The Perfect Scream (17 page)

P
atty was supposed to meet Ken, but she had called and canceled. After working so closely with Tony, even in the presence of his girlfriend, Lisa, she found herself thinking about her former boyfriend and was too distracted to listen to Ken babble about some reality TV show or how MDs thought they were so great. She wondered why he hadn’t become a general practitioner if he was so jealous of anyone with a medical degree. He had to tell everyone he met how podiatrists attended medical school and were “real” doctors. But his patients still called him “Doctor Ken.” That ate at him every day.

Instead of dinner with a petty, frustrated podiatrist, Patty found herself approaching the entrance to the Tau Upsilon fraternity clubhouse at the apartment complex that doubled as fraternity row. Earlier, she had called the house at UF and found out a few more details about the big Halloween party thrown every year in the Jacksonville chapter. The description sounded heavenly for college frat boys and was every parent’s nightmare.

She saw Bobby Hollis notice her from the lounger outside the front door. He sprang to his feet and turned toward the door, apparently to warn the brothers inside.

Patty simply called out in a very loud, clear voice, “Don’t.”

He responded like a dutiful dog and froze in place. Then he straightened and pulled his shirt, flicking potato chip crumbs onto the ground. He turned slowly and said, “Hello, Detective, nice to see you again.”

“Cut the shit. I don’t have time for it.”

The door to the fraternity house burst open and a young man stumbled out. She immediately recognized him as the one she had thumped out at the beach. He staggered to a stop, looked into her face, and let a goofy grin spread.

He ran his hand across his wild hair and said, “Well, well, what do we have here?”

Patty didn’t change her expression when she said, “You don’t have much of a memory.”

The kid said, “I never needed one until I saw someone as beautiful as you.”

Patty rolled her eyes but acknowledged, at least to herself, she liked the compliment and the kid was smooth.

From behind the drunken moron, Bobby Hollis said, “You remember Detective Levine, don’t you?”

The kid was shit-faced, but he remembered, and the color left his face. He backed away, then turned to one side and appeared ready to sprint if he had to.

This time Patty said, “Don’t. Sit.”

The kid froze, then sat on the lounger next to the front door.

Patty shoved Bobby Hollis next to the frightened fraternity brother. She looked at the drunken brother and said, “Just out of curiosity, what does a clueless dope like you major in?”

“Pre-law.”

“Why?”

“Why else? Money. Personal injury is where it’s at, along with decent litigation. Look at the tobacco settlement. Any lawyer involved is rich.”

Maybe the kid was right. For a drunken asshole, he made pretty good sense. She turned toward Bobby and said, “I need a few answers from you guys.”

“Like what?”

Patty leaned in closer to them to get her point across. “I want to hear all about your Halloween parties the last couple of years.”

The fraternity brothers looked at each other. Then Bobby said, “What do you want to know? It’s a lot of fun and half the damn school comes to the party.”

“That’s what I’m looking for. A list of attendees the last two years.”

Bobby’s eyes opened wide as he said, “That’s impossible. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“I would start by sobering up and getting together with a couple of your trusted friends. I want a preliminary list first thing tomorrow morning. And if I don’t get it, next time I come back I’ll bring along Detective Stallings. Your lives will never be the same until you help us out with this. Do my good little dogs understand what I’m saying?”

Both young men nodded their heads in unison.

When Lynn worked this late it was usually for Dr. Ferrero, but tonight she was behind her desk at the Thomas Brothers supply company catching up on accounts receivable that had been held two weeks, then dumped on her desk in a big pile. She really didn’t care because it was peaceful and kept her mind off other, more troubling things.

She finished near seven o’clock and cut through the loading dock to the parking lot, where there were still a number of people scurrying around and closing out their jobs for the day. As she turned into the fleet parking lot she saw Leon wiping down one of Mr. Thomas’s Cadillacs.

She stopped and they exchanged helloes as she took a moment to look at the details of the beautiful car. She turned to the familiar sound of the golf cart Dale used to scoot around the giant complex.

He slowed until he was directly across from her and said, “Looking forward to Saturday night. We’ll have a great time.” He scowled at Leon and said, “You’re outside all day tomorrow. Wear plenty of sunscreen.” He mashed the pedal of the golf cart and hummed away at a brisk five miles an hour.

