by Matt Coyle
An LJPD cop engaged in finding the truth instead of breaking hard on me. A ploy? Maybe, but I’d ride it as long as it took me closer to finding out the truth about my father.
“No, but I’ll bet Phelps banked at Windsor Bank and Trust. If Windsor didn’t hire the guys who bugged my house, he knows who did. Find them and you’ll find who killed Armstrong and Ketchings. And probably Phelps. Have you checked Armstrong and Ketchings’ offices and computers yet?”
“No.” Detective Sheets shook his head.
“That would be a good place to start.” I guess I was there to tell the police how to do their job.
“We can’t. There was a fire at their office last night. It destroyed everything.”
Whoever killed Armstrong and Ketchings were smart, thorough, efficient. Yet, they’d left Moira and me alive when it would have been easy to kill us the same night they killed the surveillance specialists. They didn’t take unnecessary chances. We weren’t a threat to them. Yet. If they found out I’d gone to the police, I might be.
“You can still get their phone records from their provider, as well as e-mail records,” I said.
“They had their own server. We’re working on getting phone records.” Terse, like I’d brought up a bad memory. He let go a long breath and his shoulders dropped half an inch. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Armstrong and Ketchings or your father and the safe deposit box?”
“No, but Windsor sicced some private security goons on me when I went by his house to ask him some questions. He’s hiding something. I’m sure it has something to do with Trent Phelps’ murder. Check his phone records and find out who he called last Saturday at about ten fifteen or ten thirty a.m. That number will lead you to whoever hired Armstrong and Ketchings. And probably their murderer.”
“Rick, I’ve got two more people murdered.” Sheets leaned across the table and touched my forearm. His eyes held sadness that belied his age. “They’re my responsibility. I have to tell their families that they’ve been murdered. I owe it to Edward Armstrong and Jamal Ketchings and their families to find their murderers. I know that you know what it’s like never to at least have that closure. I need your help so I can give it to someone else.”
Sheets knew my story. Knew my wife had been murdered and the case was never solved. He was the first cop to take my side and see me as a victim left in the killer’s wake instead of the killer. Of course, it could be a con to get me on his side.
“I’m trying to help, Detective. That’s why I came down here.” He might find the killers and bring them to justice, but that wouldn’t bring closure to the family. A murdered loved one was a hole in your gut that could never be filled.
“I know. I appreciate that. But I don’t think you’re telling me everything. Detective Denton was right. Finding empty shell casings in a safe deposit box and tying them to a decades-old murder is a stretch. A huge one. What are you not telling me? What else do you know?”
“It’s not a stretch, Detective. Like I said earlier, my father was first on the scene at the Phelps murder scene. Phelps was shot twice in the head with a twenty-five caliber handgun. My father opened a safe deposit box soon after the murder. That box contained two twenty-five caliber empty shells. Five hours after Windsor and I discovered the shells, someone bugged my house and now the men responsible are dead.”
“Are you telling me your father murdered Trent Phelps?”
“No.”
“Then why else would he have the empty shells from the bullets you claim killed Phelps?”
“He was first on the scene. Someone saw a cop take something from the car at the murder scene and put it in his pocket before any other cops arrived.”
“What?” Sheets turned pink. “Where the hell did you hear that?”
“From a newspaper reporter who covered the story twenty-eight years ago.”
“He reported in the paper that a police officer removed something from the car before the scene was secured and crime techs were there?”
“No. It was an anonymous call and his editor wouldn’t let him put it in a story without corroboration. Look in the murder book. See if any spent shells were found at the scene.”
“Rick, do you understand what you’re saying? You’re telling me that your father took evidence from a crime scene and withheld evidence in a murder.”
“Yes.”
What I couldn’t say out loud yet was that he’d taken the gun used in the crime and had probably been paid fifteen grand to do so. That was too personal. Too revealing. Too much to confess about the blood that ran through me. Not at the Brick House. LJPD. The police force my father served and honored. Until he disgraced it. To tell it all would be too much of a betrayal even after my father had betrayed my belief in him.
“Give me this reporter’s name.”
I did and also gave him Jack Anton’s phone number. Sheets wrote down the information in a notepad. Then he shook my hand and thanked me for talking with him. I put my hand on the door to leave, then turned around.
“I think you made a mistake arresting Jeffrey Parker for Sophia Domingo’s murder.”
“Why?”
“He was in Las Vegas at the time of the murder. I checked with the hotel. He checked out Saturday morning. Sophia had to have been murdered Friday night at the latest. You saw the decomp starting on the body.”
“His hotel room was booked until Saturday, but he didn’t physically check out. He had the do not disturb sign on his door the whole time he was supposedly in Las Vegas. The last time he used his keycard to get into his room was Thursday night. No one at the convention remembers seeing him after Friday morning.” Sheets exhaled through his nose. “Looks like your old girlfriend is going to be available again soon.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
KIM WRAPPED HER arms around me when she answered the door. The whites of her green eyes were stained red. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ball. I walked her inside her house and closed the door behind us. I stroked her matted hair. I let her pain ooze into me. I felt her hurt. But something else, too. Something wrong inside me felt her warmth with the pain. Wanted to be able to hold her again without the pain. Hold her as I had when we’d been a couple.
