Clearwater Journals by Al Rennie - HTML preview

Langdon hadn"t expected her move and recoiled away from her. I smiled as he realized what she had been trying to do. He seemed embarrassed.

“Too late - your loss partner,” I said with a smile.

“Not if it"s true what her T-shirt says,” Langdon actually smiled at his own quip. “I can"t imagine how I"d explain bite marks to Babe. She"s my old lady.” Then he broke out into an incredibly goofy laugh which even surprised him. I wondered when he had last laughed like that.

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“I"m never wearing this damn shirt again,” Mia muttered. “Men - short for mentally

challenged.” She quickly took off in a very cute huff.

We both watched Mia as she made her hasty escape.

“That"s quite an attractive little fireball you got there mister – but damaged goods. You want to take care of her,” Langdon mused.

I thought back to the almost identical description my landlady, Phyllis Reilly, had used to describe Mia.

“Yeah, she is a bit of a wildcat; isn"t she?”

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Langdon – My New Best Friend

There was a pause before Langdon switched his attention back to me. “You have

anything else you might like to share with me Holiday?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” I replied. “First off though, I"m kind of curious about how you made contact with Nolan. You just picked up the phone, dialed Metro Police Services, and they gave you my life story? I don"t think so. Not in this or any other lifetime.”

“You"re right,” he said with a sly smile. “I phone Toronto given my present non status and Bob"s your uncle – dead air – fer fuckin sure. My ex-partner, Cooper, who is still on the job, phones with all the weight of the Tampa Police Department inter department special query protocol and this guy Hank Nolan phones back within six hours tripping all over himself to be of help.”

“Well, I guess that clears that up. What did your ex-partner say that I was being

investigated for when he made his call up north?”

“Don"t know. I didn"t ask him – something pretty good though I"d guess. You can ask

him yourself. I"d like to introduce you to him in the next day or so.”

I wasn"t happy – that phone call may have been what set Frank off - but there was

nothing I could do about it. I wasn"t going to give Langdon the satisfaction of knowing that he had ticked me off. I still needed his information. I told him about my weird visit with the Doulton/Bullock clan at their Belleaire mansion. He commented that he hadn"t known about their move from Tampa. Then I dropped Eliza Bullock"s story to Mia three years ago about not knowing her daughters were intending to meet, and then how I had snagged her into saying Vickie was excited about going to Orlando to meet Mia. That bit of information piqued the old guy"s interest. He knew the significance of discrepancy. He said he would check his notes again to find out what her Mom had said exactly during the early stage of the investigation. I told him about Eddie Ralston"s connection to Vickie, and how we wanted to get Mia in to talk with him.

That request turned his crank again. I thought it might.

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“Well, Ralston is in the can for aggravated assault, B & E, as well as a few other drug related charges and will probably be away for another three to four years, unless someone sticks him before that. He used to snitch for me from time to time. Now, he wouldn"t give me the time of day – hates my guts. Says I"m the reason he"s taking a county vacation. But I guess there"s always a chance he might talk to someone like Missy there. You wouldn"t stand a chance - but maybe your girlfriend. He might just talk with her,” Langdon said as if he was giving the idea serious consideration. Then, with a slight shrug, he turned his attention back to finishing his meal. “Any ideas about how you want to do this?”

By this, I guessed that he meant how Mia and I were going to move forward from this

point with or without his help. I told him quickly about our list that we were going to use to do a follow up. I not so subtly suggested that we would do a much better and quicker job with the help of his investigation notes. I told him that I had yet to meet the stepbrother, Terry, but doing so was slowly creeping up on my list of things to do. I believed that there was definitely something hinky about the entire Doulton - Bullock family dynamic.

Langdon was listening to me talk with a stony indifferent thousand-yard stare that old cops and good poker players develop. McGregor had been the master of it. Finally, as I finished expressing my suspicions about the Bullock pair and why I wanted to look at them closer, he broke into a grin.

“Well, there you go Sunshine. For a few hours, we also had them tagged as prime

suspects. We had no idea why they might want to kill the kid except, take it from me, both father and son are total whackos. We were looking for a quick solve. We thought maybe Terry had taken sis for a drive into the park. He wanted to play some kind of kinky hanky panky with the kid, and she resisted. He fucked her anyway and then realized that he was in deep shit. So he took the handiest thing to him, her pantyhose, and Bob"s your uncle – she"s fuckin dead. Now he needs to get rid of the body.”

