Fenway drove the Highlander around to the front parking lot. She passed Unit 112, with Deputy Celeste Salvador standing guard in front. Fenway waved—and Celeste motioned for her to stop.
Fenway rolled down the window. “Everything okay? Did they come back?”
“The squatter who was staying in this unit? I haven’t seen anything.” Celeste paused, then a pained look came over her face before she spoke—she might have been arguing with herself. “I hate to bring this up, but do you have an update on Mark’s backfill?”
“I’ve submitted everything to HR,” Fenway said, “a couple of weeks ago. Haven’t heard anything yet.”
“Okay,” Celeste said, “but Mark’s retirement party is tomorrow night at Winfrey’s. If you want him to cross-train anyone—”
“Right.” Fenway sighed. “That would have been ideal. I’ll see what’s holding it up.”
“No problem,” Celeste said coolly, although her jaw clenched. Ugh. A follow-up call to HR would have to go to the top of her to-do list. Fenway had the hometown advantage: Celeste wouldn’t have to move, wouldn’t have to learn the ins and outs of a new sheriff’s office, and was already familiar with both the geography and many of the people in Dominguez County. But If Fenway didn’t get the hiring process moving again, Celeste would likely apply to other sheriff and police departments. She had a good résumé—seven years as an officer and straight-A’s in her criminology program at Huntington University. And she’d gotten a 95% on the written exam. Someone would jump at the chance to work with her—and Fenway wanted to make it clear to HR that Celeste was at the top of her list.
Fenway nodded. “I’ll get to it as soon as I get back to the office. I promise.”
Salvador paused.
“What is it?”
“Debbie Farzan—she’s in charge of hiring—she leaves at three thirty.”
“Oh. Well, okay, first thing tomorrow.”
“All right. And—if you could do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Donnelly is on my back about overtime. If you need me to stick around late tonight, would you clear it with her?”
“Absolutely. And I will need you to stick around. Did you have plans?”
Salvador smiled. “Not tonight. And I can use the extra money.”
Fenway smiled back, then turned the corner to the exit gate, which beeped at her and gave several metallic clunks before it started opening. Once through, Fenway found herself on a side street, and turned right to go into the front parking lot.
She saw her Accord next to the curb one block up, and McVie pacing on the sidewalk next to it, on the phone, talking animatedly with his free hand. Getting out of the car and locking the doors with McVie’s key fob, Fenway walked over to him. He saw her out of the corner of his eye and reached out his free hand, enveloping Fenway in an embrace.
“I can be there in about fifteen minutes.” His voice was confident, but a slight undercurrent of nervousness was buried under the surface. “And it’s a ten by twenty?”
She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. She turned her face into his shoulder. He smelled like sunblock and honey with a slight tang of sweat and the barest hint of his cardamom-scented cologne.
“Thanks,” he said into the phone. “I appreciate it. Glad I called.” He tapped the screen and squeezed Fenway back. “This sucks,” he said.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go to Colorado.”
“I’ve got to,” he said.
She knew why he believed he had to move: Megan in a new school for her senior year. Amy wasn’t the most supportive parent. But Fenway had been on the daughter’s side of this before. “Part of the reason Megan’s moving is to get away from you.”
“I know.” McVie patted Fenway’s shoulder. “And that’s okay. I don’t have to see her every day, or even every week. Mark my words, though: one day this year, she’ll wake up in a panic, and Amy will be off on a business trip or over at her boyfriend’s house, and she’ll need her dad. And I’ll be damned if I won’t be there for her.”
Fenway squeezed him tighter.
Fenway never got that assurance from her father. Nathaniel Ferris: always two thousand miles away, getting married on the weekend of her high school graduation. She knew why, now—and she knew her mother had been a complicated person. Still, Nathaniel Ferris had never fought for her. Not the way McVie did for Megan.
Ironic that the very qualities she valued in McVie were the things moving him away from her.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“Not a problem,” McVie said gruffly. “I’ll rent the space, then I’ll head to the sheriff’s office and talk to Mark, then I’ll take some boxes.”
“You could use some company.”
“And Seth Cahill could use someone to find his killer.”
Fenway broke from her embrace and looked askance at McVie.
“Oh, don’t give me that,” McVie said. “I asked Callahan to help me move boxes, and he said he couldn’t because he was on the Cahill homicide.”
“So he gave you the name of the victim.”
McVie patted her shoulder again. “Don’t be too hard on him. It’s an awkward spot for everyone.”
“Celeste Salvador wouldn’t have given out our victim’s name.”
“No, but I didn’t ask her to help me move, either.”
