by Matt Coyle
Perfect. This guy would come across as credibly as a politician at a fundraiser. I guessed his back only hurt when he worked but not when he surfed. A couple of hits off the bong and he was as good as new.
“Where did you used to work?”
“UPS shipping center in Kearney Mesa.” He put a hand on his lower back and Method-acted a wince. “Until my back went out.”
“I understand that you contacted Jack and Rita Mae Eddington with information that you think could help free their grandson from prison.”
“Yeah.” His eyes hit mine, then moved down to the left. “I heard someone brag about murdering the family and getting away with it.”
“Steven Lunsdorf?”
“Yeah.”
“Where and when did you hear this?”
“The Chalked Cue in Clairemont last Monday night.”
The Chalked Cue was a dive bar known to attract bikers. That seemed like rough trade for this wannabe Rastafarian to hang out with.
“Is Lunsdorf a friend of yours?”
“More like an acquaintance.”
“And he just blurted out to an acquaintance that he murdered a family eight years back?”
“No.” Quick. Defensive. “I guess we’re more than acquaintances, but we don’t really hang out. I see him at The Chalked Cue sometimes. Anyway, we were shootin’ pool and he was pretty drunk. There was a show on TV about some kid in the Carolinas murdering his family. Steven said those family murders don’t always go down the way they say they do on TV.”
“That’s it?”
“No.” He reached a hand out to reload the bong. “He said it could have been just like that Eddington family eight years ago that the son got blamed for. Maybe someone else did it. Someone like him.”
“And you believed him?”
“Not right away.” He hit the bong again and blew out a skunk cloud. “I said, ‘Sure, bro, whatever you say.’ Then he got mad and told me he could take me to the hillside behind the house and show me where he buried the golf club he used to beat the family to death.”
“Did you take him up on it?”
“No, man.” He set the bong back down. “I was kinda freaked out. Steven’s a member of the Raptors, and I didn’t want to be down some hill with him when he dug up the murder weapon and decided I knew too much.”
The Raptors were white supremacists born out of the California prison system who sometimes partnered with the Aryan Brotherhood. If Fellows was telling the truth, I can’t say I blamed him. The Raptors were armed and usually skittering on meth. A volatile cocktail.
“So you expect the Eddingtons to hire somebody to dig up the hillside behind their late son’s house until they stumble upon the murder weapon?”
“No. I think I know where it is. Steven kept rambling on all night about it. He told me it’s buried under a cactus fifty yards below the house.”
“Did anyone else hear the story who can corroborate it?”
“I don’t think so.” His eyes skirted from the curtained window to the door, like he was expecting someone to peek through or walk in. “We were at the back table by ourselves.”
Convenient.
“You said he was drunk. How drunk were you?”
He hesitated. Probably gauging his believability if he copped to being smashed. “I wasn’t drunk. I’d only had a couple beers.”
“While he was rambling on, did he tell you why he murdered a family of perfect strangers with no apparent motive?”
The crime scene had been staged like a burglary, but the police never bought it.
“He said it was a job. Nothing personal, but he wished the little girl hadn’t walked in when he was doing the parents. He felt bad about killing her.”
Hit man with a heart of gold.
“What do you get out of all this, Trey? There was no reward offered for information on the crime. This thing had been put away cold for eight years until you called the Eddingtons with your little story.”
“It’s not a story! It’s the truth!” His red eyes got big. “Why you giving me a hard time when I’m just trying to do the right thing?”
“So, you’re just a Good Samaritan with nothing to gain.”
“Just because I smoke pot and don’t work, doesn’t mean I don’t care about people. I felt sorry for the kid and the grandparents.”
A stoner with a heart of gold. I’d put him up on the pedestal right next to the gold-hearted hit man. Maybe two years of peeking at people betraying their spouses and their vows before God had made me cynical. Or maybe it was just a lifetime of questioning my own motives, but I doubted Fellows’ heart was anything denser than gold leaf. However, right now, I was just there to collect the story.
