The Perfect Prey

by James Andrus

  Yvonne Zuni was feeling the pressures of command as she scrambled to get help for both Tony Mazzetti and John Stallings, as their cases seemed to come to a head at the same time. She had sent Stallings and Patty to the Wildside to find Larry Kinard. She and another detective were still with Jason Ferrell.

  Now she had Tony Mazzetti on the phone. He’d developed a good suspect who had confessed to the shooting. She was surprised it turned out to be one of the residents of the house. She asked Tony, “You found both of the guns?”

  “She pointed out where she had buried two guns. I’d risk my entire career the ballistics will match those guns to the shooting. Plus there was about thirty-five thousand dollars in cash stuffed in Ziploc bags.”

  “What other resources do you need over there?”

  “Crime scene is here now processing the guns and checking out the rest of the yard. Christina and I are going to book this girl on first-degree murder. The media is gonna go crazy as soon as they hear about it. I’m gonna need to get home and change before I talk to the reporters.”

  “Why are you going to talk to the media?”

  “Because that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years in homicide.”

  “If they need a comment they can call the lieutenant. That’s her job. We’ve got a lot going on right now, and I might need you on Stallings’s case.” She had everything handled, but she didn’t want the detective to think he could call the shots and decide who would or would not talk to the media.

  She just hoped Stallings and Patty could grab Larry Kinard without too much trouble.

  Fifty-four

  This was the second time he’d had prey to this apartment. Lester wasn’t home, and the neighborhood was very quiet tonight. He also had the advantage of not having the victim’s car in his driveway. It was a simple plan. Fuck her, then kill her. He still wasn’t sure if he was going to leave her back in her own car or find a place to hide her body completely. Considering the interest of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, he tended to think he’d leave her somewhere damp and swampy.

  She wandered through his little place ahead of him, looking for signs of a female roommate. Then she stopped in the hallway, noticing his collage of other prey. She said, “Larry, who are all these women?”

  “Just girls I thought were pretty.”

  She stepped forward and brushed the corkboard with her fingertips. A couple of loose photos on the frame moved at her touch. “You sure do have a one-track mind. These girls could all be sisters.”

  He gazed at her as she stared at his work of art and wondered if it wouldn’t be as much fun to kill her fast and not even worry about the sex. His erection told him that would be fine. He felt the power start to build and surge through his arms and legs. He flexed all over like a big cat ready to pounce. He joined her at the same table where he’d mounted Lisa, then broken her neck. The same sharp letter opener was still in the drawer. He leaned in close to her, sniffing to make sure he still had her scent right, and kissed her on the neck to hide what he was really doing. He slid the drawer open and took a quick look down at the letter opener.

  “That poster is kinda creepy.” Ann stepped away from him quickly. “If you have any Ecstasy I’ll take it with me.”

  She had no idea it was already too late. He was now completely in predator mode.

  Fifty-five

  Stallings and Patty raced from the Wildside dance club. The manager had told them Larry Kinard had just left after having worked the early shift. He gave them Kinard’s address, and now Stallings had the gas pedal pressed hard against the floor. Patty was on the cell phone advising the sergeant where they were going and asking for as much help as they could send.

  Patty said, “John, slow down. If we’re killed on our way there it won’t do anyone any good, and my mom will be pissed at you.”

  “Sorry, we gotta grab this guy, and it’s a way to keep my mind off of Gary Lauer.”

  “I understand, but Kinard has no idea were looking for him. He may not even be home yet. We have a better chance of T-boning someone than we do of losing him.”

  Stallings slowed down but still managed to pass one of the many buses running between downtown and all points east. He turned to his partner and said, “Who else is coming?”

  “The sarge says she and Mazzetti are on their way, and Hoagie is coming from the crime scene near Market Street. Should we wait for the whole posse?”

  “Let’s do a drive-by and check the place out. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.” He appreciated the fact that Patty knew not to tease him right now.

  Not only did he feel the power as a predator, he vividly recalled how he felt when Ann had left him naked and bruised at the beach. That was why he wanted to throw a good scare into her first. He could’ve just attacked her as she gazed out the window or hidden the deadly weapon, but instead he turned around slowly, smiling with the letter opener in his right hand and touching the point of it with his left index finger.

  Ann said, “You look like something out of a stupid horror movie. Stop fooling around and find me the X.”

  He stepped closer to her and reached out to take her hand. Tentatively, she reached out to his and let out a giggle.

  He said, “What’ll you give me for the X?”

  Now she gave him a broader smile, came closer, and said in a soft voice, “What would you like?”

  He glanced over his shoulder and said, “I’d like to put your photo on that board too.” He slashed upward quickly with the letter opener, making a deep gouge in her chest and cheek. He liked the stunned expression on her face and decided he’d wait to let what was happening sink in completely.

  Her shriek only heightened his excitement.

  As soon as Ann entered the little bungalow she got a weird vibe. She wasn’t sure if it was from the building or from Larry, but one way or the other all of her internal alarms were telling her to get out fast. She took a good look around and saw no indication of anything unusual. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Maybe child pornography or a bottle of ether. Her mind was starting to cook up crazy ideas about this guy. But she had to admit he’d been a perfect gentleman since she’d talked to him at the club, then followed him back here in her friend’s car.