Fenway elbowed McVie in the ribs. “A clear-cut case of blatant sexism. You don’t think women can move boxes.”
McVie knotted his eyebrows, then tapped his phone screen a few times before bringing it to his face.
“Hi, Deputy Salvador,” he said. “Listen, Fenway had to cancel on me tonight, and I could really use some help with a few of these boxes for the next hour or so. Pizza and beer on me.” A pause. “Oh, okay. What case?” He listened intently. “No, no, of course not. Just thought I’d ask. Thanks.” He tapped the phone and put it back in his pocket.
“No victim’s name,” Fenway said. “I should have bet you twenty bucks.”
“Not a bet I would have taken,” McVie said. “Did Celeste apply for Mark’s job?”
“Of course.” Fenway looked at McVie out of the corner of her eye. “She bugged me about following up with her.”
“Good. Don’t sleep on Celeste. She’ll be gone if you don’t act fast.”
“I know. I’ve done my part—it’s hung up in HR.”
“Then un-hang it.”
Fenway took her phone out and tapped her email app. She tapped the keyboard on the screen, composing a quick message to Debbie Farzan, asking in a couple of short sentences what the status was on the backfill and when she could move forward with her preferred candidate. Looking into McVie’s eyes, she melodramatically swooped her finger onto the screen and hit Send.
“There it goes,” Fenway said. “My email to HR asking for a status update.” She patted McVie’s chest and took a step back. “Now, isn’t there some overpriced storage facility you need to get to?”
McVie grinned and dropped his hand to Fenway’s, giving it a squeeze. “There is. Let me know when you’re free tonight.”
Fenway parked under a tree across from the Epsilon Zeta Epsilon house. The old Victorian house had a large banner draped next to the front door: an image of a Black man in a dark leather jacket, hands clasped in front of him, dark wraparound sunglasses on, and a black Chicago White Sox baseball cap on his head. “Eric Lynn Wright,” Fenway murmured, staring at perhaps the most famous photograph of the rapper known as Eazy-E. She’d seen about twenty college-aged kids go in and out of the building; they were, without exception, white.
Another white man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, walked purposefully around the corner and strode toward the E-Z-E house. Fenway blinked; instead of the surfer clothing she had seen him in before, the man wore fitted blue jeans and a polo shirt. Fenway squinted.
Zoso.
She barely recognized him without the long waves of hair that fell to his shoulders. Now, he had a short haircut, still blond, cropped close on the sides but fuller on top. He carried a large backpack. Anyone else might have figured he was returning from a study session in the library.
Fenway opened her car door, got out, and shut it behind her. Zoso’s head snapped around at the sound of the door closing, and his eyes narrowed.
“Hey,” Fenway said. “It’s been a while.”
“Sure has.” Zoso looked up and down both sides of the street, but no one was there. “I always enjoy seeing you, Miss Stevenson, although I don’t always like why you want to talk with me.”
Fenway crossed the street and walked up to Zoso. “You’re looking great.”
Zoso shrugged. “Easier to do business when I don’t look like I’m doing business.”
Fenway grinned. “I hear that. Let’s take a short walk.”
“I have a meeting,” Zoso said.
“I promise, it’ll be short. Around the block. Five minutes, tops.”
“I’ll be late.”
“If you walk with me, I won’t look in that backpack.”
“You don’t have probable cause.”
Fenway looked out of the corner of her eye at Zoso. “How do you think I knew you’d be here? You think my source told me you were selling cookies door-to-door?”
Zoso pursed his lips. “Yeah, all right.” He tightened the shoulder straps and started walking down the sidewalk the way he came. Fenway followed.
“Cahill Warehouse Storage.”
Zoso stopped in his tracks. “I’m not involved with those guys. Who said I was? They’re lying—I would never get involved—”
Fenway held up her hand. “Just tell me what goes on there.”
“First of all,” Zoso said. “I don’t touch that Nyllie bullshit anymore.”
Nyllie? Of course—morpheranyl. Cute street name.
“Nyllie can kill you,” Zoso continued. “I’m all for people medicating their cares away. I’m not about medicating your life away. Not worth it, man. Someone dies after taking that shit, there’s blood on your hands.”
“Too much risk of going to jail?”
“Too much risk of me never being able to live with myself again.”
“Aww,” Fenway said. “A dealer with a heart of gold.”
“Shut up,” Zoso said, but color rose to his cheeks.
“So you know Cahill Warehouse Storage is involved with morpheranyl. What do they do with it?”
“How should I know?”
Fenway glanced at Zoso’s face, then stared straight ahead. “When I asked about the warehouse, you brought up morpheranyl. Clearly, you know something.”
