Die-Off

by Kirk Russell

  ‘Fuck, let me out right here.’

  ‘Not yet, we’ve still got to get a statement from you. What did you take from Enrique’s wallet when you took the phone? The first responders said it was down in the driver’s footwell and it looked like someone had gone through it. There was no money.’

  ‘He didn’t carry money.’

  ‘Not even a few bucks?’

  ‘He carried some money in his jeans. Someone in the hospital probably stole it.’

  Marquez took him to headquarters instead of the American River District Office. He interviewed Soliatano with Captain Waller sitting in. The video equipment was small and on a stand and Soliatano looked at the camera from time to time but he never complained and did another revision and refinement, telling the camera he thought that he and Enrique Jordan were stocking native fish in the river.

  ‘I thought the guy who hired Enrique was growing fish to help the rivers but couldn’t get a permit to do it so was doing it on his own.’

  He stuck to his story of never having seen the hatchery and added, and this was a good touch, ‘He told Enrique it was safest for the fish to introduce them into a river at night.’

  He now denied having made the 911 call and maybe that was on the advice of his attorney brother-in-law who he had talked to just before the interview. Maybe the brother-in-law told him a voice analysis wouldn’t be conclusive. He also denied knowing Matt Hauser or having met with him, ever communi-cated with him or received money from him. It was quite a turnaround from the truck ride and he did it all calmly as if the conversations with Marquez never happened.

  He looked at Marquez and said, ‘I made up the other site I took you to. When you knocked on my door yesterday morning I got scared and I was trying to give you some answers so you would go away.’

  Marquez nodded as if that made complete sense.

  ‘Anything else you’d like to tell us?’

  ‘One thing and that’s I won’t need a ride home. My brother-in-law is picking me up.’

  ‘Tell your brother-in-law we’ll have some follow-up questions.’

  Soliatano grinned as if Marquez had told a good joke, but said it was fine to call his cell and that he was up early every morning. Marquez called close to dawn the next morning and a recording said Soliatano’s cell phone was no longer in service. When he stopped by Soliatano’s house his black Honda was parked along the curb, but no one answered the door and the dog didn’t bark. He knocked again and waited and walked around and looked in a window on one side of the garage then saw a neighbor come out of his house across the street.

  ‘They left in the middle of the night,’ the neighbor said. ‘I hope it’s not a problem with the baby being premature. My wife is worried.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the baby.’

  ‘Are you a friend of theirs?’

  ‘We just met but I’m hoping to see a lot more of him.’

  ‘I see.’

  Probably not, but that was okay. Marquez called Waller after he drove away.

  ‘Soliatano’s phone is disconnected and I’m just leaving his house. His wife’s van is gone and he told me she wasn’t driving anymore. The dog isn’t barking. The shades are down and a neighbor said they left in the middle of the night.’

  ‘It’s what the neighbor said, there’s a problem with the baby.’

  ‘I checked with the local hospitals. She’s not there. I think they’re gone. I’ve got the plates and a description of her car. I’m going to ask the highway patrol to watch for it.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘We can’t lose track of this guy. We’ve got to find him.’

  ‘So he can lie through his teeth again?’

  We need him, Marquez thought. We need him to get to Hauser.

  ‘Talk to you later,’ he said, and hung up.

  ELEVEN

  That night a California Highway Patrol officer with the nickname ‘Lottery Lou’, having three times bought winning lottery tickets, was shopping for a new van with his wife at Hilltop Mall in Richmond. Today was the second day of a four-day Halloween sale at a dealership, and though the sales people looked weird in their costumes the prices were ‘slashed’ to where Lou knew they were competitive. He was ready to buy but what he couldn’t do was sit around and listen to a guy dressed up as a 1920s baseball player talk about Bluetooth features and the ‘capabilities’ of the car.

  He already knew the car was capable. He had written speeding tickets for a dozen of these vans, so he told Lisa he’d be right back. He was going around the corner to a gas station so he wouldn’t have to do it later.

