Killer Swell (20 page)

I pulled into Emily's condo community in Del Mar and parked in front of her stairs. I wasn't looking forward to the conversation, but I knew I needed to clear the air. The longer I let it go, the more difficult it would be for me to see her, something that was going to happen if I was going to figure out what happened to Kate.

I walked up the steps to her door and knocked. I waited a minute, then knocked again. Still no answer.

I ran back to my car, scribbled a quick note, and ran it up to her door. I knew that I was getting off easy, but I tried to convince myself that leaving a note was at least pushing the issue.

As I drove down PCH, the sun was starting to dip and I decided to pull off and walk the beach at Torrey Pines State Beach. I knew I couldn't make it to Clairemont Square in time to talk with Carter's friend about the key, and I'd found that walking the sand at dusk does wonders to organize my thoughts.

I'd walked a couple hundred yards to the south, just to the edge of the bluffs, and was kicking myself for not having my board in the rental car when I recognized a familiar face walking in my direction.

Emily smiled at me as we met. “Hey, stranger.”

“Hi. I was actually just up at your place.”

“I wasn't there.”

“Got that. I left a note.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds serious.”

“Sort of,” I said, a mixture of relief and dread coursing through me in anticipation of our impending conversation.

She tugged on the hem of her gray T-shirt. “Noah, last night—”

I held up my hand. “Let's not apologize or do any of that stuff. That's what I wanted to talk about.”

She motioned toward the rocks at the base of the cliff, and we walked over to them and sat down.

“I didn't know he was coming over,” she said before I could say anything. “I hadn't seen him in a couple of months. Things just kind of went nuts.” She paused. “But I told him that last night was one night. That's it.”

I nodded. “You don't have to explain anything to me, Em. Really.”

“I know. But it was awkward.”

“Yeah, it was.” We watched the water for a minute before I spoke again. “Emily, I just don't think this is a good idea.”

She looked surprised. “What? You and me?”

I nodded. “There's too much going on right now. With both of us.”

She bit her bottom lip, her gaze now riveted on the surf. “Okay.”

My stomach dropped further. “I don't have a clue what I'm doing, Em. I really don't. I'm trying to make Kate's death a priority and starting a relationship with you at the same time…it just doesn't feel right.”

“Fine,” she said, her voice a dull monotone.

“And we're gonna be around each other,” I said before I lost the courage to keep talking about it. “I need to be able to talk to you without feeling weird around you. And if something's going on with us, I don't think that's gonna work.”

“I get it,” she said, but still didn't look at me.

We sat there in silence. The sun sunk further, turning the ocean from a dark blue to more of a metallic hue. The waves got smaller, long lines of foam washing easily to the shore.

“This feels like it's about last night,” she said finally, hugging her knees to her chest.

“It's not,” I said. “I promise. Maybe last night made it clearer to me. I don't know. But this is about you and me—nothing else.”

She turned to look at me. No tears in her eyes. I'm not sure what I expected. Maybe a little anger, maybe a little sadness. But her expression was blank.

She brushed the blond hair from her face and stood. “Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“For letting me know,” she said.

I stood. “Emily, I didn't—”

It was her turn to hold up her hand. “I mean it. Thanks for letting me know where I stand.”

She walked past me, up the beach toward the parking lot, leaving me without anything else to say or anyone to say it to.

I spent the night wrestling with Emily's reaction to me and new thoughts about Liz. I ended up getting about two hours of sleep. When I woke, I felt too sluggish to hit the water or take a run, so I took a long shower, read the paper, and watched a thick marine layer build over the coast. A day without sunshine.

I drove up to Clairemont about mid-morning to see Carter's key guy. About twenty minutes from the beaches, the only notable thing about the area was that the high school with the same name was rumored to have been where Cameron Crowe did his undercover research for
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
. The school did not put that on its enrollment materials.

