The Perfect Death Read online

  Other thoughts went into his actions. He’d made a quick assessment of his chances of being caught. The area seemed deserted. There were no construction projects he was working on in the area. There was nothing to tie him to the area. He scanned the building quickly for obvious security cameras and saw none.

  Doing something like this was a big deal. He didn’t take it lightly. It was not only creating the art he enjoyed. There were other benefits. He greatly preferred to spend time with each of his subjects before they became part of eternity. Over the years, just by chance, he’d gotten to spend time with about half his subjects.

  But now, as the wind picked up and rain splashed against his windshield, he had the unpleasant task of disposing of the dead body that had provided what he needed. She was stretched out on the floor of his work van right next to the sliding side door. He thought about dumping her out in the vast wetlands between downtown and the beach, but knew the longer he rode around with her in the van the more dangerous the situation became for him. He wanted to find a place that might hide her body for at least a few days.

  He stopped at a red light in the south part of town and noticed a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office patrol car pull in the lane next to him. The white Chevy Malibu with a pleasant yellow and blue seal seemed innocuous enough. He kept his face straight ahead with his eyes cut hard to the left trying to see if the cop noticed him. But the low patrol car provided him no opportunity to look into the passenger compartment. Did the cop move inside the police car? His heart started to beat faster and he felt sweat sprout on his wide forehead. He involuntarily looked over his shoulder at the girl’s body. Now it felt like the light was stuck in the red position and the seconds were ticking into long minutes. Had he finally made a stupendous error? He’d always been careful, but he was no criminal. At least not a real criminal like the ones that prowled the streets of Jacksonville and hid their crimes. He just used common sense, and at this moment common sense didn’t feel like it was enough.

  Finally the light changed and he hesitated before stepping on the gas of the Chevy van. The police car didn’t move and that only made him more nervous. He took the first right turn he could, hoping he didn’t see lights behind him.

  His hand was shaking uncontrollably on the steering wheel and he realized that no matter what, he had to get rid of the body right this minute. One of the big construction companies had been renovating some of the office space down at this end of the city and the site had five large Dumpsters outside the gutted building. This was the best he was going to find in his current condition. He stopped on the edge of the site, careful not to let his tires roll onto the sand and cement material on the ground. He didn’t want any kind of imprint of his tires, a commonsense move he’d picked up from a TV police show.

  As always, in any construction site, he took a moment to assess the glasswork that was being done. The Hartline Glass Company logo was plastered on a slick, commercially made sign, which meant the glasswork would have no class or style. They were simply a measure-and-fill-the-hole kind of company that used only sheet glass and pre-measured windows. He may have been forced to do the same thing for the most part, but that was only to support his art of glassblowing. Occasionally he did sell a glass sculpture he’d created but never for enough money to live on comfortably.

  He sucked in a couple of deep breaths trying to calm down. Not one light was on in any of the office buildings surrounding the project. The Dumpster was about forty feet away and already had construction debris in it. If he was lucky someone would haul away the Dumpster without checking it too closely.

  He scurried around the outside of the van, slid open the side door, and looked at the dead girl on the floor of the van. Her face made him smile and nod to himself in acknowledgment that he’d made the right choice and she was worthy of being in his project. He yanked on his work gloves to keep the spread of his DNA to a minimum, then reached down and heaved her over his shoulder like a fireman. The body had cooled considerably, but she wasn’t stiff yet. He struggled along the edge of the construction site to the long Dumpster, then laid her down and judged the height of the Dumpster. He lugged over two cinderblocks and built a crude stairway

  He knew he had to check the body and untie the belt around her throat and look closely to make sure there was nothing that would speed her identification and lead the cops to him. But before he could start his customary examination, he saw the reflection of headlights coming from a block down the street. He thought of the cop who had been stopped next to him at the red light. This wasn’t a time to panic, even though he felt panic rise in his throat. He had to do something and do it quick. Taking the body in his arms he stepped awkwardly onto the two cinderblocks and tossed her into the Dumpster like a sack filled with old pieces of glass. He heard it land on top and then slide down along the side. He took one second to shove some of the construction debris over her and hustled back toward his van.

  He could still see the lights, which meant the vehicle on the next block had stopped with its headlights shining ahead. There was no time to waste. None. He threw the van into gear and turned down the street closest to him, hoping to be clear of the site before the mysterious car continued its trek toward the site.

  He was careful not to speed, even with every fiber of his body telling him to mash the gas pedal. Five blocks away he turned onto one of the main roads and headed toward downtown Jacksonville. After a mile a terrible thought struck him. In his haste to dispose of the body, he’d left the belt wrapped around her neck. All he could do now was lay low and hope time would cover his tracks.

