Page 25 of Nightshade

STILWELL ATE THE sandwich from the Sandtrap in the morning with fresh-brewed coffee. He ate quickly, filled a Yeti with more coffee, and left the house early—while Tash was still asleep—to get to the sub to start working on a search warrant for the Black Marlin Club. He knew the probable cause statement would need to be bulletproof in order to get by Judge Harrell, but that would be only the first test it would face. If a case was ever built against a defendant in the Leigh-Anne Moss murder, the search warrant would be his lawyer’s first stop in an effort to derail it, and that didn’t even take into consideration the appeals that would very likely come later. Prosecutions often succeeded or failed based on the underpinnings of probable cause. Stilwell knew it and wasn’t going to let his warrant be the Achilles’ heel of this case.

Mercy was already at her desk when he got there.

“Good morning,” she said cheerily.

“Morning, Mercy,” Stilwell said. “I’m going to set up in my office today to do some writing work. Try to keep people off me if you can.”

“Not a problem.”

“Anything going on that I should know about?”

“All quiet except back there in the jail. That man can get on my last nerve.”

Stilwell had forgotten about Spivak. He put the Yeti on the desk in his office and went back to the jail. Once again, Spivak was standing right at the bars like he was waiting for him.

“The big boss,” he said. “I thought you were bringing me dinner last night.”

“I was until I found out you already had dinner,” Stilwell said. “So, listen, Spivak, I’m not going to fuck around with you today. I need you to cooperate and that means you keep it down back here. If that’s a problem for you, we have the means to keep you quiet.”

“You going to gag me?”

“If we have to. We have a spit harness I’m authorized to use. When you’re back here yelling, it’s a threat to the people who work in this building. I’m authorized to do what I have to do to alleviate that threat. If you want to be cuffed to the bars with a harness wrapped around your face, that’ll be your choice.”

“You try that on me and you’ll end up in the hospital next to your deputy.”

“If I have to call in every deputy on the island, I’ll do it. My people have jobs to do, Spivak. And I’m not going to let them work in an environment where they feel unsafe. Consider yourself warned.”

“When am I getting my fucking hearing?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll make sure you’re first up.”

Stilwell turned and left the jail section. In the bullpen he told Mercy to keep an eye on the camera feed from Spivak’s cell. He then went into his office and closed the door, a clear sign he did not want to be disturbed.

For the next three hours Stilwell worked at his computer. First he outlined the accumulated facts and evidence: The victim in the harbor had been identified as Leigh-Anne Moss and she had been fired from the Black Marlin Club probably on the same day that she was murdered and the jade statue was stolen. He noted that the new anchor and sail bag on the Emerald Sea were similar to those used to submerge the body. He added descriptions of an unidentified person making a middle-of-the-night trip from the club to the Emerald Sea and the ketch’s short trip out to the bay and back the following Monday—both of which were unauthorized by the boat’s owner.

Next, Stilwell spun his wheels online looking for any kind of tidal or ocean currents report that would support his belief that Moss’s body had been dumped from the Emerald Sea into the bay and then brought back into the harbor by such underwater movement. He gave up after forty minutes of searching but knew it was a weakness in his crime theory that could possibly raise a red flag with a judge or jury. He made a note to find an oceanography expert who could testify to the possibility that Leigh-Anne Moss’s body had returned to the scene of the crime like, as Ahearn had said, a ghost.

Last, he set to work on a summary showing probable cause to search the BMC for forensic evidence of the murder, the missing sculpture, and all records of membership, personnel, and use of the club’s guest rooms on the weekend in question. His goal was to make the statement complete and concise. It was a sales pitch to the judge, urging him to buy Stilwell’s theory of the crime and demonstrating the need to take the investigation into the hallowed confines of the wealthy private club.

By the time he finished the first draft, he realized he was famished. He checked his phone and saw he’d been working for more than three hours straight. He sent the document to the printer and left his office to grab it from the tray before anyone else could see it.

He saw Ralph Lampley at a desk working at a computer, and it prompted him to remember the ten-o’clock deadline imposed on Starkey up at the Zane Grey.

“Ralph, did you get the report on the eviction at the Zane Grey?” he asked. “What happened up there?”

“I was going to tell you but Mercy said not to knock on your door,” Lampley said.

“Tell me what?”

“The guy up there got his bank to wire money to the hotel, so everything turned out fine.”

“How’d you find this out?”

“I called the manager. He said the bank wired enough for two weeks, so he’s letting the guy—Starkey—stay, and now everybody’s happy. The hotel got the money and Starkey can finish writing his book or script or whatever it is.”

“Well, good, then. What are you writing up?”

“Just a bunch of bullshit. Somebody graffitied the Casino last night. They’re painting it out today but they want a report for insurance.”

Stilwell wondered if the vandal was a local. Catalina had no street gangs but that didn’t stop gangsters from coming over on the ferries from time to time.

“What did the graffiti say?”

“Just two names, Sleepy and Mako.”

“You might want to go up to the school and talk to the maintenance people. They’ve had some graffiti issues up there this year. Maybe see if they’ve had anything with those names. That way we find out if they’re local or from off island.”

“Copy that,” Lampley said. “I’ll go up after I finish this.”

Stilwell walked over to Mercy’s desk and she held up four pink message slips.

