Yesterday's Echo

by Matt Coyle

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Except I did.

  “You lied about not knowing the woman that the men were looking for.” Dan folded his arms across his chest, a sentinel on the Blue Line. “It was obviously Miss Malana, the woman who’d just spent the night at your house, and who you’d been looking for at the Shell Beach Motel three hours before we spoke to you. Why’d you lie, Rick?”

  I’d lied because Melody hadn’t wanted to get the police involved, back when she was innocent and fragile. Now I had a better idea why. But admitting it now would only make me look more guilty. And I wasn’t the only one holding things back. How could the cops be so certain the thugs were looking for Melody unless they questioned them? And then let them go.

  “It wasn’t obvious to me, Detective. But I guess it was to the big guy who jumped me. The same guy who worked security for Mayor Albright yesterday. You know, Chief Parks’s buddy.”

  I walked around the detectives to the door and held my breath when I turned the knob. Unlocked. I opened the door and walked down the hall, fighting the urge to run. Any second I expected to hear the clink of handcuffs and feel Moretti’s breath on my neck. I hit the door to the stairwell and thundered down the steps and out the back door of the Brick House.

  Still a perfect day in the Jewel by the Sea. The sun blinding down through a cloudless sky mocked me.

  Muldoon’s

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Muldoon’s was only a few blocks from the Brick House. Even if it had been a thousand, I wouldn’t have gone back inside and asked for a ride. Hopefully, I was done riding in cop cars, front seat or back, for the rest of my life.

  I threw a hand up to block the taunting sun and wished I’d remembered to grab my sunglasses when the cops escorted me away. I fled the Brick House parking lot and headed for Muldoon’s, passing by the front of the police station. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw brown curls and white teeth coming at me.

  “Rick!” Heather Ortiz waved as she hurried toward me from the front walkway of the Brick House. She wore her reporter’s uniform: sweater, jeans, heels, and leather shoulder bag. Just like the outfit she wore at the Shell Beach Motel. And like the one she’d worn when we’d slept together two years ago.

  Behind Heather, a man with a camera clicked photos of me.

  I moved my hand from the sun’s assault to block the camera’s and kept walking. The camera kept clicking.

  I’d become news. Again. I could make Muldoon’s in two minutes if I sprinted full-out the whole way. How much farther would I have to go to outrun the spotlight? I kept walking.

  “Rick.” Heather finally caught up to me. “Please, do you have a minute?”

  “Lose the photographer.”

  She stopped and turned to the man, his face one big camera lens. “Sam, I’ll meet you back at the car.”

  The photographer peeled off, and I continued walking with Heather nipping at my heels.

  “Come on, Rick.” She hustled up alongside of me and pulled a notepad and pen from her purse. “Why were the police questioning you?”

  “No comment.”

  “Did it have to do with the Windsor murder?”

  I stopped. “What murder? You called it a drug overdose in the newspaper yesterday.”

  “I got a scoop.” She flashed me a big dimpled smile, like having inside info on dead bodies was sexy. “But keep that to yourself. We want to break it in tomorrow’s edition of the U-T.”

  “No comment.” I started walking again, faster this time.

  Pepper and palm trees splattered shadows across the sidewalk, providing brief cover from the pressing sun. We passed the T intersection of Cave Street and Ivanhoe. Another couple blocks and I’d be back at Muldoon’s. Sanctuary from the intruding glare of the sun and the media.

  “Why not tell your side of the story so you can control the spin?” Heather’s high heels clacked along the sidewalk beside me.

  “There’s no side.”

  “Come on, Rick.” She put a hand on my arm. I kept moving forward. “Maybe if you would have talked to the press back in Santa Barbara the story wouldn’t still be following you.”

  I stopped and turned toward Heather, biting down anger. “It’s not a story, a ten-second sound bite, a prime-time TV show. My wife was murdered. And she was still dead when the media moved on to exploit someone else’s grief and she’s still dead now.” I stepped out of the shadow of a palm tree, the sun knifing my eyes. “No fucking comment.”

