by Coyle, Matt;
“Thanks, Captain. I probably should have stepped off.”
“Old habits die hard.” He smiled a friendly, yet politician’s smile. “Did you and Krista stay in touch after you left the force?”
He didn’t say after I was fired. A nice touch.
“Unfortunately, no. We hadn’t talked in years.” Now I wished we had.
“In case you were wondering, we still work your wife’s murder when we can allocate the time and manpower.”
“Any new leads?” I asked.
“Sadly no, but I do believe Colleen’s murder will be solved someday and her killer will be brought to justice. It’s one of my top priorities.”
He gave me a smile that was harder to read than the last. I couldn’t tell if it was meant to reassure or target me. Was he the one cop in Santa Barbara who’d moved off me or did he think I was guilty like the rest? Now that I might need it, my alibi had died with Krista.
“Thanks.” I think.
“You staying in town tonight or heading straight back to San Diego?” Again, I didn’t know where I stood. Pleasant conversation ender or the town sheriff telling me to get out of Dodge.
“I’m driving home tonight.” Nothing good could come from staying in Santa Barbara.
“Safe travels.” Politician’s smile. “You’ll hear from me if anything breaks on your wife’s case.”
On the phone or in person with steel bracelet accessories?
Captain Kessler was a tough read. I was happy to be leaving town. We shook a final time, and I crossed the street to the parking lot that held my car.
I stripped off my blazer and threw it in the back seat. I’d paid my respects. Avoided a fistfight at a funeral. That’s the kind of man I wanted to be. Not the one who shoved an envelope full of bad news at Irene Faye this morning or the one who slept with Tom Weaver’s wife fourteen years ago. Or the one who sometimes used violence as a means to a good end.
But I wasn’t done with Santa Barbara, yet. I hadn’t paid all my respects. Or paid for all my sins.
I had one more stop to make before I drove back home to San Diego.
CHAPTER SIX
THE APARTMENT WAS only about a mile away from the church. It looked exactly as I remembered it. Same beige and white paint. Probably hadn’t been repainted since I lived there. I hadn’t been back since I moved out a week after a jogger discovered Colleen’s body on East Beach. Lost two month’s rent I couldn’t afford, but I couldn’t stay there any longer knowing Colleen would never walk through the front door again.
And knowing the last hour we spent together in that apartment was the worst hour of our marriage.
I parked across the street and stared up at apartment # 3 on the second floor. I’d not only carried Colleen over the threshold our first night as a married couple, but carried her all the way up the stairs to get there. Still trying to impress her even after I put a ring on her finger. I couldn’t remember exactly when I stopped trying to impress her. Woo her. But sometime during the last three months of her life, I stopped.
I’d put the blame on Colleen during our weekly fights. Claimed she’d become too judgmental. But deep down, even as I accused her, I knew I’d been the one who’d changed.
I’d seen the parts of Santa Barbara that tourists never see. The gangs, the violence, the inhumanity. And I’d let it infect me. Taint me. Harden me. Us versus them. Every day a war. I brought the war and its nastiness home with me every night. I still hadn’t learned how to shove the job into a compartment in my brain when I was off duty. The smart cops, the ones who lasted, figured that out in the first year or two. I was on year three and the battle raged 24/7. On the streets. In the bars woofing after my shift. At home with my wife who needed a husband, not a cop perpetually on duty.
I hadn’t been back to Santa Barbara since SBPD released me from jail and eventually fired me. The department, led by Detective Grimes, was sure I killed Colleen. DA Levin dropped the charges and told SBPD to come up with more evidence and she’d take the case to court.
Apparently, Grimes never gathered enough new evidence to satisfy Levin. She was gone now and so was Grimes. He’d retired to become a private investigator like me. But not like me. Colleen’s father hired him six or seven years back to work one case. His daughter’s murder. When Grimes caught up with me six years ago in San Diego, I was still his only suspect. I doubt anything had changed for him or John Kerrigan.
