Lynn cut her eyes up and casually and mumbled, “Hey, Dale.”
The big man said, “Think you’ll be ready for that drink soon?”
Lynn sighed, wondering if this might be an issue she’d have to deal with before she could complete her own mission. She said, “How about Saturday night?”
The big man whistled and clapped his beefy hands together.
John Stallings had to work hard not to fixate on the issues bubbling up at work. He was already focused on finding Zach Halston because he wanted to find out more about Jeanie. The young fraternity brother might also be the key to their larger case of looking into the deaths within the fraternity. All Stallings could do was think about Jeanie and the photo of her and Zach locked arm in arm.
But at this moment, playing a simple game of catch in the backyard with Charlie and Lauren, Stallings didn’t want to focus on anything but the two kids laughing and telling him about their day. This was how he’d dreamed life would be when he was a child. But he’d never had a relationship with his father. Now, as the old man’s memory faded, Stallings had the relationship he had always wanted. He was determined not to make the same mistakes with his own children. They seemed to enjoy having him around and looked forward to his daily visits. It had not surprised him that Maria had stayed hidden during his entire visit. He didn’t know if she was still angry or if she was embarrassed by her allegation that he had traveled through Ocala to see his partner, Patty.
He had not even bothered to refute the ridiculous claim and hoped that the time and distance of the weekend might have caused Maria see how silly she’d acted and that was why she was avoiding him.
Looking at Lauren with her perfect smile and long, brown hair blowing in the late afternoon breeze, Stallings couldn’t help but compare her to Jeanie. It was about this age, fourteen, that he’d felt his relationship with his missing daughter start to change. She’d become more distant and disappeared with her friends more often. He had assumed she and her mother were still communicating closely like they always had. It wasn’t until later, after she disappeared, that he’d realized Maria had completely lost her grip on all aspects of family life. Apparently he had too. He had been so absorbed in homicide investigations he had lost sight of what was really important.
It was different with Lauren. He was involved in every aspect of her life and knew her habits and hobbies as well as she did. Lately, she’d been on a reading kick so he had bought her an Amazon Kindle and was gratified whenever he saw her curled up on the downstairs couch, reading the latest teen angst book. But she still liked to get outside and exercise. His fears about his middle child had eased somewhat since he’d caught her in a downtown bar with older girls less than a year ago. She had told Stallings she was going to study and it had broken his heart to realize his little girl had lied to him.
He didn’t know why Lauren had backed away from her older group of friends but suspected it had something to do with her need to keep a closer eye on her mother. Since his sister, Helen, had transitioned out of the house, Lauren seemed to accept more and more responsibility.
After the game of catch was done and he made sure they had a reasonable dinner prepared, Stallings got ready to leave for his house over in Lakewood. He ached to tell Maria about the photograph he’d found of Jeanie, but he didn’t know if he wanted to tell her because it was good news or because he thought it might get him out of the doghouse. He didn’t want to do it for the wrong reasons and raise her hopes only for them to be crushed. He decided to wait.
Just as he had said good-bye to the kids and was about to open the front door he heard Maria clear her throat behind him and turned to see his wife standing halfway up the stairs. She wore a simple sundress and looked like she had either been sleeping or crying.
Maria opened her mouth, but all that came out was a very quiet, “Hey.”
Stallings nodded and swallowed hard, trying not to say anything stupid. For some reason Grace Jackson’s pretty face flashed in his head. Finally Stallings said, “You okay?”
Maria just kept looking at him with moist eyes.
Stallings said, “I didn’t see Patty over Thanksgiving.”
The statement was met by silence.
Stallings threw in, “But it looks like you have an issue with her.”
Maria stepped down two more steps, then came all the way, opened the front door and pulled Stallings out onto the porch. She said, “Patty gets more of you than I ever did.”
“That’s not true. Patty and I have never been anything more than partners and good friends.”
“I would’ve liked to be your friend. I didn’t mind seeing you have coffee with the pretty woman downtown at the cafe. I knew there wasn’t anything real between you. I could tell with one look. But Patty is different. She’s important to you.”
Stallings thought about it, nodded his head, and said, “I guess she is. But like a sister.” Stallings looked at his wife’s beautiful face and said, “How do you feel about Frank Ellis? Do you think about him as a brother?” He had to laugh at his own, unintentional Brother Frank Ellis pun. Maria’s expression told him she didn’t think it was that funny.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was awfully early in the morning, but Tony Mazzetti gritted his teeth and marched toward his partner’s desk. The lull in homicides had kept him from having to spend too much time with the eccentric Sparky Taylor. Thank God for small favors. Now Mazzetti needed that giant brain of Sparky’s to process some of the information they had and see if his odd perspective on life could tell him if the deaths related to Tau Upsilon fraternity were an accident or something much more sinister. As he approached the immaculate desk, his partner finished his last piece of wheat toast that he ate every morning, wiping his mouth after every bite with a new, clean napkin. Mazzetti cleared his throat.
“Hey, Spark. What’s new?”
The rotund black man looked up at Mazzetti with those soft brown eyes and pleasant face-unlike almost any cop Mazzetti had ever met-and said, “I’ve been reading the files on the robbery victim, the overdose, and the accident victim from the marina to see if there was anything we might have to do on this case.”
Mazzetti couldn’t believe his partner was so far ahead of him, but he resisted saying something like
Sparky had a light Southern accent that Mazzetti assumed he had developed growing up in the Jacksonville area and honed during his four years at Georgia Tech. It was Sparky’s engineering background and mind-set that gave him new ways of looking at the same old problems.
Sparky said, “I’ve taken the liberty of running a statistical analysis and boiled it down to its most basic components. I’ve come up with this formula. If you take into account the two-year span in education of the victims and you assume that the fraternity has an average of forty-two members plus or minus three each year with a turnover of ten to twelve members each year, you would have to assume that the fraternity had approximately sixty to seventy members from the time the shooting victim graduated until now. Three deaths among that number of young, relatively wealthy white men is out of the ordinary. That being said, there are always statistical anomalies.”
Mazzetti looked at his partner and said, “Come on, Sparky, what the fuck does all that mean?”
As usual, Sparky didn’t change his expression in any way. He simply said, “It means we have a problem that needs investigating and I suggest we jump on it with both feet.”
Lisa Kurtz enjoyed being an assistant medical examiner and had aspirations to become the chief medical examiner of some jurisdiction, preferably in Florida. She liked the weather and the people. Although she found that most Floridians took college football far too seriously. She didn’t worry about factoring her relationship with Tony Mazzetti into her career decisions. Those choices were at least two years down the road and she didn’t get the sense that she and Tony would be together for too long. She enjoyed his company and his cute, simple tactics in the bedroom, but they didn’t share many interests. What really fascinated her about Tony was his job. Although she had gone to medical school and considered herself part of the law enforcement community, she was not a detective
