Lost Tomorrows

by Coyle, Matt;

  Still, I had to weigh whether that minute risk was worth the reward of checking my calls. The absence of my returned calls might be as dangerous as an inbound call from Santa Barbara. Someone might wonder why it took me eighteen hours to return a call in today’s world of instant access.

  I had to know if someone called me.

  I dialed my cellphone number and tapped in the code number to access my voicemail. If no one called me, the phone call would be so short it might just show as a hang-up if someone bothered to check.

  My voicemail came on. Five messages. Shit. I rarely got five phone calls in a week, much less in eight hours. I had to check the messages. The first one was at 8:37 p.m. Leah. She asked me to call her right away. Another from her at 9:30 p.m. I needed to call her now. Her voice anxious.

  What could be so urgent? I started the long walk on the pier back to my car. Maybe Leah was in trouble. Or worse. I needed to drive by her house. I pressed the phone against my ear and listened to the next message as I quickened the pace.

  10:15 p.m.

  “Rick, where are you? Call me back. Please!” Frantic.

  I upped my tempo to a swift jog and continued to listen to the messages.

  10:55 p.m.

  “Rick! Tom really was in the SBSD’s drunk tank the night Colleen was murdered. He couldn’t have killed her! Where are you? Why won’t you call me back? God, I hope you didn’t do something bad.”

  I stopped dead run and almost dropped the phone. Weaver really in the drunk tank? Bullshit. A con. A made-up story. Where was the proof?

  The last message came on. Leah again.

  11:30 p.m.

  “Rick. You have to call me. Tom is innocent! Call Stephen. He has proof about the drunk tank.” She recited her brother, the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Deputy’s phone number. “Call him when you get this message. He doesn’t care how late it is. Call him and then call me. I’m worried about you. I’m worried about what you might … Talk to Stephen, then call me.” She recited his phone number one more time and hung up.

  I stared at the burner phone and repeated the phone number in my head and debated whether to make the call.

  No.

  Leah knew I was going to kill Weaver. She’d figured it out and hadn’t bought my backtrack story from last night in my hotel room. She’d seen the darkness in me after only a week together. And she still cared about me. She didn’t want me to spend the rest of my life in prison for killing the man who killed my wife and her sister.

  Leah wanted justice. I wanted revenge. She believed in the rule of law. I was my own law. She didn’t have the bloodlust that vibrated throughout my body.

  She made up the story about the drunk tank and co-opted her brother to help convince me of the lie. She must have. If I called Stephen Landingham for his part in the lie, the caller who called my home in San Diego from Santa Barbara would be identified as me. In Santa Barbara two or three hours before Tom Weaver was killed when everyone thought I was home in San Diego. I couldn’t risk it for false information. Nothing Stephen Landingham could say would dissuade me from what I had to do.

  Everything pointed to Weaver. At the house when I was with Krista. Lying about being in Fresno when Colleen was killed. Two cops on the beach where Colleen was dumped. One in plain clothes, he a detective at the time, and his buddy Mitchell, a patrolman in uniform back then. The black Ford Fusion passing to and fro in front of Krista’s house the night before she died when he’d checked out the same exact detective car from Santa Barbara PD. The flashlight in Krista’s house after the exact time it would have taken him to hike back to her house after he made his last pass in the car.

  Weaver killed Colleen. Krista found his connection to her murder when she reopened the case and he killed her. Case closed. Judgment determined. Execution imminent.

  Leah had tried to save me, but she didn’t know that my salvation could only be measured in blood. Weaver had to die. Whether I killed him tonight or a year from now, Leah would know I pulled the trigger. I could live with that. She’d have to decide if she could live with it, too.

  I threw the phone into a trash can and sprinted the rest of the way to my car. The phone had served its purpose. I wouldn’t make any calls or check any more messages.

  I drove up Tom Weaver’s street ten minutes later.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  SERGEANT LANCE’S JEEP Cherokee was still in Weaver’s driveway, right next to his Dodge Challenger. They’d been at his house for less than an hour. Not long enough if they were in the early stages of a relationship when what happened post-coital was still important.

