Page 14 of Nightshade

WHILE TASH WENT to work at her desk, Stilwell returned to the playback, continuing it at twenty-four times normal speed and keeping his eyes on the two boats that the skiff had disappeared between. He was well into daylight Sunday and hadn’t seen any movement of the vessels by the time Tash came back.

“Okay, as far as I can tell, Mr. Colbrink was not here that weekend,” she said. “He was here over Memorial Day weekend and took the boat back to MDR or some other destination on Monday.”

“Okay,” Stilwell said. “What about the other boat?”

“That’s the Aventura out of Mission Bay. It’s registered to a corporation of the same name so it can be rented for charters. The captain’s name is Bernie Contrares.”

“Mission Bay?”

“Between San Diego and La Jolla.”

“Does it come up here a lot?”

“A few times a year at least.”

“You know the captain?”

“A bit, from working out moorings. Bernie’s an old navy guy. He’s always nice.”

“Was the boat occupied that weekend?”

“I show it arriving Friday and leaving the following Monday morning, the nineteenth. I assume there were people aboard.”

“You have something I can write all of this down on?”

“Here.”

She gave him a slip of notebook paper where she had already written everything down. Stilwell saw that the information on the Aventura also included the owning corporation’s address in La Jolla. Under her notes on the Emerald Sea, Tash had put down an address and phone number for Mason Colbrink in Malibu.

“This is great, Tash. Thanks.”

“I’m also making a list of the Black Marlin members we deal with on the moorings. Everybody who’s come in this year.”

“That’ll be helpful. Thank you, but then you can stop there.”

“What do you mean? I said it was fun. I want to help.”

“I know, and you are helping, but I want to be careful about it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning it’s not all fun and games. I don’t want you to go down a path that, you know, could become dangerous.”

“I’m just sharing records and video.”

“Okay, that’s great, and let’s leave it there.”

“Well, you’re the one who asked me.”

“I know. I did. And now I’m saying we should stay in our lanes. You mean the world to me and I don’t want—”

She bent down over his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek, apparently not caring that Heidi was nearby, then went back to the control desk. Stilwell watched her go, then glanced over at Heidi. She was oblivious, or at least acting like she was. He went back to the screen and continued the high-speed playback, hoping to see something that might explain what the midnight mission of the man on the workboat had been about.

He started skipping ahead, searching hour to hour and checking to see if there was any movement from either the Emerald Sea or the Aventura . An hour later, with a headache blooming behind his eyes, Stilwell slowed the playback and watched as a skiff delivered supplies and a crew of three to the Aventura . Shortly afterward, the big yacht left the harbor, confirming the time details that Tash had written in her notes. As it slowly made its way out of the harbor, crew members in matching white shorts and polos moved about its decks, prepping the craft for the journey ahead.

The cameras now had an unobstructed view of the Emerald Sea. Stilwell had no sooner returned to a faster playback when he saw movement and hit the pause button. The time code put it at 11:16 a.m. on the Monday after the weekend of Leigh-Anne Moss’s firing. He played it at regular speed and watched as a male figure in what looked like the same workboat as before came from the covered embarcadero at the club and went directly to the Emerald Sea. The man wore a floppy fishing hat and sunglasses along with a baggy green windbreaker. When Stilwell zoomed in, the resolution of the video blurred badly and made identifying the man impossible. Stilwell watched as the man in the floppy hat tied the workboat to the stern of the ketch and then climbed aboard.

The man unbuttoned a canvas cover over the boat’s cockpit and helm, then stepped down into it. He bent over and busied his hands with something on the floor of the cockpit that was out of Stilwell’s view. He then stood, grabbed a gaffing pole out of a holder on the deck, and moved forward to the bow, where he used the gaff to pull a line off the mooring buoy.

With the boat free-floating, the man went back to the cockpit and positioned himself behind the large wheel and throttle. Under engine power, the Emerald Sea started making its way toward the mouth of the harbor at idle speed.

Stilwell quickly switched angles, moving to a camera that was located on top of the harbormaster’s tower and offered the closest and clearest view of the harbor’s opening to the Santa Monica Bay. As the Emerald Sea moved across the screen, Stilwell saw the sun glinting off the bow and realized that a shiny steel anchor was attached at the boat’s prow. He stared intently at the boat and the workboat in tow behind it. As it passed directly in front of the tower, the man at the helm stood tall in the cockpit, and the mainsail boom completely blocked his face. The boat then turned into the mouth of the harbor and headed out into the bay.

“Shit,” Stilwell said.

Tash came over from her desk. “What?” she asked.

Stilwell pointed to the screen.

“The Emerald Sea just left, and the guy behind the wheel blocked his face with the boom,” he said. “It felt like he was making sure the camera didn’t get a clear shot of him.”

“Let me see,” Tash said.

Stilwell reversed the playback and let her watch.

“Definitely,” she said. “He’s standing on the cockpit bench so he’ll be hidden behind the boom. You’re not supposed to do that, because if you hit a wave wrong, the boom could knock you off the boat.”

“You think it could be Colbrink?”

“I can’t tell. But the thing is, Mr. Colbrink never sails without a crew. He always has one or two people with him when he crosses back to MDR.”

Stilwell nodded.

“So would there be any record of this boat leaving?” he asked.

“Let me check the registry,” Tash said. “Get up.”

