might be available for dinner tonight.”
“I thought it was too dangerous to eat out in public.”
“Not if we pick some out-of-the-way place. What’d you feel like eating?”
“I love a good Italian place. Any ideas?”
Bell said, “I have just the place. It’s down in Deerwood Park. It’s called Gi-Gi’s. How does eight o’clock sound?”
“Like a date.”
NINETEEN
John Stallings was surprised Maria wasn’t bent out of shape. He sat across from her at the small table in the same cafe where he’d met Liz Dubeck. As soon as he’d noticed her, he’d walked over and tried to explain why he was sitting with another woman, but Maria had showed no real emotion. His first concern was she’d fallen off the wagon, but as he sat there quietly talking to her, he realized it might be a worse problem. She just didn’t care.
Maria shook her head and said for the third time, “You don’t have to explain anything to me. We’re separated. As I recall, I’m the one who asked you to move out. You can have coffee with anyone you want.”
Somehow her calm and rational response was even more unsettling than if she’d yelled and cursed. But Maria had never been prone to emotional fits. Even her choice of drugs, prescription narcotics and other depressants, mirrored her personality. She was quiet and thoughtful rather than fiery and vengeful. Right now the quiet, thoughtful approach seemed much harsher to Stallings.
Stallings said, “What’re you doing over here, Maria?”
“Like I said, we don’t have to explain ourselves to each other.”
“I’m just curious. It’s not near the house and there’s no reason for you to be downtown.”
“What if I told you I was headed down to the football stadium?”
“I’d say there’s no reason to be sarcastic. I worry about you. I worry about the kids too. Some days you guys are all I can think about.”
“But apparently not today.”
That hurt Stallings more than about anything she’d ever said.
It was midmorning and Mazzetti felt like he had to get out and do some work on the case rather than read other people’s reports about the work they’d done. But there were a lot of aspects to Kathy Mizell’s murder and it required a lot of detectives. That’s why he and Sparky Taylor were now at the Jacksonville Medical Examiner’s Office on North Jefferson Street. The modern, two-story, white building looked more like a middle school than the last place the residents of Duval County visited.
Mazzetti gawked at the young, pretty assistant medical examiner. Goggles covered her blue eyes as she perched on a stool, working on a body of a seventy-eight-year-old drowning victim. It was not uncommon for Mazzetti to discuss cases with her while she continued her work. He was amazed at how the young Syracuse graduate could do so many things at once and still get it all right.
She used a scalpel to slice the skin along the crown of the man’s head as she said, “The one thing I’d say is our killer is strong. He didn’t use the belt as tourniquet; he pulled it manually with his hands. That makes me believe he’s probably large with some muscle mass.”
Mazzetti said, “But there’s nothing to link Kathy Mizell to the Pamela Kimble murder in Rolling Hills, is there?”
“Not that I can see.” She paused for a moment as she peeled back the skin and hair of the elderly man’s head. “Kimble was a manual strangulation where the killer used his hands. There are no links. No decent DNA or fingerprints or other organic material. Aside from asphyxiation, even the mode of death is different. One killer used a belt and the other his bare hands. It’s very uncommon to see a strangler change details like that between two different murders.”
Mazzetti wanted to tell the young assistant medical examiner to stick to the medical aspects of the case and leave the other forensics and profiling to the detectives. He knew she also had a background in psychiatry and kept up with all the medical journals about deviant behavior so he kept his mouth shut. He had learned a long time ago it was easier to let people run their mouths and ignore them than it was to tell them to stick to their fields. He’d need a good working relationship with this woman for a long time to come.
The assistant medical examiner said, “Any idea where the belt came from?”
Mazzetti looked at Sparky Taylor to involve him in the conversation. The rotund detective took the hint and said, “We’ve identified it as a part of the Thomas School uniform. There’s a girl named Leah Tischler missing from the school and it’s a good bet the belt was hers. The only question now is, did she discard it when she ran away or is she another victim of the same killer, who took the belt from her?”
The woman looked at Sparky and said, “The Thomas School. That’s big-time. I bet you boys are under some pressure to solve this one quick.”
Mazzetti cut in and said, “We’re under pressure to solve every murder quickly.”
The assistant medical examiner stood from the stool and stretched, removed her glasses, focused those drop-dead-gorgeous blue eyes on Mazzetti, and said, “You look like you handle it pretty well. Wish I could stay in shape as well as you.” She smiled at him.
Mazzetti felt like he’d stumbled into a robbery the way his heart raced and his face flushed. He wondered if he was misreading the cute assistant medical examiner when she added, “We should meet at the gym over at the PMB sometime.”
No, he was reading it right.
Patty Levine knew when to ask her partner personal questions and when to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t know what had happened earlier in the morning, but John Stallings was in a silent, brooding mood.
She casually asked, “How was coffee?”
“Look, I’m married. Nothing happened.”
She couldn’t remember her partner ever speaking so sharply to her and, although it was hard for a moment, she knew he wasn’t mad at her. Something else was eating at him. They rode along in silence as she checked her list of safe houses that runaways used on occasion. The runaway population in Jacksonville had its own underground railroad of sorts. It also had a communications network rivaling AT amp;T. The runaways seemed to know where they could congregate safely, eat, and sleep with a roof over their head. The county government provided very few services for runaways compared to the problem, but there were a number of alternatives like the cheap hotels decent people like Liz Dubeck ran or houses that rented rooms cheaply.
Patty and Stallings had already checked three safe houses Stallings had a very good relationship with. No one had seen any sign of Leah Tischler or knew anyone who had had any contact with her. A common response during one of these investigations.
Stallings pulled his Impala to the curb in front of an old Florida, flat-roofed, cement-block house. Two men in their early twenties sat on the porch with their feet dangling off. They started to get up when they saw the car stop but relaxed once they realized it was Stallings.
Patty was always amazed how calm her partner was as he approached people and situations like this. He nodded and said, “Hey, boys. Darryl inside?”
One of them said, “Watching
Stallings chuckled. “Everyone needs a goal in life.”
Patty followed him through the open door, aware of the gun on her hip covered by a loose shirt. She knew Stallings and Darryl Paluk had a long history, which included a broken nose and several broken fingers before Darryl realized he should never hold back information from Stallings about missing girls. For his part Stallings had never hassled Darryl about his pot dealing and constant use of the drug inside the house. Even now, late in the morning, Patty navigated through the thick haze of marijuana smoke.
The big, hairy, shirtless man sat in an oversized La-Z-Boy recliner, laughing wildly at an episode of the
