James Andrus - The Perfect Death

As soon as he saw Cheryl’s foot slide onto the kitchen’s new tile floor he sprang up, swinging wildly with his left hand in a wide arc to knock the gun away. Once again the gun boomed as Cheryl jerked the trigger. This time he didn’t wait and threw his entire body into her, driving the knife hard into her solar plexus. The force of his body behind the thrust of the knife drove it even farther into her torso and he turned his wrist to make sure the blade worked deeper under her rib cage. He felt the blade bounce off bones and sinew on its path to her beating heart. He kept his left hand on her right arm to hold the gun away from him when it went off for a third time. The deafening sound of the gunshot had closed his eardrums.

Now he took a moment to look into Cheryl’s face. He could see the shocked expression in the way her eyes wouldn’t focus. Considering the force of his knife attack he was surprised she was even breathing. But he clearly felt the power running out of her legs and arm as she dropped the pistol and slowly started to sink to the tile floor. He released his grip on the knife, took a step back, watching in fascination as she slipped onto the floor and rolled to one side. Blood gushed out of the wound below her chest and a red puddle formed around her face with her blond hair sticking to it.

Once again he checked his face and his chest for any wounds. He was shocked she’d fired the pistol three times inside his tiny apartment and had failed to hit him. He was just as shocked his knife attack hadn’t immediately stopped her. He had a lot to learn about everyday violence.

Already he started to think how he could explain this to Mary or if it would be easier to go ahead and kill her but not use her for his work of art. Neither of these women were worthy of eternity. He stepped over Cheryl’s body as he scanned the living room to see where Mary had ended up.

It only took him one step to see Mary had never made it past the couch as she lay on the carpet staring directly at his ceiling with a bullet hole an inch to the left of her pretty nose.

This was one mess that was going to take a while to clean up.

Patty enjoyed the position she found herself in. She’d been lecturing Tony Mazzetti about his immature stupidity in coming to the construction site without any backup. To his credit, he took full responsibility and admitted he’d made a mistake. Then he said something that truly surprised her.

Mazzetti said, “You saved my ass. You’re the best girlfriend anyone ever had.”

She wanted to hug him and give him a big kiss, but she was enjoying her position of power and thought she’d make it last longer. It was the closest she had felt to him in a month. She’d parked her car in a lot down the street and climbed into his Crown Vic. She let him sit there and sulk for a few minutes as she occasionally lobbed another recrimination at him, but, in fact, she wasn’t really upset. He’d done what many men could never do: he’d accepted responsibility. And the fact that he’d acknowledged she’d saved him and didn’t try to make up some story about having the construction workers right where he wanted them had been icing on the cake.

Now Patty said, “You really think this Daniel Byrd could be our killer?”

Mazzetti shook his head, “I doubt it, but I can’t discount him as a suspect. By Monday night he’ll be spilling his guts to me.”

Patty reached over and patted Mazzetti on the head. “That’s my bulldog. Now take me to the restaurant. Beating poor defenseless construction workers worked up an appetite.”

She caught Mazzetti’s smile as he turned toward Gi-Gi’s Italian restaurant.

John Stallings used all the tricks he’d learned looking for fugitives to try and locate his own father. So far he’d had no luck. The priest at the community center shared Stallings’s concern when he came by and explained that his father had not been by his room all day. They both immediately came to the same conclusion. The confusion James Stallings had been suffering was clearly an indicator of something much more serious. The fact that he had no car made it more ominous he was missing. He was out of the area and no one had seen him. That meant he had walked a long way or could be on public transportation anywhere in the largest city in the country.

From there Stallings stopped at soup kitchens where his father worked and ate. One kitchen was only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and no one at the second soup kitchen, located north of the municipal football stadium, had seen Stallings’s father all day. The kitchen was jammed with clean-cut young people busy at every section of the room.

A volunteer, older than most of the others, maybe in her early thirties, said, “What do you want?”

“That how you talk to everyone?”

“Only to cops that might scare our diners.”

Stallings smiled and held up his hands. “I’m just looking for my dad.” He explained the situation. He knew her name was Grace Jackson and she was well known in the Jacksonville area for her work with the homeless and as an outstanding teacher at a charter school in a rough section of the city. She had the determined voice and mannerisms of a woman on a mission.

Grace looked him up and down. “You got a good reputation as a cop.”

“You have a good reputation too.” He liked the smile on the plump, pretty black woman’s face.

“Your dad makes me laugh.”

“My dad?”

“I got similar issues with my father. I’m sure he’s a riot to people whose childhoods he didn’t screw up.”

Stallings laughed and realized why this woman was so effective. He slipped onto a stool and took a moment to clear his head.

Yvonne Zuni liked wearing a nice dress for dinner. She spent so much of her time in a profession dominated by men, having to act tough and having to dress professionally but also tactically, she sometimes felt like she was playing dress-up when she was able to actually wear a dress. She raced home, changed, put on some makeup, and brushed out her hair instead of the more drab, simple hairstyle she wore around the office. Now she wore it straight with a few curls on the side.

She didn’t even bother to drive her county-issued car; instead she grabbed her BMW M3. She’d been shocked no one had pulled her over on her way to Deerwood Park, with her treating J. Turner Butler Boulevard like the racetrack at Indy. There was definitely a different feel to the BMW from any of the American cars issued by the sheriff’s office.

For some reason, the southern end of the county didn’t feel like part of JSO’s jurisdiction and she started to relax immediately. The idea of a secret, but almost normal, date with a handsome man and no restrictions made her smile. Although the sheriff’s office would not approve of their relationship, she was confident no one she knew would possibly run into them at an intimate restaurant like Gi-Gi’s.

As she pulled in the parking lot she saw Ronald Bell standing by the valet and couldn’t resist squealing the tires when she brought the car to a precision stop. She appreciated his smile at the sight of her and threw caution to the wind as she watched the valet pull away in her car, embracing her date and planting a wet kiss on his lips.

She could sense Bell was a little nervous at the open display of affection.

Bell said, “It’ll be two minutes before they set up our table. We can go into the bar or just enjoy the night breeze for a few minutes. The choice is entirely yours.”

She loved the idea of not hiding. She also liked the idea she didn’t have to answer him. Instead she turned and planted another kiss on his lips.

She was so involved with the kiss she barely noticed the dark Crown Vic as it pulled into the parking lot.