  I started for Muldoon’s again. First walking, then jogging, then running. The clacking of Heather’s heels fading, then silent in the background. My bum knee ached and Heather would never catch me, but I kept running. Still, no matter how fast I ran, my past stalked me like a coyote on the scent.

  I hit Muldoon’s at full sprint.

  Muldoon’s

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I pulled into my driveway a little after one a.m. Inside the house, I went through the kitchen to the back door to let Midnight in. I could usually hear him snorting outside, eager to greet me. But when I opened the door there was only the silence of the night. I threw on the backyard light and saw Midnight lying on his side next to the front gate, a circle of vomit pooled near his head.

  “Midnight!”

  I bolted across the yard to him. He didn’t move. His tongue hung out of the side of his mouth and his eyes were white slits underneath his eyelids. I pushed opened his lids, but his pupils hung unmoving at the top of his eye sockets. Tears welled in my eyes as I held my hand to his nose. It was dry and the temperature of the night. Then a weak brush of warm air grazed my fingers. He was alive!

  I scooped up some of the vomit in my hand. It looked like raw ground meat and was still warm. I ran into the kitchen and put the vomit into a Ziploc bag, then shoved it into my pocket and ran back out to Midnight. I picked him up. Eighty pounds of dead-weight. His head hung limp off to the side. I got him through the gate and into the backseat of my car and peeled out of the driveway. When I turned onto the main drag, I heard Midnight’s body slide along the backseat and thump against the armrest. He was running out of time.

  My vet in La Jolla only kept normal office hours, but I knew of a twenty-four-hour emergency clinic in Mission Valley. I’d been there before when a cat dashed out of the darkness in front my car one night on my drive home from work. Neither the cat nor I had been quick enough to save its life.

  I slammed to a stop in the clinic’s parking lot and pulled Midnight’s limp body from the car, and the memory of that cat leapt into my mind. I prayed that I’d been quick enough this time.

  As I ran to the entrance with Midnight in my arms, the sliding glass doors opened, and a woman in a green smock wheeled a gurney out to me.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know!” I set Midnight down on the gurney and we pushed him inside the clinic. “I came home and found him in the backyard. He was unconscious and there was vomit on the grass. He’s barely breathing.”

  She stopped in front of a counter in the center of the room and picked up a phone and pushed a button. “Dr. Ramsey, we have a code red.” She hung up the phone and turned to me. “I’m going to take your dog—what’s his name?”

  “Midnight.”

  “I’m going to take Midnight into the emergency room and the doctor will be out to ask you a few questions.” She wheeled Midnight toward swinging doors leading to a room off the left side of the clinic.

  Before she got there, the doors swung open and a man who looked barely out of his teens came into the room. “Dr. Ramsey” was stitched above the left pocket of his white coat. He stopped the gurney and pushed the rubber end of the stethoscope against Midnight’s chest for too long. The world grew silent and the night crept into the clinic.

  Finally, he pulled the instrument from Midnight’s chest. “I’ll be in shortly.”

  The woman nodded her head and wheeled Midnight through the swinging doors.

  “Is your dog on any medicat
ion?”

  “No.”

  “Has he eaten anything unusual recently?”

  I remembered the warm contents in my pocket. “I don’t know, but there was vomit on the grass where I found him.”

  I pulled out the bag and handed it to Dr. Ramsey. He examined it for a second then put the bag in the front pocket of his lab coat.

  “I’m going to pump Midnight’s stomach and expel anything that hasn’t been fully digested. I’ll also give him an enema to flush out any lingering toxins.” He put his hand on my shoulder in a strained attempt at bedside manner. “He’ll get the best care possible.”

  I wanted to believe him, but he looked like a kid wearing a coat with his father’s name on it. “Thanks.”

  He turned and hurried through the swinging doors into the emergency room.

