‘How do you get there?’
‘I have friends who knew her a lot better and one of them you know. Remember Kevin and Ridley?’
‘Sure.’
‘Kevin was up there and might have met up with them during the trip but nowhere near where they were killed, maybe a lot farther south. Still, he might have given them some people to call when they got farther up. He has friends in that area.’
‘What kind of friends?’
‘Dope growers.’
Marquez nodded. It didn’t surprise him but nothing did anymore.
‘I always thought it was about somebody angry that dams might get taken out, but there were other people they hung out with along the way and those names aren’t on Facebook. They got invited to some places they couldn’t post about and if they went to a party with Kevin he wouldn’t have wanted their names on Facebook.’
‘Did he tell you he was there?’
‘No, I ditched those guys. By then, we weren’t talking anymore. But I can call him. I’ll call him before I talk to Voight but I don’t really expect anything from Kevin.’
‘Voight knows they went to parties as they worked their way up the river but do call Kevin. If Voight hasn’t already talked with him he’ll want to now.’
‘I want the murders solved, but I don’t want to help this Voight.’
‘Yes, you do. If he gets a good lead he’ll go somewhere with it and he’s not going to frame me. I won’t let that happen and you’ve got to remember Voight has the murder weapon now. He didn’t have anything before that. Now he’s got a place to work from.’
‘Yeah, but you—’
‘I won’t let it happen.’
‘T
his is Lila Philbrick.’
Marquez knew when he left Crescent City that if it was one of the Philbrick’s it would be Lila who called. His pulse quickened because she wasn’t just responding to a call from him.
‘Hey, Lila, did you find something?’
‘I found a photo with Jim Colson in it. His face isn’t all that clear but it’s him, and I’m also sending you one of Lisa Sorzak. There’s a lot about her that Geoff didn’t tell you.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like she was everyone’s girlfriend, including my husband, and that’s why it got so tense when you were here. I haven’t talked about any of this in a long time and I’m supposed to be over it, but it still makes me want to punch Geoff in the face.’
She laughed.
‘Not really, I’m over it and I was kind of a mess in those years too and it’s a miracle we didn’t go bankrupt. Geoff likes to pretend it never happened or that he can’t remember. That’s why he got so foggy on the names. He does that little boy act.’
‘What did Lisa Sorzak do for you?’
‘Bartended, cooked, waited tables, slept with my husband, a little bit of everything. When we fired her she found a job in Ukiah at a bar and got fired there for dealing drugs to the staff. How much do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘Okay, well here goes. When I caught my husband in one of the bedrooms upstairs with her she was on top, he had a gag in his mouth, and his wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts. This was an old Victorian-style bed. We really didn’t know what we were about when we opened this business. It took all of my inheritance to figure that out, but anyway, she was on top and looked at me and got off him, got dressed and said, ‘He’s all yours. Have fun.’ I fired her ten minutes later and I left Geoff tied to the bed until the next morning.
‘When he gave that little whiny, “it’s been ten years, Lila,” that’s what he was talking about. Sorzak was a manipulative secretive bitch and I didn’t say that because we’re not supposed to talk about ex-employees, but I don’t think I have to worry about anything with you.’
‘You don’t.’
‘She was also a painter and she thought she was a poet and I hope she thinks that still because her poetry sucks and it’s never going anywhere. She was a pretty good painter though. I had Geoff burn the paintings she gave us. One was a very good watercolor landscape looking north from Crescent City that a customer offered to buy for five hundred dollars. It was a very good painting but also one that Geoff liked a lot and it was therapeutic to watch him burn it along with a bra she intentionally left behind. Her poetry is as self-centered as she is, so by the time you read two or three lines you want to stick your finger down your throat.’
‘You’ve still got a special place for her in your heart.’
‘Yeah, I do, and I’ve kept track of her.’
‘Where she is now?’
