The Perfect Prey

Twelve

Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Detective John Stallings sat with the old man from the woods, drinking stale 7-11 coffee and munching on hard, dry donuts. For his part, the old man appreciated the way Stallings had dealt with him and seemed to be enjoying not only the refreshments but the show as well.

They watched two JSO crime scene techs recover and process Allie Marsh’s purse and a shirt that may or may not have belonged to the girl. The old man, after taking a few minutes to decide if he could trust the JSO detective, had told Stallings he had heard the phone ringing as he passed the Dumpster, reached in, and retrieved it. He hadn’t used it because he really didn’t have anyone to call and only answered once, which was when Stallings had called. The story had checked out, and Stallings didn’t believe the old man had anything to do with Allie’s disappearance, but he couldn’t let him wander off just yet. He made the man believe staying and watching the law enforcement spectacle was his idea. Truthfully, now that Stallings had been on duty for almost twenty hours, he didn’t mind the company.

As the sun rose and cast a pleasant light over a possibly nasty situation, he saw Patty Levine pull up in her county, unmarked Ford Freestyle with Tony Mazzetti right behind her in his big Crown Vic. Another police-looking unmarked car, a Dodge Charger, rumbled in behind them. He was surprised to see the slim, attractive form of Yvonne Zuni pop out of the Charger and start marching his way. She had a certain sway in her hips that said she was not all business, all the time.

She smiled, as she got closer. “This is impressive, Stall.” She stopped short when she saw the old man next to him.

“Who’s this?”

“He found the phone.”

“He’s the one that answered it when you called?”

Stallings nodded.

“Did he turn himself in?”

“Sort of.”

“What’s that mean?”

“When I found him, he explained the whole situation and led me here.”

“Then he’s a suspect.”

“Barely.”

“Why isn’t he in cuffs?”

Stallings looked at her with a cocked head, wondering if she was serious. “Handcuffs? Why? He’s not technically in custody.”

“Then why is he here?”

“I’m holding him in case I have more questions. It’s consensual.”

“Have you Mirandized him?”

“I don’t have to. He’s not in custody.”

“Is he free to go?”

Stallings hesitated. “What are you, his attorney?”

“No, I’m your sergeant and I want things run properly. Now, you need to shit or get off the pot. Charge him and cuff him or tell him he can go. I don’t want a complaint the first week I’m in a new job.”

Stallings started to answer, then realized she wasn’t making a personal attack. She was doing what she thought was right. Even if it was all fucked up. He nodded and walked away, motioning the old homeless guy to follow him. Stallings said, “I don’t need you anymore. You have my phone number-I want you to call me tomorrow at noon.”

The old man nodded.

“And I’ll be able to find you at your little camp?”

“That’s where I stay unless it rains. Then I use the back of the Regency Square Mall a little east of here. I don’t want to ruin it so I go by myself and only stay there every once in a while.”

Stallings nodded, understanding, like few others, the plight of homeless people. He reached in his front pocket and checked the little brown alligator money clip Charlie had given him at Christmas. He had three twenties and four singles and a five-dollar bill. He yanked out the three twenties and handed them to the old man.

The man took it and nodded his thanks. Then he said, “I’ll probably watch from the front of the 7-11. I don’t want you in trouble with your pretty sergeant.” He smiled, showing as many gaps as teeth.

Stallings let out a laugh, realizing how sharp the old man was to hear and understand what was going on. He watched the old man walk away and wondered about his own father, who had ended his career as a bully and shitty father by rolling out onto the streets himself. Stallings had seen him once in the last few years but kept tabs on him though different sources. He used to live downtown in a cheap, pay-by-the-week motel, his Navy pension keeping him safe, but alcohol slowly rotting him from the inside out. Stallings knew he had moved in the last year and hadn’t looked for him.

He’d thought that his father had at least provided him with a negative role model so he wouldn’t screw up his own marriage or kids. Now, separated and still mourning his missing Jeanie, he didn’t think his father had provided him with anything, either negative or positive.

He heard Patty say, “You need a hand with anything, John?”

He turned to see her with Mazzetti standing next to her.

Mazzetti said, “Yeah, the real cops are here now, Stall.”

“Well, Mr. Real Cop, this case just got kicked up a notch. What do you suggest we do now?”

Mazzetti just stared at him.

Stallings was sincere when he asked for investigative recommendations, but somewhere inside he hated to admit he enjoyed seeing the homicide detective baffled with such a direct inquiry.

Patty said, “I’ll see if we can get any more information off the cell towers and then check to see if there are any security cameras for businesses along the road for a couple of miles in each direction. Maybe the 7-11 had some traffic and somebody saw something?”