  Patty Levine looked at her watch and shook her head. She turned toward Stallings and made one last plea. “Don’t you think it’s a little late to be bothering a teacher, John?”

  Stallings looked up at the lights inside the condos along the St. Johns River. “It’s not even eleven yet and it looks like most of the building is still awake.”

  Patty grabbed Stallings by the arm. “Talk to me, John. I understand your interest in pursuing this, but even by your standards this is bizarre. Why are we going to harass this teacher late at night? Why are we doing this without talking to the sergeant? Why have we been working fifteen hours without a break?” She waited while her partner looked at the ground. Whenever he didn’t know how to answer a question he looked at the ground to gather his thoughts. She wished he’d do the same thing before he punched people. She waited patiently for him to focus on her and answer.

  He started slowly. “I don’t know. It’s the way the details of the situation hit me. It’s so much like when Jeanie disappeared. We’d had an argument, but it wasn’t anything serious. We waited to report her missing because there were other problems we were dealing with and no one realized exactly what had happened. I thought we were a close family. We had roots in the area, just like the Tischlers, but somehow it all went bad. And maybe, by working this as hard as I can, I’ll see some clue or hint I missed with Jeanie.”

  Patty didn’t reply; she just looked at the teacher’s name on the mailbox and rang the buzzer.

  A few minutes later they were in the neat living room of the young music teacher. The woman wore a robe over a flowered muumuu. Her long, stringy hair lay limp across her wide shoulders. Patty had wasted no time explaining the situation and the need to bother her at such a late hour.

  After listening to the questions, the teacher shook her head and said, “I assumed Leah was home sick. I haven’t heard from her since I saw her in class on Friday.”

  Patty noticed the young teacher sneaking looks at Stallings. She’d seen it before. The way her partner’s understated manner and good looks attracted women from all areas of society. Stallings had no clue when this happened.

  Stallings said, “You haven’t noticed any calls from numbers you don’t recognize? Leah doesn’t have her cell phone with her.”

  Then the young teacher sat straighter and snapped her fingers. She rushed into the kitchen and came back out with an iPhone i
n her hand. She lifted her glasses to look at the screen closely and said, “I was called by a number Friday evening, but I had no idea who it was so I didn’t answer.” She read the number off her phone as Patty copied it down into her notepad in the beat-up metal cover.

  After a few more routine questions Patty said, “Would you call us if you hear from her?”

  The teacher turned directly to Stallings and said, “Why don’t you give me your business card and cell phone so I can reach you if I hear anything?”

  Patty shook her head, thinking about all the times she’d heard women talk about how obvious men could be.

  THREE

  John Stallings swallowed hard and resisted the urge to grab the motel manager by the collar of his faded flannel shirt. He gave the young man with the soul patch a hard look and said, “You don’t need to know why we’re looking for her, you just need to know that we’re looking for her. But here’s a simple question.” Stallings spoke very slowly to emphasize how close he was to losing his patience. “Have you seen this girl?” He tapped the photo of Leah Tischler he’d laid on the young man’s desk.

  This time the man’s nervous eyes skittered toward the photo and he picked it up with a shaky hand. He took his time looking at the glossy color photo of a dark-haired, smiling seventeen-year-old taken two months earlier at a dance recital. The Tischlers had been very helpful the night before. He and Patty had developed a detailed info sheet in time to get it out to all the road patrol officers before the day shift and to all the detectives. The sheet had Leah Tischler’s photo and description, along with photos of the clothes she was wearing and of the gaudy, silver-plated belt the Thomas School issued. The teacher Leah was close to provided a phone number Stallings had determined to be a public pay phone inside a check-cashing store one block away. Now he and Patty were checking each of the small, low-rent apartment and motel buildings in the area.

  Stallings didn’t rush the manager now that he’d made his point. This guy who ran the thirty-unit building couldn’t grasp the idea that for every runaway or missing person there was someone who missed them and worried every night. Stallings didn’t have time to answer stupid questions like why he was looking for someone or what would happen to her if she were found. He’d long since abandoned any pretext of being polite to people who slowed down his efforts to find missing kids. Especially teenage runaways.

  This place was the only obvious destination in the area. But she might have been looking into cheap housing. Anywhere along Davis might lead to a clue to her whereabouts. It never ended with a missing persons case. An interview could lead to five more interviews and an address could point to three different houses. The only chance an endangered teenager had was a cop who wouldn’t give up. He had to live by that code. The manager handed back the four-by-six photo and shook his head. “I haven’t seen her.” He held up his right hand like he was testifying at trial. “I swear to God.”

