James Andrus: The Perfect Prey

“Huh?”

“You disappeared, you idiot, and your mom hasn’t heard from you in three weeks.” Looking at the scared, meek man, Stallings lost a lot of his anger. He decided it might not be a bad idea to listen to him before jumping to any conclusions.

Understanding slowly dawned on the young chemical engineer. “You mean the only reason you were looking for me was my mom was worried?”

From across a room, Mazzetti said, “I got a few questions about the shooting across the street.”

Stallings added, “And I have a few questions about the Ecstasy you made and who you sold it to.”

“So I’m not really in trouble?”

Mazzetti stomped across the room shouting as he came closer. “Oh no, you’re in trouble, dipshit. You can’t steal a police car and drive around Jacksonville without being in trouble. In fact, you ran from me twice.” Mazzetti balled a fist when he was right next to him. “I oughta kick your ass.”

Stallings snapped his finger to get the young man’s attention. “There’s only one way to keep this madman from killing you. You have to help us out with a few things.”

Ferrell glanced around the room and said, “When did my mom call?”

Stallings thought about it and said, “Two weeks ago last Monday.”

“What day is it now?”

“Thursday.”

“Is it still February?” Ferrell’s red eyes scanned the room again, and the shakes that had been confined to his hand spread through his whole body. “I kinda lost track of time. But I’ll help out any way you want. Just tell my mom I’m okay.”

Her name was Sharee, and her light brown hair flowed behind her as the wind whipped in from the missing window. She had not said one word about the fat guy they’d left at the beach.

“You got any weed?” she asked after a few minutes of driving west.

“Bad for you. You look too fit to smoke grass.”

“Got anything?”

He thought about his final X tab leaving with Ann. He shook his head. “Sorry, I’m dry.”

“Somehow you seemed like a guy who would have something. You were pretty cool back there. You weren’t really robbed, were you?”

He smiled and shook his head.

“A girl?”

He nodded.

“Your girlfriend?”

“Not even close.”

She reached across and rubbed his shoulder, then let her hand drift down his body until it rested in his lap. After a few seconds of massaging, she looked at him with those big, dark eyes and said, “What’s a matter? You a fag?”

He shook his head. “You’re not my type.”

He dropped her at her father’s house a few miles later.

It had taken a few minutes to calm Tony Mazzetti down and keep him from physically assaulting the bewildered Jason Ferrell. But now John Stallings had the young chemical engineer in the kitchen alone. He didn’t seem like a jerk or uncooperative in any way; he was just sort of out of it. He had moments when he was lucid, but more often than not he stared off in space and mumbled long, incoherent sentences.

Stallings scooted a chair directly in front of him and sat down so he could look at the young man eye to eye. He noticed Patty Levine slip in from the other room and lean against the kitchen counter. A standard practice the partners used. When one person interviewed a subject, the other hung back and took notes. That allowed the interviewer to focus on the subtle nonverbal cues given off by a witness or suspect.

Stallings said, “We know about Leonard Walsh and the meth recipe you were making for him.”

“Who’s Leonard Walsh?”

“You don’t know a guy with a meth lab over in Baker County?”

Jason’s eyes focused for a moment as he looked at Stallings and said, “You mean the guy by the national forest? Redneck with all the trailers?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He says you were going to use your abilities as a chemical engineer to create a new meth recipe. He said you tried to get him to sell Ecstasy instead. He gave us the Ecstasy tabs you gave him.”

Jason was nodding slowly in agreement with everything Stallings said. “I really hadn’t started on his meth recipe. I don’t think meth is good for all of the rednecks west of Jacksonville. X is much safer.”

“Tell me about the X. Who did you sell it to?” Stallings couldn’t control his impatience to know which of the suspects was a client of the chemical engineer.

“I sold to a whole bunch of people. Mostly the people I met in bars. It’s not like I handed it out like candy. I sold bigger lots so I only had to deal with twenty people or so. Nothing serious, I liked the extra income.”

“You didn’t make enough from your regular job?”

“I had a lot of expenses.”

“Like what?”

Jason just looked around at the kitchen.

Stallings said, “You finance Miss Brison’s life here, don’t you?”

“Everything was for her. I started making the X as a way to get her off heroin. Then she got hooked on the X. So I had to start making special batches for her that were less and less potent. Now I’ve got her almost back to reality.”

From the other side of the kitchen, Patty said, “That explains why the Ecstasy tab Tony sent to the lab was so much weaker than the others.”

Jason twisted in his seat, nodding. “Exactly. She’s hardly even noticed, and soon she’ll be able to deal with the world drug-free.”

The young chemical engineer had answered a lot of questions in Stallings’s mind, but he still had the most important one yet to ask. “Did you ever sell any Ecstasy to a guy named Chad Palmer or Gary Lauer?” Stallings truly didn’t know if he wanted Palmer to be the man or Lauer.

Jason scratched his head, concentrating hard on the question. He looked back at Stallings and said, “Dude, I don’t keep track of names. I’m a strictly first-name-and-short-description kind of guy. Like Joe, the truck driver, or Tom, the garbageman.”

“Then it would be Chad, the pharmaceutical rep, or Gary, the cop.”

Jason perked up and said, “A cop? I sold to an undercover cop?”

“Don’t worry about that. All I need is information. Do either of those guys sound familiar? They’re both about your age, athletic, dark hair.”

Slowly Jason shook his head. “I think a pharmaceutical rep would have access to a lot better shit than my Ecstasy. And I’d know if I was dealing with a cop. I’m pretty smart that way.”

Stallings looked over at Patty, knowing they’d hit another dead end in the case. Now the question was what to do with the spacey adult runaway.

It was dawn, and Patty Levine felt herself dozing in a comfortable chair in the corner of the hotel room where they’d stashed Jason Ferrell for the night. It was Sergeant Zuni’s idea to keep track of the wily chemical engineer without booking him in case narcotics could use him as a snitch. It was her background in narcotics that gave her the idea, and it seemed reasonable last night. Patty had volunteered to take the first shift of watching him because she knew she wouldn’t sleep much anyway.

Listening to the lovesick chemical engineer talk about how he changed his whole life to help Marie Brison, including making his own Ecstasy with decreasing potency, had brought Patty’s own drug use into the light. She always had some excuse to keep using her regular regimen of Xanax, painkillers, and Ambien. For several years she’d used the excuse of being a female in a male-dominated profession as a way to keep taking the anxiety drug. But she knew she was more capable than most cops and more physical than most cops. Now she had to analyze why she should keep taking the Xanax.

The Ambien was a more obvious issue. She couldn’t sleep at night. The fact that she stayed awake the entire night while Jason Ferrell snored on the bed across the room showed that her insomnia was still going strong. Sure, she nodded off, but it was only for a few minutes.