The Perfect Woman js-1

by James Andrus

  Patty shook her head. “No, I have a big badass cop boyfriend.”

  “And he could probably beat the shit out of me.”

  Patty let out a little laugh and said, “Honey, I could beat the shit out of you.”

  Twenty minutes later Patty was looking over records in the rear of the pharmacy amid discarded magazines and other trash.

  She made a few notes; there didn’t appear to be any problems with the inventory. The Florida Department of Business Regulation had been inside doing an audit in the last two months, but she didn’t want that pharmacist to think she was just breezing through asking a few superficial questions.

  Her metal notebook case sat on a stack of diaper boxes in the corner as she looked over the volume of inventory reports. She’d been on the move so much she had already left it at one pharmacy and had to return for it.

  A blond man walked in the room, saw her, and froze. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

  Patty knew the look of someone trying to ask who she was without actually asking.

  She smiled and said, “I’m Detective Levine from JSO.” She held out her hand, asking his name without really asking.

  He took it and shook it briefly, keeping eye contact with her.

  She had to say, “And you are?”

  “Oh, sorry, William. William Dremmel.”

  “And what’s your job around here?”

  “I’m a stock…I do a little of everything. If you have any questions I can probably answer them.”

  “Notice any Oxycontin or other narcotics missing?”

  “Not really.”

  “Anyone suspicious hanging around or asking questions about drug interactions.”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “Have you seen the photo of the missing girl on TV, Stacey Hines?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Have you seen her in here before?”

  “I’ll have to look at her photo again.”

  There was something about this guy that set off an alarm deep in Patty’s head. It wasn’t his answers so much as his demeanor. He looked like a nervous guy trying to act cool. She’d make a note of him and his name later.

  The man said, “I have to get a few things in here, then head back out to the floor. Do you need anything else?”

  She shook her head and purposely returned her attention to the inventory sheets. She didn’t want to telegraph that he had caught her professional interest. He rummaged around on the side of the room, grabbed a box of diapers, and left without another word.

  She finished up, talked to the pharmacist for a moment, got on her phone to the office, then headed back out to her car. The clerk had just jumped onto her radar. She’d check him out and see if anything moved him up the ladder to a real “person of interest.” Right now it was just a creepy feeling he gave her.

  She didn’t even have to write down his name. It was lodged in her memory: William Dremmel.

  William Dremmel was as excited as he’d ever been in his entire life. He’d set up a second bed in his lab. Stacey’s eyes followed him, but she never said a word as he laid a single mattress on the floor opposite her in the small room. He hastily installed eyebolts in studs in each wall, just like Stacey’s restraints. He had a second set of cuffs in his own bedroom. He gave her a smile and wink but no explanation as he left the room.

  At his computer in his bedroom he looked up everything he could on the little Denny’s waitress who had said her name was Maggie Gilson. He found a Margaret Gilson with a criminal record, entered a hacker’s site, and discovered Little Miss Innocent had a past for shoplifting, but all three cases had been dismissed. Retailers never followed through if the thief paid off the bill. She was twenty years old but didn’t have any utilities in her name. He’d make her his next project. Just the idea of having someone new to learn about excited him. His erection threatened to rip his pants as he found little nuggets of information about the cute girl.

  When he had searched databases enough he swiveled in his seat and picked up the three sheets of paper he had managed to slip from the battered gray metal case that Detective Patricia Levine had carried into the pharmacy. This was so easy he didn’t need to look in the computer. Her schedule, in great detail, was on one page and phone numbers and notes on the others. An envelope with an unpaid water bill was stuck to the last page. It listed her address. Sweet.

  Although he didn’t have to dig too deep for information on Detective Patricia Levine, it was still exciting to learn about her without her knowledge. He’d noticed her look at him in a certain way that could mean problems. He had so much to do he wondered what to do first. Clearly he had to act if she started to investigate him. But Lori and her knowledge of Stacey Hines gave him a different worry. Either way he liked these kinds of challenges and knew he could stay one step ahead of the cops on this.

  Thirty-six

  John Stallings took several seconds to ease the front door of his home shut. The lock clicking sounded like a cymbal in the silent house. He didn’t want to wake anyone, and he was so tired that just standing still at the door almost caused him to doze off. Not only was he exhausted by a day of following up leads and ideas that Peep Morans and Ernie had given him about narcotics dealers who specialized in prescription drugs, but he had a raging headache from lack of food and he was just too tired to eat.

  He turned to head straight to his bedroom and noticed Charlie sound asleep on the living room couch. He snored lightly with his body twisted in an odd position that only a kid could sleep in.

  Stallings felt a smile wash over his face despite his exhaustion as he bent to pick up the boy and carry him to his room. As he bent down he heard Lauren entering the living room from the kitchen.

  “Hey Dad. Where’ve you been?”

  “Work.”

  “I tried to call.”

  “My phone ran out of juice before me. Why? What’s wrong?” He no longer had time to be eased into bad news.

  “Just worried, that’s all. Aunt Helen is here.”

  “Why, what’s wrong?” It was a question he had asked too often.

