Yesterday's Echo (36 page)

“Where's Kim?” I pictured Kim laying still, eyes open like Heather Ortiz. Then she was Colleen on the steel coroner's table in Santa Barbara. “Please. Let her go. She doesn't know anything.”

“What's he talking about?” Heaton stepped back from the open trunk, my backpack in his left hand. “Who's Kim?”

Heaton didn't know. He'd helped Parks to cover his own ass, but didn't know all that Parks had done.

“It doesn't matter.” The chief barked commands like Heaton was still on the force. “What's in the backpack?”

“Does he know that you killed Heather Ortiz, Chief?” I said.

“Shut up!” Parks backhanded me with the Glock. The barrel's sight sliced open a gash above my right eye. Blood streamed down into my eye and joined the flow from my nose.

“What's going on, Ray?” Heaton's normal gruff baritone leapt up an octave. His right hand down at his side holding his gun. “I don't mind roughing up this asshole, but I didn't sign on for murder. Tell me he's wrong.”

Parks spun toward Heaton and an explosion shook the night. A dark dot bloomed on Heaton's forehead and he collapsed straight down like a puppet on broken strings. His gun clattered to the ground.

I sprang to my feet and bolted for the edge of the parking lot when I heard Parks's voice.

“Stop or you're dead!”

Personal defense experts preach to keep running in a situation like this, that it's hard to hit a moving target. Peter Stone had
proved that tonight, but I'd just seen Parks spin and put a bullet in a man's forehead at twenty feet. My back would be an easier target, even while running.

I froze and prayed for the cavalry to arrive.

“Turn around and walk toward me slowly.” He had the Glock trained on my chest.

I did as told and he backed up when I got within ten feet of him. He halted after a couple steps.

“Okay. Stop right there.”

Parks looked back and forth between Heaton's still body and me as if he were measuring the angles. He might as well have been measuring my casket. I was a prop in Parks's play. Heaton and I get into a gun battle at the cross and kill each other. The trail back to Parks is erased and he goes off with Albright to Sacramento. But that still left Kim.

“Sit down and don't move.” I sat down and Parks walked over to Heaton's fallen body.

“What did you do with Kim?” Time was my ally. If I could get him talking, I might have a chance of surviving. And if I didn't, maybe the extra few seconds would save Kim.

Parks opened the backpack with his free hand and looked inside, then back at me. “You killed her.”

Tears welled in my eyes and washed the trickle of blood. “You motherfucker!” I rose up to start a suicide charge when Parks stopped me.

“Whoa! You haven't killed her yet. She's in the trunk.” He nodded over to the Crown Vic parked ten yards away. “You set yourself up nicely, Cahill. Some of your hair, extra from the hat you left in Windsor's hotel room, will be found in Heather Ortiz's house. I wouldn't have gone to the trouble if I'd known you were going to walk all over the crime scene on your own. I just heard it on the scanner. Some citizen saw you fleeing Heather's house. You are one stupid son of a bitch, Cahill. Just like your old man. You have to be stupid to get caught.”

“You don't think you'll get caught?”

“You just brought me the evidence I needed.” He pulled Windsor's ledger out of my backpack and waved it at me. “Goodbye, Cahill.”

“What about Windsor's book?” I braced for impact. “I copied it on a flash drive and mailed it to a friend. If I don't show up at his house on Monday, he'll send it to the police and the newspaper. Windsor named names. Like Scarface.”

“You don't have any friends, Cahill.” He pointed the Glock at me.

“Hey!” Turk burst through the fog.

Parks spun and fired at Turk just as I dove at him. The Glock went off again and pain ripped through my left shoulder and my left ear went deaf. Turk, Parks, and I all hit the ground at once. Only Turk had stopped moving.

I lunged across Park's body and grabbed for the gun with my live hand. But it wasn't there. It was on the ground ten feet away. Parks clamped his hands around my neck and squeezed, digging his thumbs into my Adam's apple. Rage burned in his black eyes. I choked out a cough and fought for air. None. I shot a right to his nose and his hands released, but one found the hole in my shoulder and tore at it.

