Nightshade

Book 1: A Catalina Novel

by Michael Connelly

Genres: Literary Fiction; Police Procedurals; Thrillers

Synopsis

#1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly introduces a new cop relentlessly following his mission in the seemingly idyllic setting of Catalina Island.
 
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been "exiled" to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found wrapped in plastic and weighed down at the bottom of the harbor. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, he starts doggedly working the case. Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.

Release date: May 20, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 400

Reader says this book is...: entertaining story (1) plot twists (1) realistic characters (1)

Sample

THE MARINE LAYER was as thick as cotton and had formed a thousand-foot wall that shrouded the entrance to the harbor. The Adjourned was late and Stilwell waited for it in his John Deere Gator by the fuel dock behind the Casino. The harbor was almost empty, the red-and-orange mooring balls floating free in lines across the glass surface. Stilwell knew that as soon as the layer burned off, the weekenders would start arriving. The harbormaster’s office had reported that it would be at full capacity for the first big weekend of summer. Stilwell was ready for it.

He heard another cart pull up behind his. An electric. Soon the seat next to Stilwell was taken by Lionel McKey.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” he said. “I thought I might find you here. Waiting for the Adjourned?”

“What can I do for you, Lionel?” Stilwell asked.

“Anything new to say about the mutilations up at the preserve? I’ve got about four hours till my deadline.”

“Mutilation, not mutilations. One mutilation. It’s still under investigation and I’ve got nothing new to report at this time. When I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It’s a promise.”

His answer was punctuated by a foghorn from somewhere inside the layer. Stilwell knew by the tone that it was the Catalina Express about to come through the shroud. He wanted to be over there to watch the arrivals as he did most free mornings, counting the number of tourists who came believing that the Casino was a gambling house only to learn that it was a grand ballroom and movie theater. But meeting the Adjourned was more important this morning than counting fools.

“So what are you putting in the paper about it?” he asked.

“Well, not much,” McKey said. “I don’t want to look like an idiot, you know.”

“I think that’s wise.”

“Why, because you know something?”

“No, but I mean, use your common sense, Lionel. You really think it was a close encounter of the green kind?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, there you go. What time’s your deadline?”

“Two.”

“If anything changes before then, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll be at the Call.”

“And I’ve got your numbers.”

“Have a good weekend.”

“If I can. It’ll be busy.”

“For sure.”

McKey hopped out of the Gator and went back to his cart. As he drove off, Stilwell saw the Catalina Call logo of linked Cs painted on the side panel.

A few seconds later the prow of the Express poked through the fog layer and headed toward the ferry landing on the other side of the harbor.

Following in its wake fifty yards behind was the Adjourned. It had been a smart move using the bigger vessel as a lead through the layer instead of coming in blind. The Express had the most modern navigational tools at the fingertips of its captain and crew.

The Adjourned was a forty-year-old Viking 35. Judge Harrell kept it clean and well maintained. It was white with distinctive blue trim and matching canvas over the salon’s windows. Stilwell watched it cut down the first mooring lane, past the floating dock behind the Black Marlin Club, and come to the last orange ball. Harrell cut the engines and used a gaff to hook the line under the ball. He was wearing a wet suit, which told Stilwell he would not need a dinghy pickup. The judge quickly moored the boat, then climbed over the stern to the fantail and jumped into the cold water.

Stilwell got out of the cart and went to the storage box on the back. He unlocked it and got two green-and-white-striped towels out and draped one of them over the passenger seat. By the time he had it in place, Harrell was climbing up the ladder onto the fuel dock.

Stilwell threw him the other towel.

“Looked like some thick stuff out there, Judge,” he said.

“Trojan-horsed on the tail of the Express,” Harrell said.

Before getting into the Gator, he toweled off the wet suit and draped the towel over his head.

“I saw that,” Stilwell said. “Smooth move.”

“Anyway, sorry to be late,” Harrell said. “I called Mercy and she’s cued everything up.”

Harrell took a seat in the cart on the towel Stilwell had spread.

“Yes, sir,” Stilwell said. “Just a few D-and-Ds and a wobbler.”

“Tell me about the wobbler,” the judge said.

Stilwell circled the Casino and headed toward the justice center in town.

“Well, technically, it’s a burglary of an occupied dwelling with a firearm enhancement,” Stilwell said. “But the dwelling is occupied by the suspect’s ex-girlfriend, and he claims he was stealing back his Glock because he was afraid of leaving it with her, like she might harm herself with it.”

