The Perfect Death djs-3

by James Andrus

  John Stallings pulled into the driveway of his former home, still concerned about the whereabouts of his father. There was nothing else he could do right now. There was nothing unusual about his father’s absence from the rooming house, and his history of being a street person would not spur the sheriff’s office into action. The chances were James Stallings was running errands or helping out at some soup kitchen. He decided to give it a couple hours before he ran by the rooming house to check on him again.

  Now he readjusted his mind to dealing with the family he’d raised instead of the man who had raised him. As he crossed the yard a soccer ball popped out from over the rear fence and Stallings was able to use his head to knock it back into the air.

  He heard his son, Charlie, say, “Cool.” The seven-year-old tried to do the same thing; instead the ball bounced off his forehead and struck Stallings right in the face. The boy said, “Sorry, Dad.”

  Stallings waved him off to assure the boy there was no problem, in fact, considering the conversation he was probably going to have with Maria, the ball in the face might be the most pleasant thing that happened to him during the entire visit.

  After he recovered from the blow and kicked the ball with Charlie for a few minutes he wandered into the house. Instead of being confronted by Maria he found his daughter Lauren sitting on the couch in the living room reading one of the Twilight books.

  He said, “What’s up?” He knew better than to try to seem cool or make some crack about vampires.

  Lauren looked over the edge of the book, her dark eyes refocusing on her father, and surprised him by smiling and saying, “Nothing, Dad. I told Mom I’d watch Charlie for a couple of hours.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “I don’t ask where she goes, I just try to help out around here. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me to do?”

  He nodded. “I appreciate it. But I wouldn’t mind if you kept track of your mother for me too. You know the issues she’s had in the past.”

  “I don’t think she’s at any meetings. She seems to be doing pretty well. But there’s something going on in town she wanted to go see, so I’m hanging out with Charlie.”

  Stallings was content to sit across from her in his old chair and just look at his daughter for a few minutes before he ventured back out in the world. He couldn’t believe how much he missed this place.

  As soon as his right arm was free, Tony Mazzetti swung his whole body and drove his right elbow into the face of the guy holding his left arm. Once he was free all he saw were the other four men on the ground moaning with Patty Levine standing in the middle of the group. The ASP was in her right hand and it didn’t look like she was even breathing hard.

  Mazzetti stared at his beautiful girlfriend, who made a quick scan of the men lying around her to ensure no one was a threat, kneeled down, and slammed the top of the ASP into the hard ground to close it. Just like they had been taught in defensive tactics class.

  Mazzetti said, “How’d you know where I was?”

  She casually looked at him and said, “You told me you were coming down to some construction sites and Deerwood Park isn’t that big. I was running early and came by to see if I could speed things along. And I guess I did.” She winked at him.

  Mazzetti thought about the benefits of charging these guys with obstruction and assault. He considered the time it’d take away from his homicide investigations to give a statement and follow up with court testimony. Each man grasped a damaged extremity. Mazzetti made the assessment this was punishment enough, but he didn’t let them know that. Instead, he walked over and grabbed Kozer by his right ear and pulled until he sprang to his feet. He gave Patty a quick look to make sure she realized he wanted her to watch the other, injured men.

  Once back inside the building and alone, Mazzetti said, “You want to be charged with assault on a police officer?”

  Kozer had to stand with his left leg in the air to relieve the pressure where Patty had struck him in the thigh. He shook his head, wiping the sweat pouring from his forehead.

  “Why’d you run from me, you little shit?” Mazzetti raised his hand as if he was going to slap him. He wanted to but restrained himself.

  “I, um, I don’t know. You spooked me.”

  “Where were you Monday afternoon and evening?”

  “What?”

  “You fucking heard me.”

  “I was here. I work Monday through Friday three to eleven.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “There are four of them lying on the ground back there.”

  Mazzetti believed him but would check before he left. As he thought about his next question, Kozer said, “I ain’t done nothin’ illegal in a few years. Whoever you’re looking for it ain’t me.”

  Mazzetti said, “There’s one way you and your buddies can avoid a lengthy and costly criminal record for the shit you pulled back there.”

  “What do I gotta do? Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  Mazzetti had the man just where he wanted him. “I’m looking into a girl’s death. The killer might be a construction guy. I need eyes and ears at the sites looking around.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Anyone acting strange. Anyone who has issues with women. Anything odd. We need a break.”

  Kozer kept staring at Mazzetti as the larger cop released him. He said, “I been wonderin’ who I could talk to about a guy who works at a few different sites. He’s not a construction worker, he’s a finisher.”

  “What’s a finisher?”

  “Guys who lay in decorative floors, or crown molding or windows or special doors. They don’t build nothin’, just make it prettier.”

  “Why’d you want to talk about this guy?

  “He came in late one day, all hungover and wearing makeup. I mean eye shadow and stuff.”

  “That doesn’t make him a killer.”

  “You said something odd. That was way odd. Then we caught him watching women through a bathroom window that was supposed to be covered. He uncovered it and hid to watch.”

  Mazzetti was interested now. “Where was he doin’ this?”

