Ironwood

Chapter 21

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Stilwell drove his ATV through the open gate of the ABC vineyard and followed an access road that bordered the original vineyard to the grape-processing and wine-production complex.

He parked next to the two deputies’ ATVs and could see McGowan and Stabile standing in the shadow of the corrugated roof over the production facility.

Dwarfed by two huge stainless-steel fermenting tanks, they were speaking to Oliver Marquez, but when Marquez saw Stilwell, the ranking officer on the island, he left the two deputies like they were day-old fish and charged toward him.

“All right, Stilwell, what are you going to do about this?” he demanded. “I am sick and fucking tired of waiting on results from you people.”

Stilwell stepped out of his ATV and held his hands up in a calming gesture.

Marquez’s face was red with anger. He was nearing seventy years old and was deeply tanned with a full head of unruly white hair.

He wore blue jeans and a denim work shirt and had a gold watch on his wrist. His jeans were tucked into black rubber vineyard boots.

“Let’s just calm down a little bit, Mr. Marquez,” Stilwell said.

“Fuck that,” Marquez said. “I’m not going to calm anything down. These people are attacking me and my interests with impunity and I’ve had my fill of it.”

“What exactly happened this time?”

“Somebody came onto my private property and chopped the shit out of my goddamn vines.”

“Okay, can you show me?”

“What for? You aren’t going to do shit about it.”

“Look, Mr. Marquez, I understand you’re frustrated, but—”

“No, you fucking don’t.”

“Sir, I’ve warned you in the past. Do not take your frustrations out on me or my deputies. We all want the same thing here. We want to stop this, and I promise you, we will.”

“You said that last time, and here we are.”

Stilwell didn’t have a good response to that. He held a hand out in the direction of the vineyard.

“Do you want to show me?” he said.

“Get in,” Marquez said.

He headed toward a hardtop ATV with the ABC logo on its door. Before Stilwell followed, he spoke to McGowan and Stabile.

“You two can go back out,” he said. “Did either of you take photos?”

“Negative,” McGowan said.

“Well, you should have,” Stilwell said. “It’s getting dark.”

Stilwell rode with Marquez to the expanded side of the vineyard.

The new vineyard was just two years old, not yet mature enough to produce grapes for wine.

Marquez had told him that a new vineyard had to be cultivated for three years before there was a usable harvest and at least two more before anybody would buy the wine from it.

It was a long-term investment and a gamble, and the constant vandalism slowed the process and endangered the eventual payoff for his family.

“They took out three lines,” Marquez said while he drove. “French clones. Do you have any idea what it will cost me to start over?”

“Not really,” Stilwell said. “But I’m sure it puts this at a felony level.”

“Damn right it does. I want these people in prison.”

“Once again, Mr. Marquez, I have to ask you if you have any idea who would do this. There were lots of protests, and the notable names from those have all been checked. No one stood out based on criminal records and, in some cases, media interviews as somebody who would cross the line to this degree of vandalism.”

“Then you’re naive. Look at all the protesters who crossed lines with ICE. Burning cars, throwing rocks at the cops.”

“I think that was a little different. That was about people being grabbed off the streets and families being separated. Let’s talk about today. When did this happen?”

“My viticulturist was out checking the vines today and discovered it. So all I know is that it happened before that. Probably last night. I hadn’t been out here since Friday afternoon.”

“Who is the viticulturist and is he still here?”

“It’s a she. Helena Novak. She’s from an old wine family in Napa. She stays at the Atwater when she comes over.”

“Okay, I’ll probably need to talk to her. I take it she’s not full-time?”

“No, she comes about twice a month to check on things.”

Marquez drove down a bouncy dirt road that ran perpendicular to the rows of the new vineyard.

The young vines were just beginning to canopy over the trellises that spread the branches and created the familiar look of a vineyard.

Marquez stopped the ATV at the end of the road, where the vineyard bordered protected land owned by the Catalina Island Conservancy.

The border was delineated by a green chain-link fence that stood six feet high.

