Dave? John Darvelle.”
“Hey, John! How are you, man?”
“Listen, I’m in La Jolla. You home?”
“Yeah, just. We’re all here. You want to come by?”
“Well, wondering if you and I could take a walk. Want to bounce something off you. But I really need to use the bathroom. Mind if I park, come up, then we can take a walk?”
He laughed the laugh of someone who doesn’t totally know what’s happening but is happy to go along with it. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
“All right, I’ll be up in a sec.”
I parked in the garage, got out, got my backpack out of the backseat, and put it on, wore it. I elevator-ed up, walked into Dave Treadway’s apartment, said hi to Dave, to Jill, to Davey. Then I went to the back Ping-Pong room, Dave’s man cave, used the bathroom, and came out.
I looked at Treadway. “Ready?”
Dave Treadway and I walked down the sidewalk toward the La Jolla Cove. The La Jolla Cove that you could see a nice corner of, in the not-too-far distance, from Dave’s balcony. The La Jolla Cove that stood out as beautiful, even in beautiful La Jolla.
As we walked down the sidewalk, I told Dave Treadway the full details of the Keaton Fuller case. It hadn’t made the papers yet. And even if it had, what La Jolla resident reads the L.A. papers? For that matter, what L.A. resident reads the L.A. papers?
Just as we got to the cove, I got to the end of my story: the shootout that resulted in the deaths of Lee Graves and his two hired killers.
Dave Treadway and I sat down on a bench that bordered the cove. At this time of day, the end of the day, there were people everywhere. Some sitting on benches like us. Some standing on the beach, at the shore, looking out at the water. And some people, lots of people, snorkeling. That’s right, tropical fish were present. Treadway had nothing to do with the fish world, with the fish people I’d taken down, and yet here we were, talking about the same case, and tropical fish, while not visible, were all around us. Swimming and gliding about, my constant companions on this one, my colorful friends, my cosmic thread.
“Man,” Dave said. “We were joking around about how you have a dangerous job, but, holy shit, you almost got killed. I mean, you could very easily be dead.”
I said, “I want you to listen to me for a second. Okay, Dave?”
He gave me that same laugh that he’d given me when I’d asked to use the bathroom and said, “Okay.”
“One of the interesting things that happens when you’re on a case, pretty much any case, is that you consider most everyone you meet along the way as a possible suspect. You just can’t help it. I mean, basically everyone. On this one, I never looked at Jackie or Phil Fuller as a possibility, but everyone else? Yeah. Obviously, I’m looking at Lee Graves that way when I first met him. Same with Craig Helton, the burned ex–business partner. But I’m also looking at you that way. At Sydney. At Greer, Keaton’s own brother.”
Treadway nodded.
“Seriously. I’m looking at the guy’s brother, at this hurt, innocent-looking guy who was Keaton’s own flesh and blood, and in the back of my mind I’m saying to myself, you know, maybe. Doubtful. But you never know.”
“Right,” Treadway said, his chuckle now betraying a little more confusion.
I continued. “Now, in this case, everyone had a really strong alibi. Airtight—that’s what the cop I told you about, Mike Ott, had said. Airtight. So my consideration for people like Greer Fuller wasn’t that intense, but it was still there a little. As I said, you just can’t help it. And so that’s part of the reason you want to be sure you’re right when you solve it. Because you’ve considered the fact that other people might have done it. So being one hundred percent sure at the end eliminates any conjecture, as absurd as that conjecture might be. And that’s a satisfying feeling. To know. To know something for sure. And, of course, there are other benefits of that clarity as well. More human benefits. Like knowing that a sibling didn’t have anything to do with the murder of his own brother. Stuff like that.”
Treadway just nodded. No awkward chuckle this time, but the look on his face that accompanied the nod was enough for me to know that he had no idea where I was going.
