Authors: Kirk Russell
When she crumpled
Marquez went to her, but Troy, for reasons only he could explain, spat on the ground near his feet and walked back toward the police cruisers. A piece of skull with hair attached lay in the mud ten feet away, and Marquez gripped the arm of a deputy who simply didn’t see it and almost stepped on it in the hurry to get to the truck. Marquez moved back to Sophie, knelt near her, curiously unsure of himself, stunned by what she’d done. He heard Kendall backing people off and asking him to get away from her body.
Marquez backed away, walked to the truck where Hawse and several others were cutting the duct tape wrapped around Durham’s neck and the headrest. Someone called out “He’s alive.
We’ve got a pulse,” and paramedics rushed forward. Marquez watched them extract him. He’d been gutshot. His shirt, coat, and pants were soaked with blood, a lot of it already dry and black.
Turning back to Sophie’s body, he saw Kendall leaning over, pulling a handgun from her waist. He removed the clip, bagged the gun, and looked at Marquez. “Insane. All of this is insane. You tell me why she did that.”
Because she couldn’t face what came next. Because of the things she’d done and what she’d become, what there was no returning from. Because she’d probably showed Nyland where Vandemere was doing his research and may have been there when he was shot.
“I want to get them to check Durham’s arms for wounds,” Marquez said.
“He’s just barely hanging on,” Kendall said. “You know that’s Vandemere’s truck she’s driving. They painted it, put different plates on it.”
Marquez nodded. He’d figured it out a few minutes ago. He walked over to one of the paramedics, a husky bald man, leaned near him to say, “There may be another bullet wound on one of his arms.”
Durham wore an expensive-looking down parka, North Face logo on it. The paramedics slit each arm down the inseam, cut his shirt off. There weren’t any wounds on his arms, only the one shot to his lower abdomen.
One of them glanced up at Marquez, said, “You owe him a coat.”
“Will he need it?”
They were pumping fluid into him, Durham ghostly, his face slack. Hard to believe he’d make it. Marquez watched as they started moving him, looked in the truck again, and then straightened as it started to rain. Sophie’s body was getting photographed. Her hair glistened.
“She must have shot him before taping his head,” Kendall said.
“He’s got a good-sized lump on his temple.”
“Doesn’t matter, he isn’t going to make it.” Marquez saw Troy starting to drift back, heard Kendall mutter, “He looks like he knows something.”
“Are you going to try to do anything out here with the truck?”
Marquez asked.
“Not with the rain. We’ll close it up and tow it in.” Kendall nodded toward Sophie and asked, “Did you know that was coming?”
“No, but I have a sense of what she was missing inside.”
“I’ll tell you what Durham is missing inside, a couple of quarts of blood.”
They both turned as Troy argued with a deputy, Troy trying to get through.
“You’ll have to wait to see her, Mr. Broussard.”
“I don’t care about seeing her. I want to talk to him.”
He’d looked their direction so Kendall walked over, said, “What is it?”
“Not you. Him.”
Marquez walked over, and Troy spoke as though he’d rehearsed what he had to say.
“I don’t care much for you or any of you people, but I know what you’re after and I’ll lead you out there. God didn’t put bear on earth to be in cages.”
“Where is it you’re going to lead me?”
“Nevada.”
“Give me an address.”
Marquez wanted to phone ahead. He wanted to secure the area around the ranch, enlist the help of anybody they could get in Nevada.
“I know where it is, that’s all.”
Marquez and the team followed Troy’s old truck down a long dry desert road outside Minden, Nevada. Well short of the ranch, Troy pulled over and parked. His truck canted steeply, two wheels
in a dusty ditch. He lowered his window but didn’t get out.
“Those buildings up ahead. He’s there. That’s his car and you’d better be damn careful.”
“What’s your role here, Troy?”
“If I had any part of it, would I bring you out here? Let’s just say he’s asked me to, but the law says I can’t trap or hunt.”
Marquez looked at him, thinking,
You did anyway, didn’t you
. He looked out across the sage and tumbleweed and knew they’d never nail Troy for it. If there was any chance of that, Troy wouldn’t have led them out here, and the question now was why had he.
Must see Bearman as a competitor or has some other grudge against him
.
From here it was roughly three-quarters of a mile to the house.
He saw the car Troy meant but couldn’t tell the make from here, amazing that Troy could. The nose of a car was visible around the back of the main building.
“The boy you killed up in the mountains brought me out here.”
“Nyland?”
“Yes.”
Funny, Nyland had said the opposite, but it could wait. Marquez glanced at Troy again, wondering if the old man was hoping they’d get killed approaching the buildings.
“Are there bears in those Quonset huts?”
“There are. Those aluminum buildings have bear in cages all lined up. I figure you and I are even now.”
“Do you feel anything for her?”
