by James Andrus
He snapped, “Don’t do that.”
“Most guys love that.” Her words were slurring from too many cheap beers and a hit of X.
“I’m sorry-I’m just not a big fan of public displays of affection.”
“That’s okay. I know a lot of guys who don’t like PDA.”
He stared at her, trying to figure out what PDA meant.
She wasn’t that drunk, because she caught on and said, “Public displays of affection.” Lisa smiled at him, looking deep into his eyes, and said, “So do you want to go back to your place?”
He hadn’t expected things to move this quickly. He hadn’t planned it as clearly as he wanted to, not even knowing how she was going to die. But they were at a bar in central Jacksonville, and no one would notice him slip out with her. He could always move her car to another lot too.
Finally he said, “Why don’t we go down to the beach? I know a nice quiet, private beach where we could have a lot of fun.”
“You want to fuck in the sand? Do you have any idea how uncomfortable that could be?” She shook her head as if it was on a wobbly pole. “What’s wrong, do you still live with your parents or something?”
He shook his head, realizing how little he liked this girl as a person.
“Then why can’t we just go back to your place?”
He was about to answer her when he noticed a blond head a little taller than everyone around her. He took a closer look and realized it was Ann. Immediately he knew he wouldn’t be taking either of them home tonight.
Lisa had been putting on the drunk act so she’d have some cover if she did something embarrassing. It was weird because he didn’t like her kissing on him and sticking her tongue in his ears like most guys did. She was frustrated because all she wanted was a quiet room where she could do this guy and then sleep peacefully without five college girls screaming and giggling in the next bed. This was all minor. There was only one thing she could never tolerate-not being the center of someone’s attention-and right now he was not paying enough attention to her. Then she saw him look over her shoulder, so she followed his eyes to see the pretty blond girl at the end of the bar staring back.
She sat up straight, resisting the urge to slap him hard across his face.
Lisa said, “Who the hell is that?”
“Just a girl I talked to one night.”
Lisa looked over and saw the girl smiling at him. That tore it. It was bad enough he wasn’t paying complete attention to her but to look up at that whore right in front of her-she couldn’t let it slide. If she was back home in Georgia, she’d have that bitch by her dyed hair and would be jerking her ass out the door right now. But in a fancy city like Jacksonville, she had to act a little more carefully.
She noticed other girls around her at the bar and calculated how many of them she might have to take out before she could deal with this bitch. She left her bar stool and started to march to the other side of the bar.
He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, saying, “What are you doing?”
“Protecting my territory.”
“Are you insane? Don’t draw any attention to us.”
She was surprised how panicked he sounded. It was the first real emotion she’d sensed in him. And it was as close to pleading as she thought she’d ever hear from a guy like this. But she still ripped her arm out of his grip and continued on her single-minded mission. When she was only a couple steps away the girl from the bar looked up and their eyes met.
Lisa said, “Just what do you think you’re doin’ flirting with my man?”
The girl said, “You’d know if I was flirting with him because he would’ve left your fat ass at the bar.”
The guy ran over from the dance floor and said, “Lisa, would you cut this shit out?” Then his eyes shifted to the girl, and he said, “I’m sorry, Ann. She’s had a little too much to drink.”
So that was his bitch’s name: Ann. Lisa didn’t bother to look back at him; instead she focused her full fury on Ann standing so calmly and quietly at the bar as if there wasn’t a girl from Georgia about to whip her ass. “Don’t be too sure I’m drunk, Ann. I’ve done a lot of things a lot more drunk. Now you back off or we’re gonna have a big problem.”
Ann did the worst thing she could do. She ignored Lisa. She stepped away from the bar and took a wide step around Lisa, then said to the guy, “Not very impressive. I thought you’d aim higher.” She continued on a slow, steady trek across the dance floor and right out the door.
Lisa felt that she’d won this round. Then she felt as if there was a fish or something swimming in her belly. She looked up to see the guy checking around the bar to make sure no one had noticed the confrontation. But it was too late. The fish in her belly had kicked up the tacos she ate for lunch, and now they wanted to come up.
She raced out of the club in time to throw up all over the bouncer.
Thirty
It was humid and hot even though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock on Sunday morning. Patty Levine may have been shorter than her boyfriend, Tony Mazzetti, but she was a much more efficient runner. She had an easy stride and years of aerobic training behind her. Mazzetti, for all his time in the gym, had not spent a lot of time on the treadmill. And it showed. All she could think about was an African rhino chugging along the plains. He kept up with her, but it was out of sheer will. He held his side, he coughed, he hacked, and his thick legs moved his wide shoulders and broad chest like a ship coming into port. But she appreciated his effort, and it showed he wanted to do things with her. She ran every Sunday morning. Sometimes up to fifteen miles, but today, she was going to take it easy on her boyfriend and only do about five.
At first she couldn’t believe that he’d take a day off during the middle of an investigation like the triple shooting. It was only after talking with Mazzetti’s partner, Christina Hogrebe, that she realized they’d both been told to take the day off and let the weekend detectives cover any leads that came in. Patty didn’t care that it was a cost-cutting measure; she was just glad to spend a few hours with her boyfriend away from work.
