The Perfect Scream djs-4

by James Andrus

  Stallings shook his offered hand, shocked Maria had talked about him to the preacher. He made his cop’s quick assessment. The guy was about his age, on the soft side, but wore expensive shoes and had a manicure. Could be harmless or on the make. Immediately Stallings didn’t trust him.

  Brother Ellis said, “I feel like I know you. I’m so glad you came to our friendly gathering.”

  “Maria can be quite persuasive.”

  Brother Ellis shared a quick glance with Maria and said, “That’s not what she tells me. I hear she can’t persuade you to leave police work and spend more time with the family.”

  He was about to snap back with an answer when he saw this guy’s game. He was trying to bait him. Stallings took a breath and said, “We do the best we can, don’t we, Father?”

  “I’m a reverend, not a father.”

  “Sorry.”

  Brother Ellis held his smile, but probably knew his cover was blown. “What is it about your work that’s so compelling?”

  Stallings gave it some thought. “Helping people.”

  “What about your coworkers? Do you like them?”

  “Most.”

  “How about your partner, Patty? I hear she’s quite the looker.”

  That caught Stallings by surprise. What the fuck? If the preacher thought that, he must have gotten it from Maria. Stallings steadied himself and said, “She’s a great cop.” He felt the urge to punch this prick rise in him. A shot to his giant noggin would knock him off his perch.

  The preacher’s instincts told him it was time to move on to another couple. All Stallings could do was turn and stare at Maria.

  Patty Levine reached down and took Ken’s hand as they strolled west along the St. Johns River in front of Jacksonville Landing. It seemed natural the way he interlocked his fingers in hers. Neither said anything as they passed other couples out on a walk. It was still relatively early and the dinner crowd was pouring out of all the restaurants in the big tourist mall.

  After a few minutes Ken asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  She didn’t know. For the first time she could remember she wasn’t thinking about some horrible crime from work or worried about a personal problem. She blurted out, “How nice this is.”

  He stopped, took her arms in his hands, and was about to lean down when Patty noticed a couple approaching from the right. Her eyes darted that way out of instinct and it stopped Ken in his tracks. Then Patty saw who it was and stepped away from Ken as she turned. What were the chances?

  Patty threw on a forced smile and said, “What are you guys doing down here?”

  NINE

  The room was a gray haze of marijuana smoke when Lynn stepped out of the bathroom. She’d considered taking off her top to keep Connor interested in the scam, but then thought she’d rather avoid it altogether and just hoped he’d sunk deeper and deeper into a drug-induced coma. To her surprise, when she stepped through the cluttered living room and into his bedroom, he was sitting upright and puffing on the giant bong she’d noticed earlier. What the hell? Had life in a fraternity made him build up immunity to all drugs and alcohol? By her reckoning he had ingested four sleeping pills, two ecstasy tablets, a couple generic prescription-strength painkillers, six shots of tequila, a few beers, and now this pot. She hated to abandon her plan to make this death look like an accident, but she did have a knife in her purse if she had to use it. She was not leaving this apartment while Connor Tate was still breathing.

  She sat down next to him on the edge of the bed. He automatically handed her the bong, which she politely refused. When she saw his eyes, Lynn realized how far gone he really was. His eyes didn’t focus in any way and his pupils looked like giant hollow black caves. They were something out of a nightmare.

  Connor slurred, “What’s your name again?”

  Instead of answering, she patted him on the shoulder, then guided him down onto the bed and made him comfortable with a pillow fluffed around his giant head. She rubbed his forehead, trying to get him to calm down and let the drugs kick in.

  He mumbled, “That’s nice.”

  She had learned not to listen to these arrogant frat pricks. If she did, she’d back out of every one of the murders. But in this case he did sound like a lost eight-year-old boy, and she wondered if she’d have the nerve to stick the knife in his throat if the drugs didn’t work. Her purse was at the foot of the bed and she leaned across Connor’s feet to look into it and grabbed the four-inch folding Buck knife one of the loading dock workers at Thomas Supply had given her. She took it in her left hand and sat back up to continue to rub Connor’s head.