From off to the side, Yvonne Zuni spoke up. “That’s the first decent plan I’ve heard on a case since I came into crimes/persons. Go ahead with all of that, Detective Levine.” She looked at Mazzetti. “What are you doing here? Waiting to see if we find a body? Detective Mazzetti, if you don’t have enough to do in homicide I’m certain I could find something for you to work on.”

Mazzetti nodded and said, “Yes ma’am,” turned, and scurried to his car.

Stallings and Patty exchanged glances, but neither laughed out loud.

John Stallings stood at the rear of his Impala with a large, detailed map of the county spread out across the trunk. Patty was on the other leads with two analysts assigned by the new sergeant. They had all the high-tech avenues covered. The leads were viable, and Patty was running down more detailed cell records, checking video cameras, and staying on top of any lab developments.

Stallings was different. He had learned the basic skills of a cop before the world of high-tech had changed so many things. He knew how to talk to people or scare them if necessary. He knew luck was involved in so much of police work and he knew how to reason things out. It didn’t always work, but sometimes he surprised himself as well as others. Right now he studied the map and drew a blue circle downtown where the Wildside dance club was. He knew she’d been there at some point. He marked the Dumpster, which was where he was standing right now, on the map. Then he let his cop eyes roam up and down the map, thinking about the possible scenarios that had led to Allie Marsh’s purse being discarded in the Dumpster.

First he had to assume the person who threw it in there didn’t expect it to be found. That person thought either no one would look in a nasty Dumpster or it would be emptied soon. Next he thought of the reasons Allie left the bar with someone. He didn’t like to dwell on any of it. Finally, he searched the map for the kind of open, but private, area someone could park a car and not be bothered. Places like parks, green spaces, canals, or tributaries with wetlands around them. It was as if he was up in one of the sheriff’s office’s helicopters without the use of time or the inevitable airsickness.

He used his finger to trace the main road, starting at the Wildside and slowly moving it along the map, keeping track of the mile legend and then following it east, over the river, across the marshes and residential neighborhoods, past the municipal airport, then all the way to the ocean. He could check the beaches. Every would-be Romeo in Florida tried to impress tourists with the ocean. Many of the beaches even had webcams to show what the waves were like for surfers. That was one of the breaks he’d gotten in the last big homicide case he had worked on. But something told him they didn’t drive as far as the ocean. The couple of parks off the road were small and tended to get a lot of walkers and runners cutting through them.

Then he started tracing back from the beach, and his finger lingered on the outer edges of the municipal airport. There were trails back in there and it was secluded. He packed up the car and waited for the last crime scene tech to leave before he headed east the 2.3 miles to the airport. He drove past the main fields and found one of the dirt paths that led behind the small airport. He had purposely not mentioned his plan to Yvonne Zuni. While it was amusing to see her cut Tony Mazzetti down to size, he had no interest in experiencing it today. She must have failed to notice that he’d been on duty almost twenty-two hours now or she definitely would’ve said something. He planned a long afternoon of sleep as soon as he checked his one theory.

He found a field with mowed grass and a tree line set back fifty yards. Low-hanging branches of wide scrub brush formed a thick, green wall with the occasional southern pine that towered near the runways of the small airport. He got out and started walking the perimeter of the field, letting his eyes scan wherever something caught his attention. Stumps in the grass, unusual piles of leaves, anything that broke the straight lines of the field.

Then he noticed something all the way over in the tree line and started walking that way. He tried to continue scanning as he came closer, but whatever was on the edge of the scrub brush had captured his attention fully and he couldn’t take his eyes off it. He saw a splash of red and blue and knew whatever it was it wasn’t something from nature.

Then he slowed as a form started taking shape. He saw the blond hair and one arm splayed out to the side, and his heart sank. He slowed and noticed the shoe missing off one foot; her face was turned away from him.

He carefully stopped and eased to the side through the brush about ten feet away from her so as not to disturb the crime scene in any way. He could see her blue, bloating face and recognized it as Allie Marsh’s formerly pretty face. He stepped back out of the brush, his hand already reaching for his cell phone when he had to stop, look up at the sky, and scream as loud as he had ever screamed. “Fuck!”

James Andrus

The Perfect Prey

Thirteen

As soon as Patty Levine had gotten the call from John Stallings telling her he’d found the body she’d dropped her inquiry into cell tower hits and security cameras and raced to meet him. At some point she would have to resume that kind of work, but right now her partner had called. He sounded a little shaken. She knew it had as much to do with his own daughter as with the case itself.

