by Matt Coyle
“I believe you.” Tired. Like the weight of the morning had finally won and beaten all resistance out of her. “I remember when you and Turk were like brothers. He still talks about you sometimes.”
Kris’ comment blew the air out of me. Turk was my brother. And he needed my help.
“Did you believe what Shay told you about the woman’s complaint?”
A long, sad exhale. “No.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE LA JOLLA Police Department headquarters is located in a two-story brick building that was once a library. Thus, the Brick House, the nickname the rank and file gave it decades ago. My father worked there for twenty-two years until he was fired without a pension for reasons that were never officially made public. I knew the reasons. And I still held a grudge.
But so did LJPD. They held me responsible for the perceived sins of my father and those of my own.
I’d spent too many hours inside the Brick House in a square white room under bright fluorescent lights. At least today I’d have sunglasses for the lights. I’d bought new ones at a Sun Glasses Hut on the Uber ride over. Large enough to cover the hole in my face, but with lenses that would let in enough light for me to test my improving vision. Hopefully the test results were positive. So far, I only saw undefined shapes against darkness.
I told the desk sergeant that Detective Denton had requested my presence. The sergeant told me to wait on the uncomfortable wooden bench near the front door. LJPD headquarters was fairly quiet. There was a bit of macho banter from the desks on the left side of the room where uniform cops filled out reports.
I once had a disagreeable talk with the former chief of police in the roll-call room just behind the desk area. He was a vindictive little man with a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder who was now a member of the U.S. Congress. He’d finally found his true calling.
Upstairs to the right housed the detective bureau offices and the ambitiously titled Robbery Homicide Division. There were plenty of robberies in La Jolla but only four or five homicides a year. Unfortunately, I’d been questioned about a few of them.
A couple minutes into my wait, a shadow passed in front of me. A distinct coconut scent. Moira’s voice to the desk sergeant confirmed my suspicion. He told her to wait on the bench. Another riffle in the darkness. Moira sat at the opposite end of the bench from me. And didn’t say a word.
We waited in silence. And waited. I didn’t ask my phone for the time, but the discomfort of my ass on the wooden bench told me we were approaching an hour when footsteps came down the staircase from the detective bureau. My guess was male. The footsteps got closer and an unformed mass stopped in front of us.
Male cologne that was vaguely familiar.
“Ms. MacFarlane, I’m Detective Jim Sheets. Hello, Mr. Cahill.”
The one LJPD cop I trusted. So far.
“Detective.” I heard the rustle of clothes as Moira stood up. I did the same and pushed out a hand.
“Hello, Detective Sheets.” He shook my hand.
“Would you mind following me upstairs so we can talk up there?” Sheets’ voice still had a youngish tone that matched his looks, which I remembered to be tall, thin, dark hair, and black horn-rimmed glasses. When I first met him, Sheets came across as more grad student than homicide cop. But he was smart, diligent, and fair. That’s all I could ask for when dealing with the police. Especially the fair part.
“Sure,” Moira answered and we followed Sheets upstairs to Robbery Homicide. They sandwiched me as I tapped up the stairs. Sheets in front, Moira behind.
Moira nudged me to the right after a few steps down a hall at the top of the stairs.
Robbery Homicide. I’d been there enough times to remember what it looked like. A large room with low-walled cubicles in the middle that housed the detectives’ desks.
Another disturbance in the void.
“This is Detective Dabney Holt,” Sheets said. “He’s going to talk to Ms. MacFarlane in one of the interview rooms. and I’m going to talk to Rick.”
“Miss MacFarlane, you can call me Detective Dabbs. Everybody does.” A booming baritone with some south in it that was more Barry White than Dabney Coleman. I didn’t recognize the voice. I would have remembered it if I’d heard it before. Even before sounds became so important to me. “Come right this way, ma’am.”
“You can call me Moira.”
