Page 2 of Nightshade

STILWELL DROVE OUT to the industrial district south of town. Next to the desalination plant was a warren of warehouses, among them the cart barn used by Island Mystery Tours. The main garage door was open and Stilwell parked the Gator in front of it so no vehicle could leave. A man in a greasy blue jumpsuit stepped out of the shadows of one of the cart bays, and Stilwell guessed he had probably been sleeping back there. His hair was matted on one side. He looked as though he had not shaved in a week, and the bloodshot eyes behind his glasses indicated he was hungover.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked.

“I’m Sergeant Stilwell with the sheriff’s office,” Stilwell said. “I have a search warrant for these premises.”

“Search warrant? What the fuck?”

“What’s your name, sir?”

The man pointed to an oval patch on the left side of his jumpsuit. “Henry.”

“Henry what?”

“Gaston.”

“Well, Henry, here is the warrant, and I’m going to need you to step aside and let me enter the premises.”

Stilwell handed him the document signed earlier by the judge. Gaston held the paper at arm’s length to read it, even though he was wearing glasses.

“Says you’re looking for animal blood,” he said. “That’s crazy. Ain’t no blood here.”

“Either way, I’m going to search,” Stilwell said. “The judge signed and authorized it this morning.”

“You’re that new guy they put in charge at the substation, huh?”

“If by ‘new,’ you mean a year ago, then, yeah, that would be me.”

“You know I’m going to have to call Baby Head about this.”

Stilwell moved to the back of the Gator and unlocked the storage compartment. He took out a set of disposable gloves, a flashlight, and the bottle of Bluespray he kept in the kit he’d put together when he’d worked homicide on the mainland.

“You can call anybody you want,” he said to Gaston as he was gathering it all. “But I’m going to conduct the court-ordered search now.”

He closed the compartment and walked directly toward Gaston even though there was plenty of room in the garage entry to go around him. Intimidated by the move, Gaston stepped back and out of the way. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and started making a call.

Stilwell entered the garage and saw that the left side was lined with empty charging bays. All the tour carts were presumably in use or at least down at the harbor ready for the arrival of tourists coming in off the boats. The right side of the garage was where carts were repaired or cannibalized for parts. There were two six-seaters in various stages of disassembly. One was on a lift because it had no wheels. The other was in need of bodywork, as its fiberglass front was splintered—it appeared to have been driven into something.

In the rear right corner of the garage was an L-shaped workbench with tools hanging on a pegboard behind it. This drew Stilwell’s attention and he walked around the two broken carts to take a look. Gaston had followed him into the barn and was standing in the center, talking to somebody on his phone.

“He’s got a warrant to search the place,” he said. “I couldn’t stop him.”

Stilwell scanned the pegboard until his eyes came to a handsaw with a long blade and a blue plastic handle.

“Uh, right now he’s in the back by the tools,” Gaston said. “You going to come over?”

Stilwell pulled out his phone and took a photo of the handsaw where it was hanging on the board. He then put on his gloves and took down the saw. Under the beam of the flashlight, he studied the blade carefully. It did not take him long to determine that it was new. There were no scratches on its stainless-steel surface and no corrosion from the salt air, and its teeth were pristine, showing no sign that they had ever cut even a stick of butter.

The saw’s plastic handle, however, was old and marked by time and use. It was only the blade that was new.

“That’s a pipe saw,” Gaston said. “We use it mostly on fiberglass and PVC.”

He had come up behind Stilwell. He was no longer on the phone.

“You cut anything else with it?” Stilwell asked.

“Just stuff with the carts,” Gaston said. “We customize. Sometimes we cut ’em clean in half and make two four-seaters into an eight-seater or a six-pack. Like that.”

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s been cutting with this one lately. Blade looks brand-new. You change it recently, Henry?”

“Uh, no.”

“You sure?”

“Course I’m sure.”

“Do me a favor and close the garage and turn off the overhead lights.”

“How come?”

“Because if you don’t, I will, and I might hit the wrong switch.”

“All right.”

Gaston went to do as he was told. Stilwell looked again at the saw. The blade was about eighteen inches long and had very small teeth—right for a smooth cut through fiberglass and PVC pipes. It was secured to the handle by two wing nuts. He used his thumb and forefinger to turn the nuts and detach the blade. Gaston pulled down on a chain attached to a pulley at the top of the garage door and it started to descend.

