by Matt Coyle
“Wherever they started, they were never proven.” Reitzmeyer finally sat down.
I remained standing and noticed all the police and PI commendations on the wall behind Reitzmeyer. My father had had a wall full, too. But he kept his hidden in the den where no one else was allowed. My mother boxed them all up along with the rest of his belongings and was going to give them to Goodwill. I took them instead. In place of the good memories I no longer had. As if the items could fill up the void my father left in my life. The void that started well before his physical death. Beginning nine years before he was kicked off the police force and the man I’d copied my life on died a little, one drink at a time.
I was in college at the time and had no place to put my dad’s stuff, so I rented a space at a storage facility that I could barely afford. Years passed, the memories faded, and my dad’s belongings became junk no longer worth the monthly rental. I fulfilled my mother’s intentions and donated my father’s belongings to Goodwill.
The only thing I kept was my dad’s LJPD badge. Only because he’d given it to me himself when I was eleven. LJPD hadn’t let my father take the badge with him when they pushed him out, but the man sitting across from me had used up favors and gotten it back for my father.
I thought of the badge, Bob and my father’s friendship, and where Jack Anton had told me he heard the rumors about my father’s fall.
“But you believed the rumors, didn’t you, Bob?” I put my hands on his desk and leaned in. “In fact, you helped spread them.”
The red splashed back across Reitzmeyer’s face. Embarrassment from being called out? Maybe. Anger? Definitely.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
I wouldn’t give up Anton after he and his wife invited me into their home and fed me. But I’d use his words. If Bob figured out where they came from, I could live with it.
“The ledger with the payoffs listed. You told just enough people that you’d seen it and you were convinced my dad was dirty.” Retired LJPD Detective Ben Davidson being among them.
“Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s been twenty-seven years. My father’s dead. Most of the people in La Jolla today have never heard of him. His taint died with him quietly in the dark a long time ago. Nobody knows or cares about it anymore. Not even my mother. My father never existed to her now.” I took my hands off the desk and straightened up. “Just you and me. We’re the only people who give a shit about the legacy of Charlie Cahill. All I want is to hear the truth come out of your mouth. Just like it did in whispers twenty-seven years ago.”
“Your father was a good man, Rick.” The red left his face and took some life with it.
“Was. I know. But he didn’t die that way. He died a broken man who’d taken money from the people he was supposed to protect the rest of us from. I just want to know how and when it started. Who showed you the ledger?”
“I found it myself.” Reitzmeyer let out a breath. “We were riding together and had just finished grabbing lunch. Your father was still inside the restaurant using the john. I went out to grab a quick smoke, so I looked for cigarettes in your father’s duffel bag in the trunk of our cruiser. I found a little brown notebook in there. I opened it. I thought maybe your father was trying to be the next Joseph Wambaugh and writing notes about the job. He was a literary guy. The smartest, most well-read cop I ever knew. I wanted to read his notes so I could needle him. Then I saw the dates and the dollar amounts and the street names—Grand Avenue, Cass Street, Turquoise Street, Pearl Street, Genesee Avenue—in your father’s handwriting.”
I remembered seeing the boxy letters when I’d found the ledger in my father’s den. I didn’t know what it was then, but I’d recognized my father’s handwriting.
“Couldn’t he have been keeping records on someone else?” A reflexive vestige of hope that I no longer believed.
“I wish, Rick. I wished that then and I wish it now,” Reitzmeyer said, his head down. “All the dates with dollar amounts next to them were shifts when your father was alone driving an L car and I had a boot riding with me.”
“So, the ledger had dollar amounts only on days when my father was working shifts alone?”
“Right.”
“How far did the dates go back?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you find the ledger before or after the Phelps murder?” I asked.
“Phelps? What the hell does Phelps have to do with anything?”
“Because my father was pushed out of the Brick House within six months of him rolling first on the scene of that murder.”
“I don’t remember exactly when I found the ledger.” Reitzmeyer straightened up in his chair. “How the hell did you come across Phelps?”
I thought about telling him the truth. Bob and I were close once. He’d been a mentor and a man I respected more than any other alive. Our rift was over an old case from LJPD. Nothing else. I’d lost some respect for him, and he’d probably never trust me again. But the actions we’d both taken had lived up to my father’s credo. We both did what we thought was right even though the law said it was wrong. Just different actions at different times. I wanted to tell Bob about the gun. I wanted to tell someone. Holding it in, being the only person alive who knew my father probably had concealed the murder weapon used in an unsolved murder made me feel dirty. Guilty. A coconspirator.
My father’s son.
“By accident.” Trust ran both ways. Reitzmeyer and my father were like brothers. Maybe he already knew Charlie had taken the gun from the car. Maybe I wasn’t the only coconspirator. “It got me interested, though, and I did some research. An unsolved murder that LJPD thinks is mob related and six months later my father is exposed as a bagman for the mob. Seems a little coincidental, doesn’t it?”
