Night Game (14 page)

Then it was a lot of the same game
again, Nyland driving through the Crystal Basin and Bobby trailing behind, Nyland making multiple stops, thirty-two by Marquez’s count, and Bobby reversing directions, roaring back down the road toward them, a fighter pilot in a beater pickup hoping to surprise the enemy. They dodged Bobby and kept track of Nyland’s GPS coordinates.

Whenever Nyland stopped they marked the coordinates and clocked the time. Gradually, he worked his way toward the lip of the basin, then instead of dropping down the steep road to the highway, he turned left onto Weber Mill Road.

“He just turned onto Shauf’s road,” was how Alvarez called it from his truck.

Nyland made three stops along Weber Mill, including one right above Shauf’s bait pile before driving home. Bobby continued down the highway toward Placerville, and Marquez followed Nyland out Six Mile Road, hustled out the ridge, and saw him back
up to the second trailer, tailgate down, headlights shining into meadow weeds. If they were able to find bait piles at any of the GPS coordinates they’d marked tonight, then they would have enough for a search warrant. They would get into that trailer as well as the main one. The second must be where he stored equipment.

After Nyland coasted his truck back down to the flat meadow, Marquez started to leave, then stopped as Nyland walked back to the second trailer. He continued on up past the third trailer and disappeared into the woods. A chained hound bayed, and Marquez talked on and off with Alvarez while he waited for Nyland to reappear.

They speculated that he had a storage area somewhere in the woods he’d just walked into. Marquez looked down on the long oval meadow, the slab house foundations where they’d watched Sophie and Nyland, the faint aluminum luminosity of the trailers, and then from the direction Nyland had disappeared Marquez saw flickering that looked like firelight. It vanished as tall trees along the meadow moved with the wind, showed once more and burned for thirty minutes before winking out abruptly. And still Nyland didn’t reappear. He waited another half hour, and when nothing more happened he climbed through the trees back to his truck and drove to the safehouse.

The next morning as Marquez was having coffee he tried to make sense of it. They had a case building against Nyland for bear baiting, one that included Bobby Broussard and, very likely, Troy before it was over. But the disparate pieces, Sophie’s role, the watch and ring, the firelight, the strange triangle Petroni was in or had been in, Marquez couldn’t fit these things into a framework. He was turning the pieces in his head when Kendall called.

“Do you know where Petroni is this morning?” Kendall asked.

“No.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Yesterday afternoon. What’s happened?”

“I’m in Georgetown.”

“You’re at Petroni’s house.”

“I am, and you’d better come here,” Kendall said. “Stella Petroni has been murdered. A neighbor found her body this morning. I’ll tell them to let you through the tape.”

Images came, nothing coherent, Marquez asked, “Killed at the house?”

“Stabbed. Beaten. Kicked.” It was a different voice than he’d heard Kendall use before, no undertow of bellicosity or wheedling edge.

“When?”

“Let’s talk here.”

When Marquez turned onto Petroni’s street he saw the coroner’s van and a small crowd of neighbors who looked like mostly retirees, standing together, shock plain on their faces. They watched him walk up. Stella’s car was out front, Petroni’s Fish and Game truck in the garage. Marquez knew a number of calls had been made requesting that Petroni turn in his truck. Bell had authorized it impounded and towed but must have assumed Stella wouldn’t allow him to hide it here. Marquez’s guess was that Stella had gone along with it, that they’d come together on the issue of Petroni’s fighting his suspension because his state salary was the only source of income. Marquez lifted his badge when he got close to the first cop. Then Kendall walked out onto the porch, waved him up.

He followed Kendall in, past crime tape near the front door and a blood splatter that had reached up on the wallpaper and soaked into the side of an upholstered chair.

“We found a bloody axe handle,” Kendall said. “Neighbors tell us she was cautious about who she opened the door for, but we think she was attacked first out here. She may have turned and
run, made it as far as the kitchen.” Marquez remembered Stella’s sliding the curtains, taking a look at him before opening up. “The phone was on the floor of the kitchen. She may have had it in her hand,” Kendall said, then stopped and turned to look at him. “Let’s say she recognized who it was and opened the door. Or her assailant had a key and she came out when she heard the door open. She gets struck but makes it back to the kitchen before he overtakes her.”

Kendall led him to the kitchen where Stella lay on her side on the floor, her face tipped up toward the ceiling.

“You see the boot prints,” Kendall said. “The killer stood over her, not to one side but over her, straddling her after she was down. Like chopping firewood, bringing the axe handle down on her head.”

Marquez made himself draw a breath. The bone structure of Stella’s face had been crushed.

“See what he was doing?” Kendall asked.

