Dark Fissures Read online

  DARK

  FISSURES

  Also by Matt Coyle

  Yesterday’s Echo

  Night Tremors

  DARK

  FISSURES

  A RICK CAHILL NOVEL

  MATT COYLE

  Copyright 2016 © Matt Coyle

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-60809-226-0

  Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing Longboat Key, Florida

  www.oceanviewpub.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For Charles Henry Coyle, Jr.

  Father, Veteran, Self-Made Man

  Dec. 6, 1924–Oct. 3, 2015

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK AND my career have been made better by the people who have touched both of them.

  My sincere thanks to:

  My agent, the Velvet Hammer, Kimberley Cameron, for her unwavering support and invaluable advice.

  Bob and Pat Gussin, Lee Randall, Emily Baar, Lisa Daily, and Michael Fedison at Oceanview Publishing for all the expertise and for being fantastic partners.

  Carolyn Wheat, Cathy Worthington, Judy Hamilton, Linda Schroeder, and Grant Goad of the Saturday Writers Group for helping to make this book worthy of submission.

  My family, Jan and Gene Wolfchief, Tim and Sue Coyle, Pam and Jorge Helmer, Jennifer and Tom Cunningham for all the support and year-round marketing.

  Nancy Denton for an essential early line edit and her continued goodwill.

  Jennifer Cunningham for a sharp eye, lots of questions, and a final read.

  Bob Buckley for all things lawyerly.

  Matt Menotti for information on car dealerships.

  Diane Villarino and George Alexander for their expertise on life insurance.

  Gina Mattern Corsini for inside real estate info.

  Dr. D. P. Lyle for his knowledge of opioids and all things medical.

  Pamela Putnam, San Bernardino County Deputy Coroner, for the extensive information on coroner procedures.

  Retired FBI Special Agent George Fong for his knowledge regarding FBI field offices.

  David Putnam for his bottomless well of knowledge of all things police and his generosity of spirit.

  Finally, thanks to two Navy SEALs, one freshly minted, the other retired, who, true to their selfless service to our country, asked not to be singled out by name for their contributions to this book.

  Any errors on the law, car sales, life insurance, real estate, medical issues, coroners, the FBI, police procedures, or SEAL conduct are solely the author’s.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A RAINBOW LIGHT bar went off in my rearview mirror. Then the quick whir of a siren. I pulled over onto the side of the road.

  Again.

  Pre-rush-hour traffic sped by on Torrey Pines Road, the main artery in and out of La Jolla’s northern end. I checked the side mirror. The cop exited his cruiser. Tall. Lean. Aviator sunglasses above sea-cliff cheekbones. I’d seen him once or twice, but he’d never stopped me before.

  Others had.

  The cop put his hand on the handle of the Sig Sauer P229 pistol in his holster as he approached my car. I put both hands on the steering wheel. In plain sight. Nothing in the car could get me arrested. Or shot.

  Except me.

  I scanned the outline of the cop’s uniform. Pressed and too form-fitted against his body to hide a throw-down gun. Unless he had it tucked between his Sam Browne duty belt and his back. He stopped behind my left ear.

  “License and registration.” Military cadence with a dollop of contempt hanging off the end. The cop’s brass nameplate read Sgt. Buchholz.

  “I have to reach into the glove compartment for the registration,” I said before I slowly reached across and retrieved the document, keeping my left hand on the steering wheel. I repeated the exercise while taking my license from my wallet.

  “Been drinking today, Mr. Cahill?” He called me by my name before he even looked at my driver’s license.

  “No.” The truth. Luckily. I put my hands back on the wheel and stared straight ahead.

  “Smoke some marijuana?”

  “No.” I waited for him to run down a list of drugs legal and illegal, but he stopped at weed.

  “What’s your business in La Jolla today?”

  “Just picked up my mail.” I bit down the urge to say none of his damn business and nodded at a stack of letters in a rubber band on the passenger seat. I kept a La Jolla mailing address at a Postal Annex to keep erect the façade that my investigative agency operated out of that town. La Jollans had nice houses and liquid assets, but they had problems just like everybody else. Maybe more. Money caused as many problems as it solved.

  “Do you know why I stopped you, Mr. Cahill?”

  “No.” Because the chief of police put a target on my back.

  “You were swerving in and out of traffic and doing forty in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone.”

  “How fast was the guy going who sped past me right before you pulled me over?” I could only take so much.

  “Step out of the car, please.” He stepped back and kept his right hand on the handle of his gun.

  As usual, I had to pay the debt that my lip had borrowed. I slowly got out of the car. Traffic whizzed by, swirling a wind that pulled at me.

  The cop ran me through the drunk-driving exercises. He made me walk the inner line of a bike path three feet from whizzing traffic. Cars honked, teenagers hooted. I walked the line. When I’d run through his tricks, the cop had me sit down on the curb while he went back to his car so people could eyeball me as they sped by.

