The Perfect Death djs-3

by James Andrus

  FORTY-FOUR

  Buddy sat straight on a stool as he ate his chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat at the counter in his kitchen. The last jar needed for his work of art sat on the counter next to him. He stared at it with mixed emotions. It was the ending of so many things. He’d taken extra time to blow it just right and the glass glistened in the overhead light of his kitchen.

  It was early for lunch, not even quite eleven o’clock, but most of the work he was doing today was in the shop and any time he felt hungry he could run upstairs and grab a quick bite. That’s how Men’s Health suggested men eat. Lots of small meals staggered throughout the day.

  The TV was off and he didn’t have a newspaper open in front of him. He was enjoying the satisfaction he felt from completing another section of his work of art. He had also learned not to jerk on the cord too hard or you could break the subject’s neck. He had been lucky last night to be able to grab Katie’s final breath, but it had been just that, luck.

  He’d hardly slept after the ceremony to put Katie in her rightful place. From the first moment he put his plan in action it had gone almost perfectly. He’d surprised her, calling pediatric endocrinology from the phone in the lobby. He’d been in the hospital enough to know they were cheap on security cameras and both cameras in the lobby pointed to the front. Easy enough to avoid. He’d worn an oversized Jacksonville Jaguars Windbreaker because it disguised him a little bit if someone had happened to see him and it had giant pockets where he had stored one of his homemade jars.

  Buddy still had his pass from earlier in the day and had the sticker on the outside of his windbreaker so no one would ever doubt he had permission to be inside the hospital.

  Katie had wanted to meet him in the coffee shop, but he met her at the elevator and led her out to the rear garden. It was a well-maintained courtyard designed to give patients a place to step outside into a world that wasn’t windy and usually had shade from one side of the building or the other. Even if there had been cameras out there it was too dark in most places to pick up anything. No one was out enjoying the night. Not with the things you could see inside, like American Idol or America’s Next Top Model. Sometimes Buddy wondered how culture could continue with crap like that on the airwaves, drawing so much attention. He wished people took more of an interest in serious art. If more people appreciated art, maybe he could’ve made a living at it instead of doing it as a sideline to his plate-glass business. Sometimes he forgot how bitter he was about people’s shallowness.

  He was glad that for one evening people had been occupied and hadn’t bothered to come out to see the natural beauty of the gardens or the moon or the brilliantly lit constellations. As they sat on a hard patio bench in the corner of the courtyard near a low, manicured hedge of decorative plants, Katie had appreciated the majesty of the heavens, staring with those beautiful eyes and a relaxed, pleasant expression. He had wasted no time pulling out the cord and slipping it around her neck so quickly she’d never even realized it was there. Then he pulled as hard as he could with both hands to give her that shock and awe he needed to start his own artistic process. But her graceful neck did not have the muscle girth to withstand the stress and he felt a sickening snap.

  He’d moved quickly, not releasing the cord until he had the jar in place. It’d been awkward and he had felt a little panic as he rushed through his process, but as he released the cord he realized there was just the slightest exhalation on Katie’s part. Not enough to fog the jar, but he could feel it gently on the fingers of his right hand as he held the jar to her lovely mouth.

  He had not been able to sit and enjoy the process for fear of being discovered at any moment. He quickly dragged her limp body from the round patio table and laid her between two rows of decorative plants. She would be easy to find. He’d have enough time to slip out the south door, which had no camera and no security personnel. He took a moment to look down at Katie’s pleasant face. She looked very peaceful. He wondered if it was because her death came so swiftly. There were some marks on her neck, but her beautiful face had not been distorted and his memory of her would stay just like that.

  The experience had been so positive he’d found himself whistling the theme to Hogan’s Heroes while working earlier in the morning. He couldn’t remember the last time he had whistled. Sometimes whistling set off a coughing fit so he had all but abandoned his childhood habit of whistling to keep himself focused.

  He finished his sandwich and was about to turn on the radio to see if there were any news reports about a body being found in one of the city’s finest hospitals. As he stood from the stool he heard a familiar sound and froze in his place, wondering who it could be.

  Someone was on the stairway to his apartment.

  John Stallings lay on the double bed, in his drab bedroom, in his lonely house in Lakewood. He’d slept for a couple of hours, but now, midmorning, he was wide awake and staring at the ceiling. He knew that at forty he shouldn’t be working thirty-six hours in a row. But sometimes that’s what the job called for. He’d been fitfully asleep until his cell phone had rung a few minutes ago. It was an analyst with JSO who hadn’t realized he’d worked all night long. She had a question about the body found in the gardens at Shands hospital. Stallings explained that aside from hearing about it early in the morning he had no details.

  Sergeant Zuni had been in a tough position personnel wise and had sent another team to handle the scene at Shands. She had put Sparky Taylor in charge of the crime scene investigation and sent Tony Mazzetti home to grab a few hours’ sleep.

  Now Stallings realized he couldn’t sleep wondering about the new victim. He got dressed, ate a bowl of cinnamon sugar oatmeal, and headed over to the hospital.

  But he was still dog tired.

