Night Tremors

by Matt Coyle

  Or make one happen.

  “Why me?”

  “Oh, come on, Rick. I thought you were supposed to be a tough guy. You’re not going to go out begging for your life, are you?”

  “No. Why did you choose me to work with Buckley on your case?” I fought the pain in my head that told me to lie down and let it be over. “You let that slip at the celebration the other night.”

  “You know, Rick, it’s a good thing you never went to prison for your wife’s murder, cuz you wouldn’t have survived. Not smart enough.” The moon caught his smile again. I felt time and my life ticking away. “I didn’t let that slip. I put it out there to see if you’d react or catch on. A little game to make things interesting. In prison, you have a lot of time to try to make things interesting.”

  “Why me?”

  “Like I told you the other night, you know what it’s like to be accused of something you didn’t do. That made you sympathetic to my plight. A lot of ex-cop PIs wouldn’t believe a man could be convicted of murder if he didn’t do it, or they wouldn’t care either way. Once I hooked you in, I knew you’d do whatever it took. I also did my research. Every hour I had of computer time in the joint, I researched you and Buckley. I knew that you worked for Bob Reitzmeyer, who fucked that whore of a mother I used to have. He was close to the investigation. I hoped he might know something about the planted evidence and you’d find out about it. And you did, then your hero complex kicked in, and everything fell into place.”

  “Planted evidence that helped convict a guilty man.”

  “Guilty or not, LJPD cheated, and you caught them. Because of that, and a little cheating on my side, I’m now a free man. Thanks again, Rick.”

  “Why did you have to kill Buckley? He didn’t know the truth about you.”

  “Collateral damage. Felt badly about it.” The demon’s smile. “For a good second or two. Trey wouldn’t see me alone. He was smart enough not to trust me. I coaxed Buckley to go with me. Told him Trey had new evidence to show us for a civil case against LJPD. When we got there, I opened up my backpack, took out my crowbar, and that was it. I wanted to meet back at Trey’s because it was a tight space. Nowhere to run. A quick tap to incapacitate Trey. A couple to kill Buckley, then back to kill Trey. And, finally…ah, the finishing touches to make it look like a Raptor murder.”

  “You think Lunsdorf is just going to roll over for the murders? How do you know he doesn’t have an alibi for Trey and Buckley?”

  “He does. He was dead at the time. Now the police are chasing a dead man’s shadow. Too bad they’ll never find him.” The laugh. “Or what’s left of him.”

  Randall had demonstrated his brilliance. There wasn’t anything left to say. He’d attack soon without warning. I had to attack first. “You forgot about Rankin. He knows everything.”

  “He’ll never say a thing. He’s under Rock Karsten’s thumb, and I’m Rock’s boy.”

  “He already told me everything. About you and the concocted confession. The threat to kill Brad Bauer. It’s on the recorder you took off me.”

  In a slip of moonlight, I saw uncertainty in Randall’s eyes. He took the recorder out of his pocket. I waited for his eyes to look at the recorder to turn it on.

  “I recorded the recording on my voicemail—” He looked down. I bolted up from the sand, pushing off the cliff with my one good arm, and sprang at Randall. His reaction with the crowbar whooshed just behind me as I exploded into his chest with my left shoulder. He clamped his massive right arm around my neck, but I kept churning my legs and slammed him into the lone boulder behind him at the shoreline, before his left arm could match his right. The air whumped from his body and he dropped the crowbar. We bounced off the rock. His hold loosened an instant, and I ducked down and reached my left hand around his back and found the Ruger in his waistband.

  His hold on my neck vised again, and he tightened it with his left arm. I yanked out the Ruger and jammed it into his ribs as my throat started to close off. The hold went slack. I sucked air into my lungs.

  “Step back.” I held the gun on him in my left hand. My right, useless, dangling from a broken wrist. I willed my gun hand not to shake and fought the dread from my nightmares. My hand trembled slightly, but I didn’t think Randall could see it in the darkness.

