Clueless

By J.R. Pittman

HERE IS WHAT OTHERS THINK OF THIS BOOK

Im not the lush he makes me out to be. Lou

If anyone has seen my knee, please e-mail me at [e-mail]. There is a reward. Death

Honest. Elvis is alive and well. Ive seen him. I dont care what anyone thinks. Donnie

Tall skinny redheads turn me on. That explains why I married a butterball brunette who is shorter than I am. Bobby Joe

I cant wait to see who plays me in the movie. Magistrate Margaret Snipper

I dont really waltz into a room. Its more of a majestic glide. Jackson

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462807161

J.R. Pittman

JR was born in Sewickley PA in 1957. Please feel free to write to the Chamber Of Commerce about erecting a statue in his honor. He was raised in a United States Air Force Family and enlisted in the Air Force before graduating from High School. After basic training, he went to Colorado where he was in the process of training in electronics. After grounding himself out to his circuit trainer one too many times, it was decided that he was probably better suited for something not involving electricity. He was sent to Andrews AFB where he was trained as a printer. He enjoyed his time there, however, all good things come to an end and he was dragged kicking and screaming to Bolling AFB. After a year in Hell, he cross trained into Law Enforcement and never looked back. During his career he crossed both oceans, having spent time in Saudi Arabia and South Korea before retiring in 1994. He began writing this book while still on active duty at Langley AFB, VA. He did it mainly for fun, but it soon developed a life of it’s own with the support of his friends. He is married to his fourth and final wife.

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Copyright © 2010 by J.R. Pittman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Squid Season

Radio Waves

The Incident

Under Fire

Specter

Failure To Communicate

Resurrection

The Married Man

Ode To A Toilet

Squid Season

Frank Jacobson was out for his early morning jog after leaving his beachfront apartment. He loved jogging on the beach. Running in the sand made him work that much harder. He was used to couples parking near the water early in the morning. It was usually young couples who didn’t have enough money for a motel. He never paid any real attention to them and this morning was no exception as he ignored the car that was leaving from between two vacant homes.

As Frank watched the waves along the shore, he saw a shadow in the water about fifty feet from the waters edge. The shadow slowly took shape in the semi-darkness, and Frank realized it was a man, face down in the surf. Frank had never learned to swim and chose to call the police rather than risk his life for someone who was obviously dead.

With the police and the ambulance came the usual spectators. Frank was kept away from the reporters as Detective Pierce, who was the first officer at the scene, quickly took control.

Pierce instructed his witness, Mister Jacobson, take me through your story step by step.

I left my apartment for my morning jog on the beach at about five thirty. It was right out there, Jacobson said pointing to a spot out amongst the waves, that I saw a dark spot in the water. The sun was starting to rise and I realized it was a body.

Why didn’t you swim out and try to save him? Pierce asked.

Because I’m thirty four years old, I live on the beach, and I can’t swim. I never learned how.

Did you see any suspicious people in the area?

I wasn’t really looking at anything except the body. I called you guys and just kept an eye on where the body was. I didn’t see anything else.

Pierce checked his notes, making sure he had all of Jacobson’s information, and then told him he was free to go. Pierce did not let it show that he was pleased to learn that Frank could not tell him anything.

Lou slowly opened his eyes and let them adjust to his surroundings. It took several minutes for them to finally focus. He noticed the framed document on the wall. It was his diploma from the Acme Private Investigator School and Laundry. With great effort, he raised his head and looked around. He wondered how he got to his office, and what he had done during the last twelve hours. His bloodshot eyes noticed a trash can beside his chair. He mistakenly looked in it and saw the remains of last evening’s dinner, combined with undetermined quantities of beer and booze. This revelation touched off another round of praying to Ralph—The Porcelain God. Lou was able to regain control of his stomach just prior to up-chucking his shoes. He wiped his mouth with his last clean handkerchief and started to place it back in his pocket, then thought better of it and dropped it in the trashcan.

The office door swung open and Jackson waltzed in. Jackson was clear eyed and impeccably dressed. Lou did not understand how Jackson was even standing. To the best of his fuzzy recollection, Jackson must have drunk twice as much as he did. In fact, if his spotty recollection of the previous night was correct, Jackson carried his happy self out of that last bar. Jackson always seemed to outdo him in everything. Jackson was better at shooting, driving, self-defense and even poker. In fact, Jackson cleaned out his wallet every time the cards were dealt. In spite of all that, they worked well together. Jackson was the only woman Lou had ever been comfortable working with.

