Chapter 47
STILWELL DIDN’T GET back to the island until almost three o’clock.
The whole way back on the Express, he mulled over Ernie Simon’s sudden retirement and Bob Trestle’s impromptu two-week cruise.
Added to that was the order that all inquiries about the airstrip case were to go through Corum, and Stilwell had no doubt that the captain was shuttering the entire thing.
It would remain open for appearance’s sake, but there would be no continuing investigation.
The question was why. If Gavin Lambert was the key suspect, the cover-up had to be for a more important and dangerous reason than to avoid a scandal over one deputy killing another because of a tawdry extramarital affair.
There was something bigger involving Lambert—and possibly Corum—that needed to be contained, something in addition to the affair that could have come out when Quigley and others testified under oath in a divorce trial.
It had to be something that would do more than damage the sheriff’s reelection campaign.
Stilwell believed it was something that could send people—important people—to prison.
The divorce case would only have been the conduit for Quigley to go public with it.
Divorcing couples often threw exaggerated and outlandish accusations at each other in pretrial motions.
But it became put-up-or-shut-up time when they got to court, raised their hands, and took the oath to tell the truth.
Quigley had kids, and by all accounts he had been close to them.
If he was fighting for custody, he would have had to destroy his wife, and one way to do that was to claim that her actions through an affair with Lambert had somehow put the kids in danger.
He decided to change direction. Instead of trying to find the spot where Lambert arrived on the island, he would look for the mode of transport he took to get there. When the Express docked, he went back to the substation, checked in with Mercy, and closed himself in his office.
In the state of California, motor-operated vessels were treated similarly to automobiles.
Every boat with an engine of any size had to be registered and licensed.
Every operator of a boat with an engine had to have a boater card, which was much like a driver’s license and carried the same information about its holder.
As with autos, all this was under the control of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Stilwell used his DMV access to enter the state’s boating records and quickly determined that Lambert did not own a registered boat or have a boating card in his name.
Stilwell knew that many in law enforcement liked to fish or sail as a means of getting away from the job.
He had gone through a heavy boating-and-fishing period himself before transferring to Catalina and still liked to go out on a boat with Tash from time to time and drop a line.
He switched over to the department’s database and used his access to identify every deputy on Lambert’s drug team.
He also wrote down the names of any spouses listed in their mini-bios, because he knew that most cops, especially those assigned to drug units, were hesitant about putting their IDs and addresses into databases.
Lambert’s major narcotics unit had twelve members. After switching back to the DMV database, Stilwell went through the list of names one by one to see if any of the deputies under Lambert’s command owned a boat.
He went through all twelve names and got no hits. He started running the names of the spouses, and on the fourth try, he got a hit. According to the DMV, Deborah Blackmore, wife of Deputy Daniel Blackmore, had registered a 2005 Bayliner in her name in 2018.
The boat was named Rapsody in Blue. Stilwell assumed the misspelling of rhapsody was intentional.
He remembered something Quigley had said in passing soon after his transfer to Catalina.
He mentioned that a member of the drug unit he had just left often performed rap songs at get-togethers outside of work.
Stilwell guessed that deputy was Blackmore, that he’d named the boat with references to both his music and his job as a cop on the thin blue line.
The Bayliner registered to Blackmore’s wife was only seventeen feet long and could be trailered instead of kept in the water.
In California, boat trailers had to be registered with the DMV separately from the boats they carried.
Stilwell went back to the DMV database and ran Deborah Blackmore’s name.
Sure enough, in addition to her driver’s license, she had a boat-trailer registration.
But Stilwell suspected he had gone down the wrong rabbit hole with the Blackmores.
The Bayliner was a little small for ocean use, and the registration showed that they lived in San Dimas, which was in the eastern part of the county and far from the coast. He guessed that the Bayliner was a lake boat used out at Big Bear Lake. It wasn’t the boat he was looking for.
