I knew I had a little time. My digital tape recorder was in place. My cell phone was turned on and clipped to my shirt. My weapons were loaded. My backpack was in the bedroom. I didn’t need any additional motivation, but I had a few minutes to kill. I walked through the attack as Mia had described it. Maybe I thought I could learn something more. I knew Ted was behind the assault on Mia. I wondered briefly if he had done the dirty work himself or farmed it out to one of his hired goons. But the degree of rage suggested something very personal—Ted. She had said that her attacker had been waiting for her. He had hidden behind the door to her bedroom that was immediately adjacent to the small washroom. As she came out of the bathroom, he needed only to step around that corner and bash her with—with what? I looked around for his weapon. What was wrong with me? What was I thinking? The weapon, whatever it was, would have to be in a forensic lab for tests. It would be used as evidence if the attacker were ever apprehended. I wondered if the lab guys had collected any useful fingerprints. I thought not. The assault had been too premeditated. Any little kid knows all about fingerprints by just watching television. Ted Bullock was a guy used to covering his ass. He wouldn’t leave prints for the cops to find.
Although I was certain that samples had been taken and removed from each new site, no one had cleaned up all of the blood. The kitchen chair was still sitting alone in the middle of the floor. That surprised me. As I moved it out of the way, I realized that it would not have been the chair Mia had been taped to. The detectives must have found another one for their walk through of the sequence of events. The tape pieces used to restrain Mia had all been collected and taken to the lab. I thought about Mia taped and blindfolded in that chair. I had no trouble at all imagining the attack. If I needed any more motivation, I had it in those images of Mia’s suffering.
The Blackberry vibrated.
“Not now Frank.” I turned it off and went to the dirty window looking out on the street.
There was no movement and only a purr of light traffic from the main road three hundred yards away. I waited and watched. At four fifty two, a dark SUV pulled onto the street and moved slowly towards the apartment. The side windows of the vehicle were darkly tinted. I could not make out how many people were coming for me, but I could see that Eliza was driving. 'Plan A' it was. My guess was that Ted was armed and hiding in the back seat. At least I hoped he was. Mrs. Bullock pulled to a stop and parked. She sat still looking at the door to the apartment. She appeared to be talking to herself. That would be Ted. I slipped the safety off on the Sig. Then Eliza was moving cautiously up the broken sidewalk. I opened the front door a crack and quickly retreated down the short hallway to the small washroom. I flushed the toilet and turned on a tap, and then quickly stepped around the doorway into the adjoining bedroom. There was a faint knock on the outside door.
“Come in Eliza. I’ll be right with you. I’m in the washroom.”
I could hear the door knock over the drinking glass that I’d left in its path.
I hit the record button on the tape recorder.
Three silenced shots ripped through the bathroom door to the right of me.
“Let’s go Ted,” Eliza hissed.
“|I hit the play button on the remote.
“I gotta get that fuckin’ diary. And I want to make sure that smart-assed fucker is dead. Just wait h …”
Loud rap music blasted from just inside the front door. The distraction was enough.
“What the hell…” Eliza yipped.
“Hi guys,” I said loudly. I extended the Sig with its silencer through the bedroom’s doorway. “Drop the gun Ted,” I said—hoping that he wouldn’t.
Ted stopped looking for the noise source, but he didn’t drop his gun. Eliza moved slowly away from her husband. “Joe. What are you doing?”
“Staying alive Eliza,” I replied as I killed the rap, “or were those three shots through the bathroom door just your way of saying hello?”
Ted made his move. He didn’t know exactly where I was. His shot was wild low and outside. Mine didn’t miss. I hit him high in the leg. He spun away. I didn’t want him dead—not yet. Eliza gasped and hit the floor. Ted snapped off another shot but he was off balance. I fired back and hit his chest. His gun dropped. He fell beside his wife. Eliza moved to pick up the gun.
“Don’t touch it. I’ll shoot you too.”
Eliza pulled her hand back. She glanced back at the door. She was about to bolt.
“Sit still. Don’t move! I mean it—I will shoot you too.”
I watched as the frightened woman edged away from the blood Ted was leaking.
“Okay Ted, Eliza. We’re gonna have to make this quick.”
“How are you feeling Ted? You okay? Because, you and me, we need to talk.”
I moved out of the bedroom and scooped Ted’s fallen S&W 357 with a bulbous home-made silencer.
“Okay Ted, we’re going to do this now, or you are truly fucking dead.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you, so you can just go fuck yourself,” he muttered trying hard to stare me down. “Call the cops and get me an ambulance.” The hit to his leg was seeping blood but the chest shot was putting him away—a man used to being in charge. Who did he think he was fooling?
