Night Game (18 page)

“I’m ready to meet you,”
the mechanical voice rasped. Marquez cleared his throat and sat up. “I’m going to take you to one of my farms. You’ll meet me, leave your car, and wear a hood until we get there.”

“I get claustrophobic.” He stalled. “You’re going to take me to a farm?”

“Yes.”

“How long will I have the hood on?”

“A couple of hours.”

“I’m not good with the hood, but, yeah, okay, I’ll do it.”

Silence now, a mechanical whine, a television or radio playing in the background on their seller’s end, the noise coming from it distorted by the voice changer. Marquez felt adrenaline start in him. He checked his watch, saw it was nearly 3:00 in the afternoon.

“Leave Placerville and go east on Highway 50 at 5:30 today. I’ll direct you to where we’ll meet.”

“I drive out of Placerville at 5:30?”

Their seller hung up, and Marquez had two thoughts. One that he’d do it, and two, there wasn’t much time, just over two hours before he was supposed to drive up the highway past Placerville.

Before that he’d have to drive to Folsom to the Region IV office and pick up the show car. He left the motel room and called Alvarez, Cairo, Roberts, and Shauf as he made the thirty-minute run down to Folsom. The car was where they’d left it on the gravel lot and he parked, switched into it, and took a call from Chief Bell as he drove away.

“We’re going to drop charges against Sweeney and his lawyer,” Bell said without any preamble. “The district attorney has heard their side and requested that we do that.”

“That was fast.”

“The state police interviewed our tipster and believe there’s a chance she misled us and Sweeney. Sweeney thought he had a bear tag and another of his staff backs that up. Our tipster told Sweeney and this other staff member that she’d acquired one for him. She’d been working on setting this hunt up for him for a while. Had him sign the bear permit application, the whole thing, and set it up with Durham, who’s been in and out of their office on lobbying business for years. The kicker is she’d had an affair with Sweeney and was angry he broke it off. This staffer backs Sweeney’s story that our tipster plotted it as revenge.”

“How do they know what’s what?”

“One of them knows about the affair. That in itself is enough.”

“Sure, the same staffer that came to pick him up. Are we really going along with this?”

“I want you to know I’m fighting it.”

“Did you know she was sleeping with Sweeney?”

“She’d told me they’d had a short relationship and that it might come up, but that it meant little and had nothing to do with this.”

“Sweeney never asked to see a bear tag?”

“He’d known Durham for years, trusted him, Durham always talking about hunting. And the DA sees problems.”

“So he’s blaming Durham too?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Okay, if he’s innocent why did he run?”

“He told the state police he realized he’d been set up and panicked.

It gets worse, Lieutenant, and I’m sorry for what’s happened here. This one is all my mistake. We’re being asked for an apology to offset political damage we’ve done to Sweeney.”

“Apologize for what?”

“They’re claiming their rights were violated, the bust mishandled.”

“Who’s claiming that?”

“The lawyer.”

Listening to Bell, Marquez could tell he hadn’t argued very hard the other way. Bell hadn’t backed them up when it mattered.

The arrest was going to be labeled a misunderstanding and the going official story that Sweeney had been deceived by a dishonest hunting guide who’d be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Nyland’s prior brushes with the law had been released to the media, and they were already doing a number on him. Sierra Guides would have its license suspended today, and Fish and Game would support Sweeney’s contention he’d been deceived. In return, nothing would be said by Sweeney’s office about an aggressive, politically ambitious assistant chief being manipulated by a jilted girlfriend. Bell was very frank in describing the threats that had been made toward him. He sounded both humbled and defeated.

“That’s what you’ll read in the newspapers tomorrow,” Bell said.

The speed of it surprised Marquez, but why should it? Hadn’t spin doctors only gotten faster and more skilled?
Better get off the phone before you say something you regret. Call your team and stay with what you’re doing. Forget about Sweeney,
though it was
his belief that each time an individual with access to power was able to get around the law it left a tiny tear in the fabric of society.

He believed in a ripple effect, that however well these events were hidden they eventually touched everyone.

