The Perfect Death by James Andrus

Tischler’s too, he’s gonna kill again. And I can’t let that happen. That’s my fucking policy.”

TWELVE
    Stallings could always tell when the whole squad was on one big case by the way detectives tended to focus on reports and information on their desk rather than chatting back and forth. The usual friendly atmosphere of the detective bureau went out the window when cases got serious and detectives got tired. In the past, before the recession, when overtime was plentiful, everyone had been buoyed by the idea they were making a lot of extra money by working such long hours. Some cops had equated the extra hours and pay to specific material things like, “Fifty more hours and I can get a pool.” Some cops had built a future on it—“This is Tommy’s college fund.” Now the detectives seemed to work a lot of hours for comp time or some other bullshit they never got reimbursed for. That was never Stallings’s motivation for working hard. He wanted to find who was responsible for Leah Tischler’s disappearance and punish him.
    He and Patty had been looking for the last person who’d seen Leah. They had a list of friends and intended to go out to the Thomas School for interviews later in the day. Stallings really felt like he needed to know if Leah had run away, and if she had, where she’d run to. Maybe Jeanie had done the same thing and gone to the same place. Leah’s mother had called him three or four times since he’d first gone out to their opulent house at the beach. He knew how tough it was and he wasn’t going to tell her to stop calling.
    Patty stepped over from her desk and said, “Almost done here. Besides going to the school, is there anyone else we need to talk to today?”
    â€œI have a couple more questions for Liz Dubeck.”
    â€œI’ll bet you do.” Patty flashed that perfect smile.
    â€œNo, it’s not like that at all.”
    â€œReally? What is it?”
    It surprised Stallings he had to think about his answer, but he was rescued by Sparky Taylor walking past on his midmorning routine of eating organic whole wheat bread and a stack of vitamins.
    Stallings said, “Whatcha got there, Sparky?”
    â€œThe usual weight-control stuff. Eating a slice of organic, whole wheat bread and drinking two glasses of water helps me keep my weight in check.”
    Stallings stared at the portly detective and managed to hold his tongue when he saw how sincere Sparky was.
    The squad door opened with a bang, and a tall narcotics detective, whose name Stallings couldn’t remember right away, stepped in with an armload of packages wrapped in duct tape. The man, in his mid-thirties, was tall and stooped and looked a little like Big Bird with thick glasses. The man glanced around the room until his eyes fell on Sparky. “Hey, Spark. Our sergeant told us to come up here to process evidence and prisoners to keep them away from some meth-lab guys we have down in our office. He cleared it with the Yvonne the Terrible.”
    Sparky stepped over and helped the man lay out the packages on the desk. Stallings realized they knew each other from the tech unit, where they had obviously shared similar interests.
    Stallings wandered over and casually inquired about the prisoners who were on their way.
    The nerdy detective said, “We scored big. One of the guys bought fifteen hundred OxyContin from a gang not far from here. They’d been selling them to some dude from Kentucky who resold them and made a fortune. When we took down the guy from Kentucky on the highway he gave up a gang.”
    Stallings mumbled, “Sweet.”
    â€œI knew Yvonne wouldn’t mind us using the squad bay. She was our sergeant before she was yours and we hated to see her go.”
    â€œThen why’d you name her Yvonne the Terrible?”
    â€œWhat better way of keeping people from stealing a good sergeant?”
    Stallings had to