increase and he felt the excitement of the unknown. It was a thrill most cops appreciated on some level. It was the reason for the thrill that caused so much grief and sorrow. It was a one in one thousand chance that whoever opened the door would have a gun in his hand.
Stallings tensed when Mazzetti banged on the door.
Sergeant Zuni sat at her desk getting ready to leave for the evening.
Ronald Bell, sitting across from her, said, “You got to be kidding me. That was business. I’m just doing my job. I thought we were going to separate work and personal business.”
The sergeant flashed her dark eyes at him. “Look, Ronald, I agreed not to say anything and you agreed to keep this quiet as long as possible. But the way you seemed to relish trashing a good cop and sneaking through medical records has left a bad taste in my mouth. I can’t hide the fact that I don’t like how you did your job. And I can’t change who I am.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re a douche bag and you will not be seeing me naked again.”
THIRTY-FOUR
John Stallings leaned against the wall as several residents peeked out their doors at the sound of Mazzetti’s incessant pounding. There was no turning back now. Even if Daniel Byrd wasn’t home, the neighbors would drop a dime that the cops had been here looking for him.
Mazzetti glanced at Sparky briefly, then over at Stallings. “What do you think, fellas? Simply go in to take a look around?”
Sparky Taylor appeared outraged at the suggestion. He didn’t have the most forceful voice, but he got his point across. “We do not have nearly enough PC for a warrant and there are no exigent circumstances. We have no more right to walk into this apartment than we do to walk into any other room in this building.”
Stallings said, “Most of the other rooms don’t house a potential murder suspect.” When he looked down the hall at a couple of the residents gawking out their doors, he wondered how accurate that statement was.
“We don’t know that this apartment does either. This doesn’t just go against policy, it goes against the Constitution.”
Stallings said, “Look at the totality of the circumstances for the probable cause. With his failure to report to his parole officer, and the comments from the other construction workers, we have enough. Citizens get jumpy when young people in the community end up strangled. I feel confident that a judge will cut us some slack.”
“Is that what you want to base our court case on? Slack? Gentlemen, there’s a reason we have policies and rules, and neither of you are such legal scholars that I trust your reasoning about why we should enter this private apartment without court authorization.”
Stallings recognized that Mazzetti was sitting back and letting him make the argument. If they made some massive fuck-up, Mazzetti would claim he was just following Stallings and trying to keep him out of trouble. At this point it didn’t matter. They had at least two dead girls and Stallings didn’t want to go to three. He briefly looked at Sparky Taylor, saying, “If this makes you uncomfortable, I suggest you head back to the PMB.” Without another word or glance, Stallings threw his shoulder into the door and popped it off the lock instantly, tumbling into a cramped, cluttered apartment.
Sparky Taylor refused to step past the doorway and stood there, shaking his head.
Mazzetti chimed in, “Spark, we can’t have an unsolved homicide our first case together. We gotta take a few risks to find this guy.”
Stallings scanned the small apartment, then turned to Sparky at the doorway. “What happens if he kills again while we’re building a case? Or, if this guy Byrd turns out to not be the killer, we can’t let him distract us from our mission for very long. Homicide works a little differently than narcotics or tech. There’s a bit of art involved with the science.” Stallings could see his comments had no effect on the portly black man, who refused to cross the threshold of the nasty apartment.
There was a tiny bathroom that had no door and only a filthy toilet and sink. On the single bed, a sleeping bag was laid out on one side with no sheets or pillow.
Stallings didn’t want to touch anything, let alone search, but he knew it had to be done.
Mazzetti stepped to the other side of the small room, muttering, “Maybe Sparky’s right. This is bullshit.” Then he slid open the single walk-in closet door and froze.
Stallings glanced from the pile of clothes on the bed and saw what was in the closet. Even Sparky had fallen silent.
Patty Levine had given up on being productive today, shut down her computer, gathered a few notes, and headed down to her car. She didn’t speak to anyone as she plodded down the stairs. She felt like the new girl in high school who wanted to be alone but didn’t like being lonely. The walk through the rear lot seemed to take forever, but at least it wasn’t raining for a change.
She slipped into her county-issued Ford Freestyle and plopped her notebook and purse onto the front passenger seat. She felt like calling Tony Mazzetti and finding out if he had some time to see her later, but she knew he and Sparky Taylor had gone out on a lead. She’d also felt some underlying tension between she and Tony and wondered if it was her reticence to move in with him. Patty didn’t feel like it was the right time and the fact that she had spent Sunday afternoon in a comfortable, drug-induced haze supported her idea that she should get a better handle on her drug use before she tried to make someone else happy. Her sour mood and lack of focus today were a direct result of the pills she had taken yesterday. She in no way felt recharged or rested, which was the only reason they were all given Sunday off in the midst of a big homicide investigation.
Patty pulled through the lot, twice braking hard to avoid patrol cars coming and going. Each time she mumbled some swear or curse, when, in truth, she didn’t know if it was more her fault or theirs.
The rear gate moved in slow motion. As always there were several day laborers and homeless people wandering on the sidewalk behind the building. Two young black men hurried down the street on the opposite side; their quick strides and confident manner told her that they weren’t homeless people. An elderly woman pushed a tiny shopping cart along the sidewalk toward the young men, who politely stepped to the side and allowed the old woman the full width of the sidewalk. On Patty’s side of the street a middle-aged Hispanic man wobbled toward her. At first she thought he might be drunk; then she realized he had one bad leg and he compensated for it with a lively swing of his arms.
Finally the gate locked open and Patty pulled through onto the street only to have to mash her brakes again. There was never traffic on this side street behind the PMB. The jackass in a pickup truck coming toward her wouldn’t swerve around. Instead, he stopped and stared until she threw her Freestyle into reverse and started to back into the lot.
Before she was out of the way of the pickup truck, still moving in reverse, she felt a thump and heard a sickening shriek.
Maria Stallings had spent many evenings wondering what went wrong in her life. One thing the Narcotics Anonymous meetings had taught her was not to dwell on the bad things but think about the good things in her life. The easiest way to do that was to think about her two children still at home.
Tonight she wasn’t contemplating anything; she was taking action. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. No matter how hard it was for her to send her husband away, Maria felt like it’d given her room to look at her life and hopefully make him realize how important the family was. No matter how many people he arrested, it wasn’t going to change what happened to Jeanie. Tonight’s activity had Maria in Jeanie’s room. It was largely the same way it had been the day she disappeared. Maria made it a point to vacuum and clean in the room just like she did the rest of the house. It made her feel better, and if Jeanie did come home she’d realize that no one had ever given up on her.
There were a number of things stored neatly in boxes stacked in Jeanie’s walk-in closet. This was where Maria had started her search. She had questions that needed answers, and she liked the idea she was the one who
