by Kirk Russell
‘When does Murkowski think you got this bribe money?’
‘She goes all the way back to the Salazar Cartel or Stoval paying me via deposits made into the La Paz bank that Jim Osiers got tagged with. Then I hid the money offshore in that ALCRON account she told you about.’
‘You hid it for years until you bought the house?’
‘That’s right.’
‘OK, back to Phelps, where did a guy with an ATF agent’s salary get four hundred thousand dollars he could split with you?’
‘From a real estate deal he did with his brother and two sisters after their parents died. I don’t know any of the details of the deal, so don’t ask me.’
‘Come on, Sheryl, don’t say that. Don’t tell me you took it without knowing where it came from. Tell me some rich uncle died and was sleeping on a mattress stuffed with hundred dollar bills, and taxes were paid on it fifty years ago. But don’t tell me the Phelps I knew gave you a big chunk of cash and you don’t really know the details of where it came from, other than it was some real estate deal with siblings. That’s just not good enough.’
‘That’s what happened. The real estate was before me, before we married. It wasn’t money I was entitled to, but he bragged about it for too long and I was that angry. I wanted him to hurt. I wanted half and I told him I’d hire private investigators if he didn’t come across. I told him I’d go to the IRS and give them a statement.’
‘What statement could you give them if you didn’t know anything about the real estate deal?’
‘I knew enough about it and I knew about him and his crooked siblings. I knew he’d split it with me if I pushed him hard enough. And that’s what happened. We met at a bar on the marina one night when our divorce lawyers were still going at it, and he brought his shitty old gym bag filled with money.’
‘Cash?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of real estate deal did that come from?’
‘A back door deal in property the siblings inherited. They swapped property with some Chinese guy and part of the deal was cash so they could dodge capital gains. The Chinese guy ended up with some site he had to clean benzene out of. They screwed him.’
He paid you because he knew if you took it, you were in, Marquez thought. You wouldn’t have any way to back out later. Marquez looked at her and knew he’d always wondered how she pulled off the San Francisco house. She was a saver and he’d figured she had finally saved enough. Everything he was hearing now disappointed him and suddenly he was unsure what to believe.
‘This might sound crazy, John, but I was thinking I’d been married to him for two and a half years and that was worth something. I remember sitting with a calculator dividing thirty months into two hundred thousand dollars. I still remember the number because it’s like the mark of the devil or something – six thousand six hundred sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents per month of marriage. I did it over and over because I kept thinking that’s not enough money for what I went through. Not for cleaning up after him and sleeping with him, and the whole thing with his lies. He was such a scuzzball that finally I thought just do it, make him hurt, make him split his secret stash, then call it a divorce and walk away. I promised to take myself on a great vacation and I did. I went to Hawaii for ten days. That’s another thing they’re looking into now. Murky was here yesterday asking who I met with in Hawaii.’
Marquez absorbed that for a moment and then his phone buzzed again. It was Desault calling for the third time in five minutes.
‘I’m going to have to take this.’ But he didn’t answer the phone yet. He asked, ‘So it’s just your word against Pete Phelps?’
‘Yes, and he’s already denied that it ever happened.’
‘Where’s he living?’
‘He remarried. He’s in San Diego selling real estate.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘In my briefcase in the car.’
‘If you get it for me, I’ll go see him.’
She left to get it and he called Desault back.
‘Jack Gant got recognized at a convenience store by a clerk in South Lake Tahoe. The clerk didn’t put it together until after he left so doesn’t know what direction he drove, but we’ve got a make and model on a pickup and video from the store. It’s confirmed. It was Gant.’
‘When was this?’
‘About two hours ago. Didn’t you say your daughter is in the mountains?’
‘She is, but well south of Tahoe. She’s in Yosemite hiking with friends.’
‘Can you get ahold of her?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Find out where she is and we’ll get agents to her. For all we know, Gant is after her.’
He hung up with Desault as Sheryl returned with Phelps’ address and phone numbers written on a piece of lined paper. She handed it to him and said, ‘I am so sorry and so ashamed, but you have to believe me. Everything I told you is true.’
FIFTY-SIX
That night a Mill Valley police officer knocked on the door and explained to Katherine that the mother of a teenager who lived down the street had found the stolen photo of Maria in her boy’s room. It was not the kid’s first break-in. He had psychological issues and his mother was suspicious enough after she heard about the burglary that she searched his room. That news came as a great relief to Katherine.