I said, “But at the end of this one, even though I had Lee Graves’s confession, I didn’t totally, totally know. I almost totally knew. But not totally, totally. I had the confession of a man who’d tried to kill me, who’d hired guys to try to kill me, and who almost certainly was a successful killer himself. And that’s a lot. That’s pretty damn convincing. Shit, the cops are cool with it. But I didn’t have a murder weapon. I had weapons that are the same make and model as the murder weapon, which strongly suggests this guy uses this particular kind of gun, but I didn’t have the murder weapon. The actual one. I also didn’t have a witness. Someone who could say something like: ‘I saw Lee Graves driving up the road to that clearing.’ Or: ‘I saw him fire the gun.’ See? I didn’t have any proof. An article of clothing, something. I just had a confession.”
Again, an unsure nod from Treadway.
I continued. “And that’s why my mind kept thinking about it. Because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.”
Dave Treadway now gave me his charming smile, the one with the underbite. The one that was accompanied by the shine in his blue eyes.
I said, “What’s my point, right?”
And now another laugh from Treadway. “Right.”
“Okay, stay with me on this one.”
“Okay, John.”
“Let’s say you did it.”
His smile shifted into a furrowed brow. A friendly but furrowed brow that said: “But you know, and I know, that’s not possible.”
I said, “But you couldn’t have, right? Like, how would that be possible? You’re on the apartment video going up to your pad the night before. You’re on the elevator video leaving your pad the next morning, at something like 7:45 a.m. You made an intercom call to your doorman at 6:30 a.m. from your apartment. Your two cars, also on video, had not left the building. And even if they had left, which they hadn’t, what, you’re going to race up to L.A., 120, 130 miles away, shoot a guy, then race back? Not to mention, there were two wrecks on the southbound freeways from L.A. to La Jolla that day. Putting the driving time from Keaton’s place to your place at three hours. The whole thing is just not possible.”
Treadway, perhaps with some relief in his voice, said, “Right. Not possible.” And then, after a pause, “And just for the record: didn’t happen.”
I said, “Add to that, Dave, why would you do that? That’s the really important point. Sure, you didn’t like Keaton Fuller, but nobody did. That doesn’t mean you’re going to figure out a way to kill the guy in cold blood.”
Treadway shifted. Moved closer to the edge of the bench. This just became a story he might be getting interested in.
“So, anyway, now listen carefully, Dave. Today I’m at my desk in my office. I work out of a warehouse, don’t know if I ever told you that. And this cat wanders down to see me. Not a guy who I might refer to as a cat. An actual cat. So this cat who came to see me is owned by a guy who keeps a couple motorcycles in a nearby warehouse. I like the cat, so I pick it up and pet it a little bit. Today, I’m talking about. Today I did that. Then, an hour or two later, I’m no longer at my office, I’m no longer with the cat, I go to a gas station to fill up my car, my Focus. And all at once, I have all these thoughts. One of them was—and the cat, I think, led me to this—If you, Dave Treadway, had driven up from La Jolla and killed Keaton Fuller, what if you hadn’t made the drive in a car, but instead you’d made the drive on a motorcycle? One that you’d parked outside your garage so it wouldn’t be seen by the garage cameras? So then the questions were: Would that somehow help you make it to L.A. and back in time? And: Either way, would you be able to make it the whole way on one tank of gas? Or would you have to stop somewhere to get gas, like I had to on the morning Nancy and I left your house after we spent the night? See, that memory, of Nancy and me getting gas that morning, was another thing connecting to all the thoughts I had while getting gas today. That’s how the mind works sometimes. You just get this onslaught. Now, before I get to whether or not you would be able to make it in time, and whether or not you’d have to get gas, I want to tell you about another thought I had this morning at the gas station.”
Dave, shaking his head, still holding on to his charm, said, “Okay” again. And then he said, “Because I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. A cat at your office? Motorcycles? It’s like: What?”
“Let me finish, Dave. So right there at the gas station today, I have this vision. This vision of this woman who was part of the case I was on before I got the Keaton Fuller gig. This woman is a gardener, and she had stolen an engagement ring from her boss, this rich old lady in Beverly Hills. I got her to admit that to me, that she had taken it, and that she still had it. And I got her to give it back. And after she gave it back, she told me why she had taken it. See, she didn’t want the ring. She didn’t want the money the ring would bring her if she sold it. No. So why did she take it? Well, she told me, in so many words, why she did it. And here’s what she said: to strike back. The old lady was a mean old bitch, mean to her employees, the rest of her staff, mean to this woman, the gardener. And so this woman, the gardener, did something to get back at her. To hurt her. See? The gardener didn’t just think the old lady deserved it, she knew it. Because it was personal.
