He waited while the little Asian family, who had rushed in from the pool after the excitement, checked at the desk to make sure everything was all right.
Stallings stood next to the manager like another employee and said to the father, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll be happy to give you your room free for three nights.”
This caused Woody to turn and stare at him in shock.
The Asian man beamed and thanked them as he turned with his kids in tow and headed out the door. The little girl turned and smiled at Stallings, who returned it. That felt good.
Now Stallings looked at the manager and said, “Relax, I’ll pay for the room.”
Woody said, “Forget it. Chasing away the drug dealers will help me more than milking that guy for a few nights. Besides I charge sixteen dollars a day to park.” He winked at Stallings, but saw the look on the detective’s face and tore up the parking card as well.
“How long have those jerk-offs been bothering you?”
“Maybe a month now. They came over two days a week, threw some cash at me and said they’d burn the place down if I called the cops.”
Stallings nodded as he went through the registration slips Woody had provided.
Patty sat in the car out front with the girl leaning on the hood, sobbing softly. The creep, who had checked in under the name “Joe Smith,” sat in the backseat in cuffs, still only wearing a towel.
Stallings thumbed through the flimsy sheets of paper, then paused, reached into his shirt pocket, popped out the cheap reading glasses he had picked up at Walmart, and resumed his search with more clarity. He had resisted the glasses until last year, when his arms no longer reached the distance he needed. His youngest daughter, Lauren, told him the glasses made him look smart, so he didn’t mind. He doubted many smart people had scarred eyebrows from fistfights or a knife wound just under their left armpit, but he liked the illusion anyway.
After he had established a signed slip as the only record for Mr. Smith, Stallings handed the registration slips back, thanked the manager, and started to turn away when he caught a whiff of something that stopped him. He turned and said, “What’s that smell?”
Woody shrugged and said, “I’ve been smelling it too. But I checked. No gas leaks. Nothing unusual.”
Stallings stepped one way then the other, trying to find the source of the odor, following it toward a narrow hallway with several closets. “What’s in here?”
The manager stepped from behind the desk, looking like an adolescent next to the taller, beefier Stallings. “All storage.”
“What kind of storage?”
“Beach chairs, suitcases, lost and found.”
Stallings stood in one spot to let the smell drift to him, then took a few steps to one side. Finally he said, “Open the middle door.”
The manager fumbled with a ring of more than fifty keys and opened the solid wood door. The stench slapped Stallings in the face.
The manager said, “You’ve got a good nose. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.”
Now Stallings was more precise, careful not to touch the door as he flicked on the light in the long, crowded storage room. He looked down one wall and back the other until his eyes fell on a thick, black duffel bag shoved in next to the wall on the dusty cement floor. He nudged it with his finger, then stepped closer, the manager following him into the cramped room.
“Where’d this bag come from?”
The manager shrugged. “I think the other clerk slid it in here when someone forgot it in the lobby yesterday. He mentioned there was a heavy suitcase left here.”
Stallings studied the small lock on the bag, dug in his front pocket for a Leatherman tool, and used the needle-nose pliers to rip it off the bag. The manager, mesmerized by the action, didn’t protest.
Stallings hesitated with his fingers on the zipper, then yanked the tiny handle down the track of the zipper about ten inches until he saw the pale, pretty face of a young woman.
“Oh, no, no, no, this is a dreadful thing,” said the manager, his accent becoming much more pronounced. Then he was quick to add, “She wasn’t a guest. This isn’t our fault. I don’t know who she is.”
Stallings sighed. “I do. Her name is Lee Ann Moffit.”
This was a day that would change his life.
Two
Patty Levine had just handed off the runaway girl to a county social worker, who was taking her to a shelter until they worked out something with the parents. The second she looked up from her metal notebook and saw John Stallings, Patty knew that something had happened. Stallings’s handsome face was usually a mask of calm during times of stress. His curly brown hair framed his blue eyes and made him look like a stylish doctor who had played rough sports as a younger man. He rarely showed any reaction, preferring, like any good cop, to keep people guessing, but now he was leaning out the front door of the motel motioning her to come in and she knew something bad had happened. She could tell their day had swung off the ordinary track. The Xanax she had sneaked at lunch kept her reactions smooth, but she popped another just to be on the safe side and swallowed it dry. She was careful never to allow any nervous tension to show at work. As one of the few female detectives, Patty felt as if she had to set an example and be twice as tough as any male cop. That only led to more stress. She didn’t drink like a lot of the cops, so this was her answer to dealing with the job. It was a decent rationalization that worked most of the time.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as she hurried toward him, her hand dropping toward the Beretta on her hip. Her Rockport boots were a little clunky, but she could hustle in them and no street thug in Arlington gave her shit once he felt her boot buried in his ribs or stuck up his ass.
Stallings leaned toward her, keeping his voice low. “We got a body zipped in a suitcase in one of the storage rooms.” He conveyed concern but not panic. She liked his professionalism.
“Is it related to the dopers we let go?”
“No, it’s one of the runaways I used to deal with. Lee Ann Moffitt.”
She saw it in his face and heard it in his voice. This poor guy didn’t need something like this right now. Not after his own daughter had disappeared.
“I’m calling it directly into our homicide unit.”
“Stall, this is Jacksonville Beach. They should catch this homicide.”
He looked up at her, his expression certain and direct. “I have to be involved in this case. I’m calling the Sheriff’s Office.”
She knew not to suggest any other course of action.
The store on Edgewood Avenue was his favorite to work in. The clinics and hospitals sent all the people who needed cheap prescriptions to this store or the one in central Jax. Both stores were in areas with a lot of homeless and street people, the safest group to look for test subjects. If they disappeared no one noticed for a long time, and if the body was found, there wasn’t a family screaming for the police to solve the crime. But he had to use his brain and be patient to find just the right one. This was still new to him.
Right now there were no customers in the pharmacy area and he was using the free time to straighten up. He grabbed a commercial container of Vytorin and tucked it back onto the narrow shelf where the big sellers were stored. The whole time his eyes scanned the area picking up information he might be able to use in the future. That was the way his mind worked. It had earned him a 4.0 at the University of North Florida and a master’s degree eighteen months later from the University of Florida. That had been a rough year and a half, driving back and forth to Gainesville three days a week to cram in classes from early in the day until late afternoon. He still had to help his mother every evening and never felt like he was part of the “Gator Nation.” Just like he never felt like one of the group at the pharmacy.
He picked up an information flyer on a new muscle relaxer to see how it interacted with serotonin reuptake inhibitors. He’d seen the big commercial container of them in the back but hadn’t noticed any prescriptions come across the counter yet. He tucked the flyer into his back pocket so he could study it better at home. He knew no one
