The Perfect Death djs-3

by James Andrus

  As he replaced the bay window, for the second time in less than a week he found himself whistling.

  Stallings didn’t like to bully people, at least people who hadn’t committed a crime. But as he backed the lab tech into the corner, he realized the man was nervous because he feared actual physical pain. Stallings would never consider touching another employee of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in any kind of aggressive way. But he didn’t have to let this guy know that’s how he felt.

  The tall, thin young man had initially told Stallings he wouldn’t be able to look at the paper with the odd chemical ring on it for several days and that Stallings should submit it through official channels.

  Stallings said, “I don’t think you understand. This is urgent and relates to the multiple homicide investigation we have going on.”

  The young man stammered, “I won’t be able to tell you exactly what the chemical is without checking a number of variables. Could take hours or even days.”

  “All I need you to do is compare it to a previous sample we submitted from two other victims. You don’t have to tell me what it is, only if it’s the same chemical found at the other crime scenes.” Stallings stepped away from the man to let him relax slightly. “And I’m going to stand in the room until you get it done.”

  The young man scurried to the other side of the lab and grabbed a folder of recent reports. He came back and took the paper Stallings had given him in an open plastic bag and examined the stain, first through a large microscope sitting at the end of the bench and then with a magnifying glass as he looked into the light. The young man went to a bench and pulled out a bottle with a small eyedropper and placed one drop of clear liquid on top of the paper. He then examined the paper again with the magnifying glass and touched the drop of liquid with a small piece of litmus paper.

  Stallings fidgeted, trying to conceal his impatience. At least the young lab technician was doing his job and doing what Stallings had asked. He didn’t feel right rushing him if he was working diligently.

  After a few more minutes and two more tests, the young man looked at Stallings and said, “It’s the same chemical exactly.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  John Stallings rushed through the corridors of the Police Memorial Building like a maniac, at one point knocking a dispatcher out of his way with barely an apology or glance behind him. He’d dialed Luis Martinez’s cell phone three times only to reach his voice mail. The secretary in the Land That Time Forgot had seen him earlier and thought he was in the building somewhere.

  As Stallings headed back to the crimes/persons squad bay, he decided, on a whim, to check Luis’s former unit, Auto Theft. As soon as he banged through the door he saw Luis chatting and laughing with a detective in fatigues and a T-shirt that had the JSO emblem on the chest.

  Luis looked up and smiled at Stallings and started to introduce him to the other detective when Stallings gripped him by the arm and said, “What was the name of the guy you were talking to when you got the stain in your notebook?”

  “Huh?”

  Stallings resisted the urge to shake him. “Yesterday you told me about talking to some guy at a glass company.”

  “Oh, that guy. He’s nobody. He knew the victim on my homicide, but there’s no way that little fruit ball did it.”

  “Luis, what was his motherfucking name?” The tone and language clearly caught Luis Martinez by surprise.

  “Arnold Cather.”

  Stallings grabbed a pen off whatever desk they were standing next to and snatched a piece of paper. “Spell it.” He wrote out the name. “What was the name of the company?”

  “Classic Glass Concepts.”

  For some reason that name rang a bell with Stallings too. He wondered if his father’s memory problem wasn’t genetic.

  Liz Dubeck was having one of those days where everything fell into place. Her three employees actually showed up, sober and helpful. She had taken an hour right at sunrise to run, climb the four flights of stairs ten times, and finish with four sets of push-ups. The guy from Classic Glass Concepts had come on time and, although he appeared to be very slow and methodical, was making progress. She had eaten nothing but fruit and avoided any coffee. Mornings like this were rare indeed.

  She’d been in a good mood for several days since the money from the federal grant had been deposited into her business account. She had been planning on it for some time and had everything in place to start sprucing up the hotel immediately. The only thing she was taking her time with was bringing the wiring up to code. It was not a cosmetic, superficial job and was proving to be much more expensive than she’d anticipated. She had two estimates scheduled after lunch and hoped one contractor might see the other and get into some kind of bidding war. Devious was not part of her nature, but she could justify her actions if it meant helping even one more runaway in greater Jacksonville.

  She knew a lot of this was to cover guilt she felt over Leah Tischler. No matter how many people told her it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t help but worry about the missing teen.

  She sucked down half a bottle of water as she surveyed the lobby and approved of the job the carpet guy had been doing in the sitting area across from her office. The new glass that was being fitted in the window was so clear it took a moment for her to realize it was already in place.

  Could this day get any better?

  Tony Mazzetti was reeling from the discovery of the link between Katie Massa and a man who gave her crossword puzzles. The fact that Marvin wasn’t really an orderly but a psychiatric patient didn’t affect the information. It meant that someone at the hospital had to have seen Katie with the man. He delivered Marvin back to the floor where he was being treated. He was a noncustodial, voluntary patient and posed no threat to the public. But he was still as crazy as a shithouse rat.

  Mazzetti’s phone was in his pocket, and he dug it out to see Stallings’s name. He flipped open the phone, “What do you need, Stall?”

  “I might have a suspect’s name. Can you check it out at the hospital?”

