by Matt Coyle
“Well, I guess the DA didn’t have much faith in your case or he wouldn’t have kicked me loose.” I leaned toward him, invading his space. “Is that why you’re here, Grimes? A chance to regain your tainted reputation? You were riding high until you pinned your star on my arrest. It’s a little late for redemption, isn’t it? Now that you’re not even a copy anymore.”
“You’re on borrowed time, Cahill.” He cut the space between us in half, so we were nose to nose. “You can feel it. The truth tightening down on you. That’s why you’re taking chances. You’re nervous. You’ve got a backpack full of secrets that the police would love to see.”
I fought my hands from going up to the backpack straps. A guilty man’s move. He’d somehow caught up to me before I’d gone into the bus station. My game changer of confronting Grimes had blown up in my face. I had to get away.
Keep moving, stick the jab.
“The cops must not be interested in your theories. If they were, you’d be working with them instead of for the defense. Colleen’s case gets colder and colder while you’re down here playing Johnny Cochran.”
“I quit the defense team an hour ago. Right after I saw you pull a computer out of that locker in the bus terminal. Strange place to keep one. Unless it doesn’t belong to you.” He gave me a smile that scared me more than anything that had happened in the last week. “John Kerrigan is my only client, and I’ve got one case. You. A whole file cabinet in my office has your name on it. John and I are going to take you down for his daughter’s murder. Even if you’re already in prison for Windsor’s.”
Grimes drop-stepped and swung his hand behind his back. I didn’t wait to see whether he’d come out with handcuffs or a gun and try to make a citizen’s arrest. I shot a hard right straight into his eye socket. He sat down like someone had whipped his chair out from under him. A woman’s scream split the air. I blasted through wide-eyed shoppers and a maze of shops trying to find an exit from the mall. My ankle throbbed and grabbed at me. I ignored it and hit full sprint.
“Stop that man!” Grime’s voice chased after me. “He’s under arrest!”
A white security shirt flashed in front of me on the left. Small, young, and the fear in his eyes told me he wasn’t fully invested. He reached for me and I pistoned a straight arm that caught him in the shoulder and knocked him into a kid in baggy jeans. They both went down.
His partner came around a corner up ahead on the right. The exact opposite of the kid rolling on the ground. Big, old enough to have been in some battles, and eager for more. Behind him, daylight. An exit from the mall. He knew where I was headed and cut off the angle. A straight arm wouldn’t work this time and my ankle robbed me of all-out speed. I juked to my left so he’d think I’d try to evade him. The move got him on his heels just enough, and I shortened my neck, lowered my shoulder, and hit him in full stride.
Thunk. Head-to-head.
The impact knocked me dizzy and off balance, but I stayed up as he went down. I gathered myself and was back up to my limited full speed. A shuffle, huffs, and footsteps behind me. The guard was again in pursuit.
“Stop that man! He’s under arrest!” Grimes’s voice now echoed through the mall, losing volume.
Thirty yards away, the exit. Grimes kept shouting from farther and farther away. The huffs of the security guard were steady, thirty yards behind me. A couple of early-twenty dudes eyed me like they might make a play, but I buzzed by them before they got their hero up.
I hit the exit and broke hard to the left up 4th Avenue. Half a block to the Hard Rock Cafe. The cab was waiting and I jumped in and told the driver to roll just as the guard showed on the street. He gave up the chase, but Grimes came running out of the mall. He stopped and pulled a cell phone out of his pants pocket.
I watched through the cab’s back window as he punched in a number and put the phone up to his face. I didn’t have to hear the conversation to know that Monday’s grand jury didn’t matter anymore. There’d be BOLOs pointed at me circulating through squad cars from La Jolla to San Diego.
I had to either run for the rest of my life or stay and fight.
Muldoon’s
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I switched cabs and the second one dropped me off two blocks from Kim’s house. I didn’t want the driver to have her address in case the police questioned him later. Kim looked surprised when she opened her front door. Midnight wedged past her and leapt his front paws up on my chest and lathered my chin with his tongue. His wagging tail percussioned against the open door. For a moment, I forgot that my life had turned to shit and enjoyed the homecoming.
