by Coyle, Matt;
No movement at the house for the next hour. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for.
Maybe Chief Siems would show up. What if he did? What was I going to do about it? Nothing. But I didn’t see another option. Until Detective Mitchell got onboard, the best I could do was watch and take notes of any comings and goings or anything unusual.
Another hour passed. Nothing. Leah’s phone rang at 9:04 p.m. I checked the screen, not sure if I should answer if it was one of Leah’s clients. It wasn’t. Leah.
“Rick, I need my phone back.” Urgent.
I didn’t want to leave my stakeout.
“Can I bring it by in the morning?”
“No. I need it now. There’s information in it that I need for a client.”
“Can I access it and email it to you?”
“No. I need the phone.” Shrill.
The damage I’d done to our relationship must have been irreparable.
“I’ll be by in twenty minutes.”
I started the Mazda and drove past Kessler’s home. Quiet. He could have been inside murdering more people, and I wouldn’t be able to tell. The night, the trip back up to Santa Barbara, had been worthless. I’d come up certain about who killed Colleen and a night later I still felt the same way. Only problem was that they weren’t the same people. Were Kessler and Siems the real killers or would it be someone else tomorrow? And someone else the next day?
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
I ARRIVED AT Leah’s and knocked on the front door, her phone in hand. She opened it, her eyes wide in the porchlight.
“Here.” I proffered the phone. “Thanks for letting me use it.”
“Come in.” She didn’t take the phone but opened the door wider and stepped back.
The back of my neck prickled. I stayed on the porch. “Are you okay?”
Chief Siems stepped into the foyer from the other side of the door, pistol zeroed on my chest. My neck hit full spike and so did my heart.
“Inside, Rick,” he said.
The gun wasn’t close enough to me to try to dislodge or redirect. I could bolt off the porch and hope Siems missed me. He probably wouldn’t, but even if he did, Leah would be left alone with Siems and his gun. She’d probably be dead by the time I got the gun from my duffle bag in the trunk of the car.
I went inside.
Siems took a step back. “Shut the door.”
Leah did as told, and that left the two of us three feet apart and five feet from the barrel of Siems’ gun. He kept it trained on my center mass. I still had Leah’s iPhone in my hand. A limited, but potential weapon.
“Set the phone down onto the bench and follow Leah into the living room. Both of you sit on the sofa.”
I set the phone down. I was running out of options. I needed to be ready if Siems made a mistake. Sitting on a sofa would lessen my reaction time. Then I remembered Krista’s Sig Sauer that Leah had put in the side table next to the sofa.
I followed Leah into the living room and could feel Siems behind me. Leah got to the sofa first, but I grabbed her arm to subtly steer her to the far side so I could be next to the side table that held the gun.
“No, Rick. You sit on that side.” Siems’ voice behind me. He’d seen what I’d tried to do. I hoped he didn’t figure out why.
Leah and I sat down on our prescribed sides. I needed to keep Siems’ thoughts on me and not the table.
“Afraid of having me close, Chief? Afraid your reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and I might get to you before you got a shot off?”
Siems sat down in the chair nearest Leah and diagonal to me. He kept his gun, a Glock 9mm, pinned on me. If Siems wanted us dead, he should have started shooting by now. Was he getting up his nerve?
“Shut up, Cahill.” He scowled at me. “If you would have just gotten with the program and let SBPD do its job, no one else would have gotten hurt.”
Siems wasn’t going to kill us now unless I made a mistake. He was waiting for his partner. But as soon as Kessler walked in, we’d be dead.
“You mean after you killed Krista? I showed up after that.” My heart pounded in my ears, but I tried to slow everything down. And speed up my brain. “But she was Kessler’s idea, right? Just like Grimes.”
“Shut up, Cahill.” He raised the gun to target my face for emphasis.
“I know you meant the things you said at Krista’s service, Chief.” Leah’s voice was soothing, consoling. “I could hear the emotion in your voice.”
“Krista was a good cop.” Siems’ voice low, raspy. “She didn’t deserve to die.”
“Kessler killed her, didn’t he, Chief?” I tried to match Leah’s voice. “And he killed Grimes. That’s why you came into his office today, wasn’t it? You were surprised when you heard Grimes was dead. You weren’t in for either of those murders, were you, Chief?”
