Clearwater Journals

by Al Rennie

As I pulled into the short lane leading to the garage, I cut the lights so as not to disturb the neighbours. Possibly, God had decided to pitch in again, or maybe I just got lucky. Turning off those lights saved me. As I got out of the car, I heard a low whisper and felt a hand on my forearm pulling me down.

  “Food Guy” and then the hand pulled me towards the back of the Jag. It was Papa Smurf.

  “Papa, what the hell are you doing here this time?”

  “Shush. That big guy is in your house.”

  “The big guy who walks funny—how do you know that?”

  “I was sleepin’ in your yard man when he snuck around from the front and let himself in. At first, I thought it was you, but this guy is a fuckin’ monster. I mean really huge.”

  This was not good—not good at all. I pushed Papa around to the passenger side of the Jag. I wanted to put the car between the house and me. I shot a quick look back out towards the road. There were two cars parked on the street about twenty-five yards apart. I couldn’t recognize the make of either vehicle. I thought about grabbing the cell phone from the car and dialing 911. That would be the smart thing to do, but that would only postpone the inevitable. And at that moment, I had the advantage.

  I had the Sig hidden in the garage and the Beretta in my backpack. The Sig made more sense with its suppressor. I’d been lucky so far. My backpack was still on the passenger’s seat of the Jag. I didn’t want to open the car door and have the courtesy lights go on.

  “Stay here Papa.”

  I crept forward and unlocked the garage door, lifted it enough for me to slide under. There was enough ambient light for me to see the front of the garage’s interior and the flowerpots where I had hidden Langdon’s favourite weapon.

  I had the Sig. I checked the clip and safety. I screwed on the silencer as I crept quietly back to where Papa was waiting.

  “Holy shit,” he said when he saw the elongated Sig. His eyes were like saucers in the darkness. “Are you some kind of fuckin’ hit man Food Guy?”

  “No Papa. Why didn’t you just take off earlier?”

  “I was afraid to, man—so I just hunkered down back here—blended in.”

  “Did the guy have a gun, a knife and canon—did you see anything?”

  “A little gun I think, but I’m not fer sur; whatever it was, he held it pointing up.”

  “Okay. Wait until you hear from me, or if fifteen minutes goes by, call 911. Tell them what’s happening.”

  “I don’t got no watch.”

  I slipped my watch off and gave it to him. “Good luck Food Guy,” he said before he crabbed back around the edge of the garage.

  When Papa was safe and quiet, I crept to the door of my room. The guy was moving quietly through the dark rooms. The door had been expertly jimmied. I wouldn’t have spotted a thing.

  I waited and listened for more than one person. Terry was trying to be careful about keeping quiet, but I guess he was in the wrong line of work. I could tell his location. But maybe there was another guy Papa had missed waiting just inside the door to do an instant lights out and game over on anyone returning home. That would be me.

  I hit the door hard and rolled low into the bedroom. When I stopped, I was lying on my back on the floor with the Sig pointed back and up at Mr. Ambush. There was no Mr. Ambush. The room was empty. Terry must have heard me. He went real quiet.

  I inched forward and slipped my suitcase out from under the foot of my bed. The only advantage I had now was that this was my turf.

  ‘If this guy is half smart,’ I thought, ‘he’ll quietly slip out the front door and try again another time. But maybe he wants this over.’

  I waited. I was in no hurry. Whatever else Terry was, he wasn’t smart. I could hear him as he started to work his way back to my room. Fearlessly dedicated, really stupid or heavily armed—take your pick. Still lying on the floor, I inched back towards the bathroom. I sat on the floor in the recess of the bathroom door with my unmade double bed between the passage into the hallway and myself.

  Terry was still moving slowly down the narrow hallway towards the open entrance. In another few seconds, he would have to make a move to attack me or get smart, change direction, and head for the front door.

  A narrow bright stab of light pierced the bedroom’s darkness and quickly scanned the interior. I had already hunkered down as low as I could get. The bed was a shield. The exterior door to the garage was still slightly ajar.

  The guy had semi committed to attack. Now, he had a real dilemma. Was I still in this room hiding or had I moved out into the hall and somehow got in behind him? Or had I changed my mind and taken off to get help? The flashlight went out. No noise. Seconds passed like hours. Time was running out for him. He had to make a choice—twelve feet to a slightly open doorway, or move back through the entire unfamiliar darkened house to get out the front door.

  I held my breath and waited to see if the guy was bright or not. He wasn’t. His nerve gave out on him. He dashed for the partially open door—and outside.

