The Perfect Woman (5 page)

John Stallings pulled his county-issued Impala into the driveway of his Cedar Hills home, southwest of the city, took three long, deep breaths, secured his pistol in a metal box under the driver’s seat of the car, then consciously put on his “home face.” This was the same ritual he had completed after a day at work for many years. It sunk in that he needed two separate personalities when his three-year-old daughter had called someone a “jerk-off.” It wasn’t even funny to him now thinking back on it.

His comfortable, two-story house was ten minutes from his mom’s house if he needed her or his sister, Helen, to come by and help out with the kids, or on occasion with his wife, Maria. They both lived in the house that he grew up in. His dad had spent the final eights years of his career in the Navy at Mayport and grabbed the house a block from the St. Johns River from a chaplain who was getting shipped out to San Diego. The old man had been a hard-ass who wouldn’t listen when everyone said he was losing sight of what was important. After Stallings had left for his baseball scholarship at the University of South Florida, his mother made a stand and the old drunken bully moved out. As far as Stallings was concerned it was seventeen years too late. He’d seen his father twice in twenty years. Once at his uncle’s funeral and once when the asshole was in the drunk tank at the city jail. At least he had had enough class not to ask for any help when he saw his son in his new blue JSO uniform with a patch that said
BOLD NEW CITY OF THE SOUTH
on his shoulder.

Stallings helped the old man anyway. He got one of the booking officers to lose his paperwork, and the senior Stallings never had to answer for the drunken punch he threw at some other rummy at a bar off Arlington Avenue.

Stallings had stuck out the beatings and drunken fits, but his older sister, Helen, made her escape at fourteen only to show up a couple years later. She never talked about her time away from the family, but the fact that she still lived quietly with their mom at forty-three spoke volumes about what had happened to her on the street. She never drank, smoked, used drugs, or even dated. He knew she felt guilty about Jeanie’s disappearance, like it was some kind of genetic code that had passed to her niece. Secretly, Stallings himself wondered if somehow his sister had influenced events. Either way it was just one more fucked-up aspect of his personal life that he had to keep a lid on for the sake of the family.

The late afternoon sun peeked between low clouds as he prepared to enter his other world. He slid out of the car, nodded to his neighbor like he always did, and headed into the house, hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst. Like he always did.

He let out a quick sigh of relief when he saw Lauren helping Charlie with his homework as soon as he walked in the door. His eight-year-old son’s dark hair hung down in front of his face as he looked at the page and listened to his thirteen-year-old sister. Looking at them made any of the shit he saw during the day seem petty and filled him with a sense of purpose like nothing else. He never did understand how parents couldn’t do everything in their power to make the best life possible for their kids.

His daughter looked up. “Hey, Dad. You’re late today.”

“Sorry guys, got hung up at work.”

Charlie looked up and grinned. “Hey, Dad.”

Stallings walked over and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Hey there, Charlie-boy.”

“How’s the homework going?”

“It’s so easy tonight a firefighter could do it.” He smiled at the proper use of the joke.

Stallings laughed out loud. Like most cops he had a slight pang of jealousy toward firefighters. Everyone loved firefighters, because they didn’t write speeding tickets or arrest people. Cops joked about how their brother public servants got to work out and sleep on duty, and every firefighter he knew had a second business. So jokes at firefighters’ expense were common.

Charlie smiled and said, “Can we kick?”

He hesitated. Kicking the soccer ball with his son was one of the things that kept him sane. He had preferred baseball, at least he had some talent there, but his son loved the soccer field, so Stallings adjusted to the new generation’s sport of choice. The athletic boy could already outrun him. “I have to head back out in a little bit, pal. We might need to kick twice as long tomorrow.”

“Gotta catch a bad guy?”

Stallings laughed out loud, amazed at how his son had a way of pulling him out of a funk. “No, nothing so exciting. I have to talk to the lieutenant, then see a lady about something. I should be back before bedtime.” He caught the look on Lauren’s face and shook his head slightly so she knew not to worry. This was business, nothing to do with Mom.