  Just as she thought he was drifting off, he said, “When you’re done with my head, play with my dick.”

  There it was. That’s the kind of conversation she’d expected to have with this immature brat. She smiled and said, “Just relax for a few minutes and we’ll see what happens.” She heard a satisfied moan and could feel him relax under her touch. She looked over at her left hand and the knife that was still closed. It would be messy, suspicious, and dangerous, but she was starting to think she had no choice. She reached across and fumbled with the blade until it opened. Connor turned his head slightly, his eyes opened but unfocused.

  He mumbled something three times before Lynn realized he was saying, “What do you got there?”

  Her stomach tightened and she took a very deep breath. Her yoga instructor would be very proud of her. The knife was open and seated in her right hand as she looked over at Connor, his head lulled in the opposite direction. His entire neck was exposed and she could see a blue vein running down it like a river marked on a map. She had to wonder if it was a sign. She didn’t much believe in omens, but this seemed awfully obvious.

  Her hand tightened on the knife as she built her courage.

  Then she heard something that made her pause.

  Patty was nearly speechless as she regained her composure and scooted back to Ken. She didn’t want him to feel awkward with people he had never met.

  Patty smiled and said, “Ken, this is John Stallings and his-” She wasn’t sure what to say. Then she blurted, “Maria.” She watched as Stallings shook Ken’s hand and looked him in the eye. In that instant, with a feeling of pride blossoming inside, Patty realized how much John’s approval meant to her. He was her authority figure. He was so much more than just a partner. But the look on Maria’s face was harder to read. She looked antsy and uncomfortable, not able to hold Patty’s gaze.

  Stallings said, “Where did you two meet?”

  Patty sensed something odd about him as well as Maria. He stayed close to Maria, away from Patty. His body language was not the usual confident, busy John Stallings. She wondered if the lull in cases had affected him by throwing off his normal rhythms. Maybe he needed the stress and thrived on the chaos.

  Stallings said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Where did you two meet?”

  Patty said, “In the park by my house. Ken’s a runner too.”

  Maria now looked like she was appraising the couple. Still she remained silent.

  Patty said, “I’m surprised to run into you two out here.”

  “We were at a. .” He paused, then said, “gathering. I suggested we take a walk. I’ve only been over here on business. At least in the last ten years. Wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

  “Did you eat at the Landing?”

  “No, we thought we’d get some dessert or something. The only place we saw was Sal’s Smoothie Shack up the street.”

  Patty just said, “Oh.” She knew Stallings was thinking the same thing about Sal’s. They had worked on a homicide where one of the victims, a bright girl named Lexie, was an employee of Sal’s and met her killer there late one Friday night. There were places that gave her the willies like that all over the city.

  Patty sensed it was time to move on and let the Stallingses go about their business. John Stallings gave her an abrupt nod good night, ne
ver moving from Maria’s side. She wondered what she had interrupted as she took Ken’s hand and led him on down the river walkway.

  Lynn lay on the bed next to the long, silent form of Connor Tate. His snoring had caused her to wait before plunging the knife into his exposed neck. It seemed to have worked out well. She had waited patiently until she hadn’t heard another sound for more than five minutes. She’d been comfortable as she lay with the knife still open in her right hand resting across her stomach. If he had showed any signs of consciousness she had been prepared to drive the knife down with tremendous force. But over the past forty-five minutes, Connor had gone from a light snore to a wheeze, to now nothing at all.

