James Andrus: The Perfect Prey

Stallings looked across at Ronald Bell as he watched the interview too. “You think if one of us gave him a heart-to-heart as cops, he might see the error of his ways?”

“Can’t be you, because you let that dumb-ass goad you into punching him. So no matter what happens, I can’t officially let you into the interview room. It would only bolster his argument that we’re all out to get him, and you’re behind the entire conspiracy. Besides I don’t think we’ve reached the point where we need to beat a confession out of him.”

Stallings was about to respond when he heard Lauer say, “Am I under arrest?”

Every cop knew that question could be the end of the interview right there. It was a delicate time that had to be handled carefully. The defendant could walk out of an interview or invoke his right to an attorney; then any chance they had of getting a confession would end abruptly.

Yvonne Zuni didn’t answer. Sometimes that was the right move.

Lauer said again, “Am I under arrest? Or am I free to go? Please answer the question right now.”

Yvonne Zuni mumbled, “You’re not under arrest.”

Without another word Gary Lauer stood, turned, and banged the door open, marching out of the room.

Stallings didn’t hesitate or ask permission. He darted out of the observation room and walked quickly to catch up to Lauer before he reached the elevator at the end of the hallway. He placed a hand on Lauer’s shoulder and turned him. He didn’t waste time on a greeting or any other preamble. Stallings said, “There was a time when you swore to protect people. It had to mean something to you. It means something to all of us. For some reason now you’re a danger to people. I don’t know what went screwy in your brain, but you lost perspective. If nothing else, think about the girl who lost her life because of you today. You may not have killed her. But she’s dead and you’re sure as shit the reason. You need to come clean or find a way to stop yourself somehow before you hurt anyone else.”

The smirk never left Lauer’s face as he said, “You give that same kind of pep talk to your daughter before she split?” He waited, inviting Stallings to punch him.

Stallings had to swallow hard, take a deep breath, and let this asshole walk away from him.

Patty Levine, not sure what to do with her prisoner or whatever she was supposed to call Jason Ferrell, checked out of the room, and now he sat in the front seat of her county car. She’d taken him to McDonald’s, where he wolfed down two Big Macs. The only place she was certain she shouldn’t take him was the PMB. At least not if the narcotics unit might use him as a snitch.

Sometime before Tony Mazzetti had dropped by, Jason Ferrell had recalled that he stored a lot of information on his laptop computer. The problem with a smart guy who did a lot of drugs was he couldn’t recall where he’d left the computer. They’d made a run by his apartment building and couldn’t find any hint of the computer. Then, against Patty’s better judgment, he checked Marie Brison’s house and again had come up empty. But Patty noted how much more lucid Miss Brison seemed than her boyfriend nowadays. Maybe his idea of decreasing dosage had helped her clear her head and get off drugs. Tony Mazzetti had described how spacey the beautiful black woman was the first night he’d met her.

But now Patty felt like a mother running errands with their child. He did pretty much whatever she said, asked a lot of stupid questions, and contributed almost nothing to her efforts to find his computer.

“You have to buy gas for this car?” asked Jason.

She shook her head.

“Have you ever had to shoot anyone?”

“No, I never had to, but I did anyway.” Patty smiled at the confused and worried expression on Jason’s face. Maybe if she gave him something to think about he’d shut up for a few minutes. But Patty thought of a question for the chemical engineer. “What does the J2A marking on your Ecstasy mean?”

He looked out the window and mumbled, “Nothing, just something I put on the tabs.”

“Come on, it has to mean something. I can tell by your reaction.”

“It means Jason to Alyssa.”

“Who’s Alyssa?”

“An old girlfriend I had in college. I thought she’d come down here to Florida when I got my first decent job, but she decided the life of schoolteacher in suburban Chicago was too exciting to leave. And when I told her I would stay, she clarified it was the life of a single schoolteacher that she wanted to live.”

“If she knew how romantic you were, using the markings on your Ecstasy tabs, maybe she’d change her mind.” Patty didn’t know what else to say, and she didn’t mean it as a joke, although she knew when she told Mazzetti about it later he’d laugh his head off.

“It’s not really romantic. It just means that the pills fuck with your head almost as much as she did. When I figured out I could help Marie with the tabs it took on another meaning. Sort of like ‘screw you, Alyssa. I got a beautiful new girlfriend.’ ”

Patty nodded, knowing he sounded like every scorned boyfriend she’d ever met. As she was thinking about where they could land for the next few hours until someone told her what they wanted to do with Jason, she started to feel the effects of no sleep and the constant activity of the last two days. She sighed.

Jason said, “You’ve got to be tired.”

“I didn’t realize how tired until now.”

“I think I have the ingredients to make you some decent speed at my apartment. You want to swing by and see what I can do?”

“That’s sweet, Jason. But I think I can last until I can grab a nap.” The sad thing was she’d been thinking some good amphetamine would perk her right up. She hadn’t realized the frame of mind she was in about prescription drugs until the last few days. Now she’d gone more than thirty-six hours without pain pills or sleeping pills and almost three hours since she’d taken a Xanax. It wasn’t perfect, but at least she was making progress.

Then Jason snapped his fingers and said, “I think I know where the computer is.”

“Where?”

“The company owned the laptop, so I probably took it by there and left it.”

“You mean the company in the Maxwell House building?”

Jason Ferrell nodded his head.

Patty thought back to how she and Stallings had tricked the manager the last time they were there, thinking they’d never see the man again.

Patty swallowed hard and said, “Uh oh.”

Tony Mazzetti and Christina Hogrebe sat in the front room of the Residence Inn suite where the shooting victim’s family had been held as a precaution. Now things were looking less obvious, and Mazzetti had focused his attention on the seventeen-year-old daughter of the woman he’d moved from the house. At the moment, the mother and the younger daughter were at a meeting with county social workers. The social workers were not allowed to discuss their case with the police, but Mazzetti figured the woman had to explain why none of her children had ever attended a public school and why the only one under sixteen still wasn’t in school. She might be smart enough to claim she had homeschooled them, but he doubted it.

Both he and Christina had agreed they didn’t want to make this confrontational unless they had to. So now he sat back while Christina led the girl through a series of questions.

Christina brushed her blond hair from her face, leaned toward the scrawny girl, and said, “Tosha, now you’re saying you did see a carload of white men shoot your brother and his friends?”

The girl had a sleepy quality to her voice. “I seen on the news the police was looking for white boys and it make me think, and I remembered.”