  I could have shot him right there. In Florida, I might have landed into a bit of legal trouble in that I hadn’t warned him and then followed the next two steps of their inane three-step policy. But then, he wouldn’t have been around to make a sequence of events statement. My word against a dead guy! No contest.

  “Stop—or you’re dead,” I said loudly. It was enough.

  Terry glanced quickly in my direction and managed to get off one wild shot as he stumbled on my suitcase. He went down heavily and landed about a foot and a half away from the exterior door—and freedom. The shot he managed to get off might have been fatal to me if I had been standing. I hadn’t been. He grunted and made a desperate effort to get up. Another mistake!

  I fired the Sig aiming for the wall in front of him. The suppressor did its stuff. There was a phut sound and a neat hole appeared in the wall six inches in front of his head. He must have sensed the round passing by.

  “Don’t shoot! I give up. I don’t got my gun no more,” he squealed as he stopped moving and assumed the arrest position—one he knew well. He must have dropped his weapon when he fell. No doubt about it, the guy may not have been shot at before, but he had definitely been arrested a couple of times. His face was pressed to the floor facing away from me, and his legs were spread wide. He was already moving his hands to lock his fingers behind his head.

  Maybe he was waiting for me to move forward and cuff him as any cop would have. I stayed put, seated uncomfortably on the wooden floor in the doorway of my small bathroom.

  “Push the flashlight this way,” I said. He was still tightly gripping a thin black high intensity metal flashlight in his left hand—the one closest to me. He paused for a moment and then slowly pivoted his face to look over at me. “Now,” I barked. For emphasis I drilled another round just over his back. My police training on the topic of discharging a firearm had kicked in. I was already concerned about where my first round might have ended its potentially lethal flight? There had already been too many innocent victims. This slug I knew would stop somewhere deep inside one of the many paperbacks crammed tightly in my small bookcase.

  I think that it must have occurred to him at some point that he was at risk of being dead more that he had ever been before. He was probably praying that some cop hearing the racket would show up and arrest him. His options were definitely limited. And his time was running out.

  “I said push the flashlight over to me and live a little bit longer—now.”

  He shoved the flashlight towards me. I edged forward to retrieve it while keeping my eyes and the Sig pointed calmly at his head.

  The full adrenaline rush I knew would hit me in any second was still building. When I had retrieved the small light with my left hand, I directed the high intensity beam at his face. He squinted before quickly ducking his face back towards the bedroom wall away from the bright light and me. That quick second confirmed what I already knew. The guy lying on the floor of my room was Mia’s stepbro
ther, Terry Bullock. As I continued to play the light over the room, I saw, just beyond his reach, the small revolver he had fired at me. It had landed there when he tripped on my suitcase.

  I again swung the bright flashlight beam over his massive prone body. An expensive looking hunting knife with a sheathed seven-inch blade was hooked onto his waistband in the small of his back. Langdon had been slashed and stabbed to death. Interesting! Although it seemed much longer, only a very few seconds had passed.

  “Well now, isn’t this nice,” I said with as much control as I could muster. In actual fact, my heart had started pounding wildly and my adrenaline was rushing hard. My voice was louder than I wanted. “You’ve been looking for me, and I had you at the top of my list of fuck-ups to meet. How fortunate! And even better, you had a gun, and I have a gun. And my gun is bigger than your gun. And my gun is pointed right at your melon. Let’s see what you’ve got and how clever you really are. Are you listening?”

  The big guy nodded his head.

  “Okay, very slowly reach out with your right hand and push the revolver over here and then gently, and I do mean very gently—shove that door closed.”

  “I don’t got to put up with your … “he said. He made a sudden grab for the revolver and started to pivot on his right shoulder in my direction. He had already rolled enough to start his gun in my direction. He was too slow.

  I shot him. He dropped his gun, cried out and collapsed back on the floor.

  “You shot me,” he said in utter disbelief. He was grinding his teeth.

  “You’re pretty good at this game Terry. Now let’s try it again. Very gently push the gun, butt first—towards me and then shove the door closed. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you again. And this time, I won’t miss.”

