Fenway blinked at the coffeemaker dripping its nectar—excruciating in its sluggishness. She glanced at the clock on the wall of the break area: 5:17 a.m. They’d taken Stephan Butler directly to the interview room next door. Fenway needed the caffeine if she’d be halfway effective interrogating him.
Dez walked up behind Fenway. “Is it ready yet?”
“Not even close.”
“That’s okay. Butler can stew while we brew.”
Fenway was too tired to smile.
Dez exhaled. “Can’t believe the drugs never showed up at the storage facility.”
“Callahan still there?”
“And backup. But no signs of life. They’ll stay for another hour or so, but if no one’s shown up by now…”
Fenway watched the coffee drip into the pot. “If the smugglers moved the drop-off point from Puerto Avila Beach back to the Portico Inlet, they probably moved the storage location too. Staying one step ahead of us.”
“I wish we’d figured out the new location sooner.” Dez looked at Fenway. “You know Deputy Brasserman?”
Fenway shook her head.
“He’s got a wetsuit and a snorkel. He just went in the water at Portico Inlet and confirmed it—two blisters attached to each of the Ariel’s hulls.”
“But no drugs?” Fenway asked.
“He couldn’t stay in the water long enough to detach the blisters from the boat. We contacted the Coast Guard, but they won’t examine the boat where it’s dropped anchor. They can’t get a tugboat until noon at the earliest. Gave me a list of the forms we need to submit.”
“Gotta love bureaucracy.” Oh—and speaking of bureaucracy, Fenway hadn’t gotten any updates from HR on the hiring process to backfill Mark. Fenway made a mental note to call HR as soon as their office opened. “So, do you think we can get information out of Mr. Butler?”
“I doubt he’ll give us much of anything about the drug smuggling. But we can see what he knows about Cahill. He might give us something if we can make the misdemeanors go away. The maximum sentence is only thirty days in jail, probably less, but if he has something to give up, he just might do it.”
“Has he done jail time before?”
“Three months for assault when he was in his early twenties,” Dez said. “Arrested a few other times, spent the night in jail—but the charges were always dropped.”
Fenway stared as the coffee sputtered from the machine into the carafe. “He won’t give anything up on these misdemeanor charges. He knows he’ll beat them anyway—he won’t spend more than a night in jail.”
“Maybe the charges were always dropped because he always had information to give.”
“Anything is possible.” The dripping coffee had turned into a weak flow. A couple more minutes and they could each have a cup. Fenway grabbed two mugs from the shelf above the coffeemaker. “Butler knows these charges are trumped up. But I bet he’s already figuring he wouldn’t get the handcuff treatment for clove cigarettes unless we wanted something.”
“So be direct?”
“I don’t see why not. He might be thinking there’s no way he’ll give up info on the drug smuggling. But Cahill’s murder? Maybe he’ll talk.”
They stared at the coffeemaker as the minutes ticked by.
“He won’t talk if he had a hand in it,” Dez said.
“True.” The coffee machine gurgled. Fenway grabbed the carafe and poured herself a cup. She usually added milk or cream, but this morning she was willing to take it black. She filled Dez’s mug, too.
Dez grabbed the coffee and took a long sip. “I really shouldn’t. Michi says she’s worried about my caffeine intake.”
“I think your wife can make an exception for a middle-of-the-night arrest.” Fenway smiled, then took a slurp, the coffee burning on the way down, and that sensation woke her up. “Okay. Let’s head in.”
Fenway opened the door to the interview room, and Dez walked in first, taking a seat directly in front of Butler. Fenway sat on Dez’s right.
Dez put a recorder in the middle of the table and pushed Record. She recited the date and time. “Interview with Stephan Butler.” She sat back and spread her arms. “Let’s get right to it, Mr. Butler.”
“These charges are bogus,” Butler said. “Any judge in the county would release me at the arraignment.”
Dez tilted her head. “The laws you broke may not be enforced very often, but they are, nevertheless, laws that you broke. Laws that carry certain penalties.”
