Dark Fissures

by Coyle, Matt;

  “No. I checked numbers against the ones on Jim’s last bill, looking for odd patterns and I called numbers I didn’t recognize. I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Just in that last month that you already have. All the calls to Oak and the one call to the FBI. Have you gotten anything from the FBI yet about that call?”

  “No. I can’t even get an agent to talk to me.” I’d called three times asking to talk to the agent who took Colton’s call and was told each time that the FBI didn’t divulge that kind of information.

  Brianne’s head sagged but her eyes stayed on me, like I was a disappointing child. I didn’t blame her. Not finding a way to talk to the agent Colton spoke with on the phone wasn’t a good enough answer.

  “Finish your coffee and get dressed,” I said. “Put on something business sexy, not something you’d wear onstage.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to see the FBI.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE SAN DIEGO FBI office is in Sorrento Valley, a community hard by Interstate 5 that serves as a buffer between La Jolla and Mira Mesa. The building is multi-stories of blue glass with a concrete outline. Official, intimidating, unyielding of its secrets.

  I’d prepped Brianne on the drive over. The office opened at 8:15 a.m. The government deals in fractions. We entered through a glass door on the right side of the building at 8:19. A shiny brown marble floor with white veins and the FBI shield took up the foyer. We were immediately greeted by two NFL lineman–sized men in suits with endangered seams. They asked us to empty our pockets into hard plastic bowls and walk through a metal detector. No alarms went off. I wasn’t strapped. My Ruger .357 was in the trunk of my car parked at Brianne’s house. Brianne had offered to drive and seemed surprised when I accepted the offer. She wouldn’t have been if I’d told her about Moretti’s tightening noose. The less time driving around in my bulls-eyed car, the better.

  We were greeted at the main desk by a thirtyish woman in a blue suit who rivaled Brianne in buttoned-down sexiness. Mocha skin, burgundy lips, and raven hair floating atop her shoulders. I’d hoped for a man. Brianne wore a brown pinstriped suit with a white blouse unbuttoned just low enough to give a glimpse of cleavage. Male or female special agent, Brianne still had a role to play.

  “I’m Special Agent Myrna Singh.” Her full lips half-rounded to a smile. “How can I help you?”

  I introduced myself and Brianne, and stuck out a hand over the desk, high enough so Special Agent Singh would have to stand up to shake it. Once she did, I had her on our level and forced to engage. I shook her hand long enough to keep her standing and kept talking. “I’m investigating the death of Brianne’s husband, Sergeant James Colton of the La Jolla Police Department.”

  I let go of her hand and she dropped it down along her gray slacks. “You didn’t show me a badge, Mr. Cahill. Are you a detective with the La Jolla Police Department?”

  “No. I’m a private investigator.”

  She held the half smile, but pressed the hand I’d shook against her slacks like she was trying to wipe my residue off her. She may not have even realized she did it. More of a reflex. Everybody likes a PI.

  “I’m sorry, this should be investigated by the local authorities. A suspicious death, unless the victim was a government official or employee, is not under the bureau’s jurisdiction. Unless the victim’s civil rights were violated.”

  “Just his breathing rights. We’re not here to ask the bureau to investigate Mr. Colton’s death. However, we need to talk to the special agent Mr. Colton talked to on the phone on August twenty-fourth at nine forty-seven a.m.”

  “We can’t disclose that kind of information, Mr. Cahill.” She gave me a closed-mouth smile and tilted her head like she was talking to a slow child or a dog. “Besides, this was three months ago. We wouldn’t even still have it on our phone logs.”

  “You’re the FBI. You keep track of everything.” I didn’t expect Agent Singh to make it easy for us to get what we needed, but I hadn’t expected her to lie to me when she didn’t have to. Heat crept up the back of my neck. “I’m sure some Russian hacker has the phone log information and all the FBI’s other files. You must have it, too.”

  “Can’t you help us, Agent Singh?” Brianne jumped in before I made things worse. She laid a little extra southern on the accent. I really wished Agent Singh had been a man.

  “I’m afraid it’s out of our jurisdiction.” She gave Brianne the same patronizing smile.

