Authors: Kirk Russell
After Bell left,
Marquez drove to the team’s rented office in town, walked from there a quarter mile to the Sierra Guides office, sandwiched between brick buildings along an alley. Through dusty windows he saw two desks and a sitting arrangement, couch and chairs grouped around a bearskin rug, a coffee table, with hunting magazines resting on top. Mounted on the walls were the heads of a rhino, a water buffalo, a lion, and a grizzly. He read the office hours in white script on the glass door. Closed Friday–Monday. “Gone Hunting,” a sign announced.
Most California hunting guide businesses were small, the enterprises of hunters trying to marry what they loved doing with making a living, which was hard to do. Bear hunting was tied to a lottery system, and a hunter couldn’t know whether he’d win a tag in a given year or not, so a guide who specialized in bear couldn’t count on repeat business. Occasionally, guides turned out to be fronts for poachers, not often, but it did happen. With
Nyland working here it made sense to learn everything they could about the ownership.
Roberts had found new information on the listed business owner, a Joe Durham—gossip she’d gotten after calling one of the numbers on Durham’s website and asking for a reference. According to a former client, Durham’s main income was a coalition of timber industry companies seeking better logging access in the Sierra Nevada. Durham lobbied for them. He was very knowledgeable about forest management and U.S. government policies and, from what she’d gathered, a switch-hitter on environmental issues. It just depended on who held the checkbook. The former client knew Durham from working with him at the state capitol, and that relationship evolved into a weekend boar hunt along the central coastal mountains. Marquez called Roberts as he walked away from the alley. They picked up the earlier conversation, Roberts relating what she’d learned from Durham’s former client.
“Nyland was on that hunt,” Roberts said. “They called him Durham’s right-hand man, the guy in the field, made it sound like Nyland did the real guiding and for Durham the guide business is more of a vanity.”
“Or a cover.”
“Sure.”
“Durham represents timber?”
“Yeah, can you believe that?” She laughed. It threw a new twist at the SOU cover story, pretending to do business in an area this guy might know too much about.
“Keep digging.”
Marquez sat at his desk in the TreeSearch office and worked the phone, computer, and fax. He’d started an “around the world” on both Nyland and Durham, checking for any criminal history.
He drove down to the sheriff’s office and read the file on Nyland— a first confrontation with police at age eighteen, a second three months later, a month in jail, questioning in a burglary, guns
stolen, Nyland a suspect in a drug case, charges dropped, then an incident where he’d boxed in a cop in a parking spot, locked his truck, and went into a shop to buy coffee, trapping the car of an officer he’d gone to high school with and later calling it a practical joke. The officer had consequently been unable to respond to an emergency call, and Nyland did five months and service work for that. There was bad beating of a man outside a bar that left the victim blind in one eye, though witnesses testified that Nyland had only defended himself, witnesses who were Nyland’s friends. Got off on that one too. Then the Tuolumne road rage incident and another where he’d tailed a Mariposa cop, a young woman, for days until undercover officers finally arrested him. He’d never given an explanation. He hadn’t been arrested since until the Creekview confrontation with Petroni.
Marquez read the file, then drove back to the TreeSearch office, ate lunch in front of the computer, looking over Durham’s website. He talked to Roberts again later in the afternoon, and she listed the arsenal of guns registered in Durham’s name, including seven hunting rifles, one of which was a .30-30 Winchester.
Later that afternoon he met with Brad Alvarez, having decided Alvarez would be the best on the team to meet with Durham. They roughed out what he’d say, that he had a bear tag and wanted a guided hunt to increase his chances of bagging a bear, that he was looking for the right guide outfit.
“Think I need to shave?” Alvarez asked.
“You could always clean it up a little bit.” Watched him smile.
“But don’t overdo it. They’re selling you, you’re not selling them.”
Alvarez had cut his wiry hair short and lost his black goatee. Put an oily Mackinaw on him now and he’d be the guy who’d come out to the house, climb up a tree, and top it for you. He knew guns, hunting, the woods. He was a confident liar, and cover stories came easily to him, a fact he attributed to being smaller than average and growing up in a tough neighborhood.
