Chapter 45
STILWELL’S INVESTIGATION OF Gavin Lambert was built on a hunch with evidence as thin as the strands of a spiderweb.
It was completely circumstantial. Some smoke but no fire—yet.
It also wasn’t Stilwell’s case to pursue.
But none of that mattered. He had been there that night when his two deputies were ambushed by a sniper.
He felt a responsibility to them and a responsibility to make sure justice prevailed.
He couldn’t trust that the investigators assigned to the case would accomplish that.
So he remained a dog with a bone, unable to let it go.
Stilwell had always trusted his instincts.
Lambert was a trained killer who had shot at people from a distance during a war.
Stilwell knew from his own experience that taking a life, in combat or not, from afar or not, carried a burden.
But the burden lessened the next time it happened.
You had already crossed a border within yourself.
Killing, no matter what the circumstance, became easier.
His instincts told him that Lambert would have no boundaries when it came to taking a life to head off a career-threatening scandal.
He was aware of what he was missing—the case could jump from the circumstantial to solid ground if he could prove that Gavin Lambert was on the island at the time of the shooting.
He knew that a sniper treasures his weapon the way a violinist treasures a Stradivarius.
He would bet his house that Lambert had kept the gun.
He had used disintegrating ammunition so that there could be no ties to it.
It might be hidden somewhere, but Stilwell knew he still had it.
Finding the gun would be a key part of the puzzle, even if ballistics would not.
The rest of Friday went down easy, although the island was beginning to fill with visitors for the weekend.
Stilwell got home before Tash, who always worked till dark on Fridays, as a fleet of private boats came in and moored in the harbor.
Stilwell used the head start to cook dinner, hoping it would serve as an apology for his missteps of the night before.
He made one of her favorites from his limited culinary repertoire, his mother’s Irish stew with fresh bread from the bakery at Vons for dipping.
On Saturday morning Stilwell followed Tash to the harbormaster’s tower, where she once again set him up at a monitor so he could view the footage from cameras positioned around Avalon Harbor.
This time he was interested in one camera in particular, the one that months earlier he had repositioned to capture a better view of the Express docks.
It now recorded every person who stepped off a ferry and came to the island.
Watching the footage was tedious. He didn’t want to move too quickly through the hours of video leading up to the last arrival before the shooting at the airstrip.
He kept the playback on real time as each boat came in and its passengers disembarked, fast-forwarding only between dockings.
This meant taking twenty minutes to get through each hour of video.
He suspected that if Lambert arrived by ferry, he might have worn some sort of disguise.
But the one thing he would not be able to camouflage was the forty-five-inch length of an M40A3 sniper rifle.
Stilwell had researched the weapon’s dimensions and learned that it was not collapsible.
He had looked at various carrying cases sold online, and now, while reviewing video of the Express docks, he wasn’t looking at people but at luggage.
Every guitar case and rucksack drew his attention.
He had seen Lambert only at Quigley’s funeral, but since Lambert gave the eulogy, he’d had Stilwell’s attention for a solid ten minutes while he spoke so eloquently about his fallen comrade and then afterward when he was talking to a gathering of his troops.
Stilwell felt confident he would be able to identify him, even in a disguise, once drawn to him by the bag he was carrying.
But four hours of video-watching went by without Stilwell spotting a single contender.
He also kept an eye out for the arrival of Gonzalo Kalas, but by the end of his review, he was certain that neither man had come to the island by ferry.
Stilwell thought it would have been a mistake for Lambert to come by public transportation, but he’d felt he had to eliminate that possibility.
Now Stilwell had to decide whether he should commit the rest of his afternoon to watching video from the day after the shooting in case Lambert had boarded a ferry to leave the island.
He was temporarily relieved of having to make the decision when Tash came over and invited him to lunch.
“You can leave?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tash said. “Audrey can cover. It will be good experience for her. Besides, all our reservations are in. She’ll only have to deal with stragglers.”
Audrey Goodson was the interim assistant harbormaster who’d been hired when Tash moved up to interim harbormaster.
“Where to?” Stilwell said.
“I made a rez at Bluewater,” Tash said.
“Going fancy, huh?”
“Why not? Plus it’s close if Audrey needs me.”
“Let’s do it.”
Stilwell stood up from the desk where she had set him up to watch video. He had trouble focusing because he had just sat for four hours looking at a screen two feet away.
“You okay?” Tash asked.
“Yeah, just too much screen time.”
“That will do it to you. You want to sit down?”
“No, I’m good. I have to remember to take breaks and walk around when I come back.”
“How much more do you have?”
“I’m about halfway through.”
“Ooh. You’re going to have a whopper of a headache tonight.”
“We’ll see.”
It was a two-minute walk down the pier and then right on Crescent to the Bluewater.
Tash ordered the lobster roll, while Stilwell went with the sand dabs.
