by Matt Coyle
Castro put his hands on his hips and the kid stepped in close.
“I will if you don’t play nice.”
“On what grounds?”
“How about peeping through people’s windows and jerking off in public?”
I stared at him and shook my head. He had the badge. I had the binoculars. His word stood for something no matter what he said. Mine would always be tinged with guilt. At least, until my wife’s murderer was caught. And maybe even after. Somebody at the Brick House wanted to talk to me. I was going there one way or another. At least this time, I had a choice.
I walked over to the cruiser, and the kid opened the back door and guided me in. Castro disappeared, then I heard the Mustang’s door close and he returned to the squad car with my backpack in his hand. In it, my camera and photos of Trey’s hideout, the Raptor, and the man with the briefcase.
“You have a warrant for that, Sergeant Castro?” I tried to sound cocksure instead of nervous that he might look at the pictures in the camera.
“Just taking it for safekeeping during your little visit to the Brick House. Wouldn’t want anyone to steal it while you’re being a good citizen.”
I stayed silent for the ten-minute ride to the police station and prayed my visit there wouldn’t end in a room with bars for windows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Officer Ives led me up the back stairs of the Brick House to Robbery/Homicide and Sergeant Castro lagged behind. With my backpack. I’d made this trek two years ago with a couple detectives. Sweat pebbled my hairline. It hadn’t been a good memory. I hadn’t had a good memory in a police station for over ten years. I’d had enough bad ones since then to erase all the good ones that had come before.
We stopped outside the door of Robbery/Homicide. Castro stuck his head in. “We have a package for you, Detective Denton.”
Denton. This could be a long night. The detective appeared at the door and looked about as happy to see me as I was to see her.
“This time we’ll talk in an interview room, Mr. Cahill.” She nodded to Sergeant Castro and he led me down the hall to the same tiny square room I’d been in two years ago. Now I felt sweat under my arms and down my back.
I hadn’t done anything wrong. Not this time. It didn’t matter. Being on the wrong side of the table in a square white room could make any innocent man feel guilty.
“Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll take it from here.” Sergeant Castro smiled at Detective Denton, then handed her my backpack and left, closing the door behind him. It was just the two of us now in the small room with a buzzing fluorescent light overhead. She pointed to a tiny desk surrounded by three chairs in the corner. “Have a seat, Mr. Cahill.”
I took the chair facing the closed-circuit camera over the door. I knew if I’d taken either of the other two, she would have asked me to move. Like I said, I’d been there before. The only thing missing was another detective. They sometimes worked in pairs. Maybe I only rated one.
Denton sat down opposite me and set the backpack in the empty third chair. Nobody had time to see the pictures in the camera. Yet.
She wore olive-green slacks and a tan blouse covered by a navy blazer. Her black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she wore just a hint of eyeliner and no lipstick.
All business.
“Can you tell me what you were doing, loitering in a car with binoculars and a camera in a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night, Mr. Cahill?” Her face went up one shade of red, and she bit off the words like I’d personally offended her. But she hadn’t turned on a tape recorder and the light on the closed-circuit camera hadn’t turned red.
Our little chat wasn’t being recorded. At least, not yet. Why not? Because it wasn’t about me peeping in windows. Not even Sergeant Castro believed that. It had been a ruse to get me down to the Brick House to talk to Detective Denton about something else. Randall Eddington.
“I’m working surveillance on a case.” I leaned back in my chair like I owned the room. The sweat under my arms trickled down my side.
“And what case is that?” Denton leaned back too. Either to mirror my body language or settle in for a long night.
“Confidential.”
“Your case is a dog, Cahill.” She folded her arms across her chest and her eyes went black. “Randall Eddington killed his family, and you’re only adding to his grandparents’ grief by giving them false hope. Are you proud of the way you make a living, Rick? By sucking money out of other people’s sorrow?”