After the TV show 48 Hours did an episode on Colleen’s murder, the whole country thought I was guilty. And I was. Just not for the crime I’d been accused of. I was still serving a life’s sentence for another Thou Shall Not on God’s list.
I sat across from the apartment for an hour and a half sifting through memories of Colleen. Zipping two sleeping bags together and sleeping in a tent on our honeymoon at Fallen Leaf Lake. And then repeating the experience our first night in the apartment because our new bed hadn’t arrived yet and I’d forgotten to have the electricity turned on. I’d offered to stay in a hotel, but Colleen wanted to make an adventure out of it. Complete with lanterns for light. But the good memories only hovered for so long, eventually blown out by the storm of bad ones. The nightly fights late in our marriage. The shouting match and broken furniture that last night. Her body on the coroner’s table.
I tried to latch onto the good memories and push back the bad that clung to their edges. Trying to hold back the rain.
A night in Santa Barbara had made sense when I packed a bag in San Diego and threw it in the trunk of my car eight hours ago. Not anymore.
No call yet from Leah Landingham. Probably still immersed in her sister’s funeral. Hopefully, Krista had been laid to rest by now.
I remained parked across from Colleen’s and my old apartment for another half hour waiting for Leah’s phone call. Nothing. I finally pulled away from the curb and drove a couple blocks toward the on-ramps to Highway 101. North to the right, south to the left. A hotel and an overnight in the city of wrong memories or home to San Diego and the decision whether or not to abandon my career as a private investigator.
I turned left.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MY PHONE RANG just as I passed San Ysidro Road, the main entrance off the freeway into Montecito, the wealthiest town in Santa Barbara County. Or almost any county in America. Or the world. Home to Oprah.
I answered.
“Rick, it’s Leah Landingham.”
Shit. Hopefully, I’d be able to give her whatever she wanted over the phone. Santa Barbara was receding in my rearview mirror and that’s where I wanted it to stay. Forever.
“Tough day.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“It is.” Her voice, heavy. “I’d really like to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“In person.”
Shit.
“I’m already driving south on the 101.” Almost free. “I waited for a couple hours …”
“Oh.” Mournful, like the whole day was still pulling her down. “I should have called you earlier, but after we buried Krista, we went back to my parents’ house for some time alone as a family.”
“I understand.” I felt guilty putting my aversion to staying in Santa Barbara over Leah’s long day of grief. “You have me for as long as you need. I’ve got at least a three-hour drive ahead.”
“If you’re not in Santa Barbara anymore, it doesn’t matter anyway. Thanks for coming all the way up here to say goodbye to Krista. That was sweet of you. Goodbye, Rick.”
“I’ll bet you haven’t eaten all day,” I said.
“I’m not really hungry.”
“I am.” I took the next off-ramp, circled over the freeway and got back on, going north. “There used to be a great little family-owned Mexican joint on East Haley Street.”
“The Rose Café.”
“That’s right. Is it still there?”
“Yes.” A lift in her voice. “I think they close at nine.”
“I can get there in twenty minutes.”
/> “I’ll get us a table.”
The Rose Café was a hole in the wall off the main track of downtown Santa Barbara. A perfect spot to not be seen. Krista took me there my first day on the job. Our first code 7 together. A lunch break. We’d have many lunches there together as T.O. and boot, partners, and later, as friends.
Leah Landingham sat in a vinyl chair at a two-top next to the front window. I sat down across from her in the small restaurant decorated with indigenous Mexican paintings on the walls. She smiled, but it took effort. Then the weight of the day returned to her face.
A middle-aged waitress slid a menu in front of me before I even said hello to Leah. I ordered chicken enchiladas with mole sauce and a Dos Equis. My favorite dish back in the day. I hoped they hadn’t changed the recipe.
