Redback

by Kirk Russell

  They weren’t gone forty minutes. It didn’t affect the party. It didn’t affect anyone at it except the hostess, but it was the first real connection with his stepdaughter and the start of a conversation that was still going on today. He knew something of how she thought. He knew she had said she was going to Yosemite to get away and clear from her head the tag of being labeled the former girlfriend of an ecoterrorist. Maria was stubborn, independent, and smart. She went somewhere last night with her friends where no one would find them. Still, his heart pounded and his voice was a croak as he swerved off the road and answered the phone. And his body suffused with an almost chemical relief when he learned from Desault that the victim in Rayman’s Hummer was not Maria.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Marquez took in her face, the widow’s peak, dark thick brown hair, dark eyes, and straight nose. The victim was similar in age to Maria. She wasn’t much older. The bullet was large caliber to do the damage it did to her throat. Marquez’s gaze went from her destroyed trachea to the manicured nails on her left hand and two rings, then back at her young face again. He had just left the victim and stepped away from the county detective when Maria called.

  ‘We’re on our way home. I’m really sorry I didn’t call back. We were up near the Fourth Recess last night and there was no cell reception. I’m staying with friends the next few days. I won’t be at my house, but I’ll have my phone.’

  He heard her friends in the background. He heard laughing and relief swept over him again, and sadness for the victim. Maria signed off as he took a call from Desault. He told Desault he had just talked with Maria and that he was en route from Bishop to Los Angeles.

  ‘I’ll fly down and meet you,’ Desault said. ‘This may tie to Stoval.’

  When Marquez reached the LA Basin it was near dusk. Desault flew in and they ate dinner together. The FBI had picked up on a rumor relayed through the DEA in El Paso that Zeta assassins had been hired to take out the guy who blew the pumps in California. Hired through a third party for big cash, this from a DEA informant considered reliable.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ Desault asked.

  Marquez didn’t make anything of it yet. It was odd. He checked into a motel and the next morning he and Desault sat down with Rayman and his lawyer. When Rayman saw Marquez he said, ‘He took my Hummer.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘I gave him your message and he took my Hummer, said he was going to borrow it.’

  The lawyer tried to shut it down but Rayman kept talking and in twenty minutes they had an account of the meeting with Stoval. Obviously, Stoval knew the police would beeline to Rayman, and so there was some message, some as yet uncovered reason. With the lawyer there he didn’t want to question Rayman much about that. The lawyer was no doubt a cartel lawyer, there to listen as well as advise, and Desault had been told there was a tentative ID on the victim, possibly to be confirmed this afternoon.

  They left Rayman, and then Marquez left for San Diego.

  ‘This is about Sheryl Javits,’ he told Desault. ‘I’ve got to go see a guy I knew as an ATF agent years ago.’

  SIXTY

  Pete Phelps had a belly he didn’t used to have. He had a wife, a big white stucco house in San Diego with a pool, and a couple of little Phelps who looked like they were eight to ten years old. They looked like sweet kids so maybe they had their mother’s genes. Marquez watched Phelps leave the house, drop the kids at school, and then stop and pick up coffee before going into the office. It turned out Phelps was a mortgage broker not a real estate broker. He specialized in subprime loans. Business was off lately.

  Using binoculars he watched Phelps in his office flirting with his receptionist. Watching him was boring, but toward the end of the afternoon he saw him lean over and give the receptionist a long kiss. He cupped the back of her head with his hand. He held her face to his and glanced outside as he let her go. That wasn’t much leverage, probably would get a laugh out of Phelps, but maybe he could work with it. He called the private investigator friend he’d worked for years ago as he was trying to figure out a career post DEA.

  ‘You’re anxious to move on this?’ his friend asked.

  ‘Yeah, I can’t sit in a car in San Diego much longer and watch this guy.’

  ‘He’s married, got a wife, two kids in school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then he’ll have it down to a routine. Give him twenty-four hours more. That’s my advice.’