“Erasing her identity.”

“I wish I had a partner like you. You’re right, he was taking away her face.”

Blood was everywhere. They couldn’t step into the kitchen. On the upswing the axe handle had lined the walls with splatters.

Her nightgown was hiked up past midthigh, raising the question of rape. Kendall’s reason for showing him this was obvious, though Marquez didn’t accept it. A neighbor walking his dog before dawn, a retired gentleman in his seventies, ex-cop, said he’d shone his flashlight at the house, seen the front door open, and become suspicious. He’d seen blood on the floor when he’d looked inside the house, and when Stella didn’t answer his calls he’d tied his dog’s leash to a porch post and gone in to investigate. When he found her he called 911 from his cell. He hadn’t touched her, hadn’t seen a need to check for a pulse.

“This neighbor told me that Stella has always been afraid some
one would break in and rob her. He’s like you, he can’t picture the statistically likely assailant. Where in Placerville did you last see Bill Petroni?”

“At 7-Eleven.” Marquez gave the time of day, a shorthand account of what they’d talked about. “He’s upset about his suspension and the bribe accusations. He’s angry at you. He said you’d passed on rumors to Bell so you could turn the heat up on him, even though you knew the accusations were false.”

“Then maybe I’m next. What was he driving?”

“The Honda.”

“Did you know this truck was here?”

“No.”

“He didn’t tell you he was storing it here?”

Marquez let the second question slide off him. He watched a TV van roll in and pointed at it.

“I don’t want to be on their tape. Let’s take this conversation somewhere else.”

They walked down the road to where Kendall had parked and got in the sedan.

“What did he want to talk with you about?” Kendall asked.

“You, for one thing. He feels like he’s being framed. He wants to know if you have any signed statements from anyone claiming he took bribes.”

“The answer is no, I don’t have anything signed, not with Brandt, the man you talked to, and not with anyone else either.”

Marquez took a deep breath, the images in his head those of Stella on the floor, the odd tilt of her neck, the hinge of her jaw torn loose. He’d known Stella in a lighthearted way when he’d been friends with Bill, been invited here when Petroni and Stella had bought the house, and remembered her loving to dance. He looked at Kendall, admiring the discipline, finding that to like about the detective, Kendall’s doggedness.

“Did you expect Petroni to call yesterday?” Kendall asked.

“No, it surprised me.”

“He called your cell?”

“You want the time he called?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get it.”

“I hope I don’t have to explain our interest in his whereabouts this morning. Who’s the friend he was going to meet?”

“He didn’t give a name.”

“What else did he talk about?”

“Going into the roofing business. There’s a cousin with a roofing business and I don’t know the name of it but the wardens who work with him probably do. That cousin might know where Bill is today.”

“He talked about money problems?”

“A little bit.”

“And?”

“He wouldn’t take a loan from me.”

“How’d he show his anger toward Stella?”

“He didn’t.”

“You’re the perfect alibi, Marquez. You’re the go-to guy for this situation. You’re credible and you’re not going to cover for him.

But underneath it all you back him because you’re that type of guy. If he can show us that he was with you and then with this other unnamed friend later in the afternoon, and if she died yesterday afternoon, and it was somewhere around then, he’s got a step up on us, and I know you don’t believe a word of what I’m saying.

It’s inconceivable to you, I can see it on your face, but I’m betting he used you yesterday.”

“You said the neighbor noticed the open door this morning.”

“It was probably open since yesterday.”

“Stella is in on the kitchen floor, the door’s open all night, and no other neighbors noticed?”

“The porch light was off. There are six neighbors on the street, two weren’t home last night, one is bedridden. None of the others walked or drove down to the end of the street until the gentleman this morning with his dog.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at.”

“I know what you’re getting at. You’re wondering why the killer would leave the door open, and there are several possible answers, one obvious being that after following her into the house, the killer may not have wanted to be seen going out the front again, may have been afraid someone would recognize him.” Kendall’s eyes narrowed. “What’s he take home a month after taxes?”

“Not enough.”

“Not for both alimony and a life, and believe me I know the feeling. He’s trapped and there’s no way out as long as she’s got her hooks in his regular check. He did the math and it didn’t add up.” He paused. “How much did you offer to loan him?”

“Just a few hundred but he didn’t ask for it, and that stays between us. I don’t want it coming back over the table in Petroni’s face. I pulled the money out of an ATM to loan it, but he never asked me to and wouldn’t take it. He left it on the seat.”

“Don’t protect him, Marquez. Try to keep an open mind.”

“How open is yours?”