  She noticed a nice, framed corkboard bulletin board crammed with photos of young women. It took her a moment to realize every single one of the girls had blond hair and blue eyes. They were all shapes and sizes–some with big boobs, some without; some shaped like pears, others tremendously athletic. But every single one of them had blond hair and blue eyes. Immediately she thought of her own blond hair and light blue eyes and felt a chill run down her spine.

  She couldn’t help herself as she turned around and told him how creepy bulletin board looked. She said, “If you have any Ecstasy, I’ll take it with me.” When she turned around he was standing there with some kind of a letter opener or knife in his hand by his side. He looked so goofy with that grin, she thought it was a joke.

  Ann said, “You look like something out of a stupid horror movie. Stop fooling around and find me the X.”

  He said, “What’ll you give me for the X?”

  Ann tried to make her voice sexy and gave him a little smile and said, “What would you like?” But she had no intention of giving him anything other than a quick hug or kiss. Right now she was thinking that if she could just get her hands on the X, she’d grab it and head out the door and never have to see this jerk again. Then he did the one thing she really didn’t expect.

  He swung the letter opener up, catching her in the chest and face. She was stunned more than anything else for a moment until she felt the blood dripping down her face and imagined what it must look like.

  Then her screaming drowned out any other thought she had.

  Patty looked out at the dark house and said, “Are you sure this is it?”

  Stallings had pulled his Impala to the curb, checked the notes he’d made at the Wildside, and said, “It’s
the right address, but it’s awfully dark.” He looked around at the other houses. “I wonder if the neighbors would know anything.” He slowly pulled the car ahead and noticed the driveway slipped away to the back of the house. He saw light at the end of the driveway. “Is that an apartment in the back?”

  Patty rolled down the window for better view and saw at least one vehicle and a couple of lights on at the much smaller structure. “It’s gotta be. A lot of these places on the east side have little attached apartments.”

  As Stallings was deciding which neighbor to talk to, they heard a female scream from inside the back apartment. There was no time to wait for help or talk to the neighbors. They both sprang out of the car.

  He watched as Ann stumbled back, touching the thick, sticky blood, pouring out of the gash on her face. She started to hyperventilate, and he thought it was gonna cause him to ejaculate in his pants.

  “You’re not so smart now that you can’t surprise me.” He stepped toward her, keeping the sharp letter opener well within her view. “Strip down.”

  Between crying and gasping for air she managed to spit out a “What?”

  “You heard me. I said take off all your clothes, and I want you to do it right this second.”

  Her eyes darted around the room quickly, and she jerked her shirt over her head and unhooked her bra with amazing speed. She wasted no time kicking off her sandals and sliding down her jeans. She stood straight up, perfectly still, only her belly sucking in and out with each strangled cry.

  He took a moment to study her and decide what he might take as a souvenir. He had a photo of her from one night at the bar. For right now he was satisfied to watch her beautiful body tremble in front of him, knowing that when he decided it would all be over. He had to savor this one because it would be months and months before he had another chance.

  Ann sniffled and managed to say, “What are you going to do with me?”

  He let his smile spread slowly. “I thought it would’ve been obvious by now. I’m going to gut you like a fish, then dump your body somewhere between here and downtown Jacksonville.”

  “I said I was sorry and I shouldn’t have left you at the beach.”

  “And you will be sorry, I promise.” He stepped forward, knowing she couldn’t retreat far into the room.

  When she bumped into the rear wall he paused a moment, reasserted his grip on the letter opener, and prepared to step forward hard and thrust at first directly into her heart. Then he was going to swing it up under her chin like he did with Holly.

  A noise distracted him. At first it was a creak on the small porch; then it sounded like an explosion.

  For a moment she couldn’t breathe; when she started to suck in oxygen, it didn’t feel like enough as her heart raced like she’d never felt before. She was afraid even to try it, but she forced herself to lift her fingers to touch the warm sticky blood on the side of her face. She’d stopped screaming and started to sob instead.

  She looked up, and Larry still had the weapon in his hand. The idea that her own blood was splashed along the side made her stomach turn. Just out of instinct she backed away, shuffling her feet slowly on the wooden floor. She murmured apologies, but she wasn’t sure who they were to. She kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Somehow she thought it was more an apology to God or her parents or anyone but this guy who kept advancing toward her with the knife still in his hand. But he wasn’t closing the distance between them. Maybe he was just trying to scare her. Her mind raced as she realized that everyone who had ever been in a situation like this tried to rationalize it. She tried to make it seem like it wasn’t really happening. But she knew right now that her life was in danger and if she didn’t do something, this man in front of her, whom she had seen naked, whom she had had sex with, who had supplied her with drugs, was going to stab her to death.

  Somehow she felt as if she was coming to grips with it until she bumped into the back wall of his apartment. Now she had nowhere to go. And he kept coming toward her.

