Page 15 of Nightshade
STILWELL CALLED TASH from the ferry dock, where he had secured passage on the next boat to the Port of Los Angeles.
“I won’t be home tonight,” he said. “I’m heading across to do a couple interviews and should be back sometime tomorrow.”
There was a hesitancy in her voice when she asked, “Where are you going to stay?”
“Not sure yet,” Stilwell said. “I’ll try Gary Saunders, see if he can put me up, or I’ll just get a motel.”
“What interviews?”
“I think I have a line on the victim, and her overtown address is in Belmont Shore. I have to knock on that door, see if there’s anybody there. Then I want to talk to the guy you gave me, Mason Colbrink, up in Malibu.”
“You can’t do those by phone?”
“Uh, no, always better to talk to a possible witness face-to-face. Why, is there a problem with me going? I’m about to get on the Express.”
“No, I just… you know, I don’t like you going across. Only bad things happen over there.”
It was a line Tash had heard her parents repeat while she was growing up on the island. They had used it to quell her adolescent curiosity and keep her close. Now she used it to keep Stilwell close.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “And bad things happen on both sides of the bay, Tash. You know that.”
“I guess,” she said. “Just be careful over there.”
“Always.”
He disconnected and thought about the brief conversation. He wondered if Tash’s concern was really about something else—namely, that his ex-wife lived in Belmont Shore in the condo that was for sale.
He had his go-bag, which he always kept at the substation, a small duffel bag containing a change of clothes. The last passenger to board the Express, he headed up the steps to the pilothouse, where he knocked on the door and let the captain know he was on board. Deputies, in uniform or not, were allowed to ride the ferries for free as long as they didn’t take a seat on a sold-out vessel.
Stilwell then moved to the stern, where he’d see the sun setting over the island and the dolphins that seemed to always follow in the wake of the ferries crossing the bay. The ferry was only half full, so he took a seat in one of the rows that was sheltered from the wind and sea spray. As the boat left the pier, he sent a text to Gary Saunders offering to trade pickled eggs and pool at Joe Jost’s for the use of the guest room at his house in Long Beach. More than securing a place to stay, he wanted to spend time with Saunders so he could ask about the woman his crew had pulled up from the bottom of the harbor.
The trip across was slightly longer than an hour, and during that time the sky darkened and the temperature dropped. Stilwell pulled a windbreaker out of his duffel and put it on as he disembarked. He walked to the long-term parking lot, where many residents of Catalina kept cars for their visits to the mainland. His 1974 Bronco was caked in smog dust and grime. It had been at least two weeks since he’d come across and used it, but the old engine cranked to life with one turn of the key. He headed to the address in Belmont Shore that was on Leigh-Anne Moss’s driver’s license and her Black Marlin Club employment application. He could have gone to the sheriff’s station in Compton to check out a plain-wrap from the carpool, but he wanted to fly under the radar on this trip and not risk word getting to Ahearn and Sampedro that he was on the mainland and working.
Leigh-Anne Moss’s apartment was in a small, six-unit building at the corner of Roycroft and Division. It had no security gate, which allowed Stilwell direct access to the door of apartment 2. He knocked once, and the door was soon opened by a man with deeply tanned skin and sun-bleached hair. Stilwell was already holding up his ID card.
“Sheriff’s department,” Stilwell said. “I’m looking for the home of Leigh-Anne Moss. Does she live here?”
“Uh, no, not really,” the man said. “I mean, this was her place, but we’re not together anymore. I let her crash here sometimes, but she mostly stays over on Catalina. What’s this about?”
“I need to find her and she’s not on Catalina. I just came from there.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, dude.”
“Your name is…”
“Peter Galloway.”
“This is the address Leigh-Anne Moss put on her driver’s license. Is she in there?”
“No, man, she’s not. I haven’t seen her in a couple months.”
“Mind if I come in and ask you a few questions, Peter?”
“Uh, I guess.”
Galloway stepped back; Stilwell entered and looked around as if searching for Leigh-Anne Moss even though he knew in his gut that she was dead. The apartment was sparsely furnished but messy with the detritus of bachelorhood. Empty beer bottles and pizza boxes, a pink glass bong that Galloway picked up off a coffee table and hid with his body as he walked it to a cabinet in the kitchen. The bong wasn’t illegal, nor was what he probably smoked with it. Concealing it was likely a force-of-habit reaction. It told Stilwell that the man tended to hide things from authority figures—parents, bosses, cops.
