Blood Truth

by Matt Coyle

  “Gee, thanks for your okay, Cahill. What part would you like me to report? That I held a man captive in my home at gunpoint or that I invited him over to my house under false pretenses so I could lay in wait to hold him captive?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Who do you think hired Armstrong and Ketchings?” She cocked her head and gave me the big eyes. “Or is that a big secret, too?”

  “I honestly don’t know. The only thing I’m fairly sure of is that Windsor called someone involved in an incident that happened twenty-eight years ago that began the process of getting my father kicked off the police force.”

  “But you won’t tell me what that incident is?”

  “I … I can’t.”

  “You can, but you won’t.” Her cheeks glowed a brighter maroon.

  “I can’t explain everything right now. I’m sorry.”

  “But you might never tell me what’s really going on, right?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

  Moira popped off the couch and hustled upstairs. Two minutes later she came back down wearing the sweatshirt from my car I’d lent her a while ago. She didn’t retake her spot on the couch. She stood in front of the recliner I sat in and looked down at me.

  “I’ll send you a bill for the housecleaning, the dry cleaning, and the hotel I stay in tonight.” She turned and took a step then stopped and turned back to me. “And I’ll clean the clothes you lent me and get them back to you.”

  “Let me at least give you a ride.” I stood up and fumbled for my keys in my pocket.

  “An Uber driver is five minutes away. I’ll wait outside.”

  “Cancel the pickup. This is ridiculous, I’ll take you.”

  “No thanks.” She headed for the front door. “I’d rather pay to get a ride from a stranger than take one from someone who doesn’t know how to be a friend. Call another friend the next time you need help. Good luck, Cahill.”

  She left and slammed the door behind her.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I STARED DOWN at a bowl of stale, soon-to-be-soggy Cheerios. I didn’t have the energy to make something more substantial for breakfast. I’d slept around three hours. And that had been in multiple shifts.

  Moira had broken the law for me last night. She’d helped me. Out of friendship. True friendship that I hadn’t had in my life for a long time. And I’d thrown it away because of pride. Blood pride. Family pride. For a family that had long been split apart. I had no family. My wife was dead. My father, dead. I hadn’t seen or talked to my mother in years. I spoke to my sister once a year in an awkward Christmas phone call.

  How many more friendships would I have in my life?

  I grabbed my phone and tapped a number. Moira surprised me by answering. I’d thought I’d have to leave an apology on her voicemail.

  “I just saw it on the news,” she said by way of greeting. She didn’t even sound angry. What had changed my luck?

  “Saw what?”

  “The two unidentified bodies, one white, one black, each with two bullet holes in their heads, found in a white van parked in the Coggan Aquatic Complex parking lot early this morning.”

  “What’s the Coggan Aquatic Complex?”

  “The pool at La Jolla High School two blocks from my house.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Holy shit is right.” Her voice went from tenor to soprano. “That’s not why you called?”

  “No. I called to apologize and to tell you the whole story about my father.”

  “Considering what I just saw on the news, you need to tell me everything. Now.”

  “I will. All of it.” Finally.

  “Pick me up at the Lodge at Torrey Pines in a half hour. I’m just finishing an Eggs Benedict breakfast in my room. I couldn’t pass up room service. I’ll add it to the cleaning bill for the house and the clothes.”

  “The Lodge at Torrey Pines?” One of the most expensive hotels in all of San Diego.

  “Yeah. You pissed me off last night, Cahill. And I decided to make you pay. Literally.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty.”

  “Roger.”

  * * *

  I pulled up in front of the rustic but oh-so-expensive Lodge at Torrey Pines, which overlooked Torrey Pines Golf Course and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Moira stood out front, still wearing the Bruin shorts I’d lent her, but holding the sweatshirt I’d pulled from my trunk in her hand. She wore a brand-new Lodge at Torrey Pines sweatshirt. The cost for my sins continued to rise. She hopped into my Honda Accord.

  “Nice sweatshirt.”

  “You’re lucky you called when you did, Cahill.” She smiled. “I was about to order an in-room massage.”