“I’m sorry,” Bell said.

“Chief, I got a phone call a little over an hour ago from our seller. He claims he’ll take me to a bear farm tonight and is calling back at 5:30 to direct me to where I drop my car. The team is already rolling. I drop my car, ride with him, and we’ll arrest him at the bear farm. We’ve asked for county backup. We’re going to take him down tonight.”

“Called when?”

“A little over an hour ago.”

“Who on your team has had any sleep?”

“Everyone.”

“You have?”

They talked it out now, Marquez giving the details of the call, how he wanted the takedown to happen. Couldn’t risk the drive with the hood so the bust would go down almost immediately.

“He’ll meet me someplace he can watch. All the buys have been in canyons at dusk where he can monitor any traffic coming in, so I doubt I’ll be able to get people in position to do it as I walk up, but as soon as we start driving.”

“You could end up a hostage. That’s very risky.”

“It’ll be hard and fast when it happens. We’ll be overmanned and do it right at first contact if we can. If I see him parked, see his face, then we’re there, no hood.”

After he hung up he checked in with the team again and then watched the minutes count down. When he drove through Placerville his phone rang, the seller’s voice crackling, “Continue east on the highway.”

He drove a steady sixty miles, the phone sitting where he could reach it easily.

Marquez dropped into the river canyon
and then climbed toward Kyburz. He drove past Shauf sitting in her van off the road shoulder. They’d made the first buy from their bear farmer in June in the Tahoe Basin. The southernmost buy was near the Fourth Recess on the eastern slope, and the northernmost near Eagle Lake off Interstate 80. They’d pushed pins into a map and stood around guessing at his home base location God knows how many times. Marquez had a full tank of gas, his team had him in view, but he really had no idea where he’d be directed now. Then the next call came.

“Turn onto the Wright’s Lake Road.”

“There was a Fish and Game bust up that way last night. It was all over the news. We don’t want to meet anywhere near there.”

“Turn left onto the dirt road near the top.”

“Go up the road to Wright’s Lake and turn left before the crest?”

“Yes.”

That left turn marked the other end of Weber Mill Road. After he hung up, Marquez called Shauf.

“This isn’t right,” he said. “He’s setting me up to drive down Weber Mill.”

He turned off the highway, climbed the narrow steep road through the trees, Shauf’s voice coming through the earpiece. Where Weber Mill Road reached the asphalt he stopped, the car poised there, looking down and across the canyon face at Weber Mill winding through the ravines. It felt like the car sat on a knife’s edge, rear tires still on the paved road, dusk coming, no rational reason why their bear farmer would bring him here unless he knew who he was.

“Do you see any vehicles?” she asked.

“No.”

“We’re on the move and should be able to see the rest of Weber Mill soon.”

His other cell rang, and she heard it too. “I’m going to take it,” he said. “Here we go.”

“Drive down the road and you’ll see a van.”

Marquez repeated for Shauf, “Okay, I’ll look for a van. How far do I go?”

No answer, line going dead. Marquez laid his gun on the passenger seat and covered it. He started down the dirt road and the car rattled. He lowered his window, unlocked the doors, undid his safety belt, and drove with his lights off.

“Was that him at Tahoe,” Shauf asked, “the man with the rifle on the slope?”

“You may be right.”

“We can’t miss tonight.”

“Wait for my signal.”

“You okay with this?”

“If we get him I’m fine with it.”

He was maybe a mile from where the takedown had been last night. He slowed, rounded another fold in the slope, didn’t like any of the thoughts going through his head. He came around another turn and saw a white van parked up ahead a quarter mile this side of where the bust had been. The phone rang.

“Park fifty yards behind the van, walk to it, and get in the passenger side. There’s a bag on the floor. Put it over your head and pull the string tight around your neck. Sit in the passenger seat and wait for me. If you’ve got a weapon on you, leave it in your car.”

“I’m here because I want to heal people. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

This time Marquez didn’t wait for him to hang up; he hung up first and got a hold of Shauf with his remaining seconds.

“We’re in the basin,” Shauf said, “but we’re not seeing a vehicle yet.”