“I think you’ve got a wrong read on the situation here Ted. I believe I’m about to send you to hell. You won’t need an ambulance. Have you heard from Terry since you sent him to stop my clock? Eh? When I last saw Terry, he wasn’t looking too good. And you know what Ted? It’s almost funny, but he told me he wasn’t going to say anything either. And I believe that he wanted medical attention too. But you know what? By the time I was finished with him, he had told me quite a bit.”
As I taunted him in my quiet menacing voice, another voice—maybe Mr. Ted’s Brainpan—was telling Ted what must have happened to his boy, Terry. His look of disgust and loathing evaporated. It was replaced with anger and fear. I could read it in his face. Eliza just trembled as she realized what was happening. She shifted further away from Ted. Momentarily, I felt a self-loathing. This was not happening the way I had imagined it. I was supposed to feel good about this—pay-back for all the shit this guy had done. I shook the feeling off remembering how he treated Vickie and Mia. There were tears in Ted’s eyes now. His pain was real. Good.
“Ted, I’m going to kill you very slowly—unless I get answers—honest answers to the questions I ask. Do you understand me Ted? Nod your head if you understand.” I still intended to kill him, but he didn’t know that—not for certain.
Mia’s mom started to cry like I was supposed to take pity—be merciful—I don’t think so. These people were evil. They deserved what they were going to get.
“Do you understand what I just said Ted? Honest answers to the questions I ask.”
He nodded—and the fighting spirit seemed to ebb away from him.
“Why did you hurt Mia?”
He shook his head defiantly. Maybe there was some battle in him still. I slowly cocked the Sig and pointed it at his face. I smiled. He capitulated. “She wouldn’t leave it alone.”
Eliza Bullock turned her head to look at her husband. “You did that to Mia?” She didn’t know.
“Leave what alone?” I demanded loudly. I needed him to focus on me. I needed to hear it from him.
“What happened to Vickie—she kept trying to get that old fuck, Langdon, and then you, to keep picking at it. I wanted her to call you off. I wanted her to stop. It was an accident. There was nothing going to bring Vickie back.”
“How was anything an accident Ted? Think about it. Vickie was strangled with her own panty hose and Mia was beaten and raped right here. How is that a fucking accident?”
“Vick told Eliza that she was going to see that bitch Mia up north just before she left to get on the bus.”
Any color that was left suddenly drained from Eliza’s face.
“You can put all this shit on Mia and her meddling,” Ted continued. “If she had just stayed away, none of this wou
ld have happened.”
“Yeah, and you were afraid that Vickie would tell Mia that you had been nailing her since she was a little kid? You knew that Mia would put an end to it, right? Phone the cops. You screwed Mia when she was a kid too Ted—didn’t you? Is that why she went away?”
He looked down at the floor like an answer might be written for him in his blood. It wasn’t remorse—a little guilt maybe—but not remorse.
“You were screwing her—right Ted? That’s what Terry told me.”
“Yeah, and he was too.” He said it like the fact that he wasn’t the only one made it all okay.
“How did you feel about that Eliza- Ted here and his dipshit son diddling your daughters?”
Mrs. Bullock said nothing. She was crying. Ted raised his head and stared hard at me. Maybe he was trying for a last ditch act of defiance- or maybe it had never occurred to him that his wife would have to know about it. Or was there something else?
“Ted, you sick fuck, my next shot is going to smack into your balls like a fuckin’ rocket ship,” I snarled. “If you’ve got something else to say, get it out now.”
And maybe I would have been able to shoot him if his wife hadn’t been sitting beside him. It didn’t matter. Ted figured I was seriously going to finish him right then and there.
“She didn’t know anything,” he whimpered while trying to cover his crotch with his hand.
“Bullshit, Ted. She knew; she had to know. Didn’t you Eliza? You knew what the fuck was going on. So what did you do when Vickie told you that she was off to Orlando to meet Mia? Did you find Ted here and tell him all about it?”
And then, it dawned on me. Vickie had felt safe enough to tell good old mom about going to Orlando because the two vicious pricks that had made her life miserable were away getting loaded at a stag.
“You killed her,” I said in disbelief as I looked down at the pathetic woman. Tears were still streaming down her tanned face. “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe you fought with her. But you knew that if Vickie talked with Mia, your life—your family was over. All the money and spas would disappear. That was worth more to you than the safety of your own kids. Things could never be the same.”
I was piecing it all together. It made sense. Ted had manipulated, Terry, into taking out Langdon because he was worried that Langdon would find out that his wife had murdered Vickie. He had told Terry that I had raped Mia. He was trying to protect himself and his wife. And he’d sent Terry to try and punch my ticket. Ted Bullock was just protecting his wife—just as she had protected him when she had murdered her own youngest daughter. What a fucking mess.
