The Perfect Prey

Thirty-five

Stallings plopped into his office chair. He’d evaded most of Patty’s questions about his personal life on the short ride back to the PMB. The interview had been a bust; at least if they were looking for a confession, it was a bust. But it was never that easy in cases like this. Especially with smart, rich guys who knew the threat of an attorney would shut most cops down.

Patty slid over from her desk. “Why were you so rough on Palmer? He’s a suspect, just like Lauer. I don’t see a big difference between the two except Palmer is a little more polished.”

“Lauer is a cop.”

“He’s still an asshole, just like Palmer.”

The pharmaceutical rep had loosened up and not called his attorney. He admitted that he liked to hang out at dance clubs and he flirted with a lot of women. It was as if he had practiced the word “flirt” and never used any other phrase. The shocked expression on his face seemed almost genuine when Stallings asked him about giving X to any of the girls.

Stallings said, “I’m trying to be objective with all the suspects. But Palmer’s whole career won’t be marred by rumors and innuendo just because we talked to him. Lauer doesn’t have that same luxury. I want to believe that a guy who worked hard to get through the police academy wouldn’t do something like this.”

Patty was about to say something else when Stallings picked up an envelope that had been sent by overnight mail. He didn’t even check the return address as he ripped it open to pull out several photographs and reports from the Daytona Beach Police Department.

Patty said, “Who are they?”

“Daytona’s spring break deaths last year.”

“Are there any dark-haired girls that go on spring break anymore? Those three look just like the two we have.”

“You know what else is interesting?”

“What’s that?” Patty said as she pulled the photos from Stallings’s hand and eyeballed them.

“All three of these girls had Ecstasy in their systems too.”

Patty said, “I hope this is just a coincidence.”

“Me too. But we better show these to the sarge just in case.” Stallings had an uneasy feeling he’d stumbled onto something he didn’t want to consider.

Sergeant Yvonne Zuni sat in her office in the back of the Land That Time Forgot. She still hadn’t had time to hang some photos and certificates. Her favorite photo showed the governor handing her a medal for stopping a bank robbery in downtown Jacksonville. She’d been a little embarrassed by the accolades because all she’d been doing was cashing her check at lunchtime when a man walked up next to her and stuck a gun in the teller’s face. She simply stepped back to her left and pulled her Glock from her purse, stuck it in the man’s ear, and said, “Police, don’t move.”

The newspapers had said that her quick action had saved countless lives. In reality the robber’s gun was a C02 pellet pistol that wasn’t even loaded. The captain of narcotics, the unit she worked in at the time, told her if she tried to correct anyone who said she was a hero he’d make sure he loaded his real pistol before he dealt with her. His rationale was narcotics agents get no credit for most of the hard work they do and that she, and the unit, would benefit from some positive media attention.

Now she was going over some schedules and overtime budgets, figuring out which cases merited closer investigation and which cases needed to be pushed to the side. She’d been in the office since seven and hadn’t stopped staring at either a computer screen or paperwork in the three and half hours since. God did she miss working the streets.

A gentle rap on her open door frame made her look up to see Patty Levine and John Stallings standing there.

She said, “Whatcha got?”

Patty stepped in, laying three photographs on her desk. “These are the spring break deaths from Daytona last year.”

She studied the three pretty blond girls and said, “So?”

Patty said, “All three of them had X in their system.”

The sergeant said, “There could be a connection, but it seems like a real long shot to me. Still, we might want to figure out where the suspects were during spring break last year.”

Now Stallings said, “Already working on it. We have a subpoena for Chad Palmer’s credit card records. I’m headed down to personnel to check on when Lauer took vacations over the last couple of years.”

The sergeant nodded, appreciating self-starters like this. A motivated detective could get a lot done, even in times of cutbacks like this. She noticed how tired Stallings looked even after the day off and wondered if his home life had taken an even worse turn. After only a week in the unit, Yvonne wasn’t sure it was her place to ask him any questions as long as the work was getting done, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t concerned. Instead the sergeant looked up at them. She handed back the photos and said, “You two really don’t need much supervision, do you?”

She appreciated the smiles she got back from both the detectives.

It was almost eleven o’clock when he woke up, and he still felt a little tired. He got out of bed, washed his face, slipped on the same clothes he wore the night before, and ventured out to the kitchen. A note on the refrigerator said his sister had taken his nephew to the doctor and would be back around one.

He didn’t mind a little quiet time in the empty house. It gave him a chance to reflect on his wild night. He had lingering images of Lisa wrapping her legs around him, lying still on his floor, curled up in the back of the Mazda, and the stoner helping him push the car into the water. It made for an interesting life. And he still had time left to hunt.

He’d find a way to casually run into Ann and start back on his slow, methodical stalking. Surprises were great, but the idea of circling the prey gave him something to look forward to.

He had the stoner’s name and had managed to copy down his license plate in case he needed to deal with him at a future date. He knew the stoner was a regular at some of the clubs that hosted the spring breakers, lived at home with his parents, and worked at Wendy’s.

But paying off the young man had virtually depleted his Ecstasy supply. So it was convenient that he found himself at this house. He was careful never to leave anything at his little apartment at the beach. He didn’t know if his landlord, Lester, ever peeked in the apartment. Since he had one room to himself here, he made use of the closet and had it packed with his stuff. Wedged up in the corner, up high where his nephew couldn’t reach it, was a Tupperware container that held his Ecstasy and a few other pills he’d acquired. He stood up on a stool and reached way back into the crowded closet and found the plastic container behind a bag of old T-shirts. He sat back on the bed and opened the container. He only had two Ecstasy tablets left.