  “It entered your jurisdiction when the deceased called this office and spoke to someone for seventeen minutes and then died under suspicious circumstances a few days later.” I set my hands on the counter and leaned toward Agent Singh, invading her space. “We’d like to talk to Special Agent in Charge Richmond.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Singh surprised me by leaning in. Her breath, Dentyne riding coffee. “It’s time for you to leave, Mr. Cahill.”

  I heard the squeak of size fourteen Florsheims on marble and knew the seam-splitters would soon surround me.

  “I don’t want to have to involve my friend Congressman Peck, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Agent Singh.” Brianne worked a tsk-tsk smile of her own. “But I will if I have to. He told me to call him if I had a problem. Do we have a problem, Agent Singh?”

  The right side of the FBI’s offensive line compressed the air on either side of me like I was a safety trying to shoot the gap on a blitz. I waited for vise grips to pinch my arms. The big boys eyeballed Agent Singh.

  Brianne pulled her cell phone from her purse, hovered her finger over it, and stared at Agent Singh. “Are you going to call Special Agent Richmond or am I going to call Congressman Peck?”

  Singh targeted black eyes on Brianne then me. Finally, she gave a quick nod to the security twins and they walked back over to the metal detector.

  “Please have a seat.” She pointed to a row of chairs against a large window opposite the front desk. She picked up the handset from under the counter and spoke into it. All I could hear was a bureaucratic hum. A moment later she hung up the phone. “It will be a few minutes. Would you like some coffee?”

  Same smile she’d given us when we walked in like nothing had happened. I thought of ordering coffee with cream and two teaspoons of sugar just to be an ass, but wasn’t ready to show Brianne that side of my personality yet. Or, maybe, again.

  Brianne hadn’t mentioned Congressman Peck on the ride over from her house. I leaned my shoulder against hers and whispered, “You really know Congressman Peck?”

  Brianne matched my lean and whispered, “The boys and I played at his daughter’s high school graduation party out in Poway before Jim died. I only met him the one time.”

  “So you don’t really know him well enough to call and ask a favor.”

  “Well, the Congressman would like to get to know me a whole lot better. In fact, he tried to when his wife was in the other room and he gave me the check for the birthday gig.”

  “Our tax dollars at work.”

  “Well, at least we got a smidgen of a return on our investment today.”

  We waited for thirty minutes. An hour. An hour and a half. A few special agents with all-American smiles passed by while we waited, but no one spoke to us. I got up and went over to Agent Singh’s desk to voice a complaint for the third time when the elevator on the right opened and a bespectacled man exited it and outstretched a hand to me.

  “Mr. Cahill?” He grabbed my hand and pumped it. Then looked over at Brianne. “Mrs. Colton? I’m Special Agent Brad Blanton. Special Agent in Charge Richmond will see you now.”

  Bureaucratic smile. Close-cropped hair. Late thirties. Blue suit. Off the rack. Nothing remarkable about Special Agent Blanton. The kind of guy you looked at every day, but never saw.

  Agent Blanton led us into the elevator and up to the third floor, the last stop. The doors opened. More marble. More tax dollars at work. We followed Blanton down a hall to an office protected by two
large dark hardwood doors. Blanton knocked and then opened one of the doors.

  “Right this way.” He gave us a butler arm wave into the office and then closed the door and stood quietly in the back of the room.

  A man stood behind a desk that matched the doors. Spit-polished with hard angles and sharp edges. His physique said seven-days-a-week-gym-honed early forties, but his eyes said a decade older. He flashed a perfect smile at us. I had the feeling it could flip to an angry grimace in a blink.

  “Please sit down.” He pointed to two leather chairs in front of his desk. “I’m Special Agent in Charge Richmond. Sorry to make you wait. I’ve had meetings all morning.”

  “Thanks for seeing us.” Brianne gave him a southern charmed smile.

  “Thank you, Mr. Blanton.” Richmond sat down without looking at Blanton.

  The door clicked shut behind us on not-so Special Agent Blanton. Richmond eyed me, unimpressed, then looked over Brianne. Impressed. “Now what can I do for you?”