“How noble,” Harrell said. “You know this man?”

“Kermit Henderson, born and raised here. Works up at the golf course running mowers and doing general maintenance. The girlfriend is Becki Trower, another local. I was thinking maybe you work a deal like you did with Sean Quinlan and we get some maintenance done around the sub. Especially since Sean is coming off his time.”

“Okay, we’ll hear him out. If that’s all you’ve got, I might get some fishing in later.”

“There’s also this.”

Stilwell leaned forward, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out the document he had printed earlier that morning and folded lengthwise to fit. He handed it to the judge, who unfolded it and started to read.

“Search warrant,” Harrell said.

He got quiet as he read the summary and probable cause statement. Then he shook his head, not because he disagreed with anything he had read but because it made him angry.

“You got a pen?” he said.

Stilwell took the pen out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Harrell. The judge scribbled his signature on the appropriate line and handed the pen and the warrant back to Stilwell.

“I gave up a long time ago trying to understand why people do what they do to each other,” Harrell said. “But cruelty to animals still gets to me. If this guy did what you suspect, then he better find a good lawyer and hope I don’t get the case.”

“I hear you,” Stilwell said. “I’m the same.”

A few minutes later they were at the justice complex on Sumner Avenue. Stilwell and Harrell went into the sheriff’s substation, where the judge kept his clothes and black robe in a locker.

Stilwell unlocked the holding facility so that Harrell could use the shower and get dressed for court. Kermit Henderson, unable to make bail, was in one of the cells. He watched the judge go by, leaving wet footprints on the gray linoleum.

Stilwell saw no sign of Sean Quinlan. He texted him to tell him to mop the jail after the judge was finished showering and getting dressed. It would be Quinlan’s final duty, as the judge was set to release him from probation.

Stilwell went into the courtroom and saw that Monika Juarez was already in place at the prosecution table. Mercy Chapa was at the clerk’s desk for her one-morning-a-week gig. The rest of the time she was manager, dispatcher, and general overseer of the sheriff’s substation, and Stilwell’s right hand.

Juarez was a small woman with brown skin. Her hair was in black ringlets that framed her thin face but did not fully hide the whitish scar that ran along the left side of her jaw. Stilwell had never asked her about it but thought that however she got it, it probably had something to do with why she’d become a prosecutor. She was about thirty and assigned to the superior court in Long Beach. Like Judge Harrell, she came to Catalina once a week to handle the island’s cases, but she preferred to come over the night before on the Express, stay at the Zane Grey at county expense, and then go directly to court in the morning.

“The judge is getting ready,” Stilwell told her. “He’ll probably start with Henderson. After that, it’s the misdemeanors. Will you need me for those?”

“No, they look pretty routine,” Juarez said.

“I picked up the judge and talked to him about Henderson. I think he’s going to offer him probation if he’ll take over maintenance around here for a few months.”

“He’s got a gun charge.”

“Technically, yeah. But he was stealing the gun. His own gun. He didn’t bring it with him.”

“And you believe that?”

“I do because the victim—his ex—acknowledged in an interview I conducted that she had his gun and wouldn’t give it back after she kicked him out. Her statement is in there.”

“I didn’t see that yet. I just started looking at the file.”

That told Stilwell she hadn’t done her homework the night before at the ZG. “Well, you’ll get to it. I’ll let you read and I’ll see how the judge is doing.”

What Stilwell really wanted to do was execute the search warrant Harrell had signed. He went back over to the sheriff’s side of the building and saw Ralph Lampley in the bullpen, eating a blueberry muffin at the desk he shared with the other deputies. Lampley had the longest-running assignment to the Catalina substation. This was because the sheriff’s department had deemed him a liability in high-crime districts on the mainland. Though only twenty-eight years old, he had already been involved in two shooting deaths while on patrol in mainland Los Angeles County. Both had drawn wrongful-death lawsuits, currently being litigated, in which tens of millions of dollars were at stake. The department had cleared him in internal investigations because to do otherwise would make the lawsuits indefensible, so Lampley was allowed to keep his badge but was transferred to the Catalina Island unit, where it was thought he’d likely keep his weapon holstered. The rumor was that as soon as the lawsuits were adjudicated or settled, he would be fired.

