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 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 Belleair 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.
“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 dickheads. 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?”
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 friggin’ 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 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.
“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 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?
One Step Forward—Two Steps Back