The Perfect Death Page 3

  This year was another story. The kids didn’t need him as much and he wasn’t even living at home. He avoided the lonely two-bedroom house he’d rented except to sleep and occasionally eat. So he’d had time to think about his missing daughter and what it was like three years ago. The wave of fear washing through him, the devastating aftermath of the empty bedroom at the top of the stairs, the feeling of failure and despair.

  The day Jeanie went missing was easily the worst day of his life. He was once stabbed in a fight with a drunken homeless man. That moment of realization when the blade seemed to appear out of nowhere and plunge into the left side of his stomach was terrifying and painful beyond words. He’d take a knife in the gut every day if he could just have Jeanie back.

  He liked to focus on the good times he’d had with his daughter. Not the fights or sleepless nights after he had found a small bag of marijuana in her purse. One of his favorite memories was when she had turned twelve and joined a lacrosse club at her school. One game into the season the coach lost his job and had to move to Dallas. Stallings stepped in as the coach even though he didn’t know the rules, strategy, or goals of the game. But all the girls, especially Jeanie, appreciated his effort and he’d never forget those sunny Sunday afternoons when they had practiced until no one had the energy to run up and down the field.

  His first week coaching he tried to adjust and not yell at the girls like he had the boys’ football team he coached a few years earlier. It didn’t take him long to realize the girls were tougher and smarter than the boys their own age. Finally he followed his instincts and the team became one of the most feared lacrosse clubs in the county.

  The highlight of the season didn’t come after the championship game. It was much earlier, after the second win, during a long Wednesday evening practice. The girls were filling out an order form for photos with the team mom, a lovely woman from East Arlington. Jeanie walked over to her dad and plopped down next to him, just off the field. For no reason she reached across and gave him a big hug. All she said was, “Thanks, Dad.” It was among the most precious moments of his whole life and it was the moment he chose to reflect on while sitting on the hard bench across from the Police Memorial Building.

  He was glad no one was around when he had to use his shirttail to wipe the tears off his cheeks.

  FOUR

  After lunch, John Stallings and Patty Levine sat in their office at the Police Memorial Building. The detective bureau on the second floor of the PMB was affectionately referred to as the Land That Time Forgot because the detectives rarely saw the new equipment and innovations the rest of the building enjoyed. Stallings didn’t mind it; he had never cared about the condition of the office because he felt like a real detective needed to be out on the street working cases, not sitting around a plush office, chatting with the other cops about how much work they did. In fact, he usually felt antsy at his desk, but it was a necessary evil to keep track of all the leads he and Patty followed every day. He rarely paid attention to the detectives’ comings and goings, but today he did notice the bureau was empty and their sergeant, Yvonne Zuni, was not at her desk in the small, separate office at the end of the squad bay.

  His cell phone rang and he took a second to screen the call, seeing the name of the lead homicide detective, Tony Mazzetti, appear on the small Motorola phone. He considered not answering because he hated talking to the smug son of a bitch. Then he realized Tony Mazzetti didn’t enjoy talking to him either and decided it might be important.

  Stallings answered the phone and said, “What’s up, Tony?”

  “I need your help.”

  A small smile spread across Stallings’s face. “Really now? You need my help? This is an interesting situation. Do you mind saying it again? I like the sound of it.”

  “I need your help, Stall. That’s as much as I’d like to banter back and forth with you. I need your fucking help right now.”

  Stallings knew when it was time for fun and games; now Mazzetti sounded serious. “What’s wrong, Tony?”

  “I have a body at a construction site in the south end of town.”

  “You need help on a homicide?”

  “Patty gave me one of the info sheets you made up on the missing girl, Leah Tischler.”

  “Oh God, you found her body?”

  “No. This victim is named Kathy Mizell.”

  “I don’t understand. What’d you need me for?”

  “We identified the belt used to strangle her. It’s from the swanky private school the missing girl attended.”

