by Kirk Russell
“Cold out here. It feels especially cold tonight.”
“Yeah, it does, and you know, that’s the part I’m not going to miss.”
“We’re getting older, I guess.”
“Think we’ve made any difference?”
“Sure, we’ve slowed it all down. Some of those people would still be out there poaching.”
Marquez talked with Alvarez about a case they’d never solved, a hunter who’d made it his mission to hunt down and kill mountain lions. As far as they knew he was still out there, and the rumor was he claimed his wife had been killed by a mountain lion. They knew he was from out of state and didn’t know much more about him, except that he had a knack for tracking lion. At midnight Alvarez said he’d rather take the first than second shift.
“Then I’ll see you at around 4:00.”
Shauf picked Marquez up on the levee road, dropped him at his truck, and he told her to go on to the safehouse and sleep. He’d see the night through with Alvarez. He ran the engine long enough to heat the cab, plugged his phone in to recharge, lowered the seat, turned the radio on low, and listened to Lucinda Williams singing. It didn’t take long for cold to seep back into the truck, and when he finally dozed he was listening to the wind high in the trees. He dreamed of a simpler time when he’d been much younger and the world had looked more open.
At 4:00, before hiking back out along the edge of the orchard to take over from Alvarez, he drank a cup of cold coffee. Then he made the mile walk from his truck. The cold wind had strengthened, and Alvarez said he’d been moving around to try to stay warm.
“She’s still in there, Lieutenant.”
After Alvarez faded into the pear trees Marquez repositioned himself. He zipped his coat collar up and about twenty minutes later saw headlights he recognized as Abe Raburn’s slow on the levee road. Checked his watch, 4:22, thinking, okay, here we go, we’re on. Shauf hadn’t found Raburn’s pickup when she’d checked the bars or his houseboat earlier, but here he was now. His headlights flashed through the bare orchard trees. He pulled up in front of the shed, parked, and went in. A few minutes later Cindy Raburn left the canning building. She hurried down the road to the house, and Marquez waited for Raburn to come out.
But nothing happened. Marquez had been close to calling the safehouse and waking the team, had expected him to load and go, but instead, the lights went out in the canning building and Raburn was still in there. Now, he came out and walked around on the gravel. It took Marquez a minute to realize Raburn was talking on a cell phone. Then up on the levee road a car slowed and turned down. Marquez read the profile as a Toyota hybrid, a Prius, as it drove past his position. It drove slowly along the gravel road until Raburn stepped out into the headlights and directed the driver to park near the canning building door.
The driver got out, and Marquez used the light-enhanced feature to tape boxes getting loaded into the rear of the hybrid. He called Shauf.
“Raburn showed up and took over for Isaac’s wife, and now we’ve got a driver picking up a load of boxes. Looks like Raburn Orchards boxes. Get everyone up at the safehouse. We’re rolling.”
He called Alvarez and woke him as the hybrid started moving. Alvarez picked up the car as it climbed up to the levee road and then gave it a lot of room. Marquez hustled out and up to the road, and Shauf dropped him at his truck.
“She’s going toward I-5,” Alvarez said.
“You say, she?”
“Looked like a white female at the wheel when it passed me, but I’m not sure yet.”
“How good a look did you get?”
“I didn’t. The driver is wearing a cap. I’m running the plates right now.”
“Good, because I didn’t get them when it went past.”
The hybrid got on 5 northbound and continued into the darkness beyond Sacramento. Cairo passed it and reconfirmed the driver was female and they already had a registration address in Thousand Oaks. Southern California.
“A long way from home,” Marquez said, and thought of the car Ludovna had stolen and burned.
“Who’s closest?” Marquez asked.
“I am,” Roberts said, “and I like it. It’s a nice color blue. I think it’s an ‘05. I wish Detroit would get off its ass and start making a good hybrid. I’d like to get one of these.”
“Keep working at headquarters,” somebody said, and Marquez asked, “How can you tell it’s an ‘05?”