“Did you get anything from the mother?”

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We tried to check out the sexual abuse angle with Mom. She gave us bupkiss, nada, zero

– like we were fuckin out of our minds. And she got real indignant about it too. But that makes sense too. The Tampa place they were living in was big time rich. She"s not going to want to shake that tree. And I don"t want to piss in your cornflakes too bad Bub, but unfortunately, both of those fuckin pricks have ironclad alibis. They were both at the stag given for a neighbour"s kid that night. We verified it talking with about fifteen guys who have nothing to gain by lying for them. They were probably totally in the bag before ten o"clock on the night Vickie disappeared.

And here"s something you didn"t get from me. According to the coroner"s report, the kid was killed at about the same time those two guys were about to pass out at that party.”

I had Terry and Ted as possible suspects. Regardless of their supposed airtight alibis Langdon had given me, Ted was still connected. Would he hire out the murder of his own stepdaughter? - pretty damn cold even for that fish.

“You listening to me Sunshine?”

I nodded.

“The second bit of disappointment is this: you want my notes, you take me with them.”

“What the hell does that mean Langdon – you take me? You want me to arm wrestle you

for them or something?”

“They must have loved you back home Bubba. No,” he said gruffly like he was talking to an idiot, “it means that I work with you to see that you don"t get in no trouble.”

Now, I was forced to mentally weigh my options. I didn"t have any. The old cop had me in an impossible corner. Background stuff if I worked with him – nothing if I didn"t. There wasn"t much to like about Langdon, although he was starting to grow on me, but maybe he could serve a couple of useful purposes. He had done the first investigation. He knew the city and the people. He could serve as a buffer with the local cops. Obviously, he still had some clout there if he had been able to find out about my past with Metro.

“And if I don"t agree?” I asked hanging the illusion out there that I had a choice.

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“I walk, and little Miss I Leave Bite Marks will think you are a total jerk-off for not taking me up on my offer. I bet Missy has quite a little temper when she"s wound up. You know it, and I know it.”

“Okay,” I said still playing coy. I extended my hand across the table to him. We shook once and sat still for a second. “So what"s next?”

“I"m going to pick up a P.I. ticket in the next day or so with the help of a few friends I still have at the department. We"ll say that we have been retained by a family member to review the case.” Langdon said as he reached down to the vacant chair beside him. He picked up a bulky tan coloured envelope. Like Houdini finishing some grand illusion, Langdon withdrew a sheaf of printed-paper. “You go over these. They are the abbreviated typed notes from my notebook that I managed to put together during the last two days. Felt good to be working at something again. I did it on a computer because you would never be able to read the hen scratch in my notebook.”

I picked up the forty to fifty single spaced computer-generated pages and did a fast scan of the first few pages. I didn"t need to read any more than that to know Langdon had been a thorough cop - and maybe a damned good one too. “This is really great Langdon. They"ll be an incredible assistance.”

“Yeah, well there you go.” He tried for modesty, but he knew the notes were good. “And do you think that you might start calling me Stuart or Stu? And as I said, sometime soon, I want to introduce you to my ex-partner, Cooper, who is still on the force. He can probably help us out a little. Unofficially, that is. This is still an open case, you know? Even though no one has done sweet Fanny Adams on it since I retired.”

“Yeah, I"ll call you Stu, and I"d like to meet your partner whenever you can set it up.

Maybe you could get around to calling me Joe or Doc. The Sunshine, Bub and Bubba thing is okay, but it"s starting to wear a little thin.”

“Doc – like the dentist gunfighter buddy of Wyatt Earp - I get it – neat.” Langdon

chuckled before he continued, “Good, we got a deal Joe. Give me your phone number; it"s not in the book yet – you have mine – and I"ll be in touch when I have something. Go through the notes Rennie/CLEARWATER JOURNALS

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and write down your questions and observations. I"ll meet you in another two days for lunch, and I"ll have my partner, Cooper, with me. His first name is Fred. He"s as close as this with Chance Kemp,” Langdon said holding up his middle and index finger as if they were joined. “I think you"ll get along fine with him. Lunch will be your treat right?”