  The November sun sliced down between fluffy clouds and bounced off my sunglasses. Not the way I’d planned to spend my afternoon. The Postal Annex that held my mailbox was on La Jolla Boulevard. If I’d just taken the Boulevard out of town going south, I might have avoided Sergeant Buchholz or any of his friends. The cops had a heavier presence in the northern section of La Jolla. The drive home would have been longer, but I probably wouldn’t have been sitting on a curb waiting on a warrant check.

  But that would be giving in.

  Sergeant Buchholz talked into the car radio and checked his computer for warrants, but he already knew me front to back. Everybody did down at the La Jolla Police Department. What they may not have known was why Police Chief Tony Moretti had circled a bull’s-eye around me. I did.

  And I knew the bull’s-eye would grow tighter and tighter.

  Sergeant Buchholz finished up in the car and sauntered over to me like he had all the time in the world and like my time was irrelevant. He stood over me and pushed down a pen and a traffic ticket book with a citation flipped to the front.

  “Sign at the bottom and appear at the courthouse on the back before the date listed.” He curled the right corner of his lips into a smirk. “Of course, your signature is not an admission of guilt. You’ll receive a letter in the mail giving you the option of paying the fine ahead of time, in case you don’t want to argue your case against me in court.”

  I stood up and faced Sergeant Buchholz before I took the book and pen from his hand.

  I could feel his eyes boring into me behind the sunglasses, daring me to challenge his authority. His po
wer. The power to disrupt a citizen’s life just because he could. Or in my case because he, like all the cops at LJPD, had a wink and a nod from their chief to harass me whenever possible. But Buchholz came to it naturally, like a cat toying with a mouse.

  I knew the weight of the badge. How it could find a crack in your character and chip away at it until a dark fissure ran through your soul. I’d been stripped of my badge long ago, before the crevasse within could swallow me up. The crack inside Buchholz seemed to be deep and wide.

  “You did some good police work here today, Sergeant.” I signed the citation and handed the ticket book and pen back to him. “I’m sure this is what you envisioned when you signed up twenty years ago. Harassing citizens on dubious traffic stops. Your chief will be proud. Tell Moretti I said hello.”

  “Drive home safely, Mr. Cahill. The streets can be a dangerous place.” Buchholz pulled my copy of the ticket from the book and handed it to me. “Even in La Jolla.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I LET THE call go to the answering machine. Again. I looked over at the phone on the kitchen wall from my spot on the couch in the living room. I wondered if I’d miss it. Probably not. Nothing good ever came from answering that phone. I’d miss the wall the phone hung from, along with all the other walls that held up the roof of my house. Well, my house and the bank’s. Soon to just be the bank’s.

  Midnight stared at me from the backyard through the sliding glass door. He didn’t paw the glass like he wanted to come inside. Just stared. He’d spent more and more time outside lately. Almost like he knew his days in a spacious backyard were numbered. He was a black Lab, after all, and clairvoyant. Those big brown eyes stared right into your soul.

  My cell phone rang in my jeans pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the screen, hoping the bank hadn’t cracked the code and found my work number. I’d worked for a big bucks investigative agency in La Jolla when I signed the mortgage papers a couple years ago. Now I worked for my own agency. My phone number had changed.

  So had my income.

  I didn’t recognize the number on the phone’s screen. It wasn’t the bank’s. I’d memorized that one. It wasn’t the La Jolla Police Department Chief of Police’s, either. I knew that number, too. The chief hadn’t called me in a while, but I knew he’d contact me again. Maybe soon, maybe not. But eventually there’d be a knock on the door and a cop holding a warrant for my arrest.

  For murder.

  In the meantime, I’d fight the battles right in front of me. Maybe the call on my cell was from a paying client, and I’d get to stave off the foreclosure for another month. I answered the phone.

  “Mr. Cahill?” The voice flowed like a mountain stream, holding the Ls for an extra beat. A hint of the South. Musical. Sensual, without effort.

  “We can start with Rick.”

  “I think my husband was murdered.” Nothing sensual about that.

  “Then you should call the police.” I needed the fee, but I knew my limitations. And the law.

  “I already did. They ruled Jim’s death a suicide.” Calm.

  “Then I’m not sure what you think I can do for you.”

  “You can find the truth.”

  A year ago, somebody else hired me to find the truth. Back when I worked for a man I respected and could pay my mortgage. I found the truth and people lost their lives. I only lost my job. And a couple friends.

  “Sometimes the truth is what everyone else thinks it is.” I thought about the people who’d died during my quest last year. “And sometimes it’s better to let the truth lie.”

  “That’s not good enough for me, Mr. Cahill.” A slight scold in the alpine stream’s current. “I need to know what happened to my husband. And I thought you would be the man to help me find out. I thought you cared about the truth.”

  The house phone rang. I walked into the kitchen and looked at the screen. The bank.

  Again. I owed it three months’ mortgage payments. That was the bank’s truth. And mine.

  “Meet me at Muldoon’s Steakhouse in La Jolla at five. I’ll be in the bar.”

  “I’d rather meet at your office.”

  “That is my office.”

