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The Perfect Scream djs-4

Page 16

by James Andrus


  “What you’re saying is I’m not unique in my issue.”

  “I’m saying any man would do it, but I’m cautioning you to not forget you’ve got kids who need you.”

  Stallings mumbled, “And a wife.”

  Grace said clearly, “Who better start to appreciate you.”

  Tony Mazzetti had been talking for a few minutes about all the possibilities related to the deaths of the fraternity members when he realized he didn’t know if he was trying to convince Patty or himself that the deaths could be accidents.

  Patty gave him a suspicious look and said, “You sure you’re not just protecting your clearance rate?”

  Mazzetti gave her a look back and said, “We’re not sleeping together anymore. I don’t have to take any shit.”

  Patty smiled and said, “Like you ever did. I was just wondering and asking questions. You don’t have to be an ass about it.”

  Mazzetti decided to let the whole matter slide. It was awkward enough working with his former girlfriend; he didn’t need to fan the flames. He changed the subject completely. “So what did Stall do to get you assigned to me?”

  Patty shrugged. “Just got reassigned. I can’t read the sergeant’s mind.”

  Mazzetti laughed. “Must’ve something pretty big to have the LT do anything to her buddy.”

  “You sound jealous.”

  “Wish I had a rabbi up the chain. No telling where I’d be now.”

  “You’d want to do something other than homicide?”

  The question took Mazzetti by surprise, and his honest answer surprised him even more. “I guess not.” He looked off in space and added, “Thanks, you made me appreciate what I have.” When he looked up into her pretty face, he also realized what he had lost.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  John Stallings tried to slip into the office like a ninja. He did not feel like speaking to anyone about his troubles. He wanted a couple of files to cover him in case someone asked what he was doing. Grace had set his head straight and he figured six o’clock was late enough to be off duty. Stallings knew exactly where he was headed. But of course even though it was late, Sergeant Zuni was still in her office.

  As he walked past he knew she’d look up and see him, so he took the offensive. He stopped in her doorway and looked in.

  Sergeant Zuni looked up from the report she was reading and simply said, “I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward position.”

  “Instead you made me look like a moron.”

  “Sorry.”

  Sergeant Zuni stood up and stepped around her desk. “I’m not a machine. I know what it is to have personal issues. You can talk to me off the record now and then.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Zach Halston is important to you for personal reasons, but he’s also important to our investigation.”

  Stallings waited for her to finish, but she just stood there until he said, “Yes?”

  Sergeant Zuni cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Hester won’t check too closely when you’re out on the street. She knows you’re a hard worker and I don’t have to justify what you’re doing to anyone.” She looked down at two older missing persons files in his hand. “I like that you’re smart enough to keep up a facade.”

  This new sergeant was more complicated than anyone he had ever worked for. And Stallings was starting to like it.

  Duval County Assistant Medical Examiner Lisa Kurtz was feeling pretty good about herself as she rushed up the stairs to the second floor of the Police Memorial Building. She had a report from the lab and a photograph that showed she could come up with forensic clues with the best of them. Her instincts about the stain on Connor Tate’s shirt had proved to be right on the money. A chemical spectrum analysis of the stain showed it to contain a number of chemicals including ecstasy, strong depressants typically found in sleep aids, and painkillers, in this case a generic form of hydrocodone. In addition, she had a magnified photograph clearly showing a chunk of a ground-up blue Ambien pill.

  Lisa waved hello to the secretary, then was brought up short as she opened the door marked CRIME/PERSONS and nearly ran into Patty Levine. The two women had a passing acquaintance and each knew they had one big thing in common: Tony Mazzetti.

  Lisa wasn’t sure what to say or do so she just smiled and nodded hello.

  Patty, always so calm and collected, was able to get out a “Hey, Lisa, what’s up?”

  Lisa wanted to show the detective the report and what she had discovered, but knew that Tony was the one who needed to see it. She signaled Patty to follow her over to Mazzetti’s desk.

  Lisa could see the surprise on Tony Mazzetti’s face when he looked up to see his current girlfriend and his most recent ex-girlfriend standing before him. His eyes cut back and forth between Lisa and Patty for a moment until Lisa pushed through the awkward moment.

  She plopped the lab report and the photograph down on his desk, saying, “Connor Tate drank a potentially lethal concoction of drugs. I had the lab do an analysis of the stain on his shirt.”

  Mazzetti focused on Lisa. “I know. That’s what killed him. Your office did the autopsy, remember?”

  Lisa ignored this sarcastic jab and said, “Why drink an odd mixture of sleeping pills and painkillers when you pop them in plain sight of everyone? I think someone fed him the mixture secretly so it would react with all the alcohol in his system.”

  “Even if it wasn’t an accident he could’ve been trying to commit suicide.”

  “I looked at the crime scene photographs and noticed there were no glasses around the bed where the body was found. Also the photographs of the tiny kitchen showed three glasses that had been washed and stacked by the side of the sink. That’s not the kind of activity you do when you’ve got a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit and have ingested at least four types of prescription drugs.”