Pain blast furnaced through me. Parks pushed me off, scrambled to his feet, and lurched to his gun. I sprang backward toward Heaton's body and spotted his Smith & Wesson. I grabbed it, spun around on my back, and fired five rounds at the dark shape my one good eye could see just as the Glock went off and punched a hole in the Caddy next to my left ear. Parks was still upright and I pulled the trigger again, but the cylinder was empty. I dove over Heaton, expecting the last gunshot I'd ever hear.

Silence.

I looked up to where Parks had been standing. He wasn't there anymore. I lowered my eyes and found him. Laid out on the asphalt parking lot, black eyes staring at nothing, the gun off to the side. I walked over to him, bent over and picked up the weapon. The ground started to roll as I rose. My ears felt clogged with cotton
and the night closed around me in a narrowing pipe. I wouldn't be conscious much longer.

Turk lay still, face down twenty feet away. Parks's car with Kim in the trunk a few strides in the other direction. I started to turn toward Turk when I noticed the holes. Two bullet holes in the trunk of the Crown Vic. Right in my line of fire when I emptied the gun at Parks.

I bent down and got the keys out of Parks's pocket and staggered over to the car. The night kept rolling in on me as I fumbled the keys into the lock and threw open the trunk. Kim lay still inside, blood pooled below her head.

I fell to my knees, saw a floating rainbow above two fuzzy orbs of light rolling toward me, then slid down onto my back. The last thing I saw was the forty-three-foot cross looming over me like a giant dagger.

I opened my eyes to bars of shadow across a wall. I figured I was in a jail cell until a nurse's face appeared in front of mine. She said something about window blinds and I closed my eyes.

The next time I opened them, I saw Detective Moretti frowning down at me. Maybe I was in jail. Or hell. I checked the off-white walls, mounted television, and IV needle in my arm. No, still the hospital.

“Is Kim alive?” The words were sharp in my throat and came out raspy.

The image of Kim wedged in the trunk of Parks's car, lying in a pool of blood, hurt worse than the hole in my shoulder. I held my breath and waited for Moretti's answer, as if the verdict of Kim's life was at his command.

“Yes.” Moretti's frown flattened into a straight line. “She's going to be fine. She sustained a blow to the head from her captor and was knocked unconscious. She has a few stitches, but no lasting injuries.”

“She wasn't shot?”

“No. She's very lucky.”

“Thank God.” Tears welled in my eyes. The first tears caused by joy since before Colleen was murdered. Then I remembered Turk lying still, facedown, on the asphalt parking lot below the cross.

“What about Turk Muldoon?” Again, I waited for Moretti's verdict.

“He's alive. In ICU. The bullet fired by the assailant lodged
next to his spine. The doctor says he'll survive, but may never walk again.”

The tears of joy dried up and a dark hole opened up inside me. Turk had set aside our war to help me when I was in trouble. He'd saved my life and paid for it with his freedom. He'd no longer be able to view life from eight thousand feet up, dangling off a granite face.

“You want to tell me what happened up there, Cahill?”

I figured Moretti hadn't shown up in my hospital room to hold my hand. I told him about the whole night, but left out the evidence I'd taken from Windsor's locker. And Stone. I'd deal with him on my own.

“That's quite a story, Cahill.”

“It's the truth.” But not the whole truth. “Kim can verify it.”

“I talked to Miss Connelly.” Dark eyes bore into me. “When Mr. Muldoon's conscious, I'll talk to him, too.”

“Okay.” I waited for what he hadn't told me yet.

“People died because of you, Cahill.” The rage built in his eyes. “You withheld evidence in a murder investigation. If you would have turned that evidence over to me, Heather would still be alive. Now the fucking media is going to make you out to be a hero.”

“You don't have to worry about the media, Moretti. I don't want anything to do with them.”

“Shut up.” He closed the door to the hospital room, then moved a chair next to my bed and sat in it. “You're a grade A asshole, Cahill. You stick your nose where it doesn't belong and leave dead bodies and broken lives in your wake.”

I couldn't argue with him.

He continued. “Well, there are sixty-seven lives hanging in the balance because of you now. The people employed by LJPD and the District Attorney's Office.”