They got out of the ATV and walked into the vineyard. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss, but once they were walking down a row, Stilwell saw that the trunk of each vine had been slashed clean through, essentially decapitating the canopy of the vine and leaving it to die on the trellis.

“You see what they did to my beautiful vines?” Marquez said.

“I see,” Stilwell said.

McGowan was probably right—a machete or similar tool had done the damage.

“How many individual plants?” he asked.

“Three lines, forty a line,” Marquez said. “You understand what this costs me in time and money? Two years gone. I have to start over and wait three years to harvest over here. Do you know what that means in terms of cases lost?”

“No idea, Mr. Marquez.”

“You can cut my pipes, fuck with my tractors and equipment, and I can fix it in a day. This? This is years. And if you don’t find who fucking did this, I will.”

Stilwell was crouched and using his phone to take a close-up photo of one of the slashed vines. He stood up and turned to Marquez.

“What does that mean?” he said.

“I know people, Stilwell,” Marquez said. “It means do your job or I’ll do it for you.”

“Mr. Marquez, listen to me carefully. I’ve told you that I understand your frustration. But you need to stand down and let me do my job. You stay on the sidelines, because if you wander off and do something stupid, we’re going to have a very big problem.”

“Fine, then do your fucking job. Because if you don’t get it done, you can be gone with one call. I did more than just vote for your fucking boss.”

Stilwell was angry now but knew he had to keep his composure. He offered a smile and shook his head. Then he lied to Marquez.

“If you know people who can take me off this rock, then by all means, call them,” he said.

“What you don’t seem to understand is none of us want to be here.

Me, that pair of deputies who responded to your call—none of us are here because we asked to be here.

So if you can get me back overtown, then please and thank you. Do it.”

“Yeah?” Marquez said. “How’d you like to go from Catalina to Compton? Those gangs over there would eat you alive.”

Stilwell caught and held Marquez’s angry stare. Finally, he calmed himself and got back to his professional demeanor.

“Did you or my deputies check the perimeter fence?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” Marquez said. “Why? That’s CIC land over there.”

Stilwell pointed at one of the damaged vines.

“Because if I’d done this, that’s where I would have come in. I doubt they drove down your access road.”

Stilwell walked out of the row and turned right toward the fence.

With Marquez trailing behind him, he walked the fence line for about forty feet before he came to a breach.

There was a four-foot cut in the links from the ground up.

Stilwell used his boot to push the fencing apart, and it created an opening easily big enough for a person to crawl through.

“Son of a bitch,” Marquez said.

“How often do you have the fence checked?” Stilwell asked.

“Uh, never. It’s a fence.”

“Okay, I’m going to go through to see if I can pick up a trail or anything else.”

“Don’t you need, like, a dog for that?”

“Don’t have a dog, Mr. Marquez. We could wait for one from overtown, but it’s getting dark.”

Marquez didn’t respond. Stilwell crouched down, pulled the fence open, and crawled through. He kept his eyes on the ground, looking for any disturbance that might be a footprint or an indication of a path. But there was nothing.

He stood up on the other side and looked through the fence at Marquez.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” he said.

“We came in the same cart,” Marquez said.

“I can walk back. I don’t know how long this will take.”

“Well, don’t get lost.”

“That’s the plan. While I’m doing this, why don’t you call your wine person at the Atwater and tell her I’ll be coming by tonight for an interview.”

“Okay, I’ll call her.”

Stilwell turned away from the fence. His instincts told him that the vandal would have come to the vineyard from the right.

Avalon Canyon Road and most of the hiking trails in the conservancy were in that direction.

He started moving that way. He checked his watch and estimated he had a half hour before it would be too dark for him to see.

The chaparral was tall and dry and its blades broke under his feet.

The area was thick with manzanita and mahogany bushes as well as prickly pear and barrel cactus.

The vegetation forced him to follow a meandering path that snaked in a northwesterly direction.

He saw no indication that he was on the same route the vandal had taken, but after ten minutes of steady slogging, he came to a clearing where there were two picnic tables with benches, a trash can, and an ocean view.

