by Matt Coyle
“Are you telling me that Wilkes was lying and that Reitzmeyer was first on the scene?”
“I’m telling you that you can’t always believe what people tell you, anonymous or otherwise. Thanks for the drink. Good luck with your story.”
“Let me buy another round.”
“Okay, I’ll go one more. I’m sure the love of my life can bear to be without me another half hour or so.”
I remembered my mother screaming at my father almost every night about coming home late with alcohol on his breath. He came home late a lot the first year after he lost his job at LJPD. Even when he wasn’t working security at a strip mall. After two years, my mother stopped caring and locked herself in what had once been my parents’ bedroom. The room where I used to play with my toy train while they tried to sleep in on Saturday mornings. Dad would crawl out of bed and sit down on the floor and play with me and Mom would laugh at us both.
I outgrew the train and my parents grew apart. And shouting took the place of laughter.
“Are you surprised that LJPD seemed to lose interest in the Phelps murder fairly quickly?”
“That seems a little editorial for a reporter. Did you ask Detective Davidson that?”
“Not in so many words. This whole conversation is off the record, Charlie, just like I told you earlier. No attributions go into the article unless you want them to. Why do you think LJPD stopped working the case?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t around very much longer.”
“What really happened with your retirement? I don’t believe the rumors that you had some connection to organized crime. That’s not the Charlie Cahill I know. You were the best beat cop they ever had down at the Brick House. What happened? Why didn’t you fight for your job?”
“Just because you don’t believe the rumors doesn’t mean you have to believe the myth. Good-bye, Jack.”
“Charlie, tell me the whole story. I’ll get it on the front page of the paper and you’ll be able to clear your name and get your reputation back.”
“Talk to Judas about my reputation. He sold it for thirty pieces of silver.”
“What do you mean?”
Cahill left without responding.
Judas? He must have meant Bob Reitzmeyer who’d spread the rumors of my father’s fall from grace to Anton. But my father had gotten it wrong, he’d taken the thirty pieces of silver for himself and left it in his hidden safe.
The last page of Anton’s notes looked to be a summary, possibly written up just recently for me. Anton said he never talked to my father again, despite him calling and leaving numerous messages. He said he attended my father’s funeral and was saddened that the only cop or ex-cop there was Bob Reitzmeyer.
That’s why Anton looked familiar to me. I didn’t remember him from the funeral, but I must have seen him there and my mind imprinted his image without knowing what to do with it. I wasn’t surprised I didn’t remember Anton. The funeral was eighteen years ago, and I spent most of it staring at the ground. A priest said a few words, but no one else spoke for my father.
Not my mother. Not Bob Reitzmeyer. Not me.
We just put him in the ground and laid a plaque over him:
Charles Henry Cahill
Husband, Father, Veteran
Dec. 6, 1945–Oct. 3, 1999
Husband. Father. Veteran. That would be enough for most men. But my father had been so much more for most of his life. He’d been a cop for twenty-two years. The best cop anyone had ever known until the truth came out. The truth that Jack Anton refused to believe, but for which I had proof. The gun and the empty shell casings that he’d taken from Trent Phelps’ car the night of the murder. Protecting the mob killer and getting fifteen grand in return. He never spent that money, but what about the other money I’d seen listed in the ledger I found in his den as a kid?
How long had he been on the take? When did he transform from the best man most people ever knew into the scumbag he became? A cop on the take. Did it start with one bad decision or had he always had a dark soul that he’d kept hidden from everyone? Even those who loved him most and knew him best.
Jack Anton’s notes hadn’t provided that answer. Maybe his old partner would.
CHAPTER THIRTY
BOB REITZMEYER DIDN’T return my call at nine o’clock the next morning. Or the one at ten thirty. I set him aside and took Midnight to Fiesta Island. A bonus for him. Twice in one week. The sun pushed through the last bit of marine layer and washed the bay in orange and blue. Midnight hurtled himself into the water after the ball and paddled it back to shore. Over and over. He chased dogs up and down the beach, unfettered joy in his eyes and dangling tongue under a California sun in America’s Finest City.
