Blood Truth

by Matt Coyle

  The blood receded from my head. Cold sweat blotted my forehead. My mouth sucked dry. My breaths, quick and shallow. The rumors I’d avoided my whole life, and held out a sliver of hope that they were lies, were true. The man I worshiped as a kid, loved more than any person in my life but my late wife, even now, was a criminal.

  The truths I’d built my whole life around were lies.

  I stood up and lurched around Anton’s desk, hunched over, grabbed his wastebasket, and retched into it.

  Again.

  “Son? Are you okay?” I felt Anton’s hand on my back.

  I held the wastebasket close to my face, unable to control my heaving body. The stench of hot bile assaulted my nose. The rot I’d held in all my life exposed to the air. My teens. College. Two and a half years on the Santa Barbara Police Force. My life at Muldoon’s. Working for Reitzmeyer. Now, on my own. The shame of my father, the truth of my blood, had churned unseen inside me waiting for the one remaining strand of childlike belief to break.

  Today it did.

  I straightened up and kept the trash can at my waist.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, son.” Anton put his hand down to his side, not sure what to do. Probably the first time someone had puked in his trash can.

  “Be right back.”

  I whipped open the office door and went into the bathroom next door down the hall. I turned on the cold water in the sink and rinsed my mouth out. Over and over. Then I cupped water in both hands and splashed it onto my face. The color came back and my breaths were deeper.

  Luckily, the wastebasket had been empty before I tried to fill it up. I ran a little water into it from the faucet, then flushed the contents down the toilet. Five more rinses and I got rid of the smell.

  Barbara Anton’s voice greeted me from the kitchen when I exited the bathroom.

  “Lunch will be ready in five minutes!”

  Anton was seated back behind his desk when I reentered his office. I set the trash can down in its spot.

  “Sorry about that. Breakfast didn’t sit well with me. Probably should skip lunch.” I pointed at the trashcan. “I washed it out. It doesn’t smell.”

  “Don’t worry about it, son. Sit back down.”

  “I think I got what I needed. I’m going to head out. Thanks. Please apologize to your wife for me.”

  My father had taken evidence from the scene of a murder to cover for the mob. The fifteen grand was probably payment. Maybe he’d never spent the money because the reality of who he’d become finally caught up with him when he’d gotten kicked off the force. Maybe he thought spending the money would have been the ultimate betrayal after LJPD didn’t arrest him. Maybe he kept the gun and the shells to convince himself that someday he’d do the right thing and give the evidence to the police. When he sobered up. Of course, he never did.

  Now he’d left the evidence to me. What was I supposed to do with it? Give it to the police so they could prove what I’d already proven to myself? My father was a criminal. Maybe they could finally close the twenty-eight-year-old cold case. Trent Phelps owned some laundromats. A business with large amounts of cash. The mob has used laundromats for years to clean things other than clothes. Money. The cash goes in dirty and comes out clean in the form of profits. Phelps was probably skimming off the top and got caught. Mob justice. Society still had the right to dole out its own justice. I guess that meant I’d call someone down at the Brick House and tell them about the evidence.

  Sometimes you have to do what’s right even when the law says it’s right.

  “Just sit down and hear me out for a couple minutes.” Anton pushed a hand toward the empty chair.

  Anton had more to tell. I’d already puked in his wastebasket. I guess I owed him an ear for a few more minutes. I sat down.

  “Like I told you earlier, I knew your father before and after all this. I knew what kind of a man he was.”

  “So did Bob Reitzmeyer. He knew my father better than you, better than my mother, better than me. He gave you your confirmation. You going to tell me now that you don’t believe it?”

  “I’m not sure what I believe, but Charlie Cahill’s story has followed me around for the last three decades. I pull out the old articles and my notes and read through them every couple years. I’ve never been able to quite believe your father would betray all he believed in for a few pieces of silver. When you called yesterday, I thought now would be a good time to look over everything again. This time with a partner.”