She stepped into the ladies’ room at the sheriff’s office and popped a Xanax to steady herself before the ride back east to the municipal airport. As she swallowed the pill with a palm full of water from the sink, the door opened. Patty turned her head quickly, perhaps with a tinge of guilt for having almost been caught and was surprised to see her new sergeant, Yvonne Zuni, standing there.

Sergeant Zuni said, “I need to make a quick stop before heading out to the scene. How did he find her?”

Patty finished swallowing and shrugged. “That’s just John. He figures out stuff the rest of us don’t even know is important.”

“I’ve heard he has his own methods of getting information.”

Patty knew to keep her mouth shut.

Sergeant Zuni said, “I believe in letting cops work, but there are rules. Some of law, some of conduct, but I want everyone to follow the rules.”

“Don’t you think some rules are stupid?”

“Like the one about not dating someone who has the same supervisor as you?”

Patty just stared at the new boss.

Then Sergeant Zuni said, “Get your stuff together. No matter how he did it, your partner found the girl’s body. Now we all have to pitch in and help.”

Tony Mazzetti rolled up at the old municipal airport before the crime scene van. He was lucky his girlfriend was in the loop and had dropped him a line before Sergeant Zuni called to order him over to the scene. He felt a real satisfaction in telling his sergeant he was already on the way. He’d even stopped to pick up his usual partner, Christina Hogrebe, from her little house in Dames Point, then shot across the Dames Point Bridge, cutting south to the airport.

Christina was a rising star at the sheriff’s office. The youngest full-time homicide detective ever, she had the instincts of an old-time street cop wrapped up in a package few men could ignore. There was a rumor a year back that Mazzetti and she were an item. He let it slide because it kept people from guessing why he hadn’t had a date in a while. Christina heard it and didn’t care. If information wasn’t being used to put someone’s ass in jail, she barely acknowledged it. He finally had to step up and deny it because someone asked how he and Christina could date and still work in the same squad. It made him wonder if anyone would care if he went public with Patty. He doubted it. He was homicide and she was missing persons. Usually.

They were screaming south on St. John’s Bluff Road when Christina said, “Tony, either slow it down or put on the lights, but I don’t want to buy it because you’ve got a hard-on to beat the new sergeant to the scene.”

“Who says I care about shit like that?”

“Hello, I think I just did. C’mon, admit it, big guy-working for a woman intimidates you.”

“What’re you talking about? I worked for Rita Hester and still do.”

“But I hardly think of her as a woman.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Not that she’s not attractive, but she’s been a boss a long time. And you’d have to admit she could kick your ass if she wanted to.”

Mazzetti just nodded at that. Lieutenant Rita Hester could kick just about anybody’s ass.

Christina said, “But the new sarge is a little different. She’s like a china doll, all small and beautiful. And she’s hands-on. She even corrected one of my reports in red ink yesterday.”

“Sounds like you’re the one with a problem.”

Christina shook her head. “I don’t mind correction or criticism if it makes me a better cop.”

“You saying I do mind it?”

“You tell me.”

“I listen to your suggestions all the time.”

“But you’re still senior partner. The sarge can order us around all day and doesn’t have to ask about opinions. She takes ‘em or leaves ‘em as she sees fit.”

“What’s your point?”

“That the sarge has you spooked.” She smiled as she chomped on the bubble gum that was always wedged in her molars.

It was tough to get upset with anyone who looked like her and had that kind of delivery.

Yvonne Zuni took a minute to survey the scene before she got out of her nice new Dodge Charger. Being new to the unit she was still trying to get a feel for how everyone worked and interacted with each other. She knew Mazzetti’s type: brash, arrogant, efficient. And Patty Levine was smart, professional, and insecure. It was John Stallings who gave her a hard time. She couldn’t get a decent read on him to save her life. She’d heard all the rumors. He was tough, resourceful, and he paid little or no attention to the SO policies. That was something they might butt heads over. The new sergeant was smart enough to realize that Stallings was an old friend of the lieutenant’s. That could be tricky too. She also knew his personal story. He wasn’t living at home right now, even though he didn’t broadcast it. She’d listened to two of the secretaries gossip about it, each with her own plans to scoop him up if he stayed on the market much longer. The sergeant figured that the split was a delayed result of his daughter’s disappearance. Marital problems were a well-known side effect of family tragedy. She knew it from personal experience.

She watched as Stallings directed the crime scene people toward the body of the young woman. He also seemed to deal well with that loudmouth Mazzetti. The two exchanged a few words, but she noticed that Stallings had enough sense to let Mazzetti walk toward the scene alone.

The sergeant wanted to see if she could have the two men work together. As long as her detectives followed the rules they’d all get along like a big happy family. And she was the mother. She missed being a mother.