  Stallings ignored his partner’s short snort of laughter behind him. He was on a mission and a little twerp like this wouldn’t slow him down. Stallings nodded, collected the photo, turned, and marched out of the grubby lobby of the small motel west of the St. Johns River.

  As soon as he stepped out onto the cracked and uneven sidewalk of downtown Jacksonville, a dribble of rain blew onto his face. At least the heat and humidity of late summer in North Florida wasn’t making him drip with sweat; the rain kept him cool.

  Patty Levine, lingering behind at the manager’s office to smooth over any hard feelings, caught up to Stallings on the sidewalk. She said, “You know you can’t really treat everyone like they’re a sexual predator or someone about to snatch a kid off the street. I appreciate the fact you’re scary and get information quickly, but sometimes it wouldn’t hurt to answer a question like why we’re looking for someone.”

  He turned and looked at Patty’s bright, pretty face framed with shoulder-length blond hair and said, “Maybe I misread what Leah’s parents wanted. I thought they wanted to find their daughter. I thought you agreed with me that this was a good case because we could provide the Tischlers with an explanation of what happened to their daughter.”

  “Actually, I said it would be nice to provide the Tischlers with an answer, but I’m not certain we’ll find a smart teenager who doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Then will you humor me?”

  Patty flashed a perfect smile and nodded her head. She knew what she was doing. It never hurt to avoid complaints, but she also allowed Stallings wide latitude. Maybe too wide sometimes.

  Stallings knew his younger partner would like to be involved in bigger cases but was very loyal to him. He also knew she was very sensitive to the fact that one of the few things that gave him any comfort was working on cases like this. He didn’t want to take advantage of her, but he certainly didn’t want to lose her as his partner either. She could do so many things and get so many more places than he could based on her looks and personality. The world of police work was evolving and he was stuck in the Jurassic period.

  Patty said, “What’s your gut say about Leah?”

  “I still think she ran away, but the fact that there’s no sign of her scares me. This was her first time running away so I don’t think she’d leave J-Ville. Someone had to have seen her.”

  They kept walking down North Myrtle Avenue, occasionally stopping to show the photo of Leah to different vendors or low-cost hotel operators.

  Stallings said, “My father doesn’t live too far from here.”

  “How’s that going?”

  Stallings shrugged. “He’s got a lot to make up for and a lot to catch up on. We’ve been taking it slow, but the kids really get a kick out of seeing him. It seems like he takes their minds off my troubles with Maria. They don’t hold the resentment my sister and I did toward the old man. Shit, Helen hasn’t even spoken to him yet.”

  Patty nodded, knowing not to say too much about Stallings’s screwed-up personal life.

  Stallings said, “What’s your boyfriend up to?” He liked the face she made when he referred to the chief homicide detective as her boyfriend. Patty and Tony Mazzetti had worked hard to keep their relationship quiet so that no one in management would feel like they had to move either of them off the squad.

  Patty said, “He’s been on the Rolling Hills homicide since last week.”

  Stallings thought about the young mother who’d been strangled in her own bed in the upscale community. Thankfully the killer had not bothered her two sleeping children. The case had garnered quite a bit of media attention, which always seemed to please Tony Mazzetti. The community was always outraged when an innocent person was harmed in their own home. It struck a nerve. A primal fear everyone held. The TV stations thrived on shit like that.

  Stallings said, “Any new leads?”

  “No, but you know what a bulldog Tony can be.”

  “Yeah, a regular Rottweiler.”

  “I wish you two could learn to coexist more peacefully.”

  “Tell him to stop being such an asshole.”

  “He said the same thing about you last night.”

  Stallings stopped and turned, making a face like he was hurt. “You don’t really care what an asshole like Tony Mazzetti thinks of me, do you?”

  “He doesn’t know you well enough to realize what an asshole you can be.”

  Stallings laughed as they kept walking, happy he had a partner with a decent sense of humor.

  An hour later, John Stallings sat at a picnic table across the street from the Police Memorial Building or PMB. It was one of the places that many of the detectives used to get away from the office without being away from the office. He considered some of the things Patty had said about being edgy and latching on to the Leah Tischler case like a shark chomping on a chummed baitfish. He knew why he was acting like a maniac. It was the same reason Maria had been even more distant to him. The third anniversary of Jeanie’s disappearance was quickly approaching. Next Wednesday would be three long yea
rs without his oldest daughter in the house. The first year had gone by so fast it hadn’t hit him. He’d been so busy searching for his daughter and so hopeful she’d still somehow be found it didn’t seem like a big deal. By the second anniversary everything around the house had settled down and Maria had slipped into that odd, computer-support-group cocoon of hers. They were barely speaking and the daily activity of taking care of Charlie and Lauren kept him so occupied he didn’t dwell on it.