Lost Tomorrows

by Coyle, Matt;

  “Cars have VINs in a number of places. On the chassis, door jamb, under the handle. Probably a bunch more.”

  “Most older models don’t.”

  “Could your guy confirm that it was the same van that ran down Krista?”

  “He wouldn’t go that far. Just that it was from the ’80s.”

  “This new info doesn’t really narrow things down then, does it?” I was thankful that Grimes was back sharing information, but the van didn’t add up to a plus or minus yet.

  “Maybe. The inside edge of the passenger door still had a few flecks of paint on it.”

  “White?”

  “Yep.” Grimes nodded. “The flecks are on the way to the lab.”

  I folded my freshly laundered clothes and put them into my suitcase. I was only a few blocks from the hotel, but I had another stop to make before I spent the night in a room that had been breached by a killer. I had to head back in the other direction to get there.

  A long way back.

  Tom Weaver’s Dodge Challenger was in his driveway. The house where I’d taken Colleen to barbecues when I was a snot-nosed cop and a raw, unrefined husband. I never got the chance to be a seasoned cop or sand down my rough-husband edges. The Spanish mission-style house sat back from the street up a winding hill similar to the street Leah lived on a few miles away.

  I sat in my black Honda Accord across the street. Camouflaged by the night, the color of my car, and the lack of a streetlight on Weaver’s block. A pavestone deck sat over a tiny one-car garage that was too small for anything but a sports car. A mission wall encased the front lawn where Tom and Krista held their cop barbecues.

  I remembered the first barbecue Colleen and I attended there together. I was only three weeks out of the academy and Krista was regaling Colleen, Leah, and her boyfriend at the time, about a foot pursuit we’d engaged in earlier that week. We were patrolling the barrio and rolled up on a petty drug deal. I was the last rookie in my class without an arrest and I was hungry. The buyer bolted and instinct kicked in like a dog chasing a ball. I sprinted after him even though I should have stayed with my partner and the buyer, who got a late start running in the other direction because I heard Krista yell at him to stop.

  A foot pursuit is not like you see on TV. You don’t pull your gun and yell, “Police! Halt or I’ll shoot!” What are you going to do when the suspect keeps running? Shoot him, unarmed, in the back for buying a two-five rock of crack? It can happen. But usually it’s a scared psychologically deficient cop who should have washed out in the academy, who pulls his gun when his wits and command presence should have been enough to get the job done.

  I was still working on my command presence as I chased the buyer down an alley, but I was athletically arrogant and desperate for the taste of that first bust. Even if it was just a penny-ante drug buy. I tackled the suspect and was on top of him with one wrist cuffed when a 10-33 from Krista came over the two-way radio on my shoulder.

  “Officer needs immediate assistance.”

  I was one wrist and a walk back to the car away from finally getting on the board. No time. There was a chain-link fence at the end of the alley I could have cuffed him to, but that would have taken an extra ten to fifteen seconds.

  I sprang off the suspect and bolted to Krista’s twenty. Her location. I found her in less than thirty seconds. On the dirt lawn of a shanty house with her suspect lying at her feet. Krista’d made the bust, but eight or nine of the suspect’s crew encircled her throwing gang signs and Mexican insults. Krista had her hand on the grip of her holstered service weapon and was shouting for the gang to back away.

  I broke the circle and stuck my face up at the biggest banger of the crew. I was six feet and a fit two hundred pounds and the guy dwarfed me. Six-four or more, two-fifty plus of prison tats and steroid muscles in a body shirt under a bald dome. I smiled up at him.

  “You and me. Three minutes. I win, you all walk away and we take your boy in. You win, we uncuff him and he can get back to slinging crack.”

  Krista was silent behind me. I took that as consent. The mass of muscles in front of me didn’t know that I’d fought Golden Gloves as a teenager and won all my seventeen fights. All but one by knockout. It wouldn’t have mattered if he knew anyway. I’d called him out in front of his homies. He didn’t have a choice. He looked happy not to have a choice.

