“Not really,” Mia replied a little absently. She was still thinking about what I had said and its possible implication. Her anger had thoroughly dissipated. She shifted in her seat and re-Rennie/CLEARWATER JOURNALS
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focused on my question. “She told me that there was this guy that she thought she kind of liked, but that he was going with someone else.”
We had left the darkened gravel laneway and were coming back into a residential section of an obviously poor section of town. Off to the left, there was a long strip of warehouses and light manufacturing buildings in various stages of disrepair and outright ruin. On the right, there was a series of squat worn out apartment blocks with a number of old residential streets feeding off between them. Up ahead, I could see a bright neon light. With luck, there would be some kind of twenty-four hour fast food restaurant somewhere along the small strip mall. I was hungry
– and needed a washroom.
I got lucky. There was one place open. It was a twenty-four seven Burger King lit up at the far end of the otherwise dimly lit parking lot. I parked the car as close to the overhead lighting of the restaurant as I could get. I made a dash for the can while Mia found us a place to sit. There were only three other people in the place, and two of them were employees. Mia ordered me a Diet Pepsi with ice and lime and a burger with fries. She had a black coffee.
As I was making my way through the Burger King to where Mia was sipping her coffee,
it dawned on me that I might have made two potentially dangerous assumptions – maybe three. I remembered the words of my old Scottish training officer, Sergeant McGregor. “Laddie boy,” he would say, “If you assume in this job, you will probably end up making an ass out of u and me.”
Not exactly original, but his point was made and valid. I had naturally assumed that Vickie would know whomever she went to park with - but what if she didn"t. Worst case scenario that I wouldn"t be presenting to Mia any time soon – what if she was hooking to make a few bucks? Or maybe the guy could have been a total stranger who grabbed her off the street. If that was the case, this was a virtual no solve as it had been for the cop, Langdon. I wasn"t going to discuss this possibility with Mia either. Not tonight anyway.
The other dangerous assumption I had made was also a logical one. I had assumed that the body was dropped off on the way out of the field. I now wondered if that had also been the position taken by the police during their investigation. But just what was the true implication if, Rennie/CLEARWATER JOURNALS
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instead, the body had been dropped off on the way into the park? Then the solution to the crime wasn"t such a slam-dunk after all. I made a mental note to ask Langdon on which side of the road the body had been found. And then I remembered that Mia"s sister was supposed to be getting on a Greyhound bus to join Mia in Orlando. What was she doing with anyone in that park -
voluntarily? This was not looking too good. Cops hang around bus stations regularly – why? - To catch the bad guys about to do or doing bad things – like enticing young girls.
When I sat down at the table across from Mia, I explained how I might have been
incorrect in saying the case should have almost solved itself.
“I don"t understand; why is which side of the road important again?” she asked as she took another sip of her hot coffee.
I borrowed a pencil from a waitress who definitely could have benefited from a few
months intensive study at a charm school. I drew a line on a paper serviette and put a circle at the end of it.
“The circle is the field; the line is the road. Suppose I"m coming out of the field, which is what we were basing our earlier judgment on. I"m the killer, so I"m driving and the victim is in the back or more likely, if it went down as I said, in the passenger"s seat. The passenger"s door opens to the right side of the road. Why would I risk dragging or carrying the body across the road in front of the car with headlights on? If I have half a brain, I wouldn"t - just in case another vehicle comes along from either direction. Look at what happened when those two cars came along and passed us as they were going out. Anyone dragging a body across the roadway would be caught like a deer in headlights. No, I"d want to stay in the dark shadows. Given that either side of the road could be used to dispose of the body, we might determine whether the car was going to the field or coming from the field by finding out on which side of the road Vickie"s body was found.”
“So if she was found on the side going into the field, it could pretty well be anyone who knew about the place but didn"t want to risk being seen for any length of time in the make out area?”
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“Bingo - and you got to remember what these people are doing back in there. They"re
parked. They will probably look up if lights hit their car. They may not want to be too forthcoming about anything, but the killer can"t take that risk. In the worst-case scenario, I mean in terms of trying to solve this thing, it was a total stranger who somehow ambushed and then murdered her. When he needed to get rid of her body, he just lucked off the main road and found himself on that quiet stretch of gravel. It"s dark, so he drags her out of the car and dumps her where her body was found. That serial killer - Ted Bundy – I think he worked that way on one or two occasions. We definitely have to find out from Langdon which side of the road her body was found on. Sometime soon, we have to go back there in the daylight. Maybe we"ll be able to see if one side of the road offers significantly more advantage to the other side for anyone trying to hide a dead body.”