  Stallings had his big Glock duty pistol in his hand as he crashed through the door. Patty was on the porch covering the inside of the small detached apartment with her Glock through the window. The door wasn’t thick, but it was well made and was harder to get through than he’d thought. He took a moment to let his eyes adjust inside and get over the shock of crashing through the pressboard door.

  Patty came in directly behind him as he scanned the hallway in front of him. It was empty. As he stepped forward and turned toward what had to be a bedroom, there was a flash of movement in the dim light and a loud noise. He jumped to the side of the door, scanned it with his gun out in front of him as Patty took a position on the other side of the door. Immediately he noticed a nude woman standing perfectly still against the rear wall. He held his position.

  “Where did he go?”

  The woman dropped straight forward onto her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.

  He entered the room followed by Patty. They scanned each corner, and Patty ducked into the attached bathroom.

  Stallings went down on one knee to hold the woman by her arm, giving her a gentle shake. “We’re the police. Are you okay?” But when she looked up he saw for the first time the wound on her face and upper chest.

  From inside the bathroom Patty yelled, “Clear,” and stepped back out into the bedroom, joining Stallings with the hysterical young woman.

  The girl sniffled. “He was going to kill me.”

  “Who?” asked Stallings.

  “Larry.”

  Stallings scanned the room quickly and noticed the screen out of the main bedroom window. As he stood and stepped toward it he said, “Did he go this way?”

  She just nodded.

  He stared out into the pitch-black backyard and realized it would be useless to chase after him. He didn’t know what direction he went. But Stallings knew he could call in a lot of cops real quick and get this whole area sealed off. He looked out the back window as he opened his phone. There was no trail or trace of where Larry Kinard had fled. As soon as the dispatcher came on the line Stallings started feeding her information for the arriving units to set up a perimeter.

  Larry Kinard acted on instinct when he saw his front door disintegrate. Before he even knew how many cops had busted in, he twisted and dove out the window in his bedroom. Landing on his feet, he kept his balance and ran directly into the bushes behind his house and kept running onto the main highway. He knew he had to get back into Jacksonville, where there were crowds and places he could disappear. His biggest stroke of luck was a bus stopping outside the convenience store about a mile west of the beach.

  He was fully clothed and still had his wallet in his pocket. Thank God he hadn’t had sex with Ann and found himself running naked once again. Instead, he calmly stepped onto the bus, dug in his pocket for his wallet, and gave the driver five dollars. Change automatically dropped out of the dispenser, and he walked past two derelicts to sit in the seat opposite the rear door as the bus picked up speed.

  There was only one more stop before they hit the wide swampy area and then the St. Johns River. No one got on at the second stop, and he noticed two police cruisers racing east.

  A smile crept over his face when he realized he’d have another season to hunt.

  Stallings and Patty wrapped the girl in a blanket and kept talking to her until paramedics took her away. One of them had told Stallings the wound was superficial and would require stitches. He said the same thing every fireman had ever said about a facial injury: “All head wounds bleed a lot worse than they really are.”

  Sergeant Zuni had arrived and taken over control of the perimeter, sending patrol cars a mile or more in each direction to block any route of escape. It was a slow night, and every cop in the city seemed to have come out to help. Even though Larry Kinard was obviously the man they sought and was a lot more than an everyday Ecstasy dealer, Stallings couldn’t help but think about Gary Lauer and what had happened. Stallings’s instin
cts might have been right about a cop not killing young college girls, but Lauer had other issues. Maybe he couldn’t work out how he felt about his girlfriend. Stallings didn’t want to think how responsible Lauer felt for the girl’s suicide, because right now he knew how responsible he felt for Lauer’s.

  Stallings and Patty were waiting for Crime Scene to come and process the apartment as well as for Mazzetti to run a search warrant past the judge. But it hadn’t taken long for them to notice the collage of blond girls in the hallway. And Allie Marsh’s photo was in the corner of the corkboard.

  Patty stared at the framed collage and said, “Do you think these could all be victims?” Her voice was hushed, and it showed the dread she had at asking the question

  “God, I hope not.” It was all Stallings had for the moment.

  Fifty-six

  To John Stallings this is what police work really meant. They might’ve missed the killer, and Larry Kinard was loose on the street, but with the right people in the detective bureau they had accomplished a lot in a couple of hours. He listened to a patrol sergeant’s radio as they sat on the porch of Larry Kinard’s house. He could visualize the wide perimeter that had been set up to catch the fleeing suspect. A patrolman had been smart enough to question a bus driver coming back from downtown, and he said he’d picked up a man matching Kinard’s description an hour before and dropped him off downtown. It hadn’t been enough verifiable information to cancel the perimeter, but it had caused another dozen patrolman to flood downtown looking for the fugitive.

  Stallings had roughed out a probable-cause affidavit on someone’s laptop computer, and Sergeant Zuni had assigned another detective to run it through the duty judge so they could search the house. The days of just tossing someone’s house were long over, and the procedures and details of search warrants and subpoenas had taken a firm hold in most large police departments in the country. Although Stallings was anxious to search the house, he was actually more concerned with the capture of Larry Kinard.