Because we were going to have to wait for Mrs. Bullock to get beautiful, we decided to go back and visit the crime scene in the light of day. The park was a fair drive from where the Bullock family lived, but we had lots of time to kill. I drove the Jaguar slowly up the narrow lane leading to the open field, the late night passion pit to the entire community. I again realized just how difficult it would be for two vehicles to safely pass each other going in opposite directions. One or both cars would have to stray onto the shoulder. I pulled over and parked on the shoulder when Mia told me that we had reached the spot adjacent to where Vickie’s body had been found. I don’t know what she had used to identify the spot, but I estimated that we parked about two feet away from where we had stopped in the pitch black a few nights earlier.
We got out and looked around. Not much. In the light of day, I saw that the road’s shoulders were just wide rough expanses of high cut grass. That fact had not been evident during our night visit. I remembered what Langdon had said about a small woods being the spot where they believed the killer intended to hide Vickie’s body. We walked over to a scruffy clutch of second growth trees. Was that what the old ex-cop had meant by a small “woods”? Eight mid- sized trees surrounded by scrub brush and waist high weeds were a “woods” in Florida. Whatever it was called, it was twenty feet back from the edge of the trail on the driver’s side, going out. In other words, if the guy had been coming out of the park, he would have had to drag or carry the body across the road in front of, or behind, his car. The distance was about thirty feet from the center of the path.
On the other side of the road and back towards the field, there was another very small clump of trees. It was about twenty-five feet off to that side of the lane. To me, this would have been the more logical place to hide a body for someone driving away from the field. Langdon and his detective colleagues had apparently based their investigation on the reasonable supposition that the actual murder had taken place in the field. I wondered if forensics reinforced that assumption. It was easy to imagine this as a crime of passion. And I guess that conclusion would seem reasonable given the state of the victim. Partially clad, panty hose wrapped around her neck would normally add up that way.
But I was still bugged. Why would anyone want to risk dragging a body across the roadway when there was even a remote possibility that he would be caught in the lights of any car leaving or, for that matter, coming into the field? It was too risky—particularly when there was an equally good hiding place only a few feet further in from the safer side of the road. I wanted to believe that if we properly presented that argument to Langdon, it would be enough to convince him to give us the help he had promised. Somehow, I doubted it. The weak part of my argument was—if the shoulders were mowed and the killer wasn’t worried about scratching up his car, or if his vehicle was a SUV, he could drive up as close to the “woods” as he wanted and dump the body. But what if the shoulders had not been cut down three years ago? Different things to consider.
We walked around the area not really knowing what we were looking for. Then I remembered our trip in here two nights earlier. At that time of night, I had no way of knowing how safely I could move over onto the shoulder. So, unless the killer was familiar with the place, possibly by driving it during daylight hours, it was unlikely he would stray too far away from the trail. I had to find out if the grass on both sides of the path had been mowed three years earlier. That was another question for Langdon. For no particular reason I still believed that someone coming into the field had dumped Vickie’s body expecting it to be found quickly.
Finally, we drove ahead into the open make out area where, according to Mia, so many kids had had their very first adventure into the wondrous world of sexual fun and games. It was a fairly large, level area looking out over the industrial section of the city. In the far distance, we could see the gulf. There was plenty of evidence, even to an untrained eye, to suggest that this was indeed a popular place to party. A budding entrepreneur could get started by selling condoms on the way in and handy wipes and Kleenex on the way out. Strangely enough, like the edges of the lane coming in, the grass covering the entire area had been neatly cut. There were even a few of those heavy wire mesh wastebaskets located around the perimeter of the place. Perhaps the local politicians didn’t have the nerve to close it. Perhaps, the land was considered on their zoning maps as parkland. I smiled—sort of an adult playground without swings or slides. It wasn’t important. We had seen enough. Mia had become strangely quiet from the moment we had driven into the field. Maybe she was recalling too many memories of her own youth.
“Let’s go,” I said as I turned to walk back to the car. “We’ll drive back over to Crescendo, and I can meet you Mom.”
“Okay Joey. Do you think Langdon will buy our argument now?”
“No way to know that until we meet with him.”
When I started the Jag to pull away from the field, Mia put her hand on the back of mine. “Joe, tell me the truth. Do you think Langdon will help us at all?”
“He might if we can convince him to seriously consider our theory about the killer being someone dumping Vickie coming into—not leaving—the field. It’s hard to figure though. I always thought that Langdon was going to be a tough sell. It would really help if we had something else—something really concrete. Or maybe I could just talk with him alone. Get him to co-operate.” I was thinking about sharing my thoughts about stepdad and bro—a path I was certain had been thoroughly explored during the initial investigation.
“How would you do that?” Mia asked with a hint of hopefulness in her voice again.
“I don’t know,” I said with a laugh. “Maybe beat the crap out of the old fart. Anyway, let’s pick up your Mom and talk to people there. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” I didn’t believe that for a second. Training officer McGregor had steadfastly maintained that luck was almost always an allusive quality in any murder investigation. During the time that I knew him, my Scottish friend was seldom, if ever, wrong.