The Perfect Prey

by James Andrus

  Now Patty had records in front of her, solid evidence of the suspect’s activity. It was the sort of thing that she was good at, and everyone knew it. Some detectives interviewed endless numbers of suspects. Some detectives sat on surveillance for days on end. Some detectives were so lucky that they just rode whatever lead came along. But Patty Levine was meticulous and had the sharpest memory of any detective in the unit. She remembered names and dates from cases that were long closed. She could make sense of bank records, phone calls, class rolls, and even convoluted Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office personnel records.

  She had two piles of records in front of her right now. One of the stacks contained American Express records she had subpoenaed for Chad Palmer. The other, copies of everything from Gary Lauer’s JSO personnel file including assignments, complaints, and vacations.

  The personnel records were easy to get once they had classified Lauer as a “person of interest.” At Stallings’s request, they had not called in Internal Affairs. Stallings said it was because he didn’t want to ruin Lauer’s career if there was nothing to the allegation. But Patty knew it had just as much to do with Stallings’s dislike for Ronald Bell, one of the chief investigators in IA.

  Usually subpoenas for financial records took weeks or even months to arrive. But as usual, Stallings knew someone, and now she had eight inches of detailed American Express records in only two days.

  The office was empty and quiet, but she was far from lonely. This was exactly the kind of police work she enjoyed, and this was exactly the kind the case that she wanted solved.

  She got to work.

  John Stallings sat in his issued Impala watching the dark rooming house west of the stadium. He’d been there about an hour and hoped he might see his father stroll in or out of the two-story house. There had been almost no traffic on the street since he arrived, and only two lights in the house had been on.

  He couldn’t explain what had driven him to come all the way over here after speaking with Diane Marsh, but it was an urge he couldn’t resist. Maybe somewhere in the back of his head, he hoped that there was a connection strong enough between him and his father to create an opportunity.

  He had always liked the solitude of surveillance in his county car. That’s what this felt like. Waiting quietly, watching the door to a house. It used to make him anxious because it meant he didn’t know when he was getting home to his family. But now they didn’t seem to need him nearly as much, and on surveillance he felt needed. He also knew that they were going to have to get much more active on this case. Talking with Diane Marsh had intensified his fire to resolve the case. And that could mean long hours of surveillance.

  He waited until just after three. He never saw his dad that night.

  He liked the atmosphere of this club on the southeastern side of the city, near the University of North Florida. He could appreciate how hard it was to maintain the beach theme in a dingy little warehouse ten miles from the ocean with the interstate virtually overhead. The staff was very professional as well.

  He had already danced once with Ann, but he didn’t want to be seen with her too much because she had four friends in the club. It would’ve been easy to ask her to leave with him, and he thought she’d say yes. But he couldn’t risk being identified later. So the stalking of his cute little antelope would continue, and he didn’t mind that one bit.

  He sat at the end of the bar and sipped a beer as he watched Ann and her friends laugh around the high top near the dance floor. It was an odd position to be in because she knew he was interested in her and she had made it clear she was interested in him, but he couldn’t make a move right now. He couldn’t even hang out chatting with her and her friends. It was too big of a risk.

  These were all tactics he’d developed over the last few years. Two years ago, in Panama City, he’d been questioned by a detective who was looking into the suicide of a coed. It was a very informal and casual interview, but the reason they even knew to talk to him was because he had spent too much time with her in public the night before. When they had sneaked out onto the roof of the nine-story hotel, using an old maintenance ladder that hung down near the window of the girl’s hotel room, he knew exactly how things would end up. The one hit of Ecstasy had loosened her up, but she’d refused to take off her pants. It didn’t really bother him as he watched her blond head bob up and down on him. When she was finished she tried to kiss him, but he fended her off, as most men would. She had started to get a little loud when he eased her to the side of the building and then, without any warning, said, “I wonder if that X can make you fly?” And shoved her off, watching her float for just a second, then plummet like an iron pole, falling straight through the roof of a Suburban parked below.

  He told the detective that while he was dancing with her she seemed perfectly all right. He didn’t know where she had gone when she left the club. But if he’d been smart no one would’ve known to look for him in the first place. And now he put those kind of lessons to use.

  A scruffy-looking kid with a hint of a beard shuffled over and asked her to dance. This was the perfect time to slip out the door. Next time he saw her, he’d make his move.

  Thirty-seven

  John Stallings walked into the Land That Time Forgot at eight o’clock sharp. The first thing he noticed were two large dry-erase boards covered with figures and dates behind Patty Levine’s desk. He stopped and stared at the incomprehensible data, then looked down at Patty, who was examining a credit card statement with great care.

  “Somebody’s been a busy beaver.”

  “Because somebody didn’t want me to come with him to the Wildside last night.”

  “I thought you were gonna have dinner with Tony.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Tony has his own case to worry about. I just had some free time and knew this had to be done. What’d you find out at the Wildside?”

  From across the squad bay, Yvonne Zuni said, “Why don’t you both come fill me in on what you’ve been doing?”

  The sergeant started with her own bombshell. “Guess who pulled me aside last night?”

  Neither detective answered.

