The Perfect Prey (20 page)

The old man started toward them. Stallings didn’t know what to do. The kids didn’t even notice him. It took about five seconds for the man to shuffle across the floor to their booth.

“Hello, Johnny.”

The kids both looked up with no recognition whatsoever on their faces. There was an awkward silence as Stallings stared at the old man. The flood of feelings: fear, resentment, nausea, and even some love, kept him from saying anything at all. The old man stood there staring in awkward silence.

Stallings felt Lauren nudge him under the table. She’d never met the old man. And only caught the mildest of stories about him. Charlie had no clue at all. Finally, Stallings managed to nod a curt greeting.

The old man’s eyes flicked to each child. He wiped his face with a shaking hand and finally said, “Maybe you should come by and say hello when you have time. I’m over near Market Street.” He laid down a Post-it note with an address scribbled on it. “Bring these two with you if you think it’s been long enough.” With that, the old man turned quickly and with surprising speed shuffled out of the restaurant, onto the street, and out of sight.

Lauren said slowly, “Who was that?”

Stallings swallowed hard and said, “My father.”

It was late Sunday afternoon, and the sun reflected off the St. Johns River in the back of the Yvonne Zuni’s parents’ suburban Jacksonville house. Yvonne sat at the end of the long table with her three sisters on one side and their respective husbands on the other. Yvonne’s father sat at the other end of the table, and her mother, as usual, scurried around with giant plates of food. Jerk chicken, black beans and rice, fried plantains, and a Caesar salad sat across the long table on the covered patio.

Yvonne had missed very few Sunday dinners with her family in the past seven years. She even had her own husband sit across from her for almost three years, but that was the past, and now she was the only Zuni girl who had no husband. But no one here judged her or treated her any differently. They loved her, and she loved them. They felt the sorrow she felt, and her mother had cried with her when her one-year-old son, Jason, had died from a rare blood disease he’d had since birth. Her sisters had felt the same anger that she had when her husband had sought to ease his own sorrow
with another woman, or more accurately, with other women.

These dinners with the family helped her keep things in perspective and keep her mind off work, if only for a few hours. It was hard to keep a gung-ho detective off an investigation because of budget cutbacks. She didn’t like sending Tony Mazzetti home, even on a Sunday, because there was no overtime. But it was tough being the boss. Anyone who had ever supervised people knew how hard the job was. That was the joke when she went to the one-week supervisory training at the sheriff’s office. The instructors used to say, “Management is great. It’s telling people what to do that sucks.”

She’d be curious to see what progress her detectives had made on their investigations this week. Pride pushed Mazzetti to make sure every homicide was cleared, and conscience pushed Stallings to make sure he’d find an answer to Allie Marsh’s death. But the sergeant knew she had to count on both of their partners to keep them from doing anything stupid. That was the way things worked in a police department.

Her father tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked over at his smiling face.

He said, with his quiet Trinidad accent, “So sweetheart, how’s the new job in the detective bureau?”

She shook her head. “It seems like no matter what you do someone’s not happy.”

He laughed and said, “That’s why I spent my life as a veterinarian with only family working at the practice. Your mom was the closest thing to a supervisor we ever had.”

Hearing her dad say it made her realize she did have two families. But this one had much better food.

It had been a busy day for him–the workout, a good run, cleaning up his Jeep, visiting his sister and nephew. He spent over an hour at the grocery store buying organic and healthy food. As he pulled into the driveway of his apartment that sat behind the main house, he froze. A gray Mazda was parked directly in front of his carport.

He cautiously stepped out onto the weed-and-gravel driveway. He didn’t bother to shut off the Jeep as his eyes scanned from one side of his apartment to another. Then he saw someone move inside the dark tinted Mazda. The gray car’s door opened, and a thick female leg stepped out onto the gravel driveway. As the figure emerged from the car his stomach tightened.

All he could say was, “How did you know where I live?”