  “You know what you’re doing, boot?” Krista whispered to me as I handed her my holster, gun, and radio. “Backup is on the way.”

  “Yep.”

  “’Cause if this goes bad, you just turned your probationary period into a washout.”

  “I just lost my first bust because of these assholes. Big Boy’s tasting dirt.”

  I stepped toward the tattooed granite slab and put my hands up. His crew surrounded us, giving us about six by six square feet to maneuver. Seemingly an advantage for the larger man. Seemingly.

  He charged and predictably launched a haymaker. I blocked it and caught him with a straight right that split his lip and staggered him. But he didn’t go down. He lunged at me with his hands open. A quick learner, he knew he had no chance fist to fist. I knew I had no chance in arm to arm. I slid to my right to avoid him, but one of his crew shoved me back at him.

  He got me in a clinch; his right arm tied up my left and his left hand squeezed my throat. My Adam’s apple became a golf ball wedged in my throat. I hammered six uppercuts in a row to his solar plexus. Puffs of air blasted from his mouth with each punch. His grip eased, and I slammed three overhand rights to his jaw. He released me and staggered backwards. I stayed in front of him and pistoned a straight right into his nose. Snap. Blood. Broken.

  He fell backwards, but his crew pushed him back at me. He staggered. I didn’t want to hit him anymore. My hand hurt. I’m sure his face did, too. Along with his ego. I’d beaten him.

  No point in beating him down. Except to show him and his crew that you don’t fuck with Santa Barbara Five-O. Especially me or my partner.

  I snapped a left jab into his broken face and a right cross to his temple. He went down like a wronged Jingo puzzle. My hand felt like someone dropped a sledgehammer on it. His crew picked up his pieces and shuffled off, throwing a few half-hearted mean mugs over their shoulders as they left.

  Krista finished the story by saying, “Here he was, breaking his cherry and hooking up his first bust and he drops everything to save me.” She finger quoted “save.” “Lost his cuffs when the suspect ran off while he was playing Rocky with the biggest, baddest banger of the bunch. I felt sorry for him so I gave him my bust. He’d earned it. But the damndest thing about your husband, he wouldn’t take it. Said he didn’t want charity. Had to bring down some baddie on his own for real. And he still thinks he hasn’t broken his cherry, yet. This boot is one stubborn son of a gun. Good luck, Colleen.”

  I’d won Krista over the day of that foot pursuit. And lost a small piece of Colleen at the barbecue. I didn’t realize it at the time. But Krista had exposed a side of me to Colleen that she’d never known existed. My recklessness. Risking the life we were building together unnecessarily.

  Colleen became quiet and withdrawn after Krista’s story and remained that way for the rest of the barbecue. We left after only an hour. Before the food was even ready. She stayed quiet in the car on the way home. She didn’t speak until we were back inside our small apartment.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “What? Help my partner when she was in a jam? That’s the job, Colleen. You know that. Krista would do the same for me.”

  “No. That’s not the job, and she wouldn’t do that.” Colleen’s face flushed and her eyes went soft with welled tears. “You should have waited for backup instead of that macho show you put on for Krista.”

  “I didn’t put on a show for her.” But the thought slipped into my head that maybe I had. I definitely wanted to show my partner that, despite the fact that I hadn’t made an arrest yet—which was by happenstance, not incompetence—I could mo
re than handle myself and be a partner who had her back. I would have abandoned the bust and ran into danger for any partner, not just Krista. But would I have challenged a giant to a fight in front of a male partner? Or any other cop but Krista? I couldn’t lie to myself and say that I would have.

  “Are you committed to this marriage, Rick?” Tears ran from Colleen’s azure eyes. I saw doubt in them for the first time since we met at a party in college four years earlier. It scared me. We’d only been married for six months, and I’d already given her reasons to doubt me.

  “Yes.” My own eyes welled.

  “Then why did you risk it and your life on some stupid stunt? That’s not the man I married. Not the man I fell in love with.”

