“Easy Mia—cool your jets okay. Jeez! I didn’t say it was an accident. It probably wasn’t. But when I was a cop, I investigated a case with my training officer where a guy strangled his wife. He claimed it was by accident—a mistake—like I didn’t know the gun was loaded. Hell of a story; bad alibi though. But then it came out in court that she and her husband had found out about this sexual asphyxia on some documentary channel on cable—maybe Sex TV—and thought they’d give it a try. The deal was that the wife would get her rocks off by having her oxygen deprived as she was getting screwed. The lack of oxygen to her brain was supposed to heighten her orgasm. Or, at least that was the theory. When the case was over and the details of the defence hit the press, some of her less sensitive friends said that she got screwed to death.”
“You’re kidding me right?” Mia said incredulously. She was still angry, but the fire was controlled.
“No, swear to God. Do you remember that Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery movie called Rising Sun from quite a few years back now?
“Yeah, I think I saw it on video or maybe a part of it. Why?” There was still a trace of anger in her voice but curiosity was winning the race.
“Sexual asphyxia was the key to the crime committed in that film. There were a lot of pretty dumb kids trying that stuff out—even in Canada for quite a few years after that movie was in the theatres—maybe more after the video was released. Anyway, I’m not saying that Vickie was into that, but maybe Mr. X thought he’d like to try it. Maybe, somehow he convinced Vickie to go along—or maybe he surprised her. Maybe the guy panicked and couldn’t get the panty hose free—particularly if he had tied it. It doesn’t really matter. This case should have been a relatively easy solve. If you can find out who she had been with during that evening, you’re looking at a pretty good suspect. Did she ever tell you about a boyfriend because he would be at the top of my list of people to talk with?”
“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-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 you 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, 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?”
“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.