Ironwood

Chapter 8

FIVE MINUTES AFTER Simon was shuttled to the heliport, Stilwell took a call from Captain Corum, who dove headlong into his upset.

“I thought I was clear with you, Stil,” he said. “You are on the bench until the investigation of the shooting is complete.”

“You were clear, Captain,” Stilwell said. “I just thought I had to check the morning boat to see if anybody caught my eye. Someone did, and now we have him in a cell. Would you rather we didn’t have him?”

“The question answers itself. But you could have sent Simon or any of your deputies out there to check the boat. Instead, you chose to disregard my order. So I will give it again: You are benched until further notice. If you are on duty, you are in the substation. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Am I being clear?”

“You’re clear.”

“Good.”

“Uh, Captain, what about court?”

“What about it?”

“The Allen trial? I’m supposed to go to Long Beach next week to talk with the prosecution team about my testimony. What if I—”

“This will be wrapped up by the end of the week, so don’t worry about that. Until then, just stay at the sub. Handle the phones, clear that junk out of the interview room. Oh, and one other thing.”

“What?”

“Give me a heads-up if you hear anything from ICE. If they come and grab our guy, he’ll be out of the country before we know it.”

“Will do. And Captain?”

“What?”

“What’s the latest on Ramirez?”

“Last I heard, she was hanging in, but we can’t talk to her. They got her on a ventilator. Hoping for tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

After the call, Stilwell put his phone down on his desk and thought about Ramirez fighting for her life.

He had gotten close to her in the past year as he mentored her and had watched her become the most capable and dependable deputy on his team.

Now it seemed possible that her days as a deputy were over, and this made Stilwell feel both sad and guilty.

It didn’t matter whether the review of his actions resulted in him getting a slap on the wrist or an all-clear from the department.

His own review left him wondering what he could have or should have done differently.

He used a key to unlock a desk drawer and took out the folder on Quigley.

It was Stilwell’s practice as the supervisor of the substation to keep a file on all deputies assigned to the island.

Each folder was thin, just transfer orders and a basic info sheet that included the deputy’s address and phone number and, if applicable, the spouse’s name and phone number and children’s names and birth dates.

Now he made the call he’d always dreaded making when he worked homicides.

Quigley’s wife already knew he had been killed, but that didn’t make this any easier.

He almost hoped no one would answer so he could put it off for a while, but it was picked up right away.

“How can I help you?” A man’s voice.

“This is Sergeant Stilwell. I was Deputy Quigley’s supervisor. I’d like to talk to Adriana Quigley if she’s available.”

“Can you hold for a moment while I check?”

“Sure.”

Two minutes later he heard a woman say weakly, “Hello?” Stilwell spoke fast, following a subconscious urge to get the call over with as quickly as possible.

“Mrs. Quigley, this is Sergeant Stilwell,” he said. “I was Alton’s supervisor here on Catalina. I’m calling to express to you how sorry I am for the loss of Alton. He was new out here, but I could tell he was a good and dedicated man.”

The truth was that Stilwell barely knew Quigley and hadn’t yet formed an opinion of him as a man or a law enforcement officer.

“What happened out there?” Adriana Quigley said.

“Ma’am, I’m not part of that investigation,” Stilwell said. “But I’m sure you will be kept—”

“Why was he out at the airport? I know your name. The captain said you were there.”

“Uh, yes, I was there but I didn’t see what happened. I was chasing a suspect down the mountain.”

“Then you should have been with him. You could have saved him.”

Stilwell wasn’t sure if she meant that he could have prevented the shooting or that he could have saved Quigley if he had been with him.

“Anyway, I have to go,” she said. “Goodbye, Sergeant Stilwell.”

She disconnected before Stilwell could respond.

He thought about the conversation for a few minutes before he was interrupted by a call on the desk line from Mercy.

“The tow guys went up and pulled the ATV up to the top,” she said. “They want to know where to take it.”

