by Kirk Russell
‘I don’t know. I think it was this guy I delivered to. I showed him the paper and maybe he told somebody. I don’t know, but I know she put the gun right on my head and made me get my wallet out. That was before your dudes busted me. She wanted me to come here and say what I said today.’
‘Before Lieutenant Muller talked to you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And then you decided to use it a different way.’
Faesy didn’t need to answer. That’s what had happened and now he needed to avoid the woman with the gun who told him she would kill him if he didn’t follow through. She wanted him to say he knew about jaguar skins and condor feathers and rare turtles and birds being sold and where to buy them.
‘She wants to set a trap and fuck you up, man.’
‘Okay, we’ll figure that out and we may need your help. Wait here, I’ll go find Lieutenant Muller and we’ll get this going.’
THIRTY-THREE
The signed search warrant for the defunct Ravil Winery came through when he was still at headquarters with the SOU. He sat down at a desk, laid his phone down, and thought about it before calling two biologists from the Fisheries Branch who were standing by. He figured to serve the warrant to the caretaker and search the buildings with the biologists. He walked down to where Muller’s team was holed up and told Muller they would have to do the rest by phone.
Marquez made it to his pickup and was north on 99 before a call came from Barbara Jones. The call didn’t surprise him but as he answered he was still debating what he was going to tell her.
‘Sounds like you’re driving,’ she said.
‘I’m on my way to the Ravil winery building. Two of our biologists are meeting me there.’
‘So am I.’
‘How did you know we got the warrant approved?’
‘It’s a wired world and I work for some sharp people. I’ll unlock for you so don’t knock any doors down. When you finish at Ravil I’ll lead you to the second pike hatchery site. We found that one this morning after combing through your friend Hauser’s computers.
‘Can you tie it to him?’
‘Not necessarily, but you’re backing a complete fraud in Mathew Hauser. He’s going to go down for embezzlement.’
‘Where is this second hatchery?’
‘It’s in the Sacramento area but I’m not going to give you an address yet. I want to manage this my way. You’ll follow me. I’ll take you there and I don’t want some DFG press release about how you’ve discovered an illegal hatchery. What ENTR wants is a thank you for finding it.’
‘Can you send me the file or files you found that located it?’
‘Are you listening to me? Your unemployed climatologist friend had multiple computers, six of them, and it took a while. He’s a bright guy but he’s not a hacker. He had it well hidden. By the way, I added up what ENTR has paid him in nine and a half years of employment. It totals what I’d make in twenty years.’
‘How long before you get to the winery?’
‘You don’t want to hear me talk about Hauser anymore? Okay, I won’t rub it in. You can get there your own way. See you there.’
At the winery Marquez did a slow walk through but left it to the biologists to scour the concrete runways and tanks where the fish were bred and raised. He took a return call from a friend at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game while he was still inside the building.
‘Calling you back, John, and yes, we have a real problem with illegally stocked northern pike in lakes in the south central area. We don’t even stock those lakes anymore. We used to stock with char, rainbow, graylings, landlocked salmon, and other fish, but with northern pike already there nothing lasts long enough for the fishermen to get to it. We were just feeding the pike. What kind of problem have you got?’
‘We’re trying to figure that out right now. We’ve got someone setting up pike hatcheries so they can stock our rivers.’
‘That’s bad news. Find the pike and kill them as fast as you can. There’s nothing they won’t eat. They’ve got a tiny brain and razor sharp teeth, which is a lot like my boss now that I think about it. Call me back if I can help.’
Barbara Jones arrived now with an older white-haired man in a dark blue suit who didn’t introduce himself. He stared at Marquez as if he were some sort of curiosity and wandered through the building with the look of a man killing time until his limo arrived.
Marquez pulled Jones away and walked with her.
‘Who’s the guy with you?’
‘One of the managing partners – don’t worry about him. Everyone is concerned about bad publicity and fallout that could affect raising venture capital. We create business models around the science—’
‘Save it, I’ve heard it all from Hauser. You like frank talk, so I’m going to give you some and this is just between you and me. You’re young. You’re bright. We’re about to go see this second hatchery and then you’re going to try to prove to me that Hauser set all this up on his own. I think that guy over there in the suit is encouraging you to focus on making everything tie back to Hauser.’
‘I find that insulting.’
‘I think you should follow your own instincts.’
‘You just got burned by an embezzler and you’re giving me advice?’
‘That guy in the suit over there doesn’t care about your investigation. He only cares about how it affects the company.’
‘And how the fuck would you know that?’
‘He’s here to keep an eye on your investigation and help steer it. You know it, and I know it.’
‘I don’t know anything about that and he isn’t steering me at all. Are you done here at the winery? Do you want to follow us to the next pike site or do you want to insult me and the company some more?’
‘We’ll follow you.’
Marquez and the hatchery biologists followed and Muller’s undercover team picked them up on the drive back to Sacramento. The SOU also picked up on another car trailing them and then trailed that man who as it turned out was first to go to the warehouse. The warehouse was in a cluster of tired-looking buildings with a new sign that read Delgado Creek Industrial Park.
