Lost Tomorrows

by Coyle, Matt;

  “Talk.”

  “Krista was a sergeant on the Major Investigation Unit. As such, she oversaw cold cases. She personally reopened Colleen’s murder investigation.” Grimes eased back into the chair, comfortable dispensing information. He liked to be in control. “Naturally, she wanted to talk to the original detectives who investigated the murder. Craig Byers died of cancer six years ago. That left me. Of course, I was the lead anyway.”

  “Why now?”

  “Why now what?”

  “Why did she decide to open the case now and why was she personally investigating it?” Being my alibi might put her in an awkward position.

  “She’d just been promoted to MIU a few months ago.” Grimes eyed my beer and ran his thumb and forefinger over his gray mustache. “The chief is all about community handholding and has allocated a lot of manpower to photo-op policing and MIU was stretched thin. Krista didn’t want the cold cases to sit any longer than they had to. She picked Ms. Cahill’s first. Maybe she put a team on it, but when she talked to me, she was running solo.”

  “Do you think there’s some connection between Krista looking at Colleen’s murder and someone running her down in the street?”

  “I haven’t seen anything that connects the two.”

  “Did she learn anything new about Colleen’s murder?”

  “Maybe. She picked my brain and didn’t give me back much. She did eliminate one suspect, though.” Grimes thrusted his chin at me. “You.”

  “You should have figured that out fourteen years ago.”

  Grimes shot out of the chair, but stopped short of attacking me. He aimed a loaded finger at me. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Cahill. You had an alibi. You could have cleared yourself the first night. We would have shifted the focus of the whole investigation and might have found Colleen’s murderer!”

  He was right. I’d kept Krista’s and my dirty little secret a secret when Grimes had me in the small square room under the white lights. I took it with me to jail. Not just to play hero to protect Krista, but to protect my own reputation. With my family. Colleen’s. And the public.

  And with my family in blue. Cheating with another cop’s wife happened, but it was a betrayal and hard to come back from. I’d put my cop family ahead of my own, but betrayed them both.

  Krista wanted to come forward even though it would ruin her marriage and probably her career. I told her to wait and toughed out a week in jail. I couldn’t have lasted much longer. I would have told the truth before there was ever a trial. All of it. Turned out I didn’t have to.

  But the joke was on me. I’d lied to protect my reputation, gotten released from jail but never exonerated and would be forever known as the ex-cop who got away with murdering his wife. Except now the one person who’d wanted to see me in the gas chamber as much as Colleen’s father knew the truth.

  And he had a right to be upset about it.

  “You’re right.” The guilt, the sadness, the horror of that night came back at me. I wanted to run. Away from Grimes. Santa Barbara. My past. But I’d already been running for fourteen years and hadn’t gotten very far. The past never goes away.

  “Your mea culpa doesn’t do either of us any good now, Cahill.” Grimes sat back down.

  “Then why are you here? Just to watch me twist? Fine. Let me know when you’ve seen enough so I can get on with my life.”

  “Believe me, asshole, I’d rather work with anyone but you. I haven’t forgotten about the stunt you pulled in San Diego.” Grimes gave me his cop glare. His hair had grayed since his days on the force, but his glare could still run a chill down a suspect’s back. “However, I was hired to do a job and I’m going to do it. You were forced on me and I’m going to work through that. It’s called being a professional. Pay attention, you might learn something.”

  “Maybe.” I emptied the rest of beer number three down my throat. “Does SBPD have a lead on the car or driver?”

  “Vehicle was described as an older white panel van.” Grimes lost his attitude while in detective mode. “Like a painter’s van. SBPD sent paint chips from Krista’s clothing to the forensic lab. They should get results back soon.”

  “So it could belong to a painter, a maintenance man, or your run-of-the-mill serial killer. I don’t imagine the cops tracked down every white van owner in Santa Barbara County.”

  “They’re about halfway through them.” The cop slow burn.

