The Perfect Prey js-2

by James Andrus

  She appreciated the smiles she got back from both the detectives.

  It was almost eleven o’clock when he woke up, and he still felt a little tired. He got out of bed, washed his face, slipped on the same clothes he wore the night before, and ventured out to the kitchen. A note on the refrigerator said his sister had taken his nephew to the doctor and would be back around one.

  He didn’t mind a little quiet time in the empty house. It gave him a chance to reflect on his wild night. He had lingering images of Lisa wrapping her legs around him, lying still on his floor, curled up in the back of the Mazda, and the stoner helping him push the car into the water. It made for an interesting life. And he still had time left to hunt.

  He’d find a way to casually run into Ann and start back on his slow, methodical stalking. Surprises were great, but the idea of circling the prey gave him something to look forward to.

  He had the stoner’s name and had managed to copy down his license plate in case he needed to deal with him at a future date. He knew the stoner was a regular at some of the clubs that hosted the spring breakers, lived at home with his parents, and worked at Wendy’s.

  But paying off the young man had virtually depleted his Ecstasy supply. So it was convenient that he found himself at this house. He was careful never to leave anything at his little apartment at the beach. He didn’t know if his landlord, Lester, ever peeked in the apartment. Since he had one room to himself here, he made use of the closet and had it packed with his stuff. Wedged up in the corner, up high where his nephew couldn’t reach it, was a Tupperware container that held his Ecstasy and a few other pills he’d acquired. He stood up on a stool and reached way back into the crowded closet and found the plastic container behind a bag of old T-shirts. He sat back on the bed and opened the container. He only had two Ecstasy tablets left.

  That meant he’d have to visit his Ecstasy source very soon.

  Tony Mazzetti had two anonymous tipsters that said the triple shooting he was investigating was done by a rival gang that sold meth on the outskirts of Jacksonville. The shooters were not only a gang, they were a white supremacist group called the Hess Party. The fact that someone called them something other than a street gang and associated them with a fringe group like racists meant that a special unit in the sheriff’s office probably had been keeping tabs on them over the years.

  Now Mazzetti found himself in the third floor office of the intel unit, better known as the “rubber gun squad.” Members of the rubber gun squad didn’t have to make arrests or go to court to prove that they were working. They collected information on groups that most cops had no idea even existed. From radical Muslims who attended mosques in the area, to the few members of the Klan who rambled through North Florida, the intel squad knew what they were doing and what they intended to do. Groups like that always had informants moving in and out. They found that out the hard way about ten years ago, when it was discovered that sixteen of the eighteen attendees of a Klan rally were all informants of various state, federal, or local police agencies.

  Mazzetti looked across the table at the stern and serious face of Lonnie Freed, a detective for the last nine years in the rubber gun squad. Mazzetti and Freed had worked as road patrolmen soon after he graduated from the academy. Freed had been wound too tight for the road, going by the book on every possible infraction. A ticket for speeding had to have an extra sheet just for his narrative details. He drove sergeants crazy with probable-cause affidavits that were six pages long. But he found a home here in intel, where they honored straitlaced, hardworking, meticulous cops who viewed every group from the B’nai Brith to the Taliban as a dangerous threat to U.S. national security.

  Mazzetti said, “What about this Hess Party?”

  The thin detective with the thick glasses spoke in a fast, clear tone. “The Hess Party is named after Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuhrer under Hitler who fled to England during the war. He was also the last prisoner of Spandau Prison. He died at ninety-three in 1987. Hess was considered-”

  Mazzetti had to cut him off. “Come on, Lonnie, get to the fucking point. Do you think these assholes that live right here in South Jacksonville are good for the shooting?”

  Lonnie nodded his head. “Oh yeah, they’re badasses. They’re not even true racists. They use it as a marketing tool to scare people so they can sell more meth and make money.”

  “Why would they shoot up a drug house on Market Street?”

  “Like I said, they’re not crazy-it’s got to be a business matter. Maybe the Street Cred boys were trying to move in on the meth field. Or maybe they just owed them money. The Hess Party is not the kind of group to shoot someone just for running their mouths.”

  “Would they be smart enough to use a spy shacked up across the street?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because there was a white dude in the house across the street. But when I tried to talk to him he gave me the slip.”

  “I hope they’re not that sophisticated.”

  Then Mazzetti remembered the speckled pill marked J2A that he’d taken from the house and left on his desk. “Does the Hess Party ever deal in X?”

  “Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Thanks, Lonnie, you were just as helpful as you used to be on the road.”

  The intel detective grinned and said, “Sure, anytime, Tony.”

  Mazzetti thought, What a dweeb.

  It had taken Stallings fifteen minutes to convince Patty to take the evening off and have dinner with Tony Mazzetti. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her with him, but he didn’t want her to screw up her life like he already done to his own. Although having dinner with Tony Mazzetti seemed like a mistake in itself.

  Stallings decided to go by the Wildside and see if Larry, the bartender, had any new information for him. He found the athletic bartender at the far end of the club, at a secondary bar that seemed to be more for VIPs than the general crowd. For a Monday night the place was on the loud side with groups of young college girls and hungry-looking fraternity nerds setting up camps at various places around the dance floor.

