Yesterday's Echo (32 page)

“And?”

“The DA wants me to testify against you. They think you supplied the heroin that killed Adam.”

Eddie Philby's jailhouse lie.

“And?”

“I'd never testify against you, Rick. Not even if I was guilty.”

There were still a few weeks until the trial. The specter of life in a cell has been known to change people's minds.

I checked the sidewalk behind us. A couple paused to look out over the ocean. We walked down to the edge of the cliff, eight feet above the water. The mist off broken waves sprinkled our cheeks.

Melody was saying all the right things. Either the truth, or lies she'd rehearsed. I needed to knock her off script.

“What happened to the bald man?” The flash of red on the videotape and Melody thrusting the knife into the man's chest ripped through my mind. “Did you kill him?”

Melody's legs buckled. I grabbed just enough of her sweater to soften her landing. She sat with a thud, and I held on to make sure she didn't tumble off the cliff into the ocean. A wave smashed against the cliff and sprayed us in the face. I wiped the water from mine, but Melody let it drip off her chin.

“You saw everything?” Her voice was a raspy croak.

“Yes.”

“Should I give you the sad hooker story? Or do you want to fill in the blanks on your own?”

“Whatever you like.”

“You were a cop. I'm sure you've heard the sob story a hundred times.” Self-contempt hung off each word. “Father molested then abandoned me as a kid. Years later, slick-talking Adam came along in place of Daddy, took advantage of my low self-esteem, and turned me out on the stroll. The tale is as old as time. Nothing unique.”

“But you overcame it. That is unique.” I couldn't help myself.
Melody could have remained a victim and lived a short, ugly life, but she fought, climbed out of the morass, and made something of herself.

“I had a whole new life. Then Adam got out of prison and tried to blackmail me. He showed me a flash drive he had with secret tapes he taken of me and my johns back a lifetime ago.”

“So you killed him.”

“No!” Raw.

“What about the bald man?”

“He haunts me in my dreams.” She hugged herself like she was her own life jacket, adrift at sea. Her words came out shaky and wet with emotion. “I see that night over and over again. The knife I'd kept under the mattress for protection. The man forcing himself into me from behind. The one indignity I'd never allow. He took that from me. Then I stabbed him. Again and again. I couldn't stop. I wanted to kill him.”

She collapsed into me, sobs convulsing her body. Pent-up emotion broken loose from years of control. I stroked her hair and gently rocked her. I knew what it was like to live with one horrible decision that had destroyed lives. Life moves forward, but the reverberations chase after you like yesterday's echo.

We sat huddled together. Waves crashing below us. Fog pulling the night down on top of us. Melody lifted her head up to me. Her eyes bloodshot, but unguarded.

“I never knew what happened to him, whether he lived or died.”

“Why not?”

“Adam had a cop on his payroll who took care of it.” She stared out into the burnt-charcoal night. “A month later, Adam and I moved to Las Vegas, and we never talked about it again.”

“The cop, a big guy, blond hair, built like a truck?”

“Yes. I only knew him by the name Stamp.”

So Heaton was in deeper than just as a bagman. Possible accessory after the fact. No statute of limitations for murder. Another name on Windsor's blackmail list? Another suspect with a reason to kill.

“Did you ever meet a cop Adam called Scarface?”

“No, but Adam mentioned his name a couple times. He was scared of him.”

“Where did you go after you left my house that first night?” I asked. “The night Windsor died.”

“I went back to my motel room, but Adam was still there.” Her tan face, now pale even in the night, weary but still beautiful. “I crushed up some of my sleeping pills and slipped then into his drink. When he passed out, I took the flash drive and the storage locker key. Adam was alive when I left. I swear. Someone else must have gone in the motel room after I left and shot him full of heroin.” Pain, fear, regret, in her eyes. “You believe me, don't you, Rick?”

I believed her eyes. “What were you going to do with the flash drive of Angela Albright?”

A big wave walloped the cliff and found a crack in the sandstone, shooting up a geyser of whitewater that slapped down ten feet from us.