Leah skipped the food and ordered a glass of white wine to take the place of the empty glass sitting in front of her. She leaned forward, glanced at the ten or so other people enjoying their dinner in the restaurant, then looked back at me.
“I don’t think Krista’s death was an accidental hit and run. I think she was murdered.” Just above a whisper, but the words struck me as if through a blowhorn. I blinked a couple times.
“Why do you think that?”
“A hit and run on State Street at two in the morning after a Sunday night? Krista didn’t go to bars anymore. She stopped drinking six years ago. There was no reason for her to be there at that time of night.”
Krista could drink most of her male counterparts on the force under the table back when I knew her. It wasn’t always pretty.
“What are you saying? That she was killed somewhere else and someone dumped her body on State Street to make it look like a hit and run? Look, as you might guess, I’m not a fan of SBPD, but their crime scene reconstruction team would have sniffed that out in a second.”
“No.” She scanned the restaurant again and leaned closer. “But I’m wondering what she was doing standing in the middle of State Street, two blocks from any bar at two in the morning. Her car was parked in a lot fifty yards away and the one witness said she was walking from the car, not to it.”
“Was there alcohol in her blood on the tox screen?”
“I don’t even know if they ran one, but there wouldn’t be.” She squinted her left eye. “I just told you, she didn’t drink.”
Unless she hid it from those she loved.
“What does your brother think of the investigation? Your dad?” The waitress dropped off my Dos Equis and I hit it hard. I could have used a tequila chaser. Or three. It had been a long day and the night was getting longer.
“They have questions, but they’re cops. They take the word of the police as gospel.”
“You don’t? You come from a cop family.”
“Yeah, but I married one, too.” She folded her arms and tilted her head to the right. “I know they’re not all righteous do-gooders.”
I was born a skeptic and my interactions with the police departments in Santa Barbara and La Jolla pushed me to borderline paranoia, but I also knew that it’s always difficult for loved ones to make sense of an accidental death. We sometimes grasp for unlikely answers to ignore the obvious truth. I didn’t know if that was the case for Leah Landingham. The least I could do was listen and ask questions.
“Have you shared your concerns with the investigating detectives?”
“Mitchell and Flora? They nod and smile and hustle me out of the station as fast as they can.”
“Did Krista have any enemies that you know of?”
“No.” Leah shook her head.
“How about a boyfriend? Does anyone know why she was on State Street at two a.m. on a Monday morning? Could she have been working a case?”
“She hasn’t had a boyfriend for almost a year. Nobody knows what she was doing there. If Mitchell and Flora know, they’re not saying.”
“Did the police give you her phone with her personal effects?”
“Yes, but the phone was broken by the impact of the van hitting her.” Leah’s eyes slipped into a thousand-yard stare. She must have been reliving an accident she hadn’t seen but had imprinted an image on her mind that she’d never be able to erase.
The waitress delivered the enchiladas mole. Their earthy smell reminded me that I hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. I dug in. Mexican umami with a hint of sweetness. As good as I remembered. I felt guilty for enjoying the food so much on such a sad day.
“I’m sure the detectives are doing their best to track down the person driving the car. It doesn’t really matter how they get there as long as they find the person.”
“They won’t if they’re not looking in the right places.” Leah finished her second glass of wine with a head snap. “They seem to have tunnel vision on it being an accident.”
Which it probably was. But I understood her desire to find the truth. Now.
“What do you want me to do?” I dreaded the answer even as the question left my mouth.
“I want to hire you to investigate Krista’s death.”
There it was. Leah needed my help. Or thought she did. She didn’t know the destruction that could bring. There was a long list of the people I’d tried to help. And a short one of people who’d died because of it.
“Why me? If you really want to hire a PI, you should get someone local. Someone who knows the terrain up here. Who can work with the police. Not someone the police hate.”
“I already have, but I want you to help him.” She reached across the table and touched my hand. “Please.”
