Case 3: Death Watch, Part Two
Disclaimer: Same as before.
~ ~ ~ ~
19 May 2000: Senior Detective Sally Payton was a flaxen haired young woman, slim, tall and athletically figured, in her mid-twenties. She approached the table where Hal and Ivy were sitting and joined them. She stopped briefly when she recognized Hal.
"Hal, I just never got the chance to tell you I'm sorry about Diane." Payton said, "There's something she wanted you to have, that I've been taking care of since last year."
"What is it?" Hal asked.
"It's in my car." Payton said.
"Sally, when did you first receive the threats you complained about?" Ivy began.
"Two months ago." Sally replied, "What was disturbing is that's what Diane complained about before she was killed."
"I can see why you'd be concerned." Hal replied, "Anyway, when did Detective Velasquez start hitting on you?"
"About four months earlier." Sally replied.
"So he came after you with unwanted advances?" Ivy said, "What did he do, exactly?"
"He didn't touch me or anything but he'd follow me around. He'd tell dirty jokes around me. And when I turned him down he'd make perverted comments about me when I'd walk by in the hallway. I tried complaining about it, but nothing came of it." Sally replied.
"Did you think that Velasquez ever could become predatory?" Ivy asked.
"When he would try to get with my room mate, Diane, last year, he could do things that bordered on stalking but her complaints didn't seem to get results either." Sally replied.
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Hal saw Velasquez sitting at the bar, a few feet away. It was all he had in him that kept him from not wringing his neck. Even if he didn't harass Diane a year ago, and wasn't possibly responsible for her murder he still found his habits reprehensible. He was sitting with a buddy of his and they had ordered their beers at the bar.
"So this prick goes and accuses me of not only making those calls to Sally. He goes and brings up those allegations last year that I had been responsible for doing the same thing to Diane Schonke last year before she was killed. He even went so far to accuse me of killing her. I wanted to do a lot of things with that girl, but killing her wasn't one of them, I mean I'm no necrophile...." Velasquez said.
"Hey," Hal said, "Can I talk to you for a bit....Outside."
"Hey, what you've got to say to me, you can say here." Velasquez said.
"You fucking Cuban swine! Don't you have any respect for the dead?" Hal remarked.
"Just because you were here boyfriend doesn't mean you can be such a prude." Velasquez began, "What did you have to say, by the way?"
"This." Hal said, calmly and punched him right in the eye. Velasquez's friend tried to intervene but wound up catching Hal's elbow to his jaw.
Hal slugged Velasquez in the stomach three times and then sent a two handed bash into the side of his head. As he lay on the ground, Hal kicked Velasquez in the ribs and then sent a devastating one between the legs. "That's for those comments. That's for the stalking. And that last one was for Diane!" Hal said, angrily as he kept on kicking him in the abdomen, ribs and groin.
"What on earth is going on here?" a British bobby said, walking into the joint.
"Nothing, Constable Growler, I'm just taking out the trash." Hal replied, kicking Velasquez yet again.
"Well, if you want to get some reeducation as to what constitutes rubbish I could take you to the magistrate. You have about five seconds to vacate the premises, Hal." Growler said.
Hal left the pub and walked out into the stormy night. He walked the rest of the way to the bed and breakfast and fell into a short and fairly restless excuse for sleep.
~ ~ ~ ~
20 May 2000: "Hal, wake up!" Ivy said
Groggily, Hal threw on the first pair of dry clothes that came handy and walked to the door, "Yes."
"Hal, its about that suspect you assaulted in the bar last night." Ivy began.
"Let me guess, he wants to prefer charges." Hal replied.
"He can't prefer charges if he's dead, Hal." Ivy replied.
"What?" Hal replied.
"That's right. He committed suicide some time late last night. We've been summoned to the crime scene." Ivy replied. Hal looked like a mile of bad road, there were bags under his eyes and a two-day old growth of beard on his face. Less than forty-eight hours after the case was assigned to them and Hal already looked like he had been in hell. Then again, revisiting a loved one's murder always could rough up even the toughest of people.
~ ~ ~ ~
"God, what a bloody mess." Hal said.