“Some article I read, the detailing is a little different.”
Marquez felt the subdued optimism running through the team. They were still in darkness but they had the car surrounded. They wouldn’t lose it. He hadn’t said so yet, but he’d also thought it was a woman who’d gotten out and helped Raburn load boxes in the rear. With night-vision goggles it was difficult, things bulked out, but in general men and women walk differently, not all, but most, and then something in the way she moved her arms, shifted to let Raburn slide a box in. You carry a memory of the way somebody moves.
Shauf and Cairo had to be wondering too. Marquez edged closer to Alvarez’s truck, rode up near him and took over the lead at first light.
“What’s the gas mileage on those hybrids?” Alvarez asked.
“Two and half times what we’re getting.”
“That’s why I’m asking. I’m there. I’m at a quarter tank.”
Alvarez pulled off at the Mobil, Shell, Chevron signs up ahead. He was just getting back on the freeway when the first sunlight came through the passenger window of Marquez’s truck.
“Right lane at sixty-five,” Marquez called out. “Sitting on sixtyfive.”
He felt sunlight touch his face and heard Alvarez say he’d picked up two cups of coffee. “One for you, Lieutenant, unless I finish this one before I catch you.”
“Catch me, I could use it.”
As the sun rose, Marquez dropped back, putting more space between himself and the hybrid, his mouth dry, heart racing, though nothing had changed in the last hour. But there was daylight now, the shape of a head, a cap coming off, Roberts said. Dark brown hair, and, from behind her, Roberts used her binoculars to look at the reflection in the rearview mirror.
“It’s a woman, for sure,” she said, and the focus on the gender was really only about one thing. “Want me to get closer?”
“Yes, but let’s hang on a little longer.”
The dark hair was right, head and shoulders were what he remembered, and Roberts was close to saying something. Up ahead was open country, soggy with the rains, fields brown and stubbled, hills in the gray early light in the distance. Before Chico there were olive groves, dusky blue-green, riding the hills off to his right, and Alvarez had closed in behind Marquez.
They made a quick stop, Marquez handing Alvarez a photo, a snapshot he’d run a copy of, and Alvarez handing him the coffee and pastry he’d picked up when he’d gassed up.
“That’s her face?” Alvarez asked.
“Yeah.”
The hybrid still rode in the right-hand lane, the blue color of the car bright against muted hills of olives, sky white since sunrise.
“I’m coming up alongside her,” Alvarez said. “I’m tailing a pickup, and the pickup just passed her, and here I come.”
Then he was silent, likely not sure yet or not wanting her to see him talking, not that it mattered like it used to, given all the “hands-free” devices.
“Okay, I’m past her.”
“Did you get a look?”
“I got a good one, and I’m just double-checking now. I’ve got her in my mirror.”
He knew Alvarez well enough, knew already from his tone. She’d gone as far as to ask him about what it took to become a Fish and Game warden, asking whether someone with her river experience and time outdoors could become a warden. He’d taken her seriously, told her he’d see what he could do to help. She’d burned him the whole way.
“It’s definitely her,” Alvarez said.
“Are you that sure?”
“It’s her,
Lieutenant, and yeah, I’m that sure. I’ll move well ahead now.”
Marquez fell farther back, and, briefly, it was almost as if he lacked the strength to push down the accelerator. He figured he’d seen just about everything in twenty years of undercover work and was surprised how much this affected him. He opened his log and found where he’d stuck Selke’s card.
“Who’s this?”
“John Marquez.”
“I don’t know anything new, and I’m in a meeting. Can I call you back?”
“We’ve just ID’d a female suspect we’re following north on I-5, coming up on Redding.”
“I can only think of one female suspect you’d be calling me about.”
“You’re right. It’s Anna.”
