by Coyle, Matt;
“There you are.” Icy. “When did you get up?”
“A little while ago.”
“Hmm.” Anger shaded with disappointment in her eyes. “That’s strange because I woke up at four and you were gone. I thought you’d gone back to the hotel.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Good to know that’s where you draw the line.”
I’d been in my own head so much that I’d forgotten why Leah asked me to stay. She needed me to be next to her when she fell asleep and still be there when she woke up. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of betraying Colleen. Too late.
“I couldn’t sleep so I came out here. I didn’t want to wake you with my tossing and turning.” I could lie easily on the small stuff. If it kept me from having to tell the truth about the big stuff.
“When do you want me to call Tom?” She didn’t believe me. The truth would have been too hard to explain.
We got to Krista’s house by nine a.m. Tom Weaver was due in an hour. Leah had persuaded him on the phone to come over. She was pretty good at lying, too.
We didn’t include Grimes in our scheme because I didn’t think he’d play along. He might call Weaver to warn him. Grimes was retired, but there was no question where he stood in relation to that thin blue line. And no question where I did, either.
Weaver arrived about ten twenty a.m. I hid in the guest bedroom while Leah escorted him into Krista’s study.
“I think someone broke into Krista’s file cabinet.” Leah’s voice. “There are some files missing and scratches on the lock like someone picked it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that on the phone?” Weaver, gruff, irritated. “Why the big secret?”
“I was worried you might have been at SBPD and mention something to someone. I don’t know who to trust over there.”
“Why? Everyone’s working hard to find Krista’s killer.”
“If you say so. Please, just examine the lock.”
“All right.” A huff. “I’ll take a look at it.”
This was my cue. Knowing Weaver had entered the office, I could stand in the doorway and block an easy exit.
“Morning, Tom.”
Weaver startled and bumped his chin into the file cabinet near the lock, which he’d been examining. He straightened up and puffed out his chest. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“Bullshit.” He turned to Leah who stood on the other side of the desk. “What’s this all about?”
“I wanted to see if you agreed with Rick’s assessment that the file cabinet was broken into.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, she’s serious,” I said. “Did you see the scratches on the lock? Looks like someone went at it with a pick set.”
“Those scratches could have come from anything. They could have been there when Krista bought the cabinet. What do you really want, Cahill?”
Weaver wasn’t stupid. Or patient. I didn’t have much time, but still had to be careful. I couldn’t push him too hard too soon.
“I don’t know if Krista told you, but she was reinvestigating my wife’s murder.” I looked at Weaver’s face for a tell. Surprise. Faked surprise. Acknowledgment that he already knew. His face didn’t change. Still wore the snarl he had when he saw me in the doorway. “She mention anything to you about it?”
“No.” Weaver stepped around the desk and managed to squeeze another inch of puff out of his chest. “But everyone already knows who killed your wife, Cahill.”
I got the implication. I’d seen it in many forms from too many people to count over the years. But Weaver was one of the few people who knew I couldn’t have killed Colleen. He was now my only living alibi. And possibly Colleen’s killer.
“Everyone’s wrong.” I shifted slightly to fill up the doorway. I wasn’t going to really block his exit if Weaver tried to push past me. He was a cop. I wasn’t stupid. At least not most of the time. But he didn’t have to know that. “I know you were up in Fresno interviewing a witness for a case the night Colleen died. Do you know the name of the hotel you stayed in?”
“What?” Weaver scowled at me. “That’s none of your business. What’s this all about?”
“Just trying to establish where everyone was the night Colleen died. It’s general practice to expense a hotel when you are out of town on an investigation.” I studied Weaver’s eyes. A hint of uncertainty slipped beneath the scowl. “Do you suppose SBPD still has a record of your expense report?”
“What are you implying, Cahill?” Weaver stabbed me in the chest with two fingers like he had at the funeral. “That I killed your wife?”
He side-glanced Leah to make sure she knew how angry he was that she’d set him up.
“I don’t know. Did you? Because I know you weren’t in Fresno the night Colleen was murdered. You here were in Santa Barbara.”
“You’re a liar!” Weaver stabbed me again and stuck his face into mine, nose to nose. He wanted me to push him away so he could arrest me. He probably already would have tried to put the cuffs on me if Leah hadn’t been there.
“You’re right about that. And an adulterer. They tend to go together.” Time to flip over my cards. “But you already knew that because you came home from Fresno a day early to surprise Krista and found a different kind of surprise in your bedroom.”
I saw the punch coming, shifted sideways, and slipped it. Except for the large ring on Weaver’s hand. It caught the corner of my eye and ripped skin. I stepped backwards out of the doorway instead of clocking him with a right counter.
“Tom!” Leah’s scream startled both of us and kept Weaver from pushing forward on me. She ran over and stood between us. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me.” He reached his arm around Leah and pointed at me. “This motherfucker. I knew you screwed my wife, asshole, but not because I was in the house when you did it. Krista told me all about it before we got a divorce.”
I wiped the blood seeping from the corner of my eye. It stung. Weaver had a right to punch me.