Situated between the canyons, the area housed middle-class homes and lots of strip malls. Clairemont Square had undergone numerous renovations, trying to keep up with the changing retail times, but it never seemed to quite make it with each new face-lift. The giant theater that still loomed as the anchor of the outdoor plaza was
the
place to see movies when I was a kid. Now it ran films you could see at half price if you didn't mind the grainy print quality or that it had already been out for a month.

I found the kiosk in the middle of the plaza. A guy with a long ponytail was lounging on a tall director's chair, his feet up on the cart and a cigarette in his mouth. Long, skinny arms emerged from a grubby white tank top that matched the dirty jeans and work boots.

“You Charlie?” I asked, admiring the vast quantity of keys hanging in every possible place on the cart.

He pulled the cigarette from his lips and squinted at me. “Yeah. What can I do for you, man?”

“Got a question about a key.”

He spread his arms wide, grinning. “Well, you've found heaven then.”

I pulled the key out of the pocket of my shorts. “Carter Hamm sent me.”

He tapped the cigarette and ash fell to the ground. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “No shit? My good buddy Carter?”

“Yeah. Said you might be able to tell me what this belongs to.” I handed the key to him.

He jammed the cigarette back into his lips and turned the key over in his palm a couple of times. “Probably.” He grinned at me. “For the right price.”

“I said Carter sent me.”

He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, tossed it to the ground, and stepped on it. “Exactly. That's why it'll only cost you twenty instead of forty.”

I extracted a twenty from my wallet and handed it to him. “What a deal.”

His laugh sounded like a hiss. “I know, dude. You're lucky.”

Charlie turned around, his ponytail whipping over his shoulder. His bare neck exposed a tattoo of a black panther with its fangs bared. I tried to imagine the pain of ink needles dancing around the top of my spine.

He turned back around, an old metal toolbox in his hand. He set the box on the cart and opened it up. He rummaged through what looked to be thousands of keys. Old, new, shiny, rusted, big, small.

“Heard Carter was in the hospital,” Charlie said, moving some more keys around.

I tried not to look surprised. “Yeah. Actually, he is.”

He hissed or laughed or whatever it was again. “That dude gets in more shit.”

“He's gonna be alright.”

“Good to hear.” He stared at a particular key he'd pulled from the toolbox, then at my key. “That's it.”

“What?”

He held up my key. “This goes to one of them rental lockers. Put a quarter in and pull the key out and it's locked, you know?”

“Yeah. Like at the airport.”

He shrugged. “Or Sea World. Or wherever.”

“Is it possible to tell where it came from? I mean, exactly.”

Charlie held the key up and flipped it around with his fingers, then nodded. “Probably.” He smiled at me.

“For a price,” I said.

His grin grew. “Right on, brother. Something with a one and a couple of zeros in it.”

I pulled four twenties, two tens, and one of my cards out of my wallet and handed them over. “I need to know as soon as possible.”

He shoved the money in his pocket and examined my card. “An investigator. Like Magnum, dude?”

“Just like him.”

“Cool,” he said, nodding his approval. He folded the key in my card and slid them into the front pocket of his jeans. “I'll call you.”

“When?”

He smiled. “When I know, Magnum.”

I walked away wondering if I was the only normal friend that Carter had.

I drove home, not knowing what else to do, and unexpectedly found Liz waiting in front of my door.

I waved. “Hi.”

She wore faded blue jeans and a sleeveless navy blouse that buttoned up the middle. Her hair was swept over to the left side of her face, her sunglasses resting atop the mane. The thick-heeled sandals made her a couple inches taller than normal.

“Hi,” she said, a reluctant smile on her face.

“Just couldn't stay away,” I said, walking up to her.

“I got your message yesterday,” she said, ignoring my comment. “Tell me more.”

I motioned for her to follow me in to my place. We sat on the sofa, and I told her about my conversation with Charlotte Truman.

When I finished, she shook her head. “Randall is one cool guy.”

“Sure—if by cool you mean an arrogant, self-important, spineless asshole.”

She folded her arms across her chest and crossed her legs. “Alright, alright. I admit he's not as innocent as I originally thought, but I still think Costilla's the guy, Noah. Randall has an alibi and this Truman lady doesn't sound like much. We'll talk to her, but you said yourself she didn't seem like a suspect.”

