Shell Games jm-1

by Kirk Russell

  “What truth?”

  “Information for the lieutenant.”

  “Lieutenant Marquez?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get it?” Davies didn’t answer and Ruter repeated the question and waited. “I asked if you got the information.”

  Ruter stopped the tape again. “He never answered that and there’s no record of any call made from either Davies’s cell phone or from Huega’s, so we don’t think he alerted anybody. But he may have used another phone to call whoever they were selling this abalone to. I think it’s a good bet he got phone numbers out of Huega. But we didn’t get any further with him on this line of questioning, so I’m going to skip ahead to where I’m asking him about injuries to Huega. He had a crushed left cheekbone and a skull fracture most likely the result of blows from a blunt instrument. Here goes.”

  “Did you hit him in the face?” Ruter asked Davies.

  “No, sir.”

  “Where did you hit him?”

  “Around the ribs because I was off balance. He dropped the gun and slipped down on the deck.”

  “Is that when you decided you had no choice but to kill him?”

  “I was done with killing a while ago.”

  “When did you last kill anyone?”

  “In the navy.”

  “When you were a SEAL.”

  “Yes, sir, but not in the line of duty.”

  There was a long pause and Marquez knew Ruter and his part-ner must have been debating whether to pursue that statement. But they did the right thing, he thought, continuing on.

  “Tell us what happened after you disarmed Danny Huega.”

  “I hogtied him with a chain, then asked him questions.”

  “And did he answer them?”

  “He was scared by then.”

  “He had a crushed cheekbone and a fractured skull. Do you want to tell us he swam in and then hiked ten miles?”

  “He made it to Gitchell Creek is what I heard.”

  “You hit him with the iron bar. You stood over him on the deck and beat him and then floated him in and carried him up the beach, right? You relied on your SEAL training to move him with-out drowning him. In effect, you delivered him. You did what they couldn’t do. It took your skills to pull it off.”

  “He swam in.”

  “You’re fighting a war to save this abalone, but things went too fast with Huega. It got out of hand and you knew you’d hit him too many times, so you decided you had to get him on the beach whether or not these other people ever came for him. You anchored as close as you could, put dive gear on, used floats to keep his head up, and then dragged him across the beach and up to that four-wheel drive track at Gitchell Creek. When you got back to the boat you called the number he’d given you, told the voice on the other end exactly where he was.”

  “You ought to be a uniform deputy or mowing someone’s lawn, sir. You’re not cut out for this work. I’ll talk to the lieutenant, but not you two.”

  Ruter broke in again. “We’d appreciate it if you’d sit down with him, Marquez.”

  “I’ll give it a go.”

  “You hear how he goes in and out, that yes, sir, no, sir, shit.”

  “Maybe, a little.”

  “Something there, I think.” Ruter was quiet, thinking about whatever that something was. “Listen to a little more tape and then I’ll tell you our problem. I’m skipping ahead one more time. Here goes.” Marquez listened to the electronic noise as Ruter fast-forwarded, had the wrong spot, backed the tape, apologizing, finally finding what he wanted.

  “There’s a moral abyss that if we cross we never return from,” Davies said.

  “Did you cross that abyss with Huega?”

  “I won’t answer any more questions without the lieutenant present.”

  The tape clicked off and Ruter cleared his throat. “He’s right, he didn’t kill Danny Huega. They’re putting the time of death ten to twelve hours after we picked up Davies. We’ll have to kick him loose in the next couple of days. I can drag it out for three days max, but he’s got a story of Huega attacking him on the boat and having to defend himself, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he’s right, Huega got on board voluntarily. Bottom line is Davies didn’t kill him alone.”

  “Huega had a fractured skull and broken cheekbone?”

  “Pulverized. Multiple blows. Injuries that preceded death by approximately six hours.”

  “I can come up tonight.”

  “I don’t think I can set it up for tonight. How about tomorrow?”

  “We’ve got a surveillance that could eat up the day.”

  “When will you know?”