“And see, this girl was a nice, great girl, and had a certain inner strength and confidence about her. Like you. And she was a bit of a bystander in this other world. She was a bit removed from this mean old lady and the rest of her staff, who had been with her forever. She hadn’t been working for her for that long. So she was able to watch the whole dynamic kind of from afar, the distance making clear what was no longer obvious to the rest of the staff who’d been beaten up for so long. Which is also a bit like you, down here in La Jolla, watching Keaton Fuller continue to be himself without any consequences. But the thing is, she was still connected enough to this old lady’s world to care. To care about the treatment of the other employees. And to care about how the old lady treated her. And to be hurt by it. So this woman’s moral compass told her that she had to do something about it—even if that thing was wrong, or even illegal. So I began to think that in a way, you two sort of occupy the same role in your respective stories. Are you following me, Dave?”
Dave Treadway looked at me and shook his head. “No, I’m really not.”
I said, “Let me keep going. See, you know all the players in the story: Keaton’s parents, Greer, Craig Helton, Keaton’s ex-girlfriend, the whole lot. And you knew how Keaton treated all these people. You knew what a shit he was. Your whole life you’ve known that. And you’re this good guy on the edges of it all. Witnessing it all. Seeing it all happen. So I thought, if you had done it, it was probably for the same reason that gardener stole that ring: to strike back. To strike back at Keaton Fuller. Plain and simple.
“But, see, the problem was, when all these thoughts and connections started coming to me, I didn’t think you’d do it on behalf of any of those people I’ve just mentioned. Because from what I’ve seen, your relationships with these people aren’t that powerful. Right? With the gardener, she was a witness to all the old lady’s crimes, yes. But she was also a victim of those crimes. She was directly affected, directly hurt by her. To my knowledge, with what I had uncovered, you really weren’t ever directly hurt by Keaton. You weren’t like the others. And your relationships with the people he did hurt . . . they didn’t seem strong enough for you to react so powerfully. Greer was a friend, but you’re not going to kill his brother on his behalf. He wasn’t that kind of friend. So I thought, if it was you, there had to be a story where Keaton hurt you specifically. Or hurt someone you loved. It had to be personal. There had to have been something where your heart was more involved.”
I looked at Dave Treadway. He was listening, his face frozen. He looked tired.
I said, “I went and saw Eve Cogburn today, Dave. Andrea’s mother. You were close to Andrea. Really close.”
Treadway, some momentary relief coming to his face, said, “Yeah, John, I was. That was a long time ago. It’s not like that’s a secret. If you had asked me about that before, when we talked, I would have told you. I didn’t even know that Eve and Andrea were a part of your investigation. I mean, Andrea’s dead, but—you know what I mean.”
“You met her when she was dating Keaton. And she was nice to you. And you became friends, even though she was a few years older. Probably like a big sister. And you stayed friends with her. You even dated her a little bit, after she and Keaton were finally done, a couple years before her death. And you were good to her. Always. Because you cared about her. Deeply. Eve told me that. Eve appreciated that. And, knowing you, I believe that.”
“Yeah, John,” he said, with a little bite. “All that is true. Except I don’t know if I’d say we dated. More just hooked up a few times. Sometimes that happens when two people who care about each other realize the person who used to be too young isn’t too young anymore. I’m surprised Andrea shared that with Eve.”
Treadway paused for a second and then said, “And, yeah, I tried to help Andrea when she . . . I’m sure you know this . . . when she got heavily into drugs, when it was getting out of control, toward the very end.”
I nodded and said, “Dave, knowing all that I know about Keaton Fuller, I think he was a total fucking scumbag. But I bet you know more about how much of a scumbag he was. And I bet you know just exactly how much he fucked with Andrea Cogburn. Someone who was very special to you. And I bet, at the end of the day, you put her death on him.”
Dave Treadway’s expression reconfigured yet again. What was it? Compassion? Recognition? Sadness? He didn’t say anything.