“No, I don't think Charlotte did anything other than make a poor decision,” I said. “But all this crap keeps leading back to Randall.”

“Alibi is airtight,” she said. “He was at the hospital. We already checked it out.”

“Doesn't mean he wasn't involved,” I said.

“How so?”

“Could've hired someone, I don't know. But he just seems wrong.”

“A lot of guys cheat on their wives. Doesn't mean they want them dead.”

Her arms were lean and toned, her shoulders tan. I tried not to stare.

“I'm gonna tell you something and I just want you to listen for a second,” I said. “Okay?”

“I get nervous when you say things like that to me,” Liz said, shifting her weight on the sofa.

“What if I told you that Kate covered for him when she was arrested? That the heroin was his, not hers.”

She looked at me like I was the one with the drug problem. “What?”

I told her what Ken and Randall told me. She listened quietly, biting her bottom lip a couple of times.

“Noah, come on,” she said when I finished. “You really buy that? She was a user, a junkie. Lying is a way of life.”

“Ken was convinced and Randall confirmed it. He admitted that it was his.”

“Ken is her father. He's always going to place the blame elsewhere.”

“How do you explain Randall then? Why tell me it was his if it wasn't?”

Liz's look was skeptical. “I don't know why he'd say it, but what does that really give us? Even if that's true, how does that give him motive to kill her? Jesus, if anything, Randall probably is living with the guilt complex to end all guilt complexes. Maybe telling you all this is a way for him to try and absolve himself.”

“What if Randall was afraid she'd turn on him? Recant her story and tell everyone the drugs were his,” I suggested. “Maybe going undercover and working with Costilla were harder than she imagined, and Randall saw that and started worrying that Kate couldn't hold up her end of the deal.”

Liz leaned forward, tapping her fingers on her knees. “I know you're having trouble with this, Noah.”

“This?” I said, annoyed that she wasn't buying into my logic.

“Yeah, this,” she said, widening her eyes. “Kate was different. It wasn't the same Kate. You can't seem to grasp that, which I understand. I do. But, Noah, clean or not, she was different. You didn't know her anymore. You had no idea about her drug problem or what was going on with her marriage. And, somehow, you've got it screwed into your head that you could've saved her.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, nodding her head. “You think that if you'd stayed in her life, everything would have been different. And maybe it would have, but the chances that you could've prevented her from experimenting with heroin, marrying an asshole, and digging a legal hole for herself are slim. Slimmer than slim.” She paused, fixing her eyes on me. “And you need to deal with that.” She cleared her throat, and her look softened. “I'm sorry she's dead, but Randall didn't do it. I'm pretty confident on that.”

I stood up and walked over to the patio door, mulling over what she'd said. Outside, the gray sky put a silver tint in the water and there was a noticeable lack of runners and skaters, thanks to the cloudy weather. I wasn't sure if Liz's thinking was colored by the guilt she felt at letting Kate slip through her protection. I knew she wanted to nail Costilla. She had a lot more invested in him than I did.

But she had a point. It wasn't so much that I thought I could've really saved Kate. My reasons for wanting to figure out Kate's death were more selfish than that. I wanted to save the memories I had of her before all of this occurred. For so long, she had been the only good thing in my life. I never knew my father and my mother was a relentless drunk, incapable of providing me with the one thing that I didn't know my life was missing until Kate had given it to me.

Love.

I had always associated that emotion with Kate, as she was the person who showed me how it felt to be cared about and to be loved for the first time. I didn't want that memory ripped out of my life by the things that happened when we went our separate ways.

But maybe I didn't have a choice.

“So if it's Costilla,” I said, turning around to Liz, “there's really nothing to be done. Right?”

She shrugged. “Not at the moment, no. It's a matter of putting a case together against him. Her murder will be one more thing added to the potential list.”

“Can you add her murder if you don't have direct evidence, though?”

She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “No. We'll need something.”

“Which you don't have right now.”

“No.”

It was an ugly circle to think about.