“It’s this side of the bust about a quarter mile.”

“Roger that.” She called back seconds later. “We’ve got it.”

“A white Ford van. I’m to get out, walk up to it, and wait inside with a hood over my head. I’ll do that, but you’ve got to take him down as he approaches. I think he’s up the slope in the trees above me. He could drive in, could be on foot, could be another dirt bike deal.”

Or he’s already in the van and waiting and there’s no hood to put on. It’s Durham.
No one had been able to locate Durham since the bust. An auto-reply on his email said he was out of town.

So did a voice mail message.

“I’m going to park in the next thirty seconds.”

He decided to do a three-point turn and park facing the other way in case he needed to get away fast. He turned the car around and was slowing to a stop when he heard a loud pop that startled him. He saw the dashboard hole, heard the echo, and jerked the wheel, sliding the car nose toward the uphill embankment, as a
second bullet shattered the window behind him. He heard Shauf screaming, “Get out, get down!”

The car plowed into the embankment as he rolled out, hitting the ground hard, a third shot punching through the open driver’s door. He heard the whine of the bullet passing and rolled, scrambled behind the car trunk, and around to the other side, heart pounding, still not certain he was out of the line of fire. But it had to have come from above, from up the slope, so the gunman might be running through the trees right now, trying to set up for another shot on this side.
Get down the embankment, into the brush down where you were last night. Go, go, don’t lay here, too risky
, and felt the seconds clicking by. He glanced around for his phone, saw it not far away, and crawled to it. His gun was in the car.

Now he looked at the slope above and decided he’d go up there instead of across the road and down the steep slope. He slid out, scrambled up the embankment, keeping trees between himself and the upslope. He stayed low under brush and got his phone out.

“I’m out, I’m okay, but I don’t know where the shooter is. I’m on the slope east of the car.”

“We think he just left on a motorcycle. There’s a report of a man at high speed on a BMW bike racing into the basin. He passed a ranger going the other way. We’d called her for backup and she was on her way here. We’re trying to seal the basin. We’ve called everybody there is to call.”

Marquez assimilated what she’d just told him. A ranger had seen someone racing a motorcycle. That didn’t mean enough. He could be on the slope above still.

“Don’t come near here yet.”

“We’re going to get you out of there.”

“Do all these deputies know he shot at me?”

“Everyone knows.”

“Any chance they can get a helicopter?”

“They’re trying.”

She reported back ten minutes later. The motorcycle rider still hadn’t been accounted for, but county cruisers were at every access to the basin. He saw police vehicles, lights flashing, come up the access road. Marquez waited another half hour, then walked over and got in the Taurus. The engine was still running. He backed up and heard dirt fall off the front grill as he drove out, lights off, his heart still going too fast, talking to Shauf.

“There’s another report on the bike, not a BMW anymore.”

“What is it now?”

“Dirt bike. Possibly a Honda.”

“Sounds right, and he’ll go off-road.”

Marquez drove down to the highway, parked near the cruisers there, then inspected the bullet holes in his car, put his index finger through the hole in the driver’s door. That one hadn’t missed his head by much. All of the shots had been close and he saw it now, what was supposed to have happened, either getting picked off as he walked up to the pickup or after sliding the bag over his head, the shooter blowing his skull apart. When he’d turned around the shooter may have decided he was leaving.

Shauf pulled up and they searched the area above Weber Mill before dropping back down to the van. A county crime unit drove down Weber Mill and parked, two crime techs getting out, saying they had some confidence that if the suspect spent any time inside the van they’d find DNA or prints. But other than checking the outside handles and door frame for prints, nothing would happen out here. Only one usable print was found, that near the gas cap, and then the van was towed. In the passenger well was a black sack, the hood.

Twenty-two vehicles were stopped leaving the basin, none were allowed in. The county and the SOU checked each driver and searched well into the night, but the motorcycle rider was gone.

