Authors: Kirk Russell
Shauf’s phone rang just after
they reached the main road. She eased off the accelerator, and the van slowed, though he didn’t think she was aware of it. The car behind veered around them, driver honking as Marquez listened to a different Shauf, quieting, comforting, gentle as she tried to calm her younger sister.
When they neared the eastbound on-ramp that would take them back to Placerville he reached and touched her hand, then pointed toward the opposite on-ramp and said, “We have time.”
They’d be at her sister’s house in twenty minutes and still have hours to check out where the buy would go down. He heard Shauf tell her sister she’d be there soon. After she hung up, she backhanded tears off her cheeks as though angry at herself for crying.
“What’s happened?” Marquez asked.
“It may have metastasized after all. There’s something in her lungs. They were hoping—” She shook her head, her voice choked
off. “Now she’s talking about something crazy, some surgeon in Houston—tries to cut them out.” She glanced over as if bewildered.
“This is my little sister. She’s thirty-six.”
Marquez talked with the team, briefing them during the hour Shauf was with Debbie. Then they drove the winding roads to where the buy was supposed to go down.
Ten miles from Placerville, in a creek canyon thick with brush and trees, they found what was left of an old fire service road. They crossed a wooden bridge over the creek, and below, visible off one side of the bridge, was the dirt track running up the right side of the canyon. Shaded and dark with bay, oak, and pine, the road followed the dark green ribbon of creek as it wound back into the hills.
You had to be from around here to know about this place,
he thought.
He studied the ridgeline, noted places where the team could take positions, and sketched a plan with Shauf. Two could go in early, Cairo and Alvarez, and find a location near the rock he’d been told to walk to. He locked in GPS coordinates, and they drove on, talking routes out, contingencies, whether to ask for any help from the Placerville or county police. They went on another couple of miles before turning around, coming back across the bridge slowly, talking again about who else they could rely on tonight.
That brought up Petroni’s name.
“What’s the deal between you and Petroni?” she asked. Another time he might have said less, but understood she was grasping for something to take her mind off her sister, and she couldn’t quite do it yet with the buy.
“When I came over from the DEA I didn’t know anyone, and Petroni was a pretty good friend to me. A lot of wardens wanted onto the two SOU teams, and it was hard for them to accept someone walking in from outside without wildlife experience.”
“I’d have trouble with you walking in and stealing a glamour job.”
“You here for the glamour?”
She smiled and then said something that surprised him, “I did it to get out of a relationship.”
He thought at first she was teasing but realized she wasn’t, and in some way it made sense. She could brace a suspect and make an arrest without any hesitation, or back someone off, but he’d just watched her kneel and force her hand through the link fence of the dog kennel to stroke the ear of a dead hound. There was a gentleness about her mixed in with the rest, and he could see her having trouble letting go of a failing relationship.
“This team is the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said, “but we’re talking about you and Petroni.”
“Petroni taught me how the department works, and we hit it off. We were working the coast, mostly abalone. I taught Petroni some things about undercover work, and he taught me about poachers, boats, the coastal towns.”
“What happened if you were such good friends?”
“All I know is when things changed. My team made a bust up the north coast in Albion. In the last few days before the takedown we were on the suspects every minute. Petroni was down south, and I was out of communication with him before and then during the bust. He found out we’d made it by talking to our chief, and after that he was a lot less friendly.”
“Why would it matter to him like that?”
“I got the feeling he thought he was running both teams, and he should have been told. Not long after that we both got called to Sacramento, and Petroni’s team got shut down.”
“Bam, shut down just like that?”
“Yeah. The chief wanted both of us there at 9:00 that morning. At 9:10 Petroni’s team was over with.”
“Who gave you the word?”
“Chief Keeler, so you can picture it. Petroni thought I’d kept this other operation secret from him as a way of making my team
look better, and that somehow I knew it was all going to go down.
He threw that theory at me in a parking lot in Placerville a year later.”
“He was hurt.”
“Yeah, and it didn’t make any sense to him. He was the one with the wildlife experience.”