  Marquez followed as Phelps picked up the kids and brought them home. His wife arrived and unloaded a Suburban, and it was one of those warm nights where you walk your dog and think you’re lucky to live in a place like this. Lights went off in several rooms at around 10:30 and then Phelps left the house and went grocery shopping. Could be that was his deal, shop when the store was quiet. Except that the real estate firm’s receptionist pulled into the store lot as he went through the checkout line.

  Phelps carried two bags of groceries to his car. Then he followed her out of the lot, talking on his cell phone, probably to her, and Marquez trailed them to the driveway of a house for sale. She pulled in and parked where her minivan didn’t show. Phelps parked down the street and walked back. He got in the minivan.

  Marquez figured Phelps was working with a window of time and that he wouldn’t waste any now. He gave him five minutes and then walked down the driveway and rapped on the door. He pulled out his badge, held it at window level and said, ‘FBI, open up.’

  He knew it would be Phelps who slid the door open and, from working joint operations with the ATF in Baja, that Phelps wouldn’t be intimidated. Not only that, he’d probably recognize the voice. Phelps slid the door open, looked at Marquez and the badge, and then asked with genuine curiosity, ‘How did you end up working for those dipshits?’

  ‘Get your shoes on and let’s talk.’

  Phelps slid the door mostly shut and put his shoes back on and their voices murmured. When Phelps got out she slipped into the driver’s seat, but not before Marquez took a few candid photos. That got everybody angry.

  As his girlfriend pulled away, Phelps asked, ‘Is this Sheryl’s bullshit? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘Let’s talk in my car.’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea, how about if you just fuck off.’

  ‘I can talk to you or talk to your wife, it’s up to you.’

  ‘When did you turn into a sleaze bag?’

  ‘Look, Phelps, I’m not here because I want to be. But I’ll do whatever it takes to get the truth out of you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You’re not listening.’

  Marquez was back in his car before Phelps came up the sidewalk. When Phelps got in on the passenger side and before the door shut, he told Marquez, ‘I showed them canceled checks. I told them her other story was a crock, so what do you want?’

  ‘I believe Sheryl.’ He waited a beat and lied to Phelps. ‘I don’t care where the money came from and she’s going to lose her career out of this either way, but if you gave her part of the divorce settlement money at the back door, she shouldn’t be going to prison for life.’

  ‘What are you talking about, prison for life?’

  ‘They’ve built a case against her that says she took bribes and set Jim Osiers up to get killed. She fed information to the Salazar Cartel and they paid her through a bank account in La Paz. Not only that, but over her career she’s worked any number of joint operations with the FBI and the theory goes she was leaking information for money paid by Emrahain Stoval. She used the money you gave her as an unexplained payment on her house in San Francisco. That money is the bottom brick in their case and they’re searching for the rest. You might hate her, but this isn’t right.’

  He couldn’t see all of Phelps’ face, but could see he was very still. When Phelps spoke again his voice was quiet and low.

  ‘That was family money. It was a real estate deal after my dad died. Sheryl wasn’t entitled to any of it. I paid her just to back
her off.’

  ‘I’ll need it in writing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘That’s going to get the IRS on my back.’

  ‘It’s your call, take on your wife, or take on the IRS. You decide which is worse, but I need to hear from you by nine in the morning.’

  He got it in writing at 9:30 the next day and called Beth Murkowski. Then he made two copies and did what she asked, took the original to the San Diego DEA Field Office.

  He called Sheryl, talked to her, and then he sat down with a double espresso and thought about it. It came down to timing and who had all the needed information and access. He flipped his phone open and flipped it shut, thought some more and then phoned Kerry Anderson. But it wasn’t Anderson who answered. It was a young woman who told him she was Kerry Anderson’s replacement. Anderson’s retirement party had happened last Friday. He’d left on a long awaited Caribbean vacation. She had a phone number and he copied that down and then read an email on his Blackberry from Desault.

