Yesterday's Echo

by Matt Coyle

  “You’re not listening, Stone.”

  “You poor boy, you’re in love. She could always make them fall in love with her. That’s her greatest asset and her biggest fault.” The superiority left his voice and he sounded human. “Listen to me, Rick. Melody’s a puppet master and you’re jiggling on command. Give me what the police didn’t find and move on with your life.”

  “Melody didn’t give me anything.” The anger wrestled free from my grasp. “So call off your pit bulls and stay the fuck out of my life!”

  “You’re making a mistake, Rick. We could have been friends.”

  The line went dead.

  Turk walked into Muldoon’s around nine as I was cleaning off silver skin from a tenderloin. It was his day off. He held a newspaper in one hand and a quart of orange juice in the other. Half-zipped sweatshirt, board shorts, tangled red hair. A thought popped into my head that he’d heard Midnight had been poisoned and was there to lead a posse to track down whoever did it. My protector, my partner, my best friend. Just like old times. Or even four days ago.

  “You read the paper this morning?” He took a gulp of OJ and a drop of it rolled down his chin and nestled in stubble. He tossed the front page onto the table.

  “No.” I looked at the paper. A lot had changed in four days.

  A picture of me with my hand blocking my face sat below a headline entitled: Restaurant Manager Questioned In Windsor Murder. The article’s author: Heather Ortiz. She’d twisted my “no comments” from our little talk yesterday into the empty denials of a guilty man.

  Now it was murder. Now I was a suspect. Now it was Santa Barbara all over again.

  “You get a lawyer, yet?” Concern lifted Turk’s eyebrows.

  “I don’t need a lawyer.”

  Maybe I did, but I couldn’t afford one. The cops had me spooked, but I wouldn’t go into hock just because they were looking at me. When they stopped looking and started touching, then I’d mortgage my future for my freedom.

  “Read the article.” Turk tapped the newspaper. “They’re making you out to be a serial killer.”

  “I don’t need to read the article. I know the story.”

  Juan, the veggie prep, chose then to emerge from the walk-in refrigerator with a bag of carrots stacked on top of a box of broccoli and a flat of cauliflower.

  “Juan, why don’t you go pour yourself a Coke in the bar?” Turk nodded toward the kitchen door.

  The kid looked at me and then set the produce down on his workstation and left the kitchen.

  “Listen.” Turk’s voice was low and calm. “You should at least talk to a lawyer. The article rehashes Colleen’s—um, the whole Santa Barbara thing.”

  “I know. Once a killer, always a killer.”

  “Rick, this is serious.” Turk grabbed my shoulder with his huge hand and bore his eyes into me. The worry in them scared me a little. “You can’t just make wisecracks and hope this goes away. I can’t—you don’t want to go through Santa Barbara all over again.”

  Turk had visited me while I was in jail in Santa Barbara before SBPD dropped the charges. He was the only friend who ever did. He had tried to keep things light during the visit, but I could tell that seeing me locked up had been hard on him. It had been hard on me, too.

  “I know. You’re right. If the cops pull me in again, I’ll lawyer up.” In that instant the past few days didn’t matter anymore. We were friends again. “Thanks.”

  “I have to go out of town for a couple days.” He dropped his hand from my shoulder. “When I get back, why don’t you get away from the restaurant while this thing blows over? You haven’t had a vacation in a while. The time off will do you good.”

  Friends with a caveat.

  I’d become a liability. This was La Jolla, where image mattered. Old money didn’t want a murderer to be the face of a restaurant they frequented. Things had changed since Turk first hired me. Times were tough now. Every lost customer counted. The only man willing to give me a job seven years ago now couldn’t afford to have me seen doing it.

  “Okay.” I kept my head down and sliced the tenderloin on the meat table into steaks.

  The knife’s blade left deep channels in the wood.

  I arrived at the veterinary clinic at noon. A green-smocked young woman with an “Annie” name tag and a mop of blonde hair gave me a warm smile. “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to pick up my dog, Midnight.”

  “Ah, he’s a sweetie.” Her smile grew bigger. “Let me check with the doctor and make sure he’s ready to go out and conquer the world again.”

