The Perfect Prey (21 page)

But now she was pretty sure he noticed her as she sat up on the little table and spread her legs, guiding him inside her. A little attention, that’s all she ever wanted. She wasn’t crazy about the feel of the condom, and it was awkward helping him slide it on. She never made guys wear condoms. She was on the pill and stayed pretty clean even though she had to visit her doctor a couple times because of not using a condom. Actually, because of sleeping with a guy who had a venereal disease. She wished she hadn’t known the doctor since she was a little girl, but he’d stuck to his oath and not told her mom about it. Both times.

She made her little passion face and let out a couple of moans now and then. She knew that’s what men like. Every time she had sex, she thought about the very first
time with Lucas by the little pond west of town. He was sixteen and she was seventeen, and he seemed as if he had such a little dick at the time. But she sure found ways to make him grow bigger. It wasn’t till later that she learned that it wasn’t really all that big in comparison to other guys. But Lucas with a sweet smile and blue eyes always made her a little sad. And every time she had sex she thought about him and sometimes almost cried. But this guy wasn’t giving her time to cry. He was throwing it at her hard and heavy. It even felt kinda good knowing that a guy like him could focus so hard on nothing but her. He had his own passion face and let loose with some odd sounds like an animal. But somehow she liked it.

She wanted to keep this one and knew she had to show him a good time. A great time. She started wiggling her legs to make her butt jiggle on the little table. Even though she didn’t like to feel a condom, she increased her grunts and moans and reached over and gently brought her fingernails along his back. Then she nuzzled his neck. Just a little nibble at first. He seemed to like it. It certainly made things more exciting for her, tasting the salt of his perspiration and feeling the muscles strain under her teeth and tongue. Then she decided to go a little further, and she bit him. She didn’t bite really hard and was surprised when a little blood trickled out. But she wasn’t sorry.

It sure seemed as if he was. He looked at her, shocked.

She didn’t care; at least he was looking at her. He’d probably leave her soon anyway.

John Stallings thought about how his father ambushed him in the restaurant and was curious what he had meant when he said to stop by and talk to him sometime. It was Sunday evening, and he’d wrestled with his emotions all afternoon. He went from angry that the old man thought he could just show back up in his life, to sad that he had lost so many years. But that didn’t compare to the years he’d spent being scared of the tyrant and wishing someone else was raising him. Now he was just tired enough to confront the old man without fear of getting physical or even too vocal.

He was on North Liberty Street looking for the address his father had given him. It turned out to be a boardinghouse that had ten rooms for rent. It was west of the stadium where the Jacksonville Jaguars played in an odd part of town with houses, businesses, industrial buildings, and apartment buildings all mixed together. It was, in fact, the kind of area where he would’ve expected to find his father.

He parked in the front of the old two-story Spanish-style house, and paused after he got out of his car. He
looked up at the mostly dark windows and tried to think of reasons to wait until tomorrow. Or next week. It’d been so long since he talked to the old man. So long since he even thought about him–or at least that’s what he told himself–that he wondered if this was even worth the effort. There was also the issue of bothering the other residents. He eased up the uneven walkway toward the porch, which held an old couch and three unmatched chairs. As he was about to climb the four wooden stairs, the porch light came on and the front door started to open.

A heavyset elderly woman in a thick bathrobe leaned out of the door and said, “Who you looking for, officer?”

Stallings froze, looked at her in surprise, and said, “How did you know I was a cop?”

“Son, you run a place like this for long enough and you can spot a cop and a social worker from a mile away. Something tells me you’re no social worker. Who you looking for?”

“James Stallings.”

“Now, what did Jimmy do that would attract the attention of the police?”

Stallings was about to make up some story, something he would feel guilty about later. He didn’t want to lie to an old lady. Then the woman clapped her hands and let out a short squeal of laughter.

“You’re Johnny, his son, aren’t you?”

Stallings had no idea his father had ever mentioned him to anyone.