  “I get the feeling you’re a bad breakup.” I pulled out of the parking lot and onto North Torrey Pines Road.

  “Actually, I usually walk away quietly. There’s always someone else. You really pissed me off.”

  “I figured that out.”

  I drove down Torrey Pines into the village of La Jolla. By the time I parked in front of Moira’s house, I’d told her everything. The ledger, the safe, the gun, the envelope full of cash, the safe deposit box, the shell casings, the Phelps murder case, newspaper reporter Jack Anton, Jules Windsor, Bob Reitzmeyer, Ben Davidson, Antoinette King. All of it.

  We sat in the car next to the curb in front of Moira’s house. Two blocks away, there was, no doubt, still a crime scene being investigated by LJPD that had come about because someone had found a hidden safe in the house I grew up in. And I chose to investigate it.

  “All of this has to do with your father and a twenty-eight-year-old unsolved murder?” Moira finally said after I’d stopped talking.

  “I can’t come up with any other explanation.”

  “And now Edward Armstrong and Jamal Ketchings are dead because of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we have targets on our backs.” Moira’s eyes went rounder than normal and her voice lost some of its usual confidence.

  “I don’t think so.” I squeezed her hand. “I think we’d already be dead. Whoever hired Armstrong and Ketchings must have been listening to the live feed from the bug on Armstrong last night. And from somewhere very near here. Whoever it was probably killed Armstrong and Ketchings right after they left your house. Or very soon thereafter if they had a set rendezvous at the pool parking lot. They could have very easily shot us while we were lying blind, coughing our lungs out on your front lawn.”

  “But maybe they were afraid one of my neighbors would see them. They had cover in the pool parking lot when they shot Armstrong and Ketchings. Maybe they were waiting for a chance to ambush us.”

  “I don’t think so.” I continued to hold her hand. “They could have followed us to my house last night and shot us there. The only reason Armstrong showed was because he’d been sent by whoever hired him to try to find out how much we knew. Armstrong must have called the person who hired him to bug my house when you called him and he found out we were connected. They figured out it was a setup and that I’d be there to try to get information out of Armstrong. They planned to turn the tables on me. Find out what I knew. Whatever the shot caller heard last night must have been enough to convince him that we weren’t onto him.”

  “I wish I had as much confidence in your judgment as you do.” She eased her hand from mine. “You’ve been wrong before.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re going to the police. I’m not taking any chances. It’s time to pull this thing out of the dark and let someone else look at it.”

  “I’m glad you said that, Cahill. Because I was going to the police with or without you.” She opened the door to the car. “Let’s check out the house and then go over to the pool.”

  If I hadn’t gotten Moira involved, I’d investigate more on my own before I went to LJPD. But, I wasn’t a lone wolf on this one. I couldn’t make decisions that would put other people in danger. Still, it was LJPD. Nothing good had ever come from any interaction I’d
had with them. Maybe Moira would change my luck.

  We walked up onto the porch and sniffed. No nose or eye irritation. Moira unlocked the front door and we slowly entered the house. All the open windows seemed to have done the trick because neither of us felt any irritation. I followed Moira back to her bedroom. Still no irritation. She walked over to where she’d been standing when Ketchings lobbed the tear gas canister into the bedroom. She bent over and picked up her Ruger .38 revolver. She put it on the top shelf of the closet.

  I walked around to the other side of the bed and found my Smith & Wesson on the floor. I didn’t remember dropping it. When the tear gas hit, my body defaulted to survival and all actions redlined to finding clean air. To live. I picked up the gun and put it in the pocket of my coat.

  Moira pulled a pair of jeans off a hanger from her closet, pressed them against her face, and inhaled.

  “You may have been saved from a dry-cleaning bill. I’ll check the house more thoroughly later. I’ll change into these and then we can go over to the pool and talk to the police.” She looked at me and I nodded. “Get the hell out of my room while I change. We’re not in a war zone anymore, Cahill. Some privacy, please.”

