Die-Off (29 page)

When he did, Marquez interrupted before he could end the call.

‘Where’s Peason?’

‘He’s not taking my calls. I’ve made at least ten calls to him in the last twenty-four hours. I’ve got meetings later today. I’ve got to try to get some rest.’

‘Tell me your room number there again? There’s a place in that shopping mall across the street that has chicken soup that might help you. I’ll get them to send some over.’

‘The room number is 215 but if I eat anything when I feel like this I throw it up.’

‘You’re on your back in bed?’

‘I’m in bad shape, Lieutenant. I can’t talk anymore today.’

‘I need you to try Barry Peason again.’

Marquez heard a loud exhale and then, ‘You know what, Lieutenant, I’m going to follow my lawyer’s advice from here. I’ll check out of the room tomorrow and I’ll pay for it. I’ll have them reverse whatever is on your credit card. My wife and I have come to an agreement on some funds. Even if you haven’t been able to do anything for me, I appreciate your efforts.’

‘It was never about you.’

‘Maybe it should have been.’

Marquez thought about that last comment before pulling out of the lot. It was dusk and orange at the horizon with a clear cold night coming. He reached Ridge Road and turned onto the gravel drive to his house. There are things that can make you feel small and mistakes you make with an investigation that are born of believing a source is going to come through for you despite the apparent truth.

Marquez knew in the first weeks of talking with Hauser that Hauser was skirting giving him any real information. He just didn’t know why. When after meeting him and Hauser was still reluctant Marquez knew he wasn’t the source he hoped he would be, yet he didn’t let go of him.
I needed him and I let him string me along and I should have let him go,
he thought.
I should have listened to Waller
.

But it goes that way sometimes. You work with an informant, someone with a grudge and information, you nurse the contact and most often they’re in it for themselves and you work with that. You work toward the day when they give you the piece of information that moves the investigation. Other times that investment is a waste and you have to own up to getting burned or used or drawn into the world of someone who is emotionally troubled.

In the walk from his car into the house he let Hauser go. He got a beer from the refrigerator, opened it, and moved out on the back deck. He sat and took a drink and looked out over the dark of the trees below to the last red line on the horizon above the ocean. Where would he turn now? He tapped his phone and let it go dark as he weighed the risks and failure with Hauser causing him to doubt himself. Get over it, he thought. It happens. He picked up his phone, scrolled contacts, found Barbara Jones’ number and called it.

‘I was just thinking about you, Lieutenant.’

‘Were you?’

‘I’m up here in Siskiyou County and I just heard on the radio that an LAPD officer was shot by a suspect and that a SWAT team got into a firefight with two suspects wanted in the killing of a man guarding a large cache of illegal animal products in a warehouse in LA. It sounds like it just happened.’

‘Let me call you back in a few minutes.’

He found the card he got from one of the detectives and called.

‘Yeah, they came back for a duffel bag of cash they left behind and a surveillance team recognized them as they cruised the neighborhood before going into the house. They approached and knocked and the woman opened fire. One of our guys got hit in the leg. Our SWAT guys showed up and called them out and lobbed tear gas in through the living-room window. It looks like she shot her partner and then tried to get away from the gas by running out the back to a neighbor’s house. They weren’t going to let her do that and when she took a shot at one of the SWAT guys they took her out. Look, I’ve got to run here but we’ll be in touch.’

Marquez called Barbara Jones back and she answered with, ‘You must need me.’

‘I’ve got doubts about Matt Hauser.’

‘No kidding, you’ve got doubts? I’d hate to be waiting around for you to ask me to marry you. You are slow.’

‘My dreams die hard. Why don’t you help me along?’

‘Ask me what you want to know?’

‘Do you know all ENTR employees?’

‘There are one hundred and two employees. I know something about most of them.’

‘Barry Peason.’

‘He’s a biologist.’

‘Attached to what team?’

‘You’ve got it all down now, don’t you? He’s attached to the one you’re interested in, WPT, the Water Project Team.’