Then Maria returned Marquez’s calls. The bounce was back in her voice, but the phone reception wasn’t good so it was hard to follow her, and she was in a little bit of a rush. She and her friends were in the Yosemite Valley. Though they were camping they were also splurging on a good dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel.
‘That’s where I am, right now,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to tell you that we hiked up to Olmstead Point from the valley today. I didn’t even know about that trail. It was really steep with a lot of switchbacks, but we went early in the morning and it was beautiful climbing up as the sun was first on Half Dome. I wanted to tell you also that I’m over everything else. I don’t blame the FBI, but why were you calling me, Dad?’
‘Jack Gant bought food at a convenience store in South Lake Tahoe this morning. The FBI has all kinds of people looking for him and they’d like to know where you are to protect you.’
She was quiet so long he thought the connection broke.
‘I’m not going to call them. We’re camping. Jack doesn’t know where I am. Tell them I’m not going to call and I’m turning my phone off. I’m going to leave it in the car. I’ll call you when we’re on our way home.’
She hung up and less than an hour later Desault called.
‘John, it’s getting complicated with Gant. He checked in under a false name at the Tioga Lodge which is near the eastern Yosemite entrance.’
‘I know where it is.’
‘The pickup he had in Tahoe was parked there and it looks like he used the shower. Some grocery bags were found inside, but we haven’t found him. There are agents there waiting for him to come back, but at the same time the search has extended to Yosemite. An employee in the cafe at the Tioga Lodge believes Gant may have gotten a ride into the park. Where is Maria in Yosemite? We need to get to her.’
‘She called an hour ago from the Ahwahnee Hotel where she and her friends were having dinner, but I don’t know what campsite they’re at and she told me she was turning her phone off and would leave it in the car. Are there agents on the valley floor?’
‘There are and they can be at the Ahwahnee in minutes. How about the names of the friends she’s with and the make and model of the car?’
‘Hold on, Katherine knows more than I do about them.’
He handed Katherine the phone and she gave Desault the names of two friends of Maria’s and another who wasn’t with them that would have phone numbers or be on Facebook. Desault said it wouldn’t take long to get phone numbers. It didn’t and they got to Maria through a friend she was with. Two agents met with her at the Ahwahnee and Maria told them she had walked from the campsite. She wouldn’t tell
them where that was or what vehicle she and her friends had driven to Yosemite in. They told her that what Gant had pulled off so far suggested he wasn’t working alone. They worried that Gant perceived her as a threat and was in communication with someone who’d tailed her to Yosemite, and Maria dismissed that idea. She refused protection and was evasive.
‘She told them she wanted to be left alone,’ Desault said.
‘But they know where she’s camped.’
‘John, your daughter left the hotel on foot and walked away on a trail. She may have been picked up by one of her friends, but that’s not confirmed yet. It seems they’ve got two cars but only one make and license plate was written down on the camping permit. The other car was parked outside the park gate and we haven’t located that car yet. We believe Maria is in it, but we’re not sure.’
There was more, but it all added up to Maria with the help of her friends leaving Yosemite and avoiding FBI protection.
‘If you hear from her, you need to call immediately.’
She didn’t call or answer her phone. But that didn’t really worry him or Katherine. It was pretty clear Maria and friends created a ruse to get her out of the valley. Or that’s how it seemed that night. The next morning was a nightmare.
FIFTY-SEVEN
In the cool gray light near dawn a deputy sheriff on the eastern slope of the Sierras spotted a late model black Hummer parked off the road under trees up Rock Creek Canyon. After spotting the Hummer the deputy pulled over and put his light on it. He got out with a flashlight and looked inside. When he shined his light through the driver’s window he saw a woman slumped against the passenger door and assumed she was sleeping.
Then his flashlight beam caught the wound at her throat. He held the light there a long moment and then moved it down, saw broad dark stains on her shirt, her skirt, the seat. Blood was everywhere, and yet, it still took him a moment to absorb what he was looking at. He leaned over, looking in, and then took his hand off the car roof and stepped back, realizing he shouldn’t even touch the vehicle. He shouldn’t touch any more than he already had. He walked around to the back, wrote down the license plates and ran them. The registered owner was a Raymond Mendoza with an LA address.
He reported an apparent homicide and within an hour, somewhere, someone connected Raymond ‘Rayman’ Mendoza to an ongoing DEA investigation and lapped that into the Bureau’s widening search for Maria Marquez and Jack Gant. Marquez got the call from Desault. That was at 8:30 in the morning after he’d been trying for hours to reach Maria by cell phone. He found his wallet, keys, creds, and badge as his muscles went weak with fear. His hands shook. Rock Creek was north of Bishop in country he knew well. It would take him five hours to get down there, maybe less if he pushed hard.
