and she had striking green eyes but not much of a figure—just a straight board with square shoulders. Her face was extraordinary, with delicate, precise features, high cheekbones, and clear skin. He’d found her at the community college but she wasn’t in either of his classes. That would have been a stupid mistake, and he didn’t make mistakes. She’d just asked his opinion of a schedule, and they started talking. No one had any idea they had even met. She was perfect from that perspective.
Tawny told him about her family in Bunnell, an aunt and uncle she had lived with after her mom died of breast cancer when she was fourteen. Her mother’s sister had done all she could, but her uncle was an alcoholic who ran the house like his unit in the Marines. He hadn’t just retired from the service, they had asked him to leave because he was so tough. She’d moved out as soon as she turned eighteen and hadn’t spoken to her aunt or uncle in three months. Dremmel had been subtle but asked who she did talk to on a regular basis. The answer had sealed her fate: no one.
After he took her to eat at Pollo Loco, a fast-food Latin chicken place, she had agreed to come home with him to watch his DVD of Sleepless in Seattle, her favorite flick. She didn’t even make it to the Empire State Building scene. Instead she had dropped unconscious on his couch, and the thrill to him was indescribable. To finally have a pretty girl at his absolute mercy. No comments about how much money he made or why he lived with his mother. Just blissful, beautiful silence. Then, after silence and lethargy became boring, he realized he might need to work on his drug combinations. He had access to anything he wanted. No one would ever know unless they started losing whole bottles of pills. His needs were substantially under the threshold where anyone would ever notice.
The planning he’d put into his scheme was meticulous and flawless and gave him confidence to know there was no way he could ever be caught. His years of study and natural intelligence would make it impossible for the cops to tie him to any deaths no matter how far he took it, even if he left each body in an identical American Tourister or duffel bag. He had his own methods to avoid detection beyond the simple steps of rubber gloves and a hairnet when he was dealing with the bodies. He had been careful to purchase the bags at a variety of locations using only cash. Thinking like that made him untouchable and above the law.
The experience of holding poor, unconscious, flat-chested Tawny Wallace as she slipped from steady breathing to a slower and slower respiration until the life drained right out of her young body had changed William Dremmel forever. For the better. He now had a task to occupy his considerable intellect and needs.
He now had goals, and all he needed were subjects.
The cops had found Tawny in a Samsonite Jumbo Suiter more than a month ago. He had watched them take the bag after a quick survey of the area. The detective in charge, a well-built guy in a suit, rushed the crime scene people along, and they were out of the shopping center before much of a crowd had gathered. He thought that was just the way things worked in real life instead of TV.
He wondered if he would ever hear anything about Lee Ann. She’d been a good girlfriend. She’d be hard to replace
Lead Homicide Detective Tony Mazzetti adjusted his Joseph Abboud silk tie before stepping into the crappy little motel’s lobby. He had waited a few minutes after his lieutenant had verbally knocked the shit out of the Jax Beach assistant chief to ensure the Sheriff’s Office investigated this case. He wasn’t sure why the L.T. wanted it so badly. All she had said to him was, “Check out this body and tell me how you want to handle it.” It was an odd way to phrase a command. Usually the L.T. just said, “Keep me informed.” That was cool with him. Lieutenant Hester hadn’t worked many homicides as a detective and never told him how to do his job. She just wanted to stay up to date. That’s all any good boss wanted.
He knew that jerk John Stallings had found the body, and Mazzetti didn’t trust that guy. Not the way his daughter’s disappearance was handled. Mazzetti never thought the circumstances or the way Stallings reported it were probed enough by the Sheriff’s Office, or as most cops just called it, the S.O. The whole fucking S.O. looked for the missing girl, but no one seemed to care about the conflicting stories or odd time line. Mazzetti could deal with him like he could any lucky schlub who seemed to stumble into one decent case after another. If Mazzetti had that kind of luck on the job he’d be a major by now.
Mazzetti knew the importance of making an entrance. It gave the troops someone to look up to and let them know who was in charge. It made him feel like a prince walking into a royal court. He’d come a long way from skinny Anthony Mazzetti with legs like toothpicks and asthma that made him wheeze like an old vacuum cleaner. He decided a long time ago he’d overcome the puny body God had given him and excel at everything he did so no one could ever say shit about the way he looked and breathed.
Now Mazzetti took in the lobby as he nodded to the various crime scene investigators, making them feel special and not just like nerds here to get in the way. Two uniformed Jax Beach cops had secured the perimeter, and he was pleased to see one of them was smart enough to start a log of who had entered the scene. The Indian hotel manager sat quietly behind the main counter, hypnotized by the activity as if he were watching an episode of Law and Order. All these little hotels were owned by dot-heads named Patel or Singh. All the politically correct types down here called them middle easterners. Mazzetti didn’t buy into shit like that.
When Tony Mazzetti got accepted to Flagler College in St. Augustine, he never considered he’d go into police work; he just wanted to live in Florida for a while. As a kid he dreamed about it, but the idea of a cop running on stick figure legs made him cry up in his room until his P.E. coach, Mr. Shepard, introduced him to weight training. Once in school he never thought he’d stay down here in this fake, Southern shithole. Quiet St. Augustine was a far cry from his native Brooklyn, and Jacksonville hadn’t been any improvement. But he had gotten hooked on the idea of being a cop, and the Jacksonville S.O., despite being stuck in the middle of this swamp of rednecks, was a good, well-paid department. And Mazzetti knew he was the smartest of the entire detective corps. East or West zone.
Mazzetti had risen through the ranks at the Sheriff’s Office by taking every assignment he’d ever been given seriously. Whether it was community relations as a patrolman in the upscale tract of Mandarin or narcotics in the downtown slums or crack-devastated Justina Street, Tony Mazzetti treated every case like it was the biggest one he ever handled. Until it was cleared. He cleared ten burglaries on one guy caught in a similar crime. He once closed out five robberies with one mope holding a gun in the same neighborhood. He was a master of clearance rate and the only way to do that was to work hard and use your head. When the national average for solving burglaries was 25 percent he was clearing simple B&Es at almost 80 percent.
Sure he liked arresting the actual perpetrator of a crime. It was satisfying every time he put a killer behind bars. But he didn’t want any unsolved cases either. That was why he drove the forensic people so hard on a scene. He wanted nothing left to chance. He was known as the “King of Homicide.” A royal title that befitted him. Royalty at thirty-eight, not bad.
Now, after assessing the room, Mazzetti cleared his throat and called out in his fast, sharp Brooklyn accent, “All right, folks, we got everything in place, let’s get to work.” He looked at the photographer. “Wally, start your survey out here. Tina, do a video from the outside all the way up to the storage room door.” He paused to see who moved first. “We’re gonna need fibers from the room and body, and”—he looked at the hotel manager—“I’m gonna want to talk to you personally.” He couldn’t count the number of things he’d ask this little guy; Security video, strange guests, records for everyone checking in the last two weeks, access to the storage room, who the other clerk was. The list went on, and he wouldn’t miss any of it.
Satisfied he’d made the appropriate impression with the crime scene geeks, Mazzetti strutted toward the door marked off with bright yellow crime scene tape, slipping on a pair of surgical