No one was there, but a hiking trail split off to the east toward Avalon Canyon Road.

Stilwell had no idea where he was. There was no conservancy placard with information about the location, just a sign on a post that said FIRE DANGER!

NO COOKING WITH FIRE. He stepped on one of the benches and then up onto the table.

It gave him a better view, and to the east he could see the top of the tower he knew was the centerpiece of the Wrigley Memorial and Botanic Garden. It helped him orient himself.

He pulled out his phone and saw that he still had a signal. He dropped a pin on his location and sent it in a text to Tash, asking if she could determine where he was. He took a photo of the picnic area and sent that to her as well.

She answered promptly.

I think you’re at the old San Pedro picnic grounds.

Not on many maps. Can you see the channel from there?

The part of the Santa Monica Bay between Avalon and Long Beach was called the San Pedro Channel but that too was left off most maps.

I see it and the top of the Wrigley phallus.

That was her name for the memorial. It always reminded Stilwell of the old Rolling Stones song about men building memorial towers toward the sky to ensure their fame everlasting.

Okay, then yes, that is the San Pedro picnic place.

Say it three times fast. LOL

Stilwell smiled and texted his thanks. He added that he had caught a call as he was leaving the sub and would be delayed but still planned on picking up a steak at Steve’s.

Stilwell climbed down from the table and checked the gravel and sand near the entry to the picnic grounds from the trail.

There were so many partial footprints going every which way that he knew his effort was useless.

It was getting dark quickly now and he wanted to get back to the vineyard before it was too late to see where he was going.

He had left his flashlight in the ATV and the last thing he wanted to do was walk into a barrel cactus and spend the evening picking spines out of his shins.

On his way back he saw something he hadn’t seen on his first pass: a green plastic box on a wooden post in a small clearing between two manzanita trees.

He stepped closer and determined that it was a protective box holding a camera.

There was a number stenciled on the top of the box and a latch with a small key lock.

He took a photo of the number, realizing that now he had another reason to talk to Kent Middleton the next day.

From there, it took Stilwell fifteen minutes to get back to the split in the fence and another ten in full darkness to walk the road back to the processing complex.

McGowan and Stabile were gone, but Marquez was waiting by what Stilwell now knew was a grape press.

It had been one of the things damaged in an earlier act of vandalism.

“Anything?” Marquez asked.

“The cut in the fence is about fifteen minutes from the San Pedro picnic grounds,” Stilwell said. “From there, a trail leads to the road. It’s probably the route that was used by the vandals, but I didn’t find any evidence to support that.”

“So a waste of time, then.”

“Not really. There’s a wildlife camera in the bushes out there. I’ll check it tomorrow and maybe we get lucky.”

“Where exactly is it?”

“About halfway between your fence and the picnic grounds. The conservancy puts them up to track animals and check for fires, that sort of thing.”

“You’ll let me know if it’s got anybody on it, right?”

“I’ll let you know when the time is appropriate to let you know. But speaking of cameras, you should think about putting some up in the vineyard. That and a sign up by the road that says there are cameras might be a solid deterrent.”

“One step ahead of you there. I already called a guy.”

“Good. There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you.”

“What?”

“Could this be something else, somebody using the water protests to get back at you for other reasons?”

“You mean, like, do I have any enemies?”

“Exactly.”

“No, this is not something else. My only enemies are the people who try to prevent me from using my land the way I see fit.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then. I’m going to go down to the Atwater to get a statement from Helena Novak.”

“When will I get the report?”

“What report?”

“The crime report on this. I’ll need it for insurance.”

“Give me a day to get it written up, then you can pick it up at the substation.”

“I will.”

“Good night, Mr. Marquez.”

“Good night, and listen, I’m sorry if I came on a little too strong.”

“Like I said, I understand your frustration. I want to get whoever did this as much as you do.”

Stilwell got in his ATV, turned on its lights, and headed back down to Avalon to talk to the viticulturist and then pick up dinner.