Night Game (19 page)

“I’m giving you a way to get to the man you’re after.”

“Call your cousin, call me back.” Marquez hung up.

Marquez took a call from Keeler,
who was at his campsite at Ice House Lake. Keeler was so certain of who he’d seen that Marquez drove there next. He called Bell on the way, got it going in case there was a deal to be made with Ungar.

“Why’s he coming forward now?” Bell asked. “Is it this Stockton bust?”

“I talked to Delano, the vice cop handling it, they don’t have any leads, and they don’t have anyone of Korean descent in custody or as a suspect.”

“We’re supposed to get this cousin immunity though we don’t even know what he’s done yet?”

“That’s what he’s asking for.”

“And he’s already leading you to Durham.”

“Yeah, he’s feeding us Durham.”

“And you think he knows Durham?”

“All I know is he called the morning after someone shot at me.”

He stayed on the line with Bell until driving up to Ice House and finding Keeler’s camper. Bell said he’d find out what kind of deal could be offered, and they agreed to ask for more help in trying to locate Durham. They’d also try to re-establish surveillance on Ungar.

Marquez walked up to the camper, his mind still on Durham and Ungar. He’d given Keeler photos of all possible suspects, as well as photos of the Broussards and others Marquez believed might be suppliers. Then Keeler called this morning and said Ungar had visited him.

“Pull up a chair,” Keeler said, and Marquez unfolded one of the lawn chairs leaning against the camper. Keeler was sitting alongside a portable grill cooking sausages and red peppers that spattered juices into the flame.

Marquez held out another photo of Ungar. “You sure it was him?”

“It was him. He sat just about where you are. I first noticed him when he was down by the water. I didn’t know where he’d come from, thought he’d hiked in. He came over and said he admired my grill, asked where I’d bought it, and said he was thinking of getting one. Asked me if I was alone up here and if he could bum a glass of water off me and started talking about the camper, how he might get one of these. I got him a Coke instead of water, and when he asked what I did before retiring, it clicked.”

“Did you tell him you’re retired?”

“Yes.”

Marquez tapped the photo. “He was a reporting party, then an informant for us. He called me this morning saying he can give us the name of the man we’re looking for.” He stared at Keeler as he tried to put it together. “How’d you register for the campground, chief?”

“Online. You can do that now. I thought about that myself.”

“He is a computer guy. He’s skilled that way. Do you think he knew you recognized him?”

“I don’t think so. I told him I like to come up here in the fall and that my wife died recently and tried to lead him a different direction. I wasn’t sure what he wanted at first. Truth is, he made me nervous, particularly after I recognized him.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it at all. Maybe we’d better move you to a different lake and not register. Or back you away.”

“You tell me.”

“It doesn’t feel right. Let’s get you out of here. Did you get a look at his vehicle?”

“No, he hiked out to the road again. Very polite, thanking me, and then I got the photos you gave and called you.”

Marquez watched the chief’s hand tremble as he moved food from the grill to paper plates. He watched Keeler stick a cigar back in his mouth and knew the chief had liked being part of the operation and didn’t really want to leave. They ate, still talking about Ungar, and he could feel a kind of loneliness coming off Keeler as he agreed that he should leave.

“Chief, do you want to take a ride with me this morning first?”

“Where are we going?”

“I’ve got a place to check out.”

After they got in Marquez’s truck Keeler asked about the shooting, saying, “When you worked under me I never came to any conclusions, but let me ask you something, how much have you ever talked to anyone about your first wife’s murder or your DEA team getting wiped out? I’m talking about what they call survivor’s guilt.”

“I got help after Clara died. It hasn’t made it any easier, but it has helped me understand. Maybe deep down you don’t think it’s fair that you’re alive and Julie isn’t.”

It surprised him that Keeler knew or remembered her name.

“Are you telling me I have a death wish?”

“That’s a loser’s hand and you’re anything but a loser.”

“This connects with me getting shot at?”

“You had more than a few close calls.”

Marquez took the exit for Howell Road and felt the change under his tires a few miles later. The conversation had returned to Ungar, but he was still surprised at Keeler’s comments about him.