  I slumped down into a chair along the wall. Dread tightened my throat and my eyes threatened tears. I scanned the clinic’s waiting room.

  I was all alone.

  I checked my watch again: 2:20 a.m. I’d been at the clinic an hour and the vet and his assistant were still with Midnight behind closed doors. My body felt like a clenched fist. I did another circuit of the clinic’s waiting room and watched the plaques, certificates, and pictures on the pale-green wall pass, again. I’m sure they all had some significance, but they never made it past my eyes into my brain. There wasn’t any room left in there behind the fear, the regret, the anger, and the memories.

  I’d had a dog as a kid. A basset hound named Baxter. We were both pups and, in my father’s eyes, had a lot to learn. He was strict with both of us, but back then only Baxter had the courage to rebel. One night when I was ten, our family went out for our awkward annual restaurant dinner. My father had always worn his SDPD dress blues to the dinner while he was still on the job. This was our first night out since Dad had been kicked off the force. He’d spent a lot of time earlier that night staring at his only two suits laid out on his bed. Once he decided, the rest of us put on our Sunday best and we all went out and tried to enjoy dinner.

  I’d forgotten to put Baxter in the backyard before we’d left. He’d rewarded me by chewing up the suit that my father had deemed second best and left lying on the bed. Dad took his belt to both of us that night. Things were never the same after that night, between Baxter and my father and my father and me.

  I never had wanted another dog until Kim, my last girlfriend, blindfolded me and drove me out to the back country in Alpine on my thirtieth birthday. When the blindfold came off, I was in a small pen with seven black Lab puppies. They were shy at first until one came over and licked my hand and sat down next to me.

  Midnight had been at my side ever since. Now he might never be again. Someone had tried to kill him. If I ever found out who, I’d give the cops a legitimate reason to arrest me.

  My temples throbbed and my breathing grew audible and then the vet’s assistant came through the door in the back.

  “The doctor will be in to talk to you in a minute.” Her brown eyes matched the stoic expression on her pale, oval face.

  “Is Midnight going to be all right?”

  “The doctor is the appropriate person to talk to. He’ll be in shortly.” She walked behind the counter in the middle of the room.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit! Is my dog alive?”

  Her face turned pink and she looked down at the computer on her desk. “Yes, he’s alive. I’m not . . . the doctor likes to be the one to talk about the condition of our patients. I’m sorry.”

  I noticed for the first time that the name Donna was stitched on her smock. “Thanks, Donna.”

  The doors swung open and Dr. Ramsey walked in.

  “Is Midnight going to be all right?”

  “I’m afraid it’s too early to tell.” Ramsey didn’t look like a kid anymore. “We’ll need to monitor him overnight.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “He’s resting comfortably. Why don’t you come back in twelve hours?” He went to the counter, and Donna handed him a clipboard. “Please fill this out.”

  I took the clipboard without looking at it. “Could you tell what he ate that made him sick?”

  “I’d have to run a toxicology screen to be absolutely certain, but it appears that someone put sleeping pills in some raw ground meat and fed them to your dog. You can have the police call me when you file a report.”

  I’d had enough of the police for one day.

  It was after three a.m. when I walked through my front door for the second time that morning. I had to be back at Muldoon’s in less than four and a half hours. The adrenaline that had surged through my body when I found Midnight and carried me through my hours of dread at the clinic now left me empty and spent.

  I zombied into my bedroom and pulled off my clothes, left them where they fell, and went to the nightstand to reset the alarm to give myself an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. But something was wrong with the nightstand. Its feet were slightly forward from the ruts in the carpet they’d made after years of resting in the same place. It looked like someone had pulled the nightstand out and hadn’t pushed it back in exactly the same place. The hair on my neck went up and the adrenaline awoke from its slumber and my stomach ground on empty.

  Someone had been inside my house. Someone had poisoned Midnight so they could search my home.

  Stone’s tough guys?

