Chapter 28
STILWELL WALKED BALLARD back to the Express dock after they got word that Laffont and Masser were settled in at the apartment at Bird Park and had a view through split curtains of Middleton’s front door.
She was taking the boat to San Pedro at noon so she could get back to work with the rest of her team.
They still needed to connect the suspect geographically to the other missing hikers and possibly link the fifth key to a disappearance.
She said the analysis of the backpack was due from the lab.
She was hoping for DNA or fingerprints but they both knew that such a case breaker was unlikely.
The killer was meticulous and undoubtedly had made sure that there was nothing about the backpack that could be traced back to him.
Ballard reported on their efforts to see if the Ford key found in the backpack fit the ignition of the Mustang that belonged to Candace Neary and was found abandoned at the observatory atop Griffith Park. The car had been sold by Neary’s family a few years after she went missing.
“We tracked down the buyer, but the car was wrecked in an accident four years ago,” she said. “It was sold for parts to a junkyard in the Valley and they had no record of where the ignition switch ended up. Another dead end.”
The boat was loading and there was a line of people at the gangway with their luggage and bags of souvenirs. Stilwell had called Kim Krabill, the ferry’s captain, and she was holding a seat in the commodore lounge for Ballard, so she didn’t need to queue up.
“I hope we’re not wrong about this guy,” Ballard said. “We have zero evidence against him.”
“My gut tells me we’re right,” Stilwell responded.
“Your gut to God’s ear. If we don’t find something soon, we might have to bring him in and try to break him.”
“He doesn’t seem to be the breaking type. Especially if he knows we have nothing solid.”
“At least it would let him know we’re watching him. Maybe make him stop.”
Stilwell was surprised by her thinking.
“What’s the hurry?” he asked.
“The hurry is that this guy is active,” Ballard said. “We can’t let him take another girl on our watch.”
“I get that, but why would you pull him in when we might be able to catch him in the act? Then we’d have a bulletproof case.”
“Because a thousand things could go wrong with that, and we’d look like shit and feel like shit for letting him terrorize another victim.”
Stilwell nodded.
“I hear you,” he said. “I’m talking about stopping him before any of that happens, but after we see him cross a line, that lets us put a charge on him.”
“It’s still risky,” Ballard insisted. “And we have no idea how long we’d have to watch him. There are years between these victims going missing. Right now, the cadence is wrong.”
“True, but psychopaths change. And the cadence is based only on those we know about. There could be others between those four.”
“The reality is that my department won’t fund an indefinite surveillance, and those two guys at the apartment are volunteers. I can’t ask them to stay with him past a week at most.”
“Then let’s at least give it till then.”
“We’ll see.”
She was looking past him as she said the last part. Stilwell saw her focus on something, and he turned around to see what it was. Simon and Trestle were hurrying along the dock to make the same boat. They spotted Stilwell and came up to him.
“Is this the one to Pedro?” Simon asked.
“Sure is,” Stilwell said. “You leaving already?”
“We did what we had to do,” Trestle said.
Simon pointed at the boat.
“But we’re on standby,” Simon said. “We might have to catch the next one.”
“Let me see if I can get you on,” Stilwell said.
Stilwell pulled out his phone and called Krabill.
He had the names and contacts of all the Express captains.
They often called him with suspicions about passengers coming to the island.
He called them when he wanted to get a ride either way or on the rare occasion that he had to move a felony custody to the mainland for booking into the county jail.
He saw Krabill come out of the pilothouse and lean on a rail as she answered the call.
They spoke into their phones while looking at each other across the dock.
She was the only female captain of an Express ferry and had been there for many years.
The wind was blowing her curly white hair as they spoke.
“Hey, Captain Kim,” he said. “You have room for two more coppers? They’re on standby but need to get back across.”
Stilwell gestured toward Simon and Trestle.
“Those two?” Krabill said. “You sure they’re not prisoners, Stil? They look sort of unsavory.”
Stilwell laughed.
“They are unsavory but I’ll vouch for them,” he said.
“I’ll make room,” Krabill said. “Send them up to the lounge with your lady cop. Peter is on the gangway. I’ll let him know.”
She waved from the boat as she disconnected and then returned to the pilothouse.