  ‘You and slugger can go over how the radio works.’

  ‘I thought we were doing this together.’

  ‘We are.’

  He drove to a Chevron station and as he did he passed a store with a van sitting alone out along the outer edge, right where the lot ended and street lights didn’t quite reach. Something about it tickled at his memory though didn’t quite connect. He bought gas. He drove back but not in a hurry, figuring Lisa would be haggling, though the dealerships didn’t really haggle anymore and it was free money anyway. It was lottery money and all the crap about shopping for the right price was nothing more than going through the motions. She was going to get the car and get it tonight. She couldn’t bear having that much money just sitting in a Wells Fargo account unspent.

  He turned in and drove across the lot to the lonely green Sienna van he passed on the way to the gas station. Lottery Lou had a head for numbers. Strings of numbers and letters and license plates stuck with him. When he bought a lottery ticket he’d read the numbers to himself a couple of times and that was enough. If he heard it again he would remember, and he knew now as he studied the halfway-to-a-junkyard Sienna that these plates came over his radio earlier today.

  He parked and pulled out the flashlight, looked in the windows and thought: middle-aged mixed-race male, thirty-one years old, and a white female and a dog, a terrier. There was fur on one of the back seats and he stared at the plates again and thought about Babe Ruth back at the dealership flirting with his wife as she blew up the whole negotiation by telling him they won the lottery, and decided he had time to call it in. He read off the license plate to the dispatcher and told her he was off duty, but when she confirmed the plates it made his night.

  Marquez heard that story from the CHP officer who waited for him at the Hilltop Mall lot. The officer had already walked the Sienna and hadn’t seen anything suspicious inside and asked Marquez before taking off if the car owner was a fugitive.

  ‘He’s not but he’s got critical information and I was concerned about kidnapping.’

  ‘What do you think now?’

  ‘That I need to get to whoever handles the store security cameras and that’s probably not until morning.’

  As the officer left Marquez was scrolling his contacts for the phone number of a Richmond Police detective named Beckjoy. When he found it he left a message on his cell. A few minutes later Beckjoy called and, after listening said, ‘I’ve got a name and a phone number for you. Are you in my cell phone, Marquez?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Hold on a second, let me check. Yeah, you’re in here. I’ll text you his number. His name is Jacobs. I don’t know what his first name is but it doesn’t matter. Tell him you’re a fish cop and you talked to me and he can call me if he needs to. He’s the type who might come down there tonight and go over the videotape with you. We had a murder out there four years ago he helped us with and I was out that way last week and saw his car when I drove by. He still works there.’

  Marquez called Jacobs who listened and then said he would drive over. Then, with Marquez in a chair alongside him, they worked backwards with the videotape until they hit tape where the van wasn’t there. The videotape was clear and distinct as Soliatano and the van drove into view. Emile Soliatano got out and then his wife and Jacobs said, ‘Pregnant’ and Marquez nodded and waited for the dog but th
ere was no dog.

  Soliatano locked the van and they started walking away and would have walked right out of view if Soliatano hadn’t stopped to answer his cell phone. His wife stood close by looking uncomfortable and unhappy.

  Then a black SUV pulled up and a man got out on the passenger side and reached and opened the door to the back seat. Soliatano’s wife got in first and being shorter and pregnant it was awkward for her. As she slid over to make room for Emile the man who had opened the door for them glanced this way.

  ‘Freeze that,’ Marquez said, and Jacobs did and Marquez took a good look at the man’s face and said, ‘Okay, let’s keep going.’

  The SUV pulled away.

  ‘Can you make me a copy of everything from when the van arrived to when they were picked up?’