Butler leaned forward. “Exactly what is it you want from me?”
“I believe you’re familiar with someone named Seth Cahill.”
“Lots of people say they know me. Maybe I took him out on the boat once.”
“We found a ledger in Mr. Cahill’s office,” Dez continued, “that has a list of dates and payments. We believe those payments and dates correlate to shipments of morpheranyl and the storage of that illegal substance.”
Butler’s eyes lowered to the table. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“Are you sure? We can correlate the Ariel’s whereabouts to the entries in the ledger.”
“Means nothing.”
“Might be enough for a warrant.”
Butler shook his head. “Maybe it is, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
Fenway nodded. She’d expected this. “Mr. Cahill was murdered about twenty-four hours ago,” Dez said.
Butler’s face registered shock for a half-second, then relaxed into its previous bored look. “I’m sorry to hear that. Doesn’t mean I know who he is.”
“Law enforcement needs to clean up this county,” Dez said, “but I don’t work in vice, I work in homicide. I’m interested in who might have been at Cahill Warehouse Storage yesterday between ten and midnight.”
“I had nothing to do with any murder.”
“Didn’t say you did.” Dez leaned forward. “Perhaps you had a client who went on a whale-watching tour who wanted to get the late-night session.”
Butler shifted in his chair, keeping his eyes down.
“Seth Cahill lost his business to his ex-wife in their divorce,” Fenway said. “Perhaps your client wanted to convince Seth to keep their business deal intact. Storage can be so difficult to obtain nowadays.”
Butler’s mustache twitched.
“It might be unusual to prosecute for crimes such as littering—” Dez began.
“Your discarded cigarette is worth a hundred-dollar fine and eight hours of community service, minimum,” Fenway said. “You’ve littered twice in the last twenty-four hours on two different public beaches.”
“Combined with the clove cigarette possession and being on a public beach outside of daylight hours—”
“Like I said before, bullshit charges. Any judge would let me go.”
Fenway sat back in her seat, then a light bulb went on in her head. “Plus, you didn’t have your anchor lights on.”
Butler shrugged.
“Maybe you’re right, Mr. Butler,” Fenway continued, “and your lawyer could get the charges dropped. But we’ve already contacted the Coast Guard. They’re very interested in a boat that may have been involved in a drug smuggling operation. Our ‘bullshit’ charges, as you put it, just happen to be enough to tow your boat into harbor and conduct a thorough search.”
“And who knows what they’ll find?” Dez leaned forward, her elbows on the table.
Butler glanced up, staring daggers at them, worry lines around his eyes.
“Let’s say we have you arraigned later today, and the judge releases you.” Fenway steepled her fingers. “You’re a free man, but your boat’s not at the Portico Inlet anymore. If the Coast Guard impounds your boat—” Fenway casually looked over at Dez. “Where’s the closest Coast Guard impound? Monterey or Long Beach?”
Butler’s face fell. Both were at least two hours away on the highway.
“At any rate, how would you continue to work for your, uh, whale-watching clients?” Fenway asked.
Staring down at the table, Butler grimaced.
Fenway had him. “The good news for you, Mr. Butler, is that we need to fill out a couple of forms before the Coast Guard will tow your boat to Long Beach. And if there’s anything I hate more than drug smuggling, it’s filling out paperwork.” Fenway leaned forward. “But I hate murder more than both, sir. So here are your choices.” She held up a finger. “One: you share whatever information you have on Mr. Cahill and his storage facility, then you walk out of here and go back to your boat.” Fenway held up a second finger. “Or we go through the motions of this little play. You get arraigned, maybe this afternoon, sit in a cell until then. You spend a bunch of money on a lawyer to get the judge to turn the misdemeanors into a fine. You get released. Then I spend two or three hours filling out stupid Coast Guard forms, so I make sure you spend the next month trying to get your boat out of impound.” Fenway sat back in her seat. “What will that do to your income?”
Butler’s nose twitched.