  “She came by and hung out this evening.” Lauren looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen as if to prove she wasn’t hallucinating about his sister visiting. Then she said, “Dad, you look really beat. Is the case going okay?”

  He looked at his thirteen-year-old in a new light. In that moment, this beautiful young girl had done everything she could to assume many of Maria’s roles. She showed interest in his life outside the house, she helped her brother with his homework, gave pep talks to Stallings, often cleaned the house, and always made sure she knew where everyone in the family was. The last thing Stallings wanted was to have another daughter robbed of her childhood. The simple question about the Bag Man case made him hesitate. He didn’t want to suck his daughter into his obsession with this killer. He didn’t even want her to know how far outside the law he’d already gone to gain any information possible. What the hell was he doing in homicide anyway when he had these wonderful kids at home worried about him? Then he thought about Lee Ann Moffit, Tawny Wallace, Trina Ester, and now Stacey Hines and knew why he was on the case. Jeanie. He blew it with his own daughter, but knew he might be able to help someone else’s daughter or at least avenge them. That wasn’t why he started police work, but he was wondering if that was how he’d end his career.

  He stepped across the room without answering Lauren and scooped her up in a tight hug. Her spindly, awkward teenage arms wrapped around him as well. As he stood there holding his surprisingly tall daughter, Helen stepped into the room from the kitchen.

  Stallings released Lauren. “What’s up, Helen?”

  “Just wanted to see the kids. Is that okay?”

  His years on the street taught him to read people even though he tried not to use his unique abilities on his own family. Now the sense that there was more to his sister’s visit was overwhelming.

  He smiled to
put her at ease, then said, “It’s fine with me. Did you get to see Maria, too?”

  The hesitation in his sister, her pretty face frozen as she formulated an answer, told him everything he needed to know. He turned abruptly and started quick-stepping for the master bedroom. Behind him he heard Helen call out, “Wait, Johnnie.”

  But he was on a mission to find out the truth, and as soon as he opened the bedroom door and Maria sluggishly turned in bed and gave him that familiar grin and sleepy-eyed look he knew what had happened to draw Helen to his house, where she had felt unwelcome since Jeanie disappeared.

  Maria gave a breezy, “Well, hello there,” as he moved to the bed and immediately noticed her dilated pupils even with the bright bed stand lamps both burning brightly.

  He didn’t need another complication in his life right now.

  William Dremmel felt as if he was handling his business better than ever before. Instead of indecisiveness he was taking action, instead of quiet loneliness he was making efforts to never be alone again, and instead of fear he felt confidence. He knocked on the door lightly, knowing it was late and Lori would be the only one awake at this hour. She’d told him many times of her insomnia and habit of watching movies in the living room after her father and brothers went to bed.

  Dremmel had a few things to say to Lori, but he also needed to gauge the threat she was to him and his experiments. Would she really continue to harp on his relationship with Stacey Hines, or was it a passing comment? He couldn’t risk it. He also wanted to tell her how he really felt about her.

  He tapped the door again and heard someone pad across the wooden floor of the slightly elevated house wedged in the neighborhood known as Durkeeville. Predominantly African American, the area had seen a renaissance in recent years, and Lori’s family had always kept the little house and yard neat. He’d driven her home several times over the years and knew his way around the streets.

  The old wooden door creaked open and Lori stood alone wearing simple shorts and a T-shirt. Her natural beauty didn’t need cosmetics to make her stand out, but she usually wore them at work anyway. Now in the soft light from inside she looked like the girl next door if the girl was a modern dancer with dark smooth skin and a bone structure any Venetian artist would kill to paint.

  “Billy, what are you doing here at this hour?”

  He smiled and said, “I wanted to talk to you away from work. Is it too late?”

  She looked over her shoulder into the house and shook her head. “No, my daddy’s asleep.” She stepped onto the wooden porch and shut the door quietly. “Now, what’re you doin’ over here at this time of night, Billy?”

  He placed a hand on her arm and leaned in close. “I needed to talk to you.”

  “’Bout what?”

  “About how I feel. I don’t want to scare you off or make you uncomfortable.”

  Her eyes reflected the streetlight, but he could also see her interest. She leaned in to kiss him.

  He stepped back and said, “I really do think you’re great. I care about you.” That was absolutely true.

  She stepped toward him again ready to show how she felt.

  He said, “Let’s walk around the side of the house so no one gets the wrong idea right out here on your porch.” He turned and took the three wooden stairs to the ground and immediately turned down the potholed, cracked cement driveway. He didn’t want to risk kissing her and then changing his mind over what had to happen.

  She followed him eagerly in her simple bedroom ensemble and bare feet.

  He stepped into the shadow of the house and kept moving, making Lori follow him without time to think.

  Dremmel carefully stepped around a puddle of water in the deepest part of the shadow, quickly added two more steps to get farther away, then turned to face Lori and watch the spectacle he’d spent an hour setting up quietly earlier in the evening.

  Lori didn’t notice the puddle, which was really a pothole with more than six inches of water. She stepped into the small pool of water and froze, then convulsed onto the hard cement driveway, still shaking as her left leg dipped into the water.

