by Al Rennie
For the next thirty minutes Mia gave me directions that took me on major roads that I recognized. The next few minutes after that, I spent on back streets that I did not even know existed. I was no longer certain which municipal district I was in, but I guessed that we were somewhere within Tampa. It was closing in on 11:30. That was alright, because it was around that time Vickie’s body was dumped according to the newspaper reports. Finally, we turned from a darkened stretch of road onto a narrow gravel lane. It was barely wide enough for two cars to pass going in opposite directions. We crept along very slowly for about a minute before Mia told me to stop.
The place was eerie. If there had not been very meagre ambient light, we would have been in absolute darkness. Just sitting there—the Jag’s engine and CD player off and the windows up—was disquieting. There was no traffic. There were no buildings or streetlights. Nothing! It seemed to me that we could well have been in the middle of the fifteenth fairway of a Louisiana golf course or at the very bottom of a South African diamond mine. I cracked the front windows a fraction. The cool night air seeped into the car’s warmth. I shivered. Maybe I’m back in Canada, I thought before I closed the window. Mia and I sat and listened carefully. Slowly, I became attuned to the night noises of insects and frogs and then, the very faint sound of the night traffic that we had left minutes behind.
“This stretch of road is where Vic was found,” Mia said quietly. “Do you want to get out?”
“No,” I answered quickly. “Let’s sit here for a few minutes, but I don’t think that I’m going to get any sense of this place. It’s too dark. I’m going to have to come back here in the daylight. I didn’t even bring a flashlight.”
“So much for the context of the crime,” I mumbled as I sat there. “I might just as well put a blindfold over my eyes and listened to a ‘Sounds of the Everglades’ CD.”
At that moment, a vehicle approached from up ahead. Its high beams were on. For a brief few seconds both sides of the roadway were brightly illuminated. The oncoming car slowed appreciably and then, politely, dimmed its lights. The road seemed barely wide enough for two cars to pass even though I had pulled as far off to my side as I guessed was safe. The oncoming vehicle had to slow almost to a stop as it passed by us. As soon as the driver was clear of my car, his high beams were back on, and he quickly accelerated away.
“That may have answered one question,” I said to Mia as I re-started the Jag and turned on its headlights. “Where does this road lead? What’s up ahead?”
“About a half mile along, the road just ends, and there is this fairly big open field. Some people call it a park, but really it’s been the local “make out” site for the area high school kids and lots of others for years—as long as I can remember anyway. You would be a wealthy man if you had a buck for every kid who lost her cherry in there. The road was originally going to be developed into some sort of a by-pass with access to the Inter-state, but that idea got bogged down in a red tape legal action at city hall. That was probably twelve to fifteen years or more ago. So here it sits. What question did it answer?”
“Well, it’s dark, no real traffic to speak of. I bet this cop, Langdon, really dug into this parking area looking for his guilty party.”
“That’s what the cops told me. They figured that Vic went in there with some guy, something went wrong, very wrong, and he killed her. As he was driving out, he dumped her here because there was no traffic. The cops thought the guy wouldn’t want to risk getting back onto the streets with a body in the car, so this was convenient.”
“That’s a pretty fair guess,” I said as I thought about the possibilities. “Maybe, he planned on getting her body into that thicket over there.” I said pointing vaguely across to my left. I’d spotted a small growth of trees and brush on that side of the lane when the high beams of the car leaving the area had passed us. “Maybe he thought that no one would find her there. Then maybe, a car came along, and it spooked him enough to just drop her where he was and take off.”
Just then another car came toward us from the direction of the field ahead. We sat quietly as it too slowed down. It was a white Cadillac Escalade. It passed carefully and then quickly accelerated away. It looked as if the only way I’d be able to turn around to get back out was to drive forward into the park. I didn’t want to take the risk of getting stuck on what appeared to be a non-existent shoulder. It would be a good idea to see the field anyway. I could do my U turn there. I put the Jag in gear and edged back toward the middle of the gravel lane. Mia’s guess of a half mile ahead had not been accurate. The distance was barely a quarter of a mile. As I completed a wide U turn in the field, my headlights briefly illuminated the foggy windows of at least fifteen or sixteen other vehicles. Some salacious thoughts about Mia darted through my mind.
“Mia, unless I’m missing something, this case should have been a slam-dunk. Whatever the reason, Vickie pisses off Mr. X, the boyfriend, who then, accidentally or not, kills her and then dumps the body on his way out of lover’s lane here.”
“How can you say accidentally?” Mia scoffed mildly.
“Well…” I began.
Then that short fuse thing cut in and something snapped. She got angry. Her voice grew harsh, and she went on the attack. “What the fuck are you thinking about Joe? She was found with her own goddamn panty hose wrapped around her neck. How can that be some friggin’ accident? She was murdered and her body left to rot. That’s not an accident.”
Mia’s Short Fuse