The Perfect Death Read online

  He kept trying to focus all of his attention on the thin edge of the wide glass window as it slid into place. The problem was his mind kept racing as he thought about the girl at the bus stop and the hours he had spent with Jessie, the subject he’d found ten days earlier.

  Jessie had been so special. The whole experience was magical. Getting to know her and making sure she was right for his work of art. Those had been a precious few hours. He’d seen her not far off Davis and made sure he parked the van well ahead of her before opening the door. This was an impulse on his part. He had no plans to take any violent action. She came closer with that beautiful wet, tangly hair and a few raindrops staining her white T-shirt. The shirt had the logo on it. A giant bright yellow sun bursting over the horizon with the words HILLSIDE FARMS, OCALA, in blue, under the sun. He made some comment about her being soaked.

  The bright young woman turned her head to him and looked in the van. She surprised him by saying, “If I could get someone to give me a ride to Orange Park it would save me a long miserable bus ride.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “My shop’s down that way.” He said it calmly and coolly, but in fact he could see the top of his building down the street where he was standing right at that moment.

  She got in the van and immediately started to chatter about how much she appreciated the ride and she had a friend who would let her stay the night in Orange Park. The young lady introduced herself very properly and he could already tell she met his requirements for eternity.

  He drove around the block and hit the automatic garage door opener to his warehouse.

  Jessie said, “I thought you said your shop was in Orange Park.”

  “It is. This is just a warehouse for the glass we work with. We have a couple of them around the city. I’ll only be a few minutes and then I’ll take you wherever you need to go.” He kept his demeanor cool and didn’t force anything he said. He invited her to step out and have a soda while he walked past the display glass into his private workspace and selected one of his finished jars. The lid was already made for it, but he had to make the rubber seal that sat inside the glass lid. It only took a second to cut a gasket from a large square of industrial rubber. He never hurried through the warehouse as Jessie sat quietly on one of the stools next to the workbench glancing around the large bay. He had left the bay door open to give her a greater sense of ease, but he knew no one ever walked this far down the street or bothered to look into the boring old glass company’s warehouse. The only people who ever bothered him were Cheryl and Donna. Those visits had been too frequent lately. They had already ruined one chance he had at adding to his masterpiece. Barged in and made his subject scurry away like a frightened deer. He never even saw her again. Buddy looked on the bright side: another five minutes and they would’ve caught him with a dead body in his shop. That would’ve been enough to cancel his lease.

  Jessie watched him as he walked back with a small glass jar in his hand and then saw her eyes drift over to the stairway to his private apartment.

  She said, “What’s up there?”

  “The office.” He liked the smooth sound of her voice. It had an innocent and youthful quality to it. He set the jar down and glanced around to see if there was a cord or strap he might be able to use. “Why’s a girl like you wandering around downtown Jacksonville on a wet, rainy day like this?”

  Now she seemed to withdraw a bit. “My ride fell through and I need to get over to my friend’s house. Are we gonna head that way soon?”

  He knew she was getting anxious and decided it was time to make his move.

  Then a voice shook him out of his thoughts and instantly he was back in the dentist’s bright office installing a sheet of glass.

  “How’s it going?”

  It sounded like the voice was coming from a fog and it took a moment more to shake him from his daydream about the lovely Jessie. He cut his eyes to the sound of the voice and saw one of the dental assistants leaning over and smiling at him through the opposite side of the glass, the detailed etching of the dolphin obstructing the side of her face.

  He had to blink his eyes hard to refocus his thoughts and form a coherent sentence. “It’s going pretty well. I’ll have this piece in place by lunch and start on the windows this afternoon.”

  The woman stepped around the glass, keeping that beautiful smile, and said, “I wish I could concentrate like you. You completely blocked me out while you were setting the glass.”

  He smiled and let out a laugh. “That’s the idea sometimes.”

  The woman’s eyes took a quick scan of the room to make sure they were alone and said, “My name is Mary. What’s yours?”

  Now he turned his full attention to the pretty young woman with long hair and said, “My friends call me Buddy.”

  It was after lunch and Patty had a doctor’s appointment. Stallings sometimes worried about his younger partner, but she knew the best way to deflect any questions about a doctor’s visit was to mumble something about “female issues.” That tended to shut him up for at least an hour every time.

  He decided to use his precious free moments to run a few blocks down and visit his father. In the last four months, since his father had reentered his life after a twenty-year absence, Stallings had learned a lot about poor choices and forgiveness. He’d also learned a lot about his early perceptions of his parents and their relationship. If his mother hadn’t told him she frequently spoke to his father and she held no real resentment toward him, he didn’t think there was any way he would’ve ever spoken to the old man again. But his mother, with her abundant patience and open mind, had explained to him she understood the disease of alcoholism and the pressures his father had been under during his career in the Navy. It’d been a slow process, but his father’s open adoration of Lauren and Charlie had given Stallings the incentive to risk getting to know him again.

