THE APARTMENT WAS only about a mile away from the church. It looked exactly as I remembered it. Same beige and white paint. Probably hadn’t been repainted since I lived there. I hadn’t been back since I moved out a week after a jogger discovered Colleen’s body on East Beach. Lost two month’s rent I couldn’t afford, but I couldn’t stay there any longer knowing Colleen would never walk through the front door again.
And knowing the last hour we spent together in that apartment was the worst hour of our marriage.
I parked across the street and stared up at apartment # 3 on the second floor. I’d not only carried Colleen over the threshold our first night as a married couple, but carried her all the way up the stairs to get there. Still trying to impress her even after I put a ring on her finger. I couldn’t remember exactly when I stopped trying to impress her. Woo her. But sometime during the last three months of her life, I stopped.
I’d put the blame on Colleen during our weekly fights. Claimed she’d become too judgmental. But deep down, even as I accused her, I knew I’d been the one who’d changed.
I’d seen the parts of Santa Barbara that tourists never see. The gangs, the violence, the inhumanity. And I’d let it infect me. Taint me. Harden me. Us versus them. Every day a war. I brought the war and its nastiness home with me every night. I still hadn’t learned how to shove the job into a compartment in my brain when I was off duty. The smart cops, the ones who lasted, figured that out in the first year or two. I was on year three and the battle raged 24/7. On the streets. In the bars woofing after my shift. At home with my wife who needed a husband, not a cop perpetually on duty.
I hadn’t been back to Santa Barbara since SBPD released me from jail and eventually fired me. The department, led by Detective Grimes, was sure I killed Colleen. DA Levin dropped the charges and told SBPD to come up with more evidence and she’d take the case to court.
Apparently, Grimes never gathered enough new evidence to satisfy Levin. She was gone now and so was Grimes. He’d retired to become a private investigator like me. But not like me. Colleen’s father hired him six or seven years back to work one case. His daughter’s murder. When Grimes caught up with me six years ago in San Diego, I was still his only suspect. I doubt anything had changed for him or John Kerrigan.
After the TV show 48 Hours did an episode on Colleen’s murder, the whole country thought I was guilty. And I was. Just not for the crime I’d been accused of. I was still serving a life’s sentence for another Thou Shall Not on God’s list.
I sat across from the apartment for an hour and a half sifting through memories of Colleen. Zipping two sleeping bags together and sleeping in a tent on our honeymoon at Fallen Leaf Lake. And then repeating the experience our first night in the apartment because our new bed hadn’t arrived yet and I’d forgotten to have the electricity turned on. I’d offered to stay in a hotel, but Colleen wanted to make an adventure out of it. Complete with lanterns for light. But the good memories only hovered for so long, eventually blown out by the storm of bad ones. The nightly fights late in our marriage. The shouting match and broken furniture that last night. Her body on the coroner’s table.
I tried to latch onto the good memories and push back the bad that clung to their edges. Trying to hold back the rain.
A night in Santa Barbara had made sense when I packed a bag in San Diego and threw it in the trunk of my car eight hours ago. Not anymore.
No call yet from Leah Landingham. Probably still immersed in her sister’s funeral. Hopefully, Krista had been laid to rest by now.
I remained parked across from Colleen’s and my old apartment for another half hour waiting for Leah’s phone call. Nothing. I finally pulled away from the curb and drove a couple blocks toward the on-ramps to Highway 101. North to the right, south to the left. A hotel and an overnight in the city of wrong memories or home to San Diego and the decision whether or not to abandon my career as a private investigator.
I turned left.