Blood Truth

Blood Truth: Matt Coyle

Imagine what happens when someone needs a total blood transfusion from a acceptable donor. Imagine someone else’s blood running through your body and into your veins. What happens when someone within your original bloodline might have tainted blood but not in the way you might think? Rick Cahill is haunted by the past and a hidden truth that might be held within the blood that runs it’s course through his veins and keeps him alive. A father that was disgraced, dishonored and let go from a noted police force before his timely death. Rick’s life has been in a serious turmoil and when receiving an unusual message from the grave his path will encounter many obstacles, danger and lives will change until he completes his search, understands his destiny and learns the harsh realities related to the meaning of BLOOD TRUTH!

Eighteen years ago his father died from drinking too much and then he receives a phone call and an item that has within its steel façade something that will reopen many wounds, cloud his perception of his father and lead him to open up many old cases and even more wounds that fester within him and others. Blood is sometimes thicker than water but in this case would he want his father’s blood drained from his body and replaced with untainted blood?

Rick Cahill receives a safe and within it finds 15 thousand dollars, a gun and a key to an unknown safety deposit box. But, before he can count the money and learn more about the contents of the safe his old girlfriend, Kim Parker requests his services. Rick is a Private Investigator and Kim wants him to follow her husband Jeffrey thinking he’s having an affair. Hard to separate employer from the feelings he still has for Kim, he accepts the job and follows her husband taking some pictures that will hurt Kim but reveal a harsh truth about Jeffery. Showing her the pictures she decides to divorce her husband but carrying his child might change her direction.
Opening the safe and finding the gun, the cash and the safety deposit key sends him in the direction of the only bank that he can think would have the box. Obstacles at the bank when meeting the manager frustrate him even more as he has to contact a relative to get a copy of his father’s birth certificate in order to obtain the contents of the box.

Within the box he uncovers when he does open it a key to a safety deposit box that has been paid for by someone named Antoinette King in order to keep it active. Within the box are two spent gun shells that lead to an unsolved murder case resulting in Charlie Cahill’s dismissal from the La Jolla Police Force.

Following Jeffrey Parker he uncovers more secrets and lies as he learn of his liaison with someone named Sophia Domingo. Jeffrey Parker was having an affair with Sophia Domingo as she managed to worm her way into getting a percentage of his real estate business while he and Peter Stone along with Sophia had a big deal in the making.

Peter Stone was the link and a Power Broker behind much of what would happen next as she has a suitcase in his hand entered the hotel suite where Sophia was and left 15 minutes later without it as she leaves with the same briefcase minute’s later gut what was the link to Peter and Parker? Kim Parker then receives the pictures of her husband with Sophia and needs to determine her next move. The gun, the safe, the safe deposit key the cash brings us back to Charlie Cahill and the two missing bullets from the gun. Fifteen grand in an envelope and a murder and a paid assassin did his father blackmail the killer? Where did the money come from as he follows Domingo?

Things spiral out of control when Sophia goes missing and Stone demands that Rick find her or deal with his anger and wrath. Not wanting to have any paperwork dealing with him he demands cash. Finding her was easy the condition not expected as once again he is in the crosshairs of the police as Detective Sheets leads the way in the investigation.

Rick faces his own demons dealing with his father as he shares with readers the past, playing ball with his dad and the times he came home drunk and needed to put him to bed and his final days. But, he seems tormented by his father’s misdeeds that link him to Trent Phelps and bringing to light what he learns about this man’s death and finding out who Antoinette King is and why she was paying for the safety deposit box and whose funds was she using and why?

Moira Malone is another investigator who helps Rick on cases and whose spark for giving him the razz at times adds to the humor in the novel making their relationship uncertain yet fun.

Dina Dergan and Sophia had lunch and the greeting was anything but proper. It appears that Sophia plays two sides of the romantic fence. When leaving her hotel room she goes to a meeting of the California Coastal Commission dealing with a land deal. Parker Real Real Estate is at the core of the deals but Windsor Bank would provide the answers to what was in the safety deposit box as we meet prim and sticking to the rules the manager of the bank Gloria Nakamura who would not allowed Rick access once he had his father’s birth certificate and other documentation allowing him to take what was in the box with him. Why was the bank President present?

While learning more about lobbyist Dina and her link to Stone the plot becomes even more complex when Rick finds the missing Sophia in the trunk of her car very dead and Parker is arrested for the murder but something does not sit right with Rick and even though he realizes that Kim is between a rock and a hard place and he cares for her, he is going to find a way to exonerate him.

The safe was his father’s but what was in it related to the murder that is over 28 years old. A father fired from the La Jolla police force and who buried his guilt, fears and anger within the largest body of whiskey until his death. The only thing of value that Rick wanted was his father’s badge but will that help heal the wounds? It is about blood, truth, and love of a parent, not denial but learning and hoping that everyone was wrong. The blood that runs through each and everyone one of us is linked to those that created us and some are tainted while others provide a picture we would rather not see

Meeting Jack Anton a reporter who reported the incident and Trent’s murder would unravel events that would endanger him, Kim, Moira and many others. Anton’s notes and records documented everything that he needed but he now had a moral dilemma whether to give the information to the police proving his father was a dirty cop or keep it to himself. Trent owned some laundry business and had huge amounts of cash.

A simple notebook that might help Rick understand where the money went to but was he reading what he saw the right way?
Family, hope, survival, blood and Rick could not deal with the fact that his father was guilty. Yet how can he discount the fact that he was an LJPD, where he served with honor and distinction until he did not? Justice was it really served and was he really as trying to solve a twenty eight year old murder-playing hero again but was he on the right track? Not revealing the fact that there was fifteen thousand dollars and the gun from the crime scene especially at Brick House where the crimes where he and his father worked. Yet knowing or thinking he was corrupt did not help him not wanting to betray him.

The Russian mob knows about Kim and the psychopath connected to Stone and her father would come to a faceoff you won’t see coming. But, there are two more vital players: Trent’s ex-wife and his daughter and of course the Scripps deal which was the primary covet. It’s all about power and greed!

What is stronger Blood or Water: Find out when you join Rick on his quest for BLOOD TRUTH! Rick Cahill: Strong, resourceful, Smart and definitely someone you don’t want to cross!
Fran Lewis: Just reviews/MJ Magazine