  Dremmel was fascinated by any form of death and this was a new challenge. He’d set an electric cord running from an outdoor socket into the water. He had jammed open the automatic GFI breaker in the utility room attached to the open carport. The juice running through her was just a powerful shock except that he allowed the shock to continue while she lay there for what was termed “low-level electrocution.” This was more spectacular than the stun gun. The little device had given him the idea for this stunt. The current essentially caused her heart to drop into arrhythmia.

  He stepped closer and looked into her twitching eyes. Was that her or the electricity? Stepping away from the water he unplugged the heavy cord.

  Lori stopped moving. He rolled up the cord, stuck it in his pocket, then leaned down and placed two fingers along Lori’s long, graceful neck. There was no pulse.

  It took him only a minute to remove his block from the circuit breaker and pick up a CD player he’d seen in the carport. He plugged it in the wall and dropped it in the pool of water. The unit sparked, then shut off as the water on the line tripped the GFI breaker.

  He surprised himself by feeling a lump in his throat for his lovely coworker, then squatted down and kissed her forehead gently.

  Now there were no links whatsoever between him and Stacey Hines.

  Thirty-seven

  William Dremmel spent the early morning hours trying to chat with Stacey. He’d been so excited by his brilliant staging of Lori’s accidental death that he couldn’t even think about sleep. When she proved to be resolute in her silence, he spent the time feeding her part of her high-protein, low-carb diet. The food plan allowed her to maintain muscle and keep her from putting on extra pounds while she was stationary. It also tended to keep her energy more regular without the ups and downs of insulin coursing through her. He allowed her to sit on the portable toilet with her hands free but not her legs. It was awkward setting the toilet on top of her mattress, but it was safer than letting her go free.

  Dremmel completed his favorite task, giving Stacey a loving sponge bath, just before dawn.

  Finally she said, “What’s the other mattress for?” She nodded her head toward the opposite side of the room.

  “It might work out that you get a little company in here.”

  “Oh yeah, who?”

  He just smiled. “There are several options open.”

  “You’re never gonna let me go, are you?” Her voice was calm and matter of fact.

  “Never is a long time.”

  She looked at him and said, “I’m never going to forgive you for what you’ve done to me.”

  That just gave him the idea for a different round of drug trials to see if he could soften her position. He’d see what he could pick up around the store today.

  John Stallings had been distracted all day long. He had Maria’s sponsor and his sister over at the house and felt confident she was in good hands, but the guilt of whether his long hours had contributed to her back-sliding ate at him. Still he couldn’t keep himself away from the case today. He’d spent the day talking to homeless men and showing around photos of the dead girls.

  As soon as he burst through the office door he had a sense that something was wrong. The other detectives kept their heads down or gave him a quick nod hello. He didn’t know if Tony Mazzetti had thrown a fit about something or if they were all just getting as worn down as him from the case and trying to maintain their own lives at the same time. God knows he felt as if he could just lie down and sleep for a few hours. But he had leads to follow and people to find.

  As he approached his desk, near the old holding cell, he saw the door to the conference room open and Lieutenant Rita Hester lean out, look at him, then motion him into the room. He set down his notebook and hustled toward the room wondering what terrible thing had happened now.

  At the doorway he paused, look
ing at the lieutenant, Tony Mazzetti, and I.A. weasel Ronald Bell all sitting around the long table.

  “What’s up, guys?” he asked as he slowly stepped inside.

  The lieutenant said, “Shut the door, Detective Stallings.”

  Uh oh, he didn’t like the sound of that. Stallings took a seat on the far side of the table so he had a table between him and Ronald Bell. It seemed like a simple precaution for the I.A. investigator’s safety.

  “What’s this about? Looks a little like a lynch mob.”

  Mazzetti didn’t look at him.

  The lieutenant said, “You wanna tell us again how you haven’t been talking to the media about the case?”

  “I can, but nothing’s changed.”

  Now Mazzetti looked up. “Bullshit, Stall. I actually believed you. I was starting to think you might be worth a shit as a cop and then you do this.”

  “Tony, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Ronald Bell slapped a stack of paper onto the table. “Your county cell phone records.”

  Stallings picked up the first page and studied it, seeing his phone number and the Sheriff’s Office name and address at the top. “Do I have to guess, or will you tell me what to look for?”

  Bell leaned in, feigning the outrage that most I.A. investigators can turn on or off in a heartbeat. “You slipped up, smart guy. You made a call to a Channel Eleven extension from your cell phone.” He pulled a page from the bottom of the stack and slid it across the table to Stallings.

  Stallings picked it up and looked at the circled call and thought about it for a minute. “That’s the day Luis Martinez shot the pot grower with the underaged girl.”

  “Exactly, and Channel Eleven was there before anyone else, even the paramedics.” Bell plopped back in his seat like an old-time defense attorney who had just made some major point.

  Stallings shook his head. “I never called any TV station.”

  Bell’s face was a deeper red than usual. He said, “Is it an error? Just chance that the number for Channel Eleven appeared on your bill?”