“If you can avoid talking about TreeSearch all the better,” Marquez said, “because this might be one guy who knows how to check up on government grants.”
Alvarez studied the driver’s license photo of Durham. It was a hard-to-read face, composed, serious to the point of severe, a left cheek that looked like it had been caved in once. He touched the face in the photo.
“I’ve got a friend who got hit with a baseball bat. It crushed his cheekbone and he didn’t get it fixed correctly so now one nostril runs all the time. His wife left him because she got tired of it.”
“Come on.”
“I’m not kidding. He used to take antihistamines, but he drives a UPS truck for a living and the stuff he’d take would make him fall asleep. I’m not saying he and his wife didn’t have other problems.”
Marquez glanced at the license info again. Durham’s birthday was in a week. He’d be fifty-three. Somewhere Roberts had gotten the idea he’d only been in the state for five years. If so, he’d done well for himself in that time, and except for the damaged cheekbone he looked like a banker type.
“There’s a website,” Marquez said, as Alvarez settled in front of the laptop.
“Let me check my email, and then I’ll take a look.”
When Alvarez clicked onto the Sierra Guides site Marquez stood over his shoulder, though he’d already studied it. “About Us,” “Hunting Tours,” “Home,” and three or four other icons, each with a particular blandness, description, and pictures but nothing really there. A photo of Nyland standing over a big buck. No photo of Durham.
They fleshed out more details of Alvarez’s cover story. Alvarez worked for TreeSearch, was hired in Vancouver where he was from and had just been reassigned here. He liked Placerville okay, mostly liked that you didn’t have to drive far out of town to get
into open country. He would trash-talk TreeSearch a little, let them know he was his own man, then take the conversation back to hunting. Tell them some of his hunting stories. In his wallet he had a photo of himself with a bear, a poaching kill the SOU had handled.
He would say he’d hunted with his dad, mostly boar and deer hunting, not all of it legal, then got into bear on his own later in Canada where there wasn’t a lot of enforcement looking over your shoulder. Wasn’t much here anymore either, he’d heard, budget cuts and all. It was pretty much the honor system, or open season, depending how you looked at it. At the right moment, if it came, if Durham or Nyland picked up on the implied, Alvarez would let slip that he was willing to pay to bend the rules if that’s what it took to get a bear. Let them know he’d done that before, but not say where, even if pressed, letting them know he’d keep a confidence.
After they’d worked it out Alvarez headed back to the Crystal Basin to hook up with Shauf and the rest of the SOU. Marquez took a chair and phoned Matt Fong to see if he’d heard anything more on the computer hacking. Matt groused good-naturedly about his desk job, how he was getting soft and missed being with the team, though they both knew he was much happier being able to see his family every night, and the promotion had meant a lot to him. Marquez liked him, was glad he’d made captain, and hoped he would continue up the ladder. He would make a good chief. He listened as Fong downplayed the FBI’s progress.
“John, it won’t go that much farther. There’s no easy way to track where they hacked in. What’ll happen are new firewalls, but we aren’t going to find out who got in. What I hear is that it was someone smart enough not to leave tracks back to his door.”
“I want to float another idea with you,” Marquez said. “You and I were at those legislative hearings in March. I’m wondering if the
leak came from someone there. You know, worked its way from a committee to someone on the outside, a friend, a business associate.”
Or a lobbyist, he might have added but didn’t want to yet.
“Not likely,” Fong said.
“Mull it over anyway.”
“I think about this every minute of the day.”
Fong had a terrific memory and might be able to identify more of the people who’d been there. Now, as he hung up with Fong, someone knocked. Marquez walked over and opened the door to Kendall’s face.
“I’m seeing more of you than anyone,” Marquez said. “Come on in and sit anywhere you want. Sorry we’re light on furniture.”
He didn’t particularly like Kendall’s showing up. Anything more Kendall had to say today could probably have been done via phone, and Kendall knew they worried about their cover being jeopardized.
“I’m sorry about today, sorry I’ve had to come after Petroni.” Kendall adjusted one of their flea market chairs and sat down.
