Authors: Kirk Russell
“Fuck your felony, man.”
“Maybe you didn’t know what was in the trunk and you were delivering it for someone.”
“I don’t hunt bear.”
“Someone did.”
“They planted all that shit.”
“The police wouldn’t know where to get bear paws.”
“You want help, make it all go away.”
“I’m only here about the bear.”
“Talk to the man, he likes to deal.” Nine-O looked at the mirror, spoke to it. “Make me an offer.”
“You talk to your lawyer. I’ll talk to the district attorney. Your lawyer can contact me through Delano, but after you’re charged it’s going to get a lot harder.” Marquez stood up. “You don’t know about the bear parts in the trunk and I didn’t write the threestrikes law. It’ll be a couple of days before we move on this, so you’ve got time and your lawyer can check out the statutes.”
Marquez got up and left. He figured if Nine-O knew anything at all the three-strikes fear would sweat it out of him. And he had to know something. Delano walked out of the station with him, telling Marquez about a meth bust he was heading up tonight, SWAT team, the whole deal.
“This is a lab that can produce ten pounds at a time.”
Marquez didn’t share Delano’s excitement but told him he used to be with the DEA. They had a conversation about the increase in meth traffic in California, and then probably out of politeness Delano asked about the SOU.
“Your Fish and Game team moves around a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“You must see some of the mess these drug labs make.”
“Sure, occasionally.”
The cleanup was as bad as the trade, and Marquez’s team had seen the waste products poured in creeks. To get a pound of meth you produced roughly five pounds of waste, hydriodic acid, lye, red phosphorus. He tried now to get Delano interested in the bear problem but didn’t get the feeling he’d reached him, though he knew Delano would keep the heat on Nine-O.
On the drive back he took a call from Kendall, learned that the detective had already gone back up to the hunting shack with crime techs. As he laid the phone down Marquez knew that Kendall had screwed him. Like the vice cop, Kendall had only a vague curiosity about bear poaching. It wasn’t on their radar screens, wasn’t part of their world and never would be. Finding bear paws in a car trunk was a curiosity, a bait pile a quaint
throwback to an America that didn’t really exist anymore. Crimes against animals carried no weight when any other human crime was involved, and yet the justice system had produced a strange opportunity today. With two strikes against him Nine-O could only deal his way out. The lawyer hadn’t been born who’d tell Nine-O he had nothing to worry about, so maybe something would come from Nine-O. If it did, it wouldn’t surprise Marquez if it tied into what they had going.
The call came after he’d returned
to the safehouse. He flipped open his cell phone and heard the now-familiar electronic whine, the pitch-altering adjustments their bear farmer made as he began to talk. You could buy a voice changer on the Internet for either a landline or a cell phone for as little as twenty bucks, but their seller had spent more. The audio expert who’d analyzed the recordings speculated that he had state-of-the-art equipment, near the quality a government spook might have.
Shauf slid Marquez a notepad and he looked at her, thinking that for a long time the best they could do was make a buy from him every six weeks to two months. But now he was very available and calling them. Marquez turned the notepad so everyone at the table could read.
He’d written, “Talking about bear farming. Wants to talk about it, could be our opening.”
“I studied with the Chinese, but they haven’t tried to improve their methods in a thousand years.” There was a high-pitched whine, the voice changer shifting settings, and the flat mechanical voice started again. “The Chinese can’t legally import and they aren’t going to anytime soon. They think they’re going to educate the world about their medicinal practices, but it isn’t going to work like that. I’ve got bear bile products right here that are better than they’re selling, and they’re going to do nothing but run into problems with the UN geeks and the wildlife groups.”
“My clients want pills, not powders, and they want to know the farms are sanitary. They want me to take a look,” Marquez said. “I need a lot of pills. And I’d like to know who I’m doing business with.”
“I answered questions about my business one time to a young woman who turned out to be with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. She’d told an associate of mine she was going to Utah on a vacation, a backpacking trip. She fell off a cliff near Zion. It took them months to find her.”
“Were you there?”
“I hid her backpack between two rocks. You couldn’t see it unless you were standing right over it. She caused me a problem in Idaho, and when I walked up the trail in Utah she knew what was going to happen. She begged and cried after I dragged her over to the edge. I can still hear her scream in my head.”
“I’m buying for people that want to heal, so that makes a story like that hard to hear.”
