Thread of Doubt Read online

  “Really?” I said. “I didn't get that impression from her.”

  She nodded. “Yes. She did. She was pressuring him to get a job. She wanted him to pay down his debt.”

  Erin had mentioned his borrowing money, but she hadn't said a word about paying down debt. And she'd told me that he actually did have some money. From dealing.

  “With all due respect, those don't sound like bad things,” I said.

  “You didn't know Patrick,” she said, stiffening. “Music was everything to him. It's what kept him going. Anyone who cared about him would've known that suggesting he set it aside would've been a devastating suggestion. But Erin did just that.”

  I found that to be interesting. Erin had spoken about his money troubles, but never to the point of suggesting that she wanted Patrick to change. I wondered if she'd left that out of our conversation or if Cleo Bullock was exaggerating what had been going on between her son and Erin.

  “Do you need anything else from me?” Cleo asked. “Because I have some things I need to attend to.”

  I was still mulling over the toxicology report and why there'd been so little heroin in his system. I'd gone to Cleo's house with the intention of trying to work toward that, but she'd given me another avenue to explore with some of the things she was telling me about Erin. I was going to leave the tox results for Mike to share with her.

  I stood. “No, I think I have everything. I appreciate your time and again, I'm very sorry about your son.”

  She walked me to the door in silence and stood there as I walked to my car at the curb. I glanced up at her as I opened the driver's side door.

  Cleo Bullock was staring at her hands again, no doubt wishing she'd never met me.

  TWENTY ONE

  I pulled away from the curb, turned left at the corner, then pulled over again and let the car idle for a minute.

  I didn't want to sit in front of Cleo's house while I tried to get my thoughts in order.

  Cleo clearly had hard feelings toward Erin. I couldn't tell whether they were justified or if she was just targeting her grief. I did wonder what she'd said about Erin's feelings toward Patrick and music, though, because I didn't feel like Erin had shared anything like that with me. She'd focused mostly on his addiction and how that had affected their relationship. I hadn't gotten the sense that the band was an issue for her.

  I was also still trying to wrap my head around the idea that Patrick might not have killed himself.

  Which meant that someone else had.

  But I wasn't sure who would've had reason to do it or why.

  I wanted to talk to Erin again.

  When I called her this time, she seemed slightly more annoyed than the day before. She was at the main library at SDSU, studying. I pressed her a bit and told her I only needed a few minutes. She finally relented and agreed to meet me outside the library.

  She held her hand over her eyes, shading them, when I got there. She was sitting on a stone bench adjacent to the front entrance. She didn't look thrilled to see me.

  “Seriously, I only have five minutes,” she said. “I have a paper that's overdue to my faculty advisor and quite honestly, he doesn't give a shit that my boyfriend just died.”

  “I hear you,” I said, sitting down next to her. I wondered about her choice of words, and the fact that she had just referred to Patrick as her boyfriend. “I'll be fast.”

  She waited.

  “Yesterday, you told me you thought he was dealing,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Where was he getting his supply?”

  “I don't know,” she said, frowning. “He never told me.”

  “Any ideas? People that randomly showed up, someone you didn't know?”

  She shook her head. “No. He kept that away from me. He knew better. Why?”

  “Just trying to tie up loose ends,” I told her. “This is going to sound weird, but did you have access to his email? Or anything like that where I might be able to get a look and see if I could figure out who he was working with?”

  She gave me a strange look. “Why does this matter if he killed himself?”

  I shrugged. “I'm just trying to get a good picture of what was going on with him. For his uncle and his mother.”

  I watched for any reaction from her at the mention of Patrick's mother, but there was none.

  “I might know his password,” she said. “But I can't guarantee it.”

  “Can you try?”

  “Is that legal?” she asked, her voice laced with doubt.

  I shrugged. “If you know the password, it's not illegal.”

  “Feels weird.”

  “I promise. It's not to do anything other than look for something that doesn't look right.”

  She studied me for a moment. “I'm getting a very weird feeling from you. There's something else going on. You're telling me there are loose ends, but I don't see how there could be.” She paused. “Unless something else is going on.”

  Erin was smart.

  “It's sometimes hard for families to grapple with the idea that a family member took their own life,” I said. “All I'm trying to do is make sure there aren't any unanswered questions.”

  Technically, that was true. I was trying to ensure that there were answers for Patrick's death and anything else that was going on in his life. So I wasn't lying to her.

  But she eyed me like I was.

  Finally, she unzipped her backpack and pulled out her laptop. She lifted the screen up and started typing. “I'm pretty sure he used a song. It was one he wrote for me. It was called 'Never Say Hello' because I almost never say hello. I just start talking.” A small smile found its way onto her face and she shook her head. “He did notice the little things, that's for sure.”

  “Were you okay with him staying in the group?” I asked. “Even with the money trouble and the drugs and everything?”

  She glanced at me. “That's a weird question.”

  It probably was, given that I'd blurted it out to her. But I'd been fixated on it since Cleo Bullock told me that Erin had not been a fan of the band. I hadn't picked that up from her the first time we'd spoken and it surprised me that I'd missed it.