She was talking about the ATV Stilwell had chased down the mountain the night before. It had been processed and towed out of the brush. It could now be returned to Sellers, its owner, but Stilwell didn’t want to make that call because Corum might give him a hard time for working the case.

“Tell them to put it in the city equipment yard,” he said. “I’ll take care of it later.”

He stepped out of the office and checked the deputies’ report-writing desk, then went over to Mercy.

“What happened to O’Connor’s report on the ATV?” he asked.

“Oh, right here,” Mercy said.

She handed him a sheet from the top of a stack on her desk.

He checked the info boxes on the reporting party and saw that Art Sellers was a quality-control supervisor at the desalination plant located on the south side of the island.

There were cell phone and work numbers for Sellers, but Stilwell wasn’t interested in interviewing him by phone.

He decided he would attempt an in-person interview later, when he was off duty and technically not violating the captain’s order to work in the sub.

“Mercy, I’m going to start clearing out the lost-and-found,” he said. “Do you mind calling Father Braxton and telling him that we’ll be ready tomorrow for him to pick up donations for the church sale?”

“Glad to,” Mercy said.

Stilwell looked up at the camera mounted in the corner of the squad room and imagined the captain sitting at his desk watching him.

“Did you send the captain the camera link?” he asked.

“I did,” Mercy said. “The six-pack.”

“Good.”

Stilwell went into the interview room to assess the boxes and other property he had neatly stacked against one wall.

When lost or forgotten items were brought to the sub, the official procedure was to write a report on anything with a value of a hundred dollars or more.

This report contained a description of the item, the date it was turned in, who received it, and what efforts had been made to locate its owner.

Mercy did most of this work, but it was a low priority on the list of her many duties as office manager.

More often than not, what actually happened was that they waited to see if someone came into the substation looking for their lost property.

The biggest item in the lost-and-found was an eight-foot paddleboard that had been left on Descanso Beach seven weeks earlier.

Mercy had taped the property report to it.

Stilwell simply moved it to the other side of the room, where he planned to place everything that would be picked up for the church rummage sale.

He then started going through the other items. There were folding beach chairs, a high-end fishing rod and reel and a tackle box to go with it, and assorted items of clothing, none of which had any visible indications of ownership.

Stilwell moved all of it over to the donation wall.

There was a plastic box containing phones that had been found and turned in.

They were password-protected, leaving Mercy no way to trace them.

A whole plastic carton was filled with various pieces of scuba-diving equipment left behind at the diving steps near the casino.

He moved these cartons over to the donation wall too.

There were three backpacks, including what looked like a fairly new Hyperlite Unbound camping pack.

Stilwell knew it was top of the line and went for over three hundred dollars because he had priced backpacks the Christmas before as a present for Tash, who camped several times a year on the island.

The property report Mercy had written was slipped into a netted pocket on the side of the pack.

Stilwell pulled it and saw that it had been brought into the sub two months earlier.

A person named Lenore Beaupre had turned it in after finding it on a bench on Crescent Avenue near the pier.

He unzipped the pack and dumped its contents onto the interview table. It contained mostly women’s clothing—T-shirts, jeans, and underwear—which did not surprise Stilwell, because the packs came in male and female torso sizes and this one was the shorter size.

Also among the contents were small pieces of camping gear, including a mini-flashlight, a waterproof container filled with matches, a first aid kit, a compass on a wristband, and an insulated water bottle.

Stilwell started going through the pack’s zippered compartments looking for anything that might lead to the identity of its owner.

He found a small makeup compact, four individually wrapped tampons, a ChapStick, and a key ring with five keys attached.

One of the keys had a Ford logo on it. It was an old-style key that turned in the ignition, not the electronic fob that most contemporary vehicles came with.

Of the four other keys, only one stood out.

It was a Medeco key with a large square head.

The name and number of a locksmith was imprinted on it along with the words DO NOT DUPLICATE.

Stilwell was familiar with the Medeco brand from prior investigations and used them himself.

They were expensive, but you got what you paid for: a secure, tamperproof lock.