The woman said, “You look just like your photo in the newspaper. Your father has made me read stories about you for hours on end. How’re Lauren and Charlie doing?”

“They are, um, fine.” He gazed at her for a moment while he gathered his thoughts. Then he said, “So my dad is here?”

“Not right this second. I think he went down the street to help one of the boys who had too much to drink. He might be a while. He likes to avoid confrontation with the drunks and let them wear out before he drives them back here.”

He wondered if somehow she had gotten his father confused with someone else.

He liked the feel of her strong legs wrapped around him. Even the short, awkward pause to slip on a condom had not ruined the moment. He was also glad Lester was not in the front house because, if nothing else, this chick was loud. It may have been just that her mouth was so close to his ear, as she screamed and grunted and squealed to every thrust that he made. This was almost as hard a workout as his run had been that morning.

Even as he grasped her and kissed her and felt himself deep inside her, his eyes kept looking down into the open drawer with the long, sharp letter opener. He could picture it in his hand, driving into her neck or her chest. The image of her shocked face while he was still inside her was thrilling. It was almost as if the letter opener had its own personality and was forcing him to pick it up and use it.

She started to kiss his neck, then nibble, until she finally bit him.

He jerked back. “What the fuck?” Reaching up with his right hand, he felt the blood running from his neck. He was bleeding. She was the prey. The prey didn’t bite
the predator. He looked at her face, a smear of blood above her upper lip, sweat running down her forehead, still swaying to every thrust he made. She liked it. So he pretended to like it too. He rubbed more blood off his neck and then smeared it across her breasts. She grinned, the light from outside making her teeth glow an eerie shade of white. He started to thrust harder and faster.

“Oh yes,” she gasped, three times in a row.

Now all he could think about was the letter opener in the drawer. It screamed at him. It taunted him. His right hand slipped off the desk and into the drawer as Lisa continued to pull him tighter and tighter to her naked body.

But somewhere in his brain, a rational thought popped out. How would he ever clean up the mess made by a sharp implement stuck in this girl’s throat? The blood and pieces of flesh. It was too much like leaving food around the house. It bothered him. He pulled his hand from the drawer and felt like he was about to come. He still wanted to be the hunter. He leaned back slightly, letting Lisa look up in his eyes. His left hand came up to caress her chin, and his right hand held the back of her head as he felt himself about to explode, his intensity pulling her along with him. She took quick, shallow breaths, trying to keep up with the energy she was expending.

He said in a soft voice, “Just relax. Let everything go for a moment.” He felt her shoulders and neck relax, but her legs were still wrapped around him. He tightened his grip on her chin and her hair, then twisted his hands in opposite directions. He used all of his strength and leverage to make the motion quick, violent and
exact. A crackling sound rippled up from her back and neck, and she went limp as he exploded inside her.

He was good for a few more thrusts as her legs slowly slipped off him and dangled from the desk. Even with the condom on, he could feel her warmth. She slumped against the wall, her head bumping the framed cork-board collage of all the other prey. He slipped out of her and let her slide right off the desk and onto the floor with a thump.

His skin tingled from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Stars appeared in front of his eyes as the room started to sway. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. It was so impulsive and unplanned. So unlike anything he’d ever done before. He’d had no idea it would even work. But now he’d claimed another victim in a new way, in his own house. This was too exciting.

He kneeled down next to her and carefully placed two fingers along her neck. He was shocked to feel a strong, steady pulse. He’d had no idea what damage he had caused, but it appeared that he had only knocked her unconscious. Perhaps breaking her neck or back, but not killing her. So he simply wrapped his big hand over her mouth and nose and clamped shut. There was no thrashing, no twitching, and there was no oxygen getting into her bloodstream.

A minute later he released his hand and checked her pulse again. Nothing. He’d brought down another antelope.