  “Again,” I said. “I'm just thinking about Patrick and what his life was like and what everyone around him was like.”

  She eyed me for a moment, then studied the screen. “Yeah, I was okay with it. I mean, it wasn't practical in any way. Even he would say that. That it was a million to one shot that something would break right for them. But he loved it. Loved it more than anyone I've ever known has loved anything else. And he really thought they were the one in a million. He genuinely thought that. So I never would've pushed against that.”

  “But what about the future?”

  She tapped a couple of keys. “I just tried not to think that far ahead. For me, yeah, I know where I'm headed, what I want to do mostly. But for us, as a couple?” She shook her head. “I didn't do that. I couldn't.”

  What she was telling me was consistent with the impression I'd gotten from her the day before. I believed her. I thought Cleo Bullock's anger was misdirected.

  She frowned at the computer. “That's not it. Won't let me in.”

  “Any other ideas?”

  She thought for a moment. “I'm pretty sure that's the password for his cloud account. But I have no idea what's backed up there. He wasn't really technically savvy, except with music. And I have no idea about the email password.”

  “Can we try that then?” I asked. “The cloud?”

  She nodded and started tapping away again. “I feel like a hacker or something.”

  I chuckled and nodded.

  “The only reason I know this is the password is because he mentioned it one time,” she said. “He made some dumb joke about me and him in the clouds and then he told me about the song title. He had to create an account when he got his phone and he'd just read something about how to make passwords more secure.” She shook her head. “I think
he just wanted to have sex with me that night.” She paused and looked at the screen. “Okay, I'm in. I was right. But it looks like he barely has anything backed up in here. No email or texts. Just phone calls.”

  “Can I take a look?” I asked.

  She handed me the computer.

  She was right. There was nothing in the text folder and nothing in the email folder. The only thing that was there was a listing of his most recent phone calls, ingoing and outgoing. But it looked like his contacts were backed up, too, because most of the phone calls had names next to the numbers identifying them. I recognized the names of the guys in the band, Erin's name, and Cleo's. There were a few other names attached to numbers, but I had no idea who they were.

  “You might know better than me,” I said, handing her the laptop back. “You see anything that sticks out here?”

  “Like what?” she said, settling the computer back on her lap.

  “I don't know,” I said. “How about names you don't recognize?”

  She studied the screen for a few moments.

  A trio of guys glanced at us as they walked into the library, backpacks slung low on their backs, heavy and full. I wondered if they knew what we were discussing, what we were looking at. I wondered if any of them were using drugs, were depressed. I wondered if there was a chance they might have known Patrick, and what their reaction would be if they found out he was dead.

  “This one,” she said, pointing to the screen. “I don't know who that is.”

  I followed her finger to the screen, next to the name Thad Paulus and a 619 area code. “No?”

  She shook her head. “No. Everything else that has a name, I know them. Even a couple that don't have names, I recognize. Pretty sure they're clubs where they've played. But I've never heard of that guy or seen that number.”

  I looked at the call history. He'd talked to him about once a week it looked like, usually late at night.

  “And this one,” she said, pointing to a call dated three weeks ago. “Patrick was with me that night, but I don't remember him making a call.” She leaned closer to the screen. “It was while I was asleep, actually. I just remember because I had an exam the next morning and I went to bed early. He stayed the night, but he was up super late. Writing.”

  I typed the name and phone number into my own phone. “Okay. And the name doesn't sound familiar at all?”

  She shook her head. “Nope, positive. Never heard it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And I should let you go. I don't want to keep you. I appreciate your time.”

  She closed the screen on the computer and slipped it back into her bag. “I don't get it.”

  I stood. “Don't get what?”

  “Why does any of this matter if Patrick killed himself?” she said, hitching the bag over her shoulder. “Why does it matter who he was talking to?”

  I didn't want to tell her that Mike and I were having second thoughts about Patrick taking his own life. It wasn't the right time, and we still didn't know what happened for certain. There might've been a legitimate reason for the tox screen to come back looking abnormal.

  “Like I said,” I told her. “Just tying up loose ends.”

  Erin stood up and eyed me carefully for a moment. Her gaze was focused, sharp.

  “When Patrick was using, he would start telling me little lies,” she said. “Nothing major, but just little things that ultimately didn't even matter. He'd tell me he ate something healthy for lunch, but he'd eaten rolled tacos, or some crappy fast food. He'd tell me he'd gone to bed early, but he'd stayed up all night. Small things like that. But it was like the drug made him lie. At first, I couldn't spot it. But over time, I got a lot better at being able to weed out the truth from the lies.”

  I didn't say anything.

  “So maybe I’m being paranoid, or maybe my bullshit radar is enhanced.” Her eyes narrowed. “Because I really don't believe you. The whole loose ends thing.”

  I held her gaze but stayed silent. There wasn’t anything I could tell her. Not now, anyway.

  She shook her head and sighed, clearly frustrated with my lack of response. “If there's something else that comes up, I hope you'll let me know.”

