The Perfect Scream

by James Andrus

  “I don’t think so. Like I said earlier, he’s really unpredictable. He could’ve made some extra money with his pot business and taken off to Hawaii with some new girlfriend. That’s the way Zach is.”

  Stallings assessed the young man and decided he was telling the truth even though he seemed somewhat evasive. Stallings pulled the photograph of Zach and Jeanie from his notebook and handed it to Kyle.

  The young man took it in his hand and studied it for several seconds.

  Finally Stallings said, “Do you know the girl?”

  Kyle nodded his head slowly. “I think her name was Kelly. She was around for a couple of weeks maybe two years ago. I know she was gone by the time we had our big blowout that got the fraternity on probation. Everyone remembers that party and where they were and what they were doing before and after. It’s like nine-eleven. I was only in elementary school, but I can remember the days leading up to it and after the attack. This party was just like that. And I know Zach had moved on to another girl by the time of the party.”

  Stallings’s heart raced at the first news he had heard about Jeanie from an eyewitness in three years. He wasn’t sure he could count his father, with his failing memory, as a reliable witness. But the fact that this boy remembered her as Kelly jibed with what his father had said. Stallings looked at Kyle and said, “What else can you tell me about this girl?”

  “Why? There’s no reason she’d know where Zach was.”

  Stallings contained his temper, but still felt like he was about to growl. “Never mind why. Just tell me what you know about her?”

  “I don’t know. She was nice and quiet. I think she worked at one of the old shops along University. You know, the secondhand shops that sell all kinds of funky stuff.” He scratched his head and looked at the photo again. “She might have lived in an apartment close by too. I don’t think she had a car.”

  “Do you have any other information on her?”

  “No.” He shook his head, more open to talking about the photo than he was about his friend’s occupation. “Do you want to talk to her about Zach?”

  “No, she’s missing too.”

  SIXTEEN

  It was just getting dark outside when Kyle started to settle down after talking to the big, scary-looking cop. He was glad Detective Stallings had come all the way down here to talk instead of at the fraternity house. Kyle was more comfortable here. He was always more comfortable at home. Unlike the other brothers, he wasn’t cocky and sure he could score with women or ace a test. That wasn’t in his personality.

  It wasn’t like him to get involved in drugs and heavy alcohol use either. He felt like a stick in the mud when the other fraternity brothers really got cranking. Look where it had gotten them. Zach was missing and Connor was dead. He wished Zach would call someone and tell them he was okay.

  But Kyle had to wonder if this cop who’d come all the way down from Jacksonville was really just looking for Zach or if he was looking for something more. No one in the fraternity really thought it was just a simple missing-persons case. Not with all the shit Zach did. The whole encounter with the cop had shaken Kyle and made him want to just stay home and watch a movie with his folks.

  He wished he hadn’t promised to meet some buddies from the University of Central Florida at a bar just outside Winter Park called The Knight’s Tower. He was forced to go out most nights in Jacksonville. Tonight he really wanted to see his friends and the only place he could see them was at the bar.

  Tomorrow night he planned to stay home and help his little sister with a school project she was doing on Florida water resources. Every time he looked at her he shuddered to think what his fraternity brothers would try if he ever let her come up and visit him in Jacksonville. Sometimes they acted like animals.

  John Stallings hustled out of the Lee house, checking his watch and looking up at the sky. He calculated the route home, cutting up I-4 to I-95, in his head. With some luck he could miss rush hour and maybe be home in time to take the kids out for a surprise dinner. He was pretty sure Maria still wasn’t speaking to him after his late arrival at Thanksgiving dinner.

  He backed out of the driveway and pulled down the street, wondering what it would be like to be a cop in a town like this. The only person he saw out on the street was a young woman in her Nissan Sentra, parked at the curb. No hustlers, no dealers, no domestics, and no frantic cops trying to keep a lid on things. He settled in behind the wheel and headed northeast.

  Stallings felt old and tired on the drive back to Jacksonville. He’d slipped past Daytona before rush hour and was now outside Jacksonville. It really had not been a hard day for him, but he was exhausted. It didn’t seem that long ago when he could work all day and night and not notice the first sign of fatigue. Was forty really that much of a turning point in a cop’s life?

  He was starting to take the Zach Halston case more seriously. Aside from the fact that he wanted to ask Zach about the photograph, he no longer viewed him as just a spoiled, missing college student. He considered the possibility that Zach’s marijuana business may have played a role in his disappearance.

  As he passed the exit to Flagler Beach, Stallings’s phone rang. He was surprised to see his old home number on the screen. It was Maria.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Working.”

  “I figured as much. I went by your house and you weren’t there. I thought you had today off work.”

  “Something came up.”

  “Something always does.”

  Stallings paused and then said, “I already apologized for yesterday. I really meant it too.”

  “You’re right. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Would you consider coming to another fellowship tonight?”

  “With Brother Frank Ellis?”

  “He’ll be there, but I thought you could go with me.”

  He felt a goofy grin on his face as he said, “I’ll pick you up in an hour.” Suddenly he didn’t feel quite as old or tired.

