by Kirk Russell
‘I hear that as a threat, warden, and I’ll play this for the judge. Let’s hold right there until we see each other.’
The sheriff broke the connection and Marquez didn’t feel any better for having talked to him. The wardens dropped him in Hoopa and Voight picked him up there. Two hours later they slowed along the front of the SCSO in Yreka and in the lot were three TV vans and a half-dozen reporters.
‘I’m supposed to pull up here with you in the back in handcuffs. He wants to make sure they get you on local TV so you can never work effectively undercover up here again. But we’ll go in a back way.’
Harknell was stiff and tense with anger when he learned that’s what had happened. He confronted Voight with Marquez ten feet away seated at a chair in an interview room with the door wide open.
‘Why wasn’t he handcuffed?’
‘I didn’t arrest him.’
‘You’d better have a very good reason.’
‘I do. I have nothing to charge him with.’
It got loud now.
‘You have a double murder.’
‘There’s no evidence.’
‘You’re relieved of duty as lead investigator. I’m replacing you.’
‘Then I’m going to tell you that you can’t hold him or charge him.’
‘I’m reassigning you to a night patrol unit but not until you get your weight within department parameters. You’re on leave until then and unless you can produce doctor’s evidence that your weight is uncontrollable that will not be paid leave. You can draw from sick days and vacation. Do not take away any of the files relating to the case. I want everything related to it on my desk in twenty minutes.’
‘My weight is none of your business.’
‘I just gave you orders.’
The sheriff stood a long minute looking at Marquez and getting a hard stare back. Then he walked away without arresting or charging Marquez with anything.
The rest of it Marquez saw later that night on local TV in a Redding motel room. Voight must have delivered the files to the sheriff before walking out the front and gathering the news reporters, several that he knew, and telling the cameras that he had just been put on an indefinite leave of absence for refusing to arrest a Department of Fish and Game officer and falsely charge him with the murders of Terry Ellis and Sarah Steiner. He allowed that those charges might still come but guaranteed they would be dropped immediately following election day and dropping them would be followed by an apology that he didn’t want to be part of.
Marquez’s photo didn’t run and the local TV angle was tensions in the sheriff’s office boiling over ahead of Tuesday’s election. One reporter speculated that Harknell had shot himself in the foot. Marquez called Voight’s cell after watching the coverage on two channels.
‘Thank you.’
‘I didn’t do it for you. I did it for myself. I thought it was bullshit last time he was so intent on getting you to the office so he could sit in on the questioning. He has moved me to the graveyard shift driving a patrol car. I’m done as an investigator as long as he’s sheriff and the kid moving up has you as job one, so stay the hell out of the county for the next week. As soon as the election is over he’ll lay off you. In the meantime he’ll have everyone looking for you. He’ll call a press conference and have a new angle tomorrow.’
Marquez flew south-west from Oakland early the next morning and sat with two LAPD homicide detectives then recounted what Colson told him yesterday. The detectives took him to the warehouse which was out near the border with Glendale in a white-painted concrete building in a rundown area that wouldn’t attract much attention from anyone. He stood in front of the building and looked at the railroad tracks off to his left and the freeway onramp not a quarter mile from the building.
They showed him where the guard was found and apologized for calling US Fish and Wildlife first, but had reasoned the cache of animal parts was so large and varied they figured it was a Fed deal.’
‘We’ve got a copy for you of what US Fish and Wildlife catalogued.’
‘I’ve got that already.’
They showed him where the young Hispanic guard was shot. Inside the building it was cool and dark and he looked at the pool of darkened blood on the concrete and the spaces where the live animals were kept and the rooms where animal parts were stacked.
They drove from there to the address Colson gave him. No one answered but a neighbor volunteered that the two people who lived there had left in the middle of the night. The neighbor described a woman that she knew as Marianne so accurately that Marquez turned to one of the detectives and said, ‘Different name, but that’s Lia Mibaki.’
‘Maybe this Colson tipped them.’
‘Or they’ll be back.’
‘Or he tipped them and all this is to fuck with you.’
‘He lost a warehouse here. It’s more likely he wants to shed everyone connected with it. But he also sent me back with an offer to our department to make a deal with him.’
Marquez paused there. Colson had also given him something else and the detectives weren’t going to like it and might react against it. But it could fit.
‘He gave me one other name and that’s someone he claims is inside your department who has been on his payroll for years. His words were, “I’ve paid this guy for a decade to watch out for me and he owes for the warehouse.”’
‘Give us the name.’
‘Pat Tillerson.’
One detective said, ‘Pat?’ The other shook his head. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘It’s what he said. Who is Pat Tillerson?’
‘Someone we work with.’
‘I’ve got to head to the airport. Call me.’
FORTY-SIX
The Best Western Hotel in Corte Madera was just off the freeway, not that far from where Marquez lived. He liked the proximity and the rooms were reasonable enough to where he could get reimbursed or at least had a chance of getting reimbursed if he put an informant up here. Or that’s the way it used to be.
