by Matt Coyle
“What good would it do if no one knew about it?”
“He wanted me to hire a private investigator and investigate the murder.”
“Did you?” Why would he want a PI to find the killer he’d blackmailed?
“No.” She lifted her chin. “After he died, I didn’t care anymore. The two men who were once important in my life were frauds. The safe deposit box was from a life I’d stopped living.”
“But you kept putting money into the checking account to keep the box open for eighteen years after my father died. That money must have added up over the years for a life you weren’t living anymore.”
“I didn’t care who killed my father. Your father did for a while before he lost his soul to a bottle. I used money from my father’s life insurance to fund the safe deposit box. I figured maybe someday someone who cared would come looking. I guess that’s you.”
“You said the two men who were important in your life were frauds. My father was the second one?”
“I told you what you needed to know about the safe deposit box and a little too much about me. Good luck in your quest.”
“I thought I was done with the life I had with my father, too.” I flashed to taking ground balls in the backyard. My stomach hallowed out. “I tried to hide from it for years. Just like you. But we were both fooling ourselves. Look at the self-portraits on your walls. You’re still living that life.”
“I painted those a long time ago.”
“But they’re still hanging on your walls. Tell me why my father chose you, Tonya. He pulled away from me after he left the force and got closer to you.” My Adam’s apple caught in my throat. The scared lonely nights of my childhood pulled at me from decades in the shadows. “Why?”
Tonya looked at me with her blank eyes peeking through blond bangs. A tear appeared at the corner of her left eye. She wiped it away, but more came. A torrent. She gasped and put her head in her hands. I came around the desk, kneeled down, and put my arm around her shoulder. The wound in my leg grabbed me, but I didn’t care. I wanted the pain. I slid my other arm across her hands holding her face. I held her. Hard and close. I let her cry. My pain flowed through her tears. Two lost children.
I waited for ten seconds. A minute. Five. I didn’t know how long. Time stood still. Tonya lifted her head and patted my arm. She sat straight up in her seat and I went back and sat down in my chair.
“I’m sorry.” She wiped the last remnants of tears from her eyes. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“The same place where it came from for me. I’m sorry I took you back there.” I leaned across the desk and opened my hands in front of me. “But I have to go back there and I need your help. Why was my father important in your life?”
Tonya looked at one of her self-portraits. Sadness gave texture to her flat eyes. She didn’t say anything for a while. I didn’t interrupt her silence.
Finally, “Your father gave a talk about drug abuse at La Jolla High when I was a junior. Some of my friends and I talked to him afterward. I could tell from the talk that he really cared what happened to us. He gave us his card that day and told us to call him whenever we wanted to. Just to talk when life got hard. I didn’t call him, but I kept his card.”
“Then you found out a couple years later that he was the cop extorting your father and you knew he was a fraud, too. Just like your own father.”
“What?” Tonya’s head snapped away from her painting and onto me. “Your father wasn’t extorting my dad. He and I were trying to find out who was when my dad was murdered.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“WHAT DO YOU mean?” My breath left me.
Instead of a twenty-seven-year-old weight being lifted from my shoulder, another one piled on. I’d spent most of my life wearing, and believing, my father’s shame. Condemning him in my mind and my heart even while I’d held out the flicker of hope that he might be innocent. My father. My blood. The man I wouldn’t talk to for the last year of his life. I’d abandoned him. I’d seen his drunkenness as a weakness that exposed his guilt.
It had really exposed a man who held honor and loyalty above all else, broken by betrayal.
“I knew my dad lied to your father and his partner about the attempted robbery. He told them that it had been a friend collecting money on a debt and not a robbery. I’d been at the store before when a man came by and my father gave him money out of the safe in the office. He told me the same thing he told the police later. That he was just paying a friend back some money he owed him. But I knew the man wasn’t a friend. I knew he was a criminal.”
“Did you tell my father when he came to the laundromat on the attempted robbery?”
“No. I was scared for my dad.”
“Did you tell my father about the cop that day?” I asked.
“No. The cop didn’t come by until a few weeks after the attempted robbery.”
“How did you two try to find out who was extorting your father?”
“I called your father after the cop came by and threatened my dad. My dad wouldn’t talk about it and I got scared. I didn’t know what else to do, so I called your father. I told my mom I was going to a girlfriend’s house and met your father at a coffee shop. I told him about the cop threatening my dad and demanding money.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t believe me at first. Then I showed him the ledger.”
“The ledger?” The leather-bound financial records with my father’s block writing.
“I did my homework in the Pearl laundromat office every day after school. My mom had taught me bookkeeping before she stopped doing it for my dad. After the attempted robbery by the man my father said was just a friend collecting a debt, I started keeping track of receipts, deposits, and the amount of money in the safe on my own. I knew the safe combination and checked it every day. My father kept a lot of money in there that didn’t correlate to the income on the books. That’s when I knew he was crooked. A fraud.”
“What about the ledger?”
“I kept records of how much money was in each store deposit bag and when the total was different the next day.”
“Of course, the total was different because your father was making deposits to the bank.”