“I try to treat all homicides more or less the same.” He added quietly, “Before I heard about bribes I heard some other stuff I’d call unsavory, Petroni demanding additional fees from some of these bear hunters, that kind of thing. Not a lot of money, but twenty, thirty dollars a pop, and in cash from scraggly-ass locals he knew wouldn’t go to the police. He had a hard-on for some of them, so he made them hurt. And I wasn’t born yesterday, Marquez. I know three-quarters of these guys are more than happy to see a warden go down, and they don’t care how it happens as long as the warden’s life gets messed up. I’d heard all these stories
before we had that Sunday roundtable with your chief and the internal affairs officer. I cut Petroni that break, but in the back of my head I kept asking myself why lie to me over trying to get Vandemere to quit harassing her. I couldn’t make that work so we decided to take another look at him and decided to see how he’d react to these accounts that he was on the take. I let him listen to one of the tapes, and he started getting loud. Telling me how he was going to sue me and the county and ruin me personally for slandering him. I had to get a couple of deputies to come into the room. He was running right on the edge and I think he crossed over yesterday.”

A sheriff’s deputy walked down the road toward them now, an officer young enough to still have acne. He looked both earnest and shocked, approached at a brisk walk, his eyes on Kendall in the driver’s seat.

“Looks like they need me up there,” Kendall said and unlatched his door. He turned to Marquez before getting out. “I know you’re shocked, but I can also tell that you’ve seen your share of killings before. I know when somebody has. Is that from your DEA time?”

“Yeah.”

“And now you’re in wildlife.” Kendall pointed at the young officer walking toward them. “Petroni needs to come in before we turn these kids loose to apprehend him along one of these roads somewhere. If he calls you again, tell him he’s got to come in immediately, and if I was Petroni I wouldn’t make any assumptions about what his years in law enforcement will do to protect him.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means he’s wanted for questioning in connection with a murder.”

When Marquez left Kendall
he drove to Wright’s Lake in the Crystal Basin and slowly cruised the lake road looking for Petroni’s orange Honda. Half an hour later he called Kendall.

“I’m at Wright’s because he told me he might borrow a friend’s cabin out here. Didn’t say he would, said he might.”

“You should have told me.”

“I’ll check it out first.”

Marquez walked the rocky shoreline, aware that he was visible to anyone in a cabin along this side of the lake. He talked to Alvarez, then Roberts, telling both to stay focused on preparations for Sweeney’s hunt and checking the sites Nyland had stopped at last night. But it was useless. Stella’s murder and the hunt for Petroni swept everything else away.

“I’m less than five miles from you,” Roberts said. “I’ll drive there and help you.”

“Run out to Dark Lake first and have a look there and across from the wilderness lot.”

Marquez hung up with her and kept turning over a thought that he didn’t want to hold, that Kendall was right, Petroni had lied and there wasn’t any friend’s cabin. Petroni had used him as an alibi, nothing more, a final fuck you to a friendship lost many years ago.

He picked his way around granite boulders at the water’s edge and looked at a dark brown cabin with two open windows facing the lake. He climbed stairs up to a weathered deck, knocked on a door, and when no one answered leaned through one of the open windows and called hello. A gear bag sat on the floor near an old sofa, a worn green Army duffel bag. He knocked harder.

“Anyone home?”

He stepped away from the window and walked to the railing facing the lake, didn’t see anyone on the shoreline or boats, and walked back to the window, stepped through into the cold shade inside. When he leaned over the duffel bag he saw the initials WP written on it in black marker. Without debating the right or wrong of trespassing, he unzipped it. Under a couple of folded T-shirts was a DFG uniform belt and shirt, everything neatly packed, and he remembered Petroni’s talking about his father, the Army major, what it had been like growing up a military brat.

He zipped it shut again and checked two bedrooms and a bath. The rooms were empty, in the bedrooms metal springs showing on cots, everything covered, protected from rodents. He went into the kitchen and saw that the refrigerator was on. Inside was a head of lettuce and a deli bag. So Petroni was staying here or planned to, though it didn’t look like he’d slept here yet.
Dropped the bag, opened the windows to air the place out, then took off? Or he’d planted the story with me and staged this.
Marquez took a final walk through the cabin before going back outside. He didn’t feel any impulse to call Kendall yet, wanted to
think it out a little further, running through possible reasons why Petroni might leave his gear.
May have gone with the roofers for the day. Riding around with his cousin learning how to bid roofs. But if that was the case Petroni would hear about the murder over the radio. He’d have contacted the police by now. Dropped the gear and went where, then?
Marquez took a last look around before walking back to his truck. As he got there his phone rang and it had to be Kendall or Roberts who was somewhere nearby. He expected to find out that Petroni had been located. But when he picked it up the screen read “Unavailable,” and as he answered he heard the tonal beep of a voice changer initiating.

