Yesterday's Echo

by Matt Coyle

  We drove him up to a house at the top of Pearl Street instead of back to his car or the police station. Dad walked the man up to the front door and waited until he went inside. When he came back to the car, I asked him why he hadn’t arrested the man for drunk driving. He told me that the man’s son had just been killed in a car accident. I felt for him, but as a cop’s kid I still saw things in black and white. Then my father told me the same thing he’d tell me a year later after he was kicked off the force and accused of being a bagman for the mob.

  “Sometimes you have to do what’s right even when the law says it’s wrong.”

  He never said another word to me about his dismissal from the force. He and my mom fought about it behind the bedroom door almost every night. But if I never asked him about it, I could still hold out hope that somehow he’d done the right thing.

  I wasn’t a kid anymore and the only black and white in my life now was the squad car that pulled into my driveway when the police arrested Melody. But even after years of denial, hatred, and shame, I was still my father’s son. He didn’t run and neither would I. But I couldn’t stand still and wait for the cops or Stone or the newspaper to write my story.

  I’d write my own.

  I went into my office and turned on the computer and Googled public storage businesses in San Diego. I found the website for the complex I’d used to store my father’s property after he died. It was one of a chain of fourteen facilities around San Diego. The one I’d used was on Morena Boulevard, a couple miles from where I lived. Windsor’s father, Jules, lived in La Jolla, but I didn’t know about Adam. He’d only been out of prison for three weeks when he was killed. Hell, I didn’t even know if the key Melody had hidden was his. Or the flash drive, for that matter. But I had to have a place to start.

  I dialed the number given on the website on my cell phone. A young male voice answered, late teens or early twenties.

  I thought about posing as a cop, but quickly changed my mind. It was an easy act for me, but one that wasn’t worth the risk. Impersonating a police officer was jail time. Then I remembered Jules Windsor at Melody’s arraignment that morning.

  “I need your help, young man.” I tried to sound old, important, and sad. “Can you tell me if my son was renting a storage unit at your facility?”

  “Sorry, sir. We can’t give out the names of our clients.”

  “I understand that, but I don’t know what to do.” I let go a long sigh. “My son, Adam, was murdered and I know he was renting a storage unit. But I don’t know where. The things he stored there are all I have left of him now.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear that.” A sigh of his own. “But I’m not allowed to give out names. I could get into trouble.”

  “Please, don’t make this difficult, young man.” Haughty old money replaced the sadness in my voice. “My name is Jules Windsor of Windsor Bank and Trust. My son, Adam, was murdered. I’m sure you’ve seen it on the news. If you’d like me to go over your head, I will. I’m sure your employer and the local media would be happy to know that you stood in the way of my claiming my son’s last possessions on earth.”

  I wasn’t proud of impersonating a grieving father and bullying a kid who was just doing his job. But this is what my life had become. I wouldn’t play by the rules anymore. Peter Stone didn’t believe in rules, and Detective Moretti broke them when convenient. The rules had me teetering on the edge of a murder charge. I had to play it my way now. But how many rules could I break before I wasn’t me anymore?

  I buried that thought and let silence work on the kid.

  He finally broke and looked up Adam Windsor on his computer. Nothing. I ran the ploy with the other thirteen facilities in the chain and was only shut out by two of them. A manager and a whiskey-throated woman who didn’t care if I was “God looking to clear out Jesus’s stuff.” She wouldn’t budge.

  None of the ones who’d checked their files came up with Windsor. Next up, I struck out with a California company that had twelve San Diego locations and a national one that had twenty. Two hours and forty-six calls and I had nothing to show except that I was good liar. Not something I could put on the résumé when I looked for the next job.

  Seven calls and a half hour later, I tried the ploy on a facility in Sorrento Valley, northeast of La Jolla. As soon as I gave the Windsor name the young woman on the phone was all sympathy.