There was a long staticky pause, and Marquez had the sense their seller was debating.
“Who do you sell my product to?”
“Mostly to Koreans in LA and San Francisco. I had a wife who was Korean. She died of cancer, but her family deals in traditional medicines and I work with them. They’re connected in the com
munity and ship some of it home. They want more. They ask all the time for more.”
“What was your wife’s name?”
“I’m not going to give you any names.”
“Then why do you ask so many questions?”
The line went dead and Marquez still gripped the phone, surprised at the abruptness and not sure what to make of it. He laid the phone down softly.
“He hung up,” Marquez said, then looked at Roberts. She would help him track down this Utah story. He slid the pad to her and she made her own copy of what he’d written down. They went down a list of assignments, and Marquez recounted details of the phone conversation so he didn’t forget them. An uneasiness stayed with him after they’d all left the table. He couldn’t shake it. A couple hours later he called home and talked with Maria about the speeding ticket. Her fingers clicked away on a keyboard, no doubt instant-messaging her friends. Lately, it was too much for her to have only one conversation. Even when he asked her to stop typing and stick with this conversation he heard her fingers lightly moving.
“We can talk now or later,” he said.
“I already know I have to pay for the extra insurance and I’m really upset, okay. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll baby-sit or get a job at Starbucks.”
“You told your mom a man was following you.”
“He was and I know no one believes me.”
“Where were you?”
“Leaving town.”
“Mill Valley?”
“Didn’t Mom already tell you this?”
“I want to hear it from you. What did this man look like, what was he driving?”
“Because you and Mom think I’m making it up.”
“I’m not saying that, Maria, I’m just asking what he looked like.”
“I couldn’t really see him.”
“What was he driving?”
“Like a regular minivan, or something.”
“A van that had side doors?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any idea of the model or make?”
“I knew you were going to interrogate me.”
“Maria.” His own exasperation showing. “I’m not challenging your story, just tell it to me.”
“That’s all there is.”
“If you say it happened, that’s good enough for me, but when I get home we’re going to retrace the route you took. I want to see it.”
“Because you don’t believe me.”
“No, because I want to think about and understand it.”
He didn’t believe or not believe her. She’d always been a very truthful kid, though in the past year or so she’d leaned more toward telling them what they wanted to hear. He asked now about the phone calls from the man who’d stayed on the line, and she was funny about them tonight, downplaying them, defensive, dismissing both the calls and his interest in them. Marquez told her he loved her, then said good-bye and sat for a while thinking it over.
Midmorning the next day Marquez drove out to Eli Smith’s house with Shauf. They found him sitting on a small campstool near the front of his old truck. The right wheel was off, and Smith worked on an axle. His hands were black with grease as he showed them a crushed ball bearing, holding it in his palm as if it were a gold nugget.
“We were on our way down the highway and thought we’d stop in and see if you had anymore ideas on who killed your dogs. I just can’t get that out of my head,” Marquez said.
“I don’t think I ever caught your name,” Smith said.
“John Croft. Hell, I thought I gave you a card. We’ve got an office in town. The business is TreeSearch. We’re only here on a government contract, though I like it so much I may move to Placerville.”
Marquez fumbled in his coat and made sure he didn’t find a card.
“We were just thinking about you and your dogs and we’re in the area on a tree count. But I can see you’re busy, we’ll leave you alone. It’s none of our business anyway, just thought we’d stop and see how you’re doing.”
“Y’all are here because you’re interested in how I’m doing.
Funny, the detective was back this morning too.”
“Good. Has he figured out who did it?”
Marquez put on his best face but wasn’t sure it was carrying, figured they’d back out of here. Then Smith surprised him.
“I owe five hundred dollars to a man for a hound I bought. She didn’t never hunt worth a damn so I never paid him in full and he’s been after me ever since. ‘Bout a month ago he said he was going to even things up. I gave the detective his name this morning.
He’s the only one I can think of, but I don’t have any proof.”
Smith reached for a Pepsi can on his hood and drank. He wiped the soda pop that foamed off his chin and pointed toward his house.
“He knows where I keep the key.”
“Why’d you wait to tell the police?”
“Because I’m not sure what else he’d do if he killed my dogs.”
“Like come after you?”
“He’s the type.”
“What’s his name?”
“I already gave it to the detective.”
