by Matt Coyle
The lifting fog still kept a low ceiling on the night. I dialed Heather one last time, hoping she’d pick up and I could get a better read from a live voice. Voice mail. I exited the car and slowly walked toward her house, my eyes alert to movements and shapes. A streetlamp cast down a bright halo of light on the corner of the Heather’s street. I avoided it, stayed on the far sidewalk, and went down half a block before approaching the house from the opposite side.
A raised wooden deck above a small yard fronted the house. Muted light pressed the edges of vertical blinds across a rectangular window. A porch light stood dark above the front door. Heather’s red Miata sat in the carport to the right of the house. I touched the hood. Warm. Heather or someone else had parked her car there recently. Why didn’t she answer her phone?
My gut told me to run, that Moretti and a SWAT team were waiting for me inside. But a voice deeper inside told me that I had to make sure, that I’d hidden from life too long to have to spend the rest of it on the run.
Heather was still my one hope. My last hope.
I traced low along the Miata to a window on the side of the house. I peeked in at an angle, afraid I might see a SWAT helmet shield staring back at me. Safe. Just a white curtain with shadowed light behind it. The carport swung around behind the house leaving a little oval patio off a back door. The door had a white-curtained window that, again, gave the hint of light within, but nothing else.
I slunk down and tried the knob. It turned. I stayed low and slowly opened the door, my ears as alert as my eyes. The only sound was the low hum of a refrigerator. The kitchen was a straight shot through an archway into the living room. A light out of view lit a bookshelf and desk against the far wall, and the arm of a burgundy couch in the foreground. No SWAT team.
Moretti could have been hiding around the corner of the living room, but I doubted it. The house had a lifeless feel. Still, like an empty stage. I crept though the kitchen into the living room and saw the full length of the burgundy couch. Heather lay across it, one arm dangling to the floor.
Dead.
Eyes open, staring at eternity. Her mouth, stretched open for a last gulp of air that never came. Finger-shaped bruises ringed her neck. Death’s grasp.
My knees gave way and I almost went down. If I’d never given Heather the information about Windsor’s payoff ledger or the birth certificate, she’d still be alive. Moretti or Stamp Heaton on Stone’s orders had killed her, but I’d been responsible, too. Just like with Colleen.
When she’d needed me, I hadn’t been there.
Bile surged up my throat, and I scrambled down the short hallway to the bathroom and purged my body into the toilet. On my knees, gripping the commode. Again. Finally, I flushed, sat back against the wall, pulled a towel down from a rack, and wiped sweat from my face and residue from my mouth. Then I folded the towel inside out and wiped down the commode and the handle.
I took the towel back out to the living room and wiped anything I thought I might have touched. Heather lay frozen in death, as Colleen had in the Santa Barbara morgue years ago. Heather deserved to be found while the beauty she had in life could be preserved, not eviscerated by the twin horrors of death and time. But I couldn’t call the police, not even anonymously. They could trace the call and identify my voice.
Something about the room was off. A void. An emptiness I couldn’t finger. I looked around and caught the desk in front of the window. A printer. But no computer. No purse with a reporter’s notepad either. I went down the hall to check her bedroom to be sure.
No computer, no purse. Whoever had killed Heather took the information that could have put them in prison and kept me out of it.
I went to the back door, wiped it down and used the towel to open it. I closed the door the same way and stepped onto the patio. Cigarette smoke hit me immediately. I froze and saw a round man next door pulling a butt from his mouth. His patio paralleled Heather’s back door. An outdoor light spilled just enough glow to illuminate my face. I turned my head down and away and walked along the carport as calmly has I could fake. A waist-high brick wall separated us.
The sidewalk was just a few strides away, then I could break off to the right and circle back to my car.
“You a friend of Heather’s?” It was more an accusation then a conversation starter.
“Yeah.” I kept moving, but felt his presence mirror me across the fence.
I bolted across the street.
“Hey! Stop!”
