by Matt Coyle
Meyers cocked her head when I was done. “You’re either leaving something out or making a lot up, Cahill. Why?”
“I told you the truth, Sergeant.” Some of it.
Meyers turned to Moira. “Is this how you remember things, Ms. MacFarlane?”
Moira looked at me and then at Sergeant Meyers. I held my breath. I wouldn’t blame her if she told Meyers all the stuff I’d left out. Even us holding guns on Armstrong. She had to know that she wouldn’t be charged if she rolled over on me. I was the prize for LJPD. She’d get a pat on the back for wrapping a bow around me.
“Yes.” Moira looked Meyers in the eye when she answered. Instead of being happy or relieved that she backed my story, my stomach turned over. I’d gotten Moira involved in holding a man at gunpoint and now she’d lied to the police because of me. Friendship.
“You two stay right here.” Meyers wagged her index finger in our faces, then circled around the PD cruiser and walked back toward the crime scene. I watched her go, then turned to Moira.
“If it becomes necessary, I’ll take full responsibility for holding Armstrong at gunpoint.”
“I think we should just tell Sergeant Meyers what really happened right now before we make things worse for ourselves than they already are.” She bit her lip.
“This is my responsibility. You got involved because of me. The only other people who know you had a gun last night are dead. There’s no reason to confess to something that had no bearing on the outcome of events. I held a gun on Armstrong. No one else. You got it?”
“Meyers is back.” She raised her eyes over the car. “With someone else.”
I turned around and looked over the police car at Meyers and the someone else.
LJPD Detective Hailey Denton stared daggers at me that I could feel through both our sunglasses, even though I couldn’t see her eyes. She and Sergeant Meyers circled the car and stood in front of us.
Brown hair, longer than I remembered. Tan sports coat, blue slacks. All business.
“Cahill, Sergeant Meyers tells me that you were the last person to see the deceased in that van over there alive.” She looked over her shoulder. I followed her eyes. The media who’d been interviewing her before were now heading our way. “Maybe we should talk about this at the station.”
“Aren’t you working the Sophia Domingo murder?” I couldn’t believe my luck.
“Not anymore. Made an arrest and handed it off to the DA and their investigator this morning.”
“An arrest?” I didn’t think LJPD even had a legitimate suspect as late as a couple days ago.
“Who?”
“That’s not public knowledge yet.” She looked at the approaching herd of media, microphones and cameras in hand. “But it will be soon, so I guess there’s no harm. We arrested your old girlfriend’s husband this morning, Jeffrey Parker.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
JEFFREY PARKER? THAT couldn’t be right. He had an alibi. He’d been in Las Vegas the weekend of the murder.
“Really?”
“Yes, Cahill. Really.” A lot of breath in her voice. “Now, if it’s alright with you, we’d like to try and solve these other murders, too. So, could you follow us down to the police station where we can talk without the media listening in?”
“We’ll be there in five.” I turned and walked back to my car. Moira caught up to me as I got in.
“Jeffrey Parker?” Moira looked at me after she slid into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her.
“I guess he wasn’t in Vegas when Kim thought he was.” I was surprised Kim hadn’t called me. She must be frantic. She’d need a friend. That used to be me. I pulled out my cell phone and tapped her number as I turned right on Pearl Street. Voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. I didn’t know what to say.
“Do you think he did it?” Moira asked.
“I don’t know.” It didn’t matter what I thought. Only what LJPD thought. But I knew from experience that they could be wrong. “But I don’t think so.”
We beat Detective Denton to the Brick House. She walked into the foyer from around back while Moira and I waited near the sergeant’s desk.
“Please follow me upstairs.” Denton motioned to the staircase. “We’ll talk up there.”
She went up the stairs and we followed. It had only been a day since my last interview in a white light room, and I’d survived that one. Still, the familiar sweat started to percolate under my arms and my breath shortened. Denton stopped in front of the door to the interrogation room where Detective Sheets had questioned me yesterday.
“Ms. MacFarlane, would you mind coming inside?” Denton opened the door to the room. “I’d like to hear what happened from you first. Mr. Cahill, please have a seat on the bench. I’ll hear your version next.”
She pointed at a wooden bench across the hall and followed Moira into the interrogation room and shut the door. I wondered how Moira felt now about choosing me as a friend.
* * *
Thirty-five minutes since Moira went in with Denton. I paced the hall. My phone buzzed in my pocket a couple minutes later. Kim.
“They arrested Jeffrey.” Tears in her voice. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Have you hired an attorney yet?” I’d hold her hand if needed, but practicality came first. It had to if she wanted to get her husband out of jail. The best way to help was to go through the needed steps to get someone out of jail after they’ve been arrested. I knew the steps. I’d been arrested for my wife’s murder and I’d helped other people who’d been arrested. “Has a bail hearing been set yet?”
“Yes. We have a lawyer.”
“Who?”
“Alan Fineman.”
“Good.”