“Krista couldn’t leave well enough alone.” Siems shook his head. Tears welled in his eyes. “Once she found Mike Richert’s name buried in Colleen’s murder book, the die was cast. Some reserve officer who answered Richert’s call must have put it in there after Ted handled the old guy. Krista told me about her meeting with Richert at her birthday party. She planned to go directly to the chief to get approval to send Colleen’s fingernail clippings to a forensics lab with a new DNA retrieval method after Ted shut her down with a bullshit story on budget cuts. We couldn’t take a chance on the DNA.”
“Krista respected you, Chief,” Leah said, leaning forward and to the right slightly. She was angling for the gun in the side table. I could give her the moment she needed if I drew a shot from Siems.
I took a deep breath and began a count to three. The front door opened on one, and Kessler walked in holding a gun. My Ruger .357. Eyes empty.
Outgunned. If I moved now, we’d both die. If I waited, we’d both die.
“Good job, Lou,” Kessler said and looked at me. “I spotted your tail as soon as I left the station, Rick.”
He walked around Siems’ chair to the right near me.
“We need to talk, Ted.” Siems kept his eyes and his gun aimed at me.
“I know.” Kessler raised my gun and shot Siems twice in the chest. Siems slumped wide-eyed, and his gun fell into his lap.
I sprang off the sofa and caught Kessler in the chest with my shoulder. Another gunshot as I drove him into the floor. Leah screamed. The air blew out of Kessler. I grabbed at the gun. The barrel burned a crease into my hand, but I held on and slammed my forehead into his nose. He released the gun and went limp.
I yanked the gun free and rolled off him to the right and jumped to my feet. His eyes were closed and blood seeped from his broken nose.
“Leah!” My eyes zoomed to her. Sitting on the floor rocking against the sofa. Her right hand clenched around her left bicep, blood dripping from a wound between her fingers. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She was crying. “But it hurts.”
I glanced down at Kessler. His eyes fluttered open. He’d be conscious in seconds. I pointed the gun at his head. One trigger pull and he’d no longer be a threat. Not to Leah. Not to me. Not to anyone else.
And my absolution would be complete.
“Don’t, Rick.” Eyes pleading louder than her voice. “That’s not who you are.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No.” She picked her phone up from the coffee table and pushed three numbers. “My name is Leah Landingham, and I live at 1609 Lasuen Road. I’ve been shot and a man is dead. I need an ambulance.”
Kessler blinked a couple times and stared at me from the floor. My flex cuffs were in the duffle bag in the trunk of the Mazda.
“In the arm. Please hurry.” Leah spoke to the 911 operator. “Rick Cahill and the man who shot me and killed ex–police chief Siems is Captain Kessler of the Santa Barbara Police Department.”
“Get up and sit in the chair,” I said to Kessler. “On your hands.”
He sat on his hands in the chair opposite Siems.
I slammed the g
rip across Kessler’s nose. Blood spurted from a gash on his already broken nose. He thrust his hands to his face.
“Put them down! Sit on your hands or I’ll hit you again.”
“Rick!” Leah. “No. Everything is okay,” she said into the phone. “Just get here fast.” She ended the call and put the phone down. “The police will be here any minute. You don’t have to do anything more.” Fear in her voice
Blood ran down Kessler’s face.
“Tell me what happened the night Colleen died,” I said to Kessler. “I’ll kill you if you lie.”
“Rick!” Leah tried to stand up but slumped back against the couch. She’d go into shock soon.
“I drove Lou to his daughter’s play at UCSB.” His voice thick with blood. “We took her out to dinner afterward then dropped her at her apartment in Isla Vista. Lou saw your wife sitting on a bus bench, and we stopped to offer her a ride. She recognized the chief and got in. He knew Colleen was your wife. It wasn’t the first time we stopped to pick up women. Lou made an excuse to drive by his house before we could drop Colleen off at your apartment. His usual routine. He got your wife to go inside his house. I waited outside. Fifteen minutes later, Lou ran out of the house frantic. Your wife fought him and he strangled her.”
Tears boiled out of my eyes and ran down my face. Colleen, alone, and scared and fighting for her life because I’d betrayed her.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” I stood over Kessler, the gun aimed at his face.
“Rick! Stop!” Leah.
“I didn’t know he’d get violent. He never had before. Not like that.”