Stallings had driven slowly down a couple of the streets with bars where all the rummies hung out. His father’s landlady had told him more about his father in a few minutes than he’d learned on his own in almost a whole lifetime. Apparently the old man did keep track of his children and had some pride for his son’s accomplishments. That was one of the reasons that Stallings was looking for him now in a bad part of town late on a Sunday night. It was close to the scene of the triple shooting that Tony Mazzetti and Christina Hogrebe had been working on. Anything could happen in this part of town.

He slowed the car several times thinking he’d seen his father, only to attract the attention of other older men wandering the streets. He pulled into the parking lot of a pool hall near the Expressway. As he was about to get out of his car a blue Mustang rumbled in right next to him. He noticed a younger man behind the wheel of the Mustang.

Stallings and the man both stepped out of their cars at the same time. They looked at each other, and each
man held the other’s gaze for just a moment. Immediately Stallings realized he knew this young man, but he couldn’t think of his name or where he’d met him. Most experienced cops immediately ran through their arrest logs in their heads. The last thing anyone wanted to do was be surprised by a criminal who still held a grudge. This man didn’t look anything like a criminal, and Stallings had the idea that he’d never arrested him.

While they were still staring at each other it hit Stallings where he knew this man from. He couldn’t keep his eyes from widening as he blurted out, “You’re Jason Ferrell.”

Without hesitation, Ferrell slipped back into his car, cranked it, and was backing out of the lot before Stallings could react.

The thrill of Lisa’s death had not worn off, but sitting naked on his hard, cold wooden floor, he turned his head, looked through his screen door, saw Lisa’s Mazda in the driveway, and realized he had a problem. He’d never had to dispose of anything like a car before. He didn’t know enough about forensics or crime scenes to eliminate all the evidence that could implicate him. All he knew was the TV show
CSI
was complete and total bullshit. He gazed down at Lisa’s naked body. She looked as if she were sleeping. There was no blood, and in the dim light he couldn’t tell if her neck had bruised at all. It didn’t really matter. If he got caught with her in the car, lack of blood or bruising still would not explain what he was doing with a naked dead girl.

He thought back over his career and what he’d done to cover his tracks so successfully. In most cases he’d learned to just make the death look like something
other than murder. Then he recalled New Orleans and the girl he’d dumped in the pond in Louis Armstrong Park. No one had ever found her, and little had ever really been written about her. As far as anyone knew she’d just disappeared. That was the next best thing to making the death appear to be an accident. Jacksonville was full of lakes and canals deep enough to cover the dinged-up gray Mazda in his driveway now.

Stallings wanted to grab Jason Ferrell, but he’d been so stunned at seeing the young man that he’d allowed him to get a big lead in his Mustang. He had no real reason to risk lives in a high-speed pursuit. Besides, he wasn’t even certain which street the young chemist had driven down. There was no question that Ferrell didn’t want to be found.

Stallings drove the streets in a rundown area west of the river and stadium not only looking for Ferrell and his father but thinking about what he needed to do to get this case rolling.

As much as he wanted to talk to his father tonight, finding out who gave Allie Marsh the Ecstasy and was responsible for her death was more important. He felt that if he could clear this up then maybe he could focus on his own family problems.

After an hour of aimless driving and feeling the exhaustion sweep through his body, Stallings finally decided to head home.

He’d spent more than an hour checking out several bodies of water he’d found on Google Earth. The detailed satellite images had not shown certain trees, curbs,
and other impediments to driving a car directly into the water.

Lisa was still naked and curled up in the trunk of the little Mazda. There was very little traffic on the road at this time of the night. He had yet to see any police cruisers and didn’t think he would draw much attention in the plain car as long as he didn’t venture into some of the areas known for selling crack.

Two of the parks that had decent bodies of water also had signs that said they closed at sunset when the gates were locked. One of the canals that he wanted to use had a very steep embankment, and he wasn’t sure he could get the car into the water by himself. Now he was at the edge of a park near an offshoot of the St. Johns River. He had a simple plan. There was a seawall here, and he knew the water immediately dropped down to at least twenty feet. He was going to shove the car off the side of the seawall and hope the murky water kept it hidden for a good, long time.