The next morning
a light rain was falling in Placerville as Marquez waited for the county records office to open. No shell casings had been recovered, but a ballistics expert who worked with topo maps and computer modeling thought that as early as this morning he could narrow the area the shots must have come from. There was nothing the SOU could do to help with that work, so Marquez moved them in other directions.

Shauf and Roberts waited on the ridge above Nyland’s trailers.

When Marquez left here he’d join them. They had a search warrant for Nyland’s trailers and were only waiting until Sophie went into work, didn’t want her present when they went through things. Nyland’s arraignment was on the docket for 1:00 this afternoon and that was another reason to go in this morning. They expected him to be released.

Along with the Sacramento police, Alvarez and Cairo had knocked on Durham’s door late last night and talked to a live-in
maid who’d told them the owner was out of town for several days.

She reiterated what she’d said to police yesterday, that she didn’t know where he was, he never told her where he was going. They didn’t have a warrant in place yet for his house, they had asked for one and it was questionable whether they’d get it, though they did get a warrant for Sierra Guides. It was Marquez’s plan to search Sierra Guides later today.

He drank coffee and read the
San Francisco Chronicle
’s account of Sweeney’s adventure as he waited. Kendall had missed his headline, but the
Chronicle
caught it perfectly. “Fish and Game Does Catch and Release with State Senator Sweeney.” It was a page A4 article, not many inches and with little detail. The arrest had already turned into a nonevent, the writer treating the bust as though it were a bizarre incident Sweeney had stumbled into via well-meaning friends, who according to a spokesman had made all the arrangements for the hunt. No mention was made of the SOU, and Sweeney only made the cryptic statement that he was not a hunter but that there were many hunters in his district and good land management should accommodate the interests of all citizens. The hunting guide would be arraigned today and could face felony charges if convicted of commercial trafficking in bear parts, but it didn’t say anything about why he’d be charged with that. There was no mention of the gallbladders. It concluded with the sentence that poaching a bear in California was a misdemeanor with a maximum fine of one thousand dollars and up to six months in jail, and it noted that the California bear population was thought to be stable at roughly twenty-five thousand black bear but that bear species in general were pressured globally.

When the records office opened he wasn’t sure he was in the right place, but the diminutive white-haired woman across the counter looked like she knew her way around. Her hearing was bad, and he wrote the name on a piece of the newspaper, handed it to her, then watched her evaluate the request.

“On Howell Road,” he said, and her eyes pondered him. Then she gave him the answer without needing to retrieve any files.

“I remember the Johengens. They were Swedish and had family in Minnesota or Wisconsin. He was a very intelligent man and nice mannered. He trained as an engineer in Stockholm, and I remember he always wore a hat.”

She described a felt hat now and seemed to want some explanation of why he was asking, as if perhaps he was prying into her privacy, not the name Johengen. He was close to showing her a badge but prodded her instead.

“Did they live on Howell Road?” he asked.

“For many years. They had a Christmas tree farm and grew apples. I don’t think they called it a farm though. I seem to remember it was Johengen’s Ranch. They had a wooden sign he’d carved.

He was a very capable man until he got sick. Just a minute.”

She went into a back room, was gone twenty minutes, and then came back out with an address on Howell.

“If it was me, I’d look for the rows of trees.”

“Thank you.”

As he left he checked with Roberts and Shauf, told them he was on his way to them, and Roberts reported that Sophie had left and that Alvarez had followed her to Placerville, saw her park and go into work at the Creekview. Alvarez was on his way back for the search of the trailers.

“I think we’re good to go,” Roberts said.

When Marquez arrived they popped the door on Nyland’s trailer and cut the chain on the second one. Two hounds were locked in the main trailer, and they got them outside and clipped them onto long chains attached to a cedar tree. Marquez petted both, kneeling with them for a few minutes before going back up the iron steps.

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of dogs. A TV was the focal point in the tiny common space, sitting on the short kitchen
counter, facing the table. Marquez worked his way through clothing and belongings back in the bedroom, looking for anything that might help build a bear-poaching case, and Shauf went up to the second trailer to start searching there.

They hadn’t been inside the main trailer long when Alvarez called. “We’ve got company.”

“Sophie’s back?”

