by Kirk Russell
They followed Harknell around the house on a garden path and into an office of much higher quality than the rest of the house. Floor to ceiling windows faced Mount Shasta where wind high on the mountain lifted plumes of new snow off the summit and spun it into funnels in the clear sky. The floor of the office was oiled walnut planking and the white-painted walls were smooth and clean. The chairs were plush, his desk suggestive of his ambition. Harknell directed them to a couch and Marquez took a chair.
‘What have you got? Let’s hear it or do you want scout here to talk first and tell how he found Colson, who I know for a fact has been paying him off for years.’
Voight asked a dozen questions about what contact Harknell had with Colson and for how long and whether he had ever met with him at the cabin where Marquez arrested him yesterday.
‘I’ve never met with him anywhere. I’ve never met the man or had reason to.’
‘Did you ever make a phone call to Texas and confirm he had once worked for the state police?’
‘I did after you got on to him and scout here. I don’t have a date for you.’
‘They have a record of you making an inquiry two and a half years ago.’
‘Bullshit, they do. No one keeps records like that.’
‘This is informal here,’ Voight said, ‘but if they send me what they’ve promised and I compare it to your phone records and it comes back that you lied to me, that’s an issue.’
‘What if I did make an inquiry? If you’re sheriff and you’re like me you want to know everything you can about anyone questionable. If I checked him or anyone else two and a half years ago and can’t remember doing that it doesn’t mean jack shit.
‘Now, contrast that with you, Rich. You get up in the morning and if you’re sober you come into work when you’re ready and then sit at your desk until ten minutes to twelve and then go to that diner where you wolf as much as you can before you come back and shuffle papers around and nap in your chair ahead of going home. That’s your day. It’s busier as sheriff and if you don’t want to take my word for it, talk to your boss after he’s been in there a couple of months.’
Voight glanced at Marquez and that was the signal for Marquez to get in. Marquez stood as he started talking.
‘Colson will never testify.’
‘That’s for sure, son.’
‘I went to his hideout.’
‘I’m sure you’ve been there many times.’
‘There’s a young woman who lives there who has picked you out of a line-up. She’s here in Yreka right now. She was brought in last night. Would you remember sleeping with an under-age teenage girl more than once or does that just get mixed in with the rest of the job?’
‘Well, Scout, you’re a man, you know how it is. I have wandered occasionally but I don’t remember any teenaged whores. If you want to put her through that you can do that to her. You’ve got to remember a young woman can be fragile.’
‘Set what you did to her aside for a moment. What’s really going on here, Mark, is that your visits to Colson’s hideout can be proved.’
‘It’s a lie.’
‘Here’s the next thing. I was on the phone with Barbara Jones not long before she was shot. I know why she called you.’
Harknell broke off staring at him and looked over at Voight.
‘That’s true. She and I talked a number of times.’ He pointed a finger at Marquez. ‘Several of those were about you.’
‘I’m saying I know why she called you.’
Now Voight slid a copy of phone records across the coffee table and Harknell went to his desk for reading glasses. He picked up the printout. That her recent calls would get scrutinized couldn’t be any surprise to him yet he seemed unsettled. He tossed the paper back down on the table, dismissing it, but the gesture didn’t carry.
‘Again, I talk to a lot of people.’
‘You talked to her late in the afternoon of the day she was killed. I talked to her after you. She was looking for the third hatchery. That’s why she called you.’ Marquez glanced at Voight and gambled. ‘You went out to meet her.’
‘Gentlemen, excuse me for a minute.’
Harknell got up and left the room and they looked at each other wondering what was going on. Voight put on a gun for the trip out here and reached around and unclasped the holster. He didn’t like the abrupt departure. When they heard a car engine start, Voight jumped up.
‘He’s running.’
They got outside in time to see Harknell accelerate away. Voight leaned into his car and got on his radio and a deputy picked up Harknell. When he turned onto the southbound I-5 onramp two highway patrol units moved in to help follow. But he wasn’t pulled over because Marquez argued against it.
