The Perfect Woman (3 page)

Stallings stood in one spot to let the smell drift to him, then took a few steps to one side. Finally he said, “Open the middle door.”

The manager fumbled with a ring of more than fifty keys and opened the solid wood door. The stench slapped Stallings in the face.

The manager said, “You’ve got a good nose. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.”

Now Stallings was more precise, careful not to touch the door as he flicked on the light in the long, crowded storage room. He looked down one wall and back the other until his eyes fell on a thick, black duffel bag shoved in next to the wall on the dusty cement floor. He nudged it with his finger, then stepped closer, the manager following him into the cramped room.

“Where’d this bag come from?”

The manager shrugged. “I think the other clerk slid it in here when someone forgot it in the lobby yesterday. He mentioned there was a heavy suitcase left here.”

Stallings studied the small lock on the bag, dug in his front pocket for a Leatherman tool, and used the needle-nose pliers to rip it off the bag. The manager, mesmerized by the action, didn’t protest.

Stallings hesitated with his fingers on the zipper, then yanked the tiny handle down the track of the zipper about ten inches until he saw the pale, pretty face of a young woman.

“Oh, no, no, no, this is a dreadful thing,” said the manager, his accent becoming much more pronounced. Then he was quick to add, “She wasn’t a guest. This isn’t our fault. I don’t know who she is.”

Stallings sighed. “I do. Her name is Lee Ann Moffit.”

This was a day that would change his life.

Patty Levine had just handed off the runaway girl to a county social worker, who was taking her to a shelter until they worked out something with the parents. The second she looked up from her metal notebook and saw John Stallings, Patty knew that something had happened. Stallings’s handsome face was usually a mask of calm during times of stress. His curly brown hair framed his blue eyes and made him look like a stylish doctor who had played rough sports as a younger man. He rarely showed any reaction, preferring, like any good cop, to keep people guessing, but now he was leaning out the front door of the motel motioning her to come in and she knew something bad had happened. She could tell their day had swung off the ordinary track. The Xanax she had sneaked at lunch kept her reactions smooth, but she popped another just to be on the safe side and swallowed it dry. She was careful never to allow any nervous tension to show at work. As one of the few female detectives, Patty felt as if she had to set an example and be twice as tough as any male cop. That only led to more stress. She didn’t drink like a lot of the cops, so this was her answer to dealing with the job. It was a decent rationalization that worked most of the time.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as she hurried toward him, her hand dropping toward the Beretta on her hip. Her Rockport boots were a little clunky, but she could hustle in them and no street thug in Arlington gave her shit once he felt her boot buried in his ribs or stuck up his ass.

Stallings leaned toward her, keeping his voice low. “We got a body zipped in a suitcase in one of the storage rooms.” He conveyed concern but not panic. She liked his professionalism.

“Is it related to the dopers we let go?”

“No, it’s one of the runaways I used to deal with. Lee Ann Moffitt.”

She saw it in his face and heard it in his voice. This poor guy didn’t need something like this right now. Not after his own daughter had disappeared.

“I’m calling it directly into our homicide unit.”

“Stall, this is Jacksonville Beach. They should catch this homicide.”

He looked up at her, his expression certain and direct. “I have to be involved in this case. I’m calling the Sheriff’s Office.”

She knew not to suggest any other course of action.

The store on Edgewood Avenue was his favorite to work in. The clinics and hospitals sent all the people who needed cheap prescriptions to this store or the one in central Jax. Both stores were in areas with a lot of homeless and street people, the safest group to look for test subjects. If they disappeared no one noticed for a long time, and if the body was found, there wasn’t a family screaming for the police to solve the crime. But he had to use his brain and be patient to find just the right one. This was still new to him.

Right now there were no customers in the pharmacy area and he was using the free time to straighten up. He grabbed a commercial container of Vytorin and tucked it back onto the narrow shelf where the big sellers were stored. The whole time his eyes scanned the area picking up information he might be able to use in the future. That was the way his mind worked. It had earned him a 4.0 at the University of North Florida and a master’s degree eighteen months later from the University of Florida. That had been a rough year and a half, driving back and forth to Gainesville three days a week to cram in classes from early in the day until late afternoon. He still had to help his mother every evening and never felt like he was part of the “Gator Nation.” Just like he never felt like one of the group at the pharmacy.

He picked up an information flyer on a new muscle relaxer to see how it interacted with serotonin reuptake inhibitors. He’d seen the big commercial container of them in the back but hadn’t noticed any prescriptions come across the counter yet. He tucked the flyer into his back pocket so he could study it better at home. He knew no one here was going to bother to read it.