Stilwell jumped up from his seat and Tash sat down. She closed out the camera app and opened the harbor registry. Stilwell watched as she scrolled through a log listing various dates, times, boat names, and crew contacts.

“It doesn’t say—wait, here it is,” she said. “It left at eleven thirty but then it says it came back only an hour later. It was just counted as a day trip.”

“And no explanation for it being so short a trip?” Stilwell asked.

“Nothing here.”

“Who was in the tower that day?”

Tash usually had Mondays off unless it was a holiday.

“It was Eugene’s shift,” she said.

Stilwell knew that was Eugene Hester, who early on competed with Stilwell for Tash Dano’s interest and affections. Having lost the competition, Hester wasn’t one of Stilwell’s biggest fans.

“Can you call him and ask if he remembers this?” Stilwell asked.

“Sure,” Tash said. “But didn’t you just tell me to stand down?”

“Okay, okay, you got me. I’ll allow this, and then you stand down.”

“Whatever you say. I’ll call him.”

“Ask why the boat came back so quickly.”

Tash pulled her cell phone and made the call. Stilwell heard only her side of the conversation and didn’t really like how she softened her voice when talking to Hester. He wondered if she was keeping her options open or if he was just getting a glimpse into how women had to navigate the world of men. She ended the call as soon as she got the information she needed.

“He said it was just a test run following repairs that had been done,” she said. “Mr. Colbrink called it in to the tower, said he was just taking it out to the bay to open the engine up and blow out the carburetor.”

“But we can’t be sure that was Colbrink,” Stilwell said.

“It could have been the mechanic or one of the crew Mr. Colbrink hires to move the boat. He still could have called it in to the tower.”

“It didn’t look like any work had been done on the boat. He just came out from the club, unbuttoned the helm, and took off.”

“You want me to call Eugene back?”

“No, I’m just thinking out loud. Can you put the cameras back up so I can watch the boat come back? Maybe we get lucky and see a face.”

Tash brought the cameras back up and then got up from the chair so Stilwell could sit down and work the angles. Soon he was looking at the Emerald Sea returning to the harbor. Disappointment hit Stilwell on two fronts. The first was that he could clearly see that the shining steel anchor was still attached to the prow of the boat. The second was that the man at the helm was once again using the boom to hide his face, this time standing tall on the other side of the helm as the boat made its way in.

Stilwell cursed under his breath. He tracked the boat through the cameras back to the same red mooring ball. The man hooked the buoy and moored the boat, then returned on the workboat back to the embarcadero at the Black Marlin Club.

Stilwell checked his watch. The afternoon had slipped by and it was after five. He pulled his phone, hoping to catch Monty West before the end of his shift at the coroner’s office.

“Blunt-force trauma,” West said by way of greeting.

“What?” Stilwell asked.

“I figured you’d be calling me about the Jane Doe.”

“Cause of death is blunt-force trauma?”

“That’s what it says on the preliminary. Damage to the skull and cerebral cortex. Contrecoup swelling, edema, the whole works.”

“So she was dead before she hit the water.”

“That would be the case, yes. But this is all preliminary. The report will be out tomorrow.”

“Did anybody from the sheriff’s office attend?”

“Let me check.”

Stilwell heard a keyboard clicking.

“Sampedro from the SO was here,” West said.

“Okay,” Stilwell said. “Anything new on ID?”

“Still a Jane Doe.”

“Anything that can help with identification?”

“They took X-rays. Dental work and two pins in the left arm from surgery to repair a break. Based on the hardware, the pins were set within the past ten years.”

Stilwell was heartened. Both could lead to identification if the victim’s medical records could be located.

“What else?” he asked. “Sampedro ordered a rape kit, I hope.”

“Let’s see…” West said. “It does say the victim was fully clothed. But, yes, here it is. No indications of sexual assault, but foreign DNA was collected for analysis. They did a rape kit.”

“Collected from where?”

“The vagina.”

Stilwell thought about what that could mean. If she was fully clothed when she was put into the water and there were no bruises or other injuries from a sexual assault, it was possible she had had consensual sex prior to her death.

“What about TOD?”

“Factoring in decomp and water temp, time of death is a range of days, not hours. Six to eight days.”

“That’s from today or from day of recovery?”

“Six to eight days before recovery of the body.”

“Okay.”

Stilwell did the math and put the day Leigh-Anne Moss was fired from the BMC at the front of that range.

“Anything else flagged in the report?” he asked.

“Nope,” West said. “That’s it.”

“Okay, thanks, Monty. I owe you one.”

“That’s what you said last time. So you actually owe me two. Question is, when you going to pay up?”

“Soon, Monty. Soon.”

Stilwell disconnected and considered things for a few moments. His sub-rosa investigation was leading to a kill theory—that is, an emerging picture of what happened and why. He knew he was very short on details, but his instincts told him that Leigh-Anne Moss was the woman in the water and that she had been killed by a blow to the head with the sculpture of the leaping black marlin. Her body had then been secreted aboard the Emerald Sea and taken out of the harbor and into the bay to be weighted and submerged.

Stilwell knew that not one part of his kill theory was provable at the moment, not even the identification. But he was undaunted. He would continue his efforts, if only to show up Ahearn and make Corum realize he had transferred the wrong man out of homicide. He would push the boundaries, even though he knew that the next moves he needed to make would take him off the island and back to the mainland, where he would be unprotected and anything could happen.