James Andrus - The Perfect Death

Stallings saw their chance. The truck pulled into a surprisingly crowded McDonald’s parking lot. He checked his watch, wondering where so many young people came from at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night and why their parents would allow them out so late on a school night. He picked up the radio and said, “He’s pulling into the McDonald’s lot. I don’t know that we can get him before he walks inside.”

Mazzetti’s voice crackled over the radio. “Let’s trap him inside.”

“There’s lot of kids jammed inside.”

“We’ll be very low-key.”

As Stallings drove into the lot he saw a JSO patrol vehicle with a young, burly officer talking sternly to three young men. He squeezed in right next the patrol car and badged the officer as he got out. The young cop immediately ignored the boys he was scolding and walked over to Stallings.

Stallings said, “Can you give us a hand real quick?”

“Absolutely. I’m working a contract here and they wouldn’t let me leave to go to the scene of the shooting. I’ve been pissed off about it all night. What do you got?”

“Just a little jerk-off we need to question. He pulled up in the truck over there a minute ago and walked inside. I got two other detectives with me.”

The burly patrolman scratched his short brown hair said, “I work here every Wednesday night because for some reason this place is a Wednesday-night gathering spot. There’s only this door and the door on the opposite side and you can see both doors from both sides. I’d say we got this guy covered.”

Stallings saw Patty and Mazzetti automatically walk to the opposite door. This time Mazzetti didn’t draw his pistol. Daniel Byrd stood a couple of people back in the line to the counter. Stallings heard the patrolman muttering about missing out on the perimeter at the scene of the SWAT shootout. Thank God no JSO personnel had been hit. The jumbled reports coming in over the radio made it sound like there were two dead drug dealers and two that had run into the neighborhood.

As Stallings entered the door, the kids moved out of his way. He thought it was the big uniformed patrolman behind him who was making a path and he was glad he’d asked for the help. Then he realized his mistake.

Daniel Byrd looked over his shoulder and immediately noticed the patrolman. Like any good career criminal he picked up on Stallings and checked the rest of the room, making Mazzetti for another detective. Stallings prepared for a fight. But the wily parole violator was one step ahead of him.

Byrd shoved a young man standing next to him. Then he pushed another boy from behind. Within seconds a brawl had started at the counter and quickly spread through the McDonald’s like a virus.

Stallings struggled to reach Byrd at the front of the counter and caught a glimpse of the smaller man as he leaped over the counter and bolted through the kitchen.

Stallings tried to get Mazzetti’s attention, frantically pointing to the back of the restaurant. He turned around, worked his way to the door, and saw that he could cut off Byrd before he reached his truck. He could hear the patrolman inside shouting for everyone to calm down.

Byrd came from the corner of the building, saw Stallings, and instantly reversed direction. Stallings gave chase, and as he cleared the corner of the McDonald’s he saw Byrd forcing a young man off a Honda motorcycle. The man had been in the drive-through lane. Before Stallings could reach him Byrd jumped on the bike again and screamed out of the lot.

All Stallings could do was get back to his car. Now it was a chase whether anyone had authorized it or not.

Patty saw Stallings and Mazzetti jump in their cars and race north on the New Kings Road but she couldn’t, in good conscience, leave a single patrolman to handle all the fights erupting inside the McDonald’s. She drew her expandable baton from her pocket and popped it open, catching the attention of all kids closest to her. They took one look at the extended metal pipe and the woman wielding it and scattered.

The uniformed cop worked his way across the room to Patty and the kids slowly calmed down. The patrolman used a good, military voice to shout, “This restaurant is closed. Anyone I put my hands on after the count of thirty goes to jail.”

Patty liked this guy and the way he got things done. The kids scurried like cockroaches when he shouted.

Patty chuckled with the patrolman, who had to listen to the McDonald’s manager complain about losing all of his business for the night. The heavyset manager said, “I pay JSO to send an extra deputy here every Wednesday and Saturday night to keep things calm so I can make money, not to chase away all my customers.”

The patrolman had taken it because this was a special situation. Most sheriff’s offices offered a contract position whereby restaurants and other businesses could hire a deputy off-duty. It was more expensive than a regular rent-a-cop but much more effective because the deputy had a gun, was trained to use it, and could make arrests.

The uniformed patrolman looked at the manager and said, “Some of your customers are hanging around, getting tire irons and knives to make the fights more interesting. You want me to call them back in?”

The manager turned around and started shouting at the staff instead.

Patty hustled out to her Freestyle and headed north, picking up the radio. “Where are you guys?”

Stallings came on the radio and said, “The son of a bitch has led us all over Jacksonville and now we’re coming south on U.S. one back by you. He’s calmed way down and I don’t think he realizes we’re still after him. Tony stays one street east and I stay one street west, and somehow we’ve kept him roughly in sight.”

Within five minutes Patty had pulled behind the motorcycle. Daniel Byrd had not seen any of their vehicles at the McDonald’s and had no reason to think the mundane family SUV was a police vehicle. When he took a ramp onto I-95 southbound, Patty let Stallings take over and follow him onto the interstate. She hit the gas and raced along the surface streets to keep pace with the motorcycle. Most people on the streets had no concept of all the surveillances that went on with unmarked police cars. Patty’s father always said he could pick out the unmarked police cars, but he meant the ones that looked like police cars. The Ford Crown Victorias or Dodge Chargers. He had no idea about all the other cars that were thrown into a modern police department’s fleet, specifically for these types of operations. To the average person on the street she looked like a frantic housewife rushing home at 11:30 at night.

Stallings came on the radio and said, “He’s getting off the interstate and we’re close to his apartment. I bet that’s where he’s headed.”

Patty had the address on an information sheet and knew the area well. Mazzetti came on the radio, “I’m on my way over there now.”

By the time Patty pulled past the apartment building, Byrd was walking in the front door and the motorcycle was parked on the sidewalk a few feet away. Stallings had called it right.

You couldn’t buy that kind of experience.

John Stallings didn’t use the radio. Instead he pulled alongside Tony Mazzetti’s Crown Vic a block away from the apartment building. They had things to discuss that didn’t need to be put out over the radio no matter how rarely the frequency was monitored.

Stallings rolled down his window so they were almost face-to-face, saying, “You think we need help on this?”

Mazzetti shook his head. “Fuck no.”

“Sounds like the SWAT thing is resolved and there’ll be a lot of cops on the street.”

“And what do we say? We really need to talk to this guy? Or maybe we have the SWAT team hit his apartment for stealing a motorcycle.”