilled-cheese sandwiches for lunch. But he also enjoyed spending time with his nephew even if it was only watching him watch TV. He could see their shared genetics in the boy’s keen eyes and quick movements.

  But now, sitting at the counter with his sister, he faced one of the many barrages of questions she fired at him from time to time. It wasn’t an inquisition, like when his mother would clearly be worried about his outside activities. He finally realized what his mother had suspected, and he’d had no real contact with her in several years. He figured dear old mom was just as happy with that arrangement.

  “I’m not saying you have to settle down, I was just wondering why you don’t,” his sister started. “I mean you spend most nights away from here anyway, but you never give me any clear idea of whether it’s with one girl or a hundred different ones.”

  He didn’t answer directly, but he had to smile about keeping his apartment secret for so long. He’d met his landlord, Lester, at the Wildside when Lester was delivering alcohol from his beverage truck. He’d struck up a mild friendship, and Lester had offered him the detached apartment behind his house for a few hundred dollars a month. He wasn’t nosy and asked no questions, which made him a great landlord.