“I lost my little girl a long time ago.”
“And around town they say you know how you did it.”
“Sophie was a born liar, no different than her mother.”
Marquez watched him drive away and four Nevada police approach, dust roostering up behind them. He put on a flak jacket and briefed the Nevada officers on what he thought they were going
to find. Another attempt was made to contact the ranch by phone and after that failed, someone spotted a man standing out in front of the house.
“That’s Ungar,” Marquez said, after lifting binoculars. “That’s who we’re looking for and he sees us.” Ungar didn’t move, stood frozen facing their direction. “He’s not sure what to do now. I think we can drive down there.”
Marquez rode in the lead vehicle. The Nevada officers took over as they parked near Ungar, asking Ungar if he was armed and Ungar shaking his head no, turning around, raising his arms so they could check him.
“I solved it for you,” Ungar said as Marquez walked up.
“What did you solve?”
“What you’re looking for is in those aluminum Quonset huts. My cousin called, gave this address, and I decided to check it out before calling you. There are twenty bears in there. I counted.
There’s a little Chinese man in feeding them. He doesn’t speak a word of English. I was just about to drive somewhere my phone will work and call you. How’d you find this place?”
Marquez let Ungar walk with him to the Quonset huts. A crowd of officers flanked them, two Nevada wildlife officers close behind Ungar. Sunlight reflected brightly off metal roofs ahead, and yet, the day was cold, the rain over the mountains to the west approaching, wind blowing hard. He watched Ungar’s black hair whip across his forehead, no cap this afternoon, no sunglasses, a shiny black leather coat. As they reached the first hut a small man in black baggy pants, black shirt, sandals, showed briefly at the door before retreating.
“What’s his name?” Marquez asked Ungar.
“Han.”
Marquez swung the door open, called to Han. He was maybe seventy, didn’t seem to speak any English, spoke rapid Cantonese
that Ungar responded to.
“I barely know any Chinese,” Ungar said. “But I told him not to move, that you’re the police.”
“Don’t say anything else to him.”
Marquez left him with the state troopers and Nevada Wildlife, left him explaining how he’d helped California Fish and Game solve this case.
Marquez walked through the thick bear smells. It was so different from the cold sage-laden wind outside. The metal walls and roof creaked in the wind as he counted. Twenty, same as Ungar had claimed. Heavy stainless cages, thick, the same water trough system, same cages as Johengen’s. He looked at each bear, the catheters, eyes staring at him, then walked back.
“Troy Broussard trap the young bears?” he asked Ungar, taking in his mocking expression, not getting any answer, just a blank face.
Ungar grinned, said, “Do you want to play this game again?”
Ungar turned and as an aside explained to one of the Nevada wildlife officers that he’d been under suspicion ever since coming forward to help.
“But why would I have anything to do with undercover wildlife officers if I was engaged in something like this.”
To keep track of us,
Marquez thought,
and because you’re driven by hate so strong you have trouble controlling it. You found a like spirit in Durham. U.S. Fish and Wildlife shut Durham down in Michigan, and somehow you two found each other out here. Thing is, Durham didn’t have quite your ambition and he also had another successful business life.
“Do you know Joe Durham?” Marquez asked.
“No.”
The Nevada wildlife officers began to question him. They’d take him in, start there. Before leaving here they’d ask him to remove his coat, check his arms for a wound. He’d have to provide
the cousin’s name, whereabouts.
Cairo and Roberts went back for camcorders, notebooks, what they needed to start documenting. The first thing was to find a legitimate way to hold Ungar more than overnight. Marquez listened to the wildlife officers start with Ungar again, their patience infinitely greater than his own, and he walked out and down to the second Quonset hut. No bears were inside, but the cages were set up, the trough, the systems in place. He looked around outside again, the desert, neighbors far away, plenty of room. When he walked back into the first building he heard one of the Nevada officers liken the Quonset hut to a hog farm, the most apt description yet.
After everything had been recorded, but before the bears were moved, Marquez walked the cages alone, looking at each bear again, counting the yearlings, eight of them. He walked farther into the hut, empty cages stacked in a dark corner, the smell of bear excrement thick down here, despite the roof fans whirring overhead. Then he saw what he’d missed, a cage with a crumpled blanket, what looked like a pet bowl with dried spaghetti strands. He smelled urine, heard Nyland talking in his head, knew it was true.
He brought the wildlife officers down. They called a detective, handed the phone to Marquez, and he related what Nyland had told him and gave the detective Kendall’s phone number, said he’d wait here for him.
The SOU began documenting, and Marquez went to Ungar.
They were getting ready to arrest him because he’d refused to produce a way to reach his cousin.
“I have nothing to do with this,” Ungar repeated. “You’re incompetent. You’re fools. You’re the same as he is.” He indicated Marquez.