“And if the Coast Guard finds anything on the Ariel—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got the picture,” Butler said through a snarl. “Answer the questions, drop the charges, get me back to my boat, and you won’t contact the Coast Guard.”
“That’s the deal,” Fenway said.
Butler glanced from Dez to Fenway, then nodded. “And take these handcuffs off.”
“Fair enough.” Dez pulled a set of keys out of her pocket, stood and walked around the table, and unlocked Butler’s handcuffs.
With the click of the cuffs unlocking, Butler pulled his hands back and rubbed his wrists.
“All right,” Dez said. “Now talk.”
“Cahill provided my clients with storage solutions,” Butler said. “My clients often had a handler for the merchandise.”
“This merchandise—” Dez began.
Fenway gave a small shake of her head. “We don’t need to know what was being stored.” Maybe that wasn’t true, but Fenway didn’t need to have confirmation of the morpheranyl to find the killer. “Who met you at the boat?”
“Cahill would meet us. Sometimes with that kid.”
“Mathis Jericho?”
“I never got his name.”
Fenway took out her phone and tapped a few times until she found the photo of Mathis Jericho she’d taken in the office of the storage facility. “This guy?” She turned the screen toward Butler.
“Yeah, that’s the guy.”
“And Cahill and Jericho would take the, uh, merchandise to their vehicle?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you go with them?” Fenway asked.
“Not me.”
“The other guy went with them?”
No response.
“That makes sense.” Fenway put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “Here’s the way I see it. You stay behind on the beach—someone’s gotta stay with the boat, after all—and you wait ten or twelve hours until your client’s representative returns to the boat. Then you and the representative leave, and you repeat the process in a week or two.”
Butler said nothing.
“So your client’s representative is at the storage facility right now?”
“I don’t know where he goes, and I don’t ask.”
“Calvin Banning, right?”
“Never heard his last name.”
Dez nodded. “He’ll be wondering where you ran off to.”
Butler shrugged.
“Did you hear anything about Seth Cahill not being able to continue with his deal to store your merchandise?”
“I—uh, I guess you could say I didn’t have direct knowledge of it.”
“But?”
Butler hesitated. “I heard Cal talking on the phone yesterday evening when we were on our way.”
“You get cell signal?”
“Cal has a satellite phone. He seemed pretty upset.”
“Upset enough to kill Seth Cahill?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“You see Cal get violent before?”
Butler was silent.
“What exactly did you hear?”
“Only Cal’s side of the conversation. He got mad—like saying stuff like, ‘What did you say?’ in a real agitated voice. Once he said, ‘We’re counting on you for this. If your place doesn’t work, you better find somewhere else that does.’”
“Did Cal threaten Seth Cahill after that?”
Butler pressed his lips together.
“We can protect you.”
“You have no clue who you’re protecting me from.”
“You can make that easier for us—”
Butler shook his head. “No. I don’t have a death wish.”
Fenway shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Dez leaned toward Fenway. “He’s given us enough to get Mathis Jericho and Calvin Banning in here. I’ll go put an APB out on Mathis Jericho’s car.”
“Figure out if there’s a dark blue sedan tied to either Mathis or the Cahills’ business,” Fenway whispered back. “We passed a sedan on the road, and I’ll bet they were in that vehicle.”
“Good thinking.” Dez stood and strode out of the room.
“Where were you between ten and midnight last night?” Fenway asked.
Butler hesitated, then dipped his gaze to the recording device in the middle of the table.
“I’m the county coroner, Mr. Butler,” Fenway said. “I’m working the homicide of Seth Cahill. That’s what I’m concerned about. Not about you dropping anchor at an unauthorized—”
“Then turn off the recorder,” Butler said.
“If we don’t get your alibi on the recording, Mr. Butler, I can’t guarantee that you’ll stay off my radar regarding the murder investigation.” Fenway sat back. “Would you rather get fined a few hundred dollars for dropping anchor north of Puerto Avila Beach, or would you rather risk getting detained for suspicion of murder?”
Butler placed his hands flat on the table and stared downward. Fenway could almost see the gears grinding in his head.
