Night Game (21 page)

“Let’s not bullshit around,”
Kendall said, “you don’t get home much.” He stared at Marquez. “Was she here for sex?”

“No, after you drove up she went into the bathroom and stripped.”

“You’ve got to be straight with me on this.”

“That’s what happened. She told me she followed me from a bar.”

“Sure, back to your motel.”

“I didn’t invite her. She tailed me.”

“And you’re going to tell me she’s so good at surveillance you didn’t notice?”

“I knew someone was following.”

Kendall shook his head, hid his disbelief by looking at his car, where Hawse was helping Sophie into the backseat.

“You let her follow you here?”

“Believe whatever you want.”

“About an hour ago she left a message with a 911 dispatcher that she knew the whereabouts of a gun used to kill somebody in the Crystal Basin. She gave her name and told the dispatcher I’d want to know and to wake me up.”

“Nyland beat her up pretty good. She’s angry.”

“The dispatcher tried to keep her on the line but she said she’d call back. She called back two hours and thirteen minutes later and gave this motel room, said she’d be here with you.” Kendall opened his arms wide. “And here she is.”

“She got here forty minutes ago, knocked on my door. I was in bed, went to the window, saw it was her, and let her in. She told me she wanted to talk.”

“Knew you were Fish and Game.”

“Yeah, my cover is blown.” Marquez looked at the back of Sophie’s head. She’d pulled the sweatshirt hood up around her again. “She needs a doctor. She took a bad shot to her eye.”

“We’ll get her eye looked at.”

“She wanted me to think she was worried about things Nyland might do to me or one of my team now that the word is out who we are.”

“Like what?”

“Like kill one of us. I questioned her about Durham and Petroni and didn’t get anything in particular that’s news, other than she says she hates Durham. She didn’t say anything about a rifle and we didn’t finish our conversation before you drove up, but her ostensible reason for knocking on my door was to warn me that Nyland is looking for a chance to get even with the undercover Fish and Game officers who wrecked his life.”

“You had a close call up there on Weber Mill. Maybe that was Nyland shooting at you. Maybe it’s time to pull your team out of here.” Kendall pointed at the back of the sedan. “What you’re
looking at in the back of that car is a rat deserting the ship. She knows the whole damn story, and she’s in the process of switching sides, testing to see how far she can make that work.”

“Could be.”

Marquez walked back into the motel room. He got his toothbrush and razor out of the bathroom and threw them in his gear bag. He packed the rest of his clothes with Kendall standing at the door. As he zipped the bag, Kendall said, “You’ve been in two bar scrapes since I’ve known you.” When Marquez didn’t respond, Kendall asked, “Why did Sophie drive from the Crystal Basin Wilderness to a little bumfuck bar and then park outside and not go in?”

“After a beating maybe she didn’t feel sociable, or maybe as she says, she was going to shoot Nyland.”

Or she took some inner comfort from being near the lights and the people inside.
He remembered fifteen cars and trucks, and maybe she’d pulled in among them and he hadn’t noticed her truck because of the state he’d been in.

“Okay, so you’re saying she followed you when you walked out. Recognized you and followed you, didn’t know you were in there. That is, it was a coincidence.”

“I’m not saying it was coincidence.”

“We’ll ask her.”

Marquez picked up his bag. Kendall was still in the doorway.

“You know someone has followed you back here and you respond by going to bed. I haven’t known you long, but that doesn’t jibe. Where are you going now? Are you done here? Going home?”

“Soon.”

Marquez woke the night clerk to check out and then ate breakfast at the Waffle House. Near dawn he called each of the team and told them to take the day off and clean their gear, get some rest. When he told that to Shauf she said she was already on her way to
him. Her sister had gone down to the medical center at Stanford with her husband, and the kids were with the grandparents.

“I’ll meet you in Placerville,” she said.

While he waited a call came in from Kendall. “I felt like I owed you the call. Sophie was in a confessional mood. We took a drive with her out to the trailer park, and she led us to a rifle doublewrapped in plastic and hidden beneath the floorboards in the former sales office. We’ll start running tests on it today. Nyland never exactly told her why but he showed it to her one night, wanted her to know it was there, and she got the impression he’d shot Vandemere with it. This was recent, after they got back together, kind of bragging to her. It’s starting to unravel, Marquez. He told her why. She just isn’t telling us yet, but it’s eating at her. She may even have had a role in the killing.”

