by Coyle, Matt;
One for my side.
“So, you know about his wife?”
“Yes, and I know he didn’t kill her.”
“Hmm.” Richert folded his arms and settled back in his chair, having performed his Good Samaritan deed. He couldn’t help it if Leah didn’t share his concern.
“My turn?” I smiled.
“Go right ahead.” He flicked a hand at me.
“You mentioned in the letter that you’d told Krista about something you saw in Santa Barbara a long time ago. What was it?”
“I knew that’s why you came all the way down here.” He was looking at me, now. Not in a friendly way. “I’m going to tell you the truth. What I saw and what you already know.”
The hair on my neck spiked and a shiver chilled my entire body.
This.
Now.
After all these years. The words stuck tight in my throat. Blocking off oxygen. I finally pushed them out.
“What did you see?”
“I better give some background first so it makes sense.”
“Okay.” I’d waited fourteen years. How much longer would I have to wait?
“I used to be a delivery captain and sail rich people’s yachts from Santa Barbara, LA, or San Diego to Hawaii and back to the mainland. Rich folks like their boats available to tour around in when they’re on vacation, but most of them aren’t capable or don’t want to sail them across the Pacific Ocean. Especially when they can go to and from in a mere six hours on a plane.” Richert looked at the photo on the end table next to the sofa of his late wife sitting on the bow of a boat. “Lily went with me many times. She was the best first mate I ever had.”
“Those must have been grand times.” I needed to know what he saw. Now. “How does it tie in to what you told Krista?”
“Back in 2005 a man I’d worked for a few times hired me to sail his yacht from Santa Barbara to Honokohau Harbor in Kona. The Mirage, a sixty-foot Hinckley schooner in Bristol condition. I was anchored off of East Beach in Santa Barbara the night before we set sail.” He glared at me, but I was way beyond his glares. I needed his truth.
East Beach was where Colleen’s body was discovered on the morning of April 19, 2005. My heart raced. Had Richert seen her killer? He stopped talking and looked at me. Studying me. Torturing me?
“And?”
“And I saw you and another man dump something on the beach.” He nodded his head and leaned back in his chair.
“What?” Leah whipped her head at me, eyes wide.
“Two people? You saw two people?” I asked Richert, realizing the trip down to Oceanside had been a waste of time. A wasted day.
Richert was making the whole thing up. There was one set of footprints walking away from the body. But they’d been obscured, like the killer had dragged his feet to make identification of his shoes impossible. It had worked, but it didn’t stop SBPD from checking my shoes for sand. And they found some on my tennis shoes. Just like they’d find on the shoes of the 85,000 other people who lived in Santa Barbara at the time. Why live in Santa Barbara if you didn’t stroll on the beaches?
Colleen and I did it often. In the beginning.
“That’s what I saw. You and another guy.” Defiant.
“Give me the specifics from when you first saw two men on the beach.” I could feel Leah’s eyes on me. Her uncertainty about me would soon evaporate after I exposed Mike Richert for the fraud he was. “Start from the beginning.”
“Lily and the crew were asleep, but I always had a hard time sleeping the night before I sailed someone else’s million-dollar boat across the ocean. I left the cabin about one a.m. and walked around the deck, making last-minute checks for the ninth or tenth time in the moonlight. The routine was the same every time we sailed. Anyway, some movement on the shore caught my eye. A dark blob with four legs moving on the beach. I went down below to the navigation station and grabbed the binoculars. When I returned to the deck, I saw the backs of two men walking up the beach toward the road.”
“So you didn’t actually see them dump something on the beach.”
“No.” He raised his chin. “I didn’t actually see you dump the body on the beach because the beach is on a rise and it was low tide. I could only see you and your accomplice from the knees up, but I could fill in the blanks. You two were carrying something that you dumped on the beach when I went to grab my binoculars. I’ll swear to it in a court of law.”
I ignored the accusation.
“What was the date?” Maybe Richert hadn’t made the whole thing up but had just confused the date.
“It would have been early morning on April 19th, 2005.”
He got the date right.
“How can you be so sure after all these years?”
“I’ll show you why I’m so sure.” He sprang from his chair quicker than I’d expected a man in his seventies could manage. He hurried down the hall of his home and came back with an old leather notebook a minute later. He snapped the notebook down on the end table and thumbed through it until he stopped on a page and pointed to handwritten notes. “See. Right here. April 19, 2005, 6:08 a.m. Set sail for Kona on Phil Russell’s schooner.”
“Where exactly on East Beach was this?”
Maybe he wasn’t lying but was off a different section of the beach. Maybe two guys dumped some trash a quarter mile from where Colleen died and he was there to see it.
“Just west of the volleyball courts and Butterfly Beach. That’s where we always anchored our boats in Santa Barbara. Quiet at night. Away from the hotels.”
Colleen’s body had been dumped near the volleyball courts, but he could have read that in the newspaper.
“Let’s go back to the two men and what they were wearing. Did you see their faces?”
“No, but one of them was wearing a police uniform.” More chin raising.