  It read, ‘Victim identified. Call me.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  ‘Her name is Terri Delgado and we can’t and neither can the DEA connect her to Raymond Mendoza. So far, there’s no apparent link. She lived in the LA area, in Brentwood. The family had money and she was trying to break into the film business as a producer. Her parents filed the missing persons report. Does any of this ring any bells with you?’

  ‘I know who she is. I’ve talked to her. She tipped us to Stoval’s bighorn hunt in the eastern Sierra. She met him at a party in LA and he invited her to go to Vegas with him after his hunt. Instead, she called us.’

  ‘Called the DFG hotline?’

  ‘Yes, and it sounds like I got her killed.’

  ‘You can’t draw that conclusion. What you’ve told me about the hunt may have gotten back to Stoval. It’s been discussed by everyone on the task force.’

  ‘Yeah, but Raymond’s vehicle, the timing.’

  ‘The timing works because he was already here to kill her. He wrapped the meeting with Raymond Mendoza into that and improvised with the Hummer. Probably didn’t get the idea to use Mendoza’s Hummer until he was sitting in it.’

  Marquez called Chief Blakely at Fish and Game and told her. Then he sat in a room in the LA Field Office with the lights off and once more listened to the archived CALTIP recording of Terri Delgado. In Terri Delgado’s voice he could hear her youth and a mix of guilt and desire to do the right thing in calling a tip, snitching on a guy who’d invited her to four days in Vegas.

  It brought him way down. He couldn’t add it up any other way. At Fish and Game they relied on the public, and Marquez felt protective toward anyone who helped them, and yet he may have gotten her killed out of concern for his own family. Stoval would have come for her anyway, Desault claimed, but Marquez wasn’t sure. Rayman gave the message and Stoval questioned Rayman, then took his Hummer and either had Delgado kidnapped and delivered to him – most likely that – or abducted her himself. More likely kidnapped and drugged, Marquez thought, and maybe in response to his threat to Stoval. Or as Desault said, he was here to kill her.

  Stoval was getting inside his head. First his name in an intercepted phone call, then a hired gunman sent to Alaska, and now this exhibition murder of Terri Delgado. He didn’t need to kill Delgado. Nothing more was going to happen with the bighorn. He wants to get inside my head, Marquez thought.

  What happened next was Rayman got kicked loose. There was no way to hold him, no evidence he had anything to do with Delgado’s murder. Marquez was still in LA and heard about the killing over the radio. When he drove there firemen were hosing off the sidewalk in front of two ATM machines outside a Wells Fargo bank. This was in a mall parking lot less than a mile from Rayman’s stucco house in the hills.

  In the bank video Rayman arrived at 3:34 p.m., just hours after his release. A man wearing a motorcycle helmet with a dark visor walks up on Rayman’s left side. A second man with a Dodgers cap and sunglasses is to his right and slightly behind him, but crowding him so may have held a gun to his back. That man is with him as Rayman withdraws money. Motorcycle man arrives after Rayman has already punched in his PIN and withdrawn the money.

  The adjacent ATM was in use and a second witness told the detectives she was walking from her car toward the Wells ATMs when Rayman’s convertible Mercedes pulled up and double-parked. It annoyed her that they had double-parked and would get to the ATM ahead of her. Her name was Patti Wright and she didn’t realize at first that a violent crime was in progress.

  ‘I didn’t know the man who got out of the car with him had a gun. I knew there was something odd about how he was moving and staying close, but I just didn’t put it together. The other man on the motorcycle I didn’t even see arrive, though I think I remember hearing the motorcycle. By the time I noticed him, he was holding a gun to the other man’s head.’

  Rayman’s lawyer dropped him off at home at approximately 12:30 and Rayman left the house in the convertible Mercedes soon after. He drove to an In-N-Out Burger and returned home at 1:30 according to a DEA surveillance team. The two agents watching mistook the man who showed up at 3:18 p.m. for a friend – it was still possible he was an acquaintance – it was very likely, Marquez thought, that the man they sent did know Rayman. This ‘friend’ was seen leaving the house via the front door accompanied by Rayman. The ‘friend’ wore a hooded sweatshirt with a sleeved pocket in front that likely concealed a gun.