He kissed his daughter on the forehead and looked up at the bookcase holding family photos. Every time he walked in the room he looked up at the last photo with all five of them in it. His oldest daughter, Jeanie, smiled back at him, and he closed his eyes for a quick prayer that she was safe. The support groups all said it was important to remember a missing child and have positive feelings about him or her. Stallings did his best.

Now, three years later, he tried to focus on the family as best he could and these two seemed happy. It had taken counseling, anger, frustration, and time. His quiet search continued as he worked closely with the National Missing Children’s Clearinghouse in Washington. They were a smart group that did good work even if most people were ignorant of their efforts. He had computer databases at work he checked once a month or so. Unidentified bodies of young females, a mental patient who wouldn’t speak, usually called Jane Doe by the facility, bulletins about any possible connection to his daughter, but nothing had panned out. He needed to show the kids that he had not given up on Jeanie.

He knew that if his wife wasn’t out here in the living room, she was on the computer or phone, and he found her in the bedroom, where she tapped away at a black Dell keyboard.

He took a deep breath and felt able to face Maria.

“Hey, dear.” He always stayed upbeat until it was clear he couldn’t anymore.

She glanced up from an instant message she was composing. “Just finishing up. This poor woman from St. Joe, Missouri, has a daughter who’s been missing eight months. I’m just giving her a few ideas for support.”

He leaned down to kiss her forehead. It was also a way to sniff her breath.

She hit Send and looked up. Her dark oval eyes and high cheekbones made her look as fresh as she did on their wedding day in Las Vegas on her twentieth birthday. They had eloped without fanfare to hide the fact that she was pregnant from her Orthodox Cuban parents. By the time Jeanie came along the goodwill of the baby had distracted Maria’s father from the math.

After Stallings’s failed baseball and academic career at USF, Maria had seemed like the only thing in his life that was worthwhile. He searched everyday for that old feeling.

Maria said, “How was your day?”

“Not so good.”

She glanced back at the screen. “I have to answer this e-mail. Hold on.” She plunked back in the swivel chair.

Stallings didn’t mind. It looked like another night of peace, and he could go back out to work without distraction for a couple of hours. But he wanted to see the kids before they went to bed. That would keep him going.

Rita Hester pressed the unlock button on her key chain and heard the familiar double beep of her blue Crown Vic parked in the detective bureau lieutenant’s spot outside the main sheriff’s building on East Bay Street. Everyone knew the three-story building as the Police Memorial Building or PMB for short. The wind was just right for her to smell the coffee from the Maxwell House plant a few blocks away. That beat the shit out of the breeze carrying the acrid, rancid odor of the paper mills as it had for years. Even though the community and industry had worked hard to ease the effects of the paper mills, and the locals quickly got used to the stench, the wrong breeze would smack you in the face and make tourists gag. No one missed the mill’s departure as part of the city’s identity. Unfortunately that was just about the only thing visitors remembered from trips to the “bold new city of the south” when the mill poured out the foul-smelling byproducts of paper production. She knew that the sulfur used in the process was part of the odor equation, but later learned it was also the cooking out of the lignins and sugars in the wood. She was just glad it was gone.

From her car she could look up onto the second floor and see “The Land That Time Forgot,” as the detectives called it. The detective bureau, with its mismatched carpets, scuffed walls, and ancient equipment, was always the last unit to get upgrades. The public saw the patrol cars and marveled at the computers to get information to the patrolmen but never dealt with detectives. No one seemed to care if there was money in the budget for them. Rita never really cared until the detective bureau fell under her command. She hadn’t bothered to actually move into the bureau, deciding instead to keep her office next to the clean lab facilities, but she fought to get any scrap she could for the detectives. Just outfitting them with laptops was a monumental task but she had accomplished it. Sure, they were leftover computers from the training division, but they worked, and it was better than nothing.