  “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “You hear how off he is, don’t you?”

  “I hear something I haven’t heard before.”

  “I hear two voices. There’s a hardwire problem,” Ruter said.

  Marquez didn’t hear two voices and didn’t say anything in response.

  Ruter asked, “What about this description he gave. It rang bells for you, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “All right, Marquez, we’re taking this Kline idea more seri-ously. Are there photos of him?”

  “I’ve never seen a good one, but the FBI may have them now.”

  “I’ll call them. How about if we talk in the morning?”

  After he’d thought over the conversation with Ruter and the recording, he called Maria. Katherine’s sister had picked her up from school, she’d stay with her cousin tonight and her aunt would drive her to school tomorrow.

  “How’s it going, Maria? How was school?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She didn’t really sound fine. If anything, she sounded sad.

  “What’d you have for dinner?”

  “I wish you and mom would stop bugging me about what I eat. Do I bug mom because she’s fat?”

  “She’s not fat.”

  “She’s got that little pooch belly. I’m never going to look like that.”

  “That’s nothing.”

  “Whatever. I don’t want to look like that.”

  “Your mom looks great.”

  “Only to you.”

  “We’re talking about you, right?”

  “I don’t want to talk about me and I can take care of myself. Besides, I have to get off the phone now. Lisa wants to use it.”

  “Ask Lisa if she can wait a minute.”

  There was a long pause. “I’m totally sick of everyone talking to me about food. I have to go now, I really do.”

  He let her get off the phone, yet wished he was sitting next to her talking to her right now. He had an uneasy feeling that he hadn’t had before about the eating issue and sat in the darkness thinking about it and began to worry for her, and for the distance forming between them. He thought about the gaps in the conversations with Katherine and the way they didn’t seem to mesh anymore. Thought of five years ago when Maria was a giggly ten-year-old and how easy and uncomplicated life had seemed then. Everything had changed and moved; it was hard to accept the difference.

  11

  The ocean darkened and the horizon fog went from purple to black as night fell. Marquez stopped in Half Moon Bay and picked up three chicken tacos and a large coffee to go, then drove to the condo they’d borrowed to watch Pillar Point Harbor. Shauf and Alvarez were waiting there. After he’d pulled into the lot and gotten out, he took another call from Ruter. He put the tacos and coffee on the roof of the Explorer and leaned back in to get the phone.

  “We can do it tonight, after all,” Ruter said, and Marquez hesi-tated, thinking about it before answering.

  “See you in four hours,” he said.

  Marquez called Shauf and Alvarez rather than walk up the two flights, told them the situation and was backing out of the parking space before remembering the tacos and coffee were on the roof. The coffee bumped off a side window and splashed onto the street, but the tacos hadn’t slid off yet and he dropped them on
the passenger seat, thinking he’d stop for coffee again somewhere up the road.

  But he never did. He called Ruter when he was a half hour out and checked in with the team again. They’d placed a GPS trans-ponder on Bailey’s boat after he’d gone to a bar in Half Moon Bay. Tracking the boat with the GPS unit should be easy, but Marquez wanted visual surveillance and had called the Coast Guard about a helicopter flight. It was a funny thing; they’d found that poachers were used to the orange and white copters and didn’t associate them with game wardens. He bit into one of the cold tacos as he listened to Ruter go on about Davies and it occurred to him he’d have to give Petersen a heads-up that he’d be getting into Bragg later tonight.

  Davies was in the interview box alone, his eyes tracing the walls, when Marquez arrived. He held out his arms to show Mar-quez the cuffs.

  “They’re trying to charge me for Huega’s murder, Lieutenant.”

  “Were you at Guyanno when Stocker and Han were killed?”

  “No.” Davies stared back at him. “I came up with that to scare Danny, but it turns out he was there.”

  “Huega was?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We were selling to the same people.”

  “Selling abalone?”