  I nodded at Brianne to take the lead. She told Richmond about her husband’s death and the phone call he made to the FBI. She explained that we just wanted to talk to the agent that her husband had called or see a transcript of the call.

  Richmond steepled his hands in front of him on his desk, and I braced for bureaucratic mumbo jumbo.

  “We, of course, liaison with local law enforcement agencies in the region and it wouldn’t be uncommon for the sergeant of a CIT unit to call our office and coordinate training opportunities. Sergeant Colton could have called for any number of ordinary reasons.”

  “Great.” I forced a smile. “Then how about we talk to the agent he spoke with or you show us the transcript and find out just how ordinary the conversation was. We’re just connecting the dots, Special Agent Richmond.”

  “It’s Special Agent in Charge, Mr. Cahill.” He winced a smile. “I worked awfully hard to get here. Might as well enjoy the title.”

  “I meant no harm, Special Agent in Charge Richmond.” I held up my hands like I meant it. And I did. I hadn’t meant any harm. After the speech about the title, I wish I had.

  “None taken,” Richmond said and we all pretended it wasn’t a lie.

  “Can you help us?”

  “Your quest is commendable.” Richmond gave us a smile that told me SAC of the San Diego field office wouldn’t be the last governmental stop for him. He was destined for great things. Probably politics. That was the only hope I had of us getting what we needed. “But, a conversation with anyone in this office is confidential under the laws of this country.”

  “Please, Special Agent in Charge Richmond, I need to find the truth about what really happened to my husband.” Emotion caught in Brianne’s throat. I couldn’t tell if it was an act or if she was sincere. Richmond’s face said sincerity.

  “You can call me Charles, Mrs. Colton. I wish I could help, but you’re asking me to break the law. That I will not do. I’m sure Congressman Peck would agree with my decision.” He gave Brianne a tight-lipped “I feel your pain” squint. “Have you talked to Police Chief Moretti about this? We could certainly discuss this phone call you’re so interested in if he talked to us in an official manner regarding your husband’s death.”

  “Police Chief Moretti won’t reopen the case,” Brianne said.

  Moretti was a loaded gun, cocked and pointed at my head, waiting for an excuse or inevitability to pull the trigger. But he was a politician, too. Just like Special Agent Richmond, looking for the next rung on the government ladder. Their paths surely had crossed. Had Richmond read corrupt megalomaniac in Moretti or had he bought the public persona? Did he care either way? Time to find out.

  “The call Jim Colton made to your office on August twenty-fourth was from his personal cell phone,” I jumped in, fighting the urge to call Richmond Chuck. “Brianne checked his phone records going back six months. That was the only time he ever called the FBI from his personal phone. What if the call was about Chief Moretti? About some practices Jim couldn’t live with anymore?”

  “Is there something you’d like to tell me, Mr. Cahill?”

  Special Agent Richmond and Brianne both looked at me expectantly. The asset forfeiture arrests were the only arrows I had in my quiver against Moretti’s Randall Eddington arsenal. Using it now without determining how much leverage it gave me against Moretti could secure me a room without a view up in the Bay Area. The other side of Marin County. San Quentin.

  “No. I’m just wondering out loud. There had to be a reason Jim Colton called this office on his personal cell phone and not his work phone.” I avoided Brianne’s eyes and looked at Special Agent Richmond. I could lie to law enforcement, no matter the agency. I’d been doing it for over ten years. Brianne was different. She mattered. Not enough to go to prison for, but enough to feel guilty when I lied to her. “Maybe he didn’t want his chief to know he called. Doesn’t it seem strange to you, Special Agent in Charge Richmond?”

  “Not particularly, for the reasons I described earlier.” He stood up and smiled at Brianne.

  “Mrs. Colton, I really think your best avenue going forward is to deal directly with LJPD and convince Chief Moretti to take another look at your husband’s death. As I said before, we’ll cooperate with the local police. Otherwise, there’s nothing I can do for you. I’m sorry.”