Detective Velasquez lay face down at his computer, blood and gray matter were splattered onto the white dry wall to his left. In his hand was the .38 Detective Special he had spoken of earlier. In his printer was a typed confession.
"Looks like your case is closed, detectives." Holbarth said, "I've booked a flight for you two tomorrow morning."
"We do have some follow up investigating to do." Ivy protested.
"And my office can handle it." Holbarth said.
"Brilliant, it took you almost a year to catch a murderer, Holbarth. What's next, is it gonna take you eight years to book a jay walker?" Hal replied.
"Read it and weep, Olden. Velasquez confesses in his suicide note to stalking both Detectives Payton and Schonke, making the threatening phone calls, and murdering your old sweetheart. Satisfied." Holbarth said.
"Oh yes. I feel the closure." Hal replied, eyes narrowing at Holbarth.
"Feel cheated of the opportunity to do him in yourself, Olden?" Holbarth asked, "I know you'd love to use those lethal little tricks they teach you in the SAS on Schonke's killer. I believe that her murderer is being carried away in the meat wagon. Now the next place I expect to see you two is on the next flight out of here."
~ ~ ~ ~
Ivy was aware of a person standing behind her and she turned around to see a very familiar woman in red. "Carmen?"
"Ivy," Carmen said, "You've barely even scratched the surface of this case. The real killer is still at large. The man responsible for the death of Diane Schonke is not the one being carted away in a body bag."
"Why do I get the feeling Hal knows exactly who it is?" Ivy said.
"Because he does. Please, try and stop him from doing anything rash, for his sake and yours as well." Carmen began.
Ivy looked slightly puzzled about the latter statement, "Carmen, I just met him, we're just friends."
"And you work well together. I was speaking from a strictly professional viewpoint. Hopefully you glean some personal benefit from this partnership, and I mean both of you." Carmen replied.
Ivy felt puzzled and in the blink of an eye, Carmen vanished yet again. What Ivy didn't see was Carmen holding a tiny cell phone and saying, "Hello, is this ACME HQ? Yes, put me in to Detective Tatiana Rossovsky. This is she? Well, I'd like to put in one hundred dollars that Hal and Ivy wind up dating by the time his tour is halfway over."
"Two years? I guessed that because knowing how stubborn both of them are, it will take them a while to admit to any sort of feelings beyond friendship." Carmen replied.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Hal, you're lucky we're related, mate." An older Englishman said, "I outta have you locked up for getting into a fight at my pub. As it is you're replacing that bar stool as well as quite a few pounds in spirits destroyed when you knocked the shit out of that fat Spanish bloke."
"Russell, the man was a fucking dirt bag." Hal replied.
Russell was a balding fellow, with a muscular build of a former prizefighter, which he was. He was also the owner of the pub and Hal's first cousin. What remained of his dirty blonde hair was close cropped, his head nearly shaven and his nose was slightly crooked from having been broken at his final prizefight.
"Whatever." Russell replied. He was thirty-eight years old, going on thirty-nine and also co-owned a gymnasium in Bristol.
"Russell, check your bank account later tonight. I should have paid you the necessary funds by then." Hal replied.
"Listen, Hal, I know that whatever your working on is really getting to you. I also heard a few references to Diane as well. I know it's been hard since...." Russell said.
"I've got work to do, Russell." Hal said, cutting him off.
"Hal, if you've got the time, do you fancy going a few rounds in the ring." Russell replied. Hal and Russell were both avid boxing fans, both men having cut their teeth in the English schoolyards, using their fists to protect themselves. Later both received instruction in the local gym, which Russell now co-owned, after concerned headmasters noted the number of fights both were inclined to get into in grammar school in an attempt to reduce those numbers.
"I would." Hal replied, as he checked his cell phone, "Well, my partner's calling me, I'd best get going."
~ ~ ~ ~
Ivy met Hal that evening, a cloudy, foggy and forbidding one, that was just like the day and night they had spent so far in the United Kingdom. He was standing next to a training facility at the camp called the Kill House. It was the close quarter battle training area for the SAS.
