“I told you I liked Neptune Beach.”
“You don’t know how happy I am to see you. You like to be called William, right?”
He smiled too and said, “Right, William Dremmel, and you’re Stacey.”
Maybe her life was about to change here in Jacksonville.
Twenty-seven
John Stallings had been at the scene of many shootings. Too damn many. Gangbangers shot from head to toe, a suicide where a man put the barrel of a.357 in his mouth, then turned slightly and blew out the side of his face and died in agony over the course of two hours as he bled to death. John Stallings had seen it all. He’d been involved in three shootings during his career where he fired his duty weapon. Once he hit the suspect in the arm, once he missed with four shots when a grocery store robber pointed a cheap Tecra nine mil at his head. The gun wouldn’t fire, and after the spray of bullets from Stallings, the suspect dropped it and surrendered. He got a medal for that because the Sheriff’s Office had gotten a lot of bad press about “trigger-happy” officers and they appreciated that Stallings didn’t kill the guy like he meant to. Three months later the suspect choked a female jail deputy before his trial on the robbery. He was currently on death row at Raiford.
But the one that haunted him the most, the one time he was truly afraid, involved a kid who was being held for a drug debt, and Stallings happened to spot the dealer with the kid. When he approached them the dealer scooped up the four-year-old and held a gun to the kid. Stallings tried to reason with the dealer, but when the dust settled, Stallings had fired one time and the bullet hit the dealer in the face. He still got a card from the kid every Christmas.
Today he was cooling his heels at the house they had believed the Bag Man owned. It now looked like the resident’s name was Martin Zepher and he was not the Bag Man. He was an operator of a marijuana grow house and slept with a girl who was only fifteen. He was now dead. The girl was in child services because her dumb-ass mother knew of the relationship with Zepher and encouraged it since the dead pot grower supplied her with the best weed in town.
The mother was in custody on child endangerment, possession of marijuana, assault on a police officer for taking a swing at a female uniformed deputy, resisting arrest, and anything else the state’s attorney wanted to file. It was not only to cover the shooting of her daughter’s boyfriend; it was because of righteous indignation from the cops involved.
Stallings sat on a surprisingly comfortable and clean couch along with the uniformed guys who had come on the raid. Outside, crime scene trucks and unmarked JSO units clogged the yard. On the street, a house over, a Channel Eleven news crew with two cameras filmed all the activity at the house. They’d showed up before fire rescue even made it to the scene, but they had stayed out of the way. He wasn’t worried about that as much as how this might slow down their hunt for the Bag Man.
Rita Hester, looking like a lieutenant in charge of the detective bureau, in a green pantsuit with her gun and badge exposed on her hip, stalked through the house making sure everything was done by the book. Patty, Luis, and Mazzetti, who’d been in the room during the shooting, had gone down to the PMB to talk to I.A. about the incident.
The lieutenant paused in front of the couch to address Stallings and the others. She looked down at him like a child who was being punished and said, “You’re goddamn lucky this guy was a criminal with an underaged girl.”
“Otherwise I would’ve been wrong to take a chance to catch the Bag Man?”
“Don’t give me that shit, Stall. You know you could’ve done things a lot differently. If you got a warrant, the SWAT team would’ve done this.”
“But I didn’t know we had the time to wait when I made the decision.” He knew not to get too snarky and didn’t say anything else.
The lieutenant sighed for what seemed like a full minute, wiped her face with her bare hand, and said, “Martinez has a PBA attorney and is doing okay. We’ll lose him on the case for at least ten days for the standard paid leave after a shooting. Mazzetti, Patty, and the uniformed guy are done for the day. I told everyone to meet at the Land That Time Forgot in the morning.”
Rick Ellis and the other uniformed patrolman sprang off the couch and headed for the door. No cop wanted to be around a scene like this if they didn’t have to be.
Stallings got up more slowly and was headed for the door when the lieutenant stepped over to him and said, “C’mon, Stall. What was the idea of rushing in here?”
He didn’t want others to be blamed for his call. “It was the right thing to do.”
“I think you’re getting too tied up in this case. You’re losing perspective.”
“How do you figure that?”
“When’s the last time you spent time with your own kids?”
Now he saw it was Rita talking to him and not the lieutenant. “There’ll be time to see them as soon as we grab this asshole.”
“What if it takes a year?”
“Then I’m afraid a lot of young girls are going to die in that time, and I’m not prepared to let that happen. Are you?”
William Dremmel had enjoyed sitting outside next to Stacey and just chatting for the last twenty minutes. The sun had poked out of the clouds and felt good on his pale skin. A party of seagulls now scurried around the bag of bread he’d dropped about ten feet away, and Stacey seemed calm and relaxed.
So far his plan had gone off without a hitch. He’d parked away from her little Ford Escort, then while she was still on the beach, he’d slipped his arm in her opened window, popped the hood, and pulled two spark plug wires, then put everything back the way it was. After he saw her feed the birds on the beach, he ran up to the Publix and picked up a loaf. He let her see him and not the other way around. This was a brilliant plan even for him.
Now he’d confirmed that she still lived alone, hadn’t talked to her family in over a week, and basically was lonely. Welcome to the club.
Stacey said, “I can make it here, but I need more hours at the restaurant, or have to find a second job.”
That gave him an idea. “You ever work with older people?”
“Tank the bartender is fifty-nine.”
“No, I mean care for elderly patients.”
She shook her head slowly. “No, why?”
“Could you do it?”
“Yeah, I like hanging out with my grandma.”
He loved her midwestern accent and quaint notion of family. He couldn’t see someone ever calling his mom “Grandma.”
He gave her his earnest face. “I’ve been looking for someone to check on my mom on the days I’m at work late. You wouldn’t have to do anything but talk to her and keep her company. I could pay fifty bucks a day for about two hours.”
Stacey brightened just like he thought she might. “Really, you’d give me a try?”
“Sure, but you’d have to meet her first. That way you and she could see how well you get along.”
“Sure, when can we meet?”
“How about today?”
She looked down at her Timex sports watch. “I have to work at six.”
“That’s no problem. I live in Grove Park. Shouldn’t take long.”
She immediately started gathering her stuff as Dremmel helped her with her chair. He packed it in her backseat as she cranked the little Escort. When it wouldn’t start he had her pop the hood and pretended to evaluate the problem. In fact, all he did was make sure the spark plug wires were not connected but looked like they were.
He walked around to the driver’s seat and leaned into the window. “Tell you what. I’ll drive you to my mom’s, then I’ll get you to work. I have a buddy who could get this running in no time after he’s off work. We’ll have this to you before you get off work.” He smiled and forced himself to stay calm.
She hesitated, then said, “I hate for you to waste your whole day.”