Die-Off (5 page)

W
hen Voight called the next morning Marquez was outside with his laptop sitting in the cold at the back deck table drinking coffee and reading about Mathew Hauser. Twenty-three Google pages linked Hauser’s name in some way to climate science. He was best known for efforts to refine microclimate forecasting, but he wasn’t ringing warning bells about the coming changes of global warming or doing battle with deniers. Hauser had a different angle. He was selling the business community a message of adapt or perish and specializing in adaptation analysis.

A newspaper article summed up Hauser’s decision to leave academia as ‘a decision spurred by a lucrative offer.’ Hauser called it ‘a chance to apply my modeling to real-world problems.’ That was the move to ENTR in 2003.

Voight was out of breath and before Marquez could ask why, he said, ‘Marquez, my doctor smokes a pack a day. His car and his office smell like an ashtray and his teeth are stained yellow-brown, but he lectures me about my health. He says lose weight or plan on diabetes, so I’m walking four miles every morning. But I’m really not calling to chit-chat and this just happens to be my best chance to call you today.’

‘Do you want to call back when you can breathe?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘I’m still coming up Tuesday, so what’s up? Has something changed?’

‘I want some questions answered before you get here, starting with the tie between whatever you’re working on and my homicide investigation. What’s going on in Vancouver and LA?’

‘An animal trafficker I’ve been chasing hubs out of those cities. Vancouver is how he accesses his Asian market. It’s also a good place to be if you’re a buyer of bear gall and paws, and he is. In the south he’s got a Mexican cartel that feeds South American and African animals both live or in parts. No one likes the hassle of shipping live, but as long as the money is there the cartel will move the animals along. He may also have something going at Long Beach Harbor. Our problem has been finding where he operates from in the LA basin, and then tying it to him.’

‘Yeah, yeah, you chase animal traffickers and it’s all mystery and hard, but what does that have to do with the murders of two young women along the Klamath two years ago? I’ve listened to the tape a dozen times and I still don’t hear the reason you flew up there and walked the river.’

‘You heard the man in the car.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I think he’s who I’m looking for with this trafficking operation.’

‘Why is he calling you with the location of a murder weapon?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know, but you flew up there.’

‘Who else was going to search before they blew the dam? You weren’t.’

‘Why did your friend Rider engage you about this gun?’

‘I don’t know why.’

‘You can’t think of a single reason?’

‘To taunt me.’

‘I don’t believe that’s all.’

‘We can talk about it Tuesday.’

‘Don’t hang up yet. The ballistics are a match. The gun you turned over was the gun they were shot with. I found out last night and now I need this Rider character. Do you have any kind of real name on him?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve got something I’m sure, rumor, something?’

‘I’ll bring what I have.’

‘Okay, and one last thing and I’ve got to be blunt. There are questions about your involvement, and I know I’m not springing something new on you. We had a conversation when their bodies were found. You sat in my car, Marquez.’

‘I did, so why are we talking about it again?’

‘Questions have to be asked and I don’t want you to be surprised or to walk out angry after you’re here fifteen minutes. Understand?’

‘Is this your idea or the sheriff’s, or did you come up with it together?’

‘I’m going to look at everything, so if in looking for Rider I cause you to lose some nurtured contact with a Korean selling bear paws, I honestly, truly, swear it on a Bible, don’t give a shit. What happened to Terry Ellis and Sarah Steiner comes first and you should get that, but I don’t know if you do. I’ve never understood who you are or why you’re doing what you’re doing.’

‘You got drummed out of the DEA or you quit, I don’t know which. That record is buried. When you left the DEA you vanished, and then came back and got yourself hired onto the Fish and Game undercover team, which as near as I can tell roams the state with almost no oversight. The last time we got into it with your SOU you were setting up a sting with no notice at all to anyone here at the SCSO. That was you making that call, so how can we trust you?’

‘We didn’t call you because the man we busted was a hunting buddy of two of your deputies. If we had told the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office I don’t know if we would have gotten him.’