  I stopped in front of Weaver’s house. My heart jackhammered. The blood rushed audibly up into my head. I wanted to break into Weaver’s house and shoot him in his bed. In the same bedroom where he should have shot me instead of tracking down Colleen and taking out his vengeance on her.

  But Sergeant Lance was an innocent. I wouldn’t make her pay for Weaver’s crime. Weaver would die, but not in exchange for my freedom. I’d wait him out.

  I parked on Cabrillo Boulevard and this time remained in the rental car with the assassin’s gun in the trunk. My hands, still wearing black nitrile gloves, clasped the steering wheel. I thought of Colleen. The only images my brain would reveal were of Colleen on the Santa Barbara coroner’s table. Purplish white skin and a red indentation around her neck where she’d been strangled. Death was all I had left of her. I pushed hard to find other images. Our wedding, the first time we met, the night she told me she loved me the first time. Every memory morphed into her death mask.

  I sprang out of the car and started walking. Running. Sprinting. Down the street, toward Stearn’s Wharf. It didn’t matter the direction, only the movement. I hit the entrance to the wharf and turned up it. Pushing. Long, deep, wet ocean, breaths to fill my lungs, my body with the tang of life. Taste, smell, touch. Anything to push out the last memories of the only woman I’d ever given everything to.

  Would my act of revenge cut through the horrible memories to retrieve the good or would I be left with neither? Just my twisted act of redemption. Was killing Weaver retribution for Colleen or just blood from a body that would never absolve my sins? A cloak I could wear to try to fool myself that I’d squared my failings with Colleen.

  Sweat boiled off my forehead in the cool night. My breaths machine-gunned in and out of my mouth. I tried to slow them and swallow the ocean air, to pull myself into the present. Into another life. But there was no other life. My past was my present. This was the path every decision I’d made in my life, good and bad, had led me down.

  I stopped walking. Right in front of the trash can where I’d tossed the burner phone. The voicemails from Leah. Her desperate pleas to stop me from doing what she’d figured out I was going to do. Needed to do. Wanted to do.

  Leah. My last chance at a real life. A lifeline floating atop my sea of turmoil. Was such a life even possible? By letting a killer walk free? Leaving it up to a failed justice system if it even got that far? My life would never be fulfilled without righting its one great wrong. My great wrong. Even after I did, could I go forward?

  One last call. One last chance at that real life. One last shot at saving my soul?

  I ran Stephen Landingham’s number through my head again. Got it. But I couldn’t use the burner again and connect it to me. I needed another phone and I knew where to find one.

  I drove over to State Street, made a right onto Cota, and parked in an empty restaurant parking lot. The pay phone that someone used to call Krista Landingham on the last night of her life was across the street, half a block up. The clock inside my rental car read 2:37 a.m. Too damn late or too damn early to call anyone. Too damn bad.

  I hustled over to the payphone, put two quarters in the slot, and punched Stephen Landingham’s phone number on the square metal numbers. It rang. And rang. And went to voicemail. I put in the last two quarters I had. The phone rang four times and someone finally picked up on ring number five.

&
nbsp; “Hello?” Groggy and pissed, like you’d expect from someone awakened in the middle of the night.

  “Stephen. Rick Cahill. Leah left me a message to call you.”

  “At two thirty in the fucking morning?” Awake now. And a lot pissed.

  “Leah told me to call you about Tom Weaver being in SBSO’s drunk tank the night my wife was murdered. She said I could call late.” I wanted to hear the lie he’d concocted or Leah fed to him. Maybe he was groggy or pissed enough to go off script.

  “Like I told Leah, I don’t see how this is any of your business, Cahill.”

  Playing hard. Not the delivery I’d expected. I thought he’d just parrot whatever Leah told him to say, hang up, and go back to bed.

  I suddenly realized I’d made a big mistake by calling. Landingham wouldn’t give me anything that could come close to convincing me that Weaver was innocent. Weaver shows up dead tomorrow and Landingham tells SBPD that I called him asking about Weaver’s fake alibi the night my wife was murdered. When SBPD checks the call to Stephen Landingham and sees it’s from Santa Barbara, my own alibi is dead.

