by Kirk Russell
They landed and Marquez bought two sandwiches, a Coke for Wheeler, and a black coffee for himself as Wheeler casually oversaw the fueling of the plane. Wheeler left as little as he could to chance. He was a competent aircraft mechanic and held a commercial and multi-engine certificate. His path to doing what he was doing now took him out across the country and through a half dozen flying jobs before making his way back home and here. Marquez watched Wheeler look over the plane and then checked his messages. He listened to one from Matt Hauser.
‘This is my new phone number. It’s one of those phones you don’t keep. I bought a half dozen of those today. Things are getting very serious and I need to talk with you immediately. I’m on my way to the Department of Fish and Game in Sacramento. Call me as soon as you get this.’
Hauser had left the message less than twenty minutes ago. Marquez returned his call and as he waited for it to connect he realized Hauser didn’t really know what he did. Hauser must think he worked from nine to five each day at headquarters on the Thirteenth Floor of the Water Resource Building. The call connected and Hauser answered, saying, ‘I’m here and I need to meet with the head of your department. Things are escalating way above your level, Lieutenant.’
‘I’m an hour and a half away.’
‘Why? Where are you?’
‘If you’re worried go up to DFG headquarters and tell them you’re there to wait for me. Or go be a tourist. Go to the capital building. There are police and cameras and no one is going to bother you there. I’ll call you when I’m ten minutes away. That’s all it will take you to walk back over.’
Wheeler carried his sandwich and Coke to the plane and ate his sandwich after they were in the air and lined up on the Sacramento River.
‘How do you want to do this?’
‘I’d like to get a good look at both banks of the river. I’m looking at access, at where you could drop pike in the river if you were coming out of this illegal hatchery we’re looking for.’
Wheeler brought the plane down and on the river sunlight sparkled and the trees along the banks flashed by.
‘I couldn’t do your job,’ Wheeler said, ‘but I sure love mine.’
Which is why I like to fly with you, Marquez thought, and they followed the river south and Wheeler didn’t ask or say anything until he picked the spot where he left the river.
‘Are you going to meet the guy you were talking to?’
‘Yeah, at the office right now.’
‘And he’s helping us?’
‘I’m not sure about that yet but I am sure he knows more than he’s saying.’
‘So you’re staying on the dance floor.’
‘That’s about right, I’m staying on the dance floor and I’m going to learn more about him this afternoon.’
EIGHTEEN
Hauser was standing in a corner of the lobby of the Water Resources Building with his back to a wall and scanning faces until he picked up on Marquez coming toward him. Marquez led him to the elevator and up to the thirteenth floor. Now they were in a small conference room sitting across from each other, an agitated Hauser demanding to meet with the head of Fish and Game.
‘What’s changed, Matt?’
‘They’re following me and they’ll destroy my reputation and career if I’m not protected. I made the decision to approach you and I’m going to frustrate you today. After three weeks of trying to get me to come across, I’m ready to talk, but I have too much on the line to negotiate my future with anyone other than your chief.’
‘You’ve said.’
‘I’m sure it’s not the first time someone has gone over your head.’
Hauser reached in his pocket and pulled out a red and black plastic SanDisk memory stick. He put it down on the table in front of him and picked up again, holding it tight between his thumb and forefinger.
‘What’s in here ties ENTR to the pike project. Get your chief in here and I’ll call my lawyer and we’ll reach an agreement.’
‘Show me what you’ve got and then I’ll find out when the chief is available. I know at the moment he’s out of state at a conference in Virginia, but even if he were three doors down the hall I wouldn’t get him involved without proof. You want protection, then take me through what’s on the memory stick.’
Hauser frowned and stared down at the table for a long twenty seconds.
‘Good God, Lieutenant, we’re talking about the destruction of the keystone native species and great harm to the fishing industry, tourism, and the quality of life in the state. This is a seminal event. This is eco-sabotage. Get the Governor involved! Do what it takes to make me believe you’ll protect me! If your chief is out of town, then call him! Aren’t you able to do that? I want to explain this to him.’
Marquez left the room for ten minutes. He talked with Waller and then returned to the conference room with his laptop, turned it on, took a chair next to Hauser with the screen facing them and said, ‘Show me what you’ve got.’
Hauser picked up the memory stick and felt for the slot along the right side of the computer, but rather than slide the memory stick in he pulled his hand back and started talking.
‘ENTR has called a meeting with me tomorrow. They haven’t said what it’s about other than to say it relates to the management of the projects I’m in charge of and there are four of them. Emergency meetings happen but usually there’s a detailed explanation. There was nothing. It’s a summons and that says to me they know I’ve been in conversation with Fish and Game. I need to go into that meeting with your department behind me. It’s critical that I know today I’m not alone standing up to them. Otherwise, you’re going to lose me.’
‘Show me.’
‘I have pieces. You have to put them together. It’s a lot easier to move water around if you’re not hamstrung by lawsuits and regulations favoring fish species. But if the fish in question are already effectively extinct due to an invasive species that can’t be controlled then the reach of the lawsuits is diminished. We’re talking about forced natural selection and millions of years of evolution erased in a seven-to-nine-year period. After the native species are no longer viable, then hard truths have to be faced. The salmon and trout are gone and water is needed elsewhere.’