As she slid the key into the lock, she sensed someone approaching her. Even in the safety of the Sheriff’s Office lot, her twenty years of police work made her reach for her purse and the small Glock model 27 inside. The nine years she spent on patrol taught her to automatically reach to her right hip, where she carried her duty weapon, but as she worked her way through the D-Bureau and up the command structure she had made it a point to retrain herself to reach for her purse.

Then she heard someone say, “Rita, got a minute?”

She relaxed as she realized it was her old road patrol zone partner John Stallings.

“Stall, what chu doin’ out so late? Mazzetti keep you on that scene all this time?”

He hesitated.

Normally, in her rushed existence, Rita would bark out a command to “get to the point,” but she let Stallings have a moment. Not just for the sake of their time on the road together, but because of the way his daughter’s disappearance had affected him. Everyone at the S.O. whispered about the way it was reported, his slow recovery, and speculation his assignment to missing persons was a way to protect him. They didn’t realize he wanted to be there and was doing a bang-up job in the unit.

Finally Stallings said, “I gotta ask a favor.”

“What’s that, Stall? I’ll do whatever I can.”

“I gotta get assigned to the homicide of the dead girl I found over on Jax Beach.”

“Why, Stall? That just doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s a feeling I have. If we don’t find the guy who did that to her, he’ll strike again.”

That comment froze her. Did he know already? Was he that smart? She gathered her thoughts and said, “What would Maria and the kids do if you started on a case like this? You could be on it for weeks with barely enough time to eat and sleep.”

“They’d understand. Especially because Maria knew Lee Ann Moffit.”

“That’s another problem, Stall. You knew the victim.”

“That’s not a problem, it’s a benefit. I never really talked to her or the family when she played lacrosse. Mainly, I knew her professionally, no conflict there. I also know who she hung out with and the circles where she traveled. Those kids would never talk to an asshole like Mazzetti.” He paused and added. “I’m on my way over to make notification to the family now. Mazzetti needed a hand and I already knew them.” He looked at her with those blue eyes and added, “Rita, something is telling me I need to be in this case. Maybe I’m still fucked up over Jeanie, maybe it’s something else, but I have to be involved.”

Rita thought about telling him the whole story, but decided to wait until they could all sit down together. She considered the veteran detective’s request. Stallings was a passionate cop who sometimes did things she didn’t approve of. Well, didn’t approve of now, as an administrator. When they were on patrol together she supported his offbeat, sometimes unlawful actions to solve a crime by any means available. Some guys could operate like that, knowing how far to take a particular situation and then how to smooth it out afterward. Stallings was the best at that. At least he used to be.

She nodded and said, “Okay, Stall. I may regret this, but I’ll have you assigned. We could use a guy like you on this case. But Mazzetti is still the lead.”

He smiled. “Thanks, Rita.” Then he paused, looked up at her again, and said, “Any way we could bring my partner, Patty, in on this too? She wants the experience.”

“She can’t go around with you on this. I got plans for that girl, and getting a beef for being with you when you crack someone’s head won’t help her on the sergeant’s board.”

“You’re still the best.”

She wanted to hug him, but it wasn’t appropriate in her current position. She liked him. Everyone did. More importantly, she could use him. It never hurt to have a scapegoat if everything went to hell on a case that was already screwed up.

Tony Mazzetti sat in his car for a few minutes to get away from the constant noise and activity of the crime scene. He needed to make some notes and start his “book” that would document every activity related to the case. The so-called murder book was necessary, because even a simple homicide like one gang member shooting another in front of seventeen witnesses typically didn’t go to trial until two years after the incident. Even Mazzetti’s razor-sharp mind couldn’t keep facts straight that long. Not with dozens of homicides in the interim.

He’d have help on this one. The only question was how much help. Right now he and the lieutenant were the only ones familiar with the bigger picture connected to this girl’s death. By this time tomorrow or maybe the day after everyone in the department would know, and he was pretty sure he’d be blamed for the fuck-up. The fact that that asshole John Stallings found the body wouldn’t help anything. It would only remind everyone of the jerk’s lucky grab a few years ago.