Lou and Jackson had been stationed together at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton Virginia. They had both been with the Security Police unit and worked the same shift. They were scheduled to get out of the military at the same time, and had no idea what they would do. They got to joking one night about becoming private investigators, and as time ran out, the idea became more of a reality. With nothing else in their future, they went to school and The Clueless Detective Agency was born. Business was slow at first, but eventually they gained a reputation for thorough, methodical work.

Lou thought back to their time at Langley. Jackson, being a knockout of a woman, was immediately trained as a desk sergeant. It was her supervisor’s belief that females were not capable of handling themselves on the road. She excelled in all aspects of her duties, and finally talked her supervisor into letting her out on the road. It was a Saturday night. A payday weekend. A full moon. Squid night, as they liked to call it, due to all those rowdy Navy troops that frequented the Langley Enlisted Club. At about three o’clock that morning, the base was hopping. Jackson hadn’t been sent to one dispatch all night. She made several traffic stops, but was still searching for a drunk driver to take off the roads. All other patrols were busy, so when the call came in about a fight in the enlisted club parking lot, the only one who could respond immediately was Jackson. By the time another patrol could break away, Jackson had separated the Mike Tyson wannabe’s and they were both handcuffed, face down on the ground. As the male patrolmen moved to pick up the first man, he started thrashing about and refused to cooperate until Jackson told him it was OK to move. Jackson never would tell anyone what she did to make those two so terrified of her.

Lou on the other hand, was always a rebel. He was constantly bending the rules, but never quite broke them. He was famous for his total lack of tact when dealing with the general public. He was known for asking people with lights mounded on the roll bars of their trucks if they were afraid of the dark. Rumor also had it that he once told a Navy troop, who was locked up in the cell, that he was living proof that if you put a squid on dry land, he can’t behave. Fortunately, no one ever found out that it was Lou that was faxing images of various body parts to the Joint-Chiefs of Staff. The Air Force was happy to get rid of Lou. They thought of him as a headache.

The thought of a headache reminded Lou of the one he was experiencing now. Every movement of his eyes, every turn of his head, brought on new meaning to the word pain. As Jackson began speaking in her sultry soft tones, Lou’s head began vibrating. He clutched his ears in an effort to silence her. He shouted for her to quit yelling, which brought on even newer definitions of the word pain.

As he opened his eyes, they focused on a newspaper article Jackson was pointing at. The banner read Local sailor drowns in freak accident. Lou thought to himself that squids can’t act right on land or on the water. He glanced over the text, and then looked at Jackson.

She said His wife called and asked if we could look into this for her. She doesn’t think it was an accident.

What do you mean? It says right here he was on his ship, fell overboard, which is typical for a squid, and drowned. It looks cut and dried to me.

Look at the picture. As they are taking him out of the water you can see a small patch of blood that stained his shirt collar. If he struck his head when falling overboard, the blood wouldn’t have had time to stain his shirt like that. Now look at it under the magnifying glass. Do you see the damaged scalp?

Lou had difficulty focusing on the picture itself, let alone through a magnifying glass. He couldn’t see a thing, but he nodded, trusting Jackson’s observations.

The pay is right, and I’ve already got my contacts at the Medical Examiner’s Office checking things out. I think this one is worth looking into.

See what you can find out. If you need any help, let me know. Lou knew she wouldn’t need any help. She never did. She did most of the legwork for the agency. He did most of the contact work with the clients, as most people were more comfortable dealing with men in the detective role. He knew if there was something fishy, and there usually was where squids were involved, Jackson would find it.

She was out the door in a flash.

Jackson had spoken with the victim’s widow at length over the phone before she woke up Lou. She was upset but was able to speak with Jackson, who has always had the knack of comforting people while pumping them for information. Jackson was able to find out that the victim had been upset when he called his wife the night he died. All he would tell her was that something was very wrong, and that he would have to be careful. He would not tell his wife what was going on. She did notice that when he broke the connection, she heard a second click, as if someone else was on an extension. She thought it was just static on the line. Navy phone lines never have been able to catch up with the rest of the world, like Outer Mongolia. When Jackson left her, she couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that this was going to get real interesting.

Jackson’s first stop after leaving Lou at the office was with the Hampton Police Department, where, posing as a reporter, she interviewed Detective Pierce, who had handled the now closed investigation.

As she walked into his office, she extended her hand, presenting him with one of her many fake business cards. Detective Pierce, I’m Angela Bowman with the Hampton Voice.

He took her card, looking it over, and said, I’ve never heard of the Hampton Voice. Is it new?

"We’re more of an underground paper. We look for stories that the other papers don’t think are important or worth looking