Wrong Light Read online

  WRONG LIGHT

  Also by Matt Coyle

  Yesterday’s Echo

  Night Tremors

  Dark Fissures

  Blood Truth

  WRONG LIGHT

  A RICK CAHILL NOVEL

  MATT COYLE

  Copyright © 2018 Matt Coyle

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-60809-316-8

  Cover Design by Christian Fuenfhausen

  Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing

  Sarasota, Florida

  www.oceanviewpub.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  This book is dedicated to the city of San Diego and all my friends, readers, and booksellers in it. You’ve given me more than I could ever give back.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ALL NOVELS ARE a team effort and this book was no exception.

  My sincerest thanks to:

  Kimberley Cameron for her continued support and friendship.

  The crew at Oceanview Publishing, Bob and Pat Gussin, Lee Randall, David Abolifia, and Autumn Beckett for behind-the-scenes heavy lifting. Special shout-out to Emily Baar for dealing with my never-ending editing process.

  David Ivester and Ken Wilson for overtime marketing efforts.

  Carolyn Wheat, Cathy Worthington, Grant Goad, and Penne Horn from the Saturday group for their thoughtful critiques.

  My family, Jan and Gene Wolfchief, Tim and Sue Coyle, Pam and Jorge Helmer, and Jennifer and Tom Cunningham for support and mouth-to-ear marketing.

  Nancy Denton for a key early read.

  Gordon Hunt, Lisa Gussin, Ana Rabelo Wallrapp, and David Truett for info on 1969 Camaros.

  Kathleen Dengerink for her expert knowledge of autism.

  George Fong for info on the FBI.

  David Putnam for advice on firearms.

  A biotech insider who wishes to remain anonymous for his knowledge of the science and business of stem cell research.

  And last, but not least, Jeff Dotseth for his encyclopedic insight into the world of talk radio.

  Any errors regarding Camaros, autism, the FBI, firearms, stem cells, or talk radio are solely the author’s.

  WRONG LIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  HER VOICE, A low purr ripe with memories of long-ago crushes, vibrated along the night’s spine. It pulled you close and whispered in your ear. You’re not alone. We’ll get through this. I won’t abandon you.

  I’d listened to it on the radio during nighttime stakeouts. Nine ’til midnight. Five nights a week. 1350 Heart of San Diego on your AM dial.

  Naomi at Night.

  No last name. None needed. Her voice was all that mattered. And your imagination.

  Counter programming. A palate cleanse to the syndicated political braying, sports shouting, and conspiracist ranting that bloated talk radio. A throwback to an earlier decade. When talk radio meant just that—talk. And listen. A disembodied voice in the night meant to soothe, not agitate.

  People eager for something else, someone else, someone who seemed to care, started listening. So much so that listeners began calling in from as far away as San Francisco. The station’s long-held, but underutilized blowtorch 50,000-watt signal was finally paying dividends. Syndication had to be the next step. An entire nation waiting to hear the “Voice.” To be soothed. To be heard. To be validated.

  That is, if Naomi could stay alive that long.

  * * *

  I pulled into the 1350 radio station’s parking lot at nine p.m. The station sat a couple streets west of Interstate 15, just north of where the Traitors—I mean, Chargers—used to play before they took their lone championship from the old AFL in fifty-seven years of existence up to Los Angeles to play second fiddle to the Rams while LA yawned. Not that I carried a grudge.

  The parking lot had no gate, no guard, no lights, no security camera that I could see. Anyone could drive in. There were six other cars in the lot besides mine. No one inside any of them.

  I turned off the ignition just as the moody bumper music for Naomi at Night came on. No need to let my imagination wander when I was about to meet Naomi. In the flesh. 1350 The Heart of San Diego was painted in red and blue lettering on the glass doors leading into the lobby. The “o” in San Diego was heart-shaped.

  The doors were locked. A relief, but that still didn’t solve the problem of the unguarded parking lot. Any five-night-a-week lonely listener who was convinced that he and Naomi were destined to spend eternity together had only to wait outside until his afterlife wife finished her show and walked out to her car. Even if somebody escorted Naomi through the parking lot, they’d be no match for a crazy with a gun in his hand and twisted love in his heart.

  I pushed the button on the intercom next to the door.

  “Yes?” Male voice.

  “Rick Cahill to see Chip Evigan.”

  “I’ll let you in.”