Wind rattled the shutters on the windows and the moment passed. I checked over my shoulder for cops, PIs, or thugs, then slipped inside and closed the door behind me.
“Is everything okay?” Kim put her hand on my cheek. “You look worried.”
“I need your help.”
“Okay.” She dropped her hand from my face and her eyes went wide with concern. “What can I do?”
“I need you to rent a car for me in your name. Your car’s fine. I’ll drop you by it when we get the rental.”
“I’ll do whatever you need, Rick.” She walked over to the mahogany table in the dining room and sat down. “But first tell me what’s going on.”
There might already be a warrant out for my arrest. The more I told her, the more I’d put her in a position of aiding and abetting.
“If the police question you, I borrowed your car and then came back and forced you to rent me a car.” Grimes had already made me in Kim’s Rav4. He’d no doubt given the police the make, model, and license plate number when he called them after I escaped him at Horton Plaza.
“Rick, what’s going on?” More fear than anger.
She had the right to know so that she’d at least have an option to walk away.
“The DA is convening a grand jury on Monday to indict me as an accessory to the Windsor murder. But there may already be a warrant out for my arrest.”
Kim’s shoulders slumped and she brought her hand to her mouth.
The words hit me as hard as they did Kim, but for a different reason. I was an albatross around her neck. First, by breaking up with her, and then staying just close enough by so she’d hold out hope and never move on. Now, I’d put her in real danger. I pulled her keys out of my pocket and dropped them on the table.
“Your car’s parked on Second Street downtown, about two blocks north of the Greyhound bus terminal.” I took thirty dollars out of my wallet and set it down next to the keys. “You’ll have to take a cab to get it. Sorry.”
I headed for the front door. Midnight fell in at my side. Head up, ears perked, he mirrored my movements, ready to go home and restart our once quiet life.
“Rick, wait.” Kim got up from the chair.
I put my hand on the doorknob and Midnight growled, the hair on his back spiked, his eyes lasered on the front door.
Someone knocked from the other side. Midnight’s growl grew louder. I snapped my fingers and he quieted, but his fur stayed at full alert. I let go of the doorknob, took a step back, and looked at Kim. Her eyes, green gemstones in white saucers. She walked over to me at the door.
Another knock, louder, urgent. Kim looked at me for instruction. I slid around the corner of the hallway, Midnight pinned to my side. Back pressed against the wall at a right angle to the front door, I nodded.
Kim took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Are you Kim Connelly?” The voice was familiar.
Midnight let out a low menacing growl. My hand to his face quieted him.
“Yes.”
“Chief Parks, La Jolla PD.”
I sucked in a deep breath. Only twenty-five minutes since I’d lost Grimes and the police had already found me.
“What can I do for you, Chief?” Kim kept her voice steady, formal. An upright citizen trying to help.
“Do you mind if I come in?” Park’s voice had less of an edge than when I’d hea
rd it at Melody’s arraignment.
My hands went to the backpack straps around my shoulders. The evidence that would put me in a six-by-eight-foot cell in the Brick House hung like a target on my back.
“I’m afraid my dog doesn’t like strangers. It’s probably best that you stay outside.” Cool, in control. A powerful side I’d never seen or maybe never noticed before. “How can I help you?”
“Maybe you could put him in the backyard while we talk.” A cop pushing his badge around.
“I just watered out there. I don’t want him to get muddy.” She blocked the doorway, a blonde sentinel in tennis shorts. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you own a 2007 green Toyota Rav4?”
“Yes.”
“Where is the vehicle now?”
“I’m not sure. I lent it to a friend.” Concern lifted her voice. “Did something happen to it? Is there something wrong?”
“Who is this friend?” More a command than a question.
“Has there been an accident? Did someone get hurt?”
“Do you know Rick Cahill?’