‘Give me the name of the biologist who is your source.’
‘I made a promise not to reveal his name but I’ll give it to you if we have a signed agreement. It has to have the Governor’s signature and your chief’s.’
They stared at each other and Marquez asked, ‘What’s changed since I last saw you? What made you drive here, Matt?’
‘They’re framing me.’
‘Who is?’
‘ENTR. They moved money around and made it look like I embezzled over eight million dollars from project accounts I manage. My lawyer says we’ll have to hire forensic accountants but it’s going to be a multi-year fight. I don’t know how they moved the money or where it is, but they’re threatening to bring in the FBI and turn me into a criminal and they’re asking for the same things you are. They want my source.’
‘Do you know Barbara Jones?’
‘A woman by that name from internal security has left me several messages in the past two days, but no, I don’t know her.’ Hauser closed his eyes. ‘Who is this captain of the Special Operations Unit you report to?’
‘Captain Waller.’
‘Do you think I could get a few minutes with him?’
‘I can ask him.’
‘I’d like to talk with him alone if I can.’
‘I’ll get him. Before I go, do you want to show me what’s on the memory stick?’
‘Not yet.’
Marquez folded his laptop shut and took it with him. He left Hauser sitting at the table doing a very good job of looking betrayed and miserable. In terms of being tracked and having his phones tapped and spyware inserted into his computers, Hauser was probably right. Eight million dollars was enough for the internal security to hire private investigators who wouldn’
t shy from bending the law if necessary.
He found Captain Waller and as they walked back Waller asked, ‘What’s the bottom line? What do you want me to tell him?’
‘Tell him no deal until he delivers. Tell him he hasn’t given us anything yet and that he lied about Emile Soliatano. Ask him where Soliatano is.’
‘What about the embezzled money charges?’
‘Tell him it’s not our problem, but we’ll protect him in every way we can if he delivers the illegal hatcheries. If he does that we’ve got his back. If he stalls on that, we’ve got a problem and I need to find another source.’
‘Is that what’s going to happen?’
‘I really don’t know yet, but it’s not working out how he planned.’
‘Is he scared?’
‘He is. I don’t know what he really knows or what he’s done, but something got to him. He is afraid of what’s coming and I don’t think he’s faking any of that. It’s coming and he knows he’s out of time.’
NINETEEN
Hauser was a bright guy but vain and superior and even if the embezzlement scheme was about to come down around his head he would stall. He would stall and the risk was more pike would get dumped in the rivers while Hauser schemed to protect himself. Marquez thought about it and then scrolled through the address book in his phone and called a number he hadn’t in a long time.
‘It’s John Marquez.’
‘Marquez, I’ll be damned. I was thinking about you this morning. Remember that afternoon we met in that little town on the eastern side of the Sierras? What was it called? Lee something or another—’
‘Vining.’
‘That’s right, Lee Vining, and we walked out and talked looking over Mono Lake with those gulls overhead and the crazy rock formations in the lake and me trying to talk you into letting us make you a Task Force Officer and getting you deputized with the U.S. Marshal’s office. I didn’t think you’d do it. You were pretty down on yourself about one of your team getting killed.’
‘Why were you thinking about me today?’
‘I don’t really know why; going back over my career in my head I guess, what mattered, what didn’t. I’ve only got a couple more years here at headquarters. What’s on your mind?’
‘I need your help. I’m trying to find a guy named Emile Soliatano.’
Marquez told him the story, a pike problem that turned catastrophic, and Emile Soliatano masquerading as the dead man’s brother, and who later with his wife abandoned the family van and got into a black Chevy Tahoe in a parking lot at Hilltop Mall in the Bay Area.
‘Send me the videotape.’
‘I just did.’
Desault played the video twice as he talked with Marquez then said, ‘Interesting. Let me run this by our techs and I’ll call you back.’
He called later that afternoon.
‘This didn’t have anything to do with the Bureau and we don’t have an Emile Soliatano in our system and I didn’t find him in the national database. You probably already know he owns a house in Vallejo but you might not know he paid off a lien the IRS has had on him for ten years for seventy-five thousand with a check for thirty-two grand last month.’
‘I didn’t know about the lien.’
‘I also got a tech to look at the video. They’re all busy so this was just a quick look, but she agrees someone was trying to make it appear as if he was getting picked up by Federal agents.’
‘Why bother to stage that?’
‘I have no idea why. You’d have to tell me. Maybe someone is trying to fool you.’
Marquez thought about that. ‘It’s probably not me they were thinking about but someone else looking for Soliatano, somebody who wouldn’t have access to some ageing agent riding out his last years at FBI headquarters. What you left out in that Lee Vining memory is that you were in your car asleep when I got there.’
Desault chuckled. ‘Yeah, I was beat. I was so tired.’
‘But the coffee place was right there.’
‘Yeah, but the sun felt better than coffee sounded. We did a good thing with that operation, John.’
‘We did.’
‘How does this Soliatano tie into the pike problem?’