  “What about body work being done on any of these vans after April 1st?”

  “Brilliant, Cahill. The veteran detectives who’ve spent twenty-plus years on the force, not three whole years like you, didn’t think of that.”

  “Humor me, Grimes. If we’re going to work together, for however briefly, I need to know as much about the case as you do. Did you get a copy of the police report?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you make me a copy?” I asked.

  He let go a breath. “I’ll get you one tomorrow, but keep it to yourself. I’m not even supposed to have one.”

  “What’s your read on Detectives Mitchell and Flora?” I grabbed two beers from the mini fridge and set one down in front of Grimes.

  “They work for MIU.” Grimes took a swig of the beer. “They were under Krista’s supervision. They’re good cops and are working the case methodically, as they should. They’ll do everything they can to catch this sonofabitch.”

  “Then why didn’t you talk Leah into believing in the detectives and not take the case as a PI?”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Cahill.” Grimes gave me the look, but I stayed all in on a game of blink. He finally spoke again. “Krista deserves justice. It can’t hurt to have some extra eyes on the case. I’m doing this pro bono, in case you thought I was doing it just for the money.”

  I took a check from Leah because I needed the money. A day’s retainer. Maybe that made Grimes a better man than me. Maybe a lot of things did. But I was going to give Leah her full day’s worth and not take everything the cops deigned to share with Grimes as the unvarnished truth.

  “Actually, the thought never occurred to me. I know you’ll bloodhound the case because that’s the kind of detective you are.”

  “Anything else?”

  “How does SBPD feel about you peeking over their shoulder?”

  “They’re okay with it as long as I share everything I find with them.” He folded his arms across his chest. “And that’s what I intend to do.”

  I doubted the police department would give me the same welcome they gave Grimes.

  “Does the sharing go both ways?” No way it could, but I wanted to see if Grimes would start our brief partnership with a lie.

  “Within reason, Cahill. They have badges, we don’t. They’ll tell me what they can, but there are certain lines Mitchell and Flora won’t cross even for a retired cop.”

  “What do you know about the witness?”

  “His name’s Dustin Peck. Thirty-four. Bar manager at Joe’s Café. He’s been out of town with his family the last couple days and is supposed to be back at work tomorrow. I plan to talk to him then.”

  “What do you think Krista was doing down on State Street at two a. m. on a Monday morning?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. Closing down a bar, maybe.”

  “Leah said she quit drinking six years ago.”

  “People fall off the wagon.”

  “Or maybe she was meeting someone. Leah said Krista’s phone was broken by the impact of the van. Did SBPD get phone records from her cellphone carrier? If she was meeting someone, maybe there’s a record of a call or text on her phone records.”

  “I’m sure they did, but don’t blow this up into a grand conspiracy, Cahill. This case will be solved by the information that comes back from the lab about the paint transfer onto Krista’s coat. We’re here to back up the police.”

  “I thought we were here to investigate and see if the cops missed something.”

  “That’s what I just said.”
<
br />   I took a swig of beer. Grimes hit his beer, too. Détente. Putting aside our differences for the greater good. For now.

  “I guess we’re meeting at Joe’s tomorrow to talk to Dustin Peck.”

  “Let’s meet at the corner of State and Gutierrez at 10:30 a.m.”

  “Crime scene?”

  “Yep.” Grimes stood up and set his beer down on the small hotel bureau. “It won’t hurt to have another set of eyes look at it before we talk to Peck.”

  He walked over to the door and exited the hotel room. No goodbye. No sticking around to finish the beer. A show of disrespect? Asking me to look at the crime scene was the opposite.

  Half empty, half full. Best I could hope for.

  I took another gulp of beer. Went down easy. The six-pack would be empty by the time I crawled into the hotel bed. Everything about Santa Barbara made me want to drink. Memories of being a cop and hitting a bar after end of watch. Drinking more when I got home and complained about mankind to Colleen. Going home to an empty new apartment after she was dead. Santa Barbara would always be about the past to me. And what might have been.

