James Andrus: The Perfect Prey

He found himself smiling at the thought of Allie’s tight body under his, the thick, sticky film of perspiration between them. Those screams of hers right near the end echoed in his ears and gave him a feeling of euphoria. This was his idea of a vacation. Just dreaming about his past exploits.

He knew he’d have to get back on the prowl tonight to keep the feeling going.

Twenty minutes into the interview of Diane Marsh, Stallings started to realize how this case had gotten spun up so quickly. Diane Marsh was a strong woman with a husband who had a lot of cash from a small fishing-boat-manufacturing business in Laurel, Mississippi. Mrs. Marsh, who had asked to be called Diane, said that they’d never worried about their children in their quiet hometown and that this was Allie’s first trip to a big city.

Stallings almost snickered at the idea of Jacksonville being a big city. Although it was the biggest city in square miles in the United States, that was more of an administrative move than a growth issue. The county and city had combined governments in the sixties. But the city and its management still had a chip on its shoulder for not being a big city. Despite its slogan, “Bold new city of the south,” J-Ville was eclipsed by Atlanta a few hours northwest and Miami due south. Aside from the stray Super Bowl or decent college game, no one took much notice of the bold new city of the south.

Overall, Diane Marsh offered little help in the case. She had not been able to reach Allie for a couple of days and panicked. When she talked to Susan and learned Allie had not come home she contacted the Mississippi attorney general, who was a personal friend, and he contacted someone in JSO command, who had apparently lit Yvonne Zuni’s ass on fire.

When Diane Marsh started to cry, Stallings reached across the table to take her hand. “I know it’s hard, but we’re doing all we can.” He’d heard the same words and they hadn’t made him feel any better three years ago.

The three years seemed like a lifetime to him. Sometimes all he could think about was how he’d wasted precious hours trying to figure out what Maria was using, where she got it, and how long it had been going on without his knowledge. In hindsight they were all useless questions. By the time he’d brought in JSO on what he thought was his own personal problem, his world and especially the house was in chaos. He was still dizzy from just how fucked up things could get so quickly. Dizzy was the only way to explain it. He physically felt as if the room were spinning and he was going to be sick. The realization that Jeanie was missing had left a hole that nothing could fill. He fended off questions from his mother and his sister and his friends that meant nothing. They weren’t contributing; they were only distracting. He had to focus. He had to do something. Anything.

Then the first cop showed up. A nice kid in uniform who gave him the fucking company line. Same bullshit he was laying down for Diane Marsh right now. God forgive him, but he didn’t have enough sense to find something new to say.

Diane said, “You can’t know what this feels like.”

“Yes, I can.”

She looked up at him, and he instantly saw the recognition shared by parents who had lost children. Diane Marsh started to weep uncontrollably.

Tony Mazzetti held Patty tight to his chest as she drifted off to sleep. He knew her routine after sex; she got up, took some kind of vitamin, brushed her teeth, and came right back to bed. Once she was out, she was out. It took him longer to fall asleep because he ran through the problems of the day and what he had to accomplish the next day. He’d done the same thing for the entire fourteen years he’d been with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. In the long years without a girlfriend, while he lay in bed alone, he’d rough out some of the history articles he liked to write. Sometimes he read. Now he liked just holding Patty’s small, perfect body as she drifted off. Even if it was early.

She expended a lot of energy. Especially in bed. He wouldn’t admit it, but he had to adjust his gym workouts around their dates because he couldn’t perform adequately at both in one day. But with their schedules and Patty’s independence, they rarely spent more than two nights a week together and sometimes they went two weeks with only a dinner or two shared. She seemed happy with this arrangement, but after years of almost no relationships he wanted more. He just didn’t know how to express that to her and not scare her away.

He worried about things he never used to care about. He wondered if his years without sex because of his massive use of muscle supplements had screwed up his technique. If he was completely honest, he’d have to admit that no woman ever really complimented his ability even before his quest to gain huge muscle mass.

The frustration of the day caused him to sigh and shift his body. A lump in his throat had not dissipated since the afternoon.

Patty reached across his chest and mumbled, “What’s wrong, Tony?”

He groaned. “Nothing.”

Patty propped herself up and looked at him in the dim light. “We’ll waive the ‘not talking about work’ rule. Now what’s wrong?”

“You shoulda heard how she talked to me today.”

“Who? The sarge?”

“Yeah, the goddamn new sergeant.”

“What did big bad, one-hundred-and-five-pound Yvonne the Terrible say to my meek, little, two-hundred-pound boyfriend?”

He could see her perfect smile even in this light. “She talked to me like a kid.”

“Tony, sometimes you act like a kid.”

“She said my clearance rates are too good and wants more care taken with each death investigation. She wants a new analysis of each of the last ten deaths.” He waited for a comment, but the silence said it all. “You think I miss things?”

More silence.

Mazzetti said, “You’re going back to the OD case. I admit I screwed up on that one. How was I supposed to know that was the Bag Man’s first victim?”

“You said it, not me.”

Mazzetti groaned. “Now the new sarge thinks the same thing. What a waste of time to go back through the cases.”

Patty’s continued silence told him she didn’t necessarily think it was a waste of time.

It was after ten, and John Stallings was still driving around the area where the cell tower for Allie Marsh’s phone last pinged, thinking of all the terrible things that could’ve happened. Meeting Diane Marsh had ratcheted up his concern, and now he found himself trapped too deep into a case again. The fact that he hadn’t visited the kids today was a sign of the obsession he developed on certain cases.

It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out what drew him to these cases. He always hoped that some detective in some city might piece together what had happened to his own daughter after she disappeared. By working these kinds of cases hard he was somehow helping and nurturing that hope. The hollow spot inside him had never healed. The thought of Diane Marsh suffering the same pain pushed him to keep thinking up scenarios of how the phone was taken from Allie.

On one hand he liked when he was busy, but it was only a temporary fix to his restlessness and hurt him in other areas, like family. But he knew himself well and resolved to go with it for now.

Stallings cruised east on the Arlington Expressway near a residential area that also held some apartments and homeless people; then he pulled his Impala into a nearby gas station and got out on foot. He knew everyone would make him for a cop, but that’s how he had gotten by on this job: honestly. Sometimes that meant he had beaten someone or at least scared them, but no one seemed to resent him for any of his actions. He was occasionally reminded of that when the lieutenant asked him to do her a special favor and use his “own methods” to find out something. She knew he could be rough, but that he always said or did something that smoothed it over afterward. He’d never had an official complaint filed against him. At least not for violence.