Stilwell had not explained why he had to review video from the camera focused on the Express docks, but when he told her the date he wanted her to cue up, she knew it was related to the airstrip case.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.
“Nah, it’s kind of a fool’s errand,” Stilwell said. “But something I need to do to cover all the bases.”
“For the detectives overtown?”
“Not really. More for myself. But if I get something, I’ll share it with them. If they ever call me back.”
“What’s that about?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I thought Ernie Simon was keeping me in the loop. But I left messages yesterday and today and haven’t heard back. Something’s going on with him.”
He noticed the worry line crease her forehead.
“Not a big deal,” he said. “He’s probably just taking the weekend off. He’s been running on this thing from the start.”
The truth was, Stilwell was beginning to think something or someone was blocking Simon from making contact. He had decided to give it till Monday morning before he did something about it.
“Are you going to be able to stay here for a while?” Tash asked.
“I have no plans to leave the island,” Stilwell said.
The crease was now gone.
“You want to watch a movie tonight?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “If you’ll be home.”
“Planning on it.”
“Chinatown?”
“What happened to All Ashore?”
“After last night’s dinner, you can have Chinatown.”
“I’ll have to cook more often.”
The waitress brought their food, and without speaking, Tash cut her lobster roll in two and put half on Stilwell’s plate at the same time as he forked half of his sand dabs onto her plate. Then they laughed at each other.
When they got back to the tower, Stilwell tried Ernie Simon on his burner and regular cell phone.
Both calls went to voicemail. He didn’t bother leaving a message.
After that, he got back in front of the screen and went to work on the video review, moving to the morning after the shooting.
He continued looking at the packs and suitcases people were carrying as they arrived to board the Express ferry.
Then he saw himself in the video. He had forgotten that he went to the dock to hunt for the man he had chased on the mountain the night before.
Watching it now, he felt like it had occurred a year ago, not just a couple of weeks.
He watched for another four hours but didn’t see a case that might have held a sniper rifle.
Nor did he see any passenger resembling Lambert.
The day had been a bust. But at least it told him that if Lambert was the shooter, he had used a different way to get on and off the island—most likely a private boat.
Stilwell went over to the command post where Tash sat with a 360-degree view of the harbor.
“I’m going to head out,” he told her.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
“No, but I had to do it. You want me to pick up dinner?”
“How about Mrs. T’s?”
“Sounds good. What do you want?”
“Want to split kung pao chicken?”
“Sure.”
“And shrimp fried rice.”
“Got it. See you at the house.”
Stilwell left the tower and walked down the pier and over to the sub.
He unlocked the door and entered an empty substation.
The second shift had started at six p.m. and both deputies were out on patrol.
Stilwell dropped the two-way he was carrying into the wall charger and grabbed a fresh one.
He then checked his desk to see if there were any message slips left for him by the deputies. There were none.
He looked at his watch. It was six thirty and he knew that Tash would be another hour buttoning up things. He grabbed the key to his ATV and headed out, locking the door behind him.
He drove south toward the industrial area of the island, then took Wrigley Road over the shoulder of the mountain and down to Pebbly Beach Road. He cruised by the Buffalo Nickel and over to the Avalon boatyard.
The boatyard was where most locals kept their small watercraft.
All vessels were dry-docked—that is, stored on wooden cradles lined in rows like a parking lot.
Customers leased spaces, and a forklift picked the boats up and put them in the water at the floating dock.
An owner could call ahead and have their boat in the water by the time they arrived.
The cost for dry storage was dramatically lower than the cost of keeping a boat floating in the harbor full-time.
The boatyard was privately owned and operated.
It appeared to be closed for the night by the time Stilwell got there.
It was surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire.
The gate was closed across the entrance but could be opened with a combination on a keypad.
Leaseholders were given the combo so they could access their boats after hours.
The sheriff’s office and the fire department also had the combination for emergency access.
Stilwell looked up the five-digit number on his phone, punched it in, and drove the ATV through once the gate rolled open.
Stilwell drove down the center aisle, boats lined up on both sides, to a small office and bait shop by the floating dock.
He was hoping to find someone still at work, but the windows of the shack were dark.
He looked around to see if there had been any cameras installed since the last time he was in the yard.
He had recommended cameras after a series of thefts from boats stored in the yard were reported.
But the boatyard’s owner had been reluctant, and Stilwell guessed that was because some of his customers might be involved in criminal activities.
That was why there were no cameras before the thefts and he supposed that was why he didn’t see any now.
Stilwell knew the boatyard was only one of many places on the island where a boat drop could be made.
Descanso Beach on the north side of the harbor was a good location as well.
But the boatyard would turn up in an online search for a boat ramp or drop-off point.
It would be the likely choice for an overlander who wanted to avoid arriving in the harbor with his sniper rifle.
This was another dead end.
Stilwell took out his phone and called Mrs. T’s Chinese Kitchen to order dinner. He then turned the ATV around and went to get it.