Authors: Kirk Russell
“All I know is supposedly the warden said there was one in the area and to watch out ‘cause they’re not under his control.”
“What’s this warden look like?”
“He’s the regular warden.”
“Petroni?”
“I guess, but I’m just saying I heard it was him. Don’t go telling Petroni I said it.” Then Brandt added, “Detective Kendall has got to stick to our deal.”
Marquez handed the phone back to Kendall and listened to Kendall lie to Brandt about what he was doing to help clear him on the other case. He winked at Marquez, then hung up.
“You’re a class act,” Marquez said.
“Well, I owe it all to my clientele. They bring out the best in me.” He patted Marquez’s knee and then stood, saying, “I don’t think Petroni killed anyone, but he may be dirty. Keep that to yourself, and I’ll be in touch.”
At dawn the next day
Nyland drove to the rear lot of a bakery in Placerville and went in through a screen door. When he came back out a tall skinny baker trailed him and helped hump burlap bags across the lot to Nyland’s truck. Bags that were likely full of day-old bread. Nyland cinched a tarp down before getting something from his glove compartment for the baker.
Alvarez, who had the best angle, called it out. “Looks like a bag of dope.”
Whatever it was, the baker pocketed it, lingered, raced a cigarette, shifting like a crane from one foot to the other as Nyland talked. Their breath clouded the air in front of them. A few minutes later Nyland got into his truck and backed out.
The bread wasn’t going to a homeless shelter. This time of year black bear instinctually eased away from protein and turned to a high-carbohydrate diet to accelerate the accumulation of fat for hibernation. Right around now, bread made good bait.
Nyland left the bakery and drove to a health club on the east side of town. He disappeared into a locker room at the rear of the building, then they watched him work out, pumping iron, running on a treadmill for half an hour. Marquez and Shauf were parked well down the street, talking as they waited for Nyland to move again. The rising sun brightened the inside of the truck cab, illuminating Shauf’s face, and looking at her Marquez doubted she’d slept much last night. She talked about her sister.
“She told me she’d give anything to feel normal for a whole day. They’re talking to her about experimental therapies.”
“What do the kids know?”
“Just that mommy is sick.”
“How old are they again?”
“Three and six.”
“How are you doing?”
“Terrible.”
They watched Nyland reappear on the sidewalk in a T-shirt and jeans, his face still red-tinged, hair wet. He loitered in the sun, talked on his cell phone, and a couple minutes later Sophie drove around the corner in her Ford pickup. She pulled up in front of the club but remained in the truck, and they figured Nyland planned to finish the conversation before getting in with her. That would leave the bread and Nyland’s truck here, a precautionary move on Nyland’s part. He would come back when he was ready to feed the bait piles.
But he didn’t get in her truck. Instead, Sophie got out and came around onto the sidewalk in front of him. He held his hand up, shook his head in a not now gesture, then moved away from the club windows. She followed, and they heard fragments of her voice and saw her lash out, sending the phone flying. It blew apart on the sidewalk, battery skittering into the gutter. Shauf laughed as Nyland scrambled to gather the pieces. When he couldn’t put
the phone together he threw it down on the sidewalk and turned to her. It was easy to read: “You fucking bitch!” “Makes me homesick,” Cairo said over the radio, but the way Sophie had gone after him was eerie and the rest of the team was quiet. Sophie ran back to her truck, and Nyland hammered the roof with his fist before she pulled away.
“Petroni’s heartthrob,” Shauf said softly.
Nyland stayed in town all day, and at dusk Bobby Broussard joined him. They were playing pool in a second-story billiards hall when Marquez dropped Shauf at her van. Nyland and Bobby walked down to the Creekview Saloon and drank, and at 10:00 Nyland left the Creekview and drove out Highway 49 toward Georgetown, a two-lane winding road. Marquez sent Cairo in an old blue Ford van to catch him. Cairo drove the battered van up on Nyland’s tail, hit the brights, and tapped his horn for Nyland to pull over to the shoulder so he could pass.