  She left the desk and disappeared into the back of the building. I went over to the waiting area and stood next to the chair that I’d spent a long two hours in last night. There was a coffee table full of magazines that I’d ignored while I’d worried about Midnight. Today, the front page of the U-T sat on top of a copy of Dog World. My partially obscured face stared up at me, the same Chargers hat on my head that I wore today. Might have to switch to a Padres cap tomorrow.

  I scanned the article while I stood over the table. It was as bad as Turk had said. Heather rehashed Santa Barbara and Colleen with emphasis on the fact that I was still a suspect up there and down here. A daily double. Moretti called me a “person of interest,” but left plenty of room to read between the lines. Muldoon’s was mentioned as the last place Windsor was seen alive. Free publicity, but at what cost? No mention of Melody. I wasn’t sure if I should feel better or worse.

  I heard Annie return to the desk. I flipped a couple pages and buried my story inside the newspaper, then dropped it onto the table.

  “He’s ready to go—” She shuffled some papers and found the one she’d been looking for. “—Mr. Cahill?”

  Her smile dissolved into recognition. I lucked into one of the few people left who still read newspapers. Annie handed me a bill and studied me like a juror in a courtroom. My life had suddenly regressed eight years. Recognition, suspicion, judgment. I avoided her eyes like a cuffed felon and handed her a credit card. Eight hundred and fourteen dollars. Money I might soon need for a lawyer, but it was a fair trade. I got back my best friend. One of the last I had.

  Annie gave me one last look. I avoided it again, and she disappeared into the back. A minute later, she led Midnight into the lobby on a leash. His head was down and his gait was measured as if he were trying out new legs. He didn’t see me at first, but then he must have caught my scent because his tail started wagging, his head came up, and he strained against the leash to reach me. I dropped to my knees and hugged him as he lathered my face with his tongue.

  Outside, the sun had broken through the clouds. Midnight needed help up into the car, a climb he’d normally ascend in one fluid leap. I rolled the window down, but he wasn’t yet ready to stick his head out and fight against the wind.

  I knew how he felt.

  Muldoon’s

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I was half a block from my home when I noticed a TV van parked in front of it. Channel Ten News. The TV people had caught up with Heather Ortiz. I was news. Again. Back under the microscope. The dread I’d felt at the vet’s late last night crept back up my throat. Maybe Turk was right. Maybe I should get out of town for a while. Or forever. I passed by my house and kept driving.

  I needed protection. And not just from the media.

  San Diego Gun was located in a strip mall on Convoy Street in Kearney Mesa. It sat next to a liquor store and a couple laps around the pole from a strip club. Guns, girls, and booze, all within one hundred feet of each other. Not even Walmart could offer that. The gun shop was crowded for a weekday afternoon. I guessed during hard economic times people wanted to protect whatever they had left. For me, that was my life and my dog.

  Home protection usually called for a shotgun, maybe a Remington Pump Action 870 or a Mossberg HS410. You take out the intruder and a piece of your wall all at the same time. I wanted something more delicate with a narrower focus. I scanned the glass cases dis
playing handguns. Semiautomatic pistols dominated the space: Berettas, Glocks, Sig Sauers, a couple of high-dollar Kimbers. Calibers from .22 to .45. I moved down to the last section of the display case that held the revolvers. Wheel guns. Colts, Smith & Wessons, Rugers. My father taught me to shoot as a kid with a wheel gun, his Smith & Wesson service revolver. Santa Barbara PD issued recruits Beretta 92S semiautos, but I always liked the feel of my father’s revolver.

  A clerk approached me from the other side of the case. Like all the employees, he was strapped; a Glock 9mm was holstered on the hip of his camo pants. Buzz cut, wifebeater stretched by a beer belly, tinted range glasses. He looked like he’d spent an earlier part of his life getting paid to carry a gun. In the service or on the force. Maybe both.

  “Anything in there you want to get a feel of?” he asked.

  I wanted to get the feel of a lot of them. But I was already out eight hundred bucks today. I needed something solid but not too expensive.

