by Coyle, Matt;
“We lived in Buellton, an hour north of Santa Barbara. Land-locked. We couldn’t afford to live in Santa Barbara when my dad was just a patrolman. He commuted an hour to and from SBPD every day. The hotels around the beaches here are cheaper than in Santa Barbara, plus you have Sea World and the zoo and lots of other things to do. Santa Barbara is tiny compared to San Diego.”
“Where would you stay?”.
“Best Western most of the time.”
“My favorite.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“One year we stayed at the Catamaran Hotel when my dad splurged. Can we drive by there when were done?”
“Sure.”
I paid for lunch. This one I wouldn’t expense.
We drove over to the Catamaran, a landmark hotel right on Mission Bay with views of the ocean to go along with those of the bay. We walked around the grounds and the bay. Leah pointed out spots where Krista and she laid out in the sun and the spot where Krista bummed a beer from a twentysomething dude. She’d light up with a new story about an old memory every few minutes.
I was glad I’d taken her advice and delayed the drive north. Seeing Leah smile was suddenly important to me.
I took Leah to my home after we spent an hour chasing her memories. I parked in the driveway, and we walked next door to pick up Midnight. Leah knelt down and took all the licks to her face that Midnight could give.
“He’s a love.” She wiped her face and finally stood up. “How old is he?”
“Eight.”
“He seems like a pup.”
“He’s a lab. They have extended adolescence.” He did have the energy of a puppy, but the heart of a lion. He saved my life once. And saved me from debilitating depression more times than I could count. Plus, he loved the ladies and they loved him.
We walked back to my house, and I suddenly remembered the condition I’d left it in when I departed for Santa Barbara two days ago. The same condition it had been in for months since I lost the reins to my life. Didn’t lose them, really. Just dropped them. When I picked them up again, it would be to steer my life in a different direction. My time as a private investigator was coming to an end.
Santa Barbara was my last case.
I opened the back door of my Accord and Midnight jumped in.
“Where are we going?” Leah stood next to the car but didn’t open the door.
“Fiesta Island. On the other side of the bay from the Catamaran. There’s a huge dog park there. I owe Midnight a swim.”
“You’re not going to give me a tour of your home first?”
“You and I have different ideas about interior design.”
We got to Fiesta Island by five thirty p.m. Midnight chased after his buddy, a massive Great Dane named Brutus, and body slammed into him when he caught up. At eighty-five pounds of pure muscle, Midnight bounced off the beast, which was twice his weight. The Great Dane shifted a couple inches at impact. I waved at the Dane’s owner down the beach and let Midnight cavort in the water and up a sandy berm and back again. And again.
Leah and I walked along the shoreline trailing behind.
“I never knew about this place when we came down to San Diego.”
“Dog heaven. Especially for a water dog like Midnight.”
“You’ve made a nice life down here, Rick. After all you’ve been through.” She looped her arm around mine. I put my hand in my pocket to lock her arm in. Like I would with a girlfriend. Natural. Easy. Too easy.
The life she’d thought I’d made was a façade. Like the walls of my home hiding the mess inside. I didn’t have a life. I had a quest. A hero’s journey in quest of “the truth” as if it were something etched in stone. Bold print in black and white. It had turned into a fool’s errand. Death, destruction, and empty dreams strewn behind me as I followed my quest. Was Leah the next casualty in my hunt for the one truth that mattered above all others? The truth about Colleen’s murder. Leah had suffered enough with Krista’s death. How could I bring her into my life, let her care for me, and then reveal who I really was?
When I found Colleen’s killers and executed them.
“It’s not as nice as it seems.” I pulled my hand from my pocket and freed Leah’s arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I LED MIDNIGHT through the side gate into the backyard when we got home. Leah followed. We didn’t talk much after I disengaged on the beach. I felt badly about it. For me as much as Leah, but that’s the way it had to be. Better to kill the relationship now before it mattered too much to both of us.
I washed Midnight with a hose and shampoo in the faltering sunlight.
“It’s nice back here.” Leah stood on the deck and looked out to the ocean barely visible miles away. “Peaceful.”
She was right. The backyard was my sanctuary from the chaos of my life. I spent many a late night sitting on the deck drinking a beer and losing myself. Sometimes.
I unlocked the kitchen door to go in and fetch a towel to dry off Midnight. Leah followed me over. I turned to face her.
“Would you mind waiting out here?” I felt stupid as soon as the words left my mouth.
“Yes, I would.” She shook her head defiantly. “I want you to show me your home.”
“It’s currently uninhabitable. Nothing to see but months of mess.”
“I want to see your house.”
Maybe it was the interior designer in her that made her persist. See the inside of someone’s house and see their soul. Maybe that’s what she needed to see. The disorder I’d been living in would be the final nick to sever any thoughts she had about the two of us.
I opened the door to let her enter then followed her into the kitchen. Ground zero for the mess my life had become. She looked at the sink overflowing with dirty dishes. The butcher block island covered in fast-food container detritus and newspapers. No expression.
“You want the whole tour or is this enough to get us back on the road toward civilization?” I swung my hand around like a Price Is Right model.
