The Perfect Death

by James Andrus

  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 Martinez 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.

  He had to either keep cool or take action. He couldn’t risk being stopped when he was so close to completing his work of art.

  FORTY-SIX

  John Stallings knew the news media would be all over the story of a young nurse found dead at one of the area’s major hospitals. But when he turned on the radio in his county-issued Impala the very first words he heard from a newscaster were “serial killer.” The phrase made him flinch. Often news stations would use the term in the form of a question like, “Is Jacksonville stalked by a new serial killer?” In this case the answer to that question was, “Yes.” And Stallings was pretty sure the command staff at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office didn’t want that term used loosely.

  The phrase itself struck a primal chord with the public and often caused more problems than it solved. The weight of useless tips could crush a team of detectives doing their best to solve a serial crime. He listened to the radio as the announcer gave a few details about the investigation. The next story was about a Christian revival that had been going on at the municipal stadium on and off for two weeks. The controversy was that they had to dismantle the stage so the Jaguars could play one Sunday afternoon. The news coverage on the event had swelled the numbers of believers filing into the downtown arena.

  All Stallings could think about now was what he could to do to stop the man who was strangling young women in Jacksonville.

  Buddy focused on Detective Martinez’s face, trying to catch any movement or expression that might give a hint to what the detective was thinking. He continued to ask Buddy simple, non-threatening questions. First about Cheryl and then about any friends or associates she’d had. He was particularly interested in boyfriends and asked Buddy if he’d ever been interested in her romantically.

  Buddy let out a quick snort of laughter. “No, not at all.” He didn’t have to fake that answer or lie in any way.

  The detective took that another way. He said, “Really? You sound pretty definite on that. Why? She was awfully cute.”

  Buddy saw the trap the detective had walked him into. If he said he didn’t think she was attractive, the detective probably wouldn’t believe him. Everyone thought she was a knockout. And if he said she was such a bitch he couldn’t be around her, that would also make the detective more suspicious. He might even think that Buddy had a motive to kill her.

  Buddy hesitated and the detective took a half step back. Buddy had his hand behind his back resting on the handle of the butcher knife. He was making the assessment of how he could dispose of a Jacksonville police detective and his car. He’d also have to answer a lot more questions because surely the detective had called in where he was going and who he was talking to. At that moment Buddy wasn’t sure there was an alternative.

  Then the answer to the question came to him. Buddy said, “I don’t really like to talk about it.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Look around. I’m in my mid-thirties, I’m neat, I’ve never been married, and I talk to my mom every day.” Only one of those things was a lie.

  It didn’t take long for the detective to catch on to what Buddy was trying to make him believe. The detective nodded and smiled, picking up his notebook and stepping around Buddy toward the front door.

  Detective Martinez said, “If you think of anything please feel free to give me a call.” He handed Buddy his business card, turned, and opened the door.

  Buddy was in the clear again.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  John Stallings hated the way news channels would inflate stories and make them sound more lurid or interesting than they really were. But he also recognized, as a detective in the new millennium, there was a role reporters could play in major investigations. The story of the dead nurse found at Shands hospital had been tied to three other murders in the Jacksonville area. Sergeant Zuni, fast on her feet, used the media opportunity to show photos of the missing Leah Tischler. Less than two hours after the first broadcast, Stallings was on his way to talk to a witness.

  He’d come across this witness in a less than official way. One of the downtown homeless people had gone to the only person she could trust: Liz Dubeck. Liz had called Stallings directly and told him she’d entertain the witness at her office until he came down and talked to her.

  The call was what he needed to pull himself out of his funk. It was not only his father’s descent
into Alzheimer’s but the erratic behavior of his wife, Maria. She was gone from the house so often that all he could figure was she had a boyfriend. He felt like his hopes of getting back together with her had completely fallen apart. Somehow, just going to visit with Liz Dubeck cheered him.

