Page 31 of Nightshade
STILWELL IMMEDIATELY KNEW something was wrong. The main door to the substation was locked, and it shouldn’t have been. He had two deputies on duty for the evening shift, Esquivel and a man named Porter whom he had pulled off the midnight shift. He had told Esquivel to stay in the sub while Porter handled patrol duties. If Porter needed backup on a call, Esquivel was to alert Stilwell. The bottom line was that he wanted one man in the sub at all times as protection for Gaston.
But locking the front door was not part of the plan. The substation was supposed to be open to the public 24/7 and locked only when all personnel were in the field.
“This isn’t right,” Stilwell said.
“What do you mean?” Juarez asked.
“Esquivel’s supposed to be in there and the door shouldn’t be locked.”
“Is he a deputy? Maybe he got a callout or something?”
“Then he would have called me.”
Stilwell put the bag containing the meals they had picked up for Gaston and Spivak on the ground and pulled out his keys.
“You stay out here until I check it out,” he said.
He unlocked the door and entered. He moved through the waiting area and into the bullpen. There was no sign of Esquivel, and the first thing Stilwell noticed was that the door to the tech closet was standing open. He looked in and saw that the middle shelf of the equipment rack was empty. The external hard drive was missing.
Stilwell drew his weapon and moved toward the jail section. The first cell he came to was where Spivak was supposed to be. But he was gone. Instead, he saw Esquivel lying face down on the concrete floor, his hands cuffed behind his back, an orange scrub shirt wrapped around his head and soaked with blood.
Stilwell quickly unlocked the door, slid it open, and went to Esquivel. He pulled the shirt away from his head and used two fingers to check for a carotid pulse. Esquivel was alive but unconscious. Stilwell used his cuff key to release his arms and then turned him onto his back. There was a deep gash across Esquivel’s forehead, and blood was flowing back into his hairline. Stilwell reached over to the bed, pulled the pillow and blanket off, propped the pillow under Esquivel’s head, and used the edge of the blanket to try to stanch the bleeding.
Esquivel started to groan.
“Eddie, you’re all right,” Stilwell said. “I’m going to get you help. Just hang in there.”
He grabbed the two-way off Esquivel’s belt, called Porter on it, and ordered him back to the sub. He then put the radio down on the floor and gently started to pat Esquivel’s cheek. This produced another groan.
“Eddie, wake up. What happened here? How did—”
“Oh my God!”
Stilwell turned. Juarez had come into the jail section.
“Monika, check the other cell,” Stilwell ordered. “Gaston is in there. Go!”
Juarez stepped over to the other cell and immediately brought a hand up to her mouth to stifle a scream. There was a cinder-block wall between the two cells, and Stilwell couldn’t see what she saw.
“What?” he said.
“He’s… he’s dead,” she said. “I think.”
Stilwell leaped to his feet and left the first cell to join her. He looked through the bars into the second cell. Henry Gaston was no doubt dead. He was sitting on the cell’s steel toilet, his head back, exposing a gaping neck wound and a cascade of blood down the front of his shirt. He had nearly been decapitated.
“What is happening?” Juarez shouted in a panicked voice.
“Listen to me,” Stilwell said calmly. “I need you to leave the sub and go to the fire station next door. Tell them you have an officer down and he needs medical attention.”
Juarez didn’t move.
“Monika!” Stilwell shouted. “Go next door and get the EMTs. Now!”
Juarez seemed to snap out of it. Her eyes focused on Stilwell’s and she nodded.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “I’m going.”
She left, and Stilwell pulled his phone. He called the sheriff’s comms center on the mainland to report a homicide and an officer down. He requested that Captain Corum and the homicide unit be alerted and dispatched to Catalina.
As soon as Stilwell ended the call he heard another groan from the first cell. He went back to Esquivel and found him trying to get up off the floor.
“Hold on, Eddie,” he said. “Stay down. We have help coming. Let the EMTs look at you before you try to get up.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Esquivel said.
“That’s okay, that’s okay. It probably means you’re in shock. Stay down and stay calm, and turn your head to the side. Help is on the way.”
“Okay. All right.”
“Do you remember what happened, Eddie?”
“Uh, I got hit.”
“Who hit you? Was it Spivak?”
“Yeah, Spivak. He hit me. He was screaming about something, so I came to see what was happening, and I got too close. He grabbed my shirt. He pulled me into the bars and I hit my head. And then… that’s all I remember.”
“Okay. It will come back. Just take it easy. Help’s coming.”
“Did he get away? I think he took my keys.”
“Yeah, he’s gone.”
Stilwell thought about Spivak’s escape. He checked his watch. The last ferry to the mainland had left forty-five minutes before. Esquivel was actively bleeding from fresh wounds, so Stilwell guessed that the attack and escape had occurred recently, after the ferry’s departure. That meant Spivak was still on the island—or he’d left on a boat he’d had stashed away somewhere. Stilwell assumed it was the latter. His instincts told him that this had been a setup from the start. That Spivak had engineered his placement in the jail so he could take out Gaston should he surrender or be arrested.
His phone buzzed. It was Captain Corum calling.
“Stil, what the hell’s going on over there?”
“It’s a mess, Captain. We’ve got a deputy down but alive, a prisoner dead, and another prisoner who escaped.”
“Can you lock down the island?”
“I think it’s too late. This was a planned assassination and most likely the escape was part of the plan.”
“Who’s the victim?”
“The dead man was a guy who said he could take down a local gangster and the mayor if we made him a deal.”
“And you believed him?”
“I did, and I think so did somebody else.”
“I’m coming out with a team. Be ready to brief us.”
“I’ll be here and I’ll be ready.”