She smiled and brushed her blond hair from her face. “Why? Am I not supposed to know where you live?”

“No, I just don’t remember giving you the address.”

“Or your phone number, or any other important information. Am I supposed to wait for you to call me whenever you want to? I have rights too.”

He leaned back into his car and shut off the engine. This had never happened to him before. None of his prey had ever figured out where his lair was. He’d intended to call Lisa tonight. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. He looked around hoping no one had noticed her come to the house. He couldn’t have any connection with her and didn’t want her to be able to find him. This was freaking him out almost as bad as Holly and her crazy cult friends.

Lisa stepped away from her car and slammed the door. “Are you going to invite me inside?”

“You didn’t answer my question. How did you find out where I live?”

She gave him a sly smile. “I followed you home from the club last night. I knew you were all alone, but I thought it would be better if I came by to see you today.”

He walked toward her, and she rushed at him and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him hard on the lips. It wasn’t the aggressive action that aroused him; it was the idea of what he could do to her. The power he had over her. She was a simple antelope, and all he had to do was use his powerful jaws on her neck and she would be his forever. Before he knew what he was doing, he said, “Let me grab the groceries from my car and we’ll go inside.”

This was dangerous territory. He wasn’t sure he was in control of his own actions, and that’s what could get him in trouble. It was nearly dark. His landlord, Lester, was away for the weekend, and the front house was empty. This might be the best opportunity he ever had to hunt in his home field.

Lisa felt a little like a detective. All she’d done was find her man and then follow him home last night. But she didn’t think that it was right to scare him late at night, so she waited until this bright sunny afternoon. What man wouldn’t want a booty call in the middle of a Sunday afternoon? She just hoped he wouldn’t even mention her confrontation with the skinny little college bitch at the club the other night. There was no way she was going to let him just walk out of her life. She was so much better for him than that bitch Ann. She’d let too many men slip out of her life. Hahira, Georgia, had
very few places to hide, but somehow men seemed to find them. But now she was older and wiser. There’d be no more incidents like Lucas. She had given everything to him and let him do anything he wanted to her, and then he just walked away. He found out it wasn’t that easy to walk away, but he tried it anyway. She wasn’t even sure she was done with Lucas yet. She’d thought about going up to Athens to see him at the University of Georgia. But right now all she wanted to focus on was her Jacksonville hunk. He had it all: looks, the moves, and the car. She even liked his little bungalow not far from the beach, where he wasn’t living with his parents and it didn’t look as if he had a wife lying around anywhere.

Now that she was older and wiser at twenty-two, she felt a certain satisfaction at finding him and forcing him to show her some attention. Those days of being shy and not aggressive enough were over now that she knew what she wanted and she was going after it. She’d earned it. Her daddy may not have ever noticed her no matter what she did. And her boyfriend had treated her like a big soft sex toy and then lost interest, but this time it would be different. She planned to go inside and make him a nice dinner and show him there was more to her than just a couple of available holes. Well, first she’d get his attention with her special female ways. Then she’d make him dinner and maybe even breakfast tomorrow morning.

This was so exciting she felt her crotch start to tingle.

Stallings didn’t need additional complications in his life. The kids peppered him with a thousand questions
about his father. They knew their grandfather was alive and that there had been a falling-out in the family. They saw their grandmother several times a week and loved their aunt who lived with them now. But somehow, no one had ever explained to them what had happened to Grandpa.

He struggled with how much to tell them. It was easier to leave most of it out. The beatings, the drunken rantings, the abuse, and Helen running away from it all. The fact that his children’s grandfather was a mean drunk who lived in a boardinghouse in Jacksonville was one thing he really hadn’t thought he’d ever have to tell them. But fate had decided that assessment was incorrect.

He decided to keep everything vague. He said that he and his father had had many disagreements and hadn’t seen each other in years.

Charlie couldn’t comprehend this and said, “Why?”