  Larry gave him a broad smile and said, “Hello, Detective. What brings you around here?”

  “Just wondering if anything was new on your end.”

  The bartender shook his head. “I haven’t seen Donnie Eliot in here since last week.”

  “He’s still in the can.”

  “No shit? What for?”

  “Possession.”

  “So you don’t think he’s the one that gave a girl the X?”

  “No, it doesn’t look like it. What about the other guys in the videos? Have you seen either of them?”

  Larry shook his head. He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out Stallings’s business card. “I told you I’d call if I saw them. The one cop hasn’t been back in here. Neither has the guy who gave me a big tip. I’d know them if I saw them again.”

  “You guys been busy?”

  “Spring break is winding down. About half the schools are back in session-that means about half our bartenders are gonna be laid off soon.”

  “You won’t be asked to leave, will you? You’ve been here quite a while, right?” Stallings had noticed the other bartenders and staff all had T-shirts with the Wildside logo on them, but Larry wore a white, oxford button-down shirt. There were no logos, nothing to indicate he worked at the bar, and it had a collar.

  “I work here in the season and then float around from time to time, but I think it’s gonna be my choice.”

  Stallings said, “So you’ll still call me if you see any of the guys I’ve been looking for?”

  Larry absently filled a glass from the Diet Coke fountain spigot and handed it to a busty waitress, who didn’t even notice Stallings. Larry looked behind Stallings, smiled, and said, “It looks like someone wants to talk to you.”

  Stallings turned around, and for the first time in quite a while was truly surprised.

  The voice said, “I bet we’re here for
the same reason.”

  Stallings’s stomach did a little flip.

  Thirty-six

  It was a little after six in the evening when Yvonne Zuni walked out the front door of the Police Memorial Building. She wanted to make it to the gym and then by her sister’s house before she even could think about eating. Her usual fast gait carried her through the lobby and down the stairs quickly until she heard someone call out, “Hey, Vonnie.” She turned to see who was calling her by her nickname. There was no one by the front door except one young man in jeans and a casual pullover. She paused for a second, then realized who stood there.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said as Gary Lauer stepped from the shadow of the pillar and walked toward her.

  He smiled that charming smile of his and said, “Still the last one out of the bureau every night, huh?”

  “There’s always plenty going on, and a good sergeant has to be on top of everything.” She checked him out from his perfect haircut, perfect ass, and perfect legs to his beat-up Top-Siders. She paused for just a second at the scar through his left eyebrow and leveled a flat stare at him. “What do you want, Gary?”

  “I wanted to tell you that I know your man Stallings has been looking through my records.”

  “All part of an official investigation.”

  “I never had any doubt that you were all business. I just wanted to tell you I never gave a girl any kind of drug and I don’t know why you guys are even looking at me. I think it’s because your detectives think I have some kind of negative attitude about chicks. I haven’t broken any laws.”

  Yvonne started to turn away, saying, “If you did nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.”

  “I’ve heard that one before, and we both know how that turned out. I’m just asking you as a friend to give me some consideration.”

  “First of all, this is Stallings’s case and I’m letting him run with it, and second of all, we’re not friends.” She bumped open the door and headed to the gym.

  It had only taken Stallings a few seconds to regain his composure and know enough to get Diane Marsh out of the last place her daughter had been seen alive. Now a few blocks away at a little mom-and-pop coffee shop, they sat across a small table as she sipped the huge latte, then dabbed her eyes with a tissue. In jeans and a casual top she didn’t seem as formal or intimidating as she had at the sheriff’s office. She also looked too young to have college-age kids. Her blond hair spread over her shoulders, and her blue eyes gazed at Stallings through intermittent tears.

  She said, “I’ve gone into the Wildside a couple of times since we found Allie’s body. I really couldn’t tell you why I’ve gone in there other than to find some kind of connection with Allie. We lost our connection a long time ago. She was a good girl. I knew what she was up to most of the time. But we hadn’t been close like we had been most of her life. I think any parent would do anything they had to do to establish that connection with their child. You know I mean?”

  Stallings nodded. Words couldn’t express how much he understood what she was talking about.

  Diane Marsh said, “My husband and I are not close. The boys always seemed to gravitate toward him. Going out on the boat, camping, all the sports that men like to play. But Allie was mine. Since she’d been at Southern Miss, we drifted apart. Nothing blatant or overt. No big fights or drama. We just hadn’t talked like we used to. And it took her disappearance to make me realize it.” She put both elbows on the small table and started to cry with her hands over her face.

  Stallings let her go for as long as she wanted. He reflected on his own life and the connection he’d lost with Jeanie. There had been fights and drama before she disappeared. And a lot since she disappeared. But he missed interaction with his oldest daughter. Missed her more than he could express. He wished he could talk about it as Diane Marsh talked about her own anguish right now. Maybe that would’ve made things easier on Maria and the kids. Maybe he’d even still be at home if he’d talked about things instead of burying himself in work.

  Finally, Diane Marsh looked up, her eyes ringed in red, and said, “Have you ever known any parent that didn’t search for some way to connect with her kid?”

