by Matt Coyle
We went all the way down to an asphalt path that ran along the bottom of the hill. More nothing. It had taken two solid hours. It was a cool day, but I was sweating, and my side reminded me that a biker had tried to punt me a few nights ago.
“I guess we struck out. Should we call it a day?” Moira asked.
“Not yet.”
Moira frowned, and I caught a hint of relief in Trey’s face. I led them up the path to our starting point and began the search all over again. This time I stuck the metal detector into any opening I could find in each bush. My mobility was limited and cactus needles impaled my jacket arm and glove. I moved the wand in as close to figure eights as possible, but mostly I was only able to shove it in small, back-and-forth movements. Halfway back down the hill and still nothing.
Trey got more and more twitchy. He stroked his blond dreadlocks so hard and so often that some of the dread was coming out of the lock, resulting in some straight, flyaway hairs. Audible exhales left him with each empty search. It seemed almost as if he were trying to unearth evidence that would free him and not some convicted murderer in San Quentin he didn’t even know.
We were at least one hundred yards from the blue sewer pipe and Moira’s exhales of irritation were starting to match Trey’s ones of anxiety. I was tired of the whole thing too. Each jab into a bush brought a fresh array of needles stuck into my clothes and, occasionally, into the skin of my wrist when my jacket separated from my gloved hand. But I pushed on. The life of a kid who’d grown into a man in prison may depend on it. However, two times down the hill was going to be it. I had about another third to go.
The next patch of bushes was practically jailed by a group of cactus. I looked for any opening that wouldn’t force me to push my whole body up against the cactus. I finally found one down low. I had to get down on my belly, angle the wand just inches off the ground, and stretch my arm out as far as possible. Cactus needles bit into my wrist as I tried to move the wand in tiny circular motions.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
I pulled out the wand and then slowly pushed it back in. Nobody breathed. It could have been anything. Some change. A screwdriver, a false positive.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
“Holy shit!” An explosion out of Fellows.
I looked up at him. He was playing hot potato with his feet. Then he stopped and his shoulders dropped. The realization hit him. If we’d found the murder weapon, he’d have to testify. Against the Raptors.
“You get this?” I asked Moira.
“Yeah.” She pulled her face from behind the handheld video camera. She looked surprised, but excited too.
We may have found the prize.
Still on my belly, I peered through the tiny opening into the bush. I couldn’t see anything but weeds, dirt, and dark. I didn’t have enough protection to wade through the cactus into the bush, but I had an idea.
I stood up, picked the cactus needles out of my wrist, glove, and jacket, then brushed the dirt off my clothes.
“Moira,” I tossed her my car keys. “Could you go up and grab the duct tape out of the tool kit in the trunk?”
“Why do you need duct tape?”
“To tape my phone to the metal detector and see if we can get video of what’s in the bush.”
“Why don’t you just use the video camera?”
“I can’t reach all the way in, and the opening is too small to get the camera through.”
“Okay.” She headed up the path.
I turned to Fellows after Moira was out of earshot. “If there’s a golf club in there, you gonna step up and testify?”
More dread pull and no eye contact. “Yes.”
I looked up the hill to the blue cement sewer cap that was a hundred or so yards away. “Lunsdorf told you fifty yards from the sewer, right?”
“Yeah. Maybe he got confused because it was at night.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I studied Fellows, and he continued to avoid my eyes. “Is there some kind of award for evidence that the Eddingtons are offering that I don’t know about?”
Fellows stopped stroking his dreads and his blond eyebrows pinched together. “I don’t think so.”
He looked like the thought had never even occurred to him. This dope-smoking drug dealer was going to risk his life to testify against a biker gang member solely because it was the right thing to do. Maybe that was the puzzle, and I was just too cynical to understand.
Moira returned with the tape a few minutes later. I taped my iPhone to the bottom of the circular coil at the end of the metal detector’s wand, careful not to tape over the tiny camera or camera app. The phone’s metal would have set off the metal detector’s annoying beeping, so I turned off the detector. We’d already found whatever was made of metal under that bush. Now we just had to see what it was. I turned the camera on to video, made sure it was recording, then threaded it through the opening of the bush.
