She saw Bobby Hollis notice her from the lounger outside the front door. He sprang to his feet and turned toward the door, apparently to warn the brothers inside.
Patty simply called out in a very loud, clear voice, “Don’t.”
He responded like a dutiful dog and froze in place. Then he straightened and pulled his shirt, flicking potato chip crumbs onto the ground. He turned slowly and said, “Hello, Detective, nice to see you again.”
“Cut the shit. I don’t have time for it.”
The door to the fraternity house burst open and a young man stumbled out. She immediately recognized him as the one she had thumped out at the beach. He staggered to a stop, looked into her face, and let a goofy grin spread.
He ran his hand across his wild hair and said, “Well, well, what do we have here?”
Patty didn’t change her expression when she said, “You don’t have much of a memory.”
The kid said, “I never needed one until I saw someone as beautiful as you.”
Patty rolled her eyes but acknowledged, at least to herself, she liked the compliment and the kid was smooth.
From behind the drunken moron, Bobby Hollis said, “You remember Detective Levine, don’t you?”
The kid was shit-faced, but he remembered, and the color left his face. He backed away, then turned to one side and appeared ready to sprint if he had to.
This time Patty said, “Don’t. Sit.”
The kid froze, then sat on the lounger next to the front door.
Patty shoved Bobby Hollis next to the frightened fraternity brother. She looked at the drunken brother and said, “Just out of curiosity, what does a clueless dope like you major in?”
“Pre-law.”
“Why?”
“Why else? Money. Personal injury is where it’s at, along with decent litigation. Look at the tobacco settlement. Any lawyer involved is rich.”
Maybe the kid was right. For a drunken asshole, he made pretty good sense. She turned toward Bobby and said, “I need a few answers from you guys.”
“Like what?”
Patty leaned in closer to them to get her point across. “I want to hear all about your Halloween parties the last couple of years.”
The fraternity brothers looked at each other. Then Bobby said, “What do you want to know? It’s a lot of fun and half the damn school comes to the party.”
“That’s what I’m looking for. A list of attendees the last two years.”
Bobby’s eyes opened wide as he said, “That’s impossible. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“I would start by sobering up and getting together with a couple of your trusted friends. I want a preliminary list first thing tomorrow morning. And if I don’t get it, next time I come back I’ll bring along Detective Stallings. Your lives will never be the same until you help us out with this. Do my good little dogs understand what I’m saying?”
Both young men nodded their heads in unison.
When Lynn worked this late it was usually for Dr. Ferrero, but tonight she was behind her desk at the Thomas Brothers supply company catching up on accounts receivable that had been held two weeks, then dumped on her desk in a big pile. She really didn’t care because it was peaceful and kept her mind off other, more troubling things.
She finished near seven o’clock and cut through the loading dock to the parking lot, where there were still a number of people scurrying around and closing out their jobs for the day. As she turned into the fleet parking lot she saw Leon wiping down one of Mr. Thomas’s Cadillacs.
She stopped and they exchanged helloes as she took a moment to look at the details of the beautiful car. She turned to the familiar sound of the golf cart Dale used to scoot around the giant complex.
He slowed until he was directly across from her and said, “Looking forward to Saturday night. We’ll have a great time.” He scowled at Leon and said, “You’re outside all day tomorrow. Wear plenty of sunscreen.” He mashed the pedal of the golf cart and hummed away at a brisk five miles an hour.
Leon looked at Lynn and said, “It’s not my business, but why would you go out with that turd?”
Lynn shrugged meekly and said, “I was kind of forced to. I swear to God there’s nothing going on between us.”
Leon gave her a long, curious look and said, “How’d you like it if Dale was unavailable for your date?”
“I wouldn’t be too upset.” As soon as she said it, she wondered what Leon might have in mind. Lynn didn’t think a simple comment like that meant anything sinister or violent, but she knew the lean, tough-looking man had his own grudge against Dale.
Leon said, “I owe it to your dad and I was going to have to do something anyway. That guy is a total dick.” He looked in every direction. “I know everyone in your family can keep a secret. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Stallings stood in the empty third-floor apartment that Jeanie had once rented. He knew he wouldn’t find any evidence or information; he just wanted to be in a space that Jeanie had occupied within the last few years. The whole idea made him shaky and raised an entirely new set of questions in his mind about his daughter’s disappearance.
Why had she run away? If she was so close, why hadn’t she called? What had gone so terribly wrong? Did she hate him? Had it all sprung from his own relationship with his father?
Stallings’s sister, Helen, had been very clear that she’d left because of their father. She was less clear about was what had happened to her after she’d left. That made Stallings wonder what other issues Jeanie might have if, by God’s grace, he did find her and bring her home. He had no illusions. This was not the tidy world of the TV hour-long drama. He had to consider the effect on Charlie and Lauren as well as Jeanie’s well-being.
So the question came up again, why had she left? It was almost easier to believe she had been taken against her will. At least then there was an explanation. Although the rate of kidnappings in the United States was incredibly small, it still happened. Most detectives went their whole careers without seeing a kidnapping. At least one that wasn’t related to the drug trade.
Stallings had developed a certain confidence as a police officer that had served him well the past sixteen years. It could be considered the sixth sense cops are expected to have. A confidence to look at someone and know they are feeding you a line of bullshit. The confidence to know you’ll achieve a goal or solve a case. It was the basic personality trait that defined a good cop.
But as a father, he had constantly compared himself to others. One of the reasons was that he never had a decent role model himself. He adopted other fathers as role models. He appreciated dads who not only spent time with their kids but did stuff with them too. Played sports instead of watching the kids run around the park. Explained things instead of just showing kids what things looked like. It often made him wonder what he’d be like today if his father had done those kinds of things.
He had a lot of questions about his life and what if scenarios. But there was one question that was more immediate and could lead to other answers: Where was Zach Halston?
THIRTY
John Stallings had spent the morning at his desk looking through every database he could think of for a reference to someone named Gator. He also wondered what exactly Zach Halston had done to piss Jeanie off.
He had found so many references to so many different Gators that Stallings knew there was only one place he could go to get any real answers. It was one of the few places in the PMB that most cops avoided. But he had made up his mind and started the trek up the stairs to the third floor where the rubber-gun squad was located. Some of the patrolman didn’t even realize there was a unit called Intelligence in the sheriff’s office. Years ago the unit had been a dumping ground for cops who had been unable to make a case or work in the streets. But now, with the rising public concern of terrorism and the mushrooming groups of extremists, the detectives assigned to the intelligence unit, or rubber-gun squad, tended to be among the smartest in the department.