follow up on.”
“Go on,” said Mazzetti, the impatience evident in his voice.
“The killer is smart. He sprayed WD-40 on the inside of the suitcase so we couldn’t lift any fingerprints if he left them. The only fiber evidence is the long orange string you found in the woods near where he left the body. We’re going to see what we can figure out about it and let you know. Also, the last two victims had decorative sand on their bodies. The one from last week had a few grains on her feet like she stepped on a path barefoot, and the newest victim had a little ingrained in her elbow as if she fell. The sand matches and you might, with some help from a geologist, figure out where it came from.”
Mazzetti looked at the squat man. “Anything else?”
“Cat hair, black cat hair was on all three victims.”
“He’s a smart killer, but he leaves cat hair on the victims? That seems sorta slipshod to me,” said Mazzetti.
“Not really. Cat hair is insidious. It creeps into everything. Usually no one notices, but when we’re combing through hair and searching armpits we tend to find everything.”
Mazzetti said, “So we got a guy with a black cat and fancy walkway that likes to see girls die slowly on drugs, but is now about a violent stabbing too. Great, just fucking great.”
The forensic scientist tossed an envelope onto the table next to him. “I had plenty of photos made up of each victim for your detectives in case they want to show them around or see if we’re missing something when we compared them.”
Stallings watched as Mazzetti pulled one photo of each victim out and stared at the three of them together. His stomach tightened when he saw the photo of the last, unidentified victim with colors dyed in her hair.
He said out loud, “I’ve seen her.”
Everyone else turned their attention to Stallings.
“She was eating at a Wendy’s the other night. I remember her hair.”
Mazzetti said, “Which Wendy’s?”
“Over on Beaver Street. I can go talk to them right now.”
Mazzetti held up a hand and said, “Not so fast, hotshot. I’m on this one.”
Suddenly it hit Stallings that the girl was eating with someone. He’d almost seen the Bag Man. Fuck! He’d been a few feet away from seeing this asshole’s face. Stallings felt a little light-headed as the idea wrapped itself through his mind. He hadn’t paid too much attention at the time, and Beaver is a busy street. What were the odds? But when he considered that both he and the killer were probably working the same areas of the city, the odds didn’t seem so great. He knew Mazzetti realized it as soon as Stallings had spoken up.
Mazzetti said, “Go look for another lucky lead.”
That was okay with Stallings. He needed something to occupy his mind and get the idea that he had let the killer slip by out of his head. He’d find his next witness today if he had to threaten every pimp and dealer in downtown Jacksonville. Someone would know where Peep Morans was hiding.
William Dremmel opened the store in Arlington so he could get in four hours before rushing over to the community college for his official office hours, then teach his Earth Science class. The one thing that cheered him about the change in routine was that Lori had also grabbed the early shift at the store. She was working from eight in the morning until close at nine that evening. He knew it was a tiring shift, but her graceful, slender body seemed to move with much less effort than most people.
“At least I have you to talk to for a few hours.” She smiled after the comment, and it made his whole body swell. She was a really nice girl.
“I’d stay for the double shift, but I have to get over to the college.”
“Did you see the police identified a victim of that killer as a student at your school?”
“No, I haven’t seen that yet.”
“There’ll be a whole lot coming out about the killings. One of the cable channels is starting to pick up on it. That prosecutor lady from Atlanta might even come down here. Could you imagine a big star like that right here in J-Ville?”
“Yeah, she’s big.” At first he liked the idea of the attention, but he had to be careful that it didn’t somehow interrupt his research. For the first time he wondered how it might affect potential subjects like Stacey Hines. Would she be worried about getting to know someone like him now that the whole world was learning about the Bag Man? He was a problem solver, and this was just one more hurdle to overcome. Then he had a great idea.
He turned to Lori, who was organizing the filled prescriptions and said, “You got a long shift today. Let me take you to a good lunch. You have a full hour break, and it’s a little bit of a ride, but they have great burgers.”
“Do they have fish too? Because I haven’t been eating anything with legs.”
“A vegetarian? I didn’t know.”
“I eat seafood too. I just saw a special on the Discovery Channel about slaughterhouses and decided I didn’t need the bad karma.”
“I saw fish on the menu, so you’re safe.”
“Wow, that’s really nice of you, Billy.” She turned and touched his arm. “You are a good guy.” Her smile gave him ideas better left alone.
Seventeen
Peep Morans’s real name was Walter Moranski and he’d lived in Jacksonville for nineteen of his thirty-nine years. He’d moved here from Detroit after a misunderstanding looked like it would turn into a rape charge. He thought a change of scenery and different name may throw off the cops long enough for the whole case to just fade away. He actually only shortened his last name; he got his nickname “Peep” for his unquenchable thirst to watch women urinate. Since he mostly lived on the streets, he knew women who lived on the streets and had no choice but to relieve themselves wherever they thought they had privacy. Peep had figured out where those spots were likely to be and set up covert vantage points all over the downtown area.
Sure he’d been caught over the years, that’s how people knew to call him Peep, but he’d never been arrested for it. He had a rap sheet for minor drug violations and loitering but not for spying on women. During his first arrest in Jacksonville he gave the name of Walt Morans. He had a fake Georgia ID card in that name. Since he’d never been arrested or fingerprinted back home in Detroit, this was the only record of him. So now the whole world knew him as Peep Morans, and he liked it just fine.
He enjoyed Jacksonville, with its mild climate and friendly people. He liked being a small-time pharmaceutical drug salesman. He got most of his stash from a guy who could buy it wholesale from a relative in the pharmaceutical business and then marked it up accordingly. What he liked best about his specialized role in the drug market was that the cops didn’t really care much about him. They focused on crack dealers and would thump them on a regular basis. Peep had been stopped with twenty or so pills and the cop would just make him throw them down the sewer rather than go to the trouble of determining what the chemical in the drug was or if he had a script for them. It was a sweet setup. For now Peep lived in a little apartment in Arlington that was nice enough to bring the kind of women he desired home. He ate okay and didn’t worry too much about going to jail.
His clientele had changed over the years. For a while he catered to suburban moms who liked their Percocet and Vicodin without having to fake an injury for a doctor. Now young people liked the pharmaceuticals too. He adjusted his marketing plan and was doing fine as long as he got to see a lady pee every couple of days.
On this clear day he was waiting on a corner he’d staked out for himself near Union Street, a few blocks from the big Shands Medical Center, enjoying the sunshine and the cooler breeze off the Atlantic, when his world took a sudden turn for the worse.
As he leaned back on a decorative cement corner piece of an older office building, his eyes closed while he felt the sun warm his face, he heard a man’s voice say, “Hello, Peep, how’s business?”
Peep’s eyes popped open to the scariest possible sight: JSO Detective John Stallings in his black Impala with the window down. He looked as calm as if he were ordering a McDonald’s double cheeseburger from the drive-thru, but Peep knew that guy was no ordinary cop. He’d discovered that the hard way a couple of years ago, and that was why he felt like he might shit in his own pants and every fiber of his muscles told him to run as fast as he