An officer moved in, and Ungar struggled against the handcuff
ing, fought three officers, but it was Marquez who reached over and gripped the bicep he’d seen Ungar favor. Lifted him by it and a cry of pain came out of Ungar. Cuffs went on, his coat got stripped, an officer explaining they wanted to make sure they hadn’t hurt him.
The bandage wrapping his right bicep was exposed.
“Is that a bullet wound?” Marquez asked.
“A hunting accident,” Ungar said. “A kill I haven’t finished yet.”
“I don’t think you ever will.”
“Oh, you can bet I will,” he said, as they walked him toward the door.
Nevada held Ungar
while they tried to sort out the situation with the help of the California SOU. The ranch was owned by a Marion Stuart aka Durham, and Durham couldn’t answer questions, might not ever be able to. He had yet to regain consciousness and according to doctors attending him, suffered an as yet undetermined degree of brain damage due to oxygen deprivation. One doctor suggested in private to Marquez that Durham’s future, if he had one, was in a vegetative state in a nursing home. He was, the doctor added, perhaps unlucky to have been rescued.
Marquez returned home, asked Bell for a week’s vacation, and worked on the case against Ungar from there. Without testimony from any of those directly involved it was particularly difficult, and they had yet to obtain a warrant to search Ungar’s apartment.
Nothing had been found in his car or on his person.
Alvarez and Shauf also requested a week off, and for the same reason, one Marquez had yet to inform Bell of. Then a call he’d
waited two days for came from Kendall. His voice was hoarse, said he’d been battling a fever.
“The knife you found in the barn was used to kill Petroni. The fingerprints on it are Ungar’s, but the DA doesn’t like the chain of evidence. He’s got a problem with you finding it alone after we’d already made two thorough searches of the barn. He sees a defense attorney tearing into us, you on the stand.” He coughed and added, “They’d come after you personally.”
“That’s all right.”
“That’s what I say too.” Kendall coughed again, apologized for having a cold, then said, “But you see the problem.”
“Sure, but aren’t there enough other pieces?”
“The problem is Ungar will claim he didn’t do the actual killing. In fact, he didn’t even know what the knife was. He saw the dried blood on it, picked it up, asked Durham or Nyland, and got told it was used on a bear. With those two out of the picture he’s free to say whatever he wants.”
“Any luck with Troy?”
“Sticking with a story that Nyland drove him and showed him the inside of the first Quonset hut on a day when no one else was out there. He just wanted him to know where it was and what the Bearman was doing.”
“Why’d he want him to know?”
“He wouldn’t say. What’s your guess?”
“That Troy supplied some of the bears. Yearlings. Cubs.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Ungar needs to stay behind bars.”
“I hear you. What’s going to happen in Bishop with your daughter and her grandmother?”
“They showed Lillian photos and she can’t pick him out. Her memory of the whole thing is still hazy. Maria is scheduled for a lineup tomorrow.”
“But he wore a mask into the house?”
“Yeah. There was some blood recovered out front but it could be argued it was contaminated, and it’ll be weeks if not months before it gets analyzed. If there’s enough corroborative evidence, he may argue he came inside because Lillian had tripped and hurt herself. That he never meant any harm.”
“Same problem I have.”
“Basically.”
“What’s the judge like?”
“Law-and-order type, a ball breaker, or so they tell me. The hope is he’ll set a high bail, or if we’re lucky, continue to hold him pending DNA and blood results.”
“Can your daughter pick him out of a lineup?”
“Based on what I’ve heard her say, I doubt it.”
“Then it’s like you said, hope for a high bail. You going to be there?”
“Yeah, I’ve taken some vacation time and so have a couple of others on my team. I’m also going to come see you. I’ve got an idea I want to run by you.”
“Good. There are a couple of things I want to show you, including Sophie’s journal.”
“Kept a journal?”
“She did. She was a lonely woman. There’s a few entries with Vandemere, one that got me thinking. I’ll show it to you when I see you. Listen, before we hang up, will you tell me what you’re planning?”
“I’ll come see you tomorrow.”
After Marquez hung up with Kendall he made some coffee and worked at the picnic table out on the deck. An hour or so later he heard the front door open, leaned around, and saw Kath was home.
“I took off work early,” she said, paused, “to be with you, because if you remember we were never going to let this happen to
us again.” She straddled the picnic bench, sunlight on her face and bright on the ghost streak of white hair that ran from near her temple. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
They’d been separated, come close to divorce, and found their way back, done as much as they could to put it behind them. He closed the file, rested his coffee cup on it to keep the breeze from lifting it, and went inside with Katherine, talked with her for hours. Maria was staying at a friend’s house tonight, and toward dusk they made love on the throw rug in the living room. Now he lay near her, the light fading through the windows as they talked about dropping down to town and getting some dinner. She turned toward him, and he took her in his arms and held her tight. She spoke to him with her voice pressed against his chest.
