Yesterday's Echo (25 page)

Or maybe she'd changed and the woman on the eleven-year-old tape wasn't Melody anymore.

Everyone's done something in their life that they wished they could change and try to forget. Some big, most small. All could be forgiven by God. All but one by man. But few sinners had their
sins enshrined on videotape or shown on prime-time TV. Melody and I had that in common. Mine, what the media had convicted me of, was unforgivable. Melody's just hadn't been exposed yet.

Melody had to know about the tape. She had the flash drive of Angela Albright and the key to the storage locker. She'd probably already destroyed the drive that Windsor was surely blackmailing her with. Could she have gotten it away from Windsor without killing him? Didn't seem likely. But were the images really worth killing to keep out of the public domain?

Melody was on the cusp of an anchor position on the local news in San Francisco. After that, maybe network. She had the looks, the brains, and the pipes. A sex tape of her hooking and shooting heroin could derail all that. Or could it enhance it? In Celebrity America, it wasn't so much what you did, just that you were seen. She'd be seen. Virally. And even if it went bad at first, things could flip around.

The tape was eleven years old. After the initial shock, people would see Melody as a rags-to-riches story. The gutsy woman who pulled herself out of the gutter and went on to stardom. Even if she lost her job, there'd be a book deal, maybe a Lifetime movie, and a better job somewhere down the line. If she could handle the embarrassment, the tape might be a bigger break than she could have ever imagined.

Surely, Melody would have worked that all out in her mind instead of killing Windsor. But she still had the Albright tape and the locker key. Those were facts that couldn't be overlooked. She had to have gotten them somehow. When she did, Windsor had either been dead or alive.

I started fast-forwarding through the tape, only hitting play with the introduction of a new john. I didn't have to see the acts and couldn't stand to. Voyeurism loses its appeal when you're watching someone you know. And care about. Instead, I focused on the other men, trying to recognize any of them on the eleven-year-old videotape.

According to one of Muldoon's regular customers, Adam
Windsor had started his life as a blackmailer whilst a teenager when he tried to shake the man down on a construction site. By the time he started running women, he'd refined his trade. He hadn't taped Angela and Melody years ago in hopes that he'd be able to blackmail them in the future if they ever went straight. That had been sheer luck. His targets when he made the tapes had been the men and women, the johns and janes, who'd shared their bodies with, and inflicted their cruelties on, Angela and Melody. Maybe after he got out of prison, he'd put the finger back on some of his old victims, along with the new ones. The old ones were the wild cards in his murder.

I was forty-five minutes into the tape before I got a hit. The man on the screen was the only one shown who didn't pay. And the only one dressed as a cop before he wasn't dressed at all.

Boss Goon.

The block of granite who'd come looking for Melody in Muldoon's on Monday morning, who'd ambushed me, and who'd worked security during Mayor Albright's speech on stage with Chief Parks at the rec center. A cop. Former. I thought he'd been working for Stone, but he may have been solo. He had his own past that needed burying. He'd gotten a freebie from Melody on the tape. Could it have been in lieu of his normal payoff from Windsor? I'd already made Moretti for Scarface. Could the goon be Stamp, the other name in Windsor's payoff ledger?

Even if he was, why kill Windsor? The statute of limitations had surely run out on the crimes exposed on the tape and in the ledger. The hard boy didn't strike me as a guy who cared much about a bad reputation. He wasn't a cop anymore, he was muscle. He probably thrived on a bad reputation.

Good or bad rep, he was still a suspect. Right up there with the Albrights, Stone, and now Moretti.

And Melody.

I fast-forwarded, the sex acts a blur. The fast twitch movements had a numbing effect, but couldn't quite dull the pain caused by watching them. It was after one a.m. I didn't know how much
more I could take, but forced myself to watch on. I slowed for a new john and sped up again. A minute later a spurt of red flashed on the screen. I paused the tape. The man, fetal, held his side, blood caught in mid-ooze between his fingers, Melody above him, her arm frozen in a downward arc, a knife in her hand.

