were busy with feedings and cleaning, sharing a TV show or quiet conversation with her husband. Back then she had considered giving up her career to spend more time with her family. She really had it all.
She looked down at the roasted chicken she picked at while she read over a few reports, making corrections and suggestions in the margins. Her TV had not been on for anything other than the local news in at least three months, and the house seemed unnaturally quiet with the thick carpet and insulated walls. A sliding glass door allowed the cool night air into the house, but there was no sound from outside.
It was in this silence that the sound of her phone beeping made her jump. She grabbed it off the table in front of her.
“Sergeant Zuni.”
“Sarge, we got a shooting near the stadium.”
It was a JSO dispatcher.
The sergeant said, “Who’s rolling?”
“Mazzetti and Hogrebe.”
“Good. Tell them I’m on my way.”
She closed the phone and smiled. At least she could avoid spending this night alone.
“This is an old sorority house?”
She nodded from the front seat of his Jeep.
“Isn’t it kinda far from the UNF campus?”
She hesitated, then said, “The sorority had to draw from other local schools too, like the University of Jacksonville.”
“I thought sororities and fraternities all came from the same school.”
She just shrugged those cute shoulders.
He parked the car in the rear of the giant old house, then followed Holly’s instructions to pull it into a carport so it’d be safe. The old carport appeared unused, but the idea of a safe, deserted house where he could spend some time with innocent little Holly excited him to the point of explosion. His hunter’s instincts came out as he scanned for other people.
Holly said, “We still get to use the house and no one will be around. We’ll have this grand old place all to ourselves.” She spread her arms like a display model at a car show.
Her smile alone was enough to attract predators, but that cute, athletic body, blond hair, and blue eyes were irresistible to him. He followed her up the cement steps in the back of the house into a dark kitchen. She produced a flashlight from a kitchen cabinet.
“What happened to the lights?”
“We haven’t paid the bill in a while, so we keep the flashlights handy.”
He wondered why she brought him to an empty, abandoned house, but those thoughts faded as she took his hand and led him into the wide living room. There were three couches and a table that made it feel like the main lobby to a sorority house. She pulled him to the longest of the three couches and shoved him playfully, then plopped into his lap and started to kiss him. She wasn’t as innocent as she played.
He decided to let this go on for a while before figuring out how to claim this kill. He could just picture the surprised expression on her face as he did whatever he was going to do. He had a knife with him, but he could also try something new. It was secluded here and quiet. Now might be a good time to be innovative.
His first two questions were the same that everyone else who’d ever visited the house had. The first was, “What about your sorority sisters?” The second was about the lights. Both were easily explained, and if she played it right it could be more exciting. She stopped in front of the back door and made a show out of adjusting her glasses and pulling her blouse tight, then held her hands up like a model to show off the house. Just like everyone else, all he did was shrug and willingly walk inside. This always reminded her of the old Dracula movies in which the ancient vampire instructed people, “Enter freely, of your own will.” Everyone came in. As he stepped through the door and into the kitchen her excitement grew to the point she had to pause to grab hold of one of the old wooden chairs left in the kitchen. He didn’t notice. He seemed distracted as if he was thinking about what was going to happen instead of what was happening now. She never understood why guys idealized sex before it happened but discounted the woman after it happened. It seemed like he was working on a scientific formula in his head, considering all the variables and outcomes. She stepped up behind him after she recovered her senses and placed her hand on his broad shoulder.
She gently led him into the living room with its two comfortable couches. She’d worked hard not to come on too strong yet. She wanted this to last. She wished she could bottle this feeling and save it whenever she was down. If it could last all night it still wouldn’t be long enough. She didn’t want tonight’s adventure to end up like Billy, the teenager. Abrupt and awkward. She’d liked the way his fresh young skin felt under her hands and how he looked as he quivered. Somehow she didn’t get the sense that this guy would quiver much. She saw him more as a strutting, football-star type. He’d think that no matter what he did, women loved it. He was probably right. Holly was already thrilled at the idea of him inside her.
She smiled as she thought about the first time she’d brought someone to the old abandoned house. Had it only been two years ago? It seemed as if she’d been doing it for a lifetime. That guy was a little older, maybe thirty-eight, and it hadn’t been that much fun. He was drunk and sluggish and tended to doze off. He didn’t appreciate her natural ability. He never realized she was playing a role. That time she was the dull-witted barista who turned into a sexual tiger. But the drunken idiot didn’t catch the subtleties and change of personality. He’d been damn near catatonic through the rest of the night. She had high hopes for tonight
Eighteen
John Stallings secretly enjoyed pissing off any of the detectives from Internal Affairs-most cops did. The hell of it was that IA really didn’t go after cops all the time; they cleared them of allegations too. It was just a deep- seated, almost police-DNA-level distrust that kept Stallings taking the extra steps to annoy some of the investigators in the unit.
These prima donnas were used to fairly steady hours, usually dayshift Monday through Friday. That’s why tonight, at ten, he had called the emergency contact for IA to get one of them down to the office to let him look through some personnel files. During the day, Stallings would have had to deal with some sour, civilian personnel manager, but now, after hours, a sworn IA investigator had to come down to the PMB and let him have access to the records. Stallings had certified it was an emergency over the phone and now waited just outside the personnel office to see which IA detective had gotten the call at home.
He smiled, then laughed when he saw the normally dapper Ronald Bell pad out of the elevator dressed uncharacteristically in jeans and a T-shirt. He was the best possible IA detective to annoy.
“Hey, Ron,” said Stallings, not bothering to conceal his delight.
Bell just glared at him. Usually he corrected people because he liked to be called Ronald.
“You look like a bear that was just stirred out of hibernation.”
“When I heard it was you who needed to get into records I wondered if you somehow figured out I was the duty detective. I guess I don’t even have to ask if this could’ve waited until the morning.”
Stallings just stood silently as Bell unlocked the solid wooden door, then led Stallings through two more until they reached a long, narrow room crammed with file cabinets and cardboard boxes of paper jammed on top of every one.
Bell gave him a tired sigh and said, “Who are we looking for?”
“A motorman named Gary Lauer.”
Bell didn’t move, his poker face giving away a slight twitch.
“You know him?” Stallings had a personal dislike for Ronald Bell that went back three years, but he knew the creep well enough to listen.
The IA detective said, “I shouldn’t say anything.”
“C’mon, Ron, this has to do with a girl’s OD.”
“You think Lauer gave her the drugs?”
“I didn’t. He was just a witness. Why, what do you know?”
