Page 23 of Nightshade

FRANK SAMPEDRO WAS waiting for Stilwell at the Express dock in Long Beach. He was leaning against a gray plain-wrap, his arms folded across his barrel chest. He was over six feet and stocky. His suits were always ill-fitting—baggy in the shoulders, too wide at the waist. He dyed his hair and mustache jet-black. As soon as he saw Stilwell approaching, he pushed himself off the car and went around to the driver’s door without a greeting.

Ahearn hadn’t made the trip, which pleased Stilwell because no cop likes to sit in the back seat of a car that has transported all manner of miscreants, but he wondered what that meant in regard to Corum’s well-oiled machine. Even so, it was a relief to Stilwell that he would not have to spend the next hour driving up to the homicide unit in downtown Los Angeles listening to Ahearn’s insults and threats.

Starting out, Sampedro kept quiet. But once they got up on the 110 and were heading downtown, he unexpectedly opened up.

“Look, just so you know, I got partnered with Rex after you left,” he said. “So all I’ve ever heard was his side of things, you know what I mean?”

A crack in the partnership; Stilwell hadn’t seen that before.

“I do,” he said. “And I know just what he said about me and that case.”

“Yeah, well, there you go,” Sampedro replied. “But like the captain said, we got this case to solve, so I’m putting all of that other stuff to the side. Seems like you’ve done some good work on this so far. Let’s keep it going.”

“Does that mean you were also in Corum’s office during the call today?”

“I was. He wanted us both in there.”

It annoyed Stilwell that Corum had not told him anyone else was on the call until he had asked, but it worked out. Stilwell was on the case, which was where he wanted to be. He took Sampedro’s olive branch as sincere and a good sign. It made him think that he could work on an equal level with him at least, if not with Ahearn.

After a few more minutes of silence, Sampedro brought up the case about which he knew only one side of the story.

“Just to clear the air, what I heard was that you thought there was a murder case against a guy, and Rex, who was lead on it, said there wasn’t. Said it was self-defense. He took it to the DA’s office and they signed off on it as self-defense. Then you tried to make an end run around them, and the shit hit the fan.”

“That’s putting it mildly. But to clear the air, as you say, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I flat out accused him of taking a dive on the case.”

“That’s a pretty strong statement.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the truth. You ever know a guy named Carl Dobbin? He was a deputy worked out of Lennox until they caught him on camera shaking down street dealers for cash and coke.”

“I didn’t know him. Never worked Lennox, but they had a lot of problems down there with that kind of stuff.”

“They did, and IAB came in and cleaned it up. Dobbin was one of the guys that got washed out. That was seven, maybe eight, years ago.”

“Okay, so what did he have to do with the case you and Rex locked horns on?”

“Everything. After he left the department, Dobbin was able to get a PI ticket because they let him retire with a clean record. Then two years ago, he ends up killing a guy in a divorce case he was working. He claimed self-defense, said that the guy he was following confronted him and pulled a gun, but Dobbin pulled his and got off the first shot. Because he was an ex-deputy, our whole team rolled out on the case. So I was there that night. Ahearn was lead but I worked the first night. I got next-of-kin duty on the dead man. I went to his sister’s house to notify her that he was dead, and she told me she believed it was a setup. Her brother had told her he thought his soon-to-be ex was going to try to kill him so she’d get all the money.”

“You believed her?”

“I believed the claim should have been investigated, but Ahearn didn’t do it. He just took Dobbin at his word and presented the case to the DA as a self-defense. The DA signed off and that was it. Then, guess what: I get a call from the sister. She still has my card from when I made the notification. She’s absolutely livid because Ahearn never talked to her and never even looked into her suspicions that it was an orchestrated hit.”

“So, let me guess—you did.”

“Yeah, I did some digging. The gun the dead guy supposedly pointed at Dobbin had been reported stolen ten years before. I pulled the records because Ahearn had never checked. It was stolen during a burglary in Lennox, and guess who took the initial report.”

“Dobbin?”

“Yeah, Dobbin. The gun was listed on a supplemental report. The house had been ransacked, tons of stuff taken, and the owner wasn’t initially sure what all he had lost. So, two days later, he comes into the substation in Lennox with a whole list of stuff he said was gone, and the gun was on that list.”

“Your theory was that Dobbin piggybacked on the burglary, that he saw the gun when he was there to take the report and grabbed it?”

“Pretty much. Then he kept it in his sock in case he ever needed a throwdown. He eventually gets booted out, gets his private ticket, and this shooting goes down. The stolen gun ends up in the dead man’s hand.”

