I WALKED ACROSS the street to Krista’s house and opened the front door with an extra key Leah gave me. The house felt emptier than when Leah and I were last there. Of course, because I was alone, but something else. I went into her bedroom and inhaled. Stale air. No hint of Krista’s perfume that had still lingered just two days ago. I opened her closet and saw why. All of her clothes were gone. Stephen Landingham must have set in motion his plan to sell Krista’s house with or without Leah’s consent.
The last sensory memory of Krista now gone. I thought of Colleen’s clothes that I’d kept wrapped in plastic after she died and the last day when I’d sniffed them and no scent of her remained. I felt her die all over again that day.
The bedroom had a door that led to the backyard. I opened it and went outside. The backyard had an overgrown lawn. Looked like no one had cared for it since Krista died. I checked the doorknob on the outside of the door. No evidence of tampering or picking that I could see.
The yard had six-foot-high redwood slat fences between Krista’s yard and those of her two neighbors and a shorter version that faced the Santa Ynez Mountains behind the house. Nothing to obstruct the view or someone wanting to gain access to her backyard. I guess Krista thought her guns and know-how would be enough to thwart any intruder while she was home. Hadn’t worked when she wasn’t. Or against a van going thirty-five miles an hour down State Street.
I stood next to the back fence and peered over it searching for footprints in the dirt or some clue to reveal an intruder. Kidding myself that I had any talent for tracking. It had been almost two weeks since someone broke into Krista’s house with a flashlight. I didn’t see any tracks in the dirt.
I went to the door that led into Krista’s office and checked the knob for proof that it had been picked like I’d seen on the lock of the file cabinet inside. Nothing. Again. Maybe the intruder had his own key. Like some ex-husbands have for their ex’s homes. The ones that still cared about each other. Could that have been Weaver until he decided he had to kill Krista?
One final door that led into the kitchen from the outside. I looked at the doorknob. And there they were. Two small scratches just like the ones on the lock of the file cabinet in Krista’s office. This was where Tom Weaver broke in. I slid the key into the lock, opened it, and went back inside. The door led into the kitchen and with the open floorplan was a straight shot into the living room. And the curtains on the window facing the street.
Weaver picked the lock on the kitchen door and entered using a flashlight for illumination instead of the house lights. His one sweep of the living room was caught on Frank Cornetta’s security camera at 8:03 p.m. Twenty-five minutes after his slick-top black Ford Fusion passed in front of Krista’s house. After she left for her birthday party. Frank Cornetta thought it would take someone fifteen to twenty minutes to hike from the trailhead a couple streets below Krista’s to the back of her house. Give Weaver two minutes to drive to the trailhead and three minutes to pick the lock and that left him twenty minutes to make the hike in the dark with a flashlight for guidance.
Easily doable. Another dot connected. Another step closer to justice for Colleen and Krista. The pieces were all falling into place.
I went over everything I’d learned since the day of Krista’s funeral in my head as I drove back to Leah’s house. Mike Richert seeing two men on the beach where Colleen’s body was dumped on the morning she was found. One in a police uniform. Tom Weaver’s car in the driveway of his house while I was inside screwing his wife. Mitchell’s story of picking Weaver up from jail where he’d supposedly been when Colleen was murdered, but no one, not even SBPD, was able to verify it. Krista’s missing file on Colleen’s murder. Someone with Mitchell’s physique breaking into my hotel room, stealing my computer, and assaulting me with a police baton. Finally, the black Ford Fusion on Krista’s street the night Colleen’s file was stolen from her house. The car SBPD detectives use. Black, the only color car Weaver would drive.
I knew that, in Jim Grimes’ terms, I was connecting dots that were too far apart to fill in the gaps of my theory. Hell, I might even be drawing dots out of nothing. But I knew I was right. If I took what I had to the police, they’d never connect the dots. They wouldn’t even see most of them. Weaver and his accomplice, Mitchell, would never be arrested. They’d retire with a pension in ten or fifteen years and live lives of leisure on the taxpayers’ dime instead of in a state hotel with barbed wire and sniper towers.
I was almost there. I just needed a little more proof on another dot or two. Confirmation that Weaver had taken home a black Ford Fusion for the weekend before Krista was killed. A division’s watch captain was usually in control of the keys to the cars. For MIU that would be my new friend Captain Kessler. The politician. I’d never get that information out of him without some quid for his quo. He’d need to know why I wanted to know who had the black Fusion detective car that night. If I told him and Weaver ended up dead, I’d have laid enough breadcrumbs for even the weakest SBPD detective bloodhound to sniff up the trail right to me.
I needed to find a better way. I called Grimes when I got back to Leah’s. “It’s Cahill. Can you meet me at Leah’s? I need to show you something.”
“What is it?”
“It would be much easier to show you.”
A long, angry exhale. “I guess I can get there in about an hour.”
Grimes knocked on the front door about an hour later. I cued up the Saturday night security tape to just before the black Ford Fusion went by Krista’s house the first time and let him in.
“Have a seat in front of the computer at the head of the table.”
Grimes sat down and I hit “play” on the laptop keyboard and stood behind. The Fusion passed by Krista’s, the passenger-side sun visor flipped down.
“That car look familiar to you?” I asked over his shoulder.
“Could be an SPBD slick top or it could be a civilian ride.” He turned and looked at me. “I can’t see the plate. Why?”