  Detective Luis Martinez was relatively new to the crimes/persons squad. He’d been brought over from Auto Theft less than a year ago to work on the Bag Man case. While he missed his friends over in Auto Theft and even the guys from patrol, he liked being a detective. Now, because of a whole line of strangulations, he had finally been assigned his own homicide. He worked with a partner named Bill Talbot who was all but useless and constantly had an excuse not to go out on interviews or work at night. Luis couldn’t very well rat him out to the sergeant; that was not the way things were done. But that didn’t mean he had to stop moving at his own pace.

  Since the discovery of a female body in a car parked at Jacksonville Landing last Saturday, he’d been in almost constant motion. He was so excited about being allowed to run his own investigation that he wasn’t jealous about not being included in this new serial-killer case. He liked working with the people in crimes/ persons and knew he could learn a lot from Tony Mazzetti. The guy was a legend in JSO for his clearance rate and work ethic.

  John Stallings was another guy he could learn from. The guy had been through everything life could throw at him and still kept a positive attitude and knew how to look out for other people. He was a cop’s cop.

  Instead, Luis Martinez had been saddled with a detective who had retired three years ago but apparently had failed to tell anyone. John Talbot was a nice fella who loved his wife and kids. He also loved donuts, beer, ESPN SportsCenter, and, way down the list, police work.

  Luis didn’t allow that to slow him down. He’d always give Talbot the option of coming with him on interviews, but if the older detective was busy or had other plans, Luis just went on his way.

  The victim in this case, Cheryl Kazen, had been found dead from multiple stab wounds in the backseat of her Chrysler 300. She’d been a very attractive woman, but the more he looked into her background, the more suspects he found. She had a string of former boyfriends who all had records, and all the ex-boyfriends he’d questioned hated her guts.

  The only real forensic evidence gathered from the car was a second blood sample. The lab had developed a DNA sample for both blood types. One matched Cheryl and the other was not in any of their databases. Luis had taken several DNA tes
t kits on interviews, but only found two of the former boyfriends worth asking for a swab.

  Now he was down to the second line of interviews. People the victim knew and dealt with occasionally. He was hoping to pick up some speck of information that, when viewed with the whole case, might point Luis in the right direction.

  He was at a building owned by the victim and her family and rented to some kind of glass company.

  Luis Martinez was in a shirt and tie with his Glock.40 caliber on his hip and his JSO detective’s shield next to it. There was no reason to hide who he was in a homicide investigation, and having the gun and badge in view tended to intimidate people. That made up for the fact that he was only five foot six. At least in his mind it compensated for his lack of height.

  All the doors to the shop were open, but it looked empty. An air-conditioner unit that cooled the second floor was running, so Luis started up the wooden staircase to the door at the top.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Tony Mazzetti shuddered at the amount of information he needed to get from hospital administrators. He’d already been appalled at the lax security measures around the hospital and learned only half of the very few security cameras even worked. There was also the issue of visitors coming and going. The names were listed on the computer alphabetically but not always with a date associated with the visit.

  The initial impression he’d gotten of the victim, Katie Massa, was that she was an extremely well-liked and friendly young lady who had no obvious enemies around the hospital. Two detectives had already questioned her ex-husband, by phone because he was in Afghanistan with a private security firm.

  In most cases where a woman was missing or killed, if the cops automatically arrested her husband they’d be right more than they were wrong. But Mazzetti knew this girl wasn’t killed by any ex-husband, no matter where he was on the globe. Even without the equipment and the lab he saw the marks on her throat and recognized the intricate pattern of the cord that had been wrapped around it and used to snap her neck. He had to work on the assumption that the killer had intended to strangle her but used too much force at just the right angle.

  There were two news trucks in front of the hospital. Normally Mazzetti would’ve been champing at the bit to talk to them, but today he was exhausted from his efforts to catch Daniel Byrd and he was disheartened that there was no way Byrd was the killer. Byrd had been booked on assault and grand theft charges, and the lieutenant was pushing the fact that his parole should be revoked immediately.

  But the real problem was they had no more suspects and were not any closer to catching the killer or clearing homicides.

  Buddy hesitated at the door after he heard the steady, authoritative rap. He took a quick look around, wiped the sweat from his palms on his shirt, and opened the door with as calm a demeanor as he could muster.

  “Arnold Cather?” The short man asked as he held up a wallet with police ID.

  Buddy nodded his head and said, “What can I do for you?”

  “My name is detective Luis Martinez with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me.”

  Buddy was not used to hearing his full name, and the way the detective spoke sent a jolt of nervous energy down his spine. He looked past the detective quickly to see if he was alone. Finally Buddy said, “Sure, come on in.” He allowed the detective to walk past and noticed how the sharp-eyed young man scanned the whole apartment very carefully, as he kept his hand hovering near the black pistol on his hip.

  Buddy motioned toward the couch and said, “Grab a seat. I need to wash my hands real quick.” Buddy used the excuse to run his hands in the cool water and then wipe the sweat from them. As he left the kitchen to join the detective on the couch he noticed a heavy butcher’s knife sitting on the counter. Without thinking, he grabbed it and stuffed it into the small of his back so his shirt covered it completely. Buddy plopped down on the couch next to the detective.