And with that parting reminder, Langdon was up and out of Crabby Bill"s. I picked up the check once again. Mia was pretty good at not being there when bills were presented. My treat -

who was she kidding? And who was Chance Kemp and why was the fact that this guy, Fred Cooper, and he were so close such a big deal? And the name Chance itself? Not a very common name and I"d heard it twice in two days. What"s that about?

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One Step Forward – Two Steps Back

I spent the rest of that afternoon carefully reading through Langdon"s notes. There was no doubt left in my mind about his ability as an investigator. He had been absolutely thorough –

good instincts and a totally professional job. Included were summaries of all the standard police procedural steps he had followed. He had highlighted the questions that he believed needed to be more completely answered. He had talked to all the people that I had wanted to meet. Somehow, he had wangled from her doctor the exact date Vickie had been given a prescription for birth control pills - that, in and of itself was impressive. Doctors are generally pretty by the book. All of his interviews were concisely abbreviated to highlight anything he believed might be cogent.

He had asterisked the things about the case that still bothered him. If he thought something was particularly important or needed additional attention, he had used bold type. As I finished going through his transcribed notes for a third time, I realized that I had made my own three pages of notations around the time line and the connections. All of my questions were underlined in red ink.

I knew that, somehow, we needed to talk with Eddie Ralston. The only interview that

Stuart Langdon had done with Ralston had been close to hostile. He had learned nothing from the guy. Maybe that partly explained the angry reaction from the cop when we mentioned Ralston"s name at lunch. That was the weakness in his investigation, and he knew it. I agreed with his own assessment that perhaps Mia stood the best chance of getting Eddie to open up honestly. She would have to arrange to visit him in jail.

I wanted to meet the stepbrother, Terry. Stuart Langdon had called the guy a walking hard on with an attitude – sounded just like his dad. I wanted to satisfy myself that there could not be another member of the Bullock family who was as big a prick as Ted.

Aside from the determination as to the exact time and cause of death, some of Langdon"s conclusions and those of the forensic people had to be just good guesses because the body had not been found right away and there had been some physical deterioration of the corpse and the scene. The forensic piece regarding evidence of sexual activity sometime in the five to eight Rennie/CLEARWATER JOURNALS

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hours before her demise was interesting. Langdon had been correct. No one, in any report that he had been given, had used the word rape. If the sex had been consensual, what did that tell us? I would follow up on that information if I could. There was never any suggestion that Vickie had been killed where she had been found. All parties agreed that she was dead for a short time before she had been dumped there. I needed a clearer definition of “short time”. Langdon had said that this was not a fresh puppy, and he"d been right about that too. I didn"t want to see the crime scene photos. I"d seen enough of those things to last me a lifetime.

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Joe Holiday - Boy Hero

Just after eight that evening, I walked up the beach and ate at IHOP. Mia had to be

careful not to spend too much time with me because her boss was “in a mood” and the restaurant was busy for that time of day. She surreptitiously asked about Langdon as she handed me a menu the second I sat down. I quietly assured her that she had been great. She had got him to work with us. I told her that I had spent the afternoon going over his notes.

“When you get off work, we can talk about some of the things we need to do next. I"ve got a quick blonde joke for you,” I said before I ordered. “Do you know how to get a blonde to laugh at a joke on Saturday?”

“You and the blonde jokes,” Mia groaned. “Okay I"ll bite – no I won"t bite. But I am curious. How do you get a blonde to laugh at a joke on Saturday?”

“Tell it to her on Wednesday,” I replied as I noticed the fat manageress giving me the evil eye again. “I"ll meet you out at your car after you get off. Your boss is shooting daggers at me again. I guess we better cool it when you whistle while you work.”

Later that night, after we had had a bite to eat, then showered and cleaned up we crawled into bed. Mia was nude under the cool sheet. She was lying on her stomach and propped up in the crook of my right armpit. As I gently stroked her butt, I told her the short form version of what I had learned from Langdon"s notes. I told her about the agreement Langdon had forced me to make before he gave me his computer pages. I was very careful to avoid any negative references to her family and my stubborn suspicions about their possible involvement. Iron clad alibi aside – I still wasn"t convinced. I told her that our chances of success were greater than before and asked her if she was prepared to visit Eddie Ralston in jail. I told her the logical steps we had to follow from here. She was happy. She kissed my chest and nibbled.

“What was the hero story about you and your partner that Langdon mentioned at lunch?”

“Hardly a hero story,” I replied quietly talking to the top of her head. She kissed me again.

