Yesterday's Echo (37 page)

“We'd had a fight before my shift started that night. We had a lot of fights back then, but this one was bad. Furniture thrown, broken plates. She didn't like that I spent so much time with my ex training officer, Krista. She told me that I'd changed from the guy she'd fallen in love with after I became a cop. That I'd become short tempered, callous, and full of myself. I could have blamed it on working the streets, seeing what depraved people did to each other. But she was right. I was just too puffed up behind the badge on my chest to see it then. When I finally did, it was too late.”

I dropped my head, and Kim put a hand on my arm. I shook it off. I didn't deserve her sympathy.

“I was still pissed when I went on patrol that night and knew where I could find a sympathetic ear. Krista and I did spend a lot of time together. We'd bitch about the job and our spouses over lunch or a beer. The things only another cop could understand. Not a civilian, like Colleen. Strictly everyday bullshit. But there'd been a different, unspoken, undercurrent at our last couple of
meetings. I knew her detective husband was out of town on a case and convinced myself I'd only go over to her house to talk. We did talk. For a little while.

“When I got out of her bed, I caught my reflection in a mirror and saw for the first time that Colleen had been right. I didn't like the person staring back at me.”

I looked at Kim, but she wouldn't look at me. I didn't blame her. She must have now wondered if I'd betrayed her while we'd been together. I didn't. Only Colleen. The one time. On the last night of her life. It had cost me my only love. It had cost Colleen everything.

That night in Santa Barbara came back at me and filled me with the same dread. Back in Krista's bedroom, a huge hole opened up in me for something I'd once had and now had ruined. I wanted it back. I wanted to be the man Colleen had fallen in love with again and realized I never could. But I had to try. I'd go to counseling, quit the force. Whatever it took.

I needed to see her, to hear her voice. To confess.

Kim still couldn't look at me, but I had to get it all out. Finally. “Colleen had called my cell phone twice while I was in bed with another cop's wife. My calls back to her went to voice mail. Panic gripped me. A graveyard shift's sixth sense. I knew something worse than my sin had happened. I raced to the library, but got there an hour late. Colleen was already gone. Forever. Her body was discovered on the beach the next morning.”

Kim didn't say anything for a long time. When she finally spoke, the hint of affection in her voice that I'd always taken for granted was gone.

“Why didn't you give the police your alibi when they arrested you?”

“I should have. Then the police might have looked for the real killer instead of focusing on me.” I looked out the window, but saw only the sun's glare. “I told myself I was protecting Krista, but I knew deep down that I didn't want my fellow cops to know that
I'd committed the unpardonable sin of sleeping with another cop's wife.”

“You were willing to go to prison for that?”

“No. If it had gone to trial, I would have shown the world who I really was. But the DA dropped the charges because they found unknown hair on Colleen's body that wasn't mine. Detective Grimes was still convinced I'd killed her, but the DA didn't think he could get a conviction. But none of that changes what I did that night.”

I finally looked at Kim, but she wouldn't meet my eyes.

“That isn't who you are now, Rick. And it doesn't change the fact that you risked your life to save mine.”

But I knew from the sound of her voice that something had changed in her. I missed it already.

Melody came by the next evening. Freedom, or maybe a tanning booth, had brought back the caramel color to her skin. Her dark eyes, as smoky and sexy as the first night I saw her.

“Oh my God, Rick, are you okay?”

She kissed my forehead. Either because it was the most likely area that wouldn't hurt, or because I wasn't worthy of deeper affection.

“I'll live.”

“I can't thank you enough for what you did. Without you, I'd still be in jail.”

That was probably true, but I didn't feel like a hero.

Melody sat with me for a half hour. She told me she had to fly back to San Francisco for work, but would be down next weekend, as she had a job offer in L.A. to host a daytime talk show. The benefits of celebrity victimhood.

“If I take the job in Los Angeles, I'd only be two hours away.” She stroked my hair. “We could see what life's like without the police trying to put me in jail and without you getting shot.”

She kissed my lips this time, and the memory of our first night
together rushed back at me. She said goodbye and stood up to leave.

“When the Detective Moretti questioned you about how my Callaway hat got in your motel room the morning Windsor died, what did you tell him?”

If the question surprised her, she didn't show it.

“That I'd grabbed it by mistake out of your closet.”

“So you didn't tell them you didn't know how it got there?”