I’d graduated from Peeping Tom to ghoul. Denton wasn’t covering new ground, but she wasn’t going to guilt me into quitting the case. She couldn’t teach me a thing about guilt. I’d earned my masters in it ten years ago. Still, I didn’t like the accusation.
“Is LJPD really that worried, Detective?” I leaned toward her across the table. Only an inch or two, but just enough to let Denton know that I could ask questions under the white lights as well as answer them. “Afraid that the golf club is going to come back with DNA from everybody but Randall Eddington? Including the real killer?”
“I know that club is going to come back with the Eddington family’s DNA on it. And you’re right about one thing. Randall’s DNA won’t be on it, but neither will some other killer’s.” She had air-quoted the word “killer’s” with her fingers. “The kid used latex gloves. There was a box of them in the garage. Didn’t Bob tell you that?”
“No. Why would he know that?”
Her eyes shot down to the table. She’d tried to catch herself from giving up too much. Too late. She’d cracked out of turn.
By Bob, she meant Bob Reitzmeyer, my boss. For now, at least. But Bob told me he hadn’t worked the case and, according to the police report, neither had Detective Denton. The only detectives listed on the report were Tony Moretti, Dan Coyote, and Haley West.
“It was a high-profile case.” Eyes back on me. Composure restored. “Everyone was interested in it.”
Apparently, you too. “Why weren’t the latex gloves in the police report?”
“They were in the discovery documents for the trial.” She gave me a smirk that would have made Chief Moretti proud. “The DA didn’t need the gloves because we didn’t have the murder weapon to check for prints or DNA. But we had the blood on Randall’s sock. An open-and-shut case. Now you’re wasting everyone’s time, and those poor people’s emotions and money trying to unlock a shut case.”
“Well, I guess we’ll wait and see when the DNA comes back. Anything else, Detective? It’s past my bedtime.”
“Why were you peeping in La Jolla? I know you’re not working an infidelity detail for Bob Reitzmeyer.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.
“Confidential.”
“Do you really want to spend the rest of the night in a jail cell protecting information for a monster who murdered his family eight years ago?” No more smile. Hard eyes and pinched lips.
She didn’t have anything worthy of locking me up. Sergeant Castro might play the public indecency card, but LJPD wouldn’t want to take me to trial. Castro may be willing to perjure himself on the witness stand, but I doubted that freshly minted Officer Ives would. And if he did, it was a conspiracy. Too much to lose for such a minor charge.
The rivers of sweat flowing down my sides only heard “jail cell.” I hoped Detective Denton wasn’t close enough to smell the fear wafting from under my arms.
“Does LJPD really want to risk a lawsuit for wrongful arrest, conspiracy, and extortion, when its very existence could be on the line with a petition from the people of La Jolla?”
All my chips were on the table. I folded my arms tight across my chest so Denton couldn’t sniff out the bluff.
“You’re right, Mr. Cahill.” The smile came back and my gut tightened. “Just so there is no misunderstanding, please check your backpack to make sure nothing’s missing from it.”
I looked at the backpack, at Detective Denton, then up at the closed-circuit camera above th
e door. Still no red light. Still off the record. But still in a small white room of the Brick House where everyone had guns and badges but me. Nothing would be missing from the backpack. Just something added. Something planted to put me in jail that night, or worse.
“That’s okay, Detective.” I smiled but could smell the fear of my own sweat. “I’m sure the backpack that’s been out of my possession for a couple minutes has only my camera and two sets of binoculars. That’s what I’m certain I had in there when Sergeant Castro took the backpack into his custody.”
“Open it, Rick.” She drilled down on me. Granite eyes and white lips. “As I said, I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding.”
She’d keep playing this game until it worked out the way she wanted it to.
“I think I’d be more comfortable with my lawyer here when I open it.”
“Okay.” The smile. More sweat. “I can wait. I’ll make sure the camera is turned on just so we can have everything on record.”