“You must be in so much pain.”
Shit.
“No. I’m just a slob.”
“Show me upstairs.” Her blue eyes pierced my skull. Saw through the disorder, the walls, the desperation. And found the need. To connect physically. Emotionally. To feel something other than pain.
“Three bedrooms and two baths. Slightly less messy than down here but nothing special.” I had rules that superseded needs.
Leah walked past me out of the kitchen and through the living room. She stopped at the staircase and looked at me, then went up the stairs.
I grabbed a towel from the laundry room and went back outside to dry Midnight.
I had rules.
When I got back to my house after dropping Midnight back next door, I thought about sitting in the car and waiting Leah out. But that was too much of a jerk even for me. I went inside. No Leah on the bottom floor. I went upstairs and checked my office, then the spare bedroom that I’d kept empty when I first bought the house. The nursery that Colleen and I dreamed about when we lived in the one-bedroom apartment in Santa Barbara. After a year, I finally gave up ghosts and made it a guest room for the living.
I found Leah in my bedroom. Fully clothed, sitting on the end of my unmade bed in the dark gray light of dusk. She was looking at a photo album I’d pulled out of a bottom bureau drawer the day I found out Krista was dead. It contained my cop career as documented by Colleen. No documentation of my final days on the job.
The album was open on Leah’s lap to a photo from one of her sister’s barbecues. Krista and her husband, Leah and her boyfriend, and Colleen and I stood smiling at the camera. We all looked truly happy. I had been happy then. Colleen and I hadn’t hit our rough patch yet. The one we were still in when she was murdered. The one that had her tell a friend she was contemplating divorce. Maybe that’s how we would have ended up. Divorced. But at least she’d still be alive.
A tear rolled down Leah’s che
ek as she stared down at the picture. I sat next to her and slowly pulled the album away and set it down on the floor. She put her head on my shoulder.
“I miss her so much,” she said. More tears and gasps came.
I held her in my arms and stroked her hair. And fought back my own tears. For Colleen. For Krista. And for Leah, knowing that her tears will dry and eventually come less often, but the pain will never go away.
We sat quietly for a few minutes. Leah felt right in my arms and I was sorry for the circumstances. But not that she was in my arms. She looked up at me, then put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled my head down to her.
I forgot about the rules.
My lips to hers. Hers to mine. Tentative and soft, then eager and hard. She pulled off her blouse and unclipped her bra. I hesitated.
“I need you, Rick. Now.” She held my face in her hands. “I need to know I’m alive and still human.”
I took off my shirt.
“I have a confession to make.” Leah rested her hand on my chest in the dark. “This has nothing to do with what just happened. But I had a crush on you when you worked at SBPD.”
I had a confession to make, too. One I should have stated before we made love. Now I didn’t know if I could say it. If I told Leah that Krista and I had had sex the night Colleen was murdered, would I be doing it to clear my conscience or did I owe her the truth? All of it. Would clearing my conscience be a fair trade for making Leah feel awful? Would not telling her be starting off whatever this was between us with a lie?
My rules weren’t arbitrary. They came from wisdom earned through life’s mistakes. And if I’d followed the most sacred of them, Colleen would still be alive.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “But I understand that what just happened was something different.”
“Yes, but it was more to me than that, Rick. I wouldn’t have made love to just anyone who was with me today after going through all of this.” She rolled her head onto my chest. “Yes, I had a crush on you way back when and still do. There, I said it. But I know that you’re hurting like I am. In pain for Krista and Colleen. It may sound weird, but I wanted to connect with that pain. To merge it with what I’m feeling for Krista. To give it more meaning. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No. I understand.” And I did. Pain, even grief for a lost loved one, needs a greater meaning. Something so debilitating and lasting had to mean more than just the end of a life.
“Krista changed after Colleen was murdered. You weren’t around much longer in Santa Barbara, but she changed. She never seemed as happy as she was before. Her marriage went to hell. Even all these years later, there wasn’t enough joy in her life. I know she liked Colleen, but I didn’t think they were close friends. Yet her death really affected Krista.”
I knew Krista felt some of the guilt for Colleen’s death that I did from the last conversation we ever had. I guess I didn’t know how much.
“Colleen’s death had lasting repercussions for a lot of people. Her family never recovered.” Although, her father did finally stop his annual call to me around Colleen’s birthday to scream expletives and call me a murderer. Maybe that was part of his recovery.
“You know, Krista loved you.” Leah propped her head up and looked at me.
“I loved her, too. We were brothers and sisters in blue. She taught me all I ever knew as a cop.”
“Not like that. She loved you loved you.” Leah studied my face. “She told me after you left Santa Barbara and came down here to live. But she felt guilty about it. Not just because she was married. I never thought she should have married Tom in the first place. She felt guilty because she fell in love with you and then Colleen was murdered. I think she somehow felt responsible.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“What do you mean?”
“About us. Krista and me?”
“I didn’t know there was a Krista and you.” Leah sat up.
I sat up, too.
“There wasn’t.” I searched for her eyes in the dark. “Except for one night.”