“Not unless you’re looking for conspiracies that aren’t there.” Bob rubbed his hand over his Van Dyke. “Your father was the godfather to every one of my children and the best man at two of my weddings. He took me under his wing when I was an eighteen-year-old kid in Vietnam and became a big brother to me. I joined LJPD because of him. I loved him. I still do. But somewhere along the way, he took a wrong turn. I doubt it had anything to do with Phelps. It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Charlie’s gone.”
I couldn’t argue a single point, but I still wanted answers.
“Charlie was first on the scene at the Phelps murder, right?”
“I think so.” Bob shrugged. “What does it matter?”
“I’m not sure.” Except that it verified that my father had been the cop the anonymous caller saw take something from the crime scene. Probably the murder weapon.
“Did LJPD ever find the murder weapon?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Twenty-five caliber handgun, right?”
“I think so.” Bob squeezed his eyes down on me. “Why?”
“I’ve just been reading old newspaper articles on the case. Just trying to get the facts right.”
“The Phelps murder doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to your father.” Reitzmeyer put his hands together on the desk. “I know you’re searching for answers. Sometimes there just aren’t any. Your father was a good man who went bad. We’ll never know why, but down deep you know it’s true.”
Maybe Bob didn’t have to know why, but I did. And I needed to know who my father was protecting when he took the murder weapon from the crime scene.
I turned to leave, but thought of something. “Do you know a woman named Antoinette King?”
“No.” No blinks. No obvious deception. “Why?”
“Just a name I came across in some of his old things.” Reitzmeyer didn’t need to know about the joint checking account that funded my father’s safe deposit box at Windsor Bank and Trust. I didn’t think he was lying about Antoinette King. But maybe he just didn’t know her name.
“What about other women?”
“What about them?”
“We’ve established that my father was a crooked cop. Was he a crooked husband? Did he have women on the side?”
I knew Bob understood all about women on the side. He’d been married and divorced three times. When I worked for him, I’d seen him go off to lunch with his girlfriend and later that evening invite one of the attractive lawyers we shared the building with into his office and close the blinds after hours. More than once.
“Hell, no.”
“You don’t have to cover for him, Bob. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“The truth matters, Rick.” His blue eyes a stone wall. “Your father went wrong, but not that way.”
So my father kept one oath before God. That still left the question of Antoinette King and the joint checking account that funded the safe deposit box with the spent shells.
Maybe I was looking at the Phelps murder from the wrong end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
DUSK PUSHED TOWARD night as I turned onto my street. I spotted it right away. A Spectrum cable van. Parked in front of my house. I whipped my car into the driveway. Midnight barked from inside the house. I started to walk to the front door when I noticed movement on the right side of the house. A man in a Spectrum work shirt holding a metal clipboard emerged from behind the hedge. My height. Thinner, but fit. Late thirties. All-American good looks. He smiled at me then looked down at his clipboard.
“Mr. Cahill?”
I didn’t say anything. My right hand instinctively went to my hip for the Ruger in the pancake holster. I remembered even before I touched my belt that I wasn’t wearing it. Investigating a twenty-eight-year-old cold case hadn’t called for a gun. Dealing with someone who broke into my house did. I spread my feet a few inches to widen my base.
“You’re the next person on my list.” He walked toward me. “I was just checking to see if you still had a cable hookup. We’d really like to get you back in the Spectrum family.”
“Checking the transmitter?”
“I’m sorry?” He tilted his head like he didn’t know what I was talking about. Emmy worthy. He kept walking toward me. “I was checking the cable hookup like I said. We’d really like to get your business back.”
“Maybe we can figure it all out after I call the police.” An empty threat, but he didn’t have to know that. Even though I wasn’t working for Stone anymore, I wasn’t going to get the police involved.
Never a good idea to poke the bear. Or the great white shark.
“The police?” He stopped in front of me holding his clipboard to the side. No bulge in either pocket. He looked unarmed.
“Yeah. We can wait inside until they get here and then you can explain the listening device on top of my bookshelf and the wireless transmitter you just checked on the side of my house. We can look inside your truck and see if you have cable or surveillance equipment in there.”
“I don’t understand. Your name’s right here on the list of potential customers.” He lifted up the clipboard as if to show me. But I was ready.
He swung the clipboard at my face. I blocked the blow with my forearm and shot a straight right to his nose. He staggered backward. Blood trickled from his nose. He threw the clipboard at me and charged in. I ducked the board and caught him with a left hook to the rib cage as his punch glanced off my shoulder. Air and a groan exploded out of him at once. My hand stung. The back door of the van burst open. I spun toward it and caught a fist in the face. Right in the eye socket. Stars. A dark form behind them. I slipped the next punch and fired back a right that caught the man in the ear. Something banged off the back of my head from behind. I stumbled and went down.
I rolled over and saw the black man run around the van to the driver’s side and the white one whip open the door and jump into the passenger’s seat. The van peeled out and sped down the street, its back door wide open. It disappeared around the corner. I didn’t give chase. I’d talk to their boss soon enough.