“I started in the news business as an unpaid intern while I waitressed at night. It took me a while, but I've finally made a decent career of it.” Her voice steadied. “Breaking the story about Angela Albright's past was going to catapult me onto the next level. Network. New York. D.C.”

“You were going to destroy a woman who'd overcome her past just like you so you could grab the brass ring?” Maybe the only thing that had changed from the woman I'd seen on video was her career.

“That's my job, Rick. I get paid to expose the truth. No matter who gets hurt.” She fixed her eyes on mine. Black marbles in a gray night. “And I was all set to do it. Then I watched the video and saw my wretched life played out all over again in Angela Albright's body. I'm not that person anymore and neither is Angela. Neither one of us deserved to have our pasts exposed.”

“The nights we slept together, which Melody was that?” Did I want to hear the truth or a lie that would make me feel better?

“That first night, I was scared and you made me feel safe. I needed you on my side and I knew how to get you there.” She held my eyes and touched my face. “But I came back the next night because I needed to see you. You made me feel again. Not just react and survive. I had to see if it was real. And it was. It is.”

I knew what it was like to feel again. Melody had given me that. But had it been under false pretenses?

“But when you came back from San Francisco, it wasn't really to see me. You needed to get back inside my house and get the storage locker key you'd hid from the police. And tonight, you wanted to meet there for the same reason.”

“Yes.” She dropped her hand, but didn't let go of my eyes. “My feelings for you are real, Rick, but I have to survive. If the DA sees what's on Adam's computer, they'll have a motive and possibly another murder charge against me. I'd be lucky to get life.”

“You could have asked me about the key instead of playing me. You could have trusted me.”

“I've never trusted anyone.” She dropped her head. “It was too big a risk to start now.”

The fog pressed in closer and the ocean beyond the shore break disappeared into the haze.

“What are you going to do with the computer?” Melody's eyes had lost all their mystery. One emotion, fear.

Melody's fate and my freedom depended on what I did with that computer. If I turned it over to Chief Parks, along with what I had on Moretti, maybe he'd choose to believe me and convince the DA to drop the grand jury. Melody had put her survival first. Maybe I should do the same with mine.

But could I live with dooming Melody to life in a cell for a murder she may not have committed in order to clear myself? I knew what it was like to be judged guilty, but I hadn't yet lost my freedom because of it.

“What are you going to do, Rick?” Fragile, exposed.

“What I have to.”

I sat alone in the Caddy and stared at two business cards belonging to men I wished I'd never met. Peter Stone and Chief Parks. Both demanded to see me tonight. One offering fifty grand, the other my freedom. All I had to do was show up and give them what they wanted.

Then trust them.

I pulled the items I'd taken from Adam Windsor's storage locker out of my backpack one at a time and studied them as if they possessed the answers to my problems. They didn't. They just reminded me of the mess I'd gotten myself into.

The last to come out was the tape recorder I'd stolen from Heather Ortiz at the UCSD library. I turned it on and heard the hiss I'd heard earlier that morning at Starbucks. I hit rewind and after a couple seconds Heather Ortiz's voice came on. She was talking to a Betty Brictson over a speakerphone, the recorder picking up both ends of the conversation. Heather introduced herself and explained that she was doing a story on Adam Windsor's murder.

“I don't know anything about any murder in California.” Middle-aged, raspy voice full of cigarettes and hard living.

“But you do know Peter Stone, correct?” Heather sounded like she knew the answer to her own question. “He's living here in La Jolla now. Where Mr. Windsor was murdered.”

“I don't see how this has anything to do with me. I don't want to be rude, but I have to—”

“But you worked as a cocktail waitress at the Starlighter Casino back when Mr. Stone was the casino manager, right?”

“Yes.” Grudgingly.

“And then you left the casino when you became pregnant with Louise. That was right about the time Peter Stone married his boss's daughter and became a part owner, correct?”

The woman sucked in a harsh grab of air.