‘I’m still sorting that out, but I know he connects to a climatologist who works for a firm called ENTR that may link to the pike scheme. We’ve tied Soliatano to this climatologist, Hauser, and it could be Hauser is trying to back ENTR away from searching for Soliatano. I know how that sounds and I agree none of it makes much sense, but it’s all that fits for me right now.’
‘Okay, well, I’ll call you if we come up with anything more; and I’ll call you next time I’m out in the Bay Area.’
‘Do, and we’ll get a drink and reminisce about the old days.’
Desault laughed and hung up. Marquez doubted the drink would happen but he looked forward to it anyway; it was good to hear Desault’s voice and know he was there and that he could reach out to him and get help. He had no proof but the call only reinforced the gut feeling that Hauser knew where Soliatano was.
TWENTY
Terry Ellis was tall and lean and built like the runner she was. Marquez saw that when he met her the day before she and Sarah Steiner were killed, and he knew from Maria that Ellis made a mark at Oregon State running the 1,500 meters. Maria described her as smart, funny, and tough. She believed that Ellis ran that night to save both herself and Sarah, that the terror of the assault did not cause her to abandon her friend. Rather, she realized that if she could get free she could outrun the attackers and get help. The miles of winding dirt track back out to the first houses would not have intimidated her, or at least this was how Maria dealt with it.
Marquez had never said anything to dissuade her but he was sure the terror Steiner and Ellis felt was overwhelming. He knew Voight would get graphic with Maria and give her details that made vivid being jerked out of the back of a camper and hitting the road hard while still in a sleeping bag. Even in the sanitized files Voight let him look through that was there, a wounded and dying Steiner left behind, the killer’s footprints chasing Ellis down to the river.
Some of the comments Maria read online painted Ellis as a coward who abandoned her friend and ran. Those had deeply disturbed Maria and Voight would pick up on that. He would work it.
At the Klamath River meeting where Marquez had met them, Sarah Steiner did most of the talking. She had thick dark wavy hair and Ellis was a straight-haired blonde, her hair parted down the middle, and yet somehow they came across as sisters. Maria told him they were close enough to be that and tonight as he talked with Maria he heard how strong that belief was still. Ellis heard her friend scream as a knife cut through the sleeping bag and into her. She heard her stabbed as she struggled to get out of her own bag and Voight would want Maria to visualize that. Voight would show her photos that Marquez wished Maria didn’t have to see. He knew they would stay with her forever.
‘Dad?’
‘I’m here.’
‘You went quiet.’
‘I’m thinking about Rich Voight interviewing you.’
‘He wants me to come to Yreka to their office. He’ll pay for me to fly up and they’ll put me in a motel for the night. I asked if we could Skype, but he wants to do it in person. Is that normal?’
‘In person is best.’
‘He has this list of people he wants to ask me about, names he got off their Facebook pages. And he was asking questions about you and me, how close we are and what you were like when I was growing up. Even when I called you my father he kept saying stepfather, you know, like repeating it on purpose.’
‘Well, you knew he was going to ask about me.’
‘I know but it’s weird. It was like he was trying to be my friend while he asked these really personal questions about you and mom. I told him about when you and mom separated. I wish I hadn’t and I don’t know why I did.’
‘It’s all okay. We did separate. We separated and got back together. What he is
doing is trying to find a connection with you. That’s part of the job.’
‘But he’s not on your side, Dad. He asked me why you wanted to meet Sarah and Terry and why you went to the thing at the high school. I’m pretty upset about it. It’s like he thinks you’re hiding something. What’s wrong with you meeting Terry and Sarah? Why is he making such a big deal about that?’
‘Right now he’s looking at me as a possible suspect.’
‘How can he do that?’
Marquez realized he hadn’t told Maria that’s what was happening. He assumed she knew and that it disturbed him too much to talk about it.
‘I was with him and the Siskiyou County sheriff a few days ago. Voight’s suspicion comes from me going out of my way to meet Sarah and Terry the day before they died and showing up right after their bodies were found. Sometimes a murderer will turn into a spectator at the scene. They get a thrill out of it and Voight is playing with that idea.’
‘Playing with? He’s investigating you, Dad!’
Three SOU wardens had been with Marquez. Voight knew that operation was legit and his real question was why did Marquez stay along the Klamath River after his suspect blew off the meeting and the rest of the SOU pulled out? The answer was he stayed because he wanted to see how the local crowd treated Ellis and Steiner. The pair had become targets of hate and he was going to step in if there was an incident. A local newspaper derided their right to speak at the debate as allowing outside environmental activists who knew nothing about the area to squander the time of potato farmers who drove in for the meeting. ‘Go the fuck home,’ was spray painted on the right side of the pickup they had borrowed from Terry Ellis’ brother, Jack, black spray paint over the faded red paint of the truck.
Marquez saw that before he walked into the high-school gym. Ellis and Steiner had parked where the truck with the painted message couldn’t be missed. But when they left that afternoon they drove back into California and a distance down the Klamath River Highway. So maybe they were pulling back. Maybe the incident frightened them—or somebody did.