“Yes, Miss Moira.” Heavier southern accent than in his introduction. Two sets of footsteps moved away.
“Mr. Cahill, please follow me.” But no sound of Sheets moving, yet. “Oh, do you need me to guide you?”
“I can follow your footsteps, Detective, but thanks.” I could have followed his fuzzy outline, but I didn’t want to admit to it. Not to anyone yet. Especially a cop from LJPD. “And I almost have the way memorized. Interrogation room one or two?”
“Interview room three. It’s about twenty feet down the hall to the right.” Sheets’ shadow moved in front of me. I tapped along behind it. My cane hit the frame of the door, and I followed Sheets’ footsteps to the right. They stopped a couple seconds later. “The doorway is about one step forward and one to your left. There is a table in the left corner with a couple chairs. Please take the one on the left against the wall.”
“Roger.”
Blind and a witness instead of a suspect and LJPD still wanted to corner me against the wall. I tapped my way into the room and heard the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. They flared above like jagged edges of lightning. I found the chair on the left and sat down. Instinct and memories flashed hot on the inside of my skin, and I could feel sweat already forming under my arms. I didn’t have to see the square white room to feel its menace. I’d been on the wrong side of too many of them here in La Jolla, San Diego, and up in Santa Barbara not to have scar tissue.
Squeal of chair feet on linoleum. I could now make out a shape in front of me under the bright fluorescent lights. Detective Sheets sat at eye level. His cologne floated in the air between us. We were alone.
A wave of relief ruffled through me. Sheets was going to interview me without Detective Denton. The relief was short lived and replaced with a gnawing dread. If Detective Sheets was alone with me and Detective Holt was with Moira, that meant Denton was with Turk. No doubt badgering him while he tried to grieve the loss of his girlfriend. I suddenly wished Denton was across from me instead of Sheets. I’d had practice battling Denton and her tricks. Turk needed somebody with a conscience, like Detective Sheets.
“Mr. Cahill, why were you at Shay Louise Sommers, apartment this morning? And just so you’re aware, this interview is being audio and video recorded.”
“Of course. And you can call me Rick, Detective. We’ve done this enough to be old friends.” A weak attempt at humor, maybe to gain a sense of control. A simple domestic surveillance had turned into a murder and my onetime best friend was in the cops’ crosshairs. The lights hummed and lightninged above. I wished I still had on my blackout sunglasses.
I hated the square white room.
“You’re right. Sorry about what happened to you, by the way.” Sheets sounded sincere.
“Thanks.”
“How about you start at the beginning?” Friendly.
“Turk Muldoon hired Moira and me to check up on his girlfriend and—”
“To be clear, you’re referring to Thomas Arthur Muldoon and Shay Louise Sommers, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And why did Mr. Muldoon hire you to check up on Ms. Sommers?” He made the words check up sound nefarious.
“He was concerned that Shay might be seeing someone else.” I just gave LJPD a motive. I would have lied if I was working the case alone, but Moira was in the next room telling Detective Holt the truth.
“When did you and Ms. MacFarlane begin this surveillance?”
“Last night around nine. We watched her until about midnight and picked the surveillance up this morning at eight-thirty at her house. But, of course, you guys were already there w
hen we arrived.”
“What did you and Ms. MacFarlane observe Ms. Sommers do from nine until midnight last night?”
“Well, I didn’t observe her do anything.” I smiled, but I doubted he did. I told him what Moira told me she saw: Shay walking from Eddie V’s to La Valencia, the elevator up to the Sky Suite, the man in the Italian suit, the Mercedes Benz Maybach, the drive along the ocean, the stop at Gelson’s, and the lights going out around midnight at her apartment.
“And did you report all of this to Mr. Muldoon?”
“Yes. We went over to the restaurant after we left Shay’s apartment last night.”
“How did Mr. Muldoon react to this information?”