Ted was crying. It had little to do with the two gunshots.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I was still trying to sort through the new images in my mental looking glass. “So when Mia started to stir things up again, and then Langdon came around and told you that he had you cold for sexually abusing Vickie, you had to act to protect yourself and your wife, right?”
The pieces fit. I felt like shooting the both of them right where they sat.
Without taking my eyes off either one of them, I speed dialed Cooper’s number. I didn’t know how long I had before cops would be banging on the apartment door. Fred picked up on the third ring.
“Fred Cooper here,” his voice was tired.
“Coop, it’s Joe Holiday,” I said. “Are you at home?’ I could almost feel Cooper’s urgency as he went red alert.
“No, Chance and I have been doing an ‘all-nighter’ trying to clean up your mess,” Coop replied trying unsuccessfully for total indifference. “You’ve been a busy lad haven’t you Joe? We found Terry Bullock in your room at the beach. Well, we didn’t, but you know what I mean. It took a few hours to identify him. He wasn’t looking too great when we tried to talk with him. Somehow he seemed to have lost his wallet and a fair bit of blood. Where are you Joe?”
“At Mia’s apartment—I had some stuff to clean up myself.”
“Yeah, well if you thought Chance wanted to see you before, he would really like to see you now. And for what it’s worth, I’d advise you to hire the best criminal lawyer you can afford.”
“And I’d really like to see Kemp too, but for the moment, I’m kind of involved in a family discussion with the Bullocks, Eliza and Ted…”
“When you say involved,” Cooper interrupted me sharply, “would it be fair to ask how they are?”
“He’s probably looked better,” I replied. “She’s not looking too great either.”
“I see. Do you have something you want to tell me Joe?”
I realized that Fred’s verbal volley was to generate enough time for my call to be traced. I thought that it might be prudent to speed things up a bit. But what’s to trace? I just told him that I was at Mia’s apartment.
“Yeah Coop—I do. I’m recording this as I give it to you. Vickie Doulton was killed by her mother after she told her that she was going to meet Mia. Mom and kid may have fought—I’ll leave that for the lawyers and the courts to figure out—but Eliza hit her daughter on the head and then strangled her to protect her lifestyle as well as her husband and stepson, Terry. Both of those guys had been sexually abusing the kid for years. And Eliza knew it. That would explain the forensic conclusion that the kid had intercourse at sometime during the few hours before she was killed—probably Terry. That’s just my guess.”
I thought I could hear movement out on the street. I wondered if the cops had arrived—pretty quick if they had.
“Sorry Coop. I got distracted there for a moment. Eliza was afraid Vickie would tell Mia about the abuse and all hell would break out. And knowing Mia, I believe that fear would have been pretty well justified.”
“I see,” said Cooper simply. He sounded a little inattentive himself. Either he was giving orders to the troops, or maybe he was writing all this down. “Is there more?”
“Yup—there is. Did you happen to find a hunting knife near Terry?”
“Yeah, it’s in the lab for tests.”
“Dollars to donuts, it’s the blade that did Langdon.”
“No bet.”
“The job on Mia was done by Ted Bullock. He thought he could convince her to call off the investigation and maybe stop the big old boulder from coming down on his happy little world. I’m about to finish that sick prick in about a minute.”
Bullock’s head suddenly snapped up. He knew what I meant. I smiled at him and pointed the Sig at his face. Just then, simultaneously, his bladder and his bowels let go. I saw the terror in his eyes. Good. I had achieved the goal of every practicing psychopath.
“Boulder Joe—what the fuck is that about?”
“I’ll tell you when I have more time.”
“Don’t do anything stupid Joe. Joe, are you listening to me? You may get a fuckin’ medal for what you’ve done so far, but if you kill the Bullocks in cold blood, you’ll get the big State of Florida needle.”
“Bye Coop!” The pushed the little red button to end the call.
“Eliza—are you listening to me?”
She sniffled and nodded. She raised her red-rimmed eyes and tried to focus on me. I pulled the kitchen chair to the middle of the room. Ted eyes widened. He struggled to move, and passed out. Eliza may have thought he’d died. And maybe he had. A short cry escaped her.
“Sit down here Eliza,” I said pointing to the chair with the silencer. I took the pre-cut tape from the chair. “You’ve got to tell the cops everything when they get here. It’s the only way you’ll stay alive. Do you understand me?”
She nodded.
“Ted used a chair like this to work on Mia.” Eliza tried to escape. I pushed her back onto the hard seat and went to work with the gray duct tape. My last piece went across her mouth.
“If you don’t tell the cops the truth Eliza, I’ll come back some time when you least expect it, and punch your ticket.”
What’s going on?