Page 39 of Nightshade

STILWELL AND JUAREZ exited through a side door to a triangular plaza scattered with tables, chairs, and potted palm trees. People wearing juror tags sat or milled about. There was an open table near one of the building’s concrete columns and Juarez headed toward it.

“I heard about what happened Friday night,” she said. “How is Tash doing?”

“Tash is okay,” Stilwell said.

“And you?”

“I’m okay too. How’d you hear about it?”

“Are you kidding? It was all over the news.”

“Right.”

Juarez sat down and put the stack of files she was carrying on the table. Stilwell took a chair opposite her.

“We could have gotten coffee,” Juarez said. “You want me to go back and grab a couple cups from the cafeteria? They let the prosecutors shoot the line.”

“No,” Stilwell said. “This won’t take that long.”

He actually wasn’t sure how long it would take but he didn’t want her to have something she could throw in his face, especially hot coffee.

“Were you cleared to go back to work already?” Juarez asked.

“No, I’ve got my shrink session at one,” Stilwell said. “And the shooting team is still working on it.”

“Well, good luck. Seems like, from everything I saw, that you don’t have anything to worry about on the CAPO side.”

The DA’s Crimes Against Police Officers unit had to review and sign off on all police shootings in the county. Such incidents fell under their jurisdiction because most law enforcement shootings involved cops reacting to perceived threats to their safety.

“I’m not worried about it,” Stilwell said.

“So, what’s going on?” Juarez asked.

Stilwell hadn’t been sure how he was going to play it until that moment.

“You’re originally from Bakersfield, aren’t you?” he asked. “The six-six-one.”

“Uh, yes,” Juarez said cautiously. “How do you know that?”

“I did a little checking on you this morning. Pulled the story Lionel McKey wrote for the Call when you were assigned to the Catalina court. According to the story, you actually asked for the assignment. Is that true?”

Juarez furrowed her brow and put an uneasy smile on her face.

“I did,” she said. “I thought coming out to the island would be kind of fun. But why would you check me out, Stil?”

Stilwell ignored her question and proceeded with his.

“Is that where you first met Oscar Terranova? Up there in Bakersfield?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Both her surprise and outrage felt staged, as though she had prepped for this moment for a long time. Stilwell read her reaction and knew he was on the right track.

“You’re the same age,” he said. “The story said you survived growing up in a gang neighborhood in East Bakersfield to get to college and then to law school up at Davis. I figure you two knew each other from back then. Was it in high school or in a gang? Maybe both? The article in the Call didn’t say.”

It was a guess, but an educated one.

“Look,” Juarez said. “I know you’ve probably been under a lot of stress, but be very careful about what you say here.”

“Same back at you, Monika,” he said. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. I’m actually hoping I can help you and you can help me, and we can maybe keep this between us.”

He said it but wasn’t sure he could keep any of it quiet. It was all he could do to contain the fury he felt.

“What is ‘this,’ Stilwell?”

“I think you know what it is, and you need to talk to me, or you leave me no choice but to go down the official road with it. If I put it in my formal statement and it goes to CAPO, then you’ll end up in front of the justice integrity unit explaining it.”

Juarez pushed back her chair and stood up.

“I’m not going to listen to this,” she said.

She started gathering her files.

“Sit down, Monika,” Stilwell said. “Spivak told me you were the leak to Terranova. Right before I killed him. He said you two were homeys from back in Bakersfield. For now, I’ve left what I know about you out of the investigation. And I can keep it that way.”

It was a bluff. Juarez stared at him from her standing position. Then she slowly sat back down. It was as good as a confession.

“You are the only one I told that I hadn’t sent the saw handle to the lab yet, that it was still on the island,” he said. “That’s why they grabbed Tash. You told them it was locked up at the sub.”

As Stilwell talked, Juarez looked off toward the other tables as though watching her career run away like a fleeing felon. But Stilwell was more interested in using her to get to the bigger fish.

“Where is he, Monika?”

“I don’t know.”

“Talk to me. I can help you. We can help each other.”

Juarez folded her arms the way Tash had the night before. Stilwell waited. He knew she was about to break.

“Look, I made a mistake, okay?” she said. “He asked me how long the lab would take to analyze it, and I was stupid. I said the lab didn’t even have it yet. That’s all. I had no idea what he was going to do. It was just… conversation.”

“Conversation with the primary focus of an investigation,” Stilwell said. “Conversation that led to an innocent woman being abducted and terrorized by a killer who’d cut somebody’s throat twenty-four hours earlier.”

