The Perfect Woman (30 page)

Dremmel got a partial shock on the arm of the guy in the closet, then didn’t waste any time racing for freedom. He leaped the fallen, stunned man, zoomed through the room, and aimed for the open door. Without breaking stride he passed through the doorway, then slammed into someone coming inside, colliding with terrific force. He didn’t hesitate and brought the stun gun up to the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger.

The shock sent them in opposite directions. When he landed, Dremmel looked across the cement walkway and realized he had just sent the motel clerk into a violent convulsion on the ground.

Dremmel had started to rise to his feet when he heard someone from the motel doorway say, “Move and you’re a dead man.”

William Dremmel looked up into the barrel of a semiautomatic pistol held by a tough-looking man with a badge clipped to his belt.

Dremmel paused and said, “Who are you?”

“John Stallings, JSO.”

Then Dremmel made his last pitch at freedom.

Stallings had this creep at gunpoint and he’d identified himself. But instead of considering the best way to hold him until backup arrived he found himself assessing his chances of shooting this stinking pile of shit and getting away with it. He edged closer, his pistol still up.

Dremmel surprised him by driving up on powerful legs like a nose tackle coming into the offensive line. His arms up in front of his face, he struck Stallings hard, shoving him back into the room, knocking the pistol loose.

Stallings tumbled backward onto the hard floor with Dremmel landing on top of him. He braced for another jolt from the stun gun. Nothing. Just the younger man trying to stabilize himself to land a punch.

Stallings drove his knee into Dremmel’s groin. He heard the gasp and yelp so familiar to any male ever hit below the belt. He slid away from Dremmel and felt his pistol on the floor as he did. He grabbed it and jumped into a crouch, raising the gun at the same time.

He yelled, “Don’t move.”

Dremmel froze, gasping for air.

Slowly Stallings backed away, giving himself more room and respecting Dremmel’s athletic ability. He stood and looked down at his prisoner.

Dremmel seemed to recover from the blow to his groin and looked up at Stallings with defiance in his eyes.

Stallings glanced out the door and saw the clerk was still on the ground, virtually unconscious. This was the exact situation he wanted. Just the two of them, isolated, with no witnesses. He thought about Lee Ann Moffitt, Tawny Wallace, and Trina Ester. That old anger started welling up in him. He let himself wonder about his own daughter as he looked at this predator who had tried to claim two more victims, one of them his own partner, Patty. He thought about her in the hospital, then raised the pistol. He wished it was a revolver so he could cock it and let this asshole think about what was coming. It wasn’t even murder. It was justice.

Dremmel stared up silently.

Maybe this is what he wanted? Then Stallings hesitated just long enough to think about Patty and her desire for him to think through his violent tendencies. Now was not the time to be indecisive. He kneeled down so he was the same height as Dremmel. He didn’t want an ambitious crime scene tech to figure out the trajectory of the bullet made it look like an execution. He already had a stun gun burn on his arm and a lump on his head from being knocked back by Dremmel. No one would ask questions unless he got stupid.

Dremmel’s expression never changed as Stallings went down on his left knee, keeping the front sights of the pistol in the center of the killer’s face.

Stallings had to ask. “What pushed you to do it?”

Dremmel shrugged, showing no concern. “You tell me. Looks like we’re not that different.”

“Yes, we are.”

John Stallings dozed off on the hard wooden bench and instantly started dreaming about falling asleep while on patrol. It was a common dream among cops, but this time it was closer to the truth. He was still on duty even if he hadn’t had a break in more than twenty-four hours. Now he felt the relative quiet of the room and the lack of constant motion catch up to him.

He’d avoided the crush of media, but he could hear the crowd of reporters in the outer room. He could imagine what the line of huge television cameras looked like ready to snatch any possible footage of him as he left. He just hoped none of them had managed to slide by his house and bother his family.

A hand on his back made him sit up straight and turn to see Rita Hester smiling. That wasn’t a sight he was used to, at least not since she’d gone into management. She sat next to him, bumping him over on the bench without a word.

They sat in silence until she said, “You did a great thing, Stall.”

“Woulda been better if we stopped him a few weeks ago.”

“You could look at it like that, but we did the best we could. You need to lighten up on yourself. Not everything is your fault. But you’re the one who stopped the Bag Man. That’s something to be proud of.”

He just nodded then asked, “Is Mazzetti coming?”

The lieutenant shook her head. “Detective Mazzetti has elected to stay at the hospital with Patty.”

Stallings smiled for the first time. “Good for him.”

“If it was Christmas, I’d call it a goddamn miracle.”

“Mazzetti isn’t so bad.”