“I don’t know what to do.” She stepped back out of my arms, maybe sensing my selfish desperation pushing against her pain. “What if he doesn’t get bail?”
“You’ve got the best defense attorney in San Diego. He’ll get Jeffrey bail.” I eased my hand around her bicep and walked her into the living room. She sat down in an off-white upholstered luxury sofa. I took the matching armchair next to it.
“I don’t know.” Fresh tears welled in the bottom of her eyes. “It depends on how much the bail is.”
My eyes did a quick survey of the classy, expensively appointed living room. I wasn’t an interior designer, but I’d been in enough La Jolla homes to know that the furniture in the room, when new, had to have been worth close to a hundred thousand dollars. I didn’t imagine it would be that difficult for Kim to get together two hundred and fifty grand for a $2.5 million bail.
“Let’s see what happens at the hearing first, then go from there. Fineman may get the bail down lower than you expect.”
“I hope so. We could barely afford to hire him as an attorney.”
“Kim, your financial health is none of my business.” I raised my hands palms up and let my head follow my eyes around the room this time. “But this has to be a three- to four-million-dollar home. Jeffrey owns the most successful real estate agency in La Jolla. I’m sure you have the finances for him to get the best defense anyone could hope for.”
“That’s what I thought until I talked to Jeffrey’s accountant today.” She looked down at her hands and a tear rolled down her cheek. “The investment in the offices Jeffrey opened up in Del Mar and Fairbanks Ranch spread our resources thin. We’re losing a lot more money at each location than I thought. Jeffrey had to take out a second mortgage on the house to hire Fineman.”
“I guess being the in-house real estate broker on the Scripps development deal would have pulled Jeffrey out of the hole he was in?”
“Yes.” Her answer was like a question. Like she was wary of where the answer might take me.
“Was the partnership with Sophia Domingo contingent upon PRE getting the Scripps’ listings?”
“I don’t know, but the partnership agreement was already signed when we found out that we didn’t get the bid.” Kim suddenly stood up and started pacing. “And the partnership with Sophia was only for the La Jolla office. The only office making money and the one that helps offset some of the losses of the other two.”
I didn’t know if LJPD had any physical evidence against Jeffrey Parker, but they had a stronger case than I was aware of before I came to Kim’s house. A strong motive. Sophia dupes Parker into giving her 10 percent of the La Jolla office with the promise of the Scripps windfall. The Scripps deal falls through but Sophia still gets ten percent of the profitable business. Then ends up dead before she can collect on the deal.
“Rick.” Kim stopped pacing in front of my chair and looked down at me. Green eyes, swollen but still stunning. “I know I’ve already asked a lot of you, but I need your help again.”
“Whatever you need.”
“Would you investigate the … Sophia’s … her death? I can’t pay you anything for a while, but I will when I can. I promise.”
“I don’t want any money.” I stood up. “But your lawyer won’t like me sniffing around. I’m sure he’s got the best investigators in San Diego working the case.”
“I don’t know them.” She grabbed my hands. “I trust you, Rick. More than anyone else in my life right now. I know you’ll find the truth.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
MY PHONE BUZZED as I drove south on La Jolla Shores Drive. The afternoon sun had melted the morning haze and washed the day in bright. Everything but my mood. What would I tell Kim when I found the same proof that LJPD had that her husband had killed Sophia Domingo? I answered my phone hoping for a distraction from reality.
Jack Anton’s name displayed on the screen.
“Rick, I just got a call from someone at LJPD about the Trent Phelps murder.”
“Detective Sheets?”
“No. Detective Dixon. He wants to go over my notes from the stories I wrote about the murder. Did you talk to the police?”
“Yes, but I talked to Sheets and Detective Denton. I don’t know who Dixon is.” I took the exit out of La Jolla onto the 52 heading home. “Should I have not mentioned you?”
“No. That’s fine. I don’t know a Detective Sheets, but the name Dixon rings a bell somewhere in my memory. Maybe he was a beat cop back when I covered crime. Anyway, I’m happy to help however I can. Maybe they can finally solve the murder and give the Phelps family some closure.”
There was that word again. Closure. As if finding the killer could bring back a loved one. There was no closure. Only justice. And maybe revenge.
“Maybe. Wherever they are.”
“Ingrid, the wife, lives in San Diego.”
“Really? How do you know that?”
“We’ve kept up an erratic correspondence over the years. I interviewed her a few times during the first couple years after the murder.”
“In the article about the one-year anniversary, you wrote that she’d moved to Northern California.”
“She did. Then she remarried and moved back to San Diego ten or twelve years ago. That’s when we restarted our correspondence via e-mail.” He chuckled. “That newfangled technology.”
“Do you think she’d talk to me?”
“I don’t know. I can ask. What do you want to talk to her about?”
“Her husband.” I paused. “My father. If there was any connection between the two of them.”
“Okay. I’ll ask her if she’d mind me giving you her contact information.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re a lot like your old man, Rick.”