They left him standing by his truck and drove back to Placerville. Later that afternoon Marquez phoned Kendall from his truck
while watching Alvarez shake hands with Nyland and Durham.
Durham wore a flowered shirt, cleanly pressed khaki slacks, and brown leather shoes. His narrow face turned toward Alvarez. He’d crossed his legs after sitting down and folded his glasses, looked oddly prissy for a man with a hunting guide business. Nyland moved toward Alvarez, opened a leatherbound album, and showed photos of hunting trips.
“Eli Smith called me,” Kendall said. “He wanted to know if you really are what I told him you were. Might not have been such a good idea to go back out and rattle his kennels.”
“Did he give you a name of a friend that sold him a dog that wouldn’t hunt?”
“No, he danced around it. Nothing has changed with him, and you ought to let me handle him. You don’t do yourself any good questioning him as concerned citizens. He’s not a fool.”
“Let you handle it like you’re handling our bear operation for us.”
Kendall was quiet, then coughed. In the distance the mountains looked smoky and cumulus towered behind the highest peaks.
“You’re short with me today, Marquez.”
“You shouldn’t have gone back up there so fast.”
“I told you I wouldn’t do it unless I had to.”
“Why did you?”
“I can’t go into this with you.”
“Talk to you later.” Marquez hung up.
Alvarez crawled under Nyland’s truck
and magnetically attached a GPS transponder and battery pack, then added plastic ties before wiring the battery pack to the transponder. He slid back out, dusted off his clothes, and Marquez gave Roberts the signal. She headed upstairs to the pool hall, ordered a beer at the wood-paneled bar, and hung out with a couple of biker types. Her long legs, tight jeans, and brown hair falling loosely on her shoulders drew them, and she shot eight ball and cutthroat and laid her money on the felt bumper to compete with a guy wearing a leather vest over tattooed skin, nothing else. A strand of turquoise beads circled his thick neck like a dog collar. She watched Nyland from the corner of her eye, and when her phone rang she waved it at the bikers, told them to shut up, said it was her old man and nobody make any noise because she was supposed to be at home making his dinner. They laughed as she moved to the windows and talked with Marquez.
“Sophie is all over him. I mean, it’s weird after what we saw earlier. They’re at a pool table in the corner by themselves. Somebody should set Petroni straight.”
“I think he knows it’s over.” Petroni had worse problems to deal with. He’d missed a meeting with internal affairs this afternoon and hadn’t returned Bell’s phone calls.
“I can tell you this,” Roberts said, “if they’re a couple that broke up you wouldn’t know it, watching him slip his hands down the back of her pants.”
“You’ve got a close eye on them.”
“It’s hard to miss.”
Roberts ordered another bottle of Sierra Pale and shot three games with the bikers, letting one of them guide her through a more tricky shot as he leaned over her. When Nyland and Sophie got ready to leave, she left the bikers hanging and went down the stairs ahead of Nyland.
Sophie left her truck in town and rode with Nyland, who drove home to his trailer. Now the GPS showed his truck was stationary, parked out in the meadow, and Marquez doubted much more would happen tonight. Still, he drove out there, taking Alvarez with him, hiking through the trees across the ridge and then down to the rock outcrop. Nyland’s trailer door was open. Light spilled onto the iron stairs, and they heard or felt a bass pulse of music. Then someone pulled the door shut and one of the lights went out.
The trailer was just a dull yellow glow now. And both he and Alvarez were tired. It was cold and late. It felt like the wind was trying to pick up, and he wasn’t sure why he’d wanted to drive out here, maybe just to confirm Sophie was staying here, Sophie was with Nyland again. What would Petroni think if he was sitting here?
“Time to take off?” Alvarez asked.
“Pretty close.”
Then they heard a scream, a sound that at first he thought was mountain lion, a sound like a child in pain. Marquez turned and scanned the dark slope behind them. It had seemed to come from somewhere up the slope.
“That wasn’t a cat,” Alvarez said.
“No, it wasn’t, but maybe it’s the wind picking up and two trees rubbing together in a funny way.”
“Didn’t seem like that either.”
“The wind has come up.”
“Yeah, and I’m freezing, but that was weird.”
Now they heard it again, though different, farther away, lasting longer. Marquez thought he heard voices, people crying out, arguing, Below, the trailer door opened and a hound bayed as Sophie and Nyland came down into the meadow, lurching, laughing, staggering onto the road, drunker than when they’d gotten home. He wondered now if the odd sound might have been a distortion of the music Nyland played in his trailer, some trick of acoustics that had allowed fragments of sound to carry.
