Authors: Kirk Russell
High clouds curled and colored
like burning paper in the dawn sky as Marquez waited for Bill Petroni in the Crystal Basin Wilderness. Most of the cabins along the lake were already shuttered, and except for hunters the basin was emptying. The reflection off the lake quieted to a silver-blue, and sunlight touched the high granite peaks across the water before Petroni drove up.
When he pulled into the lot it was in the same red Honda he’d had a decade ago, its color faded to a tired orange, roof streaked with rust, the car testimony to the frugality a warden’s salary demanded. Petroni walked over, breath steaming in the cold, hair silver at the temples, face fuller, but the same long stride as if hurrying to get somewhere. Marquez wondered if Petroni had ever figured out where that place was.
“Can’t go with you,” Petroni said, before anything else. “I got a call ten minutes ago, got a problem with a couple of deer poachers.”
“Then let me ask some directions before you take off.”
“Ask.”
Marquez unfolded a topo map and flattened it on the hood of his truck.
“Show me where I leave the trail to get to Coldwater Canyon.”
Petroni touched a spot on the map with his car key. “Head left of these rocks. You’ll see where the creek comes down. Follow it.
You’ll have to do a little climbing near the top.”
“And if I find something up there, how do I get a hold of you this afternoon?”
“Call my cell.”
“On our hike up this morning I’d planned to brief you on our operation.”
“Better late than never, I guess.”
“I should have gotten to you before now.”
“Right, and I’m sure you were trying to.” He stared into Marquez’s eyes, said, “I don’t miss it. You don’t need to worry about that. I’m over it and all the bullshit that comes with it. I remember undercover operations where I sat in a van for twenty hours and peed in the cup I drank soda from hours earlier, and driving all over the state because I had an ‘operation’ going. Tell you something, Marquez, the way you find poachers is living in an area. That’s how you get to know the people and figure out who belongs and who doesn’t. They’re your real backup, not some slimebag tipster.”
He and Petroni had been called to headquarters in Sacramento one summer morning eight years ago and told the department was cutting back to a single SOU team. Petroni’s team was shut down.
Petroni had been offered a role working under Marquez, but pride wouldn’t let him do that. He’d gone back into uniform instead, asked for a transfer to Georgetown, and eventually gotten it.
For years afterward Marquez answered questions about what had happened between them. And meanwhile Petroni kept badmouthing him. Then in Placerville one afternoon Petroni had
trailed him as he would a suspect. He’d confronted Marquez in a parking lot, accused him of things he should have known better about and other things he knew nothing about, such as why Marquez had left the DEA and come to Fish and Game. That finished whatever chance they’d had of remaking their friendship.
“You have any problem finding the canyon, give me a call,” Petroni said and started walking away. “Your phone will work up there.”
“I had a visit from a Detective Kendall.”
Petroni turned back. “Let me tell you something about Kendall.
He’s a reformed drunk LAPD sold the county sheriff. Worst hire they ever made.”
“He came to see me about the homicide up here, said you told him to talk to me. He also said you’re dodging him now.”
“Listen, I already told him what I know, and Kendall’s problem is he’s lazy. We’ve got all kinds of lowlifes up here now, meth cooks, pot farmers, cycle gang members doing drug deliveries, you name it. Hydroponics has made it so the pot farmers don’t even have a down season anymore. You can bet some scuzzbags scouted Vandemere’s gear and his truck, then decided to take it.
Tell Kendall he ought to move his office out of his favorite bar.”
“He’s thinks you’re stonewalling him.”
“Fuck him.” Petroni started to point a finger, stopped himself, said as he turned away, “Not your problem or your business, Marquez.”
He was looking at Petroni’s back now, watching him climb into his car. When Petroni’s door slammed, Marquez began refolding the topo map and decided he’d drive over to the wilderness lot, walk from there. He heard Petroni’s engine start and without turning around to face him lifted a hand to wave good-bye, a gesture to the conversation he’d hoped they’d have. But now he was glad to be hiking up alone.
Marquez slipped a day pack on,
crossed the road, and picked up the Rockbound Trail. He liked the early cold, the fall bite to the air, the light, almost weightless feel of the pack. Within an hour he was on open granite in sunlight looking up at the V-shaped pass and the dark blue sky above. He stopped and studied the rock up ahead, figured out it was where Petroni said to break from the trail.
A jumble of dark-stained granite marked where the stream running from Coldwater Canyon tumbled down in the runoff months. He climbed alongside the stained rock, brown and orange lichen powdering under his fingers. He free-climbed the final forty feet where the stream cascaded as falls in late May, slipping once near the top, thick fingers gripping hard as his legs dangled. Then he pulled himself over the lip and rested. It was the kind of short climb he wouldn’t have thought twice about twenty years ago.
