James Andrus: The Perfect Prey

The final leg of her pharmaceutical trinity was the various painkillers she’d been prescribed for numerous injuries and strains she had received while involved in competitive gymnastics. Now she wasn’t sure the scholarship to the University of Florida had been worth the years of discomfort. This seemed to be the easiest habit to kick of the three kinds of drugs she took. Today would be her test. She would tough out any pain she felt. It didn’t matter if her hip throbbed like a bass speaker at a rap concert or her back radiated pain all day. She would not pop a Vicodin or Percocet no matter how badly the pain affected her.

Her experience in police work taught her not to try to kick all three drugs at once. She’d focus on the pain pills first. Then deal with her anxiety and insomnia as her life started to adjust.

As close as Patty was to John Stallings and as serious as she was getting about Tony Mazzetti, she’d never told either of them anything about her drug use. She was pretty sure neither of them had any idea.

Jason stirred and sat up quickly in the bed. He was still in the clothes he’d been wearing when they found him. He stared at Patty for a moment, shook his head, and blinked his eyes. “Where am I, jail?”

Patty had to smile. “Do you remember anything about last night?”

“I know you’re a cop named Patty, even if you don’t look like it. And you work with a scary guy named Stallings. I may do X at night, but it clears out pretty quick.”

“You ever wonder if you’re wasting your talent as a chemical engineer?”

“You mean by finding ways of getting rid of the Maxwell House waste products? Because I think I helped at least one person by making the Ecstasy.”

Patty shook her head. “We’ve got two dead girls with Ecstasy in their systems. One of them overdosed on it, and her heart exploded in her chest.”

The color drained out of Jason’s face. He clutched his stomach and scooted to the edge of the bed, looking over at Patty in the chair. “You think it was my Ecstasy that killed her? I never meant for anything like that to happen. That’s why I was making such weak tablets.” He paused, gathered his thoughts, and took several deep breaths. “What can I do to help? I have the recipe on my computer.”

“I don’t know what good the recipe will do. What we really needed was who you sold it to. And not just first names and job descriptions. Besides, you could only remember three or four clients last night.”

“But I have a full list on my computer.”

That caught Patty’s attention. “You really are more lucid this morning. Where’s your computer?”

“I don’t have any idea.”

The phone startled John Stallings first thing in the morning. He’d already tossed and turned most of the night, worried about Patty at the hotel room with Jason Ferrell. Not that he didn’t think his partner could handle herself-she was tougher than any cop he knew. He just hated when someone got stuck on a shitty detail.

He fumbled with his cell phone as he glanced at the clock and saw that it was seven in the morning. He popped it open and mumbled, “Stallings.”

Yvonne Zuni said, “John, there’s a possible break in the case. Meet me down at the PMB as quick as you can. Come up to the third floor.”

Stallings sat up in bed trying to clear his mind. “The third floor? Where on the third floor?”

“Internal Affairs. Gary Lauer is being questioned there right now, and we might have an opportunity to break him on the Allie Marsh case.”

“What’s he at IA for?”

“Apparently he got drunk last night, said it was all the pressure he was under, then got into a big fight with his girlfriend. The neighbors called the cops, but he’d already left her apartment.” There was silence on the line for a moment. Sergeant Zuni added, “A neighbor found the girlfriend this morning with her wrists slashed. She’s at the medical examiner’s now.”

“You think Gary Lauer tried to hide her death as a suicide?”

“Whether he did or didn’t, this might be the time to question him. Because with the two dead spring break girls someone could’ve tried to hide a murder behind a suicide and an overdose.”

Instantly Stallings thought of the string of girls from Daytona and Panama City.

Tony Mazzetti knocked on the hotel room door three times, balancing Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and a mixed dozen donuts in one hand. He was a little earlier than his scheduled eight o’clock arrival, but he didn’t know how well Patty was doing. On the few occasions he spent the whole night at her house she either tossed and turned or slept like a log. No one considered Jason Ferrell any kind of a threat, and Patty really knew how to take care of herself, so that wasn’t a concern. They’d already broken all kinds of official rules by holding the chemical engineer in a hotel overnight, but if he really was going to be of any use as a drug informant it’d be hard to keep it quiet that he’d spent the night in jail. This was an old trick, not officially sanctioned by the sheriff’s office or especially the state attorney’s office, but it was used on occasion not only to give someone a break but to take a shot at the big case cops always wanted to make. The guy had been too screwed up on God knows what for Mazzetti to get any straight answers out of him. Today he planned to ask him about his own case, the triple shooting near Market Street.

Patty had a bright smile on her face when she opened the door, and Mazzetti was surprised to see Jason Ferrell sitting at the cheap table in the corner of the hotel room. His eyes seemed clearer this morning, but he still had the disheveled appearance of an absent-minded professor or street person.

He resisted giving Patty a kiss on the cheek as he entered the hotel room but did make a show out of presenting her with the donuts and coffee. She accepted them with a nod that sent her pretty hair across her face.

Mazzetti said, “Anything new with your car thief here?”

Jason said, “I’m sorry I took your car. I guess I panicked.” He grabbed two donuts from the box and devoured one in a single bite. “When can I get back to see Marie? She doesn’t do well on her own.”

Mazzetti shook his head as he plopped in the chair across the table from Jason. “We’ve been cutting you a break so you could get a decent night’s sleep here, but you’re not free to go yet.”

“Why?” He looked at Patty with big puppy-dog eyes.

Mazzetti kept talking. “You got until five o’clock today to come up with something good. Someone had better go to jail based on information you provide or at five o’clock you get booked for making your Ecstasy.”

“But I thought you guys liked me. Patty and I bonded.”

“You’re not our fucking mascot. Make a case, or you’ll have a new permanent address.”

“I already told you guys I have the list of my clients on my laptop.”

Mazzetti opened his notepad he carried everywhere with him. “I’m much more interested in a bigger crime. One that happened very close to your love nest.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The triple shooting right across the street. You were there at Marie Brison’s house. I know because that was the first night you ran from me. You had to have seen something.”

“You mean that was real?”

Now he had Mazzetti’s attention. “You did see something. I knew it.”

“It was during a time when the X was still pretty strong, and I might’ve been using a homemade sleeping pill as well. I couldn’t tell you what day it was, and I thought I had dreamed it, but I did see someone shooting up the house across the street.” He slapped his forehead and added, “That’s why all the police were there afterward. Of course it had to be real.”