Yesterday's Echo (7 page)

The only other person in the room was the detective I'd seen talking to Heather Ortiz at the Shell Beach Motel earlier in the day. A nameplate on the outside of his cube opposite Dan's read “Detective Moretti.” Hair slicked back hard, olive skin deeply tanned like a guy who spent his days at the beach or his nights under a sun lamp. He was hunched over a trash can clipping his fingernails. I guess the DB turned out to be an overdose. One less murder to solve for the busy boys at Robbery/Homicide.

Dan pulled a chair from the empty cube next to his and offered it to me. My ribs and kidneys hurt as I lowered myself down into the chair. He opened with some preliminaries, name and address to get everything on the record if needed. Then he asked me to describe my day leading up to and through the assault.

I gave him the rough and tumble at Muldoon's and then the ambush. The rest was between Melody and me. Nothing about taking her home last night, nothing about looking for her at the motel. I didn't even give him her name or what she looked like. Until I knew different, Melody didn't want the cops involved and I certainly didn't want to be involved with the cops.

“And you don't know the woman that these men were looking for?” He looked at me like “no” would be the wrong answer. I gave him a version of it, anyway.

“Like I said, they were looking for a woman they claimed had dinner in Muldoon's last night. I don't necessarily see or remember every guest who comes into the restaurant.”

I'd probably never see Melody again. If I did, I didn't want it to be because I'd betrayed her trust.

Dan stood up and looked down at me like I'd betrayed his. Sometimes in life you have to make hard choices.

“All right, Rick,” Dan said.

He walked over to a file cabinet against the wall and grabbed two large three-ring binders, then came back and dropped them on the desk. They made a loud “clunk” that brought Moretti's head over the cubicle wall. He gave me cop eyes and then disappeared below the partition.

“Look through those mug books and let us know if you find the men who assaulted you.” He gave me the same look Moretti had. “I'm going to go grab our sketch artist in case the suspects aren't in the books.”

I flipped through the mugs and didn't see anyone I recognized. I sat quietly and waited for Dan's return. The quiet didn't last long.

“Those two hard boys seemed pretty certain you knew the woman they were after. Why do you think that is, Cahill?” Detective Moretti's coal eyes bore into me over the top of the cubicle.

He must have been listening while he worked on his manicure.

“I don't know.” I held his glare. “Maybe they didn't like getting kicked out of the restaurant and decided to take it out on me.”

“Just an innocent victim.” He hit each syllable hard like the drop of a guillotine blade. “Is that it, Cahill?”

I'd never met this guy before and wished I hadn't then. His contempt for me was boldly up front, even for a cop. I hadn't faced such hatred since my last encounter with Colleen's father.

“I didn't even want to press charges.” My voice had some hiss to it. “I came down here as a favor to Dan, so—”

“You're a real sport, Cahill.” He smacked gum, loud and hard with an open mouth. “Doing the police a favor by reporting a crime that you seemed content to cover up. You could have saved us all a lot of time and trouble if you would have waited around for the uniforms. That's what people with nothing to hide do.”

“Yeah, I can see you're very busy. Not even enough time for a decent manicure.”

Moretti sprang up from his chair to his full height, which would have been right at the police department minimum, if they still had one. He walked over and let his short-man frame tower over me as I stayed seated. I glanced at the chief's office behind Moretti to the left. Parks's eyes were on me and not his belligerent detective.

“How the hell were you ever a cop, Cahill?”

Finally, a good question. I hadn't planned on being one. I was going to be a football coach. Start in high school and then move my way up the ladder. My father had been a cop for LJPD. At least until he “retired” early without a pension. There'd been an investigation, but no charges filed. I remembered playing kickball in grade school the first time I heard the word “bagman.” Neither the kid who'd repeated his father's words nor I knew what it meant. Until later.

