Page 21 of Nightshade

NO LONGER A person of interest, Forbes was now a witness. Stilwell had to rethink and retool his approach. The interrogation had become an interview. He started by telling Forbes what the man wanted to hear.

“I’m going to go to bat for you, Duncan,” he said. “I’ll talk to probation and the DA’s office about making this warrant go away. I’ll tell them you’ve been very cooperative in this investigation.”

“It’s such bullshit,” Forbes said. “They better fix it.”

“Well, the more you help me, the better the chance of that happening.”

“But I told you, I don’t know anything about that girl.”

“That’s fine. But I want to talk to you about the Emerald Sea .”

“What about it?”

“You sailed the boat back to Marina del Rey this past Monday, right?”

“Monday morning, yeah.”

“How did that get set up?”

“The way it always does. The owner, Mr. Colbrink, just called me and said he wanted to take it back across. That was Sunday—he wanted to go Sunday. But I was working on the Mistress and told him I couldn’t. He then said Monday morning and I said I could do that.”

“Why did he want to leave in the middle of the holiday weekend?”

“He just said it was too crowded.”

“So, on Monday, was it just you two on the boat?”

Forbes hesitated. He leaned back and scanned the confines of the room, his eyes eventually going to the camera mounted in the corner over Stilwell’s left shoulder.

“Man, this could cost me my job with Mr. Colbrink.”

“Everything in an investigation is kept confidential, Duncan.”

“You mean until it isn’t.”

“Look, I told you. You want my help with the warrant, you gotta help me. I’m asking you, was it just you and Colbrink on the trip back to Marina del Rey?”

“No. He had a lady friend who went back with us.”

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just the hired help. He didn’t make any introductions. I heard him call her Bree, I think. Or Breezy. I think both, maybe.”

“And she had stayed on the boat with him over the weekend?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I got there Monday, and so I only know about Monday.”

“How old is Bree or Breezy?”

“At least forty.”

Forbes had confirmed information Stilwell had gotten from Colbrink during the ride from the mansion in Malibu to the boat in Marina del Rey. But the confirmation served to raise Stilwell’s confidence in Forbes’s truthfulness.

“I want to show you something,” Stilwell said.

He typed a few commands into the laptop and opened the video Tash had emailed him of the skiff moving from the BMC to the Emerald Sea, then turned the screen so Forbes could see it.

“Who do you think that is?” he asked.

Forbes watched the video to the end of the clip before responding.

“I don’t know, man,” he said. “That’s weird.”

“Is it Mason Colbrink?” Stilwell asked.

“I doubt it. That time stamp right? This on the eighteenth?”

“Yes, the eighteenth.”

“But you were just asking me about this past weekend.”

“I’m asking you about both weekends. Look at the video. Could that be Mason Colbrink?”

“I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think he was on the island then.”

“Okay, well, whoever the guy is, what do you think he’s doing?”

“No idea. Probably trying to steal shit.”

Stilwell turned the computer back around and closed it. He hadn’t considered that the man on the skiff might be taking things from the boats in the harbor. It was a reminder of how easily tunnel vision could hijack an investigation.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Well, because there was some shit missing.”

“From where?”

“The Emerald Sea .”

“Like what?”

“An anchor, for one.”

“What else?”

“Somebody fucked around with the sails. Dumped one of them out of its bag and then I couldn’t find the bag.”

“Anything else?”

“Nah, I think that was all.”

“Where was the anchor taken from?”

“It was a spare that was kept in a locker with the stern anchor.”

“Did you notice the missing anchor and sail bag or did Colbrink?”

“On Monday when we got the boat back to MDR, I cleaned it up and opened up the lockers because of mold. I always let everything air out—Mr. Colbrink has a big thing about mold on the boat. So I opened the hatches and I saw stuff was missing or fucked with.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Well, Mr. Colbrink has an account at the ship’s store over there. I went over and got replacements.”

“What’s the name of the store?”

“Topsail Chandlery. Mr. Colbrink lets me sign on the account for supplies and stuff.”

“Did you tell him about the anchor and the sail bag?”

“Not yet. I actually kind of forgot. I left my phone at Two Harbors that day, so I was going to call him when I got back, but then I forgot. Anyway, he doesn’t really care about that stuff. He just wants the boat to be ready and clean for the next time he goes out, and he wants no sign that anybody else has been on it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Like in case his wife checks the boat out. He doesn’t want any lipstick on the glasses in the galley, extra toothbrushes in the head. Like that.”

Stilwell nodded. Forbes was helping things fall into place in the investigation, but the information didn’t move Stilwell any closer to figuring out who the man on the skiff was or who had used the anchor and sail bag from the Emerald Sea to submerge the body of a young woman.