“Who is the gun registered to?”

“Marion Stuart.”

“Durham.”

“He buys everything huntingwise that Nyland owns.”

“Did Durham ever report a missing gun?”

“No, and if we asked him he’d say he’d didn’t know it was missing, that it was a Sierra Guides gun in Nyland’s possession.

You can hear it, right?”

“Sure.”

“Is Durham your man?”

“He’s at least a piece of the puzzle.”

“But you’re done here, aren’t you? You said your cover is blown, even Sophie knows who you are.”

“It is blown.”

“Things are about at the point where we take over. Think about it and I’ll talk to you later.”

Marquez pulled up alongside
Shauf’s van and she got out wearing sunglasses though the morning was cold and cloudy. Her face was ashen and she said little as they drove out Howell Road. When they passed the barn with the Nazi flag draped over the side she pointed at a skinhead standing near a motorcycle and he flipped her off. Shauf gave him the finger back. At Johengen’s, Marquez parked near the gate.

“When Sophie was in my room last night she said Durham stays in some rundown place she’s visited but couldn’t find her way back to.”

“She grew up here. She knows this road. If Durham sleeps out here, she’s probably slept in his bed.”

“Might have been her way of trying to communicate.”

“Manipulate is the word you’re looking for.”

Marquez got out a flashlight, and they climbed over the gate
and walked down around the driveway bend. He saw the peak of the house roof with its curled and decaying shingles and then Petroni’s orange Honda parked in the flat area between the barn and the house. For a moment neither of them said anything or moved. He turned toward her.

“Why don’t you hang here and I’ll walk down and take a look first,” Marquez said.

“Is Petroni staying here?”

“As in hiding out?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems like he’d find someplace farther away.”

Marquez watched the barn and house and everything as he walked toward the Honda. When he leaned over and looked through the windows he saw a large bloodstain covering most of the middle of the backseat. Rivulets had run down to the floor carpet.

He waved Shauf forward, keeping his eye on the windows of the house as he dialed Kendall.

“I’m at Johengen’s tree farm. Petroni’s car is here. There’s a large bloodstain in back. You’d better come on out.”

“Don’t touch—” Marquez hung up and knocked on the farmhouse door. He stepped to the windows and tried to look past lacy yellowed curtains, waited, stepped away from the house, and went back to the Honda where Shauf stood now.

“Someone died in here,” he said.

Two slow-moving flies reacted to his shadow and rose off the backseat. The plaid material of the old seats was torn in several places, and he saw an old mug lying in the passenger well, saw some paper scraps. He felt the heart go out of him and stood a long minute staring before backing away, making himself walk to the barn. It was chained shut, would take bolt cutters, and standing near the barn doors he caught a waft of something dead. He looked
toward the orchard. The breeze blew from that direction, and with Shauf he walked out among the old apple trees. Another smell, the vinegary sharpness of decaying fruit, and then as the breeze strengthened again the decomp smell was stronger. His pulse bumped up, and he studied recent tire tracks in the orchard weeds. An odd pattern of crushed grass, something dragged out here.

He moved ahead of Shauf toward the thickening smell, the edge of the orchard where the embankment fell away, then spotted a carcass he feared was going to be Petroni, but it was a bear, recently skinned. A cloud of flies rose as he moved closer. He stooped and retrieved a piece of plastic tubing lying in the grass near the carcass. Studying the tubing, he put it together.

“We’ve got to get in the barn,” he said. “We’ve got enough for a warrant. Why don’t you call Roberts and ask her to get going on it while I talk to Bell?” He held up the plastic tube. “Tell her we found evidence of bear farming.”

“Why do we need a warrant with the county on the way here? Kendall will open the barn.”

“We may need it later.”

He looked at the barn, knowing Petroni could be in there. Petroni obviously knew this place, had put it in his log. Now Marquez called Bell, but the chief didn’t process it the same way.

Bell listened quietly, then asked, “Do you think he moved her in the car?”

“Stella?”

“Yes.”

Marquez realized how far Bell had gone toward accepting the idea Petroni had killed his wife.

“She never left her kitchen,” Marquez said. “They’re bringing bolt cutters to get into the barn here, and I’m ready to go into the house but we’ve been asked to wait.”