  I picked up the tear gas canister off the floor and went into the living room. I grabbed the other canister and put both empty vessels on the table in the kitchen. I didn’t throw them away because I might need them as evidence to back up the wild story Moira and I were about to tell the police. I’d handled the nozzles on top so as to leave undisturbed any fingerprints the police might find on the canisters. Armstrong and Ketchings had spent time in military intelligence. They were probably familiar with tear gas and knew where to obtain it. I doubted the person who hired them had any connection to the tear gas. Still, I did my best to preserve any evidence, just in case.

  Moira came in to the living room wearing jeans and a green sweater.

  “I’ll wash the shorts and t-shirt you lent me and get them back to you.” She gave me a small closed-mouth smile. “I’ll take good care of them, Rick.”

  “Thanks.” She was pretty good at this friendship thing. I still had a long way to go.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I PUT MY gun in the trunk of my car. I had a conceal carry license, but I was going into enemy territory. I didn’t want to give LJPD a reason to act first and ask questions later.

  We drove the two blocks to the high school. La Jolla High School sat below a bluff that held Muirlands Middle School. The northernmost end housed the Coggan Aquatic Complex and parking lot. The lot was roped off with yellow crime scene tape. A white van was parked behind the tape. It looked like it could have been the same van Armstrong and Ketchings painted a Spectrum logo on and drove to my house. Today, it was just white. A white-coated evidence tech had the passenger-side door open and was examining something. I couldn’t see who was on the other side of the van.

  Four LJPD cruisers surrounded the scene along with two plain-wrap detective cars. Five TV news vans formed a phalanx beyond the police cars. A double homicide in La Jolla was big news. Bigger than a drive-by shooting in Southeast San Diego would ever be. A gaggle of reporters and cameramen formed a semicircle around someone. Probably a police spokesman. There were too many media types in the way to get a good view.

  My stomach tightened up and my mouth went dry. LJPD was bad enough. Add the media and flop sweat and nausea were sure to follow. The media swung both ways with me. Sometimes they wanted to make me a hero, but mostly they chose villain. I’d had enough cameras and microphones stuck in my face for a lifetime. Accusations in the form of questions usually followed.

  I parked at the opposite end of the lot.

  “Maybe you should talk to the detective in charge and I’ll wait here,” I said.

  “You know more about the cause for all this than I do, Rick.” She looked at me and tilted her head. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She was right. The story was mine. If I stopped tackling things that had bad memories attached, I’d stay home and watch Seinfeld reruns all day.

  Moira and I approached the crime scene and were stopped by my old friend Officer Gains who’d been first on the scene when I discovered Sophia Domingo’s body. He stood ten or so feet outside the crime scene tape. I gave him a nod of recognition. He gave me nothing.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave, folks.” He held up his hands in a double-barreled stop sign. “This is a crime scene.”

  “We need to talk to the detective in charge of this investigation, Officer Gains.” I matched his business glare. “We have information that may be pertinent to the case.”

  “You can give it to me and I’ll relay it to the appropriate personnel,” Gains said.

  “If that’s the way you want to play it, Officer.” I nodded toward the crime scene. “I’m sure the lead detective will be happy that you took over his job and decided who he should talk to and when.”

  Gains scowled at me. I scowled back. Two chances with him in less than a week, and I’d yet to make friends. I’d better hold onto Moira for as long as I could. Gains finally put his hand up to his shoulder and pushed the call button on the radio clipped to his uniform.

  “Sergeant?”

  “Gains.” A woman’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “I have two civilians here claiming to have information about this investigation. One of them is Cahill.”

  Cahill. I didn’t even get a first name or a mister. Just Cahill. Probably not even capitalized. A common annoyance. Like, “I’m not feeling well. I think I caught a cahill.” Or, “Get the swatter, there’s a cahill buzzing around.” That’s what I got for being a good citizen, “cahill.”

  “Be right there.” The voice on the radio didn’t sound happy either.