I tried to duplicate the movements that had earlier set off the detector, then held it steady in various positions. When I pulled out the device, I had four eyes staring at me and, again, no one breathing. Including me. I flipped up the wand, turned off the camera, and cut away the tape with mini-scissors from a Leatherman tool attached to my keychain.
Trey looked over my shoulder when I hit “play” on the phone’s camera app. Moira wedged in next to me. The display was almost completely dark and the first images were blurred as the camera had been unable to auto-focus as I’d moved the wand back and forth. It came to the section where I’d held the phone steady. Dark images came into focus: weeds, rocks, thin branches, leaves, dirt. Nothing that looked metal or man-made. Another blur as the camera moved to another steady position. More of the same.
Trey blew locomotive breaths over my shoulder. Moira shook her head. There were probably some coins hidden under the debris on the ground or a long-ago-buried aluminum can that had set off the detector earlier. Steven Lunsdorf’s third-party confession was nothing but inadmissible hearsay without the golf club. The fool’s errand began to feel foolish.
The final steady position came into view. The same as the others. Nothing but organic crap that you’d expect to find under a bush. The only difference was that the images were a little lighter, as this final static shot was closest to the opening of the bush. The image blurred again as I had started to pull the wand out of the bush. A tiny splash of rust color flashed at the edge of the screen. It could have been a tiny rock, but it was just different enough from everything else on the screen for me to take another look. Fellows and Moira had already backed away.
I went back to the last image just as the picture blurred and hit pause. The rust color wasn’t a rock. It looked to be a splash of color on something else. Something long and thin. I spread my fingers across the face of the phone and the image grew larger but more blurred.
Blurry, but clear enough. The rust color was rust on a cylindrical piece of metal.
A golf club shaft.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Moira. Call Buckley.”
I heard feet shuffle behind me. Trey’s breath, again, pistoned over my shoulder. “Holy shit.”
Moira burst over and grabbed my hand holding the phone. “Oh my God. Is that really what I think it is?”
“I’ve played enough golf to know that it can’t be anything but.” Our eyes locked and hers went bigger than usual. “Call Buckley.”
She took out her phone, hit Buckley’s number, and offered the phone to me. “You should tell him.”
After pissing off Buckley yesterday with my interrogation of Jack Eddington, I welcomed the chance to be a hero and an opportunity to stay on the case. I settled, instead, for being a decent guy. “No. You got it.”
She smiled, and her tough-girl image melted into something nice. Two seconds later, “Mr. Buckley, we found a golf club.” The marbles left the blender and she sounded like a schoolgirl saying “yes” to the prom.
I could hear Buckley’s hoot through Moira’s ear. Sounded like he’d
called the cows home.
She gave him the details and the name of the streets of the intersection below us, Draper and Gravilla, which were closer and would give easier access to the bush than from the death house on the cul-de-sac up the hill.
While Moira talked, I e-mailed the video to Buckley’s and my e-mail addresses. I wanted copies in case something happened to my phone.
“He wants to talk to you.” She handed me the phone.
“Good job, son.” Buckley sounded happy and sober. A rare combination. “Our Hail Mary may have been answered and we can free that young man. I wish I could get over there, but I’m on lunch break at court.”
“We have it covered.” Although I wasn’t sure if I still had a job.
“Stay there and protect the scene. I’ll call Chief Moretti and give him the good news. I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed.” A dusty chuckle. “He may go to the scene himself. The Eddington case helped put him on the road to becoming the chief. That and the Windsor mess.”
Moretti. He’d be thrilled to find out that I’d helped to unravel his most famous arrest. I didn’t look forward to feeling his rat eyes on me while crime-scene technicians dug up the murder weapon. The one never found eight years ago that was likely to get him a headline in the San Diego U-T newspaper. And not a flattering one.