“So, after eight years, the Eddington case was fresh enough in your mind to remember the kid and the grandparents?” I asked.
“I followed it every day on the news. Something like that doesn’t happen every day around here. Especially in La Jolla.”
“If it comes down to it, you’ll testify in court about everything you just told me?” The Raptors might have a say in it if they got the chance.
He eyed the picture of the couple on the wall and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. This time, no smoke came out. Just a whiff of fear. He finally looked at me and nodded his head. “If it comes down to it.”
CHAPTER NINE
Buckley met me at his office in La Jolla in the late afternoon. He sat with his cowboy boots propped up on the desk next to a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon, staring out the window at the Pacific Ocean half a mile away. He could only glimpse a thin strip of blue above hotels and restaurants that hugged the coast. Still, it must beat the view he had of boarded-up businesses back when he worked in southeast San Diego.
I sat opposite his desk in a leather chair angled so I could enjoy the view too. Buckley nodded at the Maker’s Mark. I shook my head. Early for me. Not for Buckley. I’d just given him a verbal report about my interview with Trey Fellows.
“So much for the nuts and bolts, Rick.” He dropped his boots to the floor and leaned toward me. “What’s your gut tell you? Is this guy legit?”
That was the question I debated with myself on the ten-minute drive from Fellows’ house to Buckley’s office. “Legit might be a strong term for a guy who smokes his disability money through a bong when he’s not surfing.”
“This isn’t a worker’s comp fraud case.” Buckley studied me with worn gray eyes under a beige Stetson. “So he’s on the dole. Doesn’t make him much different than a lot of folks these days. I need your gut on the story. Does it pass the stink test?”
“On the surface.” The debate from the drive over still churned in my head. “I would have to try and find someone to corroborate that he and Lunsdorf played pool at The Chalked Cue last Monday night. But the story mostly plays. It has a lot of details that ring true.”
“Mostly plays.” He took off his hat and his ponytail tumbled down his neck. The hat left an imprint across his pale forehead. “What’s leaving a hole in your belly? You look like you got a cow in the squeeze chute but can’t find your branding iron.”
“I’ll pretend I know what that means, Buckley.” I looked out at the line of blue below the orange horizon. “The story seemed a little practiced—”
“That’s to be expected. He told his story to the Eddingtons, to me, and now you. People like to get the facts together in a nice neat row. I’ve seen it hundreds of times with witnesses. It’s human nature.”
“I know, but Fellows doesn’t come across as a hero or a glory seeker. It takes a lot of courage to accuse a Raptor of anything, much less murder. And if you actually get a new trial, it will blow up in the media 24/7. I don’t think Fellows would welcome that kind of scrutiny.”
“Scrutiny equals celebrity. Every swinging dick and dickette under the age of forty can’t wait for their Warhol fifteen minutes.” He closed his eyes, pursed his lips, then looked back at me. “Sorry, Rick. Didn’t mean any harm. I know you got
more time under the hot lights than any man deserves. Even a guilty one.”
The last breath of fire from the sun snuffed itself out at the edge of the ocean.
“No worries, Buckley. I don’t even think about the past anymore,” I lied.
“Good work today, son.” Buckley put his hat back on. “You got good instincts, an active mind. I know the money at La Jolla Investigations is better than anywhere else, but you’re wasting your talent snooping on strangers playing mattress rodeo. ’Bout time Bob Reitzmeyer figured that out.”
He was right, but that was between Bob and me. I’d never publicly criticize the only cop who showed up at my father’s funeral. I also had the feeling that Buckley had laid it on a bit thick to give me an extra nudge to stay on the case.
“I’m still not a hundred percent.”
“Life rarely gives you a hundred percent of anything, son.” Buckley’s red-rimmed eyes zeroed in on mine. “What’s it gonna take to get you to ninety percent?”
“I want to meet Randall.”