“Lamp, why aren’t you out and about?” Stilwell asked.

“Because frickin’ Fernando didn’t bother charging my wheels,” Lampley said. “So I’m waiting for at least a half a charge before I hit the street.”

He was talking about the electric UTV cart he shared with the night-shift deputy. Normally, Stilwell would have been annoyed with Angel Fernando for failing to charge the cart when he’d finished his shift that morning. It was the third time this month. Fernando was the newest import from the mainland, where they didn’t patrol in electric golf carts, and he had a habit of forgetting to charge at the end of shift. Instead of dwelling on Fernando’s lack of attention to the routines of his job, Stilwell saw an opportunity to get himself out of the station.

“Okay, then, can you finish up there and handle court this morning?” he asked Lampley. “I’ve got to go serve a search warrant, and I need someone to take Kermit into court once the judge is on the bench.”

Lampley spoke with his mouth full of muffin. “Yeah, I can do that,” he said. “Is that warrant for the mutilation case?”

“Yes,” Stilwell said. “But keep it to yourself.”

“Cool. You go, Sarge. I can handle court.”

“Shouldn’t take long. Once you get a decent charge, check with the judge and see if he wants a ride back to his boat after court.”

“Will do.”

Stilwell left the sub, making a mental note to remind Fernando once again to leave the patrol cart charging at the end of shift. As the detective sergeant assigned to the Avalon substation, Stilwell was the commanding officer on the island. With that distinction came a host of administrative and scheduling duties he reluctantly accepted. Having to remind a veteran deputy to plug in his golf cart at the end of his shift was not one of his favorites.

STILWELL DROVE OUT to the industrial district south of town. Next to the desalination plant was a warren of warehouses, among them the cart barn used by Island Mystery Tours. The main garage door was open and Stilwell parked the Gator in front of it so no vehicle could leave. A man in a greasy blue jumpsuit stepped out of the shadows of one of the cart bays, and Stilwell guessed he had probably been sleeping back there. His hair was matted on one side. He looked as though he had not shaved in a week, and the bloodshot eyes behind his glasses indicated he was hungover.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked.

“I’m Sergeant Stilwell with the sheriff’s office,” Stilwell said. “I have a search warrant for these premises.”

“Search warrant? What the fuck?”

“What’s your name, sir?”

The man pointed to an oval patch on the left side of his jumpsuit. “Henry.”

“Henry what?”

“Gaston.”

“Well, Henry, here is the warrant, and I’m going to need you to step aside and let me enter the premises.”

Stilwell handed him the document signed earlier by the judge. Gaston held the paper at arm’s length to read it, even though he was wearing glasses.

“Says you’re looking for animal blood,” he said. “That’s crazy. Ain’t no blood here.”

“Either way, I’m going to search,” Stilwell said. “The judge signed and authorized it this morning.”

“You’re that new guy they put in charge at the substation, huh?”

“If by ‘new,’ you mean a year ago, then, yeah, that would be me.”

“You know I’m going to have to call Baby Head about this.”

Stilwell moved to the back of the Gator and unlocked the storage compartment. He took out a set of disposable gloves, a flashlight, and the bottle of Bluespray he kept in the kit he’d put together when he’d worked homicide on the mainland.

“You can call anybody you want,” he said to Gaston as he was gathering it all. “But I’m going to conduct the court-ordered search now.”

He closed the compartment and walked directly toward Gaston even though there was plenty of room in the garage entry to go around him. Intimidated by the move, Gaston stepped back and out of the way. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and started making a call.

Stilwell entered the garage and saw that the left side was lined with empty charging bays. All the tour carts were presumably in use or at least down at the harbor ready for the arrival of tourists coming in off the boats. The right side of the garage was where carts were repaired or cannibalized for parts. There were two six-seaters in various stages of disassembly. One was on a lift because it had no wheels. The other was in need of bodywork, as its fiberglass front was splintered—it appeared to have been driven into something.

In the rear right corner of the garage was an L-shaped workbench with tools hanging on a pegboard behind it. This drew Stilwell’s attention and he walked around the two broken carts to take a look. Gaston had followed him into the barn and was standing in the center, talking to somebody on his phone.

“He’s got a warrant to search the place,” he said. “I couldn’t stop him.”

Stilwell scanned the pegboard until his eyes came to a handsaw with a long blade and a blue plastic handle.

