“What do you think?” Colleen said, flipping up the collar of her leather jacket against the biting wind blowing in from the ocean.
Retired Santa Cruz detective Dan Moran pushed his glasses up his nose and handed Colleen back her file folder.
“It’s good work, Hayes,” he said. “Damn good.” But his thick dark eyebrows furrowed in concern.
“Then why do I sense a ‘but’ coming?”
“Because it’s not enough to nail this Kieran Skinner.”
The two of them were standing outside the Santa Cruz Boardwalk Casino, the clatter and inanity of the arcade games being played at full volume wafting out. The two of them watched the wind blowing the waves to and fro beyond the pier. The sky had cleared enough today so that a few brave souls in wetsuits were paddling out on surfboards on the swelling waves.
“Not enough evidence?” she said. “I’ve covered everything.”
“It’s circumstantial at best,” Moran said, frowning. “It relies on an inference to connect it to the Copeland murder.”
Colleen gave a sigh.
“The Falcon is new evidence,” she said.
“Which you have yet to find,” Moran said, raising his eyebrows above his black-framed glasses. “No telling where that car is now, eleven years after the fact. Could have been crushed for scrap. And, even if you do find it, what do you have?”
“Larry, the maintenance man at Stow Lake. He’ll vouch he saw it the night of the murder.”
“Testimony taken over a decade later. Memories are faulty, Hayes, and, as good as you say his is, a jury is still going to be doubtful. And if they aren’t, you have a car parked near a murder. Skinner’s lawyers are going to argue that there could be a lot of cars parked near any murder.”
“Okay.” She grimaced. “How about the rush order for Kieran Skinner’s glasses?”
Moran shook his head. “Kieran Skinner could have sat on his spectacles during Thanksgiving dinner. We both know he didn’t, but I can hear his lawyer now. He or she—or, more likely, they—will make you look like a fool if you try to make that the reason he should spend the next twenty years in San Quentin.”
Colleen pulled the pill case from her pocket. “What about the pièce de résistance?”
“Evidence you stole? Prove it’s where you said it was—in the evidence box. That clerk is going to cover his tracks and deny he ever met you.”
Christ. There was one other fragment, but it had spilled on the floor of the break room when she engineered her “accident” to steal the piece she had. It might never be found.
“I’ve got Doctor Drake,” she said, “who wrote the coroner’s report. I’ve got evidence that Kieran was tucked away in Valley Oaks for a decade.”
“Fair enough,” Moran said. “But you can’t prove Margaret Copeland broke Skinner’s glasses, swallowed a chunk so you could come along eleven years later and nail him for murdering her. You, Hayes—an ex-con who killed her own husband.”
“Your biggest enemy in all this, Hayes? It’s not Kieran Skinner. It’s not even his father, the assemblyman on his way to the state senate—although he is going to take you down any way he can. It’s the rogue cops and ex-cops in SFPD who don’t want you to get to square one. From what you’ve told me, there are at least three of them. Add Assemblyman Skinner and you’ve got formidable opposition.”
“They killed one of their own—just to cover it up.”
“Exactly my point. They are not going to let you win this, legally—or illegally.”
Colleen took a deep breath as she put the pill case back in her jacket pocket. It seemed so small now, that little piece of evidence.
“I know he did it,” she said.
“And you’ve convinced me, too, Hayes. Anyone can see the case smelled funny from day one—when SFPD dropped it, then later blaming it on the Zodiac—all because Patrick Skinner threw his weight around. But you can’t fight City Hall.”
Again, she sensed Moran had more to say.
“Unless?” she said.
He gave a wry smile. “Unless you have some direct evidence.”
“Like?”
“A good old-fashioned confession, Hayes. Along with what you have, that might swing it. Let me call an associate of mine. FBI. Maybe he can help. It’s a pretty strong case you make, after all. But it’s going to be tough. Don’t get your hopes up.”
“What you said about SFPD,” she said. “A few bad apples, right? There must be someone there who wants to see this solved.”
“You can try. But tread warily.”
“And here I thought you were going to pat me on the back and say what a great job I did.”
“You did do a great job, Hayes. But you think you’re at the tail end.” He shook his head. “What you’ve got is a promising start.” Moran pushed his glasses up his nose. “You’ve still got a long way to go.”
It would be crazy to walk away now. She needed to see Mr. Copeland nod with relief. She needed to see Kieran Skinner’s face when they sentenced him. She needed to see the look of release on Alex’s face.
She needed to see Frank Madrid pay for killing Jim Davis.
“Can we still trade cars for a couple of days?” she asked. Her Torino was not only bright red but red hot, as far as SFPD was concerned.
“Why?”
“I want to head up to Point Arena to see if I can make contact with Pamela. At the commune.”
“Bull.” Moran actually laughed. “You’re planning on following Kieran Skinner around.”
“From a safe distance. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing.”
Moran shook his head. “Just bring it back in one piece, Hayes.” He reached into the pocket of his checked jacket and came out with a set of car keys. “And don’t tell Daphne. She’d kill me.”
“Did you know that Kieran means ‘Little Dark One’ in Gaelic?” Colleen said, taking Moran’s car keys, handing him hers.
“Go figure,” he said, taking the keys to the Torino.
“And could you hang onto this for me?” She held out the file folder with all of her collected paperwork and notes, and the plastic pillbox with the Zyl fragment.
He looked at it for a moment, took the folder, slipped the pillbox into his jacket.
“Be careful, Hayes.”
Out on the water, a surfer turned his board toward shore and stood up in his black wetsuit. He caught the crest of a rough wave, riding the curl as it plunged toward shore. The wave grew in size, wild and out of control. A frothy whitecap appeared underneath the board and the surfer stepped forward, arms out, and she thought she heard him give a victory whoop. But then the wave exploded and he flipped backwards, the board vertical for a second before both man and board disappeared. A complete wipeout. But a moment later, after the wave passed, his head appeared, and he swam to his board, climbed back on, and paddled back out.