The Perfect Death

SIXTY

John Stallings felt like a caged animal as he watched Tony Mazzetti and Sparky Taylor interview Arnold Cather at the PMB. He sat in a viewing room next door to the interview room, watching the proceedings on a closed-circuit TV with Yvonne Zuni in one chair and Lieutenant Rita Hester in the other. He couldn’t sit still, standing and pacing in the back of the room, giving handwritten notes to Patty in the hallway so she could text them to Mazzetti.

Stallings recognized that, as the lead detectives on the case, Mazzetti and Sparky should be the ones in the room staring down the suspect. Since Arnold Cather liked to go by the name “Buddy,” Mazzetti immediately started calling him Arnold and Sparky called him Buddy. They set up a good dynamic for the classic “heavyset compassionate good cop and annoying bad cop.”

After the fifth question Stallings sent in, Mazzetti turned directly to the camera and shut off his phone. Once again Stallings sprang up and faced the back of the small observation room. He had tipped his hand and it took an old friend and former partner like Rita Hester to call him out on it.

She lifted her wide frame, nicely hidden behind a brown pantsuit, and motioned him out of the small room into the hallway. As soon as he was clear of the door she wrapped her strong hand around his elbow and tugged him into the empty conference room across the hall.

She leveled those clear, brown eyes at him and said, “You trust me, Stall?”

He nodded his head, noting that she had not removed her hand from his arm.

“Then let me monitor this interview and I’ll act as your proxy. I’ll make sure Mazzetti questions him on every aspect of his activities and ensure that he never met Jeanie.”

Stallings appreciated how she danced around saying something like, “We’ll make sure he didn’t strangle your daughter.” Stallings looked at Rita Hester’s pretty face, feared by every criminal in Duvall County. As usual, she was right. Not just professionally, but personally as well.

Stallings felt the energy seep out of his body and knew he was spent. The killings were over. He’d accomplished his goal. Now he had to trust the cops he worked with to look out for his own interests. Mazzetti was an asshole, but he could handle this.

It was time for John Stallings to step back and recapture as much of his life as he could.

On his way home to his small house in Lakewood, Stallings stopped at the hotel to check on Liz Dubeck. As soon as he walked through the front door of the empty lobby she rushed from behind the counter and threw her arms around him. At that moment he knew she had realized how close she’d come to being part of that monstrous glass structure.

Liz said, “I heard that you figured out Buddy was the killer and sent the others to protect me. You’re like my guardian angel.”

Stallings wasn’t sure he knew what to say. “Just glad you’re safe.”

She stepped back, smiled, and said, “Am I safe as far as you’re concerned? Have I dropped into female-friend mode?”

“I’m not sure we ever progressed past that stage. And there’s nothing wrong with being friends, is there?”

She stepped forward, ran her fingers through his hair, and planted a kiss on his lips. Then she stepped away from him and said, “I’ll always be here for you.”

“You can’t know how important that is to me.”

Stallings felt a stab of sorrow as he trudged to his car. He sat in front of the hotel for a moment wondering if he had enough energy to make it to his house and collapse in his bed.

As it turned out, that was exactly how much energy he had left.

Patty Levine had given Tony Mazzetti a good night’s rest to recover from the investigation. She knew there was so much more to do, but at least they were confident the killings had stopped. The strangler was behind bars. As far as Tony Mazzetti was concerned they had cleared a bunch of homicides.

She looked across the table in the Caribbean-themed restaurant out on Atlantic Beach and smiled at him. She felt the effort it took to smile. It wasn’t the organic, warm smile she could’ve produced a month ago.

Mazzetti said, “This is the first chance we’ve had to chat in almost a week.”

“Not so good for people in a relationship, huh?”

“Anyone would acknowledge that these were special circumstances. Now we can focus on us.”

“But for how long? Our whole lives are special circumstances.” She took a moment, then reached across and grasped his right hand in both of hers. “That’s why I wanted to talk. I think I need to focus on me for a while.”

“What’s that mean?”

Patty knew he didn’t understand exactly what she was talking about. She could never go into the details of her concern. She wouldn’t intentionally put anyone in that position. The fact that Sparky Taylor had shown the insight to figure it out had shocked her. She didn’t want to seem like a whiner or admit there were days she couldn’t handle the job. Tony Mazzetti would land on his feet now that she had taken him out of his comfort zone of ignoring everyone and everything except his job.

When Patty cleaned up her act, she’d be interested in talking to him about a life together, special circumstances and all.