Of course, they knew he wouldn’t, had counted on him not to, and Cairo tailgated him until he turned down the road to the Broussard property. Five minutes later Marquez followed, driving to the spot across the valley that they’d used in the past for surveilling the Broussard property. He drove lights-out up a badly rutted dirt road to a clearing where he could see back across the valley. He lowered his window, breathed the cold night air, and waited.
The Broussard property was a piece of cleared land that backed up against brushy terrain too steep for wild pig. A winding dirt road carved by a Caterpillar blade cut through a stand of pines and rose to the main house where Troy had raised his family. Behind the house Troy and his sons had chainsawed a clearing in the woods, and years ago they’d built a second structure that backed up against the steep slope but had never been finished. It still lacked electricity. A garden hose supplied water. The windows were covered with plastic. That was where Bobby lived, and Marquez
could see him in the kitchen now with Nyland and Troy, Bobby hopping around like an insect drawn to the light.
There was a third building, a squat unpainted structure, a glorified shed partially hidden by brush, where the dogs slept in winter and where, mountain rumor had it, Sophie used to get locked up for days at a time as an adolescent.
Marquez remembered tracking Troy home years ago after a night hunt. Troy had taken three bears illegally, and Marquez had gotten here in time but lacked a warrant. While he’d stood guard over the house and waited for the warrant to arrive he’d watched Bobby and another cousin fill driveway ruts in the midday heat.
They’d shoveled in dirt, watered it down, then compacted the soil by driving a jeep back and forth over the former ruts, drinking beer as they worked, a boom box hanging from the jeep’s roll cage, playing loud rock and roll while Troy slept. The warrant had never arrived, and at dusk Marquez had left defeated.
At midnight the kitchen door swung open. Nyland and Bobby Broussard walked out, stood in the darkness near Nyland’s truck, Bobby fidgeting, moving with nervous energy in and out of the light, his gawky movements made garish by the larger shadows he cast against the house. A few minutes later Troy joined them, headlights came on, and three trucks wound down the driveway and started toward Placerville, Nyland in the lead, Bobby a half mile back, Troy trailing.
Nyland went through Placerville and got on Highway 50 eastbound, Bobby not far behind, Troy well back, limping up the steep grade past Apple Hill, riding the slow lane, the headlights on his old truck no brighter than Halloween pumpkins, shoulders hunched as he gripped the wheel. Nyland drove past Pollock Pines and dropped toward the river basin, Bobby behind him, Roberts and Cairo trailing Bobby. When Nyland and Bobby crossed the concrete bridge and turned onto Crystal Basin Road, Cairo and Roberts hung back, then slowly followed.
But rather than cross over the ridge and drop toward the basin, Nyland parked on a shoulder before the road crested. Bobby pulled in behind him, and they killed their lights. Cairo and Roberts had the choice of continuing up and driving past them or parking on the shoulder well below.
“We’re pulling over, pretending we’ve got a reason to be here, Lieutenant,” Roberts said, and it was a questionable call, but Marquez didn’t say anything.
They waited for Troy to arrive and thought he’d sweep the road from behind, guessing that he’d drive past Bobby and Nyland and become the lead vehicle as all three moved into the basin.
Bobby would bring up the rear, taking Troy’s place.
But it didn’t happen that way. Instead, Troy pulled off the highway well before dropping to the river, three or four miles from where they were. He parked behind the shell of a long-abandoned diner and sat shielded from the highway, his lights off.
An hour passed before Nyland moved, retracing his route, leaving the basin road and crossing back over the American River.
Somewhere between the river and where Marquez was parked, they lost him. Marquez assumed he was with Troy and decided their best move was to sit tight, so they waited, chattering to stay alert. Marquez backed his truck up among trees alongside the highway and drank from a Thermos of tea. He called Katherine, but she was sleepy and the conversation was short. Then Alvarez said he had something.
“There are lights up on the ridge way above you on your right.”
“I don’t see them, I don’t have the angle,” Marquez answered and saw only a dark, steep forested slope climbing to a ridge.
