by Coyle, Matt;
I arrived at the casino about 12:30 p.m., a half hour early for my meeting with Odell Rollins. A habit from my years of surveillance work. I liked to get the lay of the land before I set up and went to work.
The casino was alpine rustic, exposed A-frame wood ceiling beams and slate brick walls. The gambling floor was small, boutique-ish, with twenty or so gaming tables and two-hundred-plus slot machines, although it did have a sports book and a live poker room. It looked to cater to Incline Village’s wealthy biannual residents. Set up to be more a local activity than a way of life. The bigger Tahoe casinos that cater to the full spectrum of gamblers are in the South Shore. That’s where whales are comped rooms and degenerate gamblers wager away their life’s energy.
The snow season hadn’t arrived yet, and the casino floor held just a smattering of well-dressed senior citizens seated at black jack tables and slot machines. The roulette wheel was silent. When the ski season arrived so would a glut of recreational gamblers.
I sat down at the bar in the sports book, ordered a burger, and ignored the inset video poker machine staring up at me. It would have to wait for the barstool’s next occupant. I’d dabbled over the years, but the gambling bug never bit me. At least not too hard. I wouldn’t let it. I’d seen it melt the resolve and beat down the common sense of my once best friend, Turk Muldoon. It had nearly cost him his restaurant.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder after I’d just swallowed the last bite of my burger. I turned and faced a block of onyx. Although he was about my height at six feet, the fabric in his navy-blue suit could have made up a buy-one-get-one-free for me. And nobody had kicked sand in my face since I was a kid. I’d played football in college and seen dozens of weight room warriors, but I’d never seen a neck like the one holding up the chiseled head of the man standing in front of me. It was more like a thigh than a neck. With his dark skin, boxcar chest, and tree trunk legs, I knew I’d just encountered Odell “Oak” Rollins.
He extended a vise-grip hand and removed all doubt. “Mr. Cahill, Odell Rollins.”
I stood up from the barstool and shook his hand. Luckily, no bones broke. “Was it the name tag on my back or the sticker on my forehead that says Private Investigator?”
“Whenever possible, I like to know who’s in my casino, Mr. Cahill.” No smile, all business. I appeared to be an unwelcomed bit of business.
With my police entanglements and good and bad write-ups in newspapers and the Internet over the years, a quick Google search made me a “whenever possible.” My past must have been strike two against me. The first strike being that I’d been hired by the woman who’d left Oak Rollins’s best friend and taken up with another man. Back in high school baseball, I’d never been a good two-strike hitter.
I’d done a little of my own research on Odell Rollins. He’d served twenty years in the Navy, the last eighteen as a SEAL. He’d retired with the rank of Chief Petty Officer and gone on to work as a special operator for GRS with Jim Colton in the Middle East. I guessed that his retired military rank still meant something to him.
“Well, I appreciate your taking the time to see me, Chief. And you can call me Rick.” I smiled. He didn’t.
“Odell is fine.” I guessed wrong. Or he just didn’t like hearing his former rank coming out of my mouth. “Let’s go to my office.”
Rollins led me through a door next to the cashier’s cage and down a hall that dead-ended into a locked door. He unlocked it and took me into the casino’s surveillance room. Eight forty-two-inch flat screens, each televising different games of chance from the casino floor and one each on the cashier’s cage and credit area, hung from the walls. Two men sat in front of a bank of computer monitors with split screens showing the same live feeds as the TVs. The men kept their eyes on the screens and said nothing as Rollins walked through the room to an office in the back. He ushered me to a seat facing a desk with its own bank of computer monitors on it. I sat in front of the desk as he sat behind it.
A photo hung from the wall behind Rollins. It must have been from his time overseas in the Middle East. He and three other men, all dressed in desert camo, knelt in front of a Humvee holding M4A1 Carbines. All the men had big victorious smiles. Probably after a battle or a successful mission. One of the men in the photo was Jim Colton. Judging by the looks of Rollins and Colton, the photo was about ten years old.