Right now a four-man group stood within arm's length of one another, wearing respirators and black fatigues, their MP-5 sub machineguns ready. A fifth stood holding a 12-gauge shotgun aiming it at a door. He blew down the door with a shotgun blast and the four-man 'stack' rushed into the building. Watching the assaulters at work never ceased to thrill Hal, and he knew that if he was caught after killing Diane's killer this would be a sight he would never see again. But it was something he was willing to do to bring justice for her.
~ ~ ~ ~
That night, Hal sat on his bed, reading what Sally Payton had given to him. It was a largely unfinished letter Diane had written to him a week before she was killed. It was together with every letter he'd ever written her in the eight years they'd known each other, the bundle was tied neatly with bits of string on the mattress.
His eyes grew cold at that moment and he knew that the time had come to put things to right. He stuck the small pistol into the waistband of his jeans and untucked his dark gray collared shirt. He also made sure the gray T-shirt he wore underneath it was untucked over the pistol as well. It was time for justice.
The rain pounded outside in one of those drenching showers the UK could be known for. Ivy was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, "Hal, what are you doing?" Ivy said.
"Where I'm going, you can't follow." Hal replied. He was going to go out and kill a man in cold blood, he didn't need her following because he didn't need her being an accessory to his deed.
"Hal, you're not getting rid of me that easily." Ivy replied.
"Fine." Hal replied, as they stepped in the car.
They drove along the motorway towards the field office on the edge of town when Hal stopped the car, "You can either stay in and be locked in, or you can get out."
"Hal? What are you talking about." Ivy said.
"I'll explain later. Ivy, this is for your own good." Hal replied. Before Ivy quite knew what happened, she was standing out in the rain as Hal drove down towards Hereford to confront Diane's killer.
"HAL!" Ivy shouted.
"Ivy! C'mon, I can help you." Carmen's voice echoed, "First let's get you some dry clothing."
~ ~ ~ ~
TBC (Can Ivy and Carmen get to Hal before he does anything rash? Who did kill Diane Schonke back in 1999? Find out in the next chapter.)
C.J. Sandiego - This case is to introduce a bit of hardship on the road...Continue to be patient, please. Thanks for being that way.
Disclaimer: Same as before.
~ ~ ~ ~
19 May 2000: Senior Detective Sally Payton was a flaxen haired young woman, slim, tall and athletically figured, in her mid-twenties. She approached the table where Hal and Ivy were sitting and joined them. She stopped briefly when she recognized Hal.
"Hal, I just never got the chance to tell you I'm sorry about Diane." Payton said, "There's something she wanted you to have, that I've been taking care of since last year."
"What is it?" Hal asked.
"It's in my car." Payton said.
"Sally, when did you first receive the threats you complained about?" Ivy began.
"Two months ago." Sally replied, "What was disturbing is that's what Diane complained about before she was killed."
"I can see why you'd be concerned." Hal replied, "Anyway, when did Detective Velasquez start hitting on you?"
"About four months earlier." Sally replied.
"So he came after you with unwanted advances?" Ivy said, "What did he do, exactly?"
"He didn't touch me or anything but he'd follow me around. He'd tell dirty jokes around me. And when I turned him down he'd make perverted comments about me when I'd walk by in the hallway. I tried complaining about it, but nothing came of it." Sally replied.
"Did you think that Velasquez ever could become predatory?" Ivy asked.
"When he would try to get with my room mate, Diane, last year, he could do things that bordered on stalking but her complaints didn't seem to get results either." Sally replied.
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Hal saw Velasquez sitting at the bar, a few feet away. It was all he had in him that kept him from not wringing his neck. Even if he didn't harass Diane a year ago, and wasn't possibly responsible for her murder he still found his habits reprehensible. He was sitting with a buddy of his and they had ordered their beers at the bar.
"So this prick goes and accuses me of not only making those calls to Sally. He goes and brings up those allegations last year that I had been responsible for doing the same thing to Diane Schonke last year before she was killed. He even went so far to accuse me of killing her. I wanted to do a lot of things with that girl, but killing her wasn't one of them, I mean I'm no necrophile...." Velasquez said.
"Hey," Hal said, "Can I talk to you for a bit....Outside."