  She headed into the library before I could respond.

  TWENTY TWO

  It took me thirty minutes to track down an address for a Thad Paulus.

  I called Mike to ask him to run the name, but he was on another phone call and had to call me back. I searched on my phone and found a couple of hits on the name that looked like they matched, but I could only get the phone number, which I already had. There wasn't much else attached to his name besides a Facebook page that hadn't been updated in several years and didn't show any photos. I called another friend of mine, a guy on SDPD who I was still friendly with, who ran the name through a database and came up with a North Park address. Mike called me back just after that and confirmed the address. He asked if he should ask me more about it and I told him it would be better to wait before I filled him in.

  The North Park area had undergone a gentrification in recent years that was still surprising to see. Twenty years earlier, it had been a largely ignored part of San Diego, a haven of old liquor stores, check-cashing places, and homes in decline. But the demand for a San Diego zip code had spread from Banker's Hill and Hillcrest, and the entire neighborhood had revitalized itself with new restaurants, shops, embracing its roots in the process. The housing prices in the area had risen, but only because people realized they could snatch up properties on the cheap, tear them down, and build something new on them. The neighborhoods now were a mishmash of old and new, the past sitting right next to the present.

  The address I had for Paulus was definitely one from the past. The small, white house was in bad need of a new paintjob. The roof had seen better days, too, with many shingles missing from the left side. The porch in front of the house sagged in the middle and the steps leading to it were slightly crooked. A chain-link fence sporting a few gaping holes contained the tiny yard.

  On the porch, two guys eyed me as I pulled to the curb. The one on the left was splayed out in a wooden rocker, his hands jammed into the front pocket of a black hoodie. He wore a Padres cap crooked on his head and a thin, scraggly beard on his face. His partner was seated in an upright chair that looked like it belonged at a kitchen table. He wore a long-sleeved Lakers T-shirt and jeans with holes in the knees. His brown hair was buzzed to his scalp, and oversized, black sunglasses covered his eyes.

  I pushed open the gate and it squeaked loudly. The one with the hoodie sat up straighter in his rocker. The guy with sunglasses pushed the glasses down his nose a bit to get a better look at me.

  “What up?” the hoodie guy said.

  “I'm looking for Thad Paulus,” I said.

  “And who are you?”

  “My name's Joe Tyler. He doesn't know me.”

  “Well, if he don't know you, he doesn't wanna know you,” he said.

  Sunglasses cracked up.

  “Is he here?” I asked.

  “I think he has a learning disability, Jay,” Sunglasses said, smiling.

  Jay stood up, tall and thin, all arms and legs. “Seems that way.”

  “I don't want any trouble,” I said.

  Jay smiled, a gap between his top two front teeth. “Then you should leave or there might be some trouble, Joe Blow.”

  The problem with telling someone at the beginning of a conversation that you didn't want any trouble was that they almost always took that as an admission that you were scared, which led them to think they had the upper hand and, in turn, become more brazen. They never saw it for what it was.

  Their opportunity to avoid getting hurt.

  “Is he here?” I asked again.

  Jay came down off the porch, his hands loose at his sides. I'd considered that he might have a weapon inside the pocket of the sweatshirt and was relieved to see that his hands were empty.

  “Are you supposed to be a bodyguard or something
?” I asked. I pointed to the guy still up on the deck. “You and him?”

  He was a little taller than I was, and he was trying to use the minimal difference to intimidate, standing up straight and looking down at me.

  I held my footing.

  “I said leave,” he growled. “Or there's gonna be trouble.”

  “You never told me to leave.”

  “What?”

  “You actually never told me to leave. You said I should leave, but you didn't explicitly tell me to leave.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Well, I'm telling you now to leave. Or there's gonna be trouble.”

  “Why?”

  The question confused him. “Why what?”

  “Why is there gonna be trouble if I'm just asking if someone lives here? That doesn't make much sense.” I shrugged. “If Thad Paulus doesn't live here, you would've just told me that I had the wrong address or something like that. But now you're telling me to leave and threatening me, which makes it seem like I definitely have the right address.”

  He thought for a moment and then frowned. “Just get the fuck out of here.”

  “After you answer my question. Is Thad Paulus here?”

  He turned to his buddy, laughing, shaking his head. “You believe this guy, Billy? He really wants an answer. Should I give him one?”

  Billy adjusted his sunglasses, chuckling. “Yeah. Give him one.”

  I could see it coming from two miles away. Jay's hand was already balled into a fist and he pivoted away from the house toward me, his left arm coming at me in a big, wide arc. I stepped back, outside of his swing, and let his momentum carry him past me. I shoved hard on the back of his shoulder as it swept past and he stumbled away from me before catching his balance.

  He stood up, pissed off. “You're gonna regret that.”

  I didn't say anything, waited.

  He glanced at Billy, then took two quick steps toward me, his right hand already cocked and ready to strike. I slid to my left and drove my fist into the middle of his stomach as I sidestepped him. He froze, his mouth open in a circle, his arm still cocked and ready to strike. His eyes watered and his knees shook.