  I scanned the crime scene and surroundings looking for the sergeant. A woman in dress blues and sunglasses appeared from behind the semicircle of media. Sergeant Meyers. Gains’ superior from the Domingo crime scene. The cameras and reporters all kept their places when Meyers left the gaggle. She wasn’t the face of this crime scene. Made sense. The cameras and microphones were probably all pointed at the lead detective on the case. That ruled out my pal Detective Sheets and his partner, Detective Denton. They were busy working the other murder I had a faint connection to. Good.

  Sergeant Meyers marched toward us with a scowl that matched the one Gains still wore. She probably taught it to him during training.

  “You claim to have information regarding this crime scene?” Meyers didn’t look at or acknowledge Moira. I had all of Sergeant Meyers’ attention.

  “Yes.” I nodded at Moira again. I was being polite. And happy to have someone to share the blame. “We’d like to talk to the lead detective.”

  “Well, the lead detective is talking to the press right now and the other detective is inside the tape investigating the scene with the crime scene techs.” She folded muscular forearms over her chest. “You’re just going to have to tell me what you think you know.”

  “Your call, Sergeant,” I said.

  “Yes, it is.” She took off her sunglasses and narrowed her eyes on the sun and me. “Are you sure the information that you just had to deliver at the crime scene doesn’t have something to do with all the TV cameras here?”

  A lot of people in La Jolla who thought they knew me well didn’t know me at all.

  “I’m certain.” I bit off the words.

  “A little free publicity for your PI agency?”

  “Do you want to hear what we have to say, Sergeant?” Heat crept up the back of my neck. “Or should we just keep it to ourselves and go home?”

  “You’ll stay right here and tell me what you know. Let’s step behind this police car so we don’t perk up interest from the reporters. Wouldn’t want them to think you were on some glory run.” She walked around a police cruiser that was parked twenty feet behind us. Moira and I followed. The heat from my neck spread around to my cheeks. Moira looked at me and stepped in front to shield m
e from Meyers before I could say something we’d both regret.

  “Hi, Sergeant. I’m Moira MacFarlane.” Moira smiled. Soft and friendly. She stuck out a hand and Meyers gave it a half-assed shake. “Do you have identification on the two victims yet?”

  “What do you do for a living, Ms. MacFarlane?” Meyers actually took out a notepad and pen from her back pocket.

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “What a surprise.” She pinched her lips and shook her head. “Your partner here, being an ex-cop, knows that we don’t release the names of murder victims until their loved ones have been informed.”

  “Of course.” Moira stayed patient. Much longer with Meyers than she’d ever been with me. “Well, if the victims are Edward Armstrong and Jamal Ketchings, we know their whereabouts last night from about seven forty to eight o’clock.”

  Meyers put her sunglasses back on. We’d been correct about Armstrong and Ketchings. They were the dead bodies in the van. Finally, Meyers said, “And where was that?”

  “My house—7312 Fay Avenue. Two blocks from here.”

  “What were they doing there?”

  I jumped in. “We were interviewing Armstrong to find out who had hired him and his partner to bug my house.”

  “You’re telling me someone put a listening device in your home?”

  “Yes. The two dead guys.”

  “And they went to Ms. MacFarlane’s house on their own accord to be interviewed by you?”

  Meyers air-quoted “interviewed” with her fingers.

  “I used a ruse to get them there. Only Armstrong showed up, but Ketchings came to the house about twenty minutes after Armstrong arrived.”

  I caught Moira drop her head and stare at the ground out of the corner of my eye. Seemed like she was for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I wasn’t going to volunteer that we’d held Armstrong at gunpoint. That made us suspects number one and two, if we weren’t already.

  “A ruse?” Meyers asked.

  I told her about discovering the bug in my home and finding Armstrong and Ketchings in front of my house with the fake Spectrum cable van. Then Moira’s call as a wary girlfriend checking up on her boyfriend. I held back everything about my father and my suspicions about Jules Windsor. That was for the detective in charge. I didn’t know if Sergeant Meyers was a gossip, and I didn’t want the story getting around the Brick House. My father had already suffered enough from Brick House gossip. I didn’t want his memory to be further sullied. Until it had to be.