I tried to get lost in that joy. Too hard. Forcing it didn’t give me the relief, the decompression I’d hoped for. Too much had happened in the last few days. The tension pressed tighter. Sophia Domingo’s murder, Kim’s recommitment to her husband, the proof of my father’s sins. They all wound together into a tight ball at the base of my neck. Fiesta Island was Midnight’s sanctuary, but it would take a Swedish masseuse, an acupuncturist, and a fifth of whiskey to relieve the knot my body had become. Or, a different life.
I warmed up Barbara Anton’s soup after I returned from Fiesta Island. Midnight fell asleep at my feet while I sipped the soup, his legs reenacting his runs on the beach as he slept. The soup did its best to relieve the knot. Creamy, sweet, herbaceous. On most any other day, it and Fiesta Island would have eased me out. Not today. Not this week.
I called Reitzmeyer at two. He wouldn’t take the call. I couldn’t wait on him all day. Sitting still made me think. I didn’t want to think. I needed movement, action. Not thought.
Retired La Jolla PD Detective Ben Davidson lived in a rural area in the southeasternmost part of Poway just off Scripps Poway Parkway and Highway 67. Davidson’s house sat on a rocky bluff with no neighbor within ten acres. The house itself was modern and probably around thirty-five hundred square feet. Not huge, but not small for a retired ex-cop with no wife and no children in the home. The house had a three-car garage. No cars were in the driveway.
I hadn’t called ahead because I didn’t want to run into Davidson’s gatekeeper again. Unless Davidson’s car was in the garage, it looked like my gamble hadn’t paid off. I parked in the middle of the horseshoe driveway across from the front door.
I rang the doorbell and waited. No one came to the door. No movement that I could discern from inside the house. I’d heard the doorbell, so I knew it worked. I rang it again and knocked three times loudly and waited some more. No one. I went back to my car and opened the door just as the door to the house opened. An elderly man stood hunched over a wheeled walker.
“Are you here to try to sell me something?” The man’s voice quavered and his mouth fell open when he was done speaking.
“Are you Ben Davidson?”
“Who else would I be?”
I closed the car door and walked back to the house. The man was emaciated, but nicely dressed in slacks and a button-down sweater that were both a couple sizes too large. Gray wisps of hair crisscrossed his mostly bald head. The years had eaten away at Ben Davidson. I didn’t recognize any portion of the stout beer-bellied man I’d met at the La Jolla Police Station almost thirty years ago.
“I’d like to talk to you about my father.”
“Is he Jesus Christ?” Davidson showed me yellow teeth in an opened-mouth smirk. “You gonna try and sell me some religion? You’re a little late.”
“No. My father was Charlie Cahill. He worked at LJPD while you were there.”
“Charlie Cahill?” He straightened up a bit, but still steadied himself with the walker. “I haven’t thought of that poor schmuck in years.”
“He’s been dead for almost two decades. I just want to ask you a few questions about him.” I put out my hand. “I’m Rick Cahill.”
“Yes, yes. Rick Cahill.” He gave my hand one weak shake then dropped it. “I remember reading about
you. They said you murdered your wife. That’s the last time I thought about Charlie. Reading about you made me think of him. I guess he wasn’t any better at being a father than he was a cop.”
My blood rose and percolated under my skin. The blood my father gave me. I let it simmer. At least Davidson was talking and without his gatekeeper.
“Maybe we could go inside and you could explain to me why he was a bad cop.”
“I guess they couldn’t prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That you murdered your wife. Or else you’d be in prison.”
“I didn’t kill her. That’s why I’m not in prison.” I smiled. One ex-cop to another. “Now, are you going to invite me in?”
“Sure, sure.” He took a couple backward steps from the door holding onto the walker. “Won’t be the first time I’ve sat across from a murderer.”