32
It was simple enough, wasn’t it? They sent her in and she burned you. You were too eager for a lead and a break and didn’t check her out enough. They stayed loosely with her now. Anna didn’t push it, kept her speed steady. There was new snow on Mount Shasta and winds on the summit that blew streamers of powder off the cornices. The SOU leapfrogged, pulling off to get gas, use a restroom, then close the gap again. They drove through Yreka and neared the Oregon border, Marquez making the calls as they did to clear them to continue the pursuit. He talked to a sergeant he knew and liked on Oregon’s Special Investigations Unit, told him what they had going on.
Anna’s window was partway down, hair catching in the wind flowing in. Shauf passed and turned to study her, Shauf’s face stolid behind dark glasses as she took her in and then talked to Marquez. He polled the team when they were well into Oregon.
“Alvarez?”
“I’m still good, but I’m hungry.”
“You haven’t slept.”
“Yeah, I have. I slept for an hour or so right around Shasta.”
A few laughs. “Cairo?” Marquez asked.
“I’m doing fine.”
“Roberts?”
“I need gas and a restroom.”
“I’ll take point,” Marquez said. “Go ahead and break off.”
“Shauf?”
“I’d like to wring her neck. That’ll keep me going another thousand miles.”
“We’ll be talking to her soon enough.”
But it was Ehrmann he talked to next. He figured it was the right moment to push for information.
“We found Anna Burdovsky. We’ve followed her from the delta into Oregon. She picked up what we think is caviar in jars being moved in Raburn Orchards boxes. Four boxes were loaded into the back of a Toyota Prius a little after four this morning. She showed up in the delta at a building we had under surveillance. It’s a southern Cal vehicle. Could it tie into what you’ve got going?”
“Read me off the plates.”
Marquez read them off.
“Burdovsky has made deliveries for people working for her ex-husband, the Karsov we’ve told you about. It’s possible this is the overlap we’ve been wondering about, Lieutenant.”
“Is Karsov here?”
“Why are you asking that?”
“You said he travels, and obviously something is up.”
“As a matter of fact he may be in the country. We’ve learned something this morning that suggests he might be. Under no circumstances should you make contact with Burdovsky.”
Marquez knew that was coming. It didn’t surprise him.
“We’re going to join you following her.”
“We don’t want to lose track of what’s she’s carrying.”
“I’m sure you’d like to have a conversation with her also.”
“That can wait.”
He gave Ehrmann their position, then hung up. Two hours later Anna finally pulled over for gas. “She’s got an iron bladder,” Shauf said, and they watched her move through the gas station store. She was in line at the cash register and came out with bottled water, hot chocolate in a white Styrofoam cup, and a sandwich. Her face looked calm. She chatted with the employees. You wouldn’t know looking at her she’d been driving for eight hours. She yawned, talked to the kid who pumped the gas, and then got back in her car.
Marquez was across the street parked in a Burger King lot on the phone with Ehrmann again, answering more questions about how they found her. He was starting to figure out what Ehrmann wasn’t saying.
“When did the FBI lose track of her?”
“A week ago.”
Marquez watched her pull out and then back onto the freeway. They could expect to start spotting Feds any moment now.
“We’ll take over when she gets to her destination,” Ehrmann said.
Anna drove harder as they neared Portland, but when it started raining she slowed and not long afterward exited and drove up to a diner. In the diner it looked warm. The windows were steamed, and outside the rain turned to sleet. Roberts went in and ordered food to go for everyone, including the extra sandwich Marquez asked for and now took down the street to where an FBI agent had nosed his car in between trees. He got the agent to lower his window, but he wouldn’t accept the sandwich, said regulations wouldn’t allow it.
“No one will know,” Marquez said. “How long have you guys been on her?”
“I don’t even know who she is. Maybe you can fill me in.”
“We’re following her on a sturgeon poaching case, but you’re on an organized crime car theft ring.”
“I didn’t even know that. They just gave me a list of vehicles to look for.”
“Which one did you spot?”
He smiled. “Yours.”
The agent was young, clean-cut, hard-eyed, wouldn’t touch the sandwich Marquez had handed him until he was alone and driving. Marquez left him as Anna got up to leave.