“What are you saying?” She folded her arms in front of her, covering her breasts.
“We had a one-night stand.” I looked at Leah but she stared down at the bed. “It was a first for me. I’m pretty sure it was for her, too. I knew she was in a loveless marriage but she still honored it. Until that night.”
Leah got off the bed and grabbed her clothes from the floor, pressing them against her body to conceal her nakedness. “Well, now you’ve fucked both Landingham sisters and it only took two one-night stands. Congratulations.”
She ran into the master bathroom and slammed the door.
I jumped out of bed, went to the bathroom door, and softly knocked. “Leah, I’m sorry. I should have told you … before. I didn’t want you to think less of Krista. Especially now. But tonight was about you and me. Nobody else.”
The water in the shower went on. No doubt to scrub any remnants of me off her.
I had rules for a reason. Unfortunately, they only worked if I followed them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I UNLOCKED THE gun safe in my closet while Leah was in the shower and grabbed a Mossberg tactical shotgun, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, and a Glock 9mm pistol and three boxes of ammo. I hustled downstairs and put them into the trunk of my car alongside the Ruger .357 snub-nose I always had with me. If Mike Richert was right and two people killed Colleen, two cops, I had to be ready to go to war.
I would have been ready with just my bare hands but given the choice, I wouldn’t be outgunned.
I packed a suitcase with a week’s worth of clothes then showered after Leah left the bathroom, walking silently past me.
The silence continued for the first two hours of our drive north.
“Why just the one night?” Leah finally spoke after we got onto the 405.
“Why just one night what?”
“With Krista. You said it was a one-night stand.”
I would have preferred another two hours of silence.
“I don’t see the point in talking about something that happened so long ago.”
“You talked about it less than three hours ago.” Leah’s eyes drilled into the side of my face. “Humor me.”
“I think we both realized it was a mistake.”
I did the moment I got out of Krista’s bed and saw myself in her mirror. Someone I didn’t recognize. A man who cheats on his wife with another man’s wife. Another cop’s wife. But beyond all that, I knew I’d lost the best person I’d ever known. Not just by my actions that night, but over months of taking Colleen for granted, for showing her my worst self instead of working to be a better person. I wanted her back. I wanted to be the man she fell in love with. The man that took the best of me to become. I wanted to give her the life she deserved. I vowed to myself right then to make it up to her. Even if I had to quit being a cop.
An empty oath to myself. The next time I saw Colleen she was on a coroner’s table.
“When did it happen? The one night?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Because I remember how happy you and Colleen were when I first met you at one of Krista’s barbecues. That would have been quite an acting job if you just screwed the host of the party. I want to know what kind of man I’m dealing with.”
What kind of man.
“It doesn’t make any difference when it was. I cheated on my wife. I cheated with the wife of another cop. That’s who you’re dealing with.”
“So, it was when you were seemingly so in love with your wife. Good to know.”
I didn’t see the need to defend the indefensible. Argue over gradations of immorality. The mask was off. Leah saw me for who I really was. At least who I was back then. Maybe I was still the same man. Maybe I wouldn’t know until I was tested in the same way again.
That was the end of conversation for the remainder of the drive. I called Grimes when we were thirty minutes outside of San
ta Barbara to set up a time to meet the next day to tell him what I’d learned from Mike Richert. Ideally it would be best for Leah to be with us in case I left something out. I doubted she’d be up for that now. I put the call on speaker.
“When can you meet tomorrow to discuss what we learned today?” I asked.
“Where are you now?”
“A half hour from Leah’s house. Dropping her off then heading back to the Best Western.”
“I’m downtown. I can meet you at Miss Landingham’s in a half hour.”
Not ideal. I’m sure Leah wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible tonight, but it would be best to talk to Grimes when our conversation with Richert was still relatively fresh in our minds. I muted the phone and looked at Leah.
“You want me to schedule something with him tomorrow?”
“No. Let’s talk to him tonight.” No anger in her voice. A relief. Her desire to find the truth about her sister’s death trumped all else.
I unmuted the phone. “We’ll see you in thirty.”
We beat Grimes to Leah’s and silently trudged inside her home. Not a word as we waited for him. Mercifully, the doorbell rang a couple minutes after we arrived. Leah went to the door and let Grimes in. He walked into the living room and spotted me at the dinner table. I wanted the formality of sitting at a table. Grimes and I needed to have a hard conversation.
“Cahill.”
“Have a seat.” I pulled out the chair at the head of the table.
“Can I get you gentlemen anything to drink?” Leah hovered, nervous. She felt the inborn tension between Grimes and me.
“No thank you,” Grimes said and sat down.
“No thanks.”
Leah sat down opposite Grimes.
“What did you learn from the letter writer?” he asked.
“His name is Mike Richert, and he thinks he witnessed Colleen’s body being dumped on East Beach fourteen years ago.”
“What?” Grimes shifted forward in his chair, bumping the table.
I told him everything that Richert told us. Leah filled minute details I missed or thought inconsequential. She didn’t miss anything. And she hid her contempt for me brilliantly. Grimes’ expression grew darker and darker with each new piece of information.