Now, in the back of the store, he noticed several customers waiting at the register and two more at the pickup line. Stallings stepped off to the side and waited until the young pharmacist in a white smock looked up. Stallings held up his credential holder so he saw the gold JSO detective shield on the outside of the holder.
The younger man looked around nervously and hesitated like he was considering making Stallings wait. To ensure that wouldn’t happen he tapped the badge on the glass and signaled for the pharmacist to come over to him right now.
The man scampered up to the glass, then turned toward the rear wooden door entrance and opened the door a crack like he thought Stallings might be a robber. To satisfy the man he opened up the credentials to show the pharmacist his photo and name.
“What can I do for you, Detective?”
“First of all, you can open the door so we can talk in private.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re pretty busy now. Can it wait?”
“No.”
“Look, I’m trying to be polite.”
“So am I. Now let’s go in back and talk.” He pushed the door open and forced the younger man to back off, then turned and led him to a messy stockroom.
The pharmacist faced the detective, putting on his best arrogant, impatient act, when Stallings clearly read him as scared. He wore a University of Florida Alumni pin on his collar, his hair was neat with a little too much hair gel, and his smock and shirt underneath were pressed and clean. This guy wanted to project a certain image.
“Now, Detective, what’s this all about?”
“Did a female JSO detective come by here yesterday?”
The smirk on the man’s face told Stallings the answer was yes before he said a word.
“You her badass cop boyfriend?”
“What? No. Did she talk to anyone besides you?”
“Why?”
“Look, pal, I wish I had time to explain, but right now I need to know if she talked to anyone beside you.”
“Hey, I don’t appreciate your tone.”
Stallings grabbed his smock, wadding it in his hand and pulling him right next to his face. “This better?” He flicked the man back as he released his grip.
The pharmacist lost his arrogance as he carefully smoothed out his smock with both hands and tried to compose himself.
Stallings said in a low, calm voice, “Now, did she fucking talk to anyone else?”
“I, um, I don’t know. She sat in here and looked over records for a while. When she left she said good-bye. When she first arrived we chatted about UF and her boyfriend.”
Stallings knew that meant the pharmacist had hit on Patty. He looked him over, getting a sense of him. He had dark hair and seemed too button-down and straitlaced to ever sell drugs under the counter.
The pharmacist snapped his fingers. “I just remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“I think our clerk walked back here and stayed a few minutes.”
“What’s the clerk’s name?”
“William Dremmel.”
Forty-five
William Dremmel was shocked to learn his mother knew what he had been doing to keep her quiet for so long.
His mother said, “I know I made some mistakes as a mother, but I shouldn’t have to have been in a coma the rest of my life. Just because I used some of my sleeping pills and muscle relaxers on you as a child doesn’t mean you have to pay me back.”
“What on earth do you mean, Mom?”
“To keep you quiet and give me some time I used to give you something to take a little nap once in a while.”
“You drugged me?”
“Only a couple of days a week.”
“Why?”
She leveled a stare at him. “Please, William. You know I had a few liaisons. I’m not perfect.”
“More than just Arthur Whitley?”
“A few.” She sounded almost proud.
“Wait a minute, you said I had mono one summer and had to sleep a lot. Did I really?”
She paused. “You were a growing boy and you needed your rest.”
“You drugged me for a whole summer.”
“Of course not, sweetheart. Only July and a few weeks in August.”
He considered all this as the pieces of his life, his choices, his desires, all started to make sense. Perhaps the toughest thing was realizing his mom was a slut.
She still had a nice smile on her smooth, pretty face. Her blouse hung low, like she’d pulled it down, showing the pleasant curve of her breasts.
He looked at her. “Goddamn, Mom, you screwed me up bad.”
“Nonsense. I had a young woman’s healthy appetites. I attended to your needs as a child and never left your father unsatisfied. It wasn’t my affairs that hurt you, it was your father’s reaction to them.”
Dremmel stared at her, not moving, not daring to move. He thought about his young, beautiful mom all those years ago caressing the handsome young black man.
Then his father caught them and said in that even but terrifying tone of his, “William, go play next door at the Seikers’.”
Dremmel, about eight years old at the time, watched as Arthur’s head snapped up and he dove to one side, racing for the sliding glass door to the backyard. Dremmel scampered over to see what the Seiker girls were doing.
Then the story got murky for him. He’d heard a lot of speculation and stray comments from the police officers he had met over the following few days, but it was never crystal clear to him what had happened.
Officially his parents had been in a car accident that had killed his father and put his mother in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. But he knew the main flaw in the story was the accident part. His father wasn’t the kind of man who had accidents. He had increased his speed on Emerson Street, running the year-old Buick into the concrete support of the I-95 overpass, destroying the car, killing himself, but tossing his mother out to the side and into the middle of the road.
Until now Dremmel had not thought about that day and what it meant. The other lesson he learned from hearing the cops talk quietly to each other: They weren’t perfect either. They had no more idea of what had gone on and how the accident occurred than anyone else. William Dremmel learned that people could fool the police.
Tony Mazzetti scribbled furiously as he listened to Stallings on the phone, standing next to the squad’s crime analyst. Stallings checked the pharmacies that Patty had canvassed the past two days and, lucky shit like he was, turned up something.
Stallings sounded like he was jogging as he said, “I may have a name.”
Mazzetti finished writing down a list of tasks for the analyst and handed them to her. “I’m ready, what is it?”
“William Dremmel, D-r-e-m-m-e-l. White male with blond hair.” He gave the date of birth and identifiers.
Mazzetti paused, then said, “I think I know that name.”
“The pharmacist says he also works out at the community college teaching science.”
Mazzetti sprang from his seat in excitement. “I talked to him. He’s about five-seven and spends time in the gym. That means he could have known the first victim, Tawny Wallace.”
“And the pharmacy has a branch near the Wendy’s on Beaver where Trina Ester worked.”
“This could be our guy, huh, Stall?”
“More importantly, he could have Patty.”
Then Mazzetti remembered one of those little details that floats around in a cop’s head for no reason and pops up without warning. “Stall, there may be some forensic evidence, too.”
“What?”
“The orange string found near Trina Estler is industrial carpet.”
“So?”
“I remember where I saw carpet like that.”
“Where?”
“At the community college in the building where I spoke to this Dremmel character.”
“No shit?”
“There’s something else, Stall.”
“What’s that?”