Dark Fissures

by Coyle, Matt;

  “Yes. So did I.”

  “And neither of you found anything.”

  “Nothing.”

  “What about anything else? Anything unusual or out of place?”

  “What do you mean?” She tilted her head.

  “You and the cops both looked for a suicide note or signs of Jim’s depression.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Well, let’s take a different tack.”

  “Such as?” She squinted her eyes down on me.

  “You’re convinced Jim didn’t kill himself. If you’re right, that means someone else did. Let’s look for reasons why.”

  “I’ve been trying to do that. I went through his emails, his messages on this phone, the desk, his clothes, his truck.”

  “But, as of yet, you haven’t found anything suspicious, right?” I said.

  “Right.”

  “How far back did you go on his emails?”

  “A couple weeks.”

  “Is his account still active or did you close it?” I asked.

  “Still active. He used Gmail.”

  “Good.” I pulled out a notepad and pen from my jacket pocket and handed it to Brianne. “Write down his user name and password for his Gmail account. Does he have any other email accounts?”

  “I don’t think so.” She wrote on the pad and handed it back to me.

  “I’ll access the account from my office computer and take a look around. I’ll go back further than a couple weeks.” I stood up. “Does he have any other electronic devices? An iPad, a laptop?”

  “No. He thought all that was a waste of money when he had all he needed on his phone and home computer.”

  “How about a work laptop?”

  “He had one, but he rarely brought it home. At least while I was here.”

  “Did you come back here that night when the police notified you that Jim was dead?” I asked.

  “Cash called me before the police did. I got here maybe five minutes after the police arrived.”

  “Aside from Jim and the rope you’d never seen, was there anything about the house that seemed out of place? Or just anything at all that wasn’t quite right?”

  “There was something in here, but you’re going to think I’m crazy.” She smiled for the first time since I’d been there. It brought me back to watching her onstage and being in awe.

  I shook it off. “What was it?”

  “Well, you see how clean and organized Jim kept this place. I’d never even seen a single pen out of place.” She walked over to a wall with framed photographs and commendations and pulled down two pictures. “These pictures had switched places on the wall.”

  Brianne handed the photographs to me. The first one was of Oak Rollins standing next to another soldier, arms locked around each other’s shoulders. The second looked a lot like the photo I’d seen on Oak Rollins’s office wall. Jim Colton and Rollins were kneeling in front of a Humvee next to the two other soldiers in the Rollins photo. One of them was the same soldier in the other photo with Rollins Brianne had shown me. The four men held the same rifles and the lighting was the same as the picture on Rollins’s office wall in Lake Tahoe. The only difference was that the photo was taken from slightly farther away than the first one. A blanket was visible on the ground in front of the men and it was covered with thirty or so gold bars.

  “That has to be a couple million dollars in gold.” I looked at Brianne.

  “Jim told me the Army bean counters said it was seven point three.”

  “So, obviously, they turned it in.”

  “Of course. By Jim’s count he and his unit collected over fifty million dollars in gold and currency from secret hiding places they found clearing houses during his four tours in Iraq.”

  Clearing houses sounded like something a landscaper would do, but it was dangerous work done on the battlefield and surrounding areas. Soldiers entered homes and structures and made sure no bad guys with guns or explosives were inside.

  “Who are the other soldiers in the photos? I’ve already met Oak Rollins.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Was he in town?” Her eyes got bigger than normal.

  “No. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  She pinched her lips together. “Are you going to keep everything a secret until I ask about something?”

  “No. I’ll send you a report at the end of the week. Let’s stay focused on the photographs. Who are the other men?”

  She shook her head and squinted at me. “The man in both pictures was Doug McCafferty.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes. He died over there. In Iraq.”

  “How long ago?” I asked.

  “About ten years ago. It happened only a few months after these pictures were taken.”

  “Who’s the other guy?”

  “Kyle Bates. He lives over in Coronado. He and Doug were pretty close.”