Leon looked at Lynn and said, “It’s not my business, but why would you go out with that turd?”

Lynn shrugged meekly and said, “I was kind of forced to. I swear to God there’s nothing going on between us.”

Leon gave her a long, curious look and said, “How’d you like it if Dale was unavailable for your date?”

“I wouldn’t be too upset.” As soon as she said it, she wondered what Leon might have in mind. Lynn didn’t think a simple comment like that meant anything sinister or violent, but she knew the lean, tough-looking man had his own grudge against Dale.

Leon said, “I owe it to your dad and I was going to have to do something anyway. That guy is a total dick.” He looked in every direction. “I know everyone in your family can keep a secret. Don’t worry about a thing.”

 

 

 

Stallings stood in the empty third-floor apartment that Jeanie had once rented. He knew he wouldn’t find any evidence or information; he just wanted to be in a space that Jeanie had occupied within the last few years. The whole idea made him shaky and raised an entirely new set of questions in his mind about his daughter’s disappearance.

Why had she run away? If she was so close, why hadn’t she called? What had gone so terribly wrong? Did she hate him? Had it all sprung from his own relationship with his father?

Stallings’s sister, Helen, had been very clear that she’d left because of their father. She was less clear about was what had happened to her after she’d left. That made Stallings wonder what other issues Jeanie might have if, by God’s grace, he did find her and bring her home. He had no illusions. This was not the tidy world of the TV hour-long drama. He had to consider the effect on Charlie and Lauren as well as Jeanie’s well-being.

So the question came up again, why had she left? It was almost easier to believe she had been taken against her will. At least then there was an explanation. Although the rate of kidnappings in the United States was incredibly small, it still happened. Most detectives went their whole careers without seeing a kidnapping. At least one that wasn’t related to the drug trade.

Stallings had developed a certain confidence as a police officer that had served him well the past sixteen years. It could be considered the sixth sense cops are expected to have. A confidence to look at someone and know they are feeding you a line of bullshit. The confidence to know you’ll achieve a goal or solve a case. It was the basic personality trait that defined a good cop.

But as a father, he had constantly compared himself to others. One of the reasons was that he never had a decent role model himself. He adopted other fathers as role models. He appreciated dads who not only spent time with their kids but
did
stuff with them too. Played sports instead of watching the kids run around the park. Explained things instead of just showing kids what things looked like. It often made him wonder what he’d be like today if his father had done those kinds of things.

He had a lot of questions about his life and
what if
scenarios. But there was one question that was more immediate and could lead to other answers: Where was Zach Halston?

J
ohn Stallings had spent the morning at his desk looking through every database he could think of for a reference to someone named Gator. He also wondered what exactly Zach Halston had done to piss Jeanie off.

He had found so many references to so many different Gators that Stallings knew there was only one place he could go to get any real answers. It was one of the few places in the PMB that most cops avoided. But he had made up his mind and started the trek up the stairs to the third floor where the rubber-gun squad was located. Some of the patrolman didn’t even realize there was a unit called Intelligence in the sheriff’s office. Years ago the unit had been a dumping ground for cops who had been unable to make a case or work in the streets. But now, with the rising public concern of terrorism and the mushrooming groups of extremists, the detectives assigned to the intelligence unit, or rubber-gun squad, tended to be among the smartest in the department.

Stallings saw Lonnie Freed sitting at the rear of the squad bay working on a computer. He cut through the empty office and plopped into the chair next to Lonnie’s desk, saying, “What’s going on?”

The thirty-five-year-old detective leaned back and pulled off his heavy glasses pinching his nose with his fingers, and said, “Stall, you have no idea how close to the apocalypse we really are.”

Stallings wanted to rush past this and simply said, “If I gave you a name, could you come up with everything you might have in your files about him?”

“Sure, what’s his name?”

“I only have his street name, Gator.”

Lonnie laughed out loud and said, “Do you have any idea how many Gators we have listed in reports and intelligence files? Between the goddamn Florida Gators, the swamp people who still love alligators, the rednecks who think it’s a funny name, and the felons who don’t ever want to use their real names, there must be a hundred and fifty Gators listed in different reports.”