“How can I help you . . . ah, Rick?” He sat straight and still like a granite statue; the only things moving were his eyes, which zeroed down on me like the lens of a camera.
“How long did you know Jim Colton?” I kept my smile on.
“We went through SEAL training together twenty-five years ago.” He kept the granite wall up.
“You two were friends?” Brianne Colton had said Rollins was her husband’s best friend. I’d let Rollins define the relationship for me.
“Yes, we were friends.” His eyes softened for an instant. “Jacks Colton was a good man.”
“Jacks?”
“That was his nickname back in SEAL training. It stuck over the years.”
“Why Jacks?”
“Jacks or better. It’s from poker. When it was Jim’s deal, you had to have a pair of jacks or better to open.”
“Did the name suit his personality?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” Raised eyebrows above a blank wall.
I bet that he did. “Someone who only plays jacks or better wants to get as much information as possible before he’ll bet. Was Jim Colton that way in real life? Always learning every angle before he’d commit to something?”
“I’m not a psychologist, Mr. Cahill.” No more calling me Rick. A hint of exasperation in his voice. “However, every man forced to make life and death decisions on the battlefield would be wise to gather as much intel as possible before he takes action.”
“That makes sense. What about in the rest of his life?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.” A vein in his anaconda neck pulsed. “Jim Colton was a good sailor and a good man. That’s as much as I know and as much as anyone should need to know.”
Including some asshole detective digging through Colton’s remains and reputation. I understood Rollins’s dislike for me and wanting to protect his friend’s memory. But my job was to find the truth, no matter who got hurt or pissed off.
“How often did you two talk?”
“A couple times a month.” His eyes shifted to the side, then he quickly added, “Sometimes more.”
I bet the add-on came because he’d guessed I had Colton’s phone records that showed the two of them had talked fourteen times in the last two weeks of Colton’s life.
“Why so many calls right before Jim Colton died?”
“We didn’t have a set number of calls we made a month, Mr. Cahill.” His lips and eyebrows knifed down. “Sometimes we didn’t talk for weeks, sometimes we talked every few days. That’s how it works with friends.”
He made it sound like I was unfamiliar with the concept of having a friend. I knew how it worked. I just hadn’t practiced it in a while.
“What did you talk about on the day he died? He called you twice.”
“The calls went to voicemail.” The stone wall fell, and his eyes went soft and human. Just for an instant. “I wish to hell I’d talked to him.”
Each call had registered as a minute on Colton’s phone bill, the smallest increment the phone company would record whether the call was three seconds or sixty. Rollins was probably telling the truth.
“Do you still have the messages? What did he say?”
“Just to call him back.”
“Did you keep the messages?”
“No.”
Maybe ex-SEALs weren’t sentimental and didn’t need to listen to a recently lost pal every once in a while. Or maybe there was more than just a request for a returned call and Rollins didn’t want me to know about it.
“Was it normal for Jim to leave two messages to call him back a few hours apart? Did i
t seem like there was something important he wanted to talk to you about?”
“Not necessarily. Sometimes he’d get impatient like we all do, Mr. Cahill.”
“Do you think he committed suicide?”
Rollins’s mouth flattened into a straight line and his eyes did the same. He put his boxing glove–sized hand to his chin and rubbed it. Finally, he shrugged and I thought for a second that the world might spin off its axis. “That’s how the police ruled it. I don’t have any reason to question their findings.”
When it came to the La Jolla Police Department, I could always find a reason. Rollins’s expression said more than his words. He wasn’t convinced either, but he wouldn’t share his doubts with me. I’d gotten under a couple layers of his rawhide skin.
Maybe if I stabbed deeper I’d strike a nerve and he’d spit out some angry truth.
“So you believe your best friend and SEAL team brother who’d fought for you and his country would take his own life?” I laced each word with disdain, digging deeper under his skin.
The vein in Rollins’s neck pulsed again and his massive mandible clenched tight enough to crush diamonds. His eyes squeezed down on me. I was glad we were in an office with a desk between us in civilization instead of in a war on opposite sides of a foxhole. He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a minute. He finally spoke.