“You don’t think I feel guilty about that? But I didn’t think in a million years that that would happen.”

“You’re not that stupid, Monika. You gave inside information to a fucking killer.”

“I know !”

She shouted it, causing others in the courtyard to turn from their conversations and look. Juarez took a deep breath and continued in a calm and quiet voice.

“He told me he didn’t do it—kill Gaston. That it was somebody else.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“He called me Friday morning and he was just as surprised as I was. He said somebody else set it up.”

“Who?”

“He wouldn’t say. He said it was his ace in the hole. He’d only reveal who it was if I made him a deal.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said no deal because I knew I could be the collateral. I couldn’t make a deal without ending up disbarred or in jail myself.”

Stilwell shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Don’t you see? He wouldn’t have come to you if he was going to deal you in. That makes no sense. His ace in the hole is Mayor Allen. Baby Head’s willing to trade him to save his own ass.”

“I don’t know about that,” Juarez said.

“Give me the number he called from.”

“It won’t matter. He uses burners and changes phones all the time. It’s never the same number.”

“Then where is he?”

“I told you—I have no idea. This is a nightmare. If I’d known what was going to happen, I would have warned you. I would’ve stopped it.”

“I wish you had.”

“But I didn’t know. Stil, you have to believe that.”

Stilwell didn’t answer. He was thinking about what Juarez had just told him: Terranova was willing to make a deal to give up a bigger fish than himself. It had to be the mayor.

“Who is he?” he asked. “How come he has no record? Not even a juvie jacket in Bakersfield. I checked.”

“Because he’s smart,” Juarez said. “He stays clean and makes other people do his dirty work for him. Like me. He gets something on you and then you have no choice. It’s probably how he played the mayor. He got something on him.”

“What’s he got on you, Monika?”

“We…”

Juarez shook her head in disgust—with the question and herself.

“We did things when we were younger,” she said. “Things I’m not proud of. He has pictures, okay? Photos that would destroy me. That’s all I’ll tell you. That’s all you need to know.”

“Then this could be your way out. You must be able to get a message to him.”

“What message? He’ll have me whacked if he sniffs a setup—and believe me, he’ll know.”

She pointed to the whitish scar that ran along the left side of her jaw.

“He gave me this,” she said. “When I told him I was leaving to go to college, that I wanted to be a lawyer someday. He did this to me, and you know what, I didn’t even call the police. I lied about it to my mother—said I crashed my bike—because I knew he would do worse if I turned him in.”

It was a terrible story, and despite himself, Stilwell felt sympathy for Juarez and her lifelong predicament. But it didn’t alter the contradiction between her actions and her pose of victimhood.

“Look, you need to figure out a way to contact him,” he said. “Tell him you thought about it and there is a deal to be made. He said it wasn’t his play, so we’ll hear him out. If he comes in and gives up the bigger fish, you’ll deal.”

Juarez shook her head as she thought about that.

“And so what happens to me if a deal is made?” she asked. “What’s to stop him from throwing me in to sweeten the pot?”

“You said he’s smart,” Stilwell said. “If he gets what he wants out of it, why would he burn you? He’ll want to keep you for the next rainy day.”

Juarez considered that and Stilwell could read her face. She saw it as the smart move.

“And what about you?” she said. “What happens to me with you?”

“I don’t know,” Stilwell said. “If you help me take these guys down, I will try to move on.”

“How can I trust that?”

“You’re just going to have to.”

Juarez shook her head.

“All of this because of a dead buffalo,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

“It’s not about the buffalo,” Stilwell said. “It’s about greed and power.”

“I guess it always is.”

“So can you get to Terranova or not?”

“Maybe. He once came to me because he needed a good lawyer. For a business matter. I gave him the name of a guy I went to law school with who does corporate law. He hired Bryson, and that was a few years ago, but the guy might still have a way to reach him.”

“Bryson? Bryson what?”

“Bryson Long. He has a one-man firm down in Seal Beach.”

Stilwell nodded.

“That’s the lawyer on the Ferris wheel project,” he said. “I was looking that stuff up Thursday night at the Zane Grey. He’s gotta still be working for Terranova. He must have a way to reach him.”

“I’ll call him,” Juarez said.

“When you get to Terranova, set up a meeting inside the courthouse,” he said. “So he has to go through a metal detector.”

“What if he wants to bring Bryson or a criminal defense lawyer?” Juarez asked.

“That’s his right. But if they hold us up with that, he’s going to be sitting in a cell until they do make a deal. Tell him that.”

“And you’ll be here?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”