I TURNED TO leave and the door whipped open again.
“I asked you one simple favor.” Tears in her voice now. “Something that I needed. Finally. Something that you could help me with. One simple question and you failed. Did you think Turk was lying about not going to see Shay? That was it. If you had had even the slightest doubt, I would have staked out Shay’s apartment and stopped Turk from going inside. I don’t think he went over there intending to kill her. He just needed to step back and breathe. Hell, he didn’t even have to know about what we saw that night if you would have just stayed in the car like I asked you to. But you had to be the hero. The blind fucking hero had to save the day. Well, you could have. You could have saved both of them, but you were wrong. You failed.”
“He didn’t kill her.”
“Shut up!” A screech. “You don’t have the right! You were wrong about everything. You convinced me Turk wouldn’t go see Shay that night and now you’re convinced he didn’t kill her? You’ve been blind for a long time and it’s got nothing to do with your eyesight.”
There was a lot of truth in what Moira said. I followed my own sense of justice. I told myself that it was because I’d seen the real justice system fail too many times. Maybe that was just a convenient rationalization. How I justified and lived with what I’d done. I did drag Moira into some bad situations and made her an accessory after the fact. And I’d do it again to keep evil from ending her life. Or mine.
I had been wrong about Turk. He did go to Shay’s house. But he didn’t kill her. If I was wrong again, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. If I was right, he might end up there anyway. I couldn’t let that happen or rely on Dan Coyote to find the truth that could save Turk. He just followed orders. I followed the clues wherever they took me. I was just narcissistic enough to believe I could make a difference. And couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.
“I can’t bring Shay back. I’m trying to find her killer. If that’s Turk, so be it. But, I’m going to keep investigating until I find the truth, one way or another.
“Another quest to fill up that emptiness inside you.” She shook her head. “You know what? It’s my fault. I had doubts and I should have followed my own instincts instead of letting you convince me to follow yours. That’s on me. So, I absolve you of responsibility. You can continue on your hero’s journey. Go forth and conquer. You’re a guiltless man, Rick.”
The door started to swing shut, but I stuck my foot out to stop it. Moira’s shadow stood to the side.
“My guilt is the one thing I don’t delude myself about.” I nudged the door with my knee and it crept open another six inches.
“That is true. The long-suffering Rick Cahill. So much of his fucked-up life is due to his own actions.”
“Guilty again.” I leveled with the door-jamb. “But at least I take action. I understand you feel badly about Shay Sommers. So do I. But what if you and the police are wrong? What if there’s evidence out there waiting to be found that points to the real killer and there’s nothing you could have done to stop him? Are you going to stay hidden in here behind the closed curtains for another week or do something about it?”
Movement. Something slammed into my stomach. Air exploded from my lungs. I staggered backwards and doubled over. I gasped for air that wouldn’t come. Sucking sounds I couldn’t control from my mouth. My face ready to explode.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Arm around my waist. “Inside. Walk! Walk!”
I let Moira guide me into her house. Still hunched over. Still gasping for nonexistent air. We stopped and she grabbed my arms and lifted them up. Her tiny frame trying to get them over my head.
“Straighten up. Extend your diaphragm.” She pushed my arms higher. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
A wisp of air vacuumed into my diaphragm. Then another. I began to believe I might live. I sucked a few more breaths in like I’d done it before and finally regained my breath. Somehow, I kept from vomiting ground turkey all over Moira’s hardwood floor. Would have served her right, though. My stomach was a sore knot, like a heavyweight boxer had just sucker punched it. Not a forty-something five-foot tall woman.
“Mind if I sit down for a second or do you want to punch me again?”
“Shit.” An arm around my waist led me to a couch. Moira helped ease me down.
“I appreciate you’re not punching me in the nose.” I humphed a laugh. “Was that because you could see someone already had done that or because you couldn’t reach it?”
“I’m sorry.” Real pain. “I hope I didn’t hurt you badly. There’s no excuse for that. I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine. A female MMA fighter once kicked me in the face without warning and knocked me unconscious. Of course, I wasn’t blind then.”
“You make it hard for anyone to feel sorry for you.” She sat down next to me on the couch.
“Good, because that’s not one of my everyday goals.” Unless it could get me closer to the truth.
“What happened to your nose? It looks awful.”
If I told her about Turk, she’d never believe he could be innocent.
“Sometimes you bump into things you can’t see when you’re blind.” Like the foot of someone who didn’t want to go to jail.
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s not the first time.”
“I’m sorry about the things I said to you.” Moira’s head faced the floor. “Well, most of them. But Shay Sommers is not your fault.”
“She’s not yours either.” I found the back of her neck with my hand. “You were paid to do a job and you did it as best you could, but you didn’t get a chance to finish it.”
“Stop.” She twisted away from me. “I didn’t punch you in the stomach so you could cheer me up. Cheering people up is not one of your strengths. You have just enough empathy to keep you from being a sociopath. The bare minimum. So, stop. Even if you mean it. Stop.”