  I didn’t think anyone was still in the house, but I searched it anyway. Even under the bed. No bogeyman, but he’d left something behind. My nose told me there was something familiar, yet out of place on the carpet next to my bed. The stink of human sweat mixed with something else that I couldn’t identify, but knew I’d smelled somewhere before. Wherever it had come from, it was now the stench of my life being violated.

  I checked all the locks on the doors and the windows. None showed any tampering. Whoever broke in must have had a set of lock picks and knew how to use them. He’d gone through the back door so he could have time to work the lock without worrying about being seen. And he’d come prepared to deal with a dog. What else had he been prepared to deal with?

  I’d gotten rid of all things police after I’d been bumped off the force. Including my gun. Tomorrow I’d go to a gun shop and fill that void. I just hoped Midnight and I could survive the ten-day waiting period. I fell asleep with the stink of something foreign in my nose and without my trusted companion at the foot of my bed.

  Muldoon’s

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The alarm rang at seven fifteen a.m., and I reached over to turn it off. I didn’t know what day it was, but the surroundings looked familiar. Home. I staggered out of bed to let Midnight outside. Then it hit me like a left hook to the kidneys. Midnight! I dashed into the living room, grabbed the phone, and called the clinic where I’d left him.

  “Mission Center Animal General.” A woman’s voice.

  “I’m checking on my dog, Midnight. I brought him in last night.” I held my breath. My heart pounded inside my head.

  “Could you give me your name, please?”

  “Rick Cahill. My dog’s name is Midnight. I brought him in last night. He was poisoned.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. That’s horrible.” I heard the clatter of fingers on a keyboard and then silence. “This computer is so slow.”

  I tried to breathe.

  “There. Oh, there’s no status listed here. Let me go check with a doctor. I’m going to put you on hold, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I stood naked, clutching the phone to my ear, and listened to the clinic’s on-hold message warn about the dangers of heart-worms. The seconds passed as lifetimes. I paced the living room and noticed a picture on top on my entertainment center. It was of Midnight as a pup. He was about ten weeks old and sat staring directly into the camera. His ears were perked up and his head was tilted as if he’d asked a question. I didn’t have an answer.

  “Mr. Cahill?” A different woman’s voice spoke into the phone.

  “Yes?”
I stopped pacing.

  “This is Dr. Helmer. Midnight is awake, but still groggy. He answers to his name, which is a positive development. I want to keep him here for a few more hours to make certain that he’s retained all his motor functions.”

  I exhaled for what seemed like the first time that morning. Life was looking up. “When can I pick him up?”

  “Why don’t you wait until around noon? If there’s any change, I’ll call you.”

  I thanked her and hung up, but still held the phone in my hand. Someone had poisoned my dog and broken into my house. It would have been a good time to call the police. I thought of Dan and Moretti and the interrogation room.

  I put the phone back onto the receiver.

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket on my drive to work. I switched the call to my Bluetooth.

  “Rick.” The man’s voice was smooth and patronizing at the same time.

  I’d heard the voice before in person. It wasn’t any more appealing over the phone.

  “How did you get my cell number?”

  “Oh, Rick.” A dry chuckle. “In my world, a man like you can always be found.”

  Peter Stone. The man probably responsible for poisoning Midnight. I squeezed down my anger. I had a feeling he fed off of other people’s rage. Like a wildfire riding the Santa Ana winds.

  “Didn’t your goons find what they were looking for last night?”

  “You must have me confused with someone else.” He managed to sound sincere. “However, if you give me what Melody took from Adam Windsor, your life will improve.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And I didn’t. Whatever game Melody was playing no longer included me.

  “I actually admire you. At first I thought you were just a boorish waiter trying to impress a woman who was out of your league. But you took a beating for her. That took courage. And stupidity. But those two always go together, don’t they?” He paused, but I didn’t answer. “Now it’s time to be smart, and I think you’re capable of that. Do me this favor and your life will improve.”