  He took a small step back, but his smile returned. “Nicely done, Rick. You saved yourself. But it doesn’t change things for me.”

  I backed up three paces.

  “Slowly take the gun out of your sweatshirt pocket by the barrel with two fingers and toss it over here.” He tossed the gun at my feet. “Now, hands behind your head.”

  He did as told. “You think you’re going to walk me into LJPD and tell them you caught the killer of poor Mr. Buckley and the drug dealer, Trey Fellows?”

  “Kneel down.”

  He ignored me.

  “I’m untouchable. The press loves me. Nationwide. You think LJPD wants to arrest me again on some crazy story of yours? You taped Alan Rankin without him knowing. Your supposed tape is inadmissible, my dim-witted friend. And you’re not exactly LJPD’s favorite citizen. Besides, the cops have all they need to chase the ghost of Steven Lunsdorf for the murders.”

  Everything he said was true. Even if the Rankin tape could be admitted, it was all hearsay and speculation. I’d needed a confession by Randall on tape, and I’d failed.

  “Kneel the fuck down!”

  “How are you going to hold that gun on me and call the police with your broken hand?”

  The devil’s laugh. “Tell you what. We’ll call this one even. We stay out of each other’s way and get on with our lives.”

  He moved his head slightly to the left and moonlight spotlighted down on me. And my trembling left arm.

  “Rick, your hand is shaking. Lost your edge after being off the force for ten years? Put the gun down now and we’ll go our separate ways.”

  His mother, father, and sister. Timothy Buckley and Trey Fellows. Steven Lunsdorf. Randall had murdered them all to serve his purposes. No other reason. Obstacles in the selfish life he’d chosen to live. And he was going to walk away a free man to live that life and eliminate other obstacles. Evil has no conscience.

  A wave crashed down onto the beach. My hand held steady. I pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I dialed a number on Randall’s cell phone. When someone picked up on the other end, I hit the “play” button on the recorder and Alan Rankin’s voice came on. I let it run about ten seconds, then turned it off.

  “Who the fuck is this? Randall?” Alan Rankin.

  “Not Randall.”

  “You’re resorting to blackmail now, Cahill?” Rankin knew that in the hands of the bar association, the tape could cost him his law license. In the hands of the police, it could cost him his freedom. In the hands of Rock Karsten, it could cost him his life. “That’s a very dangerous game. How much do you want?”

  “I want you to send down your cleaning crew. The same ones that made the body disappear from Candlelight Drive.” I told him where to send the men.

  “Why don’t you just go to the police and claim self-defense?”

  LJPD might even believe me. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was what the people of La Jolla believed. Right now, they, and the rest of America, believed Randall Eddington was a saint who’d been cheated out of eight years of his life and forced to grieve the loss of his family from a prison cell. Any story that contradicted that could get the voter initiative to disband LJPD on the ballot. LJPD wasn’t about to commit professional suicide.

  Certainly not for me.

  “Send your team now or a copy of the recording goes up to San Quentin. I’m sure Karsten can find another lawyer. One that’s alive.” I hung up.

  I drove home, stopping every few miles, and dropped individual pieces of the Ruger .357 Magnum, which I’d disassembled and wiped down, into sewer drains. The same with the single remaining bullet and four empty shells; three from the
bullets I’d put into Randall Eddington, and one that someone had used to kill Eric Schmidt. I used a file from my tool kit in the trunk to file the serial number off the barrel of the last piece I threw down a sewer.

  I left puzzle pieces around La Jolla for a puzzle harder to put together than the one that Trey Fellows had worked on and gotten he and Timothy Buckley killed.

  Rita Mae Eddington called me the next evening. Worry hung off her voice. “Rick, have you talked to Randall today or last night?”

  “He called me early last night. Why?”

  I hadn’t felt guilty last night when I put three bullets in Randall Eddington’s chest. Nor when I’d had Alan Rankin make his body disappear. I’d played God and broken his most cherished commandment. And it hadn’t bothered me. But it did now. Not because of what I’d done, but because of the pain it would bring a nice old lady who’d already endured more pain in her life than she or anyone deserved.