“No, it looks like Kendall, Hawse, and two or three cruisers.”

Marquez walked forward, looked through the window, and saw the vehicles crossing the meadow, Kendall and Hawse leading in a county SUV.

“How do you want to handle this?” Alvarez asked.

“Keep going until we know otherwise.”

Alvarez had finished with the little kitchen and hadn’t found anything, was flipping through magazines on the table now. A checkbook would help, a record of Nyland’s banking.

“Gentlemen,” Marquez said, when Kendall and Hawse clanged up the iron steps to the door. He took a look at their faces and guessed correctly they didn’t have a warrant to search the trailer.

“We came out to look at that fire pit you found the bone in, but why don’t you invite us into the trailer?” Kendall said. “It is a piece of femur though very old. We’ll have a warrant for the trailers by afternoon and if I’d known you were here, I would’ve asked you not to come in ahead of us.” Kendall studied Marquez’s face, shook his head. “If I were you, Marquez, I’d be sitting in a bar counting my fingers and toes.”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you?”

“I’d like to find Durham.”

“We’re doing what we can. You know Nyland will be out today.”

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other, not saying anything, the moment awkward. Kendall didn’t want them here, and they weren’t leaving without a search. Marquez asked about the piece of femur, though he could tell Kendall already had some sort of explanation.

“It’s very old, and it may explain vandalism and grave robbing in the old cemetery in Placerville. They’ve had a problem with it for a couple of years.”

“Not someone Nyland murdered.”

“Would I be asking you to invite me in?”

Kendall and Hawse followed him back to the tiny bedroom. Hawse picked up a pair of Sophie’s panties and started moving them along, walking them across the room as though Sophie were in them.

“Like to see that,” he said, and Kendall jumped him.

“Cut it out or wait outside,” Kendall said.

“Hey, I was just making a joke.”

“Make it outside.”

“Christ, what’s the matter with you today?”

Hawse left, muttering to himself, and Kendall asked without touching it, “What’s this skull?”

“Bobcat.”

The bobcat skull was very white, probably bleached, and sat on a little polished wood stand with an iron spike running up through where the brain had been. The spike tilted the skull so that the eye sockets stared straight forward. Near it was a necklace of claws strung on a silver chain and a photo in a gold gilt frame of a smiling Sophie naked and sitting on a horse. From the background, it might have been taken here in the meadow. There was also a black-andwhite photo of a man in a much smaller frame. He looked enough like Sophie that Marquez wondered if that was her biological father.

There were hunting rifles and two handguns that Marquez bagged and tagged. In a drawer he found a razor-sharp hunting
knife beneath Sophie’s folded clothes and a small jewelry box that held maybe fifteen human teeth, three with gold crowns.

“Now, that starts my spine crawling,” Kendall said.

And still Marquez had found nothing salient to their case.

They were asking for Nyland’s phone records as well as those of Sierra Guides, trying to ride the momentum of the bust, but phone records could be harder to get. Some judges were reluctant. He found a diaphragm with a happy face drawn on it and then looked at the teeth again and re-examined the knife. He touched the edge of the blade and cut through the latex glove.

“What are you doing with the teeth, Marquez?”

“I’ll bag them if you want, but it’s going to be hard to argue they have anything to do with bear poaching.”

“We’ll have our warrant this afternoon, but he may get out first. Bag ‘em now, if you don’t mind.” Marquez turned at the order, studied Kendall, realizing the detective had hid his true feelings about finding Fish and Game here. He’d hid his anger and frustration so he could get inside.

Marquez bagged the teeth though, and they moved back out into the little living space. When they took the cushions off the seats built around a table bolted to the floor they found more storage.

In those compartments were boxes of ammunition, including .30-caliber shells. These got loaded into Shauf’s van and they would go to DOJ. Kendall wrote down the box numbers and photographed them.

In the second trailer were stacks of bear hides and a workbench area where Nyland stored his power tools, a Skilsaw, a cordless Makita drill, a white five-gallon plastic bucket with a carpenter’s nail bags in it, a router and power planer, and then among the hand tools on the bench, Marquez pointed out a couple of surgical saws. There wasn’t enough here for someone in the hunting guide business.