  I knew in my heart that she was right. The six months at the academy and three weeks on the street had changed me. No, they hadn’t changed me. I’d changed me. I’d puffed myself up and pushed out some of the humanity that had made me who I was. Insecurity and arrogance, fused together into an inert block, took humanity’s place. I was the son of a cop who’d been deemed dirty. A bag man for the mob. I had to prove I wasn’t tainted. Beyond that, a super cop. I had to prove that a knee injury that destroyed my college football career was just a minor blip. That I was physically and mentally whole again. Strong. The toughest motherfucker on the street.

  A bad combination for a healthy marriage. A healthy human being.

  I didn’t have an answer for her. We cried and hugged and made up. I spent the next year trying to prove to Colleen how important she was to me. How much I loved her. And I did love her, more than anyone I ever had in my life. But there was a crack in the foundation of our marriage. I’d plastered it over for as long as I could keep the darkness in me from coming to light. But the crack was still there and it would grow into a fissure a few months before Colleen was murdered. It never got a second chance to heal because of the man in the house across the street from where I now sat.

  Somewhere behind the wall inside the house where I slept with his wife and ignited the tragedy that ended Colleen’s life, but never ended for me, sat Tom Weaver. Unaware that the number of his days left on earth were being counted down by someone else.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  SOMEONE KNOCKED ON my hotel room door at eight fifty-five p.m. I answered, expecting to see Jim Grimes. Figured he’d learned something new, good or bad, about Krista’s death and wanted to tell me face-to-face. Probably something bad, something that didn’t jibe with my theory of her murder. He’d come to tell me once and for all that I was completely wrong about Tom Weaver.

  I answered the door. Leah.

  Stunned, I didn’t say anything.

  “Can I come in?” Weary.

  “Sure.” I opened the door wide and stepped aside.

  “So.” She scanned the room. “You like this place better than my house?”

  “I thought this would be a better base of operations.”

  “You left me a Post-it note on the refrigerator? Two sentences? Ten words? That’s what this past week has meant to you?” The hurt went deep into her eyes.

  “You’re right. I should have waited until you came home.”

  “I thought we were in this together.” She walked over to the desk and looked down at my computer. The report I was just about to send her was on the screen.

  “We were.” I couldn’t tell her that we couldn’t be anymore. That by being in, she’d be aiding and abetting and I couldn’t allow that to happen. “But the investigation is about to close down. SBPD found a burned-out van in an abandoned warehouse that may be the one that struck Krista. It’s just a matter of time before they track down the owner.”

  “Wait? What?” She shook her head. “What happened to Tom and Detective Mitchell? I thought you had it all figured out.”

  “It looks like I was wrong.” I forced myself to look into her eyes. To sell the lie. I’d gotten good at lying. Especially to those whom I cared about.

  “What changed?”

  “Nothing really changed. I just took a step back and tried to look at everything as if I didn’t have a personal attachment to the case. What a more professional PI would do. What Grimes has done.”

  Leah tilted her head and squinted one eye at me. Maybe I wasn’t as good at lying as I thought.

  “What did you see that you missed before?” Her half-closed eyes burned into me like the moon eclipsing the sun. “That changed your opinion?”

  “Weaver’s drunk tank alibi, for one.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe Detective Mitchell’s story about Tom being in a drunk tank.”

  “You, yourself, told me that you believed Mitchell.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t and now you do?” Laser squint. “What about the two men Mike Richert saw on East Beach the night Colleen died? One in a police uniform and the other in plain clothes.”

  “Those could have been any cop and a buddy. Hell, it could have been a rent-a-cop and his friend.” I didn’t look at her this time, but felt the blue eclipse burning into my skull. “And who knows if Richert saw what he thinks he saw? It was nine years after the fact. People manufacture memories. It happens all the time. He sailed a bunch of yachts from Santa Barbara to Hawaii. He could have missed the date by a year.”

  “All of a sudden you sound like Jim Grimes and Detective Mitchell, Rick. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “No, there’s not.” I stared into her eyes this time. This grieving woman. The first person I’d really fallen for in years. Someone searching for the truth, just like me. And I lied to her. “I’m just trying to be objective for a change. Taking my need for vengeance out of the equation.”