  Evigan was the Program Director who contacted me about threats to Naomi. He’d sounded as if he was in his late forties or early fifties. A little old to still go by “Chip.” One man’s opinion. Then the name came back to me. He’d had a show on the radio years ago that I’d listen to on my morning drive to Muldoon’s Steak House when I ra
n the joint. Morning Joe with the Chipster. It was pretty awful, but his frenetic energy was a good wake-up call for opening the restaurant at 7:30 a.m. after closing it the night before at 1:00 a.m.

  Either time or his new position had sapped the frenetic from him. The man who opened the door to the radio station was slump-shouldered with a mouth to match. Purple circles were engraved under his drooping brown eyes. He stuck out a hand and tried to lift the corners of his mouth in a smile. Failed.

  “Chip Evigan, Mr. Cahill. Thanks for coming.”

  I shook his hand, then followed him through a door down a narrow hallway.

  Naomi’s sultry voice wafted out of the speakers in the hallway. “Welcome, fellow wanderers of the night. What secrets shall we whisper tonight? What lies can we tell that reveal the truth? Find shelter here from the dark night, the cold world. Bring your lives with you. You’re safe here.”

  Her standard opening. A siren call to every socially awkward shut-in from San Diego to San Francisco. My only surprise about the threats to Naomi was that they hadn’t come earlier. Like her first week on air two years ago.

  I stayed abreast of Evigan and walked by an open area dotted with a few desks. A woman sat at one looking at a computer monitor.

  “That’s the News Nest. Rachel is scanning the wires for stories for the bottom of the hour news break.” He nodded at the woman. She looked up and smiled. Red hair, freckles across her nose like a teenager, even though she was in her forties. Rachel Riley. She’d worked at the station for years. I’d heard her read the news at various times of the day for over a decade. Even had her own show for a while. Seemed like everybody who worked at the station did at one time or another and then either got promoted or demoted. The common factor being they couldn’t hold onto their own shows’ audiences.

  A business that lived and died by ratings made for shaky employment. Naomi was the station’s brightest star. A lot of resentment could grow in the shade deflected from all that sunlight.

  On the right just past the News Nest was the studio. A big picture-frame window looked in at the talent. A sign next to the window said “On Air” in lighted red letters.

  “Naomi,” Evigan said and walked past.

  I slowed a tick. Involuntarily. I’d worked security at a radio-sponsored country music festival a while back during a lean month. The lone country radio station in town had a booth featuring their on-air personalities at the event. That day, I’d learned the true meaning of the saying, “A face for radio.”

  Naomi had a face for billboards. Dark eyes, hair to match that peaked to a point on her forehead and outlined a heart around her face. Cheekbones that could cut and blossomed lips that couldn’t help but make every word she spoke seem sensual.

  I didn’t know exactly what I expected, just not the woman I saw. I wondered if her harasser had ever seen her. If so, more fuel for the demented fire. She wore a ’60s hippie-brimmed hat that hid her eyes and most of her face in the picture on the station’s website. Shadows and mystery. Her show. Her persona.

  She caught me looking at her and stared back. Piercing, unblinking eyes. No smile. Heat flushed my cheeks. I felt like a schoolkid caught ogling the substitute teacher. I sped up to catch Evigan as he opened a door into a small office.

  He sat down behind a utilitarian desk. I took a seat opposite him in a wooden chair that was probably older than me. A whiteboard with the station’s program lineup hung on the wall behind him. The lineup was written in erasable black ink for easy replacement in the volatile world of talk radio.

  Signed photos of Evigan with local celebrities back in his radio hosting days covered one of the other walls in the small office. Or at least, his younger days. The man sitting across from me looked to be twenty years older than the one in the photos, most of which were probably less than ten years old. I guess time flies faster behind a desk than a microphone in a radio station.

  “Everything I show you and that we discuss has to be kept in the strictest confidence, Mr. Cahill.” The purple circles under Evigan’s eyes seemed to have embedded deeper in the sixty seconds since he let me into the radio station. “Do you understand?”

  “All my clients’ cases are confidential, Chip. That’s why they hire me.” I needed the work, but if I was going to be scolded like a child, I’d prefer it came from the woman behind the microphone and not a man named Chip.

  “Well, alright, as long as I have your word.”

  “You not only have my word, Chip, you have it in writing on the contract I sent you and that you signed.” Middle management. “Why don’t we move onto the reason you hired me?”

  Evigan frowned, deeper than his default expression. He took out a letter envelope from his desk drawer and set it down in front of me. “This arrived a week ago.”

