Night Tremors

by Matt Coyle

  Moira rolled her eyes. Buckley shook his head and winced a closed-mouth smile.

  “No, son. This one’s on me.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “The results came back from the private DNA lab.” Buckley smiled and lifted his hands up. “We go before an appellate judge next week.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Moira smiled wider than I’d seen yet.

  “Holy shit.” I set down the beer I was about to hit. “How many strings did you have to pull for that quick a result?”

  “Not too many. An old friend at the lab owed me a very big favor.” Buckley took a swig of Maker’s Mark neat. “Paid in full.”

  “So, Steven Lunsdorf’s DNA was on the golf club along with the Eddingtons?” I asked.

  “Not quite. There is DNA and blood from the three murdered Eddingtons, God bless their souls. There are some other DNA markers of an unknown person on the remains of the grip. Mr. Lunsdorf’s DNA is not in the database, so it can’t be compared. But the most important thing is that there is no DNA from Randall.”

  “What good is that? It proves the golf club was the murder weapon but nothing else.”

  “We have the affidavit from Trey Fellows stating that Mr. Lunsdorf told him that he hid the golf club he used to kill the Eddington family under some cactus down the hill behind their house. And that’s where you found it.”

  “Will the affidavit stand up in court?”

  “It will if it has to, but Mr. Fellows is going to testify anyhow.”

  “Have you forgotten that he met with the Raptor’s lawyer the other night? Or that he’s a drug dealer? And scared shitless.”

  “Rick, I appreciate your concern.” Buckley laid a leathery hand on my arm. “But we’re in tall cotton now, my boy. The work you and Ms. MacFarlane have done has made all the difference in this case. You two have given me the key to unlock that young man’s cell.”

  “We have hearsay evidence and zero motive. I just can’t believe that is going to be enough to make Eddington a free man.”

  “It’s enough to free him from prison and get him a new trial. Motive is the DA’s province.”

  A large slug of bourbon. “The Eddingtons will have to put up their condo for collateral on bail, but it’s going to happen. The momentum is on our side, and the train’s a rollin’ down the track.”

  I still wasn’t convinced, but I kept that to myself. I didn’t want to ruin the party. Anyway, Buckley had been a lawyer longer than I’d been alive. He knew a whole lot more about the law than I did.

  I’d been a cop. Not a great cop, probably not even a very good one. Not good enough for my lieutenant to stick up for me when the Santa Barbara Police Department booted me off the force. But, I’d been a cop long enough to develop a cop’s gut, and my gut told me that Fellows couldn’t be trusted. Somewhere along the way, he’d turn Buckley’s defense to shit and doom Randall Eddington to life in his cell up at San Quentin.

  Buckley looked at me after we’d all finished lunch and he’d polished off two more bourbons. “Now comes the tricky part.” He kept his eyes on me. “As I said before, there were unknown DNA markers on the grip of the golf club. Not enough to identify anyone when matched against other DNA. However, it was enough to eliminate Randall as the owner of the DNA.”

  “The DNA doesn’t necessarily have to belong to the killer,” I chimed in when Buckley paused to hit his bourbon. “It could be from someone who borrowed the golf club and hit a few shots on the range, or the person who put the grips on the clubs. It could belong to anyone.”

  “You are right about all that, pardna.” Buckley’s eyes were more bloodshot than normal. “But it would make our case mighty strong if the limited number of markers matched those in Mr. Lunsdorf’s DNA. There aren’t enough markers to identify anyone, but there are enough to eliminate people. If Mr. Lunsdorf can’t be eliminated, then that strengthens our claim.”

  “But I thought you said Lunsdorf’s DNA isn’t in any system,” Moira said.

  “We have to try to acquire some ourselves.” Buckley trained his basset-hound eyes back on me.

  “How are we going to do that?” Moira asked.

  “Thus, the tricky part,” I said before Buckley could. My ribs and head began to ache. “I’m going to stake out the parking lot at The Chalked Cue and snag one of Lunsdorf’s discarded cigarette butts.”