I wanted to spend the night at home in my bed. I had the feeling that wouldn’t happen unless I risked spending it in jail. I grabbed the backpack off the chair and unzipped the main pocket. Camera and binoculars still there.
And a baggie a quarter full of tiny, white granulated crystals. Cocaine, or something worse
My heartbeat double-tapped, and a rivulet of sweat broke free from my hairline and ran down into the corner of my left eye. I left the baggie where it was, zipped up the backpack, and set it back down on the empty chair.
“Everything accounted for?” Denton cop-eyed me.
“Yes.” I tried to steady my breath. “And someone put a baggie full of some white substance in there.”
“Well, let’s leave that where it is for now.” She got up, grabbed her chair, and set it down at the end of the table about six inches from me, then sat down. “Are you hot, Rick? You’re sweating. You could use a shower.” She waved a hand in front of her nose.
“Tell me what you want, Detective.”
“Give me the name of your witness and what you were doing in La Jolla tonight, and you can take your backpack and go home and take a shower.”
They’d have Trey’s name as soon as Buckley petitioned a judge to throw out Randall’s conviction. Did I want to risk going to jail to give Trey a few extra days of anonymity? He’d have to face the cops sooner or later. If he was going to crack, what difference did it make if he did it now or later?
“I don’t know his name. Buckley doesn’t trust me.”
Maybe Trey would crack, but the few extra days would give me time to find the holes in LJPD’s arrest that they were so worried about. So worried that they were willing to falsify evidence and put me in jail. Had they done the same to Randall Eddington? The harder they squeezed me, the more I believed Randall was innocent.
Detective Denton had the badge and the power. Her and Sergeant Castro’s word against mine. I didn’t stand a chance. Except that they’d be risking LJPD’s entire existence if the truth ever got out.
I was all in.
“Why in the world would Buckley hire you if he didn’t trust you?” She leaned in so her face was two inches from mine. All-day coffee breath. “You think I’m stupid?”
No. Just not smart enough. “The Eddingtons made him hire me. They think I’m a hero because of the Windsor thing a couple years ago. Buckley hates me, but doesn’t have a choice.”
“If you really were a hero, you wouldn’t have taken the case, spared those poor people added grief.” She stared at nothing. “They’ve suffered enough.”
“If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.”
“But it is you.” She focused her stare back on me. “And I think you’re lying.”
“Call Moira MacFarlane. She’s the lead. I’m just window dressing to keep the Eddingtons happy. You met her today at the crime scene. The witness only talks to her.” I pulled Moira’s card out of my wallet and put it on the table. “Give her a call if you want and ask her about me.”
A gamble, but the whole night was. Besides, the little I knew about Moira, I got the feeling she liked authority about as much as I did. I gambled she wouldn’t give Denton anything.
“I got her contact information at the scene.” She slid the card along the table into my lap and gave me the stone eyes. “Who were you staking out up on Candlelight Drive tonight?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Fine. Go ahead and call your lawyer.” She stood up. “I’m going to go turn on the camera.”
I waited until she was a yard from the door. “Okay. Shit. I was…ah…keeping track of my girlfriend.” I put my hand to my forehead, squeezed, and closed my eyes.
“Your girlfriend.” A question without the question mark.
“Ex.”
“Gee, I wonder why. I thought you were kind of creepy. What’s her name? Does she have a restraining order on you yet?”
Hooked her.
“No.” More head squeezing and some heavy breathing. “Kim Connelly. She’s a realtor in La Jolla.”
“Wait here, Cahill.” Denton left the room.
If she called Kim, I had faith that Kim knew my relationship with LJPD well enough that she’d cover for me. I checked the light on the closed-circuit camera. Still off. I grabbed the backpack, opened it, and used my shirttail over my hand to pull the baggie out and toss it onto the table.
Detective Denton came back into the room with a cup of coffee just after I’d dropped the backpack on the chair and settled back into mine. I held the hangdog look. She looked at the baggie, then at me. She set the coffee down on the table and picked up the baggie full of tiny white crystals.
