Read Online Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle - Free Book Online

belligerent detective.
    â€œHow the hell were you ever a cop, Cahill?”
    Finally, a good question. I hadn’t planned on being one. I was going to be a football coach. Start in high school and then move my way up the ladder. My father had been a cop for LJPD. At least until he “retired” early without a pension. There’d been an investigation, but no charges filed. I remembered playing kickball in grade school the first time I heard the word “bagman.” Neither the kid who’d repeated his father’s words nor I knew what it meant. Until later.
    My dad died when I was a sophomore in college. The man I’d loved as a child, feared as a kid, and hated as a teenager. His ex-partner was the only cop who attended the memorial service. That was the day I decided to become a police officer. I never let myself believe that I was doing it to erase the tarnish my father hadbrought to the family name. It was only after I’d turned tarnish to rot that I realized what I’d been trying to do.
    I didn’t think Moretti was interested in the details, so I kept my history to myself.
    â€œYou had to go all the way to Santa Barbara to find a place where no one could smell the stink of your old man on you.” He smacked his gum louder. “But you fouled the world and that poor girl with your own stink. Didn’t you?”
    If he didn’t have a badge and it had been five years ago in a bar, I would have stopped his mouth with my fist. That may have been what he was hoping I’d do now. Give him a reason to put me in a cage where I belonged. Where my family blood had fated me. I tamped down the anger and shoved it into a compartment in a dark hole in my mind.
    â€œYou practicing interrogation methods for when you catch the guys who jumped me?” I smiled up at him like a good citizen. “After you’ve buffed your nails, of course.”
    He raised his foot up and rested it on the arm of Dan’s chair and leaned in on me. Up close, I could see the tip of a jagged cleft lip scar under his black mustache. I caught a whiff of his cologne. It was subtle, like ox musk mixed with gasoline.
    â€œSomething’s not right about your little story, Cahill.” He smiled but drilled small, mean eyes into me. “Just like the story you told Santa Barbara PD a few years back. The rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the rotten tree.”
    I stood up. Moretti dropped his foot back to the ground and straightened up. It didn’t matter how straight he made his spine, he’d never catch up to me. This time I crowded him and looked down at his forehead. “Tell Dan I’m sorry I couldn’t wait around for the sketch artist.” I crouched down a few inches so we were eye to eye. “Okay, Detective?”
    Moretti grabbed me by my shirt and sent his cologne in first before his face. “Sit down!”
    He tried to push me down into the chair, but I stayed upright. My ribs and kidneys screamed pain, but I swallowed it. I caughtthe chief’s office out of the corner of my eye. Parks still had his eyes only on me.
    â€œSylvia’s ready to sketch for Mr. Cahill.” Dan’s voice broke the tension, but I kept my eyes on Moretti.
    â€œCahill and I were just discussing his father.” Moretti relaxed his shoulders and looked over at Dan. “Bags Cahill left quite a reputation behind. Just like his son, Rick, here.” He turned back to me. “I told your friend Dan all about your, ah, interesting past this afternoon.”
    He gave me a snake grin, patted me on the shoulder, and then left the room.
    I turned and saw in Dan’s eyes that I’d need a new golf partner. Now every cop I knew was on the other side of the thin blue line.
    I sat down and worked with the sketch artist. Not because it was the right thing to do. I’d already done enough wrong to negate the right. I did it to show Moretti and the rest of them that,