by Coyle, Matt;
“Why is that?”
“Jim would never let Cash be the one to discover his body.”
“Would he let you?”
She hesitated long enough to put a lie to her response. “No.”
“What time of day did your son find him?”
“Around midnight.” She looked down at the table again. Sadness for what her son went through or guilt for not being there first? Both?
“Where were you?”
“At my apartment. Jim and I were separated.”
“Separated, as in getting a divorce? Or, as in figuring it out?”
“Is that relevant?” She leaned forward and gave me the tight lips and the squint.
“It might be.” Her eyes, blue half-moon spotlights, bored into me. I’d looked at worse things in my life. “Losing you might have pushed your husband over the edge. And regarding him not wanting your son to find his body, when you’re spiraling down into that type of depression, you don’t think past just wanting to make the pain stop.”
She relaxed back in her seat. “You sound like you’ve lived through that kind of depression.”
“How long were you and Jim separated?”
“Four months.”
“Four months sounds like you’d gotten it figured out and the next thing to do was sign the papers.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything.” She gave me the angry eyes again. “I met you here with the understanding that you’d help me get my husband’s case reopened and, instead, you’re acting just like the police who ruled Jim’s death a suicide.”
“You asked me to find the truth, Mrs. Colton.” I leaned toward her and pushed the bank’s late notices to the back of my mind. “And if I agree to take you on as a client, that’s what I’m going to do. If you want an investigator who will go through the motions and chase your phantoms for a daily fee, I can give you some phone numbers.”
“I want to find the truth, Mr. Cahill.” Her jaw cinched tight.
“Even if the truth turns out to be that your husband committed suicide?”
“I have to know the truth.”
“Okay, then play along with me a bit longer.” I settled back in the booth and scanned the few notes I’d taken. “So, were you two getting a divorce?”
“We’d talked about it but hadn’t decided yet.” She looked down at the table again.
“But you initiated the separation.” My guess was she had decided on divorce, whether she told him or not.
A long enough silence to again answer the question. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Even in today’s world of dual incomes, it’s unusual for the woman to be the one who moves out of the house when a couple separates.” I scribbled a note on the pad. “How often did you see, or talk with, Jim after you left?”
“We talked on the phone a couple times a week about our son. He was about to start his freshman year at UCLA and money was tight.”
“When was the last time you saw Jim?”
“Two weeks before he died.”
“Had your husband been depressed?”
“My husband went through periods of depression over the years, Mr. Cahill.” Brianne tugged at the collar of her sweater like she’d suddenly gotten hot. “But never anywhere near depressed enough to kill himself.”
Her hesitation earlier when I’d asked her if her husband would have allowed her to find his body told me that she’d wrestled with the possibility that her husband had committed suicide. But no need to push that point until I learned more facts about the death.
“Is there anything else that makes you think your husband didn’t kill himself ?”
“Jim had guns all over the house. If he was going to kill himself, he’d use a gun.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to make a mess.”
“He was a neat freak, but would have used a gun.” She took a long swig of her beer. “Besides, I’d never seen the rope that . . . that he was hanging from before.”
Maybe Brianne Colton wasn’t just an estranged wife putting denial between her and the guilt she’d feel if she accepted her husband’s death as a suicide. She’d thought it out, and separated or not, no one knows a man better than his wife. But I wasn’t ready to jump onboard, yet.
“Did he have any problems at work? Anything other than your marriage that he could have been depressed about?”
“Sure. Work bothered him sometimes. You, of all people, should understand that.”
“Why?”
“Jim was a cop. I’m sure you remember what it’s like.”
“San Diego PD?”
“No. La Jolla.”
CHAPTER THREE
LA JOLLA PD. Police Chief Tony Moretti and all his men. The man squeezing me whenever he could and the man convinced I’d committed murder.
“Mrs. Colton . . .”
“Brianne.”
“Brianne.” She’d be back to “Mrs.” after she heard me out. “I can’t take your case. I’m sorry I made you come down here. I can give you the contact information of a couple investigators who are very good, better than me. I’m confident either can find out the truth about what happened to your husband.”
“I don’t want any other private investigators.” Her eyes went wide. Vulnerable. “I want you.”
“I don’t have a very good relationship with the La Jolla Police Department. Somebody else would be able to get more information from them than me.”
“That’s why I want you, Rick. You’re not afraid to stand up to LJPD. You won’t take what they say at face value.”
She was wrong. I was afraid of LJPD. I might not believe what they’d have to say, I just couldn’t afford to have the conversation.
“You think you know me because you read some old newspaper articles or Internet stories, but you don’t.” I suddenly wished I’d taken Pat up on that beer. And about six others. “The articles, the stories, they’re not a hundred percent true. I’m not the man they make me out to be.”
“Then what kind of man are you?” Her eyes went half-mast again, blue lasers boring into me, searching for some truth that wasn’t there. “I thought you’d understand what I’m going through. Someone murdered your wife eleven years ago and got away with it. Did you just stop caring?”
