Die-Off (17 page)

A spotter plane would go up if they found anything tomorrow as Marquez worked from what he got from Soliatano. He felt like they had to find it tomorrow and Soliatano was the break they had needed. Finding the first hatchery might lead to the other two. Or that was his hope—that and hoping there were only three.

As he hung up with Waller a gray dusk settled over the Central Valley and a call came from Hauser. After three weeks of Hauser’s calls Marquez had grown used to the late-night harangues designed to burn time and serve as diversions from whatever tease about the pike project he started the call with. But after leaving him in the church, he didn’t expect a call today.

‘There’s nothing more I have that will help you but you need to know what you’re up against. Five years ago they funded a major study on the Asiatic carp migration working its way to the Great Lakes. That was a significant study. So was one they did with snakehead in the Potomac. There’s good science in both and it has helped everyone, but they have two faces. They’re using what they learned from the Great Lakes study with the pike introduction. They do that with everything.

‘They make money by studying current problems and then making forecasts and starting businesses that anticipate future problems. I was hired to model climate change in the western United States from 2015 to 2025 because they’re looking at future water usage. Trying to save a fish like smelt in the delta will be so yesterday and quaint no one will understand why it ever mattered.’

‘Where are you, Matt?’

‘In my car.’

‘Near your house?’

‘A couple of miles away but I can’t go there and I don’t know where to go. I stayed in the church until the priest came out and talked to me. I agreed with Paula that until things are figured out she’s in the house and I find a place to live. I stayed in a hotel last night and I lay in the bed there as I talked to her and she told me she doesn’t want to live with a thief. I’m a scientist. I was a possible Nobel candidate and that’s what she said to me, that she doesn’t want to be married to a thief.’

‘I think your lawyer’s idea is the right one. Ask ENTR not to press charges if you return the money. Start negotiating.’

‘It’s not just pike they plan to introduce into western rivers. They’re testing different species of carp too.’

Marquez started to ask about that but stopped and let it be. He edged forward in traffic, still listening but thinking about tomorrow and Brookline Road.

‘Almost all the salmon sold now is farmed and grown in pens and ENTR is getting into that business.’

‘You told me about Chile, Thailand, and Indonesia.’

‘I did?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Several times you’ve told me ENTR expects to beat the disease and musculature problems penned salmon are susceptible to.’

‘Did I tell you about the species selection team?’

‘No.’

‘The species selection team evaluates my models and makes predictive guesses about which species are likely to thrive and dominate. Their focus is on the river systems. They’ve predicted pike and carp as predator survivors in many rivers and lakes that now have other native species. They don’t know it but their work got used for the pike project. Are you still there?’

‘I’m here, Matt. I’m listening.’

‘The future is about fighting for resources and food. Have you looked at my climate models?’

‘I’ve looked at what you sent me.’

‘After the Arctic ice goes part of North America enters a permanent drought. That’s where I focused. Overall, the warmer it gets the less snowpack. The less snowpack, the more plant and animal species change, the more fires, less water storage in the dry states, and it’s a cascade from there. You have one thing changing, then ten, then a thousand, and a Bible-thumping dystopian on his knees praying for the end times may be certain this is God’s plan, but the people you’re up against look at it differently. They see winners and losers.

‘They see losers not adapting and becoming successively weakened by heat spells, crop failures, lack of water, and businesses moving in and everything coming down to who controls the resources. The government will control the water but the people with the money will control the government and a lot of money is going to be made in rebuilding water distribution systems. Politicians are just part of the pay structure. They’re a business expense. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Where are you going with this?’

‘The illegal pike hatcheries are going to be near legitimate hatcheries such as those we have in partnership with your department. They ran a two-year pilot to assess the viability of eliminating salmon as a keystone fish in western rivers before they moved forward with the salmon farm investments and they used the science from earlier studies and from the Species Selection Team before setting up the pike hatcheries. They expect an acceleration as the climate change cascade begins. You understand what is meant by that, don’t you?’