I could tell from the fading sound of his voice that he hadn’t pursued me past his driveway. But it wouldn’t be long before he checked on Heather and the sirens came. I pushed hard on my throbbing ankle and made the far corner. No one chased me, so I doubled back on the next block down and headed for the car. I ditched the towel I’d taken from Heather’s house down a sewer a block from my car. A minute later, I cranked the Caddy’s ignition and pulled out from the curb.
No cops, no sirens, no screams of discovered death. Yet.
My choice had been made for me. A life on the run. No life at all. I headed for I-5 South.
Mexico.
Muldoon’s
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I didn’t have a passport, but I’d only need one if I was coming back. I wasn’t. I had about a hundred bucks in my wallet. That wouldn’t last very long. Not even in Mexico. I pulled into a minimall in National City and withdrew my daily max of $400 from an ATM.
My phone vibrated in my pocket as I took the on-ramp back onto the freeway. Kim. Maybe Heather’s murder had already made the news and she was calling to warn me that the cops had put up roadblocks. Too soon. Maybe she just wanted to tell me that Midnight missed me and, by implication, she did too.
What could I say to her? Midnight was hers now? Sorry I wasn’t the man you thought I was? This way our break would be final. She’d be forced to finally move on with her life without me hanging around the fringes. At least Midnight would have a good home. I let the call go to voice mail.
Chula Vista passed by into my rearview mirror. San Ysidro, next. A few more exits and I’d be at the border. If the cops had a roadblock there, I’d ditch the car and my life on the run would begin on foot.
The phone buzzed again. Kim. I suddenly wanted to hear the only friendly voice I had left one last time.
“Rick.” Urgent. “I need your help.”
Finally payback for all the times she’d helped me without need for explanation. Unfortunately, my debt would remain unpaid.
“What’s wrong?” I stalled for time while I figured out how to tell her that I’d never be able to help her or see her again.
“I’m up at the cross and my car broke down.” The words came out quickly like fear had run them together. Kim wasn’t one to panic over a broken-down car. “They must not have known I was up here when they locked the gate. I can’t get my car towed until tomorrow, and I don’t have any money for a cab.”
“What are you doing up there?” The clock on the dashboard read 10:25 p.m. LJPD closed the cross down at ten every night.
A road sign rolled past. The border was a mile away.
“I came up to look at the view.” Her words, breathy with emotion. “Like when you used to bring me up here.”
Another sign. Half a mile to the border.
“I’m sorry, Kim.” My heart folded in on itself. “I won’t be able to see you for a while. Goodbye.”
I put the phone in my pocket and slunk down in the seat. Ashamed. I’d failed the second woman in my life who’d ever loved me. Just like the first. Only, Kim would survive.
A sign appeared out of the thinning fog: LAST U.S.A. EXIT BEFORE MEXICO.
The fog. The cross. The view.
You couldn’t see twenty feet past your nose in the fog on Soledad Mountain tonight. There was no view.
Kim was in danger.
I punched her number on my phone and whipped across three lanes of traffic and blaring horns to just make the last U.S. exit. Voice mail. I left her a messag
e that I’d be there in twenty minutes, circled under the overpass, and rocketed the Caddy north, back onto the freeway.
Moretti, Heaton, or maybe even Stone, had gotten to her, hoping to get to me. If they didn’t think I was coming, they wouldn’t need her anymore and kill her. I prayed she was still alive and had gotten the voice mail.
I rummaged Chief Parks’s card out of my wallet and dialed his number while I punched the Caddy up to eighty-five. I didn’t trust Parks with my own freedom, but I had to with Kim’s life. His voice mail came on and I left a message that Kim was being held at gunpoint at the cross. I put my phone in my pocket, then pulled it out again. I couldn’t depend on Parks checking his messages or me making it to the cross in time to save Kim. I dialed 911.
My freedom for Kim’s life.
My phone beeped before 911 could pick up. Chief Parks’s number on hold. I hung up with 911 and took the call.
“Cahill, I’ve got an officer down and an ongoing SWAT operation at La Jolla Shores.” The cell reception was scratchy, but I could make out excitement in his voice. “All squad cars are employed, but I’ll try to get at least one unit up to the cross. I’m on my way there now. You’d better not be pulling my chain on this.”
