The Perfect Death Read online

  One of the prisoners had already been tossed through the door and bumped into the nerdy detective working on the evidence. The prisoner jumped up and kicked the nerdy detective squarely in the head, knocking him sideways, where he struck his head on the corner of the desk on his way down. This emboldened the other two prisoners, who started struggling immediately in the grasp of the muscular cops. One headbutted a young black police officer, shattering his nose and driving him back into the hallway. The third prisoner used his legs to kick off the wall and forced two detectives back with him on the ground, taking them all out of the fight.

  As Stallings pushed away from his desk, ready to rush over and help, he saw Patty Levine weigh in from the side, all elbows and knees, cracking one of the prisoners three or four times with effective blows and knocking him out of the fight instantly.

  Two other crimes/persons detectives were slow to react. These were non-uniformed detectives and no one carried a Taser. For years the public had cried out about police punching suspects who acted up; then, with the introduction of the Taser it seemed the controversy would die down. Now the public, uneducated in the use of the Taser, viewed it as a near torture device. Stallings wasn’t fond of the small devices that delivered electronic shocks—just more equipment to keep track of. He’d punched enough people in his career to know how effective a right cross could be. And that’s what he intended to use right now as the last prisoner was able to shake off the detectives holding him.

  Stallings crossed the room, raising his hand ready to strike. He looked the prisoner right in the face, giving him a chance to surrender. He saw no surrender in the man’s eyes and prepared to strike hard across his face when another detective popped out from behind the door and swung an ASP, missing the prisoner with the metal expandable baton but striking Stallings hard in his left arm.

  The blow knocked Stallings to the side. He immediately reached for his arm, feeling the pain shoot through his shoulder. It worked exactly like every training class had ever taught him. The fluid shock of the ASP strike had traveled up his nerves in his arm and felt as if someone had slammed his hand in a car door.

  The detective swung the metal ASP again, striking the prisoner in the arm and, after a full backswing, struck him in the leg, dropping the young thug to the ground.

  As quickly as it started it was over. Whew. Stallings looked around the room at the various groaning and moaning men on the floor. The only one who seemed to be seriously injured was Sparky Taylor’s friend from the tech division. Patty knelt beside him trying to stop the bleeding from his forehead. Evidence was scattered everywhere, and a new form of chaos descended in the room as everyone tried to separate the prisoners, the wounded, and the evidence.

  THIRTEEN

  The fight at the office had disrupted everyone’s day. Unlike the way many TV shows portray police departments, any kind of a scuffle outside the booking area or jail facility is rare. Stallings once explained it to one of his neighbors by saying it would be like having several stockbrokers get into a fight at the Charles Schwab office. It happens, but those in the area are always surprised. Heading north of the city to the Thomas School was an excellent way to break up the day and step away from the chaos of the fight. Not only was Dwight, the nerdy detective, rushed to the hospital with a serious head wound, two of the three prisoners had to be hospitalized. It had been an all-out brawl and injuries happen, but he was sure some reporter trying to make a name would focus on the broken wrist of a prisoner or the fact that they had been handcuffed at the time of the fight. Someone who’d never been hit had no idea how distracting it could be.

  The school sat back from the road with a pattern of soccer and baseball fields adding to the stately feel of the buildings. It looked more like a small college than an exclusive, private prep school. Stallings had heard tuition topped thirty thousand dollars a year and it looked as if they had put a fair amount of that money back into the school.

  Stallings had let Patty work her magic to get them set up in an administrator’s office near the front entrance. It wasn’t only her professional manner; he had to admit she could deal with regular people much better than he could. He liked to think he was learning from her. Then they’d get behind on a missing person investigation, and he’d lose his patience and deal with people too bluntly. And like an epileptic seizure creeping into the consciousness, he could feel his patience ebbing away as they made no progress toward finding Leah Tischler. Although there was the strong possibility she’d been a victim of whoever strangled Kathy Mizell, there was no absolute proof she was dead. Either way he felt a burning drive to discover what had happened to her. The rational side of his mind told him there was no greater chance of him finding out what had happened to his own Jeanie by finding out what had happened to Leah, but he recognized he wasn’t always rational and sometimes it was an irrational hunch that solved the case. If nothing else, he wanted to give the Tischlers some sense of closure. Something he and Maria had never felt.

  With a great deal of assistance from some Thomas School administrators, Stallings and Patty were able to see, in quick succession, a slew of snooty girls all wearing the same uniform as Leah Tischler wore in her final photo. The school had agreed to help in exchange for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office being clear Leah had not disappeared from school and the school had no liability in the matter. Stallings agreed, knowing it was someone higher than him who would make the call at a news conference and decide whom to throw under the bus. His guess was that if the school had any responsibility at all, they’d be mentioned prominently in the news. But that wasn’t his concern. He had one goal. Maybe one of these girls would help him achieve it.