  “He didn’t come home last night and he isn’t answering his cell phone.” Fear in her voice that I’d put there. “Did he tell you that he was going somewhere?”

  “No. We just talked about Timothy Buckley and Trey Fellows.”

  “Oh, dear, that is so horrible. So much evil in the world. Are you okay?”

  No. Even though I’d rid the world of an evil that Rita Mae loved but never saw. I hadn’t seen it either, until it was too late. For Buckley and Trey. And almost too late for me. “I’m hanging in there.”

  Two days later, Randall’s disappearance was all over the news. Local and network reporters called me day and night, wanting an interview with the private detective who’d helped set Randall free, only to have him now disappear. I ignored them all.

  The day of Buckley’s funeral, Detective Denton showed up at my front door. “Mr. Cahill, Chief Moretti would like you to come down to the station and have a brief talk.”

  “I’m going to a funeral today. Maybe tomorrow.” I started to close the door, but Denton stuck her foot in the jamb. I fought the urge to slam the door on it.

  “It will only take a few minutes. I’ll bring you right back.”

  “I’ll follow you down there.” I could call a lawyer to come along, but the only lawyer I trusted was dead. Besides, I needed to find out what game Moretti wanted to play.

  Denton gave me cop eyes, like it was her decision whether or not I went in her car or mine. Finally, she nodded. I walked next to her down the walkway from my house.

  “Detective Denton.” I stopped walking. “I lost the memory card to my camera, can you lend me one?”

  She stopped and looked at me, but didn’t say anything.

  “Also, I’m looking to buy a motorcycle. I know you have a direct line to experts in the field where information is sometimes leaked. Let me know if you hear about any deals.” Someone at LJPD had told the Raptors that Trey was hiding out on Candlelight Drive. Detective Denton had had the most to gain if Trey never testified. Her plan had failed, but Randall Eddington’s hadn’t.

  “Get in your car before I put you in the back of mine.” Taut eyes, snake hiss of a voice.

  Moretti sat behind a grand mahogany desk in a raised chair with pictures of he and B-list celebrities in golf attire on his desk. He pointed to a chair in front of the desk. I sat down and was forced to look up at him, perched on his throne.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Rick. I know that you and Timothy Buckley were friends.” He sounded sincere. Maybe he’d just gotten better at acting like a decent human being since he’d become police chief.

  “Thanks.”

  “Timothy Buckley and Trey Fellows. Two more people who spent time with you and ended up dead. How many is that now? Three? Actually, four, if you count your wife.” Couldn’t hide his true personality for long. “Might make a man question some of the decisions he’s made in his life.”

  He’d gotten something right. Not that I’d ever let him know.

  “Is that why you had your tainted detective escort me up here? To give me a body count? I know exactly how many people I’ve lost in my life.” I pushed the anger up front. But only to cover my growing anxiety. Moretti was playing a game. He was the cat and I was the mouse. I knew the claws would come out soon.

  “All those bad decisions. All those people dead.” He gave me the smirk he’d given me two years ago, when he thought he knew something about me that he shouldn’t. “Might make a thoughtful man reevaluate his life. Might make a rash man angry and want to seek revenge.”

  “I have to go to a funeral today, Moretti.” I stood up. “Call me when you’re done philosophizing.”

  “What happened to your arm, Rick?”

  I had a cast on my broken wrist and had to keep the arm in a sling for a few more days.

  “Got drunk and fell down some stairs.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Seems to happen to you a lot.” He studied me with double-barrel coal eyes. “Sit back down. I’m almost through with you.”

  I stared at him, and saw handcuffs and a jail cell in my future with one more bad decision. I sat down.

  “No doubt you’ve seen the news about the disappearance of Randall Eddington?”

  “Yes.” I kept my voice under control.

  “We’re investigating the disappearance and looking at all angles.”

  I controlled my breathing and didn’t say anything.

