As we sat through a magnificent dinner together talking and laughing, my thoughts drifted back to the dressing room. I was so confused and nervous about what plans he had for us, what plans he had for me. During dinner, he seemed like he had earlier that day on the beach, relaxed and open. The logical part of my brain was telling me to run away, but the other part was telling me that everything was fine. Honestly, it didn't matter what either part of my brain told me, I was in love with the man sitting across the table from me, I was in love with all of him, including the parts that I don’t understand. I realized that day, while he was showing me the pain he held behind that mysterious mask that he wore, that he loved me too. That was all I needed to know.
When dinner was over, we headed up to our hotel suite. At the door Nate stopped and pulled a white satin blindfold from his suit pants pocket.
"I am going to put this over your eyes, Kali," he said and lifted the blindfold up to my face tying it in back careful not to tangle my hair in the knot.
He grabbed one of my hands in his and I could hear him opening the door to the suite...
"Kali...Kali?" a familiar voice jarred her from her journal and away from her memories.
She looked up from the rocking chair and saw Carmen smiling down at her.
"Would you like another? We are going to close in twenty minutes."
With a heavy sigh, Kali shook her head, no. Realizing where she was, she looked down at the clock display on her iPhone. 8:40 p.m. Feeling a deep sadness come over her at being pulled away from that night with Nate, she reluctantly returned the journal into her green tote bag and gathered up her things. As she stood the room tilted slightly and a wave of dizziness washed over her. That night with Nate was the turning point in their relationship. She had thought it was the beginning of experiences that would bind them together for the rest of their lives. She never saw what was coming. That night she had felt as if her world would forever include Nate, just not the way it did today. Being able to experience him only by reading old journal pages was not the way she had envisioned their future together.
She shook her head trying to clear both the disorientation and thoughts from her mind and walked down the creaky wooden stairs to the bottom floor. She placed her coffee cup behind the back counter, almost dropping it to the floor.
"Goodnight, Carmen," Kali said.
"Goodnight, are you okay?" Carmen asked.
"Yes, thanks," Kali said and walked out the door, without another word.
She got on the I5 and headed home, still lost in memories of that July night. When she finally made it home, she washed her pale face, brushed her teeth and got into bed. She lay very still, listening to the faint sound of the waves crashing on the shore outside her condo and wondering if responding to Nate's text earlier in the week had been a mistake. She desperately wanted to go back to him but she was terrified that returning to him one more time might obliterate what was left of her soul.
Sutton pulled into the residential neighborhood where Nate lived, parked the Crown Vic and looked through the case notes again. Having virtually nothing to go on, Sutton got out of the car and headed to the end of the block. He decided he was going to do this the old school way and just start knocking on doors to see if anything shook out.
By the time Sutton had knocked on every door up the street side opposite Nate's house and made his way half way down the street on Nate’s side, he had come up with zilch. Feeling discouraged and a bit weary, he walked back to his car. Opening the trunk, he pulled a cold bottle of water out of a yellow cooler he kept there. He closed the trunk, leaned back against it and took a couple of small sips. Looking back at the other side of the street towards Nate's house, he noticed a woman in her front yard watering some shrubs that separated her property line from that of her neighbors. He pulled back a few more swigs of water, ran his hand through his unruly hair and began walking towards the woman.
"Good morning ma'am," Sutton said.
"Morning officer," the woman said, looking Sutton up and down.
The woman walked towards the side of her house and turned the water off at the spigot before walking back towards Sutton.
"Ma'am, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"Sure, fire away," she said with a questioning expression on her face.
"Did you live in this house in 2009?" he asked, pointing in the direction of her house.
"Yes, my husband and I bought this house twenty something years ago."
"Do you recall if you were home on Christmas Eve in 2009?"
She thought hard for a moment and then answered, "Yes, I was. My son was home from college to visit that year, and we had several family members over for an early Christmas dinner. Parking was a nightmare. The street was packed, and the rain was coming down like the devil."
"Do you recall anything out of the ordinary that night? Any people milling around that didn't belong to this neighborhood? Anything at all come to mind?"
"Only the red car that I called you guys about," she said her tone full of accusation.
"Red car, ma'am?"
"Yes, the red sports car. Jesus, I gave you guys the plate number. When you didn't come, I called again and by that time I was worried that the woman sitting inside might be in trouble," she said, her tone becoming tight.
"The woman, ma'am, can you describe her please?"
"I told you, she was young looking, with short, curly blonde hair and she kept rolling down her window and peering through some sort of goggles at that house," she stated, motioning to Nate's house.
"Goggles, ma'am? What type of goggles?" Sutton asked.
"Don't you guys know anything?" Exasperated she held her hands up to her eyes as if she were looking through a set of binoculars, "These kind of goggles, you know, to see far away things."
"And you called this in to whom, ma'am?"
"You guys!" she practically screamed at him while pointing to the Crown Vic he had parked across the street.
"Ma'am, can you tell me the number that you called us at?"
She stomped off towards her house and went inside briefly. When she returned, she was carrying a small book of the White Pages. She flipped it open to the San Diego Sheriffs Encinitas station non-emergency line and tapped her finger at the number, "This number! I called you at this number and you never came!"
Sutton thought he was going to fall over. What the hell, how had they missed this in the initial investigation, he thought to himself.
"Thank you ma'am, and I apologize for the call delay. Christmas Eve is a very busy night, and we are always understaffed. Thank you again," he said and hurried back to his car.
Sutton fished his cell phone from the mess of paperwork he had on the passenger seat and rapidly dialed Ryan's number. He didn't wait for Ryan to say hello, "Ryan, you are not going to believe this. I just found us a witness. Get me the address to the Sheriff's station in Encinitas."
"What the hell are you up to Sutton?"
