Nude Noir Ch. 05

Laura finally said, "we need more sunscreen now." Together, we waded to the beach, picked up our towels, and walked back to where we'd left Jen, Trish, and Ron. As we approached them, they were all sitting on one towel, shoulders touching, with Jen in the middle.

As we got closer, Paula called to Jen, "Did you have a good time?"

"Very good," Jen answered. "You?"

"The best I've had yet," Paula responded. She had figured out how to play to my ego.

Laura said, "Trish, I think you had a good idea."

"I do too," Trish replied. "It's too bad Ron and I leave tomorrow. A few more days of the six of us together would be the best vacation ever."

We still had over an hour before the boat was to pick us up. Laura and I spread sunscreen on Paula. Then, Paula and I took care of Laura. Then, Laura and Paula spread sunscreen all over me. We dragged that process out under the amused gaze of Trish, Jen, and Ron. Once we were done, we all sat on towels on the sand, drinking and talking. The longer I listened to Paula and Jen, the more I liked them both. They were intelligent, thoughtful, funny, and sexy young women.

The six of us went to the nude side hot tub late that night. Trish got Ron erect and Laura got me up. Trish told Jen, "Let Ron get into the tub, then you straddle him, facing him, and just slide down on him."

"I don't want to spoil your vacation," Jen said.

Trish laughed. "I have that dick in me all the time. Since you're here without a man, I'm happy to share."

Paula didn't argue. She sat down in the tub on my lap with my dick in her pussy. Laura sat beside me. We sat like that, having drinks, talking to each other, and to other people in the tub for quite a while. Finally, Laura said, "Ok, Paula, start riding him." She did, and I sensed she'd made love in that position before. We were more familiar with each other now and didn't want to take as long as we did that afternoon. Paula did an excellent job of getting me, and her, off while Laura, Trish, Jen, Ron, and God knew who else watched. After Paula and I came, it was Jen's turn on Ron. It was very erotic watching her tits bounce as she rode him and the look on her innocent face as she came was extraordinary.

Laura and I made love in the room the next morning. We took our time and had to rush to catch Trish and Ron before they got in the van back to the airport. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and Trish gave me a wonderful hug. I doubted, however, that we'd encounter the Cardinals again.

Once the van left from outside the resort lobby, Laura asked Paula and Jen, "have either of you parasailed?"

"Once," Jen replied. Paula shook her head.

"Ian and I did it together nude a couple of days ago," Laura said. "You have to try that. Just come to our room. You can get towels and undress there. Then, we'll hit the beach."

I ended up taking two parasail rides that day: one with Paula and one with Jen. We didn't make either ride as gratifying as the one Laura and I had taken earlier. Still, it was fun to be up on the air nude with each woman.

Laura and I were leaving the next day. We had dinner with Paula and Jen. After dinner, they came back to our room. We all stripped off, had drinks, and talked. Laura's face slowly took on her naughty look. She finally stood and insisted we all go into the bedroom. She had me lie on the bed on my back. She circled herself, Paula, and Jen around my groin and began giving them a guided tour of my dick and balls, explaining where I was most sensitive, what she did with me, and how I responded. Laura made sure that both girls handled me, a lot.

Of course, I got very hard. I knew what was coming and was looking forward to it. Laura positioned Paula to ride me again and had Jen squat over my face (which was a lovely view of Jen). I got fucked by Paula while I ate Jen to an orgasm.

Paula and Jen slept with us that night. They helped us pack the next morning. We exchanged contact information. I thought, and hoped, that we'd spend more time with them in the future. As we took the long van ride to the airport, Laura summarized our time in Jamaica, "A great trip and lots of sex. We made money and made some new friends." She paused, then added, "I really like Paula and Jen. We've got to get them to The Cove."

"I agree," I replied.

We were busy once we got home. Laura and I didn't split the work up. We worked together on every case that came in. Partly, that was application of "two heads are better than one." Mostly, it was because we enjoyed doing everything together. I had never imagined that I'd want to spend literally every minute with another person, but I'd never imagined a person like Laura.

Another good thing was that Beth Potter and Sally Stancik resumed visiting The Cove. Since Svetlana had moved out, our guest room was open. Beth and Sally used it most weekends. Both women were a few years older than me. Both were attractive, but it was obvious they were not young when they took their clothes off. They were good people and good friends. I enjoyed spending my weekends with three nude women in Unit 7.