  “Gary Lauer tried to convince me he had done nothing wrong and that we were harassing him for no reason.”

  Patty said, “He really said there was no reason?”

  The sergeant smiled and said, “Actually he said the only reason you were harassing him was because you didn’t like his attitude toward women.”

  Patty didn’t say anything.

  The sergeant said, “He does have a shitty attitude toward women. I’ve seen it firsthand. Where are we on this thing? Is there a connection to Daytona or any other town? I want to know if this is this a real homicide investigation or a narcotics investigation.”

  Stallings cleared his throat and said, “I spoke with Diane Marsh last night.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “I went by the Wildside to talk to the bartender there. She’s been going in as a way to find a connection between her and Allie. It was just chance that I saw her.”

  “Did she add anything to the investigation?”

  “No, but she didn’t screw anything up either.”

  The sergeant moved her dark eyes over to Patty and without saying a word was able to convey that she wanted to hear what Patty had turned up.

  Patty said, “The drummer, Donnie Eliot, was in rehab last year during spring break. He gave his counselor in Delray Beach permission to speak to me. That doesn’t eliminate him from suspicion in the Allie Marsh case but clears him in any Daytona cases that could be connected.”

  “Have you looked at Lauer and the other suspect’s travel yet?”

  “Palmer’s credit card receipts show him all over the state all the time. I have five different days where he made purchases in Daytona in March and April of last year.”

  “What do you have on Gary Lauer?”

  “Lauer’s personnel records show he took vacation last year for thre
e weeks in March. The year before that he took two weeks in March. But of course there’s no way to tell where he went while he was on leave.”

  Stallings said, “I’m afraid if we approach him, he might be smart enough to get an attorney. He’d connect the two investigations in a heartbeat.”

  Yvonne Zuni let a sly smile spread across her pretty face. “I think I have a way to figure out where Gary Lauer was during vacation the last couple of years.”

  Tony Mazzetti sat at his desk considering all the leads to his triple homicide that had turned into dead ends. He held the little speckled tablet with the J2A marking that he’d taken from Miss Brison’s house. The spacey bitch was the only open avenue he had right now. He really wanted to talk to the white guy who’d given him the slip the night of the shooting. He’d done a full background on Miss Brison and discovered her first name was Marie, she apparently owned the house near Market Street, there was no record of her employment in the wage-and-hour database, and her only arrest had been six years ago at the age of twenty for shoplifting. He wondered how she made a living but decided she probably didn’t need much money for a month-to-month existence in that neighborhood.

  Christina Hogrebe had been nearly as frustrated as he was with a lack of witnesses from the area. She was now running backgrounds on some of the Hess Party’s miscreant turds.

  Patty Levine startled him as she popped up out of nowhere. Instinctively he hid the speckled tablet in the palm of his hand. She didn’t appreciate his lax evidence-handling methods, and he didn’t feel like a lecture right now.

  “Whatcha doin'?” asked Patty.

  “Looking for witnesses.”

  “How can you do that sitting in the office?”

  He turned his head to look up into her pretty face. “Did Stall send you over here to break my balls?”

  She smiled. “No, I can do that all on my own.

  He grunted a short laugh and said, “How are you guys doing on the overdose case?”

  “It’s slow. Stall doesn’t want to admit that a cop could be involved.”

  “Who would?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I just hate Lauer’s attitude so much, I didn’t see the bigger picture.”

  Tony said, “It happens to us all sometime.”

  “I always try to be a check and balance to John on any cases involving young women. He can get tunnel vision.”

  “He does get focused on crimes against young women.”

  “Can you blame him?”

  He shook his head, glanced around the room quickly, twisted, and gave Patty a quick peck on the cheek.

  Patty returned a quick hug and then lingered, pinching his midsection, saying, “You’re getting a little pudgy there, Detective.” She winked and was on her way.

  Mazzetti poked at his stomach with his index finger and realized he had not been hitting the gym as he usually did because his hours had been all screwy. Then he stopped at that thought and realized there was someone worth talking to from the Market Street neighborhood: Pudge, the street prophet. He grabbed his Windbreaker and rushed out the door.

  John Stallings had contacts with virtually every missing persons detective in the Southeastern United States. One call to the Panama City Police Department got him the best man to answer the sensitive questions that had come up in the case.

  After one ring a cheerful voice came on. “Doug McKay, Missing Persons.”

  “Well, Detective McKay, you sound awfully chipper for the end of spring break. This is John Stallings over at JSO.”

  “Stall, how goes it in the rectum of the state?”

  Stallings had to give the detective a minute to chuckle at his own joke. “You know we’re developing a little bit of a spring break crowd too.”

  “In Jacksonville? Why?”

  “Very funny. Are you done yet?”

  “Seriously, is it a lot cheaper to stay over there now? Because on my last visit it seemed like the hotels were expensive, it rained all the time, and your beach communities weren’t set up to handle big spring break crowds.”

  “You know how it is, Doug–our city commission is looking for their share of tourist dollars.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if the money these kids bring in is worth the hassle. You get a group of flat breakers in here and they cram six into one room, each eat one giant meal at Golden Corral, and buy two beers at night. By my calculations that’s about fifteen bucks a day into the local economy. I don’t think they’re worth the trouble.”