My dad died when I was a sophomore in college. The man I'd loved as a child, feared as a kid, and hated as a teenager. His ex-partner was the only cop who attended the memorial service. That was the day I decided to become a police officer. I never let myself believe that I was doing it to erase the tarnish my father had
brought to the family name. It was only after I'd turned tarnish to rot that I realized what I'd been trying to do.

I didn't think Moretti was interested in the details, so I kept my history to myself.

“You had to go all the way to Santa Barbara to find a place where no one could smell the stink of your old man on you.” He smacked his gum louder. “But you fouled the world and that poor girl with your own stink. Didn't you?”

If he didn't have a badge and it had been five years ago in a bar, I would have stopped his mouth with my fist. That may have been what he was hoping I'd do now. Give him a reason to put me in a cage where I belonged. Where my family blood had fated me. I tamped down the anger and shoved it into a compartment in a dark hole in my mind.

“You practicing interrogation methods for when you catch the guys who jumped me?” I smiled up at him like a good citizen. “After you've buffed your nails, of course.”

He raised his foot up and rested it on the arm of Dan's chair and leaned in on me. Up close, I could see the tip of a jagged cleft lip scar under his black mustache. I caught a whiff of his cologne. It was subtle, like ox musk mixed with gasoline.

“Something's not right about your little story, Cahill.” He smiled but drilled small, mean eyes into me. “Just like the story you told Santa Barbara PD a few years back. The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the rotten tree.”

I stood up. Moretti dropped his foot back to the ground and straightened up. It didn't matter how straight he made his spine, he'd never catch up to me. This time I crowded him and looked down at his forehead. “Tell Dan I'm sorry I couldn't wait around for the sketch artist.” I crouched down a few inches so we were eye to eye. “Okay, Detective?”

Moretti grabbed me by my shirt and sent his cologne in first before his face. “Sit down!”

He tried to push me down into the chair, but I stayed upright. My ribs and kidneys screamed pain, but I swallowed it. I caught
the chief's office out of the corner of my eye. Parks still had his eyes only on me.

“Sylvia's ready to sketch for Mr. Cahill.” Dan's voice broke the tension, but I kept my eyes on Moretti.

“Cahill and I were just discussing his father.” Moretti relaxed his shoulders and looked over at Dan. “Bags Cahill left quite a reputation behind. Just like his son, Rick, here.” He turned back to me. “I told your friend Dan all about your, ah, interesting past this afternoon.”

He gave me a snake grin, patted me on the shoulder, and then left the room.

I turned and saw in Dan's eyes that I'd need a new golf partner. Now every cop I knew was on the other side of the thin blue line.

I sat down and worked with the sketch artist. Not because it was the right thing to do. I'd already done enough wrong to negate the right. I did it to show Moretti and the rest of them that, although I was my father's son, they'd never know me. They could label me a bent cop, a guy who got away with murder, but they'd never know who I really was.

No one ever would.

Dan had left me alone with the sketch artist. After about a half hour she had two good renderings of my attackers. I didn't think anyone wanted to pat me on the back or shake my hand about being a good citizen, so I thanked the artist and got up to leave.

Moretti sauntered into the room just as I stood up from Dan's desk to leave. He ignored me and took the sketches from the artist and headed over to the copy machine next to the coffeemaker. I'd started to turn to leave when I noticed Moretti stop and stare at one of the sketches. He gave a quick glance in my direction and then went into the chief's office, closed the door, and shut the blinds.

I didn't wait around to find out who he'd recognized or why the chief had to see the sketch in a sealed room. It could have been a suspect in a high-profile case they wanted to keep the lid on. It
could have been an ex-cop they knew. It probably had nothing to do with me. But when that door shut and those blinds snapped shut, the memory of Santa Barbara Police Department and another sealed room rushed back at me. My body flashed hot and my breath caught in my throat. I bolted out of the squad room, down the stairs, and out of the station house.

I shut down Muldoon's early and was home by eleven thirty. Three or four beers and then bed was the plan. I'd had enough excitement for one day. And one night. I had a Ballast Point Ale in my hand even before I opened the back door to let Midnight in. I put a hand out before he could jump up and knock me over again. I was almost knocked over anyway.