She was wrong about my empathy. I just expressed it differently than she did. Or most people. But now wasn’t the time to argue. And I still needed her help.
My needs.
“Do you believe Turk thinks you’re a good private investigator?”
“What? What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Just play along for now.”
“I don’t want to play along with anything. You seem to be breathing fine now.” She stood up. “I don’t want to keep you any longer.”
“Give the narcissist one single minute.” I stayed seated on the couch. “Does Turk think you’re a good P.I.?”
“I guess.” A hiss.
“Then why did he want to keep you on to investigate who killed Shay? Pretty stupid if he killed her. Another pair of eyes searching for the truth.”
“To make himself look innocent.”
“Pretty big risk.”
“You’re down to thirty seconds.”
“Okay.” I grabbed my phone out of my pants pocket and commanded it to pull up the most recent photo. The one of the old man in La Sala. “Have you seen this man before? Specifically, last Wednesday when we were on Prospect Street, day or night?”
“Hmph.” She took the phone from my outstretched hand. “The frightened old man?”
“Yeah.”
“Nope. Never seen him.” She didn’t hand the phone back right away. “This is in La Valencia, isn’t it? La Sala.”
“Yep.”
“Why does the old man look so scared? What did you do to him?”
“He was wearing Dove deodorant. I thought he was peeking over my shoulder.” No further explanation needed.
“Oh, that again. The Dove Stalker.” She chuckled. “And you thought is was this poor old guy? Everyone in the bar is staring at you. Way to stay undercover.”
“You’re sure about the old guy in the photo?”
“One hundred percent.”
What I expected to hear, but neither good nor bad news. It didn’t confirm or deny that we’d been followed. Just that it hadn’t been the old man.
I reached out my hand for my phone.
“Hold on a second.”
“What?”
“I don’t know who the old man is, but I do recognize someone else. Our friend from the ride in the Maybach. The man you fingered as Keenan Powell.”
“What?”
“He’s sitting in the back of the room by the window. I enlarged the shot to make sure. That’s him. Looks like he’s with someone else, but they’re blocked by another table of diners. Can’t tell if he’s with a man or a woman.”
“What’s Powell doing?”
“Looking at you. Most people in the photo are. You must have made quite a scene.”
“Not quite a scene, just a normal scene. Here.”
I stuck out my hand and Moira put the phone in it. I took off my sunglasses and stuck the phone up to my face, almost against my nose. All I could see was light with a dark human outline in the upper edge. I’d acted on instinct and then willed myself to see the features of Keenan Powell. Folly, of course.
“You can see?” Her voice broke high.
“Not really.” I pulled the phone away from my face. “But I am getting some vision back.”
“That’s great!” Elation in her voice. “How long has this been going on?”
“For a couple weeks. It gets better every day, but I still only see outlines and shapes. I don’t know if I’ll ever get enough back to be able to walk without a cane or recognize people I know.”
“I thought something was going on when we were in the car waiting for Shay to get off work that night.” She sat back down next to me on the couch. “I watched you looking out the window without your sunglasses.”
“I’m trying not to get too optimistic about it until I can actually really see things. Let’s keep it between us.”
“Must be hard for you to tamp down all your natural optimism.”
“It is, but I’ve been taking my cues from you.”
“I’m really happy about your eyesight, but I can’t get involved in one of your crusades right now. I’m beat up. I have to recover and reevaluate. The one thing I feared came true. I couldn’t save that girl.”
“You’re right. There was nothing you could do to save her.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“But it’s the truth and I’m going to prove it.”
“Are you still working for Ellis Fenton? I saw you on TV with him again after the arraignment.”
“I am a symbol of heroic sacrifice who stands up for another heroic sacrificer. That’s my gig. I’m even making hourly doing it.”
“But that’s not all you’re doing.” Gotcha voice. “You’re working something on your own.”
“Fenton has a plan and a timeline on how to handle things.”
“But you have one of your own, don’t you?”
“My timeline’s just shorter.” I turned toward Moira. Even her blurred outline was petite. “Kris Collins and her boyfriend saw Shay with Keenan Powell having dinner at Nine-Ten a month ago. A couple weeks before Turk followed her to La Valencia and got suspicious.”
“That doesn’t change anything. Actually, it makes it even more likely that Shay and Powell were having an affair.”
“Kris and her boyfriend didn’t get a romantic vibe between Shay and Powell and you didn’t either the night we followed them by the beach.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s what Turk thought that matters, and he thought Shay was cheating on him.”
“It only matters what Turk thought if he killed her. If he didn’t, then everything else matters.” I told her about Shay’s angry discussion with Powell at dinner and about her first lying to Kris about where she was and then telling her that she met a friend of her father’s.
“Like I already told you. None of this changes anything.” She stood up. “I’m not going out on that limb with you. Not on this one. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Heroic symbols don’t have to be careful.” I got up and used my white cane to find my way outside, back into the world.