  “Sorry, Anton. Your notes and articles tell the whole story. My father did sell his soul for the few pieces of silver, got caught, then dealt with his Judas guilt by living inside a bottle until the booze and the guilt killed him. That’s your story. Just another fall from grace. Nothing special about it. Write the story if you want. I don’t care. Just don’t make my father out to be a hero. Only a ten-year-old kid would believe that.”

  “Think it all the way through.” Anton leaned into his desk, his hands agitated. “Your father died a poor man. If the mob had been paying him off, where was the money?”

  Fifteen grand of it had been in a safe hidden in a wall. But that would remain my secret until I shared it with the police and no one else.

  “After he was kicked off LJPD he didn’t have any more value to the mob.” Or anyone else. “Why would they continue to pay someone who could no longer give them anything of value?”

  “Still, there had to have been some evidence of the extra money you saw as a kid. An expensive new car, a boat, a vacation home. Something. The Charlie Cahill I knew never showed anything but a solid middle-class guy. Does anything from your childhood stick out in your mind?”

  “No.” Except for the fifteen grand. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t have it stashed away somewhere or spend it some way other than on his family.”

  Like on another woman. Antoinette King. The woman who, eighteen years after my father’s death, was still paying the maintenance on a safe deposit box in my father’s name. I wondered how much mob money she siphoned off while my father was alive.

  “You think he gambled?” Anton asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s a lot about my father I never knew.” I ran a hand through my hair and let go a breath. “Thank you for showing me the old articles and sharing your notes. I appreciate your trying to defend my father. I spent most of my life doing the same thing. Even to myself. But I got what I came for. Maybe not what I wanted, but what I needed. If there’s a way for me to do you a favor sometime, let me know.”

  A knock on the office door. “Lunch is ready, boys.”

  “Your stomach still bothering you, son?” Anton gave me sad eyes. “My wife went to a lot of trouble today to make us a nice lunch.”

  After emptying its contents, my stomach now had a void. My nausea had passed after I accepted the truth about my father. I was suddenly hungry. To fill the void. And to start a new life now that I finally knew the truth about an old one.

  I stood up. “Let’s eat.”

  * * *

  I got onto I-8 and headed west toward the 805. Barbara Anton had sent me home with a tub of the best tomato soup I’d ever tasted and Jack had slipped a file under my arm containing copies of the old newspaper articles and his typed notes. I planned to eat the soup for dinner. I didn’t have any plans for the file. I’d already gotten the confirmation I needed from Anton, just as he had from Bob Reitzmeyer. Only, Anton wouldn’t take it for the truth it was. He still held out hope that my father had somehow remained the man everyone thought he was. I didn’t. Of course, I had more information.

  Hope can be a dangerous thing. It gives you an excuse not to see the truth. Without the truth, life’s a lie. I’d lived a lie long enough, even as I’d claimed the truth as my life’s mission years ago.

  I had one truth now, my father’s. I owed it to Trent Phelps’ family and the police to help them find their own truth.

  I pulled out my phone and hit the phone number for LJPD.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “DETECTIVE SHEETS, PLEASE.” I’d left Sheets’ business card with his direct number at home before I visited Jack Anton, so I called LJPD’s main phone number.

  “Who may I say is calling?” A woman’s voice.

  “Rick Cahill.”

  “And what is this regarding, Mr. Cahill?”

  “I’ll tell Detective Sheets what it’s regarding when he answers the phone.” No need to broadcast my father’s involvement until I talked to Sheets.

  “Humph.” I made another friend at LJPD. I heard the click of my call being transferred.

  I only knew one other homicide detective down at the Brick House. Detective Denton. A disciple of former police chief Tony Moretti, who was now a congressman in Washington, DC, Denton hated me almost as much as her old boss had. Sheets would be busy with the Sophia Domingo murder, but I figured he’d take what I had to give him on my father and add it to the cold case file they had on Trent Phelps. LJPD was too small to have a team of detectives dedicated to cold cases, but they didn’t have many unsolved murders anyway. Sheets or some other detective would get to the Phelps case after he arrested the murderer of Sophia. And I could clear my conscience, if not my father’s name.