"Man, just give me the damn address," Sutton barked.
"That gut is going to give you another heart attack old man, hold on," the line went silent while Ryan hunted down the address.
Sutton plugged the address into the navigation unit and headed towards the station in complete disbelief that he had finally gotten a new lead.
Andrew awoke, the unfamiliar surroundings of his temporary housing startling him as he opened his eyes. Groggy from another restless night he strolled towards the coffee maker, brewed a pot and sat down at the small table in what was supposed to be a dining area. His hand strayed absently to Laura's cell phone records, his fingers shuffling the corners as his mind sorted information. He had come across her assistant's phone number as well as a few other numbers that had appeared multiple times in the weeks leading up to Laura's murder. He wanted to track down the owners of all of those numbers, but hadn't put much effort into it until now. Early on in the investigation, he had studied those call records repeatedly. He had been in contact with Laura's assistant, Inez Hernandez, the day after Laura's memorial service. She had insisted that she’d had no idea where Laura was the night of her murder and because that night was Christmas Eve, Andrew believed Inez and didn't press the issue with her.
Andrew had yet to meet Inez in person. Today was a personal day off, and he would start on a game plan for his own investigation. The first item on his list was to contact Inez and try to arrange a meeting with her. Dialing her phone number, Andrew was unsure how to begin the conversation and when he heard her voice after just one ring, he found himself frozen briefly, "Hell...Hello Inez?"
"Yes, this is Inez, how can I help you?" she said, sounding very professional.
"Um...hi Inez, this is Andrew Carmichael, I don't know if you remember my wi..."
She cut him off mid sentence, "Yes, of course I remember Laura. I am so sorry that I have not contacted you, it was just a...it was a horrible situation," she said.
"Yes, it was, it still is. Inez, I would like to meet with you to go over Laura's last few weeks here in San Diego, or, um... her last few weeks. Can I meet you today or sometime this week? I won't take much of your time..."
Cutting him off mid-sentence again, she said, "I don't know that I can offer you any other information. I have already told the detectives everything I know, Mr. Carmichael. I would like to put all of this behind me; it was hard for me too."
"Yes, I am sure it was hard for you Inez, but as you may know, there has not been an arrest in Laura's case, and you were the person here in San Diego that she was closest to. I would really like to meet with you, please?" He said, his voice beginning to sound desperate.
"Mr. Carmichael, I was not close to Laura. She was a private person, and all I did was handle her business schedule and complete business reports for her. I don't know where she went that night, and I did not keep tabs on her after office hours. I hope they catch the person that did this to her, but I can't help you."
Andrew began to speak and realized that Inez had hung up the phone. He pulled the phone away from his ear, looked at the display and discovered that she had indeed hung up on him. Shaking his head, he set the phone down and began to look through the other numbers on the phone bill. He started with the last outgoing and incoming calls. The very last phone call was an incoming call from a number that had come up at least ten times in the weeks leading up to Laura's murder. None of the calls were longer than two minutes each, and all of the calls associated with that number were outgoing calls Laura made to that number. There was only one call made from that number to Laura's cell phone and it was the last call Laura received. There were hundreds of texts involving that number also, back and forth between Laura's number and the number in question. Andrew took a notebook out and wrote himself a note to ask Sutton about this number and find out if he had already looked into it. The last thing Andrew wanted to do was get in Sutton's way, especially now that he was back on the case, but he was determined to get some answers. He didn't know where to start and figured that he should tell Sutton about his transfer to San Diego.
The forty minute drive to downtown San Diego from Camp Peterson gave Andrew time to think about how he would break it to Sutton that he had no intentions of letting this go, and that he planned on working the case himself. He was sure that Sutton would ask him to stay out of it. If almost two years hadn't elapsed with zero forward movement on the case, he might have complied with a request of that sort. Since there were no developments in the case, Andrew had no choice but to try to do something, anything, there was no way for him to move forward without a resolution.
He pulled into an ACE parking area near the police building on Pacific Avenue and headed up the street towards Sutton's station, on foot. He looked up at the tall buildings and wondered what Laura had seen in this city. She had loved it here, and the last three months of her life she had spent far more time in San Diego than at home. Because of the nature of her business, Andrew didn't know the specific details of what she had been researching here in San Diego, but he knew that she thought the city was stunning and as he looked around he couldn't understand why.
When he arrived at the building Sutton worked out of, he checked in at the main lobby reception area and was asked to have a seat and wait while Sutton was called for. Andrew smiled, knowing that Sutton would be pissed he had shown up unannounced, again. Sutton was an odd man and definitely had his quirks, but Andrew had no doubt that he was giving Laura's case a hundred and ten percent of his time and energy. It was obvious to Andrew that Laura's case growing cold was the main force that had driven Sutton out of retirement and back to the job. The guy wouldn't rest until he nailed the bastard who did this to Laura, and Andrew felt exactly the same.
A ding sound alerted Nate that Kali's avatar had come up on the desktop version of a running app they both used. Technology is amazing Nate thought as he watched Kali's location and route load on the small box within the computer screen. Kali wasn't active on the online site but she had left her privacy settings wide open, and she always mapped out and tracked her run's. This gave Nate a front row seat to see where and when she ran. It also created an extremely easy opening to initiate the next step in his plan to put her back into his life.
It was a glorious morning, the air was crisp and the skies were already bright blue at 6am. Nate decided to take the black Audi TT out. He left the house and made the short commute to the stretch of beach in Carlsbad that Kali was running on. When he arrived at the parking area, he pulled up the running app on his phone and saw that she was about two miles away from passing back by the lot. Knowing how consistent she was with sticking to routine and her run map he got out, stretched and began running in her direction knowing that they would be running right towards each other. How fitting, he thought to himself.