  Rayman and that man drove from the house to the mall and the Wells Fargo ATM. They double-parked, got out, and then the man on the motorcycle arrived. This was the part Marquez hooked into, executing him in front of a camera. It keyed with something Kerry Anderson had said years ago, and, in fact, he’d jotted down in one of his old logbooks.

  The motorcycle rider walked up as Rayman and the unknown first assailant approached the ATM. Rayman slid his ATM card in. He entered his PIN and the bank record showed a two hundred dollar withdrawal. That money was disbursed by the machine, but left there, and if there was some meaning in that Marquez didn’t get it.

  At this point, motorcycle man was along Rayman’s left side, still with his helmet on as he raised a gun. The woman standing in line, Patti Wright, and the teenage boy using the second ATM both reported having heard the command, ‘Look straight ahead!’

  Rayman started to turn his head and the bank camera captured the spray as the bullet exited the right side of his head just forward of his right ear. Both men fled on the motorcycle. DEA surveillance did not pursue. They called it in and secured the scene. Marquez stood in front of the Wells Fargo ATMs and then flipped open his cell and called Desault as he walked back to his truck.

  ‘Kerry Anderson once told me that Stoval likes or requires photo verification from the Zetas or any other hired gun,’ Marquez said.

  Marquez called Anderson but didn’t reach him. He flew home to San Francisco late in the afternoon and stopped at the DEA as he came through San Francisco. Murkowski came to talk and gloated, her cheeks reddening with the thrill at being the first to tell him.

  ‘You’re too late. She resigned this afternoon.’

  ‘Why did she quit?’

  ‘Well, Agent Marquez, I think it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t belong here.’

  Marquez knew there was no point to a tit for tat with this Internal Affairs agent, but he couldn’t leave it there.

  ‘You forced out one of the best to ever walk through here, Murkowski. But you wouldn’t know that, and what’s more, you’ll never see it. You’ll never know the difference. You’re working for the wrong side.’

  ‘That’s the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me.’

  ‘Then never forget it was me that said it. I’ll see you later.’

  His mood was dark that night. Katherine was gone three days on a business trip. She had taken Maria with her. He talked with both, and then sat outside slow drinking under the stars. The impunity with which Emrahain Stoval moved and did what he did reached to th
e core of Marquez. He didn’t feel anything at all for Rayman, but he kept thinking about the way Terri Delgado’s life was discarded.

  He couldn’t sleep that night. The house creaked and moved. His phone rang a burred half ring at 4:00 a.m. and when he checked it was Sheryl. He called her back and there was no answer. He drove to her house in San Francisco early the next morning, couldn’t find her, and then he got the call from Desault.

  SIXTY-TWO

  ‘Stoval is moving,’ Desault said. ‘He’s in the air headed to Italy. Last time he went from there to Africa. Do you want to follow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, it’s your call, but are you sure? There’s no lead. There’s no tip he’s going to hunt. There’s nothing.’

  ‘I’m going to stick with him, and I’ve been thinking more about the hit squads, his relationship with the Zetas, and what he gets out of it other than he needs them for business. He may get the same thrill out of ordering a hit as bringing down a lion.’

  ‘Where are you getting that from?’

  ‘He didn’t have any reason to kill Terri Delgado. Without a bighorn case she wasn’t a threat to him.’

  ‘You’re having a real hard time with her murder, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course, I am.’

  ‘How much is it affecting you?’

  ‘Don’t even go there. I’m fine.’

  Some say insight is just pattern recognition at a subconscious level. Marquez guessed that Stoval was due for a hunt. The periodicity, the past frequency, the timing was right. He packed his go bag. When Stoval’s pilot diverted to the Bahamas, ostensibly with a mechanical problem, and then filed a flight plan to go from there to Argentina, Marquez called Desault and asked him to book a flight for him to Buenos Aires.