“It passed by Krista’s house the Saturday before she died.” I stepped around Grimes and ran the tape backward until the car passed in front of Krista’s the wrong way and hit pause. “The night of her forty-sixth birthday party that Leah threw for her right here. See anything unusual about the car?”
Grimes moved his face closer to the computer screen and studied the image on it. He didn’t move or say anything for maybe a minute. Finally, “It looks like the sun visor on the passenger side is down and across the window, not the windshield.”
“Bingo.”
“Bingo what?” Grimes turned and looked at me. “Somebody drives during the day and has their visor down against the setting sun and leaves it like that. The next time they get in the car, it’s still down. Big deal. Where’d you get this video, anyway?”
“From a neighbor who cared about Krista and wants her murderer caught.”
“And the killer will be caught eventually. Is this all you have?”
“Keep watching.” I ran the tape on fast forward until Krista left for her birthday party, then paused the video when the Fusion passed by in front of the camera.
Grimes gave me a dirty look and studied the image.
“So both visors are down. Same argument I just gave you.”
He was making this difficult. I’d expected easy confirmation. Maybe he just didn’t like validating any new evidence or theory that I came up with. Because he was Grimes and I was Cahill.
“The driver’s head is turned away from the camera. He’s got the visor down and is turned away to make sure the camera doesn’t get a good shot of him.”
“We don’t even know if the driver knows there’s a security camera in the neighborhood. You are tunneling in on this car because it’s the same make as the slick tops SBPD detectives drive. You’re still trying to pin Krista’s death on Tom Weaver, aren’t you, Cahill?”
“I’m looking at the evidence and following where it takes me.”
“So what’s your theory? Tom Weaver followed Krista for thirty hours and then ran her over on State Street in a white van he doesn’t own?”
“Nope. He didn’t follow her Saturday night.”
“Then why are you showing me the Fusion?”
“I’ll show you.” I hit play on the keyboard then fast-forwarded to just before the flash of light in Krista’s living room at 8:03 p.m. “Watch the bottom of the curtains in the living room window.”
“Now what?”
“Just watch.” I hit play and the light flashed for an instant and disappeared. I rewound the tape then paused it when the light hit the curtains.
“What? The light?” Grimes gave me his best or worst squint. “Easy. Probably from a car on a street behind the house.”
“There aren’t any streets behind the house, but there’s a trail back there. The trailhead is a couple streets below Krista’s.”
“Enough with the puzzle pieces, Cahill.” Grimes folded his arms and looked at me. “Explain your latest theory so I can move on with my day.”
“The driver of the slick top knew about the birthday party Leah threw Krista here.” I sat down at the table diagonally from Grimes. Putting us on the same level. “He stakes out her house until she leaves for the party. He knows she’ll be out of her house for at least a couple hours, so he drives down to the trailhead and hikes up to the house and picks the lock on the kitchen door into the backyard. I already checked it. Scratch marks just like those on the lock on the file cabinet. The flash of light is when he opens the door and scans the room with a flashlight. The kitchen door is straight across from the living room window.”
“And your theory is that this mystery driver picked the lock on the file cabinet and read Krista’s notes on Ms. Cahill’s file and found something that incriminated him in the murder?” Grimes kept his arms folded, a scowl on his face.
“More or less,” I said but he didn’t look convinced.
“Then why wait?”
“What do you mean? Why wait to go to SBPD?” I had my reasons but I couldn’t tell him. Or anyone.
“No. Why did the killer wait to run down Krista thirty hours later? Why not just stay in the house and shoot her when she comes home? Take a few things. Make it look like a robbery. Or shoot her and bury her body somewhere where it will never be found. She would just disappear. Or stage a suicide. She just had a birthday. Divorced, alone, nothing but the job to get her through each day. Why take a chance that she’ll get a warrant for his arrest?”
“Maybe he wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that she was on to him, yet.”
“What changed in the next thirty hours?”
“I don’t know, but someone broke into Krista’s house and stole the file she had on Colleen’s murder. Only a cop would know she copied files and took them home. And only someone in MIU would know she reopened Colleen’s case. That would be Mitchell, Weaver’s alibi that no one can corroborate for the night Colleen was murdered.”
“You never would have made detective if you stayed on the force, Cahill. Your logic takes more leaps than a cricket on crack.”
I didn’t need Grimes’ validation on Weaver and Mitchell being the killers. I was ninety-five percent convinced. I guess I wanted that last five percent to come from someone else to do what I had to do. If I was going to play judge, jury, and executioner, I had to be one hundred percent certain before I carried out the sentence.
“All right, forget my theory. Do some investigating on your own. Find out of if Weaver had a G ride the weekend Krista died. Show me I’m wrong. If he didn’t have a black Ford Fusion from the SBPD lot the night of Krista’s birthday party, I’m full of shit.”
“Cahill, I’m not investigating Krista’s death to prove or disprove whatever bullshit theories you come up with. I’m doing it because her sister asked me to.” He walked toward the front door then turned back toward me. “And because Krista was a good cop who deserved better than to be murdered and left to lie on the street for hours while MIU investigated.”
“Then find out what really happened and don’t take MIU’s word for granted,” I said. But he’d already walked out the door leaving me alone in Krista’s sister’s house chasing ghosts on a video.