  “How about the Ruger SP101?”

  “Two-and-a-quarter or three-inch barrel?”

  “The snub.”

  He opened the case from his side and pulled out the revolver, opened its empty cylinder, and handed it to me. “Great conceal weapon. It’s a .357 Magnum, but you can shoot .38 Specials all day long on the range to mitigate the recoil. I use Winchester 110 grain jacketed hollow points packed in a full .357 Magnum load when I shoot mine. That’ll give you plenty of stopping power when the shit hits the fan. It’s got five shots. The three inch has six, but you really only need one.”

  The gun had some heft to it for a snub nose. I closed the cylinder, sighted it away from the clerk, and tried the trigger. The double action was smooth, crisp.

  “Show you anything else?”

  I dropped my hand to my side and felt the weight. Solid, reassuring, lethal. I set the gun down on the counter. “I’ll take this.”

  I filled out the paperwork and handed Buzzcut a credit card: $450 plus the government’s take. A lot of money, but less than I’d paid to save Midnight’s life. Seemed like a reasonable amount to protect my own. Now I just had to wait ten days. I’d known Melody less than half that time and had already been ambushed, fingered for a murder by both the cops and the press, had my house broken into, and my dog poisoned.

  Ten days?

  Buzzcut came back with my receipt.

  “We’ll call you in ten days to come in and pick up your weapon, Mr. Cahill.” He lowered his voice when he said my name, like he knew it wouldn’t be good to advertise. For either of us. “Remember to bring in your receipt.”

  Whatever vocation Buzzcut had performed in the past wearing a gun, he wasn’t doing it anymore. Neither was I. And if he knew not to shout out my name, he probably knew my past. Maybe he had a story, too. Maybe he could help a brother out.

  I checked the salesman name on the receipt: John.

  “John,” I learned in over the counter, my voice now low, “I know the ten days is moot, but do you know where I could find something to hold while I wait? Something without so much paperwork.”

  John straightened up and the former cop in him took over his posture. I thought for a second he was going to ask me to spread ’em.

  “Sir, your credit card is good, and if you don’t have any felony convictions, I’m sure the State of California will okay your purchase in ten days.” He kept his voice low, but it now had command presence. “But if I heard you correctly, you’re asking me to break the law. Seems like you’re in enough trouble all by yourself. I’ll forget what I heard since you once wore a badge. I can see why you don’t wear one anymore.”

  I left the gun shop nearly five hundred dollars poorer, empty-handed, and with a worse reputation than when I’d entered. But when I got to the car, Midnight still wagged his tail.

  The TV van was gone when I got home. For now. I parked in the driveway and took Midnight inside, gave him a Milk-Bone, then went back outside and started up my car again. I drove around the corner and found my favorite secluded parking spot. I didn’t want anyone to know when I was home. Not the media, not Stone’s thugs, not even my neighbors. My life was now empty driveways, averted eyes, and glances over the shoulder.

  The message light on my answering machine pulsed staccato when I got back to the house. I let it blink. Reporters, friends, family. What would I say to them, “No, I didn’t kill this one either”? The one friend who didn’t ask questions and trusted me unconditionally was alive and safe again. I owed it to Midnight to keep him that way. Whoever had broken in might come back when I wasn’t home. I wasn’t going to leave Midnight there alone to protect it.

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket for the ninth or tenth time that day. A call from the animal clinic would have been the only one that demanded a pick up. Midnight was safe with me now. So I was free to ignore calls for the rest of the day or longer.

  I checked caller ID and answered.

  “Rick!” Kim, my most recent ex-girlfriend, but still close. “I’ve been calling all day. You had me worried. Are you all right?”

  She obviously still subscribed to the U-T. “I’m fine. Sorry. It’s been a busy day.”

  “I thought maybe—”

  “That I’d been arrested?” Not yet.

  “Rick, my God!” Her voice rising with fear. “What’s going on?”

  “The police just asked me some questions.” I kept my voice calm to try to settle Kim’s nerves. “This thing will all be sorted out. Don’t worry.”