  Stallings didn’t say anything as silence held on the crackle of static over the cell phones.

  Mazzetti said, “I think it’s Leah Tischler’s belt.”

  Patty Levine sat in the passenger seat of John Stallings’s county-issued Chevy Impala. She didn’t try to engage him in small talk; she knew him too well. His mood always turned dark after hearing about the death of any young woman. This one was more devastating because of the implication that Leah Tischler was dead as well. No cop took a missing girl more seriously or her death harder. Unfortunately it was an all too common event. And that was just one of many concerns Patty had for her partner, who’d endured far too much stress in recent months. Patty looked across at Stallings, who focused his attention on the road, moving fast but not recklessly. His normally short, brown, curly hair barely touched his collar, and his handsome face, with the scar over one eyebrow and a slightly broken nose, gave him the look of a former football star who’d stayed in pretty good shape since college.

  He rarely spoke to her about his problems with Maria, but that wasn’t the heaviest weight on him right now. Patty didn’t think he or his wife had ever moved past the disappearance of Jeanie. No parent really did, and Maria and John Stallings weren’t just any parents. They were both trying to change the world in their own ways: Maria by involving herself in peer counseling for other grieving parents and Stallings through his work in Missing Persons. Now Stallings had set up house not far from the family and had been working hard to make time for the kids. Any time something like this happened, Stallings tended to tune out everything by finding the person responsible. For his sake Patty hoped they had a suspect in custody already.

  A few blocks after exiting I-95, Patty could see the police activity and the first of the news trucks arriving on the scene. Stallings pulled the car to the curb more than two blocks from the action in an effort to stay under the radar of the news reporters. Based on his history of capturing serial killers, every reporter in Jacksonville tended to focus on Stallings whenever he arrived at a homicide scene. Stallings didn’t like it and it drove Tony Mazzetti absolutely crazy. Patty and Stallings slid over to the edge of the scene and gave their names to the patrolman who was keeping a log of everyone who entered the crime scene.

  Stressful times like this pushed Patty to reach for a Xanax or some other pharmaceutical crutch. She’d been working hard to ease off the pills and hadn’t used an Ambien to sleep in over a week, resulting in about five hours of total sleep in seven days. She had taken one Xanax for anxiety two days ago and purposely hadn’t carried any with her the last two days. She’d even allowed her prescription for Vicodin and another painkiller expire. Now, as they faced another traumatic scene, Patty felt the familiar pang of anxiety and desire for her soothing drug. She craved one to calm her down. Instead she focused on the grim task at hand.

  Patty did a quick survey of the scene, wondering who was here already. A call like this, happening in the middle of a weekday, when things were generally slow, attracted cops from all parts of the city. But her new sergeant, Yvonne Zuni, did a pretty good job of scaring away anyone who wasn’t vital to the investigation. Her reputation and nickname, Yvonne the Terrible, tended to keep people on task. And nothing was more at odds with her nickname than her looks. A petite build and exotic face with long black hair made it hard to believe she was one of the most feared sergeants in the entire Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. And now she was doing her us
ual efficient job of directing activities.

  Patty saw her boyfriend, Tony Mazzetti, standing next to a green construction Dumpster with the two-letter logo of Waste Management on the side. Screens had been erected in front of it to keep the media from getting any direct shots of activity going on inside the Dumpster. Patty headed his way.

  As she approached, Patty stepped onto a sidewalk, giving her a view into the Dumpster, which had settled a few feet lower in front of a gutted strip mall with nothing but walls and a roof standing. She saw two crime scene techs working behind the screens and realized the body was still there. She could clearly see the young woman with long, dark hair. The color was drained out of her face and her eyes were ringed with a pale discharge, which sometimes occurred during decomposition. As she stepped next to Mazzetti, Patty realized how the woman had died. A black leather belt with an ornate buckle was wrapped around her throat. She shuddered at the idea of what this woman had gone through.