Delicate territory. I’d lied to the police so often over the years that it was second nature. Something I didn’t really even have to think about, like my subconscious now counting steps when I walked from one place to another. The rhythm of an interrogation told me when to lie as much as the words being spoken. The ebb and flow of the conversation. The feel of a trap being set. It was now more reflex than even instinct. I usually told the lies to protect myself or someone I cared about.
I know where the investigative compass pointed at the beginning of a murder investigation. Without an eyewitness, video, or inculpatory evidence, it points directly at the spouse, partner, or family member. And that’s where it stays until evidence to the contrary is found. Police departments always deny it, but it’s human nature. Occam’s Razor. Keep it simple. The boyfriend did it.
Turk hadn’t done anything wrong. A little anger leaked out when we told him about Shay and the man in the limo, but that was a normal human reaction. And normal human reactions can be twisted into motives for any homicide cop sitting on the top of Occam’s Razor.
“What do you mean, how did he react?” I played dumb.
“Did he become angry, upset, volatile?”
“He didn’t become anything. Certainly not volatile. He stayed calm.”
“So, you told him that his girlfriend was fooling around and he just sat there stoically?” His voice pitched higher and rose at the end of the question like I’d said something ludicrous.
“We didn’t tell Turk that Shay had been cheating on him because we didn’t find any proof of that.” But it didn’t take much of an imagination to see that she could have. “Do you know something I don’t, Detective?”
“Did Mr. Muldoon tell you he planned to talk to Ms. Sommers about what you told him last night?”
I was supposed to answer Sheets’ questions. Not ask my own.
“No. We told him we’d pick up the surveillance at Shay’s house in the morning and asked if he’d be there and he said he wouldn’t.”
“Have you ever known Mr. Muldoon to become violent?”
There it was. That murder investigation compass was pointing straight at Turk and Detective Sheets wasn’t going to move off him until he was nudged.
Or pushed.
“Turk is one of the nicest, gentlest people I know. We played football together for a season at UCLA. He made All Pac-12 as a linebacker. That was the extent of his physicality toward other people.”
“So you never had a physical altercation with him?” Sheets’ voice told me that he knew the answer to the question.
But how could he? No one else had been around when Turk and I went to fists. We were on the roof of Muldoon’s Steak House. Unless Sheets somehow tracked down a seagull in the last hour that flew over the restaurant seven years ago, no one saw or knew about the fight.
“We may have roughhoused like brothers do a few times in our teens, but that’s it.” My pulse stayed constant, breath even, the sweat under my arms already dried. Lying was the easy part. The hard part was dealing with interrogators’ rebuttals.
“You and Turk had a falling-out a few years ago, right? When you left the restaurant?”
He’d gone from Mr. Muldoon to Turk. Less formal. Just shooting the shit between friends. No repercussions over a wrong answer. Or the truth.
Then it clicked on me. Kris talked to the police at the crime scene. Did she know about our fight on the roof of Muldoon’s? How could she? Only Turk and I knew about the fight. She mentioned earlier that Turk still talked about me sometimes. Had the fight story floated out of Turk as a true confession during a late night of drinking? Things I’d like to change in my life? Maybe it was the answer to a “what really happened to you and Rick” question. Or maybe he spilled it to someone else under similar circumstances and that person talked to the police.
Whatever it was, and whether it came from Kris or not, Detective Sheets knew about the fight that was the exclamation point to the end of our friendship.
“I changed careers. People do it all the time. Turk and I are still friends.” I could have said friends again to be more truthful. Even that may have been due to my coming to a family member’s defense. Estranged or not, Turk was still family. The big brother I never had. Until I met him.
“So you and Turk never got into a real fistfight?” Slight agitation penetrating the grad student façade.
“I already told you, Detective, Turk and I roughhoused a little as teens. Like all kids do.”
“You are aware that this conversation is being taped, aren’t you, Mr. Cahill?”
“Well.” I tapped the lens of my sunglasses. “I’ll have to take your word for that, Detective Sheets.”