I felt that pain every day, but it was my pain. Nobody else’s and not for public display.
“I can give you the names of a couple good investigators.” I tilted my head. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, Mrs. Colton.”
“I already hired someone else two months ago.” Her glare could cut glass. “He copied the police report and charged me five thousand dollars. You’re my last hope.”
Everybody has problems. Mine could put me in jail for the rest of my life. Brianne Colton’s was not believing that her estranged husband had committed suicide. My problem was unsolvable. Hers had probably already been solved. She just didn’t like the result.
I wrote the names of two PIs I respected and their phone numbers on my notepad, ripped off the page, and set it down in front of Brianne. “Call either. They’ll be thorough and honest.”
“I know Dan Coyote.” Brianne held the notebook page I’d dropped onto the table in her right hand. “He used to work for LJPD. He’ll back their version. Moira McFarland does mostly workers’ comp cases.”
“You did your homework, but it didn’t tell you everything. Coyote quit LJPD because he didn’t agree with their tactics, especially Moretti’s. He’ll play it straight. Moira McFarland worked with me on the Randall Eddington case last year.” The one where people died. But not because of her. The deaths were on me. “She’s good.”
“Maybe you’re right about both of them, but I can’t afford to make another five-thousand-dollar mistake. I need someone who’s not afraid to take on Chief Moretti and find out what he’s covering up.” She crumpled the paper in her hand. “Someone I can trust. That’s you.”
I didn’t know why Brianne Colton thought she could trust me. Maybe in today’s worl
d of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles where Andy Warhol’s prediction became a biblical utterance, people thought they knew someone they’d never met because of some story on the Internet. The only thing the Internet had ever gotten right about me was my age. But her instincts about Moretti were good.
I’d already caught him in a cover-up once. Back when he was just a detective and before he thought I’d murdered somebody. Well, he probably thought I’d murdered my wife but that was years earlier and way out of his jurisdiction. And he wasn’t alone. I’d already been tried and convicted by the press, which made me question Brianne’s trust in me even more.
“Why so much trust, Brianne?” I scanned her eyes looking for something I could believe. Or not believe.
“A friend of mine speaks very highly of you.”
I couldn’t think of many people who would speak highly of me. Bob Reitzmeyer, my old boss at La Jolla Investigations, thought I’d betrayed him, which was close enough to the truth. Turk Muldoon, my former best friend and partner, now avoided me as much as I did him. I worked hard and did a good job for my clients, but most of the time I gave them nothing but bad news. Hard to give a glowing review for the person who confirmed your suspicion and broke your heart by catching your spouse sheet wrestling with someone else.
No. I drew a blank. “Who’s that?”
“Kim Parker.”
“Kim Parker?” I knew both names, first and last, but they didn’t go together.
“Formerly Kim Connelly.” She raised her eyebrows and searched my eyes. “She got married a few months ago. I thought you knew.”
Kim. The woman whose heart I’d broken and who broke mine. With plenty of help from me. I knew she’d moved in with the real estate king, and the Christmas cards stopped coming last year, but I hadn’t expected this. Denial only works until reality hits you in the head. Right then, I could have used a helmet. It must have shown.
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.” Brianne gently rested her hand on top of mine. A gesture of kindness that startled me. I hadn’t felt pure kindness, kindness without a hook hiding within, in so long, I didn’t trust it.
“How do you know Kim?” I slid my hand out from under Brianne’s and picked up my notepad like I’d missed something important that I’d already written down.
“I sing in a local country band that performs all over San Diego. Kim comes to a lot of our shows. About a year ago, we sort of became friends through osmosis, I guess. I sang at her wedding. She’s a great gal.”
“I know.”
“Anyway, she said I could trust you. That you’d find the truth no matter what and you’d do what was right.”
I wasn’t sure if I knew what was right anymore. I only knew what was wrong. Moretti and his boys in blue were mostly wrong when it came to me. Did they have anyone else on their hit list? Jim Colton? How far would they go to stop an enemy? Murder?
I wasn’t ready to go that far. I couldn’t let my feelings for Moretti taint the evidence or my gut instinct, which was that Jim Colton, like so many cops and ex-cops, killed himself. He just chose a rope over eating his own gun.
“Jim never trusted Chief Moretti,” she said.
Brianne seemed to be reading my mind. If true, I had to give the deceased credit. He must have had good instincts. Except for the suicide part.
“Why do you think Moretti is covering something up?” I leaned forward.
“When I was finally able to pick up Jim’s belongings, his cell phone was missing.”
“Maybe Jim didn’t have it on him because he’d just gotten up the nerve to kill himself and didn’t want to risk getting a text or a phone call that might change his mind.”
“I checked all over the house and couldn’t find it.” She shook her head. “Either the police took it or the person who killed him did.”
“Did you try to find it with the Find Your Phone feature?”
“Jim didn’t have it set up.”
“Maybe the cops lost it?” Brianne may have been convinced her husband was murdered, but I wasn’t. Not yet. Maybe never.
“Or the killer took it.”