“Uh, right now he’s in the back by the tools,” Gaston said. “You going to come over?”

Stilwell pulled out his phone and took a photo of the handsaw where it was hanging on the board. He then put on his gloves and took down the saw. Under the beam of the flashlight, he studied the blade carefully. It did not take him long to determine that it was new. There were no scratches on its stainless-steel surface and no corrosion from the salt air, and its teeth were pristine, showing no sign that they had ever cut even a stick of butter.

The saw’s plastic handle, however, was old and marked by time and use. It was only the blade that was new.

“That’s a pipe saw,” Gaston said. “We use it mostly on fiberglass and PVC.”

He had come up behind Stilwell. He was no longer on the phone.

“You cut anything else with it?” Stilwell asked.

“Just stuff with the carts,” Gaston said. “We customize. Sometimes we cut ’em clean in half and make two four-seaters into an eight-seater or a six-pack. Like that.”

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s been cutting with this one lately. Blade looks brand-new. You change it recently, Henry?”

“Uh, no.”

“You sure?”

“Course I’m sure.”

“Do me a favor and close the garage and turn off the overhead lights.”

“How come?”

“Because if you don’t, I will, and I might hit the wrong switch.”

“All right.”

Gaston went to do as he was told. Stilwell looked again at the saw. The blade was about eighteen inches long and had very small teeth—right for a smooth cut through fiberglass and PVC pipes. It was secured to the handle by two wing nuts. He used his thumb and forefinger to turn the nuts and detach the blade. Gaston pulled down on a chain attached to a pulley at the top of the garage door and it started to descend.

Once Stilwell had the blade separated, he put the handle on the workbench and studied one side and then the other in his flashlight’s beam. The overhead lights went out and the garage dropped into darkness save for Stilwell’s flashlight and some daylight that leaked in under the corrugated roof’s eaves.

Stilwell sprayed one side of the saw handle with the chemical in the bottle, a compound that emitted a whitish-blue glow in the presence of hemoglobin. He then turned off the flashlight and waited and watched.

“What’s going on?” Gaston called from the darkness.

“I’m conducting a presumptive test for blood,” Stilwell said.

That brought only silence from the space where Gaston stood.

A minute went by and nothing happened. Stilwell flicked on the flashlight, turned the saw handle over, and sprayed the new side with the chemical. While he had the light on, he swept the beam across the garage to locate Gaston. He had moved away from the garage door and was now standing ten feet behind Stilwell, trying to see what he was doing.

“Stay right there for me, Henry,” he said.

“How come?” Gaston said. “I work here. I’m entitled to be anywhere I want.”

“I need to know where you are when the lights are off. Don’t fuck with me. You won’t want that.”

“Fine. I’m staying right here. Whatever makes you happy.”

“Thank you.”

Stilwell turned the light off and looked at the workbench. The holes in the saw handle where the blade had been attached were filled with a pale blue phosphorescent glow. It meant that blood had most likely seeped into the holes and so had not been washed away during cleaning.

“You can turn the lights on, Henry,” Stilwell said.

Gaston went back to the switch and the overhead lights came on. Stilwell approached the garage door holding the saw handle in a gloved hand.

“Open it,” he said.

Gaston pulled down on the chain, and the garage door began to rise.

“What’s that mean, presumpive?” he asked.

“Presumptive,” Stilwell corrected. “It means it looks like there was blood but the lab will have to confirm.”

“So you’re taking that?”

“Under the authority of the search warrant, yes. Who were you talking to on the phone, Henry?”

“I called Baby Head at the booth. He’s on his way.”

“Not going to make a difference. I’m still taking it.”

Stilwell walked out to the UTV and took an evidence bag from the storage compartment. He placed the saw handle in it, sealed it, and used a red marker to write the date, time, and search warrant number on it. He put the bag in the storage compartment and locked it with a key.

He moved to the cart’s seat and grabbed the clipboard from the shelf below the dashboard. Gaston was standing in the garage doorway, watching.

“I’m writing you a receipt for the handle I’m taking,” he said.

“What’s that do?” Gaston said.

“Documents chain of evidence.”

“‘Chain of evidence’?”

“A record of who has handled evidence and where it’s gone.”

“Evidence of what?”

