Patty didn’t reply; she just looked at the teacher’s name on the mailbox and rang the buzzer.
A few minutes later they were in the neat living room of the young music teacher. The woman wore a robe over a flowered muumuu. Her long, stringy hair lay limp across her wide shoulders. Patty had wasted no time explaining the situation and the need to bother her at such a late hour.
After listening to the questions, the teacher shook her head and said, “I assumed Leah was home sick. I haven’t heard from her since I saw her in class on Friday.”
Patty noticed the young teacher sneaking looks at Stallings. She’d seen it before. The way her partner’s understated manner and good looks attracted women from all areas of society. Stallings had no clue when this happened.
Stallings said, “You haven’t noticed any calls from numbers you don’t recognize? Leah doesn’t have her cell phone with her.”
Then the young teacher sat straighter and snapped her fingers. She rushed into the kitchen and came back out with an iPhone in her hand. She lifted her glasses to look at the screen closely and said, “I was called by a number Friday evening, but I had no idea who it was so I didn’t answer.” She read the number off her phone as Patty copied it down into her notepad in the beat-up metal cover.
After a few more routine questions Patty said, “Would you call us if you hear from her?”
The teacher turned directly to Stallings and said, “Why don’t you give me your business card and cell phone so I can reach you if I hear anything?”
Patty shook her head, thinking about all the times she’d heard women talk about how obvious men could be.
THREE
John Stallings swallowed hard and resisted the urge to grab the motel manager by the collar of his faded flannel shirt. He gave the young man with the soul patch a hard look and said, “You don’t need to know why we’re looking for her, you just need to know that we’re looking for her. But here’s a simple question.” Stallings spoke very slowly to emphasize how close he was to losing his patience. “Have you seen this girl?” He tapped the photo of Leah Tischler he’d laid on the young man’s desk.
This time the man’s nervous eyes skittered toward the photo and he picked it up with a shaky hand. He took his time looking at the glossy color photo of a dark-haired, smiling seventeen-year-old taken two months earlier at a dance recital. The Tischlers had been very helpful the night before. He and Patty had developed a detailed info sheet in time to get it out to all the road patrol officers before the day shift and to all the detectives. The sheet had Leah Tischler’s photo and description, along with photos of the clothes she was wearing and of the gaudy, silver-plated belt the Thomas School issued. The teacher Leah was close to provided a phone number Stallings had determined to be a public pay phone inside a check-cashing store one block away. Now he and Patty were checking each of the small, low-rent apartment and motel buildings in the area.
Stallings didn’t rush the manager now that he’d made his point. This guy who ran the thirty-unit building couldn’t grasp the idea that for every runaway or missing person there was someone who missed them and worried every night. Stallings didn’t have time to answer stupid questions like why he was looking for someone or what would happen to her if she were found. He’d long since abandoned any pretext of being polite to people who slowed down his efforts to find missing kids. Especially teenage runaways.
This place was the only obvious destination in the area. But she might have been looking into cheap housing. Anywhere along Davis might lead to a clue to her whereabouts. It never ended with a missing persons case. An interview could lead to five more interviews and an address could point to three different houses. The only chance an endangered teenager had was a cop who wouldn’t give up. He had to live by that code. The manager handed back the four-by-six photo and shook his head. “I haven’t seen her.” He held up his right hand like he was testifying at trial. “I swear to God.”
Stallings ignored his partner’s short snort of laughter behind him. He was on a mission and a little twerp like this wouldn’t slow him down. Stallings nodded, collected the photo, turned, and marched out of the grubby lobby of the small motel west of the St. Johns River.
As soon as he stepped out onto the cracked and uneven sidewalk of downtown Jacksonville, a dribble of rain blew onto his face. At least the heat and humidity of late summer in North Florida wasn’t making him drip with sweat; the rain kept him cool.
Patty Levine, lingering behind at the manager’s office to smooth over any hard feelings, caught up to Stallings on the sidewalk. She said, “You know you can’t really treat everyone like they’re a sexual predator or someone about to snatch a kid off the street. I appreciate the fact you’re scary and get information quickly, but sometimes it wouldn’t hurt to answer a question like why we’re looking for someone.”
He turned and looked at Patty’s bright, pretty face framed with shoulder-length blond hair and said, “Maybe I misread what Leah’s parents wanted. I thought they wanted to find their daughter. I thought you agreed with me that this was a good case because we could provide the Tischlers with an explanation of what happened to their daughter.”
“Actually, I said it would be nice to provide the Tischlers with an answer, but I’m not certain we’ll find a smart teenager who doesn’t want to be found.”
“Then will you humor me?”
Patty flashed a perfect smile and nodded her head. She knew what she was doing. It never hurt to avoid complaints, but she also allowed Stallings wide latitude. Maybe too wide sometimes.
Stallings knew his younger partner would like to be involved in bigger cases but was very loyal to him. He also knew she was very sensitive to the fact that one of the few things that gave him any comfort was working on cases like this. He didn’t want to take advantage of her, but he certainly didn’t want to lose her as his partner either. She could do so many things and get so many more places than he could based on her looks and personality. The world of police work was evolving and he was stuck in the Jurassic period.
Patty said, “What’s your gut say about Leah?”
“I still think she ran away, but the fact that there’s no sign of her scares me. This was her first time running away so I don’t think she’d leave J-Ville. Someone had to have seen her.”
They kept walking down North Myrtle Avenue, occasionally stopping to show the photo of Leah to different vendors or low-cost hotel operators.
Stallings said, “My father doesn’t live too far from here.”
“How’s that going?”
Stallings shrugged. “He’s got a lot to make up for and a lot to catch up on. We’ve been taking it slow, but the kids really get a kick out of seeing him. It seems like he takes their minds off my troubles with Maria. They don’t hold the resentment my sister and I did toward the old man. Shit, Helen hasn’t even spoken to him yet.”
Patty nodded, knowing not to say too much about Stallings’s screwed-up personal life.
Stallings said, “What’s your boyfriend up to?” He liked the face she made when he referred to the chief homicide detective as her boyfriend. Patty and Tony Mazzetti had worked hard to keep their relationship quiet so that no one in management would feel like they had to move either of them off the squad.
Patty said, “He’s been on the Rolling Hills homicide since last week.”
Stallings thought about the young mother who’d been strangled in her own bed in the upscale community. Thankfully the killer had not bothered her two sleeping children. The case had garnered quite a bit of media attention, which always seemed to please Tony Mazzetti. The community was always outraged when an innocent person was harmed in their own home. It struck a nerve. A primal fear everyone held. The TV stations thrived on shit like that.