James Andrus - The Perfect Death

The girl looked like she might cry and was fighting to hold it back.

Stallings stared at the girl and noticed the hole for her lip stud on the right side of her wide mouth. But he could see in her face that Patty had struck a chord.

The girl said, “I might know why Leah ran away and maybe even where she ran to.”

The way the girl said it made Stallings hope, just for a second, that this meant Leah had discarded her uniform and a killer had found the belt. He leaned forward. “Where is she?”

The girl said, “Ask Tonya Hazell.”

It was another lead, and Stallings intended to run with it.

Sergeant Yvonne Zuni sat at her desk after having made more than twenty phone calls regarding the fight in the squad bay. Her only real concern was the condition of the injured detective, Dwight. She’d worked with him in narcotics and despite his odd appearance and goofy nature, he was one of the best detectives she’d ever supervised. She was starting to see that the detectives who’d worked in the tech unit all shared the similar attributes of being extremely smart, working hard, staying diligent in their paperwork and steering clear of trouble off-duty. Usually detectives had three of these four attributes. Every detective had a different three. Some were smart and hardworking but ignored paperwork. Some were smart, stayed out of trouble off-duty, were current on their paperwork but also avoided work at all costs. The tech guys seemed to be the only ones who were reliably stable in all departments. She knew even though Sparky Taylor had some odd habits, he fell into that exact mold, spending every night with his family, giving the job everything he had while he was on duty, and definitely staying clear on policy, procedure, and paperwork.

About every fourth call the sergeant made was to find out if there was any new information about the injured detective. Head injuries were a tricky business and could leave lingering issues. Right now all she knew was he was being evaluated at the hospital and had drifted in and out of consciousness since the paramedics took him from the squad room. Sergeant Zuni knew that Dwight had two young girls at home and his wife was a teacher. She shuddered as she considered the worst-case scenario.

She also had to brief command staff on the incident. The agency was blessed with leaders who’d worked their way up through the ranks and understood many of the issues officers and detectives had to deal with. In this case they understood it was necessary to use serious physical force to overcome the disruptive prisoners. All anyone seemed genuinely concerned about was the detective’s injury, and that made Sergeant Zuni feel good about the department.

She heard a light rap on her doorframe and looked up quickly to see the senior internal affairs detective, Ronald Bell, standing in the doorway looking like a model who’d just walked off the runway. He was tall and handsome with light gray hair and a rugged smile, but what set him apart from all the other tall, handsome detectives was that he almost always wore extraordinarily expensive, exquisitely cut suits. Today he had a dark blue suit with a white shirt and pale yellow tie. He looked like one of the ads in Men’s Health about how to become successful and attractive.

Bell said, “Awfully quiet around here?”

“Open homicide cases tend to keep the detectives busy.”

“I guess big-ass brawls do too.”

“Don’t make me go over my whole day. I wish I could have a Bombay Sapphire martini right this second.”

Bell said, “Sounds like you had a rough day.”

“Please tell me someone hasn’t made an official complaint that requires Internal Affairs to come down and look into this thing?”

“By all accounts your detectives did a great job. It wouldn’t hurt if they were maybe in a little bit better shape or had a couple more ASPs available. I heard your man Stallings took a pretty big blow to the arm from one of the tactical guys who had an ASP.”

“You know Stall. Something like that’s not gonna slow him down. He had a bruise, but he wasn’t complaining too much when he ran out the door to look for another missing girl.”

“I know John Stallings very well. I’m surprised he didn’t crack someone’s head open.”

“Although it may seem like it to you, he’s usually not the violent type.”

“I have several Jacksonville residents who might disagree with that analysis.”

“Have any of them ever filed a complaint?”

Ronald Bell raised his hands in surrender, stepped into the small office, and pulled the door quietly shut behind him.

Sergeant Zuni raised an eyebrow and said, “Is this something serious or are you going to say something romantic?” She stepped from behind her desk and reached to embrace her secret boyfriend. In the two months they’d been seeing each other she was certain no one had become suspicious. She didn’t want Bell to get in trouble for dating one of the sergeants in charge of the detective bureau. It was his job to investigate complaints against officers and detectives, and he was known as a ruthless enforcer throughout the department. But she’d seen another side of the fifty-four-year-old internal affairs investigator. Aside from being smart he was extremely sophisticated and had used much of the money he’d inherited from his mother’s side of the family to create a lifestyle in stark contrast to that of most of the cops in the agency. But it was the way he treated her that made her want to see him more and more. He made her feel like she was the only woman in the world and would listen as long as she wanted to talk about anything she wanted to talk about.

Bell said, “This is nice.”

“Too bad you’re in IA and I’m a conflict.”

“No one’s complained so far.”

“That’s because you’re used to keeping secrets.”

Bell said, “If I could, I’d shout it out so everyone would hear.”

Sergeant Zuni laughed for the first time all day. She liked this guy and what they had.

But the relationship was not without pitfalls. Sergeant Zuni saw the irony of her keeping a secret relationship with an internal affairs investigator while Patty Levine and Tony Mazzetti struggled to keep their burgeoning relationship under wraps. The sergeant had figured out the two detectives’ attraction to each other some time ago, but she didn’t like to meddle in other people’s affairs, especially two of the top producers in the bureau.

She stepped back from Bell and looked into his handsome face. “This isn’t a social visit, is it?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What’s up?” She knew better, even with her boyfriend, than to make specific inquiries. If Internal Affairs didn’t already know about it she wasn’t about to bring something to their attention. Even inadvertently.

“It is somewhat related to the fight this morning in the bureau.”

“In what way?”

“Narcotics is missing two hundred fifty of the Oxys they confiscated this morning.”

“And this relates to us how?”

“The missing pills were part of the evidence the detective was bringing in to sort out. As close as we can tell they had to go missing from somewhere up here and probably during the fight.”

“Have you been able to ask Dwight what he did with them?”

Bell shook his head. “He’s still being evaluated and is in and out of consciousness.”

“There was no one here but our detectives. No visitors, lawyers, or reporters. Just cops.”

“My first thought was some attorney had grabbed them while he was up here talking to a client, but when I checked all the rosters I saw no one had been up to the squad bay this morning.”

“So you really think one of the detectives stole seized evidence? You don’t think it’s more likely they just miscounted?”