James Andrus - The Perfect Scream

“Anything. Anything at all.”

“Could you find someone for me?”

“Easy. Especially if he was in the business. What’s his name?”

“Zach Halston.”

Stallings lined up his punch like a professional billiards player lined up a championship shot. But a split second before he balled his fist and threw the punch a woman with curly blond hair wandered in from the living room and said, “Who’s at the door, dear?”

Stallings used the distraction to take in the scene. He gave no indication of what his next action might be.

Brother Ellis composed himself quickly, turning to the woman and saying, “This is Maria’s husband, John.” He gave Stallings a look that said, Be cool. “John, this is my wife, Denise. We were just visiting with Maria. She ran upstairs to grab a photo album and will be down in a minute. I’m sure she’d love to have you join us.”

Stallings managed a weak smile as he nodded to the pretty blond lady and stepped into the house on unsteady legs. The whole situation freaked him out a little bit.

Tony Mazzetti lingered in his car as Sparky stepped out of the Crown Vic, waiting for his partner to join him. Mazzetti hated talking to families of dead people. Whether it was an auto accident or a homicide, talking to a family after a case was closed either raised hopes or suspicions. Every parent saw conspiracy in the dead child. No one wanted to admit to the fact that random chance played a vital role in everyone’s lives. No one ever wanted to admit the death could be the victim’s fault. They wanted answers and scapegoats. They wanted a reason to not feel so desolate. Mazzetti didn’t want to do that to someone who’d already grieved over the loss of a loved one and now he had nine files waiting for him to do just that. Nine families whose old wounds would be reopened just by talking to the police.

Add to that the fact that his old partner, Christina Hogrebe, was still teaching at the police academy and he felt real despair. Christina or “Hoagie,” as she liked to be called, could talk to anyone about anything and make them feel good. It wasn’t just the fact that she was an intelligent, beautiful girl; it was some unquantifiable quality she had that allowed her to deal with people in an easy manner. Patty Levine had a similar quality. The only person in the detective bureau with less ability to speak to someone easily than himself was his new partner, Sparky Taylor. For all his brains and sharp insight, Sparky talked to people like a robot and appeared to have no ability to feel any empathy. That didn’t mean he wasn’t compassionate. He cared about how people felt; he just had no ability to understand emotions. Now Mazzetti had to interview a family who lost a son two years ago. What a way to start the holiday season.

Mazzetti knocked on the front door of the nice suburban house. He noticed the Star of David over the door. Mazzetti identified himself with his open credentials as soon as the nice-looking, middle-aged woman opened the door. Without hearing anything but his name, just seeing the JSO credentials, the woman started to cry uncontrollably.

Once inside the house and sitting on a couch, the woman composed herself. When she’d stopped crying and only sniffled, she managed to say, “Have you found something new about Robert’s death?”

“No, ma’am. We just had a few questions about him. It’s sort of a follow-up study were doing on deaths in the county over the past two years. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”

“If you’re asking me why he would hang himself at the dorm shower room, I still have no idea.”

Having an entire sleepless night to reconsider how he felt about Brother Frank Ellis had led John Stallings to the conclusion that he needed to listen to people more. He had spent more than an hour looking at old photographs of the family with Ellis and his wife, Denise, and the pastor had never once hinted that Stallings had roughed him up or treated him badly in any way. The fact that the man was visiting Maria with his wife also indicated that perhaps Stallings was wrong about him being interested in Maria. If he was wrong about Brother Ellis, what the hell else could he be wrong about?

Counter to stereotype, many cops liked to focus on the best in people. Stallings had to look for the best or risk drowning in despair at how people could act. The vast majority of people did what was right because it was right, not because of the law or the work cops did to enforce the law. If people started doing whatever they wanted, there weren’t enough cops in the world to set society back on the right track. It now annoyed Stallings that the one guy he thought was an asshole turned out to be a decent guy. Shit.

Stallings’s cell phone pulled him out of his deep thought. As soon as he flipped it up and noticed a number from Volusia County he immediately recognized the voice.

The woman said, “This is J. L. Winter. Remember me?”

“How could I forget?”

“It would be hard, wouldn’t it?”

Stallings could feel her confidence even over the cheap Nextel phone.

J.L. said, “Can we meet? I have information on Zach Halston.”

Patty listened carefully as Tony Mazzetti systematically explained everything he and Sparky had learned about the suicide at the University of North Florida two years earlier. The victim had been a member of the fraternity and attended many of their parties. The boy’s mother noticed a change in him before Thanksgiving two years ago. He had seen a doctor for depression several years before that. He was probably a true suicide.

Patty asked why he had not had a tattoo.

Mazzetti had thought of that too and had asked the grieving mother. Tau Epsilon never forced anyone to get the goofy logo on their ankle, and the boy was a practicing Jew. He’d skipped the tattoo for religious reasons.

Mazzetti said he then raced over to the medical examiner’s office to go through the file with Lisa Kurtz. There was nothing at all to indicate this was anything other than a suicide. Mazzetti had even gone as far as contacting the retired detective who had worked the case. The detective had found three of the victim’s friends who had said he was deeply troubled by something. They said it was something that had happened shortly before his death. That put the time frame right around the Halloween party.

The story sounded like classic Tony Mazzetti, emphasizing how hard he worked and how quickly he jumped on leads, but mainly how the death could not possibly be a homicide. However, in this case, Lisa Kurtz agreed with him. Patty was surprised how much she liked Tony’s new squeeze. But the less interested she became in her own boyfriend, the more jealous she was of the pretty young assistant medical examiner. Despite her personal feelings, she couldn’t deny that Lisa was sharp and dedicated. She represented women well in law enforcement. That meant a lot to Patty.

But now in the conference room, seeing Sergeant Zuni and Sparky staring at Mazzetti, it was clear they had a problem. Mazzetti wanted the problem to be a rash of accidents and suicides, but Patty knew it to be something else. She said, “There is no way these are all coincidence. I don’t care if they happened over the course of two years or ten years, the common thread of the fraternity links these deaths together. These have got to be homicides.”

Mazzetti shook his head. “Too many variables. A gunshot, all kinds of different drugs, even ketamine. I mean, Jesus, where do you even find that shit?”

Sparky said, “Usually at a veterinarian. But the rampant spread of the drug used recreationally has provided a number of sources.”

Mazzetti looked at his partner and said, “What’re you, a commentator on a documentary?”