  “Were Jim and he close? Coronado’s only twenty minutes away.” Bates was next on my list to interview. He had been the other man Jim Colton had called on the day he died along with Oak Rollins.

  “Not as close as he was with Odell. Jim and Kyle probably got together a couple times a year.”

  “What’s your theory on the photos switching positions on the wall? Could a maid have done it?”

  “We didn’t have a maid,” she said.

  “How about Cash?”

  “I asked him. He said he hadn’t been in Jim’s office in weeks and he never touched the pictures.”

  “Is it possible that Jim switched them after you moved out and you didn’t know it?”

  “Jim put things in specific places for a reason.” She pointed at the plaques. “I helped him hang everything on these walls four years ago. He had made a chart where everything would go. He was as anal as a colonoscopy.”

  “Don’t take offense, but is it possible that the photos weren’t moved at all and you misremembered where they were?”

  “Yes. That’s possible. But I doubt both Cash and I misremembered.” She air quoted the last word.

  “Okay, then what do you think happened?”

  “I have no idea. I just know that someone other than Jim moved them. Maybe the police accidentally knocked them off the wall and replaced them in the wrong spots. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but you asked if anything was different in the house.”

  I wasn’t convinced they were moved by someone other than Jim Colton. Maybe he’d looked at the photos when he’d contemplated ending his own life. Looked back at a fallen comrade and wished he could have gone out on the battlefield like Doug McCafferty had. Or just looked back at the highlights of his life when it had tangible meaning. Maybe he put them back in the wrong spots because order wouldn’t matter anymore after he went into the garage with the rope.

  Or maybe he’d been looking at the pictures at his desk and had been interrupted by his murderer who put the pictures back in the wrong place after he killed Colton.

  Another loose end on a case that had a sack full of them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MY PHONE RANG on the drive home. The name on the screen almost made me pull over. Or keep driving until I outran my life.

  Alan Rankin. A man I hadn’t seen or talked to in almost a year. A high-end criminal lawyer who teetered on the edge of the law and who I’d hoped never to see again. I let the call go to voicemail. I was in the burbs but still in the city of La Jolla. With my luck, I’d get pulled over by a stray patrol car and written up for talking on my cell phone. Plus, I wasn’t ready to hear what Rankin had to say.

  I might never be.

  Midnight greeted me at the front door when I got home. I took him out to the backyard and tossed a tennis ball around. He’d chase it down and snatch it as deftly as any Gold Glove shortstop in Major League Baseball. I usually enjoyed watching Midnight chase the ball as much as he did the chase. Today, anxiety replaced joy.

  I checked my phone. Alan Rankin’s name still showe
d as the last incoming call. I hadn’t imagined it. It was real. The only call I feared more was one from Chief Moretti. I tossed the ball until Midnight had a good pant going, then sat in a patio chair and stared at the sliver of ocean miles away.

  Midnight, tongue hanging out, sat down next to me and leaned his shoulder against me. It would have been a good place to get an early start on a relaxing evening. If I didn’t have a call to make. I doubted I’d have many relaxing evenings for a while.

  I pulled the phone back out of my pocket. Rankin hadn’t left a message, but the call itself was message enough. I hit dial.

  “Have you seen today’s La Jolla Lantern?” Not even a hello.

  “No.” The Lantern was the weekly paper for La Jollans. More local event driven than hard news. I hadn’t read one since I left Muldoon’s three years ago. They didn’t deliver to Bay Ho. That was fine by me.

  “Read the article, then meet me at my office at seven.”

  “What article?”

  “You’ll know which one.” He hung up.

  I hung up and Googled the Lantern on my phone. Unfortunately, its website still had last week’s edition up. Shit. I’d have to drive to The Village and pick up a paper copy. The Village. LJPD headquarters and highest density of patrol cars. If the cops stopped me tonight, I’d be strapped. CCW—carrying a concealed weapon. Which could get me killed. But meeting Alan Rankin without a weapon could get me killed, too.

