Dark Fissures

by Coyle, Matt;

  If Moretti was running a racket, where did the money go? To his department, or was he taking a cut? I didn’t have to imagine him using his position to intimidate people to keep them from reclaiming their assets. I’d seen his intimidation up close.

  Ruiz had pointed a crooked finger at Moretti for questionable asset seizures. Maybe Moretti decided not to investigate Jim Colton’s death because he thought the investigation might splash back on him and reveal his shakedown racket. Maybe Colton had evidence that Moretti had twisted the law beyond recognition. Moretti wore the badge prouder than most and got off on the power it gave him. He wouldn’t give it up easily. Maybe his reasons for not investigating Colton’s death went to a darker place than I’d first imagined. I knew Moretti to be a bully, a liar, and an asshole. Murderer? Maybe.

  But how did I investigate the Chief of Police when he had the power of the badge and all I had was a past that could put me in jail? And was it worth the risk? I was already in Moretti’s crosshairs for Randall Eddington’s disappearance. The disappearance for which he’d just told the La Jolla Lantern he had new evidence. If my investigation got too close to Moretti, he might arrest me for Randall’s murder and let the facts catch up when they could.

  All that potential danger to investigate a man’s death that very well may have just been a suicide.

  I’d taken Brianne Colton’s money and promised her that I would put all of me into the investigation of her husband’s death. But it hadn’t been a suicide pact. If all of me meant a life behind bars, I’d consider our contract null and void and mail her a refund.

  My car kept driving and I kept stopping at red lights, signaling turns, and giving pedestrians the right of way. By rote and reflex, without any thought or recognition, my mind drifted to my late father as it often did when I contemplated ethics and morality.

  Or lack thereof.

  Twenty-six years ago my father had been kicked off the force at LJPD. All that time and I still didn’t know exactly what he’d done. I’d asked him once and hadn’t gotten an answer. There hadn’t been anything in the newspapers. I didn’t read them as a ten-year-old kid, but I’d checked through online search engines later in life. To investigate through LJPD would have been too humiliating and probably wouldn’t have gotten me any more information than I already had. The rumor was that he’d been a bag man for the mob. No charges were ever filed. He just quietly walked away from his job and his pension.

  And later, his family.

  I’d defended his name, my family name, with my fists on school playgrounds, but I had known deep in my heart that he’d done something wrong. Guilt that a bottle couldn’t wash away hung off his body like an albatross. Pulling him under and his family with him. Before all that there’d been a code of honor that my father had lived by: A truly guilty man should never go free. Whatever my father’s guilt had been, he hadn’t gone free. It had chased him into shame and an early grave.

  I didn’t know my father’s crime, but I knew his guilt. It coursed through my veins. And I had earned it on my own. Maybe the guilt of my sins would lead me to my father’s end. But would I add to it by letting a murderer walk free?

  I finally saw the world outside my windshield and my destination. The cross atop Mount Soledad. The war memorial where my father had taken me as a kid and where I’d often gone on my own as an adult. I’d always felt at peace up there, eight hundred feet above the ocean and the town of La Jolla. The best view in all of San Diego County. Above it all. La Jolla, my job, my past.

  I parked below the forty-foot-tall cross and pulled out my phone. I wasn’t sure the number I needed to call was even in my contacts. It was. I called it.

  “Scott Buehler.” A trace of cynicism hung off his voice in just saying his own name. But that was fine with me. I needed a cynic right now. Working for a newspaper in the age of the Internet could make you one. Especially a free newspaper. Free or paid subscription, Buehler was the best reporter in San Diego. Or maybe I just felt that way because he’d been fair to me in print regarding my encounters with the police over the years.

  I heard a “Hmm” through the phone after I stated my name. Considering the brick wall I’d built for the press over the years, including Buehler, I took his reaction as positive.

  “You still working the crime beat?”

