Die-Off

by Kirk Russell

  ‘Sure, not much different than when you were selling new inmates to prison gangs. You pocket the money and forget about it.’

  His name came to Marquez now. York. Pierce York and one of four guards paid by a prison gang to get access to new prisoners they wanted for sex. It worked until one of the unwilling sex partners needed intestinal surgery following a gang rape. That was the young man in the headline Pierce just showed him.

  ‘York thumped the top of the bar with a calloused index finger. ‘Get out of here and show up in the morning or don’t, I don’t give a damn which.’

  Marquez drove back to the motel. He cleaned his gun as he talked with Hauser. Hauser was at the Best Western Marquez had booked him into and had no new information and was very down. As cleaning fluid sat in the gun barrel, Marquez leaned back in the motel room’s one chair and listened.

  ‘I wish I’d never gotten involved. I’ve destroyed my career and my personal life.’

  ‘Return the money.’

  ‘I’m not a thief.’

  ‘You gambled ENTR wouldn’t go public with the missing money, but they surprised you. Now they have to tie you to the pike project and they’re working on that and you still aren’t giving me what I need to help you.’

  ‘You want some real world, Lieutenant? Go online and Google my name and you’ll see people questioning my microclimate models. Those questions weren’t there a month ago. That’s ENTR working at discrediting me. Do you know I was considered for a Nobel Prize?’

  ‘I hadn’t heard but I know you’re letting a criminal case get built. Call your lawyer tomorrow morning and let him float some ideas by ENTR management. It came out of accounts you were overseeing. You’re probably the one guy who could figure out how to get it back.’

  ‘If it got returned tomorrow the pike in the third hatchery would get released into the rivers. Do you want that?’

  ‘They won’t get released if your biologist friend helps us.’

  ‘He can’t do anything without risking his career.’

  ‘He needs to take that risk.’

  Hauser hung up and Marquez reassembled the gun then phoned Voight and the two wardens who would back him up tomorrow. The Del Norte sheriff was also backing him up with three deputies. The wardens would be out of uniform and in a faded blue pickup carrying chainsaws. If Marquez was taken down a dirt road they would be there with the cover of being out there to cut firewood from deadfall. Marquez also had a small GPS tracker stitched into the tongue of his right boot and another in his coat. He made the call to Waller as promised and then went through his gear again, feeling nervous in a way he didn’t usually experience.

  He lay on his back on the motel bed and talked with Katherine before trying to sleep. At three in the morning just after he had dozed off his phone rang. He recognized the biologist Barry Peason’s cell number, but when he answered all that was on the other end was someone breathing and listening. He tried for a couple of minutes to get Peason to talk and left the line open.

  ‘We need your help, Barry. Talk to me. You can do that without any risk to yourself.’

  Marquez paused. He listened and waited and the phone screen threw blue light on the motel room wall.

  ‘The best thing you can do now is help us.’

  There was a soft click as the line went dead.

  FORTY-FOUR

  There were rain showers in the early morning as Marquez waited in the dark outside the bar, but it looked like it was going to clear. When a pickup drove up it wasn’t the bartender, instead a sun-weathered older guy who said he was a boat captain and that Marquez should follow him to the wharf.

  Marquez talked to the two wardens and the Del Norte officers as he followed the pickup to a pier and a fishing boat. Ten minutes later the boat’s diesels fired and the boat vibrated with the engines’ thrum as the captain pushed the throttle forward. They cleared the harbor and churned south in good-sized swell.

  After sunrise as the visibility improved a Zodiac came into view, and then ran alongside them. The captain slowed and put the boat on autopilot. He took Marquez to the crane used to bring supplies onboard and lift out the fish catch and told him to get in the basket.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m going to lower you onto their boat.’

  ‘Have you ever done this before?’

  ‘Plenty of times with illegals and I’ve only lost a couple of them.’ He smiled. ‘When you lose one they don’t pay you. I haven’t done this in a while but you’re fine. I haven’t forgotten how.’

  Marquez climbed into the crane basket and the boat captain swung him out over the ocean as the fishing boat pitched and rolled and the Zodiac alongside rose and fell underneath the basket holding Marquez. He climbed over the edge of the basket and they grabbed at his legs. When he let go and dropped he knocked both men down, catching one on the cheekbone with his elbow.

  The Zodiac accelerated away, angling for the shore with Marquez seated at the bow. They put in at a broken-down pier, got out fast and hurried over to a green Suburban. Guns came out and a canvas sack went over Marquez’s head. He felt the poke of a needle and heard a muffled, ‘Have a nice sleep.’

  He didn’t remember losing consciousness but he knew from the sound of the tires as he came to that they were now on a smooth dirt road. He touched his coat. His phone was still with him. The bag was tied loosely at his neck and his face and hair were drenched in sweat. He slowly moved his left boot to his right. His boots were still on so the GPS tracker was intact.

  He listened to the road and talking that was low and indistinct. The road climbed and he felt the curves and heard the engine pulling harder as it got steeper. They bounced in ruts that jarred and the driver swore, and maybe half an hour later they slowed and as they stopped the bag came off and he smelled pine and fir and felt the cold air.