He was enjoying himself. That made one of us.
I walked inside, closed the door behind me, and followed Davidson down a dark slate-tiled hall. He was unsteady on the walker, but kept up a quick pace. Living dangerously above a hard, hip-breaking floor. He led me into a living room with the view of a pool outside and a rocky hillside beyond. Davidson dropped down into a white wing-backed upholstered chair. A photo of a middle-aged couple sat on a side table next to his chair. The woman bore a resemblance to Davidson in the eyes. Cold. I sat across from Davidson in his chair’s twin.
“Now, what would you like to know about your father?”
“How well did you know him?”
“I knew him as well as anyone else at the Brick House.” He shifted his weight and winced. “I made Homicide Detective, and he didn’t get past patrolman after twenty years on the job, but I knew him. LJPD was a small force, just like it is today. You couldn’t hide your true self from men who were trained to uncover secrets.”
“What was my father’s true self?”
“Don’t you already know that, son? Your father thought of himself as high and mighty, but he was just as corrupt as every … as a common criminal.”
“Just as corrupt as everybody else? Is that what you meant to say?”
“Don’t go putting words into my mouth, boy.” He gave me a look that had probably been nasty enough to put a scare into someone under the white lights in an interrogation room twenty years ago. “Just as corrupt as every criminal I put behind bars in my thirty-year career. The brass at the Brick House didn’t have the stones to arrest him for being on the take. They made your father the poster boy of LJPD for years, so when the truth came out they kept everything quiet to avoid a public relations nightmare.”
“And that truth was?”
“Your father did favors for what was left of the Italian Mob in La Jolla and San Diego back then. He looked the other way here, covered something up there. Whatever they needed.”
“Do you have proof for any of this?”
“I know your father kept a ledger of his payoffs.”
“Did you ever see it? How do you know he wasn’t collecting evidence on someone else?”
“I have it on good authority.” Davidson’s face flushed pink. “Did you come here to learn the truth or argue against it?”
“The truth. But I haven’t heard anything convincing yet.”
“How about fifteen grand in a brown paper sack? Is that proof enough for you?”
“You saw it?”
“Hell, yes I saw it.” A noise came from the front of the house. “You’re going to have to leave now, sonny.”
“Pop?” A woman’s voice. “Whose car is in the driveway?”
“You better move along.” The pink evaporated from Davidson’s face and he looked more gaunt than when I arrived. “Gina doesn’t like me having visitors.”
I stayed seated. A woman clacked down the tile hall toward me. Tall, broad through the shoulders, attractive in a masculine way. The woman in the photo next to Davidson’s chair.
“Who are you?” The voice on the phone from the gatekeeper call. She put her hands on her hips and splayed her legs.
“Rick Cahill.” I stood up and offered a hand. She ignored it.
“Did you invite him over, Pop?”
“No.” Davidson shrunk further into the chair. “He just showed up.”
“You’re going to have to leave. My father’s ill and is not supposed to have visitors.”
“Okay. But one last question.” I looked down at Davidson. “Why did you put in the police report that Bob Reitzmeyer was first on the Phelps crime scene when it was really my father?”
“Phelps?” Davidson’s jaw went slack. “What do you know about Phelps?”
“Am I going to have to call the police, Mr. Cahill?” The daughter pulled a phone from her purse and punched the screen. “I know you have some experience at being arrested.”
“Things started going downhill for my father the night he discovered Phelps’ body.” I kept my eyes on Davidson. “Why?”
“Yes, I’d like to report an unwanted intruder in my father’s home.” Gina spoke into the phone.
“I’m leaving. We’ll talk again, Mr. Davidson.” I turned and walked down the hall. The clack-clack of Davidson’s daughter behind me.
“He’s about six feet tall, two hundred pounds, brown and brown. He’s been menacing my father.”
I opened the front door.
“Cahill.”
I turned to look at Gina. She now had the phone down at her side.
“You got what you wanted. I’m leaving.”