“Why would someone kill your husband and stage it as a suicide? Did he have any enemies?”
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly.” No matter how badly I needed the money, I wouldn’t take it from Brianne Colton, or anyone else, under false pretenses. “There has to be more than a lost phone and Jim choosing a rope over a gun to kill himself.”
“I know Jim was thinking of quitting the force.”
“How does that make him a target for murder?”
“Jim wasn’t a quitter. He’d been a Navy SEAL. They don’t quit because something is difficult.” Her eyes softened and she looked at memories over my shoulder. “He would only quit if he was asked to do something dishonorable or his superior was behaving dishonorably and Jim felt he couldn’t stop him.”
Moretti. Dishonorable. I was surprised Jim Colton had lasted a week on the La Jolla Police Department. But the fact that he had been a SEAL curved the ball a bit. SEALs were the best of the best. The toughest of the tough, both mentally and physically. If Colton killed himself, something had to have gone way wrong in his life. A pending divorce might have been enough, but I doubted it. And if it hadn’t been divorce and there wasn’t anything else, Brianne Colton might be right about Jim being murdered.
“What did he do at LJPD?”
“He led the CIT.”
Crime Impact Teams are small units in a police force that combat specific crime areas and problems. I briefly worked CIT in Santa Barbara doing parole and probation sweeps before they booted me off the force.
“I didn’t know LJPD had a CIT.”
“They didn’t until Chief Moretti hired Jim to run it three years ago.”
“Where was he a cop before La Jolla?”
“He wasn’t. He worked for the GRS overseas.”
“GRS?” I asked.
“Global Response Staff. A CIA security force.”
“Jim worked for the CIA?” Now I was starting to believe.
“No. He was an independent contractor. The CIA uses contractors for most of the security work. CIA agents are in supervisor roles.”
“Was he in the Middle East?”
“Yes. His last post was Benghazi.”
“Geez. Tough duty.” I made a note about Colton’s service on my pad. “Was he there during the siege when the ambassador and the others were murdered?”
“Yes. One of the others was Jim’s friend.” She air quoted “others” and I felt like an ass.
“Jim quit after the attack. He thought the State Department had FUBARed the whole thing and acted dishonorably.”
Brianne Colton was definitely a military wife. FUBAR was military slang for Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. My dad had been in the Navy during Vietnam and carried FUBAR into his career as a cop. And his family.
“Could Jim have made any enemies with fellow contractors or the CIA after the shit went down?” I asked.
“He made his feelings known to his supervisors at the CIA that people had died needlessly, but he didn’t take it any further.” She shook her head. “The independent operators were upset with the State Department, but not each other. They’re all former Special Ops guys. They love each other like brothers.”
I didn’t bother to bring up Cain and Abel.
“Did the medical examiner perform an autopsy?”
“Yes. She determined the cause to be death by strangulation due to hanging.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean someone else didn’t put the noose around his neck.”
Maybe. Maybe wishful thinking.
“Anything else you can give me?”
“Well, I don’t know if this means anything or not.” She reached into her buckskin purse and pulled out a manila folder. From the folder, she took a sheet of paper. “This is Jim’s last phone bill with all the calls he made in the month of August.”
&n
bsp; Brianne handed the sheet of paper to me. It was a computer printout with a long list of phone numbers next to dates and times. One phone number three quarters of the way down the bill was circled. The date was August twenty-third, five days before Jim Colton died, either by his own hand or someone else’s. Brianne reached over my arm and tapped the circled number. “That’s the number to the local FBI office.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“THE FBI?” The case just got interesting. “How do you know?”
“I called the number.”
“And?”
“I tried to find out why Jim had called and who he talked to but didn’t learn anything.” She tucked a long strand of silky hair behind her ear. “I couldn’t even get past the operator.”
I looked at the duration of the call, seventeen minutes. Why had he called the FBI? Five days before his death.
Brianne said Jim had been contemplating quitting LJPD. Had he found corruption within the department worthy of a call to the FBI? I knew from personal experience LJPD and Chief Moretti were corrupt. Corrupt enough to murder someone to keep things quiet? That, I didn’t know. It would be dangerous to find out, but danger as a free man beat life behind bars. Maybe Jim Colton had found the leverage I needed to keep Moretti away from my front door.
I scanned the other phone numbers on the bill. Most of them started with the three San Diego county area codes: 619, 858, and 760. Fourteen calls Jim Colton made in the last two weeks of his life were to a phone number with a 775 area code. One on the day he called the FBI and two on the last day of his life.
I tapped the number and looked at Brianne. “Do you know this number?”
“Yes. That’s Oak Rollins’s number. He was Jim’s best friend.”
“Oak?”
“Odell. He and Jim were SEALs together and both worked the detail in Benghazi. Oak was his nickname. If ever you saw him, you’d understand why.”
“Did Jim and Oak talk often?”
“Pretty often. Probably every few weeks.”
I wondered what they talked about during the last two weeks of Jim Colton’s life.
The missing phone. The call to the FBI. Moretti. Just enough to take a look.