"Hey, what you've got to say to me, you can say here." Velasquez said.
"You fucking Cuban swine! Don't you have any respect for the dead?" Hal remarked.
"Just because you were here boyfriend doesn't mean you can be such a prude." Velasquez began, "What did you have to say, by the way?"
"This." Hal said, calmly and punched him right in the eye. Velasquez's friend tried to intervene but wound up catching Hal's elbow to his jaw.
Hal slugged Velasquez in the stomach three times and then sent a two handed bash into the side of his head. As he lay on the ground, Hal kicked Velasquez in the ribs and then sent a devastating one between the legs. "That's for those comments. That's for the stalking. And that last one was for Diane!" Hal said, angrily as he kept on kicking him in the abdomen, ribs and groin.
"What on earth is going on here?" a British bobby said, walking into the joint.
"Nothing, Constable Growler, I'm just taking out the trash." Hal replied, kicking Velasquez yet again.
"Well, if you want to get some reeducation as to what constitutes rubbish I could take you to the magistrate. You have about five seconds to vacate the premises, Hal." Growler said.
Hal left the pub and walked out into the stormy night. He walked the rest of the way to the bed and breakfast and fell into a short and fairly restless excuse for sleep.
~ ~ ~ ~
20 May 2000: "Hal, wake up!" Ivy said
Groggily, Hal threw on the first pair of dry clothes that came handy and walked to the door, "Yes."
"Hal, its about that suspect you assaulted in the bar last night." Ivy began.
"Let me guess, he wants to prefer charges." Hal replied.
"He can't prefer charges if he's dead, Hal." Ivy replied.
"What?" Hal replied.
"That's right. He committed suicide some time late last night. We've been summoned to the crime scene." Ivy replied. Hal looked like a mile of bad road, there were bags under his eyes and a two-day old growth of beard on his face. Less than forty-eight hours after the case was assigned to them and Hal already looked like he had been in hell. Then again, revisiting a loved one's murder always could rough up even the toughest of people.
~ ~ ~ ~
"God, what a bloody mess." Hal said.
Detective Velasquez lay face down at his computer, blood and gray matter were splattered onto the white dry wall to his left. In his hand was the .38 Detective Special he had spoken of earlier. In his printer was a typed confession.
"Looks like your case is closed, detectives." Holbarth said, "I've booked a flight for you two tomorrow morning."
"We do have some follow up investigating to do." Ivy protested.
"And my office can handle it." Holbarth said.
"Brilliant, it took you almost a year to catch a murderer, Holbarth. What's next, is it gonna take you eight years to book a jay walker?" Hal replied.
"Read it and weep, Olden. Velasquez confesses in his suicide note to stalking both Detectives Payton and Schonke, making the threatening phone calls, and murdering your old sweetheart. Satisfied." Holbarth said.
"Oh yes. I feel the closure." Hal replied, eyes narrowing at Holbarth.
"Feel cheated of the opportunity to do him in yourself, Olden?" Holbarth asked, "I know you'd love to use those lethal little tricks they teach you in the SAS on Schonke's killer. I believe that her murderer is being carried away in the meat wagon. Now the next place I expect to see you two is on the next flight out of here."
~ ~ ~ ~
Ivy was aware of a person standing behind her and she turned around to see a very familiar woman in red. "Carmen?"
"Ivy," Carmen said, "You've barely even scratched the surface of this case. The real killer is still at large. The man responsible for the death of Diane Schonke is not the one being carted away in a body bag."
"Why do I get the feeling Hal knows exactly who it is?" Ivy said.
"Because he does. Please, try and stop him from doing anything rash, for his sake and yours as well." Carmen began.
Ivy looked slightly puzzled about the latter statement, "Carmen, I just met him, we're just friends."
"And you work well together. I was speaking from a strictly professional viewpoint. Hopefully you glean some personal benefit from this partnership, and I mean both of you." Carmen replied.
Ivy felt puzzled and in the blink of an eye, Carmen vanished yet again. What Ivy didn't see was Carmen holding a tiny cell phone and saying, "Hello, is this ACME HQ? Yes, put me in to Detective Tatiana Rossovsky. This is she? Well, I'd like to put in one hundred dollars that Hal and Ivy wind up dating by the time his tour is halfway over."