“My father is dying of cancer.” There was still anger in her eyes, but maybe pain, too. “I can’t have people coming by and upsetting him.”
“He didn’t seem upset until you arrived.”
“You can’t hurt me any more than my father’s illness has. He’s lucid now, but he’ll have nightmares tonight.” Her brown eyes blurred with liquid. “My father deserves to die with dignity.”
I left the house and got into my car and thought about my father dying without dignity or anything else he’d earned in his life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LA JOLLA INVESTIGATIONS hadn’t changed much in the two years since I’d left there. The headquarters was still on the first floor of a ritzy La Jolla law office building. Shiny and sharp-angled copper and bronze. The car in Bob Reitzmeyer’s parking spot was still a BMW. Just a newer model than the last one I’d seen there.
The receptionist was new. Blond and pretty like the last receptionist. A prerequisite to work the phones for Bob. She smiled like she meant it. Bob wouldn’t when he found out who was in the lobby.
“Rick Cahill for Bob Reitzmeyer.”
“Do you have an appointment?” A smile like it was a reasonable question. She’d been answering my calls all day and telling me Bob couldn’t talk to me. She knew I didn’t have an appointment.
“No, but he’ll see me. Just tell him I’m here to talk to him about my father.”
She smiled, but with less sincerity, picked up the phone, and told Reitzmeyer I was there to see him. The look on her face said Bob told her he wouldn’t see me. I peered over the counter at her office phone and read Speaker upside down below a clear plastic button. I shot my hand over the counter and pushed the button.
“I’m here to talk about my dad. Remember him, Bob? He used to be your best friend.”
The line clicked to a dial tone.
“You’re going to have to leave, sir.” The receptionist’s face flushed an angry red. “You can’t interrupt a call like that. Please leave or I’ll call security.”
“You’re right. I apologize. You can call security, but Bob will be out here in a few seconds to personally escort me to his office.”
She picked up the phone’s handset again just as Bob appeared in the lobby. A little grayer than the last time I’d seen him, and his face redder than I’ve ever seen it.
“What do you want, Rick?” He strode across the lobby, his teeth clinched in a snarl.
“Should I call security, Mr.
Reitzmeyer?” The receptionist had her hand poised over the keypad.
“Not yet, Eva.” He put a hand in her direction and stared me down through blue eyes. “Well, Rick?”
“Let’s go back to your office and talk about my father.”
“What about your father?”
“About his last few months at the Brick House. You want me to hang a line for the laundry out here or do you want to talk in your office?”
He glared at me some more and pinched his lips. Then he turned and started down the hall to his office. A few heads prairie-dogged over the cubicles where investigators used office computers to access the investigative websites I now have to pay for a la carte. I recognized one of the faces eyeing me suspiciously. I nodded. The face frowned and slipped down below the gray wall of the cubicle. I hadn’t made too many friends in my two years at LJI.
I followed Bob into his pebbled-glass office. He thumped the door shut behind me, then went and stood behind his desk. His face still red, a stark contrast to the gray Van Dyke anchoring his chin.
“You’re lucky I didn’t have security throw you out on your ass. Is this how you operate on your own? Bursting into people’s workplaces and interrupting private phone conversations?”
“When I have to.”
“It won’t get you very far, Rick.”
“It got me into your office.”
“Your father’s memory got you in here. Just like it got you the job here in the first place. And then you fucked that up.”
I was way past insults. You had to break the skin to hurt me now.
“Let’s talk about my father’s memory.”
“What about it?” Reitzmeyer threw up his arms. “What angle are you working now, Rick? What piece of the past do you want to dig up and make another mess of this time?”
The last piece I’d dug up had cost me my job at LJI. And some people their lives.
“When did you know, Bob?”
“Know what?”
“That my father was on the take?”
Reitzmeyer tilted his head and squinted at me. “Is that what this is about? The rumors?”
“Rumors don’t start out of thin air. They come out of someone’s mouth.”