Page 78 of Nightshade

“I understand. When will the lunch rush be over?”

“Probably around two.”

“Okay, let’s do two. After I finish eating, I’ll leave, but then I’ll come back at two to give you a ride down to the station.”

“So itwasher.”

“We’ll talk about that.”

“I knew she was going to get into trouble.”

Stilwell felt the whisper on the back of his neck again. He was beginning to think that finding Leslie Sneed might significantly advance the case.

“Well, we’ll talk about that too,” he said.

She left to put in his food order. Stilwell took a pen out of his pocket and started to read and edit the search warrant. But he soon stopped. He couldn’t concentrate because of his excitement over finding Leslie Sneed and because he knew she might provide information that would have to go into the request to search the Black Marlin Club.

He put the document aside and started thinking about how he would handle things at two.

26

AFTER FINISHING HISBLT, Stilwell had an hour to kill while Leslie Sneed worked the lunch rush at the Sandtrap. He drove the Gator down to Crescent and posted up on the side of the road where he had a view of the Black Marlin Club’s front door and the embarcadero dock on the side. He pulled out his phone and called the cell number Frank Sampedro had given him.

“Just checking in,” he said. “You guys at the boat yet?”

“Well into it,” Sampedro said. “And we got blood.”

“Really? Where?”

“The bottom of the helm. It was cleaned up, but forensics found it in a hinge on one of the floor hatches. We got enough for DNA matching. We’re just hoping it’s not fish blood.”

“It’s gotta be the victim’s. Colbrink told me he doesn’t fish.”

“Good to know.”

“Anything else from the boat?”

“We’re still working it. Forensics is down in the cabin now.”

“What about the cleaner? The Three-Oh-Three.”

“Nothing there. We checked the trash cans on the dock and even the dumpster where everything gets emptied. It all was picked up yesterday by county sanitation.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, but we got the blood in the helm.”

Getting fingerprints would have been better,Stilwell thought.

“Is Colbrink there?” he asked.

“He was,” Sampedro said. “Rex took him downtown for a formal interview.”

Stilwell didn’t say anything to that. He was thinking about what he remembered of Ahearn’s interview techniques. They were generally heavy-handed, and he hoped Ahearn wasn’t going to offend a cooperating witness and lose the access they currently had to both Colbrink and what was likely a floating crime scene.

“When you talked to Colbrink, did he tell you about Yacht Lock?” Sampedro asked.

“No. What’s Yacht Lock?” Stilwell replied.

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