“Yes.” The knuckles of Kim’s hand, still on the knob of the opened door, tightened to bone-white. “Is he all right?”
“That’s up to him. Where is he?”
“I’d like to know what this is all about. You knock on my door and ask me cryptic questions and refuse to answer any of mine.”
“You tell Cahill to contact me right away when you talk to him.” Kim’s free hand moved forward like Parks was handing her something. “I’m the only thing that stands between him and a jail cell.”
“What does that mean?” Real concern now. Her hand came back to her side with a business card in it. “Is Rick under arrest?”
“You just have him call me on my cell phone. It’s written there on the card.” He slowed his cadence and hit every word hard. “His time is running out. If he doesn’t contact me tonight and give me what he has, I don’t think I can stop this thing.”
“What thing?”
“Tonight or it’s out of my control.” Fading away, like he’d turned and gone back to his car.
Kim closed the door, and I stepped into the foyer. The confident woman who’d held the chief of police to a draw had melted away. She looked dazed like she’d taken a shot to the chin, barely able to stay upright.
I put my arms around her and pulled her in. “Thanks.”
“Rick.” She pushed her hand holding Parks’s business card at me, fear crowding her green eyes. “Maybe you should call him. He’s the chief of police and it sounds like he might be on your side.”
After our confrontation at Melody’s arraignment, Parks would have had to have changed sides to be on mine now. But he’d come alone today, just like Moretti had at the library. And he’d tried to stop the grand jury that Moretti had spearheaded. There was definitely a rift between the two of them. I’d already made Moretti for Scarface, Windsor’s corrupt cop. Maybe Parks had, too, and he’d figured out that I had evidence that could prove it. Could he really be my only shot of getting out of this? Or was it a trick to get me to show myself?
I took Parks’s business card from Kim’s hand. Maybe it was worth the gamble.
Muldoon’s
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The gold ’65 Cadillac DeVille drove like a whale in deep water. Mushy suspension and slow to turn. It had a black drop top, but I kept the lid on. My goal was not to be seen. Thankfully, the Caddy wasn’t vintage, so I wouldn’t attract any admiring eyes. Kim had borrowed it from a neighbor who was five years past driving, but who’d held onto it for chauffeured drives to the grocery store. It smelled of cat piss and baby powder, but the engine ran and it couldn’t be traced back to me.
Parks already knew of my connection to Kim. The rest of the force was probably soon to follow. If they’d spread the net wide, they would have looked for car rentals in the names of my friends. The few I had left. Parks’s card, unused for now, sat in my wallet. The backpack full of evidence was in the trunk.
Seven forty-five. Fifteen minutes before my meeting with Melody. Night clamped down and pushed the Santa Ana winds back where they came from. A fog had fallen into their void. I drove along Torrey Pines Road, the Caddy’s jutting chin, like an icebreaker, cut through the mist. Headlights were smudged yellow orbs in the rearview mirror.
I parked down on Coast Boulevard above the ocean and across from the staircase that led up the backside of Muldoon’s. Hidden in the fog, the staircase was empty and the rusted metal banisters were cool and slick in my hands. At the top, I stayed in the shadows and fog. Melody could have set me up, working with the cops and DA, to cut a plea deal. The courtyard in front of Muldoon’s sat empty, too early in October for a dinner wait.
Ten minutes later, Melody emerged from the fog across the courtyard. Black pants, dark sweater, flowing midnight hair. Confident look of a television reporter instead of a frightened murder suspect. She took my breath away, and I silently cursed myself for allowing it. I receded back into the fog, a few steps down the staircase, and called her on my cell.
“Rick?”
“Take the staircase across the courtyard all the way down to the street.”
“What’s going on?”
I hung up and scuttled down the steps as fast as my gimpy ankle would allow. At the bottom, I hustled across the street and hid behind an SUV. I scanned both ends of the street for patrol cars or slick tops. Nothing. A few hand-in-hand couples strolled the sidewalk overlooking the ocean. No one gave off the scent of an undercover cop.