  Lynn checked his pulse and thought she’d felt a slight beat so she decided to wait a few more minutes. She looked down at Connor’s exposed, muscular legs, his defined abs under his hiked-up shirt, and the childlike expression on his handsome face. It didn’t make her feel guilty. If anything this was fitting, if not very satisfying. After her first murder, Lynn realized she loved the sound of the victim’s scream. Boy, did he scream as he sat trapped in the fire. It was a great, bloodcurdling cry. But not perfect. The sound of the fire and the fact he had pulled a pillow over his face in a useless attempt to save himself made the acoustics questionable and muffled.

  Her next victim just talked and cried. It wasn’t until she’d pulled the trigger that she’d realized what she was looking for. It was the absence of a scream that made her understand that was what she was hoping for.

  Alan Cole had made a decent yelp, but the impact of the fast-moving Suburban had been too much and cut off any real chance she had at hearing a gruesome scream.

  Now big, dopey Connor had simply faded away without a sound.

  On the bright side, no one could link four deaths with such different scenarios. Two would certainly be considered accidents. The other two were in different cities and had no connection. Other than her.

  A smile slid over her face as she realized how cunning she’d become. Maybe she should do something more in the business world than be a bookkeeper. She’d work in her father’s fading business, but he abhorred aggressive business practices. He just wanted to transport.

  Lynn reached down and placed two fingers along the side of Connor’s neck. Nothing. Now she could figure who was next and how he was going to die.

  TEN

  Dennis Switeck hated working Saturdays in the fall. One of his true passions in life was college football, and living in Florida gave him a firsthand look at three of the perpetually best teams in the country. In the last twenty-five years, the University of Florida, Florida State, or the University of Miami had been in the national championship game nineteen times. That was astounding. He loved the fact that people from Texas talked about what a football state Texas was and how they bragged about it constantly. Whereas Florida didn’t have TV shows made about high school football or have to shout to the world how it was a great football state, but went on to dominate college football year in and year out.

  Dennis’s job as an assistant medical examiner in Duval County meant that he had to work every third Saturday. He could still catch most of the games on the TV at the office, but it wasn’t the same as partying with his buddies at one of the sports bars or in someone’s party room. Today had been slow football-wise because everyone was gearing up for the annual Florida-Florida State game next Saturday, the weekend after Thanksgiving. It was almost like a state holiday when the two titans of college football met. Even though Dennis had gone to Michigan, he still got fired up for the rivalry game. It wasn’t Michigan-Ohio State, and Floridians would never understand the intensity of that rivalry on every level, academic as well as sports wise. But it was still a great game and a fun weekend. That’s why he had switched with Lisa Kurtz, who didn’t give a shit about college football. Why would a Syracuse graduate care about sports anyway? She was happy to change weekends because she had some big date with the hotshot homicide guy from JSO.

  Dennis got a call about 1:30 from a detective saying he was on the scene of what appeared to be an accidental overdose at one of the fraternity apartment houses near the University of North Florida. Now, two hours later, he was about to do the autopsy on the young man who’d been found in his own bed. He was anxious to get started and cleaned up so he could head out to catch the night games, but the detective on the case, Luis Martinez, had been in the bathroom for what seemed like half an hour.

  Finally the short, intense detective came into the procedure room, clapped his hands, and said, “Okay, Dennis, let’s get this show on the road.”

  Dennis had to chuckle because Martinez was one of the funniest detectives he knew. But he still had a lot of questions. Martinez explained that the young man’s body had been found in the late morning when one of his fraternity brothers had had to enter his apartment to get the key to their clubhouse. It wasn’t unusual for the young man to sleep late, but when they hadn’t been able to find the key they’d had to try and wake him up.

  Dennis said, “You got the notes I needed?”

  Martinez handed him a clipboard that started with the decedent’s name, Connor Tate.

  Martinez said, “My guess is a mixture of dope and alcohol. We didn’t rush through the scene and we bagged his clothes and the blanket he was lying on. It didn’t appear that anyone else had been in the apartment. None of his buddies saw him last night. He’s a big drinker and is not opposed to using all kinds of pharmaceuticals. Plus his fucking apartment reeked of weed. I mean like every single crevice and carpet fiber smelled like pot.”