She liked being in command during the run and peppered him with questions. All the effort he needed just to stay up with her kept him from coming up with his usual mantra of bullshit that he tended to hide behind. She got a little more insight into his childhood. How his mother raised him and was overprotective. How he still felt insecure about his physical fitness. Why he always dressed as if he was going to be on TV. All the little things that made him who he was. Then she said, “You’d rather be out on a homicide right now, wouldn’t you?”
“No, baby, this is exactly where I want to be.” He gulped some air. “And this is exactly what I want to be doing.”
She rolled her eyes and mumbled, “Bullshit”
“No, baby, I swear.”
She picked up the pace and pulled away from him. It’d do him some good to get a dose of humility. She put about one hundred yards between them, enough distance down the winding path in the park near At-lan tic Beach that she couldn’t hear him wheeze or breathe hard anymore. She passed several walkers, a couple of joggers, and one older man with his granddaughter on a bicycle and then took a turn onto a path that climbed toward the beach.
She saw a runner cross the path in front of her. Shirtless and sleek and very, very fast, he looked like an agile animal. But there was something familiar about him. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. She sped up and took the same path as the fleet runner, but he’d already turned another corner and was moving too fast to catch.
She had an odd urge to chase him down and see who he was. It wasn’t that she thought he was cute, even though she thought he probably was. It was something else. Something she couldn’t form clearly in her head.
Instead she slowed, taking a second to stretch her legs as her pet rhino slowly rumbled up behind her.
The idea of two of his targets meeting at first struck him as dangerous; then an element of excitement crept into the equa
tion. He would have worked something out with Lisa last night had Ann not walked into the bar. Conversely, had he not been with Lisa, he would’ve approached Ann. Instead it’d been a quiet night, relatively speaking.
He’d started out on a hard run to clear his head. The park near Atlantic Beach was one of his favorite places to run. He occasionally discovered prey in the park. But today, with the image of both of his new girls floating in his head, prey was the last thing he wanted to bump into. He just wanted his heart to beat hard and the sun to bake him and make him sweat. In running shorts and new ASICS shoes, he felt efficient, loose, and good.
He still couldn’t help turning his head and looking at the cute blond woman with the graceful stride coming toward him on another trail. He didn’t get a good look at her face, but some instinct told him to keep running. When she took the same trail, he decided to really turn it on and put some distance between them.
Maybe it was his animal instincts that made him want to escape the woman. Or maybe it was something else. But with Ann and Lisa already on his plate, he didn’t want to risk finding another target. It seemed easier to run fast and get on with his day. He was supposed to call Lisa but hadn’t had time yet. She’d wait. He thought about asking her out to dinner. And as long as she showed up alone and didn’t expect him to be part of the main course, she was a big step up from Holly.
John Stallings sat in the small booth with his kids on either side of him. A half-eaten pepperoni pizza sat on the table, along with three gigantic cokes. He’d taken the kids to an early movie and was relaxed for the first time in several weeks. Charlie and Lauren debated the merits of the movie. Lauren discussing the length, acting, and special effects, while Charlie was more interested in the possibility that humans really could mutate into new life-forms. The normally quiet boy seemed exceptionally boisterous, talking about everything from sports to school.
Stallings was worried it was a side effect of the separation, even though he saw the boy most days. It felt as if they were trying to catch up. It wasn’t the same as when he lived at the house. He listened to Charlie go on and on about his week as class supervisor. The young man had assured his father that he had not let the power go to his head.
“Yeah, Dad, it’s tough. Kids think they can get by with anything. If I showed one person attention, everyone else got mad at me.”
Stallings said, “Tough to be in charge, sport.”
“I sure did learn that, Dad.”
The conviction in Charlie’s voice and the simple statement made Stallings think about his new supervisor, Yvonne Zuni. Maybe she wasn’t as bad as he’d initially thought. With his interest in finding who had given Allie Marsh the Ecstasy, it could be an interesting week ahead of him. He’d see what kind of support the new sergeant gave him.
Charlie said, “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be in management. I’m like you, Dad, I’m an action kind of guy.”
Stallings and Lauren both laughed at Charlie’s sincerity. As much as he loved hearing Charlie’s stories, seeing his teenage daughter smile made him feel just as good. There was so much the young lady had taken on in the past few years. From trying to be the lady of the house while Maria recovered, to her concern for her father’s long hours and dangerous work. It felt as if the concern he’d had for her earlier in the week when he caught her at the Bamboo Hut had just melted away. Who would’ve thought you could miss a sullen teenager this much?
As the kids continued to debate about the movie and mutants, Stallings couldn’t get his conversation with the Daytona detective out of his head. He knew kids did stupid things during spring break, but no one should have to die for it. Maybe the same person was handing out too much Ecstasy. Maybe there was a connection between them. He had a lot of work to do to try and figure that out.
