Blind Vigil

by Matt Coyle

  Also By Matt Coyle

  Yesterday’s Echo

  Night Tremors

  Dark Fissures

  Blood Truth

  Wrong Light

  Lost Tomorrows

  Copyright © 2020 by Matt Coyle

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-60809-400-4

  Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing

  Sarasota, Florida

  www.oceanviewpub.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For Ariel Amavisca,

  a courageous woman who tackles life head-on

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without the help of many people.

  My sincerest thanks to Kimberley Cameron for her continued support and sharing my vision.

  The crew at Oceanview, Bob and Pat Gussin, Lee Randall, Lisa Daily, and Kat Daue for always listening.

  Ken Wilson, Jane Ubell-Meyer, and Jennifer Vance for ABM, Always Be Marketing.

  Carolyn Wheat, Penne Horn, Carl Vonderau, and Becca Jenkins of the Saturday Writers Group for always making me think twice.

  My family, Jan and Gene Wolfchief, Tim and Sue Coyle, Pam and Jorge Helmer, and Jennifer and Tom Cunningham for word-of-mouth marketing and responding to “look at me” emails.

  Bob Buckley for a wide variety of legal and criminal defense issues.

  Nancy Denton for a vital early read.

  David Putnam for police procedure and all-around cop stuff.

  Assistant Marshall Mynde Heil for Bellevue, Idaho, specific law enforcement information.

  D. P. Lyle M.D. and Paul J. Wesling O.D. for medical information.

  Jim O’ Donnell for hedge fund information.

  A woman behind the glass in the lobby of the San Diego Central Jail for information on the jail’s inner workings.

  Darlene Young and Bobby Hunter for information on life in Idaho.

  Jan Moran for expertise on perfumes and scents.

  Kelly McLaurin for information on computer programs.

  And to Ariel Amavisca and Kristin MacDonald for gracious insight into living with vision impairment.

  Any errors regarding legal and criminal defense issues, law enforcement, medical situations, hedge funds, the San Diego Central Jail, Idaho, perfumes, computer programs, or living life visually impaired are solely the author’s.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DARKNESS. I OPENED my eyes and still couldn’t see. Every day started and ended the same. In a dark void. Ever since my life ended and started all over again. I touched the cylindrical scar hollowed out below my left eye. Still tender. Its damage still raw.

  Still blind.

  The only time I saw clearly now was in my dreams.

  I reached to my right and felt the cool sheets of my bed. Not Leah’s warm skin. Gone. The fourth morning into her two-week trip back up to Santa Barbara. The longest we’d been apart in nine months.

  Since a killer shot me in the face and stole my vision.

  Leah had been by my side during the weeks and weeks of grueling physical and cognitive rehabilitation. Praising, cajoling, prodding me up the next rung of the rehab ladder. She’d put her life on hold the last three months, living with me back in San Diego, and making weekend trips to Santa Barbara to keep her interior design business afloat.

  Leah was gone, but I wasn’t alone. Midnight, my nine-year-old black Lab, stirred from the foot of the bed. I heard his license tink against his metal nametag as he rose from the floor, his muscles unfurl under his skin, and his paws push off the carpet. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and felt warm breath on my right knee.

  I found Midnight’s head and scratched it. He licked my face. I got out of bed and walked the ten steps to the master bathroom. Last year, the trek would have been only eight or nine steps. My strides were shorter now. More regimented.

  And always numbered.

  I showered and walked the five steps from the bathroom to the dresser against the wall.

  Midnight at my side. I opened the top drawer. Underwear and socks. All folded into neat little packages. I never used to fold my clothes or even care what drawer I put them in.

  Now it mattered.

  I grabbed a pair of athletic socks from the left side of the drawer and a pair of underwear from the right. I could tell the difference between athletic and dress socks by the thickness and cushion of the fabric. But I still separated them. Everything had its place. T-shirts next drawer down, blue jeans in the bottom. Tennis shoes snug against the dresser around the right side. Dress shoes, slacks, jackets, coats, and button-down shirts were in the closet.

  Along with a gun safe I no longer opened. But I still kept a .357 magnum in the nightstand next to my bed. Old habits die hard.

  I only went into the closet for my bomber jacket these days. There wasn’t a reason to get dressed up or have a quick change of clothes that I could stuff into the duffle bag in the trunk of my car for stakeouts.

  My private investigator’s license was still good for another year. After that, I’d let it lapse. I didn’t want to return to my old life. At least, not that part of it.

  I dressed and headed downstairs with Midnight at my left thigh. Six steps out of the bedroom, fifteen down the hall, and fourteen stairs descending onto the landing. Another step down into the living room.

  Midnight had sensed something different about me after my injury. He’d always been dedicated to me and an excellent guard dog, but now he rarely left my side.

  We walked the sixteen steps from the staircase to the sliding glass door to the backyard and I let him outside.