‘She left Ukiah and with money she saved from selling drugs or stole from her employers she bought a bar in Weaverville. She has something else going on that’s probably illegal down near the Mad River. If you find her, ask her where the money to buy the Weaverville bar came from. I’d love to know.’
‘What’s the name of it?’
‘It’s got some really stupid hokey name. I’ll think of it in a minute. Our bar would come up short sometimes – I mean, missing money, not a lot but some – and we were so naive and trusting we believed her and never did anything about it. She had a really good way of controlling the men around here, including Jim Colson. Geoff and I were doing lines of coke every day and drinking too much and she and Colson just made themselves at home. I remember walking back around midnight on a rainy winter day when we had no customers and hadn’t for hours. She was on her back on a bar table and Colson was fucking her and get this, I apologized. That’s how messed up things were around here.
‘At some point she got tired of Colson. He was older than her by eight or nine years and mysterious and strange but she had a real sexual appetite. It was one of the few things she didn’t fake. She picked men like a farmer picks tomatoes. When she wanted another she just reached for it and Colson couldn’t keep up with that. What I think happened with her and Colson is she figured out how she could control him and when she did that she lost interest. But they were also bad people, her especially, and something was wrong with him. He had a creepy quality.
‘But I’ll give Lisa this, men were drawn to her. She got us our first regular customers.’
She laughed again, this time deeper and Marquez smiled.
‘I never thought of it this way, but maybe she brought in the business that saved us. There were a few of them that hung around and drank and a new one would show up after that one left. I’m sorry if I sound vindictive but she was bad news. But even if I don’t sound like it, I’m over it. You’ve got to forgive, right?’
She laughed at that.
‘I remember the name of the Weaverville bar now. It’s a perfect name for a bar owned by her. It’s called the Come On In.’
‘And you think she still owns it?’
‘She does and she can’t be doing well enough not to be there. If you want to find her, go there and wait.’
‘Lila?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I appreciate your call but how do you know all this?’
‘It’s because I’m still working on the forgiving part, and it’s not about her sleeping with Geoff. Men are easy. It’s the way she stole and kept talking to me like she really cared about what happened to the tavern. It’s the way she burned us. She was like a low-grade infection, the kind where you know something is wrong with you but you’re not sure what it is yet, and I was so stupid. I hate looking back and knowing I was so stupid and naive and we went through all that money. If we never did the inn we could have lived the rest of our lives on that money. And she stole from us. That still makes me angry. She was stealing from us and sleeping with my husband and we were all having staff meals together and were best of friends.’
Lila wanted to talk more and needed to and Marquez listened and got a little more about where to look along the Mad River, though what she knew about that was pretty sketchy. The Weaverville bar he could find easily.
Lila made an odd promise now, that she would talk to Geoff about Lisa, and she didn’t come out and say it, but sent the signal she thought Geoff knew more about Sorzak’s whereabouts. Marquez got a description of Sorzak, chickenpox scar on her right bicep, long legs, beautiful legs, blue eyes, brown hair, two small moles on her right cheekbone.
‘I’ll scan these photos and email them to you, but it’s not really what she looks like that sticks with you; it’s the way she is. You’ll get it if you find her and since you’re a man you’ll like her.’
‘Okay, and what about Colson?’
‘Haven’t heard a thing; maybe he went back home, wherever that is. He was never completely here anyway. I don’t care what Geoff says, something happened to James Colson before we ever met him.’
‘Who would you call if you were going to try to find him?’
‘You haven’t had any luck with tax records, driver’s license, and all of that?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘I don’t know who I would call. I’ll ask Geoff.’
Marquez thanked her for the help and Lila sent the photos soon after and in her email added one more thing about her. Sorzak didn’t use her last name anymore. She signed her poetry Lisa X and somewhere she found – or as Lila said, slept with – a judge who let her change her last name to X. That last didn’t turn out to be true but it did help Marquez find her.
L
ater that afternoon a distraught Hauser called.
‘They just fired me.’
‘You knew that was coming.’