“Do you think Ms. MacFarlane’s story will corroborate yours, Rick?” The grad student had graduated to fully accredited homicide cop.
“Corroborate sounds a lot like a courtroom term for a friendly conversation. I don’t know exactly what Moira saw, only what she told me she saw. But I’m pretty sure we heard the same things when we talked to Turk.”
“I got to tell you, Rick. You’re sounding very evasive.” Faux cop friendliness, but holding a get out of jail free card over my head. “Seems like you’re hiding something or trying to cover for Mr. Muldoon.”
“I think maybe you misinterpreted what I’ve said.” I smiled. “When you lose your eyesight, you become much more reliant upon your other senses. Hearing, in particular. So, it’s understandable that you may be more focused on what I look like sitting here all covered up behind sunglasses while I’m purely focused on the sound of the words being spoken.”
“Thanks for coming in.” The temperature in the room suddenly dropped twenty degrees. Scrape of his chair on the floor. A shadow rose in front of me. “Should I get a uniform up here to help you down the stairs or can you manage on your own?”
“I’ll go solo. Thanks.” I stayed seated. “But I have a question for you, Detective, if you don’t mind.”
“As I’m sure you can understand, I’m very busy today. Thanks for coming in.”
“Was there an opened champagne bottle and a piece missing from a chocolate cake at Shay Sommers’ house?”
“I can’t talk about a crime scene of an ongoing investigation. Thanks for coming in today.” The shadow moved toward the opening in the gray background. The door.
“Shay bought champagne and chocolate cake after meeting someone at La Valencia.” I stood up. “She was a health freak who rarely drank or ate sweets. Sounds like she was celebrating something. You might want to find out who rented the Sky Suite at La Valencia last night and who owns the Mercedes Benz Maybach with the license plate number L576Q44.”
But Sheets had already left the room.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I CAUGHT MOIRA’S scent just inside the entrance of the Brick House. My sunglassed eyesight unable to pick up her form under normal lighting. She’d been waiting for me.
“Rick, I’ll give you a ride home.”
We walked outside and I heard voices and shuffling sounds and saw ripples in the void.
“That’s Rick Cahill.” A male voice shouted.
I sensed people closing in on us. A hand tugged me to the right. Moira.
Voices jabbed from the darkness.
“Mr. Cahill, did the police questi
on you about Shay Sommers’ murder?”
“Did you know the victim?”
“What do you know about Thomas Muldoon’s involvement in Ms. Sommers’ death?”
“Back off, people,” Moira snapped as she led me onto the sidewalk and down Wall Street.
A few voices and footsteps trailed after us, but finally faded into the background. The reporters didn’t want to miss the main event which was Turk leaving the police station.
Neither of us spoke until we got into Moira’s car.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Offended. “I told them the truth. What did you tell them?”
“The same.”
“It doesn’t sound like it if you had to ask me what I told them, like we needed to get our stories straight.” A huff. “You can’t play your usual game with the police on this, Rick. A woman died on our watch, and we have to help the police in any way we can.”
I understood Moira feeling responsible for Shay Sommers’ death. Because of the Donnelly case, she’d gotten emotionally involved over the target of the investigation. A woman she’d never met. Dangerous territory. For your livelihood. And your soul. I’d learned the hard way. Or maybe I never learned at all because I continued to make the same mistake over and over again. Like now. But my involvement was attached to Turk, not his dead girlfriend.
“Along those lines, did your cop friend ever get back to you with the registered owner of the Maybach?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s a rental.” Clipped.
“And?”
“Luxurious Limos in La Jolla.”
“Did you call them and try to find out who rented the Maybach?”
“First of all, the company would never give me a client’s name.” Sibilant S in “first.” She was mad and getting madder. “Secondly, why would I even consider doing that?”
“To find out who Shay met last night at La Valencia. What Turk paid us to do.” Now the irritation flipped over to me.