“You know what, Henry? It’s not like Baby Head went out there and cut up the buffalo himself. He’s too clever for that. I’m guessing he had someone do it. I’ll be sending this saw handle to the lab in overtown. If the blood on it matches that mutilated buffalo’s, I’ll be back. Those are protected animals, and killing one—that’s a felony. We’re going to have a big weekend, and I’ll probably be running my ass off with drunk-and-disorderlies. I’m thinking about taking Tuesday off to recoup and then I’ll get this to the lab Wednesday or Thursday. I figure from there, it will take a few weeks for the lab to get to it. Homicides of humans take priority. But once I deliver it, there’s no turning back. So what I’ll do is give you till then—Wednesday—to come in, talk to me, and work something out. After that, it will be out of my hands.”

He took the receipt from the clipboard, pulled off the yellow copy, and got out of the cart. He walked over and handed it to Gaston.

“Wednesday, Henry,” he said.

The whole thing was a bluff. Stilwell knew that the lab would apply negative priority to his DNA request. He’d be lucky to get results before the end of the year.

“Baby Head ain’t going to allow this shit,” Gaston said. “He knows people.”

“Yeah, so do I,” Stilwell said.

Stilwell got in the John Deere, turned the key, and backed away from the barn. In the street, he put it in forward but was blocked when another cart pulled in front of him. It was a six-seater from Island Mystery Tours, the green papier-mâché alien lying chest-down on the roof, its three-fingered hands grasping the sides as if holding on for dear life.

Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, the owner-manager of the franchise, jumped out and approached him.

“What the hell are you doing, Stilwell?” he asked angrily.

“I’m pretty sure Henry already told you on the phone,” Stilwell said. “He’s got a copy of the search warrant and the receipt. You can figure it out from there.”

There was a line of sweat forming on Baby Head’s smoothly shaved scalp. He had a tattoo of a diamond ring on his neck below his left ear and a full sleeve of tats on his right arm depicting skulls, flowers, and a three-digit number Stilwell didn’t recognize but guessed was the area code of his place of origin.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, man,” he said.

“Maybe so,” Stilwell said. “It wouldn’t be the first time and it won’t be the last.”

“I know about you, man. We all know about you. You were on thin ice when you got here, and now you’re about to drop right through. Hope you got your water wings on.”

“Can you move your cart now, sir? I need to get back to the station.”

“Fuck you.”

Terranova jumped back in his cart and pinned the pedal. The cart drove up and into the cart barn, forcing Gaston to move quickly to get out of the way.

Stilwell headed back to town, stopping briefly atop Mount Ada to take in the beauty of the mountains and the crescent-shaped harbor below. The Casino looked like a cupcake with red icing. Several boats had already come in since he’d picked up the judge earlier.

Arriving back at the sub, Stilwell saw Lampley about to head out in his freshly charged patrol cart. He pulled up next to him.

“How’d it go?” Lampley asked.

“I found blood on a saw handle,” Stilwell said. “I’ll get it to the lab and see what happens.”

“Don’t hold your breath on that.”

“I won’t. You handle court?”

“Yeah, it went quick.”

“What happened with Kermit?”

“Harrell gave him three months’ community service. Told him to work it off in the sub.”

“Perfect. I’ll make a to-do list and put it on the board. Everybody can add to it.”

“Okay.”

“Where are you going now?”

“Just doing the circuit. No calls yet. The calm before the storm.”

“Copy that.”

Stilwell threw him a mock salute and pulled his cart into its assigned parking space. Before he got to the door of the substation, he took a call from the harbormaster’s office.

“It’s Tash. We need you over here on the skiff dock right away.”

Tash Dano was the assistant harbormaster. Stilwell had met her on his rounds when he was first assigned to the island. He had met with everybody in any position of power or authority in the small community, from the mayor of Avalon down to the assistant harbormaster. Most were standoffish because deputies assigned to Catalina seemed to come and go quickly; they left as soon as they were rehabilitated in the eyes of the mainland command staff. The island was known as a way station for the department’s freaks and fuckups and therefore it was not worth the residents’ investment of time to get to know any of its personnel. Tash was different. She had invited Stilwell to lunch and even gave him her own tour of the island. She had lived there her entire life and had no plans to leave. Stilwell immediately liked her.

“What’s up over there?” he asked.

“You know Abbott, the scraper?” she asked.

“I know who he is. First name is Denzel, right?”

“Right. He just called and said there’s a body down there under the Aurora. He said it’s got an anchor cha. . .