  “I’m the lone investigative reporter so I cover all the beats that need investigating.” Another hmm. “I know you didn’t call me on a Sunday to see how my career is going. What can I do for you, Rick?”

  “You know of any big drug busts or any busts by LJPD in the last six months or so involving asset forfeitures?”

  “Nothing comes to mind. I don’t focus on La Jolla unless events demand it, but if something big had happened I would have heard about it and investigated.” A tiny thread of interest dangled from his answer.

  “Are busts where nobody is formally charged but assets are seized interesting enough to be investigated by the only investigative reporter at The Reader?”

  Buehler stayed silent for a few seconds. A long few seconds.

  “What’s the game, Rick?” The cynicism returned to his voice.

  “No game. Just came across some information that I thought needed looking into.”

  “Why don’t you look into it yourself ? Last time I checked, you still had a private investigator’s license issued by the state of California.”

  “First of all, I only investigate when I get paid. Secondly, as you know better than anyone, I don’t have too many fans down at the Brick House. No one there would be willing to answer my questions.” Plus, they’d ask some of their own.

  “Exactly.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m a newspaper reporter, Rick. Even in the age of Twitter, Snapchat, and Meerkat where every pajamaed Millennial with a cell phone living in his parents’ basement thinks he’s an investigative journalist, I still need sources. If I start poking around LJPD just to feed your vendetta, I’m going to lose every source I have there.”

  Not the response I’d expected.

  “Do or don’t do whatever you like, Buehler.” Time to change tactics. “But you said something about being a newspaper reporter and an investigative journalist. I guess those only come into play when there’s no risk involved. Maybe I’ll just have to find some stoner in his parents’ basement who gives a shit.”

  Buehler didn’t say anything, but he didn’t hang up either. Probably thinking. Good. Better than a hang-up. Finally, “You better not burn me, Rick.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Where did you get your information?”

  “I’m strictly an unnamed source, right?” I didn’t want Moretti to find out that I was behind the investigation.

  “Sure.”

  I looked out my windshield at the town of La Jolla below. The marine layer had burned off leaving cotton candy clouds lolling in the sky. The ocean beyond, cobalt blue in the fall sunshine. Another postcard day in paradise. I couldn’t see the Brick House from my vantage point, but I knew it was there. The quaint white brick building that had destroyed my father. And had tried to destroy me. Dry rot in the core, eating its way into the soul of paradise.

  “Sergeant Ruiz. Head of the Criminal Impact Team.” I’d told Ruiz he wouldn’t go into my report, but I hadn’t said anything about talking to a reporter. Of course, that was worse. “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, Buehler, but this is going to take finesse. Don’t run at it head-on, and don’t talk to Chief Moretti until you absolutely have to.”

  “Thanks for not telling me how to do my job.”

  “Sorry, I just don’t want to put Ruiz in Moretti’s doghouse. I can tell he wants the truth to get out, but he won’t risk his job to do it.” That was my rationalization to give up Ruiz. That down deep he wanted to right a wrong and find out the truth about the death of his friend. Still, I didn’t feel good about it.

  “I’ll do the job the way I see fit, Rick.” I heard fingers tapping a keyboard over th
e phone. “I thought so.”

  “What?”

  “You said Ruiz heads up LJPD CIT, right?” Now the hum in his voice was from excitement.

  “Yeah.” I knew where he was going and I didn’t know whether to be happy or worried.

  Buehler was an investigative reporter. He investigated. That’s why I called him. But I couldn’t just point him at what I wanted investigated and hope he’d stop there.

  “The former head of CIT, Sergeant Jim Colton, committed suicide three months ago. Do these supposed asset forfeiture arrests have something to do with that?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t, but I’d just lost sole control of my investigation. Maybe Buehler would uncover the truth that I hadn’t yet been able to. And maybe he’d ask Moretti questions that could lead back to me.

