James Andrus - The Perfect Scream

Her parents seemed to enjoy raising kids. At least until recently. No matter how old the kids got, her parents still tried to take care of them. She knew her father had created a retirement account for her and said she had nothing to worry about after age fifty-nine. He also had a house fund for her, just like he did for her siblings. But it was understood that the fund was for a house in the Jacksonville area so they would be close to her parents. She wouldn’t leave them now anyhow. They were too fragile. It broke her heart. That made her more determined to finish her mission.

She pulled her Buck knife from her purse and stared at it. This last one would be perfect. She’d do it right and finally hear the perfect scream.

Patty thought John Stallings was unusually quiet. That was saying something. He wasn’t brooding. John never brooded. He was just more withdrawn than normal and was focusing on the case notes from their first interview of the day.

The mother of a nineteen-year-old son killed in a car accident said he had no connection to the fraternity. These were touchy interviews that could easily open old wounds for the families of the victims. It wasn’t until the end of the interview that the woman started to sob uncontrollably. It was moments like this that gave Patty an insight into John Stallings’s home life and the sorrow they had all gone through when Jeanie disappeared.

Now Stallings drove his county-issued Impala south on I-95 toward their next interview in Hyde Park.

Finally, Patty had to say, “I know something’s bothering you. You wanna talk about it?”

“Do I ever want to talk about anything?”

“You might be surprised to find it makes you feel better.”

“For your information, I talked my head off last night. I reached my quota and now I’m going to focus on police work for a little while.”

She took his answer as more informative than usual and noted the nice neighborhood as they got off I-95. Hyde Park was an upscale suburb of Jacksonville proper that housed attorneys and doctors. They found the house they were looking for and Patty whistled in amazement. Even by Hyde Park standards this was an opulent home. The two-story house sat far off the street with a winding, semicircular driveway covering much of the front yard. A sturdy, decorative fence ran the length of the property line and an electronic gate blocked the driveway.

Stallings didn’t hesitate to pull the Impala into the driveway and press a button on a stone pillar.

Patty noticed a camera on the opposite pillar move as someone inside the house examined the car. After a few seconds the voice came over a speaker in the stone pillar.

“May I help you?”

Stallings looked down at the sheet of paper and said, “Is Mr. or Mrs. Hickam available?”

“Please identify yourself.”

Stallings and Patty exchanged glances at the formal and direct command.

He leaned out the window closer to the pillar and said, “Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.”

There was a long pause and the camera on the opposite pillar continued to scan the car. After almost twenty seconds another male voice came over the speaker, saying, “May I ask what this is in reference to?”

“We’re doing some follow-up on a two-year-old death investigation. We would like to speak to the Hickams. Are they at home?”

Patty always admired how Stallings could put a slight inflection in his voice that seemed to force people to do whatever he wanted without being overtly threatening. She may not have had the same level of experience as Stallings, but her instincts told her something was definitely not right about this house.

Just as the gate started to slide open, the voice came over the small speaker and said, “Drive up to the front door.”

Patty heard Stallings mumble, “Is today the day that changes the rest of my life?”

That set her on edge.

Emmanuel White was not as thrilled with his new job as he thought he’d be. He’d worked his ass off to get through Ohio State and worked just as hard for two years to get this job. He was so happy to be out of the Midwest and assigned to Florida that he didn’t even care that he had been sent to Jacksonville. He knew in the rest of the state, the northwest city was a little bit of a joke and so far the weather had not proved to be as sunny as he’d hoped. But he was pretty sure he’d make it through the winter without snow and none of the rivers here could catch on fire like the Cuyahoga.

He’d watched the two monitors during the twelve-hour day shift for five days in a row. He was scheduled to be off for the next two days, but on this job he never knew when he’d have free time. In fairness, his job wasn’t only to monitor the two cameras; he was expected to review recorded telephone conversations from a number of different phone lines. There still wasn’t enough to keep him occupied for twelve hours at a time.

He noticed an Impala drive up and stop at the gate. It was one of the few times there was any activity at the house. The camera he monitored was across the street from the house. Emmanuel could see the security cameras at the house scanning the car before they opened the gate and allowed it to drive in.

Emmanuel was able to copy down the tag and decided to run it instantly, rather than wait until later. He liked watching the national news at 6:30 and always tried to have his work done before Brian Williams came on TV. He turned to a small Toshiba computer, typed in his password, and ran the tag. It came back to a corporation in Jacksonville. He ran the corporation through a separate computer databank and recognized it as a company used to register cars for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. The practice was designed to foil drug dealers who tried to figure out who was following them. It didn’t slow him down one bit.

He hesitated, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed a supervisor to advise him about the unusual visitors. It was sad that this was the highlight of his last five days. He may have been new to the job, but he expected something different after being an Ohio State trooper for two years and then surviving the DEA training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Somehow he thought the life of a federal narcotics agent would be more interesting than this.

Emmanuel White advised his supervisor what was going on. All the supervisor wanted to know was if he had finished reviewing the recorded telephone calls from the day before.

Emmanuel wondered if life was any different with the other federal agencies.

John Stallings kept alert and remained very aware of his surroundings as he and Patty followed Mrs. Hickam through the house to a den that overlooked a sprawling backyard and small lake. Several things had caught Stallings’s attention during the stroll through the house. It had a surprisingly homey atmosphere with a number of photos of the family. He recognized one of the kids as the victim of the alcohol poisoning case that Stallings had come to investigate. His name was Josh Hickam and he’d been a sophomore at the University of North Florida when he had died in early November, two years ago.

Mrs. Hickam was an ordinary-looking woman of about fifty-five, who had a muted personality that reminded Stallings of Maria when she was using heavy doses of prescription drugs. Aside from introducing herself and asking them to follow her, she had not said a word during the walk through the house.

Mr. Hickam met them in the den and Stallings could tell by the man’s darting eyes that he was nervous and making a detailed assessment of him and Patty. The walls of the den were lined with books and framed photographs of the family. One section of the south wall contained a locked, glass display case with more than thirty handguns on various racks and pedestals. This house was secure if Mr. Hickam felt comfortable displaying so many guns so prominently.