Melody rushed in behind Midnight and planted her lips on mine before I could wipe the surprise off them.

This time we made it to the bedroom. Despite the fast start, we took our time, explored and savored. The passion of last night was muted, but the feeling was more intense. Like it was more than sex. That it had meaning. Unlike last night, her eyes allowed me in. When I looked into them, I saw desire, yet vulnerability. A vulnerability that I shared and hadn't felt since the early days with Colleen. It scared me, but in that moment I loved her for it.

I rolled onto my back when we were done, and Melody nuzzled against my shoulder.

“What happened to your face?” She traced a finger along my scab in the dark.

The hair lifted off the back of my neck. Those were the first words Melody had spoken to me tonight. Her voice floating in the dark sounded so much like Colleen's that I could have been back in Santa Barbara lying in bed with her eight years ago. Or standing over her grave, her voice accusing, coming up through the earth. Guilt flooded in through the cracks of my memories.

“Hey, come back to me, Rick.” Melody gently squeezed my chin. “Where did you go?”

A place that's always there, no matter how far I run from it.

“I'm right here.” I took her hand off my chin and held it in my own. “I'm not the one who disappears in the middle of the night.”

“Ouch. I guess I deserved that.” She rolled onto her back but kept hold of my hand. “And you deserve an explanation.”

“If you hadn't come back, that would have been explanation enough. But you did.”

“I wasn't going to.” She blew out a deep breath. “I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye last night or leave you a note. I thought it would be best for both of us if I just disappeared. I wanted you to forget about me.”

“Why?”

“Because my life is—complicated—right now.”

“You mean there's a man in it.”

“No. My career. Things.” She squeezed my hand. “It just seemed that a relationship didn't make sense right now.”

“Then why did you come back?”

“Because all the reasons why I shouldn't have weren't enough to stop me.” She rolled over on top of me and kissed me. “And I wanted to see if you felt the same way.”

“Am I going to wake up tomorrow to an empty bed?”

“No, but you might wake up to breakfast in bed. I make a mean stack of pancakes.” She rolled off me and rested her head in her hand. “Now, what happened to your face?”

I told her about my adventures with the hard boys and the cops. I left out my trip to Shell Beach Motel. My pride didn't want her to think that I'd crawled after her when she left me behind.

“Rick, I'm so sorry about all this.” She ran fingers along my scalp and kissed my forehead. “You tried to protect me and look what happened. Why didn't you just tell them what they wanted to know?”

“I didn't know where you were, so I couldn't have told them if I wanted to.”

“But you could have least told them the truth. That you knew me. Maybe they wouldn't have hurt you.”

“What happens between you and me is no one's business but our own.” I rolled up on an arm so that we were face-to-face. “But if there is going to be an ‘our,' I need to know why these men are after you.”

She didn't say anything and I waited. Her face was outlined in the dark, but her features hid in shadows. Finally her voice came out of the night. “They must be working for Peter.”

“Stone?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“So, he's more than some jilted lover. What's going on?”

She turned away from me and rolled onto her other side. “I don't know.”

“Melody. These guys are dangerous. If you won't tell me what this is about, then go to the police.” I laid my hand softly on her hip. “Or I will.”

She was silent again. Then her voice, barely above a whisper, drifted over her shoulder. “I think my source is blackmailing Peter.”

“I thought he was giving you information about Mayor Albright. What's that have to do with Stone?”

“He knows a lot of things about a lot of people. I don't know what he has on Peter, but I don't want to be the person who brings the police into it.” She sat up and faced me. Her eyes still pools of shadow. “Peter is a very vindictive man and knows a lot of ways to hurt people. Please stay away from him, Rick. I don't want him to hurt you, too.”

I didn't want him to either. Stone had already pushed some pain my way through the restaurant before he even knew me. Now I was probably on his to-do list.