He told her a little more but not the whole story as they drove back to Placerville. When they reached the safehouse Marquez called Bell and told him the team was kicking in the money and would wait to get reimbursed. They were going forward with the buy. Alvarez and Cairo were getting their gear ready, everything spread on the dining table. Roberts and Shauf stood in the kitchen talking.
“I don’t like how you’ve done this,” Bell said. “I feel like you went around me.”
The conversation ended badly, and he felt lousy after hanging up. The team had all grouped into the kitchen, Roberts and Cairo laughing at some joke they’d shared.
“We’re on,” Marquez said, as he walked in.
“We were going either way, Lieutenant,” Alvarez said, his face lit up, the energy building now.
Marquez stood among them, taking up the last space, larger than the rest. They were all from different walks of life, coming from different places, more than twenty years between him and Melinda Roberts. Roberts’s hands flew over a keyboard while he still pecked out his reports. She was also a rated sharpshooter. Alvarez came out of East Palo Alto, had worked at his dad’s auto shop, and had planned to be a mechanic. He was the guy who could adapt to any problem, the type you read about surviving an avalanche, somehow reacting quickly enough. Cairo had gone to a year of law school before going through the Fish and Game academy. He was an easy-going surfer type. Even the people he busted didn’t get pissed off at him, and some apologized.
“Okay,” Marquez said, “let’s go over it again before everyone takes off.”
They moved out to the dining room table, and Marquez spread the map. Alvarez and Cairo would leave first, get dropped off near the creek bridge by Roberts, and would hike in until they found the rock.
“The rock has white spray paint on it,” Marquez said. “That’s what he told me to look for. I’m supposed to start up the road at 8:00.” He glanced at Alvarez, then looked at Cairo. “You need to find positions up the slope where you can see the rock. Time yourself going in this afternoon, and that’ll tell you roughly how long it should take for me to get there.”
“How about whistling as you come up the road?” Cairo said.
“Yeah, or I’ll sing.”
The team’s laughter was a nervous kind, and Marquez could feel the change since the CD. The address in Roberts’s file was her parent’s peach orchard outside Colfax. She’d talked to him about the orchard’s isolation, the vulnerability. They were all a little worried.
Marquez watched Alvarez and Cairo load gear, then climb into Roberts’s van. Shauf left ten minutes later, and he was alone at the safehouse. He got his gear together and put on the Kevlar vest, but it didn’t feel right. He sat and held the vest in his hand for a while and then picked up the coat with the fiber optic sewn into it, the camcorder, and it just didn’t feel like the right move.
He’s not through checking us out, and he gave us too much time to prepare today
. Marquez picked up his phone and called Roberts.
“I’m not going to wear anything,” he told her. “Tell Alvarez and Cairo they have to get as close as they can. They’ve got to be able to move fast.”
She chuckled. “You found a new way to cowboy it, Lieutenant.”
“No, I’m running with my gut. He’s giving us too much time to prepare.”
She was quiet then said, “Okay, I’ll let them know.”
He hung up and took a call from Kendall. “How about meeting me in Placerville for a beer?” Kendall asked. “I want to compare notes and talk, and I met with your warden today.”
Marquez got the name of the bar. An hour later when he walked in he found Kendall at a table with a thin red-haired woman he introduced as Sadie. Her freckled face was evenly tanned, hair heavily dyed, her smile shy and friendly. Marquez figured her tan explained Kendall’s using an applied tanning product. Sadie smoothed her thin dress as she stood, and she brushed away Kendall’s hand as he patted her rear.
“I won’t be long,” Kendall told her, then motioned for Marquez sit down.
On the table a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a half-eaten order of fried zucchini rested on a copy of the
Mountain Democrat
. Marquez watched Sadie take a seat at the end of the bar. She looked unhappy to be alone, and Kendall nodded toward her.
“Good woman,” he said, as though talking about a reliable old car. “I drove down and picked the bullet up from your friend at DOJ. Thanks for having him call me, but the bullet is not a match. I’ll get it back to you. That said, if you find your Coldwater Canyon hunters, I’d like to interview them.”
“How’d it go with Petroni?”
“He bullshitted us again.” Kendall leaned back, belched softly, covering his mouth. “I’ve got another witness tying him to Vandemere, and we’re going to have to kick it up a notch. I’m notifying your chief tomorrow unless you want to take a final run at convincing Petroni.”
