The nurse said, “I understand.”
The doctor nodded, thinking the nurse wasn’t a local. She didn’t have the annoying twang many of the nurses raised in Daytona or its suburbs had. He felt confident she was the right nurse to look after the most challenging case he had had since he arrived in purgatory.
Sparky Taylor had to admit he enjoyed working with the intel detective. Lonnie Freed shared his love of computers and even knew his policy pretty well. They started by sorting the names of associates provided by the DEA. The federal agencies had always been quite secretive about how they obtained information. Of course the FBI was the worst. An informant could provide them with hearsay about one person talking about another person and both of the people would end up as criminal associates to some known terrorist or fraud kingpin.
The world of narcotics was even more nebulous. Names were batted about by informants and over wiretaps and entered into DEA reports, making them each become an associate of a known drug dealer. At least the DEA attempted to rate the reliability of information. They had a proprietary database that no other agency could access. But this report the local DEA supervisor had given John Stallings detailed the reason each name was on the list.
Sparky noted how efficient Lonnie was in determining who was a viable suspect based on if they were in jail or living in some distant area. He had managed to narrow the list to eleven names.
Now Sparky was separating the various owners of Suburbans into three separate piles. Each pile represented a geographic area with the largest one being Jacksonville.
Lonnie pointed to a stack of five registrations and said, “What’s that fourth pile?”
“Those are vehicles registered to businesses. We may not have to worry about them.”
Lonnie said, “Why don’t you give them to me and I’ll see if anything matches up.”
Sparky smiled and nodded at the efficient, intelligent idea. He wished this guy worked in crimes/persons.
Patty Levine and John Stallings had already cleared three Suburban owners off their list simply by driving by the vehicles. One was white and two were red. Stallings had insisted they stop and inspect one of the red Suburbans to ensure it hadn’t recently been painted.
Now Stallings wanted to stop when he saw a blue Suburban backed into the driveway of a small house in a newer section of Jacksonville known as Argyle. Developers had put their mark of bland, identical houses across broad swaths of former ranch land. Zero lot lines made the houses look more like apartment buildings.
Even though the chances were miniscule that this was the right Suburban, Patty felt her heart rate increase with anticipation. This was the first car that was even the right color.
She stood at the end of the driveway as Stallings bent over and inspected the grille and headlight on the front. Patty saw damage on the driver-side bumper, but it looked more like he had struck a low wall.
Patty was startled by a shout from the front door of the house.
A beefy bald man in his mid-thirties yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Stallings straightened, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his ID, letting the man clearly see the badge.
The man said, “I don’t give a damn who you work for. This is my property. Unless you want a shit pot of trouble, you better back out of my yard and get a warrant.”
Patty saw the way Stallings stuffed his ID back into his rear pocket and started to march toward the man. She could read Stallings’s body language better than anyone else. This was about to turn ugly, and more important, cost them valuable time.
Patty stepped forward, holding her hand up to stop Stallings like she was a traffic cop and he was an approaching truck. She turned to the man and said, “We’re sorry, we didn’t mean to upset you. This is a countywide effort to identify the driver of a specific blue Suburban.”
The man the man cut his eyes from Stallings to Patty. “Why are you looking for a Suburban?”
Stallings said, “Why are you being evasive? Doesn’t matter why we’re looking for it, we just are.”
Patty turned so the man couldn’t see her expression, but she was able to convey to Stallings that she needed him to shut the hell up for a minute. As she turned back to the man, Patty put on a calm expression and stepped closer to him. “We’re looking for someone involved in a hit-and-run of a young man in St. Augustine. A witness was able to see part of the tag, which is the same as yours. If you can tell us where you were yesterday about two we can cross you off our list.”
The man relaxed slightly and said, “I was on my route in Fernandina Beach yesterday.”
“What kind of route do you have?”
“I’m an independent business machine repairman. I have the contract for Konica in North Florida.”
Stallings said, “Can you prove where you were?”
The man scowled at Stallings but stepped over to the car and opened the passenger-side door. Patty maneuvered to be able to see inside the vehicle and brought her hand to the gun on her hip covered by an open Windbreaker. She noticed Stallings step to the other side so he could look through the driver’s window.
The man came out with two sheets of paper. As he showed them to Patty he said, “This is the receipt from the office where I fixed two copiers. And this is my vehicle log that shows I left the house at eight-fifteen, made three stops, all at Fernandina Beach, and got back home at four-forty-five.”
Patty checked the paperwork and saw that it all matched up. But the paperwork gave Patty an idea. What if the Suburban was part of a fleet? It could be very hard to track down. Both Zach Halston and Alan Cole in Daytona had been struck during the middle of the day. There was the strong possibility that whoever was driving was using a vehicle from their employment.
She looked at Stallings and said, “On the next set of names we pick up, let’s take vehicles registered to businesses.”
FORTY-EIGHT
John Stallings and Patty Levine had identified five businesses they would visit tomorrow. Somehow Stallings wasn’t surprised that Sparky Taylor had already separated out vehicles registered to businesses. As usual, the portly detective gave no indication of whether he thought it was a good idea to visit businesses. He had found a likable, capable new assistant in Lonnie Freed. No one from the D-bureau even asked why Freed was up there helping out. Even Sergeant Zuni accepted his presence without a word.
Stallings had chosen the businesses they would visit based on their size. Because tomorrow was Saturday he chose only the big offices that would have someone there on the weekend. He knew command staff viewed this case as vital by the ease with which he and Patty got permission to work on a Saturday. No one even asked about overtime.
Stallings had purposely left all information Lonnie Freed had provided on suspects named Gator on his desk. He didn’t trust himself not to abandon the case in his search for Gator and a link to Jeanie. He hoped they could resolve the fraternity case soon; then he’d contemplate taking a leave of absence to focus on finding Gator and healing some of his own personal issues. He wasn’t sure how he could explain it to Maria, if he even bothered. As distracted as she’d been recently, he wasn’t sure she would realize he was not going to work.
Just thinking of Maria caused him some anxiety. He knew his personal life was a mess. He knew he was still hopelessly in love with his estranged wife. What he didn’t know was how she felt about him. He was trying to be patient with her issues. But he didn’t know how much longer he should let things drag out without resolution. Stallings didn’t want to let another woman like Grace Jackson walk out of his life. That was one of the reasons he was visiting the community center this late on a Friday evening. Although he wanted to visit with his father, he was hoping Grace might be volunteering tonight as well.