by Matt Coyle
“There’s no danger.” Although in domestics, as Moira sadly lived through, there’s always the chance that someone will break and get violent. But that wouldn’t happen with Turk. “I’m going to help Moira and then find that next thing in this new phase.”
We ended the call with stilted “I miss yous” and “I love yous.” I did miss her. And love her. She’d slept in my hospital room on a cot for a month while I recovered from the gunshot wound. She held my hand while I tried to adjust to a sightless world. She’d uprooted her life to move down to San Diego to be with me. Her parents and brother were in Santa Barbara. Her home, her interior design business, everything important in her life was in Santa Barbara.
Except me.
My former life was in San Diego. I could have started the new one anywhere. Grab Midnight and get on a plane or into the back of a car. Anywhere. Santa Barbara was anywhere. But I’d lost too much there. My wife. My reputation. My eyesight.
San Diego was home, even if that was only Midnight, Moira, and a house with a view I could no longer see. I didn’t ask Leah to leave her life and come with me to San Diego, even though I wanted her to. I didn’t want her to feel obligated to be my nursemaid, but I knew she wouldn’t want me to be alone as I learned how to live my new life. I just needed to be home, which was selfish enough.
Maybe the cracks from that decision were starting to wear on both of us.
Moira called at 7:30 p.m.
“Change of plans for tonight.” Her rapid-fire staccato in my ear.
“Leah called you.”
“Huh?” Moira had never learned to lie as well as I did. The only skill I was better at and used more often than her as a private investigator.
“I know she called you and talked you out of taking me with you.” Time for the baby chick to leave the nest. Leah wouldn’t be happy, but I wouldn’t be either if I stayed home. “Pick me up in forty-five minutes as agreed upon or I’ll take an Uber down to La Jolla and white cane all over your surveillance.”
“I promised Leah I wouldn’t take you with me.” Slower cadence than her normal voice. “I’m still going to send you a check for five hundred. You earned it. I wouldn’t have taken the case without your assurances about Turk.”
It wasn’t fair of Leah to put Moira in the middle of our tug-of-war. Not to Moira and not to me. But it wasn’t fair of Moira to take her side, either. I might have told Leah things I’d never told anyone else, but Moira knew me viscerally. She’d killed a man to save my life. She knew I’d done things that I couldn’t tell Leah about and things I couldn’t even tell her about. She knew who I really was.
“The money’s secondary.” Although I needed it. “If you think I’ll be a distraction or a hinderance, then go without me. The case comes first. But if you think I can be any type of asset, I want to help. I need to help.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight fifteen.” She hung up.
I walked from my recliner to the sliding glass door to the backyard and opened it. Midnight pranced inside. The sound of his paws on the hardwood floor was always quicker coming in than going out. His wagging tail banged against my leg.
I took a step to the right and found the dimmer switch on the wall for the chandelier in the living room. I made a habit of turning on a couple lights in the house at night for Midnight. Just because I walked around in the dark didn’t mean he had to.
I pushed the dimmer and the border of my dark lightened like the edge of a solar eclipse. My mind playing tricks on me again. More CBS. Charles Bonnet Syndrome. I turned and looked up where I thought the chandelier would be. The rim around the darkness brightened.
My breath quickened along with my heart. I closed my eyes. The bright edge was still there. CBS. Dirty mind trick. It told me to imagine what I might see if a light shone. I kept my eyes closed and the rim of fire faded. I opened them and the circle of light returned. I pushed the dimmer and the light faded again. Back on, circle brighter. Dimmer all the way up, even brighter circle. One eye at a time, open and close. Much brighter in each opened eye. I steadied my breath and slid down along the wall to the floor. Midnight licked my face.
More mind games or the return of a fraction of my eyesight? Hope and dread wrestled in my stomach. What if it was true? Was this just the beginning or a slightly higher cement ceiling? A final joke to buoy my spirits only so they could be drowned again? I pushed down on the hope and swallowed the dread. My ophthalmologist had diagnosed my first flashes of light as CBS. I’d give it another week or so before I went back to her. For now, I’d keep the light show to myself. I couldn’t tell Leah and raise her hopes for an uncertain outcome. The same with Moira. A secret.
