by Matt Coyle
I sat back in my recliner and took a long slug of beer. Randall had just ripped the scab off the investigation and put Lunsdorf and LJPD right in the middle of the blood. He may have also put a target on his own back, but I didn’t think even the Raptors were bold enough or stupid enough to put a hit on a man who had just told the world they were murderers on TV.
Buckley obviously had not been ready for Randall’s declaration. Randall was a free man and had a mind of his own. I doubted Buckley would advise they do any more press conferences. Freeing your client was one thing. Embarrassing the police and DA who put him in prison was another. But I had to admire the kid. He wanted the police to go after the man who he believed had slaughtered his family.
My house phone rang. Midnight looked at me, waiting for me to answer the phone. I stayed seated and let the call go to the answering machine. A few minutes later, another call. Three in the next five minutes. I finished my beer and went into the kitchen for another one. The house phone and answering machine sat on the granite kitchen counter across from the fridge. I hit the message button on the machine. Each call had been a different reporter asking for an interview.
I changed my favorable opinion about Randall speaking up.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Sierra Fellows had moved back into her apartment after she bought a German shepherd. The dog took my place as a guard. The Raptors left her alone. So did everyone else. Her brother came out of hiding the day after the press conference. To me, at least. Not to the general public. Or the police. DA Franklin’s decision not to retry Randall and the ensuing press conference was all over the local news, print and TV and radio, the next day. Trey called me in the morning.
“Bro, you think the Raptors still want to kill me?” Not quite conversational, but not panicked, either. Maybe he’d gotten used to having a target on his back. Or maybe he felt confident that his rich stoner buddy could keep him safe indefinitely. Had worked so far.
“I doubt it. After Randall Eddington outed them on TV last night, they’re probably keeping their heads low. I’d bet Lunsdorf is either lawyering up or going underground.”
“Yeah, well, that Randall dude wants to meet me. Shake my hand and all that. I just want to make sure it’s safe.”
“Where are you going to meet?”
“My house.” He was silent for a couple seconds. “Buckley’s going to be with him. I just don’t want to get ambushed by the Raptors when I go back out in public.”
“I’ll pick you up and take you to meet Randall. Make sure everything is safe.”
“Sorry, bro. My friend is serious about his privacy. He doesn’t want anybody to know who he is.”
“I’ll be discreet. I don’t care who he is.” Yes, I did. “I’m just looking out for you.”
“I know, man. You’re a good dude. You took care of Sierra when I couldn’t. I’m in your debt, bro.”
“We’re square, Trey.” I’d risked injury, maybe my life, to keep Sierra safe. But it had been in service to a case I was paid to work on. At least, it had started that way. Trey risked his life to free an innocent stranger and try to bring the murderer of a family he’d never met to justice. All for no other reason that I’d been able to figure out, than it was the right thing to do. Maybe Kelsey Santos had been right. There was a helluva lot more to Trey than just being a stoner.
“What time is the meeting?”
“Tonight at six.”
The meet was a bad idea. I was surprised that Buckley had agreed to it. If the DA ever decided to try Randall again, his meeting with Fellows could look like collusion or a conspiracy. One man accused of murder meets with the man who would testify in his defense that someone else confessed to the murder. The DA could use the meeting to weaken, if not destroy, Trey’s testimony. A bribe for friendly testimony. Coercion. The DA could take her pick.
On the other hand, the meet could help me discover where Trey was holed up and who his protector was.
“I’ll surveil the area around your house beforehand to make sure no Raptors are watching. I’ll call you on this number if there’s a problem, so make sure you hold onto this phone. No more burners.”
“Cool, bro. I’ll keep this phone for a while. I owe you one.”
I hung up without repeating that we were even.
Jasmine greeted me with dagger goth eyes when I walked into the lobby of Buckley’s office.
“Is he in?” I didn’t bother with niceties. Any form of pleasantness from me to Jasmine came back at me in inverse venom.
