Night Game jm-2

by Kirk Russell

  “Show me the bear carcass while they’re dusting the chain on the barn for prints.”

  “What have you found in the house?”

  “Someone has lived in the bedroom. It’s relatively kept up compared to the rest. ” “No blood?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sophie told me about a rundown place Durham stays at.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  Marquez walked Kendall out to the bear, and Shauf cut through the grass toward them. She’d been on the phone to Roberts and wanted to talk away from Kendall. Marquez stepped aside with her while Kendall looked at the carcass.

  “Melinda talked to the lawyer managing Johengen’s widow’s estate. He’s had this place rented to the same man for five years, though the name isn’t Durham, it’s Marion Stuart.”

  “Sure.”

  “She’s faxing Durham’s driver’s license photo to him. He’ll call back as soon as he gets a look.”

  Marquez took a closer look at the orchard as he told Kendall they’d faxed a photo to an LA lawyer. He pointed out the tire tracks to Kendall, the other area of crushed grass, his idea that something had been dragged out here, possibly the bear whose carcass was on the embankment. They’d found the catheter, so that bear hadn’t come up from the willows and creek.

  Kendall nodded and said, “There are media people already out on Howell. One of the deputies saw a couple of them hiking up outside the fence, so they may have cameras on us right now. I know you’re camera shy, but I don’t want you to leave.”

  “We’d be the last to leave.”

  Kendall indicated the plastic tube Shauf held. “That’s from the bear?”

  “It was on the ground here near the carcass. A tube gets inserted surgically and the bile gets drained once or twice a day. We know Nyland hasn’t been coming out here twice a day, but we don’t know about Bobby Broussard or anyone else. It’s time to open up the barn. What are you waiting on?”

  “It’s happening right now.”

  Kendall left them and walked back out to his group. Looking around at the lack of bear tracks or scat and at the swatch of crushed grass, Marquez saw an image that explained the crushed grass, the bear dragged out here in a cage towed by a truck. He watched Kendall and Hawse go around to the creek side of the house past the cottonwood. As he walked toward them to see where they were going he caught a glint of metal and saw an old piece of plywood blackened with age and staked down with metal concrete stakes, the cover to an old well.

  He pushed the grass along the edge of the plywood away with his foot and studied the metal stakes. They were a type that got used to support form boards in concrete construction, something he’d paid attention to lately as he schemed the bedroom addition at home. The steel stakes had bright nicks on them. Hammered, pounded in recently, nothing else would explain the marks. The plywood was blackened with age, spongy when he stepped on it, crusted with mud, and the stakes were rusty except for the bright spots, and now, leaning over, he determined the nails driven through the holes in the stakes were relatively new also. They were neither galvanized, nor rusted yet.

  Kendall came around the corner of the house, waved across to get Marquez’s attention, and then pointed at the barn, meaning meet him there, they were opening the doors. Marquez studied the plywood cover more before walking across the clearing. The steel stakes had been driven in at an angle, and from the resistance to his pushing he could tell they’d been pounded in at least a couple of feet to pin the plywood down well. It would take some work to get them out, might require a shovel. A county deputy cut the chain holding the barn doors shut and as they swung open pale light cut the darkness. They could make out the shape of the near things, but not much more. From somewhere in there came a low, deep animal growl.

  “Jesus Christ,” Kendall said, and the deputy who’d cut the chain pulled his gun, and stepped back.

  Marquez put a hand on the deputy’s shoulder, slowed the man’s quick step back, saying, “It’s in a cage. It’s not running around in the barn.”

  “How do you know that?” Kendall asked.

  “We’ve been looking for this location for months.”

  “Okay, Marquez, you come with me,” Kendall said. “Everybody else stay back.”

  They clicked flashlights on, and Marquez swept the flashlight beam along each wall and across the dirt floor looking for evidence Petroni had been in here. Their lights reached toward the back where the growl came again, and he saw cages, knew the bear growling was in one of them. He counted seven empty cages and then one with an emaciated bear in it. The cages were set up over a metal trough that water flowed through into a drain. Excrement, urine, loose food, would fall into the trough and the water carried it away. He turned to Kendall.

  “I wondered if I heard water flowing the first time I came out here. Thought I heard it and didn’t check.”

  Marquez shone his light around the cages and back at the bear.

  It didn’t react at all to the light. Blind, or too long in the darkness, possibly. He moved the light from cage to cage, talking to the bear as it growled, trying impossibly to reassure it. The other cages were in varying states of cleanliness; a couple looked like they’d held bears until recently, and that told him they’d probably find more carcasses.