  Dennis shrugged his shoulders and said, “None of them listen to the public service announcements. We must get ten of these a year from the different universities.” He had already figured out what he would say in the official report even before he started his circular saw and cut the top of Connor Tate’s skull off.

  John Stallings was frustrated the week flew by so quickly. A workweek with a holiday in it threw off his schedule. The occasional Monday holiday like Labor Day or Presidents Day didn’t bother him too much, but Thanksgiving, falling in the middle of the week and using up both a Thursday and Friday, put a cramp in his investigations. It also threw off any support he hoped to get. Analysts took the whole week off; even Patty was leaving soon and wouldn’t be back until Monday.

  Stallings had kept himself busy by interviewing a dozen different frat boys who were all friends of Zach Halston. Patty had focused more on other aspects of finding the missing young man. She spent a lot of time with the computer techs going through his computer and working with the analysts scouring phone records. Stallings didn’t mind because he showed the photograph he’d found of Jeanie and Zach to everyone he talked to. It made it easier to hide what he was really doing from Patty. Some of the fraternity boys vaguely remembered Jeanie, but no one recalled her name. Stallings could feel the pressure building inside him to find Zach Halston and get some answers.

  He heard from one of the brothers about the death of Connor Tate. Stallings checked with Luis Martinez, who’d been assigned the unattended death. Martinez was satisfied it was just a simple overdose. Everything pointed in that direction. Connor had a history of recreational drug use, was a heavy drinker, and wasn’t afraid to mix his pharmaceuticals. The autopsy had shown that he was healthy and suffered no trauma. The medical examiner’s office was still waiting on the toxicology reports, but Martinez had said there were pills in the apartment, half-empty bottles of alcohol everywhere, and the apartment reeked of pot. It sounded like the time Stallings had visited.

  The Tau Upsilon fraternity overall didn’t seem like a bad bunch of kids; most were focused business majors and some of the alumni had decent jobs. The gaudy, multicolor tattoos on the inside of their right ankles were the only thing they all had in common. All the tattoos were identical and showed the fraternity Greek letters set in palm trees in the back of a red pickup truck. Stallings liked the sense of Florida and the boys’ sense of humor.

 
But here it was the day before Thanksgiving and he was no closer to finding Zach Halston than he had been last week. He’d made a dozen copies of the photograph of Zach and Jeanie and given them to a couple of the boys. He’d been very specific about them only showing it to other fraternity brothers and only telling him of the results. No one else.

  Stallings started to sketch out some plans to talk to fraternity brothers outside the area when Patty walked up to his desk.

  She had a bright smile when she said, “Whatcha working on?”

  “Figuring out who we might need to talk to next week. What about you?”

  “I used my feminine wiles to get the computer guys to rush the review of Zach Halston’s computer.” She plunked down a pile of paper on his desk. “List of what appears to be his customers. The list of all the fraternity brothers. Some unknown telephone numbers that look like they might be associated with his partners in the pot business and a half a dozen credit card numbers that he and other brothers were using to buy stuff online. All the cards are under other people’s names and the two people I checked with didn’t know that they had credit cards under their name. So it looks like Mr. Halston, in addition to being a college student, is a pot dealer, identity thief, and probably at the top of many people’s hit lists.”

  Stallings patted the paper and said, “Does it bother you to go outside of guidelines to have some computer nerd rush your request?”

  “You scare people, I tease people. We each have our skills, and as long as we don’t abuse them, it’s no problem. For instance, you haven’t punched anyone in front of me for several weeks. I think you’re using your scary skills reasonably. I made no promises to any of the computer nerds, but I’ll admit I unbuttoned my shirt one button and leaned in while I was talking to them. If that makes me a bad cop then I’m guilty.”

  Stallings let out a laugh and said, “You’re not a good cop, you’re great cop, and don’t forget it.”