“I don’t.”
“Then it gets rough for him now.”
“You’re running on rumors.”
Kendall looked at Sadie, then back at Marquez. “I don’t have to tell you anything about rumors. You live off tips, don’t you?”
Marquez left Kendall sipping a Jack Daniels. After he was in his truck and rolling toward the buy site, he checked in with Shauf.
“We’re all in position,” she said. “You’re going to drive past Melinda right at four miles out.”
“Have you seen anyone?”
“No, though we heard motorcycles.”
“Dirt bikes?”
“That’s what Brad and Cairo think.”
Their map showed the road alongside the creek ending a couple of miles in, but that didn’t mean there weren’t unmarked trails.
“So maybe there is another way in,” he said.
“That’s what we’re guessing.”
“Okay, well, I just drove past Roberts.”
He felt his gut tighten the way it had years ago when he’d gone out on the first drug buys. He didn’t feel like himself.
“They say it’s going to take you twenty minutes to walk up to the rock. It has the names Chloe and Ed spray-painted in white on it.”
“Got it.”
Twelve minutes later Marquez started up the creek road, smelling the moss and oak leaves, feeling the cold night. The flashlight shone on dark earth. He heard the trickle of water in the creek off to his left, and the night seemed unnaturally dark. On the phone their seller had warned him to keep the flashlight pointed down at the road, and he kept it angled just ahead and walked slowly, listening, expecting from what Shauf had told him that it might be a dirt bike that would round the corner and coast down toward him with its engine off. Half a mile in, a light flashed on and off ahead. A deep voice he wasn’t sure he recognized said, “Shine the light at your face and keep it there.”
Marquez shone the light on his neck and stared into the darkness trying to see who was there. Holding the light on himself made him feel like a target. Two men walked down the road
toward him, and he knew he’d done the right thing leaving the Kevlar vest and digital camcorder behind. One was big but light on his feet, fading to the side while his pale companion came forward with a garbage bag and a powerful flashlight. He dropped the bag on the ground and shone the light on it.
“Take a look,” he said, and when Marquez didn’t, “what are you waiting for?”
“You open it.”
“What are you afraid of?”
The background man moved in and showed a gun.
“We want you to take off your coat,” the pale man said.
“I don’t really want to.”
“Take it off anyway, but do it slowly.”
Marquez unzipped his coat, hoping Alvarez and Cairo had a clear view. They’d have to come out fast with their guns drawn. He handed over his coat and watched the pale man check the pockets, knead the sleeves and every inch of the coat before dropping it on the ground. The big helper moved around behind.
“Your shirt.”
“Right.”
Marquez took his shirt off and tossed it on the garbage bag, let the guy bend and pick it up. He guessed they’d been hired to come check him out and who knows what else if they found what they were looking for. It changed everything again. He ignored the urgency in the next order that he spread his legs, did it slowly, asking, “If you’re looking for a wire, it means you think I’m a warden. Why is this happening?”
The pale man squatted now, taking little time with the shirt, handing it up to Marquez while his partner carefully checked the rest of Marquez’s body. The garbage bag got opened, exposing dried bear galls.
“Get dressed. Take your bag with you,” the pale man said, then talking big, “You would have taken a walk with us if you’d been wearing anything.” He pointed behind him. “Up the road.”
Marquez put his shirt on, picked his coat up, and found the money was gone.
“Where’s my money? I’m not interested in doing business tonight.”
“You already did it. Take the bag and haul ass.”
“Not going to happen.”
“You leave it here, that’s your problem.”
“You tell him I want my money back.”
Marquez put his coat on and walked away. His legs felt stiff, awkward, and he knew it was possible he’d get shot. But each step took him farther into darkness, and when he looked back they were gone.
After they’d returned
to the safehouse and debriefed, Marquez felt too edgy to call it a night.
“I’m going to take a ride into town,” he said. “Anybody want to come along?”
“I’ll go with you,” Shauf said. “I could use a drink.”
They drove past the Creekview Saloon and spotted Petroni’s orange Honda parked not far away. After a moment’s hesitation Marquez pulled over and parked.