When he couldn’t reach Hauser by phone he stopped there, found Hauser’s room, and knocked on the door. He knocked harder the second time and when nothing happened went down to the front desk and showed the Visa card the room was charged to. Even then they were reluctant to open the door, but after they did and he saw the bed was made and the carpet looking like it hadn’t been walked on since it was vacuumed, he got the manager to check with the cleaning staff. A maid reported she didn’t have to do anything in the room this morning.
Marquez took that back to his car and called Hauser. Behind him, he heard the low roar of the freeway as Hauser’s cell rang. He answered on the fifth ring.
‘I’m checking in with you, Matt. How are you doing?’
‘Not well.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the hotel room you rented for me and on my back with a bad migraine. I can’t talk long.’
Hauser who hurt too much to talk long did a riff now on his wife and his wife’s lawyer and the restraining order forbidding him to go near his house in Piedmont. He said his lawyer told him again this morning that he should quit cooperating with Fish and Game as it wasn’t a reciprocal arrangement. Marquez didn’t cut him off or interrupt. He listened to the whole thing and waited for Hauser to return to his headache.
When he did, Marquez interrupted before he could end the call.
‘Where’s Peason?’
‘He’s not taking my calls. I’ve made at least ten calls to him in the last twenty-four hours. I’ve got meetings later today. I’ve got to try to get some rest.’
‘Tell me your room number there again? There’s a place in that shopping mall across the street that has chicken soup that might help you. I’ll get them to send some over.’
‘The room number is 215 but if I eat anything when I feel like this I throw it up.’
‘You’re on your back in bed?’
‘I’m in bad shape, Lieutenant. I can’t talk anymore today.’<
br />
‘I need you to try Barry Peason again.’
Marquez heard a loud exhale and then, ‘You know what, Lieutenant, I’m going to follow my lawyer’s advice from here. I’ll check out of the room tomorrow and I’ll pay for it. I’ll have them reverse whatever is on your credit card. My wife and I have come to an agreement on some funds. Even if you haven’t been able to do anything for me, I appreciate your efforts.’
‘It was never about you.’
‘Maybe it should have been.’
Marquez thought about that last comment before pulling out of the lot. It was dusk and orange at the horizon with a clear cold night coming. He reached Ridge Road and turned onto the gravel drive to his house. There are things that can make you feel small and mistakes you make with an investigation that are born of believing a source is going to come through for you despite the apparent truth.
Marquez knew in the first weeks of talking with Hauser that Hauser was skirting giving him any real information. He just didn’t know why. When after meeting him and Hauser was still reluctant Marquez knew he wasn’t the source he hoped he would be, yet he didn’t let go of him. I needed him and I let him string me along and I should have let him go, he thought. I should have listened to Waller.
But it goes that way sometimes. You work with an informant, someone with a grudge and information, you nurse the contact and most often they’re in it for themselves and you work with that. You work toward the day when they give you the piece of information that moves the investigation. Other times that investment is a waste and you have to own up to getting burned or used or drawn into the world of someone who is emotionally troubled.
In the walk from his car into the house he let Hauser go. He got a beer from the refrigerator, opened it, and moved out on the back deck. He sat and took a drink and looked out over the dark of the trees below to the last red line on the horizon above the ocean. Where would he turn now? He tapped his phone and let it go dark as he weighed the risks and failure with Hauser causing him to doubt himself. Get over it, he thought. It happens. He picked up his phone, scrolled contacts, found Barbara Jones’ number and called it.
‘I was just thinking about you, Lieutenant.’
‘Were you?’
‘I’m up here in Siskiyou County and I just heard on the radio that an LAPD officer was shot by a suspect and that a SWAT team got into a firefight with two suspects wanted in the killing of a man guarding a large cache of illegal animal products in a warehouse in LA. It sounds like it just happened.’
‘Let me call you back in a few minutes.’
He found the card he got from one of the detectives and called.
‘Yeah, they came back for a duffel bag of cash they left behind and a surveillance team recognized them as they cruised the neighborhood before going into the house. They approached and knocked and the woman opened fire. One of our guys got hit in the leg. Our SWAT guys showed up and called them out and lobbed tear gas in through the living-room window. It looks like she shot her partner and then tried to get away from the gas by running out the back to a neighbor’s house. They weren’t going to let her do that and when she took a shot at one of the SWAT guys they took her out. Look, I’ve got to run here but we’ll be in touch.’
Marquez called Barbara Jones back and she answered with, ‘You must need me.’
‘I’ve got doubts about Matt Hauser.’
‘No kidding, you’ve got doubts? I’d hate to be waiting around for you to ask me to marry you. You are slow.’
‘My dreams die hard. Why don’t you help me along?’
‘Ask me what you want to know?’
‘Do you know all ENTR employees?’
‘There are one hundred and two employees. I know something about most of them.’
‘Barry Peason.’
‘He’s a biologist.’
‘Attached to what team?’
‘You’ve got it all down now, don’t you? He’s attached to the one you’re interested in, WPT, the Water Project Team.’
