He made a note, then looked back at the young woman and noticed the makeup covering a mark on her neck. “What’s that from?”
She looked at the ground.
“Tabby, I’ve known you since you were sixteen. Tell me what happened.”
“I was light on the take Monday night. My manager wasn’t too happy about it.”
“Who’s your manager?”
She looked up at him. “It’s nothing, really.”
“Who is it?”
“Davey Lambert.”
Stallings knew the name and could picture the atypical pimp. He wasn’t known for his rough stuff and had some kind of computer sideline. He combined the two professions to become the wealthy king of Internet prostitution.
“Why’s Davey got you out on the street? I thought he only worked online?”
“He had trouble with someone and they knocked Davey off-line for a while.”
“Knocked him off-line? How?”
“Smashed up all his computers, tried to burn down that house he owns over on Beaver Street. He always thought it was funny selling pussy from a house on a street named Beaver.” She still had an engaging smile.
“Hysterical.”
“He ain’t so bad.”
Stallings looked at her. “C’mon, Tabby. You were light, so he choked you.”
“I’m tellin’ you, Stall, it wasn’t nothin’.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m gonna kick his ass.”
She smiled. “And you won’t tell him it was me?”
“You know better than that.”
She hesitated but not for long. Her smile spread at the thought of her pimp meeting up with someone like Stallings. “He’s at the house now trying to get the computers up and running. And he’s plenty pissed off. That’s why this happened.” She pointed to her discolored neck.
Stallings smiled, handed her half the cash in his pocket, and said, “Take the night off, Tabby. Your manager is going on vacation.”
William Dremmel stopped at a Wendy’s off Beaver Street after the pharmacy closed at nine. It had been a quiet night, and he’d spent the last three hours organizing one of the storerooms and tossing the newspapers and magazines that the vendors didn’t pick up after the periodicals were out of date. He liked that kind of work because it gave him a chance to acquire different pharmaceuticals for his experiments. No one noticed while he rooted around in the rear with crushed cardboard boxes. He could easily open a commercial tube of Percocet and Oxycontin while he was in the secure controlled-substance area because the fat pharmacist never bothered to lock up like he should.
He also got his pick of three-month-old magazines, so tonight he grabbed two copies of Muscle and Fitness and a Playboy that featured the “Girls of the Southeast Conference.”
Now he lingered over a Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich hoping his mother would be fast asleep by the time he got home. Sitting in the grubby fast-food joint, watching the diverse parade of humanity stroll through, gave Dremmel a sense of his own accomplishments. These poor slobs would never get the chance for a decent education or to advance science like him.
Outside the wide glass window he watched a roach scurry along the metal frame. This was not the part of town where the nicer restaurants stayed open long or the young business crowds gathered for a drink after work. This was the kind of area he would find a test subject some day. But it was someone inside that caught his attention. One of the workers had slipped out from the back with a burger and fries, eating quietly in the corner. She looked up and caught him staring. Even in the frumpy uniform he saw her perfect, small frame and cute, wide face. She had brown eyes with thick brows, and her hair had six or seven different colors dyed into it. On one side were patches of blue and pink and the other had white, red, and yellow. A rat-tail-like length in the back was pure black.
Instead of looking away when she saw him or ignoring him like most women would, she smiled, displaying the line of bright, if not completely straight, teeth. Dimples formed at each corner of her mouth. Then she said, “You work over at the pharmacy, right?”
Dremmel was surprised and just nodded. “I work at different branches on different days.” How had this girl slipped into his store and he not have noticed her?
She picked up her tray and ambled over to him, plopping in the other seat at the tiny tabletop. “I’ve seen you behind the counter a couple of times when I’m checking out up front.”
“So you’ve never come back to the pharmacy section.”
“Never had to, yet.”
She shot him a smile that showed a lot of intelligence and something else. Maybe a brashness he wasn’t used to. His thoughts of Stacey Hines faded for a brief moment as he looked into this girl’s face.
She said, “I’m Trina.”
“I’m, uh, Bill.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
He forced a smile. “I’m sure.” Dremmel let his gaze turn toward the window and watched a black Impala slow down and pull into the lot.
Trina leaned across the table toward him and whispered, “So, Bill, can you get any drug you want?”
It was a question that threw all his carefully laid plans for Stacey Hines into a holding pattern.
Ten
John Stallings pulled his county-issued black Impala into the Wendy’s parking lot. His stomach had been rumbling for more than an hour, but he wasn’t sure the effect a Wendy’s burger would have on him. This stretch of Beaver Street had only a few restaurants, and Wendy’s was the best choice of the bunch.
He pulled into an empty spot near the big bay window and glanced inside to see how busy the place was at this hour. One man stood in line and a few people sat at tables in the main dining area.
A girl in the window right in front of him munched on a sandwich as her head bobbed in response to a question from her companion. Her multicolored hair swayed in every direction as she nodded. She smiled and her whole face lit up, reminding Stallings exactly why he was out here at this hour. He felt guilty detouring off the main case to seek retribution on a pimp for hurting one of his girls. But in the big scheme of things Stallings really felt he was on this job to help people, and those he felt were most at risk were younger women working the streets in some way. Spending a few minutes scaring a pimp would help some women but wouldn’t necessarily stop the killer.
Looking back up into the Wendy’s, Stallings watched the young lady finish her sandwich. The concrete pillar blocked his view of the other person at the table, but from her gestures and posture he guessed it was a young man.
Moments like this made him wonder what it would have been like to see Jeanie in social situations. Dating, bringing boys by the house, growing up in front of his eyes. He knew not to dwell on those kinds of ideas, because they would crush him if he let them. He appreciated the smile on the girl’s face and then decided if he was going to take a few minutes away from the case to frighten a pimp, he better skip dinner to make up for it.
Besides, hunger put him in a nastier mood to deal with Davey Lambert, the pimp who went too far.
Patty Levine had lost track of time as she made call after call into every time zone in the country and pored over online catalogs of luggage and duffel bags. She had no idea how many companies made similar looking bags and that the number of outlets was in the thousands. She had narrowed the initial focus of stores that sold large bags to a small geographic area of Jacksonville and the surrounding area. She had a small map and marked from the Georgia border south to Flagler Beach and from the coast inland to Macclenny off Interstate 10. She liked this kind of work but more importantly realized no one else would put as much energy into it and might miss something.
Just as she felt her stomach growl someone said, “You’re here late.”