  I went inside and fed Midnight then went upstairs to my bedroom to change. The technology for concealed holsters had changed quite a bit since my days as a street cop in the barrio of Santa Barbara. I pulled my UnderTech compression concealment t-shirt from my bureau and slipped it on. Cool and tight to the body, it had a nylon holster sewn into the fabric of the shirt under the left armpit. I pulled my Ruger SP 101 .357 Magnum from the nylon gun case on the nightstand and slipped it into the holster. Snug to the body. I didn’t secure the Velcro strap over the handle. I just wanted to see how the weapon felt in the holster. I hadn’t had need to wear it in a while. Tonight was different.

  I pulled the gun from the holster and put it back in the case. The concealed weapon was for my meeting with Alan Rankin, not for my drive into La Jolla. If LJPD stopped me, I’d tell them about my licensed weapon in the trunk of my car. Any misunderstandings with a gun on my body could be deadly.

  I Googled Alan Rankin, Attorney At Law, to find the address to his office. The only time I’d met him had been at his home. Without an invitation. I had a gun that time, too.

  Rankin’s office address made me do a double take. The same address as Muldoon’s Steak House, just a different suite number. It must have been one of the offices behind and below the restaurant with a view of the ocean. Figured. I wondered how long he’d been there and how I’d never bumped into him all the years I’d worked at Muldoon’s. Maybe I had and didn’t know it because it hadn’t mattered.

  Now it did.

  * * *

  I picked up the latest issue of the La Jolla Lantern at a liquor store in a mini-mall in The Village. They have mini-malls in La Jolla, just nicer buildings and cleaner parking lots than most of the rest of San Diego. It was six o’clock. I had an hour to kill and was hungry. I knew where I could get a good meal with an employee discount within walking distance of Rankin’s office. I just hoped I’d be early enough to miss Turk.

  The hostess took me up to the booth where I’d first talked to Brianne Colton. My table on slow nights like tonight. I ordered a teriyaki sirloin, mid-rare, and a baked Idaho, just butter, from the waiter and plopped the newspaper onto the table. Nothing interesting above the fold. I unfolded the paper and a picture of a sad older couple caught my eye. I didn’t have to read their names. Jack and Rita Mae Eddington.

  My stomach swallowed itself into a sucking hole.

  The caption of the story read: Eddingtons Running Out Of Hope.

  The article recapped the story of the Eddingtons’ grandson, Randall, who was convicted of murdering his parents and sister and spent seven years in prison. He’d been freed on appeal last December when newly discovered evidence pointed at another suspect. Evidence that I helped uncover. The DA chose not to retry and the remaining Eddingtons were given another shot at a happy life that lasted about five days. Randall disappeared and hadn’t been seen since. The article said that the Eddingtons were trying to come to grips with the fact that their grandson, the last remaining heir of their family, was probably dead.

  I felt for the Eddingtons. I always had. Especially for Rita Mae, who reminded me of my late grandmother. The Eddingtons had to endure the murders of their son, granddaughter, and daughter-in-law, and then see their grandson go to prison for the crimes. They never gave up hope and used their life’s savings to get Randall out of prison only to lose him again. Forever. Jack and Rita Mae’s pain must have been unbearable. But the truth would have hurt them even more.

  The Eddingtons had hired me to try to find Randall. I’d taken the case pro bono for six months and hadn’t found any evidence of Randall. But I hadn’t looked very hard.

  I read the last sentence of the article and my throat constricted and my face flashed hot. Police Chief Moretti was examining new evidence that could persuade him to consider the disappearance a homicide.

  I had my waiter box up my dinner. I’d lost my appetite.

  * * *

  The glass door to Rankin’s office was locked, but I could see a receptionist sitting behind a marble desk inside. I tapped on the glass, and she came to the door and let me in. She was tall, blond, and pretty in a grown-up tomboy sort of way. Looked like she’d once been a bodybuilder, but had let femininity creep back into her curves. She wore black yoga pants, tight to her muscular legs, flip-flops, and a purple hoodie.