“I’ll leave Moira here to protect the scene and take Fellows home. I don’t think we want him hanging around when the other side shows up.”
“You’re right. We want to keep him under wraps for as long as we can. Once the police see his affidavit, they’ll be all over him like horseshit on a stablehand’s boot.”
“I’ll get him home and tell him to lie low. You talk to Jack about me?”
“I got you today. The golf club may get you to the end.”
“Thanks, Buckley.” A thought that had been itching me since we found the golf club wedged its way back under my skin. “What if they find Randall’s and his family’s DNA on the golf club, but no one else’s?”
“You sure know how to float a turd in the punch bowl, son.”
Fellows didn’t say a word on the drive to his house. He sat slumped down, peering out the car window like he was hiding from the world. Getting a jump-start on the rest of his life.
I pulled into the driveway of the house that fronted his cottage. He started to get out without a look or a word. I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“You got somewhere you can hide your stash for a while?”
“Maybe.” He gave me wide eyes and raised eyebrows. “Why?”
“Once the DA reads your affidavit, the police are going to take an interest in you. Time to take a break on dealing the weed and lie low.”
“That’s my livelihood, man.”
“Keep it up, and you won’t have to worry about food or rent or freedom for a long time.”
“I gotcha, bro.” He nodded his head and got out of the car with the energy of a geriatric who’d lost his walker.
It was nearing one o’clock and I was hungry for lunch. But I wanted to keep an eye on Trey. See if anyone came by, or whether he met with the big Raptor dude again. Even with today’s find corroborating his story, I wasn’t yet convinced that Trey was a piece of only one puzzle. Food would have to wait.
I lucked into a parking spot a half block from Trey’s house. I pulled my binoculars out of the trunk and set up in the backseat, spying out the back window.
After a half hour my neck had a crick in it and my stomach was a grinding hole. My only solace was that I wasn’t peeping through motel windows at naked bodies and breaking up marriages.
Trey hadn’t come out to the street, and no one had gone through the driveway back to his little studio. Another half hour passed. The crick in my neck had turned into a wrench and the hole in my belly, a chasm. Sore and hungry, I could handle, but stupid had started to creep in. I dropped the binoculars on the seat next to me and slowly rotated my neck. It crackled like a biodegradable bag of potato chips. I was about to climb out of the backseat when a yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulled into the driveway fronting Trey’s cottage. I picked the binos back up.
A blond woman got out of the Bug. I only got her profile, then her backside as she walked behind the main house, presumably to Trey’s cottage. She wore a Lycra workout outfit that showed off a fit body. She looked familiar, and I tabbed her for Trey’s sister from the picture on the wall of his cottage.
I waited, the binos pinned on the driveway. A few minutes later, Trey and the woman came out to the car. He carried two duffel bags. Each big enough to carry his stash of weed. One bag for the weed, the other for his clothes? Looked like he hadn’t just found a hideout for his weed, he’d found one for himself too. Smart. If the Raptors or the police came looking, they wouldn’t find him at home.
Trey and the woman got into her car and it backed out of the driveway. I had to follow them and find Trey’s new hideout in case he planned to hide from Buckley and me too.
I slid over the console into the driver’s seat and started up the Mustang. The Bug made a left onto Jewel, heading toward Grand Avenue. I eased my way behind the car, staying half a block back to avoid detection.
The Bug turned left onto Garnet at the light and then north on Ingraham, heading out of the north end of Pacific Beach into La Jolla. Trey’s sister lived in Ocean Beach, 180 degrees in the opposite direction.
I was pretty certain the blond woman was Trey’s sister. I was pretty uncertain where she and Trey were going. The Bug made a right on La Jolla Mesa Drive and climbed the long hill up into La Jolla. Halfway up the hill, it made a right turn onto Lamplight.
I turned onto Lamplight and caught a glimpse of the Bug up on Candlelight Drive. It pulled into a driveway five houses up the street. I turned right on Candlelight, parked in front of a house on the corner, and watched Trey and his sister exit her car and go into the house.
