around the city. For all of his faults, no one could say Peep was lazy. If he wasn’t sidetracked by his odd fetish or slowed by use of narcotics, the quirky young man from Detroit would’ve probably have been a tremendous success in the business world.
He was sitting out in the open on a park bench just north of the main downtown area. He showed no interest in fleeing for a change so Stallings took the bench next to him to find out what his informant had learned.
Peep didn’t even waste time with small talk. “No one knows the girl. I been all over Arlington and a couple of the areas I know up north and not one person had ever seen the girl before.”
“What about the boy, Zach Halston?”
“That little prick has been all over the city. A couple of the tougher dealers scared him until he focused on the college crowd. Someone told me he got into a beef there too. Another dealer was undercutting him to the college students, which caused a confrontation.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Peep shook his head. “I’m not even sure where I heard it. Just gossip on the street. You know how it goes.”
Stallings did know how word got out on the street. The shocking thing was how accurate it was most time. No one could ever cite one source, but everyone knew what was going on.
Stallings patted Peep’s shoulder. “That’s good, Peep. Got anything else for me?”
“The last anyone saw of Zach was he collected a little money someone owed him about four days ago.”
Now Stallings gripped the smaller man’s shoulder. “Four days ago? So he’s still alive?” Then Stallings asked, “Where was he?”
“South of the river, closer to the university.”
“Did you hear if anyone was after him or if he was in danger?”
“I haven’t heard about anyone being pissed off at him. You know how paranoid pot dealers can be.” Peep gave him a half smile showing Stall that his years on the street hadn’t robbed him of his sense of humor.
But Stallings hardly noticed him because right now all he could focus on was Zach Halston.
Lynn was amazed how quickly the two cops subdued a man so much larger than them. While one stepped away and pulled a can of pepper spray, the other one threw two quick punches into Dale’s massive gut and stepped to the side and kicked him in his upper leg. Dale listed to one side like he was going to fall over just as the tall, uniformed police officer let a stream of orange liquid loose in Dale’s face. At first there was no reaction as Dale went down on his injured leg. He gripped his thigh where he’d been kicked and started to yell at the man who had kicked him. Then it seemed like the pepper spray completely occupied his mind as he grabbed his face and started to babble incoherently.
The man Dale had shoved off the edge of the dock was climbing up the stairs, apparently uninjured but eager to get a shot in on the big man who had pushed him down. They rolled Dale on his side like a beached whale until they were able to handcuff his massive hands behind his back.
Lynn heard a voice in her left ear say, “Now you don’t have to worry about your date.” She snapped her head to see Leon standing right next to her.
Lynn said, “I don’t understand.”
“One call, a few grams of crack, and a bad attitude will manage to keep him occupied for the next couple of years. Best of all, old man Thomas will can his ass before lunch.”
“But how?”
“There’s nothing a narcotics agent likes more than a reformed smuggler. Half the numbers in my cell phone are for DEA agents and local narcs looking to make a case. This was so easy I’m embarrassed.”
Lynn tried not to smile as the three police officers led Dale away while he was still complaining about his face burning. No one on the dock looked too upset to see the big man leave.
Now Lynn could focus on her real issues.
It’d only taken Patty Levine a few hours to track down three different coeds who had attended a Halloween party two years earlier at the Tau Upsilon fraternity house. She worked alone because she wanted the girls to open up to her and having Sparky Taylor with her would’ve been just as bad as bringing along John Stallings even if he hadn’t been taken off the case.
Sitting in a small sandwich shop on University Boulevard near the University of North Florida, Patty looked across the table at the young lady whose name she had gotten from one of the fraternity brothers in town. The young man had provided a list of as many of the attendees to the Halloween party as he could remember. Not counting the fraternity members, the list had more than seventy names.
Patty had already established that this girl had had a very similar experience to the first two girls she had spoken to.
The girl said, “That fraternity is nothing but a bunch of assholes.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I woke up in the bushes after that party. There are girls that found themselves in other
“You think someone slipped you a roofie that night?”
“Who knows? I take responsibility for drinking too much, but the frat boys have so much alcohol on hand. The whole fraternity is known for its wild parties and disappearing the next day.”
Patty looked at the pretty blond-haired girl and said, “Are they known for anything else?”
“Just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Pot.”
THIRTY-TWO
As much as he hated to admit it, Tony Mazzetti knew he was looking at a string of killings. After talking with Patty Levine and Sparky Taylor and seeing the mounting evidence, he and Sergeant Zuni had concluded that the chances were remote that all of the deaths of the fraternity members were accidents. He wasn’t absolutely convinced they were all connected. Someone who used drugs on one victim wouldn’t be likely to use a gun at close range on another. Just as it seemed unlikely the same person would burn someone alive. There was no pattern. Mazzetti knew that killers loved patterns and hated change.
Now he was over at the medical examiner’s office searching previous deaths ruled accidental or otherwise to see if there were others that could be thrown into the mix. They were starting at October from two years earlier to be on the safe side. Mazzetti and Lisa Kurtz sat at a table in the administration building of the medical examiner’s office and carefully looked at each file of any male under the age of thirty who had died in the last two years in Duval County.
The whole squad came up with a number of variables like male victims, within the last two years, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, with any association to the college. These included the numerous deaths that were attributed to drug overdoses, and even suspicious car accidents.
Lisa sat next to him and had been nothing but professional the past two hours. He had wondered if it would be awkward working so closely with the young woman he knew was a freak in the bedroom. So far it was not. He was careful not to call her his girlfriend, especially out loud, because he still wasn’t sure how he felt.
Lisa slid an open file across the table to Mazzetti and said, “Here’s another one.”
Mazzetti looked at the photos of the young man laid out on the procedure table of the medical examiner’s office and saw the listed cause of death as “a hunting accident.” He placed the file with the other three files they had already pulled for closer examination.
On the very next file, Lisa said, “Here’s another one. An alcohol poisoning case two days after the party.”
She slid the file to Mazzetti, who looked down and noticed the victim’s name was Josh Hickam. The file went