“That last almost sounded like voices,” Alvarez said. “As though they were afraid and talking fast.”
“Yeah.
Sophie carried blankets, and she and Nyland walked down the road running through the meadow. They stopped at the first of the abandoned foundations, spread the blanket on the moonlit concrete, and passed a bottle. Tiny fragments of their voices carried on the wind. They draped a blanket over their legs.
“Not my kind of picnic,” Alvarez said. “Way too cold.”
Then Nyland stood and moved out onto the slab. He took a stance and aimed. They heard the sharp hard pops and saw the muzzle flashes.
“Aiming toward the old sales office,” Marquez said, and a faint sound of glass breaking carried on the wind. They heard Nyland’s
whoop. “I took a look at the building last time I was here. There were a couple of windows on that face that weren’t broken yet.”
“Job’s done now.”
Nyland went back to Sophie, and the bottle got passed again.
“Get drunk and shoot up something,” Alvarez said. “Nothing has changed in a hundred years.” He cleared his throat, voice much quieter now. “I swear those were voices we heard. That wasn’t any music they were playing in the trailer.”
Sophie stood, and Marquez saw that she had the gun. She pulled her clothes off with her free hand and held the gun on Nyland as he stripped and then lay on his back on the blanket.
“You seeing this, Lieutenant?”
“It’s a game.”
Sophie had a two-handed grip aimed at Nyland’s head, and Marquez heard Alvarez mutter, “Yeah, my girlfriend and I play this one all the time.”
The gray-white concrete slab was like a stage, and on the slope they became voyeurs as she straddled him, taking him with one hand and guiding him inside her, holding the gun to his head as she moved slowly with him in her, her free hand pushing down on his chest, her back arched, hair spread on her shoulders, breasts pale.
“Looks like they’re still friends,” Marquez said.
“She had Petroni fooled.”
Petroni had himself fooled
.
“Where’s Petroni living now?” Alvarez asked. “He’s not waiting at home for her, is he?”
“I don’t know, but we’re done here.”
They hiked back up to the ridge and drove back to the safehouse.
Alvarez went inside, and Marquez sat in the truck listening to music, a local station, old rock and roll songs, a lot of them thirty years or more old, songs written for times that had vanished. Lately,
he’d been listening to some group he liked called Magnetic Fields, but he wondered if he would ever connect with modern music in the same way he had when he was young. He wondered if his beliefs about what he could get done running an undercover team were overblown and foolish. He lowered his window and reclined the seat, tried to make sense of the events of the past few days. He left the music on low, listening to the Doors’ “LA Woman,” and thought about Kendall’s story of why he’d left LAPD and how vehemently Petroni contradicted it, how personal that was for Petroni.
The way Petroni was on me for a while.
He thought of Brandt, the informant Kendall had let him talk to. Was there any chance Petroni was on the take? Of all things, that was hardest to imagine. With his eyes closed he thought of Sophie making love with Nyland and Sophie at the Creekview with Petroni. She was more than a woman alone, she was lost.
He fell asleep in the truck and slept the remaining hours of the night, waking with his cheeks numb from cold and his neck stiff.
The night’s dreams still lingered in him, and he looked at the house, lights out, team asleep. He could go in and make coffee, boil an egg, toast bread, and read the newspapers. Instead, he started the truck, backed out, and drove up an empty Main Street past the Liar’s Bench, Placerville Hardware, the antique shops, and on toward the east side. He parked and went into the Waffle House; he wanted the light and other people. Maybe Petroni would show up. He read the newspapers and made notes to himself.
Later, after he’d paid and was back outside, he called Petroni’s cell phone.
“This is Sophie,” a woman’s voice said. “Billy’s asleep.”
“This is the friend who helped at the bar that night, the Creekview. I need to talk to him.”
When had she driven there?
“He’s really tired. Can you call back later?”
“Sure, and if I don’t reach him, will you tell him I called?”
Marquez drove up the highway to the Pollock Pines address where Petroni had been house-sitting with Sophie. The old orange Honda was out on the street with a layer of frost on it. Sophie’s Ford pickup was there, her windshield clear of frost, heat still rising from the engine. He thought about parking and knocking on the door but didn’t. Later he would wish he had.