Shortly after Laura and I got back from Jamaica, Sally disclosed a dilemma. She had been Tampa SAC longer than was customary. The Bureau had told her it was going to assign another agent as Tampa SAC and promote her to a position in Washington. That was a problem because Beth had been with Tampa PD too long to leave. Sally and Beth loved each other too much to be that far apart.

Sally had decided she had to resign from the Bureau. However, she had no plan for what to do next. Laura and I worked to persuade her to join our firm. Sally's stature in the law enforcement and business communities in Central and South Florida would take us to a new level. It would also be a selling point that our firm was majority female.

As Sally and Beth spent more time at The Cove, they also got to know my clients and benefactors, Paul and Lilith Westerfeld, The Cove's owners. It became customary for the six of us to go out to dinner together on Saturday nights.

We had gone to a barbeque joint a little way south on 41 from The Cove the first Saturday in December of that year. We had a good meal and lots of laughs. I held the door for everyone else and was following behind Laura when I heard tires squeal. It was night, but the lot was well lit. I saw a small Japanese sedan approaching us fast. Then I saw a gun barrel aimed out the passenger window. I pushed Laura to the ground with myself on top of her.

That night was the longest sustained period of gunfire I had ever experienced. It seemed to go on forever, although it was probably over in less than a minute. As the car sped away, I stood saw the plate number, pulled out my phone, and called 911. I knew we needed lots of ambulances. I think the 911 operator thought I was drunk or playing a prank. Mass shootings just didn't happen in Pasco County. Fortunately, someone inside the restaurant had called 911 too, reporting the same things I was.

Having called for help, I checked on Laura. That was when my world disintegrated. I'd done a great job of protecting her, from everything except the bullet that entered her left temple. She wasn't moving and wasn't breathing. I felt no pulse. I felt sick. I sat down beside her and began crying.

To summarize a long, ugly night, Laura, Sally, Beth, Paul, Lilith, the restaurant's cashier, a server, and two other customers were dead. Another server and a cook were severely wounded. Police found evidence of 50 rounds fired, meaning there was another gun I hadn't seen. Physically, I was unhurt. Psychologically was a different matter.

An acquaintance with the Sheriff's office, Detective Glen Knowles, got the case. Because of Sally, the Feds were on it too. Glen told me the next day that the car was found abandoned a mile or so away from the restaurant. It has been stolen in Plant City earlier the day of the shooting. The car was completely clean, no prints, no casings, no fibers, no mud; except there was a receipt from a fast-food drive-through timed about an hour before the shooting. The scum had eaten burgers and fries before they killed Laura. Glen hoped to get video from the fast-food joint.

Glen got the video. A couple days later, he asked me to come in and look at it. He wanted to know if I recognized anyone in the car. The clearest picture was of the driver. He was young, Latino, and a stranger to me. I asked Glen if they could enhance the image of what looked like a blonde-haired woman in the back seat.

When I saw the enhanced image, I told Glen, "If I didn't know she's in prison, I'd say that's Pam Westerfeld."

Glen typed at a keyboard for a few seconds, looked at the computer screen, and told me, "Uh, she's not in prison. On parole on the Orange County drug charges. A federal judge granted her habeas on the convictions here, ineffective assistance of counsel. She's reporting to her parole officer and waiting to see whether she'll be retried here."

"Shit," I said, "that's her."

Glen talked to Pam's parole officer. Pam was following the rules. She lived in Ft. Myers and worked as a clerk for a short-haul trucking company there called SouFla Logistics. Her boss, a man named Manuel Fuentes, said she had worked a night shift on the Saturday of the shooting and was at work when the shooting happened. He knew because he had been in the office that Saturday night and saw her. That seemed off to me. Why was a clerk working on a Saturday night?

Glen called me a day later. "Ian, you knew a woman named Allison Nance, right? Didn't she help you on the cases that sent Pam Westerfeld to prison?"

"Yes," I replied, "Ali was, for a time, my partner and my lover. She left a few years ago to go to law school up in Gainesville. Last I heard, she was a lawyer in Jacksonville."

"Shit," Glen said. "I really hate to tell you this, but you'll find out anyway. She was gunned down outside her parents' home in Sarasota last night. Same MO as the shooting up here, drive-by with a stolen car, same ammo. Witnesses say there were three people in the car. They think two men and a woman. They think the woman was a blonde. The car was found. It's clean. No receipts this time."

