Page 67 of Nightshade

“Ahearn, enough,” Corum said. “Stil, go ahead.”

Stilwell took a deep breath, tried to clear the image of Ahearn’s smug face out of his mind, and began.

“On Saturday we received a report of a theft of a supposedly priceless piece of art from the Black Marlin Club out here,” he said.

“A painting?” Corum asked.

“No, a small sculpture of a black marlin. It was taken from a display in the main hallway of the club, where it had been for almost a hundred years. Do you know anything about this club, Captain?”

“I’ve heard of it, yes. People with money and power.”

“Exactly. So, the report was taken by Deputy Dunne and it got lost for a couple days because Dunne was the deputy who got assaulted Saturday night and he’s out with a concussion. The report didn’t cross my desk till yesterday, and then I started working it.”

“What’s this have to do with you coming over here and interviewing witnesses in the murder case?”

“I’m going to get to that, Captain, if you let me tell the story.”

“Go ahead, but I don’t have all day here. You need to land the plane.”

“I went to the BMC and talked to the general manager, who had made the initial report. His name is Crane and he said no one noticed the sculpture was missing till Saturday, when he made the report, but that it had likely been gone a week. Then he pointed the finger at an employee he had fired the week before, Leigh-Anne Moss. He said he suspected that she stole the statue on her way out of the club right after he fired her.”

“Fired for what?”

“He said she was fraternizing with the members and that’s a big no-no.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Well, I ran down Leigh-Anne Moss and learned that she had a dyed streak of purple in her hair. I’d seen the victim we pulled out of the harbor, so I put two and two together and called Ahearn to give him the name. He invited me to fuck off, to use his words. So I did and kept going with my case. But everywhere I went, it rubbed up against the harbor case.”

“That true? He gave you the name?” Corum said.

Stilwell knew he was speaking to Ahearn.

“He mentioned the name,” Ahearn said. “But we made the ID through DMV on a thumbprint. I go to the address on her DMV, and the boyfriend tells me the sheriff’s already been there. Stillborn should have called me before he even got on the ferry.”

“Did you not tell him to fuck off?” Corum asked. “And stop using that name. I find it offensive.”

“I meant stay the fuck away from my case, and he didn’t,” Ahearn responded.

“Jesus Christ, what am I going to do with you two!” Corum erupted. “Stilwell, did you take it further than that?”

Stilwell paused to compose a truthful answer as well as open a path through this thicket that would allow him to keep his job.

“There are no cameras in the BMC, so there was no way of confirming who stole the sculpture from the display,” he said. “But I went over to the harbormaster’s tower and reviewed video from the harbor cams that had angles on the club. I saw something suspicious on the night after Moss was fired and the theft presumably occurred. This involved a boat that belonged to a member of the club. A man named Mason Colbrink. He lives in Malibu. I followed that up and just this morning confirmed that both an anchor and a sail bag had been taken from the boat and replaced with new ones.”

“You have a suspect?” Corum said urgently.

“No. Colbrink and his one-man crew, a guy named Duncan Forbes who lives out here, both seem to have pretty solid alibis for that whole weekend,” Stilwell said.

“So, then, what’s your theory?” Corum pushed.

“I think Leigh-Anne Moss was killed inside the Black Marlin Club,” Stilwell said. “Then her body was put on the boat in the middle of the night and the next day taken out of the harbor.The body was put in the sail bag, weighted with the anchor, and dumped out in the bay. The underwater currents brought her back in once the body began to bloat.”

Stilwell heard Ahearn make a derisive chortle. He didn’t respond to it, but Corum did.

“All right, let’s stop there,” he said. “You did good work on this, Stil, but it’s a homicide and it’s not your case. There are special circumstances because you’re over there and the case is over there and you know the lay of the land. I want you part of the investigation. How soon can you get back here to get in a room with these guys? You need to hash this out and decide next—”

“We don’t need him,” Ahearn interrupted. “Sampedro and I can handle the case.”