  She could tell Mazzetti was considering her hypothesis. But he wasn’t convinced.

  Lisa pointed at the photograph and added, “You can even see a chunk of a blue Ambien tablet on his shirt. He was lying down when he drank it. It dribbled into a puddle on his chest.”

  Patty said, “C’mon, Tony, she’s got something here. That kid wasn’t the type to try and take his own life. He was too confident and cocky.”

  Lisa liked Patty’s rational thought and realized the pretty detective didn’t hold any grudge about her dating Tony. She could see being friends with someone like Patty.

  Mazzetti said, “Who would do something like that?”

  Lisa said, “Who was with him the night before his body was found?”

  Mazzetti shook his head. “No one knows.”

  Patty said, “Based on everything we know about the fraternity in general and Connor in particular, it had to be a woman.”

  Stallings took Grace’s advice and the sergeant’s coded signal as well as following his heart and sixteen years of police experience. Now he was looking at an ancient block building he remembered as a kid. It looked like an abandoned prison, but local history said it was housing for early migrant workers. When he was a boy, the building had been abandoned and run-down only to be renovated in the early 1990s on the cutting edge of the mini-boom that had gone on in the area. Now it was out of style again and just one of many cheap apartment buildings on the south side of the city.

  It was four stories tall with about twenty units on each side and looked to be only about a third full. Stallings had to admit it was better maintained and considerably cleaner than most of the older apartment buildings in the area.

  The sun had been down less than an hour, but the lack of outdoor lighting made it feel much later as Stallings approached the door marked OFFICE. He knocked once and rang the buzzer twice, then stepped away from the door, saying out loud in a low voice, “Is this the day that changes the rest of my life?”

  The door to his right opened a crack and he realized it was the manager’s apartment attached to the o
ffice. A thin, elderly man in a flannel shirt peered through a crack with the chain still on the door. Once he got a look at Stallings, he unchained the door and said, “What can I do for you, officer?”

  “How did you know I was a cop?”

  “I’ve run this place sixteen years and anyone built like you, with no tattoos and who’s taken a bath in the last three days, is a cop. The only thing surprising is that at this time of the night it’s usually a uniformed patrolman looking for someone.”

  The older man invited Stallings inside and his wife joined them as Stallings explained he was looking for two young people and laid out the photograph of Jeanie and Zach Halston.

  The woman took a very close look and said, “That’s Kelly who lived up on the third floor couple of years ago. And the boy used to come around for a while.”

  Stallings caught her tone and said, “You don’t sound like you thought much of him.”

  “He was a little bit of an ass. Kelly liked him at first, but she had a thing for a guy named Gator. Nice young man but kinda confused. You know how women like to fix men.”

  Stallings got all the information he could about Jeanie and Zach, then took the time to ask about Gator.

  “I don’t know what the young man did for a living. He was tall, about six-one and lean.”

  The man added, “He would’ve made an excellent baseball pitcher.”

  The woman, recognizing what Stallings was looking for, added, “I don’t know where he lived, but he drove an older Chevy sedan. He had blue eyes and brown hair.”

  Stallings said, “Did Jean, I mean Kelly, talk to you or tell you where she was headed once she moved out?”

  The woman shook her head. “She was a polite girl and gave us two weeks’ notice but never said where she was moving. I had asked her about the one boy, Zach, and she just smiled and said he was a spoiled brat.”

  Stallings had to smile at that. Some of his values had imprinted on her. He looked up at the old couple and said, “Can I look in the apartment?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Patty was supposed to meet Ken, but she had called and canceled. After working so closely with Tony, even in the presence of his girlfriend, Lisa, she found herself thinking about her former boyfriend and was too distracted to listen to Ken babble about some reality TV show or how MDs thought they were so great. She wondered why he hadn’t become a general practitioner if he was so jealous of anyone with a medical degree. He had to tell everyone he met how podiatrists attended medical school and were “real” doctors. But his patients still called him “Doctor Ken.” That ate at him every day.

  Instead of dinner with a petty, frustrated podiatrist, Patty found herself approaching the entrance to the Tau Upsilon fraternity clubhouse at the apartment complex that doubled as fraternity row. Earlier, she had called the house at UF and found out a few more details about the big Halloween party thrown every year in the Jacksonville chapter. The description sounded heavenly for college frat boys and was every parent’s nightmare.

  She saw Bobby Hollis notice her from the lounger outside the front door. He sprang to his feet and turned toward the door, apparently to warn the brothers inside.

  Patty simply called out in a very loud, clear voice, “Don’t.”

  He responded like a dutiful dog and froze in place. Then he straightened and pulled his shirt, flicking potato chip crumbs onto the ground. He turned slowly and said, “Hello, Detective, nice to see you again.”

  “Cut the shit. I don’t have time for it.”

  The door to the fraternity house burst open and a young man stumbled out. She immediately recognized him as the one she had thumped out at the beach. He staggered to a stop, looked into her face, and let a goofy grin spread.

  He ran his hand across his wild hair and said, “Well, well, what do we have here?”

  Patty didn’t change her expression when she said, “You don’t have much of a memory.”