  “Can I do anything to help?”

  It wasn’t a throwaway line for Kim. She meant it. Her heart was pure, her intentions sincere, and her love unconditional. That had been the problem. She was too good a woman to tie herself to a man who could never return what she so easily gave. I figured that out early. Kim hadn’t yet.

  “Well, there is something.” I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. I didn’t want to worry her more than the newspaper already had. “Midnight’s not feeling well, and I’m going to be real busy for the next few days. Would you mind if he stayed with you for a bit?”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Her voice had the worry I’d tried to avoid.

  “He got into something that made him sick, but the vet said he’s going to be fine. I just want someone who’ll give him the TLC I can’t right now. I know that’s you, Kimmy.”

  She was the girlfriend who’d given me Midnight on my birthday three years ago. I knew she missed being with him as much she missed being with me.

  “Oh, poor boy. Of course I’ll watch him. I have to work late tonight. You can drop him by on your way to work.” She still knew my schedule. “The spare key is still under the flowerpot in the backyard. You remember, don’t you?”

  There was a longing in her voice that made me feel guilty on a day when half of San Diego already thought I was.

  Muldoon’s

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I got to Muldoon’s at five thirty, early so as to avoid customers and most of my crew. My plan was to hide in the office most of the night unless it was busy. Kris was hostessing and she could handle most anything on her own on a slow night. She’d work late and I’d just be there to put the restaurant to bed. I’d worry about the employee costs later.

  I’d parked down by the beach and taken the long cement staircase that led up to Prospect Street from Coast Boulevard. I entered Muldoon’s through the back door of the liquor room that was behind the bar. If the media was camped out in front of the restaurant, they’d never know I was there.

  The bar was empty except for Pat, who was wiping down shot glasses. He gave me a surprised look as I entered through the back door. “Shit! You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.”

  “No. I didn’t mean that, but since you mentioned it—”

  “Not now, Pat.” I shook my head and headed out the bar on my way to the office.

  I didn’t make it.

  “Rick!” Kris stopped me at the hoste
ss stand, and I waited for the question.

  I got one, just not the one I’d expected.

  “Where have you been? Mark’s been trying to get ahold of you all day. He’s got food poisoning and can’t find anyone else to wait tables tonight. There’s no one but you to work his shift.”

  So much for my plan. I wondered how our regulars would like their slaughtered cattle being served to them by a murderer.

  I’d deal with the customers as needed. I’d deal with my crew right now.

  “Kris, go grab everybody who’s here and bring them into the bar.”

  She gave me a puzzled look.

  “Now!”

  She hustled into the dining room, and I went back into the bar.

  “It seems like that reporter has an axe to grind.” Pat put a shot glass back on the shelf above the cash register. His eyebrows lifted on his round face. “Isn’t she the one who did a story on the restaurant a couple years back? The one who took you home?”

  Never spend an all-nighter drinking tequila with a bartender.

  “What’s your point?” I asked.

  “Maybe she’s bitter. Mad that you never asked her out again.”

  “Doubt it. The cops have a high-priority case and they want the public to think they’re doing something. It’ll pass. In the meantime, we need to keep doing our jobs.”

  Kris walked into the bar trailed by Blake, the grill man; Juan, the prep cook; Brittney, the waitress; and the busboy, Justin. They stopped just inside the door and looked at me with worried eyes, except Blake, who looked pissed to have been pulled off the grill. My kind of employee.

  “I’ll say this once.” My voice was firm, but not loud. I scanned the face of each employee before I continued. “There is some shit in the newspaper that makes me look bad. There will probably be more of the same on the TV news. I haven’t done anything wrong, but they’ll make it sound like I have. None of that matters. When we’re in this restaurant, we do our jobs. Nothing else. I don’t care what you do in your free time, but the bullshit on the news will not be discussed inside these walls. If customers ask you about it, you don’t know anything, because you don’t. If any reporters try to enter the restaurant, you ask them to leave. If they don’t, you get me. If you want to talk to reporters on your own time, that’s your right. If it affects your ability to perform your duties at Muldoon’s, you’ll lose your job.”