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“Come on. Don"t be shy. Tell me Joey.” Her fingers danced lightly down my chest and

across my stomach.

“It"s not anything really, but if you"re going to punch me or pinch me, I"ll talk.”

“I may do worse than that Honey boy if you try to hold out on me.”

“Okay,” I sighed resigned to telling the story I"d all but forgotten. “Here goes. Hank Nolan and I were partners in the Don River section of Toronto where the river dumps into Lake Ontario. The Don River kind of snakes its way through Toronto from north to south and by the time it gets close to dumping into Lake Ontario, it has all the charm and attraction of a major league cesspool. That"s all for the geography lesson. Anyway, we spotted this kid who we had been looking for. We knew him well. He had done a number of B & Es in the area, stole money from little old ladies and little kids – not a very nice person really. The dummy was trying get away from us by crossing the river sort of tight rope walking on the lower span of a rusting railway trestle. I pulled the cruiser over, and Hank got out and yelled at the kid. Long story short, the dumb kid gets distracted, loses his balance and falls into this smelly, polluted, brown sludge

– the Don River. He can"t swim worth a damn. Hank watches the kid tumble into the river and just freezes. He didn"t or couldn"t figure out what to do. Using no judgment at all – I mean I could have plunged right into the submerged fin of an old Cadillac or impaled myself on a rusted tie rod - I go in after the kid and save his mean narrow ass.

Protocol calls for the use of a reaching assist as the first response. There wasn"t time, and the kid was in big trouble. I mean I could have caught diphtheria or typhoid or honkus of the ponkus swimming in that gunk filled river, but in I go. I"m an idiot. Instead of giving me total crap for risking my life – and saving the Toronto tax payers the cost of supporting this little criminal in prison the rest of his life - like they should have and would have if the media hadn"t got hold of the story - the powers that were at the time gave Hank and me a bravery citation.

Some heroes eh?

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And the kicker to the story – the kid wanted to sue us for endangering his pathetic life.

He then grows up to be a major pain in the ass to the police and the city for years – and get this -

a repeat offender pedophile. Go figure eh?”

“You"re still my hero Joe Holiday. I"ll miss spending time with you tomorrow when

you"re working,” she murmured softly. “You"ll probably be off to Sand Key by the time I get back from my run.” Mia gently licked and kissed my right nipple. Then, she softly nibbled it.

Her body was warm against mine. “I"ll leave you the phone number for my apartment. I have to go back there to get some stuff. And I"ll buy some time for my cell. Call me sometime in the morning okay?” Kiss. Lick. Nibble. “I work two to ten again.” Kiss. Nibble. Light lick. Moving lower. “Come and get me when I get off at ten okay?” Lower and another kiss. Another soft nibble and gentle lick! “And, for my last trick – something very special,” she murmured again –

smiling - as she looked up the length of my torso, “and with no bite marks either!”

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Hi Ho Hi Ho – It’s off to Work I Go

The next morning came way too early for me. I woke up just after six. Mia was not there beside me on the double bed. I wasn"t worried. She would be out for her run. I put on my official security guard uniform - the light blue short sleeve shirt with the Gulf Coast Security crests on both shoulders and navy lightweight slacks. To finish the image - New Balance black walking shoes and a crested navy ball cap. I packed my light lunch into a small blue and white Thermos cooler chest. I would pick up my official clipboard and pen from the guy I was supposed to relieve at 7 o"clock. I was ready for another workday on Sand Key, but with Mia in my life now, it felt different, more meaningful. Joe Holiday, breadwinner again – it had a nice feel to it.

Just as I was leave, I spotted a small scrap of paper on the floor. I picked it up. Mia had scribbled the phone number for her apartment in Tampa on it. She must have left it on my small bookcase, and it fell off when she swung the door closed. I folded the note and put it in my pocket. The Jaguar started on the first try, and I was off.

During my mid-morning break, as I sat in the roadside guard shelter watching the twelve monitors and eating a carrot, I tried to phone Mia at her apartment. The line was busy. I tried again about a half an hour later, but no one picked up. I figured that she must have done all of the fridge cleaning and mail sorting that she needed to do, and that she was on her way back to the beach. From there, she would go on to IHOP to do her shift from two to ten. The rest of my day was as boring as it usually is doing that job. The occasional quick walk around the entire property – twenty-five minutes if I"m not distracted - is the only thing that keeps me sane. I never could figure out what I was supposed to be looking for on those patrols - anything suspicious I guess. The only thing I regularly found suspicious was how some of the residents had earned the millions that allowed them to live there. A few of them looked like they wouldn"t be able to tie up their shoes. I guess looks can be deceiving.