Jasmine kept the daggers on me, picked up the handset to her office phone, and stabbed a button with a black-nailed finger. “Rick.”
She made my name sound like the F-word. She listened to the receiver, hung it up, then said, “Okay.”
I took that as it was okay to go into Buckley’s office.
“Rick, my boy, I think Jasmine is slowly coming around.” He smiled from under his cowboy hat, boots up on the desk, leaning back in his chair, staring out at the ocean a half mile away. The sun had eaten through the morning haze with a bright voracious appetite, making winter in San Diego feel like spring anywhere else.
I ignored the jab. “You sunning yourself in the afterglow of victory, Buckley?”
“Son, I’ve been a criminal attorney for forty-plus years. I believe in the law and the role of the defense attorney in the greatest system of jurisprudence that man has ever conceived.” He tilted his head further back to let the sunlight bathe his neck. “But I don’t think I’ve had an innocent client more than a couple dozen times, if that. Now, I’ve had plenty of clients who were innocent of the crimes they were charged with, but guilty of many others. No, a truly innocent client is a rare thing. And to be able to get justice for a young man who has been treated so unjustly for eight years is something worth savoring.”
Buckley was right, of course. His belief in Randall’s innocence had been what convinced me to take a look at the case. That, and Rita Mae Eddington’s chocolate chip cookies. The case had turned my world upside down, and lost me most of what little in life I had left. But it set me on a new direction. It had shown me the soul-cleansing grace of working a case that mattered. I was grateful to Buckley for showing me the light and for giving me the opportunity.
But I’d already thanked him once.
“That’s beautiful, Buckley. Now come back down to earth.” I sat on one of the two leather chairs that faced his desk. “Why in hell are you allowing a meeting between Randall and Trey Fellows?”
Buckley dropped his boots onto the floor and leaned forward. “Son, you are ice cubes down the underpants after the first kiss with a childhood crush.” He scratched his permanent, two-week-old beard. “But you do have a point. I can’t talk young Randall out of it. He’s determined to meet Trey and thank him for being so courageous.”
“It’s a bad idea.”
“Well, of course it is. But Randall’s very persuasive, and after having eight years stolen from him by the great State of California, he deserves to act on a bad idea with good intentions. The meeting will be quick and under the radar. There will only be four people that know about it, and each of us understands the importance of secrecy.”
“Hell, Trey isn’t being too secretive. He told me about it on the phone.”
“Trey trusts you like I do, Rick. Implicitly.”
I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve all the trust. I’d defied Buckley’s orders more than once, and what I had planned for Trey after his meeting with Randall would ruin any trust he had in me.
“I don’t trust anyone implicitly.” Maybe Kim, not that it mattered anymore. “But some good could come from the meeting.”
“I see the wheels turning behind your eyes, Rick.” Buckley squinted at me. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’m going to put a GPS tracking device on Trey’s car at the meeting and track him back to where he’s been holing up.”
Buckley’s brow creased and he shook his head. “Why in hell would yo
u do that?”
“I want to find out who this mysterious man is who’s been ‘protecting’ Trey.” My turn with the air quotes. “You have to be curious too, Buckley. There’s still a dead body floating around out there yet to be discovered, and I think this guy is responsible for making it invisible.”
“And to what greater good is all this, Rick?” He raised his hands up. “Whoever this person is, he’s looking out for Trey’s best interests and has kept Trey alive for the last week and a half. Kept him from being framed for a murder he didn’t commit.”
“And thus helped you free Randall from prison.”
“Yeah. Sure. I had selfish reasons for looking the other way about Trey’s protector. But all for the greater good. An innocent man is free from prison, and a courageous man is free from harm. Surely, you can see this, Rick. Why peek behind the curtain when you already have the ruby slippers?”