“That must be him,” Alvarez said. “It’s got to be him.” For the next fifteen minutes they listened as Alvarez called out the progress of the lights. “Okay, they just went out.”
Marquez looked at his watch, marked the time, and tried to put himself up on the ridge and in Nyland’s head, getting out of
the truck, in a hurry, dragging the burlap bags of bread. There’d been four bags, so maybe two trips. Awkward lugging those bags in the dark, and his boots would leave marks, the bags disrupting the duff under the trees.
We’ll find your tracks tomorrow,
he thought,
and we’ll find your bait pile
.
Nyland was up there long enough
for Marquez to wonder if he had another way out, possibly a dirt road falling off the back of the ridge. But just before dawn headlights snaked down through the trees. Then Bobby Broussard’s headlights came on, and he left the road shoulder where he’d sat all night. Nyland went past westbound, and Marquez cued his radio.
“Okay, he’s off the slope and westbound in lane one at sixtyfive, just passing Fresh Pond. Here comes S-2 right behind him, also lane one at sixty-five.”
Marquez used the S-2 or suspect two designation for Troy, as they had through the night. Nyland was S-1, Bobby S-3. He called it out as Bobby went by a few minutes later.
Nyland exited at Six Mile Road, Troy and Bobby continuing to a restaurant in Placerville where Shauf reported Troy’s getting wearily out of his truck, his fatigued face gray as granite in the
early light. There was no reason to stay with them any longer and, with the exception of Alvarez, Marquez told the team to stand down, get some sleep, be ready to roll again later that day.
Alvarez met him across the river and up the canyon outside a restaurant in the small town of Kyburz. They bought coffee, a half dozen sugared donuts, and stood in cold wind near Marquez’s truck, eating, talking, gulping coffee, letting the caffeine and sugar do their work. In Marquez’s truck they drove up behind the abandoned diner and then along a potholed asphalt road until reaching a steel gate. Beyond the gate was a dirt track climbing into the forest.
From tire tracks it looked like Nyland had driven up the steep slope and around the gate, and Marquez shifted into four-wheel drive and followed his tracks up and around pine stumps. They slid down to the thin track on the other side.
From there it was tough going, narrow and steep, forty-five minutes to get up onto the ridge. On top they stood outside the truck, zipping their coats against the cold early wind. Eastward, peaks rose above the dark green of forested canyons, and on the highway side, sounds of traffic carried up the slope. They could see into the Crystal Basin but were having trouble finding Nyland’s tracks. They saw where he’d parked yet they hadn’t found his trail. Alvarez hiked one direction, Marquez the other.
Walking north and a little bit down the lee side, Marquez found the semblance of a trail, followed that and found scuff marks, old bear scat, and boot prints. He dropped down the slope into a small clearing and got Alvarez on the radio.
“I’m looking at a three-sided wood shack built against an outcrop.
It’s got a new chain on the door. We’ll need a shovel, a pry bar, a hammer, and two of the groundhog cameras.”
Marquez checked out the shack while he waited. The plank siding had long ago weathered white. A door built of the same planks held a shiny chrome padlock and chain that looked new.
Marquez looked that over and then called Roberts, woke her, and asked her to start trying to find out who had the lease on this land.
He wanted her to try to get around needing a warrant to go into the shack. He walked the perimeter and found bear tracks down alongside the creek drainage beyond the clearing.
“Looks like your house,” Alvarez said, as he walked down into the clearing.
“Yeah, it might be sixty, seventy years old. Loggers or maybe a hunter’s shack or someone living off the land. I’m building that addition this winter, and I’ll need your help for a day or two.”
“I can still swing a hammer. I worked summers on a framing crew when I was in junior college.”
“Show me, I’ve been hearing about it for years.”
When Alvarez laughed, Marquez smiled, and maybe they were punchy from the long night or maybe it was knowing they were close to finding something. He touched one of the square-headed old bolts and looked at the door’s hinges, figured out the easiest way to get in, then decided to wait for Roberts to call back. They followed bear tracks down into the brush, decided to look for the bait pile first, and about a quarter mile below the shack heard the unmistakable whoof of a bear warning them.