Hauser didn’t wait for an answer and Marquez’s focus now was on a van that had stayed well behind him most of the drive and exited ten miles ago in Dixon but was behind him again, which might mean they were just trying to get an edge on the traffic by running up the frontage road off to his right. He decided to be more cautious getting to the Sacramento safehouse.

‘People imagine that we can reverse climate change at the eleventh hour, but that won’t be the case.’

‘How soon can you return the money?’

‘What?’

‘I’m asking how easily you can return the money. If you return it and you give us the biologist’s name we can work something out.’

Marquez knew what would happen next. He heard the phone click as Hauser hung up and called Captain Waller and let him know he was coming into Sacramento.

‘Come here first, John. The ENTR people are all over us. They know people in the Governor’s office. The chief is on the phone with the governor right now and the Governor is telling us to back off ENTR. He wants to meet with you as soon as he’s off the phone with the Governor. Who
are
these people?’

I
n a funny way it was Barbara Jones who got them there, calling Marquez the next morning at dawn as he drove north on 99. She sounded as if she was well past her first cup of coffee and ready to lock and load.

‘Matt Hauser embezzled, stole, transferred eight million dollars to a secret account, and I don’t really care why. I mean that. I could care less why he took it. I want it back and Hauser doesn’t want to go to prison or defend himself against lawsuits that will go on for fifteen fucking years, so I’m calling you again. He’s not listening to his lawyers and this thing is on the edge of getting ugly and public. Consider this my reach out. You might be the only one who can convince him before it’s too late and in return we’ll triple the resources we’re putting into finding these illegal hatcheries.’

‘You now agree they exist.’

‘Someone grew the pike you found so they must exist.’ She paused before adding what didn’t need to be said. ‘ENTR denies any involvement.’

‘Of course.’

‘Here’s something else for you to think about. Matt Hauser started coming apart seven to nine months ago, long before Fish and Game heard of him. People he works with started getting odd emails, some of them threatening, some delusional, like proposing ENTR spend ten million on a campaign to raise public awareness of who he is with the goal of getting him nominated for a Nobel Prize. I mean that. He wrote stuff like that. He felt that his name being in circulation, even if it was just Internet chatter, would benefit ENTR.

‘But the real thing is his wife has had an open affair with one of the founding partners and Hauser has known and the stress has unraveled him. I’m telling you this because some people at the top making the decisions about how to deal with this current problem are sympathetic and would like to see Hauser avoid embezzlement charges.’

‘You’re full of surprises.’

‘I’m like that and I’m just bringing you up to speed because we want to continue what’s been a great relationship with your department.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘It is and we want to keep it that way and really when you look at all the evidence against Hauser and where he’s at now that his job and credibility are gone, it’s a pretty good offer for him. He’s got forty-eight hours to take it.’

‘And I’m the messenger?’

‘He calls you and he calls his wife. We can’t really ask her right now. We’re talking to his lawyers, but you know what that’s like.’

‘I’ll let him know.’

‘And we’ll keep working the pike problem. We’re very interested in finding out who’s behind the fish stocking. We don’t want our reputation damaged so maybe it’s time to share. If you agree, let’s start today.’

‘I agree but I don’t have anything to share right now.’

‘But you’re hearing me.’

‘I am.’

‘I’ve also got a little advice. You’ve got a reputation for pushing the boundaries. Don’t do that with ENTR. You could end up needing a lawyer like Hauser.’

‘You have a nice day, Barbara.’

Marquez broke the connection. Last night he and the tech, Chen, came up with a list of properties off Brookline Road and Wheeler was on standby if they needed help from the air. He figured that was their best move today: eliminate as many sites as they could and continue searching, Marquez on the road and with binoculars and on the phone with Chen who looked down with the real-time Google Earth. It was a limited approach, but if Soliatano wasn’t lying this time then they were already close.