  Now sixty-four years old, he was a shell of the belligerent bully Stallings remembered as a child. The hard-drinking, loudmouth jerk had evolved into a conscientious and surprisingly funny older man. He had not had a drink in six years and moderated a number of different groups to help the homeless and alcoholics in the wide area of Jacksonville’s southern downtown. The municipal football stadium and St. Johns River bordered the southern edge of his father’s little kingdom. Stallings’s office sat within his father’s kingdom, but he had never run into the old man. Now Stallings realized he hadn’t been looking for him and could’ve very well seen him without recognizing the old man on a number of occasions.

  He parked his Impala directly in front of the tall, run-down but stately rooming house where his father had a single room on the second story in the rear of the building. As Stallings walked up the pathway he noticed his father sitting on one of the comfortable chairs on the covered porch of the large house. Two other men sat on a low sofa with a plastic cover.

  His father laid a hardcover book he was reading in his lap and smiled as Stallings approached and took the straight-backed wooden chair next to him.

  “Hello, Johnny. What brings you by this time of day?”

  “Just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  When his father smiled and his cloudy eyes seemed to clear, Stallings caught a glimpse of the younger man he had known.

  Stallings’s father said, “How’s that girl of yours doing?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one you married, goofy.”

  “Dad, we talked about this. She and I are separated right now.”

  The older man looked down and shook his head. “That’s a shame. I really like Helen.”

  Stallings was about to casually correct him when he realized the old man had no idea he’d confused Stallings’s sister with his wife. He checked quickly to make sure his father hadn’t slipped back onto the sauce, leaning in to sniff his breath.

  Stallings said, “Her name is Maria. Helen is your daughter.” He said it lightly, hoping it would clear his father’s head.

  The el
der Stallings gave a grin and a quick wink. “Just pulling your leg, son.” He tapped the side of his head and said, “I’m as sharp as ever.”

  Even with the comment from his father, Stalling decided to use the visit to make sure the old man hadn’t lost a few steps mentally.

  Buddy enjoyed the few minutes he spent talking with Mary. She explained the difference between the dental hygienist and assistant as well as several of the key points of protecting your teeth.

  She said, “You have good teeth and a very friendly smile.”

  “Thank you very much. I appreciate the compliment. How long have you worked here?”

  “Almost ten years.”

  “There is no way. You must’ve started here when you were fourteen years old.” He wasn’t just flattering her; she did have a very youthful-looking face.

  “You are a charmer. I’ve been here since I was twenty-two years old and graduated from the program out at the community college.”

  He liked her friendly manner and now that he looked, she had a few wrinkles, which gave her face a very gentle character. He said, “Maybe we could grab a cup of coffee sometime?”

  Her smile already told him his answer. “I’d love to. I’m on vacation for two weeks starting Friday so maybe Friday evening. Otherwise we’d have to wait nine days until I got back from my cruise to Cancún.”

  “Who you going on the cruise with?”

  “I’m trying something new and spending the first three nights of the cruise alone, then meeting three girlfriends when they get on in Cancún. It was the only way we could all work out being together and I didn’t want to waste a half a week of vacation. It’s very exciting.”

  Buddy did the math and realized this was an opportunity he couldn’t ignore. As long as he kept things quiet, no one would realize he’d be the last person she saw before she missed her departure. That would give him several days to spend with the lovely Mary before he had to worry about anyone missing her.

  He looked up and forced a gentle smile on his face, saying, “I’d love to meet you somewhere Friday evening.”

  TEN

  It was early evening and Patty Levine sat on the floor of her Jacksonville condo watching a Rodney Yee DVD and trying to master one of the more advanced yoga poses involving balancing on her hands with her torso lifted off the blue mat on top of the light carpet. She breathed in through her mouth and out through her nose, trying to fill her belly with air as well as her diaphragm. She cleared her mind and did everything Rodney said to, and still she felt like shit.

  Patty plopped down onto the mat, placing her right foot across her left leg, and twisted her whole upper body, catching her reflection in the mirror of the open closet door in the hallway. She had no idea why she was so critical of herself. She generally didn’t care what others thought and her parents were perfectly reasonable about most aspects of her life. It wasn’t until she had gotten serious about gymnastics and started to compete at a high level that she expected more and more of herself. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and although it wasn’t the most glamorous look, she liked her blond hair. But she’d always been self-conscious about her wide-set eyes and the scar at the bridge of her nose she’d received falling off a balance beam her senior year in high school. She bared her teeth to her image in the mirror and, despite most of them being straight and white, all she focused on was her left incisor, which turned slightly outward. She shook her head in disgust and followed the next move on the DVD. That Rodney Yee could really spread his legs.

  She muttered, “This is bullshit,” knowing it had a lot more to do with her own choices in life than with anything Mr. Yee was telling her on the DVD she had picked up at Target for $19.95. She could remember a time, before she started to compete nationally in gymnastics, when she had enjoyed all kinds of exercise and stretching. Now it seemed like one more thing to cram into her already busy day. But she knew the real issue, the core of her problem tonight, was her back pain and her desire to refrain from using one of the assortment of painkillers she had stashed in her bathroom medicine cabinet. She’d let her normal prescription run out but couldn’t bring herself to dispose of the random pills she’d acquired over the years. Soon those would be exhausted too. That was why she was forced to do yoga in an effort to relieve lower back pain that had been building since midmorning.