  I wanted to know what really happened to Jim Colton. But I didn’t want the bulls-eye that Moretti had put on my back to get any bigger.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE LIGHTS OF Pacific Beach and Mission Bay below strobed through the shifting gossamer fog. The ocean beyond, invisible, loomed in the darkness. I was into my third beer sitting on the patio when Midnight alerted and I heard a knock on the front door through the open sliding glass door into the living room. A hope that it was Brianne bubbled up inside me. I hadn’t talked to her all day. Her visit last night and Bates’s crack about her today were layers of the same onion. I wanted to know which one was closer to the core. Then I reminded myself that she was a client and nothing else. The rest shouldn’t matter.

  Even if it did.

  I exited the evening chill into the living room and went to the front door. Midnight beside me, hackles at full battle height. I looked through the peephole and understood why.

  Moretti.

  LJPD Police Chief Tony Moretti. Out of dress blues in an Italian suit, but still carrying the authority of the badge. And still with the power to put me behind bars.

  My stomach turned over and my mouth went cotton. I looked at Midnight. My one call would be to my neighbor to make sure she and her daughter would take care of him.

  I settled Midnight and opened the door. He growled when he saw Moretti. Instincts trump command authority.

  “Cahill.” Jet-black hair still greased back. Eighties porn mustache still pulled down his mouth. Cologne still pulsed from his pores. He hadn’t grown any, either. Still huge attitude in a sawed-off body.

  The one chance that my living nightmare hadn’t yet come true was that he was alone. No boys in blue with steel bracelets ready or Sergeant Ruiz with the CIT team. Moretti had a huge ego, but I doubted he’d try to take me down alone. I might just sleep in my own bed tonight.

  “Moretti.” I kept the door at my body’s width.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “No. That would make this social and we’re not friends.”

  “Let’s pretend we are.” He smirked. His version of a smile. The only version I’d ever seen. “I have some information that will interest you, but I’m not going to tell it to you standing on the porch.”

  I let him in. Midnight growled. I quieted him and led him back through the living room and outside. It wouldn’t be fair to subject his sensitive olfactory glands to Moretti’s gasoline cologne. Wasn’t fair to me either. I turned around and found Moretti seated in my recliner. I wondered how much it would cost to steam clean it. Or if I should burn it.

  “What happened to your face?” He smiled.

  “Get to it, Moretti.”

  “We found the Volvo.” Moretti’s dark eyes radared me, searching for a reaction.

  “No need to sit.” I held steady. “You won’t be here long.”

  “I made myself at home. Comfy chair.”

  “You said something about a car?”

  “Playing dumb, Cahill?” His eyebrows knifed up. “Thought you were too smart to play dumb. Smarter than everybody else.” He strung out the “everybody.”

  “I’m just a citizen trying to live my life, Moretti.” I remained standing, frozen in place.

  “For now.” He chuckled. A hyena closing on the kill. “The Volvo was found in Reno a couple months ago. Found in an abandoned warehouse, like it had been there a while. Same VIN number as the one that belonged to Jack Eddington until it went missing on December twenty-first of last year. You remember Jack, don’t you, Cahill? Randall Eddington’s grandfather?”

  “Sure.” This wouldn’t have a happy ending for anyone but Moretti.

  “Well, I talked to Jack yesterday. He told me you spent six months trying to track down Randall after he disappeared the same night the Volvo did. Funny that you never talked to anyone at LJPD during your investigation. That’s where most PIs start when they investigate a missing persons case. The police. Especially since we were already investigating on our own. We could have compared notes. How much did you charge the Eddingtons to search for their grandson, anyway?”

  Chocolate chip cookies, which I never ate.

  “Is that why you came by? To talk about my old cases?”

  “Speaking of your cases, I hear you’re leading Brianne Colton on a wild goose chase. Is that your specialty now? Exploiting grieving families? How much are you squeezing out of that poor woman to keep her delusion alive that Jim didn’t kill himself ?”