  “That was my plan, if you think you’re up to it.” Buckley dipped his head.

  “I’ll be fine. I don’t have to go inside the bar or confront any Raptors. All I have to do is wait for the right moment.”

  “But will that even hold up in court?” Moira looked at Buckley.

  “Not at a trial. In a trial, we’d get a court order for the DNA. But an appellate judge might accept it with the other evidence we offer regarding the murder weapon to help him make a decision.”

  Moira and I walked Buckley up the stairs to his office a half hour later. He’d had four bourbons and, judging from his wobble, another two or three before he met us. He’d been celebrating victory before the final whistle, but I didn’t begrudge him. There was hurt hiding behind Buckley’s bloodshot eyes and his smiles mostly seemed like a lot of work. I didn’t think he’d had many victories in his life outside of a courtroom. Sometimes you had to relish the moments that could never fill the emptiness.

  Buckley stumbled through the door into his outer office and I steadied him upright. Jasmine eyeballed us from behind her desk. Thin black lips under goth eyes. She squinted at Buckley and then shook her head at me like it was my fault.

  “Timothy!” She stood up and swung around the desk toward us. Latticed leather and knee-high boots.

  Buckley hung his head like a scolded child. Suddenly, Buckley and Jasmine’s relationship seemed familial. Father, daughter? It was hard to see a resemblance under Jasmine’s goth and Buckley’s beard. Still, there was a connection I’d never noticed before.

  “Let me have him. You’ve done enough damage.” Jasmine grabbed Buckley’s arm away from me and led him into his office.

  I didn’t bother to object. Her mind was made up. She knew Buckley better than I did, but somehow I was responsible for his condition. In her mind, I was a murderer and, apparently, an enabler as well.

  My car sat a block from Buckley’s office. La Jolla Investigations was just another two blocks west. The job I’d taken a sabbatical from was there. The job given to me by Bob Reitzmeyer, my father’s old partner and the only cop who went to the old man’s funeral. Bob Reitzmeyer, the man who finagled the deal so that I could just afford to buy my new house.

  Bob Reitzmeyer, who’d probably had an affair with Alana Eddington before she was murdered, and who told me he hadn’t worked the case but had been at the crime scene.

  I walked the three blocks to La Jolla Investigations.

  The brass-and-copper facade on the building that housed LJI seemed shinier than when I was last there and its angles seemed sharper.

  I’d only been gone a week, but I felt like a visitor when I used my key card to enter the building. The reception area was empty, so I went down the hallway past the conference room to Bob’s office. That was empty too. Probably for the best. I hadn’t figured out what I’d say to Bob anyway. I’d gone to the office on instinct. Might be a good time to start using some of the wisdom Buckley had mentioned the other day. If only I knew where to find it.

  I headed back down the hall toward the lobby and passed the storage room. I stopped. The storage room. Bob had taken me in there a couple times to show me some of the copies of files he kept from cases he’d worked on at LJPD. Would he have kept any notes he took from the Eddington murder the short time he was at the crime scene? One thing I knew about Bob, as messy as he was in his personal life, he kept his professional life regimented and organized.

  I went back to Bob’s office and found his office keys in a desk drawer. He rarely left his office unlocked, so he had probably just gone to get some coffee. I didn’t have much time, so
I hustled back to the storage room and unlocked the door. I considered that I could be technically guilty of unlawful entry. That was the wisdom speaking that Buckley had mentioned. I ignored it and went to the corner of the room to the file cabinets where Bob kept the LJPD files. Locked, but I found a key on the key chain that unlocked them.

  The file folders were alphabetical. There it was. A folder marked Eddington. I opened it and found a small notebook. Nothing else was in the folder. The files Bob had shown me of other murder cases had all contained copies of written reports from his LJPD “Murder Books,” large blue binders he kept for each case at the Brick House. They’d also contained the original notebooks like the one in the Eddington file.

  There weren’t any written reports because Bob had been bumped from the case and never wrote up anything. The notebook read much like the Eddington police report in shorthand: what time Bob had arrived at the scene, who was there, the account from the neighbor who found the bodies, Randall’s arrival on the scene. In every entry about Randall thereafter, he was referred to as “the suspect.”

