Murderous Intent: Clint Faraday Mysteries, #5

By C. D. Moulton

A collection of 5 Clint Faraday mysteries

The Time Factor
A call to the police. Happens all the time. Not so often when the caller has been dead for an hour, though

A Long Way to Fall
All the way to the bay! The problem was that he had to roll uphill for a few meters, then through some dense bushes.

Dead Low Tide
Two bodies. Died of snakebite, by a snake that was known to be among the deadliest in the world. Teensy little problem! That snake is found only in small areas in the waters off Australia. This was Panamá

A Moving Target
Where did the Indios get something that would shoot down a plane at 3 kilometers? Maybe more importantly, why?

Dead Ahead
A house fire. A body, inside. It happens, but not so often where the man died of a broken neck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Aug 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201520878

Book preview

Clint Faraday Mysteries

Murderous Intent

5 books

The Time Factor

A Long Way to Fall

Dead Low Tide

A Moving Target

Dead Ahead

(c)2014 & 2019 by C. D. Moulton

all rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder/ publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

These are works of fiction. Any resemblances to actual persons is purely coincidental.

The Time Factor

A call to the police. Happens all the time. Not so often when the caller has been dead for an hour, though

A Long Way to Fall

All the way to the bay! The problem was that he had to roll uphill for a few meters, then through some dense bushes.

Dead Low Tide

Two bodies. Died of snakebite, by a snake that was known to be among the deadliest in the world. Teensy little problem! That snake is found only in small areas in the waters off Australia. This was Panamá

A Moving Target

Where did the Indios get something that would shoot down a plane at 3 kilometers? Maybe more importantly, why?

Dead Ahead

A house fire. A body, inside. It happens, but not so often where the man died of a broken neck.

Contents

About the author

The Time Factor

Police Report

Strange?

Start from Nothing

Blah People

From Nowhere

Finding Hidden Things

Scientific Non-facts

Checking Things

Passports

Reverse the Scam

Update

A Long Way to Fall

In the Golden Grill

A Look at the Scene

Doesn’t Make Sense

Things Learned

Investigations

Act in Character

Less of a Problem

Explanation

Picture This

E-mails

Dead Low Tide

A Phone Call

Finding Background

The Suspects Arrive

Digging Deeper

Modifying the List

More Questions

Tying it Up

Back to Bocas

A Moving Target

A Call

Method

Questions

How? 

Who?

What?

Cooperation

Home Again

Dead Ahead

Driving Home

Not Burned to Death

Colombians?

Subterfuge

Bad-asses

Your Move

A Way In

The Trick Was...

Relax 

About the author

CD began writing fiction in 1984 and has more than 300 books published as of 3/15/16 in SciFi, murder, orchid culture and various other fields.

He now resides Gualaca, Chiriqui, Panamá, where he continues research into epiphytic plants and plays music with friends. He loves the culture of the indigenous people and counts a majority of his closer friends among that group. He funds those he can afford through the universities where they have all excelled. The Indios are very intelligent people, they are simply too poor (in material things and money.) to pursue higher education.

CD loves Panamá and the people, despite horrendous experiences (Free e-book; Fading Paradise). He plans to spend the rest of his life in the paradise that is Panamá.

CD is involved in research of natural cancer cure at this time. It has proven effective in all cases, so far. It is based on a plant that has been in use for thousands of years, is safe, available, and cheap. He was cured of a serious lymphoma with use of the plant, Ambrosia peruviana.

Information about this cure is free on the FaceBook page Ambrosia peruviana for cancer. CD asks only that all who try it please report on its effectiveness on that group.

The Time Factor

Clint Faraday Mysteries

#16

© 2011 & 2013 by C. D. Moulton

A call about trouble between neighbors – but the caller was dead at the time the call was received. Blah people in town. Too blah to believe.

Police Report

Clint Faraday, retired PI from Florida, USA, now living in Bocas del Toro, Panamá,  brought in the corvina, a nice one, and put it in the bait well with the other he caught, only a few minutes earlier. That would be enough fish, for now. He decided to see if there were any langosta of a decent size at the mouth of the pass between the Zapatillas, then he’d laze around a bit, then maybe go home.

He started the engine, and headed out toward the pass, when his cellular buzzed, so he answered. It was Sergio Sanchez, captain of the police in Bocas Town, who Clint often worked with. Clint was retired (Hah!), but was back in the detective business, only a couple of weeks after moving to Panamá, six years ago. The cases here were different, and looked at from a somewhat different perspective than in the states.

Buenos! Clint greeted. Que pasa?