Heather'd been busy this morning after I gave her the name on the birth certificate. Betty Brictson was Elizabeth Nelson Delano. The name of the mother on the birth certificate of Louise Abigail Delano that I'd found in Adam Windsor's locker.

“I'm not suppo—I don't want to talk about that.” Betty's voice was thick with emotion or a couple cocktails. Maybe both.

“It must have hurt when Peter chose his career over you and his daughter.”

Stone was the child's father! The chapter title in Windsor's memoir, Father-Daughter Love. Stone and his bastard child. That's why he wanted everything from Windsor's locker. He wanted the birth certificate. But why?

Betty Brictson was silent for a moment. Then, “I miss her.”

“Where is she? What happened to her? There's no record of her after her birth. Is she still alive?”

“She might as well be dead for how little contact I've had with her. I've seen her once in ten years and that was on television. She's too important now to talk to her mama.” A sob followed by a line of hacking coughs.

“Who is she? What's her name now?”

“I have to go.”

“Why did Adam Windsor have her birth certificate?”

Silence. No breaths. No coughs. Finally, “He was a vile human being and I'm glad he finally got what was coming to him.”

The phone went dead and so did the tape.

Louise Abigail Delano. Illegitimate daughter to Peter Stone. Could she be the key to the whole puzzle? Too important to talk to her mother and only seen on TV once in ten years. She could have been any semicelebrity who flashed to the surface for her fifteen minutes and then disappeared back into the murk.

Who was Louise Abigail Delano?

Betty Brictson knew. But even if I could track her down, she wouldn't tell me. Stone knew, too, and he was waiting for me up in his mansion on a hill. But he'd take what I had and give nothing back. There was one more person who might know, but I doubted she'd talk to me either. If she did, she might have company listening in, but I didn't have any options left.

I looked out the Caddy window at the ocean below the cliffs. The fog had clamped down on the night. Water and sky wove together to form a gray shroud.

I started the car and drove though the sea of fog along Coast Boulevard. Headlights of oncoming cars smeared out into yellow halos sifted through a silk scarf. Stoplights were rainbow hallucinations. I cut back a few blocks through the soup until I hit Pearl Street and found the only gas station left in downtown La Jolla. An old phone booth sat next to the service garage.

I dropped in some coins and punched the big square numbers. Heather Ortiz answered on the third ring.

“Hello?” Low, almost a whisper.

“I guess you found your phone where I left it. Sorry about that. I didn't have time to stick around and talk to the detective.” I tried to sound apologetic. Considering how she'd set me up for Moretti at the library, it wasn't easy. “I still have your notes and tape recorder if you want them back, too.”

If Moretti and LJPD were triangulating cell towers, they'd be out of luck. A trace was possible, but I wouldn't be in the phone booth long enough for it to matter.

“I'll have to call you back.”

I'd gotten the result I'd feared, but not the anger I'd expected.

“Wait. Before you do, did you find out who Louise Abigail Delano is?”

“No. But I found out Scarface lost his scars. Gotta go.” Dial tone.

What the hell did that mean? Moretti's cleft lip scar was gone?
No, but it was now covered by his mustache. Maybe that's what she meant. She'd figured out that her bedmate was Scarface, but I hadn't found out anything I didn't already know.

I could either run, wait for the Grand Jury to indict me, or find some answers on my own. I still had Chief Parks's card, but his visit to Kim's house left me with more fear than trust. I was down to a Hail Mary. And the deity I had to entreat didn't answer prayers. He crushed them.

Stone.

Back in the Caddy, I pulled the envelope that held Louise Abigail Delano's birth certificate out of my backpack and wrote Turk's address on it. I ripped a blank page from Heather's notepad and wrote a note that the birth certificate belonged to Stone's daughter and instructed Turk to hold onto to it until he heard from me. He owed me that. If things didn't turn out as I'd hoped, if I got arrested, or worse, he'd know he had something valuable that pointed a finger at Stone. I stuffed the note into the envelope, then attached a stamp that I'd rummaged out of my wallet.