Zoso was quiet.
“So what was it? You were working with them, they cut you out?”
Zoso scoffed. “Possum tell you that?”
Aha. She’d touched a nerve.
“I stopped working with them because of Bear.”
First a possum, now a bear. “Bear a friend of yours?”
Zoso shook his head. “Was.”
Fenway was quiet, staring at the ground, but feeling the steam rise from Zoso’s ears. How angry was he about Possum and Bear? How much had he been involved with morpheranyl?
Zoso glanced up and down the sidewalk again, then lowered his voice. “They hold shipments there until the local dealers can come pick it up.”
“How does the morpheranyl get into the county?”
“They use blisters.”
Fenway cocked her head. “Those big plastic containers attached to the bottom of boats?”
“That’s right. Straight outta Miami Vice. Cops got so good at checking that shit that no one used them for a decade. Now that the cops aren’t checking for them anymore—”
“Got it.” Fenway scratched her nose. “Any idea where the boats land?”
Zoso glanced behind him. No one was following them. He lowered his voice. “Maybe you could jog my memory.”
Fenway stopped walking. Zoso went a few more steps, then came back.
“What?” he asked.
“You serious?”
“Twenty bucks is gonna kill you? You’re keeping me from a business appointment.”
“I haven’t asked you what’s in your backpack.”
“I thought you were cool.”
“I am cool. That’s why I haven’t asked about your backpack.”
Zoso licked his lips. “This stuff should all be legalized. Or at least decriminalized.”
“I don’t disagree, Zoso.” Fenway dropped her arms to her sides. “I’ve asked for your help, what, maybe three times in the last year?”
Zoso was silent.
“Tell you what,” Fenway said. “When you have a chance, stop by the coroner’s office at lunch. I’ll take you to the best taquería in the county. Maybe the state.”
“I can’t be seen with you.”
Fenway stared at Zoso for a moment, then took her wallet out of her purse, got a twenty-dollar bill and held it in front of Zoso.
Zoso took the bill smoothly. “Look, I just know how they did it last year. Maybe things have changed.”
“You can’t ask Possum? Or Bear?”
The corners of Zoso’s mouth turned down. “Bear’s dead.”
Oh. “Whatever info you have. Gives me a place to start. What, cigarette boats? Or those homemade pangas I read about?”
They started walking again.
“Maybe in Florida. Not here.” Zoso rubbed his chin. “You familiar with the whale-watching tours that go out of Estancia Harbor?”
Fenway nodded. Always busy on the weekends. McVie kept promising they’d whale-watch soon. Now it might have to wait until McVie came back for a visit—or maybe after Megan graduated from high school. Assuming McVie would come back at all.
“There’s a thirty-foot catamaran, double level, that docks there sometimes. The Ariel.”
“Like the mermaid?”
“I guess. Anyway, last year, that boat’d be gone for days at a time. Never carried guests.”
“Okay, the Ariel at Estancia Harbor. Is that where they unload the morpheranyl?”
Zoso scoffed. “No way. Too many people coming and going. If they use blisters, someone will notice a guy in a wetsuit and scuba gear pulling packages out of the water.”
“So if not in the harbor, then where?”
“They used to use a little area near Belvedere Beach.”
Fenway knotted her brow—Belvedere Beach. That sounded familiar—oh, right, the beach off Ocean Highway about five miles north of the city limits. Near her father’s former oil refinery. She’d investigated a dead body found in a pedestrian underpass not too far from the beach. “The Belvedere Terrace Hotel is right there.”
“Yeah, but the cops were all over that place last year.” Zoso snapped his fingers. “Of course—you were the coroner on that case.”
“I was.” Fenway cocked her head. “I remember seeing a lot of rock formations just offshore. Didn’t look like a good place for a boat to drop anchor.”
“Not at the hotel. About a quarter mile farther along the coast,” Zoso said, “is a little inlet right near Portico Lagoon. No rocks. Seas can get a little rough, but in the inlet, it’s calm. Deep. A boat like the Ariel could drop anchor, any decent diver could get the stuff out, and the trees all around the lagoon give it good cover.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot.”
Zoso chuckled. “Well, no one would ever use it now. The cops got way too close with all the action at Belvedere Terrace last year.”
Fenway put her hands on her hips. “So that doesn’t really help me much.”
“My point is, that’s the kind of place you’re looking for. Very little traffic, but a way for a vehicle to get in and out. Well hidden, either with trees or underbrush or a cliff—if there’s a way to get up and down.”
“You sure you didn’t hear anything about where they moved their drop-off point? A conversation you walked into? Maybe some reference someone made?”
