All The Way Back

by David Kearns

  Chapter Eleven

  Eccles called the next morning and asked to see me again. He said that it might be the last time we talked for a while. I told him that there was no place to park at my house and asked him to meet me at the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.

  Sandy slept late. I assumed that she was still tired from her long drive from Texas. I made a cup of coffee and walked down the zigzag road to the parking lot, sipping on my coffee along the way.

  While I waited for Eccles I sat on a park bench, drank coffee, and watched the bird activity on Three Arch Rocks. It was one of those rare sunny mornings in Oceanside with warm temperatures, no wind, and clear skies. I hadn’t seen the bald eagle that morning, and I wondered if he would make an appearance while Eccles and I were talking. There was a sign posted at the entrance to the beach which described different threats to tourists including sneaker waves, tsunamis, falling off a cliff, and getting pulled out to sea by the undertow. I wondered if the sign should be augmented to include the possibility of being snatched off a rock by a bird with a seven foot wingspan.

  Eccles pulled into the parking lot, got out of his car, and walked over to where I stood. “Have you seen the eagle this morning?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Eccles nodded. He was wearing a button down shirt with a thin blue plaid print over blue jeans and new tennis shoes. I wondered if he’d gone shopping. I was wearing cut-off jeans, a Coldplay concert tee shirt, and a faded pair of Nike running shoes.

  “Looks like you’re dressed for a walk on the beach,” I said.

  “Indeed I am,” Eccles said. “Let’s walk.”

  We stepped down onto the cream-colored sand and walked south past the backside of Josephine’s Cafe and the handful of homes which dot the narrow highway leading into Oceanside. The ocean churned as it typically does, but the sound of the surf wasn’t unpleasant. The sun glinted off the waves, making thousands of little diamonds sparkle on the ocean surface. Pelicans and seagulls paralleled the beach, staying airborne on the breeze with occasional flaps of wings. We walked in comfortable silence until we’d left Oceanside far behind, with no homes visible on the hillside fronting onto the ocean. There were no other people within a quarter mile ahead of us or behind us.

  Eccles paused at a giant driftwood log lying on the sand. The root system was surprisingly shallow and small compared to the length of the log.

  “This looks like a good spot,” Eccles said.

  “For what?” I said.

  “For you and me to have a conversation with each other. An honest one that won’t be overheard or recorded.”

  “All right,” I said. “You have something to say, say it.”

  “I don’t think I can prove that Peck hired Randall Burton to go after your parents. There’s no paper trail of payments between Peck and Burton, and there’s no way in hell anyone will testify against Peck in court. Unless there’s other evidence I don’t know about, I’ve reached a dead end.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You took that pretty well,” Eccles said.

  “My expectations are low,” I said. “The police had twenty years to do something and didn’t. This is just more of the same.”

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” Eccles said. “Another way of looking at it is that because you kept what happened to Burton a secret, we didn’t have anything to go on for twenty years. So it’s at least partially on you that the crime was never solved. You should have said something when it happened. Why the hell didn’t you? Was it because you took your father’s gun that day, and you thought it was your fault that he couldn’t defend himself?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Eccles shook his head. “I never cease to be amazed by human behavior,” he said. “Regardless, I’m pretty sure I can make a case against you for concealing the homicide, a justifiable homicide in my opinion, of Randall Burton.”

  “I don’t think you can,” I said.

  “When you came back to your house from your confrontation with Burton, you took off your clothes and replaced them with clean ones. The dirty ones you put in the clothes hamper after using bar soap to try to wash the blood stains out of the jeans. You missed a few blood spots here and there. When those jeans were processed by forensics at the time of your parents’ home invasion, no one knew what to make of the blood spots on the denim. The spots weren’t very big, and there weren’t very many of them, and while the bloodstains were human, they didn’t match your parents, your brother, or you either. It was a puzzling footnote in the evidence, but so what? Active kids have wrestling matches with friends, or help someone pull a tooth and get a little blood on their clothes here or there. At the time, it didn’t seem important to run it down. Your parents had both been killed, and you weren’t available for questioning. You were hospitalized for some time with depression, if I understand correctly.”

  “For two months, yes.”

  “And then you lived with your aunt and uncle in Tulsa?”

  “That’s right. Until I went to college.”

  “Family is important, isn’t it? They’d do anything for you; you’d do anything for them.”

  “Right.”

  “Thing is, I had the lab compare the DNA in those blood spots on your jeans with Randall Burton’s DNA, and the results came back last night as matching. Your brother was away at camp like you told me he was. You were home, and somehow you got Randall Burton’s blood on your jeans. You killed Burton with your dad’s pistol. There’s no other possible explanation,” Eccles said.

  I thought about what he’d just said. “Since you haven’t read me my rights, I assume you’re not charging me with anything. At least not right away.”

  “Not right away,” Eccles said. “So now that there’s no doubt about what happened that day, how about you answer a few questions honestly. Off the record?”

  “All right. Off the record.”

  “You told me that your parents were at the kitchen table looking at paperwork when you left the house that day, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there’s no record of any paperwork being found in the kitchen. Whoever was with Burton must have collected it before he left the house.”