"Hi, Clint. We seem to be having quite a bit of trouble from that John Benton character and the Sanders. Sandy and Herb. Benton called to say they were threatening him, because his horse got into their garden and ruined something or other. He says they opened the gate, themselves. He’s not responsible for anything, if they left the gate from his property open – with which I agree.

He said to tell you they were sneaking around your house and Judi’s (Clint’s attractive nextdoor neighbor, who helped him in a lot of his cases). He doesn’t trust them, since that incident with the missing TV.

When was this? The call from him?

About five minutes ago. Four thirty three, on the book.

I don’t picture him calling you. Not John. He might smack Herb in the puss, which he needs, at times. He wouldn’t call you.

His voice? It was him, I’m sure. No one else has that raspy a voice, around here. You can listen to the recording. I already sent Jorge and Gino over to see what’s happening. I just wanted to tell you about the sneaking around your place.

I really don’t see Herb or Sandy sneaking around my place, or anyone else’s. Something big must have happened to make him call you, that he isn’t talking about.

I agree there! I was just... wait a moment. Jorge is calling on the radio ... great lord! Benton is dead! His head’s nearly cut off his body!

I’ll be there as fast as this rig will make it!

Strange?

He made it to Bocas in sixteen minutes, which was good, for his rig. He tied to the police dock, and went into the office, to find that Sergio had gone to Benton’s place. It was close to Clint’s, so he got in his boat, and went around to tie to his own deck. He could walk the six or seven blocks to Benton’s house (if they had blocks on that road).

Judi (Judi Lum), his attractive neighbor, who helped him with a lot of his cases, was waiting for him. She said Sergio had called her to tell him Doc had come up with something strange.

Strange?

Something about him being dead for more than an hour. Probably more like an hour and a half. Maybe that means something to you?

Yeah! He called Sergio less than half an hour ago!

I see. Nobody ever said Judi was slow. She walked along with him to Benton’s place. Half the police department was there, it seemed. It was a strange conglomeration of police and Doc’s crew. Doc was the ME for Isla Colón. Sergio met Clint, and said it was the kind of thing that he seemed interested in. He had always helped the police, when asked, and they might need his experience with this kind of thing. It was rare, in Bocas, to have murders. This one was more than a bit puzzling.

Oh. There were two reporters who liked to hammer at the police, there. If Clint just showed up and started doing anything, or asking questions, they would print that he was intruding into the investigation, and the police had enough of a problem when they had to actually solve a case – or something worse. This made it plain that his help as an expert was requested.

What’s this crap about him being dead awhile before he called your office about it? Clint asked, when the reporters were enough of a distance away that they couldn’t hear.

"I can let you hear the recording. I could have sworn that it was Benton’s voice, and even his phrasing. I talked to Sandy and Herb, and they said there wasn’t any problem with him, about his horse, or anything else. They’d gotten along well enough, since they made it plain to him they weren’t backing down and letting him intimidate them like some of these spineless gringo wimps do, or something. You can talk to them, if you like. They’re out back, and Jorge is questioning them about people being seen looking into the houses in the area. So far, they haven’t known anything about any of the things Benton was supposedly complaining about.

You know how I can tell a disguised voice, Clint. This one fooled me.

It tells us one very important thing. Whoever it was is someone who knew him, and the people around here, pretty damned well!

Yes. They would have to be around him to know the phrasing he would use.

But there’s another little detail we probably should consider. They haven’t been around him for the past month or so.

Sergio thought for a minute, started a shrug, then brightened. Ah! They didn’t know the trouble with Sandy and Herb was resolved!

Clint nodded, then said he was going to nose around, a bit. He’d go to the station, later, to listen to the recording of the phony complaint. He might be able to catch something.

He looked over the outside, found nothing out of place, then went in. Doc had the body on the Gurney for transport. Clint opened the bag to take a quick look-see, then said it was someone pretty powerful, to cut that much with one swing, with which Doc agreed. Also tall. The cut was slightly downward, from the side. Benton was only five eight or nine, but this one will be over six feet.

That reduces the suspect list to only five thousand people here, Clint replied – which got him the finger. He said he would look over the place,as soon as the CSI team left. They’d be there for another three or four hours. Clint knew forensic science procedures as well or better than the team. He’d be damned careful not to damage anything that could ever be called evidence. Clint pointed to the two reporters. Doc grinned, and called, Okay boys! Transport! I’ll want to know a few answers about this one, so be careful. I have the equipment at the morgue to find what I don’t understand about this, pretty fast. Go, people! The trail grows stale!