  “Oh, my gosh, I watched it on the news. I’m so sorry for your loss. Let me look it up.” I felt a twinge of guilt at suckering the woman, but rode it out in silence. The clattering of fingers on a keyboard echoed over the phone. “Hm. I didn’t find one under Adam’s name, but I did find one under yours.”

  Coincidence? I figured if a man like Jules Windsor had extra stuff lying around, he’d just buy another house to put it in.

  “Really?” Playing for time. “I don’t recall renting one.”

  “Well, you may have forgotten about it.” More clattering of keys. “You’ve had it for eight years, the payments are direct with-drawals from your bank account, and your son was the first person to access the locker since I’ve worked here.”

  Eight years. The newspaper had said Adam Windsor got locked up eight years ago. Dean Slater, one of Muldoon’s regular customers, said that Jules Windsor had kicked Adam out of his house for dealing drugs when he was a teenager. Maybe after the big drug bust, Jules had packed away any remnants of Adam to rid himself of his memory. Then Adam gets out of prison and the old man gives him the key to his old stuff.

  What could be hidden away in there that was eight years old and had gotten Adam killed?

  “Oh, yes.” Back in character. “My wife must have made the arrangements. Could you tell me what unit number that is?”

  “Three seventeen. It’s the third building on the right after you go through the security gate, about half way down.” She took a big gulp of breath. “Oh, that reminds me, you probably don’t have the code to the gate, do you?”

  “No.” But I had a simple plan to get past that obstacle.

  “Well, I can’t give it out. But if you stop by the office when you come here, I’ll open the gate for you.”

  “Oh, that’s very kind.” Not the sort of attention I needed. “But, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to come by today. I’m making the funeral arrangements. I’ll come tomorrow or the next day and I would appreciate your help then. Thank you very much, young lady.”

  After I got off the phone, I found the storage key where I’d stashed it in my office desk drawer and put it in my pants pocket. Then I went into my bedroom closet and rummaged around until I came out with a backpack. I grabbed a flashlight out of the junk drawer in the kitchen, stuck it in the backpack, put on my Padres cap, and went outside to my car.

  My eyes were in the rearview mirror as much as on the road during the drive to Sorrento Valley. The hairs on the back of my neck were at half-mast. I still had the itch that I was being watched, but it had faded into the resignation that I was just paranoid.

  Muldoon’s

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  San Diego Self-Storage sat on Sorrento Valley Road across from the Coaster railroad tracks that connected North County with downtown. To the west, the scrub-brush-covered terrain pushed up from the Rose Canyon fault, above Interstate 5, until it peaked into Soledad Mountain. The cross was just visible on top.

  I parked a half block south of the facility and got out of my car to surveil it on foot. It sat back from the street on a low rise and had a small parking lot next to the manager’s office. The office had a large tinted window that faced the security gate across the lot. A sign on the gate read “Only One Vehicle Per Gate Code.” A closed-circuit camera jutted out from a hedge and targeted the gate entrance.

  I went back to my car and grabbed a screwdriver from the glove compartment, unscrewed my license plates, and tossed them in the trunk. I got in the car and watched traffic speed past on Sorrento Valley Road and waited. Then waited some more. Finally, after about an hour,
a car slowed past me and turned up into the storage facility. I started my car and followed it up the driveway, then hit redial on my cell phone and put on my Bluetooth.

  The lady in the car ahead of me stopped at the gate, stuck an arm out the window, and started punching numbers into the keypad on a metal stanchion. The same woman I’d talked to earlier answered the phone in the manager’s office.

  “I need your help.” This time I went with my own voice. “My wife thinks she may have lost her necklace in your office the other day. Can you check your lost and found? It’s got a little silver heart pendant on it.”

  I didn’t know if they had a lost and found, but I figured, at least, there’d be a drawer where they kept lost items. Anything to keep her looking anywhere but out the window.

  “I’ll check.”

  Bingo.

  I’d gotten pretty good at deceiving people. I convinced myself that the ends justified the means and added self-deception to my growing list.