  Not long after Lynn had parked her car down the street from Kyle’s house, she saw a nice-looking man who was in his late thirties or maybe forty get into the Impala in the driveway and pull down the street. She noticed him looking in each direction and their eyes met very briefly. She didn’t think it was Kyle’s father, and she was intrigued by all the possibilities that ran through her head. It was a little game to pass the time. But as she continued to wait there was no more activity from the Lee house.

  One of the sneaky or cunning things she had done was to create a fake Facebook page and use the photograph of a tall, female volleyball player from Florida State. She knew no fraternity boy would pass up being friends with someone like this girl and Kyle accepted her immediately. In his profile he’d mentioned a bar near his house called The Knight’s Tower where he would meet his friends who’d stayed in town to go to the University of Central Florida. She had already driven past the bar a few miles away and had an idea that’s where Kyle would be heading tonight.

  She had to be careful not to be seen with him by too many people. She had slipped on a low-cut top and tight jeans, knowing that you catch more flies with honey. This had already worked for her with these fraternity brats and she didn’t mind giving it another chance at the bar. She still wasn’t sure where she’d make her move. Lynn had no illusions about how messy it’d be. She had a change of clothes in her car and intended to discard her jeans and top as soon as she was done practicing her knife skills on Kyle Lee.

  Maria stepped off the porch before Stallings even came to a complete stop. As usual, she wore no makeup and no fancy clothes. Just jeans and a nice top. And she was still one of the most beautiful woman Stallings had ever seen. She had a certain grace, even walking down the two steps from the porch. She flashed him a smile as she approached the car and he grabbed the larger pieces of trash on the floorboard of the passenger side of the car and tossed them into the backseat. It’d been so long since anyone had ridden with him that he hadn’t even c
onsidered the mess.

  She slipped into the passenger seat, turned, and said, “What’d you do today?”

  What’d she say? Friendly chatter. He couldn’t remember the last time she had talked to him in that tone. He couldn’t believe how much a simple sentence like that meant to him.

  He shrugged. “Just looking for a missing fraternity boy from UNF.” He pulled away from the curb slowly. “Any trouble getting Lauren to babysit?”

  “Nope. She’d do anything for us to spend time together.”

  Stallings thought, I better raise that girl’s allowance. He drove along in pleasant silence as opposed to the usual strained silence.

  Maria dug some paper from between the seat and console. He noticed her glance at each scrap as she crumpled them up and tossed them on the floor. Then she kept one and studied it.

  Maria said, “This is from today.”

  “Yeah, I ate in the car.”

  “Firehouse Subs.”

  “Yep.”

  “In Ocala?”

  He wondered where this was going.

  Then Maria said, “Isn’t Patty in Ocala? Is that the kind of work you were doing?” She turned and gave him the kind of look he’d use to wither a suspect’s resolve. “This is why you worked on a holiday?”

  Before he could answer she had sunk back into her seat with her arms folded. “Just drop me off” were the only other words she spoke.

  Lynn couldn’t believe how accurate she was predicting what Kyle would do. She’d left her spot near his house three times. One of the times was to eat dinner at a trendy, upscale sandwich shop, where she legitimately took a few minutes to contemplate what she was doing and if she should stop this crazy mission right now. But something wouldn’t let her. Some force or power inside her kept pushing.

  Now she found herself following Kyle as he pulled into the half-full parking lot of The Knight’s Tower. The sports bar had a mix of low-class, cheap student vehicles and moderately well-maintained everyday cars. The building was long and sturdy, made up to look more festive than it really was. Basically, it was a long, concrete block structure with square windows, on which someone had painted a decorative black and gold mural depicting the mediocre accomplishments of the University of Central Florida Golden Knights football team. The two players that were highlighted in tenth-grade-level artwork were former NFL quarterback Daunte Culpepper and NFL receiver Brandon Marshall, easily the two most notable grads of the sprawling Orlando-based university.

  Inside, Lynn found the bar laid out like many sports-oriented establishments. A long, walnut-colored bar led to an open bay area with the required sixty-inch flat-screen TV against one wall that featured whatever the main game was for the day. Tonight a giant sign underneath it read FLORIDA–FLORIDA STATE TOMORROW AT 3:30. In Florida all other college games paled in comparison to the titanic struggle between the archrivals. It didn’t matter if either school was in the hunt for the National Championship or not; the game had taken on epic mythology with every Southern football fan.

  She eased onto the stool closest to the entryway and ordered a chardonnay. She was able to see Kyle clearly as he sat at almost the opposite end of the bar and turned around to face the big TV showing highlights of the pro and college football games from the last two days.

  The walls of the bar were decorated with memorabilia from the University of Central Florida with a few shirts from Rollins College, a local, high-end private school. There was an unwritten code that none of the big three football schools would be acknowledged in a place like this. There was no FSU garnet and gold. No University of Florida blue and orange. And no green and white of the University of Miami. Over the years the University of Central Florida had eclipsed all three schools in sheer size but had never accomplished anything close to the athletic glory each of the other Florida schools enjoyed. No one wanted to be reminded they were mediocre.

