Page 2 of Nightshade

“Looked like some thick stuff out there, Judge,” he said.

“Trojan-horsed on the tail of the Express,” Harrell said.

Before getting into the Gator, he toweled off the wet suit and draped the towel over his head.

“I saw that,” Stilwell said. “Smooth move.”

“Anyway, sorry to be late,” Harrell said. “I called Mercy and she’s cued everything up.”

Harrell took a seat in the cart on the towel Stilwell had spread.

“Yes, sir,” Stilwell said. “Just a few D-and-Ds and a wobbler.”

“Tell me about the wobbler,” the judge said.

Stilwell circled the Casino and headed toward the justice center in town.

“Well, technically, it’s a burglary of an occupied dwelling witha firearm enhancement,” Stilwell said. “But the dwelling is occupied by the suspect’s ex-girlfriend, and he claims he was stealing back his Glock because he was afraid of leaving it with her, like she might harm herself with it.”

“How noble,” Harrell said. “You know this man?”

“Kermit Henderson, born and raised here. Works up at the golf course running mowers and doing general maintenance. The girlfriend is Becki Trower, another local. I was thinking maybe you work a deal like you did with Sean Quinlan and we get some maintenance done around the sub. Especially since Sean is coming off his time.”

“Okay, we’ll hear him out. If that’s all you’ve got, I might get some fishing in later.”

“There’s also this.”

Stilwell leaned forward, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out the document he had printed earlier that morning and folded lengthwise to fit. He handed it to the judge, who unfolded it and started to read.

“Search warrant,” Harrell said.

He got quiet as he read the summary and probable cause statement. Then he shook his head, not because he disagreed with anything he had read but because it made him angry.

“You got a pen?” he said.

Stilwell took the pen out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Harrell. The judge scribbled his signature on the appropriate line and handed the pen and the warrant back to Stilwell.

“I gave up a long time ago trying to understand why people do what they do to each other,” Harrell said. “But cruelty to animals still gets to me. If this guy did what you suspect, then he better find a good lawyer and hope I don’t get the case.”

“I hear you,” Stilwell said. “I’m the same.”

A few minutes later they were at the justice complex onSumner Avenue. Stilwell and Harrell went into the sheriff’s substation, where the judge kept his clothes and black robe in a locker.

Stilwell unlocked the holding facility so that Harrell could use the shower and get dressed for court. Kermit Henderson, unable to make bail, was in one of the cells. He watched the judge go by, leaving wet footprints on the gray linoleum.

Stilwell saw no sign of Sean Quinlan. He texted him to tell him to mop the jail after the judge was finished showering and getting dressed. It would be Quinlan’s final duty, as the judge was set to release him from probation.

Stilwell went into the courtroom and saw that Monika Juarez was already in place at the prosecution table. Mercy Chapa was at the clerk’s desk for her one-morning-a-week gig. The rest of the time she was manager, dispatcher, and general overseer of the sheriff’s substation, and Stilwell’s right hand.

Juarez was a small woman with brown skin. Her hair was in black ringlets that framed her thin face but did not fully hide the whitish scar that ran along the left side of her jaw. Stilwell had never asked her about it but thought that however she got it, it probably had something to do with why she’d become a prosecutor. She was about thirty and assigned to the superior court in Long Beach. Like Judge Harrell, she came to Catalina once a week to handle the island’s cases, but she preferred to come over the night before on the Express, stay at the Zane Grey at county expense, and then go directly to court in the morning.

“The judge is getting ready,” Stilwell told her. “He’ll probably start with Henderson. After that, it’s the misdemeanors. Will you need me for those?”

“No, they look pretty routine,” Juarez said.

“I picked up the judge and talked to him about Henderson. I think he’s going to offer him probation if he’ll take over maintenance around here for a few months.”

“He’s got a gun charge.”

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