By the time I had led Mia through the side of the road explanation, we had finished our drinks and I had half a burger and cold fries in front of me. Mia looked morose. All that impersonal dead body talk was okay for me. I could be detached. A corpse was simply an abstract part of an equation to be solved. But Vickie had been her flesh and blood. I returned the borrowed pencil to Miss Congeniality before we headed back to the car. I checked my watch. It had been a long day. It was well after midnight.
“There is still the question about why she wasn"t on that bus to meet up with you unless the whole timeline is screwy,” I said still thinking out loud.
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Mia Leaves Home
“I guess I"d better take you home,” I said as I started the car. “There"s not much more we can do until we meet with Langdon at Crabby Bill"s tomorrow. I hope he is at least a little bit helpful. If he gets stubborn, or he just cannot help us, we"re in big trouble.”
I looked over at Mia and realized how bleak a picture I was painting. We needed some positive spin and distraction. “I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that he was willing to meet with us at all. How do I get to your place?” Now there"s a distraction.
For the next ten minutes, I again followed Mia"s directions. From the perspective of notable sights, we seemed to be heading deeper into an even seedier part of Tampa. Forty minutes earlier, I would not have believed that that would have been possible. Mia asked a few questions about what help we might expect or hope to get from Langdon. I could give her the questions that we could start with, but I couldn"t give her any answers to satisfy her. I just didn"t know what to expect from the old ex-cop – who might have been “drunk or hung-over since Viet Nam”. Finally, she lapsed into giving me simple directions – turn here - left at the light – that sort of thing. I knew she wasn"t happy that we hadn"t learned more. She was also worried because I simply couldn"t assure her that Langdon was going to be really helpful. Perhaps it had become apparent to her what our chances of success were.
Actually, if I was in Langdon"s shoes, I didn"t know how forthcoming I would be. I mean what has he got – a foreign ex-cop turned obituary writer for the last five years and an ex-stripper turned hooker trying to find a solution to an unsolved crime involving the murder of the ex-stripper"s younger sister. It was almost laughable. But for Langdon, helping us was also a “lose -
lose” scenario. We could get our hats handed to us by treading where we shouldn"t go. If that happened, the police department would be giving him some hard looks because now they have some more dead bodies - ours. Or we could solve the thing and make him and the major crimes unit of the Tampa City Police Department look like a bunch of incompetent schmucks. Was I missing something here?
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Around eight minutes after we left Burger King, we pulled up in front of a shabby low-rise apartment building in an entire neighbourhood of run-down buildings just like it. They might have been all the rage in the mid-forties, but I doubted it. They were depressing enough at this time of night when I could barely see them. I guessed that they would be even worse in the light of day. The magic phrase “housing slum” and all its attached connotations jumped to my mind.
A call out to investigate a crime in the infamous Toronto"s Regent Park housing slum was something like going into an Afghanistan battle zone and, if at all possible, devoutly to be avoided. Tampa cops probably felt the same way about this neighbourhood. I sat and said nothing. Reluctantly, I killed the headlights, and I turned off the car"s ignition. Mia just sat there
- her head bowed – not moving.
“I"ll walk you to your door okay?” I said after a few quick moments of hesitation.
“Your Jaguar might be gone by the time you get back,” she mumbled followed by a short mirthless laugh.
“I was thinking that myself,” I replied absently as I set the location into my GPS. Then I realized how hurtful my reply had been. I smiled weakly trying to disguise my gaffe.
“You"re right Joe! It"s pretty dismal isn"t it? It"s sometime called Little Beirut and not because it"s an Arab community.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” I bluffed.
“Not in this case,” Mia replied sadly. Then she suddenly brightened; inspiration had struck. “I"ve got an idea. Why don"t I just run in and pick up some stuff? I can go back to the beach with you and then we can go together to meet Stuart Langdon at lunch. That way you don"t have to drive all the way back over here tomorrow morning. You probably wouldn"t be able to find the place again anyway unless that G.P. thing really works.”
“I guess,” I started to reply uncertainly, “but my place is kind of limited ...”
“We"ll think of something,” she replied quickly as she jumped from the car and hurried up the minefield of broken walkway. The cramped doorway to her building was not lit. I lost sight of her almost immediately as she rushed to the front of the worn out apartment building.