  Stallings thought about his own father and remembered, just barely, how they would play catch in the tiny front yard of the Jacksonville home. It was a memory he hadn’t recalled in decades. His father coaching and encouraging him with every toss. Telling the young boy he had a gift and he’d be able to do anything he wanted with it.

  Stallings shook his head, saying, “No, I really can’t think of a parent that didn’t want to connect with their kid.”

  Patty Levine had told Stallings she was going to have dinner with Tony Mazzetti tonight. The only reason she said that was because Stallings insisted that she not go with him to the Wildside. He used some bullshit excuse that he didn’t want her to make the same mistakes in her personal life that he’d made in his. But Tony was busy on his own triple homicide and she knew there was a lot to do on their case, so she had gone for a run earlier in the afternoon than usual, then cleaned up and come back to the office just after seven.

  There was a lot more to this case than anyone wanted to admit. On one hand, if a cop like Gary Lauer had handed out Ecstasy, there was a huge problem. On the other hand, if someone else was systematically handing out Ecstasy to spring breakers, that was another huge problem. This was not a simple case of a girl who overdosed on drugs. The case may have initially gotten so much of their attention because the family was wealthy and the mother insistent, but now there were other elements that overshadowed all that.

  Now Patty had records in front of her, solid evidence of the suspect’s activity. It was the sort of thing that she was good at, and everyone knew it. Some detectives interviewed endless numbers of suspects. Some detectives sat on surveillance for days on end. Some detectives were so lucky that they just rode whatever lead came along. But Patty Levine was meticulous and had the sharpest memory of any detective in the unit. She remembered names and dates from cases that were long closed. She could make sense of bank records, phone calls, class rolls, and even convoluted Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office personnel records.

  She had two piles of records in front of her right now. One of the stacks contained American Express records she had subpoenaed for Chad Palmer. The other, copies of everything from Gary Lauer’s JSO personnel file including assignments, complaints, and vacations.

  The personnel records were easy to get once they had classified Lauer as a “person of interest.” At Stallings’s request, they had not called in Internal Affairs. Stallings said it was because he didn’t want to ruin Lauer’s career if there was nothing to the allegation. But Patty knew it had just as much to do with Stallings’s dislike for Ronald Bell, one of the chief investigators in IA.

  Usually subpoenas for financial records took weeks or even months to arrive. But as usual, Stallings knew someone, and now she had eight inches of detailed American Express records in only two days.

  The office was empty and quiet, but she was far from lonely. This was exactly the kind of police work she enjoyed, and this was exactly the kind the case that she wanted solved.

  She got to work.

  John Stallings sat in his issued Impala watching the dark rooming house west of the stadium. He’d been there about an hour and hoped he might see his father stroll in or out of the two-story house. There had been almost no traffic on the street since he arrived, and only two lights in the house had been on.

  He couldn’t explain what had driven him to come all the way over here after speaking with Diane Marsh, but it was an urge he couldn’t resist. Maybe somewhere in the back of his head, he hoped that there was a connection strong enough between him and his father to create an opportunity.

  He had always liked the solitude of surveillance in his county car. That’s what this felt like. Waiting quietly, watching the door to a house. It used to make him anxious because it meant he didn’t kno
w when he was getting home to his family. But now they didn’t seem to need him nearly as much, and on surveillance he felt needed. He also knew that they were going to have to get much more active on this case. Talking with Diane Marsh had intensified his fire to resolve the case. And that could mean long hours of surveillance.

  He waited until just after three. He never saw his dad that night.

  He liked the atmosphere of this club on the southeastern side of the city, near the University of North Florida. He could appreciate how hard it was to maintain the beach theme in a dingy little warehouse ten miles from the ocean with the interstate virtually overhead. The staff was very professional as well.

  He had already danced once with Ann, but he didn’t want to be seen with her too much because she had four friends in the club. It would’ve been easy to ask her to leave with him, and he thought she’d say yes. But he couldn’t risk being identified later. So the stalking of his cute little antelope would continue, and he didn’t mind that one bit.

  He sat at the end of the bar and sipped a beer as he watched Ann and her friends laugh around the high top near the dance floor. It was an odd position to be in because she knew he was interested in her and she had made it clear she was interested in him, but he couldn’t make a move right now. He couldn’t even hang out chatting with her and her friends. It was too big of a risk.

  These were all tactics he’d developed over the last few years. Two years ago, in Panama City, he’d been questioned by a detective who was looking into the suicide of a coed. It was a very informal and casual interview, but the reason they even knew to talk to him was because he had spent too much time with her in public the night before. When they had sneaked out onto the roof of the nine-story hotel, using an old maintenance ladder that hung down near the window of the girl’s hotel room, he knew exactly how things would end up. The one hit of Ecstasy had loosened her up, but she’d refused to take off her pants. It didn’t really bother him as he watched her blond head bob up and down on him. When she was finished she tried to kiss him, but he fended her off, as most men would. She had started to get a little loud when he eased her to the side of the building and then, without any warning, said, “I wonder if that X can make you fly?” And shoved her off, watching her float for just a second, then plummet like an iron pole, falling straight through the roof of a Suburban parked below.