“These came in,” she said.

The first was from Mayor Allen. There was no message, just a number, and Mercy had checked the CALL BACK box.

“You probably should have knocked on my door for this one,” he said. “Any idea what he wanted?”

“It was actually one of his assistants who called,” Mercy said. “She let slip that the council just approved a ten-thousand-dollar reward on the harbor case. The mayor wanted to tell you and give you the parameters.”

Stilwell stared at the message, trying to decide if the reward was a good or bad thing. It would likely bring in multiple calls with information he would have to chase down—a lot of spinning of his wheels. But it could also bring in a solid lead. He had seen rewards work both ways when he was on the homicide unit.

The next message was from Ned Browning. It said No go on the sales records, and Stilwell understood this to mean that Browning had found no record of the purchase of a handsaw by Henry Gaston or Oscar Terranova. That would have been too easy, Stilwell thought.

Message three was from Lionel McKey, and Stilwell guessed he was calling for comment on the reward. Stilwell crumpled that slip up and tossed it into the trash can next to Mercy’s desk.

The last message was from someone named Leslie, no last name or phone number given. Mercy had written Wanted to know if the dead girl was Leigh-Anne Moss.

“She had the name?” he asked. “What did you tell her?”

“You told me not to give out information on cases,” Mercy said. “So I told her we didn’t have an ID yet, and before I could ask anything else, she hung up.”

“Damn.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure she works at the Sandtrap if you want to talk to her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I could hear plates and voices in the background and someone saying, ‘Leslie, pickup.’ I think that’s why she hung up so fast.”

“Okay, a restaurant kitchen. Why do you say it’s the Sandtrap?”

“Well, that part’s a guess, but there’s a girl who works up there named Leslie. She’s waited on me before.”

It was Mercy who had told Stilwell about the Sandtrap being the best place for lunch when he first came to the island. She went there often on her lunch break.

“That’s really good, Mercy,” he said.

Stilwell had eaten half a sandwich from the restaurant that morning but it looked like he would be going there for lunch now. He told Mercy to call him if anything came up and headed out of the sub.

Up at the golf course, he asked the hostess for a table at the Sandtrap and requested Leslie as his server. It was before noon, and the lunch rush hadn’t started. In case this was a dead end, Stilwell had brought the printout of the search warrant with him to edit while he ate.

Soon, a woman in her twenties with her brown hair in a ponytail came to his table. The name tag clipped to her light blue golf shirt said LESLIE . He recognized her from his past stops at the restaurant but realized he had never registered her name. He was in his usual uniform—tan cargo pants, holstered weapon and badge on his belt, green polo shirt with a sheriff’s badge embroidered on the left breast—but it didn’t seem to register.

“What can I get you today?” she asked.

“I’ll go with a BLT on wheat toast,” Stilwell said.

“Anything to drink?”

“Iced tea.”

“You got it.”

“Are you the Leslie who called our office this morning about Leigh-Anne?”

She raised her eyes from her order pad and seemed to notice the embroidered badge on Stilwell’s shirt for the first time.

“How did you know that?” she asked.

“The woman you talked to is a regular customer here,” Stilwell said. “I know you’re in the middle of work now, but I need to ask you about Leigh-Anne.”

“Uh, okay. Was she the girl they found in the water?”

“I can’t really answer that at the moment. But why did you call about her?”

“Because she owes me money and I sort of heard that there was going to be a reward for, you know, information that helps with the case.”

“How did you hear about the reward? That was just approved.”

“Oh, you hear a lot of things at the tables. City Hall people have breakfast here almost every day. I heard them talking about the reward this morning.”

Stilwell nodded. “You said Leigh-Anne owed you money. For what?”

“She rented a room from me and stopped paying.”

“When was this?”

“She started renting it in January but she stopped staying there a couple months ago and she didn’t pay me for the month before she left.”

Stilwell sat forward, fully focused on the piece of luck he had just been served.

“What’s your full name, Leslie?”

“Leslie Sneed.”

“So Leigh-Anne stayed with you while she was working at the Black Marlin Club?”

“Usually she was here on the weekends. Sometimes on Thursdays if she got a shift. And then she stopped staying and decided she didn’t have to pay me for the last month.”

Stilwell nodded sympathetically.

“Listen, I need to talk to you more about this, but this is not really the right place to do it,” he said. “Can you come down to the sheriff’s station with me?”

“You mean, like, now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I… uh, I don’t think the manager will let me leave. It’s about to get busy here and I also need the tip money.”

“I understand. When will the lunch rush be over?”

“Probably around two.”

“Okay, let’s do two. After I finish eating, I’ll leave, but then I’ll come back at two to give you a ride down to the station.”

“So it was her.”

“We’ll talk about that.”

“I knew she was going to get into trouble.”

Stilwell felt the whisper on the back of his neck again. He was beginning to think that finding Leslie Sneed might significantly advance the case.

“Well, we’ll talk about that too,” he said.

She left to put in his food order. Stilwell took a pen out of his pocket and started to read and edit the search warrant. But he soon stopped. He couldn’t concentrate because of his excitement over finding Leslie Sneed and because he knew she might provide information that would have to go into the request to search the Black Marlin Club.

He put the document aside and started thinking about how he would handle things at two.