Fineman was the best criminal defense attorney in San Diego. Various talking head gigs on television had given him a national reputation. He deserved it. He’d been the lawyer for someone I once cared about who’d been arrested for murder. The case never went to trial because I discovered the real killer. Clumsily, mostly by accident.
“The bail hearing is tomorrow.”
“I’ll be over as soon as I can. I’m stuck in the middle of something right now that I can’t get away from. It will probably be an hour or so. Everything is going to be okay.” I didn’t know that, but Parker had the best lawyer in town and the assets to buy whatever experts and tests Fineman needed to offset the state’s case. Justice was blind, but not deaf, and money talked.
The door of the interrogation room opened, and Moira came out followed by Detective Denton.
“I gotta go,” I told Kim. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Mr. Cahill, I’m ready for you, now,” Denton said. “Ms. MacFarlane, please stay available as we may need to talk again. Soon.”
I looked at Moira. She held my eyes for a second then looked at the floor. I didn’t know if that meant she had or hadn’t confessed to holding a gun on Edward Armstrong on the night he was murdered.
I followed Detective Denton into the square room with the white lights. She closed the door behind me, and I sat in my favorite chair facing the door and the red-lighted camera above it. Denton sat down at the table kitty-corner to me. Sans sunglasses, I could see the gold flecks in the irises of her brown eyes. It gave her eyes a faint glow. No glowing smile to match as she stared at me across the table.
“Do you know how many murders we had in La Jolla last year?” she said.
“No.”
“One.”
“Okay.” I knew where this was going, but didn’t want to kick-start it.
“And now we have three in less than a week that you are somehow involved in.”
“I’m not involved in any of them.” The sweat trickled down under my arms. I concentrated hard to even out my breathing. “I contacted LJPD in both instances to give whatever information I could to help you solve the crimes.” Mostly. Enough for them to find the truth without hurting innocent people along the way. I didn’t know yet if I’d succeed
ed in the Sophia Domingo murder. I didn’t know if Jeffrey Parker was guilty or innocent.
“Yes, I know. I’m nominating you for the Citizen of the Year Award.” She tilted her head and frowned. “Where were you between seven and midnight last night?”
I told her the same story I told Sergeant Meyers an hour earlier. The same one Moira must have told her five minutes ago. I left out the part about holding a gun on Armstrong. I hoped Moira had, too.
“So, Mr. Armstrong just stood there and complied when you questioned him? Why didn’t he just leave?”
“I was between him and the door.” True.
“So, you were holding him against his will?”
“No. He may have felt that way. I’m not a mind reader.”
“But his partner had to teargas Ms. MacFarlane’s house to extricate his partner.”
“I could only speculate it was his partner. I couldn’t open my eyes.”
“You’re missing the point, Cahill. Jamal Ketchings had to use tear gas to get his partner away from you and out of the house. Sounds like he was being held against his will. Were you holding a gun on Armstrong?”
“Ketchings chose to use tear gas. He didn’t have to.” The glow from Denton’s eyes seemed to grow brighter. “I’m licensed to carry a concealed firearm and I had one during our meeting. Armstrong and Ketchings had broken into my home and hidden listening devices and then, later, assaulted me. I didn’t want to take any chances of being assaulted again.”
“I’m impressed with your ability to spend a minute not answering a simple question. You should run for mayor. However, if you don’t answer my question right now, I’m going to fulfill a wish I’ve had for the last two years and arrest you.”
“Armstrong was probably aware that I had a gun. Go ahead and arrest me if you can trump up some charge. I’ll be out on bail tomorrow.” I smiled like there wasn’t sweat running down my underarms. “You seem to be unusually concerned with the press. They’ll be hanging around when I make bail. I’m sure they’ll want to know why you arrested me. They may come to the conclusion that you have a vendetta against me.”
A bluff. I’d never volunteered anything to the press. They’d asked me lots of questions over the years and, occasionally, I answered them. But I never sought them out. I liked the press about as much as I liked Denton, but she didn’t know that.
Denton’s mouth pinched tight, and I could almost feel the heat from the gold flecks in her eyes. She let go a long exhale like she’d been holding her breath for two minutes. She stared at me some more then finally spoke again.
“How did you come across Edward Armstrong and Jamal Ketchings initially?”
I told her about finding the bug on my bookshelf and then the incident with the fake Spectrum van in my front yard.
“And why didn’t you report this to the police? You didn’t have to deal with anyone here. You live in San Diego PD’s jurisdiction.”
“I thought Armstrong and Ketchings were involved in something I was investigating on my own. I didn’t want to get the police involved until I had more proof.”
“Proof of what?”
The moment of truth. I’d already given Moira the okay to tell the police what I’d told her about my father. The fifteen grand, the Saturday Night Special, the empty shell casings. Once I’d told her the truth and saw how it led to Armstrong and Ketchings’ death, I knew Moira had to tell the police. There were killers somewhere out on the street who had to be caught. Moira telling what she knew about my father would help that cause. Me telling it would feel like a betrayal.
To my father whom I already knew to be guilty?