“But you helped him destroy evidence instead of arresting him. You were there when he bathed her in bleach to get rid of any DNA, weren’t you? Your career meant more than giving Colleen the justice she deserved?”
Chief Siems suddenly coughed and jerked in the chair. I snapped my head toward him.
Kessler lunged up at me, the crown of his head slamming into my face. Stars. The gun slipped from my hand, and I slumped down to one knee. Darkness pushing in on the sides.
Leah screamed, pulling me back awake.
“She was still alive when I found her, but unconscious.” Kessler’s voice above me. I looked up and saw the barrel of my own gun staring me in the face. Above it, tears ran down Kessler’s cheeks. “I was an accessory. I couldn’t let one mistake ruin the career I’d planned out. Be a fucking errand boy to the chief for all those years for nothing. I was on my way. I didn’t want to kill her. Siems never even knew she was still alive. He thought he’d killed her, and suddenly, I had leverage. I didn’t want to—I had to.”
I leapt at him. Gunshots. Darkness.
Colleen smiled up at me as she handed me her camping breakfast specialty. Scrambled eggs and bacon straight off the Coleman stove. Her impossibly blue eyes bright with love and promise, matching the color of Fallen Leaf Lake behind us. The first morning of our honeymoon. Our first morning as husband and wife.
The happiest day of my life.
EPILOGUE
“I WISH I had better news, Ms. Landingham.”
Sobs and sharp breaths.
Darkness. I opened my eyes. Still darkness.
“Although the bullet missed the optic chiasm, its concussive force caused swelling in the area and, thus, resultant blindness.” The male voice I’d learned to associate with Doctor Morizi. “But since there was no direct damage to the area, blood flow returned fairly quickly. There is a chance that Rick’s vision will return. When, and how completely, are anybody’s guess. But, all in all, he is a very lucky man. A millimeter difference in any direction and the outcome would have been far worse.”
I was lucky. And I was blind.
I closed my eyes and searched my memories of the only vision I had left.
A hand on my head. I knew it was Leah’s by the touch. I’d felt it often over the past few days. It comforted me, even without words. I’d grown dependent upon it.
Lips on my forehead. Then something wet. Tears.
Detective Mitchell’s voice startled me one morning in my hospital room.
“You were right, Cahill. Kessler and Siems were responsible for your wife’s death.” I heard an exhale. “Kessler steered the investigation into Krista’s death where he wanted to. I thought he big-footed his way in because he knew the death of a cop would get a lot of press and he was looking for some help to climb up the next rung on the career ladder. I should have known something was hinky when he jumped in to take responsibility for obtaining Krista’s phone records before I could assign a junior detective to do it. He cut out her last incoming call from the payphone on State Street. And he convinced me that Dustin Peck was an unreliable witness. I should have put the pieces together. If I had, maybe you …”
“Regret’s a horrible thing, Detective. It poisons your soul and stops you from moving forward in life. You did the right thing when your number was called. That’s all anyone can ask.”
“Maybe.” I heard a sigh. “Anyway, we have Kessler dead to rights. The burned-out van we recovered was once owned by a man, now deceased, who lived next to the ranch owned by Thom Murphy, Kessler’s stepfather. The van and the property had long since been abandoned. Apparently, Kessler stole it and got it running … so he could kill Krista.”
“What about Siems?”
“He died on the operating table.”
Detective Mitchell never talked to me again, but his visit had served its purpose. For both of us.
Leah’s shoulder healed nicely, although it did scar. I felt it etched into her arm. I often caressed it after we made love. A reminder of the new life we led in San Diego. An imperfection I couldn’t see. I had a new scar, too. On my left cheek. Cylindrical and deep. I only touched it when I knew I was alone. It made me think of Colleen.
Kessler survived Leah’s gunshot to his abdomen. She saved us both when she grabbed Krista’s gun from the side table and shot Kessler. A millisecond after he shot me.
As much as I wanted Kessler dead, I was glad he survived. He would easily go down for Krista and Siems’ murders, but I wanted justice for Colleen. Not my justice. The law’s. Humanity’s. I stayed on the Santa Barbara DA until she agreed to prosecute.
The trial was set for September of next year. The month Colleen and I were married. I wanted people to hear about Colleen before she was a victim. When she was alive, not a statistic and a sad story. I wanted the world to know she’d been a real person, living a real life. With dreams and goals.
And infinite tomorrows.