“Because I have to know the truth.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I arrived in Trey’s neighborhood at five p.m. and did a few laps around it in my Mustang. No Choppers, black Trans Ams, or any signs of Raptors. I parked a block down from Trey’s house and walked the neighborhood. The sun had already set, so I peeked in hedges, behind fences, and even under cars. Clear. I made a few more rounds on foot, then went back to the car and did the same on wheels. Finally, I found a spot closer to Trey’s house near the intersection with the cross street. I parked and waited.
At five minutes to six, a late-model, silver Ford Focus circled the block. Too dark to see the driver inside. The Focus parked in the spot I had given up a half hour earlier. The driver walked down the block toward Trey’s. A streetlight caught him, and I saw that it was Trey, himself. His head was on a swivel. Nervous to be out in public unprotected. Or so he thought. But he was mostly right. I wasn’t armed. Not with a gun, anyway. The blackjack that had served me so well of late weighted down my bomber jacket pocket.
Trey had left his parking spot in the main house’s driveway open. Smart. Even though he wasn’t driving his own car, he didn’t want to make it look like anyone was home. I waited until he slipped around the back to his cottage, then got out of my car. I went over to the Ford Focus and pulled a tracking device out of my jacket pocket. The device was roughly half the size of an iPhone and had a magnetic strip on the back. I made sure there weren’t any eyeballs on me, then bent down behind the bumper and attached the tracker to the chassis of the Focus.
Headlights bisected the intersection, and Buckley’s Cadillac turned onto Trey’s street in search of a parking spot. I slowly walked to Trey’s, making one last round peeking into the dark. By the time I got to his cottage, Randall and Buckley were already there.
The tiny cottage could barely hold four adult men, especially when one of them was the size of Randall. He could easily fill out the uniform of a Charger linebacker. When I went inside, he and Trey had just decoupled from the obligatory bro-hug. Randall only had a couple inches on Trey in height, but looked twice as wide and outweighed him by at least sixty pounds. All muscle.
“Trey, I’ll never be able to thank you enough for risking your life to come forward with the truth.” The single overhead light in the room caught Randall’s eyes and all of the thousand yards had disappeared, leaving them vulnerable, yet warm. “After everything dies down, when LJPD finally gets off their butts and arrests Steven Lunsdorf for…for…” Randall took a double deep breath, fought back tears. “…for the horrible things he did, I want you to come work for us at Eddington Golf. I know things have been hard for you the last couple years, and I think you’d be an asset to our team.”
Buckley’s face pinched and a low groan escaped his mouth. He quickly tried to cover. “In due time. You’re right, Randall. Once the DA charges Mr. Lunsdorf.”
Trey looked shocked. Even stricken. Maybe he’d gotten used to living on the dole and dealing marijuana to get by. Or better yet, living under the wing of a sugar-daddy pal. Whatever it was, I doubted working for Randall was in his top three choices of what to do with the rest of his life.
“Yeah. Cool.” He worked up a tight smile. “That would be great.”
Randall gave him back a closed-mouth smile, seeming to understand that he’d never have to worry about someone having to teach Trey how to glue the head of a nine iron onto a steel shaft. He slipped past Trey and went over to the lone photograph on the wall of the cottage. The one of a smiling Brad Bauer and Sierra Fellows together.
“Is that your sister?” Randall turned and asked Trey.
“Yeah.” Trey blinked a couple times.
“She’s very pretty.” It was complimentary and not predatory. “Is that her boyfriend?”
Seemed like a genuine question, but at least three people in the room knew that the prison that Randall had just been freed from was the home to the man in the picture for the last three years. There were four different cell blocks and over 5,000 inmates in San Quentin. It would probably be more unusual if Randall did know Brad Bauer than if he didn’t.
Trey probably ran through the same thoughts in his head because he didn’t answer right away. Finally, “Yeah.”
“Well, he’s a lucky man. They look very happy together.”
Nobody volunteered that Brad Bauer lived in the same zip code that Randall had just fled. Everyone but Randall seemed anxious to end the awkward meeting and have Trey and Randall go their separate ways. Forever.
