James Andrus - The Perfect Death

“I was killing time before I meet … before I meet someone for dinner. I didn’t want to run back to my condo and out again.”

The sergeant smiled. “I’m glad you have plans tonight. I worry about you guys working too hard. Especially about Stallings. He always seems to be involved in stuff after hours. I never met a cop who got so fixated on a case.”

“I worry about him too. He’s under a lot of stress with his kids and he’s trying to keep better track of his father and his health. I keep a pretty good eye on him.”

Sergeant Zuni gave a short laugh. Patty realized it was because the sergeant knew no one controlled Stallings for very long.

Patty said, “What about you? Anything exciting on the agenda?” Patty often wondered if the beautiful sergeant got out much. She seemed very private and quiet.

Sergeant Zuni said, “I might manage to grab a bite to eat tonight.”

Patty smiled as the sergeant walked away. There was something in the way she’d said she might grab a bite to eat that led Patty to believe she had a romantic evening planned.

Mary couldn’t believe how lucky she was to meet a guy like this before her cruise. It gave her something to look forward to as well as an easy way to get to the airport. She liked him a lot. He was sweet and polite and a really good listener. That was hard to find in Jacksonville. It seemed like the men were either hotshot attorneys who felt the world revolved around them or underemployed high school dropouts who still lived with their mothers. She’d been burned too many times and had a tendency to take the all-or-nothing bet on men. She rarely waited to see how things would evolve because it was outside her control. Instead, she liked to commit early and completely. That either scared men away or hooked them so solidly she had to get a court order to get rid of them if things went south.

But this guy really did seem nice as he drove her to the long-term parking lot near the airport. She’d already decided to do something special to show her appreciation. But it also gave her a chance to see that lovely smile with the cute dimples. She couldn’t decide if she had gone into dental hygiene because she liked teeth or if she noticed teeth because she was a dental hygienist. Either way this guy had a great smile.

She hadn’t dated a guy she’d wanted to sleep with in months. Her last boyfriend, Troy, showed up occasionally to keep her satisfied. She knew he told his friends it was just a booty call, but it worked both ways. The problem with Troy was he was only twenty-three years old and not mature enough to realize how great he’d had it when he was with her. She missed those washboard abs as well as some of his grander attributes. But tonight she was going to let loose with someone else. She hoped he felt the same way. The same fire. She recognized this as one of the special nights in her life as she started an exciting vacation by having a rendezvous with a man she thought might be something exceptional. She loved to look at her life that way.

He had a quiet, calm quality she found irresistible. Too many guys wanted to sit around and talk about themselves or sports or the damn Jaguars. He seemed much deeper than all that. And she had a scary thought. What if she didn’t like his art he’d been talking about? She knew she’d suck it up and play along. She’d tell him it was so beautiful she wished she’d inspired it. Or some kind of shit like that.

Tony Mazzetti had already visited the first construction site and talked to two of the names Joey Big Balls had given him. One of the men had given him the names of two others. But Mazzetti had questioned him ruthlessly about his whereabouts the night Kathy Mizell was killed. He had a foolproof alibi. He’d been in jail for the night after being arrested that afternoon on a probation violation. The arrests and even the probation had not made their way through the computer yet to show up on his criminal history. Such was the life of a cop in modern times. Mazzetti tended to depend on computer printouts so much that he was surprised when someone had an excuse not shown on one.

The other man had been much tougher to talk to. Sour and holding a serious chip on his shoulder, the convicted car thief had felt as if he was being harassed for a crime he had already served two years in prison for. Now he worked as a carpenter and kept pretty steady hours. Mazzetti didn’t want the guy to feel persecuted, but he needed some questions answered and it took a little pressure to get the guy to talk. All Mazzetti did was mention that he could be forced to look into the disappearance of two trucks near the worksite. He had no idea whether this guy was involved in the theft of the trucks, but there were reports in the system and it seemed to make him much more talkative. He claimed he’d been at home and his wife and at least one neighbor could verify his story. But Mazzetti really didn’t even need to talk to the wife because he could read people pretty well and this guy wasn’t pulling his chain.

So now he was at the last site and had forty minutes to find his man, talk to him, and drive the 3.2 miles to the restaurant to meet Patty about eight o’clock. It seemed like a good plan and a decent end to a hard week. He hoped to take tomorrow off to recharge his batteries and maybe even Sunday too. The sergeant had been very easy about the progress of the case. She knew all the detectives were working as hard as they could and they really needed a break in the case and in their workweek. That was a good fucking sergeant.

Mazzetti calmly walked onto the construction site and looked at the five-story building, which only had the walls and bare cement floors built. There were wide, gaping holes for the windows and doors. Joey Big Balls had said the crew was behind schedule on this building and worked two full shifts from 6 A.M. until 10 P.M. This seemed like the perfect time to catch as many workers as possible at the site.

He knew he stood out in his Brooks Brothers suit and silk striped tie, but this wasn’t a mission of secrecy. He paused in the dusty gravel in front of the main open door to the building and cringed as he looked down at the dust on his new leather shoes. He looked up and mumbled, “Motherfucker.” As his eyes scanned the building he saw a man lean out one of the windows and look down at him. It was only a short glance, but he recognized the man as Eldon Kozer. To be sure, he looked back down at his info sheet with Kozer’s driver’s license photo, identifiers, and criminal history. This was his man, there was no doubt.

Mazzetti stepped into the building, moving quickly to avoid a man with a wheelbarrow full of jagged metal debris. He saw several ladders strapped to the ironwork inside the building and one set of temporary stairs. He took a deep breath to cleanse his lungs before tromping up the stairs. So far no one had even bothered to ask him who he was or what he was doing on the site, and that was fine with him.

About halfway up the stairs, Mazzetti glanced to his right and saw someone easing down the ladder secured to the next wall. His eyes met the man coming down the ladder. It was Eldon Kozer. Kozer looked Mazzetti up and down but didn’t move.

Mazzetti said, “I need to talk to you for a minute.”

“Me?”

“You’re Eldon Kozer, aren’t you?”

The man scowled and said, “Who are you?”

“JSO.”

Without another word Kozer pulled his feet out of the rungs of the ladder and clamped them on to the outside edge and used his heavily gloved hands to slide down the ladder like it was amusement ride.

Mazzetti could hear Kozer shouting something to his buddies as he smacked the ground and started to run. Mazzetti turned to race down the stairs.

The chase was on.