meant nothing when a child was missing. All scared parents were the same, so he sat down to listen to this story.
Bob Tischler was joined by his younger wife, Lois, and Stallings realized this was a second family for the man. They had two young boys and Leah, who was fifteen. As their story unfolded, Stallings saw the similarities to his own situation and felt a chill.
Leah was a student at an upscale private school; she had a few problems with her parents and had been caught smoking pot. Her parents thought she was throwing a tantrum when she didn’t come home after school Friday. By the time she was reported missing on Saturday, the responding officer thought she was just a spoiled runaway. Now, on Monday, there’d been no sign of her. The whole situation felt far too familiar to Stallings. He had to wonder if the answer to Leah Tischler’s disappearance might lead to answers about his own daughter’s disappearance. The odds were astronomical, but he was a father of a missing daughter. At this point he’d do anything to learn what had happened to his Jeanie.
Patty handled all the sensitive questions about relations within the family and the reasons Leah might have to run away. And that was the most obvious answer, she had run away. It was the circumstances of her running away and what might happen to her on the street that caused Stallings to shudder. The chances of a child being kidnapped in the United States were extraordinarily low, but the chances of a runaway falling in with someone who might cause harm were much, much greater. These were not the issues he wanted to discuss with frightened parents right now. All he and Patty wanted to discover was a lead to where the girl might have gone.
Stallings studied the parents as they each told different parts of the sad, familiar story. The mother-red eyed and tired looking, blond hair unkempt but natural good looks shining through-had the composure to write out some notes. Stallings guessed she’d been Tischler’s legal secretary and was probably twenty years younger than the sixty-year-old attorney.
Patty asked the key question, “Is there anyone that Leah would have run to?”
Bob Tischler shook his head and looked off in space, but Lois Tischler knew how important all these questions were. She said, “Leah has an older half sister named Susan who lives in Fernandina Beach. We’ve already talked to her and she hasn’t seen her and promised to call us.” The woman sniffed, using a Kleenex to wipe her eyes. “There’s a music teacher at her school she’s close to. I guess there’s a chance she could’ve gone to her house.”
Patty wrote down the name of the teacher from the prestigious Thomas School as well as the sister’s phone number.
Stallings had already asked about any calls to Leah’s cell phone. That was his first clue that she’d run away. The Tischlers had taken away her cell phone as punishment. The modern grounding. Even Stallings knew you didn’t mess with a kid’s cell phone unless there was a serious issue. It had also cut off one way to track the teenager.
Patty looked up from her notes and told the Tischlers she needed to see Leah’s room and access her computer.
Stallings liked how direct and forceful she was, not asking permission but telling them what she was going to do. As Lois Tischler led Patty and Stallings up the hardwood staircase he caught a glimpse of a boy about six or seven peering at them through the banister before scampering away. That made Stallings think of his own son, Charlie, who had been only four the day JSO detectives asked him and Maria basically the same questions he and Patty had asked tonight.
Once in the room, Patty went right to a Toshiba laptop computer on the small white desk near the bed. Stallings glanced at photos on the wall of Leah and her friends. She had long dark hair and an intense gaze. Something about her eyes said that she had street smarts and experience far beyond the wealthy trappings of her family. He hoped that was true because it might keep her safe on the streets of Jacksonville. He let Mrs. Tischler show him through her daughter’s closet and draw her own conclusions about any missing clothes.
Finally Mrs. Tischler was able to say that there was nothing missing and that meant Leah was wearing the Thomas School uniform the last time she was seen. Mrs. Tischler pulled out a gray and white plaid skirt, white shirt and a black belt with an ornate and distinctive silver-plated buckle.
She said, “This is exactly what Leah wore everyday to school. She has three skirts and one is missing. She has five shirts and one is missing. She has two belts and one is missing. Every student is issued the same number of uniforms.”
Stallings photographed the clothes laid out on the bed and took several close-ups of the distinctive belt buckle. They’d print an information sheet with several photos of Leah and the clothes to hand out to other detectives and the road patrolmen who covered the downtown areas of Jacksonville.
Patty turned from the computer and said, “We’re gonna need to take the computer into the lab at JSO.”
Mrs. Tischler looked at her and said, “Why?”
“Every time a teenager goes missing it’s standard to go through their personal computers. She might have kept e-mails or text messages to whoever she ran off with or information about a place she might want to go. But this computer has too many passwords and I’m gonna need one of our techs to break them.”
Stallings may not have been technologically up-to-date, but he’d learned enough to tell every parent of a teenager to make sure they knew the passwords necessary to get into a computer and occasionally take a look in the computer. It might be sneaky but it could help them avoid a lot of problems in the future. At this point in his life, sneaky was the least of Stallings’s worries.
Then Mrs. Tischler, like all parents in a similar situation, looked at Stallings and said, “Please, Detective, bring my little girl home.”
Stallings knew there would be nothing else he could concentrate on.
TWO
The thrill of feeling the girl’s life run out of her was still fresh when reality smacked him in the face. He’d been impetuous and acted without thought. But that was what he needed to do sometimes. He had to run free. Now he had the reality of a corpse in his van and a need to dump it. Fast.
Hauling around the body had left him nervous and shaken-two things he rarely felt. There was no one to blame but himself. It had all happened so fast when he saw her sitting alone in the dark bus stop. Something, some instinct, told him to take a better look so he pulled over down the street like he was working on the empty bus stop. That gave him time to think. A pair of mini sports binoculars helped him assess the girl. The extra time allowed him to come up with his cover story about changing out the glass. He made a number of snap judgments, perhaps not all of them smart, but sometimes there was no fighting instinct. The girl was too perfect a candidate for his project. Her clear skin and trim figure indicated she was health-conscious. Her face had a certain innocent quality to it that he found irresistible. Only a certain type of woman turned his head. Of those, only a select few rose to the level of being added to his lifelong work of art. Circumstances had provided him with several subjects over the past month. That was unusual. But that was the nature of art. It was unpredictable, thrilling, and could not be contained once human passion started to flow. Besides he had no idea how long he’d have to work on his masterpiece. Ultimately the biggest challenge in his art was finding the right type of woman. If he used prostitutes or crack whores from the streets, his art lost all meaning even if the effort he had to make was much less. It was almost like seeing a good actor on-screen; you couldn’t always say what made him a good actor. The challenge was finding women worthy of being remembered throughout all eternity. That’s what it was all about for him: worthiness. His work of art had to stand the test of time, a testament to his skill, passion, and devotion to beauty. A way of blending his talents and his desires to create something no one could take away. He had to have at least one thing in his life no one could take away.
Other thoughts went into his actions. He’d made a quick assessment of his chances of being caught. The area seemed deserted. There were no construction projects he was working on in the area. There was nothing to tie him to the area. He scanned the building quickly for obvious security cameras and saw none.
Doing something like this was a big deal. He didn’t take it lightly. It was not only creating the art he enjoyed. There were other benefits. He greatly preferred to spend time with each of his subjects before they became part of eternity. Over the years, just by chance, he’d gotten to spend time with about half his subjects.