  “You sound like you’re a little tired of the spring break crowd.”

  “That’s like saying black people are little tired of the Klan. I wish they’d just wipe out the whole idea of a vacation in the middle of the semester.”

  “Are you guys at least making a little overtime?” Stallings knew by the silence it was time to push on. “For a change this isn’t about Jeanie or any of my personal problems. I was just wondering how closely you guys watched drug use during spring break.”

  “Hell, Stall, I watch it all the time. I watch it on the beach, I watch it at the clubs, and I even have to watch it at the movie theater with my kids sometimes. Watching it is no problem. Being able to do something about it in times like this is what is hard.”

  “Do you have a lot of overdoses?”

  “Not many, that’s why it’s not a priority for us to stop the drug use. I think we had one heroin overdose this year and one cocaine overdose last year. We also had a drowning this year, but drugs weren’t a factor. The boy was from Kansas State, and I guess there’s no reason to learn how to swim out there.”

  “Any Ecstasy overdoses that were deaths?”

  There was silence on the line for a moment, and then detective McKay said, “Now that you mention it, not for a couple years. Two years ago we had two dead girls with Ecstasy in their system, but they weren’t overdoses. One was a hit-and-run and the other was a suicide. She jumped off the top of one of the beach hotels and caused quite a ruckus when she destroyed some rap star’s tricked-out Suburban.”

  “Can I ask a weird question, John?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Were both of your deaths two years ago blond girls?”

  After a brief pause the detective said, “As a matter of fact they were. How’d you know that?”

  Thirty-eight

  Stallings took a few moments to assess the mood of his all-female audience. Sergeant Zuni, Patty Levine, and lieutenant Rita Hester sat staring at him. It was the first time he’d seen the lieutenant in the D-bureau since Sergeant Zuni had arrived.

  As usual, based on rank and years of friendship, the lieutenant jumped straight to the point. “All right, Stall. You got two minutes to convince me why we need to put so much more manpower into an overdose case that I didn’t want to take in the first place.” She folded her formidable arms in front of her and gave him the glower that had made many a street thug cry.

  Stallings wasted no time. He laid out the photographs of the three spring break deaths from Daytona the year before, then the two Panama City deaths from the year before that. All blond. He didn’t have to state the obvious.

  After a moment he said, “All five had Ecstasy in their systems at the times of the death. All five died during the traditional spring break period of March to April.” He laid down the photographs of Kathleen Harding and Allie Marsh. “Two deaths with Ecstasy and residue from Durex condoms this year here in Jacksonville.” Then he laid down the photograph of Chad Palmer and Gary Lauer. “Two viable suspects.”

  The sergeant and Patty knew where he was going, but the lieutenant took a moment to study all the photographs. She surveyed the others in the room quietly, then said, “What are you asking for, Stall?”

  “We need a couple more detectives for surveillance. Maybe a tracker or two that we can slap on their vehicles. We need to take this seriously.”

  Rita Hester said to Patty and Sergeant Zuni, “Could you ladies give us a moment alone?” She waited until she and Stallings w
ere alone in the small room and said, “Stall, you can’t turn the death of every young girl into some kind of conspiracy. Sometimes kids overdose, or they drown, and sometimes they even run away. But not everything has some sinister meaning. Wrap up this overdose. Keep this girl’s mother quiet. And move on. We have real homicides stacking up in the unit. They just found a girl in a parking garage who had been stabbed through her chin to the top of her head. We don’t even have a case open on it yet.” She looked down and shook her head. “I’m sorry, old friend, but I’m going to have to turn you down on this one.”

  Stallings drew in a long breath and said, “I can see your point, Rita. But with all due respect, that’s bullshit.”

  “Just because I’m an administrator now doesn’t mean I can’t smack you, one old street cop to another.”

  “Then as an administrator, can you really risk the liability of ignoring something like this? Think of the financial shock to the city if there is a serial killer preying on spring breakers and we just let it slide.”

  He could see the lieutenant working over the problem in her head, the back of her jaw grinding. Her eyebrows furrowed. Finally, after almost a full minute, she faced him and said, “I’ll tell you what, against my better judgment, I’ll give you and Patty the leeway to check out your suspects. I don’t want Lauer’s reputation trashed if there’s nothing there, and I don’t want us facing a lawsuit from Mr. Palmer. You and Patty could have a little overtime and a little discretion, but I want this shit cleared up soon.”

  Tony Mazzetti cruised the streets at the site of the triple shooting. Life in the neighborhood had quickly gotten back to the usual ebb and flow of commerce, comedy, and connection. Because in this neighborhood if you weren’t connected, you did very little commerce and saw very little comedy from day to day. He knew that when people saw a lone white guy in a Crown Vic, they assumed he was a cop. And that usually garnered extra attention from everyone, especially the crack dealers on the corner. But the crack dealers had to realize he wasn’t a narcotics detective or he wouldn’t be in such an obvious car and wearing a shirt and tie. The most courtesy extended to him was not offering to sell him drugs.