“Let me tell you something no lieutenant should ever admit about one of her troops.”

“What’s that?”

“I think Tony Mazzetti is a complete asshole.”

“That’s not a secret.”

“He’s also a top-notch detective, so as a boss I need him around. Just like I need you around.”

“I wasn’t planning on leaving.”

“I mean in homicide.”

Now John Stallings stared at his boss. “I don’t know about that, Rita.”

“Maybe in a coposition with missing persons. There are a lot of cases that overlap.” She sat quietly for a minute and added, “Just think about it.”

“All I can think about now is going home.”

“You’ve earned it.”

Someone walked past them. Stallings looked up and saw it was Ronald Bell.

Bell smiled, gave him a thumbs-up, and said, “I knew you’d do it.”

Stallings didn’t even bother with a response.

Rita Hester said, “No, you didn’t, Ron. You told me three days ago he wouldn’t be any help on the case.”

He bowed his head and turned to walk away.

Rita was about to blast him verbally again when the rear door to the room opened. She snapped her head toward the back of the large room and she nudged Stallings, “There’s your man.”

He craned his neck to see William Dremmel, in an orange JSO prisoner jumpsuit, shackled at the ankle and handcuffed through a front waist chain, being led into the crowded courtroom with armed deputies on either side of him. Dremmel had no expression as a murmur rippled through the courtroom audience.

Stallings had made a lot of hard choices lately and figured he’d pay for some of them soon, but the choice to bring Dremmel in alive might pay off in positive karma in the long run. Thank God for Patty and her efforts to reform him.

He stayed just long enough to hear the judge say, “No bond.” A sympathetic bailiff let Stallings slip out through a rear door to avoid the TV cameras.

The Bag Man was all done.

It was light out when John Stallings finally woke up. He’d hit the sack after court about noon. The kids were in school, and Helen had taken Maria to a doctor’s appointment. He figured it was late in the afternoon and was surprised he felt good enough to sit up and think about dinner with the family. He had no clock near his bed from his days as a patrolman. If he had to sleep during the day after a midnight shift he found he could only do it with no clock around.

He padded to the bathroom and started to clean up. After he’d washed his face and changed into shorts and a T-shirt the bedroom door opened and Maria walked in. She sat at the edge of the bed until he quietly joined her.

He said, “I guess you heard what happened.” He held a secret hope she might be experiencing something like pride.

“You’re a hero again.”

“We stopped a killer.”

She didn’t respond.

“I was just coming down to see what was for dinner.”

Maria looked at him and asked, “What time do you think it is?”

He looked to his dark alarm clock. Stallings shrugged, “Late afternoon, I guess.”

“John, you’ve been asleep for twenty-two hours. It’s ten in the morning.”

“Holy crap, that’s why I feel so good.” He didn’t think he had ever been in a bed that long, even when he was sick.

“We need to talk.”

Stallings held up a hand. “I know I’ve been gone a lot, but now things will get back to normal.”

“What’s normal? Us not talking? You working weird hours? Working for days on end, then sleeping for days?”

He felt like this could be a result of her relapse and didn’t want to argue.

Maria said, “I know I have issues, but I’m working on them. You have no idea that it’s you too. You have issues.” She started to cry softly then said, “We need a break. You need to leave.”

“What are you talking about?” She sounded coherent, but the message didn’t make sense.

“Helen is going to stay with us, and you’re going to have to move out for a while. We have too much to work out right now.”

“Maria, I think you’re a little confused right now. Think about this.” He felt his stomach tighten.

“I have thought about it, and you’re the one who’s confused. You’ve been detached from the family. Working all the time to save other kids has made you neglect us. You think I’m not involved. You’re the one who’s off trying to run from memories of Jeanie. You’ve been living in some kind of fantasy world. Helen tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.” She placed her hand on his arm. “I love you, I really do, but I have to think about the kids. You have to move out and work on these problems.”

He just stared at her; perhaps clearly for the first time. Was she right? Did he have it all turned around in his head?

John Stallings didn’t answer as he considered what she had said and what she wanted. It hurt as bad as any punch he’d ever taken or any injury he’d ever suffered.

This really was the day that changed the rest of his life, and he never even saw it coming.

The solitary holding tank at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Goode Pretrial Detention Facility kept some distance between William Dremmel and some of the street thugs swept up by patrol officers and narcotics stings. But he could hear the noise. Constant yelling and hooting. Off-key rappers and the ramblings of disturbed homeless men, shuffling around the wide cells that housed thirty prisoners each. The facility had a policy of no TV sets. Somehow Dremmel didn’t think the reading material supplied by the Sheriff’s Office was utilized by most of the inmates.