  Brianne stood up. “I’ve already tried to get Chief Moretti to reopen the case. Twice. He won’t do it. We aren’t even asking the FBI to investigate. We’d just like to know who Jim talked to and what was said on that phone call. It’s really not much to ask. He was my husband.”

  “I’m sorry.” Solemn frown, then he looked at the door.

  Brianne turned to leave. I stayed seated. “Do you really want us to get Congressman Peck involved, Agent Richmond? Or the press? A grieving widow stonewalled by the Feds makes good copy. Might adversely affect one’s future ambitions.”

  Richmond looked down at me. The grimace I’d feared earlier finally pulled angry at his face. “Are you threatening a federal agent, Mr. Cahill?”

  Shit.

  “Not in any way whatsoever.”

  “He didn’t mean anything, Charles. Come on, Rick. We’ve taken up enough of the agent’s time.”

  Brianne walked over to my chair. I stood up to leave, but Richmond’s voice stopped me. “I’m sure you think it was a good idea to hire Mr. Cahill, Mrs. Colton.” He kept his eyes and his grimace pointed at me. “Avenger of the underdog. But the truth is, he was a corrupt cop who is still the main suspect in his wife’s murder.”

  Richmond opened a desk drawer and pulled out a file that no doubt had my name on it and dropped it on the desk for effect. He must have done his homework when he heard I was here with Brianne. He continued with my career highlights. “He was fired from the Santa Barbara Police Department and no other agency in the state would hire him. He makes a living peeping through motel windows and doing odd jobs for questionable characters. Oh, and he’s on his way to be foreclosed upon. Again, Mrs. Colton, I suggest you deal directly with the police and not waste your money on this con man.”

  The FBI had a file on me. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But that didn’t help fill the sucking hole in my gut. The bank, Moretti, the FBI. The walls were closing in.

  Brianne grabbed my arm and pulled me out of Special Agent Richmond’s office. Exiting the rest of my problems wouldn’t be so easy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  BRIANNE DIDN’T LOOK at me or say anything on the walk to the car. The November gray hung heavy in the air. She stared at the windshield for a few seconds before she turned on the ignition. I didn’t interrupt her silence. She was working out the pluses and minuses of hiring me. And she didn’t even know about all the minuses. She exited the parking lot and the silence hung as heavy as the November sky.

  “Is what Special Agent Richmond said about you true?”

  “Everything but me being a con man.”

  “A corrupt cop?”

  “That’s
a matter of opinion. I lied to the police during the investigation of my wife’s murder and once to protect a partner. They don’t take kindly to that. Apparently, someone advised the FBI about it sometime over the past ten, twelve years.”

  “Why did you lie in your wife’s murder investigation?” The words came out haltingly, like they were painful to form in her mouth.

  “To protect myself.” I’d only told one other person the whole truth. I didn’t know Brianne well enough for that, but she deserved some of it. “And someone else. It had nothing to do with Colleen’s death. Only my reputation and that of the other person.”

  “I told the police the truth about everything in my life when they investigated Jim’s death. Even the embarrassing parts. That’s what you do when you want them to find the truth about why someone you cared about died. What lie did you tell to protect your partner? That was just for his reputation, too, right?”

  Brianne’s husband had been a cop; surely she knew about the honor of the thin blue line. But I knew the honor could shield the public from the truth and allow some cops to act like crooks. Just as my partner had back on SBPD.

  “I’ve made mistakes in my life, Brianne. Big ones. People have gotten hurt because of some of them. I can’t change that. Only learn from it.” But I hadn’t really learned. I’d just withheld information from the FBI to hold on to the leverage I may need to keep myself out of jail at the expense of possibly finding the truth about Jim Colton’s death. “The week you hired me for is over after tomorrow. I can reimburse you the last day of the week and we can call it even.”

  I was compromised and hurting the case. Brianne didn’t know it, but I did. I shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. Only problem was, I didn’t have the money to reimburse her. The bank did.

  “No. Let’s keep things the way they are. Work through tomorrow.” Brianne kept her sunglasses pointed at the road. She hadn’t looked at me since we left the FBI building. “Let’s communicate through emails going forward.”