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I sat there in the dark staring into the void where she had disappeared. I was quietly wondering if I should go in and help her or at least meet her to walk her back to the car. Then, I became distracted thinking about how I could accommodate her in my small rooming house. I recalled my first conversation with the rental agent – no overnight guests he had said. “No problem,” I had replied. “I don"t know anyone here anyway.”
Suddenly, something slammed into the passenger side of my car.
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The End of an Almost Perfect Day
Without me noticing him, a rag tag old drunk had approached my car from the rear. He had been reeling along the sidewalk when he had suddenly collapsed against the side of the Jag. I jerked away involuntarily and then, realizing that he posed no threat, watched as he slid silently along the hood trying to find his footing. Then, just up ahead, I spotted three young gangbangers slide, like hungry sharks in a murky sea, from the deep shadows of an apartment building. They angled cautiously towards the drunk and my Jag. There was no rush – easy pickings. I watched as they jacked each other up in their black hoodies and low slung baggy jeans. One kid had a length of bike chain sticking from his pocket. All of them were doing quick visual scans for witnesses or bigger sharks. But really – who was going to own up to seeing anything in this place? This was an easy – two fer – the Jag and a drunk - thank you Santa Claus. They appeared to be in no hurry as they got ready to make their move. The drunk wasn"t going anywhere, and they hadn"t spotted me slouched behind the tinted windshield of the low slung car.
When they had closed to within eight feet or so, I started the Jag"s powerful engine and flashed on the car"s high beams. The young guys were surprised, and that more than anything else, made them turn and run – animals from fire. The drunk was just as surprised, but he was in no condition to do much about it. He must have spotted the kids when I flashed on my lights because he started back in the direction from which he had come. The old guy shot me an uneven finger as he wobbled past the passenger"s side window. He had no sooner managed to navigate himself to the small open parking lot off to the front and side of Mia"s apartment building than she was jumping back into the car with yet another large straw bag filled with God knew what.
“Let"s go,” she said followed by a wide smile. The apparent despair of earlier had been entirely replaced by a fresh and unexplained excitement. Her mania was so extreme, that, with the cynicism of an experience cop, I wondered if perhaps she was on drugs. An “upper” taken in her apartment would have done the trick. That kind of thinking is clearly the downside of being a cop. Inherent optimism is too quickly replaced with cynicism, sensitivity with callousness.
Maybe getting all those old cop feelings back wasn"t such a good idea.
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“What about the drunk?” I asked reasonably. I was still puzzled by her new attitude.
“What drunk?”
I told her about what had happened while she had been looting her apartment.
“Nothing you can do - unless you want to baby-sit the old fool all night,” she told me pointedly. “Those young guys will roll him for any money he still has, but I don"t think they"ll really hurt him – he"s probably related to at least one of them. He won"t be able to get as drunk for a few days, and that will probably be good for him. I think it is called survival of the fittest.”
“Okay then Ms. Pragmatist, I guess we should just get the hell out of here.” I really didn"t want to get out of the car - let alone babysit some crazy old drunk.
As I pulled slowly away from the curb, I could just make out the shapes of the kids
reassembling for another foray into the street. There was nothing I could do. The old guy was toast - buttered on both sides.
“Okay Short Cakes, let"s go, but I have to tell you that my rooming house, as Clearwater Beach quaint as it may be to me, is no royal palace either.”
“Well, maybe we could go to a motel for tonight and worry about the other stuff later.”
“I may be a bit slow,” I said quietly as I weighed the meaning of what she had said, “but is the motel idea you just mentioned - is that like the seducing me into helping you that I heard about only last night? Is it also the - we can get back to that later when we don"t have an audience – you mumbled to me when we were kissing on the beach earlier?”
“I do believe it was,” she said and laughed as she watched me respond with my own wide smile. The Jag suddenly picked up speed.
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Bulls in the Pasture
Earlier in the evening, I had been impressed by Mia"s ability to levitate from sitting to standing faster than a speeding bullet. I was left breathless by the activities of my first night in bed with her. Never before had I considered making love an Olympic contact sport. We located a Howard Johnson"s Motel with a brightly illuminated parking lot just off the Interstate 275 within about ten minutes of leaving her old apartment building. We checked in, paying cash, as Mr. T.
and Mrs. J. Smith (Tarzan and Jane). Not too original but then no one really cared anyway. The third floor non-smoking room was the standard variety that you expect with the motels designed for the economy minded. But it served its purpose well – very well. Nine point five for artistic merit! A perfect ten for enthusiasm!
