The Perfect Prey

Thirty-eight

Stallings took a few moments to assess the mood of his all-female audience. Sergeant Zuni, Patty Levine, and lieutenant Rita Hester sat staring at him. It was the first time he’d seen the lieutenant in the D-bureau since Sergeant Zuni had arrived.

As usual, based on rank and years of friendship, the lieutenant jumped straight to the point. “All right, Stall. You got two minutes to convince me why we need to put so much more manpower into an overdose case that I didn’t want to take in the first place.” She folded her formidable arms in front of her and gave him the glower that had made many a street thug cry.

Stallings wasted no time. He laid out the photographs of the three spring break deaths from Daytona the year before, then the two Panama City deaths from the year before that. All blond. He didn’t have to state the obvious.

After a moment he said, “All five had Ecstasy in their systems at the times of the death. All five died during the traditional spring break period of March to April.” He laid down the photographs of Kathleen Harding and Allie Marsh. “Two deaths with Ecstasy and residue from Durex condoms this year here in Jacksonville.” Then he laid down the photograph of Chad Palmer and Gary Lauer. “Two viable suspects.”

The sergeant and Patty knew where he was going, but the lieutenant took a moment to study all the photographs. She surveyed the others in the room quietly, then said, “What are you asking for, Stall?”

“We need a couple more detectives for surveillance. Maybe a tracker or two that we can slap on their vehicles. We need to take this seriously.”

Rita Hester said to Patty and Sergeant Zuni, “Could you ladies give us a moment alone?” She waited until she and Stallings were alone in the small room and said, “Stall, you can’t turn the death of every young girl into some kind of conspiracy. Sometimes kids overdose, or they drown, and sometimes they even run away. But not everything has some sinister meaning. Wrap up this overdose. Keep this girl’s mother quiet. And move on. We have real homicides stacking up in the unit. They just found a girl in a parking garage who had been stabbed through her chin to the top of her head. We don’t even have a case open on it yet.” She looked down and shook her head. “I’m sorry, old friend, but I’m going to have to turn you down on this one.”

Stallings drew in a long breath and said, “I can see your point, Rita. But with all due respect, that’s bullshit.”

“Just because I’m an administrator now doesn’t mean I can’t smack you, one old street cop to another.”

“Then as an administrator, can you really risk the liability of ignoring something like this? Think of the financial shock to the city if there is a serial killer preying on spring breakers and we just let it slide.”

He could see the lieutenant working over the problem in her head, the back of her jaw grinding. Her eyebrows furrowed. Finally, after almost a full minute, she faced him and said, “I’ll tell you what, against my better judgment, I’ll give you and Patty the leeway to check out your suspects. I don’t want Lauer’s reputation trashed if there’s nothing there, and I don’t want us facing a lawsuit from Mr. Palmer. You and Patty could have a little overtime and a little discretion, but I want this shit cleared up soon.”

Tony Mazzetti cruised the streets at the site of the triple shooting. Life in the neighborhood had quickly gotten back to the usual ebb and flow of commerce, comedy, and connection. Because in this neighborhood if you weren’t connected, you did very little commerce and saw very little comedy from day to day. He knew that when people saw a lone white guy in a Crown Vic, they assumed he was a cop. And that usually garnered extra attention from everyone, especially the crack dealers on the corner. But the crack dealers had to realize he wasn’t a narcotics detective or he wouldn’t be in such an obvious car and wearing a shirt and tie. The most courtesy extended to him was not offering to sell him drugs.

He’d passed Marie Brison’s house several times, but there were no cars and no activity around the little clapboard house. The next time he met this white guy-and there would be a next time-there was no way he was gonna let him get away without a long talk. But now his goal was to find the only person who had spoken to him the night of the shooting. That was Pudge, the street prophet. A portly little man didn’t stick out on the streets at all, and Mazzetti wanted to be subtle when he approached him. That ruled out rumbling into the bars or pool halls and asking a lot of questions.

Like a lot of police work, it involved time and patience. There was nothing for him to do around the office. Christina Hogrebe had a handle on the backgrounds of the victims and suspects. The little nerd Lonnie Freed from intelligence was trying to scrounge up a snitch who knew anything at all about the Hess Party.

Without saying a word or even knowing he possessed it, Patty had shamed him into submitting the suspected Ecstasy to the lab. The young female lab tech had muttered, “Seems like we’re taking in a lot of Ecstasy lately.”

Mazzetti just nodded, leaving her to work her magic. Not that he expected anything from the results, at least nothing that would help his murder investigation. But now he could look Patty in the eye and she couldn’t say that he wasn’t thorough.

After more than an hour of searching for Pudge, Mazzetti’s stomach growled, so he pulled into a Church’s Fried Chicken. There was no line this time of the day and the pretty young cashier looked surprised to see a large white man walking alone. He ordered a two-piece dinner and the Diet Coke, then plopped on the bench next to his car to enjoy the cool spring day. As he was about to take his first bite of a leg, he heard someone chuckle at the corner of the building. He turned as the short, squat figure emerged.

“That chicken sure does smell good.”

“I hate eating alone, Pudge. If I bought you a dinner, you think we could chat?”

“A three-piece dinner?”

Mazzetti smiled. “With an extra order of okra if that’s what you want.”

Yvonne Zuni knew this would be the best time to come by the apartment. She had an ASP stashed in her waistline and her Glock Model 27 in her purse where it was easy to grab. This was tricky, but she’d weighed the pros and cons and decided to knock on the door.