“You sure you want to do this tonight?” Shauf asked.
“Yeah, he owes us some answers.”
The bar at the Creekview had been built to look like a big horseshoe, and they took a position along one side. Marquez leaned in to get the bartender’s attention. Three bartenders stood talking to each other, wearing black shirts carrying a gold emblem in the shape of a prospector on the pocket. Gold rush branding
was a change he’d seen start in Placerville a few years ago. The original town name, Hangtown, appeared more and more on store windows.
He ordered drinks and then spotted Petroni sitting with a young black-haired woman at a table in front of a bandstand where a country singer was tuning up her guitar and bantering with the crowd. A waitress wearing cowboy boots, red tights, a short black skirt, and a red bandana around her neck leaned over Petroni’s table.
Marquez chatted with Shauf while waiting for their drinks. It was too noisy to unwind here, and after they had their drinks he wished they’d gone somewhere else. This wasn’t going to be the place to sit with Petroni. He clicked his glass against hers, and she asked, “Who are these guys across the bar?”
“The one with the thin blond mustache is Bobby Broussard, one of the cousins. He lives out there with Troy. I don’t know the other guy.”
The other man was also young but much tougher looking, powerfully built. On this cold night he wore a tight T-shirt under a loose leather jacket open wide enough to show off his pecs. His hair was short, gelled, bleached, his face flat, cheekbone planes too sharp, as if someone had screwed up a wood carving but kept going at it anyway. He became aware of them now. He leaned and said something that brought a leering smile to Bobby’s face.
Marquez took a sip of rum and said, “That’s Troy Broussard’s daughter, Sophie, sitting with Bill.” He turned, got the bartender’s attention, and asked, “Is Sophie working tonight?”
“She’s over by the bandstand with her boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah, I see her now, thanks.”
Marquez lifted the rum again, and the bartender lingered, did he want another? Marquez did, but rum wouldn’t work for him tonight. He’d thought coming into town and cooling down would
help, but the buy had been too disturbing. He glanced over, caught an arrogant expression on Bobby’s companion’s face.
Shauf turned her back to them and spoke softly. “They’re focused on Petroni’s table, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“Why is that?”
Maybe it was the novelty of a Broussard going out with a game warden, or maybe these two at the bar didn’t have anything else to occupy themselves with, Bobby like a schoolboy giving his girl cousin shit. Petroni’s head shifted just slightly, perhaps sensing the conversation out of his view at the bar, then he finished his drink and stood heavily. He gave Sophie a grim smile before heading for the bathroom.
“Arguing with her,” Shauf said. “Doesn’t anybody in this town get along?”
Petroni moved awkwardly around a young couple, the new jeans he wore too tight for his middle-aged gut, the wide leather belt more fitting in a western bar than here.
As soon as Petroni disappeared into the bathroom, Bobby Broussard started weaving his way to Sophie, his thin frame sliding between tables, a geeky, sleazy smile offered to women he brushed into, his thigh and crotch rubbing against them as he squeezed his way through.
Watching him, Marquez remembered a much younger Bobby working as a spotter on bear hunts, keeping an eye out for the law, a thin kid with bad skin and always running his tongue over his upper lip in a way that made you glad you didn’t know what he was thinking. When Bobby reached Sophie he tapped her on the shoulder and used his beer bottle to point at the bar where his friend stood smiling. Sophie turned, looked at the man at the bar, then raised her hand, and flipped him off as though there were no one else in the room. Shauf chuckled.
But then something more got said, and Sophie came out of her seat and stuck the same finger in Bobby’s face. Even the singer looked over as Bobby grinned, backing up like this was all good fun, and Sophie’s gaze returned to the other man, who toasted her with his beer and crooked a finger motioning her to come to him. A couple of women yelled at his gesture as if it offended them personally. Marquez heard the word “asshole.”
“I’m ready to go,” Shauf said. “Who needs this? You don’t, I don’t. Let Petroni have his midlife crisis. I’m fried, you must be too.”
“Let’s hang for a couple.”