  The sixth girl to walk through the door of the small office sighed loudly as she stood there waiting for the detectives to acknowledge her. Stallings looked up from his notes and was surprised to see a girl with piercings all along her ear and the tip of a tattoo on her neck coming out of her collar.

  Patty said, “Are you Marcie?”

  The girl nodded her head, causing her stringy hair to flop across her forehead as she stepped forward and plopped into the hard wooden chair. Her plaid skirt puffed out as she hit the chair.

  Patty said, “I like your piercings.”

  The girl perked up, shifted from a suspicious glare at Stallings to a more attentive expression toward Patty. “The ears are the only thing that can be pierced around this place. They made me pull out my nose ring and lip stud. I just put them in again as soon as I walked out that stupid gate.”

  Stallings sat back and let Patty chat with the girl, putting her at ease before turning to the questions they needed answered.

  Patty asked about running away, and the girl said, “We all think about it. It’s a nice change, a way to get away from our shitty lives.”

  Stallings had to ask, “What’s shitty about your life?” He wasn’t judging her, but he really felt he needed to know the answer. He wondered if Jeanie had had the same conversation with someone else before she disappeared.

  The girl said, “You know, our parents don’t get us. This is a boring backwater of a town. Jesus, this is the best school in North Florida and even it sucks.”

  Stallings was surprised when Patty scowled and leaned forward. “What’s your father do?”

  “He owns a Cadillac dealership north of here.

  “So you have your own car?”

  The girl nodded and mumbled, “A CTX.”

  “You ever miss a meal?”

  “What’d you mean?”

  Patty’s normally pleasant blue eyes flashed fire, and she said, “Look around you. Look beyond this school and you’ll see people are barely getting by. There’s real suffering, not the imaginary shit you and your friends dream of.”

  The girl looked shocked.

  “You guys think running away is some kind of romantic escape. Leah Tischler’s parents are beside themselves with grief. There is a very real chance Leah has suffered some traumatic shit. We’re working o
ur asses off to try and find her and to help her parents get through a rough time. All I’ve heard from you girls so far is how tough life is. I think you’re as disconnected and screwed up as you think this school is. Now cut the shit, Marcie. You know anything that might help us find Leah Tischler?”

  The girl looked like she might cry and was fighting to hold it back.

  Stallings stared at the girl and noticed the hole for her lip stud on the right side of her wide mouth. But he could see in her face that Patty had struck a chord.

  The girl said, “I might know why Leah ran away and maybe even where she ran to.”

  The way the girl said it made Stallings hope, just for a second, that this meant Leah had discarded her uniform and a killer had found the belt. He leaned forward. “Where is she?”

  The girl said, “Ask Tonya Hazell.”

  It was another lead, and Stallings intended to run with it.

  FOURTEEN

  Sergeant Yvonne Zuni sat at her desk after having made more than twenty phone calls regarding the fight in the squad bay. Her only real concern was the condition of the injured detective, Dwight. She’d worked with him in narcotics and despite his odd appearance and goofy nature, he was one of the best detectives she’d ever supervised. She was starting to see that the detectives who’d worked in the tech unit all shared the similar attributes of being extremely smart, working hard, staying diligent in their paperwork and steering clear of trouble off-duty. Usually detectives had three of these four attributes. Every detective had a different three. Some were smart and hardworking but ignored paperwork. Some were smart, stayed out of trouble off-duty, were current on their paperwork but also avoided work at all costs. The tech guys seemed to be the only ones who were reliably stable in all departments. She knew even though Sparky Taylor had some odd habits, he fell into that exact mold, spending every night with his family, giving the job everything he had while he was on duty, and definitely staying clear on policy, procedure, and paperwork.

  About every fourth call the sergeant made was to find out if there was any new information about the injured detective. Head injuries were a tricky business and could leave lingering issues. Right now all she knew was he was being evaluated at the hospital and had drifted in and out of consciousness since the paramedics took him from the squad room. Sergeant Zuni knew that Dwight had two young girls at home and his wife was a teacher. She shuddered as she considered the worst-case scenario.

  She also had to brief command staff on the incident. The agency was blessed with leaders who’d worked their way up through the ranks and understood many of the issues officers and detectives had to deal with. In this case they understood it was necessary to use serious physical force to overcome the disruptive prisoners. All anyone seemed genuinely concerned about was the detective’s injury, and that made Sergeant Zuni feel good about the department.

  She heard a light rap on her doorframe and looked up quickly to see the senior internal affairs detective, Ronald Bell, standing in the doorway looking like a model who’d just walked off the runway. He was tall and handsome with light gray hair and a rugged smile, but what set him apart from all the other tall, handsome detectives was that he almost always wore extraordinarily expensive, exquisitely cut suits. Today he had a dark blue suit with a white shirt and pale yellow tie. He looked like one of the ads in Men’s Health about how to become successful and attractive.

  Bell said, “Awfully quiet around here?”

  “Open homicide cases tend to keep the detectives busy.”

  “I guess big-ass brawls do too.”

  “Don’t make me go over my whole day. I wish I could have a Bombay Sapphire martini right this second.”

