“No, but I am right now, and I need to be out here.”
“That’s one of the problems, John. You can’t see the difference between what you need to do and what you want to do.”
“I need to find this missing cop. Can you stay with Maria a little longer? Please, Sis.”
“You have to make a choice, John. Work or family, because I don’t think they can coexist any longer.”
“Were you always a ball breaker, or did you develop this attitude recently?”
“I learned it on the street when I ran away. I just never had to use it on you. You turned out to be the opposite of Dad. At least I thought you did. You need to get your shit together, little brother.”
“I appreciate you staying with her and helping. I swear I’ll…” She’d hung up on him before he made a promise he couldn’t keep.
Patty Levine had spent more than an hour breathing deeply and steadily, hoping to clear her mind so she could think her way out of the deep shit she was in. She had to stay calm not just for herself, but for the other prisoner, Stacey Hines. The younger woman, really just a girl, had talked nonstop after their captor had left, leaving them both conscious. Now Patty realized she wasn’t sure how long he’d be away. It was hard to imagine what this girl had gone through at the hands of this creep. It made Patty angry.
Patty knew the effort going into finding the missing Stacey. She’d been unaware anyone knew she was gone and cried when Patty told her that her father had been on the news appealing for the return of the young woman. Now the detective wondered if anyone had noticed she was missing. She wished she had more of a social life, and that was the irony. She was finally starting to get a life together and met someone who may be special. Did Tony Mazzetti figure out she was gone? Who knew how men thought? She hadn’t spoken to John Stallings, which was unusual, because for so long he had been the only person she spoke to every day.
She could only assume that between John and Tony someone had missed her and they were looking for her now. If John Stallings was on the case she had a better chance of being found. Once he got rolling there was no hope of stopping him. But she had learned over the years from both competition in gymnastics and police work that ultimately one could only depend on oneself. She had to act as if she were alone and had to do everything possible to protect Stacey and escape. Patty was no damsel in distress, and this creep would find that out when she got the chance.
She looked across the small room, taking in details. The terrazzo floor was clean but indicated an older home. The window had been bricked up by an amateur, displayed in the shoddy consistency and uneven nature of the mortar and crooked brick near the bottom left corner. The eyebolts in the wall were well secured, and Patty could tell she wouldn’t be able to shake either her hands or feet loose by unseating the steel bolts.
Patty said, “Stacey, has he ever slept in here with you?”
“I don’t think so. Once I’m out, I’m out.”
“Do you know what drugs he gives you to sleep?”
“He changes them up. He said he intends to find the perfect drug cocktail to keep me happy but sedated and docile.”
“Let’s not give him a reason to stop that experiment. As long as we’re in the experiment he won’t hurt us.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“He’s in some odd fantasy of conducting an experiment. We’re part of that fantasy.”
“He’s so crazy he seems normal.”
Patty agreed with that assessment, but it didn’t make her happy. There would be no way to reason with Dremmel. She shuddered at the thought of him using a stun gun on her. She just had to find a path, a chance to surprise this son of a bitch.
Stacey turned her head and said, “I think one of the drugs he uses is Ambien. Do you know what that is?”
Patty said, “Oh yeah, I know it.” And she saw a possible path to escape.
Forty-four
Thinking about his childhood had sapped William Dremmel of his energy. He could only flop on the couch next to his mother’s wheelchair with another black-and-white movie on the TV. He thought he recognized Errol Flynn but couldn’t be sure because his brain was on overload. Sweat poured from his face as he tried to suck in enough air to live but not be too obvious to his mother. He wiped his face with the tail of his untucked shirt, staining the bottom as if it had been dipped in a pool. He tried to clear his head as memories kept flooding back. His heart ticked along like a two-cylinder engine. Then he felt as if he had a grip. A tenuous one, but a grip on reality.
He turned away slightly from his mother and looked at the clean, off-white wall with the window set in it. His eye was drawn toward the floorboard where a floor lamp stood and he noticed a design. That was exactly what he needed. Something to focus on. Something to drawn his concentration.
The circle and lines meant something, but he couldn’t dig the meaning out of his confused thoughts. Then he realized what he was looking at: a blood spatter from the unfortunate incident with Trina. Somehow he’d missed a spot of blood that was obvious. Obvious enough to ruin everything and send him to jail for the rest of his life. How could this have happened? He was careful. He was smart. This opened a new line of questions in him. Has he made other mistakes? Did he take on too much by trying to keep the lovely Detective Levine for his experiments?
He made a quick decision. She had to go. He sat up on the couch, thinking where he had a suitcase large enough for her. She was taller than any of his previous subjects. Then he saw where he’d made his mistake. Pride. One of the sins. He didn’t have to get rid of her in a suitcase. In fact, that would offer too much to the cops. Instead he’d find a place to leave her body where no one would ever find it. A Jimmy Hoffa, that’s what he’d pull.
This would take a little planning and maybe a trip to scout out the location. He didn’t want to frighten Stacey, so he’d use a strong dose of an Ambien-based cocktail tonight and by the time Stacey awoke tomorrow she’d be back in a single room.
He had started to push himself off of the couch, when his mother turned to him and said, “I don’t want to go back to being drugged all the time.”
John Stallings’s conversation with his sister had shaken him. He wasn’t being a good husband or father by working so much. The result wasn’t much different than his father; they just arrived there by different routes. It killed him that Maria needed him at this very moment and so did Patty. This wasn’t a normal investigation. His partner was missing. Now he’d made his choice and decided to go full throttle.
He had already hit three of the pharmacies that Patty had visited two days ago, spending almost no time at any of them. He asked a few questions, then moved on. He wasn’t trying to build a case, he was trying to find another woman who had disappeared. No matter what he did it seemed like he spent a lot of time looking for people. This time he knew Patty wasn’t the type to just run off. At first he suspected that she and Mazzetti had argued and she was just pissed off. Now, as the hours had passed and there was no sign of her, he suspected something more sinister. Had she crossed the killer somehow? He’d find out.
The pharmacy Stallings was in now had several locations all across the city. He quickstepped to the rear of the store, where the pharmacy counter was set into a solid frame behind glass to discourage robbers. He eyed each employee to see if any matched the description of the blond man given by Ernie the dealer. So far he hadn’t come close to finding any employee that drew his interest except one pharmacist earlier in the day. He had looked at the blond man’s personnel file and asked him a few questions about his personal life, but he didn’t come close to the profile of the killer. He was married, owned a dog, not a cat, and had two teenage kids. Stallings could tell pretty quickly this wasn’t the guy.