He ate a candy bar and drank from a water bottle. Below, the forests of the Crystal Basin were dark blue-green in late morning light. Toward the southwest, the sky had whitened with high cirrus; the afternoon would cool down. He thought about Katherine and Maria, missing them this morning.
When he put the pack on again and turned he saw a tiny lake gleaming like a polished stone beneath the granite face at the far end of the canyon. More a pond than a lake and probably no real fish in it, the type of lake fishermen bragged about because it showed they knew the hard-to-get-to places. He hiked toward it, following the rocky, dry streambed. Juniper trees grew sporadically along both sides of the narrow canyon, pine in scraggly bunches near the stream. There was little here that would attract bear, and it was difficult to believe a sow with cubs would forage this high late in the season when elderberry, gooseberry, acorns, and apples were all at a lower elevation.
As a crow flies he wasn’t far from where Jed Vandemere’s body had been found, and he decided when he finished here he’d hike out that direction. Kendall’s speculating that Vandemere’s murder might be connected to the man they were looking for had gotten his attention. He hiked on into the canyon, caught the odor of something dead, and knew as he did that the backpacker who’d called CalTIP had been genuine. It made him melancholy, took away the brightness of the early morning.
People trafficking in animal parts preferred to do so quietly. With bear there was a steady flow of gallbladders and paws to the markets. Thousand-pound adult grizzlies got slaughtered in Siberia solely for their gallbladders. He’d seen similar abuse here too many times to accept the rationalizations and calls for patience, for more time to allow for cultural change.
The last wild animals had their backs to the abyss. It was really that simple.
He found the sow bear at the base of a pine and guessed that she’d been killed within the last four or five days. Wasn’t skinned but her paws were missing, abdomen cut open, gallbladder no doubt gone. He moved her and looked for bullet wounds and found one he could chase. Then working a circle outward from her carcass he found what was left of two cubs, fur and small pieces of bone.
He returned to the sow, took off his pack, brushed flies away from the camcorder lens, and videotaped the dead bear. He picked up a piece of dental floss lying between two rocks and knew it likely was used to tie off the bile ducts after the gallbladder had been removed. Then he pulled a tool from his pack, a piece of heavy-gauge wire with a blunt end that he pushed into the wound to try to establish the direction of the bullet track before cutting into her.
After slicing through several inches of putrefying fat he had to back away from the smell, his eyes watering, drawing several deep breaths of clean piney air before continuing. Had she been killed near a road her carcass could have been transported to the Fish and Game facility in Rancho Cordova where X-ray equipment would locate the bullet. Instead, he forced himself to overcome the smell and dig for it as flies swarmed around him. He cut deeper and then got luckier than it was fair to hope for, felt metal scrape metal and dug out a bullet lodged against a rib. He turned it in his palm before bagging it. It wasn’t badly deformed, and he would call his friend at the DOJ lab in Sacramento when he got back to his truck. He’d drop off the bullet tomorrow before meeting with Bell.
He wiped the knife and probe clean, dropped them in a plastic bag, peeled off the latex gloves, then wrote his notes. Estimated the bear’s weight at two-fifty, her age at four years, the cubs born last spring. He packed up and started toward the lake, still searching for what had drawn the bears here. Not far from the water he
found his answer. Partially hidden by bushes was a bait pile composed of what looked like restaurant garbage. On a nearby rock he found oats mixed with honey. He gathered what clues he could, a fragment of brown paper bag with the letter R in red, crusts of bread that had fallen between rocks.
Now, climbing out the back of the canyon he looked down across a long slide of talus at Barrett Lake, small and windblown. He followed the directions Kendall had given him, hiked over a secondary ridge out of view of the lake, and spotted the fluorescent orange spray paint marking the boulder where Vandemere’s remains were found.
He stood on the rock near a black-red bloodstain, keeping his boots away from it. Kendall had told him Forest Service rangers would clean the rock next week, removing both paint and blood. He studied a dark stand of pine well down the slope, trees corresponding to Kendall’s photos. Kendall was right, took a marksman from there, not an easy shot, and he understood Kendall zeroing in on hunters. Vandemere up here working on his geology thesis— standing on this rock when the bullet hit him, did he even realize what had happened? Marquez knelt, touched the bloodstain, and remembered Kendall’s mincing, almost angry acknowledgment that Vandemere’s father had gone to his son’s grad school adviser and gotten enough information to create a map of where Jed had been exploring. He’d made a grid to search and worked it with volunteers, friends of Jed’s and family.