Dremmel was happy to be alone in a much smaller cell with its own toilet, even if it was exposed.

He had made it through his initial hearing and realized he was done. At least for now. Even his attorney wouldn’t sit too close to him like he smelled or had lice that might jump onto the young, cocky public defender’s cheap suit. At least they had told him that his mother was safe and comfortable at a facility near their house. She had of course been sedated, but he hoped she hadn’t admitted to knowing about any of Dremmel’s activities. He didn’t want her charged as an accessory. He didn’t want her to face anymore sorrow.

He looked down at the uneaten baloney sandwich and fruit juice sitting on the minuscule writing desk built into the wall and considered his plans. This was just a minor setback, which, with his superior intelligence, he could overcome given enough time. If he could direct the energy and focus he had been using on his drug trials, he might make himself feel a whole lot better.

He looked down at the thick scratches on his inner forearm. Blood dripped onto the cold cement floor of the cell. A single screw that projected out of the metal frame of his cot provided the sharpened edge he needed to draw blood. Not a lot of it but possibly enough to convince someone he was crazy. He’d admit to killing the girls if he could just be called mentally ill. That would give him time to find a way out of whatever jail they stuck him in. He didn’t believe there was any building made that he couldn’t, if he applied his intellect to it, find an escape from.

Then life would be sweet. He’d be free. In more ways than one. Of course he would literally be on the streets, but he also would no longer have to observe any constraint society wanted to put on him. Now he could kill without concern. It was all gravy. If he could just get out of prison.

He might find something else to study.

One thing he’d do is make sure that lucky cop, that John Stallings, regretted butting into his business. That was a goal he could look forward to.

He rubbed his arm hard across the bolt and felt it cut into an artery near his elbow on his inner forearm. Blood spurted out and across the room, forming an instant dark puddle near the middle of the tiny cell.

In case that wasn’t enough to show his mental state, Dremmel started to write his name in blood on the dingy wall. Then he wrote a short poem.

He forced himself to keep grinning until one of the correctional officers noticed him and rushed to the cell door.

The muscular black man shook his head and said, “You’re one crazy son of a bitch.”

Dremmel kept smiling and thought,
thank you for noticing.

John Stallings sat in the low early morning light from the solitary clean window in the Land That Time Forgot. He was wide awake after his odd sleeping pattern. He’d spent most of the day finding a place to live while Maria and he worked out their problems. He couldn’t face moving in with his mother; in fact he hoped to resolve his marital issues before his mother even found out. But now, in the empty, silent Crimes/Persons squad bay he looked up at the nineteen-inch screen of the analyst’s computer. It was the fastest machine in the unit, and he’d been viewing photographs and drawings posted by everyone from cops in Seattle to child advocates in Maine.

Three drawings had been of middle teens and from the time shortly after Jeanie’s disappearance. They were all of bodies that had been discovered. He made note of the investigating officers or tip line and knew he’d have to wait a few hours before calling. He hated these kinds of leads because they could only lead in one direction.

He also had the number of a teen rescue house in Dallas, where the woman who ran it, Rhonda Boyette, kept a constant eye out for him. She was representative of the kindhearted people Stallings had run across in his endless search for his oldest daughter.

Working on this kept his mind off his most recent problems and somehow made him feel like he had a purpose. He just couldn’t believe that he’d never see her again. Something inside him, a hunch or sixth sense, whatever it could be called, told him that this chapter in his life was not over.

After a couple of minutes he clicked a Web address that took him to a local TV station’s Web site and read a news blurb on William Dremmel. There was nothing new in the short story. Just that the Bag Man was in solitary at the Goode Pretrial Detention Facility on East Adams Street. The judge had issued no bond and ordered an array of psychiatric evaluations. All standard in a case of this nature. William Dremmel’s mother was at a hospital and resting comfortably.

Stallings read the rest but didn’t worry about it. William Dremmel’s days of terrorizing Jacksonville were over, and Stallings doubted he’d ever have to worry too much about the killer again. The trial would be simple, and Mazzetti would handle most of it.

Stallings felt a twinge of satisfaction that he had accomplished what he had set out to do.

He stood, stretched, and walked back over to his own desk. He looked down at the seven framed photographs on his ancient wooden desk and picked up a five-by-seven color shot of Jeanie posing with several of the lacrosse players and her coach. Instead of focusing on Jeanie’s smiling face like he usually did, he drifted over two girls to the smaller form of Lee Ann Moffit.

Somewhere, somehow, he knew there was a cop working just as hard for his Jeanie.