  Bob had tabbed Randall as the murderer almost immediately, before he’d even been questioned by Detectives Coyote and West/Denton. I read through the remaining notes. The last entry sucked the air right out of me. Bob had written that he searched the suspect’s car and had found a car registration, insurance card, and some music CDs.

  No mention of a bloody sock.

  Bob had searched Randall’s car before Detective Denton and there had been no bloody sock. Someone had planted it in the car after Bob’s search. If Bob’s notes had been in the discovery evidence the DA was mandated to turn over to the defense before the trial, there wouldn’t have been a trial. Except one for the cop who had planted evidence in a murder investigation.

  Randall Eddington was going to be a free man.

  I ripped out my cell phone and quickly took pictures of each page of the notebook, as well as the cover, the file, the file cabinets, and file room. Then I put everything away, locked the file room, and returned the keys to Bob’s desk.

  I’d just made it back to the lobby when Bob walked through the front door of the building carrying a cup of Starbucks coffee.

  No hello, just, “How’d you get in here?”

  “I have a key.” I pulled out my key card. “I work here.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Flat face. “Follow me to my office, and we can talk about work.”

  I did as told. Bob stopped at the door of his office and scanned the room. Probably looking for something out of place. I hoped I put the keys back in the correct part of the drawer. He finally went in and sat behind his desk. He pointed at a chair and I sat down.

  He cop-eyed me like I was a crook. He was trying to sweat me. Maybe he knew what I’d done. No. Bob didn’t have security cameras inside LJI, although he had some installed for the law firm upstairs, but not on our floor. I suspected that he didn’t want there to be any video evidence of his late-night flings that sometimes took place at the office.

  Finally, “Still working for Timothy Buckley?”

  “Just the moonlighting that you okayed.”

  “How much longer?”

  “I have another two weeks of vacation time left. It could be for that long.”

  “I need you for something tonight.” Still cop eyes.

  Bob had never given me such short notice to do a stakeout on a weekend before. This was strictly to get me off the Eddington case.

  “I wish I could, Bob, but I already have something else to do.”

  He kept staring at me. The cop eyes slowly softened into sadness. “Your father was like a brother to me. He didn’t deserve what he got. I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t let me. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough.” His voice tightened. “I tried to do right by him when I hired you. You were broken when you started here, but I still saw a piece of the kid who used to sit at the dinner table and listen to cop stories. In a lot of ways, I saw you as the son I never had.”

  He wiped his eyes and stood up. “Wait here.”

  Reitzmeyer had me off balance. First the cop eyes and then the emotion. Emotion I’d never seen in him before. Guilt for the search of his files crept into my gut. If our positions were reversed, Bob would have asked me about the murder scene straight up. Too late. I’d already gotten the answers I needed from the notebook.

  Bob walked back into the office carrying a large box. I thought it might hold some things of my father’s that Bob had kept. He handed me the box. I looked inside and realized I’d been wrong. About too many things.

  A framed photo of Colleen stared up at me. The one I kept on my desk there at LJI. Every other piece of personal property I’d kept at the desk was inside the box too. The air left my lungs like I’d been punched in the gut.

  “I’ll put a check in the mail tomorrow for whatever you’re owed, plus a couple months’ severance.” Poker face. Flat voice. The emotion he’d shown earlier bottled back up. “Your father understood loyalty. You don’t. That’s not something I can teach.”

  My knees went weak. Down deep I knew this had to be the outcome, but it still hit me hard.

  Bob had been my connection back to my dad during the good times before everything went to shit. Now all I had left were the old bad memories. And new bad ones. This was the result of living a “whatever it takes” life Buckley had warned me about.

  “Goodbye, Rick.” He didn’t look at me, just shut the door behind me.

  I lugged the box of all I had left from my two years at La Jolla Investigations the two blocks to my car. I’d gotten more than I could have hoped—a giant leap closer to making Randall Eddington a free man—but I’d lost a job.