“You can’t catch all of these guys,” she said.
Later they did go down into town and ate, then came back up and sat outside under the stars with a couple of drinks. The next morning he drove to Placerville, met with Kendall out Howell Road, then drove south. He was in the courthouse at 10:00 the following morning as Judge Faribault set bail for Ungar. A collective murmur of approval went up from Lillian’s friends when the amount was $250,000, but only Marquez and the team had anticipated that Ungar would make bail that day. They knew the money he’d been making, just didn’t know where he kept it. They waited outside for him. With Alvarez’s help Marquez had illegally attached a GPS unit to Ungar’s car, and they watched now as Ungar walked out and scanned the parking lot and the street.
“Looking for us,” Marquez said. “He knows.”
They could hold their breath and hope, but it was up to Ungar.
He walked to his car, got in, started south on the highway out of Bishop, went almost to Lone Pine before turning around and coming back. They watched the satellite readout as he did a number of backtracking moves on his drive north on 395. It took him nearly
ten hours to get back to Placerville, though a straight drive would have put him there in five.
Shortly after 9:00 P.M., Marquez made another call to Kendall.
“He just pulled into Placerville,” he said. “He’s buying gas.”
“Christ, I hope you’re right.”
“You ready on your end?”
“Yeah, we’re good to go.”
Then it looked like Marquez was wrong. Ungar got back on the highway and headed westbound. It was Alvarez who voiced the fear tightening Marquez’s gut.
“Lieutenant, he could be driving to your house.”
Marquez hadn’t yet answered when Ungar exited the highway again. He drove into a new mini-storage complex alongside the highway. They saw him punch in numbers and then an access gate swung open. They got the number of which unit he visited, but couldn’t see inside.
“We thought Petroni had a unit there,” Kendall said. “Sophie was sure he had one. That’s the key we were looking for up at Wright’s Lake.”
Ungar was in the storage unit until after midnight. Then, his headlights came on. The car swung out of the lot and back onto the highway. He continued eastbound past Placerville.
Marquez heard the electric change in Shauf’s and Alvarez’s voices and felt it himself. He talked to Kendall, his voice tightening with urgency as Ungar’s car slowly exited at Howell Road. A quarter mile beyond Johengen’s barn he pulled off and parked in the trees.
“We’ve got him just beyond Johengen’s,” Marquez said.
“We’ve got him in view. He’s sitting in the car.”
“I’m starting down Howell.”
It took Marquez twenty minutes to get within a mile. Near Johengen’s the road ran straighter for a third of a mile, and he
pulled over before then. He killed his lights, knew where he’d leave his truck and walk. Talked to Kendall again from his cell phone, told him Shauf and Alvarez had moved in from the other direction.
“He’s out of the car,” Kendall said, “getting something out of his trunk.”
“He’ll probably cross the creek and come through the orchard.”
“Half an hour ago I was freezing my ass off. Now, I feel like I’m on fire. Let’s just hope he’s not headed somewhere else in the woods because he’s got something buried. Hold on a second.”
When Kendall came back on, he said, “It might have been a shovel he got out of the trunk.”
Marquez, Shauf, and Alvarez crossed the creek and came up alongside the old farmhouse, seeing it all, the orchard in moonlight, trees skeletal and bone-colored. Marquez saw Ungar first, pointed him out, a dark figure moving, almost floating through the grass. The Bearman. He crossed the orchard to the barn, then disappeared around the back, and they heard boards being pried off, nails wrenching. Light shone through gaps in the siding. A ladder banged against the barn wall, scraped as it slid up to the rafters, and then light climbed the wall, shone through cracks. Along the orchard perimeter the SOU and county officers moved into position.
Ungar descended the ladder, the flashlight marking his progress.
He dragged the ladder back, and the groundhog cameras Marquez and Kendall had buried recorded it all.
They heard boards pounded back into place. When his flashlight went out they waited for him to show at the corner of the barn, but after a minute he still hadn’t. Marquez heard Kendall’s worried “Shit, please no.” There was a chance he’d leave via a different route, climb into the rows of overgrown Christmas trees
or come around the front face of the barn. He might even bury it up there and create new evidentiary problems.
Then they saw him leave the corner and start through the orchard, and they let him get out in the middle before lighting him up. He took two steps, froze, and abruptly threw the bundle holding the knife he’d retrieved. Marquez’s flashlight caught the knife that had killed Petroni spinning through the air. It landed near the base of a gnarled apple tree, and Ungar made one dodging move to his left, dropped to his knees, calling, “I surrender, I surrender.”
“Sonofabitch,” Kendall said, “sonofabitch, we’ve got him.”