  My need for blood.

  “So, you’re quitting?”

  “I agreed to investigate Krista’s death to find the truth. I let my emotions taint what I saw. I almost even had you convinced, but you were able to take a step back and see things as they are. The police are close to solving the murder. That’s what we both want.” I took the second check Leah gave me from my wallet and offered it to her. “I didn’t earn this.”

  “Were you even going to call me or just send me a report?” She ignored the check in my extended hand.

  “I’m driving home tomorrow morning.” I could lie to her about the case, but not about the two of us. Away from everything else. She wouldn’t want a future with me if she knew what I planned to do and who I really was.

  “Keep the stupid check. You earned it.” She waved her hand. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Rick, but I don’t believe anything you just told me.”

  “It’s the truth. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

  She slapped me across the face. Hard. “Don’t you dare apologize.”

  My face stung, but not enough. I wished she’d hit me harder.

  “I’m not some fling that didn’t work out. You’re just too cowardly to take a chance on happiness.” She strode out of my hotel room and slammed the door behind her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  I STOOD UNDER a tree and the cover of night in a park on the corner of East Yanonali Street and North Soledad in the Eastside neighborhood of Santa Barbara. Eastside was home turf to a vicious criminal gang and an area known for drug dealing when I was on the job. Based on what I saw tonight, nothing had changed.

  Forty yards away from me a teenage kid was slinging crack out of a backpack at his feet. He wasn’t my target. The 1963 Chevy Impala lowrider across the street and up half a block on North Soledad was. I pressed my arm against my chest and felt the Smith & Wesson in its shoulder holster.

  Two bandanaed bangers in the Impala watched two other homies in a 1978 Monte Carlo lowrider fifty feet from the kid. Every so often, someone would stumble up to the Monte Carlo and stick their hand in the passenger side and then hustle over to the park and the kid. He’d pull something out of the backpack at his feet and hand it to the visitor, who’d then shuffle off.

  Pay the men in the car and get your junk from the ki
d while the muscle watched from the other car and made sure no one got ambitious. The muscle had what I needed.

  I’d watched for a half hour and no SBPD cruisers had passed by. Maybe crack wasn’t a priority anymore now that all the federal dollars were aimed at opioids.

  I didn’t care about drugs or anyone taking them. It’s a free country. Mostly. Everyone should have the right to screw up their lives however they want as long as they don’t hurt innocents and don’t expect me to clean up their mess. The war on drugs had done about as much to stop their consumption as Prohibition did to stop drinking in the ’20s and ’30s. All it had done was help create gangs that were even more brutal than the Italian, Irish, and Jewish mobs that Prohibition birthed. Where there’s demand, there’s a market. You can cleanse it in the sunlight of the free market or push it into darkened parks and let muscle in lowriders run it.

  Tonight, I was happy for the black market. A means to my ends. And someone else’s.

  I needed something the bangers in the Impala had or knew how to get. For a price. I could try to buy one from the muscle, but theirs wouldn’t be for sale. Even if it was, I’d have to show my face. If the dots were ever connected by the police and they questioned the men in the Impala, the muscle could identify me. That would defeat the whole purpose of my mission tonight.

  I hopped over a fence on the south side of the park into a T-boned alley that led into East Mason street. I hustled down Mason and turned right on North Soledad. The Impala was about fifty yards ahead on my side of the street facing away from me. I grabbed the black ski cap from the pocket of my black leather jacket and pulled it down over my face. The only holes in the wool cap were for my eyes. Dark blue jeans and black gym shoes finished my ensemble.

  Dress for the job.

  My wallet and phone were both on the nightstand of my hotel room. No ID and no cell phone to ping off nearby cell towers. If someone suspected me of what I was about to do, all evidence pointed to me being snug in my hotel room.

  I edged forward, slipping behind trees for cover. I pulled the Smith & Wesson from the holster in my black nitrile-gloved hand and sidled up against a tree trunk fifty feet behind the car and waited.