“Leah, if I thought I could help, you wouldn’t have to ask me.” I squeezed her hand and let go. It was warm. I hadn’t felt warm in a long time. “You know my reputation up here. I’d do more harm than good.”
“Krista always said you were the best partner she ever had. Even when you were a rookie.”
“That was a long time ago. Before SBPD arrested me for murdering Colleen.”
“I’ve read about a couple of the big cases you solved in San Diego, Rick. I want someone with fresh eyes, an outsider, to look into Krista’s murder. At least talk to the witness.”
If I said yes, could I walk away if the case got personal? Even more personal than investigating an old friend’s murder already was?
Irene Faye, tears streaming down her face in the Vons parking lot this morning, came back to me.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A COUPLE YEARS ago, a vice president of the Best Western hotel chain hired me to get enough evidence of his wife’s infidelities to break their prenuptial agreement. I got what he needed. Saved him a bundle. My reward, beyond my fee, was two weeks of free nights at any Best Western in the country. Tonight, I took my reward at the Beachside Inn across from the beach a quarter mile down from Stearns Wharf, one of Santa Barbara’s iconic landmarks. I also broke the seal of the first Dos Equis from the six-pack I bought on the way from the restaurant to the hotel.
I sat out on the second story room’s patio and stared at the lights on the wharf. Colleen and I had spent a few romantic nights out among those lights. Eating ice cream from the little shop on the pier, listening to the lapping water below. Arguing over the number of children we’d have and teasing each other with ridiculous names for them. We thought we had our whole lives to figure it out. We were wrong. A mile north of the wharf Colleen’s body was discovered on the beach three months after out last trip together to the ice cream shop.
I went back inside the hotel room.
Someone knocked on my door at nine fifty p.m. Leah Landingham was the only person who knew I was staying at the hotel. I didn’t know how many glasses of wine she had before I met her at the Rose Café, but she had one while I was there. Maybe my hand had felt warm to her as hers had to me. Or maybe there was one other thing she wanted to tell me in person about Krista’s death.
I stood to the side of the door, leaned over, and looked through the peephole. Wrong on both counts. Horribly.
I op
ened the door. Retired Santa Barbara Police Detective Jim Grimes stared at me through cold steel-blue eyes. The same eyes I’d looked into when he read me my rights and arrested me for Colleen’s murder.
“Cahill.” Voice flat, eyes hard.
“Grimes.” The last time I’d seen Grimes I’d laid him out with a sucker punch at a San Diego retail mall six years ago. He’d tried to connect me to a murder I didn’t commit. We were even. According to my old set of rules. The one where violence was justified in the name of a good cause. Mine.
“We need to talk.” Grimes eyed me, then the door I held as a barrier between him and me. The past and the present.
“That’s your opinion.”
“You always had to play it hard.” He squinted and shook his head. “Even when your wife was on the coroner’s table, you had to play it hard. That was a big mistake, Cahill. Cost the investigation time and focus.”
“If you tracked me down to tell me I’m an asshole, Grimes, get in line. You got something else to say, we can do it from this distance.”
“Leah Landingham hired me to investigate Krista’s death and now she wants me to work with you.”
“I figured that out when you knocked on my door.” Leah was the only person who knew where I’d booked a room. Grimes was a PI. Of course, she’d hire an ex-homicide cop to investigate Krista’s death. I just wish she’d told me it was Grimes. I would have given her a different answer. “I told her I’d stick around to interview the sole witness. If nothing comes from that, I’m on my way back to San Diego and you and I never have to see each other again. That cover everything you wanted to talk about?”
“Nope.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Krista reopened your wife’s murder investigation a week before she died.”
I pulled the door wide and let Grimes in.
CHAPTER NINE
MY MIND AND heart raced against each other. There wouldn’t be a winner. I hid it all behind a stone face. I sat in the office seat next to the small desk and let Grimes have the cushioned chair across the small hotel room. I didn’t offer him a beer or a smile.