Marquez paused before gambling.

‘Why isn’t he at work?’

‘Good question.’

‘Where is he?’

‘No one seems to know.’

‘What’s his connection to Hauser besides the team?’

‘I can’t talk about that but I’m working on it.’

‘You need to talk to me about it. Didn’t you say we’re on the same side?’

‘We are and I wish I could. I like you and I like the way you do your job. I make more in three months than you make in a year but you work harder.’

It was coming together for Marquez. More of the pieces were fitting and he felt the tiredness slipping away. He couldn’t see anything close to all of it yet, but he saw more and he pushed now.

‘How did Hauser transfer eight point two million dollars? How did he pull that off?’

‘He was trusted. He was a team head and there are monthly audits. He knew when it would be caught. Everything he’s done he scripted.’

‘Wouldn’t he need help?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I’m making a guess.’

‘Embezzlers tend to work alone.’

‘But what if you’re moving money inside the company to a project that’s off screen and only a few people know what it’s for, and then you move most of it again thinking the people behind the secret project can’t do a thing about it without hanging themselves. What happens then? I’ll make a guess at that too. Those who set up the secret project decided to play hardball with the embezzler. They created a phoney record of where the money was transferred from and then sold that to the FBI who then started investigating Hauser.’

‘Lie to the Feds?’

‘Sure, they’re already in pretty deep with the pike project and they need to destroy Hauser’s credibility. That’s job one and they need someone honest like you who is boots on the ground and chasing the leads they’ve planted in phoney files uncovered in Hauser’s impounded computers. Hauser tried to screw them and they’re giving it right back to him. They upped the stakes.’

‘That’s your going theory, that Hauser was overseeing the pike project from the start and stole money allocated for it?’ Jones asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And I’m a patsy being encouraged to investigate Hauser and find the third hatchery and the rest in the other states by the very people who set it up in the first place.’

‘Somebody set it up, you agree with that, right?’

She was quiet. She didn’t want to admit yet that Hauser was right in claiming the project originated at ENTR. She was that kind of loyal. She couldn’t bring herself to say it. But too many fragments fit. Hauser was part of the original scheme and likely promised a lot of money to speed along the inevitable changes coming to the river ecosystems. Once in, he saw a way to get even more money and calculated that they wouldn’t be able to come after him without revealing the pike project. It also explained the dance with Fish and Game.

‘Of course, somebody set it up.’

‘You hear me, right?’

‘I hear you but your theory is wrong.’

‘What was the name of the guy with you at the second hatchery? Wasn’t it Ned Cowler? Go back to him.’

‘You’re crazy. He’s worth a hundred million. He wouldn’t take that kind of risk.’

‘Ask him.’

‘What else have you figured out?’

‘That you and I both know where Barry Peason is. He’s at the third hatchery.’

She was silent for a moment then said, ‘Look, we’ll solve the problem. If it started with us, we’ll solve it.’

‘You don’t know where the third hatchery is, do you? You’re looking for it. Are you on your own with this or is Cowler encouraging you to look for it?’

‘He is as serious about finding out the truth as you are.’

‘I think he already knows the truth. You think about what I just said and maybe between us we can find it in time. Are you good with that?’

‘You’re wrong, but I’m in.’

When he hung up he wished he had said be careful. He almost called her back.

A
bout half of the twenty-five thousand registered voters in Siskiyou County turned out for the special election for sheriff that Mark Harknell lost by 617 votes. He was said to be reflective and not intending to ask for a recount so as to prevent the county from needlessly spending money. Marquez heard the results on an early-morning radio report and almost called Voight, but instead listened to a local radio station interview the departing Sheriff Harknell who would vacate his office today.

He spoke of standing up for a rural America under attack from outside forces, citing his opposition to the proposed removal of four dams along the Klamath as a stance in defense of farmers and ranchers. He painted himself as defending the county against special interests and radical liberal elements that wanted to impose their agenda on families who had lived for generations in Siskiyou County. He brushed over the unsolved murders and growing preponderance of meth labs and large-scale dope farms his opponent had hammered away at and sounded more like a man who had lost a run for Congress than a sheriff seeking re-election.