  I was going back to San Diego tomorrow night. Whether Grimes and I tracked down Dustin Peck or not, I was going home.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE SUN WAS still hiding behind the morning haze when I hiked four blocks up State Street to meet Grimes. I arrived fifteen minutes early, but he was already there. He stood in front of an empty retail building on the corner. No handshake or even a hello offered by either of us when I stopped next to him. He handed me a manila envelope with the police report in it. I fingered through until I found the accident reenactment diagram. I’d read the rest later.

  The diagram had the POI—point of impact—about twenty feet up from where I stood in the middle of the street. Krista had been knocked out of a shoe, and her POR—point of rest—was thirty-seven feet behind me, next to the curb. Estimated speed of the vehicle at impact was thirty-five miles an hour.

  Grimes walked up the sidewalk parallel to the POI. I followed. He pointed to the middle of the street. Morning tourists passed by us on either side, unaware they were right in the middle of a crime scene where a good cop had died.

  “Was Krista wearing dark clothing?” I asked.

  “It’s in the report.” A scowl.

  “Humor me.”

  “Jeans and a leather jacket.”

  “So it’s possible the driver didn’t see her at night.”

  “Yep.” Grimes pointed to the street. “One of her tennis shoes was recovered in the middle of the street. Son of a bitch knocked her right out of it.”

  I looked into the street. No bloodstain on the asphalt that I could see. Thank God. But something was missing that should have been there.

  “No skid marks?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I walked back down to the area next to the curb where Krista’s body had come to rest. No skid marks anywhere along the path, which meant the driver didn’t even slam on the brakes after impact when he realized he’d struck something.

  “Whoever was driving the van never hit their breaks. Is that in the report?”

  “Yes.” He tilted his head like he was talking to a child. “The report is very thorough. Jake Mitchell is a good detective. Nobody’s slacking off. Every cop on the force is working overtime. Some on their own dime. Believe me, SBPD wants to catch Krista’s killer more than you do. You don’t get to come up here and play hero. Not in Santa Barbara.”

  “Let’s just try to get through the day, Grimes. I’m doing what I was hired to do. Did they get anything off security cameras?”

  “No. The nearest business that has a camera is four blocks away.”

  “And none of them caught a white van going south on State Street at two fifteen that morning?”

  “Nope.”

  “So, the witness was a block and two-thirds or three-quarters from here?” I looked east down State Street toward Joe’s Café where the witness had been when he saw the accident.

  “What’s your point?”

  “That means the van was either parked on State Street at the most a block and three-quarters away from the impact zone or it turned off a side street in the same area and accelerated up to thirty-five miles an hour before it hit Krista without braking. Does that sound like an accidental hit and run to you or does that seem like someone acting with malice?”

  “That sounds like someone who was blatto drunk and ran after they realized what they’d done.”

  “All the while never braking?”

  “We don’t know whether or not they braked. Only that they didn’t slam on their brakes and leave skid marks. A lot of DUI accidents occur without the drivers using their brakes. They hear the thump before they see anything.”

  “Yeah, but after the thump they usually slam on their brakes.”

  “Not always.” Dismissive.

  “How far back did the detectives watch the security cameras’ footage?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did they only check the video around the time of the accident or did they go all the way back to say, six p.m.? The white van had to have come from somewhere.” I pointed up to Haley Street, the next street intersecting State. “Did they check cameras on Haley or any of the other cross streets around here?”

  “They’ll get the make and maybe model of the van from the paint chips they found on the vic … that they found on Krista. As soon as they get the analysis back from forensics, they’ll track down the vehicle and probably find the suspect.” Grimes started walking east on State toward Joe’s Café. “It’s in the damn report. Read it.”

  “You just gave it to me.” I followed Grimes, a step behind. “SBPD’s a small force. Just want to know if there’s some place we can fill in the gaps.”