  The kid said, “I never needed one until I saw someone as beautiful as you.”

  Patty rolled her eyes but acknowledged, at least to herself, she liked the compliment and the kid was smooth.

  From behind the drunken moron, Bobby Hollis said, “You remember Detective Levine, don’t you?”

  The kid was shit-faced, but he remembered, and the color left his face. He backed away, then turned to one side and appeared ready to sprint if he had to.

  This time Patty said, “Don’t. Sit.”

  The kid froze, then sat on the lounger next to the front door.

  Patty shoved Bobby Hollis next to the frightened fraternity brother. She looked at the drunken brother and said, “Just out of curiosity, what does a clueless dope like you major in?”

  “Pre-law.”

  “Why?”

  “Why else? Money. Personal injury is where it’s at, along with decent litigation. Look at the tobacco settlement. Any lawyer involved is rich.”

  Maybe the kid was right. For a drunken asshole, he made pretty good sense. She turned toward Bobby and said, “I need a few answers from you guys.”

  “Like what?”

  Patty leaned in closer to them to get her point across. “I want to hear all about your Halloween parties the last couple of years.”

  The fraternity brothers looked at each other. Then Bobby said, “What do you want to know? It’s a lot of fun and half the damn school comes to the party.”

  “That’s what I’m looking for. A list of attendees the last two years.”

  Bobby’s eyes opened wide as he said, “That’s impossible. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “I would start by sobering up and getting together with a couple of your trusted friends. I want a preliminary list first thing tomorrow morning. And if I don’t get it, next time I come back I’ll bring along Detective Stallings. Your lives will never be the same until you help us out with this. Do my good little dogs understand what I’m saying?”

  Both young men nodded their heads in unison.

  When Lynn worked this late it was usually for Dr. Ferrero, but tonight she was behind her desk at the Thomas Brothers supply company catching up on accounts receivable that had been held two weeks, then dumped on her desk in a big pile. She really didn’t care because it was peaceful and kept her mind off other, more troubling things.

  She finished near seven o’clock and cut through the loading dock to the parking lot, where there were still a number of people scurrying around and closing out their jobs for the day. As she turned into the fleet parking lot she saw Leon wiping down one of Mr. Thomas’s Cadillacs.

  She stopped and they exchanged helloes as she took a moment to look at the details of the beautiful car. She turned to the familiar sound of the golf cart Dale used to scoot around the giant complex.

  He slowed until he was directly across from her and said, “Looking forward to Saturday night. We’ll have a great time.” He scowled at Leon and said, “You’re outside all day tomorrow. Wear plenty of sunscreen.” He mashed the pedal of the golf cart and hummed away at a brisk five miles an hour.

  Leon looked at Lynn and said, “It’s not my business, but why would you go out with that turd?”

  Lynn shrugged meekly and said, “I was kind of forced to. I swear to God there’s nothing going on between us.”

  Leon gave her a long, curious look and said, “How’d you like it if Dale was unavailable for your date?”

  “I wouldn’t be too upset.” As soon as she said it, she wondered what Leon might have in mind. Lynn didn’t think a simple comment like that meant anything sinister or violent, but she knew the lean, tough-looking man had his own grudge against Dale.

  Leon said, “I owe it to your dad and I was going to have to do something anyway. That guy is a total dick.” He looked in every direction. “I know everyone in your family can keep a secret. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  Stallings stood in the empty third-floor apartment that Jeanie had once rented. He knew he wouldn’t find any evidence or information; he just wanted t
o be in a space that Jeanie had occupied within the last few years. The whole idea made him shaky and raised an entirely new set of questions in his mind about his daughter’s disappearance.

  Why had she run away? If she was so close, why hadn’t she called? What had gone so terribly wrong? Did she hate him? Had it all sprung from his own relationship with his father?

  Stallings’s sister, Helen, had been very clear that she’d left because of their father. She was less clear about was what had happened to her after she’d left. That made Stallings wonder what other issues Jeanie might have if, by God’s grace, he did find her and bring her home. He had no illusions. This was not the tidy world of the TV hour-long drama. He had to consider the effect on Charlie and Lauren as well as Jeanie’s well-being.

  So the question came up again, why had she left? It was almost easier to believe she had been taken against her will. At least then there was an explanation. Although the rate of kidnappings in the United States was incredibly small, it still happened. Most detectives went their whole careers without seeing a kidnapping. At least one that wasn’t related to the drug trade.

  Stallings had developed a certain confidence as a police officer that had served him well the past sixteen years. It could be considered the sixth sense cops are expected to have. A confidence to look at someone and know they are feeding you a line of bullshit. The confidence to know you’ll achieve a goal or solve a case. It was the basic personality trait that defined a good cop.

  But as a father, he had constantly compared himself to others. One of the reasons was that he never had a decent role model himself. He adopted other fathers as role models. He appreciated dads who not only spent time with their kids but did stuff with them too. Played sports instead of watching the kids run around the park. Explained things instead of just showing kids what things looked like. It often made him wonder what he’d be like today if his father had done those kinds of things.

 

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