The water recycling unit was compact and portable. The thousand-gallon tanks held several hundred fish each. Many were nearing six inches and at a point where they needed to be released. Overhead were long skylights that let in a milky light. Marquez studied the simplicity of design, the water supply, pellet food dispenser, the high-end water recycler, and it impressed him. The tanks were fiberglass, probably loaded on a flatbed and backed in through the rolling door.
He took it in and it filled him with a sense of loss, a feeling that they were always going to be fighting the next thing, and walked outside trying to lose that. When he walked back in the man in the dark blue suit wanted to talk to him. Marquez watched him put on a puzzled face.
‘We thought you’d be happy.’
‘Don’t I look it?’
‘No.’
‘I’m awfully sorry. But you must be happy to help out like this.’
‘We’re very disturbed that someone who has worked for us for so long could be suspected of an act this terrible. I can’t tell you how troubling it is. As you know, we’ve partnered with Fish and Game on a number of things. We’re very much on the same side. We’ve even consulted with you on your new logo and name that rolls out in 2013.’
‘What are we going to be called?’
‘The Department of Fish and Wildlife, and we’re very proud to be partners with you.’
He introduced himself as Ned Cowler and Marquez left questioning the hatchery biologists as they took samples from each tank. A debate carried on into the late afternoon about whether to kill the fish with rotenone or just pump the water out, but Marquez didn’t hear the conclusion. He and Muller searched the rest of the building instead, moving quietly through sad little offices in the back and upstairs to storage above.
They found footprints in the dust but not the
man who had gone in ahead of anyone else and not shown himself since. They found where he lay down on a dusty stack of lumber and where his elbows rested as he lay on his belly. Muller turned to him.
‘Was he up here with a rifle?’
Marquez shook his head. That’s not what he was seeing.
‘I think he filmed your team and me and went out the back door. He probably got picked up by somebody, but sooner or later they’ll come back for the car he arrived in.’
‘ENTR filmed us?’
‘Yeah, to find out who the members of the undercover team are. They already have me and I think they got tipped or anticipated the SOU would show up as I was led to the next winery. One of their security people also seemed to know the search warrant for the second winery was approved.’
‘Okay, when this guy comes back for his vehicle we’ll be waiting and wherever he goes we’ll go with him. I’ll call you. This is starting to get to me, John. I feel like we’re being used.’
‘We are.’
THIRTY-FOUR
The driver returned to the warehouse hatchery after midnight. He was dropped by a taxi two blocks away, walked in, and drove out of the industrial park with his lights off. The SOU trailed him to the Sacramento Hyatt and didn’t get his name but did get the floor and the room he was in. They were waiting for him to move again early the next morning when Marquez took a call from the Trinity warden, Logan.
‘I may have found her cabin. It’s about half scuttlebutt whether it’s hers or not, but I know where the trail is, or what passes for a trail. It’s down the south fork and you’ve got to know where to cross the river.’
Marquez listened and said, ‘I know where that is.’
‘But that’s just the start and it’s not easy to see the cabin from the water. There’s a beach and it’s tiny but if you want to borrow a boat the offer still stands. The cabin has been around for a hundred years, or that’s what my friend told me.’
‘And if I walk?’
‘It’s three miles, more or less, from the other side of the bridge and some of it is pretty damned steep. What are you driving?’
‘A late-model green Tacoma pickup with a short bed.’
‘How long will it take you to get to the bridge?’
‘Four hours.’
‘I’ll meet you there and we’ll find a different place to leave your truck. There’s river access farther upstream. Maybe we’ll park it there and I’ll run you back to where the trail starts. If you’ve got questions call me before I leave Weaverville. There’s no cell reception where you’re going. Are you sure you don’t want to borrow a boat?’
Marquez talked with Muller twice on the drive north. Muller told him that shortly after nine this morning the man who had checked into the Hyatt last night left Sacramento and headed west in an Avis rental car. He wasn’t listed as an employee for ENTR but could be headed for their offices in Palo Alto.
Less than half an hour after meeting up with Logan, Marquez was climbing through trees on the south bank of the Trinity River. The trail rose onto a rocky bench and threaded along the top of a steep bluff above the river. Below, the water was dark green and running hard with last night’s rain. The sky was cloudy, gray, and cold. More rain was forecast for the late afternoon and wind gusted hard through the high branches of the trees as the trail crossed a forested area and ended abruptly in a small meadow.
Even if he didn’t find the trail again, he had the river and Logan told him a narrow switch-backing trail led up from the beach below the cabin. He could work downstream and would find that. He also carried a Garmin that tracked his progress with GPS, but it was another hour and a half before he found it. He spotted the gray weathered wood siding and a stone chimney of a small cabin built between two trees high on a steep face above the river.
If she was there – and from what he’d been told he guessed she was – then she had a good view of him as he made the climb from the small beach at the base of the rocks below the cabin. That trail climbed to a shoulder and then worked up the backside. It took him straight to the cabin and he liked the spot. It looked out on a curve in the river and you couldn’t see any of the highway or anything man-made. He knocked on the door.