  Patty cut her eyes over to Stallings, who was speaking with the sergeant out of view of the Dumpster. She hoped it stayed that way. He didn’t need a vivid reminder of what could’ve happened to his own daughter. Any time Patty saw him in conversation with a superior she worried. There were rumors around the department about how Stallings had gone crazy and beat up a rich-kid suspect a few months ago. Patty knew it was no rumor. She’d been there when Stallings caught the pharmaceutical rep handing some free samples to a young coed. Because of the incident, the detectives in the crimes/persons unit learned quickly their new sergeant, Yvonne the Terrible, wasn’t quite so terrible. She was more of a miracle worker and steered the focus off Stallings so he could continue to work a big case going on at the time.

  Patty stepped next to Tony Mazzetti and said, “Where’d you get the screens?”

  Mazzetti turned his handsome face on his thick, muscular neck and said, “Paramedics had them for some reason and loaned them to us. Who would’ve guessed firemen could be helpful on occasion?” His dark brown eyes scanned the immediate area and settled back on Patty. In a much lower voice he said, “You look great, I’m glad I have something to distract me for a few minutes. This one is ugly.”

  “How’re you holding up?”

  The big man shrugged, straining his tailored shirt. “I’m getting used to Sparky Taylor as a partner. I can’t believe Hoagie accepted the teaching job at the police academy for three months.”

  “I heard Sparky is really, really smart.”

  “He’s also really, really weird.”

  Patty let her eyes drift to Mazzetti’s new partner. He was built like a giant pear. Patty figured the African American man was about forty, but with the extra weight and floppy clothes he wore, it was very difficult to be accurate. He’d looked the same six years ago when Patty had first met him. Back then he’d been the tech agent for the department. Basically an audiovisual guy who could plant bugs, hide cameras, and work complex wiretap equipment. But all that ended for Sparky Taylor when he got hopelessly wedged in the bathroom window of a suspect’s house after planting a microphone for the narcotics unit. Although the suspect had not come home and seen it himself, the neighbors had told him about the fire department and other cops rescuing a heavyset black man squeezing out of a back window. The department had been forced to reveal its court-ordered microphone and wiretap warrants. Since that incident, Sparky, whose real name was Cliff, had floated around different units in the detective bureau. Now he’d landed in homicide.

  Patty turned to Mazzetti. “Any ideas on this one yet?”

  “Her I.D. says she’s Kathy Mizell, nineteen, and a student at UNF. Her parents said she didn’t come home last night, which wasn’t unusual. She stayed with friends near campus a couple of nights a week.”

  Patty felt sick at the idea of a bright young student ending up like this. “What about the scene itself?”

  “She wasn’t killed here, just dumped. I called you guys because of the photo of your missing girl. I recognized the buckle on the belt. Has to be her belt.”

  “Seems reasonable, but where’s her body and why would the killer link two victims?”

  Mazzetti sighed, saying, “I’m trying to find any possible link to the body in Rolling Hills. So far, aside from the mode of death being asphyxiation, there’s nothing to connect the women. I don’t want to make the same mistakes I’ve made in the past.”

  Patty was so proud of him for even admitting he’d ever made a mistake she wanted to give him a hug right there on the spot. She looked back up and saw the dead girl’s face as one of the crime scene techs moved to one side. She knew she’d see that face in her short periods of dreaming tonight.

  FIVE

  He sat outside a McDonald’s not far from his warehouse with the living quarters above. He had a dream lease. The two-bedroom apartment covered half of the second floor above his shop and was nicer than half the condos in the city. He watched the two little girls in the covered ball pit. Blond heads bobbing up and down out of sight. The clouds and light rain forced him to stay under the overhang, but at least he had time to enjoy his Big Mac, fries, and Coca-Cola. One of the drywall workers he saw on jobs left the McDonald’s and waved to him.

  The burly young man said, “Hey, Buddy.”