I hugged Midnight and got back to my feet, ready for whatever the the night might bring.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MOIRA CIRCLED PROSPECT Street for a few minutes before a spot opened up near Eddie V’s Prime Seafood Restaurant. She pulled into one of the angled parking spaces in front of the sidewalk. We each cracked our windows to keep the car from fogging up if we had to sit for a while. The salty funk of the ocean a street below floated into the car.
“How far are we away from Eddie V’s?” I asked, sorting through my memories of Prospect. A street I knew better than any other in La Jolla. Except for the one I grew up on in the tract home section of town.
“About five spaces north of Eddie V’s. Between it and the entrance to the Crab Catcher.” I appreciated Moira’s specificity. She understood my need to picture what I couldn’t see. “I have a good view of Eddie V’s from here.”
The restaurant was set back from the sidewalk and had magnificent ocean views. It opened a couple years before I left Muldoon’s and was its biggest competitor. Higher end and advantaged by a view that Muldoon’s didn’t have, it was winning the battle. The restaurant biz was brutal, especially in La Jolla, but Muldoon’s had managed to keep its doors open for almost fifty years since Turk’s late father first staked his claim on Restaurant Row.
“Did you learn anything else about Shay?” I asked Moira and stared in her direction through my blackout sunglasses.
“Twenty-nine. Lives in Bird Rock. Born in Bellevue, Idaho. Her mother, June, died three years ago at the age of fifty-three. Mother and father never married. The father, Colt Benson, died in 1997 at the age of forty-six.” Moira’s rapid-fire professionalism. “Shay went to college at Portland State. Graduated with a degree in Business Management in 2013. Worked in a Hilton hotel in Portland until she moved to San Diego eighteen months ago. Has held four restaurant and hotel jobs in San Diego since then. Hostess, waitress, front desk.”
“Twenty-nine. Fourteen years younger than Turk.” Just an observation. He’d dated younger women back when I knew him, but never that much separation.
“Very pretty from the photo Turk gave me and the ones I’ve seen on her limited social media footprint. Blond hair, blue eyes. Kind of a girl next door who blossomed into a beautiful woman. There’s a sweetness to her …”
Moira’s voice drifted off as if in thought. Maybe thinking about Rachel Donnelly, murdered by her physician husband after Moira reported to him that she was having an affair.
“Limited social media? No leads there?” I wanted to bring her back to the present.
“No. All of her posts are from her years in Portland.”
“You seem to have everything covered. What’s my role in this partnership?”
I’d avoided the elephant in the car up until now. Even as I realized how much I needed this gig with Moira to regain a sense of usefulness in my life, I needed to believe that she really thought I could be of use even more.
“What do you mean?” A bad liar. She knew what I meant.
“How can I help with the case?”
“As I said before, you already have helped with your read on Turk. Going forward, I’ll run things by you for your opinion. And if we have to give him bad news, I want you to be there with me.” A wavering exhale. “I need to know how he’ll react.”
; Moira did need me. The fiasco with Doctor Donnelly had really shaken her. She didn’t want to make the decision alone about how to handle Shay Sommers if we had to tell Turk she was cheating on him. A familiar roil that I hadn’t felt since Santa Barbara filled my gut. What if I misread Turk and gave Moira bad advice? Shay Sommers was my responsibility now, too. Her life could be affected by a decision I made. The kind of decisions I thought I’d never have to make again. Decisions I didn’t want to make anymore, but knew I’d have to one more time. Moira needed me. And even with the turmoil in my gut, I needed to be needed.
“You got it, Boss.”
I angled my head away from Moira and toward the windshield. I’d made a habit of facing people that I talked to since I lost my eyesight and started wearing sunglasses at night. A faint shimmer of light haloed out the corner of my right eye, possibly above the thick temple of my sunglasses frame. I turned my head toward the light. It disappeared through the blackout lenses.