“Um, so, yeah, what’s this about?” Galloway said. “What do you want to ask?”
“It’s a criminal investigation involving Ms. Moss,” Stilwell said.
“Why am I not surprised. What did she do?”
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Have a seat. Sorry about the mess.”
“Not a problem. Thanks.”
Stilwell sat in a chair across from the couch. It was all mismatched furniture that gave the impression of a college apartment, but Galloway was ten years past college age.
Galloway took the couch and picked up a half-full bottle of beer from a coffee table that was crowded with empties and crumpled pages from scripts.
“I’ll ask you again,” Stilwell said, “do you have any idea where Leigh-Anne Moss is?”
“No idea,” Galloway said.
“Do you know where she stays when she’s out on Catalina?”
“Not really. I guess she stays with whatever rich guy she’s banging at the time.”
Stilwell didn’t respond to that at first. Galloway’s tone gave him pause. He now had a direction to go with his questions.
“That seems kind of harsh,” he said.
“Sometimes the truth is harsh,” Galloway said.
“What do you do for a living, Peter?”
“I go to auditions, mostly. I’m an actor. But since the strikes, there’s been like zero production out here. I’m thinking about moving to Atlanta, to tell you the truth.”
“And leaving Leigh-Anne behind?”
“There’s nothing between us, so there’s nothing to leave behind. We broke up a long time ago.”
“But this is the address she put on an employment application.”
“Well, I had nothing to do with that.”
“Do you know what she does on the island? For work, I mean.”
“Same thing she always does. Bartender, waitress—she’d strip too, but I hear there’s no places like that out there. Not officially, at least.”
“What’s that mean? ‘Not officially’?”
“Let’s just say L-A is available for private parties of any kind. Here, there, wherever she happens to be.”
That tone again. Galloway could barely hide his contempt.
“She goes by L-A?” Stilwell asked. “Her initials?”
“Sometimes,” Galloway said. “Like a stage name, I guess you’d call it.”
“Is that how you met? At a club or a bar? Or on a stage?”
“We met when we worked for the same catering company up in Hollywood.”
“When was that?”
“About five years ago. We met and after a while we moved in together.”
“Long commute to Hollywood from down here.”
“We moved down here after we left that job.”
“Left or got fired?”
“I wasn’t fired. I got a part in a movie and quit. She got fired for doing her thing like she always does.”
“Coming on to the clients?”
“Man, you have all the answers. Why bother with the questions?”
“Because it’s my job. So it sounds like she had this… pattern of getting jobs that put her close to people with wealth.”
Stilwell stopped there, hoping Galloway would continue. He didn’t.
“What I’m getting at is, it sounds like she used her jobs to get to people—men—who could help her,” Stilwell said. “Is that what you would say?”
“I think I already did,” Galloway said. “What did she do, rip off one of those old fuckers? You ask me, he got what he deserved.”
“So you knew that she… was this way, had been this way as far back as the caterer. But you stayed together and moved down here?”
“Man, we broke up so many times… but then we always got back together. Except the last time, I guess.”
“You said that was a long time ago, but you also said it’s been a couple months since you’ve seen her. Which is it?”
“I actually didn’t see her. I talked to her. I still let her stay here when she has no place else to go. She’s got a key.”
“Is this a one-bedroom?”
“Yes.”
He drew the word out in a long frustrated tone.
“She sleep on the couch?” Stilwell asked. “Or with you?”
“None of your fucking business,” Galloway snapped.
“Okay, then tell me this. Was that the last time she stayed here, two months ago? That would be, what, March?”
“It was April. But I wasn’t here. I had a gig in Georgia. She called up, said she needed to crash, and I said, have at it.”
“What kind of gig? Acting?”
“You could call it that. I get booked as Deadpool at Comic Cons around the country. It’s good money between the real jobs. I’ve got the same height, weight, and build as Ryan Reynolds.”
Stilwell nodded. He knew Reynolds was a movie star. He and Tash had seen one of his films at the Casino. But he feigned confusion to draw Galloway out. The actor read him and started shuffling through the script pages scattered on the coffee table. Finally, he held up an eight-by-ten photo of a man in a red-and-black costume that covered him from head to toe. He had what looked like two ninja swords strapped to his back.