  “It was the only way to get close to them. I’ve got the money, I’ve been holding it for you.” When Marquez didn’t respond, Davies repeated, “It was the only way.” Marquez thought he saw sadness before the steady intensity returned to Davies’s eyes. “I didn’t kill Danny. He swam in and I watched him start down the beach.” Davies wiped the side of his face on his shoulder. His fore-head carried the dull gleam of oil and he was unshaven. According to Ruter, he’d refused to eat or drink. “And he was fine then.”

  Marquez wanted to keep the questioning on Huega being at Guyanno during the murders, but went with the shift now.

  “Somebody knew where to find Huega,” Marquez said. “But you were the only one who knew where he was. What explains that?”

  “Somebody was keeping track of him, but, hell, you know, around here you just listen to the police radios and they were buzzing that night. Any fool can keep track of what these cops talk about.”

  “They think you set Huega up.”

  “Look, the fat man out there listening had Danny ready to testify he’d seen a knife like the one used at Guyanno on my boat. I mean, he was cutting a deal with him, Lieutenant, as in dirty cop, and Danny was going along because they had him on a dope dealing charge and they were trading that with him. Anything I did, I had to do.” Marquez had heard this self-righteous rap from Davies three or four times now. He felt the long, fast drive up, the two cups of coffee he’d had getting briefed by Ruter when he’d arrived. The coffee made his nerves vibrate and his stomach sour. He knew Ruter was convinced of Davies’s involvement and was frustrated that he couldn’t bring charges or get Davies to confess to assisting the killers. Davies was admitting to being in contact with these poachers and selling abalone to them, but wouldn’t take it any further than that, even when they hinted at immunity from prosecution. He’s not giving me the numbers either, Marquez thought. So why’d Davies want me here? Just to confess he’d sold abalone? That seemed small in light of everything else.

  “You’re thinking I’m a head case, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m thinking this is the time to tell me what you really know.”

  “Danny got into dope with them and that was the part that went bad on him. It was more than just abalone. They’ve been running dope for growers up in Humboldt and selling it to these same people buying abalone.” The crow’s feet around Davies’s eyes, the wrinkles that lined his mouth, whose cause Marquez had put down to sun and wind, he now saw formed in part by anxiety. “They took out Stocker and Han because those two had cheated them. They were already looking for Danny when he got on my boat.”

  “You sound like you’re sure of that.”

  “They asked me where to find him after Guyanno. Stocker, Han, and Danny, they were rotating their diving so two of them are out every day the weather permits. They’d been going at it for seven weeks, trying to pull a hundred abalone a day, about five grand worth. That was their goal, but their deal was another five bucks each if they delivered it already shucked, so Stocker started looking around for a place no one would pick up on him. Danny said they’d been beating their average for seven weeks, so I figure they’d been paid a quarter million so far. Some of that cash they used to buy dope, and then they sold the dope to the same abalone guys. It was all a big circle and they were making it big time. That’s why they couldn’t keep quiet about it. They used the Lost Coast for some of their dope smuggling and that’s why I ran Danny up there, so he could show me where.”

  “And did he?”

  “We never got that far. He pulled the gun and we got into it and then I found he was wired up.”

  Marquez had heard the gun story, the fight on the boat Davies had described to Ruter. Skepticism must have shown on his face because Davies reacted now.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Tell me what Huega told you about Guyanno.”

  “Do you think I’m in with them?”

  “No.”

  “But you think I’ve fucked up.”

  “You’re in a fucking mess, I’m sure of that. What happened? Were they robbed?”

  “Okay, look, this is what Danny told me. He’d been drinking in town with Stocker and Han and they were all going to party a little more that night and dive in the morning.”

  “When was this?”

