Page 98 of Nightshade
“Listen, I want you out there with me in front of the media. You’re the head guy here on the island and you should be standing with me. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll introduce you and you just stand there.”
“Whatever you need, Cap.”
Stilwell took his coffee mug off the desk and stepped out of the office. But he didn’t go to the break room for coffee. He walked into the jail and saw that the body and the forensics team were gone. He quickly pulled his phone and called McKey back. The reporter answered the call with an excited tone.
“Sergeant Stilwell. What’s up?”
“You didn’t get this from me.”
“Okay.”
“Say it.”
“I didn’t get it from you. It’s off the record, deep background. Whatever you tell me, you won’t be anywhere near it.”
Stilwell turned so he could watch the door and see if anyone was coming in. He lowered his voice when he spoke again.
“Okay, prove I can trust you,” he said. “At the press conference, the captain’s going to state that the prisoner who got murdered was in jail because he had admitted to killing the buffalo up on the preserve last week.”
“Was that the motive for the murder?” McKey asked.
“Don’t ask questions. I’m not answering any. What the captain won’t be saying is that the dead guy worked for Island Mystery Tours in cart maintenance.”
“Okay…”
McKey obviously wasn’t making the jump.
“So the mutilated buffalo juices the aliens-on-Catalina stories in the media…” Stilwell prompted.
“Holy shit,” McKey said. “And that in turn juices business for Island Mystery Tours.”
“Cause and effect.”
“Did the guy who killed the buffalo admit that was why he did it?”
“I told you I’m not answering questions. But why else would he do it?”
“That’s Baby Head Terranova’s business. Is he being investigated?”
“Write a good story, Lionel. Just keep me out of it.”
Stilwell disconnected before McKey could respond and pocketed his phone.
33
AS THE SUNset on Friday, Corum and his team of investigators piled into two helicopters and flew back to the mainland. The reporters had left earlier, as had the body of Henry Gaston, which was escorted across the Santa Monica Bay by a sheriff’s boat, offloaded, and taken to the coroner’s office for autopsy. The hit man Merris Spivak remained at large and it was a coin flip as to whether he had somehow gotten off the island or was still in Avalon or in the mountains hiding. Stilwell had no opinion. His attention was on how to make a case against the man who he believed had brought Spivak to the island with the purpose of killing Gaston.
Stilwell had been awake for thirty-eight hours by the time he got home. He had expected Tash Dano to be waiting for him, but the house was dark. She had not responded to his earlier texts about plans for the evening or to his heads-up that he was on his way home. The truth was that he was too tired to eat or discuss his day. He wanted to sleep. He called her, but when it went straight to voicemail, he was relieved—he was too exhausted even to engage in a basic phone conversation.
“Hey, Tash,” he said. “I’m home and I’m beat. I’m going tocrawl into bed and sleep for about ten hours. Come on by if you want, but I can’t promise that I’ll be good company. Love you.”
He disconnected, wondering if his utter exhaustion had lowered his defenses enough to say the last two words of the message. He had never said those words to her before and wondered what her reaction would be.
About a month earlier, they had reached a point in their relationship where they had agreed to let each other track the location of the other’s phone. Tash had suggested this, admitting that she felt slightly insecure about being involved with a man who often left the island for work-related trips or to deal with the final dissolution of property and emotions from his marriage. Stilwell understood this and agreed to the mutual tracking. It seemed to him a modern addition to the steps of a deepening relationship, even though he felt no personal need to always know where his lover was. But now, for the first time, he attempted to track Tash.
He opened up her contact on his phone and thumbed the photo he had assigned to her number, and it opened up to her details and a map. The map showed her at the Buffalo Nickel, a bar that was out near the desal plant in the industrial section of the island. The bar was a locals’ hangout away from the tourist sector—he had been there with her at least twice—and he was not surprised that she had gone there after work on a Friday evening. But under the map it said the location was more than two hours old. It would normally sayLiveunder the map if it was a current location, so she must have turned her phone off, and that was puzzling.
Stilwell realized he was stumbling into the same insecurity trap that Tash had fallen into and that modern technology only served to heighten. Again, he ascribed it to his exhaustion and tried to dismiss it. He plugged his phone into the charger on the bedside table, set an alarm for seven the next morning, stripped off his clothes, and got into bed. Within five minutes he was asleep.