“Do you think we have time for another little adventure?” Mia asked as she emerged
from the steamy bathroom looking totally refreshed after a long hot shower. She was wearing only a small white towel wrapped around her head - a kind of weird turban.
“Nooo,” I groaned from beneath the single wrinkled sheet I had pulled from the stained carpeted floor in an attempt to maintain some semblance of personal dignity. I couldn"t take my eyes off her. She was truly amazing. Just looking at her standing there was enough to jump start my depleted hormones back to life. I was feeling painfully aware of our age and fitness difference. Until that night, I had thought that I was in pretty good shape and not half bad in the sack.
She just laughed and hit a provocative pose. The sight of her standing there naked made me think maybe another “adventure” might just be possible. I seemed to be rising to the occasion, before I remembered that we were supposed to be at Crabby Bill"s in forty minutes.
“I"ll just take a quick shower and a total transfusion of all my bodily fluids, and we"ll be on our way,” I said. “But I"d really like a rain-check on that little adventure idea.”
“You got it Joey – how about if I just come in and help you wash your back?”
We were a quite late getting to Crabby Bill"s. My shower lasted longer than I thought it would. I was a little worried that Langdon would have given up on us and taken off. I dropped Rennie/CLEARWATER JOURNALS
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Mia as close to the restaurant as possible and went off to park. By the time I was led to a small booth in the back corner of the second floor, Mia was busily talking to the ex-cop. He looked pretty much like a worn out old man. In some ways, he reminded me of Papa and Kickstart with a little bit more money. She was nervously sipping cold lemonade through a bent white plastic straw. A Diet Pepsi, ice and lime, sat waiting for me in front of the vacant seat beside Mia.
The ex-cop, Stuart Langdon, sitting across from my co-adventurer, wasn"t exactly what I thought he would be like. But he was close, very close. Before I was within ten feet of the table, I could tell that the guy was a lifetime smoker and boozer. Only God knew what else he was. His nose would have put Rudolph the Reindeer"s to shame. If my glass count was accurate, he had already finished three beers while he had been waiting for us, and he was smacking his lips in anticipation of his fifth. His loose gray skin sagged. His complexion was sallow. That"s a neat trick in Florida. What little hair he had left was unkempt and had been badly dyed an orange flavour. I figured the guys he had put on death row would look better than he did – even the ones already executed. Langdon was wearing the standard detective attire of a decade earlier. I guess what they say is true - bad habits are hard to break. Today"s offering included an off the rack lightweight charcoal gray suit, white button downed collar shirt and loosely knotted black and gray striped tie. Although I couldn"t see his shoes beneath the tabletop, my bet would have been on the classic thick-soled black wingtips of the variety all the old detectives and military guys liked.
Langdon didn"t offer to shake hands, but he tracked me with watery blue eyes like maybe I was a rip off artist about to swipe his life savings. I moved along behind Mia and sat down.
Langdon"s lack of a sunshine greeting was reciprocated. As I glanced over at Mia to
acknowledge what she had been saying, it was evident that she was anxious about the
receptiveness of the ex-cop. Her left leg was pumping. I turned my attention squarely back onto Langdon. His eyes were red rimmed and deep set. He looked like he regularly wore glasses for reading. I also caught a quick glimpse of a cunning intelligence there as he completed his quick appraisal of me. Maybe this hadn"t been a total waste of our time.
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“So you"re the disabled cop from Canada Mia has been telling me about. Sorry about
your wife. Nice to meet you,” he said in a cheerfully mocking tone. His voice confirmed the heavy smoker assessment - low and raspy. His eyes locked on mine to evaluate my response to his opening shot. He had revealed a lot about his investigative skills. The death of my wife wasn"t exactly a secret but it might require some ability to connect dots. I did a quick check of Mia. I hadn"t told her anything other than Annie and I had separated. I would have some
“splaining” to do later Lucy.
Obviously, Mia must have told the old guy a bit about me while they waited for me to park the car. His gruff tone and off-hand comment didn"t come as a total surprise to me. That he knew about my wife did. And he knew he had got to me a bit with that shot. It"s an old cop trick.
Gain the upper hand while making the other guy feel like a schmuck. I"d have to be a bit more careful in moving ahead. Langdon was old school. I"ve been told that the younger cops today go in for a more confidential “we"re just the best of buddies shooting the breeze” technique. As my grandmother used to say – it takes all kinds.
Mia hung her head and muttered to me, “Sorry.”
“And you"re the cop who couldn"t find out who killed Mia"s sister," I replied looking back at the old guy and flashing a wide smart assed smile. “It"s nice to meet you too.”