Marquez was twenty-two miles from highway 99 off a rural road and on a dirt track above a stand of oaks talking to Chen on his cell when Barbara Jones’ white Audi A4 sped by on the road below. He got just enough of a look at her to say, ‘We may have just gotten lucky.’

Jones was white, black, and Asian—mostly white but her beauty was from the other two and the intermingling. Her skin glowed with radiant energy as the first ray of sunlight caught her face. She held a phone to her ear and then was gone, speeding into the next curve.

Marquez chased and when he caught sight of her car he hung well back. He missed where she turned off, but a mile later knew she had and backtracked, found it, and called Chen.

‘I think it was just given to us. Here’s an address. See what you can find out. It looks like a ranch.’

He called Wheeler and stayed clear until he was overhead to the south and reporting a car leaving on an access road to what he called a cattle ranch with grapevines. Then Chen came back with an answer.

‘The property was foreclosed on a year and a half ago and bought by a partnership.’

‘That could fit. What’s the name?’

‘Ravil Vineyards.’

‘Okay, she’s gone. I’m going wine tasting. Try to find out more.’

Ten minutes later he was on an asphalt road that wound through low hills and former pasture land that held only rye grass and thistle now. As he approached the buildings he slowed and saw two carpenters putting new batt and board siding on the face of a building. Near them was a pickup. He didn’t see any other vehicles.

The carpenters took him in and from their looks he guessed she had asked them to keep an eye out. He got out, putting on his coat as he walked up to them, a cold wind blowing from behind him and in the distance Mt. Lassen with new snow.

‘Hey, I’m late and looking for my boss. Did you see a white Audi roll through here with a super-hot babe at the wheel?’

‘Dude, you just missed her.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Fifteen minutes.’

‘Fuck.’ Marquez pulled his phone and made sure they saw it. ‘I’ll call her. See you. Thanks.’

He turned the car around and they were still watching and he didn’t take any photos, but he could tell he was good with them. They weren’t going to call her and he had seen enough to know his next move. He called Chen.

‘There’s a lot of new construction. Give me some directions to the county building department and call ahead and see if there’s a building inspector or someone I can talk to. There are two carpenters out there working. I’ll come up with something for the inspector.’

It took him forty minutes to find the building department and half an hour to convince a building inspector who had done his morning rounds and was planning to eat lunch at his desk and be in the office the rest of the afternoon to make the drive back with him. The inspector knew the story: 140-acre family ranch, quarreling kids who inherited it and no one to work it, then an investment banker who knew nothing about growing grapes who bought just before everything crashed in 2008. Now there was a new set of fools who thought they were going to make money with aquaculture. The inspector turned.

‘Why does Fish and Game have a problem with aquaculture?’

‘We don’t.’

‘So does that mean they’re doing something else?’

‘It does but I can’t say much.’

‘How sure are you?’

‘Pretty sure and there are a couple of carpenters working there that I don’t want to get another look at me.’

‘I can chase them off. There’s not supposed to be any more work out here until they renew the permit, but you want a look inside.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then that’s up to them but I bet I can get them to let me inside.’

Marquez took in the inspector again. He saw a middle-aged guy ten pounds overweight wearing jeans with an oversized belt buckle and boots, and a tucked-in button-down shirt. He looked like he knew who he was and could pull off whatever was needed.

The inspector got one of the carpenters to unlock and let him into the concrete building built back into a hill. The lights came on inside and Marquez saw how big it was and all about wine storage when it was built. He watched the inspector and the carpenter walk back out, the carpenter going to shut the door and the inspector hesitating and the carpenter nodding.

The door stayed open and the inspector slowly walked down with the carpenter and across to where the second man was still at work on the siding. When they were far enough away and the carpenters facing the inspector, Marquez walked in. He smelled fish and found round concrete raceways still dark and damp. He checked the equipment, took photos, and emailed those to Chen. He reached into a tank after finding fish scales and gathered samples and got back to the car before the building inspector started back his way.