enough to give drugs to anyone. Gary Lauer had some issues, but Stallings hoped this wasn’t one of them.
The Impala was parked in the driveway of his house. Or at least the house his wife and kids lived in. He tried to clear his head of all the work clutter before he went inside. Even when she was using, Maria was an early riser, and sometimes this time of the morning was the only chance he had at a few lucid moments with her. He knocked and waited for someone to answer. After a moment the door cracked open and Maria’s dark, haunting eyes looked up at him. She stepped back and silently let him in.
Stallings didn’t say anything either. She looked good. Beyond good. Almost forty, his wife could pass for her late twenties with a firm, curvy body, lush skin, and eyes that showed her intelligence. She didn’t seem much different from the first day he had seen her on the campus of the University of South Florida.
Finally he said, “Is Lauren upset?”
“About what?”
“About me catching her at a bar?”
“Oh, that. She said she wouldn’t drink. I’m not sure what the big deal is.”
He paused, thinking he had misunderstood her. “You don’t think our fourteen-year-old daughter hanging out at a bar is a big deal?” He kept his tone steady and even, but she knew him well enough to realize how hard he was trying to maintain a calm facade.
“She was with friends, not drinking, and it was only eight o’clock.”
He stared at her silently, hoping it wasn’t a glare.
Maria sat down on the couch in the living room. “I understand what you’re saying, and I’m trying to tell you my view of it. I don’t seem to be getting past your initial anger. I don’t want to come down too hard on her for little things. I don’t want to drive her away.”
And there it was. He didn’t speak as a lump swelled in his throat at the insinuation that he had driven Jeanie away.
The whole situation had happened mainly because he’d always thought of Lauren as a little girl. He knew that she was a beautiful fourteen-year-old who could dress up and look much older. But in his head she would always be the younger sister to Jeanie, and she had always been so quiet and obedient that this incident had knocked him numb. But he shied away from harsh punishment. That was a common side effect for parents who lost a child. It wasn’t just an effort to make the remaining children happy. He knew that in the back of his mind he wanted to make sure he gave her no reason to run away. It made disciplining children very difficult and stressful.
Lauren always had been very much a little girl, whereas Jeanie had been more like his little buddy. She had come almost five years before the other kids, and like any father, he wanted someone to play sports with and roughhouse around the house with. That was Jeanie. Even when she was older, she chose a sport like lacrosse instead of something more feminine. She could throw a football as well as any boy and never shied away from delivering a block or knocking someone down when she had the ball.
She looked like a perfect girl with lighter hair than the other two kids and beautiful creamy skin. But she had the attitude of a cocky, athletic boy, and Stallings always loved that. He could take her to any sporting event, and she’d stay interested and ask the right questions. She’d even ride her bike with him while he jogged. She’d been easy to deal with until she wasn’t.
He had to look rationally at the last year she was still at the house, during which she’d rebelled and seemed uninterested in anything to do with the family. It was a slow evolution but one that had troubled him then and haunted him now. It was his first time dealing with a teenager in the house, and although he had heard all the horror stories about the crazy things teenagers said and did, he wasn’t prepared when he had to confront it himself. At the time he wondered how Maria had handled it so quietly and comfortably. It wasn’t till later that he realized she was too stoned most of the time to give a shit. Then he had asked himself a hard question: Were his punishments too harsh? Had something he’d said or done drove her from the house? Or had something else happened? Had she been kidnapped or fallen in with the wrong crowd? These were all questions that ran through his head on a daily basis and right now were hammering his brain like a machine gun.
Finally Maria sighed and said, “John, we’ve been through a lot together, and I haven’t handled it well.”
“That mean you want me back?”
“I wish we had our whole lives back.”
In her tone and words he felt the blow of how much they had lost. Maybe that was what was making him crazy about Lauren, but he didn’t think so.
His cell phone rang, and out of habit he quickly dug it out of his pocket. The analyst from the detective bureau was on the line and said, “Stall, you said to call you if I found anything on Donnie Eliot.”
“Yeah.”
“We got him listed in our intel database as dealing in prescription narcotics but no arrests. Want me to start checking some of the other cities with local databases?”
“No, Faith, that’s okay. I know detectives in Daytona and Gainesville. I’ll give ‘em a shout and see if they know this knucklehead. Thanks.” He shut the phone and absently returned it to his pocket.
Maria looked up and said, “See? Even when you’re at home, work comes first.”
Stallings knew when he’d been dismissed, and this time he had been dismissed physically as well as emotionally. He kept his mouth shut, turned silently, and started for the door. But something made him look up over his right shoulder. That’s when he saw her. Lauren was sitting on the landing of the landing with a Kleenex in her hand and her eyes red and puffy from crying. He looked back over to the family room, where Maria continued to sit on the long couch, staring straight ahead. With just a flick of his head he motioned Lauren to follow as he opened the front door and like a ghost she appeared next to him on the porch.
He closed the door and sat on the edge of the wooden porch with his foot on the steps leading up from the sidewalk. Lauren slid in right next to him, still not making a sound. He didn’t feel the need to talk either. He looked each way down the empty street, appreciating the old-style streetlights mounted on wooden telephone poles in the relatively quiet neighborhood, even though they weren’t that far from downtown Jacksonville. The temperature had dropped and felt nice out in the night air. The sky was clear, and a half moon cast a gentle light across the yard. He sat there in silence with Lauren, just appreciating the fact that she was next to him.
After a few minutes she sniffled, cleared her throat, and said, “I never thought I’d run into you in a place like that. It just surprised me. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you drink a beer.”
“I wasn’t there to drink, sweetheart. I was looking for someone. I was working.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Is who dangerous?”
“The guy you were looking for. Sometimes I forget how dangerous your job is.”
“No. He wasn’t dangerous.” When Stallings turned, she was staring him down like a veteran detective trying to make him tell the truth. It was such a good, intense stare he had to add, “Really, sweetheart, it was a fairly routine interview.”
“But not everyone you interview is routine. I saw the news coverage of that guy William Dremmel you caught last year. Your job is dangerous. You’re paid to take risks. It scares me. A lot. The way mom is, I have no idea how we’d make it without you. I already miss Jeanie so much it’s hard to comprehend what it’d be like if something happened to mom or Charlie or you. And you’re the only one who has to be dealing with dangerous people.”
It had never occurred to Stallings that his kids looked at things in those terms. Certainly Lauren had never given any indication that she was worried about him. In the last couple of years she’d barely acknowledged him, let alone shown any concern. He was so touched he felt his own eyes start to water.
Lauren wrapped her arm around his back and said, “You know that Mom really needs you. I think she’s just a little confused right now.”
He was so choked up he couldn’t say a word. Instead, he wrapped both arms around his daughter and squeezed her tight, thanking God for little moments like this. The sad thing was he knew a half a dozen cops who would feel the same way if only they could have a moment like this.
Twenty-six
Patty Levine felt a pang of guilt at the sight of the lab tech’s cheerful face as he greeted her.
