James Andrus: The Perfect Prey

Patty crossed the cramped room and settled into the hard, wooden, straight-back chair next to Stallings’s desk.

He looked up from some notes but didn’t say anything. Typical.

“What’re you working on?”

“Jason Ferrell. We’re gonna find that guy today.”

“You make him sound like a fugitive. He’s not even wanted.”

“Except by his mother.”

“He’s thirty years old.”

“Tell that to a parent missing her child.” He sighed. “She called me first thing this morning, anxious for any news. I told her we’d do everything we could to find him.” He looked around the room. “There’s nothing else cooking. I’ve screwed up too many promises lately to let down this lady.”

Patty smiled at her partner. The guy didn’t have a fault as far as she was concerned. “I’m with you. What’s the game plan?”

“If the landlord says other guys are looking for him we might want to sit on the apartment and see if they show up. If we know what he was into, we might figure out where he’s laying up.” He looked through some notes, then back to Patty. “Did you drop off the yellow liquid we found at the lab?”

“Yeah, but it’ll be a little while. They don’t see the urgency we do.”

“Let’s save our battles for when we know who we’re fighting.”

She was about to suggest checking the local surveillance video feeds in stores and other places Ferrell might have frequented, when the lieutenant stepped in through the rear door and said, “Listen up, people. I want to introduce you to your new boss.”

Patty stared as Yvonne Zuni stepped up next to Rita Hester.

John Stallings heard someone behind him mutter, “Holy shit, I don’t remember her looking like that.” Stallings wasn’t sure he had ever met the woman standing by the door, but he’d seen her around. He felt a pang of guilt that he had assumed she was an analyst or maybe someone’s executive assistant. It was a chauvinistic prejudice that he hadn’t thought he held. But Stallings had to look at this beautiful woman with tropical dark skin and bright green eyes and wonder, How on earth did you ever get the name Yvonne the Terrible?

She stepped up next to the lieutenant and said in a clear voice, “First I’d like to see each set of partners privately in the conference room to get a handle on what you’re working on. Second, I want a written summary of each case on a single sheet of paper on my desk by noon. And finally, I’m glad to be here.” Without another word she turned and stepped into the conference room. Within twenty seconds she called out, “Well, who’s gonna be first?”

Stallings and Patty exchanged glances; then both stood at the same time. He knew putting off something unpleasant didn’t make it any more tolerable. They marched together into the conference room.

“I’m John Stallings.”

“I’m Patty Levine.”

Yvonne the Terrible stood up. She held out a delicate hand and shook his hand firmly. “I know both of you. Patty, we worked the snatch-and-run bandits a couple of years ago.”

“Good memory.”

The sergeant said, “I was just a detective then.”

Patty nodded. “But you ran that case.”

Yvonne Zuni looked toward Stallings. “And everyone knows you, John.” She motioned them to sit down. “You guys are our missing persons team, right?”

Patty added, “And backup homicide.”

“We’ll see. What are you working on?”

Stallings and Patty took turns going through their cases. Stallings finished with a detailed view and plan on finding Jason Ferrell.

Sergeant Zuni closed her notebook in which she had scribbled several comments, then looked up at Stallings. “Instead of finding this middle-aged loser, we have a new missing persons report on a student from Mississippi named Allison Marsh. I don’t want a big media drama over a missing student. Drop what you’re doing and track her down.”

Stallings said, “I didn’t even see anything on it yet.”

“I know. Consider this your assignment. The call came in upstairs.”

“That’s a little odd. Usually…”

The sergeant cut him off. “Usually there was no sergeant here. Usually hotshots like you and Tony Mazzetti did whatever you wanted to. Now, as of this minute, you better get out and find this girl.” She smiled, but somehow she’d gone from beautiful to scary. “Any questions?”

Stallings didn’t have one.

John Stallings, like any seasoned cop, knew his strengths and weaknesses. He could read people and interview well. Some would say there was a large element of fear that made people talk to him, but he got results. He also was willing to work ungodly hours to find a missing kid or solve a homicide. His greatest weakness was not using all the available sources of information from computer databases and intelligence files. Patty understood the physics of such work and seemed to like it, so he let her run with it.

An hour after Yvonne Zuni had ordered them to find the missing Allison Marsh, Patty had her metal notecase crammed with printouts, photographs, and information on the case. They were about to head over to Atlantic Beach to catch the travel mates of the missing girl. Allison Marsh’s mother had reached the girls and had started the chain of panic even though Allie hadn’t been missing long.

As he pulled onto Edgewood Avenue, Patty said, “Where are you going?”

“Just a quick run by Jason Ferrell’s apartment. See if anyone is around.”

Patty started to sift through her notes.

Stallings smiled and said, “Worried Yvonne the Terrible is gonna catch us veering off our assignment? Should we call her when we want to stop and get lunch?”

“It’s not like you to ignore a missing girl, or to mock a boss. You usually follow orders.”

“I am following orders and doing a little extra. Just because Jason Ferrell is a little older doesn’t mean his mother isn’t any less worried. I promise we’ll be talking to Allison Marsh’s friends within an hour.”

As Stallings pulled his Impala to the curb right in front of the main door to the apartment complex, two men walked out and froze at the entrance.

Stallings said to Patty, “Do those two look like the guys the manager described to you?”

“Exactly how he described them.”

Stallings knew to get out quickly. Something about these two made him lift his shirt to show his gun and badge on his hip. These weren’t city people; they’d come from the farther reaches of the south. Maybe South Georgia or the center of North Florida.

The taller of the two men, in jeans, a dirty white T-shirt, and John Deere hat, said, “Oh shit, five-O.” He turned and started to walk quickly down the sidewalk with his pudgy, bald friend behind him.

“Hang on, fellas,” called out Stallings.

The men slowed.

Patty stepped out, but used the car as cover. She saw the pair as a threat too.

Stallings kept his voice loud and firm. “Turn around and walk back this way.”

The big man turned. “Why?”

“You said it before. Because we’re cops and we want to talk to you.”

“I don’t think we have to consent to that demand.”

Stallings turned to Patty. “Fucking Law and Order. “ Then he called out, “You do have to consent.”

“Why?”

“Because if you make me come over to you boys, I’ll kick your asses.”

The men exchanged glances and then, without warning, started to run hard down the sidewalk.

The move surprised Stallings so much that he hesitated between jumping in his car or chasing them on foot. He and Patty slipped back into the unmarked police car and pulled from the curb in time to see a blue Ford F-150 rumble over a chain-link fence at the far end of the apartment’s side parking lot. They pulled onto the next block as Stallings hit the gas and cut through the lot. He pulled up short of following the raised truck over the crushed fence. The low clearance of his Impala would never make it over the fence.