“He’s storing equipment somewhere else,” Marquez said. “Out at the Broussards’, maybe.”

Now he walked Kendall out the trail to the little meadow with the fire pit. They lifted the iron lid off, and Kendall knelt and began sifting through the ashes as Marquez showed Hawse what else they’d found out here. Kerosene. Firewood stacked near a tree. Marquez could see the detectives planned to be here a while, and he let Kendall know he was leaving.

“Marquez,” Kendall called to him. “You’re not going to want to hear this, but we’re looking at the possibility Petroni took the shots at you.”

“He’d aim at you first.”

“What if your bear farmer is Petroni? What did you tell me you’ve paid for bile products so far? Thousands, right? And you’re telling me there’s a lot of money in this. That’s real motive for a guy starved for cash and in a position to set up shop. Maybe that’s what Stella knew about.”

“You still don’t have any idea of where’s he’s gone, do you?”

“Doesn’t matter where,” Kendall said. “Mexico, wherever, we’ll bring him home. Do you know someplace in the mountains he’d go to hide?”

“No.”

“Did you think anymore about what I threw at you the other night?”

Kendall kept talking and Marquez stood in the dry grass twenty feet from him but only half listening, his head buzzing, their bear farmer’s voice and the shots still loud in his head.

“Petroni would have good reason to use a voice changer.

Think about it,” Kendall called, as Marquez turned and walked away.

After driving away from the meadow, Marquez took another call, this one unexpected but initially hopeful. It was Ungar.

“Hey, did you make that bust with the politician?”

“No, those were uniform wardens.”

“I figured it was you for sure, and there were a couple of other busts in Stockton.”

“How do you know about Stockton?”

“My cousin called and told me he lost a shipment of bear paw that was supposed to go to LA.”

“Those were his?”

“So you know about them?”

“Yeah, we got notified. We hear about everything.”

“I talked to him about your offer.”

“What he’d say?”

“He wants to go for it but wants me to set it up.”

“He must really trust you.”

“I started feeling lousy after you were here last, thinking about what you’re doing humping through the woods and driving around and not getting paid much.”

“Don’t let it get you down.”

“You kind of pissed me off early this summer and I haven’t shown you the right respect since. I mean, what I’m saying about my cousin, that’s true, I don’t want him going down. His life is messed up enough. He owes for the bear product that didn’t deliver in Stockton, the stuff the police got. He’s afraid it’ll get him killed.”

“Who’ll kill him?”

“The man he’s delivering for.”

“Delivering where in LA?”

“I’ll get it all for you. He’ll come in and give you names, but we’ve got to work it all out first. I want to make a deal where he gives you what he knows and he gets immunity.”

Marquez looked at the road ahead and drove and was quiet a moment.

“He’s tied in with the guys in Placerville,” Ungar said. “He knows who you’re looking for. He knows the guy behind it all, the guy doing the bears in cages.”

“Okay, get one piece of that from him, one piece that I can check out and we’ll make it happen.”

“I’ve got it.”

“You’ve got it now? Let’s hear it.”

There was a long pause, Ungar drawing it out and anticipation flooding into Marquez. He knew Ungar had been up here several times. They’d always known Ungar knew more; the question was how much.

“It’s not the type of guy you’d expect.”

“You’ve already got a name.”

“This guy is like me, he’s got a successful business. He works out of Sacramento.”

“Lives there?”

“That’s right.”

Durham. Has to be Durham.
“I need a name.”

“Hey, I know, but not until we meet and you’ve got the deal done on your side. Then I want to meet you alone.”

“Let me see what I can do, I’ll call you back.”

“When?”

“Soon.” Marquez knew he could say yes right now, but something restrained him. “I’ve got to talk to my chief and the DA. I need more of what your cousin has been involved in. You told me before that all he did was deliver, but now you’re saying he owes money. I need to know how involved he is before I can negotiate something. They’re not going to approve anything without knowing first who they’re dealing with.”