Die-Off

by Kirk Russell

  But Marquez didn’t think so. What he had gathered was that Ellis and Steiner were aware of the disdain and anger focused on them, yet still traveled in a bubble of well wishers, some of them online and a handful of them in the towns they visited. In the farming areas along the river there was plenty of distrust of outside environmentalists, though that didn’t start in 2009 when Ellis and Steiner came through. The great die-off of salmon along the Klamath River was years before in 2002 and after another push had already begun to remove dams along the Klamath.

  Anger and fear of change imposed by the ultimate of unknowing outsiders—federal bureaucrats—inflamed the farming communities, and restoring the Klamath wasn’t as simple as removing dams. Rivers need estuary systems and much of that land had been agricultural property for generations. Then there was the tight Presidential election of 2008 where the vote was close in Oregon. The views of the Oregon Potato Commission versus those of environmental groups led to then Vice President Cheney and the Republican political operative Karl Rove proposing bypassing the Endangered Species Act in order to provide water to farmers.

  But that was over with before Ellis and Steiner showed up in 2009 and Cheney and Rove were long gone. The water problems of the Klamath remained, of course, and the frustration, anger, and fear that big government would make the wrong decisions were still there when Terry and Sarah came through. It was why Marquez had made a point of checking on Maria’s friends. It had worried him to see their pickup tagged with spray paint. He wanted to hear them talk and know that they were aware of how intense the water issue was along the river.

  According to Maria, Terry and Sarah’s plan was to travel the 263-mile length of the Klamath to talk to people and blog in favor of dam removal. That was a long stretch of country, running from rainforest country in California to dry eastern desert in Oregon. They moved slowly up the Klamath, two days near Orleans, three at an organic farm, then onward with the beeswax candles, dried steelhead, and salves they had bought. They rented kayaks and bicycles and went to parties at night at least twice. It was, after all, also a summer road trip.

  They crossed into Oregon, did the event at the high school where they got to speak, and perhaps it was the hostility that caused them to retreat as many miles back down the river as they did. Voight’s files charted their progress up the river and the retracement the night they were killed. He chased witnesses. He backtracked. The files showed his frustration.

  Marquez met up with Maria two hours later in San Francisco not far from where she worked. Then they did what they had done for years when there was something difficult to talk about. They walked into an afternoon soft with fall light and under a clean blue sky with only a streak of feathered cirrus on the horizon. At the foot of Mission they crossed the Embarcadero and walked along the waterfront, talking through many of the same things they talked through on the phone earlier.

  Maria stopped for a moment to make her point.

  ‘I have a photo on my Facebook page of the three of us that I reload every three months or so. I still do that even if they’re not ever coming back. It matters to me and I want to know who killed them and I wish I could kill the person who did it. I wouldn’t have any problem pulling the trigger.’

  ‘Yes, you would.’

  ‘No, I really wouldn’t.’

  They started walking again and he moved the conversation on.

  ‘Can you remember anytime anywhere you were with Terry and Sarah and my name came up?’

  ‘No, but I’m sure I mentioned you. Why are you asking?’

  ‘Same as Inspector Voight, I’m just looking for any connection.’

  ‘You’re not the same as him at all.’

  ‘He’s doing what he thinks he has to, Maria.’

  ‘No, he isn’t. He’s an asshole and there’s no big aha moment he’s going to have talking to me. I never told you or Mom this, but Terry and Sarah wanted me to do the Klamath trip with them. We were going to make more of a road trip out of it. It wasn’t going to be all about the dams. They wanted to have fun. They were really good people and totally normal. There was no reason to kill them and it’s not like they were raped before they were killed. This wasn’t some sex killer. It was about what they were doing and Voight doesn’t know anything. If he knew anything he wouldn’t be questioning you.’

  Her eyes clouded and she turned away. She brushed the corner of her eye with her right hand and shook her head.

  ‘How close did you come to going with them, Maria?’

  ‘Super close but then I talked to my boss and he said I’d have to take a leave of absence and they would have to get another intern. There wouldn’t have been any job to come back to, so I didn’t do it. And there was Terry’s brother’s pickup with the camper shell. It was perfect for two people but not for three. I would have had to drive my car.’

  Marquez listened and guessed she did come close. She didn’t like where she was working. The pay was very low and her boss had been very cool toward her since coming on to her and getting rebuffed. That was over a year ago and her mom had encouraged her to quit immediately, which was probably why she didn’t.

  ‘I’m okay, Dad, let’s keep walking. Are they sure the gun you found is the one that killed them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They went there now and talked about guns and ballistics and this was the Maria he was counting on. She wanted to understand in every way how Voight could look at him as a possible suspect.

  ‘The connection might be me, not you, Dad.’

  ‘How do you get there?’

  ‘I have friends who knew her a lot better and one of them you know. Remember Kevin and Ridley?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Kevin was up there and might have met up with them during the trip but nowhere near where they were killed, maybe a lot farther south. Still, he might have given them some people to call when they got farther up. He has friends in that area.’

  ‘What kind of friends?’