“Sophie doesn’t corroborate his story. She says she was attracted to Vandemere and went swimming with him a few times at Loon Lake. Petroni caught them cavorting there.”
“Is cavorting your word or hers?”
“Her exact words were cruder, and I guess Petroni just happened to be patrolling the area, or maybe he put his undercover experience to work and followed her. She didn’t say it exactly, but it doesn’t sound like she was fully clothed. When Petroni found out he got very angry, went to Vandemere, and threatened to haul him in on a bogus violation.”
“What would that be?”
“You tell me, a four-inch fish, maybe, I don’t know your business.
According to her, Petroni routinely uses his badge to throw his weight around.”
“Are you here to road test a theory?”
Here to see if I can knock holes in it before you take on Petroni
. “Petroni didn’t kill Vandemere.”
“Naw, of course not. Wardens don’t kill geology students, and they don’t take bribes or make up violations. Jealous boyfriends kill, not wardens.”
“You’re running too fast with this.”
“You never know how they’re going to go. The last case I worked I got burned on because I moved too slowly. This was a B and E of a cabin outside of Pollock Pines early this summer. The perps turned out to be gangbangers up visiting for the day from Sacramento, which is what they do nowadays. They go for a day in the country and visit remote cabins. Unfortunately, the owner was home when they broke in. They didn’t realize it because he’d loaned his car to his son for the day. I’m talking about four shitbags in a lowered Honda. The DA let them plea-bargain to manslaughter because I didn’t have enough. I didn’t lean on them hard enough early enough. They claimed it was an accidental death, they were only there to rob him. Truth is, they beat him to death with the tire iron they’d pried the front door open with. If I find who killed Vandemere, there won’t be a manslaughter plea. ” “Good.”
“There’s a phone call I want to make with you. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“You’re not walking me to lunch again, are you?”
“No.”
They walked up the street past the courthouse, then crossed to the old soda works that had become a coffeehouse with art hanging from the walls. In the rear of the building were rooms carved out of rock and a door that led to a mine shaft. They chatted about the building as they waited for the coffees. Kendall said that he was into California history and that the gold rush was still the
single most significant economic event in the history of the country. Marquez wondered how the Great Depression weighed in, but left it alone. Then they carried their coffees across the street and found a place to sit.
“I’ve got another bear hunter for you to talk to,” Kendall said.
“What’s his name?”
“Brandt. Know him?”
“No.”
“He wears a piece of dried bear heart on a leather thong around his neck, says it gives him power in bed with his girlfriend.
He’s pointed me toward other hunters, houndsmen, as you people call them. He’s also suspected of being an accomplice on another case up here involving a theft, so he wants to stay on my good side. Right now, he’s waiting on my call. I told him you’re an associate and I’m going to put you on the line. What he’s told me is that he and other unnamed people know of someone who makes monthly payments to a warden up here. They meet out some dirt road in the Crystal Basin, warden gets paid and afterwards stays out of certain areas for a period of time. I don’t have a warden’s name yet, but how many wardens are there, how many possibilities? The warden is stepping the rate up lately, and Brandt’s been hearing the whining.”
“Is the word out that you’re looking for dirt?”
“I’m sure it is and I’m sure they’re lining up to fuck with Petroni’s life, but the punch line for you is he told me this unnamed warden warned these hunters to be watching for an undercover team.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“A couple of days ago.”
Marquez sipped the coffee, thinking about Kendall’s motives, then said, “Okay, make the call,” and watched him punch in the numbers, listened as Kendall told Brandt he was going to put
another investigator, a colleague on the line. Marquez took the phone, and Brandt said, “I already told Detective Kendall I’m getting this from a friend who works in the business.”
“You hunt legitimate?”
“Yes, sir, I don’t have any problem with the rules.”
“Let’s talk about your friend who’s giving you the information.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What business is he in?”
“Mostly he’s a lookout, but he helps some with skinning and cleaning too.”
“He’s working for poachers.”
“I guess so, but I’m not involved in any of that, sir.”
“I understand.” Marquez drew a quiet breath, looked at Kendall before speaking again, then said, “We called Fish and Game and they don’t have any undercover team.”