The Perfect Prey

Sixteen

John Stallings and Patty Levine had been at the Wildside all afternoon and evening. Patty had caught on immediately as the young corporate manager had explained the digital video surveillance system inside the club. The cameras each recorded a night’s activity and stored it as a file on a main computer. Patty had sat in front of the computer and printed out images of Allie Marsh and the men she talked to during the evening. Stallings spoke with a lot of the staff, finally narrowing his focus to a couple of bartenders and waitresses.

Stallings conferred with Patty, and she showed him some of the more interesting video she had found. It was hard to see Allie unless she was close to one of several cameras. One showed the center part of the main bar, and after a few minutes of fast-forwarding and scanning different angles, Patty found her twice. Each time talking to a different man. Both a little older with dark hair and nice clothes. Another clip showed her laughing with a scraggily-looking young man near the small stage. The camera got a clear view of him, and Patty printed out each of the men’s faces so they were easily identifiable.

During a slack time on the dance floor they saw her again talking with a funky-looking kid with long hair. This was also the first time they noticed a bottle of water in her hand. Did that mean she had already started on the X by then? They printed out the frame of the longhaired young man talking to her.

Patty had searched and searched but could not find footage of her leaving with anyone. Patty took the counter up to midnight and could still see Allie hovering on the left side of the club near the small bar on the side. But after that there was no sign of her in the club, exiting the doors, or in the parking lot. As the club emptied, it became easier to spot individuals, and Allie clearly was no longer there.

The manager breezed back in a couple of hours later, surprised to see them still working at the computer with a short stack of frames printed out on the high-quality laser printer.

He smiled, “Find anything useful?”

“Yeah, a few things,” started Stallings, wondering how much to trust the sharp-dressed man. “We’re gonna need to talk to two of the bartenders on the floor now and look at some credit card receipts as a way to identify a few suspects.” Stallings handed him the printed photos Patty had retrieved, and the manager thumbed through each one, studying it carefully, shaking his head, then moving on to the next one. He stopped at the last one and stared. He looked up at the detectives and held the photo for them to see it. “I know this guy.”

Stallings said, “Who is it?”

“He’s the drummer for the band. His name is Donnie Eliot.”

He waited with a nervous and giddy chill running through him. Holly was supposed to meet him at a little deli by ten. It was less than ten minutes away, so he could handle what he had to do now and still make it in time. He never gave out his cell number or tried to get a girl’s because that was a link he just didn’t need. This hunt had been an easy one with the cute young junior at UNF offering to meet him. The fact that it had been so easy had taken a little of the fun out of it. The element that had changed was the frequency of his hunts. Holly would be the third one in a week. He usually went months, a few times more than a year, between hunts, but this was his season. He’d never bagged prey outside the traditional spring break period of roughly March through mid-April. One year he’d given up hunting for Lent. He’d learned that was something he didn’t want to do again. To make up for it the following year, he’d singled out a girl at Mardi Gras and hunted and bagged her in the same day. He hadn’t even tried to make it look like a suicide.

He felt an erection bloom as he recalled Fat Tuesday the year after Katrina had hit. He saw her on the corner of Bourbon and Conti Street in jeans and a tight midriff shirt. He could tell by the way her head hung down and long, blond hair floated in the breeze that she was alone and sad about something. It started with a simple lunch of a muffuletta and then an afternoon of hearing how she was visiting in town with her family from Oklahoma City and was bored. Her younger brother and sister were out on the town with her parents, but she had brooded until she was allowed to stay at the hotel alone for the day.

He took the young woman on a tour of the city, which he knew pretty well, leading her farther and farther from the more crowded tourist area with each stop. He bought a couple of hurricanes and let the alcohol work its way though her system until she swayed when she walked. He cut her off before she got sick. He’d seen too many college students barf in the street to buy her a third rum-infused red monster.

They crossed Rampart into Louis Armstrong Park and enjoyed the quiet outdoors as the sun began to set. He knew he had to make his move quickly before her parents made a fuss. That became obvious when she dropped the bombshell that she was only seventeen. In the recesses of the park, near one of the ponds formed by the running brook, they started a hot session of kissing and petting. When he realized she didn’t want to go past a certain point he became much more excited and let his predatory instincts run wild. God, it was glorious and liberating as he ripped her shirt from her, exposing small, firm breasts, then yanked her jeans and panties off at the same time. He’d always remember the look on her face when she saw the size of his dick. Because of the situation he knew he didn’t have time for a condom, but he’d already planned her disposal and didn’t think leaving evidence on her was going to be a problem.