  Lynn was patient, waiting to make sure there was no one inside the place who Kyle was going to meet. Once she was certain he didn’t know anyone in the main room she started to build up the nerve to approach him. Her goal was to get him outside before anyone realized he’d been here. She still wasn’t sure what she was prepared to do to accomplish this goal, but in this sexy getup with her best lipstick and eyeliner on she was hoping it wouldn’t take too much.

  Just as she was about to stand up and make her way toward Kyle, she felt a tap on her shoulder that made her jump. Lynn turned to see a young man, about her age, with a big grin on his face. He had a cute, preppy look to him and dark eyes.

  He said, “Hey. I’ve never seen you in here before.”

  This was the first kink in her plan.

  SEVENTEEN

  John Stallings had been stunned by Maria’s tirade after finding the receipt from Firehouse Subs in Ocala. Stallings had not taken Brother Rick Ellis seriously when he’d suggested Stallings and Patty had a romantic connection. Obviously this was a real concern for Maria and nothing he’d said had calmed her down in the least. She had demanded he take her back to the house immediately and had even threatened to jump out of the car and walk home.

  Stallings saw the futility of his position and agreed to take Maria back to the house. His heart broke a little as he watched her march away from his car and up the stairs to her porch without even glancing behind her one time. He sat there like a doofus in front of his former house for more than five minutes before he realized he needed to do something. Anything.

  Stallings started to drive, and before he realized it he was in front of the soup kitchen where his father worked most Friday nights. Stallings was careful to park more than a block away so his unmarked police car didn’t spook any of the patrons of the soup kitchen. The chief volunteer, a lovely woman named Grace Jackson, who was a local teacher recognized often in the paper for her community spirit, had once told him never to park any vehicle that could be interpreted as a police car in front of the place.

  As soon as he walked through the door he saw that most of the patrons had been served and the cleanup was almost completed. At the far end of the room his father sat at a round table eating a fried chicken leg and chatting. As he walked across the room a real fear rose in Stallings that his father might not recognize him immediately. His memory bounced around from perfect to almost blank without reason or schedule. Stallings often worried this man he’d just gotten to know again after more than twenty years would eventually forget him altogether. It made Stallings feel like he didn’t exist at all if his own father had no memory of him. But on his good days he rationalized that it was better to have made amends with his father even if it meant only a short time together than to have remembered him as the bitter, drunken bully he had been for most of Stallings’s childhood.

  At the table next to his father sat Grace. She was younger than Stallings, perhaps thirty-five, with a pretty face and a perfect, chocolate complexion. The last time he had seen her, several months earlier, she had told him how much his father meant to her. Now, as he saw them smiling and talking, he felt a pang of guilt over not establishing a relationship with his estranged father sooner.

  Stallings felt this tension release when Grace gave him a bright smile. His father turned and Stallings’s heart stopped for a second until the older man smiled too.

  James Stallings said, “Hello, Johnny. What brings you over here tonight?”

  Stallings couldn’t believe how happy he was to see his father’s smile and hear his lucid words. It was almost enough to wash away the lingering feelings about Maria’s fit.

  James Stallings turned to Grace Jackson and said, “This is my son, Johnny. He’s a big-shot detective with JSO.”

  Grace smiled. Her teeth were bright and straight and beautiful. She said, “I’ve met your son.” Then she surprised Stallings by standing up and greeting him with a big hug. She was shorter than him, around five foot two, and a little plump, but he definitely sensed something extra in their lingering hug.

  Stallings liked the way she held on to
his hands as she released her hug and just stared at him for a moment. The last time he had seen her she was in an apron and had been working behind the kitchen counter for hours. There was something about her that looked fresh and invigorated. She had the most alluring dark eyes set in a pretty face, so Stallings just enjoyed the moment.

  They all sat together at the round table and chatted about different things. Stallings felt comfortable enough with Grace to pull out the newly found photo of Jeanie and slide it in front of his father.

  James Stallings took the photo and stared at it for a moment. He looked up at his son and said, “Today it’s crystal clear in my mind. I can even remember the sound of her voice.”

  Stallings said, “You once said she went by a different name too. Do you remember?”

  The older man nodded his head and said, “Kelly.”

  It was all coming together. Between what Kyle had said and now his father, he was sure Jeanie was alive. He was about to ask his father another question—then, without warning or reason, James Stallings started to sob.

  Lynn was polite but firm. She didn’t want to have anything to do with this preppy pest. But his cheerful smile gave no indication that he understood what she was talking about. He just kept nodding and insisting he wanted to buy her a tequila shooter.

  Finally she had to say to him, “Is English your first language?”

  The pest giggled and nodded his head. “You are just too cute. There is no way you’re leaving here without me getting a number.”

  Lynn would’ve almost thought it was funny except for the fact that Kyle was getting ready to move from the bar. She still wanted to catch him before he met with his friends. But the pest was insistent.

  He asked, “Are you meeting someone?”

  She didn’t want to say yes, then have him see her with Kyle and possibly describe her later.