  “How’d you get the name?”

  “Tony, it’s a long story. But Martinez talked to him on a different homicide and ended up with the same chemical residue as the one from Lexie Hanover’s apartment on a sheet of notebook paper.”

  Stallings’s information made his crossword seem lame so he kept his mouth shut and copied down the name Arnold Cather.

  “Sit tight, Stall. I’ll check this guy out and get back to you.”

  John Stallings had never been good at waiting patiently for anything. Now he paced while Luis Martinez gathered all the information he had on Arnold Cather and while Tony Mazzetti checked the guy out at the hospital. He forced himself to sit at his desk and write down the facts he had learned on one sheet of paper so he could explain it coherently if someone asked why it was important.

  Finally Luis Martinez came over to his desk with several reports. The smaller detective said, “I don’t know if this guy could be your killer. I didn’t get that kind of vibe at all.” He dug through a stack of papers and pulled out a report from the driver’s license bureau known as a D.A.V.I.D., which recorded the address, vital information, and a large color photo taken when a driver’s license is issued in Florida.

  Stallings looked at it for a moment and realized where he’d seen the name Classic Glass Concepts before. “That fucking guy was replacing the bay window over at a hotel where a missing girl had been seen.”

  The look on Martinez’s face told Stallings he might be onto something.

  It didn’t take long for Tony Mazzetti to track down the name Arnold Cather. He was on the log entering the hospital and when Tony ran down to records they immediately referred him to a doctor in the oncology unit.

  The doctor was on rounds when Mazzetti caught him as he was entering a room on the fifth floor. “Excuse me, Doc.” Mazzetti held up his badge. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  The young Indian doctor sighed and rolled his ey
es. “I’m really quite busy right now. Can it wait?” The doctor assumed that would be enough to stop Mazzetti and turned his back on the detective as he started to enter the room.

  Mazzetti reached out and grasped the man’s pencil-thin arm, perhaps too aggressively, then decided to go with it and jerked him back out into the hallway. “No, it cannot wait.” He led the doctor down the hallway to the first empty room he found and all but shoved him into it.

  The young doctor said, “I don’t think I like this sort of treatment. Perhaps I shall have to speak to your supervisor.”

  “You can speak to whoever the hell you want after you answer a couple questions. This involves the murder of a nurse right here at the hospital and is absolutely time sensitive.” That seemed to catch the attention of the doctor, who remained silent, but now his eyes focused on Mazzetti. “Do you treat a patient named Arnold Cather?”

  The doctor hesitated. “Look, Detective, I understand you have a job and this is a serious matter. But ethically I cannot talk about who I treat or don’t treat without a subpoena. I have to worry about being sued every minute of every day.”

  Mazzetti swallowed hard, trying to think of a counterargument. Instead, he thought about the faces of the dead women he’d looked at over the past few weeks. “Doctor, I’m going to give you immunity to talk to me. I will get you a subpoena later if I have to. But it is vital that I find out about Arnold Cather.”

  “I told you I’m worried about the legal consequences.”

  “Perhaps you should worry about the physical consequences.” Mazzetti bowed up and stepped closer to the smaller young man with dark glasses and trimmed black hair.

  The doctor stammered for a minute. “You-you can’t be serious.”

  “We have women who’ve been strangled. One right here at the hospital. We also have a link to a suspect named Arnold Cather and I’ve already been told by the hospital he’s being treated by you. Now I need to know about him. Right now.”

  The young doctor swallowed and nodded his head. “Okay, but if I’m forced to later, I will say that you threatened me.”

  “I can give you a black eye to back up your assertion if you’d like.”

  “No thank you. I think I’ll be able to convince people myself.”

  “Then tell me about Arnold Cather.”

  “I wouldn’t think that he’d be capable of crimes like that. He is a little on the odd side but seems perfectly harmless. His hobbies are glassblowing and crosswords.”

  Mazzetti took in the information, digesting its significance. He kept cool and said, “What are you treating him for?”

  The doctor hesitated, knowing that this was a sensitive subject. Finally he said, “Mr. Cather is in the advanced stages of lung cancer.”

  “Is it debilitating yet?”

  “It’s terminal.”

  Mazzetti froze for a moment, looked at the doctor, and said, “How long does he have?”

  “I’m surprised he’s still alive and functioning so well. A couple of months ago I told him he only had six weeks to live.”

  Mazzetti instantly realized this was their man and why the pace of the killings had picked up so drastically.

  The killer was trying to beat his own deadline.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  John Stallings hustled down the stairs to the rear parking lot, frantically dialing and redialing Liz Dubeck’s cell phone. He’d left one quick message for her to call back but desperately wanted to reach her and tell her to just walk away from the hotel if the glass guy was there.

  He was about to call Patty and the dispatcher to get someone to head over there when Mazzetti’s name appeared on his phone. Stallings immediately answered it, saying, “What do you got, Tony?”

  Mazzetti all but shouted into the line, “This is our man. He’s a terminal cancer patient. That’s why he’s killing so often.”

  Stallings bounded through the rear door and out into the parking lot with the phone glued to his ear.