The call from Voight came soon after. ‘Are you anywhere nearby?’

‘Yeah, I can’t get enough of your county.’

‘I got reinstated early this morning by the new sheriff. He wants me to wait to go into the building until Harknell clears his desk.’

‘Maybe you could help him clear it. Did you think he was going to lose?’

‘No, it surprised me, but from the way he wanted to name you a suspect maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Enough people must have felt he was overstepping his role. He told me once that Ellis and Steiner had no business being in the county supporting the dam removal and that what happened to them could have happened to anyone doing what they were doing. I don’t mean to say he didn’t want to solve the murders, but in his head your department is part of a bigger problem of outsiders imposing their will, so it’s not hard for him to see you as a bad guy. Even if the murder charges didn’t stick he wasn’t hurting anybody that didn’t already need hurting in his mind. Does that make sense?’

‘You didn’t let that happen and I owe you. I’m glad you got reinstated right away. That says people knew it was wrong.’

‘Harknell overstepped.’

‘Everyone does.’

‘You’re an ongoing riddle. Are you going to defend him? This guy was set on ruining your life.’

‘I get where he’s coming from. He had to turn his back as farmers pulled irrigation water even if it was illegal.’

‘And killed your fish.’

‘Not my fish, not mine, not yours, not anyone’s.’

‘All right, we don’t have to get lost in this. I just wanted to make sure you knew he’s gone. I’ve got to go now; we had a homicide last night. I’m on my way there.’

‘Where was that?’

‘A woman shot in her car. We’ll talk in the next few days. You’re still up here looking for that third hatchery?’

‘I am but we may be joining forces with ENTR’s security unit. They’re better tapped into the information that will get us there.’

‘Good luck with it—and call Sorzak. I can’t get her to call me back.’

Marquez had planned to call her anyway. He did now and she picked up right away, asking, ‘How did it go?’

‘How much do you know about where he’s living?’

‘The cabin in the hippy refugee camp, is that where he met you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve been there but don’t worry for him. He’s got very nice apartments in Vancouver and LA, and a house in San Francisco. He goes up to that encampment to hide and prey on the teenage girls.’

‘When is the last time you saw him?’

‘The morning he came for me to make the phone call to you.’

‘Okay.’

Marquez waited a moment before saying, ‘I’m going to change subjects.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Did you hear about the shoot-out in LA?’

‘No. What happened?’

‘It was a couple, a man and a woman, and they were wanted for questioning about a murder of a young guy who was guarding a cache of animal parts and live animals in a warehouse.’

‘Did you ask Jim about it?’

‘I didn’t know about it when I met with him. This went down yesterday. A shot was taken at an LAPD detective and a SWAT team brought in. Do the names Lia Mibaki and Arturo Borg mean anything to you?’

‘No and why would they?’

‘They may have worked for Colson. You never came across them?’

‘I’ve never heard of them.’

‘Never?’

‘Not that I can remember.’

‘Why are you avoiding Voight?’

‘Because he lost his job and he’s not the investigator anymore. It’s news around here.’

‘He got it back when Harknell lost the run-off.’

‘Guess I’d better return his calls after all.’

But she wouldn’t reach him today. The homicide that Voight was called out to was in an area with spotty cell coverage. Marquez learned that when Voight relayed a request through the sheriff’s office that Marquez come to the murder scene.

The murdered woman was found by a rancher checking his fences along a rural road. She was at a turnout and slumped in her seat. Her car engine was running and the headlights on when the rancher found her before dawn. He drove past the car on his way out and saw it was in the same position when he returned an hour later, so took a look.

She was shot four times through the open driver’s window and struck in the chest, neck, and head. The car wasn’t opened until after Voight arrived and Voight didn’t get a look at her wallet until the forensics team finished. Then he went through the contents of her purse and scrolled through her cell phone.