could hear the noise. Constant yelling and hooting. Off-key rappers and the ramblings of disturbed homeless men, shuffling around the wide cells that housed thirty prisoners each. The facility had a policy of no TV sets. Somehow Dremmel didn’t think the reading material supplied by the Sheriff’s Office was utilized by most of the inmates.
Dremmel was happy to be alone in a much smaller cell with its own toilet, even if it was exposed.
He had made it through his initial hearing and realized he was done. At least for now. Even his attorney wouldn’t sit too close to him like he smelled or had lice that might jump onto the young, cocky public defender’s cheap suit. At least they had told him that his mother was safe and comfortable at a facility near their house. She had of course been sedated, but he hoped she hadn’t admitted to knowing about any of Dremmel’s activities. He didn’t want her charged as an accessory. He didn’t want her to face anymore sorrow.
He looked down at the uneaten baloney sandwich and fruit juice sitting on the minuscule writing desk built into the wall and considered his plans. This was just a minor setback, which, with his superior intelligence, he could overcome given enough time. If he could direct the energy and focus he had been using on his drug trials, he might make himself feel a whole lot better.
He looked down at the thick scratches on his inner forearm. Blood dripped onto the cold cement floor of the cell. A single screw that projected out of the metal frame of his cot provided the sharpened edge he needed to draw blood. Not a lot of it but possibly enough to convince someone he was crazy. He’d admit to killing the girls if he could just be called mentally ill. That would give him time to find a way out of whatever jail they stuck him in. He didn’t believe there was any building made that he couldn’t, if he applied his intellect to it, find an escape from.
Then life would be sweet. He’d be free. In more ways than one. Of course he would literally be on the streets, but he also would no longer have to observe any constraint society wanted to put on him. Now he could kill without concern. It was all gravy. If he could just get out of prison.
He might find something else to study.
One thing he’d do is make sure that lucky cop, that John Stallings, regretted butting into his business. That was a goal he could look forward to.
He rubbed his arm hard across the bolt and felt it cut into an artery near his elbow on his inner forearm. Blood spurted out and across the room, forming an instant dark puddle near the middle of the tiny cell.
In case that wasn’t enough to show his mental state, Dremmel started to write his name in blood on the dingy wall. Then he wrote a short poem.
Sleep time, sleep time. All is well.
Keep time, do time. See you in hell.
He forced himself to keep grinning until one of the correctional officers noticed him and rushed to the cell door.
The muscular black man shook his head and said, “You’re one crazy son of a bitch.”
Dremmel kept smiling and thought, thank you for noticing.
John Stallings sat in the low early morning light from the solitary clean window in the Land That Time Forgot. He was wide awake after his odd sleeping pattern. He’d spent most of the day finding a place to live while Maria and he worked out their problems. He couldn’t face moving in with his mother; in fact he hoped to resolve his marital issues before his mother even found out. But now, in the empty, silent Crimes/Persons squad bay he looked up at the nineteen-inch screen of the analyst’s computer. It was the fastest machine in the unit, and he’d been viewing photographs and drawings posted by everyone from cops in Seattle to child advocates in Maine.
Three drawings had been of middle teens and from the time shortly after Jeanie’s disappearance. They were all of bodies that had been discovered. He made note of the investigating officers or tip line and knew he’d have to wait a few hours before calling. He hated these kinds of leads because they could only lead in one direction.
He also had the number of a teen rescue house in Dallas, where the woman who ran it, Rhonda Boyette, kept a constant eye out for him. She was representative of the kindhearted people Stallings had run across in his endless search for his oldest daughter.
Working on this kept his mind off his most recent problems and somehow made him feel like he had a purpose. He just couldn’t believe that he’d never see her again. Something inside him, a hunch or sixth sense, whatever it could be called, told him that this chapter in his life was not over.
After a couple of minutes he clicked a Web address that took him to a local TV station’s Web site and read a news blurb on William Dremmel. There was nothing new in the short story. Just that the Bag Man was in solitary at the Goode Pretrial Detention Facility on East Adams Street. The judge had issued no bond and ordered an array of psychiatric evaluations. All standard in a case of this nature. William Dremmel’s mother was at a hospital and resting comfortably.
Stallings read the rest but didn’t worry about it. William Dremmel’s days of terrorizing Jacksonville were over, and Stallings doubted he’d ever have to worry too much about the killer again. The trial would be simple, and Mazzetti would handle most of it.
Stallings felt a twinge of satisfaction that he had accomplished what he had set out to do.
He stood, stretched, and walked back over to his own desk. He looked down at the seven framed photographs on his ancient wooden desk and picked up a five-by-seven color shot of Jeanie posing with several of the lacrosse players and her coach. Instead of focusing on Jeanie’s smiling face like he usually did, he drifted over two girls to the smaller form of Lee Ann Moffit.
Somewhere, somehow, he knew there was a cop working just as hard for his Jeanie.