‘They’re moving the victim in the next hour or so, and we’re impounding the vehicle. The Bureau is getting involved. There’s no identity on the woman yet. She’s approximately twenty-five with brown hair, and hazel eyes, and John, this is very hard to say, but from the description we can’t rule out Maria. They’ll fax me a photo. Why don’t you come into San Francisco and wait here with me.’
‘It’s not her.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘She’s with two friends, but I’ll drive there now.’
‘You don’t need to do that.’
Desault almost said, you don’t need to do that yet. He barely caught himself. Marquez walked out to his truck, still talking to Desault as he started the engine.
‘Raymond Mendoza is who you gave the message for Stoval to, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mendoza is in custody. We picked him up at home this morning. He claims the Hummer was stolen and that he didn’t report it stolen because he was traveling. Or some story like that. A neighbor who hates both the vehicle and Mendoza, and pays attention to his coming and going in it, says Mendoza was home last night and the night before, but not his vehicle.’
Desault tried to talk him into turning around, but he couldn’t do that. He drove and tried Maria’s cell several times and got through to one of her friends and learned they’d smuggled Maria out of Yosemite last night and she and two others were supposed to be camped at June Lake on the eastern side. Marquez got the names of the friends and the car make and model and called the Mono County Sheriff’s Office.
But they didn’t find the car in the time it took him to cross the Sierras. By then he had called Katherine at work, though he didn’t tell her the homicide victim’s physical characteristics were similar enough that the FBI was faxing a photo of Maria. He couldn’t do that, and Desault was right; Maria was fine. She and her friends had ditched the FBI last night and were somewhere no one would think to look for them.
When his phone rang next he could barely breathe as he answered. It was Desault calling with the victim’s identity.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Years ago, when he and Katherine couldn’t get enough of each other and decided to marry, some wealthy friends of Katherine’s threw a party for them in St Helena in the Napa Valley. Maria was in a dress with a big blue bow in the front and her hair pulled to one side and with flowers there that she kept touching delicately on the drive up. She had shiny red leather shoes and was very excited about the party, and then in the summer heat and with the adults drinking wine and eating, and the older girl she had been told she’d be playing with being unfriendly to her, she had gotten flustered and overwhelmed.
An acquaintance of Katherine’s, a noted winemaker with an odd pale narrow face, watched this and then tried to get Maria to sit on his lap. She pulled away from him and he scooped her up from behind and lifted her high in the air as if imitating some amusement park ride. He made sounds like she was on a ride as he whooshed her along and smiled widely at the people nearby as he set her down. When she burst into tears, he said, ‘You must not be old enough for a big party like this.’
Maria ran to their car parked on the crushed gravel beneath an arbor. Katherine followed. The car was unlocked and by the time she reached her Maria had climbed into the backseat. Her face was streaked with tears, the flowers that had been in her hair lying where she had torn them out and thrown them on the gravel. Marquez could see Maria and Katherine in the car and near him the winemaker joked with a small circle that kids hated him and that no matter what he did they cried.
Katherine talked Maria out of the car but she broke free and ran back and an exasperated Katherine said, ‘I don’t want her in the car out here alone. The car is way too hot anyway. I don’t know what she’s so upset about. I guess the party is just too much excitement for her.’
‘I’ll talk to her.’
And that was probably where he first connected with Maria. He got in the car and asked, ‘Can I sit with you?’
She didn’t answer. She’d had enough of adults and was feeling sorry for herself and very disappointed after all the expectation of what the party would be. She kept her head pressed against the window. Her left hand gripped the hem of her dress and tears still ran down her cheeks, though she didn’t make a sound.
He lowered the other windows to cool the car off and kept talking to her. He talked her into getting into the front seat where he knew she was used to sitting with her mom and hadn’t been since the three of them started riding together. Her world had been disrupted. The mom she’d had to herself, she didn’t have in the same way anymore.
‘Let’s get out of here for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’
Heads turned as he backed out. The hostess looked over reprovingly at this unnecessary indulgence of a little girl who just needed a nap, and this Marquez, this game warden, leaving in the middle of a party that was a nicer event than he’d probably ever been to. With Maria he stopped and got an ice cream. They drove slowly back and looked at vineyards and she told him about starting first grade and the friend she met, and now she was going to be going to a new school and wouldn’t know anybody at all.
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.