  Walking along the sidewalk to the front door of the four-story hotel, Stallings immediately noticed work being done on the building. A tall, stooped man was measuring the floor for new carpet and another man was measuring the front bay window. Inside, Stallings could tell the walls had been recently painted.

  Liz Dubeck greeted him with a bright smile that instantly lifted his spirits.

  Stallings said, “What’s going on here?”

  “I got a federal grant to fix up the old place. I’m going to replace some of the carpet that was ruined by a leak, have the whole place painted, bring the wiring up to code, and even replace the cracked front window.”

  “That sounds great.” He felt a little awkward since their last conversation and really didn’t know what else to say. As usual, Liz was able to take up the slack.

  Liz looked around the lobby to ensure that none of the workers could hear her as she motioned Stallings around the front counter and said, “This woman is really scared about talking to the police. I promised her that you and I were friends and you’d use the information without implicating her.”

  “No problem. What kind of information does she have?”

  Liz led him back into her office. “You can ask her yourself.”

  Stallings looked at the fifty-year-old woman wearing a plain but clean dress and eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Her greasy, gray hair had been recently brushed and pulled back in a ponytail. She looked up with bloodshot eyes but didn’t say anything.

  Liz introduced Stallings to the woman, who didn’t want to give her name. But her first question took Stallings by surprise.

  “Are you any relation to James Stallings?”

  “He’s my father.”

  “If James Stallings is your father, you can’t be too bad, even if you’re a cop. Your pop has done more to help me and the other homeless people in town than just about anyone I know.”

  For possibly the first time in his life Stallings felt real pride about his father. He settled down into the chair next to the woman and asked why she wanted to talk to him.

  “I seen the photo of the missing girl on TV at the community center. I seen the girl.”

  “Which girl are you talking about?”

  “The missing one. Leah something.”

  Stallings felt his pulse increase as he reached in his notebook and pulled out the familiar picture of Leah Tischler and held it for the woman to look at.

  “That’s her. I seen her two Saturdays ago. I remember because it was before that revival started down at the stadium. She was wearing jeans and a man’s plaid shirt. Like a lumberjack’s shirt. Way too hot for this time of year.”

  Stallings made a couple of quick notes and wanted to confirm the timeline with her. “How can you be sure it was a Saturday morning?”

  “Because some businesses were closed and they don’t serve breakfast at the community center on Saturday. I had to walk to the Christian relief center on Davis. When I was coming out I saw that girl at a bus stop. We talked for a minute. That’s why I remember.”

  She spent a few more minutes giving Stallings enough details for him to believe that she had seen Leah Tischler at least one day after she had been here looking for a place to stay. That meant Leah was alive and not wearing the belt found wrapped around Kathy Mizell’s throat.

  The woman said, “Leah said she was going on a trip. She was tired of J-Ville.”

  “Where was she going?”

  The woman shrugged. “She just said she was leaving.”

  As Stallings thought of a new set of questions, he looked out of the open window in the office at the white construction van with a magnetic sign that said CLASSIC GLASS CONCEPTS stuck on the side.

  Buddy was relieved the sharp young detective left without asking any more questions. After the meeting he decided he needed to get away from the shop for a few hours. He had estimates to make and was still looking for the final piece of his work of art. He doubted he’d be bothered about Cheryl’s death any more. In a way she had gotten the opposite of eternity. It seemed like her case would be unsolved and she’d be largely forgotten in a very short time.

  His first estimate was at a crappy motel that catered to homeless people and probably got a ton of federal money to house them. It was a simple job. Replacing a cracked window. No etching or decoration. Pretty much just manual labor. He’d make his estimate high so that if the woman accepted it at least he’d have a few bucks in his pocket. There was no way he wanted to get stuck on a job like this unless it set him up for free time later. The only thing that mattered now was his work of art. He had to find the right subject to fill that last slot.

  As he made a few notes and walked back to the open door of his van, a young woman dressed like she worked at a bank stopped him and said, “Your sign says Classic Glass Concepts—does that mean you do more than just replace windows?”

  “What are you interested in?”