“That’s me,” Galloway said. “As Deadpool.”
Stilwell nodded again and smiled.
“So, Deadpool is a character?” he said as if just understanding. “How often do you do this?”
“About once a month. I work the circuit. It promotes the movies. It’s good money.”
His saying the money was good twice made Stilwell think it probably wasn’t.
“What about this month?” he asked. “Did you have a Deadpool gig?”
“That was a Comic Cruise. Left out of Tampa.”
“When was that?”
“Like two weeks ago. It was a three-day cruise. Why are you asking about me?”
Galloway had just given Stilwell what appeared to be an alibi for the weekend Leigh-Anne Moss had been fired and—Stilwell thought—murdered. He assumed that the Comic Cruise had been held over a weekend, and two weeks ago would mean two weekends ago. It would be easy enough to check the dates of the cruise and confirm that he’d been on the ship.
“It’s my job to ask questions,” he said. “Let’s get back to Leigh-Anne. Where is she from?”
“Originally Detroit,” Galloway said. “Like everybody else, she came out here to find fame and fortune. But it didn’t exactly turn out that way.”
“Does she have family back there?”
“Well, she has a father back there who started raping her when she was thirteen. And a mother who let it happen. There’s an older brother somewhere but they lost touch after he left home. And that’s about it as far as she ever told me.”
“You were her family—while it lasted.”
“I guess so.”
“But that’s over. Correct?”
“Yes, correct. That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“Well, what I’m trying to figure out is who she’s with now. If I know that, then I can leave you alone and go knock on that door. You understand?”
“I understand but I can’t help you. I have no idea who she’s with. I only know she’s not with me.”
“And that hurts, doesn’t it?”
Galloway shook his head and jumped up from the couch.
“That’s it!” he yelled. “You need to go. Now. I’m not answering any more questions.”
He pointed at the apartment’s front door. Stilwell didn’t move.
“Peter, sit down,” he said. “Please. This is a criminal investigation. You have to understand that you either talk to me here or I take you to the Hall of Justice, where we talk in a room with no windows.”
He waited and Galloway finally sat back down.
“Thank you,” Stilwell said. “Tell me what you know about Leigh-Anne’s job out on Catalina.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Galloway said, “except that she works at a private club.”
“How’d she get the job?”
“I don’t know. She met some guy at a party and he told her about it.”
“A party here or on the island?”
“Here, I think. I wasn’t there.”
“Was this guy a member of the private club on Catalina?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask her. It wasn’t like I wanted to know all the details. All I know is she got a job over there.”
“And she never talked about it with you?”
“She just said it was this fancy club full of rich guys and that it was supposed to be a fishing club—men only—but these guys just go out there to get away from their wives and fuck around. That’s why she wanted the job.”
“She was looking for a hookup.”
“Wow, you must be some kind of a detective or something.”
Stilwell ignored the sullen sarcasm. “Did you ever get on an Express and go see her over there?”
“No, I’ve never been there. I told you, man, we aren’t together anymore. Why would I go?”
“Because you still want to be together?”
Galloway shook his head as though he were trying to shake off a bad dream. He looked away and didn’t answer. But in his silence was the answer.
“Peter, I have to ask you one more thing,” Stilwell said. “And then I’ll leave you alone.”
Galloway turned back to him.
“Jesus,” he said. “What?”
“You must still have photos of her,” Stilwell said. “I need to see them.”
“Why do you need to see photos?”
“Because all we’ve got is a driver’s license. It would help to have some candid shots.”
“For what, like a wanted poster or something? What the hell did she do?”
“I can’t tell you about an active investigation, Peter. Do you have photos?”
Galloway reached into a pocket and pulled out his phone. He tapped in a password, then opened the photo app. He scrolled through his photos for almost thirty seconds before he stopped.
“This is all I’ve got,” he said. “But they’re old.”
He handed the phone across the coffee table to Stilwell. The shot on the screen was a close-up of Leigh-Anne, smiling, no purple streak in her hair. It was dated May 5, 2022. Stilwell thumbed through three more shots, all taken within seconds of the first photo, all showing the same unposed smile.
Callahan the bar manager had been right. She was a looker. Stilwell saw what all men, young and old, saw. But what mattered to him was something else. He saw a woman with light in her eyes, a true smile on her lips. A future that shouldn’t have been taken from her.