Stilwell ran the rest of the spouses’ names through the DMV for boat registrations and got no more hits.
He sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes as he tried to think about what he might have missed.
He suddenly leaned forward and on a hunch typed MIPCO president Walter Bessemer into the search engine.
He got a hit. Bessemer owned a thirty-six-foot Beneteau Gran Turismo called the Bullet.
Stilwell had never heard of the brand and googled the boat.
It was a sleek cruiser with twin 300-horsepower outboards.
A hybrid of comfort and speed, it retailed for over half a million dollars.
It was also at the extreme end in terms of length to transport on a trailer.
To be sure, he checked Bessemer’s name for a trailer license and came up empty.
He now knew the boat was in the water somewhere and he had to find it.
Bessemer didn’t enjoy the same anonymity as law enforcement officers when it came to DMV registration.
His boat was registered to an address on Grand Canal in the L.A.
suburb of Venice. His driver’s license put him there as well.
Venice was far from where MIPCO was located, in Riverside County, but L.A.
County had very restrictive regulations on manufacturing ammunition.
Stilwell guessed that Bessemer enjoyed the good life in Venice while his disintegrating bullets were made out in the desert.
The search for the Bullet had an obvious starting point.
Venice was adjacent to Marina del Rey, the largest man-made harbor for recreational boats on the continent.
It was home to several private yacht clubs and offered some of the most expensive dockage in California—hence the name Marina del Rey, which translated to “the King’s Dock.
” The likelihood was high that Stilwell would find Bessemer’s boat in the marina.
The only issue was that there were five thousand other boats floating there with it.
What Stilwell had going for him in his search was that Marina del Rey was owned by the county and therefore fell under the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department.
The marina had hundreds of live-aboards and was surrounded by high-end condo towers and commercial businesses.
The MDR substation was much larger in terms of personnel than the Avalon sub, and Stilwell had strong connections there because so many of the boaters from MDR put Avalon Harbor on their itineraries.
There had been much intel sharing and many cross investigations in the time Stilwell had been posted on Catalina.
He called Sergeant Dave Akins, his counterpart at the MDR sub.
“I got a boat in the marina I need to find,” Stilwell said. “And hopefully some video of its comings and goings for the past week or so.”
“Not a problem,” Akins said. “Give it to me.”
“The boat’s called the Bullet. It’s a thirty-six-foot Ben—”
“I know it. Nice boat.”
“How do you know it?”
“The name sort of stood out to me when that boat showed up. Turns out it’s actually owned by an ammunition guy, but I didn’t know that until we checked it out. Before that, I was wondering if we had some made guy or a gangbanger wanting to get into the marina.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Maybe two years.”
“And you’ve talked to the owner?”
“Yeah, briefly. I’ve got his card somewhere here.”
“Walter Bessemer?”
“Could be. Sounds right.”
“Do you know where he docks it?”
“Yeah, he’s in the PMYC basin.”
“What’s PMYC?”
“Pacific Mariners Yacht Club.”
“They got cameras on the boats there?”
“Oh yeah, they got cameras up the ying-yang.”
“They cooperate, or are we talking a warrant?”
“Oh no, they go along to get along. Tell me what you need.”
“I want to come over and look at video of the Bullet going back eight days.”
“Okay, what else?”
“Can you send somebody over there and shoot me a photo of the boat?”
“Not a problem. I’ll do that when I go talk to them about you coming in.”
“Perfect.”
“Now, do I want to know what this is about?”
“No, you don’t. And you want to keep all this to yourself. For now.”
“I got ya. I’ll call you back in about twenty.”
“Good deal. Call me on my cell.”
They disconnected. Stilwell looked at the photos of the boat model on his screen.
He scrolled down and read that Beneteau boats were built in France and that the company was a hundred and forty years old.
He wondered about Bessemer choosing this particular company and boat.
He guessed that Bessemer was the kind of guy who wanted a boat nobody else in L.A.
had. That said something about him that might be useful down the line.