Zoso thought for a moment. “Possum took me to this place south of Estancia. You know where Puerto Avila State Beach is?”
Fenway thought for a moment. “Right by Vista del Rincón.”
“That’s the one. There’s another beach, almost totally private, maybe half a mile north of there. Deep enough, no big jutting rocks like at Belvedere Beach. Secluded, no public road, so you won’t run into anyone. I had no idea how Possum found it, but it would make sense.” He tilted his head. “And now that I think about it, the cops never came. We used to drink, run on the beach in the middle of the night, we even made a bonfire once.” His eyes glazed over for a moment. “Anyway, there’s a fire road you can access from this weird turnoff about a hundred yards before the Vista del Rincón exit from Ocean Highway. Possum used to be involved, so I guess the Ariel might be going there. About a hundred feet of sand between the ocean and the fire road. Wouldn’t be that hard to carry about two hundred pounds of Nyllie to a waiting car. It’d be like carrying an extra passenger. I bet you could take the whole shipment of Nyllie in one trip.”
“As long as they’ve got someone who gets the morpheranyl out of the blister.” Fenway nodded. “Who was the diver when you were part of the organization?”
“They never told me that. But lots of people in Estancia have wetsuits and scuba gear. Hell, you could do it with a snorkel if you were fast enough.”
Fenway scratched her head.
“The Ariel goes back to the harbor, no drugs, so no worries about inspections. The driver gets back on Ocean Highway, and he’s in L.A. in an hour and a half.”
“Or back in Estancia,” Fenway muttered. In her head, she calculated the distance and time from Vista del Rincón to Cahill Warehouse Storage. “About twenty minutes to Cahill’s storage space if you follow the speed limit, right?”
“Sounds about right.”
That would limit the time on public roads—make it less likely to get pulled over. “You think the owner of the storage place is in on it?”
Zoso laughed. “I’ve got no idea. Everything I told you? Old info. Nyllie is getting here by boat, the Ariel used to be one of those boats, they used the Portico Inlet for drop-off.”
“And it got stored at Cahill.”
Zoso grinned. “And that’s all I know.”
Fenway nodded. “What about after the morpheranyl made it to Cahill? Dealers come get it?”
Zoso sighed and cracked his neck. “I can’t believe I’m explaining the distribution system to…” His voice trailed off, then he cleared his throat and straightened up. “Well—look, users get patches, pills, stuff like that.”
“So once the morpheranyl gets here, they still have to prepare it for use.”
“Don’t just skip to the last step.” He grinned. “The whole process takes time. I mean, the machinery is cheap, and so is the protective clothing, but you’ve got to process the Nyllie properly. That adds a week, sometimes two.”
“How much morpheranyl are we talking about?”
“No idea.”
“Humor me.”
Zoso stared at the sidewalk and shuffled his feet as they turned the corner. “If they’re using a catamaran and storing drugs in the blisters attached to the bottom of the two hulls, I think we’re talking about maybe a hundred kilos per trip.”
“That doesn’t sound like a lot.”
Zoso chuckled. “Those patches are like twenty or twenty-five milligrams, and they go for a hundred bucks on the street. You do the math.”
“Isn’t that about ten times the lethal dose?”
Zoso shrugged. “Those patches give you a measured amount over time. So you stay high for a few days. Yeah, you can get high for cheaper, but you can’t stay high for cheaper.”
Four hundred bucks for a gram—
No, that’d be off by a factor of ten—a gram would have forty patches’ worth of morpheranyl, not four. So it’s four thousand bucks for a gram. A thousand grams in a kilo, and a hundred kilos.
“Millions of dollars,” Fenway whispered.
Zoso laughed. “Maybe when all is said and done, but it’s not like any one group of dealers is getting that. Split between maybe three different groups and four or five hundred people like dealers, processing, middlemen, transport—”
“And storage.”
“And storage,” Zoso said. “Still, when I was working with them, I made a lot more than I do now. A number that high? Almost tempting enough for me to get back into the business,” Zoso said. “But…”
“Possum and Bear.”
Zoso tilted his head up, looking at the night sky. “Heard you did the autopsy on Bear. Day before Thanksgiving.”
Autopsy on Bear? Fenway furrowed her brow, then her head snapped up. “Scott Behrens.”
“Bear was a great guy,” Zoso said. “One of my best friends growing up. The stuff he went through as a kid, he had a hard time with…” Zoso’s voice caught.
Fenway remembered. Scott Behrens had looked a lot like Fenway, skin color, high cheekbones—they could have been siblings.
Zoso shook his head. “Anyway, I won’t touch Nyllie anymore. Not even for all that cash.”