The tubby old pharmacist looked down from his perch to a young, well-dressed woman who he guessed was a “Chi-Chi,” which was the store slang for paying customer from the phrase “cash in hand with insurance.” He didn’t know how they got the longer “Chi-Chi” from that, but everyone used it to be cool. Besides, “Chi-Chis” weren’t something they saw very often in the small pharmacy. The woman listened as the old pharmacist used his condescending tone almost as much as he did on the free clinic patients.

“Look, sweetheart,” said the man in the coffee-stained white smock. “This is a twenty-five milligram tablet. That’s low for Elavil, but you should start seeing the effects in a couple of days. Okay?”

He stepped closer to the pharmacist and tapped the flabby man on the shoulder.

The older pharmacist turned and glared at him. “What the fuck is it, Billy? Can’t you see I’m busy?” His red face almost glowed.

Although it was a slightly lower tone than the pharmacist’s normal voice, William Dremmel cringed, knowing the customer could hear him just like the cashier and anyone else in the rear half of the store.

Dremmel cleared his throat and whispered. “That blouse makes me think this woman might be pregnant.”

“So?”

“Elavil can’t be used by women in their first trimester.”

The pharmacist turned his ruddy face to look at the woman, then looked back at Dremmel. “She’s probably just fat.”

The woman looked past the pharmacist and said to Dremmel, “What did you say about pregnancy?”

The pharmacist said, “Don’t worry about what he says. He’s just a stock boy.” He turned to Dremmel and said, “Get back to cleaning up.”

Dremmel hesitated, but the woman turned and marched out of the store, so he had accomplished his goal. The pharmacist wouldn’t complain about losing a customer, because he’d eventually realize Dremmel was right. This wasn’t the first time Dremmel had kept him from making a potentially fatal error. He’d go back to cleaning up, but the psychological wound that porky pharmacist had inflicted sapped his energy. When would the other employees see this was just a part-time job for him? It meant nothing. If the community college would let him put his mother on the insurance, he wouldn’t worry about the little extra cash and cheap prescriptions he got from here. It sounded better to be a science teacher than a clerk at a second-rate, family-run, nine-store chain of pharmacies. But he’d been there ten years, since he graduated from UNF. At thirty-two he felt he should have more responsibility. At the community college he was considered young for a professor, even a part-time, contract instructor who usually ran the lab classes.

He slinked back to the stock area and finished straightening up.

The cashier, Lori, strolled past him and whispered, “He’s just a dumb old fart.” She smiled and winked. Her brown skin set off her white teeth in the most complementary way. She also stood in perfect contrast to his pale complexion and wispy, blond hair. Rogaine had helped him but not as much as he wanted. Lori added, “That lady is lucky you were around.”

That made Dremmel smile too. Lori had taken one of his classes on Earth Science last year and knew his real profession. She was lithe and graceful at five foot seven, just about his height. She said she was twenty-three, but he had gotten into the company records and saw she was really thirty-one. Women and their vanity made him shake his head. It was this little secret he had that made him feel superior. He loved finding out information and hoarding it for himself. Secret things that took effort to find on a computer or by following a woman around. The only thing he had found that was better than hoarding the secrets was telling the woman everything he knew about her when she couldn’t do anything about it.

He was still high from his last “girlfriend,” who he had finally discovered couldn’t last a full three days with all the different drugs he had pumped into her. She’d seemed hardier than that with her good biceps and healthy hair. He had traveled all the way to Jax Beach to drop her off. He knew how things worked. The Sheriff’s Office found the first body in their jurisdiction, now the Jax Beach police would be responsible for Lee Ann. That would screw things up, and he’d take his time to find just the right girl to take as his next “girlfriend.”

He couldn’t resist putting the bodies in luggage as a nod to the cops that only one person was doing this. It wasn’t smart, but he recognized that and accepted it for the little grin it gave him from time to time. He was careful and knew they wouldn’t find anything that led to him. Still, he had a procedure for the girls and their disposal, and showing off to the cops wasn’t part of the equation. It was just something he felt like doing. So he kept looking for the right woman.

Lori wouldn’t do because they worked together; she had family that would report her missing, plus she didn’t ever look down on him. That seemed so rare in a woman. Certainly his mother had pushed his father until he snapped. Man, had that fucked up his life.