“Give me directions on how to get to you.”

Marquez and Shauf walked back across the flat open parking area to the orchard. A line of police vehicles rolled down the driveway and crunched through a glaze of ice over thin puddles.

“Protecting his crime scene,” Shauf said quietly.

Crime tape got strung and the front door of the house opened. Officers went in with guns drawn. Marquez wanted into the barn but all they could do was wait. Things moved carefully, yet steadily, and he picked up a new respect for Kendall, watching him direct traffic. Kendall quizzed them, went back to the Honda, and now came back to Marquez.

“Show me the bear carcass while they’re dusting the chain on the barn for prints.”

“What have you found in the house?”

“Someone has lived in the bedroom. It’s relatively kept up compared to the rest. ” “No blood?”

“Nothing.”

“Sophie told me about a rundown place Durham stays at.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

Marquez walked Kendall out to the bear, and Shauf cut through the grass toward them. She’d been on the phone to Roberts and wanted to talk away from Kendall. Marquez stepped aside with her while Kendall looked at the carcass.

“Melinda talked to the lawyer managing Johengen’s widow’s estate. He’s had this place rented to the same man for five years, though the name isn’t Durham, it’s Marion Stuart.”

“Sure.”

“She’s faxing Durham’s driver’s license photo to him. He’ll call back as soon as he gets a look.”

Marquez took a closer look at the orchard as he told Kendall they’d faxed a photo to an LA lawyer. He pointed out the tire tracks to Kendall, the other area of crushed grass, his idea that
something had been dragged out here, possibly the bear whose carcass was on the embankment. They’d found the catheter, so that bear hadn’t come up from the willows and creek.

Kendall nodded and said, “There are media people already out on Howell. One of the deputies saw a couple of them hiking up outside the fence, so they may have cameras on us right now. I know you’re camera shy, but I don’t want you to leave.”

“We’d be the last to leave.”

Kendall indicated the plastic tube Shauf held. “That’s from the bear?”

“It was on the ground here near the carcass. A tube gets inserted surgically and the bile gets drained once or twice a day. We know Nyland hasn’t been coming out here twice a day, but we don’t know about Bobby Broussard or anyone else. It’s time to open up the barn. What are you waiting on?”

“It’s happening right now.”

Kendall left them and walked back out to his group. Looking around at the lack of bear tracks or scat and at the swatch of crushed grass, Marquez saw an image that explained the crushed grass, the bear dragged out here in a cage towed by a truck. He watched Kendall and Hawse go around to the creek side of the house past the cottonwood. As he walked toward them to see where they were going he caught a glint of metal and saw an old piece of plywood blackened with age and staked down with metal concrete stakes, the cover to an old well.

He pushed the grass along the edge of the plywood away with his foot and studied the metal stakes. They were a type that got used to support form boards in concrete construction, something he’d paid attention to lately as he schemed the bedroom addition at home. The steel stakes had bright nicks on them. Hammered, pounded in recently, nothing else would explain the marks. The plywood was blackened with age, spongy when he stepped on it,
crusted with mud, and the stakes were rusty except for the bright spots, and now, leaning over, he determined the nails driven through the holes in the stakes were relatively new also. They were neither galvanized, nor rusted yet.

Kendall came around the corner of the house, waved across to get Marquez’s attention, and then pointed at the barn, meaning meet him there, they were opening the doors. Marquez studied the plywood cover more before walking across the clearing. The steel stakes had been driven in at an angle, and from the resistance to his pushing he could tell they’d been pounded in at least a couple of feet to pin the plywood down well. It would take some work to get them out, might require a shovel. A county deputy cut the chain holding the barn doors shut and as they swung open pale light cut the darkness. They could make out the shape of the near things, but not much more. From somewhere in there came a low, deep animal growl.

“Jesus Christ,” Kendall said, and the deputy who’d cut the chain pulled his gun, and stepped back.

Marquez put a hand on the deputy’s shoulder, slowed the man’s quick step back, saying, “It’s in a cage. It’s not running around in the barn.”

“How do you know that?” Kendall asked.

“We’ve been looking for this location for months.”

“Okay, Marquez, you come with me,” Kendall said. “Everybody else stay back.”