  ‘Sure, I can send you a video file.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  With enhancement they could probably get the license plate. The agency best equipped to do that was the FBI, but he knew he couldn’t go there because his best guess from everything he’d just watched was that the black Tahoe was an FBI vehicle and the pair were agents. Could be another agency, but it was most likely FBI. Soliatano had called for help and the Feds came to the rescue. Was that possible and, if it was, what in the hell was going on?

  TWELVE

  Voight put on his coat before going out to bring Marquez back. The coat was a Men’s Wearhouse number that was too big for him years ago but that fit him now, though nothing fit him this morning. He was uncomfortable with most of what they had planned. He knew he was getting ahead of himself and that was reinforced as he saw Marquez.

  He shook Marquez’s hand, Marquez looking about the same—broad-shouldered, rangy, tough, but not a woodsy type and that was really about the eyes. This wasn’t a uniform Fish and Game warden in a DFG vehicle driving around looking for violators. This guy was as dangerous as he was casual.

  ‘We’re going to do this in an interview room, John. Everything I do with this investigation gets taped, but don’t read anything into it. You okay with that?’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Thanks for making the trip north. You must have come up last night.’

  ‘I drove up this morning.’

  ‘You got an early start.’

  ‘I did.’

  Three murder files waited in the interview box, smack in the middle of the table, and Voight encouraged Marquez to open the first file. This was how he was going to roll with it, let him look through everything, a fellow law enforcement officer getting to peruse murder files, though they were not exactly complete. He had removed everything that mattered but no doubt Marquez anticipated that.

  Voight explained how they were organized, his face coloring, a light sweat starting on his forehead that was probably blood pressure and expectation. He knew this needed to go just right and he had real doubts about everything he had laid out yesterday with Harknell’s encouragement.

  Sheriff Harknell walked into the room right on cue and was all smiles. He clapped Marquez’s back and thanked him for being here. Harknell couldn’t stand the Department of Fish and Game. Harknell heard they were changing their name to the Department of Fish and Wildlife soon and half an hour ago was joking about what he would call the department if he were naming it.

  Harknell was proud of his part in getting Marquez here, but the stupid ass didn’t realize it was really Marquez at the wheel, not him. Marquez was trading nothing. The investigation file he sent on this Rider character was a mess, initials for suspects, short notes, references to other Fish and Game investigations, something only an insider could read.

  Harknell looked from Marquez to him and without warning asked, ‘Did you get your walk this morning, Rich?’

  ‘No time for it today.’

  ‘We have to make time. It’s important. Go take it right now.’

  Voight was stunned.

  ‘What are you talking about, sir? I can’t go anywhere right now.’

  ‘No, I mean it, and I’ll get started with the warden. I need to get caught up on where we’re at anyway and Warden Marquez needs to read and I’m sure that’ll take some time.’

  The way he said it insinuated that Marquez had trouble reading, but if the insult bothered Marquez at all it didn’t show. Marquez looked much more curious that Harknell was sending him off on a walk and making a different statement.

  Harknell pulled out a chair and sat down across from Marquez with a concerned frown, talking now as if Voight wasn’t in the room, saying, ‘Rich has a medical condition we’re accommodating as long as he sticks with it. He’s got everything you don’t want—labile hypertension, pre-diabetes, and a list of other conditions he’s got to take care of. We have an agreement that he’s going to do that.’

  Harknell turned to Voight.

  ‘Get out of here, Rich. Go do the walk. We won’t get that far while you’re gone.’

  ‘I’ll do it later and it’s my business, no one else’s.’

  ‘You’ve made it department business and you’re going to walk now.’

  Voight felt anger surge and the heat that came when his blood pressure jumped. He spent half the night getting ready for Marquez to look at it and didn’t do it so Sheriff Hardass could sit in his chair.

  ‘Go.’

  Voight stood over his chair. He didn’t sit down and the room got smaller. He had a moment of dizziness. Harknell didn’t know shit about homicide investigation. Harknell’s top skill was handing out paper plates at a Kiwanis pancake breakfast and leaning on donors for checks whenever he ran for re-election. He knew zero about solving a murder or getting a suspect to talk.

