and that’s what really interested her. She read novels about detectives, she watched
The natural curiosity that made her think she’d be a great cop had led her to seek out the shirt that the overdose victim, Connor Tate, had worn the night he died. She knew she should take the shirt over to the sheriff’s office crime lab or at least tell Tony what she was doing. Instead, she and one of the coroner techs, a former evidence custodian for Dade County, did their own forensic analysis of the shirt. They had scraped the residue from a stain that ran almost the length of the front of the filthy shirt. Now she would have to include the crime lab. She decided to deliver the tiny sample of scrapings herself and say it was part of an ongoing medical examiner’s probe, which was true. They were always interested in overdose deaths and the prevalence of certain drugs in the community.
If anything came of it, she’d let Tony know. Until then she just would enjoy being a detective.
Stallings had been born and raised in North Florida, yet he had not spent much time on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville. He was glad Patty had been with him and able to guide them both around campus as well as using her status as a graduate to assist them in finding the fraternity house with little or no trouble. They wanted to branch out from the Jacksonville chapter of Tau Upsilon, which served several of the smaller universities in the area. Stallings had had a theory that perhaps other fraternities had suffered a recent spate of bad luck as well. Although he considered three deaths among such a small number of young men unusual, Stallings still wasn’t convinced it was the work of some mastermind.
Now they were inside the house talking to a very nervous UF student who had been a member of the fraternity for his entire four-year career at the sprawling university. Stallings could tell by the look in this kid’s eye that he was very uncomfortable talking to any law enforcement officer. Stallings let Patty start off the conversation smoothly and in her own style. There was no reason for this young man to be as shaky as he was acting.
Patty sat next to him on a long sofa and patted his knee in an effort to calm the young man down. She said, “There’s nothing for you to worry about. We’re just curious if you know of any members of your fraternity who have died accidentally or otherwise in the past two years?”
The thin young man turned his pale eyes to Stallings, then back to Patty. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a fast elevator. “There’s no one in the chapter that died for as long as we’ve existed. At least as far as I know.”
Patty nodded like she was thinking, but Stallings knew she was trying to figure out what this boy’s story was too. Finally she said, “What about any alumni?”
The boy physically winced and slowly nodded his head. “One of our brothers, Paul Smiley, died in some kind of fire in Atlanta last year.”
Patty waited, thinking the boy might expand on his answer. When he didn’t say anything else she said, “You sure that’s it?”
“That’s the only person who died that I know of.”
There was something in his tone and delivery that made Patty say, “What about anyone seriously injured?”
The boy bit his lower lip and finally said, “Another one of our alumni, Alan Cole, is in the hospital in Daytona after he was hit by a car.”
“Do you know any details about either incident?”
The boy shook his head. “I think whoever hit Alan drove away and hasn’t been found.”
Stallings scribbled down some notes but still had a sense the boy was hiding something. He cleared his throat until the young man looked up at him; then Stallings said, “Did either of these guys spend much time at the chapter house in Jacksonville?”
Slowly the boy nodded his head. “They both had friends and other things that took them to Jacksonville. I think they usually stayed at the chapter house.”
“Did they ever go together to Jacksonville?”
“I guess they did around Halloween.”
“Why Halloween?”
“Because the North Florida chapter always hosts a kick-ass Halloween party.”
Stallings exchanged a quick glance with Patty.
Yvonne Zuni prided herself on always being on top of homicides, drug cases, and missing children. But this latest wrinkle in the crimes/persons squad was different from anything she had ever had to deal with in her short career as a supervisor. She wasn’t even sure a crime had occurred. They needed more proof than just a crazy theory about bad luck at a fraternity. She’d been told by Lieutenant Hester to keep things low key. But John Stallings and Tony Mazzetti were never low-key for long. Between the two of them something was going to be put on command staff’s radar. Sergeant Zuni didn’t mind; part of her job was running interference for her detectives. She just wished she understood the issue a little more clearly.
She wandered through the squad bay back toward her office, keeping a subtle eye on who was working at their desk and who was running their mouth at someone else’s desk. There was usually too much work to allow much time for watercooler talk. But as effective as the squad had been the last few months she wasn’t going to come down on anyone taking advantage of the lull in homicides or the precipitous drop in robberies over the past two months.
She noticed Tony Mazzetti at Sparky Taylor’s desk working with the peculiar detective on something. She knew the two detectives weren’t friends but had noted how they complemented each other so well. She had heard through the grapevine that Mazzetti’s regular partner, Christina Hogrebe, was going to be promoted to sergeant before she finished her temporary assignment at the police academy. Zuni hadn’t broken the news to Mazzetti yet but was gratified to see that he was working with Sparky on investigations instead of just treating him like an assistant.
She paused at John Stallings’s cluttered desk and noticed a small stack of photographs. She moved aside a sheet of paper on top of them and pulled the first photograph off the desk. She noticed the other ten photographs were copies of this one showing a young man and a young woman smiling next to each other in a long hallway with festive lights strung behind them. It took her a moment to recognize the missing fraternity brother Zach Halston. She didn’t know who the very pretty blond girl was. The sergeant assumed Stallings was using the photos to show different witnesses who might’ve come into contact with the missing fraternity brother.
She kept a photograph in her hand and set the piece of paper back over the remaining photographs on Stallings’s desk. As she neared her office she heard her desk phone ring and hustled to catch it.
Sergeant Zuni absently set the photograph of Zach Halston and the girl down at the side of her desk as she picked up the receiver and simply said, “Sergeant Zuni, crimes/persons.”
Dale squeezed into the tiny chair next to Lynn’s desk. Since she had agreed to have a drink with him Saturday night he’d taken it to mean she wanted to see him more often during the workweek at Thomas Brothers Supply. Until she had a better idea of what he knew and what he planned to do with the information, she decided to stay on the large, smelly man’s good side.
At the moment he was wolfing down a tuna salad sandwich, then gulping a twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew. He repeatedly offered Lynn a bite of the sandwich or a drink from the bottle, which she politely refused.
Dale said, “What time do you want me to pick you up Saturday?”
Lynn said, “I’m going to meet you. I thought we might go over to Jacksonville Landing to sit at a bar along the river.”
“Lady’s choice. I’ll take you wherever you to like to go. Maybe you could even bring some of your party pills if you want to have a real wild time.”
“What are you talking about, Dale?”
“I’m talking about the Baggie of pills I found the other day in your purse.” Now he cut his eyes slightly to the side and said, “Were you high the day you wrecked the Suburban?”
Lynn suddenly had a sickening feeling that Dale was not the big dumb redneck he pretended to be. She wondered if she might not have a real problem sitting right in front of her.
