The Perfect Death Read online

  Buddy mumbled, “Hello, ladies.”

  Cheryl jumped right to the point. “You ready to accept our offer?”

  “I’m looking, but I do have six years left on my lease.”

  “I can have that voided in court.”

  “You keep saying that. If that’s true, why are you after me to move the shop?”

  She growled in frustration. Her sharp features flushed red, while Donna looked on silently. He knew Cheryl had a chance to rent the warehouse for twice what he paid and was pissed her late father had made the agreement. But she was stuck. She also hated him because Donna thought he was sweet. Like their father had. Buddy always figured that was one of the reasons the old man had given him an extended lease. He wanted Buddy to hook up with his daughter. The old man’s drastically younger Lebanese wife had produced the two pretty daughters after he was fifty. He had done his best to make sure they were secure before their combined drama had sent him to the grave at seventy-seven last year.

  Buddy had options in his living arrangements, but he liked annoying Cheryl too. He always kept a cheap apartment downtown. He had a few things there for storage and spent the night there when the power was knocked out to his warehouse and home a few months back. The place was cheap and on the outside chance this crazy chick got him out of his current place at least he’d have somewhere to crash.

  Cheryl turned, shoving her sister in front of her, then stooped and wheeled on her heel one last time to say, “This isn’t over. We won’t be held hostage.” She followed Buddy’s eyes to her sister and added, “And stay the fuck away from Donna.”

  John Stallings hung up the phone at his desk before heading into the conference room, where the other detectives had gathered to discuss the leads to be followed on the new homicide. The link to Leah Tischler put everyone into high gear because of the implications of a possible serial killer. He’d called to check on the kids and tell Charlie he wouldn’t be able to practice soccer with him. The seven-year-old took the news in stride. His fourteen-year-old, on the other hand, seemed relieved she wouldn’t have to put up with her father today. He didn’t bother to talk to Maria. She needed some space and he was doing his damnedest to give it to her. But he could tell she appreciated his efforts to stay connected with the kids and didn’t mind him swinging by the house almost every day.

  Meetings like this, after normal working hours, were the biggest sticking point in his marriage. Although he had never realized how much time it took away from his marriage, police work had found a way to crush his family life. He wondered how cops with young kids ever managed to balance their lives.

  The conference room was jammed with detectives. Tony Mazzetti sat at one end of the table, but it was Yvonne Zuni who was clearly in charge. She leaned on the table near the center as she made sure everyone understood his or her role in the investigation. The dynamics of an investigation had changed greatly from when Stallings had first started sixteen years earlier. In these lean economic times, overtime was a premium and management found a way around the expensive program by farming out leads to a number of different detectives. As usual, Tony Mazzetti would run the investigation. His new partner, Sparky Taylor, took notes as Sergeant Zuni explained the plan of attack.

  Stallings liked the odd detective. The guy was a virtual reference book of the sheriff’s office policy and procedure. He could quote specific statutes under the Florida criminal code for the most common crimes they had to deal with. A graduate of Georgia Tech, with a degree in engineering, Sparky had a different way of looking at things from most detectives. Stallings appreciated new perspectives.

  Mazzetti droned on about the scene and his brilliance in noticing the unusual buckle on the belt used in the homicide. He told them the victim’s brief background to give them avenues to investigate, like who she hung out with, boyfriends, and creepy guys in her classes, but the biggest detail was Leah Tischler’s belt. All Stallings could think about was where Leah was. Dead or alive, he’d like to find her and give her parents some form of closure. Her wealthy attorney father was already blaming his long hours for her disappearance. Stallings could relate. But now Stallings wondered if he thought Leah could hold a clue to his own daughter. Was this what he would find? Had Jeanie run away, then stumbled into a monster like this? He shuddered at the thought and looked back up at the crowd in the room as the sergeant started to talk.

  Yvonne Zuni’s dark eyes flashed at Stallings. “Stall, we’re gonna need you to work your magic. Focus on Leah Tischler and find out if anyone noticed her around. There’s a good chance she had run away when this creep found her.”

  Stallings just nodded. This was his strength and what he was needed for most often. Besides, he owed the new sarge and would do anything she asked. She may have been a pain in the ass administratively, but there was no one he’d rather have backing him up if he ever got in trouble again.

  Tony Mazzetti stared down in silence at the plain chicken breast, tiny helping of pasta, and raw vegetables on his plate. It was tough staying fit while trying to make a relationship work. He glanced over at Patty’s plate of lasagna and basket of garlic rolls. As a kid in Brooklyn, a meal in a nice Italian joint was a special occasion. Now it was an exercise in restraint. Before he could feel sorry for himself he remembered he needed to talk to a supervisor at public transportation. He pulled out his pocket-sized, leather-bound notepad and scratched a one-line reminder. When he looked back at Patty, her blue eyes were focused on him like lasers.

  He stuffed the notepad sheepishly into his coat pocket. “Sorry, I’m not used to having to balance a homicide and a relationship. It’s all new to me. And with no overtime to go out and hit the streets you have to make use of any time an idea pops into your head.”