  The gate opened for the car ahead of me. I followed it though without having to enter a code. The bill of my hat was pulled down over my eyes, and I kept my head angled away from the surveillance camera. I’m sure passing through the security gate without entering an access code wasn’t a capital offense, but it could be considered trespassing and I didn’t need any heat.

  The woman came back on the line. “I’m sorry, sir. I couldn’t find a necklace.”

  “Damn. Well, thanks anyway.”

  I turned down the third row of buildings and followed it all the way down, passing unit 317. I parked around the corner at the far end, grabbed my backpack, and got out of the car. If anyone came snooping, I didn’t want my car parked in front of Adam Windsor’s unit. Surveillance cameras sprouted out of the side of the buildings about every fifty yards. I kept my head down and traversed the storage units on my way to 317. Most of the blue corrugated metal doors I passed had digital locks. I worried that Windsor’s unit would too and that I’d sent myself on a fool’s errand.

  I was relieved to see that 317 had the old-style lock. I put the key in and held my breath while I turned it. A click and the lock opened. I felt relieved and nervous at the same time. Now I was committed. I rolled the door up, slipped inside, then rolled it back down, sealing myself in darkness. I fumbled in the backpack, found the flashlight, and turned it on. I scanned the room and saw a light switch on the side wall. I flicked on the overhead light and was surprised by the orderliness of the space.

  Two dressers, a disassembled bed frame, and an immense head-board took up the back wall. A golf bag full of clubs, snow skis, a snowboard, and a bookshelf were the next row out from the wall. The rest were boxes, all shapes and sizes, taped, and stacked high, except for a wooden desk and office chair near the door. A black canvas laptop computer case sat on the middle of the desk and behind it was a hutch full of file folders and two old VHS videotapes. The name “Adam” had been scratched into the side of the desk long ago.

  The computer inside the case was a newer model Sony VAIO, so someone must have put it in the storage unit recently. Adam after he got out of prison? I pushed the on button. It still had some battery life, but asked for a password once it booted up. I tried every variation of Adam and Jules Windsor, front and back, that I could think of. No luck.

  I turned off the computer and pulled the two VHS tapes out of the hutch. The first was labeled “Angela.”

  The second one said “Melody.”

  Something told me the tape wouldn’t be a video of Melody opening presents under the Christmas tree in happier times with Windsor. Melody had taken the key to the storage unit from Adam for a reason and it wasn’t to gather up fond mementos. What was on Melody’s tape? Scenes of her prostituting herself like Angela Albright? Had she taken the key before or after Windsor’s death?

  The police thought Melody was guilty and they didn’t even know about the key and the video. Sooner or later they would. Beads of sweat suddenly popped along my hairline. If the tape had images Windsor used to blackmail Melody and the police found me with it, I was an accessory. Before or after the fact didn’t matter. I’d do time.

  I wiped down the first two tapes with my shirt to rid them of fingerprints and put them back in the hutch. If the police ever found this storage unit, they’d have to determine it was a crime scene to dust for fingerprints. It was a long shot, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I started to wipe the Melody tape and then the words she shouted to me as she was being arrested floated through into mind. “I didn’t do it, Rick! You have to find the truth!”

  Would she really have wanted me to find the truth if she was guilty? Was the truth in my hands right now? If there was something on the tape that could help Melody, why hadn’t she told the police? My father’s words came out of my mouth, “Sometimes you have to do what’s right even when the law says it’s wrong.”

  The law and right and wrong could be sorted out later. My gut told me what to do now. I put the video in my backpack, then grabbed the other one and stuffed it in as well.

  I pulled the file folders out of the hutch and perused them. They were filled with eight-year-old bank statements, electric bills, and other paper trails of a life frozen in time. The first two desk drawers held 1980’s baseball cards, a schoolkid’s knickknacks, and some dated Hustler magazines. The bottom drawer contained an old Panasonic cassette camcorder. Probably the one used by Windsor to take the videos of Angela that he later transferred onto the flash drive. It was empty. I put it back in the drawer.