The road dropped into a creek canyon thick with oak, bay, and willow, then climbed through trees and followed a long meadow.

Where it wrapped the meadow was a barn with a big Nazi flag tacked on one side and four or five motorcycles up in front of the house. Smoke curled from the chimney of the house. A bald man sitting on the porch studied them as they drove by.

Marquez explained why they were looking for the remains of the Johengen tree farm, and they were out far enough now to pass only an occasional house and mailbox. At the last one he stopped, backed up, and read the number before continuing on, and then, following the advice of the woman in records, he watched the hills for rows of second-growth fir and pine. When he spotted lines of trees too uniform to occur naturally, he turned up a dirt road and drove a third of a mile up to a dilapidated, moss-covered wooden gate.

There was no address, and the gate had been chained and padlocked with a new bright chrome lock. If Petroni saw this, then he would have picked up on the new lock immediately. What it brought to mind was the lock on Nyland’s hunting shack. Keep Out and No Trespassing signs were posted, and a barbed wire fence ran up into the trees. He looked up, following the line of barbed wire as it climbed the steep slope.

“Doesn’t look like they want visitors,” Keeler said.

“I’ll go knock.”

Marquez climbed over the gate and walked down to the bend in the driveway. He could see an old farmhouse with a red asphalt roof that in several places was missing shingles. There was a barn off to one side of a clearing and what looked like an old apple orchard beyond it. Willow trees and thick brush grew alongside a creek on one side of the orchard, and he guessed that was the property line. A cottonwood drooped over the farmhouse, and then behind the property, rising with the slope, were rows of trees, many well over twenty feet tall. He didn’t see any cars, stepped onto the rotted porch, and knocked on the back door.

The door glass rattled, but no one came to answer. He looked at the sheets tacked over the windows and the mud wasps’ nests overhead in the eaves and rapped the door again, though just for show. No one was here. He walked across to the barn, shoes sticking in the mud from the earlier rain, and he found the barn doors chained shut. He walked down one side of the barn and then back out into the cleared bare space between house and barn and scanned the orchard and hills before going back up the driveway to his truck.

“Your phone rang,” Keeler said.

He’d missed a call from Roberts. She kept her voice neutral when he called back, but there was no need to hide her excitement.

“Bingo,” Roberts said. “Durham had a game park in Michigan years ago, registered as the Marion Stuart Corporation. He got shut down for illegally buying lion cubs and had a list of other offenses. I talked to a game warden there who said Durham’s ranch had some of the worst conditions he’d ever seen. Crowded cages. No water. He raised monkeys he sold to zoos and labs, and they tried to bring a case against him for that. He sold out and moved after that.”

“What happened to the case against him?”

“He paid fines and agreed to close down. When he moved to California he picked up a second name and ID.”

“He’s living with two names?”

“That’s what it’s looking like. This Michigan deal was in 1992. I talked to another guy in U.S. Fish and Wildlife who connected with the name Marion Stuart. He thinks Stuart left the country for several years. They’d heard he was shipping animals out of Taiwan. Someone in their department was down there and saw him at an animal market.” She paused. “Think he’ll show up for Nyland’s arraignment?”

“No, and let me tell you what happened with Ungar this morning.”

He gave her that and added, “I’ll meet you and Shauf at Sierra Guides in half an hour.”

He drove back to Placerville with Keeler. Though they had a warrant, Marquez had made the decision to delay going into Durham’s hunting guide business. Shauf and Roberts had staked out the office this morning, hoping he’d show up there to retrieve records. But they’d also made contact with the landlady, and she was here to meet them and unlock the doors. The landlady was standing with Roberts when Marquez and Keeler drove up, a white-haired woman wearing a royal blue running suit with a Nike emblem.

Keeler took over, talking to her outside as the team started searching.

One desk had a file drawer full of maps of the area and photos of other hunts. Marquez found a shot of Durham as a young man, posing over a lion, looking lean and intense, one hand tightly gripping his rifle. There were more photos but little in the way of paper. Roberts settled down in front of the computer, booted up, and began to try to get through the passwords. When she couldn’t, she announced they’d want to take the computer with them. That was all they took, though in Nyland’s desk they’d found a business card holder with the name of a gun shop in South San Francisco, a location that got Marquez’s interest, and he copied down the address and phone.