“People do things every day that surprise me, Mr. Cahill. I saw it on the battlefield overseas and I see it here in the casino. Jacks hadn’t been himself since Brianne left him. He seemed depressed when we’d talk on the phone. Sometimes the fight just leaves you and there’s nowhere to go but home.”
He eyed the door like that was my cue to leave and go to my own home. Hopefully, he meant in San Diego and not my final resting place. I wasn’t ready for either just yet. “How well do you know Brianne Colton?”
“Well enough.” Stone face.
“You don’t like her?”
“I liked her just fine until she took up with another man.”
“She come across as money hungry to you?” I thought about the life insurance policy with the suicide clause.
“No. She only cared about her singing career.”
Maybe.
“Did Jim Colton make any enemies on our side of the battlefield while he was overseas?”
“No. Everybody loved Jacks.” Unmovable.
“Even after Benghazi? He didn’t piss anybody off up the ranks?”
“We all had concerns about how State handled things that night. Jacks didn’t make a stink about it.” He stood up, dismissing all earlier subtleties. “I really have to get back to my responsibilities, Mr. Cahill.”
I didn’t move. “Why did Colton call the FBI five days before he died?”
A slight pause, then raised eyebrows. “I didn’t know that he had.”
“Really?” I gave him my own pause and eyebrows. No effect. He stood still, chiseled like a face on Mount Rushmore. “He called the local San Diego office one day right after he hung up from a lengthy phone call to your cell number. You sure you don’t know why Colton called the FBI?”
“I told you I didn’t, Mr. Cahill.” He circled his desk and stood in front of my chair, staring black eyes down at me. “If you were more thorough at your job, you’d know that Jacks commanded the CIT unit for the La Jolla Police Department. He could have had any number of reasons to call the FBI, and it’s not unusual for CIT and the Feds to discuss strategy and coordination at times.”
If I’d scratched a piece of flint in front of his eyes, they would have burned two holes right through me. I wondered if Jim Colton had ever seen that look—directed at him. Best friends don’t always stay best friends. Sometimes they become enemies. If I had to choose an enemy, it wouldn’t be an ex-SEAL. If an ex-SEAL were my only choice, it wouldn’t be Oak Rollins.
I stood up. Rollins kept his twin torches on me, but I didn’t challenge him. I’d gotten what I’d needed. An overreaction. To cover a lie. Rollins did know why Jim Colton had called the FBI five days before he died. Of that, I was fairly certain. But I was even more certain that he wouldn’t admit it. What I didn’t know was why Colton had made the call or how it had affected his and Rollins’s friendship. Or if the call had gotten Jim Colton killed.
I extended a hand. “Thanks for your time.”
Rollins shook my hand without denting it. He walked over to the office door and opened it. I went through the doorway but stopped and turned back to Rollins.
“Do you know if Jim ever went rock climbing?”
“No.”
“Do you know if he owned a rock climbing rope?”
“No.”
“How about that he was afraid of heights? Did you know that?”
“No.” His eyebrows went up right away this time. No hesitation.
This backed up what Cash Colton told me about his father and put another red flag on the rope that was used to hang Jim Colton. Why would he buy an expensive nylon climbing rope from a specialty store when he could easily buy a cheap twine rope from any Walmart, Target, or Home Depot at the nearest mall?
“Do you ever rock climb?”
“Not since I was a SEAL.”
“Would it surprise you to know that the cell phone Jim Colton called you with twice the day he died was never recovered?”
“No.” He shook his head. The question hadn’t surprised him. “The police probably lost it when they recovered his personal items. Wouldn’t be the first time, I’m sure.”
Rollins was either trying to bluff me off my hand or he’d worked for the casino too long. He played by house rules. The cops had ruled his best friend’s death a suicide, so it was a suicide. You can’t beat the house. Still, I wasn’t convinced.
“When was the last time you saw Jim before he died?”