He winked to Clint, and headed outside. The reporters were crowding around him (as much as three people can crowd around anyone). He was telling them he had to have some equipment to answer a question or two, and he wasn’t about to stick his neck out through stupid speculation. He’d leave that kind of thing to them. He said it in a good-natured way, but many a truth is spoken in jest. They’d follow him back to the morgue, and hang around as long as he wanted. He’d call for some piece of equipment, swear, and go back into the lab. The reporters would wait. He’d drop a few tidbits about ... the time factor, it has to be about the time factor! or something, and they’d die of curiosity. Clint already knew what that would be about.

Clint waited until the van and the reporters left, then went over the house and murder room, carefully. The forensics team was good. They hadn’t missed anything he could find.

He soon went out, and to the police station. Judi had been talking with the neighbors, the whole time. She was a genius about getting information people didn’t know they’d given. She walked back to his place with him. All she’d learned was that there were three or four men and a woman who had been hanging around, the past two days. One of the men had been here, before, maybe six or eight months ago, and had been on what seemed to be friendly terms with Benton. They were just normal people.

They big? Clint asked.

"Well, two are tall. They played soccer and basketball, when they were here, before. I guess they may have been Panamanian. They seemed Latino, at least. At least a couple of them spoke English, and all of them spoke decent Spanish. Not exactly Panamanian Spanish, but very good. They would sometimes speak English, when they weren’t including a native.

Some people say they were all here, some say only one. I think they stayed in town, and the one came here with Benton, before. This time, they all came, a couple of times, and the one by himself, once, that they knew about. They didn’t see any of them, today.

"I imagine they were careful not to be seen, Clint said. I’ll have to find them. Quietly. We don’t want anyone to know I’m even looking for them."

I figured. I let them tell me all kinds of things, without asking about anything.

I know your method. It works once in five times, with me. It always works, with you.

Not always! I’ve told you fifty billion times not to exaggerate!

They laughed, and chatted, Clint got his moto out, and headed for town. He wanted to know which one of them was a good mimic, too.

Sergio set the recording to the time received. Benton’s voice came on, asking for him. Yes. Go ahead.

This is John Benton, on the Saigon road.

Yes?

"I gotta ask you to get those lousy damned jaw-flapper Sanders slugs off my back! They even had the balls to threaten me, because my horse got in their flower garden! Hell, they left the gate open, themselves! It ain’t no fault’a mine if they leave the damned gate open, themselves! Back to home, the heat would arrest them!

"They was sneakin’ around my place, and that Clint guy’s place, at night, his and that Chink woman, right next door to his place. They done threatened to slice me up if I don’t pay for their dam flowers or somethin’ like. You gotta do somethin’ about those shits!"

It went on like that for about a minute. Sergio said he’d send a man over to warn them to stay off his property. Clint had smirked at two spots, making Sergio deeply thoughtful. He suddenly brightened.

Themselves?

Uh-huh. He would always say ‘hisself’ and ‘theirselfs’ when he was ranting about someone.

I should have caught those items. I’ll have to give myself a severe reprimand for shirking my duty!

They talked, a bit, about the case. Clint said he had a little information to check. He’d be in touch as soon as he learned anything. It was hard to picture someone like Benton being involved in anything that would get him killed.

Start from Nothing

Clint would have to start from nothing here, really. What he knew about Benton was next to nothing. He hadn’t cared for the ass, from the first time they met, at El Toro Loco, when he had just moved down there from the states. Benton had inherited the place, when his spinster aunt died, being her only living relative. From the things he knew about her, he could deduce that she had moved to Bocas Town to get away from him and his friends in Mississippi, or Missouri, or somewhere in that area. He was a typical redneck – which Clint had enough of to last a lifetime from a few recent cases. Of all the places a redneck shouldn’t come, Panamá was near the top of the list, and Bocas del Toro, Panamá, was on top, or as close to the top as could be imagined.

That could be behind this. It looked, from the way he was sliced, that there was a lot of emotion behind the swing. Clint wanted to know about the three or four men and a woman.

Bob, at the Golden Grill, knew the woman’s name was Lucia Aumond. She was recently from Louisiana, but was born in Panamá, in the canal zone. Her father was a gringo, from the states. One of the men, she had called Lyle. He was the closest to a gringo, in looks. Lucia had a good figure, but a more-or-less plain face. Lyle was about six two, 250, or a few more pounds. They were all staying at the Olas. They weren’t popular, with the gringos or the natives, though they weren’t necessarily unpopular. Sort of neutral. People didn’t seek them, but they didn’t avoid them, either.

They’re just ... there, if you know what I mean, Billy explained. "You know the type. Sort of background figures. Like, ‘We were sitting on the deck, and he came out, and nodded. I don’t remember when he left’ sort of thing. The kind of people you don’t really notice. I doubt I could describe any of them, very much. Two men who were sort of mousy, and two who were tall – I think. Even that’s like trying to bring it up from the haze.

