Thread of Doubt Read online

  “I helped him move some of your stuff out.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, running the hand through his hair again. “So, yeah, we got the notice that he wanted us out. I went to tell Patrick. He was in the studio or whatever you wanna call it. I told him.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “He just sort of laughed,” Ruben said. “He laughed, shook his head, and just kept playing his guitar.” He took a drink from the coffee. “I asked him if he heard me and he said he did. He said don't worry about it. And I was like, how am I not supposed to worry about this? We need a place to fucking live.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Just told me it'd be cool,” Ruben said. “We'd figure something out.”

  I leaned back in the chair and looked around the empty shop. I wasn't hearing anything that indicated Patrick was showing any outward signs of being under pressure. I was hoping they could tell me that he was overwhelmed and then I could take that back to Mike, which might make the suicide easier to understand.

  But I wasn't getting that impression.

  “Okay, let me ask you this,” I said. “Were you guys okay as a band?”

  “We're really good,” Ruben said. “I mean, I'm not trying to be arrogant, but we're good.”

  “Not what I mean,” I said, clarifying. “How were you guys getting along? Were things cool? What was the dynamic?”

  He shifted in the chair and stared at the coffee for a long minute.

  It was the same vibe I'd gotten from Ricky.

  I waited.

  “No,” Ruben finally said. “Not really.”

  “What was wrong?”

  He took a sip from the coffee, then made a face at it, like it tasted bad. He set the cup down. “We're poor as fuck, alright? And I don't mean, like, we've only got a couple hundred bucks or anything like that. I mean, we were down to, like, eight bucks. We were behind on everything. Our credit cards are all maxed.” He nodded at the coffee. “I had to scrounge up change in my car just for that.”

  “Should've waited for me,” I told him. “I would've bought.”

  He shrugged. “It's fine. I mean, I've been poor for forever, so it's not like it's new. It's stressful for sure, but I'm used to it. And not like the other guys are rich or anything. But I think it was just the collective stress of none of us having any cash that was starting to wear on us.”

  “Understandable,” I said. “Were you guys doing anything to try and change that? I don't mean that to sound dumb, but were you guys looking to set up gigs? Or get jobs during the day? Again, I'm not trying to sound ignorant, but I'd assume at some point you would've had to do something.”

  He picked up the wooden stir stick next to his coffee and tapped it lightly against the table. “That's what I'm doing now. I was at my dad's place when you called. I told him about what happened and he...” He made a sour face. “He's not really into the band thing. I mean, he's cool if we play and stuff, but he doesn't think we should be making it our job or whatever. He runs a house remodeling business and he's been trying to get me to work for him for forever. Anyway, I went home last night after we finished talking to the police, told him what happened, and the first thing he said was I could start working for him today if I wanted.” He smiled, and it was filled with sadness. “And I get it. He's trying to be helpful in his way. That's cool. But it just sort of sucks that this is where I'm at. I'm having go back to my dad for a job the day after my friend dies.” He shook his head and looked away, but not before I saw the tears forming in the corner of his eyes.

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “That really does suck. On all fronts.”

  “Yeah,” he said, wiping at his eyes with his forearm. “It does.”

  I gave him a minute to compose himself.

  “Was Patrick worried about it?” I asked. “About the money? Or lack thereof?”

  Ruben sighed and leaned back in the chair. “I don't know, man. Yeah, I'm sure he was. In his own way. But that's the thing. He never showed us that kind of stuff. If shit was bothering him, he didn't tell us. He just said 'we'll figure it out.' So it was hard to tell with him.” His eyes moved away from mine. “Sometimes he was just really fucking hard to talk to. He and David went at it a lot over stuff like that.”

  David was the only member I had yet to talk to.

  “Money, you mean?” I asked.

  “Everything,” he answered. “He and David were tight, but David wasn't afraid to question him or challenge him. And I don't mean in a bad way. But David's kinda Type A, you know? He needs a plan. He needs organization.” He shook his head. “And, man, that was not Patrick's strong suit.”

  I nodded. “Sure. Okay. One last thing and I'll let you go. Did you see any signs that Patrick was using drugs again?”

  Ruben sighed again and thought for quite some time. He shifted in his chair several times, like he couldn't get comfortable. “The police asked me the same thing last night. I don't know. I think maybe he was.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Because I've seen him before,” he said. “When he was using. And it was bad. He couldn't focus. He didn't eat. You could just tell. Wasn't him. It's like a ghost of him. Kind of hard to explain.” He paused. “So, he wasn't totally like that. I wouldn't say that. But I don't know. I just sort of got the feeling that was the road he was heading down. Again.”

  “You said he’d been holed up in the garage, though, working on music,” I reminded him. “The last time you saw him was three days ago, right?”

  He frowned. “Well, yeah. So I hadn't seen him a ton. But that was kind of part of it. He disappears. So I guess in my head I at least wondered if that's what was going on.”

  I thought about this. He and Ricky were a bit at odds in terms of what they thought they were seeing in Patrick. I trusted that the people who spent the most time with him would've recognized it if he'd taken a step backward. One was saying he hadn't and one was saying he might've. Not the most unusual thing that they'd had different perceptions.