“Are we parked near a streetlight?” I asked.
“Yes, there’s one to your right about fifteen feet away.” Business staccato. A pause, then a slight lilt of optimism. “Why?”
“Just trying to get my bearings and adjust my memories of the street accordingly.” I couldn’t tell her about my light revelation. If it even really was that. Not yet. I wasn’t ready yet to say it out loud and make it real. Not until I was sure that the glimmer of light I could now see was some sort of path to regaining at least some eyesight. “Any action down at Eddie’s?”
I wanted to be sure Moira was looking in the other direction. I turned toward the passenger window and took off my sunglasses. There it was again. A circle of light around the dark ball was just like I saw when I looked at the chandelier at my house. The streetlight. I did the individual eye tests. Both registered the dim halo. A flicker of hope accelerated my heartbeat. I rubbed my eyes and put the sunglasses back on in case Moira had looked over at me. Even blind eyes get itchy.
“You know, you don’t have to wear the sunglasses on my account.” A gentle tone of voice she rarely used with me. “The scar is not as bad as you think it is. You’re the same Rick to me. Still a major pain in the ass. But’s that’s okay, I’m used to it.”
Moira had definitely softened to me since Santa Barbara. But I didn’t hear the faint pity I thought I’d heard in her voice this morning. This was affection. Comfort from a friend. The change still had me a little off balance.
“Thanks, but you have to admit they do make me look like the Terminator. I even have the same damaged face.” I turned toward her and did my best Arnold robot impression. “I’ll be back.”
“Yep. Still the same asshole.”
We sat silently for a while and the minutes ticked by.
“Bingo.” Moira broke the silence.
“She headed this way or toward Muldoon’s?”
“Muldoon’s.” The sound of her door clicking open. “I’m pursuing on foot. If she follows her routine, I’ll tail her to Muldoon’s and then to La Valencia. Maybe we can rap this up tonight.”
“Text me every fifteen minutes with updates.”
“Half hour.”
“I’ll be sitting in the car staring at nothing while you’re outside in the world tailing a target.” A little of the desperation I felt seeped into my voice. “Play along so I can, too.”
“Roger. Fifteen minutes.” The swish of Moira getting out of the car, then the thunk of the closed door.
An adrenal rush spiked my body, then bled out and left me hollow. The chase. And I couldn’t participate. A sounding board left behind waiting for updates and the opportunity to give an opinion.
I wanted back in the game.
The game that had broken me and nearly taken my life now beckoned me to reenter. To rejoin the quest for the truth that was in my blood. It hadn’t ended with the truth I found in Santa Barbara.
I just had to find a new way.
A smell folded in under the ocean brine through the window. Familiar. My heart double-tapped. Dove for Men deodorant coupled with a distinct human musk. The same scent I’d smelled today on this very street. The man who Moira didn’t notice, but I knew had been there. I faced the window. The scent hovered. Then a soft shuffle of footsteps toward the sidewalk.
The Invisible Man.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT HAD TO be the same man. And he’d been standing outside my car window. Staring at me? Why? A coincidence that I’d come across him twice in the same day? But I hadn’t. He’d come across me. From behind each time. If I wasn’t blind, would I have even noticed him? No. I wouldn’t have smelled him, because I wouldn’t have fine-tuned my olfactory senses to use them as sight and his footsteps would have been lost in background noise.
If I’d seen him tonight, I wouldn’t have known that he’d been right behind me on the sidewalk today. How many people pass by us every day of our life that we never notice? Maybe it wasn’t even the same man. Could I really be sure? Maybe alone in the dark, I was just being paranoid.
Except he’d stood next to my open window and looked at me. I knew it. He’d come from across the street, paused, and stared at me through the window before he got onto the sidewalk. It was him. Why was he here now? Following me?
If he was following me, why take a chance by getting so close? Because he knew I was blind. I wasn’t a threat to him. He was taunting me without me even knowing. Playing a sick game with himself. With me. But he’d left. Why?