“No. These were the off-the-books deposit bags. The discrepancies for all the stores always added up to three thousand dollars exactly once a month. Not always the same day of the month, but always the same amount.”
“And you gave this ledger to my father?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember seeing him write the store locations on the ledger?” My father’s block writing.
“I don’t remember, but he might have. I’d just used the store number to keep track. Number one, Grand Avenue. Number two, Cass Street. And number three, Turquoise Street. Number four, Pearl Street. Number five, Genesee Avenue.”
“How do you know this wasn’t money going to the mob?”
“They took a straight percentage of the gross receipts always on the first day of the month. The total was always different and larger. My father was being extorted by the mob and dirty cops. It was all in the ledger that I gave your father.”
“Who else knew about this?”
“No one. I didn’t even tell my mom. I was afraid she’d tell my dad and he’d do something that would get himself killed.” She shook her head. “Maybe I should have told him. Maybe he’d still be alive. Your father was going to try to help my dad and keep him out of jail.”
“Did he talk to your father? Did your father tell him who the cop extorting him was?”
“He talked to my father the next day, but my dad told him it was all untrue. That I’d gotten stupid ideas in my head. My dad grounded me for a month.” She stared down at the desk. “Didn’t matter though. Somebody killed him two weeks later.”
“Did you tell all this to the police?”
“No. When I gave your father the ledger, he told me not to talk to anyone about it unless he
said it was okay. So, I didn’t tell the detective when he questioned me after my father’s death. I was afraid if I did, someone would kill your father like they did my dad. I thought he would tell the detectives about the ledger, but he never did.”
Maybe he did and they tried to frame him for the murder. When that didn’t work, they framed him for taking money from the mob. Why didn’t he take his evidence to the brass or the FBI? Or if he did, why didn’t they believe him?
“If you had so much trust in my father, how did he disappoint you? Why was he a fraud?”
“Because he quit. He quit trying to solve my father’s murder. He quit on himself. He quit on me.” She pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “He quit on you, too.”
And I’d quit on him. When he’d needed me most.
“I’m going to find out who killed your father, Tonya. And I’m going to make sure the man who betrayed my father is arrested.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
I CALLED DETECTIVE Sheets’ cell phone. The call went to voicemail. I called again. Voicemail. I called again.
“When you call someone and get voicemail, it means the person is busy and you’re supposed to leave a message.” Staccato.
“I’ve got information on a murder case.”
“Dammit, Rick. We’ve already gone over this. I don’t have time to hear any more silly theories on the Domingo murder. I’m working the other murders you’re connected with and I’m busy.”
“This relates to that case.”
“Elaborate.”
“I have new information on the Trent Phelps murder. I talked—”
“Contact Detective Dixon. He’s in charge of all cold cases. Call the LJPD main number and they’ll transfer you to him.”
“It’s the same killer, Detective. Whoever killed Trent Phelps killed Armstrong and Ketchings.”
“I told you I don’t have time—”
“A cop killed Phelps, Detective. And I’ve got the gun that killed him.”
“You’d better not be playing games, Rick.”
“No games.” I told him about finding the gun in the safe. And the money. The ledger, the safe deposit box, and Tonya King. I didn’t tell him who I thought the murderer was. I wanted first shot before the cops got to him.
Sheets didn’t say a word until I was finished. Even then, he was quiet for a few more seconds.
“Where’s the gun?”
“In my gun safe at home.”
“Do we need a warrant to take custody of it?”
“No. It’s yours.” It had been in Cahill custody for way too long already.
“Don’t touch it again. I’ll send a couple uniforms and a lab technician to pick it up. It’s too late to get a warrant for the safe deposit box at Windsor Bank. We’ll go there tomorrow. Do you have this ledger?”
“No. I saw it once as a kid, but never saw it again. I’m guessing that’s one piece of evidence my father or someone else destroyed.”
“I’m going to coordinate with Detective Dixon. Wait at your home for the uniforms to get there.”
“I’m not home. Give me an hour and a half.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m out running an errand.”
“Rick, you’ve done some good work here. Don’t ruin it by doing something stupid.”
I hung up without answering.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
I PARKED IN front of Judas’ house. Bob Reitzmeyer. I squeezed my arm against my side, feeling the butt of the .45 Magnum holstered underneath my jacket. The sun burned out below the horizon. The house’s security lights went on. The inside stayed dark. I knocked on the door anyway. No answer. I pulled out my phone and called Bob. No answer there, either. I didn’t leave a message. What I had to say needed to be said face-to-face. With a gun as a backup.
Bob Reitzmeyer. My father’s best friend. The man who had saved his life in Vietnam. A man he loved like a brother. The cop my father wasn’t partnered with on the dates in the ledger when Trent Phelps paid off the cop extorting him. The man who’d claimed the ledger was proof of my father’s guilt. The one man my father would do anything to protect. Even remove evidence from a crime scene. The one man’s betrayal that could break my father’s heart. And his will.