That statement hadn’t been a compliment for almost thirty years.
“In what way?”
“Whatever happened at the end of his career, I always knew Charlie Cahill to be a man who tried to do the right thing and always sought to find the truth, no matter the repercussions.” He took a sip of something. Maybe something hard from his desk drawer. “You’re the person who got the ball rolling again on the Phelps murder. If you hadn’t been persistent, Phelps would still be an uncleared cold case sitting in a file cabinet in the basement of the Brick House.”
And Edward Armstrong and Jamal Ketchings would still be alive. My father had only covered up one murder. I’d been the catalyst for two more.
“Yeah. A regular chip off the old block.”
I set an appointment to meet with Jeffrey Parker at the jail. I lied and said Kim would be with me to get his approval. I needed to talk to him alone and didn’t want to wait until he was out on bail. I wanted Parker to still be caged. Smelling the stink of desperation and fear, his own and others. Hearing the clanging of doors shut on freedom and the roar of caged men’s anger bouncing around 360 degrees of cement and steel.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
LA JOLLA HAD its own Police Department and criminal court, but no jail. The county jail held what few La Jollans needed incarceration. The San Diego County Jail was on Front Street in downtown San Diego. A twenty-plus-story boxy cement edifice that reminded San Diegans that, even though we lived in paradise, there was still evil among us, and we needed a place to house paradise’s lost.
I sat on a steel stool bolted to the cement floor in front of a thick glass window framed by a steel counter and steel dividers halfway up the window affording those on my side of the glass a slice of privacy. A phone handset hung on a lever on the plank on the right side. Parker sat down and picked up the receiver off the counter on the other side of the glass.
Parker wore orange jail scrubs and looked like he’d aged five years since I’d seen him last. His skin matched the gray cement wall behind him. Purple circles hung under his eyes. The scrubs were two sizes too big or he’d shrunk after half a day in jail.
I was 70 percent certain that Parker killed Sophia. The percentage rose the more I learned. If he did it, I wanted him to pay. No second chances on the one thou shalt not that only God could forgive. But looking at Parker now, only a few hours in a cage and already a deteriorated version of his free self, I felt sorry for him.
“I thought Kim was coming with you.” He cupped his hand around the speaking end of the receiver to try to grab an inch of privacy in a building built of bars where there was none.
“Change of plans.”
“What do you want, Cahill? Haven’t you inserted yourself into Kim’s life enough?” Color returned to his face. Red. “Or did you just want to see me in jail to take the sting out of the fact that Kim chose me over you?”
“I’m here because Kim asked me to do her a favor.” My phone vibrated in my pocket. I left it there. “She believes you’re innocent. She also chose to believe you when you told her that you and Sophia didn’t have a sexual relationship.”
“I still don’t know what you want, Cahill.”
“Kim asked me to help save your life. I want to know that she’s not throwing her life away on a lying cheater.” I leaned toward the glass and zeroed in on Parker’s weary eyes. “How many others were there before Sophia?”
“There wasn’t anyone and Sophia was strictly business.”
“Listen, asshole, you lie to me again, and I’m walking away, straight to the police.” I leaned toward the glass and gripped the handset tighter. “Kim can choose not to believe what her eyes told her in the photos I took of you and Sophia at the hotel. I can’t. You and Sophia were working on more than business. Was she the first or were there more? Don’t fucking lie to me.”
Parker’s head and shoulders slumped and his eyes glistened early tears. “There was no one else
. Just Sophia.”
I’d expected a lie, but his body language told me he spoke the truth.
“If I could only go back in time.” His eyes gave way to tears and his voice came out hoarse. “Sophia had an aura. She was beautiful and sexy and she came on to me. It wasn’t just her. It was everything wrapped up together. The Scripps development, the money, the way to save my business. Kim and I had been having problems. I know it’s not an excuse. I’d do anything to take it back. I almost lost the love of my life. She’s the best person I’ve ever known. We’re going to start a family and I’ve blown everything.”
“Why did you leave the convention in Las Vegas early without checking out of your hotel? To set up an alibi for when you killed Sophia?”
“No.” He wiped a tear away and shook his head. “Sophia called me and told me that GBASD wasn’t going to give me the listings for the Scripps development. So, I drove back to San Diego to meet with her and to see if we could salvage the agreement.”
“Maybe you tried to salvage more than just the agreement. You didn’t check out of the hotel so Kim would think you were still in Vegas while you cheated on her. Again.”
“It was going to be the last time. The guilt of cheating on Kim was tearing me up inside. I needed the Scripps listings to save my business.”
“But you weren’t going to get them. You figured out that Sophia had used them as a lure to get you to give her ten percent of your business, so you killed her.”
“No I didn’t.” He slammed his free hand down on the steel counter on his side of the glass. “I’d already almost ruined my marriage because of Sophia. Kim is the best thing that ever happened to me. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life in prison and lose her for good.”
“Well, you may have to anyway.”
I wasn’t any more convinced that Parker was innocent of killing Sophia than when I walked into the jail. But I was convinced that he loved Kim.
As much as I did.
* * *