  ‘Out. Time to walk.’

  Now it was just two men and him and a shadow of a trail climbing along a creek. They startled a black bear and the one in the front took a couple of steps toward it to get the big bear moving. An orange Coast Guard plane passed overhead and the man nearest looked at him and smiled as if the plane was searching for Marquez and the idea of finding him up here was a joke.

  The trail steepened as it left the creek and under the brush and along the rocks was a few inches of icy new snow. They struggled upward and then hit another dirt track and followed that up and a mile later walked into an encampment that looked to Marquez like a back to the earth group inhabiting a failed settlement from a former century. Blue plastic tarps stretched over lean-to structures and the remains of cabins, smoldering wood fires, beards and beads, and faces turned toward them but the men leading him didn’t say a word to anyone.

  They walked through the encampment and picked up a trail through cedars that led to a cabin with a stout wood door and two guards. One held a shotgun, the other an AR-15 on a sling over his right shoulder. That man rapped on the door and said, ‘The prisoner is here.’

  Now Marquez was looking at an injured Jim Colson. His head was shaved. An angry red scar that looked very raw and was laced with black stitches curved in a half moon under the back of his skull. His left eye was also bruised and he looked weak and pale though his look was one of disdain. He motioned Marquez to a chair and the cabin door was pulled shut.

  ‘You may have made a bad mistake coming here, but we’ll talk.’

  ‘What happened to your head?’

  Colson didn’t answer at first and Marquez sat down. The only light was a battery lantern and a dying fire in the stone fireplace.

  ‘I’ve come close to killing you more than once, Marquez. I’ve got a twitchy sniper working for me, an Afghan vet, I gave the go to take you down in the Washougal Basin. Half of your skull would have been in the brush behind you if he hadn’t missed.’

  Marquez knew about the shot taken. He had backed away fast. He listened as Colson explained a change he’d come to after receiving the head wound that he touched now with his le
ft hand. His voice was deep and hoarse.

  ‘I’ve had to reconsider many things since I got hurt and there is an opening here for you. There is a way we could do a deal. You won’t like it and I’m not sure what I’ll do with you if you turn it down, but if you want to hear it I’ll lay it out for you.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I have more than enough money and I could give you lists of people, networks, smuggling lines, shippers, law enforcement officers, as long as I have in writing a guarantee no one will come after me.’

  ‘You want out.’

  ‘That’s right, I want out, but not a plea deal. I’m not admitting to anything and I want to leave with everything I’ve earned and a guarantee no charges will ever be filed.’

  He said this without turning his head from the fire, but turned now, his eyes dark in the shadowy light, face impassive, his voice slow and soft.

  ‘It’s not a decision you’re going to make, Lieutenant, but you are the one who can make it happen. It means you wouldn’t hunt for me any longer and I wouldn’t think about killing you anymore. I would go away and you’d have all the names.’

  ‘How long have you used this place?’

  ‘Hippies settled this place forty years ago. They tricked the government and ended up with a ninety-nine-year lease. They grow dope and ratty vegetables and make craft-type crap they sell at flea markets. Some were born here. I killed one of the natives when I first got here. He was a young man whose girlfriend I slept with and he wanted to fight to the death. He’s buried down by the creek and they don’t like me much here, but they don’t dislike me anymore either. I give them money. I built a building with showers and put in a septic system so they don’t have to shit in the woods. I rebuilt this cabin and use it when I need to rest.’

  ‘Were you once a cop?’

  ‘Did she give you that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who.’

  Marquez took in the cabin. It was no more than fifteen feet by twelve feet. Stone walls, a stone fireplace, a cedar plank floor, a bed, a small iron stove and a grill in the fireplace that looked like it had been used to cook on. A five-gallon jug held water.

  ‘This is where I figured out I was Rider.’

  ‘And we’ve figured out who you were before.’

  There was a long silence and then, ‘Well, he doesn’t exist anymore.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘You need me, Lieutenant. You can’t get it done on your own. Everything you want to save is for sale and there’s more demand every year.’

  ‘I want to keep talking but I need to know more about you.’

  ‘I left Texas after finding out my wife had an affair as long as our marriage and that my son wasn’t mine. I would have killed the man who fathered the boy, but I couldn’t then. I had to wait for that. That was a humiliation like no other. I couldn’t stay there any longer. My ex lives in a trailer park on the outskirts of town now and waitresses at a dump that’s been there forever and pays nothing. She’s barely holding it together.

  ‘I sent a man to make her feel better and bring her flowers at the restaurant and ask her out last summer. Over dinner on their first date he offered her a weekend job across the border in a Mexican whorehouse. He said her face collapsed, but I’ll never forgive her. I’ll track her to her grave. The boy never made it out of high school and does grunt work for a fracking company. He’ll never go anywhere.’

  ‘Who were you when you left Texas? I want to hear you say the name.’

  ‘The man you’re asking about doesn’t exist anymore and doesn’t matter in this conversation.’

  ‘I want you to say your name.’