Petroni came back from the bathroom, and by then Sophie had turned her chair so her back was to the bar. Petroni sat down and looked around at the nearby tables, but what he needed to see was Bobby Broussard’s companion crossing the room behind him. Within a few strides the man was there, and he jerked Petroni’s right shoulder from behind. Petroni just managed to get on his feet as his chair went over, his drink skittering.
“Watch my drink for me,” Marquez said, and started across just as Petroni and the man came to blows. He saw Petroni take hard jabs to the gut and one to the chin. Petroni went down on one knee, then fell to the floor. The man reached down, wadded Petroni’s shirt, started to lift him, was swearing at him, calling him a cocksucker when Marquez got there and forced him to lower Petroni back to the floor.
“This is the part where the lowlifes haul ass,” Marquez said. “That’s you.”
“Let go of my wrist, fucker, before I kick the shit out of you.”
A moment later he threw his weight sideways, trying to knock Marquez off balance. A table upended but Marquez kept his feet, blocked a hard punch that hurt. He waited for the man to come at him again, but surprisingly, he didn’t.
“Kick his ass, Nyland, kick his ass!” But Nyland had changed his mind, and the same voice egging Nyland on called to Marquez, “She’s his girlfriend, asshole.”
Two Placerville officers pushed through the bar doors. Nyland tried to back away, but the police closed on him and looked as though they recognized and didn’t like him. Petroni got to his feet, wiped blood from his nose. Sophie handed him a napkin. Marquez didn’t take his eyes off Nyland. If Nyland was local, he had to know Petroni was the warden out of Georgetown, and not many people come after law enforcement officers, at least not in a crowded bar.
“Take him in,” Petroni told the officers.
But they didn’t work for Fish and Game and went about it their own way. They stopped Nyland from walking away and asked Marquez and Petroni to come outside as well. Marquez waited near the bar entrance away from the patrol cars. But Petroni got close enough to Nyland to where one of the cops put a hand on Petroni’s chest and pushed him down the sidewalk. Nyland swore as one officer clicked on cuffs and the other read him his rights. He yelled over at Marquez.
“I’m watching for you.”
Marquez ignored him, instead watched Bobby Broussard, who stood in front of one of the cops and kept pointing down the street. Nyland’s keys got handed over to Bobby, and Marquez realized that must have been what the conversation was about. After Nyland was in the back of the patrol car, Marquez moved close to Petroni. One of the cops walked over. He asked Petroni, “Are you going to press charges?”
Petroni shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What do you mean, warden?”
“I mean, I’ll deal with it.”
The officer looked to Marquez. “And who are you?”
“A friend of Bill’s. I was at the bar and saw Nyland or whatever his name is cross the room and start the fight.”
“And how did he do that?” The cop started writing.
“He came up from behind and yanked Bill off his chair.”
Marquez gave terse answers and then his alias as a name. The police cruiser pulled away.
Petroni’s voice was thicker, his nose clogged with mucus and blood as he explained. “Nyland used to be her boyfriend. They lived together for years.”
“Is that his truck Bobby’s driving?”
A Toyota pickup went past on Main Street, and Petroni nodded, touched his lip, and looked at the blood on his fingers.
“He’s got dogs in the truck. That’s why they let him take it,” Petroni said. “Nyland’s close with the Broussards, and he used to go out with Sophie. That’s what that was about.”
“How long have you been going out with her?”
“She’s not one of them if that’s what you’re thinking. She left home when she was sixteen.”
Petroni turned to face him, his nose still bleeding, teeth streaked with blood, the tissue paper in his hand saturated. He forced a strange pained smile, and Marquez didn’t think it was the pain of the blows.
“This isn’t over,” Petroni said.
Marquez left it alone. Petroni was angry, humiliated, and he needed to cool down. He ought to go down to the station and press charges, let Nyland sit in a cell for a month.
“Want me to run you by the clinic and get your nose looked at?”
“No.”
“Where does Nyland live?”
“I’ll deal with him.”
“I’ve got a different problem with him.”
Marquez got directions to Nyland’s place before Petroni went back inside to Sophie. Shauf was waiting for Marquez near his truck. As they got in he told her.
“Nyland was at the wheel the other night. That’s the truck that followed me.”