Page 20 of Nightshade

“Am I getting out of here?”

“No. I have a question for you.”

“Are you taking me to county?”

“I’m keeping you right here until the judge comes out. That’s usually Fridays. But if he’s backed up on the mainland, it might not be till next Monday.”

“Ah, fuck. You can’t do that.”

“Actually, I can, and I am. Did you know Deputy Dunne?”

Spivak was silent for a moment. Stilwell stepped back to the wall opposite the holding cell and turned on the lights. Thoughbeing in the bottom bunk kept Spivak in partial shadow, Stilwell could see his eyes when he came back to the bars. Spivak had a shaved head that was pointed like a bullet, a host of tattoos peeking out of his jumpsuit collar and sleeves, and a crescent-shaped scar below his left eye.

“Did you know him?” Stilwell asked again.

“Who the fuck is Deputy Dunne?” Spivak said.

“The deputy you clocked with the wine bottle and put in the hospital. Did you know him? Did you have any previous encounter with him?”

Spivak again went silent, which made Stilwell think he was hiding something.

“Talk to me, Spivak,” Stilwell said. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

“Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights or something before asking me shit?” Spivak said.

“You already got ’em when we booked you.”

“Then I ain’t talking to you. I want my lawyer.”

“You called your lawyer already, Spivak. That was your phone call. You decide you want to talk to me, I’ll see what I can do about another call.”

Stilwell left him thinking about that and went back to his office. On his computer, he ran Spivak’s name through the crime index. He was forty-four years old and had a history of arrests in Los Angeles County for assault and other violent crimes, most of them in the Long Beach area. This furthered Stilwell’s belief that there was a connection between Spivak and Dunne. He pulled up what he could on the prior arrests and did not see Dunne’s name in any of the reports. The year before, Spivak had spent three hundred days in the Pitchess Detention Center after pleading guilty to a charge of aggravated assault. Pitchess was part of the county jail system; a sentence of less than a year was served in the county system, while a sentence of more than a year meant a transfer to state prison.

Stilwell picked up his phone, found Dunne among his contacts, and called him. It went to message.

“Tom, it’s Stil. Just checking on you to see how you’re doing. Give me a call when you get this. All right, man, talk to you.”

He disconnected and thought about Dunne. He had been transferred to the Catalina sub seven months earlier. Stilwell had been told he was coming from the jail division but wasn’t sure where he’d worked in the massive multifacility system. He was also not told what transgression had resulted in Dunne’s transfer.

Stilwell went back to work and an hour later emailed the whole package of cases to Juarez. He didn’t expect to hear from her until late in the day. She had a calendar to cover at the Long Beach courthouse and that would be her priority. Catalina was not high on any mainlander’s to-do list.

Stilwell next started to review the crime reports that had come in over the long weekend and that he’d been too busy doing extra patrol or booking bodies to look at. There were sixteen, all crimes that did not involve arrests and that he, as the island’s lone detective, would need to follow up on.

Catalina was shaped like a lopsided eight—or an infinity symbol, as many inhabitants of the island preferred to view it. Avalon was built on a natural harbor on the south side of the island and was far and away its biggest population center. Two Harbors was a small town at the isthmus between the two halves of the eight. A slow twenty-mile drive or a faster boat ride from Avalon, it was a place where residents wanted as little as possible to do with tourism and civilization, including law enforcement. The rest of the island was largely undeveloped except for small nomadic settlements of people who were all running from something or somebody.

Three of the crime reports had come from Two Harbors: a stolen outboard motor, a vandalized golf cart, and a crab-trap poaching. These were not major crimes, although the poaching was thethird such occurrence in a month, and Stilwell put these aside to review later. He made irregular visits to Two Harbors to follow cases or simply to show the flag, but he usually waited until several reports had accumulated. He planned to get out there by the end of the week.

The remaining cases were a mixed bag of vandalism, petty thefts, and fraud involving visitors who had made online reservations that turned out to be phony for hotels, fishing charters, or island services. Their deposits had disappeared into the digital ether, and there had been no hotel, tour, or fishing boat awaiting them. Most of the reports were walk-ins and were handled by Mercy, who consoled the victims and then called around to see if she could find a hotel room or at least a seat on a ferry going back to the mainland.

Stilwell shuffled through the reports until one grabbed his attention. It was a felony theft report filed by the general manager of the Black Marlin Club. The BMC was a private club that was over a century old. It had an invite-only membership of moneyed families from the mainland who brought their yachts in from Newport Beach, Santa Barbara, Marina del Rey, and other wealthy enclaves along the California coast. The club was named after what had once been the sport fisherman’s prize catch, and its members were much like the black marlin: sleek, fast, and rare in California waters. They were also dangerous—the members, that is—in terms of their reach into the corridors of power and wealth. Stilwell had been cautioned when he was transferred to Catalina to give Black Marlin members a very wide berth.

The report from general manager Charles Crane was on the theft of a small black-jade sculpture of a marlin rising from the ocean’s surface. The sculpture had been on display on a pedestal in the entry hall of the clubhouse for nearly a hundred years. Thepedestal stood next to a glass case containing other historical items from the club’s past.

Deputy Tom Dunne had taken the theft report on Saturday just hours before he was attacked. According to Dunne’s crime summary, it was unknown when the sculpture had been stolen, because the pedestal was in the front hallway, which was not routinely used by members or employees. Members usually arrived by boat and entered or left the premises through doorways connecting to the docks at the side and rear of the building. Employees were not allowed to use the front entrance and used a side door.

The sculpture was reported missing on Saturday when a housekeeper charged with dusting it once a week found the pedestal empty. Crane described the sculpture as ten inches tall and weighing three or four pounds. He gave its value as priceless because of its age, the quality of the jade, and its connection to one of the club’s founders. What Stilwell zeroed in on was not the stolen object or its value but the suspect Crane had identified.

He’d told Dunne that the week before the sculpture was noticed missing, he had fired an employee named Leigh-Anne Moss for inappropriate behavior. The report said that Moss was a part-time waitress in the club’s private restaurant and bar and that she had broken the rule forbidding socializing with members. Crane told Dunne that he suspected that Moss took the jade marlin on her way out of the club following the acrimonious meeting that had resulted in her dismissal.

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