“Well, son, we best be going.” Buckley put his hand on Randall’s massive back. “I know Mr. Fellows has some things to attend to. Now, this meeting needs to stay between just the four of us, right?”
Buckley looked at each of us individually, and we all nodded our heads.
Randall thanked Trey again and squeezed him in a full bear hug this time. Beyond awkward, it looked painful. Randall, Buckley, and I left together, then split off to our cars. I waited in mine while Buckley drove off with Randall in the Caddie.
I activated the app on my iPhone that tracked the tracer I’d put under Trey’s car. A red light blipped in place right where the Focus was parked on the little map. Trey finally left his house and got into the Focus. I put the phone into a holder attached to the inside of the windshield. I waited until Trey was a half mile away before I started the car and followed him using the blinking red dot on the map on the cell phone.
It only took me a few minutes to figure out where he was going.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The red dot went down La Jolla Boulevard, then through La Jolla, down Torrey Pines Road, and onto La Jolla Shores Drive. I didn’t have to watch the red dot to know that it would turn onto La Jolla Farms Road and stop in front of Alan Rankin’s gated home.
Alan Rankin. Lawyer for imprisoned Raptor kingpin, Rock Karsten.
Trey’s protector. The man responsible for hiding the corpse of Eric Schmidt? What was the connection between Rankin and Trey? A small-time drug dealer and the lawyer for the leader of the biker gang that supplied him the drugs. Drugs and money. Was that what this was all about? That simple? No. It wasn’t business. It was something more. Whatever it was, I doubted Rankin was protecting Trey out of the goodness of his own heart.
I parked up the street from Rankin’s house and debated about what to do. Half of me, most of me, wanted to go bang on Rankin’s front door and demand that he and Trey tell me what the hell was going on. The sliver of restraint left in me that I’d ignored too much lately finally won an argument. I’d have better luck with Trey alone when I confronted him with proof that he’d been staying with Rankin. I’d wear him down, and use his sister if I had to. Plus, I now could track him wherever he went. I made a Y-turn in a driveway and drove home.
Every half hour or so, I checked the tracking map on my phone. Trey, or at least the Focus, didn’t move all night. I decided to drive back over to Rankin’s street early in the morning and wait until he went to his office, then confront Trey. Otherwise, Trey might stay holed up inside the house all day. All he needed was a bong and
something to put in it.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket and woke me up. I’d crashed on the couch watching TV. Midnight raised his head from his spoon position behind my legs. I pulled the phone out. 2:17 a.m. No name attached to the phone number on the screen. I answered.
“Is this Rick Cahill?” A woman’s voice. Familiar and urgent.
“Yes.”
“This is Kelsey Santos. You gave me your card and told me I could call you anytime.”
Two-seventeen in the morning certainly qualified for anytime. “Sure, Kelsey. What is it?”
“Trey’s missing.” Near panic. “He was supposed to meet me at my apartment at midnight after I got off my shift. He never came over and doesn’t answer his phone.”
The last time I’d checked the tracker map had been around ten-thirty p.m. I must have fallen asleep sometime shortly after. Maybe Trey had done the same and left his phone somewhere where it couldn’t wake him.
“Give me a second.” I wondered if Kelsey knew about the Alan Rankin situation. Doubt it. If she had, in her current panicked state, she probably would have driven over to Rankin’s house. I tapped the tracker app open and saw the red dot still blinking in one place. I was about to tell Kelsey that she had nothing to worry about, when I noticed that the dot’s location had changed since I last looked at it. It now blinked in place at Trey’s address.
“When did you talk to him last?” I sounded calm, but inside, concern tugged at me.
“About ten-thirty.”
“What time did you call after he didn’t show up at your apartment?”
“Quarter after twelve, and every fifteen minutes since.” Now the panic, a fever pitch.
“Did you go by his house?”
“No. I know he’s not staying there and I want to be here in case he shows up.” Tears in her throat now. “Do you think I should?”