That meant he’d have to visit his Ecstasy source very soon.

Tony Mazzetti had two anonymous tipsters that said the triple shooting he was investigating was done by a rival gang that sold meth on the outskirts of Jacksonville. The shooters were not only a gang, they were a white supremacist group called the Hess Party. The fact that someone called them something other than a street gang and associated them with a fringe group like racists meant that a special unit in the sheriff’s office probably had been keeping tabs on them over the years.

Now Mazzetti found himself in the third floor office of the intel unit, better known as the “rubber gun squad.” Members of the rubber gun squad didn’t have to make arrests or go to court to prove that they were working. They collected information on groups that most cops had no idea even existed. From radical Muslims who attended mosques in the area, to the few members of the Klan who rambled through North Florida, the intel squad knew what they were doing and what they intended to do. Groups like that always had informants moving in and out. They found that out the hard way about ten years ago, when it was discovered that sixteen of the eighteen attendees of a Klan rally were all informants of various state, federal, or local police agencies.

Mazzetti looked across the table at the stern and serious face of Lonnie Freed, a detective for the last nine years in the rubber gun squad. Mazzetti and Freed had worked as road patrolmen soon after he graduated from the academy. Freed had been wound too tight for the road, going by the book on every possible infraction. A ticket for speeding had to have an extra sheet just for his narrative details. He drove sergeants crazy with probable-cause affidavits that were six pages long. But he found a home here in intel, where they honored straitlaced, hardworking, meticulous cops who viewed every group from the B’nai Brith to the Taliban as a dangerous threat to U.S. national security.

Mazzetti said, “What about this Hess Party?”

The thin detective with the thick glasses spoke in a fast, clear tone. “The Hess Party is named after Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuhrer under Hitler who fled to England during the war. He was also the last prisoner of Spandau Prison. He died at ninety-three in 1987. Hess was considered-”

Mazzetti had to cut him off. “Come on, Lonnie, get to the fucking point. Do you think these assholes that live right here in South Jacksonville are good for the shooting?”

Lonnie nodded his head. “Oh yeah, they’re badasses. They’re not even true racists. They use it as a marketing tool to scare people so they can sell more meth and make money.”

“Why would they shoot up a drug house on Market Street?”

“Like I said, they’re not crazy-it’s got to be a business matter. Maybe the Street Cred boys were trying to move in on the meth field. Or maybe they just owed them money. The Hess Party is not the kind of group to shoot someone just for running their mouths.”

“Would they be smart enough to use a spy shacked up across the street?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because there was a white dude in the house across the street. But when I tried to talk to him he gave me the slip.”

“I hope they’re not that sophisticated.”

Then Mazzetti remembered the speckled pill marked J2A that he’d taken from the house and left on his desk. “Does the Hess Party ever deal in X?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

“Thanks, Lonnie, you were just as helpful as you used to be on the road.”

The intel detective grinned and said, “Sure, anytime, Tony.”

Mazzetti thought, What a dweeb.

It had taken Stallings fifteen minutes to convince Patty to take the evening off and have dinner with Tony Mazzetti. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her with him, but he didn’t want her to screw up her life like he already done to his own. Although having dinner with Tony Mazzetti seemed like a mistake in itself.

Stallings decided to go by the Wildside and see if Larry, the bartender, had any new information for him. He found the athletic bartender at the far end of the club, at a secondary bar that seemed to be more for VIPs than the general crowd. For a Monday night the place was on the loud side with groups of young college girls and hungry-looking fraternity nerds setting up camps at various places around the dance floor.

Larry gave him a broad smile and said, “Hello, Detective. What brings you around here?”

“Just wondering if anything was new on your end.”

The bartender shook his head. “I haven’t seen Donnie Eliot in here since last week.”

“He’s still in the can.”

“No shit? What for?”

“Possession.”

“So you don’t think he’s the one that gave a girl the X?”

“No, it doesn’t look like it. What about the other guys in the videos? Have you seen either of them?”

Larry shook his head. He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out Stallings’s business card. “I told you I’d call if I saw them. The one cop hasn’t been back in here. Neither has the guy who gave me a big tip. I’d know them if I saw them again.”

“You guys been busy?”

“Spring break is winding down. About half the schools are back in session-that means about half our bartenders are gonna be laid off soon.”

“You won’t be asked to leave, will you? You’ve been here quite a while, right?” Stallings had noticed the other bartenders and staff all had T-shirts with the Wildside logo on them, but Larry wore a white, oxford button-down shirt. There were no logos, nothing to indicate he worked at the bar, and it had a collar.

“I work here in the season and then float around from time to time, but I think it’s gonna be my choice.”

Stallings said, “So you’ll still call me if you see any of the guys I’ve been looking for?”

Larry absently filled a glass from the Diet Coke fountain spigot and handed it to a busty waitress, who didn’t even notice Stallings. Larry looked behind Stallings, smiled, and said, “It looks like someone wants to talk to you.”

Stallings turned around, and for the first time in quite a while was truly surprised.

The voice said, “I bet we’re here for the same reason.”

Stallings’s stomach did a little flip.