At the end of my shift, I collected my hundred in cash in a small white envelope - which is to say under the table – from the area security supervisor. I have to be paid this way because I"m a Canadian citizen without a green card. I"m not supposed to be able to work in the U.S. of Rennie/CLEARWATER JOURNALS

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A. as I might deprive an American citizen of a job. I guess that says something about my security guard position – no American citizen wanted it. I sat in the Jaguar with the windows down until the air conditioner got up to speed and then started my drive off Sand Key and on home. I realized that my light lunch had been too light. I was hungry. And I wanted to see Mia. Two birds with one stone, I decided to risk the dagger looks of the manager, so I stopped off at IHOP

for a bite to eat.

“Nice outfit Tex! - how many?” It was the short chubby waitress named Janille trying to play with my head again.

“Forty two,” I said without batting an eyelid. “The bus is just parking around the back.”

Janille"s eyes shot wide open. She tried to peer around me to spot the bus with its forty-two passengers. “Gotcha,” I said. White humour! “Just get me a place in Mia"s section okay.”

“Mia ain"t here.”

“Yes she is,” I said. I wasn"t going for Janille"s payback. “She"s working until ten I think.”

“She"s a no show, and the boss is raggin on everyone since two this afternoon like

somehow it"s our fault.”

I didn"t know what to do. I wondered if Janille was still trying to get even with me for the bus gotcha, but I couldn"t spot Mia. I thanked the chubby little black waitress and went to the parking lot. Mia"s car wasn"t there. I ran back to the Jag and drove home. Neither Mia nor her car was there. I wasn"t panicked, but I was starting to worry. I went inside and tried to phone her Tampa apartment – nothing. No one answered. There were probably plenty of possible

explanations for why she had missed work, but the only thing I could think of was that she had fallen and hurt herself at the apartment. I had to get there.

Then I realized that I had set my GPS for that apartment when I had been there with her nights before. I ran back outside and fired up the Jag. After a few more seconds the GPS loaded.

I punched in “Recently Found” on the touch screen and hit it. I drove as quickly as possible to her apartment praying the entire time that she was okay – but that warning note left for me on Rennie/CLEARWATER JOURNALS

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Mia"s car and the encounter with Sammy in the CVS kept playing through my head. Twenty minutes later I pulled over in front of her home. As I was getting out of the jag, I glanced over towards the apartment"s grim parking lot. Mia"s battered Honda was there. Please God no. I ran to the door of her apartment. It was closed but not locked. This was not good. I knocked loudly.

Nothing - but the door swung slowly open.

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Crime Scene

My heart was thumping loudly as I gently grabbed the receding doorknob and followed it inward. In my cop days, I would have had my gun drawn. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the apartment, my heart almost stopped. Mia was lying motionless on the pale linoleum.

Her naked petite body was covered in blood. I scrambled to her, dropped to my knees and checked for life signs. There was an irregular and feathery heartbeat. Her face was battered; her eyes swollen shut. But she was breathing - barely. I checked for any severe bleeding. Any lacerations had coagulated. No arteries severed. You didn"t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that some very sick prick had methodically raped and beaten her. A long stemmed broken green wine bottle covered in blood was lying nearby. I had seen a few rape and assault victims like this a number of years ago, but none of them had been this bad. I looked for her phone.

Someone had torn it and its jack from the wall. There was dried blood on the handset. There was the sound of a shower running from the bathroom.

For a second, I thought the guy might still be here. I slipped into the kitchen and picked up a sharp carving knife from an empty tomato juice can that held Mia"s few kitchen utensils. I listened for another second. I wanted the guy to be there. I wanted him to pay big time for what he had done. The shower was still running. I couldn"t hear any movement. I was also acutely aware that Mia was dying right there on the floor. I moved carefully down the short hall, paused at the closed door. No steam was seeping beneath it. There were no sounds other than the water running. I threw open the door. Nothing!

I pulled out the cell phone Max had given me and dialled 911 – “Ambulance and police to – fuck – what"s the address? I rushed to the front and read off the apartment number. The woman is in a bad way. S