Stilwell let that sink in for a few moments before continuing.

“There was a lot at stake in the divorce,” he said. “The dead guy was a former gangbanger and drug dealer who’d turned completely legit and invested in businesses all over South L.A. There was a lot of money on the table that he didn’t want to split with the wife. So the wife hired Dobbin to supposedly get the goods on him to use as leverage. But what if Dobbin told her he could make it so there was no money split and she got it all?”

“You know what I call that? A lot of coincidence and conjecture.”

“I’m not arguing with that, but it should have been investigated and it wasn’t. Ahearn either took a dive or just looked the other way. I did some digging on that too, and it turns out Ahearn and Dobbin were in the same academy class. They went way back. So now you have another coincidence, and that is one too many not to be looking at this.”

“You go to the captain with it?”

“Nope, and that was my mistake. I went straight to IAB when I should have started with Corum.”

“And the bureau took a pass.”

“They used the same words you did— coincidence and conjecture . That’s what our vaunted Internal Affairs Bureau said. It went no further. Ahearn ended up with an ‘unfounded complaint’ in his jacket and I got sent to the Island of Misfit Toys. End of story.”

“Till now.”

“Till now. Ahearn has the ding in his jacket that he blames me for and he can’t see past it to properly work the case. His ass must be burned that Corum is making us work together.”

“He’s not too happy, but he’s a professional. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m glad one of us thinks so.”

“What was your thinking back then? That Dobbin paid Ahearn off?”

“Or he just looked the other way for an academy pal. And once he did that, Dobbin owned him. But I don’t really care which it was, and for the record, I didn’t care too much about the dead ex–drug dealer either. But Dobbin is still out there and people who get away with stuff tend to think they can do it again.”

Sampedro drove in silence for a few more moments before speaking.

“I appreciate the detail,” he said.

“And I appreciate the position you’re in,” Stilwell said. “I want you to know, on this thing, I’m all about the woman in the water. That’s it. I’m not interested in tangling with Ahearn about that old case. I want to close this case.”

“Good to know.”

Stilwell didn’t mean all of what he had said, but he guessed that Sampedro would eventually summarize the conversation to Ahearn. That was what partners did. It would hopefully put Ahearn at ease so that the Leigh-Anne Moss investigation could proceed unfettered by the friction between them.

The homicide unit was in the old Hall of Justice building across Temple Street from the Criminal Courts Building. Stilwell knew it well from his previous assignment there. Sampedro parked in the county garage and called Ahearn to say that they were on their way up. Ahearn was waiting in one of the conference rooms. He had already wheeled in a whiteboard with Leigh-Anne Moss written in red at the top. There were a few dates and other notations beneath it and then a line drawn down the center of the board separating the headings Catalina and County . Ahearn clearly understood that there was work to do on both sides of the bay.

Ahearn said nothing when Stilwell and Sampedro entered. He was sitting at the oval table at the center of the room in the chair closest to the whiteboard—a signal that he was in charge of deciding what went on it. Stilwell noticed a stack of documents at the seat farthest from the board and understood that this was his spot. The stack appeared to be copies of documents produced by the Ahearn-Sampedro team during the first five days of the investigation, with the preliminary autopsy report on top. Stilwell took that as a good start to the fraught partnership and sat down in his designated chair.

“That’s all the documentation on the case so far,” Ahearn confirmed. “What I’d like to do with this meeting is establish clear lines of responsibility for all three of us and map out our next moves.”

Stilwell could have easily said that this was already the directive from Captain Corum but he decided not to poke Ahearn. He nodded instead.

“Stilwell, you seem to have the inside track on this—at least according to the captain,” Ahearn said. “So why don’t you start. What should Frank and I be doing? What are you going to do?”

Stilwell noted that it might have been the first time in years that Ahearn had addressed him by his correct name. Another sign of cooperation.

“Well, since you have it divided between here and there, I think there are a few things over here that we need to do right off the bat,” he began. “The boat I mentioned on the call with the captain is called the Emerald Sea . It’s a forty-foot ketch that is currently docked at the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey. I’ve talked to the owner, Mason Colbrink, and he agreed to stay off it until we can get a forensics team in there to process it.”

Ahearn got up and wrote the boat’s name down in the County column. He stayed standing.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

Stilwell knew he had to protect Monty West at the coroner’s office.

“I haven’t seen the autopsy,” he said. “Was the victim cut? Any indication of blood loss?”