‘Fuck you, again. You put animals ahead of people.’

‘No, we just give them a chance.’

‘My Portland homicide friend who picked up the gun from you, I know who he is. I know what he is. I don’t know who you are. I know you were half raised in the woods and lived in a tent with a dirt floor and your mom was pretty well traveled in Humboldt County before she went off to India to find herself. I know your dad was a dope peddler and people said his mixed blood helped him make other connections. Those were your parents, not you, but yours is not a common law-enforcement story. How old were you when you and your sister got dropped at your grandparents’ doorstep?’

‘You’re way over the line here, Rich.’

‘I know I am and I think we’re all going over that line in the next week and I don’t want to pretend. I did a lot of looking into you and where you came from after the murders when I didn’t have any good leads. All that is going to come up, and you’re right, the sheriff is involved. Best thing you can do is help me find this Rider and the woman who made the call.’

‘What else can I do for you?’

‘We have an opportunity here that hasn’t been there – and yes, you found the gun, and thank you for that, but you didn’t do it for Terry Ellis and Sarah Steiner. You did it for—’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘I want everything.’

‘I’m not going to hold back, but if you’re looking at my files I want the same from you.’

‘There is not a single investigation your department conducts that’s equal to a homicide investigation, not anything close.’

Voight’s role in Siskiyou County was broad. His track record was good and though they hadn’t gotten on well together they really didn’t have to. But this conversation was taking it somewhere new. Voight had done a strange thing coming on about his childhood and Marquez wasn’t sure what to make of that. Voight’s own story was a hard one, so that made it a little surprising that he came on this way.

Rich Voight was a career LAPD homicide detective who got warned not to take down a gang leader for the murder of another gang-banger. He made the arrest and a week later his ten-year-old boy disappeared. The boy was never found and connection to the gang never proved. It tore Voight apart and his career and marriage didn’t last. When he moved to Siskiyou he was divorced and alone, a man with a deep hurt and a fierce anger.

‘Be here at ten Tuesday morning, Marquez, or I’ll come find you. Stonewall me and I’ll run over you. Bring your files. See you then.’

‘I’m looking forward to it.’

‘Sure you are. We’ll see you here.’

M
arquez slid onto a bench across from Hauser who was alone at the table, eating a sandwich and squinting against the sunlight as he read emails on his cell phone. Up close, he had a bone-rich face, all slashes and sharp lines, an aquiline nose, long, almost effeminate eyelashes, square-framed glasses, and short dark hair cut modern and going gray fleck by fleck. He was startled to be interrupted. He looked unhappy and then covered that.

‘Who are you?’

‘John Marquez.’

‘You can’t do this. I’m not joking about ENTR security.’

‘Then let’s take a ride in my car and I’ll bring you back. Bring your sandwich. How’s the food here?’

‘It’s good.’

‘Great. Let’s go.’

In the car, which was a gray Ford sedan today and comfortable, Marquez said, ‘I’ve been reading about ENTR and I’m not getting anywhere. Their website says they’re going to remake the world, but how do they make money?’

‘By turning research and information into businesses. They’re very successful at that.’

‘Then why seed western rivers with pike?’

‘I told you it’s nothing the main company is backing. The project is segregated and secret.’

‘But you know about it.’

‘And I already told you how I know and I’m not going to say more until we have an agreement. But if you’re asking more generally “why seed western rivers with northern pike?” then let me ask you this: how many salmon would be left in the Sacramento River or any of these rivers if northern pike colonized successfully?’

‘Only a few.’

‘And could anything be done to eradicate northern pike once they colonize?’

Marquez paused a moment. He didn’t have much interest in this question and answer game. He needed the name of the ENTR biologist who had tipped Hauser to the pike plot. He stared at Hauser before continuing. ‘If the pike colonized there wouldn’t be anything we could do.’

‘So they would become the dominant species.’

‘They would.’