  I looked at the envelope without picking it up. It was addressed to Naomi at Night with the station’s call letters and address. The return address was also the station’s. The postmark was from San Diego. That narrowed things down a bit. The writer probably stuck the letter in a post office drop box somewhere in the city. Untraceable. The handwriting on the envelope was in block print. Each letter leaving a deep indentation into the envelope. Anger bordering on fury or someone who didn’t know their own strength? Neither option was on my best-case-scenario list.

  “And you contacted the police, but they declined to investigate?” Reiterating what he’d told me on the phone.

  “Yes.”

  “Why not?”

  “I read them the letter, and they didn’t think it sounded threatening enough to investigate.”

  I pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves from my jacket pocket and put them on. I opened the envelope and removed the letter, careful to hold it by the edges of the paper, in case there came a time when there’d be a reason to fingerprint it. There were six pages of hand-printed stationery in the same block lettering as the envelope. Same deep indentations, too.

  “How many people have handled this?” I asked Evigan.

  “The daytime receptionist, Naomi’s producer, and me. I think that’s it.” Evigan’s face slipped back into a deep frown. “Why?”

  “Wait a second.” I put the letter down. “Naomi hasn’t read this?”

  “She gets so much mail that she doesn’t have time to read it all, so we have her producer, Carl, read some of it and pass along any letters to her that need a reply. Naomi likes to personally answer letters from her fans. After Carl read the letter, he brought it straight to me.”

  “And you didn’t tell Naomi about it?”

  “No.”

  “And you told Carl not to tell her about it, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think you should alert her to this situation if you think it’s dangerous?”

  “I’m not sure it is dangerous.” His eyebrows rose.

  “You called the police and then me when they wouldn’t help you. I think you’re sure.”

  “Just read the letter and tell me what you think.”

  I started reading the letter, again holding each page on the edges. The first five pages were fairly innocuous. The writer praised Naomi and recounted some of the things he claimed she said during her shows, putting quotation marks around them.

  “Don’t fight the lonely night. Let it in to comfort you until your Other presents herself.” “Don’t pollute the freedom of your mind with the restrictions of your body.” “Peer into the darkness. Only then can you find your true light.”

  There were another twenty or so quotes. It sounded like New Age mysticism. Naomi had ventured into that area when I’d listened to her, but not too often. Mostly, she just listened and found the perfect question to ask at the perfect time to unlock the caller’s true angst. She was remarkable. She should have been a psychiatrist. Or a homicide cop.

  The author turned one of Naomi’s quotes back at her on the last page of the letter. “I was lost in the darkness until I peered into it and found my true light, you. Cora, you have given me a pu
rpose in this darkness underneath.”

  The letter ended: “Until that night, that sweet night when our prophesy is fulfilled, I ask that you just acknowledge that you’ve listened to my words on paper as you have on the air. Just say my name once during the show by the end of next week and I’ll know our hearts are twinned forevermore. Don’t disappoint me and awaken my rage.

  “Until, sweet Cora,

  “Yours, Pluto.”

  Evigan was pacing behind his desk by the time I finished the letter. He stopped when I set it down. “Well?”

  I reread the last paragraph out loud and looked at Evigan when I finished. “Is Naomi a stage name? Is her real name Cora?”

  “No. Her real name is Naomi.”

  “What about her middle name?”

  “Ursula. But I Googled Cora.” Evigan looked like he was waiting for a pat on the head.

  “And?” No pat.

  “It was made famous by James Fenimore Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans. She was the dark-haired heroine in the book.”

  “The dark hair fits Naomi.” I wondered if there was some connection with the novel. I also knew Cora was a shortened version of the Spanish name for heart, Corazon. I had to dig deeper. “What about Pluto?”

  “It’s a planet. Or used to be. I can’t keep track.” He sat back down.

  “I know that.” He still wasn’t getting a pat on the head. “Odd choice for a name for a potential stalker.”

  “Why do you say that?” Evigan’s eyebrows and voice rose in unison.

  “If I was an insecure creep who fixated on a woman I could never have, I’d pick a bigger planet to enhance the size of my penis, like Jupiter. Not some dot in the sky you could never see that lost its planet cred. Pluto is also a Roman god. Did you try to find a connection between it and Cora?”

  “No.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll do it. Has there been any other communication from him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Naomi received an angry voicemail asking her why she didn’t acknowledge a letter she received.” Evigan walked around his chair like he was about to sit down, then went back behind it and put his hands on the headrest. “The voicemail date was 12:01 a.m. last Saturday morning. Right after the last show of last week.”