If our roles were reversed, I would have done the same thing. A long time ago. But if he’d taken out his revenge on Colleen, I’d kill him. No arrest. No trial. No verdict. Just the death penalty. But I had to be one hundred percent certain and I wasn’t yet.
“Your car was in your driveway the night I slept with Krista. I have a witness who will swear to it.” Leah and I hadn’t gotten that far yet, but it didn’t matter. And it never would, but Weaver didn’t know that.
“Bullshit. You already admitted that you’re a liar. I believe you about that.”
Weaver was arguing his innocence with a two-bit private dick instead of leaving. Why? If he was innocent, why even bother? He was a cop, I was hated by cops. Especially in Santa Barbara. He should have welcomed my accusation so I could make a fool of myself at SBPD. Unless he was guilty. Or, at least, had something to hide.
“A witness saw your Crown Vic slick top in your driveway around ten the night Colleen was murdered. That’s the same time I was in bed with your wife.” I slipped my right foot back and flexed my knees in case he tried to cheap shot me again. Part of me wanted him to. Not to get him in trouble, but because every time I talked about being in bed with Krista, I remembered Colleen died because of it.
“How do you know your witness”—he air-quoted “witness”—“isn’t mistaking that night for some other night? Why would he suddenly remember it now?”
“Because I didn’t realize the significance of it until Rick told me he slept with Krista the night Colleen was murdered.” Leah stared at Weaver like the roles were reversed and she had him in the square white room.
Weaver’s face lost some color. It stayed hard, but he couldn’t stop the blood from exiting his head. He tried to stay strong. “How could you possibly be sure it was that night?”
“Because it was the night Colleen died.” Leah’s blue piercers never left Weaver’s face. �
��Where did you go after you saw Krista and Rick together, Tom?”
“I didn’t go anywhere. I was in Fresno.” He pushed past Leah and me down the hallway and out of the house.
“Oh my God.” Leah slumped against the wall. “He’s lying. He really could have done it. He could have killed Colleen.”
“And Krista.”
I was ninety percent there. Tom Weaver had as many days left on the earth as it took me to get to that last ten percent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LEAH CLEANED THE gash Weaver ripped in my face and applied a couple butterfly bandages from an emergency medical kit we found in Krista’s bathroom. Krista was always prepared for the worst.
Except the night she was murdered.
Leah grabbed the mail from Krista’s mailbox before we got into my car to drive back to her house. Bills. They chase you even after death. I backed out of the driveway and started to drive up the road, then stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Leah asked.
“That house has a surveillance camera.” I pointed at a camera mounted under the eaves of the house across the street from Krista’s. “I didn’t see it when we were here Sunday night.”
“You think they might have video of someone breaking into Krista’s house?”
“Let’s find out.”
I put the car back in gear and pulled into the home’s empty driveway. I studied the angle of the camera before I knocked on the front door. It looked like it would catch anyone entering Krista’s house. No one came to the door. I rang the doorbell. Nada. I went back to my car and grabbed a business card and pen out of the center console and wrote, “Please call me. Urgent!” on the card. I wedged it into the doorjamb just above the doorknob.
It’s not every day that a civilian finds a private investigator’s card on their door with an urgent message. I expected a call. The homeowner may not let me look at his surveillance video, but he’d call. Either out of curiosity or fear.
When we got back to Leah’s house we plopped down on the sofa, and she tossed Krista’s bills onto the coffee table. She reached over and gently touched my face below the butterfly bandages. “You sure you don’t want to go to a doctor? It might scar.”
“I’ll survive.” I gave her a squinty smile. “Even though my face is my moneymaker.”
“I like your face.” She touched my cheek again.
“Think of the character a scar will give it.”
“I know it’s not your first.” She tugged the neck of my t-shirt down to the left revealing the scar below my shoulder. Then she pulled up my left sleeve exposing a scar on the outside of my bicep. “I saw these when we were in your bed yesterday. I didn’t say anything at the time because I had other things on my mind. And body.” She smiled. I would have blushed if I was capable of it. “How did you get those?”
I rubbed the cylindrical scar on my upper chest through my shirt. It was still tender six years after the fact.
“I took too long putting the pieces together on a case and almost got people I cared about killed.”
“Someone shot you?” Her eyes went big like someone getting shot didn’t happen every day.
“Yep.” I wondered how much to tell her. We’d shared a bed and tragedies. That wasn’t enough to tell her my whole story.
“What happened?”
“I lived and the shooter didn’t.”
Same story with the scar on my arm. Someone tried to kill me, but I killed them. I could live with those. And the others. But Leah didn’t need to know about how many people I’d killed or that I wasn’t done killing.
“What happened to the people you cared about?”
“They’re mostly all right.” One now walks with a cane, another married someone else, and the third got rich and famous. The survivors of my quest for the truth. Not everyone else survived.
“I guess mostly is okay.” She studied my face, trying to see inside. Finally, she stood up. “Breakfast?”
“Sure.” I followed her into the kitchen.
“No. You sit at the counter.” She pushed me out. “I’m going to show you I can cook. Cheese omelet? I need to use up what’s left of that cheese platter my parents forced on me.”
