Page 59 of Nightshade

“Who?”

Forbes shook his head and spread his hands. Stilwell studied his reaction. He saw no tell that would indicate Forbes knew the name or was anything other than surprised by the question.

“Leigh-Anne Moss,” Stilwell said again. “You know her.”

Once again, he didn’t pose it as a question.

“I got news for you, Deputy Doo-Dah,” Forbes said. “I know no one named Leigh-Anne Moss. That was easy. Can I go now?”

“Not quite,” Stilwell said. “You work on theEmerald Sea,right?”

“Sometimes, yeah. When I’m needed. It’s a part-time gig.”

“What do you do for this part-time gig?”

“I keep it clean and I help the guy who owns it sail it back and forth from MDR. That’s it. What’s it got to do with this bullshit warrant?”

Stilwell ignored the question. He opened his laptop and pulled up the DMV photo of Leigh-Anne Moss. He turned the screen to face Forbes.

“You recognize her?” he asked.

“Sorry, no,” Forbes said. “Is that the girl? Leigh-Anne?”

“You sure you don’t know her, Duncan? You lie to me, and I’m just going to book you into county. I’ll let your probation officer deal with the warrant. Those guys, they have awesome caseloads. You’ll be lucky if your PO gets to you in a month.”

“Fine, it’s a zero-bail county. They haven’t changed that yet.”

“It’s nice that you know that, Duncan, but the warrant’s got a no-bail hold. You’ll be in there till your PO decides to show up. And he won’t be in any hurry.”

“They can’t do that. It’s zero-bail.”

“They can do it for violations of probation and parole. And they’ll do it with you.”

Stilwell could see the panic start to enter Forbes’s eyes.

“Look, I’m not lying, man,” Forbes said. “I don’t know her. If I did, I would tell you, but I’ve never seen that girl in my life!”

“Purple streak in her hair?” Stilwell suggested.

“No, man, I don’t fuckin’ know her.”

“Well, we’re going to come back to her. Meantime, let’s talk about you. Two weekends ago, where were you?”

“I don’t know. I was here. No, two weeks ago I was fishing. We were booked the weekend before Memorial Day.”

“We’re talking about Saturday, May seventeenth.”

“Yeah, the seventeenth. I was fishing.”

“Fishing where?”

“We had clients. We were out the whole weekend. Up around Anacapa. We anchored off Frenchy’s Saturday night. I got pictures on my phone.”

Anacapa was one of the Channel Islands that included Catalina. It was to the north, was uninhabited, and was one of the smaller islands in the chain, but Stilwell knew Frenchy’s Cove was a popular shelter up there where overnighters anchored.

“Okay, where’s your phone?” Stilwell asked.

“I don’t know,” Forbes said. “Those two deputies took it from me. And by the way, neither one of them knows shit about running that Zodiac. I’m lucky they didn’t flip it out there. And I was cuffed. I coulda drowned, man.”

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