“No.” The lie wouldn't let her eyes meet mine. “Why?”

“I just wanted to be sure.” And I was. Melody had let me dangle on the edge of the Windsor murder as a potential suspect. Another option in her feral instinct for survival.

“I really do care about you, Rick.” She turned and left.

In her broken way, I believed she did.

She didn't come down to see me the next weekend, or ever again.

Three days after I got out of the hospital, against doctor's orders, I drove my car over to Elk Fenton's office. I got what I needed and then went to Turk's house. He was still in the hospital, but out of ICU and on his way to recovery. Not recovery of his former life, but of some kind of life. I sifted through his mailbox, found what I was looking for, then headed over to San Diego Gun.

Ten days had passed and my life had changed more than once, but I still had need for a gun. I picked up the Ruger .357 Magnum and bought a box of Magtech ammo.

At six o'clock the next morning, I drove over to Stone's house and parked where I'd left the Caddy a week ago. My left arm in a sling, I hammered on the drawbridge front door and returned my right hand to the heavy pocket of my bomber jacket.

Stone opened the door in a blue terrycloth robe. His eyes were alert, but he hadn't been awake long enough to tame his gray mane. I pulled my hand from my coat and held the Ruger loosely at my side. Stone's eyes tracked the gun, then came back to mine.

This was going to end today. How it did, would be Stone's choice.

“Well, Rick,” he opened the door wide, “I see we have some unfinished business. Come in.”

I stepped inside and off to the right so I could see him as he shut the door. “Your office.”

He led me down the hallway. All photographs were hanging back in place. I checked the wall inside his office that had been punctured by the first shot he fired at me. Not even a mark.

Stone saw me examining the wall. “Some mistakes are easily erased.”

“Sit, Stone, but keep your hands on the desk.”

He did as told and I took the same seat opposite him I'd chosen a week ago. The morning sun hadn't yet climbed up the back of Mount Soledad and the panoramic windows behind Stone only hinted at the ocean below in gray relief. I set the gun down on the desk and pulled an envelope out of my back pocket and placed it next to the gun.

“You're now legally part owner of Muldoon's Steak House. There's nothing I can do about that.” I rested my hand on the desk between the gun and the envelope. “But I can stop you from forcing Turk out and tearing the restaurant down to put up a hotel.”

“You think the threat of a gun is going to stop me?” He gave me sharp teeth and dead eyes.

“No, but what's in the envelope will.”

“You have my attention.”

“Louise Abigail Delano's birth certificate.” I took the certificate out of the envelope and held it up so he could see it. Then I pushed the envelope across the desk to him.

Stone opened it and pulled out the document Elk Fenton had written up for me the day before. “What's this?”

“An agreement not to sell Muldoon's or close it without Turk's consent. Sign it.”

He looked at me and smiled, then signed the contract and slid it back to me. I checked his signature and put it back in the envelope and placed the birth certificate on the desk. I stood up, put the gun in my pocket, and reached across the table with an open hand.

Stone tilted his head and his smile grew larger. He hesitated, then finally shook my hand. I turned and headed for the door, leaving the birth certificate on the desk.

“You don't think my lawyers can break this contract, Rick?” The confident, languid baritone from the first night we met.

“Maybe.” I stopped and looked at him. “That's why I shook
your hand. I know you won't break that oath because you believe in honor. And if you do, I'll come after you.”

I left without looking back.

Late that night, I sat with Midnight in the dark and watched the video of Colleen and me in Lake Tahoe the weekend I proposed to her. The video cut to the part where we camped at nearby Fallen Leaf Lake. Colleen was cooking over a Coleman stove and didn't know I was filming. Her blonde hair in a ponytail, sparkling azure eyes pulled up at the corners in a smile, she sang softly to herself as she flipped bacon on the stove. She looked up, embarrassed when she saw me, then her face melted into the smile that told me she wouldn't want to be anywhere else but there with me. It was the look I held onto after all those years and summoned when I could get past the guilt.

I turned off the tape and cried.

A week later, I went back to work at Muldoon's. Stone stayed away. I worked one hundred and forty-nine straight days until Turk finally rolled through the front door in a wheelchair. I quit the next day.

I've since found a new job. Private investigator.

Now strangers come to me with their problems and I try to solve them. I do it for money, not for love. It's easier that way. Fewer people get hurt.