Page 115 of Nightshade

“You’re just going to have to.”

Juarez shook her head.

“All of this because of a dead buffalo,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

“It’s not about the buffalo,” Stilwell said. “It’s about greed and power.”

“I guess it always is.”

“So can you get to Terranova or not?”

“Maybe. He once came to me because he needed a good lawyer. For a business matter. I gave him the name of a guy I went to law school with who does corporate law. He hired Bryson, and that was a few years ago, but the guy might still have a way to reach him.”

“Bryson? Bryson what?”

“Bryson Long. He has a one-man firm down in Seal Beach.”

Stilwell nodded.

“That’s the lawyer on the Ferris wheel project,” he said. “I was looking that stuff up Thursday night at the Zane Grey. He’s gotta still be working for Terranova. He must have a way to reach him.”

“I’ll call him,” Juarez said.

“When you get to Terranova, set up a meeting inside the courthouse,” he said. “So he has to go through a metal detector.”

“What if he wants to bring Bryson or a criminal defense lawyer?” Juarez asked.

“That’s his right. But if they hold us up with that, he’s going to be sitting in a cell until they do make a deal. Tell him that.”

“And you’ll be here?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

40

ON HIS WAYback downtown, Stilwell made a call to Sampedro to summarize his interview with Easterbrook the night before. He suggested a more formal and recorded interview, a DNA swab for comparison to the foreign DNA recovered during Leigh-Anne Moss’s autopsy, and a hard look at his alibi.

“But you don’t like him for this?” Sampedro asked.

“My take is that his grief is legit,” Stilwell said. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her.”

“Right.”

“But if he was at his office in L.A. while she was at the Black Marlin Club, I think he’s in the clear. There’s got to be a way to confirm that or catch him in the lie.”

“The DNA is going to be a problem for him.”

“There was no physical indication of rape. And we have nothing else that suggests it was. A match would back up his story about it being consensual sex.”

“Yeah, but maybe he has one last roll in the hay with her and then he conks her on the head and end of problem. Everything we’re hearing, this girl was bad news. Maybe he found that out.”

Stilwell thought of nightshade being poisonous and deadly.

“My gut says it’s not Easterbrook,” he said.

“You and your gut,” Sampedro said. “We’ll bring him in, put him in a room, and see what he says. What else you got?”

“That’s it for—”