‘Let’s pass him. He hasn’t been arrested or charged with anything and he’s going to try to get on his boat. There may be something there he wants to lose. Get me there ahead of this convoy and I’ll take care of the boat.’
Voight got on his radio and let the deputies know that he was going around and then hit the gas and the car leapt forward and they took the Shasta Dam exit and as they rolled through Shasta City the call came that Harknell had just exited and was three miles behind them and driving slowly.
‘He’s scared and he’s unsure what to do, but he’s headed to the lake,’ Marquez said, and pushed Voight to drive the road hard. He figured he had five to ten minutes, probably closer to five after he got through the gate and onto Harknell’s boat.
After Marquez got around the dock gate he reached in through the cabin window and got the cabin door open. Now he cut the ignition wires and pushed them up under the dash. He was back out the gate and off the dock as the strange convoy rolled in and a red-faced and shaking Harknell confronted the deputies. They kept quiet as Voight tried to talk to him.
‘Goddamn you, you drunk fraud, so help me God, I’ll have your job.’
Harknell turned to the highway patrol officer, said loudly, ‘Eddie, your dad and I go way back and if you’ve got any questions about this bastard’s insinuations call him. He turned back to Voight, his hands shaking as he fumbled for his key to the dock gate. He opened the gate and maybe he was unaware it didn’t close behind him as he strode toward his boat or maybe at heart he knew it was over.
He cast the bow line off before getting onboard and two more sheriff deputies pulled in. Marquez stepped onto the dock and walked down to Harknell’s boat. Harknell had a gun near his right knee and was hunched over the dash trying to figure out why his key didn’t work.
Harknell turned.
‘Step on this boat and I’ll shoot you and I’ll be within my rights.’
‘I won’t get on the boat, Sheriff, and you don’t want to shoot anyone.’
His forehead was beaded with sweat, his cheeks red, eyes desperate and Marquez kept talking. Harknell started to rise then stumbled and sat back down in the seat, and Voight was now on the dock approaching with two deputies.
‘You’re a fisherman, Sheriff. You’ve got to tell me. You know what’ll happen. Tell me now before they get here. Those pike are going to the delta. They’ll kill off everything. You might hate me but you don’t want that.’
Did Marquez expect anything? No. But was it worth a try? Why not? Just as Voight and the deputies arrived and a moment before Harknell was ordered to place his hands on the boat’s dashboard, he whispered, ‘One-Two-Three-One Burnside Road.’
FIFTY-ONE
The SOU team was too far south to get there but a Siskiyou warden and two SOU met Marquez at the cut-off to Burnside Road. He laid out his plan.
‘I want them to think there are more of us. I’ll go in first and five minutes later, you.’
He pointed to one of the SOU wardens and she nodded. The other two would follow her.
‘I’m going to show you a photo I pulled off the Internet of a biologist named Barry Peason. I hope I got the right Barry Peason.’
Nobody laughed.
‘I’m joking. It’s him. He
’s a biologist and this other guy is named Matt Hauser. I don’t know who else is here and I don’t know if these guys are here either, but I’m hoping they are and we’re not too late. I’ll go in now.’
Marquez turned in at a mailbox on a gray redwood post with stick-on letters reading 1231. It was a ranch and as he saw three cars and the buildings his first reaction was that Harknell may have lied and this was a legitimate ranch. A Ford 250 was parked next to a Honda and beat-up Subaru all-wheel drive. He saw a barn, a house, two other out buildings, three horses in a corral, alfalfa in a field, things he would expect to see on a small ranch.
He didn’t see Hauser’s car or the white Prius registered to Barry Peason. He studied the barn as he knocked on the door of the house, and then knocked again. As he did, the door to the barn rolled open sideways and almost silently but for a mechanical whirr, and when he saw what was happening he called Sheila Braga. She was the lead warden coming in.
