on life. The Byrds he knew worked hard and valued education above anything else. It made him want to smack this Byrd right in the face.
Byrd said, “What charges are you holding me on?”
“You got to be kidding me.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
Stallings had to cut in at this point. “You’re wearing a yellow dress. So I would have to say, yes, you do look like you’re kidding a little bit.”
Byrd tried to give him a hard look, but he was an amateur trying to fight in the heavyweight division.
Mazzetti said, “We got a lot of questions and in the long run it’d help you out to be our friend.”
“You didn’t tell me what the charges are?”
Mazzetti stood quickly, scooting the chair back with his legs. “First off, a violation of parole. There’s the grand theft with the motorcycle. Assault on the motorcycle rider. Fleeing and eluding the police. And resisting arrest.”
“How did I resist arrest?”
Stallings said, “Really? All those charges plus your past history and you’re worried about a misdemeanor resisting arrest? Son, have you got some kind of learning disability we should know about?”
“The only thing I’m ashamed of is that I let an old geezer like you catch me.”
Stallings gave a chuckle. “That’ll go over big at Raiford.”
The comment hit home and caused Byrd to lose some of his cockiness. His brown eyes darted around the room and he fidgeted in his seat. But he didn’t ask for a lawyer and had told Stallings he was considering cooperating. He was in custody so they had already read him his Miranda rights. Stallings was a little surprised he hadn’t asked for an attorney then, but as the questioning had continued he was shocked the man was willing to sit there. He really didn’t want to go back to prison.
Finally Byrd said, “What kind of questions do you have?”
Stallings and Mazzetti had already worked out this little dance. Stallings would ask general questions about Leah Tischler; then Mazzetti would build up to the homicides.
Stallings said, “I’d like to ask you about this girl.” He slid a photograph of Leah Tischler across the table, and Byrd seemed to take a good long look at it.
Byrd said, “I’ve never seen her before.”
“You run into her within the last two weeks?”
Byrd shook his head. “No, no way. I’ve been working every shift I could the last month trying to get enough money together to pay off my traffic fines so I could get a job driving a cement truck.”
Stallings studied the younger man’s face carefully and looked over at Mazzetti, who made a few notes but was also trying to get a fix. Stallings said, “So you don’t want to say anything about this girl?”
“That’s not what I said. What I’m saying about her is that I never met her and have no information on her.”
Now Mazzetti got involved and said, “What about Kathy Mizell over by the health education building? The girl at the bus stop.”
Once again Byrd kept calm and looked Mazzetti directly in the eye. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why am I here really? Why were you guys chasing me? I’ve done a lot of shit, but I don’t know what you guys are asking about.”
Mazzetti said, “Whose dresses were those in your apartment?”
Byrd looked down at his dress and then gave a flat stare back to Mazzetti. “Really, dude, you can’t figure it out?”
Stallings admired the young man’s attitude.
Byrd said, “Take a wild guess why I can’t let the guys at work know I wear them. Construction workers aren’t known for their tolerance. This is the first time a dress ever really helped me out, other than to make me feel special and better than I really am.”
That caught Stallings by surprise, but he had to admit the man was very cool and calm if he had really killed anyone.
The door opened to the interview room and Patty Levine stepped in. This was a very unusual move among the detectives. Mazzetti and Stallings immediately knew something big had happened. Stallings looked at her, waiting to hear whatever vital news she had. The way Byrd looked at her, Stallings could tell he might’ve been a cross-dresser but he wasn’t gay.
Patty said, “He’s not our man.”
At the same time Mazzetti and Stallings said, “Why?”
“Because they just found a body in the courtyard at Shands hospital. She’d been strangled with a ligature sometime between ten and midnight. We were on Byrd the whole time and he never came close to the hospital.”
Stallings knew there was a lot of information to verify and forensics to ensure that this was a victim of the same killer, but somehow, in that moment and looking at the lack of response from Daniel Byrd, he knew there was still a serial killer loose on the streets of Jacksonville.
FORTY-FOUR
Buddy sat straight on a stool as he ate his chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat at the counter in his kitchen. The last jar needed for his work of art sat on the counter next to him. He stared at it with mixed emotions. It was the ending of so many things. He’d taken extra time to blow it just right and the glass glistened in the overhead light of his kitchen.
It was early for lunch, not even quite eleven o’clock, but most of the work he was doing today was in the shop and any time he felt hungry he could run upstairs and grab a quick bite. That’s how
The TV was off and he didn’t have a newspaper open in front of him. He was enjoying the satisfaction he felt from completing another section of his work of art. He had also learned not to jerk on the cord too hard or you could break the subject’s neck. He had been lucky last night to be able to grab Katie’s final breath, but it had been just that, luck.
He’d hardly slept after the ceremony to put Katie in her rightful place. From the first moment he put his plan in action it had gone almost perfectly. He’d surprised her, calling pediatric endocrinology from the phone in the lobby. He’d been in the hospital enough to know they were cheap on security cameras and both cameras in the lobby pointed to the front. Easy enough to avoid. He’d worn an oversized Jacksonville Jaguars Windbreaker because it disguised him a little bit if someone had happened to see him and it had giant pockets where he had stored one of his homemade jars.
Buddy still had his pass from earlier in the day and had the sticker on the outside of his windbreaker so no one would ever doubt he had permission to be inside the hospital.
Katie had wanted to meet him in the coffee shop, but he met her at the elevator and led her out to the rear garden. It was a well-maintained courtyard designed to give patients a place to step outside into a world that wasn’t windy and usually had shade from one side of the building or the other. Even if there had been cameras out there it was too dark in most places to pick up anything. No one was out enjoying the night. Not with the things you could see inside, like
He was glad that for one evening people had been occupied and hadn’t bothered to come out to see the natural beauty of the gardens or the moon or the brilliantly lit constellations. As they sat on a hard patio bench in the corner of the courtyard near a low, manicured hedge of decorative plants, Katie had appreciated the majesty of the heavens, staring with those beautiful eyes and a relaxed, pleasant expression. He had wasted no time pulling