Many of the news reports at the time of Colleen’s murder stated that I’d been alone on patrol that night and had an hour and a half of unaccounted time. Now I knew Richert was lying. He’d obviously gotten the cop angle off a news report. I wondered if he’d told Krista the same story. She knew the truth about my alibi and knew this guy was lying. The Krista I remembered would have called him out on it and set him straight. Yet, Richert had sent her a fawning letter a few days later. That didn’t check.
“But you said by the time you looked through the binoculars at around one a.m. in the morning all you could see were the backs of the men. How can you be so sure one was a cop? There’s no insignia or markings on the back of a police uniform.”
“His belt. It was one of those utility belts with a gun holstered on his right hip.” He folded his arms again and pushed back in his chair. “That’s how I could tell it was a cop.”
“How was the other man dressed?” Since I was obviously the cop in Richert’s mind.
“In dark clothes. I think he had a watchman’s cap on too.”
“You mean a knit ski cap, right?”
“Yeah. In my day we called them watchmen’s caps.” Arms still folded, barely tolerating the killer he’d let into his house. “But I didn’t get as good a look at him.”
“Why not?” Because you hadn’t fleshed out in your mind what he looked like because you were too focused conjuring up images of me.
“Because they left the beach single file and the cop brought up the rear.”
A bolt of adrenaline shot through my body and ramrodded my spine. “What did you say?”
“They left the beach single file.” Richert narrowed his eyes on me. “Like I said, by the time I got my binoculars, they were already walking away. I only caught glimpses of the man in the watch cap because he was taller than the cop and the cop looked like he was taking long strides and maybe dragging his feet. Each step brought his head down, and I’d get a glimpse of the other guy’s head and shoulders.”
My temperature spiked to fever level and my face blew hot. Sweat bubbled out of me. Richert was telling the truth. The foot-dragged tracks
hadn’t been in the media. The only reason I knew about it was because Grimes accused me of covering my tracks when he had me in the box. Unless Krista somehow let it slip when she questioned Richert.
Impossible.
If Richert was telling the truth, that meant at least one of the people who killed Colleen was a police officer. I’d suspected whoever stole Krista’s files had been a cop, but this confirmed it. Made it real. A brother in blue. Did I know him? SBPD was a small force. Had I sat next to him at roll call? Shared a laugh at a barbecue? Tipped beer mugs at Paddy’s Pub after end of watch? All these years of searching the internet for clues on my own, pestering the department for information and he’d been among them all along.
I tried to remember who had been at roll call the night Colleen was murdered. Yates and Seeger usually rode together when I patrolled alone in a U car. Had they been working that night? Martinez and O’Neal? They were a Dick and Jane team. Couldn’t have been them. Carty and Scholl? I couldn’t remember. Richert thought it was one man in uniform and one in civilian clothes. It couldn’t have been a two-man patrol. Someone from the station on Figueroa?
Whoever it was, I had to know them.
“Fuck!” I slammed my fist down on the end table and shot up to my feet. The picture of Richert’s wife tumbled onto the floor.
Richert threw his hands up to defend himself in his chair. Leah’s eyes and mouth gaped round.
“Sorry.” I paced back and forth in front of the couch.
“That’s okay, son.” Richert studied me and rubbed his chin. “It wasn’t you, was it?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry about the accusations.”
“No need. You’re not alone.” I sat down and slid my hand across my brow and wiped the sweat onto my jeans.
“Losing your wife and then having people think you’re guilty must be a terrible burden to bear.”
My guilt was my burden.
“What did the police say when you told them what you saw?” I asked.
“Well, that’s the thing, I didn’t tell them until about five years ago.”
“What?” My adrenaline red-lined. If Richert had spoken up at the time of the murder, SBPD might have caught Colleen’s killers. Just like they might have if I’d given them my real alibi when they first questioned me and freed them to look for someone else.
“Like I said, Mr. Cahill.” Richert twisted in his chair and a hint of pink hued through his leathery skin. “I didn’t know at the time that it was significant. It was just two men on a beach like any other night. We set sail later that morning at six a.m. We spent a month in Hawaii then sailed the schooner to Tahiti and spent another month there.”
“The case was still in the news two months later. It was the murder of the century to the Santa Barbara Independent. They did weekly updates.” And harassed me almost daily. Phone calls to my unlisted number. Camping outside my apartment along with Channel 3 News. The press pushed me back to my hometown of San Diego as much as SBPD’s suspicion.
“We didn’t sail the boat back to Santa Barbara.” His hands opened in front of him and his eyebrows rose. “The owner wanted it down in Newport Beach so we sailed it there. We were living in Seal Beach at the time but were only home about three months that year. The rest of the time we were sailing rich people’s yachts around the world. I didn’t even know about your wife’s murder. In fact, the way I found out was by watching a 48 Hours rerun on Investigation ID five years ago. When they gave the date of your wife’s murder and where they found her body, I remembered that night off East Beach and realized the date fit.”
“Who did you talk to at the police department?” Five years ago. Grimes had already retired and become a private investigator. The case had gone cold by then—no one would have been actively working it. Did Richert’s call even go in the file?