“All right, Duncan,” he said. “I want you to think hard. Was there anything else missing or unusual about the boat when you went through it to clean?”

Forbes slowly shook his head.

“No, man,” he said. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Okay, let’s back up for a second,” Stilwell said. “Think about when you were cleaning the boat. Where did you start?”

“I always start inside—the forward cabins—and then I back my way out, you know? I do the deck and wipe all of the topside stainless last.”

“Okay, start with the cabins. Nothing unusual or out of place?”

“Not that I remember.”

“No toothbrush to get rid of?”

“Nah, not this time.”

“Then what, the salon? Is that what you call it?”

Stilwell was using a well-worn and effective interview technique of taking a witness back through what was perceived as a mundane experience and drawing out details with questions that moved the story moment by moment.

“There was the usual,” Forbes said. “Dishes in the sink. I cleaned it all, put everything on the rack. I took out the trash and then mopped.”

“Where’d you get the mop?” Stilwell asked.

“There’s a closet in the galley where the cleaning supplies are.”

He snapped his fingers as he remembered something.

“That’s right,” he said. “The mop head was missing, and I never leave it that way.”

“Explain that to me,” Stilwell pressed.

“Last thing I do is either bleach the mop head or put on a new one so it’s clean and good to go for next time. Mr. Colbrink likes everything super-clean. He’s a germophobe. He’s always got the hand sanitizer, and he wipes his phone constantly. Half the time, he’s wearing a mask. Even on the boat. He was the one who told me to always keep a clean mop. If you start with a dirty mop, you’re not gonna get a clean boat. He told me that the first day he hired me like six years ago.”

Stilwell recalled that when they’d driven from Malibu to the marina the night before, Colbrink had put on a mask.

“So the mop head was missing,” he said.

“Right,” Forbes said. “I had to put a new one on, and that isn’t how I leave things.”

Stilwell was thinking about how this seemingly insignificant detail about the mop fit with his evolving theory of the crime.

“Is that important?” Forbes asked.

Stilwell came out of his reverie.

“Uh, it could be,” he said. “Every detail counts. You remember anything else? Did you find the mop head that was missing in the trash or somewhere?”

“No, it was just gone.”

“Okay. Were any other cleaning tools used?”

“Yeah, I had to open a new bottle of Three-Oh-Three,” Forbes said.

“What’s Three-Oh-Three?”

“It’s the marine cleaner I put in the bucket for the mop. Somebody left an empty bottle in the supply cabinet, so I opened another.”

Stilwell felt another charge go through his chest.

“What happened to the empty bottle?” he asked.

“It got tossed with the stuff from the fridge I cleaned out,” Forbes said.

Stilwell’s hope for a surface containing fingerprints was immediately dashed.

“You mean you took it to a dumpster or something at the marina?” he asked.

“Yeah, they have trash cans there,” Forbes said. “At the end of the dock.”

Stilwell nodded. He thought he had gotten from Forbes everything he could in a first-round interview.

“Okay, we’re going to take a break,” he said. “I’m going to call your PO and see what we can do about the warrant. You can stay here or I can put you in a cell where there’s a bed if you want to lie down. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to work this out.”

“Man, can’t you just let me split?” Forbes pleaded. “I mean, you know where I live. I’m not going to take off or anything.”

Stilwell shook his head.

“Can’t,” he said. “You were officially taken into custody. I can’t just let you walk out without clearing this up. So, here or the cell?”

“I guess I’ll take the cell,” Forbes said dejectedly.

“Good choice.”

“It doesn’t seem like it.”

“Let’s go.”

Stilwell stood up, opened the door to the room, and led Forbes out and toward the jail. He put him in the cell next to the one where Merris Spivak was still detained. Cell two had been emptied of the three other men arrested over the holiday weekend, as one had made bail and Monika Juarez had declined to file charges on the other two—an unofficial sentence of time served. After locking Forbes in, Stilwell moved down the bars to cell one to check in on Spivak, who was lying on his back on a bunk. Without looking over at Stilwell, Spivak raised a middle finger to him.

“Still not talking, Spivak?” Stilwell asked.

“I don’t talk to cops,” Spivak said.

“You know we’re going to find out.”

“Find out what?”

“How you know Deputy Dunne.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, boss.”

“Yes, you do. It was Pitchess, wasn’t it? I know you were both there at the same time. What did he do to you that would make you blindside him like that?”

“Didn’t we have this conversation? I’m not telling you jack, Jack.”

“Yeah, well, assaulting a law enforcement officer on camera—you won’t be going back to Pitchess this time, Spivak. You’re going upstate. See how that works for you.”

Spivak gave another middle-finger salute, this time shaking his hand intensely as if that would make the move more insulting. Stilwell just nodded and headed back to the bullpen to call the state probation office.