coached a few years earlier. It didn’t take him long to realize the girls were tougher and smarter than the boys their own age. Finally he followed his instincts and the team became one of the most feared lacrosse clubs in the county.
The highlight of the season didn’t come after the championship game. It was much earlier, after the second win, during a long Wednesday evening practice. The girls were filling out an order form for photos with the team mom, a lovely woman from East Arlington. Jeanie walked over to her dad and plopped down next to him, just off the field. For no reason she reached across and gave him a big hug. All she said was, “Thanks, Dad.” It was among the most precious moments of his whole life and it was the moment he chose to reflect on while sitting on the hard bench across from the Police Memorial Building.
He was glad no one was around when he had to use his shirttail to wipe the tears off his cheeks.
FOUR
After lunch, John Stallings and Patty Levine sat in their office at the Police Memorial Building. The detective bureau on the second floor of the PMB was affectionately referred to as the Land That Time Forgot because the detectives rarely saw the new equipment and innovations the rest of the building enjoyed. Stallings didn’t mind it; he had never cared about the condition of the office because he felt like a real detective needed to be out on the street working cases, not sitting around a plush office, chatting with the other cops about how much work they did. In fact, he usually felt antsy at his desk, but it was a necessary evil to keep track of all the leads he and Patty followed every day. He rarely paid attention to the detectives’ comings and goings, but today he did notice the bureau was empty and their sergeant, Yvonne Zuni, was not at her desk in the small, separate office at the end of the squad bay.
His cell phone rang and he took a second to screen the call, seeing the name of the lead homicide detective, Tony Mazzetti, appear on the small Motorola phone. He considered not answering because he hated talking to the smug son of a bitch. Then he realized Tony Mazzetti didn’t enjoy talking to him either and decided it might be important.
Stallings answered the phone and said, “What’s up, Tony?”
“I need your help.”
A small smile spread across Stallings’s face. “Really now? You need my help? This is an interesting situation. Do you mind saying it again? I like the sound of it.”
“I need your help, Stall. That’s as much as I’d like to banter back and forth with you. I need your fucking help right now.”
Stallings knew when it was time for fun and games; now Mazzetti sounded serious. “What’s wrong, Tony?”
“I have a body at a construction site in the south end of town.”
“You need help on a homicide?”
“Patty gave me one of the info sheets you made up on the missing girl, Leah Tischler.”
“Oh God, you found her body?”
“No. This victim is named Kathy Mizell.”
“I don’t understand. What’d you need me for?”
“We identified the belt used to strangle her. It’s from the swanky private school the missing girl attended.”
Stallings didn’t say anything as silence held on the crackle of static over the cell phones.
Mazzetti said, “I think it’s Leah Tischler’s belt.”
Patty Levine sat in the passenger seat of John Stallings’s county-issued Chevy Impala. She didn’t try to engage him in small talk; she knew him too well. His mood always turned dark after hearing about the death of any young woman. This one was more devastating because of the implication that Leah Tischler was dead as well. No cop took a missing girl more seriously or her death harder. Unfortunately it was an all too common event. And that was just one of many concerns Patty had for her partner, who’d endured far too much stress in recent months. Patty looked across at Stallings, who focused his attention on the road, moving fast but not recklessly. His normally short, brown, curly hair barely touched his collar, and his handsome face, with the scar over one eyebrow and a slightly broken nose, gave him the look of a former football star who’d stayed in pretty good shape since college.
He rarely spoke to her about his problems with Maria, but that wasn’t the heaviest weight on him right now. Patty didn’t think he or his wife had ever moved past the disappearance of Jeanie. No parent really did, and Maria and John Stallings weren’t just any parents. They were both trying to change the world in their own ways: Maria by involving herself in peer counseling for other grieving parents and Stallings through his work in Missing Persons. Now Stallings had set up house not far from the family and had been working hard to make time for the kids. Any time something like this happened, Stallings tended to tune out everything by finding the person responsible. For his sake Patty hoped they had a suspect in custody already.
A few blocks after exiting I-95, Patty could see the police activity and the first of the news trucks arriving on the scene. Stallings pulled the car to the curb more than two blocks from the action in an effort to stay under the radar of the news reporters. Based on his history of capturing serial killers, every reporter in Jacksonville tended to focus on Stallings whenever he arrived at a homicide scene. Stallings didn’t like it and it drove Tony Mazzetti absolutely crazy. Patty and Stallings slid over to the edge of the scene and gave their names to the patrolman who was keeping a log of everyone who entered the crime scene.
Stressful times like this pushed Patty to reach for a Xanax or some other pharmaceutical crutch. She’d been working hard to ease off the pills and hadn’t used an Ambien to sleep in over a week, resulting in about five hours of total sleep in seven days. She had taken one Xanax for anxiety two days ago and purposely hadn’t carried any with her the last two days. She’d even allowed her prescription for Vicodin and another painkiller expire. Now, as they faced another traumatic scene, Patty felt the familiar pang of anxiety and desire for her soothing drug. She craved one to calm her down. Instead she focused on the grim task at hand.
Patty did a quick survey of the scene, wondering who was here already. A call like this, happening in the middle of a weekday, when things were generally slow, attracted cops from all parts of the city. But her new sergeant, Yvonne Zuni, did a pretty good job of scaring away anyone who wasn’t vital to the investigation. Her reputation and nickname, Yvonne the Terrible, tended to keep people on task. And nothing was more at odds with her nickname than her looks. A petite build and exotic face with long black hair made it hard to believe she was one of the most feared sergeants in the entire Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. And now she was doing her usual efficient job of directing activities.
Patty saw her boyfriend, Tony Mazzetti, standing next to a green construction Dumpster with the two-letter logo of Waste Management on the side. Screens had been erected in front of it to keep the media from getting any direct shots of activity going on inside the Dumpster. Patty headed his way.
As she approached, Patty stepped onto a sidewalk, giving her a view into the Dumpster, which had settled a few feet lower in front of a gutted strip mall with nothing but walls and a roof standing. She saw two crime scene techs working behind the screens and realized the body was still there. She could clearly see the young woman with long, dark hair. The color was drained out of her face and her eyes were ringed with a pale discharge, which sometimes occurred during decomposition. As she stepped next to Mazzetti, Patty realized how the woman had died. A black leather belt with an ornate buckle was wrapped around her throat. She shuddered at the idea of what this woman had gone through.
Patty cut her eyes over to Stallings, who was speaking with the sergeant out of view of the Dumpster. She hoped it stayed that way. He didn’t need a vivid reminder of what could’ve happened to his own daughter. Any time Patty saw him in conversation with a superior she worried. There were rumors around the department about how Stallings had gone crazy and beat up a rich-kid suspect a few months ago. Patty knew it was no rumor. She’d been there when Stallings caught the pharmaceutical rep handing some free samples to a young coed. Because of the incident, the detectives in the crimes/persons unit learned quickly their new sergeant, Yvonne the Terrible, wasn’t quite so terrible. She was more of a miracle worker and steered the focus off Stallings so he could continue to work