Blood. Family. Hope. I’d hoped I could still find a scenario where my father wasn’t guilty. Of something. Taking money from the mob. Looking the other way. Covering up evidence of a murder. But I couldn’t. Everything I’d found out in the last week had done just the opposite. My father had been guilty. Of everything. Still. My father. My blood. LJPD, where he’d served with distinction until he went wrong. Where the rumors started. Where justice was served on him quietly in half measures. An organization I knew to be corrupt. Not just because of my father. The corruption may have started with him, but it didn’t end there. It lived on.
“I’m investigating a twenty-eight-year-old murder. I uncovered some evidence that got me too close to the truth and somebody hired Armstrong and Ketchings to bug my house to find out what I knew.”
“Cahill playing hero again. Going lone wolf and leaving more dead bodies in your wake.” The glow in Denton’s eyes turned into laser beams. “Do you ever consider the possible ramifications of your actions before you decide to throw on your cape? You’re a human wrecking ball without a conscience. What’s wrong with you?”
I wished I knew. I could blame it on my father’s blood, but that would be declaring that I had no choice. I had choices. Sometimes I made the wrong ones. But I had good intentions while I paved the road to hell.
“You want to hear what I have to say or do you want to play Doctor Phil?”
“I want to put you behind bars or force you to move to Alaska. You’re a menace.” She leaned back in her chair and her jacket flipped open revealing the gun on her belt. I guessed a practiced move meant to intimidate. The gun didn’t scare me. The badge that said LJPD on her other hip did, and the white light room did. “Until I can do either, I guess I’ll have to listen to your story.”
“Do you know anything about the Trent Phelps murder case? Happened in November 1989.”
“I ask the questions in here, Cahill. You’ve been in one of these rooms often enough to know that. You came to us claiming to have some story to tell. Start telling it.”
I told her what I knew about the Phelps murder, that my father had been first on the scene. And that his life started going downhill shortly thereafter. I told her about the empty shell casings in his safe deposit box, but not about the hidden wall safe or what was in it. If it had been another detective, any other detective, I might have spilled all of it. Denton reminded me of what the Brick House had been and still was. What would she do with the information I had to give her? Would she investigate or hold onto it until she could use it as a bludgeon against me? It may not even matter. Moira might have already told Denton everything I’d told her about my father.
“Your late father keeps some shell casings in a safe deposit box for God knows how long and you’re trying to tie it to the death of a couple surveillance experts you claim bugged your home?” Denton leaned forward into my space. “That’s quite a jump. Even for you.”
Moira hadn’t told her about the gun in my father’s safe. Neither would I.
“The shells were .25 caliber. Check the murder book on Phelps. The murder weapon was a .25. Two shots to the head,” I said.
“Even if that’s true, it’s still a leap.”
“Five hours after Jules Windsor saw those shells in the safe deposit box viewing room, I found a bug in my house after seeing a fake Spectrum cable van in my neighborhood. A couple days later, the van came back and Edward Armstrong searched for the receiver he’d planted outside my home. I confronted him and he and Ketchings attacked me and then escaped. Check with my neighbors. I’m sure one of them spotted the van in the neighborhood.”
“A Spectrum cable van in a residential neighborhood. How unusual.”
“You think I like dealing with LJPD, Detective? You seem to know my history here. Why the hell would I want to tangle with anyone at the Brick House if I didn’t think it was absolutely necessary?”
“We’re just your first stop. The media is next. You get to tell them how you came here and told us how to do our job. More publicity for your backwater little agency.”
“I guess we’re done here.” I stood up.
“Sit down.”
“Are you arresting me, Detective? Otherwise, I’m free to go. I came here to tell you what I knew but you don’t want to hear it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I WALKED TO the door an
d opened it. Detective Sheets stood in the doorway. He must have been watching the live camera feed from another room. He smiled. I didn’t.
“Detective, you’re in my way,” I said.
“Rick, would you mind giving me a couple minutes? No more than ten, I promise.” He held up his hands. “Then you can go.”
“I can go right now if I want to, Detective.” I shifted my gaze from him to Denton.
“I know.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “This would be a personal favor to me. Just you and I will talk.”
Denton got up and squeezed by both me and Sheets and left the interrogation room. The bad cop exited, time for the good cop. LJPD was behind on modern interrogation techniques. Nowadays you bond with the subject right away. Any badgering comes later. Sheets was a little late with the friend approach. But he was the closest thing to a clean cop I knew at the Brick House.
Armstrong and Ketchings were dirty, but they didn’t deserve to die. And if their deaths were related to Trent Phelps, there was still a murderer free, walking the streets for twenty-eight years. He’d killed again. He knew I was asking questions. How long before he pointed his gun at me?
I retreated into the room and sat back down.
“You were watching the feed. You already heard what I told Denton.”
“Yes.” Sheets sat down in the chair Denton had vacated. “Why do you think Mr. Windsor is somehow involved?”
I told him what bank manager Nakamura had told me about Windsor never being present for the opening of a dead relative’s safe deposit box before and that she had seen him making a phone call right after he left the viewing room.
“Do you know of any connection he may have had with Trent Phelps twenty-eight years ago?”