‘I’m almost to you,’ she said.
‘Block the road and bring the others up fast. You’re about to see a white Prius with Peason at the wheel coming at you. Don’t do anything until there are three of you. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m checking out the barn and I can see fish tanks. The set-up is a lot like the last one.’
He walked through and confirmed what he knew he would find, empty tanks, the operation being shuttered and Peason on his way out. He called Braga back.
‘The pike are gone.’
‘We’ve got him.’
‘Bring him back here. I think the fish moved this morning. There are wet tire tracks in the barn and they’re from a bigger vehicle, not Peason’s Prius.’
Peason shook with nervousness and stalled and then blamed Hauser for everything. He didn’t know where Hauser was and no, Hauser had never been here. He said no one else was in the house or anywhere on the premises and gave them permission to check. Two guys were southbound toward the delta in a pickup truck with plastic coolers carrying the young pike.
Marquez let Peason believe if he cooperated it might all work out for him and he could undo everything and start over. He said the truck with the fish left two hours ago but wouldn’t release pike into the delta until dusk. There were multiple coolers and approximately three thousand fingerlings. They might release from a boat but he wasn’t sure and got more and more vague about the actual release spot, repeating that it wasn’t his responsibility.
‘Whose is it?’
‘I don’t even know their names.’
‘You don’t know the names of the guys driving the fish to the delta?’
‘The first time I saw them was this morning.’
‘Who paid for this hatchery?’
‘ENTR but only a few people know about it.’
‘We’ll need the names of everyone.’
‘I’m not a manager.’
‘You’re a scientist.’
‘That’s right. You need to talk to the manager of the project. When I took this on it wasn’t to dump invasive species into the delta. No one told me that’s what was going to happen. I don’t know anything about that part of it. This was an experiment to see if we could breed northern pike. The rest is something else that I don’t have anything to do with.’
Peason was scared and shocked and his story shifted. Marquez figured they couldn’t wait as he fumbled for a way out.
‘Here’s where you’re at. You’re the guy in charge of the California hatcheries and who knows where the Oregon and Washington hatcheries are. You’re not a bystander watching to see if we stop this delta release. You are absolutely fucked if it happens.
‘The first round died of a virus, the second was stopped, and this is the third. If it makes it into the river there’s nothing we can do and you’ll become known as the biologist who micro-managed a multi species die-off. You’ll go to prison and you’ll see a flood of civil suits that will continue after you’re out of prison as the pike take over and the natives die-off. You’ll never see a share of the money Hauser promised you, but the good news is you’ll never have to worry about money again. You won’t have any. How much did Hauser promise you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about?’
But he did and Marquez could picture Peason’s role now. Hauser had promised him something substantial, enough to where Peason had hung on until the end. Peason had gambled and lost and couldn’t accept that. He didn’t see ENTR trying to pin it all on him and Hauser and the promise of money going away.
He gave Peason a few minutes and then stepped away and called Wheeler to see if he could get his plane in the air. Wheeler said thirty minutes. Questioning Peason could wait. All that mattered now was stopping that truck. He walked back over to Peason and sat down.
‘Do you want to stay and help us or should we run you down to the county jail and get you booked?’
Turned out the scientist in him didn’t need much time to do a deep analysis. Five minutes was all he needed to think it through. He wanted to help.
FIFTY-TWO
Marquez took Peason with him. He knew Peason hadn’t told him everything and when Wheeler couldn’t find a blue pickup with an orange tarp over the bed after flying Highway 99, his gut feeling got a little deeper. He watched Peason nervously adjusting his glasses and the zipper of his fleece coat and asked again, ‘Orange tarp, blue Ford pickup?’
‘Same as I told you before.’
‘We aren’t finding it from the air.’
‘Maybe your pilot flew over when they were under a gas station canopy.’
‘Or maybe they took a different road.’
‘This is the highway they’re supposed to drive.’
‘Call the driver.’