Moira.
He was following Moira.
I pulled out my phone and told it to call Moira. Straight to voicemail. I left a message.
“Call me. I think someone’s following you.”
I whipped open the car door. It banged against the car next to me. I got out, slammed the door shut, pulled my collapsible support cane from the inside pocket of my bomber jacket, and snapped it into a straight line.
I tapped the cane back and forth in front of me. It bumped off the front tires of Moira’s car and the one next to it. Two steps forward and the tip found the curb. I got on the sidewalk and asked my phone for directions to Muldoon’s Steak House so I’d be alerted when I arrived. Siri voiced directions and I started three-legging toward the restaurant as fast as I could. I audibly sniffed the air for the man’s scent like a bloodhound on the chase. Gone. Only the piquant scent of the ocean and wisps of perfume and cologne as people shuffled out of my way.
“Whoa.” Male voice. Twenties.
“Watch out for the blind dude. He’s in a hurry.” Another. Same age.
I felt the ground with my feet and the vibrations through the cane into my hand. Smooth sidewalk. Distant voices on my right. Must have been the inlet of bricks and grass where Eddie V’s was set back from the sidewalk. Muldoon’s had to be only thirty or forty more yards down the street. But what would I do when I got there? Barge into the restaurant and shout Moira’s name, blowing her cover?
I’d figure it out when I got there.
I moved up closer to the outside edge of the sidewalk away from the street and made wider arcs with the cane. The surface changed from hard cement to something more giving on the far-right edge of each arc. The lawn next to the Morten Gallery. A couple more strides, the lawn ended and the cane tip banged off something hard on the right arc that gave off a dull echo. The door to the odd little garage structure of the health supplement business next to the gallery. A few more strides and Siri told me Muldoon’s was to my right.
The staircase down to the courtyard that led to Muldoon’s was set back from the sidewalk. I turned right and the cane found open space. A couple more steps and I found the handrail to the staircase. Thirteen. The number that popped into my mind after taking them by rote for so many years. I hadn’t counted the stairs this morning when Moira led me down them, but my mind said thirteen steps
I transferred my cane to my left hand and held onto the rail as I hurried down the stairs, counting off in my head with each step. A man and woman talking below me to the left.
Strangers. I set my right foot down on the fourteenth count, let go of the rail, and followed with my left foot. Air. My left foot finally found ground, jarring my body off balance. I stumbled left, caught my leg on something, and heard a woman’s scream as I hit the ground, hands first, then left side of my head, then my shoulder. My cane clattered away on the adobe bricks.
Fourteen steps.
“Kira, are you alright?” Male voice. Thirties. Ruffle of clothing like someone being helped off the ground.
I crawled forward searching for my cane. A half-moon of light at the bottom of my left eye.
“Yeah, but what’s wrong with that guy?” Female. Twenties. Angry.
“Hey, asshole, are you even going to apologize?” Same male. A couple steps closer, standing over me.
I abandoned my search for the cane, stood up, and faced the direction of the voice. The half-moon of light was broken by a dark vertical rectangle.
“Whoa.” The man, surprised.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said in the direction I’d heard the woman’s voice.
I suddenly realized the light was visible because my sunglasses had been knocked askew on my face in the fall. I could feel the left ear-piece slightly higher against my head raising the left lens higher. Exposing the hole in my face.
I righted the frames.
“That’s okay.” The woman. Apologetic. “I didn’t know you … Here, let me get your cane.”
“Yeah.” The man.
Two sets of footsteps around, then behind me. I turned to face the pair.
“Here.” The woman. “Your cane.”
I held out my right hand. The handle of the cane pressed against my palm and I circled my fingers around it.
“Thank you. Are you okay?” I asked embarrassed. Exposed. Vulnerable.
“Yes, I’m fine. Are you okay?”
I’d scraped my hand, my ear felt on fire, and my shoulder was sore. But my pride hurt more. And the confidence that I could somehow find a new path back to my old life cracked hollow.