Before they could back up a large black bear rose from brush, and Marquez registered a slash of white fur on the chest as it snorted another warning. He watched the bear’s ears as it dropped to four legs again, watched to see if the ears flattened, knowing they were probably safe if the ears stayed up. The bear turned away, its coat rippling fluidly as it moved almost silently down through the trees, four hundred pounds or even bigger. It turned, looked back, its dark face visible well down the slope, then was gone.
“He’s out of here,” Marquez said. “Let’s take a look.”
Paper trash. The chewed remains of tin cans. Bits of Styrofoam, remnants of black plastic garbage bags. Alvarez held up a crust of
bread. The bruin was missing a toe on his left rear, and there were other tracks, a second bear, an adolescent, and Marquez found tracks of two more adults. After looking it over they hiked back up to the shack, and the call came from Roberts.
“You’re on Federal land leased to a lumber company,” she said. “I got a hold of the judge at home. You’re good to go. What’s the situation there?”
“We found a bait pile. We don’t know what’s in the shack.”
If the rusted screws and nails holding the hinges on came out easily enough, they could put everything back the way they found it, then bury the groundhog cameras and record anyone coming and going. Infrared beams on the cameras would trip with movement and start the film. Marquez messed around with the door hinges for a few minutes, then pried one loose, the nails groaning as they came out. He laid the nails on a rock. They would put it back together the same way.
Inside, it smelled heavily of rodents, chipmunks. There was a small table, a chair, a pine cabinet sitting on the floor, plank shelves nailed to the wall, blankets, a Coleman stove, white gas, an aluminum and canvas folding cot, three plates, two chipped mugs, an iron skillet, and cooking utensils. They found canned food, Vienna sausages, green beans, tuna fish. Marquez read the expiration dates, all fairly recent.
Alvarez bent and picked up an empty container, handed it to Marquez. “Freon.”
“Petroni said something like that to me. He thinks Nyland is dialed in with meth cooks.”
They searched for more proof that Nyland was cooking up here, but they didn’t find it, though it was Marquez’s guess the lab equipment wasn’t far away. If they reported the Freon, they’d be leading the ATF or DEA up here, and he knew how that worked. Fish and Game would have to take a ticket and wait. He wasn’t going to do that.
Alvarez climbed onto the table, checking a space above. The shack had a ledger board bolted to the outcrop that served as one wall. Roof rafters had been nailed to this ledger, and on one end of the shack a crude shelf was suspended from the rafters, a piece of plywood held in place by two-by-fours. He slid his hand along the dusty board, talking to Marquez as he did, feeling in the darkness for the wood ledger in back.
“I’ve got something,” Alvarez said, then pulled down a package wrapped in canvas and tied with leather laces, handed it to Marquez, and hopped down. Marquez untied the laces, and the canvas unfolded slowly like a flower in morning sunlight. Then they were looking at a watch and ring, the ring gold with scrollwork, what looked like snakes encircling. The watch was a Seiko with a chrome band and showed the correct time and date.
Marquez moved them around with a knife, didn’t touch them.
“We’ll videotape them and put them back,” he said.
“Got to be stolen.”
“I don’t know what we’ve got here.”
They put the hinges back on, buried the groundhog cameras, and started the jarring ride down. Thirty minutes later they bounced down the last rough stretch. Morning traffic raced by on the highway, and Marquez waited for a gap. They’d retied the laces and left the watch and ring in their hiding place. He dropped Alvarez at his truck. When Marquez got back on the highway he called Kendall.
“I’m going to steal your line,” Marquez said. “I’ve got something to show you. Where are you?”
“In Placerville eating an early lunch.”
“We found a bear bait pile and a hunter’s shack we’re pretty sure Nyland has been working out of. I’ve got a video we took that I want to run by you.”
“What’s on it?”
He told him, then listened to Kendall breathing.
“Can you take me up there?”
“Yes.”
“I’m at the little yellow fast-food stand on the east side of town.”
“See you in half an hour.”