“First I spoke to whoever answered the phone and told them I had information about Colleen Cahill’s murder. He transferred me to someone, but I forgot his name. As I told Miss Landingham, I wrote his name down but can’t find the damn pad I wrote it on. Either I or Lily must have accidently thrown it away. I feel badly about that because I could tell Miss Landingham thought it was important. I’m still looking for it.”
“Did anyone from the police department ever call you back?”
“No.”
“Did Krista say how she came across your name?”
“Yes. She said she found my name in a file.”
“Did she already know what you reported to the police on your phone call?”
“No. I told her when she called me.”
The information about what Richert reported should have been in the file along with the name of the cop who took the call. Why weren’t they?
“Why did she come down here to talk to you in person?” Leah asked.
I knew the answer. Krista thought she might be able to get more out of Richert if she was physically in front of him. Take cues from his body language, maybe ask the right question that would unlock a memory hidden away through time.
“I told her I’d been waiting five years for someone to follow up on my call. I think she wanted me to know that someone was taking me seriously,” Richert said.
Doubted it, but why burst a lonely man’s bubble?
CHAPTER TWENTY
“WOW.” LEAH SAT in the passenger’s seat of the car and looked at me. “That was quite a story.”
“Do you believe it?” I asked.
“I think I do.” Leah pushed a stray strand of blond hair out of her eyes. “You might be right about Krista’s death being related to your wife’s.”
“Yep.” I knew I was right before we made the trip. But now, I had a pool of suspects. Cops working at SBPD the night Colleen was murdered. At least one of them.
“But I’m not sure one of the people Mr. Richert saw was really a policeman. I can’t believe a policeman would kill your wife.”
“Grimes did when he arrested me.” I started the car.
“I guess you’re right.” She didn’t look convinced. “What now?”
“Back up to Santa Barbara to tell Grimes what we found out.”
Maybe he’d have an idea who Richert talked to on the phone at SBPD. Maybe he could get a look at Colleen’s case file with Krista’s updates after her talk with Richert. At least one cop knew her death and Colleen’s were connected. And if Krista told him what she learned from Mike Richert, that probably got her killed.
“Can you call him instead of telling him in person? It would be nice to stretch our legs and get something to eat before we drive back.” Leah smiled but the sadness that had been in her eyes since Krista’s service dug deeper. “It feels good to be out of Santa Barbara for a while. Even with what we learned today, I need a break from … from all the bad memories up there.”
I knew how she felt, but I had the scent now, and it led back to Colleen’s murder. I wanted to get a visual read on Grimes when I told him what we learned before he relayed it to SBPD.
“It might be best to head back now.”
“Really?” Sad blue eyes that had felt too much sadness lately.
“I guess I could check on my dog and make sure my neighbor is okay with keeping him a few more days.”
“I get to meet your dog?” Leah smiled, turned, and put her hand on my knee. “I love dogs.”
“But you don’t have one.”
“I did. Had to put her down a year ago. Elfie. A boxer. Every time I think about getting a new one, I feel like I’m cheating on her. Discounting how much she meant to me.”
“You are a dog lover.” I patted her hand, still on my leg. It felt right there. Even though I knew it wasn’t, it felt right. “We’ll get something to eat and then I’ll introduce you to Midnight.”
“Yay! Can we get fish tacos at Rubio’s?”
“We can get them at a number of places. San Diego is the fish taco capital of America.”
“I want Rubio’s.” Smile still beaming. “My family used to
go down to San Diego on vacation in the summer when I was a child. We stayed in Pacific Beach and always got fish tacos at Rubio’s. The original one. Let’s go there.”
“Done.”
The sun occasionally peeked through the haze on our thirty mile drive south from Oceanside. By the time we got to PB, the sun had burned off the gray and shone the postcard weather people from out of town associate with San Diego. They feel gypped when they arrive for vacation the first week of summer and experience June Gloom.
Even Paradise gets overcast.
We got to Rubio’s a little after three, and I parked behind the fast-causal restaurant in the tiny parking lot. We picked a good time, between lunch and dinner. The original Rubio’s didn’t look a thing like its modern strip-mall offspring. A small stand-alone building with corrugated metal siding around the roof at the end of a block dominated by car dealerships. It had once been an Orange Julius. Before I was born.
We both ordered two taco plates of the original and ate our food under the straw tiki hut on the back patio.
“This brings back such memories,” Leah said, taco in hand, white sauce smudged at the corner of her mouth. “Good memories.”
I reached a napkin over and wiped the sauce off her lip.
“Thanks.” She grabbed my hand as I pulled it away from her face.
“That was more for me than you. I don’t want people to think I hang out with slobs. We’re in my hometown now.”
“No. Thanks for taking me here.”
“I’m glad it brought back some good memories.” Something we both needed as much as the food.
“I remember eating here and all the surfers checking Krista out. She’d lay out all summer and get golden brown. I thought I had the most beautiful big sister in the world. So did the surfers.”
Her smiled faded and her eyes lost their gleam. She’d stepped out of the memory. Krista wasn’t her teenage big sister anymore. She was the dead woman Leah’d seen put in the ground two days ago.
“Why did your family come all the way down here in the summer when you had beautiful beaches in Santa Barbara?”