“No, ma’am. We just had a few questions about him. It’s sort of a follow-up study were doing on deaths in the county over the past two years. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
“If you’re asking me why he would hang himself at the dorm shower room, I still have no idea.”
Having an entire sleepless night to reconsider how he felt about Brother Frank Ellis had led John Stallings to the conclusion that he needed to listen to people more. He had spent more than an hour looking at old photographs of the family with Ellis and his wife, Denise, and the pastor had never once hinted that Stallings had roughed him up or treated him badly in any way. The fact that the man was visiting Maria with his wife also indicated that perhaps Stallings was wrong about him being interested in Maria. If he was wrong about Brother Ellis, what the hell else could he be wrong about?
Counter to stereotype, many cops liked to focus on the best in people. Stallings had to look for the best or risk drowning in despair at how people could act. The vast majority of people did what was right because it was right, not because of the law or the work cops did to enforce the law. If people started doing whatever they wanted, there weren’t enough cops in the world to set society back on the right track. It now annoyed Stallings that the one guy he thought was an asshole turned out to be a decent guy. Shit.
Stallings’s cell phone pulled him out of his deep thought. As soon as he flipped it up and noticed a number from Volusia County he immediately recognized the voice.
The woman said, “This is J. L. Winter. Remember me?”
“How could I forget?”
“It would be hard, wouldn’t it?”
Stallings could feel her confidence even over the cheap Nextel phone.
J.L. said, “Can we meet? I have information on Zach Halston.”
Patty listened carefully as Tony Mazzetti systematically explained everything he and Sparky had learned about the suicide at the University of North Florida two years earlier. The victim had been a member of the fraternity and attended many of their parties. The boy’s mother noticed a change in him before Thanksgiving two years ago. He had seen a doctor for depression several years before that. He was probably a true suicide.
Patty asked why he had not had a tattoo.
Mazzetti had thought of that too and had asked the grieving mother. Tau Epsilon never forced anyone to get the goofy logo on their ankle, and the boy was a practicing Jew. He’d skipped the tattoo for religious reasons.
Mazzetti said he then raced over to the medical examiner’s office to go through the file with Lisa Kurtz. There was nothing at all to indicate this was anything other than a suicide. Mazzetti had even gone as far as contacting the retired detective who had worked the case. The detective had found three of the victim’s friends who had said he was deeply troubled by something. They said it was something that had happened shortly before his death. That put the time frame right around the Halloween party.
The story sounded like classic Tony Mazzetti, emphasizing how hard he worked and how quickly he jumped on leads, but mainly how the death could not possibly be a homicide. However, in this case, Lisa Kurtz agreed with him. Patty was surprised how much she liked Tony’s new squeeze. But the less interested she became in her own boyfriend, the more jealous she was of the pretty young assistant medical examiner. Despite her personal feelings, she couldn’t deny that Lisa was sharp and dedicated. She represented women well in law enforcement. That meant a lot to Patty.
But now in the conference room, seeing Sergeant Zuni and Sparky staring at Mazzetti, it was clear they had a problem. Mazzetti wanted the problem to be a rash of accidents and suicides, but Patty knew it to be something else. She said, “There is no way these are all coincidence. I don’t care if they happened over the course of two years or ten years, the common thread of the fraternity links these deaths together. These have got to be homicides.”
Mazzetti shook his head. “Too many variables. A gunshot, all kinds of different drugs, even ketamine. I mean, Jesus, where do you even find that shit?”
Sparky said, “Usually at a veterinarian. But the rampant spread of the drug used recreationally has provided a number of sources.”
Mazzetti looked at his partner and said, “What’re you, a commentator on a documentary?”
Patty had to smile at the give-and-take between the two partners but noticed that Lisa Kurtz, sitting at the end of the table quietly, was the one who came up with the comment that shut Tony Mazzetti down.
Lisa said, “What if the killer did it specifically so they wouldn’t be caught? Change up the mode of death so radically and use so many different jurisdictions that the cops would never catch on? Made it seem like a woman, when it was really a man, or something like that.”
The comment earned a frown from Mazzetti, but Patty wanted to cheer the young medical examiner who’d put it all together.
This was the start of something big.
THIRTY-FIVE
John Stallings sat in a booth at a Denny’s in the south end of Duval County. He wanted to stay in his official jurisdiction just in case there was a problem. He couldn’t fully trust a pot grower, even one as attractive as J. L. Winter. From the window he could see the traffic coming down J. Turner Butler Boulevard. He wasn’t sure what kind of vehicle to look for but wasn’t surprised when he saw the beautiful woman pulled into the lot driving a Cadillac CTX. Nice, but not too flashy.
He stood when she entered the restaurant and approached him. He held out his hand to forestall any chance of a hug.
J.L. said, “What a gentleman.”
When they settled into the thick padded benches, J.L gazed out the window and said, “I try not to come into civilization too often. But it gets so boring on the farm and I have so few visitors, I have to keep occupied.”
“My guess is you could have all of the visitors you wanted.”
“Given the nature of my occupation, I try to limit the number of people who actually come onto the premises.” She gave him a sly smile. “But you have an open invitation.”
“Why do you live in such isolation? There is so much you could be doing.”
“If business stays like it is, I can retire in a couple of years and never worry about money again.”
Stallings had heard that same line from every prostitute, drug dealer, and thief in Jacksonville. “What do you do when you have enough money?”
J.L. shook her head, causing her black hair to fan out behind her. “I don’t know. Maybe public service so God won’t judge me too harshly. I thought about teaching. I have my bachelor’s in elementary education from USF.”
Stallings said, “I was at the University of South Florida on a baseball scholarship.”
“When did you graduate?”
“Never did.”
“How do you go from baseball to a police officer?”
“Maybe I want God to take it easy on me too.”
Lynn couldn’t believe how quickly Leon had found information on Zach Halston. She’d already written down where he had been seen down in St. Augustine. Now she looked back up at Leon sitting across from her at her desk.
“How’d you get this?”
“One phone call. You just have to know the right people to call.”
“I appreciate this, Leon. But I think you’ve done everything you could do for me.”
The hard-looking man shook his head. “No, there’s a lot more I could do. This was too easy. Now that I’ve done this, we’re joined together.”
“But I don’t need any help.”
“Everyone needs help and this makes me feel good. You don’t want me to feel bad about myself, do you?” His tone changed.
Lynn could see how effective this man could be in almost any cutthroat industry. But now he was her problem and she had to figure out a way to deal with him.