“I’m not.” I couldn’t risk being wrong.
“Don’t do anything stupid. I just hope we can get some men there in time.” He hung up.
The fog thickened on my drive north. I exited the freeway and wound my way up Via Capri. My radar went up for Stone’s Mercedes as I traversed his home terrain. Not a single headlight, but maybe he was already waiting up at the cross.
The fog closed in tighter. Instinct took me up the mountain as I drove faster than the gray wall beyond my headlights would let me see. I sensed I was approaching the summit and turned off the lights. I slowed and craned my neck looking for the entrance to the cross.
My phone vibrated. Turk. I ignored it. Then I saw a horizontal silver smudge through the gray. The gate to the road that led up to the monument. Closed. Either I’d beaten Parks up here or he’d locked the gate behind himself. That didn’t make sense if he was expecting reinforcements. No, I’d gotten here first. I couldn’t wait for Parks or a patrol car. Kim might still be alive and the fog would give me cover.
I parked on the tiny shoulder opposite the gate, turned off the switch to the Caddy’s inside light, and quietly got out of the car. My phone vibrated. Turk again. We didn’t have anything left to talk about and never would, but he’d called me twice in fifteen seconds. Maybe he knew something I should. I whispered hello and kept my eyes on the shifting fog behind the gate.
“Rick!” More emotion in one word than I’d heard out of Turk in a lifetime. “A couple of detectives were just here looking for you. That reporter who’s been on your ass was murdered and they think you did it. What the hell’s going on?”
Maybe Parks’s get-out-of-jail-free card didn’t extend to Heather’s murder. But I didn’t have time to deal with it now.
“I gotta go.”
“Wait! These guys have a hard on for you. I got the feeling it’s shoot on sight and read you your rights later. Go to the police station and turn yourself in before they get to you. Where are you?”
Maybe the cops had put him up to the call. Maybe he was really concerned. It didn’t matter. Right now cops with guns might be the only thing that could save Kim’s life.
“I’m at the cross.” I hung up and ducked under the single-bar gate.
I peered into the fog. It muffled the sounds of the night down to a loud silence. I shuffled forward and found the sidewalk that meandered around the parking lot and up the hill to the cross.
At the top of the hill, a breeze pushed the heavy air and a car appeared twenty-five feet in front of me. A Crown Vic slick top. A detective car. It was parked just below the steps that led up to the cross. I froze. The fog swallowed the car again and I strained to hear voices, footsteps, anything.
Nothing.
I took a step forward and sensed movement behind me. Too late.
“Don’t move.” Something small and hard poked into my back.
The barrel of a gun.
Muldoon’s
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
A bear paw of a hand patted me down while the other one pressed the gun to my back.
“Kneel down and give me your car keys and your cell phone.” Stamp Heaton stepped around in front of me and leveled a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum at my chest.
I did as I was told. He stuffed the keys and phone into his coat pocket. Then he kicked me in the nose. Heaven’s light exploded and my head hit the sidewalk.
“Go down and find his car and bring it up here. Lock the gate behind you.” A voice out of the night.
The same one that had been behind the police spotlight the night Melody and I were pulled over. I’d heard it since, but hadn’t been able to connect it with that disembodied voice until tonight when it came blind out of the dark again.
La Jolla Police Chief, Raymond Parks.
Scarface.
The cologne on my carpet, his not Moretti’s. Windsor’s words in his memoir about the crooked cops’ scars of his youth. Acne, not Moretti’s cleft palate. Heather telling me that Scarface had lost his scars. Plastic surgery. The man with the shiny buffed cheeks. Prettying up to follow Mayor Albright up to Sacramento and start his own political career.
My head throbbed and my nose felt like it had been shoved into my brain. I lay still, pretending to be unconscious, blood pooling against my lips. I didn’t have a weapon and didn’t even know where Parks was. Right now, playing possum was all I had.