  I’d have to wait. Weeks. Months. Until Stephen Landingham forgot about this phone call, and I had a clean alibi again. I bit my lip. Until I tasted my own blood. It was a poor substitute for Weaver’s. My brain had been on fast twitch ever since I realized Weaver killed Colleen. I’d spent the last fourteen years without an answer. Investigating on my own at first, then hiring a private detective until I couldn’t afford to pay him anymore, then finally coming to grips with the likelihood that I’d never have an answer, and let Colleen and her memories and her justice slip out of focus. Still with me, a part of me forever, but now difficult to find the edges to grab onto.

  Until I came back to Santa Barbara. The city of lost tomorrows where I came to mourn a lost friend. In her death, Krista showed me the way to my vengeance. Now I had the target in sight. In reach. The man who killed Colleen and killed the rest of my life. Each extra second he breathed made each new breath of my own painful. Desperate.

  “Then why the hell did she tell me to call you?” I’d shoved myself back in the furnace for this? “First you tell her Weaver wasn’t in the drunk tank the night Colleen was murdered, now you say he was. Which is it? Which time were you lying?”

  “Fuck you, Cahill.” Wide awake. Venom wide open. “You were a cocky boot who didn’t deserve your wife and now you’re fucking up my last remaining sister’s life. Stay the fuck down in San Diego and leave Leah alone.”

  “So, I guess Weaver never spent a night in your drunk tank. Strange that Detective Mitchell would say that he did.” Time to backtrack on my motive. “I don’t really give a shit anymore. Leah wanted me to call and I did. I don’t care what Weaver does with the rest of his life. I didn’t volunteer to investigate Krista’s death. Leah asked me to. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. Hopefully, SBPD will do their fucking job and find her killer. And when they’re done with Krista, maybe they’ll finally put a little effort into finding Colleen’s murderer. I don’t give a shit about Weaver. I just don’t like being lied to.”

  “Nobody lied to you.”

  “Look, I know Weaver didn’t kill my wife. I jumped to some stupid conclusions, but I know he wasn’t in the drunk tank the night Colleen died, either.”

  “You don’t know shit, Cahill. You never did. Tom was there from about eleven thirty to one thirty.”

  “Were you at the station that night?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  I didn’t understand why Landingham was still fronting the lie. I’d given him the out. I guess he didn’t believe that I didn’t see Weaver as a suspect anymore. Maybe I should wait a year before I killed Weaver. My face flashed hot. A year. I didn’t know how I’d make it through tonight, much less next year.

  “’Cause a buddy of mine who worked the jail told me about it the next day.” He blew out an angry breath. “I don’t know why the hell I have to explain myself to you.”

  I did.

  “Why didn’t anyone at the sheriff’s department tell that to SBPD when they inquired in the last couple days?”

  “We don’t rat each other out up here.”

  “You’ve known all these years and never said anything?”

  “Said anything about what? That my brother-in-law was picked up for drunk driving and we cut him a break? That’s the way it works on the right side of the thin blue line, Cahill. I guess you weren’t a cop long enough to figure that out. Tom’s spending two hours in the drunk tank fourteen years ago had no significance until you started calling him a murderer a couple days ago. And the only reason I’m telling you now is because my sister called me crying tonight saying she thought you were going to kill Weaver because you were convinced he killed your wife. Well, he couldn’t have, you asshole. He was behind bars.”

  Stephen Landingham hung up.

  I dropped the phone and slumped to my knees.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  WEAVER. INNOCENT.

  My mind flashed back to staking out his house, then his car in the restaurant parking lot. Waiting for him to arrive with my hand on the grip of the assassin’s weapon. The barrel aimed at his head. What if he’d been alone when he returned to his car? No what if. He’d be dead.

  I would have murdered an innocent man.

  Nausea swarmed inside me. Cold sweat blanketed my body. My lungs hyperventilated uncontrollably. I fell forward to all fours and wretched. The last bit of undigested food in my stomach fire-hosed out of my mouth. Again. Bile spewed out after all the food was splattered on the sidewalk.