“If you have an alibi,” Fenway said, “you might as well tell me now.”
“Between ten o’clock and midnight on Monday, right? I was in the Ariel. On the way to a beach in Dominguez County.”
“Can you get more specific?”
“At ten o’clock? Probably somewhere south of the Channel Islands. Midnight, we’d gotten closer. Point Comenzio, maybe. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the time.”
“You said ‘we.’ I assume this is your client’s representative?”
“Cal.”
Fenway leaned back in her chair. “Did you have a schedule?”
“We were meeting on the beach at two o’clock.”
“That’s two a.m.? You were supposed to meet Mr. Cahill?”
“He said he’d be there, yes.”
“What happened?”
“I—” Butler stopped, glanced at the recorder in the middle of the table. “Look, I need assurances from you.”
“If you’re involved in this murder, Mr. Butler—”
He held up both hands. “I didn’t know anything about a murder. Stop the recording.”
Dez glanced at Fenway, who nodded. Dez reached out and hit the stop button.
“No one is supposed to get hurt when I make my runs. Picking things up in one place, transporting them to another. The less I know, the more they trust me. The more they trust me, the more work I get.”
“And your clients trust you.”
“That’s right. They see me in here talking to you, I’ll be selling my boat and going underground. If I live that long.”
“I thought you said no one was supposed to get hurt.”
“Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, Coroner. I’ve dealt with the kind of people my clients are. I stay out of their way. I don’t have questions; I don’t ask people’s names. I show up on time—not too early, either. I look the other way when people are loading up the boat, and I keep my head down so I don’t run into any trouble. Stay under the speed limit. When the sign says, ‘no wake,’ I don’t make a wake. These people have a business to run, and so do I.”
“But you knew who Seth Cahill was.”
“He introduced himself to me.” Butler gave a small smile. “I told him I didn’t want to know who he was, and I didn’t want him to know who I was.”
Fenway paused. “How long did you wait for Cal last night?”
“What do you mean, how long did I wait?”
“That’s the deal, right? Cal would go with Cahill and Jericho, then you’d wait at the beach until he came back.”
“Not last night,” Butler said.
“What happened last night?”
Butler knitted his brow, then looked up. “The kid—Matt?”
“Mathis.”
“He was the only one to show up. Half hour late, too.”
“What time was that?”
Butler licked his lips, as if debating whether to answer the question. Finally, he spoke. “A little after two thirty in the morning. Cal didn’t like it. He thought the kid was trying to pull something.”
“He said that?”
“They argued. Me, I was standing off to the side.”
“Smoking.”
“Well, yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Cal told the kid to leave the merchandise,” Butler said. “Then Cal got some supplies, a sleeping bag, some other stuff, headed out with the kid. Probably to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere. I had to put the merchandise back on the boat myself. Went and docked.”
Fenway shut her eyes and the contents of Unit 112 flashed in her mind. “What color was the sleeping bag?”
“Uh—blue, with gray stripes.”
The same as the sleeping bag in the unit. “Do you remember any of the other stuff he took?”
“A red-and-white cooler. A gallon of water, too.”
“A lantern?”
Butler furrowed his brow. “Not that I remember. I wasn’t paying close attention.”
Fenway nodded. Calvin Banning was the squatter in McVie’s original rented unit. Maybe his fingerprints would come back with more information. “Where did you dock? Estancia Harbor?”
“I don’t like going in there when I have a shipment on board.”
“Where did you go?”
“Friend of mine has a dock. Left the boat there for the night.”
“Where was this?”
Butler smiled. “You asked me where I was between ten and midnight. You have your answer—I was on my boat with Cal. Arrived on the beach after he was already dead. Doesn’t matter where I docked.”
“We’ll need to confirm your alibi.”
Butler shook his head. “Then talk to Cal, not anyone at the dock.”
“So when did you go back to pick up your friend Cal?”
“He stayed. Gave me a call and said Seth never showed. Said he was sticking around.”
“Where did he sleep?”
Butler shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”
“Right, because you don’t want to know.”