  She smiled that sweet smile and took another monstrous bite of lasagna. She looked tired, and he worried she pushed herself too hard in her search for runaways with John Stallings. But homicide was no piece of cake either and if she was gonna be running leads on this new case, she wouldn’t catch up on her rest anytime soon.

  Relationships might be new to him, but homicide was old hat. He wasn’t sure what would happen in his romance. It was uncharted territory—a scary, thrilling adventure ride—but he knew he’d never be able to stomach an unsolved homicide. His phenomenal clearance rate was one of the few things he could point to as an accomplishment and he liked everyone at JSO knowing he kicked ass in homicide investigations. He told himself that was why they called him the King of Homicide. The murder he’d been working on until this afternoon had really eaten at him. Pamela Kimble had left behind a husband and two kids. She was no gang-banger or dope dealer gunned down by a competitor. He knew someone else would take up any slack on the Kathy Mizell case. Maybe even Stallings, who seemed to have a thing for young, confused women who ended up in bad situations. Everyone in the S.O. understood Stallings had some kind of deep-seated desire to make up for whatever had happened to his own daughter. He may not have been Mazzetti’s best friend, but there was no denying he was a hell of a cop.

  Patty set down her fork, wiped her face, and said, “Do you really think the world would come to an end if we went public with our relationship?”

  “There’s nothing I’d like better than to tell people you’re my girlfriend, but based on policy and what they’ve done in the past, one of us would have to transfer out of the squad. I figured we’d let things go until we have no choice.” He didn’t want to bring up the recent feeling that they were drifting apart. Maybe it was just the natural rhythm of a relationship and he didn’t have the experience to deal with it correctly.

  “You mean you wouldn’t be willing to work road patrol instead of homicide just for me?”

  He hesitated, not only unsure of his answer, but not wanting to upset Patty. She burst out laughing, covering her face with her hand. Then gave him a sly smile.

  “I can’t believe you’d fall for something like that. I’d never put you in that position.” She reached across the small ta
ble and clasped his hand.

  He liked her playful side and realized he had to loosen up. He’d been out of uniform and stuck working in the detective bureau for so long he’d forgotten what it was like to just play around. Every cop knew half the job was practical jokes, but somehow he had missed out on that because of his ambition. He’d never really minded being on the outside looking in, but now he realized there was nothing wrong with making a beautiful girl like this smile.

  Even if it wasn’t as much as he had made her smile a month ago.

  SIX

  Buddy watched the two women as they marched through the small McDonald’s courtyard. He had to admire the shape of them walking away, even though in Cheryl’s case he didn’t want to. Her surgically enhanced body gave her outrageous curves. It was Donna’s beautiful innocent eyes he noticed as she glanced over her shoulder at him, stepping into the passenger seat of her sister’s Chrysler 300.

  He had considered Donna for his work of art on several occasions. Those big brown doe eyes and wide, full lips gave her an innocent look. She just had nothing to offer eternity. Donna was a lost child who followed her sister around like a puppy. Besides, he knew her and she might point police in his direction if she turned up dead. Buddy liked the twenty-four-year-old. Her sweet disposition more than made up for her lack of brainpower.

  He knew the pressure to break his lease and move out was a direct result of Cheryl’s incessant harping. She’d taken over most of the daily business activities of her father, including the renting of the six warehouses across the city as well as the small apartment complex on the east side of the river. Her mother had been an internationally known model in Lebanon and greatly preferred lounging at their beautiful house in Ponte Vedra Beach to being troubled with the daily burdens of collecting rent and dealing with tenants.

  Cheryl, on the other hand, had a ruthless streak that served her well as a landlord. Buddy had only met her mother once and she seemed pleasant enough and certainly the women’s father was a gentleman. After Buddy had blown him a special glass vase for his twenty-fifth anniversary, the man had signed a sweetheart ten-year lease with him, which he allowed Buddy to pay up front. Now, with six years left on the lease, he was probably Cheryl’s biggest problem.

  He caught Cheryl’s murderous glare from inside the black sedan and thought to himself how nice it’d be to choke the life out of her. Too bad she wasn’t worthy.

  John Stallings rolled over for the fifteenth time in the last sixteen minutes and stared at the clock on the nightstand. He flung the covers off in frustration and growled quietly to the empty room, then growled louder, so it filled the empty house. It was nearly midnight and he was no closer to sleep than he had been when he laid down at 10:15. His insomnia was as much a result of having no family and therefore no anchor in his life as it was of picturing Kathy Mizell shoved into a Dumpster and Leah Tischler at the bottom of a canal somewhere. Both families were crushed tonight.

  Stallings couldn’t shake the feeling he’d failed Leah Tischler. He knew rationally that wasn’t how to look at the situation, but who could stay rational when a young woman was dead? If you stayed rational you went crazy.

  He felt like he’d done everything he possibly could to save his own family. Maybe it wasn’t the job. Maybe Maria had grown tired of him. But he thought he’d had a handle on both the job and his home after Jeanie disappeared. Now he realized it was just a fantasy. He knew Maria had been through a lot and had her whole life ahead of her. If leaving him on the curb made her feel better, he was prepared to go through it graciously. He’d made no comments when he discovered that Maria had already been out on several dates. All Stallings wanted was the kids to be happy, and right now he wouldn’t mind sleeping for a few hours, but he knew it wouldn’t happen.