“Okay, you’re good,” Stilwell said. “The guy checking tickets is named Peter. She’ll tell him to let you all into the commodore lounge on the upper level. How’d it go at the strip?”
“All good,” Simon said. “We got what we needed.”
“Which was what?” Stilwell asked.
Simon frowned at the question and Stilwell realized he had pushed it too far. He was no longer part of the investigation or in the loop. This bothered him, but he knew it wasn’t Simon’s decision. It went back to Corum.
“Just measurements and photos,” Trestle said.
“Sure,” Stilwell said. “I get it.”
He saw that the line to board the ferry was near its end.
“You guys should probably go before they start calling the standby list,” he said. “The commodore lounge is up top. Any issue, ask for Captain Krabill.”
“We’ll be in touch,” Simon said.
He turned to go but threw a wink at Stilwell that his partner didn’t see. Stilwell took it as a sign that Simon might keep him informed on a sub-rosa basis. He would call Simon once he was back on the mainland.
“Got ya,” Stilwell said.
Ballard started to follow, but Stilwell tapped her on the arm and she hung back.
“So you’ll let me know what happens with your guys?” he said.
“Of course,” she said. “If Middleton makes a move, you’ll know it.”
Stilwell nodded in the direction of the boat.
“And listen,” he said, “if you end up talking to those guys in the lounge, ask them what they were doing out here. I would love to know.”
“I thought it was measurements and photos,” Ballard said.
“And I think that was bullshit. They have something they aren’t sharing with me.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Gracias.”
“What, you think I’m Mexican?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Hawaiian.”
“Oh, yeah? Which island?”
“Maui.”
“Nice. I spent a lot of time over there when I was in the navy. I’d hop over from the Pearl. A shame what happened to Lahaina. I loved that town. Thought about it when I could see the smoke from the Palisades last year.”
“You could see the fire from over here?”
“Just the smoke.”
Ballard nodded.
“I’m going to go,” she said.
“Aloha, e ku?u hoaloha,” Stilwell said.
Ballard smiled as she turned toward the boat.
“You learned something over there,” she said.
“A few things,” Stilwell said.
He watched her go down the gangway and didn’t head back to the sub until he saw the ticket-taker signal her aboard when she opened her jacket to show the badge on her belt.
Ten minutes later he entered the sub to find Dawn Stabile in the squad room.
“What happened up there?” he asked.
“They wouldn’t talk to me and told me to wait in the car,” she said. “So I did. But I watched them. They were looking at a piece of paper and going to different spots. One would stand there while the other took a picture of him. They also measured different distances and wrote stuff on the paper.”
Stilwell knew they were mapping out the double shooting, making sure it was documented should there ever be a prosecution of a suspect. They couldn’t have done that if they hadn’t found a witness. It meant Ramirez was remembering all or part of that night.
“Okay,” Stilwell said. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” Stabile said. “First they walked down to the middle of the landing strip and searched in the brush there. Then they walked back up and searched the runway near the end.”
“Let’s do this one at a time. Tell me about them searching the middle of the runway.”
“No, not the runway exactly. They went into the brush on the side and went down where I couldn’t see them.”
“How far down the runway?”
“About halfway, at least.”
This was curious to Stilwell. On the night of the shooting he had chased the ATV into the brush near the end of the runway. This meant Simon and Trestle were searching in a different spot on their return visit to the airstrip.
“How long were they down there out of sight?” he asked.
“Like twenty minutes at the most,” Stabile said.
“Okay, and then what?”
“They came back up, spread apart, and headed toward the west end of the runway. They were looking for something.”
“On the tarmac?”
“Yes.”
“Did they find anything?”
“No. At least, they never picked anything up. I watched them the whole time.”
Stabile’s report gave Stilwell pause as he thought about what Simon and Trestle had been looking for.
It seemed clear that they believed that the shooter had not been hiding on the plane but in the brush off the side of the runway.
The search of the tarmac had probably been an effort to find ricochet marks.
“Did you take any photos of them with your phone?” he asked.
“Uh, no,” Stabile said. “You didn’t ask me to.”
“It would have been good if you’d thought of it on your own.”
“Sorry.”
“Me too.”
“Should I go back out on patrol now?”
“Yeah, go ahead. But give me the keys to the SUV.”
“I gave them back to Mercy.”
At least she did that right, Stilwell thought.