Buckley scratched his beard and raised his eyes to the ceiling. Finally, “I guess we could make a trip up to San Quentin and talk to Randall.”
“I’ll go alone.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing personal, Buckley. I want it to just be me and Randall face-to-face between the glass.”
“I’ll make the arrangements. How soon can you go?”
“I already booked a flight this morning.” I stood up. “I fly out on Southwest tonight and see Randall at eight tomorrow morning.”
The flight from San Diego to San Francisco took about an hour and a half gate to gate. Less than an hour in the air. Not much time to travel 500 miles. Plenty of time to unlock painful memories.
San Francisco used to be one of my favorite cities. Not anymore. Not for a long time. My late wife, Colleen, had grown up in Mill Valley in Marin County, just a short drive over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The last time I’d been up there had been for her memorial service ten years ago. I’d just been released from jail in Santa Barbara after being arrested for Colleen’s murder. The DA had dropped the charges. Not because he thought I was innocent, but because he didn’t think he could get a conviction.
Colleen’s father had tried to use his local influence and giant wallet to keep me from attending the service. It hadn’t been enough. He would have had to kill me to keep me from being there. An idea he’d no doubt explored.
The Episcopal Church that Colleen had attended as a kid was filled past standing room only. People stood shoulder-to-shoulder along both outer aisles. A murmur trickled through those standing near the door when I entered the church. The murmur built to a vibrating hum, and heads snapped toward me as I weaved through the crowd to the front of the church.
Colleen’s family took up the first few pews. No one had saved me a seat. I stood next to the first pew at the front of the crowd. Colleen’s parents, brother, sister, and grandparents sat directly to my left. No one jostled over to squeeze me in.
John Kerrigan stared hatred at me. Pure, malevolent, visceral. In his mind, I’d murdered his daughter, and now had come to desecrate her memory. I held his stare and took it. Let him bore his anger, hatred, and pain into me. It was the only thing I’d ever be able to do for him and his family.
Colleen’s younger sister, Christy, now seventeen, sat next to John. Beautiful, with Colleen’s blue eyes and blond hair. She’d always been a tagalong whenever Colleen and I visited her family. Colleen had called her my biggest fan, always taking my side whenever John Kerrigan spoke ill of me. I gave her a slight nod.
Christy looked at me with her father’s eyes. Hatred. And betrayal. I could take her father’s venom, but not hers. He’d never liked me. His daughter’s death, the sad outcome of my unworthiness, low character, and now, depravity. I turned away. The air sucked out of me, leaving me empty. Of everything.
Again.
The minister came to the pulpit. Behind him were blown-up photos of Colleen. As a child, a teenager, a woman. The last one of her had been the one taken on the Rubicon Trail above Lake Tahoe. The impossible cobalt blue of the lake lifting the azure blue of Colleen’s eyes. The photo I now kept on my desk at home. My favorite picture of us together.
In the blown-up photo on the easel in the church, I’d been cut out.
The minister prayed and quoted the Bible. Then John, Christy, and a handful of childhood friends solemnly trudged to the pulpit, one after another, and told remembrances and stories about Colleen. No one asked me to speak, and I didn’t volunteer. I stood and cried silently, swallowing the wails that erupted from me when I mourned alone. No one offered me a kind word or a pat on the shoulder.
I was the reason everyone had to suffer through the day. The Santa Barbara Police Department had released me, but refused to clear me. I was the murderer who’d gotten away with it. I had taken Colleen away from all of them and then had forced them to feel my presence. Forever tainting their memories of Colleen.
Per her wishes, Colleen had been cremated. I let her family have half her ashes. Later, in a private ceremony, they spread them in Carmel Bay, a couple hours south of San Francisco. I did the same a few days later. Alone. We’d gone to Carmel on our honeymoon, Colleen’s favorite vacation spot as a child. It became mine too. The most beautiful stretch of scenery along the California coast. Now it had become a cemetery. The forever resting place of a lost life.