I rolled onto my back and took a couple deep breaths. My left eye throbbed and poured out a stream of tears. I didn’t even try to open it. The back of my head ached. I ran a hand over it and felt a small, mushy lump below the crown. The faux cable man’s metal clipboard lay next to me on the ground. It now had a bend in it that would have fit perfectly around my head. He had to choose metal. What was wrong with plastic or even particleboard?
I sat up and everything throbbed harder for a few seconds then settled back into pulsating aches. I scaffolded up to my feet. My cell phone rang in my pocket. I didn’t even make the effort to answer it and let it go to voicemail.
Midnight greeted me at the front door. He licked my hand, probably more concerned with the changing color of the skin under my eye than his dinner. But when I filled his bowl, he went right at it.
I grabbed the bag of ice I kept in the freezer for aches and beatings and found the couch. I wished I’d had the foresight to visualize that violence sometimes leaves more than one sore spot and kept two ice bags available. The eye hurt most, but the head was more vital. I held the ice to the lump on my head with one hand and fished my phone out of my pocket with the other.
I figured Stone had made the call I ignored after his men reported to him what happened at my house. He probably wanted to gloat, complain, or feign ignorance. Mostly, he’d want to get information. He must have sent his men by to check their surveillance system because it hadn’t been transmitting conversations from any phone calls. That’s because I’d been making them outside. I checked the screen. No name. I didn’t recognize the number. It had a local area code.
I weighed returning the call to find out who’d made the original. Stone’s listening device was still on top of the bookshelf. The ice helped, but my head still ached and so did my eye. Getting up and going outside to make a call didn’t promise a big enough return against the discomfort it would cause. I could call the number later or let the listening device pick up my voice and feed it to the receiver. Stone would get a freebie, but at this point I didn’t care. The equipment would be returned to sender tomorrow and I couldn’t imagine a phone call where Stone would hear anything either to his advantage or detriment.
I tapped the number on the screen of my cell phone. The line picked up after two rings.
“Detective Sheets.” Maybe I’d been wrong about letting Stone listen in.
“Rick Cahill returning your call.” I set the ice bag down on the floor, slowly stood up, and walked toward the sliding glass door to the backyard. Midnight sidled up next to me. The recorder on top of the bookshelf wouldn’t pick up my voice through a sliding glass door.
“Actually, I was returning your call.” The grad student voice. “Hailey said you had information I needed to hear.”
Hailey. Detective Denton.
“I just had some questions about a cold case.” I slid the door open and stepped outside.
“I thought this was about Sophia Domingo’s murder.”
“No. I tried to explain to Detective Denton that it was about a cold case. It can wait.”
“What’s the case and what’s the information? Maybe one of the other teams is working on it during their down time.”
Could I really rat out my father? My blood? I wanted Trent Phelps’ killer to pay for his crime. I wanted the Phelps family to get their justice. I’d learned about justice from my father. He’d sworn an oath and given twenty-two years of his life in the pursuit of it. I’d grown up believing that, aside from his family, justice was the most important thing in my father’s life. But he’d proven that wrong.
“It’s not important. Sorry to waste your time.” I wasn’t ready to convict my father yet. There was still one holdout juror looking for indisputable truth. Me.
“If you’re withholding evidence in a criminal investigation, you can be charged with obstruction of justice.” The cop voice. “I’m sure you’re aware of that, Mr. Cahill.”
Justice. Obstructed. Upheld. My father had done both. So had I.
“I am. I just wanted to get a cop
y of a police report of a cold case. I’m investigating something on my own and thought you could help.”
“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, Mr. Cahill. Detective Denton warned me about you, but I like to form my own opinions. I’m forming one now.” Sheets hung up.
I didn’t know what kind of game I was playing either. Just that I wasn’t playing it well.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE PETER STONE Development Company was located on the twentieth floor of the Wells Fargo Building, the bronze and glass monolith on B Street in downtown San Diego. A woman straight off the cover of Glamour Magazine greeted me from behind a glass desk. Severe haircut, stunning eyes, Slavic cheekbones. She shot a quick glance at my black eye and then focused on my good one.
I played the same game that I’d played with Bob Reitzmeyer’s assistant yesterday. Rick Cahill. No appointment. He’ll see me. She made a call and twenty seconds later, her sister or beach volleyball teammate appeared and greeted me.
“Mr. Cahill?” She was six-two in heels, had a slight Russian accent, and wore a wraparound chocolate dress like a second skin. She looked me straight in both eyes and I almost forgot I had a black one. “Please follow me.”
I would have followed even without the please. She led me down a hall with glass offices that had glorious views of downtown and the harbor beyond. People were in discussions and examining what looked to be blueprints and architectural designs. This was a real business, not a façade. Energy vibrated through the walls. Dirty money or clean, Stone was a successful businessman. Which made his off-the-books exercises even more despicable.
The hall dead-ended at a brushed-copper door that reminded me of the drawbridge that allowed egress into Stone’s fortress on the hill in La Jolla. Stone liked what he liked and had the wealth to buy it.
“This way, Mr. Cahill.” The woman opened the door and ushered me into an office that matched the square footage of my entire house. I followed her in and didn’t even check behind the door for a thug this time.