  Hopefully, whoever Sheets arrested for Sophia’s murder wouldn’t be anyone I knew. Unless it was Peter Stone.

  “Detective Denton.” Same matter-of-fact voice I’d heard two years ago.

  Shit. I didn’t say anything and was about to hang up.

  “Cahill?”

  The operator must have given my name to Denton when she picked up Sheets’ phone.

  “Hello, Detective Denton. I was trying to get through to Detective Sheets.”

  “He’s out of the office. I’m his partner.” She hit the “P” in partner hard. “Whatever you were going to tell him, you can tell me. Is this about the Domingo homicide investigation that you’re right in the middle of?”

  Sheets had obviously gotten her up to speed. I doubt he had me “right in the middle” of the investigation, but Denton would love to put me there. They had a hard time moving on down at the Brick House. They carried grudges like they were skin rashes. Always ready to flare up with just the slightest scratch. Chief Moretti may have left for a larger throne, but his attitude remained.

  Or maybe it was just me.

  “I’m not in the middle of anything, Detective Denton. I wanted to talk to Detective Sheets about something that has nothing to do with the Domingo murder.”

  “What is it concerning?”

  I wanted to give the police the evidence my father had hidden away decades ago and move on with my life. But I was still in neutral. Giving the evidence to Denton would be like giving it to Moretti. Ammunition to prove that my father was dirty and, thus, I was dirty by blood. Just like they’d always believed.

  “It can wait.”

  “Are you withholding evidence in a murder investigation, Cahill?”

  “No.” Probably. Just not the investigation she and Sheets were investigating. “I’ll talk to Sheets another time.”

  “You’re risking being charged with obstruction of justice.”

  “Get back on the leash, Denton. Moretti’s not around to try to impress anymore.” I hung up. A mistake. Maybe. But Denton hated me whether I played nice or not. Besides, my way was much more fulfilling. For a while.

  I probably should have waited a bit to call Sheets anyway. He had plenty on his plate and the Phelps case had been cold for twenty-eight years. I was the only one trying to warm it up. And that was just because I was in a hurry to clear my conscience and get on with my life. My lateral progression could wait a few more weeks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MIDNIGHT GREETED ME at the front door. He did the dance in place like I owed him another trip to Fiesta Island. A couple hours there would do us both some good. Me as much as him. I walked over to the sliding glass door and let him outside for now. I went into the kitchen and put the tub of Barbara Anton’s tomato soup in the refrigerator. I pulled out Jack Anton’s file on the Phelps murder from under my arm and thought about tossing it into the trash. What more was there to learn? My father’s criminality was now confirmed. I didn’t need Anton’s file lying around as a constant reminder.

  I set the file down on the kitchen table and opened it. One look before the trash. I’d already read the newspaper articles. They hadn’t produced anything different from what I already knew. I put the articles aside to throw away after I read the notes Anton had slipped into the file. He’d read me his notes on the stoner kid seeing a cop take something out of the car at the accident scene, but the file contained dozens of pages of other notes.

  Most of the notes were later cleaned up and printed in the newspaper articles. I read the ones Anton had written about Trent Phelps’ journey the night of his death. The manager at his laundromat on Grand Avenue in Pacific Beach had said he left at 9:15 p.m. to go to his La Jolla store located on Pearl Street. I remembered that laundromat. A few buddies and I had gotten drunk a couple times when we were in high school and taken turns seeing how long we could cycle in the dryers. I won. I won a lot of stupid competitions back then. Anything to keep me from going home and listening to my parents fight. The laundromat was long gone now.