Marquez paused before gambling.
‘Why isn’t he at work?’
‘Good question.’
‘Where is he?’
‘No one seems to know.’
‘What’s his connection to Hauser besides the team?’
‘I can’t talk about that but I’m working on it.’
‘You need to talk to me about it. Didn’t you say we’re on the same side?’
‘We are and I wish I could. I like you and I like the way you do your job. I make more in three months than you make in a year but you work harder.’
It was coming together for Marquez. More of the pieces were fitting and he felt the tiredness slipping away. He couldn’t see anything close to all of it yet, but he saw more and he pushed now.
‘How did Hauser transfer eight point two million dollars? How did he pull that off?’
‘He was trusted. He was a team head and there are monthly audits. He knew when it would be caught. Everything he’s done he scripted.’
‘Wouldn’t he need help?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I’m making a guess.’
‘Embezzlers tend to work alone.’
‘But what if you’re moving money inside the company to a project that’s off screen and only a few people know what it’s for, and then you move most of it again thinking the people behind the secret project can’t do a thing about it without hanging themselves. What happens then? I’ll make a guess at that too. Those who set up the secret project decided to play hardball with the embezzler. They created a phoney record of where the money was transferred from and then sold that to the FBI who then started investigating Hauser.’
‘Lie to the Feds?’
‘Sure, they’re already in pretty deep with the pike project and they need to destroy Hauser’s credibility. That’s job one and they need someone honest like you who is boots on the ground and chasing the leads they’ve planted in phoney files uncovered in Hauser’s impounded computers. Hauser tried to screw them and they’re giving it right back to him. They upped the stakes.’
‘That’s your going theory, that Hauser was overseeing the pike project from the start and stole money allocated for it?’ Jones asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And I’m a patsy being encouraged to investigate Hauser and find the third hatchery and the rest in the other states by the very people who set it up in the first place.’
‘Somebody set it up, you agree with that, right?’
She was quiet. She didn’t want to admit yet that Hauser was right in claiming the project originated at ENTR. She was that kind of loyal. She couldn’t bring herself to say it. But too many fragments fit. Hauser was part of the original scheme and likely promised a lot of money to speed along the inevitable changes coming to the river ecosystems. Once in, he saw a way to get even more money and calculated that they wouldn’t be able to come after him without revealing the pike project. It also explained the dance with Fish and Game.
‘Of course, somebody set it up.’
‘You hear me, right?’
‘I hear you but your theory is wrong.’
‘What was the name of the guy with you at the second hatchery? Wasn’t it Ned Cowler? Go back to him.’
‘You’re crazy. He’s worth a hundred million. He wouldn’t take that kind of risk.’
‘Ask him.’
‘What else have you figured out?’
‘That you and I both know where Barry Peason is. He’s at the third hatchery.’
She was silent for a moment then said, ‘Look, we’ll solve the problem. If it started with us, we’ll solve it.’
‘You don’t know where the third hatchery is, do you? You’re looking for it. Are you on your own with this or is Cowler encouraging you to look for it?’
‘He is as serious about finding out the truth as you are.’
‘I think he already knows the truth. You think about what I just said and maybe between us we c
an find it in time. Are you good with that?’
‘You’re wrong, but I’m in.’
When he hung up he wished he had said be careful. He almost called her back.
FORTY-SEVEN
About half of the twenty-five thousand registered voters in Siskiyou County turned out for the special election for sheriff that Mark Harknell lost by 617 votes. He was said to be reflective and not intending to ask for a recount so as to prevent the county from needlessly spending money. Marquez heard the results on an early-morning radio report and almost called Voight, but instead listened to a local radio station interview the departing Sheriff Harknell who would vacate his office today.
He spoke of standing up for a rural America under attack from outside forces, citing his opposition to the proposed removal of four dams along the Klamath as a stance in defense of farmers and ranchers. He painted himself as defending the county against special interests and radical liberal elements that wanted to impose their agenda on families who had lived for generations in Siskiyou County. He brushed over the unsolved murders and growing preponderance of meth labs and large-scale dope farms his opponent had hammered away at and sounded more like a man who had lost a run for Congress than a sheriff seeking re-election.
The call from Voight came soon after. ‘Are you anywhere nearby?’
‘Yeah, I can’t get enough of your county.’
‘I got reinstated early this morning by the new sheriff. He wants me to wait to go into the building until Harknell clears his desk.’
‘Maybe you could help him clear it. Did you think he was going to lose?’
‘No, it surprised me, but from the way he wanted to name you a suspect maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Enough people must have felt he was overstepping his role. He told me once that Ellis and Steiner had no business being in the county supporting the dam removal and that what happened to them could have happened to anyone doing what they were doing. I don’t mean to say he didn’t want to solve the murders, but in his head your department is part of a bigger problem of outsiders imposing their will, so it’s not hard for him to see you as a bad guy. Even if the murder charges didn’t stick he wasn’t hurting anybody that didn’t already need hurting in his mind. Does that make sense?’