‘I don’t have his number.’
‘Someone knows where they are. Call them.’
‘Your plane will find them.’
But the spotter plane didn’t find them. It was Muller and four of the SOU team in the late afternoon who picked up on a white pickup towing a power boat, its bed covered with a gray tarp. The pickup pulled in at Brannan Island State Recreation Area and drove through and drove out and continued up the road to the Isleton Launch Ramp near the Ramos Oil Company. The two men in the pickup started to back down that ramp then changed their minds and pulled out and Muller kept two of the team with them as they checked out other boat launches before returning to the Brannan Island Recreation Area.
But they didn’t launch their boat, and instead spread food out on one of the picnic tables and started a charcoal fire in one of the barbecue stations. Two steaks marinated in a shallow plastic dish as the coals readied. One of the men walked down at the boat launch and toed the invasive water hyacinth that had grown up the launch ramp while the other swigged beer and served potato salad onto paper plates and kept the sea gulls at bay.
Muller pulled out the SOU wardens just as the steaks were hitting the coals. He told Marquez they had another pickup to check out on a levee road above prospect Slough, and the pair at Brennan were cooking and eating, so probably the wrong pickup.
Marquez reached the delta soon after. He pulled off on the shoulder outside Isleton and turned to Peason.
‘You’re not going to ride any farther with me, Barry. I want you to get out and face the truck. I’m going to arrest you and there’s a warden on the way who will take you to get booked.’
‘Why are you doing this after I gave you the Oregon and Washington hatcheries?’
‘You mean, why am I double-crossing you?’
‘Yes!’
‘I don’t want you riding with me as we look for the pike you raised. I’m in a bad mood, Barry, and I don’t trust you much. Turn around.’
Marquez put restraints on his wrists and a warden arrived and Marquez touched Peason’s right shoulder. ‘Stay here. I’m going to talk to the warden a minute before we get you loaded up. And I’m going to borrow your phone a minute too.’
He pulled a cell phone from Peason’s coat as he stepped away and Peason yel
led, ‘You can’t do that. You don’t have the right. That’s illegal.’
Marquez checked text messages and then forwarded the last dozen to himself. The last text Peason sent read: ‘launching rio.’ He read emails and scrolled through Contacts and forwarded several to himself. He pulled the battery from the phone and gave it to the warden after turning Peason over.
‘Where’s my phone?’
‘I slid it back into your pocket. Have you ever been arrested before?’
‘No.’
‘You’re going to have to give up your phone and wallet when they book you. Same thing when you do prison time, but they’ll give it back to you when you get out. The warden has your phone battery. If you remember anything before you’re booked and charged then call me and I’ll sit with the district attorney’s office and tell them in the very end you helped us. Or you could do that right now. What’s “launching rio” mean?’
Peason shrugged and Marquez could only come up with one answer for the biologist to do this. Money.
He talked to Muller as he pulled away. ‘I’m five minutes from the Brannan Recreation launch. Peason got a text off as we were driving that reads, “launching rio,” and this isn’t Rio de Janeiro.’
It was Muller’s team and Muller’s call about how to do this. Muller said, ‘Hold on, John,’ and got on his radio as Marquez passed a slow car and got back into his lane. Thirty seconds later, as he made the left turn into the Brannan Recreation Area, the driver he had passed sat on her horn and flipped him off as she went by. He wound along the narrow asphalt road and Muller came back with, ‘Are you there?’
‘I’m here and the boat is in the water with one guy in it and the other running down to the boat right now. He’s going to get in before I get to him and I’m looking at coolers stacked in the back. This is it.’
The second man climbed on the bow and the boat chugged into reverse. They watched Marquez drive down to the boat launch and jump out and though they weren’t looking at a uniform, they knew he was after them. One was Hispanic, one white, both young, the driver’s gaze leaving him as he straightened the boat out and put his sunglasses on. The stern rode low with the weight of the fish coolers and the boat slowly started upriver.