“Sometime in June. Good-bye, Mr. Cahill.” Oak Rollins closed the door leaving me on the other side.
CHAPTER TEN
I GOT HOME at seven that night. Midnight was happy to see me. That was worth something. My neighbor’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Micalah, Midnight’s pal and dog watcher, had fed him and taken him outside to play while I was trying to squeeze information from a stone. More like a boulder. I wasn’t sure if I’d learned enough to justify the expense of taking a flight to Lake Tahoe instead of just making a call. I’d write it up anyway. I liked Brianne Colton. Maybe too much, but I wasn’t running a charity.
I led Midnight up the stairs to my second-floor office, and he took his spot under my desk. I pulled my laptop out of my backpack and went over the notes I’d written on the plane ride home from Reno.
The trip hadn’t been a total washout. I came away from my meeting with Oak Rollins thinking he might not believe Jim Colton had committed suicide, that he knew why Colton had called the FBI, and that he didn’t know Colton was afraid of heights. I just didn’t know why he’d seemingly held back information.
Maybe he was mad at Brianne and wouldn’t cooperate with someone she’d hired. Honor, a scarce commodity in the new millennium, was important to brothers in battle. Brianne had broken the code when she moved out of the home that held her son and husband and then took up with another man. But the deeper code was to his fallen brother. If I was right and Rollins didn’t believe his best friend committed suicide, he knew there was only one explanation for his death. Murder. Colton hadn’t slipped and fallen into a noose hanging a foot over his head.
Yet, Rollins hadn’t done anything about it. I’d given him an opportunity to share his doubts about Colton’s death, and he’d rode the cops’ story line. He and Jim Colton had spilled blood for righteous causes and been each other’s family when their real ones were half a world away. How could he sit still when there might be a killer loose who had murdered his friend, his comrade, his brother?
Maybe Rollins wasn’t sitting still. Maybe he knew who killed Colton and he had a plan to handle the murderer on his own but he didn’t want me getting in the way. But Colton had been dead for ten weeks. Ho
w long was Rollins going to wait?
Of course, I could have been all wrong. Maybe Rollins really did believe Colton had taken his own life. And he didn’t know why Colton had called the FBI. Maybe Rollins had gotten angry because I’d questioned his veracity. Or because he didn’t like me digging around in his friend’s grave. Could be that he just didn’t like me. The latter had been the answer to a lot of questions over the last ten years.
One last possibility was that Rollins was somehow involved in Jim Colton’s death and had something to hide. A long shot, but so was the whole case. He’d seemed genuinely sad when he said he’d wished he’d talked to Colton on the last day of his life. My gut told me Rollins had nothing to do with Colton’s death, but my gut had been wrong before.
Right now, whatever Oak Rollins knew or didn’t know or believed or didn’t believe didn’t matter. The more I dug into the Colton case, the less I believed LJPD’s conclusion. I knew them to be a shoddy and corrupt police force. If I didn’t buy the suicide, I had to find out if the misdetermination of death was due to the former or the latter. One was discouraging, the other frightening.
For all the cities in San Diego County, the county medical examiner is the ultimate determiner of the manner of death: natural, accident, suicide, homicide, or undetermined.
However, it’s not as scientific as they make it out on TV. The medical examiner can be swayed one way or the other by the evidence the cops share with him. Or don’t share.
I pulled the file Brianne had given me that contained the police report. I hadn’t paid attention to the medical examiner’s name the first time through, only the results. Now I needed the name. Beverly Lin. Tomorrow I’d try to find out if she’d bent under pressure by Moretti.
I put away the file and scratched Midnight’s head. He looked up at me, trust and affection in his eyes. The best look I’d seen all day.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SAN DIEGO County Medical Examiner’s Office is located on the campus of the County of San Diego Operations Center in Kearny Mesa. The ME who performed the autopsy on Jim Colton was Dr. Beverly Lin. She was one of eight pathologists in the Medical Examiner’s Office. I met her at the Commons Dining cafeteria in the middle of the sprawling Operations Center.