  He lifted his half-eaten Big Mac as a greeting and nodded. As the only employee of his business he had no need to make close friends. He was either “Buddy” or “the guy from Classic Glass Concepts.” That was how most of the construction business worked. Since his custom glass business took him to only the high-end homes and businesses, he usually saw the same companies catering to the wealthy. He had hoped, when he first started out in business, that his glassblowing talents would allow him to make money creating works of art. He quickly learned that to make a living in the glass business, you had to adapt. Now only a few square feet of his warehouse were dedicated to the actual art he had studied for most of his life. The walls of the warehouse held sheets of thick glass, some etched with exotic designs.

  That was how he’d found the victim three weeks ago in Rolling Hills. He was working in a fancy house down the street. All the rich people insisted he use an unmarked van so he was parked in a driveway and no one noticed him. The street was crammed with lawn and pool service trucks and three separate construction crews working on remodelings. The gate to the community was unlocked for all the workers. He’d noticed Pamela Kimble walking with her children one day. Tall and graceful, she had the gait of a runner sidetracked by a pregnancy, fast and deliberate with the kids trying to keep up. He waited until he was done with the job, then came back two days later and parked at a house where he had installed an interior etched glass panel. He knew the owner wouldn’t be home. He was careful to leave an invoice on the front door handle in case anyone noticed him, but no one did. No one ever did. Rich people use workers but don’t notice them.

  He’d slipped into Pamela’s house in the middle of the day. She hadn’t even known someone was inside until he had his hand around her lovely throat. He’d surprised her as she took a nap in her cool, dark bedroom on the mammoth king-sized bed. Sprawled in workout clothes and a loose T-shirt, she was the perfect picture of a suburban mom.

  He had used his hands to choke her, requiring him to wear simple rubber surgical gloves, so he fumbled with his homemade glass jar. An exact little cylinder like the others. He opened his fingers slightly to let her gasp, then exhale, only to tighten his grip harder. It was difficult to describe the peace he felt when her body finally went limp and he let her lie across his lap for a few minutes. She was definitely worthy of eternity. He thought, in the long expanse of time, she might see what he was really doing for her. For her essence and memory. He slipped back out of the house, her kids sleeping in front of the TV in the next room. It was a great moment.

  He had been shaken by his experience getting rid of the body the night before. The idea that someone might surprise him in such a vulnerable position was terrifying. He’d made some mistakes. He hoped he hadn’t
left a fingerprint or DNA somewhere on the body. He almost always used some kind of gloves. It was bad enough he had used the belt and been so flustered he left it. Not that it could be linked directly to him, but it was too unusual to be ignored. He liked leaving as little as possible in terms of evidence or clues. He wasn’t like the nuts in the movies who enjoyed taunting the police.

  For so long he’d been patient and careful never to use a woman who could be linked to him as a subject for his work of art. He wondered if it was really necessary. Were the cops really that good at discovering minute clues? He doubted it. That was one of the reasons he had picked up the pace lately. He realized his work of art would take too long to complete if he only added a piece every other year or so. But last night had spooked him.

  The buzz of the encounter had him pumped up. He felt like a kid on Christmas morning as he calculated how many more he needed. Not too many now. Soon he’d have a real monument. A memorial that would be special. He couldn’t help but smile as he thought about his work of art in progress for sixteen years.

  He finished his Big Mac and took a long swig of Coke. A red plastic ball popped out of the pit and rolled next to his heavy work boot. As he bent down to retrieve it, one of the blond girls scampered out of he ball pit, red ribbons tying her ponytail, flopping over to one side. She skidded to a stop about ten feet away and fixed her blue eyes on him. A smile swept across her face, showing one missing front tooth.

  Then his moment of humanity was shattered when he heard an unmistakable voice say, “Look who’s here, the squatter.”

  He looked up slowly, knowing exactly who had the sneer in her voice. He was surprised it wasn’t just Cheryl, but her sweet, younger sister too. Poor Donna had a look of horror on her face as Cheryl marched toward him.