James Andrus: The Perfect Prey

As the car squealed to a stop at the edge of the parking lot, Stallings slammed the steering wheel. “Shit.” He could see the truck speeding away. He had no reason to jump on the radio and call out a pursuit. He just wanted to talk to the men.

He looked over at Patty. “What are you grinning about?”

“I got the tag.”

Less than thirty minutes after the rednecks had given them the slip, Patty Levine and John Stallings had crossed the wasteland between J-Ville and the beach towns. Patty liked to see how well her tough, street-smart partner could talk to young people. In his years assigned to missing persons, he had developed a reputation for being able to deal with Jacksonville’s large homeless population. One of the reasons, Patty could clearly tell, was because he treated everyone with respect until they didn’t deserve respect. He also had a good rapport with younger people.

Now he sat on a couch next to Susan Meyers in the lobby of a little family-run motel off the ocean. The girl was worried about her missing friend and scared, but Stallings had a way of reassuring people without being condescending or fake.

He had established that none of the girls traveling with Allison Marsh, whom everyone called Allie, had seen whom she left with the night before. They had all gone to a popular dance club called the Wildside, which was known as being easy on underage drinkers, especially pretty girls. It was so easy that the bar also attracted an unsavory older male clientele as well.

Susan was round and dowdy in the bright lights of the motel. She’d been crying and now was down to just a sniffle.

“The way Allie’s mom yelled at me for allowing her to leave without us just got to me. She’s very strong.”

Stallings said, “It’s not your fault-we just need to find her. Now tell me anything else I might’ve forgotten to ask you. You’re sure you didn’t see her with a specific guy?”

Susan shook her head and blew her nose into a wadded-up Kleenex. “She danced with a bunch of guys. I think she wanted to hook up with one, but I don’t know who he was.” She blew her nose again. “Her mom started calling about one in the morning and said she couldn’t get ahold of Allie. When I told her I was already at the motel she freaked. I guess that’s when she called you guys.”

“Did Allie meet anyone this week she talked about?”

Susan hesitated, and Patty saw that she was hiding something. Patty cut in. “C’mon, you’re not in trouble. Did Allie meet someone?”

“Well, she did meet a guy who gave her this little pill.”

“What kind of pill?”

“A speckled one. She kept saying he was a nice guy even if he was a little older than us. I never saw him.”

“Did she take the pill?”

Susan waited, looked at both detectives, and said, “We both did. We split it.”

“What happened?”

“It made me sort of breezy. I just coasted through the afternoon.” She snapped her fingers. “And thirsty too.”

At the same time both Stallings and Patty said, “Ecstasy.”

Stallings had used his contacts at one of the local cell phone companies to get the records for Allie Marsh’s phone. There’d been no calls made since 8:20 P.M. the night before when she called Susan’s phone. Susan had confirmed that she called just after they entered the Wildside because they’d gotten separated. The lack of activity made it difficult to see if there was a pattern of calls going through cell towers in different areas.

Now, as he sat in his Impala and Patty grabbed a sandwich, he tried to think of whom he could harass about Ecstasy and maybe see if Allie fell in with one of the local dealers or if a dealer knew someone passing some X around.

Patty hopped back into the car and offered him half her tuna sandwich. He waved her off as he stared at the sheet of phone records.

Patty shook her head. “It would’ve taken most of us three days to get records like that.”

“It was an emergency. This girl still hasn’t shown up, and the idea that she had a source of X makes me nervous.”

“What about the rednecks in the truck from this morning?”

“You said it was registered to someone in Sanderson.”

“Leonard Walsh.”

“I’d like to talk to him about Jason Ferrell, but this is more urgent.”

“When’s the last time anyone tried to call Allie?”

He shrugged, looked at the number on the top of the page, and dialed. What did he have to lose? The phone rang once, twice, a third time; then, to his surprise someone answered.

“Hello.” It was a man’s gravelly voice.

Stallings hesitated a moment and said, “Is Allie close by?”

“No. No one here but me.” Then the line went dead.

Stallings turned to Patty and said, “This ain’t good.”

John Stallings felt his face flush red as he approached Yvonne the Terrible in the detective bureau. They’d been called back to the SO just after the strange man had answered Allie Marsh’s phone and he had the cell company scrambling to see which cell tower it pinged off of. It was a long shot, but it was a lead. A lead he couldn’t follow up if he was wasting time in the office.

Even Patty noticed his anger and said, “Take a minute to calm down, John.”

“We don’t have a minute now. This went from a missing party girl to a suspicious disappearance in a matter of minutes. We need to get out there and look for her.”

As they approached the sergeant’s office, which had been vacant for many months, Yvonne Zuni stepped out and turned casually toward them. She smiled and nodded.

Stallings fought the urge to yell. He respected the chain of command even when command staff was wrong. He said evenly, “We have a hot lead. Do you really need us here right now?”

Sergeant Zuni matched his even tone. “I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t.”

“Then what’s the emergency?”

“I didn’t say it was an emergency. I just said come back to the office. If you’re gonna be outraged know why you’re outraged.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you should consider who you’re barking at and if it will do any good.”

Stallings realized she had just told him to shut up in a decent, boss kind of way.

Then the sergeant said, “I want you two to meet someone.” She turned and started walking toward the conference room, pulling Patty and Stallings along silently.

In the room, at the far end of the long table, sat a pretty blond woman who appeared to be in her late thirties. She sat straight with a manner that, coupled with her clothes, suggested she had money. The woman looked up at them with bright blue eyes that seemed familiar to him.

The sergeant said, “Detectives Stallings and Levine, this is Diane Marsh, Allison’s mom.”

Now Stallings felt like an ass.

Daytime had never been his best time to function. He was a creature of the night. But the thrill of his little adventure with Allie Marsh had kept him from sleeping, and now he hustled around the small cottage he rented, cleaning out any dust and wiping down the kitchen with Clorox. His refrigerator was nearly bare, not because he hadn’t been shopping but because he hated garbage. Most things he ate were self-contained and easy to wrap up and dispose of in his kitchen can with two heavy-duty plastic bags. He took his bags to his landlord’s large outdoor cans because he hated to be around any kind of decomposing garbage. There were no remnants of meat or other food on his kitchen counters and few odors in the small house other than cleaners.

That was why he took his prey anywhere but in his own lair. Not only did it keep him safe from any possible suspicion, if there ever was any, but it kept potentially disgusting remnants away from his house.