"Ali is..." I asked.

"Yes," Glen said. "I'm sorry."

The coroner released Laura's body. I decided to have her buried in Chicago, next to her parents. It was a cold day just before Christmas. Svetlana came for the funeral. We talked for a while, but she had a flight back to DC. I meant to see some old Chicago friends, but just didn't want to. I stayed at the cemetery until it closed, got a room, and flew back to Tampa the next morning. I went to Paul and Lilith's funerals, and Beth's, which were all in Florida. I didn't go to Pittsburgh for Sally's funeral.

A few days after Paul and Lilith's funeral, I got a call from their lawyer, a man I knew slightly. He told me they had revised their wills after Pam went to prison. The Cove was owned by a limited liability company of which Paul and Lilith had been the only members. Their interest in the LLC passed to me when they both died. I would own The Cove once the probate process was completed. That was a shock.

When Greg had left for Jamaica, he'd persuaded Paul and Lilith to replace him with Gretchen Dowling. Gretchen had worked years for a large hotel/resort chain. She was not a nudist, but she was a hell of a manger. She'd have to keep The Cove running. I certainly wasn't up to it.

It was a truly shitty Christmas and New Year, made worse by the fact that the Feds and Pasco County were making no progress on the killings. Sarasota PD had hit a brick wall on Ali's killing too. January dragged on without progress. The FBI put surveillance on Pam, but she obviously knew and kept her nose clean. The only face the cops had was the driver from the day Laura was murdered. We didn't know who he was.

Glen called me at the end of February to tell me that the FBI was ending its surveillance of Pam. They had decided nothing would come from it. "You think its Pam, and you've persuaded me," Glen said. "She's out from under the Feds' eyes now. There's only one person who helped put her away who's still alive: you. You're probably her next target."

On one level, I really didn't care if Pam Westerfeld killed me. She'd already taken everyone who mattered to me. However, the probate of Paul and Lilith's estate had been completed. I now owned The Cove. I felt I owed it to the regulars, and to the happy memories I'd made there with Laura, Ali, Beth, and Sally, even Svetlana, to keep The Cove running.

Glen didn't have the resources to keep a guard on me. He recommended that I stay armed and very, very alert. I've never been a good marksman. If I was up against automatic weapons, I wouldn't get many shots. Whatever I did had to cause maximum damage.

I bought a.44 magnum, the gun Clint Eastwood made famous in the old "Dirty Harry" movies. I hated taking that thing to the range. The gun's recoil made my hand, arm, and shoulder hurt after only a few rounds. I also had a hard time getting the gun back on target for a second shot. My shooting might have improved a little, but I'd need luck if anything happened.

I had been extremely lethargic and depressed since Laura was killed. My PI firm was closed, but it took immanent lease expiration to make me clean out the office. There were things of Laura's in there that would be painful to see. I finally went to the office, in a strip center a few miles from The Cove, in mid-March.

It was still cool out, which was good. I had an excuse for the light jacket I wore so I could carry the gun in its pocket. I didn't bother going around the back to the tenant parking. Only the UPS store next to my office was open that morning. There was plenty of parking in front.

It must have been the squeal of tires as the car turned into the center off US 41. I'd last heard that sound when Laura was killed. I looked up and saw the car circling the lot so it could pass with me on its passenger side instead of going directly to a parking spot or pulling up directly to the building. That alarmed me.

I had the gun out and was in my "shooter's stance" before I saw the rifle barrel come out the front passenger window. I fired at the passenger side of the windshield. Then, I dove. As the car came closer, I rolled and fired a round, I hoped, into the engine. I expected return fire. There was absolutely no cover. I was a clear target lying on the concrete.

The car passed me without firing a shot. It continued out of the lot and turned north on 41. I pulled out my phone and called 911. I heard sirens seconds after I ended the call.

While I was still in front of my office checking whether I'd pissed myself, the shooter's car died about half a block up 41. Deputies quickly surrounded the car. The driver surrendered immediately. Two other people were in the car. A woman, quickly identified as Pam Westerfeld, was in the front passenger seat with a huge hole in her chest. She was dead. My first shot had passed through her, through the seatback, and hit the man in the back seat in the shoulder. He was injured but alive. Both Pam and the guy in the back seat had Kalashnikov automatic rifles.