  I’d never seen a receptionist dressed this casually anywhere but a gym. It was Saturday. Maybe she was Rankin’s girlfriend just helping out. Much younger girlfriend.

  “Mr. Rankin is ready to see you.” Higher voice than I expected. She smiled and went from tomboy to sexy girl next door. “Follow me.”

  I set my to-go container down on the reception counter and followed the woman over to a door to the right of the reception area. She knocked on the door once.

  “Mr. Cahill is here.” She didn’t wait for a response and opened the door for me to enter.

  I walked in and squeezed my left arm against the revolver holstered in my shirt hidden by my jacket. Still there. Alan Rankin, slight and balding, sat behind a massive hardwood desk that dwarfed the one in Jim Colton’s office. He was alone and my body unclenched. I’d expected to see the steroid-inflated tough guy I’d sucker-punched at Rankin’s house almost a year ago. Right before I’d beaten information out of Rankin.

  “Mr. Cahill.” His voice, the confident ooze of a man comfortable telling lies in front of juries. He stood and pointed to a leather chair in front of his desk that could cover the cost of one of my mortgage payments.

  I took a step toward the chair and something hard exploded into my left ear. I staggered but stabbed my hand inside my coat for the gun and spun just in time to see the flash of a bare foot before it slammed into my nose.

  Stars. Night.

  Blood streamed from my nose over and around my lips when I came to face-first on the marble floor. Maybe that’s why Rankin chose marble over carpet in his office. Easier cleanup. Judging by the viscosity of the blood and the ringing in my ears, I figured I’d only been out a few seconds. Long enough. I groped inside my jacket for the gun I knew wouldn’t be there.

  “Looking for this?”

  I rolled over onto my back and saw Rankin sitting behind his desk holding up my gun. At least it wasn’t pointed at me.

  “Let’s try again.” He pointed to the leather chair a couple feet away and set the Ruger .357 Magnum down on his desk.

  My head felt like a bowling ball teetering atop a pencil and my ear a cymbal in a heavy metal band drum solo. I wobbled up onto one knee. Blood dripped down onto my jacket. I atte
mpted vertical and the bowling ball listed to the right and the rest of me followed. A pair of strong hands steadied me. The “receptionist.” Her weapons back in their flip-flops, she guided me over to the chair. I sat down. I wasn’t proud. Not tonight.

  “I see you’ve met Miranda.” Rankin smiled at the woman who stood to my left, a leg’s length away from me. “She used to fight mixed martial arts. You know, MMA? Never lost a fight. She’s been out of the game awhile, but still packs a punch. Or should I say a kick?”

  “We even now?” My voice sounded nasal and muted at the same time. I could only hear it out of one ear. I wiped blood and dark crimson from my nose and smeared it onto the arm of the king’s ransom leather chair.

  “Miranda, get Mr. Cahill a towel.” He eyeballed me like I was a hostile witness on the stand. “No, Mr. Cahill, we’re not even. You’d better hope we never are.”

  Miranda went through a door in the back of the office and came out with a sea-foam-colored hand towel and handed it to me.

  I wiped a bloody sunset into the middle of the sea foam. “I’m here, Rankin. What do you want?”

  “You read the article?” Rankin held up a copy of the La Jolla Lantern.

  “Yes.”

  Rankin looked at Miranda as she hovered within striking distance of my face. “Miranda, please wait in the reception area and close the door behind you.”

  She looked at Rankin then at me and left the office.

  “Your conscience ever bother you?” Rankin asked.

  “No.” A high frequency buzz hummed in my ear and my nose felt like a throbbing fist, but my conscience was just fine. “You’re worried about my conscience?”

  “I’m worried about your mouth and what your conscience might make it say to the police.”

  “No need to worry.” I knew Rankin was more concerned about the capo of a biker gang in San Quentin than LJPD. Concerned enough to have me killed? Maybe. But Rankin’s expertise was cleaning up after other people’s murders, not his own. As far as I knew, he hadn’t crossed the line you could never uncross.

  Yet.