Langdon just sat there with a kind of fixed glare and a false smile. Beyond that, he didn"t respond at all. He said nothing. The next few seconds would tell me how we were going to do here. Finally, Langdon"s weak smile slid from his wrinkled pale face, and he seemed to go somewhere deep inside himself. I"d seen this act a few times before too. McGregor had been pretty good with it. Sometimes it wasn"t an act.
Finally, he looked up at me. He still did not reply. He slowly extended his thick coarse hand across the table. I grasped it and nodded. He tried, unsuccessfully, to break every bone in my right hand. Then, it was my turn. Even after the physical demands of the night with Mia, I could still punch this old guy"s ticket.
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“Fuck,” he said as I released my grip. “There was a time when you could never have
done that to me.”
“I believe it,” I said - not believing it for a second. “Have we finished with the two bulls in the same pasture stuff yet?”
“Yeah,” he said and made a hacking phlegm filled rumble that was his version of a laugh,
“so what do ya want to know Junior?”
“Everything,” Mia bubbled.
Langdon gave her a quick glance and rolled his eyes like he couldn"t believe it. Then he focused his gaze back onto me.
“There are a few things that we could use some answers for,” I stated simply. I wasn"t certain just yet how reliable what the old cop would give us might be. Maybe he would just shine us on for a while and then, tonight or some time later on, have a few laughs at our expense with his pals at the legion or local cop bar. “Like which side of the road the body was found on – stuff like that that the newspapers didn"t get.”
“She was found off the left hand side of the road as you drive out of the field. I gather that you have seen the place.”
Pretty good so far.
“Not during the daylight hours. In fact, it was pretty late and very dark last night when we were there.”
“There"s a small woods that starts about twenty feet back from the road. We figured the guy was trying to get the girl"s body in there. If he got lucky, no one would find it for months, maybe years. But we figured something spooked him. He dropped the kid and just got the fuck gone. Or he was in bad shape or hurt and couldn"t drag her any further. You get the idea. A lot of guesses – nothing for certain.”
At that moment, a thirty something dark haired waitress in navy blue shorts and a white sleeveless blouse sporting the Crabby Bill logo arrived to take our orders. I hadn"t even picked up my menu.
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“Chowder, big steak medium rare, fries, rings and two more beers,” Langdon said
quickly. “The treat is on the little lady here - right?”
Mia nodded and smiled at Langdon and then gave the waitress her order - fish and chips.
“The same for me,” I said.
After the waitress had verified the order and flashed a parting smile, I picked up on what Langdon had been saying. “So did you figure that the killer dropped the body off on the way into the lover"s lane area?”
“No,” Langdon said as he picked up his almost empty glass of beer. He seemed to be
inspecting something in the bottom of it. “This is almost empty. Why do you say that the guy was coming into that sex pit?”
“Did you go in there at night?” I asked trying to seem reasonable while knowing that Mia wanted to show off. She wanted to tell Langdon about what I had shown her the night before. I took her hand beneath the table hoping she would get the message.
“Didn"t have to,” Langdon replied grouchily. “Forensics got us all we needed, and we knew she wasn"t killed where her body was found. She was brought there and dumped. We figured she got in with the wrong guy or guys went parking up there and managed to get herself killed. The guy – whoever he was – and believe me we looked at a lot of guys in her part of town
– just disappeared from the face of the earth.”
Mia started to say, “But there"s a …”
“Just a second,” I said quickly cutting her off and gently squeezing her hand again, “was there any evidence that indicated how much earlier she had been raped? She had been raped, yeah?”
Langdon hesitated. His sharp eyes flashed to Mia and then back to me. He may have
suspected that I had deliberately cut Mia off, but he said nothing. The waitress arrived with Langdon"s clam chowder and beers. I thanked her. Langdon switched his interest to the server briefly, nodded and offered a small grunt – a true gentleman. The waitress nodded at me and quickly moved away.
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“Well?” I asked, as the cop prepared and then tasted his chowder. Mia was quiet – my message - like a swift kick in the shins - had been received. She was perceptive enough to know that we could not let Langdon into that particular loop just yet - maybe never.
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Langdon’s Condition
“Well, what?” Langdon replied as he savoured his first spoonful of the chowder. I
wondered if he was retreating into a defensive shell and this interview had all but ended.
“Well, was there any evidence to suggest how much earlier Vicky had been raped?” I
repeated.
“Yeah, th