"Two years? I guessed that because knowing how stubborn both of them are, it will take them a while to admit to any sort of feelings beyond friendship." Carmen replied.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Hal, you're lucky we're related, mate." An older Englishman said, "I outta have you locked up for getting into a fight at my pub. As it is you're replacing that bar stool as well as quite a few pounds in spirits destroyed when you knocked the shit out of that fat Spanish bloke."
"Russell, the man was a fucking dirt bag." Hal replied.
Russell was a balding fellow, with a muscular build of a former prizefighter, which he was. He was also the owner of the pub and Hal's first cousin. What remained of his dirty blonde hair was close cropped, his head nearly shaven and his nose was slightly crooked from having been broken at his final prizefight.
"Whatever." Russell replied. He was thirty-eight years old, going on thirty-nine and also co-owned a gymnasium in Bristol.
"Russell, check your bank account later tonight. I should have paid you the necessary funds by then." Hal replied.
"Listen, Hal, I know that whatever your working on is really getting to you. I also heard a few references to Diane as well. I know it's been hard since...." Russell said.
"I've got work to do, Russell." Hal said, cutting him off.
"Hal, if you've got the time, do you fancy going a few rounds in the ring." Russell replied. Hal and Russell were both avid boxing fans, both men having cut their teeth in the English schoolyards, using their fists to protect themselves. Later both received instruction in the local gym, which Russell now co-owned, after concerned headmasters noted the number of fights both were inclined to get into in grammar school in an attempt to reduce those numbers.
"I would." Hal replied, as he checked his cell phone, "Well, my partner's calling me, I'd best get going."
~ ~ ~ ~
Ivy met Hal that evening, a cloudy, foggy and forbidding one, that was just like the day and night they had spent so far in the United Kingdom. He was standing next to a training facility at the camp called the Kill House. It was the close quarter battle training area for the SAS.
Right now a four-man group stood within arm's length of one another, wearing respirators and black fatigues, their MP-5 sub machineguns ready. A fifth stood holding a 12-gauge shotgun aiming it at a door. He blew down the door with a shotgun blast and the four-man 'stack' rushed into the building. Watching the assaulters at work never ceased to thrill Hal, and he knew that if he was caught after killing Diane's killer this would be a sight he would never see again. But it was something he was willing to do to bring justice for her.
~ ~ ~ ~
That night, Hal sat on his bed, reading what Sally Payton had given to him. It was a largely unfinished letter Diane had written to him a week before she was killed. It was together with every letter he'd ever written her in the eight years they'd known each other, the bundle was tied neatly with bits of string on the mattress.
His eyes grew cold at that moment and he knew that the time had come to put things to right. He stuck the small pistol into the waistband of his jeans and untucked his dark gray collared shirt. He also made sure the gray T-shirt he wore underneath it was untucked over the pistol as well. It was time for justice.
The rain pounded outside in one of those drenching showers the UK could be known for. Ivy was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, "Hal, what are you doing?" Ivy said.
"Where I'm going, you can't follow." Hal replied. He was going to go out and kill a man in cold blood, he didn't need her following because he didn't need her being an accessory to his deed.
"Hal, you're not getting rid of me that easily." Ivy replied.
"Fine." Hal replied, as they stepped in the car.
They drove along the motorway towards the field office on the edge of town when Hal stopped the car, "You can either stay in and be locked in, or you can get out."
"Hal? What are you talking about." Ivy said.
"I'll explain later. Ivy, this is for your own good." Hal replied. Before Ivy quite knew what happened, she was standing out in the rain as Hal drove down towards Hereford to confront Diane's killer.
"HAL!" Ivy shouted.
"Ivy! C'mon, I can help you." Carmen's voice echoed, "First let's get you some dry clothing."
~ ~ ~ ~
TBC (Can Ivy and Carmen get to Hal before he does anything rash? Who did kill Diane Schonke back in 1999? Find out in the next chapter.)
C.J. Sandiego - This case is to introduce a bit of hardship on the road...Continue to be patient, please. Thanks for being that way.