I moved my car down the street with a good view of Bob’s house. I didn’t want to give him the chance to drive off if he saw my car out front. An hour passed. No Bob. Cops would be arriving at my house in a half hour to take custody of a murder weapon. Detective Sheets wouldn’t be happy if I wasn’t there to give it to them.
Bob would have to wait. My phone rang before I could restart the car. Unknown caller. I answered.
“Mr. Cahill, this is Detective Dennis Dixon.” Cop command voice. “I’m in charge of LJPD cold cases and I just got off the phone with Detective Sheets. We are going to delay collection of the potential murder weapon at your house because we need your help with something else.”
“What’s that?” Bob would have to wait even longer. But we’d talk tonight. And I still had a gun.
“I don’t want to talk too much about it over an open line. However, we need you to verify if the piece of evidence we’ve uncovered is legitimate before we make an arrest.”
“What’s the evidence?”
“A leather-bound ledger.”
“I can be at the Brick House in ten minutes.”
“It’s more complicated than that. We need you to come to the site where the evidence is located before we can make an arrest. You’ll understand when you get here. Detective Sheets is interrogating a witness right now, but will be on his way here as soon as he’s done.”
“What’s the address?”
He gave it to me. It sounded familiar, then I remembered.
“That’s retired Detective Davidson’s address.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
THE SKY WAS full dark by the time I got out to Ben Davidson’s house in East County. Dark enough so you could see the stars. No lights from a city or even a nearby town to dilute the night. A plain-wrap detective car sat in Davidson’s horseshoe driveway. No other vehicles. I parked behind it and walked to the front door of the house and knocked. The door opened within five seconds. A man in his early fifties stood in a triangle of light. Fit. Buzz cut. Military bearing. Looked vaguely familiar. He could have been one of the many Brick House cops I’d encountered over the years. Rarely with good result. However, he gave me a polite smile.
“Mr. Cahill?” He stuck out a hand. “Detective Dixon.”
I shook his hand and entered the house. He led me into the living room where I’d talked with Ben Davidson a week ago. No one else was in the living room tonight. A ledger sat on a coffee table in front of the chair Davidson had sat in before. I wondered if the retired detective was the person sitting in the square white room with Detective Sheets right now.
“Is this the ledger you saw as a child?” Detective Dixon looked down at the ledger on the table.
“I think so, but I can’t be one hundred percent certain.”
“Understood.” He pulled a pen out of his inside coat pocket and lifted open the ledger. “Do you recognize the handwriting on this page?”
My father’s block handwriting. The writing I’d seen on birthday cards as a kid. On a note telling me how sorry he was he’d missed one of my Little League games because of work. And on the envelopes of letters I’d returned to sender unopened the last six months of his life.
“Yeah.” I blinked a couple times and swallowed the knot in my throat. “It’s my father’s.”
I looked up at Dixon and the conversation I had with Ben Davidson in that room came back to me. There was a void in the room now. A picture missing from the side table next to the chair where the old man had sat. The back of my neck tingled.
“I’m still not sure why you had me come up here to verify the ledger was my father’s.”
Headlights flashed through the white-curtained window.
“That must be Detective Sheets,” Dixon said. “You’ll understand when he comes inside.”
A few seconds later the sound of the front door opening and closing came from the foyer. Footsteps and then a man emerged.
Bob Reitzmeyer.
I shot my hand under my coat for the .357. A jab in my side. Dixon won the race.
“Hold it.” He pressed the barrel of his gun deeper into my side. “Hands in the air.”
My heart machine-gunned in my chest and my stomach dropped down a well. I put my hands up and stared at Bob as he walked over. Flat expression. Dead eyes. Dixon shoved his left hand under my coat just as Bob did the same.
“I got it.” Bob pulled out my gun and held it on me. “I never knew exactly why I held onto that ledger for all these years after I took it from your dad’s car. I guess I liked having a piece of him close to me.”
“The payoff dates in the ledger when you and my father were riding solo wasn’t proof of his guilt, but yours.”
“Well, I had a partner on those days when I wasn’t with your dad.” He nodded at Dixon.
“This isn’t true confession, Bob,” Dixon said. “Let’s move this along.”
“Sit down, Rick,” Bob said.
I sat in Ben Davidson’s chair. I remembered the photo I’d seen on the side table now. It was of Davidson’s daughter with her arm around a man’s waist. Detective Dixon, Ben Davidson’s son-in-law.
“There are a couple of uniforms and a crime scene tech knocking on my door right about now.” I tried to steady my voice. Shallow breaths made it difficult. “Detective Sheets is going to start looking for me when I don’t answer the door.”
“No, he won’t.” Dixon gave me a devil grin. “I told him I’d take custody of the gun when he called me to coordinate.”
“When I don’t turn up, he’ll get a warrant for the gun. He’s already getting one for the shells in the safe deposit box. Somebody’s DNA is going to be on that gun and ballistics will match the slugs found in Phelps to the Raven .25. The DNA will solve the crime. You’re going to have to live life on the run as it is. Killing me’s not going to make a difference. It will just ensure that you get the needle.”