  ‘Get going, Rich,’ Harknell said in a stronger voice. ‘The warden and I will still be here.’

  The sheriff winked at Marquez.

  ‘You and I both know Rich already stripped the files. I’m surprised there’s anything left for you to read.’

  Voight left the office fuming and headed out on a walk which took him straight to his car. He drove over to the Burger King, bought coffee and then a bite to eat, a breakfast burrito, a large order of hash browns, and two sausage biscuits. This whole set-up was wrong and he knew Marquez sensed it. That’s why he showed up so early.

  Questioning him would run through lunch and maybe a lot longer, so it made sense to eat something now. He ate sitting in his car in the sun and then drove the route he was going to say he had walked. As he did, he turned the idea of quitting the department and suing the sheriff. Harknell was way out of bounds ordering him to go walk and it was incredible that his life had come to this, working for this pompous bastard who treated Siskiyou County as a private fiefdom. He finished the last of the coffee and biscuits and walked through the moves with Marquez one more time in his head before parking and going back in.

  Marquez’s stepdaughter, Maria, was key in this. She communicated on Facebook with Ellis and Steiner and somehow, he didn’t know precisely how yet, the right information got passed on to Marquez. It let him build his cover and claim he was looking for a suspect the day he showed up at the town meeting and met the girls. He was supposed to be on an undercover buy but instead he was in a high-school gym with Ellis and Steiner and other people who didn’t have to work for a living and could sit around and debate freeing the Klamath River by taking down dams.

  Late that night the girls were attacked along a dirt road by the Klamath River. Next day Marquez shows up after the bodies were found. They put out a ‘be-on-the-lookout’ call to all law enforcement for a suspect vehicle and within an hour Marquez is at the crime scene. Siskiyou County has six thousand miles of road and with something like this it takes everybody, but Marquez showing up at the scene was strange.

  Voight shook the crumbs off his shirt and coat and when some of them fell on the seat between his legs he lifted himself high enough off the seat to brush a hand under and wipe it clean. That jammed the steering wheel into his gut. He didn’t like the weight he had gained or the sad despair that seemed to d
ominate his nights and he was alone too much. He didn’t like it that he didn’t just tell the sheriff to go fuck himself; didn’t like what he was willing to take to keep the job.

  He hadn’t solved the Ellis and Steiner murders or gotten anywhere on a recent homicide, three months ago when a young man was beaten, kicked and stomped to death by two men. He had good leads on that one that he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. All three had been in the bar drinking and argued and still he hadn’t solved it.

  Last week Harknell had asked him to take a ride with him and tell him where things were at on that one. The parents of the young man killed were people he knew. The county only had forty-four thousand people in it, but it was bigger than three US states, something the sheriff seemed to forget. It was a lot of territory to cover, though it did bother Voight that he didn’t seem to have the stamina he once had or the clarity of mind.

  He had turned into a note taker – and worse, having written something down, having both heard it or read it and written it down, he still needed to look at the notes later. That never happened when he was younger and he knew the sheriff was looking at him sideways now, thinking of making changes. A deputy, an ambitious Iraq vet who wanted his job, kissed the sheriff’s ass every day.

  Voight cleaned the Burger King litter out of the car and walked it over to the trash barrel before going back in. He knew he smelled like fast food, but fuck Harknell.

  ‘What did you learn?’ he asked Marquez as he pulled a chair back and sat down across from him, smiling, his mouth tight like it was being pulled open with pliers. ‘Did you find the tie to your investigation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe there isn’t one.’

  ‘I’m going to tell you why I’m here. The day I met Ellis and Steiner at the high school I had set up to buy from an individual whose identity I didn’t know. He was supposed to meet me and do a small deal with me that would set up a bigger one, but I think he probably always knew who I was. I think this recent tip call says that might have been Rider.’