I U-turned the Mustang and drove slowly up the hill, noting the address of the house Fellows had gone into as I passed it. 5564 Candlelight Drive. The home had a big bay window that, thankfully, no one looked out of as I drove by. A nice home in La Jolla that didn’t match the address I had for Sierra Fellows in Ocean Beach. I needed to know who owned that house.
I knew how to find out, but didn’t know if it was still fair to ask. I U-turned at the top of the hill, parked four houses above 5564, and pulled out my phone. As a realtor, Kim had access to homeowner information in San Diego County. She’d helped identify the owners of homes over the last two years, through which bedroom windows I’d had to peep.
Old habits were hard to break. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Rick.” Not the usual enthusiasm. “Are you feeling better? Is everything okay?”
“Much.” I suddenly wished I knew another realtor. “Thanks again for taking care of me the other night. Someday, I hope to repay half of all you’ve done for me, Kimmie.”
“I’m not keeping score.” Soft. “Besides, you saved my life. I can never repay that.”
“We both know I put your life in danger.” The guilt from that night and the whole Windsor mess clung to me like a shadow. Grasping tighter after the sun went down. “So, please let go of that.”
“You came for me in the worst moment of my life, Rick.” Sad. “I’ll never let that go.”
I knew she should, but, selfishly, was glad she hadn’t.
“How’s the real estate king?”
“Now I know you need a favor.” Matter of fact. “Need another name of a home owner?”
She knew me too well, yet still remained my friend. No point in pretending. “5564 Candlelight Drive in La Jolla.”
“Give me a few minutes.” Click.
I shouldn’t have called. I shouldn’t have let her go the other night. I should have given her what she needed a long time ago.
Five minutes later, my phone rang. Kim.
“Dianne Elizabeth Wilkens is the name on the mortgage. Two n’s in Dianne. Kevin Christopher Wilkens died three years ago
and his wife, Dianne, became the sole owner. Well, she and the bank.”
“Thanks, Kim.” I wanted to tell her what she needed to hear. Three years ago. “I’ll try not to bother you for a while.”
Silence. Then, “You never bother me, Rick. Call me anytime. Now please take care of yourself and stay out of the emergency room.”
“I’ll try. You can call me anytime too.”
“No, Rick.” An uncomfortable pause. “You have to make the call. Bye.” She hung up.
I had to make the call whether to screw up her life some more, leave her alone, or let her save me. I knew I could do the first. I wasn’t sure about the other two. But first, I had to figure out who Dianne Wilkens was, and how she was connected to Trey and Sierra Fellows. Maybe it didn’t matter in the effort to free Randall Eddington. But maybe it did. Until I could find out the real story about Trey Fellows, everything mattered.
I kept my eyes on Dianne Wilkens’ house. A couple minutes later, Sierra Fellows emerged and got into her Bug. She headed back the way she’d come. I followed her all the way to her apartment in Ocean Beach.
So, it looked like she wasn’t staying at the house on Candlelight, but now her brother was, and he’d left his car back home. If anyone went snooping around his house they’d see his car and think he was still there. He’d taken my advice about hiding his weed and done me one better. He’d hidden himself.
Well, from everyone but me. Hopefully, it would stay that way.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I got a bite to eat and made it back to the crime scene around three. The crime-scene techs were already there and had roped off roughly a fifty-by-fifty-foot square with yellow crime-scene tape. I watched from the asphalt path at the bottom of the hill with a group of onlookers behind a line of four uniformed cops.
Moira stood up the hill just outside the tape, filming the crime scene techs who were filming on their own. Two uniformed cops stood off to her side to make sure she didn’t try to enter the crime scene. The lab-coated techs had just extracted the golf club from the cactus and the bush when I arrived. The shaft of the sand wedge was almost all rust, and the grip had eroded to a few small patches of rubber. The techs tagged the wedge and stuffed it into a long paper bag. I didn’t get a good look at the heavy head of the wedge which, although the shortest club, made it the heaviest.