“Right, Dave?” I said. “You thought Keaton essentially took Andrea’s life. Right? And you thought he deserved to die for it. Right? And so you figured out a way, years later, to do it. You take the stairs all the way down your building, to avoid the elevator cameras. You make sure to leave the door to the stairs open so you can get back in. You don’t go to the garage either, so you avoid those cameras too. You get on a motorcycle at about 3:30, 4 a.m. The motorcycle’s parked, I don’t know, right up the street from your place? You zip up to L.A. You drive up Rising Glen Road, position yourself, pull out a pistol. You’ve figured out, by this point, that Keaton works out in the morning. And when he walks out of his house, you pop him. You tuck the pistol away, you hop back on your motorcycle, you get out of there.
“And then you hit major traffic on the way back, due to an accident. But you’re on a motorcycle, so you can drive right between the cars that are just sitting there stationary. You can zip right through the clogged section. A legal move in L.A. So it’s as if there isn’t a traffic jam at all. At 6:30, your wife calls the doorman from your home intercom and plays a recording of you—a quick command to watch out for a delivery. Had to be what happened. Then, right around 7:30, you cruise back into La Jolla. Shit, you can do the 120 miles in ninety minutes if you go seventy-five miles an hour, and you have a way to get around any traffic. Then you park the bike down the street. You walk back up the stairs. You’re back in your apartment at 7:40. You walk out your front door at 7:45 and get in the elevator, putting you on camera. Then you go down, get in your car, go to work, get away with it.”
Treadway said, “John. You just told me that Lee Graves, a meth dealer, a guy who tried to kill you, confessed. You saw with your own eyes that this guy is more than capable of murder. And he confessed. John. Are you one of those people who can’t let things end? Like, you’ll freak out if you don’t have something to focus on? To obsess over? Why are you inventing a preposterous story when you’ve already busted the guy who did it?”
“I know, it’s insane.”
Treadway laughed. A laugh of relief. “Yeah. It is.”
I said, “Problem—for you, anyway—is that I can prove it. It’s insane, but I can prove it. It comes back to the question I was asking earlier: Can a motorcycle make it the whole way on one tank of gas? Well, some could. But the one you were on couldn’t. See, I called the cop I was telling you about, Mike Ott. He gave me a name at the DMV. A person police detectives call when they want driver information. And that person told me that you have a license to drive a motorcycle and that you, at the time of Keaton’s murder, owned one. A 2010 Honda Shadow. A vehicle that, with a full tank of gas, could only cover 110 of the 120 or so miles you needed to go. Which means you’re probably getting off at an exit just north of La Jolla, right off the 5. An exit that coincidentally, or cosmically perhaps, is the same exit I got off to get gas when I left your house with Nancy the morning after we spent the night. Only I was, of course, going in the other direction. Amazing how stuff like that works.
“But let’s get back to today. Today, I went and talked to the manager of the gas station closest to the freeway when you get off the freeway at that exit. The same gas station I’d gone to with Nancy. The same one. And the manager allowed me to look at the gas station security video of the morning Keaton Fuller was killed. Sure enough, there’s a guy gassing up a Honda Shadow at 7:20 a.m. But you can’t see the license plate because the guy is, wisely, standing in front of it. And you can’t see the rider because he’s wearing a helmet. And then when the driver walks the motorcycle over to a space near the store’s entrance, and then walks inside to pay—in cash, of course—you still can’t see who it is because the person is wearing a hat.”
I opened my backpack and pulled out a green John Deere trucker hat, the one I’d worn playing beer pong, the one I’d absconded with a half hour ago when I used Dave Treadway’s bathroom. “This hat,” I said. “The driver of that Honda Shadow is wearing this green John Deere hat when he goes in to pay. Your green John Deere hat. I’ve got it on tape. Right here in my bag.”
Dave shook his head and gave me a dismissive sigh. “That’s what’s holding your story together? A guy you can’t see at a gas station wearing a green hat?”