  Mazzetti said, “You know where this guy is?”

  Stallings said, “I think he’s over at an old hotel that caters to the homeless and runaways. His glass shop is not too far from the PMB.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid. I’m on my way now.”

  Stallings wasn’t about to wait and didn’t intend to do anything stupid.

  Buddy had the jar and cord in his left hand as he casually strolled through the lobby, nodding to a stoned dude laying carpet. He paused at the empty counter to capture the full excitement of what he was about to do. He also needed to catch his breath and clear his throat with one long, hard cough. He wondered, once the artwork was completed, if he would even bother going back to see Dr. Raja, who’d done all he could but hadn’t really helped in any way. Buddy’s passion for blowing glass had also been his doom. His desire to capture the final breaths of beautiful women probably had led directly to his own imminent death.

  When he had savored the feeling, Buddy glanced over his shoulder to make sure the carpet guy wasn’t paying any attention. He scooted behind the counter and into the office. It was empty. He thought it was weird that a hotel, even a shitty one like this, didn’t have anyone at the desk.

  Then he noticed the rear door that opened into the alley behind the hotel was ajar. She was outside, where there was no one around.

  Perfect.

  Patty Levine was on her way into the office at the Police Memorial Building when John Stallings called. She rarely heard any hints of panic in his voice, but she instantly picked up on the urgency of his call.

  “Patty, go to the hotel Liz Dubeck runs. Stick close to her until I get there.”

  “What’s the problem, John?”

  “There may be a guy there fixing her front window. His company is Classic Glass Concepts. He’s our killer.”

  Although Patty would’ve loved to hear the reasoning, she knew she’d find out later. Right now her only job was to race over to the hotel.

  Stallings said, “I’m calling dispatch, too. Don’t do anything crazy, just make sure Liz is safe. Patrol will be on its way soon.”

  Patty said, “I’ll be there in less than ten minutes.” She stepped on the gas of her Ford Freestyle and shot through a red light. The idea that she could be in a position to catch this asshole gave her hope of redemption.

  Buddy stuck his head out of the open office door into the long, empty alleyway. There was a Toyota Camry parked right next to the door that he assumed was the manager’s. Beyond the car, about forty feet from the door, he saw the pretty manager named Liz shaking out a throw rug. He watched her for a moment with fascination as she inspected rug after rug and either shook out the dirt or tossed it in the Dumpster.

  He immediately saw a chance to buy a few hours by tossing her body into the Dumpster when he was done. Sometimes things just worked out. He felt like this was another sign he’d made a wise choice of subjects.

  Buddy peered through the crack in the door and savored the feeling once again as he checked the rubber seal on his homemade glass jar, then pulled on the heavy cord.

  This was going to be sweet.

  Stallings roared out of the lot of the PMB, almost knocking the metal gate out of his way. It wasn’t a long ride over to the hotel, but it felt like an eternity as the acid ate away at his stomach. His mind raced through a thousand possibilities of what could happen. Unlike Tony Mazzetti, Stallings rarely thought about ensuring he had enough evidence to make a case. All he really wanted was to stop the killer. Any way he could. At the moment his absolute first priority was making sure Liz Dubeck was safe. He hadn’t realized how much she meant to him until that very moment.

  He didn’t care if he stopped Arnold Cather, or if Patty Levine or a patrolman did. He just wanted it over. He knew Mazzetti was racing from the hospital so he could be the one to make the arrest. Stallings was fine with allowing him to grab all the credit.

  He cut across a side street, swerving at the last second to miss a motorcyclist, then a homeless woman pushi
ng a shopping cart full of tin cans. He still had several blocks to cover before he’d be at the hotel.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Buddy eased out of the office into the alleyway. He liked the fact that the hotel manager had no idea he was approaching her from behind. Her dark hair swayed from side to side as she shook out another small rug. She had a much curvier body than most of his subjects and he appreciated the shape of her hips in her tight-fitting jeans.

  He carefully took one small step after another so as not to alert her. As he crept closer he considered the logistics of using the cord and grabbing the small glass jar at the critical moment. This was such a spur-of-the-moment action he hated to spoil it by planning it out so carefully. He stuffed the jar into his belt line so he could reach it quickly as he closed the distance.

  The thrill of completing his artwork almost made him dizzy as Buddy took the two ends of the cord in each hand.

  As Patty Levine pulled directly in front of the hotel, she saw a patrolman rolling up from the opposite direction. They stopped their cars on each side of the empty street and she hurried across to meet him.

  Climbing out of his cruiser, the muscular thirty-year-old cop said, “Hey, Patty, you know what this shit is about?”

  “We’re checking on the hotel manager here and detaining any male workers until Stallings and Mazzetti can come over. Should only be a few minutes.”

  The uniformed cop said, “This has to do with a homicide?”

  Patty nodded. She looked past the cop and saw the white van. The patrolman followed her toward the front door. She looked through the front window and saw a worker kneeling in the lobby.

  Patty said, “This might be the guy they want to detain. I don’t know what he looks like. It all happened really fast.”