They clicked flashlights on, and Marquez swept the flashlight beam along each wall and across the dirt floor looking for evidence Petroni had been in here. Their lights reached toward the back where the growl came again, and he saw cages, knew the bear growling was in one of them. He counted seven empty cages and then one with an emaciated bear in it. The cages were set up over a metal trough that water flowed through into a drain.
Excrement, urine, loose food, would fall into the trough and the water carried it away. He turned to Kendall.

“I wondered if I heard water flowing the first time I came out here. Thought I heard it and didn’t check.”

Marquez shone his light around the cages and back at the bear.

It didn’t react at all to the light. Blind, or too long in the darkness, possibly. He moved the light from cage to cage, talking to the bear as it growled, trying impossibly to reassure it. The other cages were in varying states of cleanliness; a couple looked like they’d held bears until recently, and that told him they’d probably find more carcasses.

He moved on with Kendall. He would come back to the bear and would call after they’d checked the barn. They would get the bear out of here right away. His flashlight beam came to rest on a weird contraption that looked like a shower stall with strips of dangling plastic where the door ought to be.

“What the hell is that?” Kendall asked.

Marquez moved to it, saw that the strips of plastic were the same as in a supermarket to keep the cold in. When he moved the plastic and looked inside, he understood.

“A drying station for meat, for gallbladders.”

“You’re an encyclopedia for this shit.”

There were a couple of gallbladders hanging, suspended in fine mesh bags, could be to keep the flies off them. The bear growled, and Marquez swung the light and saw tire tracks in the mud and a stack of deer hides and more pelts nailed to the wall along with dozens of antlers.

“Don’t step anywhere near those tire tracks,” Kendall said, and Marquez turned his flashlight on a line of mounted bears all in different poses on wooden pedestals, counted five stuffed, mounted black bears, and moved the light on.

“It could be Petroni was part of this,” Kendall said.

“That’s not Stella’s blood in the backseat.”

“You don’t know whose it is.”

Kendall’s light searched the soft soil of the barn floor, and Marquez knew he was looking for a grave. Marquez did the same thing himself as he moved through the barn to the back where the caged bear was. He shone the light on the other cages, brought it back to the growling bear again, saw the tube running from its abdomen, the poor quality of the undercoat, and wondered if they’d be able to save it.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” he said, and heard Kendall walking over.

“I’ve smelled some rough things in my life,” Kendall said. “I don’t see anything, but I’ll get better lights. We’ll take one walk through and then back out.”

“That carcass in the orchard was a bear in a cage that got dragged out there. You’ll want to take castings of those tire tracks as well.”

“Dragged from here?”

“Yeah, then released, and the bear would have gone for the creek, the water and cover there. Must have been frightened and sick. It was shot as it started down the bank.”

They heard the hoarse rattle of an old freezer compressor kicking on and spotted its pale white reflection at the very back of the barn. They’d walked past it the first time, too caught up in the drying station.

“Let’s check it,” Marquez said.

“What are bile products used for?”

“High blood pressure, coughs, gallstones, asthma. It’s a cureall.

That bear in the orchard was killed as recently as yesterday, could have been after Nyland was released.”

“Nyland got released and disappeared with Sophie,” Kendall said. “Then she starts talking to us last night, and before that she tells you this Durham sleeps at some rundown farmhouse.”

“She didn’t say ‘farmhouse.’” When Kendall stopped talking abruptly, Marquez said, “Finish the thought. Where do you see Petroni in this?”

“I don’t see a happy ending.”

“You think he’s here somewhere.” If they didn’t find him in here, the search of the grounds would widen. Dogs would be brought in. “The plywood cover on the well should come off.”

The freezer was big enough to hold just about anything and that was reason enough for silence. It had an ancient lock latch, and Kendall wanted to be the one to open it. He grunted as he lifted the heavy door and Marquez shone his light inside. A black bear’s head looked back up at them, a webwork of ice crystals filling its open mouth, its eyes iced grape skins dully reflecting the light. Kendall let the top rest against the back wall, and they removed twenty-two frozen paws.

“At least there are no human body parts,” Kendall said. “At least not that, but it looks like we found the headquarters you’ve been after.”

They swept the barn with light again as they walked back. Kendall squinted in the sunlight as they came outside, and Marquez said, “There’s an old well that needs to get looked at.”

“Okay, show me.”