He entered her despite her pleas to stop and after a very, very short time felt himself starting to lose all control. He was on her back, mounting her like an animal should when he popped the blade on his nice Browning knife and ran the razor-sharp edge across her exposed neck. The move silenced her to a slight gurgle, and he felt the life run out of her as he came into her. It was the best of his kills so far.

But he had been lucky that day and he knew it. No one saw him with her. Few people wandered into the park, and no one heard her cries. He used a length of nylon rope some homeless person used for a clothesline and two loose cinder blocks to weigh the dead girl down and send her to the bottom of an impossibly small pond. It was so small no one would think to search for a body there.

Two days later he read a tiny article about the missing girl that implied she had run away. That was the only story ever printed about her. Now she held a place near the center of his prey collage.

He sipped a bottle of water and was glancing out at the near-empty dance floor when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw the smiling face of pretty Holly.

He used his tongue to check the inside of his mouth. His fangs were ready for the hunt. He smiled, feeling the surge of wildness pulse through his body.

Even if it was nearly nine o’clock at night, John Stallings had analysts at the sheriff’s office running Donnie Eliot’s name through every possible criminal index. While they waited for information on their first suspect, they talked to waitresses and bartenders in the spacious administrative offices of the club. Photos of Allie Marsh and the three unidentified men who had talked to her sat on the table. Credit card receipts were laid out next to the photos to help anyone with a cloudy memory.

The father in Stallings had a nagging feeling that there was more to Allie’s death than a simple overdose. He couldn’t explain it, but maybe it had to do with the connection he felt with her mother. Diane Marsh had elected to stay in town, at least for a few days, while information was still being sorted out by the detectives. Stallings knew he was hooked and couldn’t let things drop now.

The door to the office opened, and a lean, muscular man of about thirty poked his head in.

Stallings looked down at a sheet of paper and said, “Larry Kinard?”

“Yes, sir.”

Stallings motioned the bartender in and to a seat. “Thanks for taking a break to talk to us.”

“I’m not on break, I’m off today.”

“Why were you in the building?”

“Picking up my check and seeing if anything was happening. You know how it is. Work at night, you can never just sit at home.”

Stallings knew exactly what he meant. He looked at the younger man and said, “We’re hoping you might be able to identify a couple of photos for us from the other night.”

The lean man nodded his head and smiled at Patty. “I heard it had to do with a girl who died.”

“That’s right. From an overdose of X. You see much of that in the club?”

“I see signs of it, you know, the sweating and heavy water use. The flaky behavior. But truthfully this place hops so hard that I’m usually just slinging drinks and collecting money.”

Stallings set down Allie Marsh’s photograph. “Recognize her?”

The bartender nodded. “Yeah. Real cutie. I saw her a couple times recently. Probably in the last week.”

Stallings nodded and laid down the first photograph of one of the men Allie had chatted with.

The bartender studied it carefully. “He was at the bar. I served him. He’s been here before. Not a flat breaker.”

“A what?”

“A spring break student who’s flat broke and orders three cheap beers for the whole night.” The bartender looked at the photo again and said, “More likely a break runner.”

“Excuse me?”

“Break runner. A guy who slips into spring break crowds and tries to hook up with younger students. See ‘em all the time. Not too old. Fit and with more cash than the students. Girls love these kind of guys.”

“So they’d go for an older guy?”

“Like a Cajun for crawfish.”

Stallings smiled, then said, “If you saw the credit card receipts could you remember his name?” He slid over a stack of receipts.

Larry the bartender started at the top and within a minute pulled a slip and said, “This is him. Chad Palmer. I remember because he tipped me twenty bucks on a fifty-five-dollar tab. See.” He pointed to the tip line.

Patty said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Stallings shoved the next photo of a fit, dark-haired man in his early thirties. The photo wasn’t that clear.

“Oh, I know him.” Larry the bartender looked up at the two detectives. “What is this, a test?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because this guy is a cop.”