Once Stilwell had the blade separated, he put the handle on the workbench and studied one side and then the other in his flashlight’s beam. The overhead lights went out and the garage dropped into darkness save for Stilwell’s flashlight and some daylight that leaked in under the corrugated roof’s eaves.

Stilwell sprayed one side of the saw handle with the chemical in the bottle, a compound that emitted a whitish-blue glow in the presence of hemoglobin. He then turned off the flashlight and waited and watched.

“What’s going on?” Gaston called from the darkness.

“I’m conducting a presumptive test for blood,” Stilwell said.

That brought only silence from the space where Gaston stood.

A minute went by and nothing happened. Stilwell flicked on the flashlight, turned the saw handle over, and sprayed the new side with the chemical. While he had the light on, he swept the beam across the garage to locate Gaston. He had moved away from the garage door and was now standing ten feet behind Stilwell, trying to see what he was doing.

“Stay right there for me, Henry,” he said.

“How come?” Gaston said. “I work here. I’m entitled to be anywhere I want.”

“I need to know where you are when the lights are off. Don’t fuck with me. You won’t want that.”

“Fine. I’m staying right here. Whatever makes you happy.”

“Thank you.”

Stilwell turned the light off and looked at the workbench. The holes in the saw handle where the blade had been attached were filled with a pale blue phosphorescent glow. It meant that blood had most likely seeped into the holes and so had not been washed away during cleaning.

“You can turn the lights on, Henry,” Stilwell said.

Gaston went back to the switch and the overhead lights came on. Stilwell approached the garage door holding the saw handle in a gloved hand.

“Open it,” he said.

Gaston pulled down on the chain, and the garage door began to rise.

“What’s that mean, presumpive ?” he asked.

“ Presumptive, ” Stilwell corrected. “It means it looks like there was blood but the lab will have to confirm.”

“So you’re taking that?”

“Under the authority of the search warrant, yes. Who were you talking to on the phone, Henry?”

“I called Baby Head at the booth. He’s on his way.”

“Not going to make a difference. I’m still taking it.”

Stilwell walked out to the UTV and took an evidence bag from the storage compartment. He placed the saw handle in it, sealed it, and used a red marker to write the date, time, and search warrant number on it. He put the bag in the storage compartment and locked it with a key.

He moved to the cart’s seat and grabbed the clipboard from the shelf below the dashboard. Gaston was standing in the garage doorway, watching.

“I’m writing you a receipt for the handle I’m taking,” he said.

“What’s that do?” Gaston said.

“Documents chain of evidence.”

“‘Chain of evidence’?”

“A record of who has handled evidence and where it’s gone.”

“Evidence of what?”

“You know what, Henry? It’s not like Baby Head went out there and cut up the buffalo himself. He’s too clever for that. I’m guessing he had someone do it. I’ll be sending this saw handle to the lab in overtown. If the blood on it matches that mutilated buffalo’s, I’ll be back. Those are protected animals, and killing one—that’s a felony. We’re going to have a big weekend, and I’ll probably be running my ass off with drunk-and-disorderlies. I’m thinking about taking Tuesday off to recoup and then I’ll get this to the lab Wednesday or Thursday. I figure from there, it will take a few weeks for the lab to get to it. Homicides of humans take priority. But once I deliver it, there’s no turning back. So what I’ll do is give you till then—Wednesday—to come in, talk to me, and work something out. After that, it will be out of my hands.”

He took the receipt from the clipboard, pulled off the yellow copy, and got out of the cart. He walked over and handed it to Gaston.

“Wednesday, Henry,” he said.

The whole thing was a bluff. Stilwell knew that the lab would apply negative priority to his DNA request. He’d be lucky to get results before the end of the year.

“Baby Head ain’t going to allow this shit,” Gaston said. “He knows people.”

“Yeah, so do I,” Stilwell said.

Stilwell got in the John Deere, turned the key, and backed away from the barn. In the street, he put it in forward but was blocked when another cart pulled in front of him. It was a six-seater from Island Mystery Tours, the green papier-maché alien lying chest-down on the roof, its three-fingered hands grasping the sides as if holding on for dear life.

Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, the owner-manager of the franchise, jumped out and approached him.

“What the hell are you doing, Stilwell?” he asked angrily.

“I’m pretty sure Henry already told you on the phone,” Stilwell said. “He’s got a copy of the search warrant and the receipt. You can figure it out from there.”

There was a line of sweat forming on Baby Head’s smoothly shaved scalp. He had a tattoo of a diamond ring on his neck below his left ear and a full sleeve of tats on his right arm depicting skulls, flowers, and a three-digit number Stilwell didn’t recognize but guessed was the area code of his place of origin.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, man,” he said.

“Maybe so,” Stilwell said. “It wouldn’t be the first time and it won’t be the last.”

“I know about you, man. We all know about you. You were on thin ice when you got here, and now you’re about to drop right through. Hope you got your water wings on.”

“Can you move your cart now, sir? I need to get back to the station.”

“Fuck you.”

Terranova jumped back in his cart and pinned the pedal. The cart drove up and into the cart barn, forcing Gaston to move quickly to get out of the way.

Stilwell headed back to town, stopping briefly atop Mount Ada to take in the beauty of the mountains and the crescent-shaped harbor below. The Casino looked like a cupcake with red icing. Several boats had already come in since he’d picked up the judge earlier.

Arriving back at the sub, Stilwell saw Lampley about to head out in his freshly charged patrol cart. He pulled up next to him.

“How’d it go?” Lampley asked.

“I found blood on a saw handle,” Stilwell said. “I’ll get it to the lab and see what happens.”

“Don’t hold your breath on that.”

“I won’t. You handle court?”

“Yeah, it went quick.”

“What happened with Kermit?”

“Harrell gave him three months’ community service. Told him to work it off in the sub.”

“Perfect. I’ll make a to-do list and put it on the board. Everybody can add to it.”

“Okay.”

“Where are you going now?”

“Just doing the circuit. No calls yet. The calm before the storm.”

“Copy that.”

Stilwell threw him a mock salute and pulled his cart into its assigned parking space. Before he got to the door of the substation, he took a call from the harbormaster’s office.

“It’s Tash. We need you over here on the skiff dock right away.”

Tash Dano was the assistant harbormaster. Stilwell had met her on his rounds when he was first assigned to the island. He had met with everybody in any position of power or authority in the small community, from the mayor of Avalon down to the assistant harbormaster. Most were standoffish because deputies assigned to Catalina seemed to come and go quickly; they left as soon as they were rehabilitated in the eyes of the mainland command staff. The island was known as a way station for the department’s freaks and fuckups and therefore it was not worth the residents’ investment of time to get to know any of its personnel. Tash was different. She had invited Stilwell to lunch and even gave him her own tour of the island. She had lived there her entire life and had no plans to leave. Stilwell immediately liked her.

“What’s up over there?” he asked.

“You know Abbott, the scraper?” she asked.

“I know who he is. First name is Denzel, right?”

“Right. He just called and said there’s a body down there under the Aurora . He said it’s got an anchor chain wrapped around it. A human body. He couldn’t tell male or female.”

It took Stilwell a few moments to understand what Tash was saying. He got regular updates on what boats were moored in the harbor. He remembered that the Aurora was a seagoing yacht registered out of Venezuela. It had entered the harbor two days earlier and moored on the fourth line of buoys, where the big boats were staged.

“Okay, I’m on my way,” Stilwell said. “Tell Abbott to meet me at the skiff dock.”

“Will do,” Tash said.

“And Tash, when’s the Aurora staying till?”

“Today. They’re leaving today.”

“What time?”

“Anytime. They have the ball till sixteen hundred but can shove off whenever they want.”

“We might have to do something about that. I’ll probably want to hold them in port if what Abbott says he saw is true.”

“You want me to call the Coast Guard in? They could stop them.”

“I want to confirm the body before we start calling in the troops.”

“Gotcha. How you going to do that?”

“I’m going to have Abbott take me down.”

“Oh.”

“Problem?”

“No. Just be careful.”

“Copy that. I will.”

Stilwell went into the sub to get his wet suit.