  ‘Dope growers.’

  Marquez nodded. It didn’t surprise him but nothing did anymore.

  ‘I always thought it was about somebody angry that dams might get taken out, but there were other people they hung out with along the way and those names aren’t on Facebook. They got invited to some places they couldn’t post about and if they went to a party with Kevin he wouldn’t have wanted their names on Facebook.’

  ‘Did he tell you he was there?’

  ‘No, I ditched those guys. By then, we weren’t talking anymore. But I can call him. I’ll call him before I talk to Voight but I don’t really expect anything from Kevin.’

  ‘Voight knows they went to parties as they worked their way up the river but do call Kevin. If Voight hasn’t already talked with him he’ll want to now.’

  ‘I want the murders solved, but I don’t want to help this Voight.’

  ‘Yes, you do. If he gets a good lead he’ll go somewhere with it and he’s not going to frame me. I won’t let that happen and you’ve got to remember Voight has the murder weapon now. He didn’t have anything before that. Now he’s got a place to work from.’

  ‘Yeah, but you—’

  ‘I won’t let it happen.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘This is Lila Philbrick.’

  Marquez knew when he left Crescent City that if it was one of the Philbrick’s it would be Lila who called. His pulse quickened because she wasn’t just responding to a call from him.

  ‘Hey, Lila, did you find something?’

  ‘I found a photo with Jim Colson in it. His face isn’t all that clear but it’s him, and I’m also sending you one of Lisa Sorzak. There’s a lot about her that Geoff didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like she was everyone’s girlfriend, including my husband, and that’s why it got so tense when you were here. I haven’t talked about any of this in a long time and I’m supposed to be over it, but it still makes me want to punch Geoff in the face.’

  S
he laughed.

  ‘Not really, I’m over it and I was kind of a mess in those years too and it’s a miracle we didn’t go bankrupt. Geoff likes to pretend it never happened or that he can’t remember. That’s why he got so foggy on the names. He does that little boy act.’

  ‘What did Lisa Sorzak do for you?’

  ‘Bartended, cooked, waited tables, slept with my husband, a little bit of everything. When we fired her she found a job in Ukiah at a bar and got fired there for dealing drugs to the staff. How much do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Okay, well here goes. When I caught my husband in one of the bedrooms upstairs with her she was on top, he had a gag in his mouth, and his wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts. This was an old Victorian-style bed. We really didn’t know what we were about when we opened this business. It took all of my inheritance to figure that out, but anyway, she was on top and looked at me and got off him, got dressed and said, ‘He’s all yours. Have fun.’ I fired her ten minutes later and I left Geoff tied to the bed until the next morning.

  ‘When he gave that little whiny, “it’s been ten years, Lila,” that’s what he was talking about. Sorzak was a manipulative secretive bitch and I didn’t say that because we’re not supposed to talk about ex-employees, but I don’t think I have to worry about anything with you.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘She was also a painter and she thought she was a poet and I hope she thinks that still because her poetry sucks and it’s never going anywhere. She was a pretty good painter though. I had Geoff burn the paintings she gave us. One was a very good watercolor landscape looking north from Crescent City that a customer offered to buy for five hundred dollars. It was a very good painting but also one that Geoff liked a lot and it was therapeutic to watch him burn it along with a bra she intentionally left behind. Her poetry is as self-centered as she is, so by the time you read two or three lines you want to stick your finger down your throat.’

  ‘You’ve still got a special place for her in your heart.’

  ‘Yeah, I do, and I’ve kept track of her.’

  ‘Where she is now?’

  ‘She left Ukiah and with money she saved from selling drugs or stole from her employers she bought a bar in Weaverville. She has something else going on that’s probably illegal down near the Mad River. If you find her, ask her where the money to buy the Weaverville bar came from. I’d love to know.’

  ‘What’s the name of it?’

  ‘It’s got some really stupid hokey name. I’ll think of it in a minute. Our bar would come up short sometimes – I mean, missing money, not a lot but some – and we were so naive and trusting we believed her and never did anything about it. She had a really good way of controlling the men around here, including Jim Colson. Geoff and I were doing lines of coke every day and drinking too much and she and Colson just made themselves at home. I remember walking back around midnight on a rainy winter day when we had no customers and hadn’t for hours. She was on her back on a bar table and Colson was fucking her and get this, I apologized. That’s how messed up things were around here.

  ‘At some point she got tired of Colson. He was older than her by eight or nine years and mysterious and strange but she had a real sexual appetite. It was one of the few things she didn’t fake. She picked men like a farmer picks tomatoes. When she wanted another she just reached for it and Colson couldn’t keep up with that. What I think happened with her and Colson is she figured out how she could control him and when she did that she lost interest. But they were also bad people, her especially, and something was wrong with him. He had a creepy quality.

  ‘But I’ll give Lisa this, men were drawn to her. She got us our first regular customers.’

  She laughed again, this time deeper and Marquez smiled.