All Stallings could say was that for reasons he really didn’t want go into right now, they had not spoken in years. He also said he was surprised to see his father today and hadn’t known what to do. He apologized to the kids for not making it clearer that their grandfather lived relatively close by.

Maria was astonished when the kids told her excitedly about meeting their grandfather. She had some questions of her own.

Maria said, “How’d he look?”

Stallings shook his head, “I don’t know. I guess he looked like an old man. He didn’t seem pissed off at all, if that’s what you mean. That’s what threw me. The last time we spoke his face was all red and he was screaming at me. He just kinda looked tired. Somehow the word
resigned
comes to mind.”

“Are you okay?”

“I wish I knew.” He looked into Maria’s clear, dark eyes. “I’m separated from my wife, overwhelmed at work, worried about my kids, and now the man that made my childhood a living hell shows up out of nowhere and says he’d like me to drop by sometime. You tell me, Maria, am I okay?”

They stared at each other in silence.

Inside the small apartment Lisa’s eyes immediately fell on the large collage of beautiful blond girls on the wall.

“Are they your girlfriends?”

“What if I said yes?” The urge to act was overwhelming, but he didn’t know what to do. No one had ever been inside his apartment before. Especially not an antelope like this. He felt sweat bead across his forehead. He had a slight tremor in his right hand. His eyes were glued on her long, beautiful blond hair falling across her tan, beefy shoulders. The sundress she wore showed off her curvy shape, but he couldn’t get a sense of how she was feeling. He didn’t know if she was pissed off, turned on, or just plain crazy. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to find him, and obviously had spent some time waiting for him. She knew way too much.

“Did you tell anyone you were coming over?”

“Why, are you married?”

He laughed and shook his head.

“Then why are you so secretive?”

“I like my privacy. Is that a crime?”

She slowly shook her head and said, “I guess not. I’m sorry–I didn’t mean to be needy. I just felt like we’d made a connection on the dance floor the other night.”

“We did. I mean, we have a connection.” He stepped
closer, reached up, and caressed her pretty, sculpted cheekbones. “And I’d like to explore it more closely.” He kissed her softly on the neck, lingering for a minute, letting his tongue make a little swirl. Then he stepped back and assessed her. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

She shook her head, and said with a little laugh, “I try to keep my stalking quiet. My girlfriends think that I can be too aggressive sometimes. I hope that doesn’t scare you.” She reached behind her and undid the tie on her dress, then let it drop down her tan body to the hardwood floor. She pushed her panties down her legs, stepping on them with her left foot so she stood completely naked in front of him.

The blood seemed to race to both his brain and his dick at the same time. It made him a little unsteady on his feet. She stepped back toward the desk against the wall. The collage of photos was directly behind her. She sat on the desk, her legs spread, and pulled him toward her, embracing him with both her arms and legs. She reached up to give him a long, slow kiss. He responded without reservation and felt his body react.

She used her feet to tug off his shorts as he unbuttoned them and let them slide to the floor with her pile of clothes. He felt himself pulled toward her and hesitated.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” She whispered into his ear.

“I need a condom.”

“It’s all right. I’m on the pill.”

“I always practice safe sex.” He stepped away from her and opened a small top drawer on the desk, scooting her legs gently out of the way. He looked down in the drawer and saw his pack of Durex condoms. He froze for a moment because next to the condoms was a
long, sharpened letter opener. It looked sinister in this setting. He could imagine it plunging into her soft skin.

He really couldn’t decide what he wanted to do more.

The more Lisa thought about it, the more she realized she could never tell her girlfriends exactly what she did. She’d make up some fabulous story about how he’d swept her off her feet. Somehow she was certain no matter how she told the story, the word “stalking” would never come up. A couple of girls had been with her through her restraining-order days and knew that she was prone to following guys a little closely, but she didn’t want to have to tell them exactly how closely she’d followed this one. Even the word “stalking” made her sound creepy. She used to use it as sort of a joke and it would make people laugh, but afterward it always embarrassed her no matter how much attention it got her at a party.