By the time he walked back toward Barrett Lake the sky had milked over completely and the granite peaks had dulled to flat gray. He took out binoculars and scanned the vehicles in the camping area at the far end of the lake below, saw a CJ5 jeep, yellow and tired looking; a Ford Explorer; and a third truck, an ancient Dodge pickup he recognized.
“Bobby, are you here?” he asked and swept the binoculars along the campsites.
Bobby Broussard’s presence might explain the bait piles, and Marquez knew he’d have to get a hold of Petroni after he hiked out. He scanned the campsites, spotted a man sitting on a log near a small campfire, head tipped down as he poked at coals and laid meat on the grill, face hidden by the brim of a hat. When he finally looked up, Marquez recognized the leathered features of Troy Broussard, patriarch of the local poacher. Wisps of blue smoke rose from the fire and Troy looked his way again. The last time Marquez had seen him was in court four years ago when Troy had been sentenced to eighteen months for commercial trafficking in bear.
Marquez had given his testimony in the judge’s chambers and listened to the trial from the judge’s door. In court, Troy had acted as his own lawyer, making a statement to the jury that animals had been put here by God for the benefit of man. He’d stared into the eyes of the jurors until they’d had to look away. After he’d gone to prison there had been a spurt of anonymous threats against Fish and Game, messages left on the hotline, and naturally Troy’s name had come up after the recent CD.
But it surprised Marquez how much seeing Troy affected him.
He read the coarse white hair on his forearms, the Jim Beam label on the bottle near the log, watched him cut his steak with a Bowie knife and chew with his eyes closed. Pretty good bet he knew all about the bait pile and poached bears in Coldwater Canyon. Petroni would have to question him; the team couldn’t.
You could drink all winter on one gallbladder sale, pay your mortgage with hide and paws if you were smart about it, and Troy was that. He’d lost his right to ever hunt again in California when he was sentenced, but Marquez doubted that had stopped him. Why else would he be up here? He studied Troy another few minutes before putting the binoculars away. Bobby might be here with him, but Troy seemed to be alone this afternoon. Marquez won
dered if Bobby had been up on the rock watching him find the poached bears in Coldwater.
Marquez slid the pack straps on and circled the lake, staying high before dropping down through a finger of trees and working his way toward a meadow and then the jeep trail. The afternoon darkened as he walked, and in the last mile the forest became gloomy. He climbed a rise and had started down the other side when he saw movement up ahead, off the road in the trees. Not long after, he heard a branch snap.
He reached the paved road and walked down past Dark Lake to where he’d parked in the wilderness lot. Then, pulling out of the lot, perhaps feeling a presence there, he took a look in his rearview mirror. Standing just inside the trees was the silhouette of Troy Broussard. He stepped out onto the road as Marquez pulled away. There were many reasons why Troy might follow a man coming down from above Barrett Lake, and they were all disturbing.
Marquez drove the slow winding road out to the highway, trying to decide which fit best.
Petroni didn’t answer his cell phone.
Marquez tried him twice more before heading to Georgetown in his pickup. In Georgetown it took a few trips down the wrong streets before he found Petroni’s house. The pine in the front yard had grown much taller, the cedar-shingled house beneath looking like a summer cottage. Neither the Fish and Game truck nor the old Honda Civic were out front, though light glowed from inside. He rang the buzzer, heard shuffling footsteps, watched a lace curtain flutter. Bill’s wife, Stella, looked out at him, eyes narrowing as she recognized him, a wary smile forming as she opened the door, as if perhaps he were here to sell her vacuums or religion.
“You’re a surprise,” she said.
“How are you, Stella?”
“I’m all right, but if you’re looking for Bill, he doesn’t live here anymore. We’re divorcing. Try the Creekview Saloon in Placerville.
Suddenly he can afford to eat out all the time, and he has a girlfriend who works there.”
“I’m sorry,” Marquez said before walking away, heard her quiet, “Well, I’m not.”
Leaving Georgetown, he called Shauf because she knew one of the other wardens who worked regularly with Petroni. Petroni must have a house or an apartment somewhere, and Marquez figured that warden would know the address.
Shauf called back ten minutes later. “Okay, the story is he’s living with his new girlfriend and looking for a house to rent in Placerville. They’re house-sitting somewhere in Pollock Pines. It’s been a big scandal up here.”
“I guessed we missed it. No address on him?”
“No, he said Petroni keeps to himself.”
“What about the other wardens?”
“He asked and all they know is the house is in Pollock Pines.
Petroni doesn’t talk to anyone.”
“Okay, well, Stella said there’s a bar in town where the girlfriend works. I’ll go by, and if he’s not there, I’ll head to Sacramento.”
“Will you need me tonight?”
“Not at all.”