  ‘It’s Rider and I started into animal trafficking when I was a bartender. I bought illegal abalone and urchin for restaurants. Then a man I used to pour free drinks for connected me with a cartel that could deliver just about any Latin or South American animal. That worked into a relationship and an even broader pipeline. I developed Chinese buyers. They haggle over everything, but they pay their bills and they want everything. I can’t come close to giving them everything they want. That’s how much demand there is. Marquez, I’m offering you something you could only dream of and you’re taunting me with this name bullshit. Why are you doing that?’

  The cabin door creaked open and a guard apologized as a teenage girl appeared, sunlight shining from behind her. She spoke to Colson as if Marquez wasn’t there, telling him she needed to see him today and he ignored her until the guard pulled her away and the door pushed shut.

  ‘It’s different out here. They grow up faster but they don’t have much education. There are only so many things she’ll ever be able to do.’

  He stared at Marquez.

  ‘Your vanity is you go places without enough backup. You think you’re that good and your badge will cover the rest. You’re wrong about both and you’re a fool to offend me this morning.’

  ‘I’m not alone out here.’

  ‘Those two wardens got a flat tire. The Del Norte deputies got lost on a dirt road. You are alone. I could have you killed today and your body left where it will never be found.’

  ‘You didn’t bring me here to kill me and I’m interested in your deal but I have to know who I’m talking to.’

  ‘That’s a lie. You’re fucking with me but let’s get out of this cabin. Follow me.’

  They walked down the trail back to the encampment with two guards following and one in front. Marquez saw a couple of kids in the brush, an old pickup settling into the ground, blue smoke rising from a faded tepee. They stopped at a fire pit ringed with stones in a clearing with split logs for benches out front.

  ‘This is where the girl lives. Her parents first sent her to me as a way of paying down the money they owe me.’

  He gestured toward a small child who looked around the edge of a red blanket covering the opening to one of the lean-tos.

  ‘These people think they’re the start of a new civilization.’

  He turned to look at Marquez, eyes opaque, a strange smile forming.

  ‘Is a deal possible or is this just a waste of our time?’

  ‘That depends on how badly you want out.’

  ‘I’m offering to help you, Lieutenant. I’ll trade immunity for what you couldn’t gather in a lifetime.’

  He reached slowly and touched the back of his head.

  ‘This was a bad wound. I’ve been here weeks. I don’t need this anymore. We can make a deal or remain enemies. It’s your choice.’

  ‘I want to know who I’m dealing with first.’

  Colson took a gun now from one of his men and stood in front of Marquez and far enough back to where Marquez couldn’t lunge as he raised the gun and aimed at Marquez’s head. His eyes narrowed, his trigger finger tightened, and seconds passed with Marquez not looking away.

  ‘I’m not going to kill you today, but if we don’t make a deal I’m not going to let you keep looking for me. But you won’t stop, so it’s this or we deal.’

  ‘Show me you mean that.’

  Colson lowered the gun.

  ‘I’ll give you Lia and Arturo. She’s the one who almost blinded you. They’re in LA. I have an address in the cabin and I’ll get it and then you leave and you get forty-eight hours to answer my offer.’

  Marquez knew he was looking at Jim Colson, no doubt about it. He nodded at Colson and waited as Colson limped back to the cabin then returned with what he said was a way to find Lia and Arturo.

  ‘We’ll look for them and I’ll be back in touch. If we make a deal then when we do your name has to come from you. No one named Rider is getting immunity from anything.’

  Marquez left the encampment with the men who brought him here. They drove dirt roads for an hour until they came to a stop.

  ‘This is where you get out.’

  Marquez could see a long distance down a smooth Forest Service road. He saw where it disappeared into the trees.


  ‘Take me to the highway.’

  The man in the passenger seat turned and pointed a gun. ‘Out.’

  ‘You got it, bud. I’ll walk from here and I won’t forget you.’

  FORTY-FIVE

  Marquez walked for hours before the two wardens found him with the GPS trackers. But it was a call from Voight that let him know his cell phone was working again.

  ‘Bad news, Marquez, the sheriff wants me to bring you in. You can bet that’s about the election next Tuesday. He likes you for the murders. Do you want to let him go public with a warrant or do you want me to come pick you up and bring you in?’

  ‘Let me call Harknell first.’

  Marquez called the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office and asked for Sheriff Harknell, figuring that Harknell would pick up and tape the call.

  He picked up on the third ring. ‘Lieutenant, where are you?’

  ‘I’m waiting for Voight to arrive but before he does I want to make sure you and I understand each other.’

  ‘I’m for that.’

  ‘You’re playing this game with me and I know you’re going to say it’s not a game but you owe me at least the true reason why.’

  ‘You’re right, Warden, it’s not a game it’s a murder investigation.’

  ‘How is a false arrest going to help your credibility?’

  ‘We’ll let the courts decide guilt or innocence.’

  ‘Call whatever TV and print reporters you’ve contacted and tell them you’ve changed your mind about framing me.’

  ‘We’re not backing away and I’ve got some advice for you: confess and let your attorney cut a deal that keeps you off death row.’

  ‘Don’t hang up yet. You need to know I won’t let you get away with this. I told you that once before and I meant it. You don’t get to make a quiet apology later and explain how you were going with the best information you had at the time. It’s not going to work like that.’