“Where is all this morpheranyl coming from?”
“I don’t know. Someone said something once about All Saints Bay.”
“Ah,” Fenway said. “Bahía Todos los Santos. Ensenada is right there.”
“Oh. Mexico. Yeah, that makes sense. I heard the name and thought maybe it was in Oregon or Canada or something.” He cleared his throat. “If what I hear is right, most of the Nyllie gets sent to L.A.—almost none of it stays in Dominguez County.” Zoso chuckled. “Can’t blame them. They don’t want to shit where they eat.”
“They? You know who they are?”
“Not the guys in charge. Just the two I’ve seen on the Ariel. Calvin is the negotiator and the muscle—well, I guess he goes by Cal. Young, wiry dude, with a thick accent, maybe Scottish or Irish. Sounds like one of those bad guys on those British crime dramas. He’s got a rep for flying off the handle. I wouldn’t trust the guy, but you don’t want to cross him, either. Lowers the breakage, I guess.”
“You said two guys.”
“There’s an old guy who drives the boat, handles the money. Doesn’t negotiate terms but holds the cash once they get it.” Zoso smiled. “My buddy said he smokes these weird Indonesian cigarettes. Mostly cloves, I guess. Won’t tell anyone his name, though.”
“Kreteks?”
Zoso gave Fenway a blank look.
“That’s what those Indonesian cigarettes are called. Kreteks.” Fenway frowned. “Clove cigarettes—kreteks too—are illegal in the U.S.”
“Really?”
“Since the ban on flavored cigarettes. About fifteen, maybe twenty years ago.”
“How do you know that?”
“I used to be a nurse, remember? Tobacco’s bad for you.”
“Sure.” Zoso coughed, almost as if he’d been smoking. “I guess he buys them in Mexico while everyone else is getting Nyllie.”
“They arrive… when?”
“Never a set schedule. They start showing up every other Tuesday at 8:17, either the cops or the competition show up. Not good for business.”
“No, I guess not.”
“That’s all I got.”
“Does Cal have a last name?”
“Uh…” Zoso scratched the side of his head where his formerly long blond tresses had been. “Yeah. Hang on. I heard it once.” He scrunched up his face. “You seen the dinosaurs right off the freeway on the way to Palm Springs?”
“The dinosaurs?” Fenway cocked her head.
“A weird place. A building shaped like a big brontosaurus. You can see it from a mile away on the interstate. I loved it when I was a kid. My—” He cleared his throat. “My mom used to take me when I was little.”
Fenway shook her head as they turned another corner. These houses were all Greek—and the Alpha Tau Xi house had a large palm tree in front. A memory flashed into Fenway’s mind. Yes. Her mom had taken her there, too. Maybe Fenway was five or six. Maybe younger. The stairs going up into the side of the dinosaur. Gripping her mother’s index finger tightly.
“I’ve been there,” Fenway said. “Out in the desert, east of Riverside.”
Zoso snapped his fingers. “Banning,” he said.
“What’s Banning?”
“The city in the desert with the dinosaur building. And it’s the guy’s last name.”
Fenway nodded. A research task for Sarah back at the office. “So Banning and the boat driver come into town on the Ariel with a boat full of morpheranyl, unload it at Puerto Avila, store it at Cahill’s storage place. Where do they stay when they’re in town?”
“The Four Seasons. Presidential suite.”
Fenway blinked.
Zoso laughed. “You really think I know where they stay? Maybe they live in Estancia. Maybe they sleep on the boat.”
“Maybe they stay at the storage facility?”
“I guess.”
“What would you say if I told you I found a sleeping bag and a portable toilet at Cahill Warehouse Storage?”
“I’d say I’d rather sleep on a boat with an actual bathroom. But that sounds like Cal. Anyway, someone has to stay with the Nyllie.” They turned the corner again and the E-Z-E house loomed ahead on the right. “Look, I gotta get to my meeting. This better not get back to Cal. Or anyone. No one takes too kindly to me talking to the cops. Even one as hot as you.”
Fenway scoffed. “Save your flattery.”
“Just remember how helpful I’ve been,” Zoso said. He turned and strode up the path to the house, readjusting his backpack. “If you ever get a call to raid the Greek houses, I hope you’ll take that into consideration.”
“Yeah, because the coroner’s office conducts so many drug raids.”
“You know what I mean. You can put in a good word for me.”
He really did look like an overeager freshman. Probably worked well for him.
The fire road off Puerto Avila state beach. She looked at the clock on her phone. She still had enough daylight. Maybe enough time before Tyra Cahill and her lawyer would be antsy enough to leave the sheriff’s office.
.