The night before my meet with Randall Eddington, I stayed in a high-rise hotel in Union Square. Far fewer panhandlers than Market Street, but close enough to the Tenderloin to keep an edge on. I walked through Chinatown with its red and gold banners to Columbus Avenue and its Italian flags in North Beach. I had dinner in a hole-in-the-wall joint that had a great spaghetti carbonara and a view of the street. And the restaurant across it where Colleen and I used to eat when we visited the city.
I could have picked a different restaurant. I could have walked to a different part of town. I could have forced myself to go to the place across the street.
I ate my pasta, stared out the window, watched, and remembered from afar.
CHAPTER TEN
San Quentin State Prison sat on the choicest piece of real estate in the world that ever held a prison, unless there was one on the French Riviera. Even then, it would have been a toss-up. The prison was on twenty-two acres of land on the shoreline of North Bay. The inmates would have had a hell of a view if not for the high walls, razor wire, and sniper towers.
Randall Eddington was no longer the doughy kid in his grandparents’ photo album. The dough had turned to iron, and the intelligent eyes of a nerdy kid, still framed by black horn-rimmed glasses, had hollowed out into the thousand-yard stare of a grown man doing life. But prison would change anybody. Even a murderer.
I sat down opposite Randall, safe on the other side of the glass, but still locked behind prison walls. I’d walk out a free man. Whether I’d try to help Randall do the same depended upon the thirty minutes we’d spend together.
I picked up the handset to the phone that connected us through the glass. “Hello, Randall.”
“Mr. Cahill.” He held the phone to his mouth and looked me straight in the eyes. The thousand-yard stare slowly dissolved.
“You know why I’m here?”
“I know Mr. Buckley and my grandparents hired you to help with the effort to get me a new trial.” He held my stare. “But I think you’re here to find out whether or not I killed my family.”
“Did you?”
“No.” Direct. No challenge or fake outrage. He kept the eye contact, didn’t blink.
“Why do you think you’re here?”
“Because I let my lawyer convince me not to testify, and Detective West planted the sock with the blood on it in my car.”
Randall didn’t look, sound, or act like a criminal. He sat upright in his chair instead of the nonchalant slump and spread-legged posture of a thug. His words clear and grammatical instead of slangy and
laced with F-bombs. His eyes direct without the malice or challenge of a streetwise punk. It could have been residue from his wealthy upbringing. It could have been a con to look good for the PI who might help set him free. Or, it could have been who he was.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t testify when the prosecution had such a strong case. The blood on the sock with your DNA and the projector breaking at the movie did you in.” I leaned back in my chair. “I can’t get past that.”
“I wouldn’t either if I was on the outside looking in.” He shook his head and then zeroed his eyes back on mine. “Did you see photos of the inside of my car at the crime scene?”
“No. Why?”
“I’ve been a neat freak my whole life. Ask anyone who knows me. My car was immaculate. If I’d killed my family and dropped a bloody sock in my car, I’d have seen it and disposed of it.”
“It was under the seat.”
“Was there anything else under there?”
“I don’t know.”
“There wasn’t. No trash, ever, in my car. Nothing, ever, under a seat. I was neurotic about cleanliness. I still am. Even here.”
“I was a cop, Randall. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that a detective is going to risk jail time to frame an innocent man.”
“They didn’t think I was innocent. They were convinced I was guilty right away, but knew they didn’t have evidence to prove it.” The first emotion he’d shown rolled through his voice. A plea. “Why did Detective West listen to my interview at the police station and then go back to the house and be the one who searched my car and find the evidence?” He air-quoted the word “evidence.” “She was the detective who first managed the crime scene until she turned it over to Detective Moretti. She had access to the bathroom hamper where I always put my dirty clothes and she had access to the crime scene.”
“She would have had to get the sock from the hamper and plant blood on it even before you arrived on the scene, meaning she pegged you for the murderer before anyone even collected evidence.”