“That’s part of the proof, yes. This is the other part.” I pulled the murder weapon out of my backpack. A Smith & Wesson M&P nine millimeter. “See, Dave, the other thing I learned from the gardener was that when people commit crimes to strike back at those who deserve it, the evidence often ends up right where it should. Somewhere people wouldn’t necessarily look, but somewhere that makes total sense. Somewhere that somehow adds to the meaning of it all. That rich old lady’s engagement ring was hidden in the garden right outside the gardener’s apartment. And in your case, the gun was buried at Andrea Cogburn’s grave. See, another thing I did today was, I went and bought a metal detector. Yeah, for a few hours I was the crazy fuck walking around with a metal detector. But I was okay with it. Because when I got to Andrea’s grave and I put the detector up to the soil, the thing started going crazy. And I dug up the gun. The Smith. A very popular gun. One of the most popular guns. Graves had two of them, at least.”
Treadway looked at me. I had him, backward and forward, and now he knew it. He might have suspected it before, but now he knew it.
I said, hitting the nail in deeper, “Eve Cogburn gave me permission to investigate the grave site, and once the grounds manager at the cemetery confirmed this, I gave him my phone and had him film me digging up the gun. And I have him and two people who work for him as witnesses that there was no tampering. I’m sure you cleaned the gun, Dave, but did you really? Or did you wipe it off like they do in the movies? These days, the tiniest bit of your skin, the tiniest section of a fingerprint . . . That’s all they need. And where’d you get it in the first place? Is the purchase clean? The serial number is still on it. I wonder if it can be traced back to you? I bet it can. Yeah, the gun, the hat, the gas station video, the Honda Shadow that you bought. I’d say that’s proof. Rock-solid proof.”
I was just about to ask him how he pulled off the shot. But then I realized, not now. I would later, but not just yet. Right now Treadway needed to let it settle in, once and for all, that I had him.
Dave’s face relaxed now, in the way that someone’s face relaxes when they get something off their chest. Even if that thing is devastating, terrible, illegal.
I said, “Dave, remember how I told you that Graves talked to me one day about the Chinese high-fin in his office? How he told me it was his favorite fish? Well, later, when I discovered the meth, I realized why. Because he was a Chinese high-fin. He was the Chinese high-fin of my story. You know why? Everyone thinks of that fish in a certain way, small and striped with a big fin on its back. Even its name thinks of it that way. But that’s just its image. A short-lived facade. The fish is actually big, and black, with a shark fin that’s actually not too big for its body. That’s the truth. And that’s just like Graves. Understand? A tropical fish broker is the image. A drug dealer is the truth. But see, then, later, amid that whirlwind of connections at the gas station, I realized that no, Graves isn’t the Chinese high-fin. You are. An affable guy. A guy who’s happy, cool with most everything. Easygoing. Charming. Fun. That’s the image. But underneath is the truth. You’re a guy who wanted revenge. And you would kill, and you did kill, to get it.”
Dave looked at me. He knew it was now his turn to talk. And to his credit, he was now through with the denials.
“Don’t do this, John. Let it go. Let me go. Don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Look,” he said. “A big part of your life is trying to catch people who did bad things. But more than that, it’s to make people who did bad things pay a price. Right?”
“Sure. Yeah. I think that’s basically right.”
“And sometimes—you have told me this—you break the rules to make sure it happens.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, isn’t it okay, then, if other people break the rules sometimes too? In fact, don’t you wish that other people would break the rules a little more often? I mean, wouldn’t you basically be glad if somebody just took out one of these horrible criminals you hear about all the time on the news? A guy who has raped a bunch of kids at a school? A guy like that? Wouldn’t you be glad if somebody just got rid of him? But instead of that happening, we all have to live with it. Go through the agony. Watch the families of the victims suffer. Endure the media coverage, the opinions about what should happen to him, the inevitable denial that always comes, the trial, the whole thing. And after all of it, the guy goes and sits in jail. Wouldn’t it be a service to us all if somebody just took out that child-raping piece of shit? Doesn’t he just deserve to be gone?”
I looked at Dave Treadway and said, “You want me to answer that hypothetical question? Well, I can’t say I’d be upset if somebody killed a child molester. No. I wouldn’t be that upset. I think I’d be able to go on with my day.”
