Chapter 30
STILWELL WAITED UNTIL he got back to his office to call Simon. He figured that he would be off the boat by then and able to talk without Trestle nearby. Simon picked up immediately.
“Hey, baby, how you feeling?” he said.
Stilwell paused for a moment.
“You can’t talk?” he said.
“That’s good to hear,” Simon said. “You take your meds?”
“Okay, when can you talk? I went up to the airstrip. I found something you missed.”
“Set the timer for fifteen minutes and take it then.”
“Okay, you have the number.”
“Love you too.”
Simon disconnected.
With fifteen minutes to kill, Stilwell walked out into the squad room and checked the basket on Mercy’s desk where call reports were dropped. When he had entered the sub, she told him there was one that needed his attention.
There were only three call sheets in the basket.
The first two were shoplifting reports from souvenir stores on Crescent that had come in within an hour of each other.
The stores were less than a block apart, and the suspect descriptions matched: white female, twenties, dark hair with a dyed-pink streak in it.
The third was a report of vandalism involving graffiti painted on the chimes tower that overlooked the harbor.
Someone had painted FSID at the base of the hundred-year-old tower built by William Wrigley and visible from most spots in Avalon.
This was the report Mercy knew he needed to address sooner rather than later. She had rightfully assumed that such an offense against one of the island’s most treasured structures would result in a public uproar, especially if Lionel McKey got wind of it and wrote a story for the Call.
“Do you know if they painted over it yet?” he asked Mercy.
“I told them not to until they heard from you,” Mercy said.
“Good. I’m waiting on a callback, but then I’ll go up and check it out.”
“Do you want me to tell Billy Barnes to meet you there?”
Barnes, a local fisherman, was the citizen volunteer who maintained the chimes.
“Not yet,” Stilwell said. “I don’t know how long this call will take. Any idea what F-S-I-D means?”
“No,” Mercy said. “I googled it but nothing came up.”
“I can guess what the F is.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
He took the report with him to his office and shut the door.
When Simon called back, it was from a number Stilwell didn’t recognize.
“What, you’re calling me on a burner, Ernie?”
“Taking all precautions.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“‘Why?’ Because I’m smart. So, first of all, why did you go up there after we left?”
“Because I’m invested. If this case goes sideways, I’ll go down for it.”
“Oh, come on. You really think that?”
“Hey, who’s the guy who’s already been banished to the Island of Misfit Toys?”
Simon didn’t respond, which meant he saw the truth in Stilwell’s concern.
“So what did you find up there that we missed?” he asked.
“I confirmed that the shooter wasn’t hiding on the plane,” Stilwell said. “He was up in that ironwood tree you looked at this morning. This was an assassination, Ernie, and I think that’s why you’re using the burner.”
“I’m not going to get into that. I’m not even supposed to talk to you.”
“By whose order?”
“You know who. You’re not part of this case anymore.”
Corum.
“Come on, Ernie, talk to me,” Stilwell said. “Why’d you come back out here?”
“I’m sure your deputy told you what we were doing,” Simon said.
“Yeah, and that’s why I climbed that tree and found the sniper’s nest. It changes things, Ernie. This was an ambush—a planned hit. Quigley was set up because of something he did when he was back on the mainland. And I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t already know.”
Simon was silent as he composed a response.
“Listen,” he finally said. “Be smart and take a step back. For your own good, Stil, step the fuck back.”
“I can’t. Quigley was a new guy, but Ramirez was on my team. She didn’t deserve to be left on the tarmac like collateral damage. And if I hadn’t chased Kalas down the hill, I probably would’ve been laid out with her. I can’t step back from that.”
Simon went silent again and Stilwell imagined him shaking his head at his warning going unheeded.
“Is Ramirez the one who told you the shots came from behind them?” Stilwell asked.
Simon answered in a tone of resignation.
“She’s telling us stuff,” he said. “She’s writing it down.”
It was a confirmation and a significant give from Simon. Stilwell responded in kind.
“Branches were broken off in the tree you didn’t climb,” he said.
“It opened a window in the tree’s canopy.
The shooter had a clear view of the end of the runway.
I found the branches fifteen feet away from the tree, thrown in the brush.
I took photos. I’ll send them to you and you can say they’re yours. ”
“I appreciate that,” Simon said.
“Did you have your sit-down with Lambert?”
“We did, yeah.”
Stilwell waited. Nothing else came.
“Come on, Ernie. What did he say? Who was Quigley’s CI? Whoever he was, he set him up.”
“Lambert said he didn’t know. He said he checked every name Quigley had put in the box. It had to have been someone he hadn’t cleared.”
Simon was referring to department procedures for using confidential informants.
Every CI was supposed to be validated and cleared by the commanding officer of the unit.
Way back, those names were secured in a lockbox held by the CO.
For decades now, the identities had been kept in an encrypted computer file, but it was still referred to as “the box.” In Quigley’s case, the identities of the informants he procured and used while in the narco unit would have been kept by Lambert.
This procedure was a safety backup but also a way to track informants and determine the level of trust that should be placed in their tips.
Stilwell knew it was common practice to test new CIs repeatedly before putting them up for approval and into the encrypted files.
The person who had tipped Quigley to the airport drop could have been one of these new, uncleared informants even though Quigley had said he was a hundred-percenter.
Stilwell found himself trying to recall exactly what Quigley had told him about the tip that led to the airport surveillance. He realized that it was another point of vulnerability for him. He had approved the quickly planned operation based on intel Quigley told him his CI had provided.
He decided not to dwell on it and moved on.
“Did you ask Lambert what he knew about Quigley’s transfer out here?” he asked. “What did he do?”
“I asked and got the same bullshit answer,” Simon said. “He claimed that Quigley asked for the transfer and specifically said he wanted to go to Catalina. Don’t take this personally, Stil, but that is bullshit, because nobody asks to go to the Catalina station.”
“So Lambert was covering something up. Did you ask Corum to apply some pressure on him?”
“I did, yeah.”
He offered nothing else and Stilwell had to read between the lines.
If Corum did not pressure or even order Lambert to reveal more, then he was protecting either the department or himself.
Stilwell had no reason to believe Corum even knew who Quigley was, at least based on the questions he had asked on the night of the shooting.
Stilwell’s conclusion—and he guessed it was Simon’s as well—was that Corum was trying to head off what could be an embarrassing situation for the department.
For Corum, this would be job one. The sheriff’s department was obsessively sensitive to image and politics.
It was headed by an elected sheriff, and any issue or controversy that might possibly threaten reelection was to be immediately and deeply buried.
Status quo kept the sheriff and his command staff comfortably in their positions.
It would be career suicide to go any other way.
Part two of Stilwell’s conclusion was that Corum’s efforts could leave Stilwell hanging in the wind. Should the cover-up need a fall guy, without a doubt it would be him.