He didn’t need another complication in his life right now.
William Dremmel felt as if he was handling his business better than ever before. Instead of indecisiveness he was taking action, instead of quiet loneliness he was making efforts to never be alone again, and instead of fear he felt confidence. He knocked on the door lightly, knowing it was late and Lori would be the only one awake at this hour. She’d told him many times of her insomnia and habit of watching movies in the living room after her father and brothers went to bed.
Dremmel had a few things to say to Lori, but he also needed to gauge the threat she was to him and his experiments. Would she really continue to harp on his relationship with Stacey Hines, or was it a passing comment? He couldn’t risk it. He also wanted to tell her how he really felt about her.
He tapped the door again and heard someone pad across the wooden floor of the slightly elevated house wedged in the neighborhood known as Durkeeville. Predominantly African American, the area had seen a renaissance in recent years, and Lori’s family had always kept the little house and yard neat. He’d driven her home several times over the years and knew his way around the streets.
The old wooden door creaked open and Lori stood alone wearing simple shorts and a T-shirt. Her natural beauty didn’t need cosmetics to make her stand out, but she usually wore them at work anyway. Now in the soft light from inside she looked like the girl next door if the girl was a modern dancer with dark smooth skin and a bone structure any Venetian artist would kill to paint.
“Billy, what are you doing here at this hour?”
He smiled and said, “I wanted to talk to you away from work. Is it too late?”
She looked over her shoulder into the house and shook her head. “No, my daddy’s asleep.” She stepped onto the wooden porch and shut the door quietly. “Now, what’re you doin’ over here at this time of night, Billy?”
He placed a hand on her arm and leaned in close. “I needed to talk to you.”
“’Bout what?”
“About how I feel. I don’t want to scare you off or make you uncomfortable.”
Her eyes reflected the streetlight, but he could also see her interest. She leaned in to kiss him.
He stepped back and said, “I really do think you’re great. I care about you.” That was absolutely true.
She stepped toward him again ready to show how she felt.
He said, “Let’s walk around the side of the house so no one gets the wrong idea right out here on your porch.” He turned and took the three wooden stairs to the ground and immediately turned down the potholed, cracked cement driveway. He didn’t want to risk kissing her and then changing his mind over what had to happen.
She followed him eagerly in her simple bedroom ensemble and bare feet.
He stepped into the shadow of the house and kept moving, making Lori follow him without time to think.
Dremmel carefully stepped around a puddle of water in the deepest part of the shadow, quickly added two more steps to get farther away, then turned to face Lori and watch the spectacle he’d spent an hour setting up quietly earlier in the evening.
Lori didn’t notice the puddle, which was really a pothole with more than six inches of water. She stepped into the small pool of water and froze, then convulsed onto the hard cement driveway, still shaking as her left leg dipped into the water.
Dremmel was fascinated by any form of death and this was a new challenge. He’d set an electric cord running from an outdoor socket into the water. He had jammed open the automatic GFI breaker in the utility room attached to the open carport. The juice running through her was just a powerful shock except that he allowed the shock to continue while she lay there for what was termed “low-level electrocution.” This was more spectacular than the stun gun. The little device had given him the idea for this stunt. The current essentially caused her heart to drop into arrhythmia.
He stepped closer and looked into her twitching eyes. Was that her or the electricity? Stepping away from the water he unplugged the heavy cord.
Lori stopped moving. He rolled up the cord, stuck it in his pocket, then leaned down and placed two fingers along Lori’s long, graceful neck. There was no pulse.
It took him only a minute to remove his block from the circuit breaker and pick up a CD player he’d seen in the carport. He plugged it in the wall and dropped it in the pool of water. The unit sparked, then shut off as the water on the line tripped the GFI breaker.
He surprised himself by feeling a lump in his throat for his lovely coworker, then squatted down and kissed her forehead gently.
Now there were no links whatsoever between him and Stacey Hines.
Thirty-seven
William Dremmel spent the early morning hours trying to chat with Stacey. He’d been so excited by his brilliant staging of Lori’s accidental death that he couldn’t even think about sleep. When she proved to be resolute in her silence, he spent the time feeding her part of her high-protein, low-carb diet. The food plan allowed her to maintain muscle and keep her from putting on extra pounds while she was stationary. It also tended to keep her energy more regular without the ups and downs of insulin coursing through her. He allowed her to sit on the portable toilet with her hands free but not her legs. It was awkward setting the toilet on top of her mattress, but it was safer than letting her go free.
Dremmel completed his favorite task, giving Stacey a loving sponge bath, just before dawn.
Finally she said, “What’s the other mattress for?” She nodded her head toward the opposite side of the room.
“It might work out that you get a little company in here.”
“Oh yeah, who?”
He just smiled. “There are several options open.”
“You’re never gonna let me go, are you?” Her voice was calm and matter of fact.
“Never is a long time.”
She looked at him and said, “I’m never going to forgive you for what you’ve done to me.”
That just gave him the idea for a different round of drug trials to see if he could soften her position. He’d see what he could pick up around the store today.
John Stallings had been distracted all day long. He had Maria’s sponsor and his sister over at the house and felt confident she was in good hands, but the guilt of whether his long hours had contributed to her back-sliding ate at him. Still he couldn’t keep himself away from the case today. He’d spent the day talking to homeless men and showing around photos of the dead girls.
As soon as he burst through the office door he had a sense that something was wrong. The other detectives kept their heads down or gave him a quick nod hello. He didn’t know if Tony Mazzetti had thrown a fit about something or if they were all just getting as worn down as him from the case and trying to maintain their own lives at the same time. God knows he felt as if he could just lie down and sleep for a few hours. But he had leads to follow and people to find.
As he approached his desk, near the old holding cell, he saw the door to the conference room open and Lieutenant Rita Hester lean out, look at him, then motion him into the room. He set down his notebook and hustled toward the room wondering what terrible thing had happened now.
At the doorway he paused, looking at the lieutenant, Tony Mazzetti, and I.A. weasel Ronald Bell all sitting around the long table.
“What’s up, guys?” he asked as he slowly stepped inside.
The lieutenant said, “Shut the door, Detective Stallings.”
Uh oh, he didn’t like the sound of that. Stallings took a seat on the far side of the table so he had a table between him and Ronald Bell. It seemed like a simple precaution for the I.A. investigator’s safety.
“What’s this about? Looks a little like a lynch mob.”