“Okay. Then let’s talk about Keaton Fuller. He destroyed people’s lives. He killed animals. He killed his own pet. He got Greer to choose one of their guinea pigs, just told Greer to pick one without telling him what he was up to. And then he shot it. Killed it. Greer told me that once when he was hammered beyond belief. I don’t think he even remembers telling me. But how fucked up is that? He also date-raped a girl. Maybe more than one. Or let me say it the way it should be said: He raped a girl. He beat up his own mother. His own mother. And if you ask me, he killed Andrea Cogburn. An amazing girl. An incredible girl. Who was smart and cool and filled with this . . . light. He got her hooked on blow, and then crack. And you know what else he did? Made her fuck his friends, John. Made her fuck his friends. He crushed her self-esteem. Then told her to fuck off. So a few years go by and she ‘overdoses.’ Wrong. She killed herself. She told me she was going to do it. I begged her not to. But she did it anyway. Which in turn basically kills her mom. You’ve met Eve. That woman is dead too.”
“Well,” I said. “What about Jackie Fuller? Didn’t your killing Keaton kill her? Ever seen the look in her eyes?”
Treadway said, with total sincerity in his voice, “Jackie Fuller has had that look in her eyes ever since Keaton started shitting on people. That guilt? That pain on her face? That’s from creating someone so bad and wondering how it happened. I swear, John, at Keaton’s funeral she was relieved he was gone.”
“Then why’d she hire me?”
“Rich people don’t like it when someone does something to them that’s out of their control.”
I thought about Muriel Dreen sending Tony Lewis and his big crooked-eyed friend over to see me after she’d gotten her ring back. I’d found her ring, but she’d lost control of the story.
Shit, Treadway might be right on that one.
He looked right at me. He gave me the look a friend gives another friend when he needs a really big favor.
“Don’t send me to jail, John. The world is a better place without Keaton Fuller. I’m positive of that. He basically killed— No, he killed two people. Don’t send me to jail.”
I looked around the cove. At the people walking along the shore. At the snorkels poking up out of the ocean. At the sky as the day ended, turning that amazing shade of Southern California orange-pink-blue.
I looked back at Dave Treadway.
He said, “Don’t do it, John. Please. Think about Davey. And Jill. For the record, Jill had no clue what I was doing. Later she did. But when I asked her to play that recording, she just thought I was out of the house really early, surfing. And that I wanted the instructions about the couch to come from me, because some of the staff have the annoying tendency to take me more seriously.”
“But when the police eventually came around, you had to tell her the truth. Because talking to the staff of your building from inside your apartment, not taking the elevator up and down, all the moves you made to not get caught—that was your alibi.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. And Jill was totally shocked at first. Stunned. Obviously. But then I told her everything about Keaton, and I guess she understood in some way. And then, after a little while, we slowly started to move on. And then we did move on. It’s surprising, amazing, how people can move on from things. Before we knew it, we were just living like it never happened.”
He took a moment, a memory registering in his eyes. “When we met you, we wanted to be friends with you. It’s crazy, but we really did. I, Jill and I, thought nobody would ever find out what I’d done. I’d covered my tracks so well. But beyond that, we had sort of started believing, and living, like I hadn’t done it. To the point that we didn’t even think it was a risk to reach out to you. Of course it occurred to us that befriending you could help to just totally eliminate your being suspicious of us. But that’s not why we pursued the friendship.”
I thought about what Treadway had said and wondered if maybe somewhere down in his subconscious I had represented what he’d done, and he’d used me to get closer to it. Like the way people return to the scene of a crime. To experience it again, to feel the sick rush of the sin, even though it makes absolutely no sense to do so.
Treadway switched back to the bigger issue and looked at me with a combination of seriousness and hope. “Don’t do it, John. Don’t do it to my family.”
I said, “I’ll tell you what, Dave. Let me think about it. Give me a night to think about it. Don’t make any moves. Don’t call your lawyer. And don’t try to make a run for it, either. I’ll be watching, and I will catch you. Just like I caught you now. Just go home, and stay in your apartment with your family. Okay?”
“Okay, John.”
We walked back to his building. He went up. I went down to the garage, got in the Focus, and left.