  “The night they were killed. He left his truck near the bar and rode up with Stocker to the campground, figuring to get his truck the next morning because they were going out early anyway. He was in the cab of Stocker’s truck because he didn’t have a sleeping bag. Danny said after they’d gone to bed, he smoked a joint and listened to the radio while lying on the truck seat. He went to sleep and he wasn’t sure what woke him up. He didn’t hear their car, didn’t see headlights, but he thinks it was yelling that woke him up, maybe Stocker yelling. There was no one in the campsite and then he heard screaming farther up the trail. They were putting all their attention to Han when Danny got near enough to see. Han broke free and ran and they shot him, then dragged him back and he saw the man with the silvery hair bend over him. He said Han’s screams carried down the canyon. It was Han they really wanted to hurt.”

  “He saw it all?”

  “No, he took off, got his ass down that trail, rolled Stocker’s truck out of the lot and started it before the road bumps up. The truck is somewhere up in those dirt roads in the mountains along the Lost Coast. Huega’s ex knows where he hid it. So you know they came down, saw the truck was gone and put it together. The next morning I met you there and by the afternoon they’d called me looking for Huega.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the detectives?”

  “Because their minds are already made up.”

  “And you’ve been making up stories,” Marquez said.

  “I’ve been fucking with them because they’re stupid. They don’t get the imperative, you know? They don’t get it.”

  “You told the detectives earlier that there were three men. Was that coming from Danny Huega?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s get the detectives in here.”

  “Bring them in and I’m done talking.”

  “Then give it to me slowly, everything you can remember Huega saying. Start with the time. What time of night was this?”

  “I never asked him that. They probably closed a bar. He went to sleep smoking a joint, he probably didn’t even know the time.”

  “Describe the men one by one.”

  Marquez took notes and the account didn’t vary much from Davies’s earlier telling. Two men had guns, one had a ponytail and the other was smaller, slight of build, wiry. The third man had come behind them, but he couldn’t read any of their faces. The third ma
n was the tall one, the one running things. He’d had an accent of some sort and had stepped into the moonlight not far from where Danny Huega was holding his breath. Davies grinned at that thought. “Danny said he walked like he was floating across the grass. He had hair that reflected the moonlight and Danny saw a blade, but that’s about it. He didn’t even say what color he was either, just the hair and the way he came out of nowhere.”

  “Dealing with these poachers have you ever heard a descrip-tion of a man like this?”

  “No, I’ve been dealing with Mexicans and with a white guy whose face you’d want to forget.”

  “Describe his face.”

  When he did Marquez knew they had their first link. It was the pair in Oakland, the white with the hatchet face and the Hispanic who was vaguely familiar. He was sure if Davies saw the video he’d recognize him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to show it to him.

  Ruter opened the door and Davies stopped talking. Marquez listened to the detectives try to get him to say more, but Davies was done and Marquez left the room. Around midnight, Ruter came out and they stepped outside.

  Marquez felt like the whole encounter had been disjointed and strange, but that Davies had mixed in truth. Either Huega or Davies had been at Guyanno during the murders. There was some indefin-able thing he could feel, some truth mixed in. Ruter believed it had been Davies, that Davies was wobbling and close to confessing. He’d seen this before.

  “That’s why he asked for you,” Ruter said. “He wanted to confess to you, not us. Then he got a little more spine while you drove up here. If you’d been twenty minutes away, he would have confessed. He was right on the edge.” Ruter pounded a fist into his palm, “But dammit, we can’t hold him.”

  “What happens now?” Marquez asked.

  “We’ll have to kick him loose until we can tie him in.”

  “Let me know when he’s back out there.”

  “Oh, I will. Hell, he’ll probably call you. You’re the only pure play, remember?”

  When he got on the road Marquez called Petersen, told her he’d pick up a couple of beers for himself and whatever she wanted to drink and meet her in Fort Bragg. They met on Elm Street and walked down the old road alongside the Georgia-Pacific property, between the blackberry bushes and down to Glass Beach where for decades earlier in the past century the citizenry of Fort Bragg used to dump its garbage into the ocean. Over the years the broken china, glass, and metal had been worn by the ocean, the glass rounded like small stones that glittered now in the moonlight. They sat on a rock and Marquez handed her a mineral water and opened the beer, a bottle of Indica from the Lost Coast Brewery.