“Frank took the autopsy,” Ahearn said.

“Cause of death is blunt-force trauma,” Sampedro said. “She was bludgeoned with an unknown object prior to death. Head wounds are usually bleeders. Of course, with the body being in the water for several days, we lost all trace of that.”

“There’s a guy on Catalina who crews on the Emerald Sea, ” Stilwell said. “I talked to him this morning and he said that when he cleaned the boat after bringing it back to the marina on Monday, he found that somebody had taken the spare anchor and a sail bag. He also said a mop head was missing.”

Ahearn turned to the board and wrote crime scene under the name of the boat.

“We’ll get forensics out there,” he said.

“But he cleaned the boat?” Sampedro asked.

“He did,” Stilwell said. “Which means it was cleaned twice—once by whoever used the mop, then by him.”

“We still have to let forensics do their thing,” Ahearn said. “If there’s blood, they’ll find it.”

“The crew guy also said he found an empty bottle of a boat cleaner called Three-Oh-Three,” Stilwell said. “But he threw it away. It was probably handled during the first cleaning.”

“Dumpster-diving,” Ahearn said. “That’s Frank’s area of expertise.”

“Yeah, fuck that,” Sampedro said.

“My guy said he put it and stuff from the boat’s cooler into a trash can at the end of the dock,” Stilwell said.

Ahearn wrote 303 on the board and then turned back to Stilwell.

“So, Stilwell, what’s your kill theory?” he asked.

“You really want to hear it?” Stilwell asked.

“Of course we do,” Ahearn said. “We’re a team, remember?”

It was said with full snark, which Stilwell ignored.

“Like I said on the call with the captain, I think she was killed in the Black Marlin Club with the jade sculpture,” he said. “Her body was hidden in there somewhere until the middle of the night, when it was moved to the Emerald Sea. The next day, it was taken out to the bay and dumped.”

“In broad daylight?” Sampedro asked.

“It’s twenty-plus miles from the coast,” Stilwell said. “A lot of open water out there once you’re out of the harbor.”

“And you’re saying the current just brought her back in?” Ahearn asked. “Like some kind of underwater ghost returning to haunt the scene of the crime?”

Ahearn had dropped the snark but put in a note of disbelief.

“I don’t know about underwater ghosts, but I do think the tide brought her back,” Stilwell said. “Avalon Harbor has a wide mouth and strong tidal currents.”

“Well, I do like a wide mouth,” Ahearn said. “Okay, what else?”

“Like, where’s the jade statue?” Sampedro asked.

“Probably ended up in the bay with her,” Stilwell said.

“That was stupid,” Sampedro said. “If she was killed at the club, why wouldn’t the killer just clean it up and put it back?”

“I was thinking about that,” Stilwell said. “Maybe he panicked. It’s possible none of this was planned. Or maybe the thing broke when he hit her. Then he couldn’t put it back.”

“It’s all conjecture until we know more,” Ahearn said. “We need something solid to move on right now.”

“Her cell phone,” Stilwell said. “She had to have had one and it also probably ended up in the bay when she was dumped. But we need to get her calls, texts, and contacts. And the GPS might give us the location where she went into the water.”

Ahearn wrote cell on the board on the County side.

“We’ll take that,” he said. “What else?”

“Leigh-Anne’s friends,” Stilwell said. “Anybody she might have told who she was involved with on the island and in that club. Hopefully her phone or Galloway can lead us to her friend group over here. And I still need to find out where she stayed on Catalina. There could also be dating apps and social media to check. My office manager found her on Instagram but the account hadn’t been updated recently.”

Ahearn put it all on the board, including the first additions to the Catalina column: friends and address .

“And then Colbrink, the guy who owns the boat,” Stilwell said. “He’s got an alibi for the weekend in question. Was over here in Malibu for his wife’s birthday. We need to confirm all of that, and then we need to talk to his mistress, someone named Bree or maybe Breezy, who was on the boat with him on Catalina this past weekend. Maybe she saw something amiss on the boat. We just need to cover all the bases, and she’s one of them.”

Ahearn dutifully wrote it on the board on the County side.

“That’s going to keep us busy,” he said. “You’re looking a little light, Stilwell. Anything else for over there?”

“Yeah,” Stilwell said. “I’ve got to get into the Black Marlin Club.”

“You’re talking about a search warrant?” Ahearn asked. “Good luck with that.”

“We’ll see,” Stilwell said. “I know a judge who might go for it.”