James Andrus - The Perfect Scream

Mazzetti decided to let the whole matter slide. It was awkward enough working with his former girlfriend; he didn’t need to fan the flames. He changed the subject completely. “So what did Stall do to get you assigned to me?”

Patty shrugged. “Just got reassigned. I can’t read the sergeant’s mind.”

Mazzetti laughed. “Must’ve something pretty big to have the LT do anything to her buddy.”

“You sound jealous.”

“Wish I had a rabbi up the chain. No telling where I’d be now.”

“You’d want to do something other than homicide?”

The question took Mazzetti by surprise, and his honest answer surprised him even more. “I guess not.” He looked off in space and added, “Thanks, you made me appreciate what I have.” When he looked up into her pretty face, he also realized what he had lost.

John Stallings tried to slip into the office like a ninja. He did not feel like speaking to anyone about his troubles. He wanted a couple of files to cover him in case someone asked what he was doing. Grace had set his head straight and he figured six o’clock was late enough to be off duty. Stallings knew exactly where he was headed. But of course even though it was late, Sergeant Zuni was still in her office.

As he walked past he knew she’d look up and see him, so he took the offensive. He stopped in her doorway and looked in.

Sergeant Zuni looked up from the report she was reading and simply said, “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward position.”

“Instead you made me look like a moron.”

“Sorry.”

Sergeant Zuni stood up and stepped around her desk. “I’m not a machine. I know what it is to have personal issues. You can talk to me off the record now and then.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Zach Halston is important to you for personal reasons, but he’s also important to our investigation.”

Stallings waited for her to finish, but she just stood there until he said, “Yes?”

Sergeant Zuni cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Hester won’t check too closely when you’re out on the street. She knows you’re a hard worker and I don’t have to justify what you’re doing to anyone.” She looked down at two older missing persons files in his hand. “I like that you’re smart enough to keep up a facade.”

This new sergeant was more complicated than anyone he had ever worked for. And Stallings was starting to like it.

Duval County Assistant Medical Examiner Lisa Kurtz was feeling pretty good about herself as she rushed up the stairs to the second floor of the Police Memorial Building. She had a report from the lab and a photograph that showed she could come up with forensic clues with the best of them. Her instincts about the stain on Connor Tate’s shirt had proved to be right on the money. A chemical spectrum analysis of the stain showed it to contain a number of chemicals including ecstasy, strong depressants typically found in sleep aids, and painkillers, in this case a generic form of hydrocodone. In addition, she had a magnified photograph clearly showing a chunk of a ground-up blue Ambien pill.

Lisa waved hello to the secretary, then was brought up short as she opened the door marked CRIME/PERSONS and nearly ran into Patty Levine. The two women had a passing acquaintance and each knew they had one big thing in common: Tony Mazzetti.

Lisa wasn’t sure what to say or do so she just smiled and nodded hello.

Patty, always so calm and collected, was able to get out a “Hey, Lisa, what’s up?”

Lisa wanted to show the detective the report and what she had discovered, but knew that Tony was the one who needed to see it. She signaled Patty to follow her over to Mazzetti’s desk.

Lisa could see the surprise on Tony Mazzetti’s face when he looked up to see his current girlfriend and his most recent ex-girlfriend standing before him. His eyes cut back and forth between Lisa and Patty for a moment until Lisa pushed through the awkward moment.

She plopped the lab report and the photograph down on his desk, saying, “Connor Tate drank a potentially lethal concoction of drugs. I had the lab do an analysis of the stain on his shirt.”

Mazzetti focused on Lisa. “I know. That’s what killed him. Your office did the autopsy, remember?”

Lisa ignored this sarcastic jab and said, “Why drink an odd mixture of sleeping pills and painkillers when you pop them in plain sight of everyone? I think someone fed him the mixture secretly so it would react with all the alcohol in his system.”

“Even if it wasn’t an accident he could’ve been trying to commit suicide.”

“I looked at the crime scene photographs and noticed there were no glasses around the bed where the body was found. Also the photographs of the tiny kitchen showed three glasses that had been washed and stacked by the side of the sink. That’s not the kind of activity you do when you’ve got a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit and have ingested at least four types of prescription drugs.”

She could tell Mazzetti was considering her hypothesis. But he wasn’t convinced.

Lisa pointed at the photograph and added, “You can even see a chunk of a blue Ambien tablet on his shirt. He was lying down when he drank it. It dribbled into a puddle on his chest.”

Patty said, “C’mon, Tony, she’s got something here. That kid wasn’t the type to try and take his own life. He was too confident and cocky.”

Lisa liked Patty’s rational thought and realized the pretty detective didn’t hold any grudge about her dating Tony. She could see being friends with someone like Patty.

Mazzetti said, “Who would do something like that?”

Lisa said, “Who was with him the night before his body was found?”

Mazzetti shook his head. “No one knows.”

Patty said, “Based on everything we know about the fraternity in general and Connor in particular, it had to be a woman.”

Stallings took Grace’s advice and the sergeant’s coded signal as well as following his heart and sixteen years of police experience. Now he was looking at an ancient block building he remembered as a kid. It looked like an abandoned prison, but local history said it was housing for early migrant workers. When he was a boy, the building had been abandoned and run-down only to be renovated in the early 1990s on the cutting edge of the mini-boom that had gone on in the area. Now it was out of style again and just one of many cheap apartment buildings on the south side of the city.

It was four stories tall with about twenty units on each side and looked to be only about a third full. Stallings had to admit it was better maintained and considerably cleaner than most of the older apartment buildings in the area.

The sun had been down less than an hour, but the lack of outdoor lighting made it feel much later as Stallings approached the door marked OFFICE. He knocked once and rang the buzzer twice, then stepped away from the door, saying out loud in a low voice, “Is this the day that changes the rest of my life?”

The door to his right opened a crack and he realized it was the manager’s apartment attached to the office. A thin, elderly man in a flannel shirt peered through a crack with the chain still on the door. Once he got a look at Stallings, he unchained the door and said, “What can I do for you, officer?”

“How did you know I was a cop?”

“I’ve run this place sixteen years and anyone built like you, with no tattoos and who’s taken a bath in the last three days, is a cop. The only thing surprising is that at this time of the night it’s usually a uniformed patrolman looking for someone.”

The older man invited Stallings inside and his wife joined them as Stallings explained he was looking for two young people and laid out the photograph of Jeanie and Zach Halston.