  The frantic pace she had kept with Stallings all day didn’t help her in any way either. They’d hit a dozen different places where Leah Tischler might have been seen. The only person who’d been of any help was Liz Dubeck, the manager of one of the downtown motels. Patty could tell Liz was attracted to Stallings’s good looks and charming manner. That wasn’t anything unusual. What surprised Patty was Stallings’s interest in the pretty motel manager. Sure, he didn’t say anything and avoided any questions about her after they left the motel, but Patty knew her partner as well as anyone and this was the first time since his separation he’d shown any interest at all in another woman.

  Patty twisted and crossed her legs in an effort to stretch out the middle of her back. There was definitely an improvement, but she could feel the constant throbbing still coming from lower down her back. If she’d known this would be the result when she was thirteen and practicing one hundred backflips a day, she might not have had the enthusiasm that didn’t wane until her second year at the University of Florida. But that was her nature. She threw herself into anything she undertook.

  The fact that Tony was working late and she had no real hope of seeing him for anything more than a few minutes over the next week didn’t help her mood. Something just wasn’t right with their relationship. She glanced at the Krazy Kat clock on her wall and realized it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet and she was starting to feel anxious about going to bed. This would be the fourth night in a row she didn’t sleep well, unless she took her usual dose of Ambien. And that’s what she wanted to do in the worst way. She’d had to take Xanax the last few days as pressure mounted with the discovery of two bodies being linked to one killer. The Xanax helped her get through the day; it was the Ambien that helped her get through the night. And in two or three hours she’d have to make a decision: go another night with almost no sleep and drag through the day, or pop an Ambien and feel pharmaceutically groggy until ten o’clock in the morning. The choices weren’t great. She wondered how Stallings functioned so well with as little sleep as he got each night. There was more than enough evidence of his nighttime activities like crawling around different neighborhoods looking for the right lead on a missing person or the tiny piece of forensic evidence that would help identify a killer. Patty also knew he spent a lot of time tracking down leads on his own missing daughter. That was something he couldn’t talk about around the sheriff’s office because he’d never been assigned to the case. He never would be; it was his own daughter. But he spent a lot of time on the computer and talking to missing persons detectives all across the country, hoping to find some clue as to what had happened to Jeanie after the Friday she walked away without a word to anyone. Poor John Stallings had a lot more to deal with than Patty did and she felt like he was a pretty good example. He was calm and patient, didn’t drink, and never took pills.

  Her new attitude had caused her to not renew any of her pain-pill prescriptions and now here she was in the early evening, anxious, alone, worried about sleeping, and in pain. Maybe she should’ve thought this out a little better.

  Buddy had cheated and used a mold to blow the glass containers for his work of art. He used a mold so each container would slip into the slot it was made for. Right now he had an extra two containers with lids and rubber gaskets ready to go. Some were a rich blue glass, others a Coca-Cola bottle green. Any of them would make lovely sea glass if they washed up on one of Florida’s sandy beaches. He had to have a clock directly above his workbench or he’d lose all track of time when he worked on his glass sculptures.

  He ran up and took a quick shower in his apartment and changed into a nice pair of jeans and a butt
on-down shirt. At exactly eight o’clock he heard a car door and the unmistakable rumble of feet on the staircase to the apartment. He felt a sense of dread as he padded to the door across the expensive hardwood floor he had put in two years ago. Somehow having Donna standing in front of her sister made him feel a little better. Buddy almost leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, but once again Cheryl’s scowl forced him back. He allowed them to step into the entryway directly in front of his small kitchen.

  He started to get annoyed but remembered what the doctor had told him and took a deep breath. At least this time they’d made an appointment and hadn’t scared anyone off. He didn’t have enough time left to waste potential candidates for his work of art. Cheryl had already cost him a great addition. Even though they had an appointment and were exactly on time, the thought of that woman invading his home pissed him off.

  He thought about the precious hours he had spent with Jessie and how he would’ve felt if they had interrupted him. He had gotten to know the sweet girl from Ocala even after he had to secure her in a chair for more than an hour before he finally used his braided cord. Thinking back on the whole incident he felt a pang of guilt. He’d released the cord to allow her to gasp her final breath but had fumbled with the jar and missed it, so he had to do it a second time. He didn’t enjoy terrifying someone like that. But there was nothing else he could have done. She’d been a good candidate to that point and he couldn’t just let her walk away. Now she rested in the jar at the bottom left of this work of art.

  Buddy was shocked when Cheryl allowed her sister to do the talking. This meant Cheryl really wanted him to move out. Donna’s pretty eyes and natural body added impact to anything she asked and he found himself more open to what she had to say. She used that quiet little-girl voice of hers.

  “We’d like to buy out your lease, Buddy.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”