The Perfect Death

FORTY-THREE

An hour after capturing Daniel Byrd, Stallings sat across from him in an interview room in the Land That Time Forgot. Stallings liked the way Mazzetti was playing this slow and cool. He had purposely left the room to allow Byrd to stew in his own paranoia. He was letting the wily suspect imagine the worst. Stallings knew to just sit there and look mean.

Mazzetti hated calling so late to advise Sergeant Zuni that they were interviewing someone. He told her not to rush down to the PMB and he’d let her know if something came of it.

For Byrd’s part, once he was caught he’d offered no more resistance. He was still in the patterned yellow dress and had a red mark across his cheek where Stallings’s arm had ridden up his chest during the clothesline. Byrd was putting on a cocky act, but Stallings knew jerks like this started to crumble as soon as they realized they were going back to jail. The key was finding what Byrd wanted. If they had a carrot, they didn’t need to use the stick.

Mazzetti came back in, settled into the empty chair, and stared hard at Daniel Byrd. Byrd leaned back in his chair, but there was only so much coolness you could have with your hands cuffed behind your back while you were wearing a dress.

Mazzetti said, “Anything you want to talk to us about, Daniel?”

“Not a thing.”

Stallings could hear the North Florida twang in those few words. He had known several families named Byrd in the Jacksonville area. One of them over in Baker County. These Byrds had a similar accent but a different outlook on life. The Byrds he knew worked hard and valued education above anything else. It made him want to smack this Byrd right in the face.

Byrd said, “What charges are you holding me on?”

“You got to be kidding me.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Stallings had to cut in at this point. “You’re wearing a yellow dress. So I would have to say, yes, you do look like you’re kidding a little bit.”

Byrd tried to give him a hard look, but he was an amateur trying to fight in the heavyweight division.

Mazzetti said, “We got a lot of questions and in the long run it’d help you out to be our friend.”

“You didn’t tell me what the charges are?”

Mazzetti stood quickly, scooting the chair back with his legs. “First off, a violation of parole. There’s the grand theft with the motorcycle. Assault on the motorcycle rider. Fleeing and eluding the police. And resisting arrest.”

“How did I resist arrest?”

Stallings said, “Really? All those charges plus your past history and you’re worried about a misdemeanor resisting arrest? Son, have you got some kind of learning disability we should know about?”

“The only thing I’m ashamed of is that I let an old geezer like you catch me.”

Stallings gave a chuckle. “That’ll go over big at Raiford.”

The comment hit home and caused Byrd to lose some of his cockiness. His brown eyes darted around the room and he fidgeted in his seat. But he didn’t ask for a lawyer and had told Stallings he was considering cooperating. He was in custody so they had already read him his Miranda rights. Stallings was a little surprised he hadn’t asked for an attorney then, but as the questioning had continued he was shocked the man was willing to sit there. He really didn’t want to go back to prison.

Finally Byrd said, “What kind of questions do you have?”

Stallings and Mazzetti had already worked out this little dance. Stallings would ask general questions about Leah Tischler; then Mazzetti would build up to the homicides.

Stallings said, “I’d like to ask you about this girl.” He slid a photograph of Leah Tischler across the table, and Byrd seemed to take a good long look at it.

Byrd said, “I’ve never seen her before.”

“You run into her within the last two weeks?”

Byrd shook his head. “No, no way. I’ve been working every shift I could the last month trying to get enough money together to pay off my traffic fines so I could get a job driving a cement truck.”

Stallings studied the younger man’s face carefully and looked over at Mazzetti, who made a few notes but was also trying to get a fix. Stallings said, “So you don’t want to say anything about this girl?”

“That’s not what I said. What I’m saying about her is that I never met her and have no information on her.”

Now Mazzetti got involved and said, “What about Kathy Mizell over by the health education building? The girl at the bus stop.”

Once again Byrd kept calm and looked Mazzetti directly in the eye. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why am I here really? Why were you guys chasing me? I’ve done a lot of shit, but I don’t know what you guys are asking about.”

Mazzetti said, “Whose dresses were those in your apartment?”

Byrd looked down at his dress and then gave a flat stare back to Mazzetti. “Really, dude, you can’t figure it out?”

Stallings admired the young man’s attitude.

Byrd said, “Take a wild guess why I can’t let the guys at work know I wear them. Construction workers aren’t known for their tolerance. This is the first time a dress ever really helped me out, other than to make me feel special and better than I really am.”

That caught Stallings by surprise, but he had to admit the man was very cool and calm if he had really killed anyone.

The door opened to the interview room and Patty Levine stepped in. This was a very unusual move among the detectives. Mazzetti and Stallings immediately knew something big had happened. Stallings looked at her, waiting to hear whatever vital news she had. The way Byrd looked at her, Stallings could tell he might’ve been a cross-dresser but he wasn’t gay.

Patty said, “He’s not our man.”

At the same time Mazzetti and Stallings said, “Why?”

“Because they just found a body in the courtyard at Shands hospital. She’d been strangled with a ligature sometime between ten and midnight. We were on Byrd the whole time and he never came close to the hospital.”

Stallings knew there was a lot of information to verify and forensics to ensure that this was a victim of the same killer, but somehow, in that moment and looking at the lack of response from Daniel Byrd, he knew there was still a serial killer loose on the streets of Jacksonville.