  “Doesn’t that imply that Peck was cleaning up the evidence trail between him and my parents?”

  “It does to me, but it doesn’t prove that’s the case.”

  “You’re going to let Peck slide, aren’t you?”

  “Hold your horses. Burton must have come in a car. What was he driving?”

  “A black Dodge Charger. I think it was a ‘69.”

  “You’re absolutely sure that’s the kind of car and the year?”

  “I know cars,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  “There’s no record of that car being there when the police came.”

  “It was in the driveway when Burton saw me and chased me to the well. When I came back to the house, the Charger was gone.”

  “So someone else drove it away, along with the accounting paperwork for your father’s business.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Possibly Peck,” Eccles said.

  “Seems right,” I said.

  “I might just look into that,” Eccles said. “Did you see anyone besides Burton?”

  “No. Burton came out of the house and walked over to the passenger side of the car like he was going to get in. Then he saw me and pulled his gun. I ran like hell and he started shooting. I didn’t see anyone else.”

  “There’s a reason we’re having this conversation in private.”

  “Which is?”

  “I could charge you with obstruction of justice or concealing evidence of a homicide, but I think it would be difficult to convict you since you were twelve years old when it happened. Also, Randall Burton was a major league asshole. This guy liked to hurt people for fun. My guess is that you’d probably get a parade in Oklahoma if your story became public. Hell, you’d be a hero in many people’
s eyes. Of course, not in Anthony Peck’s eyes. He’d find a way to make you disappear, or possibly have you slaughtered in a public place. And then I’d be the bad guy. It would be my fault that you were killed, since I prosecuted you for doing something heroic and brought Peck down on your head.”

  “It sounds like you’re on the horns of a dilemma.”

  Eccles nodded slowly. “Well, part two of this conversation is where things get a little tricky. I’ve been trying to understand your relationship with a Federal Marshal connected with the witness security program named Eric Fullmeyer. I gather that you’re not in the witness security program, but Eric reached out to OKC police when he saw us starting to put out feelers to track you down. That seemed odd to me, so I did a little asking around. I have a good friend in the marshal’s service, and he told me - completely off the record and under no circumstances would he testify to it in court - that Eric relocated you at his personal expense to keep an El Paso cartel from turning you into ground beef. My friend also said that the rumor is that the cartel found you anyway and kidnapped your girlfriend. Apparently before it was all over, you snuffed a dozen cartel people, including several professional killers. After that, you took down the head of the cartel itself. Some dude named Marco who got barbecued in an airplane crash in El Paso. Brand new airplane, in fact. Seems the gas tanks had sand in ‘em.”

  Eccles chuckled and smiled. He looked at the ocean and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Excuse my French,” Eccles said. “But as far as I can tell, you are some kind of God damned killing machine. When we first met, I could tell you were a hothead, but I had no idea who or what I was dealing with.”

  “You still don’t,” I said.

  “Well, that’s true,” he said. “That’s true enough. But I know more than I did when we first met, don’t I? Let me just say that if what my friend told me about you and the cartel is true, I don’t feel sorry for those people, and I’m not surprised the feds didn’t came after you. You did the feds a favor, right? People like that ruin whole communities with their drug trafficking, extortion, and worse. However, if I don’t charge you, knowing what I know now, and then you cut Anthony Peck in half with a chainsaw, I’m on the hook for that, aren’t I? This Peck, as bad as he is, is pretty well known. Ordinarily I’d say that no pissed-off vigilante would stand a chance going up against Peck’s security people, but in this case, I think Peck should be worried. I assume you’re planning to do something spectacular like feeding him to scorpions, or painting him with magnesium powder and turning him into a human sparkler. Something like you’d see in a James Bond film. You seem like you have a flair for that sort of thing and you’ve had twenty years to think about how you’d like to get even. I could really get hurt if you do that and I didn’t even try to stop it. Because now I’m absolutely certain that you killed Burton. And I’m absolutely certain that Burton killed your parents.”

  “I see your point,” I said.

  “I hope that you do,” Eccles said. “So here is the deal I’m offering you. You leave Peck alone and I won’t charge you with concealing evidence of a homicide on Burton. You have my word.”

  “Suppose I decide to go after Peck anyway?”

  “Anything happens to Peck, I’ll charge you the next day and say I was building a case against you. When your name gets made public, God help you.”

  “And if Peck comes after me?” I asked. “Seems likely that he will, since he asked about me when you interviewed him.”

  “If you can prove self-defense, you’ll never hear from me again. In practical terms, I would be prepared to disappear, though,” Eccles said. “If you take Peck down, you’ll feel more heat than a branding iron at a round-up.”

  “Did that colorful metaphor come from your boss, too?” I asked.

  “No. That one is entirely of my own making.”

  “So I’m supposed to wait for Peck to come after me, then if I defend myself I should be prepared to disappear. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just disappear now?”

  “I sure as hell would,” Eccles said. “Peck is probably on the war path, and his crew is a lot bigger than yours.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m heading back now,” he said. “I think I’m getting sunburned. I do hope you’ll take my advice.”

  Eccles turned and started back down the beach towards his car. I leaned against the smooth surface of the driftwood log and considered my options.