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James Andrus: The Perfect Woman

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James Andrus The Perfect Woman

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Stallings hesitated with his fingers on the zipper, then yanked the tiny handle down the track of the zipper about ten inches until he saw the pale, pretty face of a young woman.

“Oh, no, no, no, this is a dreadful thing,” said the manager, his accent becoming much more pronounced. Then he was quick to add, “She wasn’t a guest. This isn’t our fault. I don’t know who she is.”

Stallings sighed. “I do. Her name is Lee Ann Moffit.”

This was a day that would change his life.

Two

Patty Levine had just handed off the runaway girl to a county social worker, who was taking her to a shelter until they worked out something with the parents. The second she looked up from her metal notebook and saw John Stallings, Patty knew that something had happened. Stallings’s handsome face was usually a mask of calm during times of stress. His curly brown hair framed his blue eyes and made him look like a stylish doctor who had played rough sports as a younger man. He rarely showed any reaction, preferring, like any good cop, to keep people guessing, but now he was leaning out the front door of the motel motioning her to come in and she knew something bad had happened. She could tell their day had swung off the ordinary track. The Xanax she had sneaked at lunch kept her reactions smooth, but she popped another just to be on the safe side and swallowed it dry. She was careful never to allow any nervous tension to show at work. As one of the few female detectives, Patty felt as if she had to set an example and be twice as tough as any male cop. That only led to more stress. She didn’t drink like a lot of the cops, so this was her answer to dealing with the job. It was a decent rationalization that worked most of the time.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as she hurried toward him, her hand dropping toward the Beretta on her hip. Her Rockport boots were a little clunky, but she could hustle in them and no street thug in Arlington gave her shit once he felt her boot buried in his ribs or stuck up his ass.

Stallings leaned toward her, keeping his voice low. “We got a body zipped in a suitcase in one of the storage rooms.” He conveyed concern but not panic. She liked his professionalism.

“Is it related to the dopers we let go?”

“No, it’s one of the runaways I used to deal with. Lee Ann Moffitt.”

She saw it in his face and heard it in his voice. This poor guy didn’t need something like this right now. Not after his own daughter had disappeared.

“I’m calling it directly into our homicide unit.”

“Stall, this is Jacksonville Beach. They should catch this homicide.”

He looked up at her, his expression certain and direct. “I have to be involved in this case. I’m calling the Sheriff’s Office.”

She knew not to suggest any other course of action.

The store on Edgewood Avenue was his favorite to work in. The clinics and hospitals sent all the people who needed cheap prescriptions to this store or the one in central Jax. Both stores were in areas with a lot of homeless and street people, the safest group to look for test subjects. If they disappeared no one noticed for a long time, and if the body was found, there wasn’t a family screaming for the police to solve the crime. But he had to use his brain and be patient to find just the right one. This was still new to him.

Right now there were no customers in the pharmacy area and he was using the free time to straighten up. He grabbed a commercial container of Vytorin and tucked it back onto the narrow shelf where the big sellers were stored. The whole time his eyes scanned the area picking up information he might be able to use in the future. That was the way his mind worked. It had earned him a 4.0 at the University of North Florida and a master’s degree eighteen months later from the University of Florida. That had been a rough year and a half, driving back and forth to Gainesville three days a week to cram in classes from early in the day until late afternoon. He still had to help his mother every evening and never felt like he was part of the “Gator Nation.” Just like he never felt like one of the group at the pharmacy.

He picked up an information flyer on a new muscle relaxer to see how it interacted with serotonin reuptake inhibitors. He’d seen the big commercial container of them in the back but hadn’t noticed any prescriptions come across the counter yet. He tucked the flyer into his back pocket so he could study it better at home. He knew no one here was going to bother to read it.

The tubby old pharmacist looked down from his perch to a young, well-dressed woman who he guessed was a “Chi-Chi,” which was the store slang for paying customer from the phrase “cash in hand with insurance.” He didn’t know how they got the longer “Chi-Chi” from that, but everyone used it to be cool. Besides, “Chi-Chis” weren’t something they saw very often in the small pharmacy. The woman listened as the old pharmacist used his condescending tone almost as much as he did on the free clinic patients.

“Look, sweetheart,” said the man in the coffee-stained white smock. “This is a twenty-five milligram tablet. That’s low for Elavil, but you should start seeing the effects in a couple of days. Okay?”

He stepped closer to the pharmacist and tapped the flabby man on the shoulder.

The older pharmacist turned and glared at him. “What the fuck is it, Billy? Can’t you see I’m busy?” His red face almost glowed.

Although it was a slightly lower tone than the pharmacist’s normal voice, William Dremmel cringed, knowing the customer could hear him just like the cashier and anyone else in the rear half of the store.

Dremmel cleared his throat and whispered. “That blouse makes me think this woman might be pregnant.”

“So?”

“Elavil can’t be used by women in their first trimester.”

The pharmacist turned his ruddy face to look at the woman, then looked back at Dremmel. “She’s probably just fat.”

The woman looked past the pharmacist and said to Dremmel, “What did you say about pregnancy?”

The pharmacist said, “Don’t worry about what he says. He’s just a stock boy.” He turned to Dremmel and said, “Get back to cleaning up.”

Dremmel hesitated, but the woman turned and marched out of the store, so he had accomplished his goal. The pharmacist wouldn’t complain about losing a customer, because he’d eventually realize Dremmel was right. This wasn’t the first time Dremmel had kept him from making a potentially fatal error. He’d go back to cleaning up, but the psychological wound that porky pharmacist had inflicted sapped his energy. When would the other employees see this was just a part-time job for him? It meant nothing. If the community college would let him put his mother on the insurance, he wouldn’t worry about the little extra cash and cheap prescriptions he got from here. It sounded better to be a science teacher than a clerk at a second-rate, family-run, nine-store chain of pharmacies. But he’d been there ten years, since he graduated from UNF. At thirty-two he felt he should have more responsibility. At the community college he was considered young for a professor, even a part-time, contract instructor who usually ran the lab classes.

He slinked back to the stock area and finished straightening up.

The cashier, Lori, strolled past him and whispered, “He’s just a dumb old fart.” She smiled and winked. Her brown skin set off her white teeth in the most complementary way. She also stood in perfect contrast to his pale complexion and wispy, blond hair. Rogaine had helped him but not as much as he wanted. Lori added, “That lady is lucky you were around.”

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