Now I understood why he'd used “captor” and “assailant” when referring to Kim's and Turk's injuries. This wasn't about justice. This was about survival. LJPD's survival. If La Jollans knew the police chief had died a three-time murderer and not a hero,
they'd surely vote to disband the department when the proposition went on the ballot.

“Let me tell you the official story.” He leaned in on me, his cologne reminding me of the man I'd killed at the cross. “Stamp Heaton and Adam Windsor used to be partners when Stamp was on the force. Heaton protected Windsor from arrest when he was running women in La Jolla. Then Windsor got out of prison and decided to blackmail his old partner. Heaton killed him, then killed Heather when he learned she was on to him. Then he kidnapped your old girlfriend to lure you to your death because you knew too much.”

“That's quite a tale, Detective, but it doesn't explain Chief Parks's showing up at the cross.”

“Parks had Heaton under surveillance and got to the cross in time to save you and Miss Connelly, but unfortunately died in a shootout with Heaton.”

“What if I don't play along with your bullshit story?”

“Right now, Heather's case is open and you're still a suspect. We have a witness who is convinced he saw you fleeing the scene.” He gave me a smirk. “Of course, he could be mistaken and some compelling evidence that Mr. Heaton committed the crime could come to light.”

Moretti had built a house of cards that could be brought down by the slightest bit of investigative journalism or me opening my mouth. But when those cards came down, I'd be at the bottom of the pile again, a suspect in another murder. I'd need a lawyer, and I'd be under the spotlight again.

I'd lived with a lie for eight years, I could live with another one as long as innocent people didn't get hurt. Heaton wasn't a murderer, but he wasn't innocent either. But I wouldn't ask Kim to lie for me. My self-preservation had its limits.

“You're going to have a hard time convincing Kim that it wasn't Parks who kidnapped her. That's the one loose end that unravels your little yarn, Moretti.”

“Like I told you, Cahill.” He leaned closer. I could make out
the cleft lip scar under his mustache. “I've talked with Miss Connelly. She understands the seriousness of your situation, as I'm sure Mr. Muldoon will when he regains consciousness.”

Kim, still looking out for me even after all I'd put her through.

“Detective Coyote going along with all this, or haven't you told him yet?”

“Detective Coyote is taking an early retirement.” He dropped his eyes.

“There's one man with a conscience. What happened to yours? Is it tough to sleep at night, Moretti?”

“I sleep fine. It's not like Stamp Heaton was a saint, Cahill.”

“Neither was Parks, but now you've made him one.”

“Where he's going, it won't matter.” He grabbed the guardrail of my hospital bed. “Do we have an understanding, Rick?”

I nodded my head, but I didn't think I'd get much sleep tonight or anytime soon. Moretti stood up to leave, but I stopped him. “And the evidence you found in the backpack of Melody and Angela Albright.”

“Doesn't exist.” He walked to the door and opened it.

“One last thing, Moretti.” He turned hard eyes back on me. “When you questioned Melody about how my Callaway hat ended up at the Windsor crime scene, what did she say?”

He told me and left.

An hour later, Kim came into my room. Her head was wrapped in a bandage, but her green eyes were clear and beautiful. Joy and guilt hit me hard in the gut all at once.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

Tears welled in her eyes, emeralds in pools of rain. She came to me and delicately hugged me, avoiding my bandaged shoulder, stitched brow, and cotton-packed nose. Hot tears dripped on my neck.

“How can you say you're sorry?” She unwound from me and pulled back. “You saved my life and almost died because of it.”

“I put your life in danger. If I had just taken what I had to the
police instead of playing hero, none of this would have happened. Heather Ortiz would still be alive.”

“You didn't have a choice, Rick. You did what you thought was right. You always do. You're a good man.”

Kim had always believed in me. She'd only brought up Colleen once, early in our relationship, just to let me know she'd listen if I ever wanted to talk. I never did. I let her believe that I was an innocent victim who'd been unjustly hounded by the police and the press.

“I was supposed to pick up Colleen from the library the night she died.” I looked up at the blank television screen in the corner of the room, not wanting to see the change in Kim's eyes that was sure to come. “It was a ritual we had. We never broke it. No matter what. She'd study at the library until closing, and I'd come by in my radio car to pick her up and take her home. It was against Santa Barbara PD procedure; just one of the rules I broke back then.