  “A couple of months ago over by the new health building for the university nursing center.”

  That made Mazzetti snap his head up and stare at the greasy redneck with more intensity.

  “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Daniel Byrd.”

  That was a name Joey Big Balls had given him too.

  Mazzetti wrote down the limited information Kozer had on Daniel Byrd.

  Kozer said, “I know you said you won’t charge us, but do you have to tell anyone what happened?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want it getting around that a cute little girl like that kicked our asses.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The shock of the gun exploding right in front of his face caused him to fall back hard against the door. He desperately reached with his right hand and felt for the knob, twisting it and causing the door to burst open and him to flop onto the floor. He took only a second to check his face but felt no blood. The gun had jumped. He looked up and noticed a hole in the door. But now was not the time to rejoice at not being shot because Cheryl was regaining her composure and still had the gun in her hand.

  He was vaguely aware Mary was screaming from the couch and had jumped to her feet. He scrambled backwards, turning so he could spring to his feet and dive into the kitchen. But Cheryl had come into the apartment right behind him with the gun in her hand.

  He crouched behind the cabinets in the kitchen, trying to think what he should do; then Cheryl screamed at Mary to shut up. He pulled one of the drawers hard off its track and dumped all the utensils on the floor. He quickly grabbed the first knife he could find and was surprised to see it was one of the heaviest butcher knives he owned. He wrapped his right hand around the plastic laminate handle and crouched at the edge of the cabinets waiting for his chance to spring.

  As so
on as he saw Cheryl’s foot slide onto the kitchen’s new tile floor he sprang up, swinging wildly with his left hand in a wide arc to knock the gun away. Once again the gun boomed as Cheryl jerked the trigger. This time he didn’t wait and threw his entire body into her, driving the knife hard into her solar plexus. The force of his body behind the thrust of the knife drove it even farther into her torso and he turned his wrist to make sure the blade worked deeper under her rib cage. He felt the blade bounce off bones and sinew on its path to her beating heart. He kept his left hand on her right arm to hold the gun away from him when it went off for a third time. The deafening sound of the gunshot had closed his eardrums.

  Now he took a moment to look into Cheryl’s face. He could see the shocked expression in the way her eyes wouldn’t focus. Considering the force of his knife attack he was surprised she was even breathing. But he clearly felt the power running out of her legs and arm as she dropped the pistol and slowly started to sink to the tile floor. He released his grip on the knife, took a step back, watching in fascination as she slipped onto the floor and rolled to one side. Blood gushed out of the wound below her chest and a red puddle formed around her face with her blond hair sticking to it.

  Once again he checked his face and his chest for any wounds. He was shocked she’d fired the pistol three times inside his tiny apartment and had failed to hit him. He was just as shocked his knife attack hadn’t immediately stopped her. He had a lot to learn about everyday violence.

  Already he started to think how he could explain this to Mary or if it would be easier to go ahead and kill her but not use her for his work of art. Neither of these women were worthy of eternity. He stepped over Cheryl’s body as he scanned the living room to see where Mary had ended up.

  It only took him one step to see Mary had never made it past the couch as she lay on the carpet staring directly at his ceiling with a bullet hole an inch to the left of her pretty nose.

  This was one mess that was going to take a while to clean up.

  Patty enjoyed the position she found herself in. She’d been lecturing Tony Mazzetti about his immature stupidity in coming to the construction site without any backup. To his credit, he took full responsibility and admitted he’d made a mistake. Then he said something that truly surprised her.

  Mazzetti said, “You saved my ass. You’re the best girlfriend anyone ever had.”

  She wanted to hug him and give him a big kiss, but she was enjoying her position of power and thought she’d make it last longer. It was the closest she had felt to him in a month. She’d parked her car in a lot down the street and climbed into his Crown Vic. She let him sit there and sulk for a few minutes as she occasionally lobbed another recrimination at him, but, in fact, she wasn’t really upset. He’d done what many men could never do: he’d accepted responsibility. And the fact that he’d acknowledged she’d saved him and didn’t try to make up some story about having the construction workers right where he wanted them had been icing on the cake.

  Now Patty said, “You really think this Daniel Byrd could be our killer?”

  Mazzetti shook his head, “I doubt it, but I can’t discount him as a suspect. By Monday night he’ll be spilling his guts to me.”

  Patty reached over and patted Mazzetti on the head. “That’s my bulldog. Now take me to the restaurant. Beating poor defenseless construction workers worked up an appetite.”

  She caught Mazzetti’s smile as he turned toward Gi-Gi’s Italian restaurant.

  John Stallings used all the tricks he’d learned looking for fugitives to try and locate his own father. So far he’d had no luck. The priest at the community center shared Stallings’s concern when he came by and explained that his father had not been by his room all day. They both immediately came to the same conclusion. The confusion James Stallings had been suffering was clearly an indicator of something much more serious. The fact that he had no car made it more ominous he was missing. He was out of the area and no one had seen him. That meant he had walked a long way or could be on public transportation anywhere in the largest city in the country.

