Yesterday's Echo (21 page)

“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.

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 important 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.

It didn't take much of an imagination to come up with a couple of candidates for the nicknames. I thought of the stink of cologne left on my carpet the night of the first break-in of my house. The scent I'd smelled on both Detective Moretti and Chief Parks. It had
been one of them. And whoever it was hadn't been looking for evidence to put me or Melody in jail. They'd been looking to destroy evidence to keep themselves out of jail. Suddenly, I remembered Moretti's tough guy in-my-face routine at the Brick House and the cleft lip scar under his mustache. Maybe he'd been clean shaven in his earlier days on the La Jolla Police Department.

Scarface.

I put Moretti in his early forties. The time frame worked. A little snooping and I could find out if he'd been working for LJPD fourteen years ago and who he'd partnered with back then. Maybe Stamp. Stamp could have been a real last name or a nickname. Either way, if he wasn't Moretti's partner, he could have been a cop from the San Diego Police Department. Windsor might have had women on more then one circuit. If Stamp was just a nickname penned by Windsor, he might be tougher to uncover. But I still had Moretti.

Then what? Take the information to Chief Parks? Not my biggest fan. And he was the kind of chief who'd thicken the thin blue line of protection around a fellow cop. Go to the state attorney general? What did I really have? A ledger with dates, dollar amounts, and nicknames that I'd stolen from a storage unit. I'd get laughed or chased out of Sacramento. That was a fate best left for politicians.

Maybe Heather Ortiz would be interested. A corruption scandal in LJPD tied in with a murder. In the days of dwindling subscriptions and shrinking newspapers, that was the kind of catnip any reporter would find hard to resist. Break the big story, turn it into a book, and then go on to be the next Ann Rule writing true crime.