Melody emerged from the stairway. When I was sure she was alone, I stepped out into the street to show myself. She hurried over and surprised me with a long, tight hug. Cinnamon and lavender rose above the salty perfume of the ocean. Her touch took me back to the first night we met. Back to her naked body wrapped in mine. Back to the hope that I could love again.
I pulled myself back to now.
She unwound from me and her eyes held mine. Sad, yet inviting. Invitation or manipulation? Had that been the look she used with her johns? I ignored it and led her onto the sidewalk. We walked along the edge of Scripps Park, the crash of waves below us filling the night. Just another couple engulfed in the romance of ocean air.
“Rick.” Melody stopped me with a hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry that I got you involved in all of this.”
“Thanks, but you didn’t come here just to apologize.” I guided her off the sidewalk down onto the sandstone outcroppings that tiered down to the crashing waves. “What’s the rest?”
“The DA is offering me a plea deal.” Her voice was muffled under the roar of the ocean. “Murder Two and I get twenty-five years. My lawyer thinks I’d be out in twelve.”
“And?”
“The DA wants me to testify against you. They think you supplied the heroin that killed Adam.”
Eddie Philby’s jailhouse lie.
“And?”
“I’d never testify against you, Rick. Not even if I was guilty.”
There were still a few weeks until the trial. The specter of life in a cell has been known to change people’s minds.
I checked the sidewalk behind us. A couple paused to look out over the ocean. We walked down to the edge of the cliff, eight feet above the water. The mist off broken waves sprinkled our cheeks.
Melody was saying all the right things. Either the truth, or lies she’d rehearsed. I needed to knock her off script.
“What happened to the bald man?” The flash of red on the videotape and Melody thrusting the knife into the man’s chest ripped through my mind. “Did you kill him?”
Melody’s legs buckled. I grabbed just enough of her sweater to soften her landing. She sat with a thud, and I held on to make sure she didn’t tumble off the cliff into the ocean. A wave smashed against the cliff and sprayed us in the face. I wiped the water from mine, but Melody let it drip off her chin.
“You saw everything?” Her voice was a raspy croak.
“Yes.�
��
“Should I give you the sad hooker story? Or do you want to fill in the blanks on your own?”
“Whatever you like.”
“You were a cop. I’m sure you’ve heard the sob story a hundred times.” Self-contempt hung off each word. “Father molested then abandoned me as a kid. Years later, slick-talking Adam came along in place of Daddy, took advantage of my low self-esteem, and turned me out on the stroll. The tale is as old as time. Nothing unique.”
“But you overcame it. That is unique.” I couldn’t help myself. Melody could have remained a victim and lived a short, ugly life, but she fought, climbed out of the morass, and made something of herself.
“I had a whole new life. Then Adam got out of prison and tried to blackmail me. He showed me a flash drive he had with secret tapes he taken of me and my johns back a lifetime ago.”
“So you killed him.”
“No!” Raw.
“What about the bald man?”
“He haunts me in my dreams.” She hugged herself like she was her own life jacket, adrift at sea. Her words came out shaky and wet with emotion. “I see that night over and over again. The knife I’d kept under the mattress for protection. The man forcing himself into me from behind. The one indignity I’d never allow. He took that from me. Then I stabbed him. Again and again. I couldn’t stop. I wanted to kill him.”
She collapsed into me, sobs convulsing her body. Pent-up emotion broken loose from years of control. I stroked her hair and gently rocked her. I knew what it was like to live with one horrible decision that had destroyed lives. Life moves forward, but the reverberations chase after you like yesterday’s echo.
We sat huddled together. Waves crashing below us. Fog pulling the night down on top of us. Melody lifted her head up to me. Her eyes bloodshot, but unguarded.
“I never knew what happened to him, whether he lived or died.”
“Why not?”
“Adam had a cop on his payroll who took care of it.” She stared out into the burnt-charcoal night. “A month later, Adam and I moved to Las Vegas, and we never talked about it again.”