  From there Stallings stopped at soup kitchens where his father worked and ate. One kitchen was only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and no one at the second soup kitchen, located north of the municipal football stadium, had seen Stallings’s father all day. The kitchen was jammed with clean-cut young people busy at every section of the room.

  A volunteer, older than most of the others, maybe in her early thirties, said, “What do you want?”

  “That how you talk to everyone?”

  “Only to cops that might scare our diners.”

  Stallings smiled and held up his hands. “I’m just looking for my dad.” He explained the situation. He knew her name was Grace Jackson and she was well known in the Jacksonville area for her work with the homeless and as an outstanding teacher at a charter school in a rough section of the city. She had the determined voice and mannerisms of a woman on a mission.

  Grace looked him up and down. “You got a good reputation as a cop.”

  “You have a good reputation too.” He liked the smile on the plump, pretty black woman’s face.

  “Your dad makes me laugh.”

  “My dad?”

  “I got similar issues with my father. I’m sure he’s a riot to people whose childhoods he didn’t screw up.”

  Stallings laughed and realized why this woman was so effective. He slipped onto a stool and took a moment to clear his head.

  Yvonne Zuni liked wearing a nice dress for dinner. She spent so much of her time in a profession dominated by men, having to act tough and having to dress professionally but also tactically, she sometimes felt like she was playing dress-up when she was able to actually wear a dress. She raced home, changed, put on some makeup, and brushed out her hair instead of the more drab, simple hairstyle she wore around the office. Now she wore it straight with a few curls on the side.

  She didn’t even bother to drive her county-issued car; instead she grabbed her BMW M3. She’d been shocked no one had pulled her over on her way to Deerwood Park, with her treating J. Turner Butler Boulevard like the racetrack at Indy. There was definitely a different feel to the BMW from any of the American cars issued by the sheriff’s office.

  For some reason, the southern end of the county didn’t feel like part of JSO’s jurisdiction and she started to relax immediately. The idea of a secret, but almost normal, date with a handsome man and no restrictions made her smile. Although the sheriff’s office would not approve of their relationship, she was confident no one she knew would possibly run into them at an intimate restaurant like Gi-Gi’s.

  As she pulled in the parking lot she saw Ronald Bell standing by the valet and couldn’t resist squealing the tires when she brought the car to a precision stop. She appreciated his smile at the sight of her and threw caution to the wind as she watched the valet pull away in her car, embracing her date and planting a wet kiss on his lips.

  She could sense Bell was a little nervous at the open display of affection.

  Bell said, “It’ll be two minutes before they set up our table. We can go into the bar or just enjoy the night breeze for a few minutes. The choice is entirely yours.”

  She loved the idea of not hiding. She also liked the idea she didn’t have to answer him. Instead she turned and planted another kiss on his lips.

  She was so involved with the kiss she barely noticed the dark Crown Vic as it pulled into the parking lot.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sitting in the passenger seat of Mazzetti’s immaculate Ford Crown Victoria, issued by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Patty Levine imagined she was in a limousine taking her on her first date. She couldn’t explain the feeling she was experiencing, but it was something near pride. The biggest of the seven sins. The one that brought down Lucifer. She didn’t really care. She was sitting in the front seat across from her attractive boyfriend, dressed in an expensive if slightly dusty suit, working in an exciting and interestin
g job, and she’d just kicked four guys’ asses. The University of Florida could not have prepared her for such an accomplishment. No drug could give her the kind of rush she had felt wading into the construction workers who had threatened her boyfriend. She’d felt her entire body get into each swing of her ASP and hadn’t been afraid to enjoy connecting with the beefy legs and bony arms. The way she felt right now, looking at Tony, she could skip dinner and drag him right to bed. Maybe this was the primal feeling that made men act the way they did around women.

  Tony had recognized he’d been in deep shit and had liked having a tough girlfriend who could rescue him. Looking across at him now, Patty wondered how many women hit on him in the course of a normal day. She knew from her long professional association with cops that a certain type of woman was attracted to the excitement and mystery of police. Sometimes it was the uniform. Sometimes it was the plainclothes narcotics agent who could lay down a line of shit. Sometimes it was the romanticized image of the dogged homicide detective. Whatever the reason, there were women who were attracted to police officers. And her boyfriend was an educated, well-spoken, and good-looking police officer. Patty wasn’t prone to jealousy but a thought crossed her mind: maybe they were ready to move to the next level.

  The outside of Gi-Gi’s Italian restaurant was ornate and busy. Cars were parked up and down the street as well as jammed into the small parking lot on the west side of the building. There was a circular drive with an overhang where well-dressed people were waiting for their fancy cars to be brought from the valet lot. Tony didn’t hesitate to pull in his county-issued Ford.

  When the valet approached him, Tony didn’t pull out his sheriff’s ID. He gave him a good police look and said, “Sorry, pal, I can’t let you drive it, it’s a police car. Let me pull it in where it won’t be in the way.” He slapped five dollars into the valet’s hand and turned to Patty. “You get out and I’ll be back in one minute.”