“Your business in Placerville,” the toneless voice said. “Who’s your contract with?”

Marquez adjusted to his surprise at their seller’s calling. His team had a phone number and a name at the Department of Energy ready to back up their story. But still, the cover story was weak. Anyone intent on knowing could find out what public contracts and grants the DOE had let.

“It’s with the DOE, but why are you asking. You checking up on my business?” Marquez opened the door of his truck, got in, and flipped through a notebook. “We’re part of a study gathering information on global warming, in our case looking at particular tree species for evidence of change. Call this number, ask for Bob Phillips. Tell him John Croft said he should tell you anything you want to know.”

There was silence now and then another adjusting of the machine, the cell phone their seller was on no doubt working off a counterfeit or stolen chip as he had previously done.
He’s too close to your operation,
Marquez thought, as the silence continued.
Bell’s right, Shauf’s right, I’ve pushed this too far. Shut the office down and pull the team. You’re trying too hard to make it work with this guy, and he’s prowling around you because he’s
suspicious. Pack up and move out of the safehouse and come back at him a different way. He’s not calling to sell anything today. We’re not hunting him anymore, he’s hunting us.

“I have the galls you bought. Do you want them?”

“If you dip them in chocolate.”

He heard laughter, a strange “Hack, hack, hack,” through the machine. Marquez had thrown the answer back as a flip comment, but dipped in chocolate was a way smugglers sometimes disguised galls, trying to make them look like figs that had been coated.

“I can drop them at your business or meet you.”

“I won’t be around the business for the next few days, so maybe we’ll have to meet.”

“I’ll call you very soon.”

Marquez drove away from Wright’s Lake. He phoned Kendall when he got out to the highway and told him what he’d found.

“I’m on my way to you,” Marquez said. “I’ll take you there.”

Kendall was in the garage with Hawse and two other detectives when Marquez walked up. They’d pulled the contents of Petroni’s truck and spread them on plastic on the concrete walk leading up to the house. Marquez saw the satisfaction on Hawse’s heavy face and knew they’d found something.

“I’m talking to you only because Petroni came to you and maybe you’ll help us find him,” Kendall said. “There are threatening messages from Petroni on her answering machine. He was angry about her cutting off the credit cards. Her lawyer just told us she saved them for a judge to hear. They aren’t apologies. They’re not the voice of a man trying to get back together with his wife.”

“He put the blame on himself yesterday.”

“Sure, and she paid the ultimate price. Let me show you what we found in the truck.”

They had photos, shots taken of Sophie Broussard and a young man who it took Marquez only a moment to recognize. Behind them was a lake, and from the gold light reflecting off the water he
knew it was taken near sunset. Sophie wore a black thong swimsuit.

Her tan skin glistened with beads of water and suntan oil. Vandemere’s left hand cupped her ass as their hips pressed together.

“What lake, Marquez?”

“I’d guess Loon.”

“That’s what one of the officers here said.” He shook the evidence bag with the photos. “Buried in his truck.”

Vandemere was tanned, lean, looked fit. Sophie’s long legs were as tall as his. Her hair was longer than it was now and wet and dark on her shoulders.

“Taken with a digital camera and printed off on ordinary paper.

We’re going into the house where he was staying with Sophie as soon as we get a warrant signed, and that’s going to be soon. Can you give me a job-related reason he’d be driving around with these photos?”

“Not offhand.”

Marquez led Kendall and a couple of county cruisers to Wright’s Lake. He showed them the cabin, the duffel bag visible through the window.

“I’ll need a warrant to go inside,” Kendall said, “and I’m going to write down that you stopped by to visit because he told you he was staying out here. You with me on that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “How’d you know it was that cabin?”

“I saw open windows.”

“He wanted you to find it.”

When Marquez left, Kendall was giving instructions to a county cop to park his unit out of view and wait.

“Officially, Petroni’s wanted for questioning,” Marquez told Alvarez as he reached the highway and started for Placerville.

“Unofficially, he’s wanted for murder, and Kendall still thinks I know where he is. There’s a chance he’ll try to have someone follow me, so take a look behind me as I come into town.”

“Got you covered.”

Half an hour later in a surprised but clear voice, and after Marquez had made several turns on Placerville streets, Alvarez confirmed a car more or less staying with him, not aggressively, but there.

“I’m not sure it’s a cop.”

“What kind of car?”

“White TransAm.”

“I need gas, I’ll stop for it now. Let’s see what he does.”

Marquez pulled into a Shell station. He caught just a glimpse of the car as he got out.