The Perfect Prey

Thirty-seven

John Stallings walked into the Land That Time Forgot at eight o’clock sharp. The first thing he noticed were two large dry-erase boards covered with figures and dates behind Patty Levine’s desk. He stopped and stared at the incomprehensible data, then looked down at Patty, who was examining a credit card statement with great care.

“Somebody’s been a busy beaver.”

“Because somebody didn’t want me to come with him to the Wildside last night.”

“I thought you were gonna have dinner with Tony.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Tony has his own case to worry about. I just had some free time and knew this had to be done. What’d you find out at the Wildside?”

From across the squad bay, Yvonne Zuni said, “Why don’t you both come fill me in on what you’ve been doing?”

The sergeant started with her own bombshell. “Guess who pulled me aside last night?”

Neither detective answered.

“Gary Lauer tried to convince me he had done nothing wrong and that we were harassing him for no reason.”

Patty said, “He really said there was no reason?”

The sergeant smiled and said, “Actually he said the only reason you were harassing him was because you didn’t like his attitude toward women.”

Patty didn’t say anything.

The sergeant said, “He does have a shitty attitude toward women. I’ve seen it firsthand. Where are we on this thing? Is there a connection to Daytona or any other town? I want to know if this is this a real homicide investigation or a narcotics investigation.”

Stallings cleared his throat and said, “I spoke with Diane Marsh last night.”

“Where did you see her?”

“I went by the Wildside to talk to the bartender there. She’s been going in as a way to find a connection between her and Allie. It was just chance that I saw her.”

“Did she add anything to the investigation?”

“No, but she didn’t screw anything up either.”

The sergeant moved her dark eyes over to Patty and without saying a word was able to convey that she wanted to hear what Patty had turned up.

Patty said, “The drummer, Donnie Eliot, was in rehab last year during spring break. He gave his counselor in Delray Beach permission to speak to me. That doesn’t eliminate him from suspicion in the Allie Marsh case but clears him in any Daytona cases that could be connected.”

“Have you looked at Lauer and the other suspect’s travel yet?”

“Palmer’s credit card receipts show him all over the state all the time. I have five different days where he made purchases in Daytona in March and April of last year.”

“What do you have on Gary Lauer?”

“Lauer’s personnel records show he took vacation last year for three weeks in March. The year before that he took two weeks in March. But of course there’s no way to tell where he went while he was on leave.”

Stallings said, “I’m afraid if we approach him, he might be smart enough to get an attorney. He’d connect the two investigations in a heartbeat.”

Yvonne Zuni let a sly smile spread across her pretty face. “I think I have a way to figure out where Gary Lauer was during vacation the last couple of years.”

Tony Mazzetti sat at his desk considering all the leads to his triple homicide that had turned into dead ends. He held the little speckled tablet with the J2A marking that he’d taken from Miss Brison’s house. The spacey bitch was the only open avenue he had right now. He really wanted to talk to the white guy who’d given him the slip the night of the shooting. He’d done a full background on Miss Brison and discovered her first name was Marie, she apparently owned the house near Market Street, there was no record of her employment in the wage-and-hour database, and her only arrest had been six years ago at the age of twenty for shoplifting. He wondered how she made a living but decided she probably didn’t need much money for a month-to-month existence in that neighborhood.

Christina Hogrebe had been nearly as frustrated as he was with a lack of witnesses from the area. She was now running backgrounds on some of the Hess Party’s miscreant turds.

Patty Levine startled him as she popped up out of nowhere. Instinctively he hid the speckled tablet in the palm of his hand. She didn’t appreciate his lax evidence-handling methods, and he didn’t feel like a lecture right now.

“Whatcha doin'?” asked Patty.

“Looking for witnesses.”

“How can you do that sitting in the office?”

He turned his head to look up into her pretty face. “Did Stall send you over here to break my balls?”

She smiled. “No, I can do that all on my own.

He grunted a short laugh and said, “How are you guys doing on the overdose case?”

“It’s slow. Stall doesn’t want to admit that a cop could be involved.”

“Who would?”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. I just hate Lauer’s attitude so much, I didn’t see the bigger picture.”

Tony said, “It happens to us all sometime.”

“I always try to be a check and balance to John on any cases involving young women. He can get tunnel vision.”

“He does get focused on crimes against young women.”

“Can you blame him?”

He shook his head, glanced around the room quickly, twisted, and gave Patty a quick peck on the cheek.

Patty returned a quick hug and then lingered, pinching his midsection, saying, “You’re getting a little pudgy there, Detective.” She winked and was on her way.

Mazzetti poked at his stomach with his index finger and realized he had not been hitting the gym as he usually did because his hours had been all screwy. Then he stopped at that thought and realized there was someone worth talking to from the Market Street neighborhood: Pudge, the street prophet. He grabbed his Windbreaker and rushed out the door.

John Stallings had contacts with virtually every missing persons detective in the Southeastern United States. One call to the Panama City Police Department got him the best man to answer the sensitive questions that had come up in the case.

After one ring a cheerful voice came on. “Doug McKay, Missing Persons.”

“Well, Detective McKay, you sound awfully chipper for the end of spring break. This is John Stallings over at JSO.”

“Stall, how goes it in the rectum of the state?”

Stallings had to give the detective a minute to chuckle at his own joke. “You know we’re developing a little bit of a spring break crowd too.”

“In Jacksonville? Why?”

“Very funny. Are you done yet?”

“Seriously, is it a lot cheaper to stay over there now? Because on my last visit it seemed like the hotels were expensive, it rained all the time, and your beach communities weren’t set up to handle big spring break crowds.”

“You know how it is, Doug-our city commission is looking for their share of tourist dollars.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the money these kids bring in is worth the hassle. You get a group of flat breakers in here and they cram six into one room, each eat one giant meal at Golden Corral, and buy two beers at night. By my calculations that’s about fifteen bucks a day into the local economy. I don’t think they’re worth the trouble.”

“You sound like you’re a little tired of the spring break crowd.”

“That’s like saying black people are little tired of the Klan. I wish they’d just wipe out the whole idea of a vacation in the middle of the semester.”

“Are you guys at least making a little overtime?” Stallings knew by the silence it was time to push on. “For a change this isn’t about Jeanie or any of my personal problems. I was just wondering how closely you guys watched drug use during spring break.”

“Hell, Stall, I watch it all the time. I watch it on the beach, I watch it at the clubs, and I even have to watch it at the movie theater with my kids sometimes. Watching it is no problem. Being able to do something about it in times like this is what is hard.”

“Do you have a lot of overdoses?”

“Not many, that’s why it’s not a priority for us to stop the drug use. I think we had one heroin overdose this year and one cocaine overdose last year. We also had a drowning this year, but drugs weren’t a factor. The boy was from Kansas State, and I guess there’s no reason to learn how to swim out there.”

“Any Ecstasy overdoses that were deaths?”

There was silence on the line for a moment, and then detective McKay said, “Now that you mention it, not for a couple years. Two years ago we had two dead girls with Ecstasy in their system, but they weren’t overdoses. One was a hit-and-run and the other was a suicide. She jumped off the top of one of the beach hotels and caused quite a ruckus when she destroyed some rap star’s tricked-out Suburban.”

“Can I ask a weird question, John?”

“Fire away.”

“Were both of your deaths two years ago blond girls?”

After a brief pause the detective said, “As a matter of fact they were. How’d you know that?”