  Bell said, “Sounds like you had a rough day.”

  “Please tell me someone hasn’t made an official complaint that requires Internal Affairs to come down and look into this thing?”

  “By all accounts your detectives did a great job. It wouldn’t hurt if they were maybe in a little bit better shape or had a couple more ASPs available. I heard your man Stallings took a pretty big blow to the arm from one of the tactical guys who had an ASP.”

  “You know Stall. Something like that’s not gonna slow him down. He had a bruise, but he wasn’t complaining too much when he ran out the door to look for another missing girl.”

  “I know John Stallings very well. I’m surprised he didn’t crack someone’s head open.”

  “Although it may seem like it to you, he’s usually not the violent type.”

  “I have several Jacksonville residents who might disagree with that analysis.”

  “Have any of them ever filed a complaint?”

  Ronald Bell raised his hands in surrender, stepped into the small office, and pulled the door quietly shut behind him.

  Sergeant Zuni raised an eyebrow and said, “Is this something serious or are you going to say something romantic?” She stepped from behind her desk and reached to embrace her secret boyfriend. In the two months they’d been seeing each other she was certain no one had become suspicious. She didn’t want Bell to get in trouble for dating one of the sergeants in charge of the detective bureau. It was his job to investigate complaints against officers and detectives, and he was known as a ruthless enforcer throughout the department. But she’d seen another side of the fifty-four-year-old internal affairs investigator. Aside from being smart he was extremely sophisticated and had used much of the money he’d inherited from his mother’s side of the family to create a lifestyle in stark contrast to that of most of the cops in the agency. But it was the way he treated her that made her want to see him more and more. He made her feel like she was the only woman in the world and would listen as long as she wanted to talk about anything she wanted to talk about.

  Bell said, “This is nice.”

  “Too bad you’re in IA and I’m a conflict.”

  “No one’s complained so far.”

  “That’s because you’re used to keeping secrets.”

  Bell said, “If I could, I’d shout it out so everyone would hear.”

  Sergeant Zuni laughed for the first time all day. She liked this guy and what they had.

  But the relationship was not without pitfalls. Sergeant Zuni saw the irony of her keeping a secret relationship with an internal affairs investigator while Patty Levine and Tony Mazzetti struggled to keep their burgeoning relationship under wraps. The sergeant had figured out the two detectives’ attraction to each other some time ago, but she didn’t like to meddle in other people’s affairs, especially two of the top producers in the bureau.

  She stepped back from Bell and looked into his handsome face. “This isn’t a social visit, is it?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What’s up?” She knew better, even with her boyfriend, than to make specific inquiries. If Internal Affairs didn’t already know about it she wasn’t about to bring something to their attention. Even inadvertently.

  “It is somewhat related to the fight this morning in the bureau.”

  “In what way?”

  “Narcotics is missing two hundred fifty of the Oxys they confiscated this morning.”

  “And this relates to us how?”

  “The missing pills were part of the evidence the detective was bringing in to sort out. As close as we can tell they had to go missing from somewhere up here and probably during the fight.”

  “Have you been able to ask Dwight what he did with them?”

  Bell shook his head. “He’s still being evaluated and is in and out of consciousness.”

  “There was no one here but our detectives. No visitors, lawyers, or reporters. Just cops.”

  “My first thought was some attorney had grabbed them while he was up here talking to a client, but when I checked all the rosters I saw no one had been up to the squad bay this morning.”

  “So you really think one of the detectives stole seized evidence? You don’t think it’s more likely they just miscounted?”

  “That�
�s what we’ve been trying to figure out and it’s going to take a little more time. But I needed to give you a heads-up either way.”

  “I appreciate that and I’ll try to show my appreciation later. But for now what’s our next move?”

  Bell pulled his collar like he needed more air and said, “We’re gonna keep our inquiry strictly low-profile. We don’t want to screw up any cases, especially a murder investigation. The sheriff is conscious of any political fallout.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I have a hell of a lot of work to do.”

  FIFTEEN

  Patty knew she was expected to run the show during this interview. Even though Stallings was a veteran, with commendations and an obsessive interest in all the cases they worked, he knew when to step aside and let her handle things. Despite being a parent, Stallings recognized she’d be better at dealing with a teenage girl.

  Unlike the other girls they’d interviewed during the day, Patty sensed this girl, Tonya Hazell, was frightened. She wasn’t sure if it was the intimidation factor of having to speak to detectives or something else, but there was no bravado or swagger in this girl.

  Tonya, dressed in the school uniform, was small and delicate with intelligent green eyes and shoulder-length blond hair. She had given up looking at Stallings at all and now focused her attention on Patty. She answered the first several questions with mumbled yeses or nos as she appeared to be assessing Patty’s reliability.

  Tonya said, “Yes, Leah told me she was going to run away. We talked about it for more than two weeks before she really did.”

  Patty stole a quick glance at Stallings. “Do you know where she is?”