“Can’t tell the cops something I never heard.”
Fenway rubbed her forehead. “Let’s suppose Cal stayed onsite at the storage facility, but the next morning, he left. Where do you think he would have gone?”
Butler suppressed a laugh. “We’re not friends, Coroner. I don’t know anything about him. How would I know where he’d sleep?”
Fenway sat back in her chair and folded her arms. Mathis Jericho had withheld important information, and Fenway hadn’t yet located Calvin Banning. They were at the top of her list of suspects.
A big problem with Banning: the timing was off. Calvin had been on the boat with Butler between ten and midnight—in fact, if Butler was to be believed, until two thirty. But time of death wasn’t finalized yet.
And Seth could have been at the facility when Cal arrived, and he could have told Cal that the storage facility was off-limits. Cal might have killed Seth out of anger, or, if Seth Cahill couldn’t be relied on to store the illegal drugs, perhaps Cal saw him as a loose end who knew too much.
Mathis Jericho was a different animal, though. He might have thought he didn’t need Seth Cahill. If Cahill no longer owned the storage facility, maybe Mathis planned to keep the storage units full of morpheranyl when necessary, going behind Tyra Cahill’s back. Or maybe Mathis had figured out another solution to the storage issue, but needed Cahill out of the way.
Either way, Fenway was glad she and Dez would question Mathis Jericho again.
Fenway walked into the coroner’s suite, Dez following, and Sarah’s head popped up from behind her monitor.
“Morning, Sarah.”
“Check your email,” Sarah said. “Seth Cahill’s credit card charges, activity on his checking and savings accounts.”
“Have you seen them?”
“He was a spender,” Sarah replied. “A couple of hundred every three or four days at Bruno Zipper’s.”
“That new craft cocktail place on Fifth?”
“With the terrible music and the line around the block, yes.” Sarah turned to her monitor and clicked her mouse. “All kinds of stuff like that—if it was en vogue, he was spending money on it. Two months ago, new titanium wheels for his Corvette at fifteen hundred a pop. The next day, Seth bought one of those online DNA testing things from Genome Genius.”
“That’s the expensive one with the three-day turnaround?”
Sarah nodded.
Fenway scoffed. “I wish our DNA testing was that fast.”
Sarah scrolled onscreen. “There’s more. Leather moccasins. Six hundred dollars at a record shop.”
“How did he pay for all that?”
“Lots of cash deposits,” Sarah said, her finger on the monitor. “I got a copy of some of the pages in that ledger. Kind of hard matching up the payments, because he kept the deposits under ten thousand.”
“No automatic trigger for the Feds,” Dez said.
Sarah nodded. “But we did total everything that made it into his accounts, everything he spent, and compared it to the ledger. The totals are fairly close, but the last few months, they’re off by about five thousand dollars.”
“He probably kept some of the cash. Easier to launder money if you spread the cash around.”
Sarah shook her head. “I mean five thousand the other way. He’s deposited about five thousand dollars more than what’s listed in his ledger.”
Fenway rubbed her chin. “Could he have been skimming from the people who were paying him? Keeping more money than he wrote in the ledger?”
Dez leaned against the counter. “Dangerous and stupid.” Her phone dinged and she looked at the screen. “Well, well. It’s a text from Callahan. Look who just showed up for his shift at Cahill Warehouse Storage.”
“Mathis Jericho?”
Dez touched her nose and pointed at Fenway.
“Sarah, can you fill out a warrant application for Mr. Jericho’s car?”
“Sure. And I was behind Judge Solano at Java Jim’s. He’s in early. I’ll have it ready for you in ten minutes.” Sarah sat at her workstation and turned her attention to the monitor.
“What are you hoping to find in his car?” Dez asked Fenway.
“I don’t know of anyone else who could have picked up the shipment last night from the Ariel, do you? With any luck, we’ll find evidence of morpheranyl in his car.”
“And then we arrest him?”
“No—we convince him to tell us the whole truth.” Fenway stretched. She needed another cup of coffee.