The Perfect Death

FORTY-ONE

Patty saw Stallings and Mazzetti jump in their cars and race north on the New Kings Road but she couldn’t, in good conscience, leave a single patrolman to handle all the fights erupting inside the McDonald’s. She drew her expandable baton from her pocket and popped it open, catching the attention of all kids closest to her. They took one look at the extended metal pipe and the woman wielding it and scattered.

The uniformed cop worked his way across the room to Patty and the kids slowly calmed down. The patrolman used a good, military voice to shout, “This restaurant is closed. Anyone I put my hands on after the count of thirty goes to jail.”

Patty liked this guy and the way he got things done. The kids scurried like cockroaches when he shouted.

Patty chuckled with the patrolman, who had to listen to the McDonald’s manager complain about losing all of his business for the night. The heavyset manager said, “I pay JSO to send an extra deputy here every Wednesday and Saturday night to keep things calm so I can make money, not to chase away all my customers.”

The patrolman had taken it because this was a special situation. Most sheriff’s offices offered a contract position whereby restaurants and other businesses could hire a deputy off-duty. It was more expensive than a regular rent-a-cop but much more effective because the deputy had a gun, was trained to use it, and could make arrests.

The uniformed patrolman looked at the manager and said, “Some of your customers are hanging around, getting tire irons and knives to make the fights more interesting. You want me to call them back in?”

The manager turned around and started shouting at the staff instead.

Patty hustled out to her Freestyle and headed north, picking up the radio. “Where are you guys?”

Stallings came on the radio and said, “The son of a bitch has led us all over Jacksonville and now we’re coming south on U.S. one back by you. He’s calmed way down and I don’t think he realizes we’re still after him. Tony stays one street east and I stay one street west, and somehow we’ve kept him roughly in sight.”

Within five minutes Patty had pulled behind the motorcycle. Daniel Byrd had not seen any of their vehicles at the McDonald’s and had no reason to think the mundane family SUV was a police vehicle. When he took a ramp onto I-95 southbound, Patty let Stallings take over and follow him onto the interstate. She hit the gas and raced along the surface streets to keep pace with the motorcycle. Most people on the streets had no concept of all the surveillances that went on with unmarked police cars. Patty’s father always said he could pick out the unmarked police cars, but he meant the ones that looked like police cars. The Ford Crown Victorias or Dodge Chargers. He had no idea about all the other cars that were thrown into a modern police department’s fleet, specifically for these types of operations. To the average person on the street she looked like a frantic housewife rushing home at 11:30 at night.

Stallings came on the radio and said, “He’s getting off the interstate and we’re close to his apartment. I bet that’s where he’s headed.”

Patty had the address on an information sheet and knew the area well. Mazzetti came on the radio, “I’m on my way over there now.”

By the time Patty pulled past the apartment building, Byrd was walking in the front door and the motorcycle was parked on the sidewalk a few feet away. Stallings had called it right.

You couldn’t buy that kind of experience.

John Stallings didn’t use the radio. Instead he pulled alongside Tony Mazzetti’s Crown Vic a block away from the apartment building. They had things to discuss that didn’t need to be put out over the radio no matter how rarely the frequency was monitored.

Stallings rolled down his window so they were almost face-to-face, saying, “You think we need help on this?”

Mazzetti shook his head. “Fuck no.”

“Sounds like the SWAT thing is resolved and there’ll be a lot of cops on the street.”

“And what do we say? We really need to talk to this guy? Or maybe we have the SWAT team hit his apartment for stealing a motorcycle.”

“Then the question is: do you want to wait or go in?”

Mazzetti said, “We gotta wait. He could barricade himself inside and then we would really need to call the SWAT team. If Patty stays where she is and we stay on this end we can cover that front door easy. That’s the only way in or out of the building and the way he parked the bike means he’s not staying too long.”

Stallings nodded and pulled his car to the other side of the street. He settled in to watch the motorcycle. He glanced at his watch; nearly midnight and he was exhausted.

This could be the big break in the case. He couldn’t think of another reason why this guy would run from them so hard. They had to get him in custody and interviewed as quickly as possible. There was no way Stallings was leaving this neighborhood without Daniel Byrd.