Sweat boiled out of me, my breath went staccato. I fumbled the remote and found the rewind button and went back to the beginning of Melody's encounter with this new john. Shaved head, mid-thirties, fit. Not the kind of guy most people would picture with a prostitute. I was an ex-cop. I knew the world was full of all “kinds.” The sex had started rough, but that wasn't unusual. Most of the men on tape with Melody had gotten off by abusing her.

A few minutes in, the man threw Melody onto her stomach and then yanked her head by her hair and she rose up on all fours. As on the other tape, this one didn't have sound but I could tell the man was shouting at Melody. He continued to wrench her hair and as her head whipsawed around the camera caught her face. Wide-eyed terror and her mouth contorting around the word, “No!”

The man pushed her face down onto the bed and thrust up inside her. Anally.

This wasn't role playing, or an agreed upon upsell for another hundred bucks. This was rape.

Melody's face grimaced, but her right hand shot forward and curved under the front end of the mattress and came out with the knife. She slashed it back behind her and plunged it into the man's side. I could almost hear his shocked shriek though the soundless tape. He rolled off Melody and balled up, blood running through fingers clutching his punctured side. Melody reared up and buried the knife in his chest, her face a demented mask. She pulled the knife out, the blade running red, and again cocked her arm for another stab. Her arm started to guillotine down and the static camera angle caught the flash of a door opening off to the left. Then everything went black.

I fast-forwarded and got nothing but the static of erased video-tape
and then rewound to the last image on the screen. The door had only opened a few inches before the tape cut out. I could only make out a blurred hand on the outer doorknob, not the person connected to it. But it had to have been Windsor. He must have been watching the live feed from another room and had rushed to intervene when things turned bloody. It looked like he'd been too late.

I dropped the remote, tilted back the chair, and stared at the static and saw nothing but the world turned upside-down.

Self-defense? With the first stab, yes, the second a stretch, after that, jail time. What had become of the bald man? Was it assault, manslaughter, or murder? Only Melody and Windsor knew for sure, and he wasn't talking anymore.

This changed everything. Melody now had motive that put her at the top of the suspect list. If she'd killed the bald man, Melody could still get her book deal, but it would be from behind bars. There was a statute of limitations on celebrity, not murder. When the spotlight dimmed, Melody'd still be in a cell. Where would I be?

I was sitting on evidence vital to a murder case. Evidence that I'd stolen and a case that the cops wanted to make me a codefendant in, not a witness. But a one-night sheet wrestle with a woman I'd never met before was a stretch for motive. If I walked into the Brick House tomorrow with the “Melody” tape, the cops might not care how I got it. They'd be happy to hammer in the final nail on Melody and keep the town council from closing them down.

I pulled out my phone and stared at Melody's number. One chance for her to plead her case and make me believe in her again? I thought of the woman I'd fallen for that first night, and then of the lies she'd told and the bloody knife in her hand.

I put the phone back in my pocket.

I woke up the next morning still seated in the recliner. The TV was on and James Cagney was standing on top of a high platform, the world aflame around him, shouting, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” Then everything blew up.

I knew how he felt, but from the other end. I had dynamite in my hands and I had to figure out how to get rid of it without blowing myself up. Not that easy, but it was time to quit playing hero and try to escape the whole Melody affair with as little damage as possible. Time to turn over what I'd taken from Adam Windsor's storage locker to the police.

Dropping stolen evidence from a murder case off at the police department didn't figure to be as easy as making a deposit at an ATM. I needed legal advice. I fished Elk Fenton's card out of my wallet and called his number. Seven o'clock on a Saturday morning must have been too early for him. I left a message on his voice mail to call me.

I had to be at Muldoon's in half an hour. Except I didn't. Not anymore. Turk hadn't offered to hire me back last night and after watching him leave Muldoon's with Stone, I didn't think there'd be a restaurant much longer anyway. I went into the bathroom to take a shower. Might as well start off my new life clean.