After knocking again he started looking for her outside but wondered if he had wasted his time hiking here. Then he picked up on movement or felt something down in the trees to his left and watched as a tall dark-haired woman with an authoritative gun in her right hand climbed into view. She looked in his direction and he watched her movements for several minutes before stepping out in front of her and identifying himself.
‘You don’t need the gun for me. If you’re Lisa, I’m here to talk to you.’
‘And if I’m not?’
‘I’ll leave.’
She gripped the gun with both hands now and aimed at his torso.
‘Show me a badge.’
‘Right.’
Marquez retrieved his small backpack and she moved higher and repositioned herself, comfortable in her stance, familiar with a gun. She had him face her as he unzipped a pocket and pulled out his badge. After studying it, she lowered the gun and said, ‘The legend himself.’ She tossed his badge back to him.
‘I had two guys up here a couple of days ago and they scared me. I don’t know what they had in mind but it wasn’t anything legal. Maybe they heard about this cabin and me here alone and thought they could have some fun, or maybe they were just looking for something to steal. My imagination tends to run when I’m out here alone. Why do you want to talk to me?’
‘I want to talk with you about someone you used to know when you worked at the Methuselah Tavern. Well, you still know him, but I want to start there.’
‘I still know him?’
‘I think you do.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding.
‘I’m not.’
‘The Methuselah was a lifetime ago and we were all drinking too much and doing drugs in those days. I slept with the husband of one of the owners for a year though Lila was fine with it before she decided to catch us. She didn’t do that until her boyfriend lost interest in her because she was such a cokehead. And she was the married one, not me.’
‘I’m looking for Jim Colson.’
‘They fired Jim and I the same day and we went separate ways, no matter what Lila says. I hardly ever hear from him.’
‘So maybe now I should thank you for your trouble and apologize for bothering you and leave.’
She smiled at that.
‘Don’t leave yet. You don’t have to do that. Let’s go inside where it’s warmer. It’s going to rain again this afternoon. We can build a fire and talk. I’m not going to say I haven’t heard from him at all or that I can fool you.’
Marquez put her in her early thirties with crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes that said some of those years were hard. She looked fit and walked up the steep slope with the gun in her right like she was used to it. She stripped the gun of bullets after they were inside. She did that and looked at him as she laid the gun on the fireplace mantel.
‘So you don’t worry.’
‘What were you going to do if you shot me?’ he asked.
‘Roll you into the river and throw the gun after it and then try to clean up before they came with dogs looking for you. The river would take you some distance. You’d get found downstream after someone driving 299 spotted you and they would come here because I’m sure you told someone you were coming here. The dogs would pick up scent but I’d be gone and wouldn’t be seen for a long while.
‘My grandfather did that once with a man who came here armed and claiming he was owed money.’
She pointed.
‘Grandpa shot him right there where those old wooden chairs are and rolled him off the edge. The man was a thief and no one cared that he disappeared; shooting him was something my grandfather didn’t share for fifteen years. He didn’t like himself for having done it and I think he told me because he was afraid of a violent str
eak in me.’
‘Is there one?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, that’s a nice family story.’
‘It’s one of my favorites.’
Marquez took a look around, a one-room cabin with a cot, a table, and two chairs. She probably learned to shoot and fish from her grandfather. She made tea and stoked the fire and they sat in front of it, Marquez holding the warm mug of tea in his big hands, Lisa talking calmly though the room didn’t feel that way. It felt small. He felt a nervous quicksilver energy coming off her now as if she was balancing a red-hot wire inside.
‘If I knew where to look for Jim and told you, would you leave now?’
‘We need to go farther than that. I’d like to know about your relationship with him and I also recognize your voice.’
‘I don’t have a relationship with him. Sometimes he finds me. Usually, that’s when he needs something. I don’t think we’ve met before. How sure are you that you recognize my voice?’
‘Pretty sure.’
‘Fascinating.’
Marquez took a sip of the tea and it tasted like wood chips. He put the mug down on the stone hearth.
‘I know the tea sucks. It’s a plant that grows around here and we need something stronger for this conversation. It’s too early for whiskey. I’ll get two beers and if we get philosophical later I’ll get out the whiskey. You went to all this trouble to find me so I’m guessing you don’t have to leave immediately.’
She stoked the fire again, leaning over with her back toward him and her shirt sliding up the smooth skin of her back and higher still as she leaned over a cooler and pulled two bottles of beer, water dripping from each onto the stone floor.
‘There’s no refrigeration so it’s going to be on the warm side. If you want to cool it, put it outside. The beer foamed as he opened it. She moved her chair closer to his.
‘Would your testifying that you recognize my voice stand up in court?’
‘No chance.’
‘That’s what I figure too, but there it is, you recognize it. I didn’t want him back in my life, I can promise you that and it’s the real reason I’m out here. I didn’t like making that phone call to you or goading you or even thinking he knew where that gun was. Did it turn out to be the gun used to kill them?’