around.”
Grace had made Stallings feel better about everything.
Lynn lingered at her desk, worried about Leon. How was she ever going to satisfy him? He had proved to be persistent and resilient and now he had turned his attention on her. She didn’t want to hurt him, but at some point she might have to make the choice between her mission and the former marijuana smuggler. Under those conditions Leon lost every time.
Her other concern was the lingering Alan Cole. She had checked with the hospital on and off and been able to pick up that he was still in a coma and unresponsive. For a while she considered just leaving the injured man to his shattered life, but she kept imagining him rousing from his coma, saying that he’d seen her behind the wheel of the blue Suburban. It was a dream that would wake her up at night. And he definitely had to pay the same price as the others. Now the only question was when to make the trip south to Daytona.
She had another target who lived locally. As she considered him, she realized he could be the last one. It made her think about her life after this horrible quest she’d been on. One of the first things she hoped to do was meet someone. Not just a guy in a bar or one of the doofuses from the loading dock at work but a nice, professional man. Someone like Doctor Ferrero, who didn’t care about supply delivery companies or how to effectively murder a college boy.
Lynn could envision raising kids. Sometimes her daydreams were quite specific: two boys with the girl in the middle. If the middle child was of a different gender it might shake up the old idea that the middle child would be a slacker. The oldest was always special because they are first. The youngest is always special because they’re the baby. It’s the middle kid who needs extra care. She loved the idea of taking them all to the beach or the mall or one of the amusement parks in the state.
Her parents seemed to enjoy raising kids. At least until recently. No matter how old the kids got, her parents still tried to take care of them. She knew her father had created a retirement account for her and said she had nothing to worry about after age fifty-nine. He also had a house fund for her, just like he did for her siblings. But it was understood that the fund was for a house in the Jacksonville area so they would be close to her parents. She wouldn’t leave them now anyhow. They were too fragile. It broke her heart. That made her more determined to finish her mission.
She pulled her Buck knife from her purse and stared at it. This last one would be perfect. She’d do it right and finally hear the perfect scream.
FORTY-ONE
Patty thought John Stallings was unusually quiet. That was saying something. He wasn’t brooding. John never brooded. He was just more withdrawn than normal and was focusing on the case notes from their first interview of the day.
The mother of a nineteen-year-old son killed in a car accident said he had no connection to the fraternity. These were touchy interviews that could easily open old wounds for the families of the victims. It wasn’t until the end of the interview that the woman started to sob uncontrollably. It was moments like this that gave Patty an insight into John Stallings’s home life and the sorrow they had all gone through when Jeanie disappeared.
Now Stallings drove his county-issued Impala south on I-95 toward their next interview in Hyde Park.
Finally, Patty had to say, “I know something’s bothering you. You wanna talk about it?”
“Do I ever want to talk about anything?”
“You might be surprised to find it makes you feel better.”
“For your information, I talked my head off last night. I reached my quota and now I’m going to focus on police work for a little while.”
She took his answer as more informative than usual and noted the nice neighborhood as they got off I-95. Hyde Park was an upscale suburb of Jacksonville proper that housed attorneys and doctors. They found the house they were looking for and Patty whistled in amazement. Even by Hyde Park standards this was an opulent home. The two-story house sat far off the street with a winding, semicircular driveway covering much of the front yard. A sturdy, decorative fence ran the length of the property line and an electronic gate blocked the driveway.
Stallings didn’t hesitate to pull the Impala into the driveway and press a button on a stone pillar.
Patty noticed a camera on the opposite pillar move as someone inside the house examined the car. After a few seconds the voice came over a speaker in the stone pillar.
“May I help you?”
Stallings looked down at the sheet of paper and said, “Is Mr. or Mrs. Hickam available?”
“Please identify yourself.”
Stallings and Patty exchanged glances at the formal and direct command.
He leaned out the window closer to the pillar and said, “Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.”
There was a long pause and the camera on the opposite pillar continued to scan the car. After almost twenty seconds another male voice came over the speaker, saying, “May I ask what this is in reference to?”
“We’re doing some follow-up on a two-year-old death investigation. We would like to speak to the Hickams. Are they at home?”
Patty always admired how Stallings could put a slight inflection in his voice that seemed to force people to do whatever he wanted without being overtly threatening. She may not have had the same level of experience as Stallings, but her instincts told her something was definitely not right about this house.
Just as the gate started to slide open, the voice came over the small speaker and said, “Drive up to the front door.”
Patty heard Stallings mumble, “Is today the day that changes the rest of my life?”
That set her on edge.
Emmanuel White was not as thrilled with his new job as he thought he’d be. He’d worked his ass off to get through Ohio State and worked just as hard for two years to get this job. He was so happy to be out of the Midwest and assigned to Florida that he didn’t even care that he had been sent to Jacksonville. He knew in the rest of the state, the northwest city was a little bit of a joke and so far the weather had not proved to be as sunny as he’d hoped. But he was pretty sure he’d make it through the winter without snow and none of the rivers here could catch on fire like the Cuyahoga.
He’d watched the two monitors during the twelve-hour day shift for five days in a row. He was scheduled to be off for the next two days, but on this job he never knew when he’d have free time. In fairness, his job wasn’t only to monitor the two cameras; he was expected to review recorded telephone conversations from a number of different phone lines. There still wasn’t enough to keep him occupied for twelve hours at a time.
He noticed an Impala drive up and stop at the gate. It was one of the few times there was any activity at the house. The camera he monitored was across the street from the house. Emmanuel could see the security cameras at the house scanning the car before they opened the gate and allowed it to drive in.
Emmanuel was able to copy down the tag and decided to run it instantly, rather than wait until later. He liked watching the national news at 6:30 and always tried to have his work done before Brian Williams came on TV. He turned to a small Toshiba computer, typed in his password, and ran the tag. It came back to a corporation in Jacksonville. He ran the corporation through a separate computer databank and recognized it as a company used to register cars for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. The practice was designed to foil drug dealers who tried to figure out who was following them. It didn’t slow him down one bit.
He hesitated, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed a supervisor to advise him about the unusual visitors. It was sad that this was the highlight of his last five days. He may have been new to the job, but he expected something different after being an Ohio State trooper for two years and then surviving the DEA training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Somehow he thought the life of a federal narcotics agent would be more interesting than this.
Emmanuel White advised his supervisor what was going on. All the supervisor wanted to know was if he had finished reviewing the recorded telephone calls from the day before.