It was a thousand miles from the Sacramento/San Joaquin delta to Seattle, but she didn’t go all the way to Seattle proper. She held a cell phone to her ear as she veered from the far left lane over to the Seattle airport exit, then drove to the Southwest gate and pulled over at the curb and got out. Before an airport officer could tell her she couldn’t leave her car alone a man stepped off the curb, took the keys from her, slid onto the driver’s seat, adjusted the seat, and pulled away. The whole exchange took less than a minute. Anna headed into the airport, and Marquez watched the airport doors slide shut behind her.
“What do we do?” Shauf asked.
“We stay with the car; we follow the caviar.”
33
Now they were parked down the street from a condominium project in Seattle. The new driver had glanced continually at his rearview mirror after he left the airport, boxing several streets when he left the freeway. Then he’d pulled into the garage beneath the condos, parked close to the elevator, and got on his phone. Two men came down the elevator. They unloaded the boxes, and the hybrid driver backed up, tires squealing on the smooth concrete of the garage as he started forward again and bounced onto the street.
“Let him go,” Marquez said. “The Feds have him covered.”
They watched the hybrid round the corner and disappear. The boxes went up the elevator. Both the garage and elevator had security cameras, so there were multiple shots of the two men and the boxes. But the information came secondhand to the SOU. The FBI asked that they not go into the building, said they were in contact with the building owners, who, after the first conversation, turned the situation over to their lawyer, waking him at home. They watched the lawyer drive up half an hour later.
“He doesn’t look too happy to be here,” Shauf said, and Marquez got out and walked up to within earshot. He heard the lawyer’s peevishly aggressive tone as he informed the FBI agents what liability the government would take on if they interrupted any of the security cameras in operation. But the problem was the cameras were on a loop and eventually the tape would play over itself and the images of the men could get lost or become difficult to recover. The lawyer wanted everything to wait until morning. He wanted to go home, didn’t want to deal with this tonight. No one had told him exactly what was in the boxes, ye
t they were clear they didn’t believe it was stolen property or drugs, so why couldn’t it wait until morning? And the building owners were opposed on principle to providing any information regarding the individual condo owners.
A manager showed up. He stood next to the lawyer and faced the two FBI agents. Marquez was called over to answer the lawyer’s questions.
“How do you know they brought illegal substances here?”
“We watched it loaded and followed them from California.”
“Did you see what was in the boxes?”
“No.”
As he said that, Marquez caught a look from the apartment manager that worried him. The manager watched him intently as the lawyer launched into a quasi sales pitch.
“These are expensive units, and the owners are professionals who value privacy and security. Access to the building is restricted-”
“The security cameras show what floor they got off,” Marquez said. “Why don’t we knock on some doors? We know what they look like.”
The lawyer looked like he’d swallowed battery acid. “That’s exactly what doesn’t happen here.” He addressed Marquez now as though explaining manners to trailer trash. “Nobody knocks on doors here. People make appointments, and we can’t begin to ask owners at this hour of the night, without any warrant or proof of anything illegal having been brought into the building, to open their doors.” He really got warmed up now. “I believe this is still America and the Constitution is still in place.”
The apartment manager drifted away, and Marquez watched him go in the keyed entrance and disappear into the building. He had a bad feeling about the guy, and the sense the opportunity was slipping away. The FBI agents continued to politely engage with the lawyer, but Marquez walked away. He pulled his cell phone and broke down the team, sent all but Shauf to go find food and a motel.
Shauf moved her van, reclined her seat, and closed her eyes while they waited. The lawyer had left. No one’s privacy would get disturbed tonight. The street cleared off, and it started drizzling. He kept watching the concrete mouth of the garage on the possibility the men who’d taken the boxes up the elevator would come back down, ready to move them to their next stop. His bad feeling about the manager intensified, but maybe the guy was actually inside trying to figure out which unit the boxes had gone into. It became harder to look through the blur of the drizzle, and still, he continued to watch, turning over the things Ehrmann had told him as a way to stay awake.