He gave Keeler a ride back to Ice House, and shortly before noon Marquez was back in Placerville in a judge’s chambers. The
judge knew Petroni enough to be concerned and asked Marquez what he knew about Petroni’s situation, what did he think? The judge was the first human being outside of Keeler who seemed concerned about Petroni. Marquez told him what he knew and then a few minutes later watched quietly from a side door as Nyland pled not guilty to all charges.

After leaving the courthouse he talked with Katherine from his truck. Kath was driving and almost back to San Francisco. She sounded more philosophical about Maria’s missing school. Her mom, Lillian, had been a high school teacher and would help Maria with chemistry. She was also an avid outdoorswoman and planned to take her hiking to lakes below the Inconsolable Mountains.

They were going to Lake Sabrina today, so whether they’d overreacted or not, there was at least the silver lining of Maria’s spending time she wouldn’t otherwise have had with her grandmother.

Tomorrow they’d drive up to the bristlecone park ten thousand feet up in the White Mountains, and Lillian would show Maria the oldest living trees on earth. Years ago, on Maria’s tenth birthday, Lillian had taught her how to shoot a rifle, taking Maria up a dry canyon behind the house with a handful of Coke cans.

They planned to do more of that as well.

“Give Maria a call,” Katherine said. “She needs to hear from you.”

“I’ll call her.”

“Did I tell you the building permit got approved? They left a message. I told Maria, she’s very excited.”

“That’s great.”

Contemplating that build was like thinking about another world, but that was the world Katherine was trying to keep his head in, and he knew it was lucky they’d been approved.

When he hung up with her he tried to reach Maria on her cell phone, and when that didn’t work left a message on the answering
machine at Lillian’s house. Then, driving away from the courthouse he took a call from Kendall.

“I hear Nyland made bail but you’ve taken away his wheels.”

“We impounded his truck. One of the lookouts was driving it that night.”

Marquez didn’t say they’d moved the transponder to Sophie’s truck, didn’t feel like he owed Kendall that. Alvarez had done it after she’d driven into Placerville and parked.

“He’s going to be angry when they kick him loose,” Kendall said. “He’ll act out.”

“That’s the way we read it too.”

Marquez had talked it over with the team that day and believed Nyland’s reaction could be violent when he learned what they’d impounded. The charges, the equipment he was unlikely to ever get back, the loss of guide license, and the possible loss of the right to ever hunt again could easily set him off. They would have to assume their identities were known by Nyland and be very careful following him, yet at the same time the route to Durham most likely was through him.

“Did you think about what I said earlier about Petroni?”

Kendall asked.

“Yeah, and I don’t see it.”

“You don’t see or you don’t want to see it?”

“Both.” Marquez took a breath, debated, said, “I found the place on Howell Road Petroni had made notes about. Johengen’s was a Christmas tree farm and apple orchard. Johengen died twenty years ago, and his wife is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. A lawyer manages a living will. I was out there this morning.”

“Tell me how to get there.”

Marquez gave him directions, then parked his truck on the east side of town and waited for Shauf. They rode out to Eli Smith’s house and found him sick with the flu and sweating when he
answered the door. A half-f bottle of NyQuil sat on his kitchen table, and the heat was turned way up, windows closed. Coming from the cold outside air, it was hard to breathe in the house.

Marquez showed Smith a badge, let him adjust to that before suggesting he be careful with his answers.

“We’re about to make more bear poaching arrests.”

“I don’t do any illegal hunting.”

“All you have to do is be truthful.”

“All I did was get ripped off.”

Marquez waited until Smith looked up at him again, face pale, body shaking with chills.

“Bobby Broussard gave us your name, but let’s go back a couple of steps and talk about the guns you reported stolen.”

“I told the detective I loaned them out. A man can loan his guns out to whoever he wants.”

“No one loans prize guns to just anybody.” It was why he’d loaned them that Marquez wanted. “Who’d you loan your guns to?”