My house phone rang just as I stepped into the shower. I went naked into the living room to answer it, thinking I must have left Elk Fenton my home number instead of my cell. I picked up on the fourth ring.

“Rick. Heather Ortiz.” She didn't wait for a hello. “Do you
care to comment on Detective Tony Moretti's comments in the
U-T
this morning?”

“I don't read the newspaper.” But today, I'd have to. I hung up.

I went into the bathroom, wrapped a towel around my waist, then retrieved the morning paper from the front porch. The Windsor murder case carried Heather's byline and was still front page news. The article covered Melody's release on bond, the upcoming trial date, and a brief biography of the lead lawyer, Alan Fineman. The story continued on page A-7 and that's where my name showed up. Detective Moretti was asked if Melody's arrest had cleared me as a person of interest. He said, “We're still investigating the possibility that Miss Malana did not act alone.”

Not exactly an exoneration. I scanned the rest of the article, looking for more bad news. I didn't find any except for LJPD. The mayor of La Jolla and the town council had decided to put to a public vote their desire to disband LJPD and the DA's office and farm out law enforcement to San Diego County's Sheriff Department. The expense of putting on a high-profile case forced the politicians' hand. Heather closed the article editorially, stating that anything less than a conviction might sway the public to the mayor and council's point of view.

The vote couldn't come soon enough for me.

I dropped the paper and sat down in the recliner. Suddenly, turning over what I had to the police wasn't such a good idea. If they thought I was dirty in Windsor's murder, I could be handing them my connection to it. I'd have a hard time explaining how I'd gotten possession of blackmail material that was motive in the case. It'd look like I was either Windsor's partner, murdered him with Melody, or was working a blackmail angle on my own. Admitting I'd stolen the evidence from Windsor's storage locker might be my best outcome.

With my history and LJPD's waning job security, I might be too big a prize not to pass up. I had to find a plan B.

I looked at the television. It must have been a marathon crime film weekend on AMC. I'd fallen asleep to
The Shawshank Redemption
, awoke to
White Heat
, and now
The Godfather
was on. Nice weekend to be unemployed, unless the police wanted to implicate you in a murder, you were being tailed by an ex-cop, and the woman you'd fallen for was probably a murderer. Twice.

I stood up to go take my interrupted shower and it hit me:
The Shawshank Redemption
. There'd been something about the movie that I'd told myself in a semiconscious state last night to remember. It hung just out of reach, but my mind told me it was important. The movie was about a man who goes to prison for murdering his wife. Obviously, close enough to home to spike a reaction, but that wasn't it. It had something to do with Adam Windsor and the clothes the inmates wore in the movie. Then I remembered. They'd had their Department of Corrections numbers on their shirts.

That was it. The DOC number. The only form of identification Adam Windsor had had for the last nine years before he was let out of prison three weeks ago. The number he saw every day on his shirt. Certainly, he'd known it by heart. Could he have used that as his password for the new computer he'd gotten when he got out of prison? I needed to see what was on that computer before I could figure out a plan B. Worst case, I'd destroy all the evidence and sever any further connection to the case.

I went into my office, booted up my computer, and pulled up the Nevada Department of Corrections website. It had an inmate search engine that required either the full name and date of birth of the inmate or his NDOC number. I punched in Windsor's name and date of birth, which I'd gotten from Heather Ortiz's first article about his death. The search came up empty. It must not have worked for released prisoners. I knew that a cop could get the DOC number, but I certainly didn't have any friends on the force. But I knew someone who did.

I found the business card in my wallet and called the number listed.

“Heather, Rick Cahill.”

“I hope you're calling to apologize for hanging up on me.” Not where I wanted to start.

“I'm sorry.” I tried to sound sincere.

“Not believable.” Still angry. “What do you want?”

“Off the record?”

“You're trying my patience.” A pause. “Okay. OTR, for now.”