  ‘I never thought of it this way, but maybe she brought in the business that saved us. There were a few of them that hung around and drank and a new one would show up after that one left. I’m sorry if I sound vindictive but she was bad news. But even if I don’t sound like it, I’m over it. You’ve got to forgive, right?’

  She laughed at that.

  ‘I remember the name of the Weaverville bar now. It’s a perfect name for a bar owned by her. It’s called the Come On In.’

  ‘And you think she still owns it?’

  ‘She does and she can’t be doing well enough not to be there. If you want to find her, go there and wait.’

  ‘Lila?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I appreciate your call but how do you know all this?’

  ‘It’s because I’m still working on the forgiving part, and it’s not about her sleeping with Geoff. Men are easy. It’s the way she stole and kept talking to me like she really cared about what happened to the tavern. It’s the way she burned us. She was like a low-grade infection, the kind where you know something is wrong with you but you’re not sure what it is yet, and I was so stupid. I hate looking back and knowing I was so stupid and naive and we went through all that money. If we never did the inn we could have lived the rest of our lives on that money. And she stole from us. That still makes me angry. She was stealing from us and sleeping with my husband and we were all having staff meals together and were best of friends.’

  Lila wanted to talk more and needed to and Marquez listened and got a little more about where to look along the Mad River, though what she knew about that was pretty sketchy. The Weaverville bar he could find easily.

  Lila made an odd promise now, that she would talk to Geoff about Lisa, and she didn’t come out and say it, but sent the signal she thought Geoff knew more about Sorzak’s whereabouts. Marquez got a description of Sorzak, chickenpox scar on her right bicep, long legs, beautiful legs, blue eyes, brown hair, two small moles on her right cheekbone.

  ‘I’ll scan these photos and email them to you, but it’s not really what she looks like that sticks with you; it’s the way she is. You’ll get it if you find her and since you’re a man you’ll like her.’

  ‘Okay, and what about Colson?’

  ‘Haven’t heard a thing; maybe he went back home, wherever that is. He was never completely here anyway. I don’t care what Geoff says, something happened to James Colson before we ever met him.’

  ‘Who would you call if you were going to try to find him?’

  ‘You haven’t had any luck with tax records, driver’s license, and all of that?’

  ‘We’re working on it.’

  ‘I don’t know who I would call. I’ll ask Geoff.’

  Marquez thanked her for the help and Lila sent the photos soon after and in her email added one more thing about her. Sorzak didn’t use her last name anymore. She signed her poetry Lisa X and somewhere she found – or as Lila said, slept with – a judge who let her change her last name to X. That last didn’t turn out to be true but it did help Marquez find her.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Later that afternoon a distraught Hauser called.

  ‘They just fired me.’

  ‘You knew that was coming.’

  ‘Two security guards were waiting when I got back to the office from a lunch meeting. They gave me fifteen minutes to put my personal things in a cardboard box. My computers were already gone and they’re not even company property. I bought those. They took my company ID and keys before they would let me out of the office and told me that if I’m seen anywhere near the premises they’ll call the police and the company will get a court order if needed.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘In my home office reading a lawsuit that a process server just handed me at our front door. I thought it was my wife Paula getting home but it wasn’t her. I’ve never seen a process server before. I didn’t even know what he was talking about and for a moment I thought he was here to rob me.’

  ‘ENTR is suing you?’

  ‘Yes, and it wouldn’t have happened if your department had helped me. Even from here I can’t access any of my documents. I don’t know h
ow a defense is going to be put together. Everything is in the cloud and I can’t access anything and none of my passwords work, none of my back-door routes work. I can’t get a hold of my wife. I’ve left her messages and she hasn’t called back. She should be home by now. I think they called her and told her, and I don’t think she’s coming home. I think this is it. I’m going to lose everything and I blame you. I blame your department.’

  ‘I’m going to come to your house and talk with you. I’ll be there in about an hour.’

  ‘It’s too late for talk, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘You needed to help me when I asked for it. There’s nothing left to talk about.’

  Now Marquez was sitting in Hauser’s study and Hauser still hadn’t heard from his wife. That was his biggest worry and it was about the marriage, not that something might have happened to her. He looked pale and feverish as if what had happened made him physically sick. His forehead beaded with tiny drops of sweat.

  Marquez had called ENTR on the way here. It was after business hours and he didn’t expect anyone to pick up the phone, but a woman did and she was very interested to know who he was after he asked for Matt Hauser. She told him Mr Hauser was no longer with the firm and that any work Mr Hauser was doing would now be handled by others. She pressed to know who he was. She wasn’t getting it from caller ID.

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘He resigned.’

  ‘He was fired?’

  ‘No sir, he resigned.’

  Hauser flipped the lawsuit across the desk in his study as if Marquez had some role in it.

  ‘Read it, Lieutenant, it’s everything I warned you about.’

  The lawsuit alleged fraud, embezzlement, destruction and theft of intellectual property, willful and injurious disregard of company protocols, sixteen violations of the employment agreement, and damages in addition to the 8.2 million dollars in embezzled funds and sought unspecified damages that could total in excess of one billion dollars if the company’s reputation was severely damaged by the alleged theft.