  I rolled away from the puke and stared up through the mist into the night. My breathing calmed, the sweat dried, and the nausea melted away, its memory echoed in my raw throat.

  The horror of what I’d almost done receded to the edge of my thoughts. Something less destructive but still damaging to my psyche took its place. If not Weaver, then who? I’d convinced myself I’d found Colleen’s killer and overlooked the facts that didn’t fit to feed my bloodlust. To finally lead me to the redemption I’d been seeking for fourteen years. Twisted and malevolent though it was, it would be my salvation. Retribution. Revenge. Murder.

  Now I was back at zero. But with the taste, the taunt, of redemption in my mouth.

  Minutes away from finally freeing my soul by further blackening it. God’s cruel joke or my deliverance? The only person saved tonight was Tom Weaver. My soul remained irredeemable. I rolled over onto all fours. My left knee landed in the pile of vomit I’d splashed out onto the ground. I pushed myself up to my feet and walked back to my car. I opened the car door and noticed the black nitrile gloves still on my hands. Assassin’s gloves. I pulled them off, along with the ski mask atop my head and tossed them into a trash can.

  I got into my car and started driving without a destination. My instincts were tainted. Counterfeited. The hunches I’d bet my life on and those of others could no longer be trusted.

  I was rudderless.

  Colleen’s killer was still walking the streets a free man.

  I’d added up the pieces and forced them to fit the puzzle I was desperate to put together to solve Colleen’s murder. To put a frame around her killer so I’d have a bull’s-eye to aim at for redemption. One shot to unlock my life. A villain to take my place.

  Weaver had to be the killer and die so I could live.

  My head whirled. The stench of vomit filled my car. I got onto 101 and drove south. Ten minutes later I pulled up in front of Leah’s house. I didn’t remember exiting the freeway or turning onto her street. I didn’t have a plan. I rolled down the window and reclined the driver’s seat.

  “Rick?” I floated above the car in a dream watching Leah jiggle my shoulder. “Rick?”

  I opened my eyes. Leah stared at me through the open window. Wrapped in a bathrobe, the sky a blue gray above her.

  “How long have you been out here?” She opened the car door. “Come inside.”

/>   I got out of the car, stumbled, and steadied myself with the door. My body felt like it weighed one thousand pounds with all the bones and muscle removed. No scaffolding left inside me. I needed sleep. Something more than a fitful nap.

  “Are you okay?” Leah put her arm around my waist. She sniffed my fouled air. “Are you sick?”

  “I’m okay now.” I gently removed her arm from my waist to let her drift away from my stink. “Do you mind if I got a couple hours sleep in your spare bedroom?”

  “Of course not.” She stayed at my side as she led me up to the house, ready to catch me if I tumbled again.

  Thanks to her phone calls to my voicemail, she’d already caught me once tonight.

  I rolled over and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It read 8:40 a.m. I didn’t know what time Leah took me inside her house, but I figured I’d been asleep for three hours.

  I got out of bed and noticed the jeans, t-shirt, underwear, and socks I’d packed in my duffle bag hanging over a chair next to the window. Leah was efficient, but I wasn’t getting into clean clothes until I had a clean body. The night camouflage clothes I’d worn last night were not in the room. Leah must have thrown them in the washer, the trash, or poured bleach over them. I hoped she burned them.

  I went across the hall into the guest bathroom. I didn’t seek Leah yet. I needed to scrub off the last twenty-four hours first. The shower was hot and short and vigorous. I chased it standing under thirty seconds of cold water.

  Awake. Without a plan or a destination, but alive.

  I went back into the bedroom and put on the clothes Leah laid out from the duffle bag.

  The duffle bag.

  Leah.

  I shot out of the bedroom, down the hall, and saw Leah sitting at the dinner table. The duffle bag was in the middle of the table. Right next to the Colt .38 Super with the water bottle suppressor. And a lock pick set, mini flashlight, binoculars, box of nitrile gloves, duct tape, plastic zip tie handcuffs and envelope stuffed full of cash. My felony kit and murder one gun.