“Give me the number he called from.”
“It won’t matter. He uses burners and changes phones all the time. It’s never the same number.”
“Then where is he?”
“I told you — I have no idea. This is a nightmare. If I’d known what was going to happen, I would have warned you. I would’ve stopped it.”
“I wish you had.”
“But I didn’t know. Stil, you have to believe that.”
Stilwell didn’t answer. He was thinking about what Juarez had just told him: Terranova was willing to make a deal to give up a bigger fish than himself. It had to be the mayor.
“Who is he?” he asked. “How come he has no record? Not even a juvie jacket in Bakersfield. I checked.”
“Because he’s smart,” Juarez said. “He stays clean and makes other people do his dirty work for him. Like me. He gets something on you and then you have no choice. It’s probably how he played the mayor. He got something on him.”
“What’s he got on you, Monika?”
“We...”
Juarez shook her head in disgust — with the question and herself.
“We did things when we were younger,” she said. “Things I’m not proud of. He has pictures, okay? Photos that would destroy me. That’s all I’ll tell you. That’s all you need to know.”
“Then this could be your way out. You must be able to get a message to him.”
“What message? He’ll have me whacked if he sniffs a setup — and believe me, he’ll know.”
She pointed to the whitish scar that ran along the left side of her jaw.
“He gave me this,” she said. “When I told him I was leaving to go to college, that I wanted to be a lawyer someday. He did this to me, and you know what, I didn’t even call the police. I lied about it to my mother — said I crashed my bike — because I knew he would do worse if I turned him in.”
It was a terrible story, and despite himself, Stilwell felt sympathy for Juarez and her lifelong predicament. But it didn’t alter the contradiction between her actions and her pose of victimhood.
“Look, you need to figure out a way to contact him,” he said. “Tell him you thought about it and there is a deal to be made. He said it wasn’t his play, so we’ll hear him out. If he comes in and gives up the bigger fish, you’ll deal.”
Juarez shook her head as she thought about that.
“And so what happens to me if a deal is made?” she asked. “What’s to stop him from throwing me in to sweeten the pot?”
“You said he’s smart,” Stilwell said. “If he gets what he wants out of it, why would he burn you? He’ll want to keep you for the next rainy day.”
Juarez considered that and Stilwell could read her face. She saw it as the smart move.
“And what about you?” she said. “What happens to me with you?”
“I don’t know,” Stilwell said. “If you help me take these guys down, I will try to move on.”
“How can I trust that?”
“You’re just going to have to.”
Juarez shook her head.
“All of this because of a dead buffalo,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
“It’s not about the buffalo,” Stilwell said. “It’s about greed and power.”
“I guess it always is.”
“So can you get to Terranova or not?”
“Maybe. He once came to me because he needed a good lawyer. For a business matter. I gave him the name of a guy I went to law school with who does corporate law. He hired Bryson, and that was a few years ago, but the guy might still have a way to reach him.”
“Bryson? Bryson what?”
“Bryson Long. He has a one-man firm down in Seal Beach.”
Stilwell nodded.
“That’s the lawyer on the Ferris wheel project,” he said. “I was looking that stuff up Thursday night at the Zane Grey. He’s gotta still be working for Terranova. He must have a way to reach him.”
“I’ll call him,” Juarez said.
“When you get to Terranova, set up a meeting inside the courthouse,” he said. “So he has to go through a metal detector.”
“What if he wants to bring Bryson or a criminal defense lawyer?” Juarez asked.
“That’s his right. But if they hold us up with that, he’s going to be sitting in a cell until they do make a deal. Tell him that.”
“And you’ll be here?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
40
On his way back downtown, Stilwell made a call to Sampedro to summarize his interview with Easterbrook the night before. He suggested a more formal and recorded interview, a DNA swab for comparison to the foreign DNA recovered during Leigh-Anne Moss’s autopsy, and a hard look at his alibi.
“But you don’t like him for this?” Sampedro asked.
“My take is that his grief is legit,” Stilwell said. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her.”
“Right.”
“But if he was at his office in L.A. while she was at the Black Marlin Club, I think he’s in the clear. There’s got to be a way to confirm that or catch him in the lie.”
“The DNA is going to be a problem for him.”
“There was no physical indication of rape. And we have nothing else that suggests it was. A match would back up his story about it being consensual sex.”
“Yeah, but maybe he has one last roll in the hay with her and then he conks her on the head and end of problem. Everything we’re hearing, this girl was bad news. Maybe he found that out.”
Stilwell thought of nightshade being poisonous and deadly.
“My gut says it’s not Easterbrook,” he said.
“You and your gut,” Sampedro said. “We’ll bring him in, put him in a room, and see what he says. What else you got?”
“That’s it for—”
“Wait, hold on. My partner wants to talk to you.”
Stilwell almost groaned. He knew where this would go. Sampedro passed the phone to Ahearn.
“Hey, shooter, what are you doing working this?” he said. “I hear you’re ROD for your latest shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later escapade.”
Stilwell waited until he was sure Ahearn was finished laying on the sarcasm. Nothing more came.
“For once, Ahearn, you’re absolutely right,” he said. “I’m relieved of duty, and that’s exactly why I was giving your partner the name of a witness to be interviewed. You two can follow up on it or not. Doesn’t matter to me.”
“You know what I’m relieved of?” Ahearn said. “I’m relieved I don’t have to work on this with you anymore.”
He disconnected the call. Stilwell felt his cheeks start to burn. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror and saw that his face had reddened. He tried to let it go. He had not discussed with Sampedro his realization that if Daniel Easterbrook was telling the truth about Leigh-Anne Moss, then Charles Crane had lied. Stilwell had kept that to himself because it threw the investigation back over to the island, and that was his part of the case, whether he was on duty or not. He felt guilty about withholding salient information from fellow investigators — it was never the best way to run an investigation. But to Stilwell, it was the only way with Ahearn in the picture.
He picked up the phone again and called Tash. He told her that he’d been on a waiting list and finally had an appointment at one with a BSU therapist. He said that after the session he would come back to the Huntington to pick her up and that they should be able to make the three-thirty Express back to Avalon. Tash seemed calmer than she was yesterday and sounded pleased with the plan.
“I’ll be ready,” she said.
“If you want to speed things up, throw my stuff into my suitcase,” Stilwell said. “Call the bell stand and have them take the bags out to the front drive. I’ll give you a thirty-minute heads-up, and you should be ready for a swoop-and-scoop. It’ll save a lot of time.”