  The detective said, “I’m here about Cheryl Kazen.”

  “I heard what happened to her. It’s terrible.”

  “How’d you hear about it?”

  “I saw it on the news and her sister called me.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  Buddy tried hard to stay calm, but his face flushed and a trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face. His eyes roamed around the room and fell on the bullet hole in the wall of the kitchen. The hole put there by Cheryl before he plunged the knife into her chest. And while he was looking over the detective’s head at the bullet hole, his eyes dropped and he noticed, for the first time, a thin splash of blood at the base of his breakfast bar. If he had noticed, how long would it take before the detective picked up on it?

  Finally Buddy was able to say, “Cheryl came by with her sister Donna one evening last week. Like Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “Why’d they come by?”

  “They’re my landlords since their father died and wanted to look around to make sure the place was in good shape and asked me if I wanted out of my lease.” He knew Donna would’ve told the story and he wasn’t about to give this guy any reason to hang around.

  The detective made some notes and let his gaze drift around the apartment. Buddy could hardly keep his right hand from slipping behind his back, like it had a mind of its own. He found himself considering if the detective would have called in his location or if someone might be waiting for him outside. It didn’t seem to matter to his hand.

  All that mattered was the magnetic pull of the butcher’s knife’s handle.

  Patty Levine snapped awake on her couch about lunchtime. She had managed to doze off without the aid of Ambien or any other narcotic after the long surveillance and interview of Daniel Byrd. This single night’s simple victory lifted her spirits slightly until she remembered some of the things she had to be anxious about.

  The image of the injured homeless man and his snotty attorney using words like “careless” and “negligent” in the IA office yesterday left Patty shaken. Her stomach growled and felt like someone was doing a ballet at the top of her intestines. She slowly stood, shaking off the stiffness of lying in an awkward position, and through force of habit padded back to the medicine cabinet in her bathroom. She looked through the rows of amber pill bottles, found the oldest vial of Xanax, and automatically took two just to get her day started.

  Her back throbbed so she reached for an odd assortment of painkillers, poking through the variety of shapes and colors to find a Vicodin. Before she placed it in her mouth, she hesitated, then looked at her image in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. Was this really what she wanted to be doing with her life? Even though she had been out late working and not partying, she looked like hell and it was almost noon.

  Patty tried to trace her exact anxiety and realized it wasn’t really about being sued. From her first day in the academy she’d heard that any good cop doing her job couldn’t avoid being sued at some point in her career. But this didn’t have anything to do with enforcement, it was just an accident. And it was her fault. Even if the homeless man was exaggerating his minor injuries and the lawyer was trying to milk the system. The sheriff’s office was constantly getting these kind of complaints because of the perception they had deep pockets. It was unusual, however, that Internal Affairs would get involved and allow a scumbag attorney to question a JSO officer directly. There was a lot more to this than Patty could decipher. She wondered if Ronald Bell was actually after something more serious than a minor car accident. He had insinuated that she had tried to cover up her activity, but there was still the rumor of the missing drugs. She wondered if she was a suspect in the drugs’ disappearance. Why not? She was an addict. She had to be honest with herself and admit some of the things she’d done recently were as a result of her drug use. This was not the way she wanted to live her life.

  Maybe it was time she told someone else about her problem.

  Buddy had tried everything to get Detective Ma
rtinez out of his apartment. He’d answered the same questions over and over and now was concerned that the sharp little detective had his suspicions about Buddy’s role in Cheryl’s death.

  Martinez said, “I have to ask this. Have you ever been in trouble with the police before?”

  Buddy shook his head. “No, not even as a kid.”

  “Would you mind if I took a quick look around the apartment and your shop?” He made it sound so casual and easy that it would be hard for Buddy to say no without looking like he was hiding something.

  Buddy hesitated. Finally he said, “I have no problem with it, as long as you don’t make a mess.”

  The detective kept his dark eyes directly on Buddy as he shook his head and mumbled, “That’s fine. I won’t make a mess.” He slowly stood from the couch, looking down the hallway toward the bedroom, then over Buddy’s shoulder toward his work of art.

  Buddy stepped back and reached behind him very slowly.

  Detective Martinez turned and stepped toward the kitchen quickly. It took Buddy several steps to catch up to the energetic man. The detective was in the kitchen before him, but he could close the gap. Buddy felt he’d lost the initiative when the detective faced him in the small kitchen.

  Buddy calmly picked up his newly blown glass jar and moved it from the counter to a shelf near the refrigerator. It was an instinct and it didn’t capture the detective’s attention.

  Detective Martinez set down his notebook upside down on the counter so Buddy couldn’t see what he had written. The detective actually opened one drawer and looked down at several carving knives and another butcher’s knife. “The victim was stabbed a number of times. I’m learning a lot about knives as I work this case.” The detective sounded casual.

  Buddy relaxed slightly until he looked on the wall and realized the bullet hole was directly behind the detective. He couldn’t keep his eyes from shifting down to the bloodstain he’d seen near the baseboard earlier. God, he hoped the detective didn’t follow his gaze.