“Guys who lay in decorative floors, or crown molding or windows or special doors. They don’t build nothin’, just make it prettier.”
“Why’d you want to talk about this guy?
“He came in late one day, all hungover and wearing makeup. I mean eye shadow and stuff.”
“That doesn’t make him a killer.”
“You said something odd. That was way odd. Then we caught him watching women through a bathroom window that was supposed to be covered. He uncovered it and hid to watch.”
Mazzetti was interested now. “Where was he doin’ this?”
“A couple of months ago over by the new health building for the university nursing center.”
That made Mazzetti snap his head up and stare at the greasy redneck with more intensity.
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“Daniel Byrd.”
That was a name Joey Big Balls had given him too.
Mazzetti wrote down the limited information Kozer had on Daniel Byrd.
Kozer said, “I know you said you won’t charge us, but do you have to tell anyone what happened?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want it getting around that a cute little girl like that kicked our asses.”
TWENTY-THREE
The shock of the gun exploding right in front of his face caused him to fall back hard against the door. He desperately reached with his right hand and felt for the knob, twisting it and causing the door to burst open and him to flop onto the floor. He took only a second to check his face but felt no blood. The gun had jumped. He looked up and noticed a hole in the door. But now was not the time to rejoice at not being shot because Cheryl was regaining her composure and still had the gun in her hand.
He was vaguely aware Mary was screaming from the couch and had jumped to her feet. He scrambled backwards, turning so he could spring to his feet and dive into the kitchen. But Cheryl had come into the apartment right behind him with the gun in her hand.
He crouched behind the cabinets in the kitchen, trying to think what he should do; then Cheryl screamed at Mary to shut up. He pulled one of the drawers hard off its track and dumped all the utensils on the floor. He quickly grabbed the first knife he could find and was surprised to see it was one of the heaviest butcher knives he owned. He wrapped his right hand around the plastic laminate handle and crouched at the edge of the cabinets waiting for his chance to spring.
As soon as he saw Cheryl’s foot slide onto the kitchen’s new tile floor he sprang up, swinging wildly with his left hand in a wide arc to knock the gun away. Once again the gun boomed as Cheryl jerked the trigger. This time he didn’t wait and threw his entire body into her, driving the knife hard into her solar plexus. The force of his body behind the thrust of the knife drove it even farther into her torso and he turned his wrist to make sure the blade worked deeper under her rib cage. He felt the blade bounce off bones and sinew on its path to her beating heart. He kept his left hand on her right arm to hold the gun away from him when it went off for a third time. The deafening sound of the gunshot had closed his eardrums.
Now he took a moment to look into Cheryl’s face. He could see the shocked expression in the way her eyes wouldn’t focus. Considering the force of his knife attack he was surprised she was even breathing. But he clearly felt the power running out of her legs and arm as she dropped the pistol and slowly started to sink to the tile floor. He released his grip on the knife, took a step back, watching in fascination as she slipped onto the floor and rolled to one side. Blood gushed out of the wound below her chest and a red puddle formed around her face with her blond hair sticking to it.
Once again he checked his face and his chest for any wounds. He was shocked she’d fired the pistol three times inside his tiny apartment and had failed to hit him. He was just as shocked his knife attack hadn’t immediately stopped her. He had a lot to learn about everyday violence.
Already he started to think how he could explain this to Mary or if it would be easier to go ahead and kill her but not use her for his work of art. Neither of these women were worthy of eternity. He stepped over Cheryl’s body as he scanned the living room to see where Mary had ended up.
It only took him one step to see Mary had never made it past the couch as she lay on the carpet staring directly at his ceiling with a bullet hole an inch to the left of her pretty nose.
This was one mess that was going to take a while to clean up.
Patty enjoyed the position she found herself in. She’d been lecturing Tony Mazzetti about his immature stupidity in coming to the construction site without any backup. To his credit, he took full responsibility and admitted he’d made a mistake. Then he said something that truly surprised her.
Mazzetti said, “You saved my ass. You’re the best girlfriend anyone ever had.”
She wanted to hug him and give him a big kiss, but she was enjoying her position of power and thought she’d make it last longer. It was the closest she had felt to him in a month. She’d parked her car in a lot down the street and climbed into his Crown Vic. She let him sit there and sulk for a few minutes as she occasionally lobbed another recrimination at him, but, in fact, she wasn’t really upset. He’d done what many men could never do: he’d accepted responsibility. And the fact that he’d acknowledged she’d saved him and didn’t try to make up some story about having the construction workers right where he wanted them had been icing on the cake.
Now Patty said, “You really think this Daniel Byrd could be our killer?”
Mazzetti shook his head, “I doubt it, but I can’t discount him as a suspect. By Monday night he’ll be spilling his guts to me.”
Patty reached over and patted Mazzetti on the head. “That’s my bulldog. Now take me to the restaurant. Beating poor defenseless construction workers worked up an appetite.”
She caught Mazzetti’s smile as he turned toward Gi-Gi’s Italian restaurant.
John Stallings used all the tricks he’d learned looking for fugitives to try and locate his own father. So far he’d had no luck. The priest at the community center shared Stallings’s concern when he came by and explained that his father had not been by his room all day. They both immediately came to the same conclusion. The confusion James Stallings had been suffering was clearly an indicator of something much more serious. The fact that he had no car made it more ominous he was missing. He was out of the area and no one had seen him. That meant he had walked a long way or could be on public transportation anywhere in the largest city in the country.
From there Stallings stopped at soup kitchens where his father worked and ate. One kitchen was only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and no one at the second soup kitchen, located north of the municipal football stadium, had seen Stallings’s father all day. The kitchen was jammed with clean-cut young people busy at every section of the room.
A volunteer, older than most of the others, maybe in her early thirties, said, “What do you want?”
“That how you talk to everyone?”
“Only to cops that might scare our diners.”
Stallings smiled and held up his hands. “I’m just looking for my dad.” He explained the situation. He knew her name was Grace Jackson and she was well known in the Jacksonville area for her work with the homeless and as an outstanding teacher at a charter school in a rough section of the city. She had the determined voice and mannerisms of a woman on a mission.
Grace looked him up and down. “You got a good reputation as a cop.”
“You have a good reputation too.” He liked the smile on the plump, pretty black woman’s face.
“Your dad makes me laugh.”
“My dad?”
“I got similar issues with my father. I’m sure he’s a riot to people whose childhoods he didn’t screw up.”
Stallings laughed and realized why this woman was so effective. He slipped onto a stool and took a moment to clear his head.