  I’d been fired by a friend once before. It didn’t get easier the second time. I could find another job. Maybe even pay my mortgage. But I wouldn’t be able to replace what I’d just lost.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The parking lot of the mini-mall that held The Chalked Cue hadn’t changed in a week. I had. I didn’t have a gun anymore and my ribs and head were sore. On the mend, but still sore. I sat in my Mustang parked in front of a Smart & Final store in an outer parking spot with a good view of The Chalked Cue. The store stayed open until 10:00 p.m., and it was now 8:05 p.m. I had another couple hours of cover until the cars cleared out.

  I’d called Buckley after I left LJI with what I’d found. He explained to me what I already knew, that the evidence wouldn’t be allowed in court because of how I’d obtained it. However, he agreed with me that once Randall was released, it could be a valuable tool in convincing the DA not to retry the case.

  Buckley still wanted DNA from Steven Lunsdorf, if possible. Thus, I sat in my car with a zoom-lensed camera pointed at the front of The Chalked Cue. Moira had offered to ride shotgun, but I convinced her and Buckley that she should continue to stake out Trey instead. I wasn’t going into the bar. Wouldn’t even if I had my gun back. Not even with a howitzer. I’d stay safely outside, collect a cigarette butt, and flee the scene.

  A full moon spotlighted the night, muscling out all but the brightest stars. The windows of my Mustang GT were tinted as dark as California would allow. They’re opaque at night. Still, I ducked my head down whenever a car entered the parking lot. Couldn’t be too careful. That was some of Buckley’s wisdom talking.

  I knew Lunsdorf was in the bar. His nickname was “Duke,” and there was a Harley parked out front with that name emblazoned in orange flames on its gas tank. He’d come out sooner or later and light up. He’d had yellow smoker’s teeth in his smirking booking photo. I doubted he’d started making healthy choices lately. I’d wait him out. I’d had a lot of practice waiting. I focused my camera on the front of the bar, not through the curtains of someone’s bedroom. This was about murder and possibly freeing an innocent man, not broken marriage vows. As Buckley liked to say, this was a case that mattered.

  A rumble pulled the camera down from my eyes. A beat-up Trans Am with a broken muffler or none at all pulled into the pa
rking lot and parked near The Chalked Cue. What was it with these bikers and loud cars? Maybe after years of sitting atop 500cc engines they’d gone deaf, and only trusted a vehicle they could feel through the thundering woofer of life without a muffler.

  I put the camera on the Trans Am and a mountain-sized man hoisted himself out of the muscle car. He could have been either the Raptor who cracked my head and ribs and stole my gun, or the guy who’d met with Fellows on the QT in the PB bar and then brought a lawyer to Fellows’ Candlelight Drive hideout. Or it could have been just another Raptor side of beef with a buffalo head of black hair and a Rasputin beard.

  I kept the camera pinned on him as he headed for the front door of the bar. The door opened before he got to it and a skinhead version of a Raptor came out. They said something to each other and the mountain turned his head in my direction as he finished the conversation. The light from The Chalked Cue neon sign caught his face and a scar across his eyebrow.

  My attacker.

  The man who’d pistol-whipped me and put a size 15 Timberland into my ribcage. My breaths came quick and through my nose and my gut turned over. Not because I was afraid. Because fight had kicked in over flight and I wanted revenge.

  The man went into the bar and I sat in my car fogging the windows. I’d been hired to do a job, not to get even. But I didn’t want even, I wanted one-up on even. And I wanted my gun back. I hadn’t figured out how I could accomplish one or both yet, but I was working on it. In the meantime, I kept the camera on the front door of The Chalked Cue and waited for a chance to complete the task I’d been hired to do.

  I didn’t have to wait very long. Fifteen minutes later, Steven Lunsdorf came out of the bar. Blond buzz cut, white t-shirt, and the rest, all leather. A woman was with him in matching attire. They didn’t go to his chopper, but instead walked over to a eucalyptus tree in the corner of the parking lot. The orange flash of a lighter went up to a cigarette in Lunsdorf’s mouth.