  “Why do you care? If the Colton suicide is a slam dunk, you have nothing to worry about.” I thought of the asset forfeitures, but kept my hole card buried. Wouldn’t do me any good now. I prayed someday it could.

  “I’m not worried about anything. I just care about a dead cop’s wife. We’re all family here, Cahill. Everybody in blue. But you weren’t a cop long enough to understand that.”

  “Anything else, Moretti?”

  “The DNA evidence the Reno crime scene techs collected has been sent off to their lab. Results should be coming back soon.”

  “Congratulations. I hope it helps you find Randall.” I’d never been in the Eddingtons’ Volvo. If all he had was the car, I had nothing to worry about. But I was worried.

  “You mean his remains, don’t you?”

  “I sure hope not. As far as I know, Randall’s disappearance is still a missing person investigation.”

  “As far as you know.” The chuckle again. “Well, unfortunately for Randall, things are starting to add up to a murder investigation.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah. We all are.” He eyeballed me for a three count. Like a lion waiting to pounce. “Remember that little talk we had down at the Brick House around Christmas last year?”

  He pulled a notepad out of the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Yeah.” The walls closed in on me.

  He made a show of reading the notepad. “According to the notes I took that day, you went down to Windansea Beach at eleven twenty-two on the night of December twenty-first.”

  “If you say so.” I remembered.

  “Did you happen to see anything besides the waves that you said you looked at that night?”

  This wasn’t a bluff. He had something new. My stomach knotted up.

  “That was a long time ago. I’m sure I saw a lot of things that I can’t remember now. Just like any other night.”

  “But it wasn’t any other night. It was the night Randall Eddington went missing. Did you happen to see him when you were gazing at the ocean?”

  “No.”

  “That’s odd.” He went silent. Sweating me. I didn’t bite. “You may remember that the Volvo Randall’s grandfather had lent Randall was seen on a security camera driving in front of Windansea Beach ten minutes before you were seen getting out of your car in the same area by another camera.”

  “Doesn’t seem odd to me. How could I see Randall if his car drove by ten minutes before I even got to the beach? He was probably on his way to his grandparents’ condo on La Jolla Boulevard a few blocks away.” I waited for the hammer to drop.

  “Sure, that makes sense.” He scrunched up his mouth and his eyes rolle
d upward. “But the problem is that Randall’s cell phone was found by a guy with a metal detector at Windansea a couple weeks after Randall disappeared. The battery was dead and the guy stuck it in a drawer because it was an iPhone with their new lightning power cord thing and his charger wouldn’t work. But here’s where it gets good, Rick. This guy just bought a new iPhone with the same kind of charger last week. So he pulls out the phone he found and charges it up. And being a good Samaritan, he wants to get the phone back to its owner. So he calls the only number in the address book, Rita Mae Eddington.”

  Moretti gives me big eyes and an open mouth like it was time to celebrate.

  “I guess I’m happy that Rita Mae got her grandson’s phone back. Is that it, Moretti?” But I knew there was more and where it went.

  “Well, we now can place the phone right at Windansea and we know from Eddington’s phone records that the last call that phone ever made, before Mr. Good Samaritan found it, was on December twenty-first at eleven forty-nine p.m. Cell tower records confirm that the call was placed in the area of Windansea right around the time a man walking his dog thought he heard gunshots. Four minutes later, the security camera caught you returning to your car on Westbourne, a short walk up from the beach.”

  My face flushed. I couldn’t hide it, so I just held Moretti’s glare.

  “Is this all a coincidence, Rick?” He used my first name and it sounded like a real question, but it was all according to script.

  “If what you just told me is true, it would have to be.”

  “You know whose phone that last call went to?”

  “No.” Yes. I knew and so did Moretti. What he didn’t know was that I made the call.

  “Alan Rankin, a high-priced criminal lawyer who’d defended the shot caller for the Raptor biker gang. Do you know him?”