She was quiet, and he knew what was coming and was sorry she felt she had to ask. Her only sister had had a hysterectomy three weeks ago and been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Debbie lived in Folsom, a half-hour’s drive from Placerville, so Shauf was spending as much time as she could with her.
“I’ll be at my sister’s house if you need me.”
“Tell her I hope she’s feeling better.”
When Marquez looked in the door of the Creekview a few guys were at the bar. A pair of women sat at a table in a big empty room. It smelled like stale beer, and he didn’t see Petroni, so let
the door fall shut. Before leaving town he stopped at a taqueria he used to frequent. New owners had glassed in the outdoor area and tiled over the concrete with Mexican pavers. A large paddle fan circulated humid air smelling of fry grease and beans. He ordered two chicken tacos, a quesadilla, coffee, everything to go, and then gassed up at the Shell station before getting on the highway.
Driving westbound on the highway, falling out of the foothills, he unwrapped one of the tacos. Food smells filled the cab. He ate slowly, bagged the trash, then sipped coffee occasionally checking his rearview mirror because a pickup had been pacing him since Placerville. Not that big a deal, yet the truck had his attention. He called home and when no one answered, left a message saying where he was and that he’d call back later. Laying the phone down, he checked his rearview mirror again.
The pickup’s headlights had started to close on him, though that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Still, he cut his speed and as the highway climbed a grade, fell in behind a slow-moving semi, passed it at the crest, and then slid over in front of it. The big semi’s lights lit up the cab, and he accelerated away, running with a long downgrade, watching to see how the pickup would react. What it did was come around the semi and start closing the gap.
Ten miles later he called Shauf.
“I’m twenty minutes from Sacramento and I’ve got a pickup tailing me. He’s not shy and I’m not sure what he’s up to. He’s either real bad at tailing or doesn’t care that I know.” Marquez heard children in the background and hated pulling Shauf from her sister’s house. “How long would it take you to get out to the freeway?”
“Five minutes.”
“I think you ought to roll. He’s coming up alongside me, and I’m going to play dumb.”
The truck, a modified Toyota SR5, silver-gray, a 2002 model, sat high off the ground, the driver looking down at him, his face unreadable through tinted glass. Marquez took his foot off the
accelerator, letting the speed drift down. The Toyota stayed with him, the driver’s head just an outline, the truck running with him, crowding him a little.
The phone rang. “I’m on the highway,” Shauf said. “What’s he doing?”
“Messing with me. I’m driving fifty miles an hour and he’s staying with me. He’s got a stainless-steel platform welded on the back bed.”
“Bear hunter.”
“Or the truck belongs to one.”
Marquez kept the line open with her. The Toyota driver started riding the reflectors, easing closer to him, before braking hard and swinging in tight behind him. Their bumpers clicked hard, and Marquez fishtailed out into the fast lane. He fought for control, his truck going sideways, then a full tires-squealing spin, and he slid onto the center median, racked through oleander bushes, and clicked off the guardrail. He bounced back into the fast lane, and a big semi bore down on him, horn blaring as it swung right, just missing him.
He let a wave of traffic go past, then cut straight across two lanes and backed up along the shoulder until he could climb the off-ramp the Toyota had taken. He was still shaking when he talked to Shauf again.
“I heard your tires,” Shauf said.
“He tapped me, sent me spinning.”
“He could have killed you.”
He told her the off-ramp, then swung right at the stop sign and drove toward the lights of a subdivision. Beyond the stucco houses was a strip mall, beyond that, dark farmland. He saw headlights way out there, told Shauf he was going after them, but by the time he’d passed the houses they were gone. Still, he continued miles into the darkness and finally pulled over, parked on the shoulder, and was standing outside his truck when Shauf pulled up.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Your truck took a hit.”
Metal brackets on the median guardrail had raked the driver’s side of the truck. He’d have to change vehicles in Sacramento early tomorrow.
“Troy must have made a phone call after he followed me out this afternoon.”
“So he made you.”
“Yeah, good chance he recognized me, though he may not remember where he last saw me.”
Marquez looked out across the darkness, the fields, the long sweep of stars, Mars still bright in the southwestern sky. The Toyota driver was telling him, I know who you are and you don’t scare me. A thick neck and shoulders, a face disguised by the glass. He felt angry at himself for not having gotten the plates. He looked at Shauf.
“It was a close call,” he said.
“Where do you want to go from here?”
“I want to find that truck.” He turned toward her. “Think it over tonight. If Troy made a phone call, where did this guy pick me up?”
“It’s a little weird that Troy followed you all the way out, even for him.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too.”
He didn’t want to say what he was really wondering. Instead, he said good night and watched her drive away.