  But it did make his death and the way I'd found him even more confusing.

  FOURTEEN

  David Schmitt wasn't eager to talk to me.

  Because he had a secret.

  I thanked Ruben for meeting with me and called David after he left. The call went to voicemail first. I waited ten minutes, called again, got voicemail. I waited five minutes, then called again.

  “What?” he growled into the phone when the line finally connected.

  I explained who I was and why I was calling.

  “Yeah, Ricky told me,” he said. “I'm busy right now.”

  “When will you not be busy?”

  “I don't know,” he said.

  “Name a time. I’ll make it work.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m gonna keep calling until you agree to meet with me,” I warned.

  He sighed. “Look, I can meet you in half an hour but I won't have a lot of time.”

  “I’ll be quick.”

  He gave me an address back in La Mesa, near Grossmont College, asked me to text him when I got there, and said he'd come out to meet me. I told him that worked, got in my car, and headed back around the curve, out of El Cajon, and went west toward La Mesa.

  La Mesa was an upgrade from El Cajon and the city liked to let you know it. Situated below the ritzy homes on Mt. Helix, the city pushed its community college, its shopping plazas, and its affordable housing...well, affordable compared to the coastal prices. It did its best to shed itself of the east county stereotypes and, in truth, felt more like Clairemont than El Cajon.

  When the GPS on my phone told me I'd arrived at my destination, I double-checked the address David had given me. The address was correct.

  So I pulled into the strip mall the GPS was telling me was my destination and shut off the engine.

  I texted David to tell him I was there and scanned the strip mall. A dry cleaners, an insurance office, a taco shop, a florist, and a barbershop.
<
br />   Two minutes later, the door to the insurance office swung open and a guy in his mid-twenties in a pair of khaki pants and a blue short-sleeved golf shirt walked out. His short brown hair was swept neatly off his forehead, the sides trimmed short. He looked more like someone who was going to try and sell me a better auto policy than a guy in a band. Which, considering where he’d just stepped out of, was a distinct possibility.

  He glanced around the lot. I got out of my car and held up my hand. He saw me, frowned, then made his way over.

  “You're the investigator guy?” he asked.

  “Joe,” I said, offering my hand. “You're David?”

  He gave me a half-hearted handshake. “Yeah. Look. I've only got 15 minutes. I'm taking my break and I don't want to go back late.”

  I pointed at the office he'd come from. “You work there?”

  “For now,” he said. “I needed a job.”

  “The money thing?” I asked. “Ruben and Ricky mentioned you guys were struggling a little.”

  “A little?” he said, smirking. “Try a lot. They don't even know I have this job. I've been making excuses for a month now as to why I had to get out of the house for a while.”

  “Why didn't you tell them?” I asked.

  He glanced back over his shoulder for a moment. “Because Patrick would've been pissed and I didn't want to put Ricky and Ruben in a spot where they had to lie for me.”

  “Why would Patrick have been pissed?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Because he would've seen it as some sort of statement that I wasn't committed to the band. Which is garbage. I took this stupid job because I am committed. But he wouldn't have seen it that way. Guaranteed.”

  “All or nothing,” I said.

  “Yep. That's how everything was with him,” he said. “Everything.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I got that from your other friends. So, I don't want to rehash everything they've told me because you're short on time. I appreciate you coming out to talk to me.”

  He shrugged.

  “I haven't been able to get a good answer from either of them, though, about the band,” I said. “What was the dynamic? Were you guys getting along?”

  “No,” David said. “We were not.”

  It was the first straight answer I'd gotten about the state of their group.

  “Were you on the verge of breaking up?” I asked. “Was it that bad?”

  “We'd talked about it,” David admitted. “Things just...we weren't clicking.”

  “What things?” I asked. “What things weren't clicking?”

  “We're poor as fuck, man,” David said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “My credit cards are maxed and I've got like three bucks in my wallet. I'm tapped. Ruben and Ricky are in the same boat. I'm answering phones and making photocopies at this place because my mom knows someone and they needed some part-time help. It's a shitty little job, but I needed money. We needed money.” His expression was somewhere between exasperation and disgust. “All of us have been stressed over it. Except for Patrick.”

  It was similar to what I'd heard from the other two. “He had money?”

  He shook his head. “No. He just refused to acknowledge that we were all eating cereal three times a day and walking places because we didn't have money for gas. But he was low on cash, too.” He paused. “Which is why we got pissed when he said no.”

  “No to what?” I asked.

  “A label,” he said.

  This was the first I’ve heard of this. “A label?” I repeated.

  “Nothing huge, but a small label in L.A. They wanted to sign us, front us some cash, get us in the studio, figure out a regional tour.” He shrugged. “Would've taken some pressure off of us, at least with the money. And gotten us some more exposure without us having to try and figure out how to do it.”

  “So why say no?” I asked. “That should've been a step up, right?”

  “Not for Patrick,” David said, his tone bitter. “He wanted to go another route.”