Stallings leaned in close and slipped him a sheet of paper that had the description the older couple had given him and said, “I don’t care how many you find, I need to talk to one who looks like this.”

 

 

 

Sparky Taylor had left his house at six in the morning and managed to miss the seemingly unending rush hour of Atlanta when he rolled in just before eleven. Most of the detectives would’ve spent the night in Atlanta, but they didn’t have two boys like him. He missed every night he had spent away from them and didn’t care if he had to work twenty hours just so he could play a quick game in the evening, then tuck them into bed. He’d never realized how rewarding fatherhood could be. It was his solemn duty to produce two intelligent, inquisitive boys who would contribute to society, just like his father had done.

Even though Sparky had gone to college in Atlanta, the sprawling city held no particular place in his heart. It was too impersonal and had the well-earned reputation of being a dangerous city. But it wasn’t until this moment that he had ever thought Atlanta had anything but a good, professional police department. He didn’t try to hide his deep disappointment in the detective who had written off the death of the Gainesville fraternity brother as an accident without doing the follow-up that Sparky felt was essential to all police work.

He looked at the table and said, “This was everything you have in evidence?”

The lanky detective who had been reluctantly helping him looked at the random clothing, singed pillowcase, and evidence receipt for two separate one-kilo bricks of marijuana and said, “The theory is he was just a stoner who dozed off in bed smoking a doobie.”

“It looks like there was more than one point of ignition. How could a guy who just dozed off start a fire in two different places in this apartment?”

“That gave us some problems too. But in the end he was just a kid from Florida who probably shouldn’t have been dealing pot in Atlanta.”

Sparky browsed through the photographs of the damaged apartment.

The obviously embarrassed Atlanta detective said, “They’ve tried to fix up the apartment, but there may be a few of the kid’s things left over there.”

“Can we go over and take a look?”

“
We
are slammed with two fresh homicides but
you
can go over and look all you want.”

 

 

 

Lynn noticed Leon walking toward her near the main office of Thomas Brothers Supply. He gave her a smile and a wink and said, “Something tells me you’re gonna be free Saturday night.” He kept walking.

She was intrigued by the older man’s contention that something might happen to Dale. Frankly, she didn’t care what happened to him. She didn’t know if her conscience had broken down since she had started on her mission or if the big loading dock manager had just pushed her to the breaking point. As long as Leon handled the issue for her, she could concentrate on other things.

She paused near her office and watched Leon continue to walk out into the lot. Dale whizzed past him in his golf cart. Leon turned and shot the big man a bird behind his back.

Lynn had a feeling Leon wasn’t acting solely on her behalf.

 

 

 

The apartment manager hadn’t even checked Sparky’s badge, just assumed he was an Atlanta cop. He tossed him the keys to apartment 315 and told him to knock himself out because they had not been able to clean it up properly in the nineteen months since the fire had occurred.

Sparky wondered what he meant by that. Until he walked into the apartment with new drywall and was still struck by the horrible, burnt stench. The apartment itself had been cleaned out except for some boxes and trash in the bedroom where the fire had occurred. There were no black smoke marks on the wall or ceiling, but it was clear to him this was the room where it had happened.

One of the boxes contained old clothing and textbooks on physics. There was absolutely nothing of value. Two other boxes had evidence of burn marks on them and contained old shoes and a singed leather coat.

Behind all of these boxes was a much smaller box, which had burned at the top and on one side. It looked like it could have been one of the origins of the flames. He remembered from the crime scene photographs very similar boxes like this on the floor near the bed. The fire had not been a raging inferno, more of a smoldering smoke event with a few open flames.

Sparky was about to leave the apartment when he kneeled down to inspect the small box more closely. The inside was filled with twisted-up newspaper. Exactly the way he would twist newspaper to start a fire more efficiently. He shook his head at the Atlanta cops’ attitude toward the deadly fire and reached into the box to pick up one of the twisted newspaper pages.

He opened up the newspaper and realized this was a link Tony Mazzetti might not want to hear about. The newspaper filling the box was the
Jacksonville Times-Union
.