  Anton’s notes said the first call to LJPD reporting the accident on Coast Boulevard was at 9:57 p.m. Presumably, the accident had been reported within a minute or two from the time it occurred. The accident must have happened around 9:55 p.m., forty minutes after Phelps’ PB manager said he left for La Jolla. Even with traffic, which wouldn’t have been stop and go, the drive wouldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes. Really closer to ten or fifteen.

  But why had Phelps even been on Coast Boulevard? The quickest way to the laundromat would have been via La Jolla Boulevard to Pearl Street. Coast was out of the way, in the opposite direction of Pearl. Maybe Phelps went for a drive by the ocean after he stopped by the laundromat. I scanned Anton’s notes. The manager at the Pearl location said Phelps never arrived at the laundromat that night. He could have made the drive by the beach before he planned to go to the laundromat.

  No way of knowing. Probably didn’t mean anything, but it twitched along the back of my neck nonetheless. I sat back in the kitchen chair and looked at Midnight through the paneled glass of the door to the backyard. He looked at me. Fiesta Island on both our minds.

  I looked back down at Jack Anton’s notes from the night he claimed everything started going wrong for my father. I’d become convinced the downward slide had been my father’s own doing. Anton wasn’t sure. What did he see that I didn’t? We’d both believed my father had once been an inherently good man. Somewhere along the way, he’d made choices that he couldn’t unmake, which had sent him spiraling downward. It was there in Anton’s notes and in my father’s secret safe and safe deposit box. Anton didn’t know about the safe and safe deposit box. Would he still hold out hope for my father’s goodness if he did? Had he learned things about my father over sipping scotch that told him Charlie Cahill couldn’t be tainted under any circumstances? Even if the proof was right in Anton’s own notes?

  I’d never sipped scotch with my father. He’d stopped sipping and started chugging the cheap stuff by the time I began paying attention. But I still owed the man I’d once so admired who’d broken my soul a deeper look into the night that changed his life irreparably. And my family’s.

  Fiesta Island would have to wait.

  I read through the notes that were for the article a week after the murder and those for the one-year anniversary piece. The last couple pages of notes were paper clipped together and had a yellow sticky attached to the top page with Charlie Cahill written on it. According to the notes, Anton and my father met for drinks at the Whaling Bar in La Jolla on October 22, 1990. The bar used to be attached to the La Valencia Hotel, the grand dame of old money hotels in La Jolla. An overnight stay there cost a Bill Gates inheritance. The Whaling Bar, which had a mural of a whale hunt
over the bar, was much more accessible than its big sister hotel. It had since closed and been remodeled into an upscale French bistro. Because La Jolla didn’t already have enough of those.

  Raymond Chandler and Gregory Peck were among the locals known to drink at the Whaling Bar.

  And apparently, years later, my father and Jack Anton did, too. According to the notes, Anton had asked my father out for drinks to talk about the cold Phelps case. The date was eleven months after the Phelps murder. The notes said my father was working as a security guard for a strip mall in La Jolla at the time.

  I remembered seeing him leave for work at night in a blue uniform. Only this one said security on it instead of La Jolla Police Department. He always had a frown on his face when he left for work instead of the smile I remembered seeing when he left for his job as a cop.

  The notes were in the form of a conversation, so Anton must have audio-recorded them. He probably edited while he transcribed them because the conversation jumped right in without any preamble or hellos.

  “Did Detective Wilkes ever tell you that I told him I received an anonymous call two days after the murder stating that the caller saw a police officer take something out of the front seat of the car and put it in his coat pocket?” Anton asked.

  “No. But whoever told you that was lying.”

  “Were you first on the scene?”

  Cahill stared at me, then took a long sip of his scotch and said, “Whatever the police report said.”

  “I never saw a police report. The Brick House won’t release it because the case is still open.

  “Davidson said that Reitzmeyer was first on the scene, but Detective Wilkes told me off the record that you were.”

  “Don’t believe what everybody tells you. You can get into trouble that way,” Cahill said.