‘And if salmon and other natives such as trout or smelt are no longer viable due to an invasive species, the fight over water diversion becomes less complicated. A number of environmental lawsuits will seem frivolous, especially in a country scrambling to cope with the changes global warming will bring. That’s why they’re doing this or that’s the main reason. But it isn’t the main company. It’s a small group inside and I’m trying to identify who they are.’

He adjusted his glasses and went quiet for a moment before confessing, ‘I’ve been paid well at ENTR, but I wish I never left the university.’

Marquez didn’t go there. He moved on and so did Hauser.

‘They’re patient. They look ten and fifteen and sometimes twenty years out. They see a big fight over water rights coming in the west. They pay lobbyists millions a year so that as it arrives they’ll have some influence with those who make policy. They identify people and establish relationships. They think on a long horizon.’

‘Good for them. What’s the name of the biologist who tipped you?’

Marquez remembered reading an article about a paper Hauser wrote, the text of which suggested that Hauser’s microclimate models were confirming what was already feared, that the melting of the Artic ice would interrupt air circulation patterns and greatly reduce the rainfall in large areas of the United States. Droughts would become semi-permanent in large swathes of the country.

Hauser continued as if he hadn’t heard the question.

‘These are the opposite of climate deniers. These are people looking to get even wealthier by capitalizing on the change, and in their view if some goofball in Congress doesn’t believe in science, well, all the better for them. It means they have more time with less restriction to make their own plans. They love the deniers and the conspiracists. Those are their downfield blockers. They know those guys will get swept away as the change really hits, but for the moment they’re making it easier by keeping the country from acting and ENTR is getting a first mover advantage.

‘I’ve sat around the table and seen them with tears in their eyes laughing over something that Senator—I think he’s from Oklahoma, but I can’t remember his name—said. But none of this stops them from donating to these same senators and congressmen. They also figure those guys actually know the truth and will roll over when it’s politically correct and excuse themselves later from any responsibility to their children and grandchildren by claiming at the time no one knew whether global warming was real or not.’

‘Put them aside, I’m looking for pike hatcheries. If you have information it’s time, Matt. We’re doing a weird little dance that’s making me question where you’re going with everything.’

‘You’re not going to intimidate me. That isn’t going to happen, but I do want to stop the pike project before it’s too late.’

‘How many people inside ENTR would you guess know about the pike hatcheries?’

‘Are you recording this?’

‘No.’

‘I’d guess less than five people, all of them very well compensated to keep quiet.’

‘Does that include your biologist friend?’

‘Lieutenant, I have to protect him. I can’t just give you his name. His career is on the line the same as mine.’

‘Tell me again exactly what you do.’

‘I predict with some accuracy the future climate in specific areas with a focus currently on western states. ENTR is ramping up investment in water rights and want to know what they’ll be dealing with climatically in ten years. They’re investing in fish pens in Chile and in Thailand and Indonesia, and the questions are similar. They’re growing salmon and targeting solving the pen disease problems within eight years. That’s where the research at the legit hatcheries here can help out. They’ll road-test virus vaccines in hatcheries here.

‘I have to tell you I have wondered if ENTR is correct in looking at the coming reality with western rivers. That big die-off of salmon, thirty-two thousand or whatever it was on the Klamath some years ago, was about low water and warm water, and that’s what’s coming. Are you married, Lieutenant? My wife is one of my problems. She works for ENTR and she’s not going to be on-board with this.’

‘What does she know about the pike hatcheries?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why are you bringing her up?’

‘She’s a lawyer for ENTR and she knows me. She knows I’ve got something on my mind and issues with the company. She told me last night I’d better not do anything that compromises the non-disclosure agreement, and between you and me, Lieutenant—and now you’ll think I’m crazy—I came up with an algorithm to describe the process of our marriage and it wasn’t pretty. We argue about everything and our conversations are dotted with code words. When she hears one of those or even the slightest vibration of one, down she comes from her spider web.