Then I heard the executioner’s metallic aria; a slide racked to chamber a round in a semiautomatic pistol. Adrenaline buzzed through me. I had to move. Now. Somewhere to my left, maybe twenty-five feet, scrub brush edged up to the parking lot from the north side of the mountain. If I could just get up without being shot, the fog might give me cover and then it was a downhill tumble to Interstate 5.
My muscles tensed. One, two—
“Heather Ortiz is on you, Cahill.” The calm voice of a moment ago, now a hard rasp. “Windsor sealed his own fate as soon as he starting writing a book. His death should have gone down as an OD, but that pissant Moretti had to get ambitious and your girl Melody filled the bill. Then you had to be a fucking hero and bring Heather into it. Hell, I liked her. All you had to do was sit on the sidelines and keep your mouth shut. You stupid fuck.”
Footsteps. Close.
I pushed up off the ground, but a kick to my ribs sent me back down. Pain vibrated along my right side. I sucked in air in short gasps through my mouth, my broken nose useless. I stayed down and hoped the cops had been with Turk when I told him where I was. Time was my only weapon, if I had one at all.
I eased up to a sitting position. Parks stood over me, a Glock nine millimeter hung loosely in his hand like a surgeon at ease with a scalpel. Coal eyes burned down at me through the fog, his mustache pulled his face into a permanent frown.
“You’re all alone, Cahill. No officer down. No help on the way.”
“Where’s Kim?” The iron taste of blood tangled in my words.
“She’s on you, too.”
“Where is she?” I shouted, but the fog swallowed the echo.
“Shut up!”
Yellow smudges rolled up the hill. As soon as Heaton searched the car and found Windsor’s payoff ledger, Parks would kill me and Kim. If he hadn’t killed her already. The Caddy stopped behind Parks and Heaton stepped out.
“Search it.” Parks said.
Heaton fingered the car keys, walked around to the trunk, and opened it.
“Does Parks know you’re working for Peter Stone, Heaton?” Maybe a rift would buy me time. I wiped blood from my lips, but my shattered nose kept pumping out more.
“Nice try, Cahill.” Parks said. “But Stamp has always been on my team. Stone just didn’t know it.”
“Where’s Kim?” I pictured Kim laying still, eyes open like Heather
Ortiz. Then she was Colleen on the steel coroner’s table in Santa Barbara. “Please. Let her go. She doesn’t know anything.”
“What’s he talking about?” Heaton stepped back from the open trunk, my backpack in his left hand. “Who’s Kim?”
Heaton didn’t know. He’d helped Parks to cover his own ass, but didn’t know all that Parks had done.
“It doesn’t matter.” The chief barked commands like Heaton was still on the force. “What’s in the backpack?”
“Does he know that you killed Heather Ortiz, Chief?” I said.
“Shut up!” Parks backhanded me with the Glock. The barrel’s sight sliced open a gash above my right eye. Blood streamed down into my eye and joined the flow from my nose.
“What’s going on, Ray?” Heaton’s normal gruff baritone leapt up an octave. His right hand down at his side holding his gun. “I don’t mind roughing up this asshole, but I didn’t sign on for murder. Tell me he’s wrong.”
Parks spun toward Heaton and an explosion shook the night. A dark dot bloomed on Heaton’s forehead and he collapsed straight down like a puppet on broken strings. His gun clattered to the ground.
I sprang to my feet and bolted for the edge of the parking lot when I heard Parks’s voice.
“Stop or you’re dead!”
Personal defense experts preach to keep running in a situation like this, that it’s hard to hit a moving target. Peter Stone had proved that tonight, but I’d just seen Parks spin and put a bullet in a man’s forehead at twenty feet. My back would be an easier target, even while running.
I froze and prayed for the cavalry to arrive.
“Turn around and walk toward me slowly.” He had the Glock trained on my chest.
I did as told and he backed up when I got within ten feet of him. He halted after a couple steps.
“Okay. Stop right there.”
Parks looked back and forth between Heaton’s still body and me as if he were measuring the angles. He might as well have been measuring my casket. I was a prop in Parks’s play. Heaton and I get into a gun battle at the cross and kill each other. The trail back to Parks is erased and he goes off with Albright to Sacramento. But that still left Kim.