She heard a chain on the inside slide across the bolt, and then the door opened wide. The pretty, well-endowed blond woman in her early twenties stood in a tight T-shirt and short, short jean cutoffs. Even with no bra on under the thin T-shirt the girl had more curves than almost any woman Yvonne knew.

The girl smiled, revealing straight white teeth that contrasted nicely with her deep tan, which, Sergeant Zuni suspected, had no tan lines. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. I always felt like I should have thanked you more for what you did.”

“This might be a chance.” Yvonne stepped into the apartment without being invited and did a quick scan of the living room and hallway. “I know he still comes by sometimes.”

“About once a week.”

The sergeant tried hard not to say anything or show any disappointment. But the girl picked up on it immediately, embarrassed by her inability to give this guy the boot.

Sergeant Yvonne Zuni said, “You know he’s never gonna get serious.”

“That’s not the problem. You saw just how serious he can get. But I know what you’re saying. He’s never gonna make a commitment to me.” She sat down on the couch and put her face in her hands. “Everyone likes the idea of dating a stripper, but no one wants to bring one home to Mom.”

“In your case you’re probably better off not bringing that prick home to your mom.”

The young woman smiled and said, “He’s never even said anything about that night. Even with the ten stitches and the scar on his eyebrow, it’s like he’s blocked it out of his memory. He’s never mentioned the fight, what caused it, what he made me do, or how you shut him up.”

Yvonne sat next to the young woman and put her arm around her shoulder. “Right now he’s got another problem, and I’ve got to ask you some really hard questions. But first I need to know if you owe me enough to keep from saying anything to him.”

“You know how he is-I’m sure he’ll get me to admit that I talked to you. But I’ll do my best to keep the nature of our conversation secret.”

“I won’t put you in any danger.”

“I’ve been in danger since I dropped out of high school and started hanging out with lowlifes like Gary Lauer.”

Patty Levine sat in her county-issued Freestyle on the north side of West State Street. She could see Stallings’s Impala three blocks up on the other side of the street. She brought up her binoculars so she could get a clear view of the driver in the blue Nissan 300ZX stopped on the side of the road. Behind the sporty little car Patrol Officer Gary Lauer dismounted from his heavy motorcycle, checked both ways for traffic, then strutted up along the driver’s side of the vehicle.

She and Stallings had agreed that they needed to do surveillance on the two suspects. Unless something drastic happened this afternoon while they were following Lauer, they intended to pick up Chad Palmer as he left his office. Neither of them could clearly state what they hoped to gain by watching the suspects, but it was better than sitting around the office waiting for leads to come to them. That was one of the things she really admired about John Stallings. Despite his seniority and experience he was still interested and working every day.

It had been easy to find Lauer in the middle of his shift. All they had to do was monitor his zone’s radio traffic and listen for a stop. Based on his record he was an industrious traffic enforcement cop. It was Stallings who had picked three different spots where he thought Lauer would be working. Stallings called them “game trails.” Those were places where it was easy to hunt, because the game wandered along the trail. Lazy hunters and even lazy animals could find a comfortable spot to sit and wait for a target. In this case, Lauer sat west of the Arlington Expressway and waited for people to hit the slower speed on the on State Street. If traffic wasn’t bad, drivers tended to keep moving along quickly. That was money in the bank for a traffic cop like Gary Lauer.

Patty could see the driver was a younger woman. Lauer crouched down to look at her eye to eye through the window, and the way both he and the woman were smiling made Patty believe the young woman was very attractive too.

This was a trend with the burly motorcycle cop. The first traffic stop that she and Stallings had pulled up on was a pretty young woman in a Volvo S60. The stop before this one was an attractive woman with a cowboy hat driving a Dodge pickup truck. Patty could almost guess the line he was feeding this woman now. How he liked his job even though it was dangerous. How he had to go to the gym to stay in shape in case he was in a life-and-death struggle. How it was hard to find a woman that understood the stress of police work. Christ, she heard enough guys feed that bullshit to waitresses, strippers, and nurses that she knew all the lines by heart.

She used her Nextel phone to call up Stallings on the direct connect. “Whatcha think?”

“Statistically I wonder how many women he pulls over compared to men.”

“You think this is gonna get us anywhere?”

“I doubt it, but I did want to get a feel for how the guy worked. It looks like he uses the job as a way to meet women. It wouldn’t be an issue except for what we suspect him of. I’m still hoping the cop in him wouldn’t have any part of that.”

“My female radar, which has been honed over the years, says that this guy is a creep who does not respect women. I don’t think he’s above giving Ecstasy to a girl to make her come home with him.”

She kept watching Lauer as he stood up and patted the car with his left hand. He didn’t write a ticket or even a warning to the young lady, but he did hold a piece of notepaper that she’d given him. Patty said into her phone, “Looks like he just scored a phone number.”

“My guess is that this guy has volumes of phone numbers at home.”

He let the Nissan pull away, then climbed back onto his motorcycle. He slowly pulled into traffic, shutting off his rear blue light once he was rolling west again. He passed Stallings without even giving him a glance. That was when two cars moving at once attracted Patty’s attention. A silver Ford Taurus and a black Dodge Charger fell in behind Lauer on his motorcycle.

Then Stallings clicked her up on the phone. “Looks like we have company.”

“You saw them too?”

“I’d lay money that it was Internal Affairs.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they’re about as subtle as a sledgehammer and can’t follow people for shit.”