  “You know people all over La Jolla have security cameras on their property.” More smirk. “Everybody is afraid of home invasions. Some of those cameras catch things all the way out on the street.”

  No home-security camera could have filmed Randall and me on the beach. We were thirty feet below street level. But Moretti had something. I was about to find out what.

  “It turns out that a camera on Neptune Drive down at Windansea caught a shot of Jack Eddington’s Volvo driving by the night Randall Eddington disappeared in that very car. At eleven ten p.m.”

  Alan Rankin’s cleanup crew had found the Volvo and disposed of it somewhere. But this was before that. Back when Randall arrived early to get the jump on me. When he was still alive.

  “That’s great, Moretti. You have a lead. Why am I here?” Sweat beaded under my arms.

  “Well, twelve minutes later, another security camera filmed a black Mustang GT with your license plate park on Westbourne Street, and someone who looked just like you get out of the car and return thirty-one minutes later and leave. Westbourne runs right into Neptune. Coincidence?”

  “Sometimes I go down and look at the ocean at night, like hundreds of other San Diegans.”

  “So that was you?”

  Nowhere to run. “Yes. And I’m sure you know that the Eddingtons live on La Jolla Boulevard, just a couple minutes away from Windansea.”

  “Of course.” Moretti leaned across the desk and his smirk flattened out into a silent accusation. “Did you happen to hear any gunshots while you were down at Windansea Sunday night between eleven twenty-two and eleven fifty-three p.m.?”

  “No.” His eyes bored into mine looking for a tell I didn’t think he needed. I gave him nothing. “The waves were pretty loud that night.”

  “That’s what the man walking his dog above the beach said. But he also thought he heard gunshots. Three of them.”

  “All I heard were the waves.”

  Moretti slid back and smiled his non-smirk version. “Okay, but let me know if you remember anything else.”

  “Will do.” I got up to leave.

  “Because we’re going to solve this disappearance. No matter how long it takes. Even if it turns out that some Good Samaritan killed that murdering son of a bitch.” He gave me the hard eyes again and they struck home. “You and I both know that son of a bitch was just about untouchable for law enforcement. He was a hero in the public’s mind. Whoever killed him might think he was doing LJPD a favor. He wasn’t. The public will demand that the killer be brought to justice and take Randall’s place up at San Quentin. And I’m going to make that happen. Count on it.”

&
nbsp; “I thought Randall was missing, Moretti.” I fought against the tickle of sweat running down my underarms. “You calling it a murder now?”

  “Not yet. You’ll be the first to know when it changes.” He gave me a smile that frightened as much as his words had. “Have a nice day, Rick. And take care of that arm.”

  My legs felt like they were stuck in tar. I had to force them to carry me out of Moretti’s office.

  Jasmine spoke at Buckley’s funeral. She wore black, but this time she didn’t match it with her makeup. Without the Goth look, you could clearly see the resemblance to Buckley. As I’d suspected, she was his daughter. She gave an eloquent, heartfelt speech that had everyone in tears.

  Including me.

  I went up to her after the service to give her my condolences. A mistake.

  “Where were you when he needed you?” Tears flowed, but her voice held anger instead of sorrow. “You should have been with him. You should have protected him. You’re not welcome here.”

  I didn’t argue. I made my way through shocked mourners and out of the church to a beautiful December day. The sun stared down at me with its own judgment.

  I’d been to two funerals ten years apart, and both families of the deceased held me at least partially responsible for the death of their loved ones. They hadn’t been exactly right, but they hadn’t been too far wrong, either.

  Something about the Eddington case had always gnawed at me. Gently nibbling at first, then deep gashing at the end. I’d followed its lead at first, but looked past it when the chance to be a hero presented itself. I’d listened to men who I’d once respected tell me that Randall was a stone killer, and had shunned their gut instincts and my own when I’d found out they’d let their ends justify their means. I’d ignored my father’s credo, the one I’d adopted two years ago for my own, when I’d seen it in action by Bob Reitzmeyer.