“Sounds good.” I sat down at the four-chair granite peninsula that right-angled the kitchen. “How well do you know Detectives Mitchell and Flora?”
“Not very.” She cracked some eggs into a bowl. “I met them at a charity golf tournament once when I was married to The Idiot and at one of Krista and Tom’s barbecues. Why?”
“The copy of Colleen’s cold case file is missing from Krista’s file cabinet. Only someone from SBPD would know she made copies of cold cases and kept them at home. Unless Mike Richert likes making up stories, at least one cop was present on the beach where Colleen’s body was dumped.”
My gut opened up again. The bodies of people you don’t know are dumped like garbage. Not your own wife. No matter how far I tried to distance myself and treat this like just another case, I couldn’t. But I wouldn’t let that get in the way of my mission. Find the truth. One last time. And kill who’s responsible.
“Whether that was Tom and some uniform abetting him or two other people we know nothing about, someone from SBPD was involved in both Colleen’s and Krista’s murders.” I focused on the mission. “Agree?”
“I guess.” She tilted her head. “But what are we supposed to do? We can’t solve this without the department’s help and we sure can’t arrest anyone.”
I didn’t tell her arresting the murderer wasn’t my goal. Or what I was going to do when I found him. The only person SBPD would arrest was me after I finished my mission. If I let them. And this time, the DA would put me on trial. Murder One.
“We gather as much information as we can until we have a solid case and then we find a cop we can trust and present our evidence.” Another lie to someone I cared about in my quest for the truth. And now, my quest for vengeance.
“Okay. You’re the boss,” Leah said and plopped a couple omelets onto plates. She slid one in front of me.
“That’s not how I remember it from my bed yesterday.”
“Touché.” She poured us each a glass of orange juice and sat down. “What’s next?”
“I need to talk to Dustin Peck again.” I took a bite of the omelet. Velvety with a tangy finish. Perfect. “This is great.”
“You sound surprised.” She cocked her head back. “I don’t just decorate homes, Mr. Cahill. I know how to live in them, too.”
“Touché.”
“Why do you want to talk to Dustin Peck again?” Leah asked.
“Two things. What time he left work and where he was standing when he saw the accident.”
“I thought we already knew he got off work at 2:15 a.m.”
“The sign on the front door of Joe’s Café states it’s only open until 11:00 p.m. on Sundays.”
“So? I don’t understand.” Her eyebrows pressed down.
“Peck told us he’d done an inventory of the bar that night. I assumed the bar closed at midnight or maybe one a.m. because it was a Sunday night.” I turned to face Leah. “I used to do a yearly inventory of the restaurant I managed, and I could do the whole thing—meat, fish, produce, dry goods, liquor, and wine—in three hours by myself. Peck should have been able to do the bar and liquor storage room in an hour, hour and a half max. Let’s say it took him a half hour to close out his bank and an hour and a half to do the inventory. That puts him at 1:00 a.m. What happened to the other hour and fifteen minutes until he saw Krista get … until he saw the accident?”
“Do you think he’s lying about seeing the accident or what he was doing after work?”
“He has to be lying about one of them. I’m going to find out which.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“CAN I COME?” Leah asked.
Leah was smart, inquisitive, and beautiful. A good combination when interviewing a possible recalcitrant male witness. “Yes.”
I rinsed the d
ishes after we finished breakfast and put them in the dishwasher. Leah grabbed Krista’s bills off the coffee table and headed toward her office down the hall.
“I have to remember to cancel her cell phone service,” she said to herself.
“Hey. Can you bring the phone bill in here?” I rinsed the fry pan and put it in the dishwasher.
Leah appeared around the corner of the kitchen.
“Here you go.” She handed me an AT&T bill.
“I should have thought of this before.”
“Should have thought of what?” Leah peered over my shoulder.
“Krista’s phone was destroyed in the accident but not her call and texting records.” I scanned the three-page bill and saw that the charges covered March 6th to April 5th. The last month of Krista’s life. She died early on the morning of April 1st, so there should be a record of any incoming or outgoing calls from her phone the last night of her life. Maybe we could finally find out what she was doing on State Street at two in the morning.
And who the last person was she talked to on the phone before she died. I was pretty sure the two were connected. Fate didn’t kill Krista. A human being with intent did. I was sure of it. Despite Grimes’ warning about jumping to conclusions. I leapt at this one without a net.
“They don’t send you the records with the bill.” She reached over my shoulder and fingered the bill. “See.”
“That’s right. I forgot. They’re online and you can look them up on your account.”
“But I don’t know the password to her account.”
“You’re the executor of the estate and responsible for paying the bills. You should be able to get access to her call records. Let’s try.”
We sat down at the dinner table, and Leah used her cell phone to call AT&T. After three or four frustrating minutes of pushing numbers and speaking to a recording, Leah finally talked to a human being. That took another four or five minutes of objections to getting access to Krista’s phone call records. Finally, a supervisor told her that she could get access if she brought a copy of Krista’s death certificate to the AT&T store in downtown Santa Barbara.