  “There aren’t any gaps.” He shot me a look over his shoulder. “We’re not partners. I’m lead on this investigation. Remember that when we talk to the witness.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WE ARRIVED AT Joe’s at ten forty-five a.m. The steakhouse was a Santa Barbara landmark. Joe’s maintained the red and white checkered tablecloths from its 1928 inception. The dining room was packed below vintage black and white photos of Santa Barbara on the walls.

  We grabbed the last two empty barstools at a magnificent wooden bar backed by four dark oak arches that opened to another dining area. A petite bartender with fast-twitch movements dropped a couple menus down in front of us. Her name tag read Bree.

  “Start you off with something to drink?” She smiled, but all my years in the restaurant biz told me her mind was whirring on the tasks she had to perform at the packed bar.

  “Orange juice. Thanks.” The six beers from last night had sucked me dry of moisture. I hadn’t drunk that much in a long time. I hadn’t been to Santa Barbara in a long time.

  “Coffee, please.” Grimes smiled at the bartender. I’d never seen him smile before. Even back when I sort of knew him on the force. Before he arrested me. The smile was pleasant. Disarming. A helluva weapon. “Can you send the other bartender down here for a second?”

  “Sure.” Bree smiled back at Grimes. A helluva weapon.

  I watched Bree go down to the other end of the bar where a tall, rail-thin man poured Mimosas for two customers. Never too early to start in Santa Barbara. The man looked at us. Beach tan. Tall. Dark hair and eyes. Scruffy goatee. Must have been Dustin Peck. I didn’t ask Grimes. The less talk between us the better.

  The bartender finished with his customers, then grabbed the OJ and coffee Bree had poured for him and walked down to us. Eyes wide.

  “Gentlemen.” He set the beverages down in front of us.

  “Dustin?” Grimes put on the smile and reached out a hand to Peck.

  “Yes?” Peck shook his hand.

  “My name is Jim Grimes and this is Rick Cahill.”

  I smiled. Not as high wattage as Grimes, but the best I could do. Peck stayed wid
e-eyed.

  “I’m kind of busy with the brunch rush. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re friends of the family of the woman who died in the car accident you saw Monday morning. The family asked us to follow up on some things so we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Grimes was smart. Didn’t introduce us as private investigators, which can make people as nervous as if we were cops. Using “saw” instead of “witness” when referring to the accident also made things sound unofficial. Less pressure. We weren’t here to grill him about a police investigation, we just wanted to know about the accident.

  “I already talked to the police twice.” His head swiveled down the bar, then back to us. “I have customers to take care of.”

  “That’s okay.” Grimes smiled. Patient. Understanding. A convincing façade. “We wouldn’t want to make things difficult for you at work. We’ll wait until after your shift, so we don’t have to come back here again and ask you questions while you’re working.”

  The real Grimes lurked behind the pleasant smile and Dustin Peck just caught a glimpse of him. Talk to us today or we’ll make your life difficult.

  “I’ve got something to do after work.” Peck’s eyelids dropped to half-mast. He didn’t like the real Grimes. I knew how he felt.

  “It will only take a couple minutes. The family would really appreciate it. What time do you get off?”

  “Twelve thirty. I guess I can give you a couple minutes.” Peck walked back to his station at the other end of the bar.

  “Let’s eat.” Grimes gave me a satisfied grin. I withheld judgment. What I’d just witnessed could have been a mirror shot of me manipulating people over the years in my tunnel vision pursuit of the truth. A good enough reason to keep avoiding mirrors.

  I ordered huevos rancheros from Bree. Grimes had an All-American breakfast. I’m sure he thought it fit. We didn’t talk while we waited for the food. No talk was small enough between the two of us. I looked over the police report while I ate. Big mistake. Photos of Krista were shuffled under the first few pages. I flipped them over after I accidently saw the first one and breakfast caught in my throat.