Back in Unit 7 at The Cove, I felt wired, exhausted, vindicated, and guilty. I'd never been a gun lover. I went into law enforcement not because I aspired to be a "killer hard guy," but because I thought I could keep a few people from getting hurt. Instead, I'd used a gun to kill someone that very day. I wasn't remorseful about killing Pam Westerfeld. I'd been forced to do it. Maybe I'd inflicted "justice" on Pam. Maybe the two guys with her would get "justice." Laura, Ali, Paul, Lilith, Beth, and Sally would still be dead. "Justice" couldn't change that. I'd failed all of them, as badly as I could possibly fail.

Later that night, my cell phone rang. That surprised me. Most of the people who had my number were dead. The caller's number, from area code 239, was meaningless to me. I answered. A heavily accented female voice said, "you won" then ended the call. I immediately called Glen and told him about the call.

The next morning, I was in Glen's office in New Port Richey giving my formal statement to Glen and an FBI agent. It was a long statement because it started with the Olmos case that had sent Pam Westerfeld to prison several years earlier. I went through the awful evening when Laura was killed in detail. In return, Glen told me that the guy I'd wounded in the back seat had been identified as Manuel Fuentes, the SouFla Logistics manager who'd alibied Pam Westerfeld for the night of Laura's murder. The driver of the car, and the driver in the drive-through video from the day of Laura's murder, was his brother Roberto. They were nephews of Consuela Olmos. The FBI was expediting ballistics testing, but the two Kalashnikovs in the car looked like the same guns that had killed Laura, Ali, Paul, Lilith, Beth, and Sally. The call I'd gotten the night before was from a number assigned to Consuela Olmos.

The FBI agent added that Consuela had boarded a flight from Ft. Myers to Miami that morning and changed in Miami to a flight to Bogota. Then, he asked me for my.44 so they could test it to verify that I'd fired the shot that killed Pam Westerfeld and wounded Manuel Fuentes, and the shot that had disabled their car.

"I've already talked with the State's Attorney," Glen added. "No question you were acting in self-defense."

"We'll make sure you get your gun back Mr. Beck," the FBI guy said.

"Keep it," I replied. "Give it to an agent, use it for training, melt it down. I don't care."

The FBI agent looked perplexed. "It was a righteous shoot," he said. "That's an expensive gun. You can use it in your line of work."

"Sir," I said, "my line of work has gotten everyone I loved killed. I'm getting a different line of work." I left the Sheriff's office.

I was back in Unit 7 by mid-afternoon. Out of habit, I stripped off. I hadn't eaten that day but wasn't hungry. I hadn't had much appetite since Laura died. I didn't even want a drink. I just felt deflated. I walked around the Unit. I hadn't really looked at it in the months since Laura died. I realized why: defense mechanism. Everywhere I looked there was a piece of her. Seeing each one felt like a knife stabbing me.

I went upstairs to our bedroom. I immediately noticed the floral print wrap Laura had bought to wear to dinner at the Jamaican resort. She'd made it into a wall hanging when we returned. It was almost impossible to believe that incredibly happy time had been less than a year ago. I remembered thinking on the flight home that life couldn't get any better. I'd been right about that, but life sure could get a hell of a lot worse.

I decided to pour some wine. Maybe, if I got drunk, I'd stop remembering things, at least until morning. I was on my second large glass when the landline phone rang. That was odd. No one ever called on the landline. The caller ID showed an area code 614 number. If I remembered correctly, that was central Ohio. Who knew me up there?

I answered the phone, I think, because I wanted to hear a voice, even if it was computer-generated. "Ian," a female voice said, "this is Paula Taft. Remember me?" I remembered Paula and said so. "I've been trying to get ahold of Laura," she said. "Her cell number says its out of service. She's not answering e-mail. There hasn't been anything new on her Facebook in months. What's going on?"

"Shit," I thought. I knew Laura and Paula had stayed in touch after we got back from Jamaica. Laura's death had been the central event in my world. I'd just assumed everyone else knew about it. I hadn't let Paula know what happened.

"Uh, Paula," I said, "I've got some really bad news." I told her about the killings and everything that had happened since. I was surprised that I wasn't in tears by the time I finished. Maybe I was starting to heal. More likely, it was the wine.