  A car pulled into the lot and I waited for it to pass. “What route?”

  “He was all about staying away from the labels,” he explained. “He wanted us to have control and he thought we'd lose it if we signed with anybody. So he wanted to record and put it online and give it away. He thought that's how we'd get fans and that's how we'd grow.” He shook his head. “I mean, it's not the worst idea if you've got cash to fall back on. But we were out, man. It costs money to record something that doesn't sound like shit and then to put up a quality site and push it out to people. We don't have money for that. He just wouldn't let it go, though.”

  I nodded. What he was saying made sense. It took money to make money unless someone was offering you that money upfront.

  “Said if we signed, he was out,” David continued, squinting into the sun. “And we knew without him, we were fucked. Because no matter how frustrating it was to me, I'm not gonna lie: Patrick was the one that made us go. Without him, we were just another bar band. Which I guess is what we are now.”

  I knew that the music industry had shifted hard with the Internet and that bands didn't need labels to gain a following or to get their music out there. It could happen organically. But it was also a crapshoot because everyone had access to the same tools. Getting noticed was still hard. Harder than hard, really.

  Patrick obviously thought different.

  “So where were you at then?” I asked. “Had you broken up? Fighting? What?”

  David sighed. “We were following him, man. I think he was working extra hard to come up with something we might be able to record and throw out there. I think he felt bad about saying no to the label, to some degree. Not for him, but for us. So I think he was busting his ass to try and come up with something before we all walked.”

  “But were you ready to walk?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” David answered. “I told him if we couldn't get something together by the first of the year, I was out. I meant it when I said I'm tapped out. And I don't want to be some old dude, playing bar gigs and working some shit job just to pay the minimum on my credit cards.” He shook his head. “I love music and these guys are my friends, but, at some point, if it's not going to happen for us, I need to start my adult life, man. And I know Patrick thought that was a cop out and that's cool. It would've been for him. But for me?” He shook his head again. “It's not a cop out. It's just being real. I mean, there's no pride for me in coming to this job a couple of times a week just to pull a paycheck that doesn't do much. But there's no pride in ignoring reality, either.”

  I nodded. I understood his point and I appreciated his maturity. It was hard to give up on something if it meant that much to you because it was admitting a certain kind of failure.

  “How did Patrick respond to that?” I asked.

  David winced. “Not great. At first he was pissed, then he didn't talk to me for a couple days. Then he said he was sorry, but that he'd figure something out so I wouldn't bail.” He pulled a hand from his pocket and tugged at his earlobe. “I mean, I know he meant it when he said it. He wasn't bullshitting me. I think he really thought he could figure something out. Probably thought he could use his sheer force of will to somehow start making us some money. But I just saw the writing on the wall.”

  I watched the traffic move along on the street next to us and tried to figure out Patrick's mindset. There definitely seemed to be stressors in his life that would've weighed on him, especially with the feelings of obligation he apparently felt toward the other members of the band. And maybe that had caused him to seek relief by using again, even if his band mates hadn't all picked up on those stressors. But they'd all described a kind of drive that didn't seem to coalesce with the idea that he'd killed himself. There was no other word for it: Patrick was driven. Driven to write, driven to create music, driven to succeed, and driven to help out his friends. That was the part I was still trying to wrap my head around.

  “I think he really was worried that one of us—or
all of us—would bail,” David said. “He was a pretty loyal guy and we really are all friends. He didn't want to start a new band or go solo or anything like that. He wanted it to be us. And that was kinda cool because I think we all knew he was sort of the brains and heart of the band. He knew it, too, and he took that responsibility seriously. So I know it upset him that we were all frustrated and that I said I'd walk and that Ruben and Ricky were at least thinking about it.”

  “Meaning the pressure was getting to him?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I think so. I mean, it would get to anyone, wouldn't it? He was hard to read, but I think just the way he was trying to make something happen...that was telling me he was feeling it.”

  “So then you think it all just finally got to him?” I asked. “Just overwhelmed him?”

  David frowned. “What else are we supposed to think? Sorta looks that way, doesn't it? ”

  It did.

  “I mean, look,” he said, shaking his head, “I'm still in shock he's dead. No matter what was going on, I wouldn't have thought he'd kill himself. But if he did?” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I feel guilty. Because I didn't see it coming and because it was all clearly bugging him more than we knew. He was a private guy and he liked to be left alone when he was working, but still. He was my friend first, before anything else. I...I feel like I let him down.”

  It was a normal reaction to a suicide. Shock, then guilt. There'd be anger, too. There was no right or wrong emotion because there weren't really any definitive answers.

  “I probably need to get back inside,” David said, glancing back at the door to the insurance company. “I only work three hours at a time and I usually don't even take a break.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Is there anyone else I could talk to? Anyone else he was close to?”

  He studied the ground for a minute.

  A car honked out on the street and another car honked back.

  “You could talk to Erin,” he finally said.

  Erin. The same girl Patrick's mother had mentioned. “His girlfriend, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Or his ex-girlfriend, depending upon where they were at this week.”