  “We were looking for a glass sculpture for the entryway to our house. You do anything like that?”

  He didn’t want to giggle and babble about how fantastic it’d be to make something like that so he took a second to think about it and look cool. In that moment he recognized how stunning the woman’s eyes were. She had wonderful full lips and a pretty smile too. Finally he said, “I have some photos I could show you of my work.”

  “When can I see them?”

  All Buddy could think was, Anytime you want and for all eternity.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Not long after meeting with Liz Dubeck and her witness, John Stallings found himself in a big conference room of the Land That Time Forgot. Yvonne the Terrible was holding court with Mazzetti, Patty, and Sparky throwing out all the information they had gathered on the homicides.

  Sparky said, “The chemical found on the body in the playground and Lexie Hanover’s apartment matched. The lab says it’s an industrial cleaner with specks of potash and other burned byproducts. They’re checking to see what some of the uses of this chemical combination would be in the real world.”

  Patty said, “We’ve sorted the two hundred twenty leads that have been called in since the press conference this morning. Most are things that we’ve already covered and a few are about specific suspects. Nothing earthshaking right now, but we’ll keep working on them.”

  Sergeant Zuni turned her pretty face to Stallings, obviously saving Mazzetti, as the lead investigator, for last.

  Stallings said, “I just talked to a witness who says she saw Leah Tischler, out of her school uniform, after she disappeared from home. That means she could have discarded the belt found around Kathy Mizell’s throat.” That caused a humming in the room as almost every detective had a question. Stallings held up his hand and said, “This may not be the most reliable witness in terms of time frame, but I believe she did see Leah and she was very specific about what she was wearing. Jeans and a man’s plaid shirt. She said it looked like a lumberjack’s shirt. Leah was at a bus stop and mentioned something about going on a trip.”

  Sparky went on about some technical issue and what policy demanded, but Stallings tuned him out as he stared at the photos of the dead girls and Leah Tischler laid out on the table. He’d done this a number of times, staring deeply into each girl’s face, trying to see what the killer might have seen. Why had he chosen these specific girls? They ranged in age from seventeen to thirty-five. None of the hair colors or even facial features appeared similar to Stallings. Yet there was something about each of them that seemed noticeable. They were each pretty, but not flawless or gorgeous. In each photo the victim was smiling, and they all had appealing smiles and bright eyes. If Stallings were going to attribute any single feature, he would have to say they all had an innoc
ent look. Maybe a pleasantly naïve look. Would that be enough to attract the notice of the killer?

  Tony Mazzetti started to talk, then cleared his throat loudly until Stallings looked up from the photos. “From the position of the body and the fact that the killer is never seen on any of the surveillance cameras in the hospital, I believe the killer knew the layout of the hospital fairly well. That might mean he’s an employee and we’re checking on that thoroughly. He used a cord around her neck that left a small pattern. It appears to be very similar to the pattern left on Lexie Hanover’s throat. There was no chemical residue found anywhere and really no other forensic evidence from the body so far.”

  “The thing I’ve been wondering is why has the body count jumped so quickly in such a short amount of time? I can’t believe that this guy just decided to start killing and in a week had four identifiable victims.”

  Patty said, “Maybe he’s very young and developed a taste for it.”

  Sparky said, “I’m checking prisoners released in the last month from any prison in the Southeast. It may be that he’s trying to make up for lost time.”

  Mazzetti shook his head. “I don’t know. I get the feeling that this creep has been at this a long time and recently picked up the pace. He’s got some specific goal in mind. If we figure out that goal we might get ahead of him.”

  Sergeant Zuni said, “The news media is already building on the story. An Atlanta station is running the same story that was run here and will broadcast Leah Tischler’s photo from Daytona to Tennessee. We’re going to get awfully busy so I intend to call in more help.”

  As the sergeant opened the conference room door everyone froze. Standing there, in a beautiful Burberry suit, was Ronald Bell.

  Stallings knew his day just gotten worse.