  He worked himself into a sitting position with his back against my bookcase. He was trying—without much success—to stop the flow of blood seeping from the hole in his chest near his shoulder. He looked at me angrily, but the fight was gone. This time he complied. Not happily perhaps, but the door was closed and the small revolver was on the floor in front of me. Keeping the Sig aimed squarely at his chest, I bummed my way forward and picked up the weapon. It was an older .22 calibre Smith and Wesson Model 60 skinny handle revolver in pretty good shape. That particular .22 handgun, with its hammerless brother, the Model 650, was a favourite of older detectives wearing ankle holsters for a backup—or a “throw down”. I recalled that hit men like it too—using the double tap technique. I wondered if he had collected it from Langdon after he killed him.

  “Now, before we go any further, take that blade and sheath out of your pants and slide it this way.” Again, he awkwardly complied. I slid the knife under the side of my bed using the Sig’s silencer as a prod. No sense adding my fingerprints to what I suspected was the murder weapon that had killed Langdon. There were tears in his eyes and blood all over his hands. I guess I must have hit a major nerve and blood vessel—maybe shattered his shoulder. He started begging me to call for an ambulance. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

  I reached over and turned on my little reading lamp. Then I slid the phone from the top of the small night table that stood between my bed and the bathroom door. The message light was flashing. Without taking my eyes off Bullock, or really thinking, I pushed the play button. The first call was from Ida May Thornberry warning me that another bald, burly young man had been in the library earlier, and he was looking for me. I had that one covered. The second and last message was from Kemp. His call had been made before I had ended up talking with him earlier. The message was that he needed to see me as soon as possible, and I should think about getting a lawyer. I thought of my encounter with Billy Ray at the park. Threatening?—I guessed that could be it. I had more important things to do just then.

  “Before I dial 911 for your ambulance Bub, you and I are going to play twenty questions. If I like your answers, and I believe them, you will be in an ambulance with a police escort in a half hour or so,” I said waving his small gun at him like some old time gunfighter. A twenty-two round was less likely to go through walls and do damage elsewhere. If I had to shoot him again, it would be with his own gun. Somehow, that seemed fair.

  “Fuck you …”

  So I shot him again. This time I was pretty certain that I hit the outside of his left shoulder because a small jagged chunk of meat jumped clear off. His dinky twenty-two was actually louder than the Sig Saur wearing its silencer. That was something to think about.

  I remembered Papa waiting outside with my watch and quarters to call 911. I slid over to me bedroom window, pushed it open, and called out to him that everything was okay. “Don’t call 911 Papa. I got it covered.”

  There was no response from him. Maybe he’d taken off—or passed out. There was nothing I could do about him right now. I turned my attention back to Terry Bullock.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound Terry. I think you’ve figured out that I’m not fucking around here. You now have matching bullet holes in your shoulders, although the first one probably hurts a whole lot more—right?” I said.

  Terry just nodded his bald head and if looks could kill.

  “Do you want to try for more or will you answer the questions I have? And before you say anything, I can assure you that you will tell me what I want to know or there won’t be enough of you left to pack in a freezer bag.”

  From that point on, Terry Bullock and I had a very productive dialogue. I pulled out the Blackberry and went to the record option. I asked the questions: he answered the questions. It was obvious that the guy was a pathological liar. He wouldn’t know the truth if it came up to him and whacked him on the nose. He was a lot like his father—a real prick. If I had followed through on my threat to shoot him every time he lied to me, he would have ended up looking like a block of Swiss cheese. But that didn’t stop me. I had him figured for the Langdon murder, and I was pretty certain that taking his knife to any forensic lab would confirm that. I wanted to play with his head for a while just to see what might fall out. Sometimes our pattern of question and answer would be interrupted when he pleaded with me to be taken to a hospital or a doctor, but generally speaking, taking careful aim at his head with the little revolver was enough to put him back on track.

  “So why did you hire Billy Ray, Sammy Tolla and the guy with the broken nose to come looking for me Terry?”

  “Billy and Sam knew what you looked like. I wanted to meet you.”

  “Oh yeah, and why did you want to meet me?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Vickie’s murder. I wanted to back you off it.”

  “So when the moron twins couldn’t find me, you went and talked with Langdon. And then you killed him.”

  “No.”

  “Terry, it’s a sin to lie—yeah?”

  “Fuck you, you …

  ‘”Ah, ah Terry …”—a small waggle with the twenty-two shut him up.

  “So again, tell me why you were here with your little gun?”

  “You beat up Mia. My dad told me what you did to her.”

  “Your dad lied to you. I actually thought that you did that.”

  “No fuckin way man. I like Mia. She don’t like me though. I was playin’ pool, and I got witnesses.”

  “Who would the witnesses be? No Terry, let me guess. I’ll bet you were playing pool with the boys at Toby’s Gym. Now who do you think will believe them you big dummy?”