He thought about his first victim. She hadn’t reacted well to his Xanax and Percocet cocktail, just fizzling out and never really regaining anything close to consciousness, lying on the little bed like a lump. Her name was Tawny Wallace, and she had striking green eyes but not much of a figure—just a straight board with square shoulders. Her face was extraordinary, with delicate, precise features, high cheekbones, and clear skin. He’d found her at the community college but she wasn’t in either of his classes. That would have been a stupid mistake, and he didn’t make mistakes. She’d just asked his opinion of a schedule, and they started talking. No one had any idea they had even met. She was perfect from that perspective.

Tawny told him about her family in Bunnell, an aunt and uncle she had lived with after her mom died of breast cancer when she was fourteen. Her mother’s sister had done all she could, but her uncle was an alcoholic who ran the house like his unit in the Marines. He hadn’t just retired from the service, they had asked him to leave because he was so tough. She’d moved out as soon as she turned eighteen and hadn’t spoken to her aunt or uncle in three months. Dremmel had been subtle but asked who she did talk to on a regular basis. The answer had sealed her fate: no one.

After he took her to eat at Pollo Loco, a fast-food Latin chicken place, she had agreed to come home with him to watch his DVD of
Sleepless in Seattle
, her favorite flick. She didn’t even make it to the Empire State Building scene. Instead she had dropped unconscious on his couch, and the thrill to him was indescribable. To finally have a pretty girl at his absolute mercy. No comments about how much money he made or why he lived with his mother. Just blissful, beautiful silence. Then, after silence and lethargy became boring, he realized he might need to work on his drug combinations. He had access to anything he wanted. No one would ever know unless they started losing whole bottles of pills. His needs were substantially under the threshold where anyone would ever notice.

The planning he’d put into his scheme was meticulous and flawless and gave him confidence to know there was no way he could ever be caught. His years of study and natural intelligence would make it impossible for the cops to tie him to any deaths no matter how far he took it, even if he left each body in an identical American Tourister or duffel bag. He had his own methods to avoid detection beyond the simple steps of rubber gloves and a hairnet when he was dealing with the bodies. He had been careful to purchase the bags at a variety of locations using only cash. Thinking like that made him untouchable and above the law.

The experience of holding poor, unconscious, flat-chested Tawny Wallace as she slipped from steady breathing to a slower and slower respiration until the life drained right out of her young body had changed William Dremmel forever. For the better. He now had a task to occupy his considerable intellect and needs.

He now had goals, and all he needed were subjects.

The cops had found Tawny in a Samsonite Jumbo Suiter more than a month ago. He had watched them take the bag after a quick survey of the area. The detective in charge, a well-built guy in a suit, rushed the crime scene people along, and they were out of the shopping center before much of a crowd had gathered. He thought that was just the way things worked in real life instead of TV.

He wondered if he would ever hear anything about Lee Ann. She’d been a good girlfriend. She’d be hard to replace

Lead Homicide Detective Tony Mazzetti adjusted his Joseph Abboud silk tie before stepping into the crappy little motel’s lobby. He had waited a few minutes after his lieutenant had verbally knocked the shit out of the Jax Beach assistant chief to ensure the Sheriff’s Office investigated this case. He wasn’t sure why the L.T. wanted it so badly. All she had said to him was, “Check out this body and tell me how you want to handle it.” It was an odd way to phrase a command. Usually the L.T. just said, “Keep me informed.” That was cool with him. Lieutenant Hester hadn’t worked many homicides as a detective and never told him how to do his job. She just wanted to stay up to date. That’s all any good boss wanted.

He knew that jerk John Stallings had found the body, and Mazzetti didn’t trust that guy. Not the way his daughter’s disappearance was handled. Mazzetti never thought the circumstances or the way Stallings reported it were probed enough by the Sheriff’s Office, or as most cops just called it, the S.O. The whole fucking S.O. looked for the missing girl, but no one seemed to care about the conflicting stories or odd time line. Mazzetti could deal with him like he could any lucky schlub who seemed to stumble into one decent case after another. If Mazzetti had that kind of luck on the job he’d be a major by now.

Mazzetti knew the importance of making an entrance. It gave the troops someone to look up to and let them know who was in charge. It made him feel like a prince walking into a royal court. He’d come a long way from skinny Anthony Mazzetti with legs like toothpicks and asthma that made him wheeze like an old vacuum cleaner. He decided a long time ago he’d overcome the puny body God had given him and excel at everything he did so no one could ever say shit about the way he looked and breathed.