"You think they were mixed up in the Benton thing?

"I don’t suppose he’ll be greatly missed. He could be an ass, but that was the way he was raised. It’s not entirely his fault. He’s just being his Poppa. Lots like that, in the states, particularly around the Ozarks, and surroundings, and down through central Florida. Very cliquish types. Ten friends, and fifty enemies. That’s why I can’t believe any of those five did it. They’re the type who don’t have real friends or real enemies. That’s all he had, so they just wouldn’t fit."

The others nodded their agreement. Clint said that was sort of his impression. There just wasn’t anyone else around who fit the picture of his killer, either. He was the type you wanted to punch out, but you felt sorry for him, more than hating him.

Yeah, Jim agreed. Half the time, you wanted to smack him in the puss. The rest of the time, you sort of felt sorry for him. This wasn’t the place for his type. A few of us are a little bigoted, and maybe one or two are real bigots (Tom was there. He was the type Clint didn’t like. There was something wrong with anyone who wasn’t of white European ancestry, and from Vermont, or New Hampshire, or wherever he was from. Jim got along with him, pretty well, most of the time, but he could grind on anyone’s nerves, at times. He was the last one who might glom onto the fact he was the object of the statement.), but most are pretty open. Boquete’s got the snobby bigot types, more than here. It’s why I avoid the place.

They chatted about various things. Clint had what he could learn from them, so soon excused himself, and went on to talk to others. He didn’t learn more than that everyone who encountered the five had much the same to say about them. It was fairly obvious killing Benton had to do with something that had happened somewhere else.

Somewhere at least one of the five was at the time it happened.

Clint walked on down past the super, and to the old ferry dock. A few people were fishing, and some kids were swimming on the other side of the building, ducking each other, and making a lot of happy noise. Two of the Indio children, about nine or ten years old, came running up to hug him, and say, Yantoro Clint! Moga me dende? (Greetings! Where are you going?) He played his game, with a quarter in one hand, and a dime in the other. He put his hands behind his back, and passed the coins back and forth, then brought his fists out front for them to slap the hand they wanted. They got the coin in the fist they slapped.

I’m just walking around, looking for the four men and a woman from the states, but born here.

Ho! The ‘blah’ people, Tonio said, cynically. They went to Drago, on the early bus.

Blah people?

Uh-huh. Totally blah. No sense of humor. Walk around looking at everything, but not seeing anything. Not good, and not bad. Paco plays basketball, sometimes. He’s not good, but he’s not bad.

Yeah! Sindro agreed. He’s there because they have to have so many people to make it a game, and not just hoops.

Clint chuckled. That about describes them!

He chatted with the kids, who soon went into the water to join the melee. He strolled on back toward the parque, spoke to several people, then went to the police station. Sergio didn’t have anything. A computer check didn’t bring up anything, other than their birth dates and school records. They all went to university, no one had excelled at anything. They were average in anything they did, it would seem. Nothing but their pictures in the yearbooks. Never a mention of them in the school (or any other) paper.

Really ‘blah’ people, according to Tonio and Sindro, Clint said, with a grin.

That describes them, to a T, Sergio replied. I can’t picture them doing anything like this.

Oh, I can!

What do you mean?

They’ve held in their emotions for their whole lives. It erupted.

Sergio shook his head, but agreed that might be a good way to put it. Colorful, but descriptive! Like when the house was burning and Old Lady Menendez was locked inside, and little mousey Chico ran up and ripped the door off its hinges. Stuck his hand through that little observation glass, and didn’t even get a scratch.  Superhuman strength for five seconds from a skinny teenager who never seemed to react much to anything. His brother died in a house fire, six years before, and he was close and helpless. Now it was happening again, but to a stranger. He didn’t even remember doing it. Several firemen saw, it and couldn’t believe it. They were big men, and couldn’t have yanked that two inch thick nispero door off the hinges. It took three of them to lift the damned thing, after they got the fire out.

Which means that even that mousey little woman could have exploded, the same way.

I tend to think whoever did it had a damned good reason, though I don’t make more than a personal judgment about that kind of thing. That’s for the court to decide.

It depends on what’s behind it. There’s something that brought up a lot of hate, in one flash. I’m not small, but the machete would have to literally be as sharp as a razor for me to make that kind of a cut.

You think it was her, then? It was a man who called.

"I don’t know which one it was. I imagine two or more could have been there, and somebody felt they would need an alibi. They’re acting pretty normal – for them. It could be because