  He rolled out of the bed that had been in the room when he’d moved into the small house in Lakewood and slipped on his jeans and a Jacksonville Jaguars T-shirt. It was time to get a jump on interviews of people who might have run into Leah Tischler.

  Thirty minutes later he found himself parking his county-issued Impala and walking down West Davis Street. It was never too late to talk to the street people of Jacksonville. Many cops overlooked them as a source of information, but Stallings knew nothing occurred in the city without the street people seeing or hearing about it.

  The street population encompassed so much more than the homeless. Anyone out all the time, whether selling drugs or their bodies, came in contact with a lot of people. Even a runaway from a wealthy family, if that’s what Leah Tischler was. It was possible the killer had snatched her from society, but Stallings felt it was more likely the young woman had slipped off society’s radar for a little while before the killer found her. There was always the chance she was still alive and had discarded her belt, but Stallings wanted to be practical and veer away from fantasy. He had a job to do and had to be reasonable no matter what his hopes were.

  Stallings wasn’t like most cops. He had relationships with people. He worked the street like a host greeting guests or a bouncer scaring jerks. No one knew Leah Tischler when Stallings showed them her photos. The discovery of her belt wrapped around the afternoon’s murder victim had not been released to the public yet.

  Then he saw someone who might hold some valuable information. An acquaintance with his ear to the ground and his finger on the pulse of the drug pipeline running through Jacksonville. Stallings watched the man in a wifebeater shirt stop and speak to different people along the street. He handed off baggies to two or three of them and was completely oblivious to Stallings. People didn’t notice cops unless there were two of them in a marked cruiser. Stallings waited patiently until the man was only a few feet away; then he stepped from the side of the building where he’d been leaning and said, “Hi, Peep. Whatcha doing out so late?”

  The scruffy man jerked his head and looked at Stallings for only an instant before he turned and darted across the street like a sprinter in the Olympics. Stallings realized if he wanted to talk to the man, he’d have to follow.

  SEVEN

  John Stallings had spent too many years as a cop to waste his energy matching a scared drug dealer step for step. That left him with two options: go back to his car and look for him or figure out where the man was running to and beat him there. Stallings cut down Houston Street to Jefferson and turned left.

  The man he was chasing was known on the street as Peep Moran because of his penchant for spying on women while they were urinating. It was a simple hobby in the world of the homeless because bathrooms were not always available. In the consumer-driven society of the United States many businesses purposely used the bathrooms as a perk for customers only. Consequently many street people were forced to use nature as their lavatory whether the middle-class people around them wanted to admit it or not. In his whole career as a road patrolman, Stallings had never arrested anyone for urinating in public. He knew when the need came over you, you had to relieve yourself. He didn’t care if the reason was too much beer or no home to go back to; no one should legislate using the restroom.

  He also knew Peep wouldn’t venture too far or risk crossing one of the freeways on foot. This was an educated guess on Stallings’s part, but one he felt pretty comfortable with. As he eased onto Jefferson Street he saw Peep Moran with his head down and his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Stallings never wasted time yelling at someone to stop; instead he closed the distance between them quickly and by the time a suspect realized he’d been seen, it was too late to flee.

  Stallings surprised the scrawny man, but instead of showing his shock, Peep acted casual. “Hey, Stall. Looking for runaways?”

  Stallings let the scared little man see his smile and said, “Why would you run from me? I thought we were friends.”

  “Friends don’t break other friends’ arms.”

  “And friends don’t sell drugs to other friends’ wives.”

  Peep gave him a slight bow and said, “Touché. We’ve establ
ished we’re not friends and therefore it should be obvious I ran from you because I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of me?”

  “Everyone’s afraid of you, Stall. Maybe the runaways and hookers like you, but none of the rest of us who make a living off them have ever had a particularly pleasant encounter with you.”

  “Peep, you sound a lot more articulate. You been going to school?”

  “Mostly I haven’t taken my own shit. I haven’t had any prescription pills in six weeks and I’m down to only smoking pot on the weekends”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  The smaller man shrugged. “Aside from being a little smarter and saving some money, I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle.”

  “You heard about the girl’s body found in the Dumpster this afternoon?”

  Peep nodded. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his scrawny throat.

  Stallings showed him the photo Leah Tischler’s parents had provided. He studied Peep’s face and realized the dope dealer recognized her.

  Peep said, “She’s dead?”

  “No, but she’s connected to the body in the Dumpster.”

  Peep nervously fumbled with his hair.

  “Give it up, Peep. What’d you know about her?”

  “I, er, I might’ve seen her.”

  “Where?” He placed a hand on Peep’s grubby T-shirt.

  “C’mon, Stall, I don’t remember. There’s a flood of scared girls rolling through here. Some leaving home for good and some just throwing a scare into their parents so they can use the Navigator more often or stay out on weeknights.”

  “Is that all you know about her?”

  “Seems like I saw her right around here, but I can’t remember.”

  “When?” He twisted the shirt in his grip and pulled Peep closer to him. The familiar anger bubbling up inside of him