Chapter 13
STILWELL CAUGHT THE last Express back to the island. Along the way, he sat in the enclosed commodore cabin and caught up on email and texts. He sent Tash a message asking where the third leg of the Trans-Catalina Trail started. Her response came quickly: Hermit Gulch.
Stilwell decided he would go up there the next day to get a feel for the area where Angela Metier had been heading. It was Tash’s usual day off and he would invite her to come, as she was the experienced hiker and he wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost. Plus he would enjoy her company.
As the boat cruised into the harbor, Stilwell pulled up the substation’s cameras on his phone so he could see who was on duty and what was going on.
Mercy made the schedule for the island’s deputies, and with two officers down, that was not an easy task.
He planned to tell her in the morning about the eighty hours of approved overtime from Corum.
He saw no one in the squad room. Mercy’s desk was empty, but it was after five, and that was not unusual.
But the standard protocol was to keep a deputy in the sub whenever anyone was held in a cell.
He switched to the jail cameras and saw that cell one was empty.
He checked the second cell and saw that Kalas had not been moved to it.
Kalas was gone.
Stilwell immediately called Mercy’s cell. She answered right away and Stilwell didn’t bother with a hello.
“What’s going on at the sub?” he asked. “Where is Kalas?”
“Uh, nothing’s going on, far as I know,” Mercy said. “And the ICE agents picked Kalas up.”
“What? When?”
“About three. They came in with the transfer order from a federal magistrate.”
“Who let them take him?”
“Deputy Mason was in here. He dealt with them and the paperwork.”
“Mercy, I’ll call you back.”
Stilwell disconnected and went into his call history to find the number for the ICE agent he had spoken to about the hold on Gonzalo Kalas. The ferry was now docked and he got up from his seat to join the tourists disembarking. He made the call as he was crossing the gangway.
“Agent Gordon, how can I help you?”
It sounded like Gordon was in a moving vehicle.
“It’s Stilwell out on Catalina. I want Kalas back.”
“Uh, what are we talking about here?”
“Gonzalo Kalas. You guys came and picked him up.”
“That’s news to me.”
“Bullshit. It might not have been you, but you sent guys to grab him. He’s the suspect in the murder of a sheriff’s deputy and I don’t want him on the next bus to Tijuana.”
“Look, as far as I’m concerned, I was waiting on you. You said you had eyes on him and you were supposedly going to call me once you had him in custody. Funny, I never got that call.”
“You’re saying you didn’t have him picked up?”
“Exactly. But he is on our pickup list. If you booked him, his name could’ve come up on the computer.”
Stilwell was silent as he walked toward the substation.
“You there, Stilwell?” Gordon asked.
“I’ll call you back,” Stilwell said.
He disconnected. He didn’t have a two-way with him so he called Mason’s cell phone. It went directly to voicemail, but the message box was full. He dictated a text telling Mason to return to the sub ASAP.
Two minutes later Stilwell entered the substation through the unlocked front door to find Mason already there.
“Sorry, I was in the can when you called,” he said. “I was about to call you back.”
“Tell me about ICE coming for Kalas,” Stilwell said.
“Uh, yeah, two ICE guys came in and said they were here to pick him up. They had the pickup order from the judge.”
“What judge?”
“A federal magistrate, actually.”
“Did they leave it?”
“No, but I made a copy of it.”
“Show it to me.”
Mason went over to the deputies’ report-writing desk and took a document off the top of a stack of papers. He handed it to Stilwell.
“What about badges and IDs?” Stilwell said, looking at the document. “You check them?”
“They had badges,” Mason said.
“Did you get their names?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t write them down. One was Rivera, like the pitcher. I remember that. Not sure I remember the other one.”
At first glance, the custody-transfer order looked legitimate.
But then Stilwell noticed that it had a seal from the magistrate of the US District Court for the Southern District of California.
Los Angeles County was in the Central District.
It didn’t mean the order wasn’t valid, but it made him suspicious.
“This is from the Southern District,” he said.
“So?” Mason said. “Is that a problem?”
“Just seems odd that they’d come all the way up from San Diego to pick the guy up. Did they say anything about where they were taking him?”
“No, they just said that they were here for him and showed me the transfer order.”
The order was two pages, and the magistrate’s signature and seal were on a third page.
“Take a look at this,” Stilwell said. “Does this look like a different font on the signature page?”
He handed the document to Mason, who flipped between the pages and studied the font on each. “Uh… maybe,” he said. “Hard to tell.”
“I think they’re different,” Stilwell said, taking the transfer order back.
“Then what’s it mean?”
“They could have used the signature page from another order and clipped it to this one.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know yet. What time did they come?”
“Around three.”
“They come on a chopper?”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“And you’re sure they were ICE?”
“Well, pretty sure. Like I said, they had badges.”
“Did they take his property?”
“Yeah, they took it. Did I do something wrong, Sarge?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Then can I go back out on patrol?”
“Of course. I’ll probably stick around here for a while.”
Mason grabbed a set of keys. As he headed to the door, a new thought came to Stilwell.
“Hey, you worked shifts with Quigley when he first transferred here, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, a few,” Mason said.
“Did he ever talk about what happened to him back on the mainland? You know, like what got him the transfer out here?”
“No, not really. I mean, I asked him about it. You know, Island of Misfit Toys and all that. I asked him who he’d pissed off over there and he claimed he didn’t do anything to anybody. He just said he asked to transfer out to the island so he could lie low for a while.”
“‘Lie low’—you’re sure he said that?”
“Hundred percent.”
“And you didn’t ask why he was lying low?”
“No, I didn’t. It was just conversation, you know?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Can I go now?”
“Yes, you can go.”