“Oh, here it is.” She gave me her Moretti smirk, opened the baggie, took the spoon out of her coffee, stuck it inside, and doled out two spoonfuls of the substance into her cup. “Can’t have my coffee without sugar.”
I blinked a couple times and shook my head to let her think I felt stupid for giving up something to her. I did feel stupid. Just not as stupid as she thought I did.
“Things aren’t always what they seem, Rick.” She took an exaggerated sip of coffee. “Until they are. That’s when you have to be worried. Keep your backpack close, and enjoy the rest of your evening.”
She turned and left the room, leaving the door open and her threat hanging in the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Castro and Ives drove me back to my car. The kid drove and Castro grinned at me over the front seat. They were a happy crew down there at the Brick House. A lot of smiling. When they weren’t cop-eyeing you, intimidating you, or planting fake drugs on you, they smirked at you to try to make you feel small. It hadn’t worked on me. Only made me sweaty.
Castro broke the silence. “You enjoy your talk with Miss Hailey?”
“Hailey?”
“Detective Denton.”
Hailey had been the first name of Detective West in the police report of the Eddington murders. On a small police force like LJPD, it would have been a one-in-a-million shot to have two detectives with the somewhat uncommon first name of Hailey. Hailey Denton had been Hailey West. Divorce was hardly unusual for cops. Now her behavior made sense. She’d worked the Eddington murders and been the detective who found the blood evidence to seal Randall’s fate. She had a vested interest in keeping the conviction righteous and Randall behind bars. And she’d been rattled enough to try to intimidate me off the case.
Something was wrong with that blood evidence.
Detective West/Denton had also been Bob Reitzmeyer’s partner. If she’d worked the case, why hadn’t he? Three detectives had been on the police report: Denton, now Police Chief Moretti, and Dan Coyote. The first two hated me. The third had been a friend once. The only one I’d had at LJPD after my dad had been forced out and Bob retired. But even that friendship had gone sour with the Windsor mess. Coyote had retired early after everything went down. Maybe time had healed our wound.
“Yeah. I found out she likes sugar in her coffee.”
I gave Castro his smile right back. “You two dream that up when you called her from Candlelight Drive?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Cahill.” More smirk. Pleased with himself.
“I think you do. Maybe you can explain it to your boot, Officer Ives here, so he’ll learn how the real police do it.”
I looked out the window at the night and stayed quiet the rest of the way back to my car. I’d had enough of LJPD for a lifetime.
I pulled down my street and noticed for the first time that my house was one of the few without Christmas lights. It would just be Midnight and me this year. He didn’t care whether I decorated or not.
He greeted me when I walked through the front door and led me through the living room to the sliding glass door that opened up onto the backyard. I let him out to do his business. He could hold it all day if he had to. He spent most days indoors when I was away at work. It wasn’t fair, but life rarely is. Two years ago at another house, someone had thrown poisoned meat into my backyard and nearly killed Midnight. That person wasn’t alive anymore, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Midnight was my best friend. A cliché, but true. And that was all right by me.
I grabbed a beer from the fridge and joined Midnight outside. I sat down on a patio lounger. Midnight sat down next to me and leaned in. I scratched his head and we both looked out, past the rolling white-and-red lights of I-5, toward the sliver of ocean. It was barely visible during the day and now was just another shadow of the night. But I knew it was out there. Infinite. Forever. Unreachable.
Midnight’s fur in one hand, a cold beer in the other. A constant low vroom wafted up from the highway. More a pleasant white noise than a distraction. I let it roll over me. The background hum of a life standing still. I thought of Colleen and the empty bedroom upstairs. The room that wasn’t yet a gym and would never be a nursery. A shrine to an incomplete life.
The burr of my phone in my jacket pocket pulled me out of my thoughts. Good. I looked at the name on the screen. Kim. More thoughts, but I answered anyway.