  * * *

  La Jolla sits on the coast just north of San Diego and is known for its beautiful beaches, stratospheric wealth, and Dr. Seuss. Muldoon’s Steak House had been a fixture on Prospect Street, La Jolla’s restaurant row, for over forty years. I’d spent seven of those years as its manager with a sliver of ownership that had never amounted to anything but a fractured friendship. Now it got me a table in the bar or dining room whenever I had to meet with a client.

  The hostess greeted me by name when I entered the restaurant. I couldn’t remember hers, so I just nodded on my way to the bar. Pat, a bartender I’d hired ten years ago, held up a Ballast Point IPA. I shook my head.

  “Client?” Pat’s eyebrows rose on his moon face.

  “Yep.”

  “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  Pat was on the Post-it note list of people I considered friends. I could have told him I hadn’t been to Muldoon’s lately because I hadn’t had a client in a while, but kept it to myself. He had his own problems, I guess. Our conversations rarely ventured past the Chargers’ or Padres’ problems.

  I sat at a table in the far corner with my back to the wall. I hadn’t bothered to tell the woman on the phone what I looked like. She’d done her research on me, so I figured she’d seen a picture. My face had turned up in a few newspapers and online a couple times over the years. Some for fame, some for blame. Most of which I didn’t deserve.

  The bar sat empty save for Pat and me. Muldoon’s didn’t officially open until 5:00 p.m., another five minutes. At 4:58 p.m. a woman walked in. Tall, long red hair, fair-skinned. Levi’s hugged her legs and a sky-blue sweater couldn’t hide her lean curves. She looked around and spotted me. Recognition in big round eyes colored a shade darker than her sweater, but no smile.

  She walked over to me. Long confident strides of an athlete. A sexy athlete. She looked to be around my age, thirty-six. When she pulled up at my table, something about her eyes told me she was slightly older. Not wrinkles or crow’s feet. Confidence. Pain. Life.

  “Mr. Cahill?” A question that didn’t need answering.

  I stood up and offered a hand. “Rick.”

  She shook my hand. “Brianne Colton.”

  The mellifluous voice from the phone. Light, but resonant. Musical. Her last name rang a dull bell in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t place the connection.

  “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Are you having anything?”

  “Not on the job.”

  She peered at me, her left eyelid dropping to half-mast. “I’ll have a beer. You choose.”

  When a woman tells me to choose a beer, I usually go for something light and delicate. Light and delicate didn’t match my first impression of Brianne Colton.

  I looked at Pat. “You can pull that Ballast Point IPA back out of the fridge.”

  The IPA was bitter and whacked you hard with hops.

  “Just one?”

  “Yep.” Too early to get hit hard with anything.

  Pat put the beer on the bar with a glass next to it. “No charge.”

  I went to the bar, laid down a five-dollar bill, grabbed the beer, and left the glass.

  “Thanks.”

  “Mrs. Colton, let’s get a table inside.” I arced my arm toward the hallway that led past the hostess station into the dining room.

  Brianne Colton walked over and I ushered her down the hallway. The petite hostess whose name I couldn’t remember smiled as we neared her.

  “Can I get you a table, Mr. Cahill?”

  “We’re going up to booth four. Thanks. I know the way. You can tell the staff to ignore us.”

  The arrangement I had with the owner, Turk Muldoon, allowed me to grab a table or booth when the restaurant wasn’t busy. I scheduled most of my client meets when the restau
rant just opened to avoid a crowd.

  And Turk. We’d been best friends once. Now we had a business arrangement.

  Muldoon’s Steak House was stuck in the 1970s: salad bar, bronze and redwood paneling, dim lighting. Stale atmosphere, but good food. That’s the way Turk and his regulars liked it. The ones who hadn’t died off, yet.

  Muldoon’s had once been my working sanctuary. A place where I’d kept busy enough to avoid the shadows from my past. Now, three years after I’d left, I was back. Sifting through other people’s shadows for a daily fee.

  I led Brianne up an elevated platform to the first leather-clad booth on the left. We sat opposite each other across a polished wood table.

  “Why did you order me an IPA?” Brianne asked.

  “I’m a gentleman, remember. It was the polite thing to do.”

  “Yes.” She tilted her head and looked at me like I was a jigsaw puzzle. “But why not a light beer or something less robust?”

  “Was it a bad choice?”

  “No. But why?”

  “Lucky guess?” I shrugged my shoulders, but she kept giving me the cypher look. “The way you carry yourself. Your confidence. A bit of athletic arrogance in the way you walk.”

  “Athletes don’t drink light beer?”

  “Maybe, but you struck me as someone who doesn’t like anything watered down.” I pulled a notebook and pen from the inside pocket of my leather jacket. “So, let’s start at the beginning. When, where, and how did your husband die? For right now, use the police version of how.”

  “He died two and a half months ago. At home.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head, both eyes set to half-mast. “He was found hanging from a beam in the garage.”

  “Did you find him?”

  “No.” She looked down at the table for a five count. When her head came up, tears filled up the bottom of her blue eyes. “My son did.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you need a moment?”

  “No. I’m good.” She blinked a few times and the tears evaporated, leaving behind steeled resolve. “That’s why I’m sure Jim didn’t kill himself.”