The locksmith’s area code was 562, which covered most of southwest L.A.

County, including Long Beach and the northern beach towns of Orange County.

His curiosity was piqued by the fact that nobody had come to claim this expensive pack and its contents.

Stilwell took out his phone and called the number on the key.

The phone was answered right away by a man whose voice had been cured over time with cigarette smoke.

“Gold Coast Lock and Key, how can I help you?”

“Yes, my name is Stilwell. I’m a detective with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Who am I speaking with?”

“This is Barn. This is my business.”

“Barney?”

“No, just Barn. I’m sort of a big guy. People call me Barn, short for Barn Door. What can I do for you, Detective?”

“I’m conducting an investigation and I’m looking at a key with the name and number of your shop on it. I’m wondering if it’s possible to trace it to its owner.”

“Uh, that depends. What kind of—”

“It’s a Medeco and there are some numbers printed on the head under the shop name.”

“Then you’re in lock, as I like to say. We keep Medeco records in case somebody needs a replacement key made.”

“Even if it says Do not duplicate on it?”

“We keep the name of the customer and that’s the only one who can order a copy. What reference number do you have there?”

Stilwell gave him the six-digit number and waited as the man typed it into a computer.

“This is weird,” Barn said.

“How so?”

“I remember this one because the police came around asking about her.”

“About who?”

“The customer’s name is Angela Metier. That’s in our records. The police came in here and asked about her because she was missing.”

“When was this?”

“Oh boy, it must have been… three or four years ago? They found a receipt for the keys we made for her and wanted to know if she’d said anything about needing the Medeco locks because of a security issue. They were thinking she might have had a stalker or something.”

Stilwell was silent for a few moments as he considered this information. Something about what Barn said didn’t make sense.

“You’re sure it was three or four years ago?” he asked. “Not more recently?”

“No, I’m looking at it here on my screen. We did the work at her place in March of ’22. And it was pretty soon after that that the cops came in here asking about her.”

“Long Beach police?”

“No, actually, it was LAPD. She lived up there.”

“Do you know if she later showed up or was found somewhere?”

“No, I don’t think so. At least not that I heard. It was in the papers for a while, and I remember thinking, Pretty girl like that, I hope she’s okay. I heard they traced her out to Catalina but then the trail went cold.”

Four years ago was before Stilwell had been posted on the island. He had not been told about the Angela Metier case when he arrived. It was not part of the briefing he got from the outgoing sergeant.

“I think, if I remember right, that the conclusion was that she had gone off on her own somewhere,” Barn said. “You know, like it was a voluntary thing.”

Stilwell asked Barn where the work for Angela Metier had been done.

He was given an address on Pacific Avenue in San Pedro.

Stilwell was familiar with the area and knew the address was close to the Lighthouse, a jazz club he’d frequented when he was living on the mainland.

The address also confirmed that it had been the LAPD that came asking about the key.

San Pedro was in the city of Los Angeles.

“You don’t happen to remember the name of the LAPD detective, do you?” he asked.

“No, but if you give me a minute, I can probably find his card,” Barn said. “Don’t get many visits from the cops, so I think I kept the guy’s card in my desk.”

“Sure, take a look.”

“Hold on.”

Stilwell heard the phone being put down on a hard surface.

While he waited, he thought about the incongruity of Angela Metier being missing for four years and her keys and backpack showing up on a bench in Avalon two months ago.

He held the backpack up to study it again and noticed that the cushioned panel that went against the spine of the wearer had a jagged line drawn on it with a Sharpie.

It looked like an EKG tracing or a seismogram of a mild earthquake.

“Okay, got it,” Barn said. “The card says ‘Detective Bryce Kaufman, LAPD Missing Persons Unit.’”

Stilwell put the backpack down.

“Is there a phone number?” he asked.

He wrote down the number Barn gave him.

“You’ve been a big help,” he said.

“What are you thinking, that she’s alive out there somewhere?” Barn said.

“That I don’t know. But I’m going to try to find out.”