  “I didn’t touch Mia. I swear it. Man phone 911 please. I’m dyin’ here. I can’t feel my arms. Look at all the fuckin’ blood.”

  “In a little while, if you keep answering my questions.”

  “You fucker, my Pa will mess you up bad—you fuckin’ bastard—you’ll be sorry you was ever born.”

  I had believed up to that point that Ted had been a stepfather to Terry as well as Mia and Vickie. Not so—I could use that—Ted was Terry’s dad. And Terry believed that his father could inflict more misery on me than he could. Ted must be a pretty violent guy
.

  “So you want me to believe you’re here to shoot me because I beat up your half sister—is that about it?”

  He was trembling and had started to sweat profusely. His dark tan had slowly turned to a weird shade of gray. I thought that he might be going into deep shock. I needed to work fast.

  “You did beat her up you fuckin’ liar. Don’t say you didn’t.” He was crying again. And I didn’t think it was just from the gunshots. Maybe he hadn’t talked with Billy Ray before he was pulled in on the parole breach. Maybe he really did care about Mia. “My dad told me you fucked her and then beat the crap out of her. He said you did things to her with a wine bottle—you dirty fucker. You’re the son of a bitch that put her in that fuckin’ hospital. He’ll get your skinny ass for it too,” he muttered. “You’ll be sorry you was ever born before he kills ya.”

  “Sticks and stones and idle threats Terry.”

  At least the guy was consistent. My adrenaline rush was over. My pulse was back to normal. I had totally regained my composure.

  “You fuckin’ retard—did you ever think about maybe trying to ask Mia who beat up on her? She’s been conscious since around noon today. And for whatever it’s worth I would never hurt Mia. As far as the wine bottle goes Terry, that wasn’t even in the papers. Your dad knew about it ‘cause either your dad was there or he paid the guy who was. And that guy reported the details to Ted. He did Mia. But I don’t give a flying fuck if you believe me or not you, you shit for brains. So, why did you kill Langdon with your knife?”

  Terry Bullock may have thought that he was about to be doing a tap dance to gain admission to the pearly gates. His teary eyes half closed like he was trying to remember something important. Blood now only just trickled sporadically from both of his shoulder wounds. His massive arms hung uselessly at his sides. Sweat and tears poured down his gray face. Maybe, he really was going to have to do that tap dance. This was certainly not the way he had pictured his evening evolving.

  “Terry,” I said loudly. He shook his head and his eyes popped open momentarily. He was still conscious—barely. “I’m going to put one in your head if you don’t tell me why you capped the cop. If you tell me, I phone 911 and you get your ambulance.”

  His voice was fading, and he was going even deeper into shock. It took around forty seconds for him to get out his final words to me—“That old fucker told my pa that he was going to get him for killing Vickie. He said that he knew all about pa screwin’ her for all those years.”

  “When did Langdon tell your old man this?”

  But Terry Bullock was out for the count. I dialed 911. I would deal with the significance of Terry Bullock’s last words later.

  I debated for about three seconds the merits of staying and waiting for the cops and the ambulance or just getting the hell out of there. Getting out of there won by a landslide. I knew that I had to speak with either Cooper or Kemp, but I thought phoning them when I was out of harm’s way was the better way to go. I believed that if they got forensics to check out Bullock’s knife, they’d have Langdon’s killer. Maybe I’d get another medal—maybe not.

  I shook my pillow out of its pillowcase and stuffed the Sig and its silencer into it with a change of clothes. With some difficulty, I pulled out Terry’s wallet. I could use the money he had, and I didn’t want the cops to identify him too quickly. Let Ted worry for a while. I could see no sense in letting Terry’s old man know that his dickhead son had failed to nail me. And there was no advantage in tipping Ted off that I would be coming for him. Using my T-shirt—I was trying to be careful about fingerprints—I very carefully picked up Terry Bullock’s hunting knife and added it to my pillowcase stash.

  Just as I was going out the door, my brain kicked in, and I realized what I was about to do. I knew that it would be essential for the cops to find the hunting knife with Terry and maybe even his little 22. I dumped the knife onto the floor beside the unconscious killer. I then wiped my prints off his revolver and left it on the double bed. Perhaps, when the cops arrived, they would think that Terry had become overwhelmed with an extreme guilt for breaking into my room and shot himself—twice—once in each shoulder—as a penance.

  It doesn’t hurt to dream.

  Fate Pitches In