Stallings glanced up from his pizza, laughing absently at something one of the kids said; then he saw him in the front door. Instantly he recognized the older man, and it felt like a punch in the stomach. He couldn’t take his eyes off his ruddy face and pitted nose. His face was more wrinkled, but still the same. His gauzy eyes scanned the small restaurant and fell on Stallings and the kids.
It was obvious the old man recognized him. He hesitated at the front door, and, like Stallings, appeared uncertain what to do. Would he simply turn and step back out onto the street? Would he stay and ignore them? The questions ran through Stallings’s mind.
The old man started toward them. Stallings didn’t know what to do. The kids didn’t even notice him. It took about five seconds for the man to shuffle across the floor to their booth.
“Hello, Johnny.”
The kids both looked up with no recognition whatsoever on their faces. There was an awkward silence as Stallings stared at the old man. The flood of feelings: fear, resentment, nausea, and even some love, kept him from saying anything at all. The old man stood there staring in awkward silence.
Stallings felt Lauren nudge him under the table. She’d never met the old man. And only caught the mildest of stories about him. Charlie had no clue at all. Finally, Stallings managed to nod a curt greeting.
The old man’s eyes flicked to each child. He wiped his face with a shaking hand and finally said, “Maybe you should come by and say hello when you have time. I’m over near Market Street.” He laid down a Post-it note with an address scribbled on it. “Bring these two with you if you think it’s been long enough.” With that, the old man turned quickly and with surprising speed shuffled out of the restaurant, onto the street, and out of sight.
Lauren said slowly, “Who was that?”
Stallings swallowed hard and said, “My father.”
Thirty-one
It was late Sunday afternoon, and the sun reflected off the St. Johns River in the back of the Yvonne Zuni’s parents’ suburban Jacksonville house. Yvonne sat at the end of the long table with her three sisters on one side and their respective husbands on the other. Yvonne’s father sat at the other end of the table, and her mother, as usual, scurried around with giant plates of food. Jerk chicken, black beans and rice, fried plantains, and a Caesar salad sat across the long table on the covered patio.
Yvonne had missed very few Sunday dinners with her family in the past seven years. She even had her own husband sit across from her for almost three years, but that was the past, and now she was the only Zuni girl who had no husband. But no one here judged her or treated her any differently. They loved her, and she loved them. They felt the sorrow she felt, and her mother had cried with her when her one-year-old son, Jason, had died from a rare blood disease he’d had since birth. Her sisters had felt the same anger that she had when her husband had sought to ease his own sorrow with another woman, or more accurately, with other women.
These dinners with the family helped her keep things in perspective and keep her mind off work, if only for a few hours. It was hard to keep a gung-ho detective off an investigation because of budget cutbacks. She didn’t like sending Tony Mazzetti home, even on a Sunday, because there was no overtime. But it was tough being the boss. Anyone who had ever supervised people knew how hard the job was. That was the joke when she went to the one-week supervisory training at the sheriff’s office. The instructors used to say, “Management is great. It’s telling people what to do that sucks.”
She’d be curious to see what progress her detectives had made on their investigations this week. Pride pushed Mazzetti to make sure every homicide was cleared, and conscience pushed Stallings to make sure he’d find an answer to Allie Marsh’s death. But the sergeant knew she had to count on both of their partners to keep them from doing anything stupid. That was the way things worked in a police department.
Her father tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked over at his smiling face.
He said, with his quiet Trinidad accent, “So sweetheart, how’s the new job in the detective bureau?”
She shook her head. “It seems like no matter what you do someone’s not happy.”
He laughed and said,
“That’s why I spent my life as a veterinarian with only family working at the practice. Your mom was the closest thing to a supervisor we ever had.”
Hearing her dad say it made her realize she did have two families. But this one had much better food.
It had been a busy day for him-the workout, a good run, cleaning up his Jeep, visiting his sister and nephew. He spent over an hour at the grocery store buying organic and healthy food. As he pulled into the driveway of his apartment that sat behind the main house, he froze. A gray Mazda was parked directly in front of his carport.
He cautiously stepped out onto the weed-and-gravel driveway. He didn’t bother to shut off the Jeep as his eyes scanned from one side of his apartment to another. Then he saw someone move inside the dark tinted Mazda. The gray car’s door opened, and a thick female leg stepped out onto the gravel driveway. As the figure emerged from the car his stomach tightened.
All he could say was, “How did you know where I live?”
She smiled and brushed her blond hair from her face. “Why? Am I not supposed to know where you live?”
“No, I just don’t remember giving you the address.”
“Or your phone number, or any other important information. Am I supposed to wait for you to call me whenever you want to? I have rights too.”
He leaned back into his car and shut off the engine. This had never happened to him before. None of his prey had ever figured out where his lair was. He’d intended to call Lisa tonight. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. He looked around hoping no one had noticed her come to the house. He couldn’t have any connection with her and didn’t want her to be able to find him. This was freaking him out almost as bad as Holly and her crazy cult friends.
Lisa stepped away from her car and slammed the door. “Are you going to invite me inside?”
“You didn’t answer my question. How did you find out where I live?”
She gave him a sly smile. “I followed you home from the club last night. I knew you were all alone, but I thought it would be better if I came by to see you today.”