  The first couple weeks after I got home from Santa Barbara, I spent hours and hours walking off distances from every conceivable option in the house. Bedroom to kitchen. Front door to back door. Office to living room. And dozens of others. Over and over. So many repetitions that I didn’t consciously count the steps anymore. My subconscious did that for me and directed me where I had to go. I saw where I was going inside my head. The logistics of my house still fresh in my mind’s eye. The only time I didn’t envision my surroundings was when I was in the bathroom at the sink brushing my teeth or shaving. I knew there was a mirror in front of me, but I didn’t visualize myself in it. Just a blank space.

  I followed the map in my head to Midnight’s food bowl, then slid two wide steps to my right and opened the door to the pantry. I found the sealed sixty-quart storage container that housed hard kibble dog food. The good stuff. I took off the lid and felt for the measuring cup inside and doled out two cups into the bowl. Breakfast.

  I reversed my trek and set Midnight’s bowl down on the hardwood floor. Found his water dish next to it and checked the water level with my fingers. Still full from last night. I traversed my way back to the sliding glass door and let Midnight inside. A sense of movement in a dark background. I felt a faint vibration along the hardwood floor in my feet when he sat on his haunches.

  “Breakfast, big boy,” I said and heard his toenails clatter atop the kitchen floor, then kibble crunching between his teeth.

  I navigated my way back into the kitchen and got eggs, bacon, and orange juice from their established areas in the refrigerator, a skillet from
an undercounter storage drawer, and made myself breakfast.

  I took the food out to the round table on the deck in my backyard. Twenty-three steps from the kitchen door. I angled my head toward the sliver of a view of the ocean two miles away as the seagull flies. The view was one of the chief selling points for me when I bought the house six years ago. It would still be today, even though the view was just a memory. I felt the ocean’s cooling breeze feather my face and whiffed a hint of salty tang hidden behind the exhaust fumes and road grease from Interstate 5 between me and the beach.

  At least, I convinced myself I could smell it from my sanctuary in the dark.

  The morning sun crawled up the back of my neck. Its warmth spread throughout my body. I pictured it climbing over the roof of my house on its journey to the sea. I turned and faced it. Shards of light, not really light, but something less than dark, danced around the edges of my nothing. This was fairly new.

  I first noticed it two and a half weeks ago. I didn’t know what it meant but let my imagination off its leash and allowed myself to dream that my sight was coming back. But just for an instant. I didn’t tell Leah about it because I didn’t want her hopes to soar up there with mine until I knew what the occasional lightening bursts in my endless night meant.

  Doctor Kim, my ophthalmologist, dashed my escaped dreams. She thought what I was experiencing was a visual hallucination or CBS. Charles Bonnet Syndrome. The brain’s stored memories of sight playing tricks. Kind of like an amputee still feeling his lost appendage. A visual phantom limb.

  I turned away from the sun.

  The surgeon who saved my life in Santa Barbara, along with the ophthalmologist he consulted, thought that the swelling near the optic chiasm caused by the bullet fragments he removed from my brain would eventually go down and I might regain my sight.

  Nine months. Still blind. Nothing had changed except my mind now played visual tricks on me.

  My vision was gone, but the pit below my eye from the bullet that exploded my cheekbone remained. A nasty reminder that wasn’t fixed at the time of surgery because the surgeon was just trying to keep me alive. Facial reconstruction surgery was an option that I couldn’t afford now, even if my insurance covered most of it.

  I’d lived. That was enough. For now.

  My voicemail pinged at 8:00 a.m. I found my phone and listened to the message.

  Leah.

  “Rick, my miracle man. Each trip north without you is harder than the last. This one is especially difficult. I pray for a time when I can live under one roof with you forever. And Midnight, of course! You two are my family and my heart aches for you when I’m away. I’m excited for our future together and know better times are ahead. I’m proud of the man you are and love you more every day. I’m counting the hours until I can see you again. Love you.”

  The emptiness in me filled with warmth. It always did when Leah left me a straight-to-voicemail message on a Santa Barbara trip. A verbal love note left under the pillow. Each message reminded me how lucky I was. I lost my eyesight in Santa Barbara, but I found Leah. Yet, each recorded message from her was also a tacit reminder that such deep professions of love were rarely verbalized by me.

  I did love Leah. More than I’d been able to express.

  I spent the rest of the morning listening to cable news on the TV in my living room. I knew a lot more about what was going on in Iran, China, and North Korea than I did about anything just outside my front door.

  Midnight growled and a second later the doorbell bonged. I walked to the front door with Midnight at my side and tapped my hand along the bench in the foyer and found my sunglasses. Right next to my collapsible white cane.

  The sunglasses had frames that dipped below my scar. The lenses were extra dark so neither my eyes nor my scar were visible. They weren’t for my vanity. I didn’t have any. Protection for my guests. I often wore them in the house for Leah’s sake. Sometimes she’d take them off me and kiss my scar. Sometimes she left them on.

  In my old life, I would have grabbed the Glock 19 I kept in the hall closet and peeked through the peephole before I greeted an unexpected visitor at the front door. Now I put on sunglasses and saw nothing. There might still be evil waiting on the other side, but it might be an Amazon delivery driver, too. I had to face the world without seeing it.