  Then I put on my backpack and wiped down the files of potential prints and put them back in the hutch. Lastly, I wiped the desk and the hutch down. A bang on the metal door outside startled me and I jammed my knee up into the underside of the desk. Something brushed against the top of my leg and fell to the floor.

  “Excuse me.” The voice outside sounded like the woman I’d talked to on the phone.

  My mind spun. If she opened the door, I didn’t have a story to get me out of this one. But silence wasn’t going to keep that door from opening. I put my hand over my mouth to neuter the chance of recognition.

  “Yes?”

  “We have to close in about a half hour, so please be finished by then.”

  “Okay.” I checked my watch: 6:04 p.m.

  I put my ear to the cool, corrugated metal door and listened for the sound of an exit. Nothing. I hadn’t heard her arrive, so it would make sense that I wouldn’t hear her leave. I stepped back to the desk and picked up the file folder that had fallen when I banged the desk with my knee.

  “Mr. Windsor?” The woman hadn’t left yet. “Is that you?”

  “Yes.” I tried to remember how I sounded on the phone. I muffled my voice with my hand again, just in case.

  “Where’s your car?”

  This gal was too inquisitive to have an unlocked door between us. I might be able to age my voice, but my physical appearance would take magic.

  “It’s around the corner. I wasn’t sure where the storage unit was.”

  “That’s your car?”

  My seven year-old Mustang didn’t fit the image of a La Jolla banker.

  “If you must know, it’s my son’s.” Haughty. “Now would you mind leaving me in peace while I sit with the memory of my boy?”

  “Sure.” Chastised. “Sorry.”

  I sat quietly in the desk chair and let silence convey an old man’s sad irritation. When I thought she was gone, I opened the file that had fallen from its hiding place. Inside was a letter-sized envelope. I opened it and pulled out the single, folded piece of paper inside. It was an Elko, Nevada, birth certificate from 1979. The name on the certificate was Louise Abigail Delano. Mother, Elizabeth Nelson Delano. No father listed.

  Who was Louise Abigail Delano? A girlfriend? A mark? I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and Googled the name. There were thousands of hits for Louise Delano and plenty for Abigail Delano, but none for the three names put together. Louise Abigail Delano must have grown up to be someone import
ant or had never grown up at all. I Googled the mother’s name and got nothing either.

  Windsor thought she was important enough to hide separately in a storage unit that held, undoubtedly, blackmail-worthy video-tapes right out in the open. Maybe there was more about her that was hidden. I slid the chair out, bent down, and looked up under the desk. There was another file wedged in a seam between the underside of the desk and the side of the top drawer on the right. I pulled the file out and opened it. Inside was a black notebook-style ledger.

  I checked my watch: 6:14 p.m. I still had time.

  I opened the ledger. The columns on the left had dates, the ones in the middle had the names Stamp and Scarface, and the right had dollar amounts. Page after page. The entries started fifteen years ago and were listed every week or two. The dates were spread out over five years. Amounts ranged from one hundred to five hundred dollars. Stamp was the only name listed for the first year and the amounts were always one hundred dollars. Once the name Scar-face starting showing up on the ledger, Stamp’s amounts increased to two fifty. Scarface got five hundred every week.

  Drug deals? Windsor had gone down for selling heroin, but the amounts were too small for a big-time dealer. The video of Angela proved he’d run at least one woman back in the day. One to five hundred could cover a variety of sexual acts. That made more sense, but Angela’s video had shown a lot more johns and janes than just two.

  The ledger must have meant something else. Like the notebook that I found in my dad’s closet when I was eleven years old. It took years for me to understand what the dollar amounts that my father had written down meant. I wasn’t a kid not wanting to believe the worst about my father anymore. The amounts in Windsor’s ledger were payoffs to cops. Money paid to keep the police off Windsor’s back so that he could run his women and deal “H” without the threat of being arrested.