‘Two security guards were waiting when I got back to the office from a lunch meeting. They gave me fifteen minutes to put my personal things in a cardboard box. My computers were already gone and they’re not even company property. I bought those. They took my company ID and keys before they would let me out of the office and told me that if I’m seen anywhere near the premises they’ll call the police and the company will get a court order if needed.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘In my home office reading a lawsuit that a process server just handed me at our front door. I thought it was my wife Paula getting home but it wasn’t her. I’ve never seen a process server before. I didn’t even know what he was talking about and for a moment I thought he was here to rob me.’
‘ENTR is suing you?’
‘Yes, and it wouldn’t have happened if your department had helped me. Even from here I can’t access any of my documents. I don’t know how a defense is going to be put together. Everything is in the cloud and I can’t access anything and none of my passwords work, none of my back-door routes work. I can’t get a hold of my wife. I’ve left her messages and she hasn’t called back. She should be home by now. I think they called her and told her, and I don’t think she’s coming home. I think this is it. I’m going to lose everything and I blame you. I blame your department.’
‘I’m going to come to your house and talk with you. I’ll be there in about an hour.’
‘It’s too late for talk, Lieutenant.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘You needed to help me when I asked for it. There’s nothing left to talk about.’
Now Marquez was sitting in Hauser’s study and Hauser still hadn’t heard from his wife. That was his biggest worry and it was about the marriage, not that something might have happened to her. He looked pale and feverish as if what had happened made him physically sick. His forehead beaded with tiny drops of sweat.
Marquez had called ENTR on the way here. It was after business hours and he didn’t expect anyone to pick up the phone, but a woman did and she was very interested to know who he was after he asked for Matt Hauser. She told him Mr Hauser was no longer with the firm and that any work Mr Hauser was doing would now be handled by others. She pressed to know who he was. She wasn’t getting it from caller ID.
‘Where did he go?’
‘He resigned.’
‘He was fired?’
‘No sir, he resigned.’
Hauser flipped the lawsuit across the desk in his study as if Marquez had some role in it.
‘Read it, Lieutenant, it’s everything I warned you about.’
The lawsuit alleged fraud, embezzlement, destruction and theft of intellectual property, willful and injurious disregard of company protocols, sixteen violations of the employment agreement, and damages in addition to the 8.2 million dollars in embezzled funds and sought unspecified damages that could total in excess of one billion dollars if the company’s reputation was severely damaged by the alleged theft.
‘Are you making the claim that they framed you in the transfer of the eight point two million and that it wasn’t you who transferred the money?’
‘I’ve never stolen anything in my life.’
‘You didn’t transfer the missing money?’
‘The money disappeared after I learned about the pike project. I knew it was gone and I’ve been trying to figure out where it went.’
‘Did you inform the company?’
‘I should have but I didn’t because a routine audit was coming up.’
Marquez waited for more and when it didn’t come, said, ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
Hauser didn’t respond and looked down at the lawsuit. He rested his hand on it and when he spoke his voice was slowed as if it took great concentration to have this conversation.
‘My lawyer believes if the money is returned and the pike issue resolved then everything else can be negotiated away. He wants me to immediately cease contact with the Department of Fish and Game. But I don’t think it matters anymore. Paula is going to leave me and my life will be ruined by ENTR. I can no longer get into the files I need and I’m not going to be a source of information to you anymore.’
‘Why would your wife leave you?’
‘She’ll choose them over me. They’ll talk to her. They’re probably talking to her right now.’
His face fell. He shook his head.
‘I can’t think clearly. I’m worried and scared and wondering why I ever warned you about the existence of the hatcheries.’
‘If Enrique Jordan wasn’t killed trying to dump pike in the Sacramento I still wouldn’t have any proof, Matt. And I need the hatchery locations. I need your biologist friend.’
‘Then go do your job and leave me alone. If you had backed me up, they would have held off coming after me. Now they’re going to destroy my reputation and make me look like a thief and a liar.’
‘They may do that, but there may also be a way we can still work together.’