  And I had eighty-five pounds of muscle and teeth right next to me.

  I opened the door and knew instantly that my guest wasn’t unexpected. The scent of Degree deodorant floated underneath a coconut shampoo fragrance and danced under my nose.

  Moira MacFarlane.

  The best private investigator I knew and occasional associate in my old life. Reluctant best friend in my before and after lives. I should have figured that Leah would conspire with Moira to check up on me. Or she may be checking on her own.

  “Hi, Moira.” I spoke quickly before she could, showing off. After I lost my sight, my other senses became more acute. I concentrated on each one intensely, like a scientist examining cells under a microscope.

  “Dammit, Rick. It still freaks me out when you do that.” The machine-gun voice on full auto hit me about chest high. Moira was five feet even, a hundred nothing pounds. Brown hair in a bob cut, the last I’d seen. Brown eyes too big for her face, lips the same. But everything came together to form exotic beauty.

  “You’re hard to forget.” Midnight’s wagging tail banged off the back of my leg.

  “Shut up and let me in.” At first glance, or listen, Moira still treated me with the indulgent disdain of a mother to a teenage son, even though she was only a few years older than me. But something had changed since I’d gone blind. Her words remained mostly harsh like before, but her tone had softened a degree. I didn’t like the change. I feared there was pity hiding in the new tone.

  I preferred disdain to pity.

  I stepped back from the door to let Moira in and give her space to bend down and greet Midnight. They had an ongoing love affair. The door closed, and I walked into the living room, Midnight tracking beside me. I heard the woomph of Moira sitting down on the sofa.

  “Leah’s idea or yours to check up on me?” I sat down on the chair opposite the sofa and faced Moira.

  “You think you’re so clever.”

  “Just moderately clever.” I scratched Midnight’s head.

  “I’m not here to check up on you.”

  “But you two talked.” That hint of pity in her voice, real or imagined, made me want to get under Moira’s skin. To get her mad at me so, for an instant, I’d be worthy of her anger.

  “You’re still an asshole, Cahill. That hasn’t changed.”

  Better. “What has?”

  “Shut up, Rick.” Hard snap in her voice. “I came here because I could use your help on a case.”

  My stomach knotted up and walls I couldn’t see closed in on me.

  “I’m not a P.I. anymore.” I took off my sunglasses. “Lost my skill at surveillance.”

  I’d already sworn off private investigating even before I was shot in the face. The physical damage it did to me was obvious as soon as the sunglasses came off. The emotional scars were harder to see, but just as deep.

  Deeper.

  Moira hadn’t seen me without my sunglasses before. Hadn’t seen the pit under my eye. An image I could only feel through my fingers and didn’t have to see. Disfigured. But better than dead, which I would have been if I hadn’t snapped my head away from the gun before it fired.

  No gasp came from the couch upon seeing me unmasked.

  “So, what do you want to do now?” Moira’s tone wasn’t mocking or combative, but she made her point.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to do, only what I did. I counted steps inside my house, worked out, and listened to the television. I was living off disability insurance and a mortgage refi. I had minimal marketable skills. Ex-P.I., ex-cop, ex–restaurant manager. Enough Xs to win at tic-tac-toe, but not much else. There was a possible book deal in the offing about what ha
ppened in Santa Barbara. And before. But I didn’t know where to put the truth or where to hide the lies.

  “What I don’t want to do is work cases anymore.” I’d chased my last ghost. I’d finally learned the one truth in Santa Barbara that I’d pursued for fourteen years. It hadn’t given me closure, just an ending. I couldn’t help strangers find truths that might destroy their lives anymore. People had died on my watch. People I cared about. And people I killed.

  “Turk Muldoon wants to hire me and I need your help.”

  Shit.

  CHAPTER TWO

  TURK. MY ONETIME best friend.

  The man who saved my life.

  He owned Muldoon’s Steak House, the restaurant I once had a sliver of ownership in and managed for seven years. My limited partnership didn’t end well and neither did our friendship. Still, Turk had let me use a booth in the restaurant to meet clients as a private investigator since I never had a real office.

  He didn’t have to worry about me taking up space anymore.

  “Turk emailed me a couple days ago for a recommendation for a good P.I. I gave him your name and contact info. I figured he wanted a background check on a new hire.” I hunched my shoulders. “Why do you need my help on something so simple?”

  “It’s not that simple.” Moira’s voice lost its rattle. Her inborn confidence gone. “He wants me to surveil his girlfriend.”

  That didn’t sound right. Turk had always been laissez faire about relationships. He’d never been married and had at least nine or ten girlfriends during the time I worked with him at Muldoon’s. Ninety percent of the time, the breakups were amicable. Everyone remained friends and Turk would be dating someone else within a month. Every once in a while, there’d be drama during a breakup, but it was usually short lived and never on Turk’s end. Everybody liked Turk. Even his exes.

  “That surprises me. The Turk I knew wouldn’t spy on a girlfriend, but we’re not close anymore.” I put my sunglasses back on. My face had made its point. “Either way, you certainly don’t need my help for the job.”