  He moved on with Kendall. He would come back to the bear and would call after they’d checked the barn. They would get the bear out of here right away. His flashlight beam came to rest on a weird contraption that looked like a shower stall with strips of dangling plastic where the door ought to be.

  “What the hell is that?” Kendall asked.

  Marquez moved to it, saw that the strips of plastic were the same as in a supermarket to keep the cold in. When he moved the plastic and looked inside, he understood.

  “A drying station for meat, for gallbladders.”

  “You’re an encyclopedia for this shit.”

  There were a couple of gallbladders hanging, suspended in fine mesh bags, could be to keep the flies off them. The bear growled, and Marquez swung the light and saw tire tracks in the mud and a stack of deer hides and more pelts nailed to the wall along with dozens of antlers.

  “Don’t step anywhere near those tire tracks,” Kendall said, and Marquez turned his flashlight on a line of mounted bears all in different poses on wooden pedestals, counted five stuffed, mounted black bears, and moved the light on.

  “It could be Petroni was part of this,” Kendall said.

  “That’s not Stella’s blood in the backseat.”

  “You don’t know whose it is.”

  Kendall’s light searched the soft soil of the barn floor, and Marquez knew he was looking for a grave. Marquez did the same thing himself as he moved through the barn to the back where the caged bear was. He shone the light on the other cages, brought it back to the growling bear again, saw the tube running from its abdomen, the poor quality of the undercoat, and wondered if they’d be able to save it.

  “We’re going to get you out of here,” he said, and heard Kendall walking over.

  “I’ve smelled some rough things in my life,” Kendall said. “I don’t see anything, but I’ll get better lights. We’ll take one walk through and then back out.”

  “That carcass in the orchard was a bear in a cage that got dragged out there. You’ll want to take castings of those tire tracks as well.”

  “Dragged from here?”

  “Yeah, then released, and the bear would have gone for the creek, the water and cover there. Must have been frightened and sick. It was shot as it started down the bank.”

  They heard the hoarse rattle of an old freezer compressor kicking on and spotted its pale white reflection at the very back of the barn. They’d walked past it the first time, too caught up in the drying station.

  “Let’s check it,” Marquez said.

  “What are bile products used for?”

  “High blood pressure, coughs, gallstones, asthma. It’s a cureall.

  That be
ar in the orchard was killed as recently as yesterday, could have been after Nyland was released.”

  “Nyland got released and disappeared with Sophie,” Kendall said. “Then she starts talking to us last night, and before that she tells you this Durham sleeps at some rundown farmhouse.”

  “She didn’t say ‘farmhouse.’” When Kendall stopped talking abruptly, Marquez said, “Finish the thought. Where do you see Petroni in this?”

  “I don’t see a happy ending.”

  “You think he’s here somewhere.” If they didn’t find him in here, the search of the grounds would widen. Dogs would be brought in. “The plywood cover on the well should come off.”

  The freezer was big enough to hold just about anything and that was reason enough for silence. It had an ancient lock latch, and Kendall wanted to be the one to open it. He grunted as he lifted the heavy door and Marquez shone his light inside. A black bear’s head looked back up at them, a webwork of ice crystals filling its open mouth, its eyes iced grape skins dully reflecting the light. Kendall let the top rest against the back wall, and they removed twenty-two frozen paws.

  “At least there are no human body parts,” Kendall said. “At least not that, but it looks like we found the headquarters you’ve been after.”

  They swept the barn with light again as they walked back. Kendall squinted in the sunlight as they came outside, and Marquez said, “There’s an old well that needs to get looked at.”

  “Okay, show me.”

  40

  They slowly dug the stakes out,no one saying much, and with a county deputy and Shauf on one side and Marquez and Kendall on the other, they lifted away the heavy plywood cover. Two sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood screwed together formed the cap, and as they lifted it away Marquez saw that fresh concrete had been poured around the rim to bed the plywood.

  It had formed a kind of seal that was broken now, and the odor flowing up from the well was horrific. He caught a finger where a screw poked through the plywood, and his blood dripped on the weeds as they maneuvered the cap over and put it down.

  The odor, the release of gasses was gagging, and they fell back, had to give the well a few minutes to vent, Kendall going to his car to get something to dull the smell. Marquez covered his mouth, didn’t breath, leaned over with a flashlight. Near the bottom, roughly thirty feet down, was dark fur. He moved the beam along the fur, then straightened, stepped back, and watched Kendall take a look while thinking about what he’d just seen.

  Then they shined both lights in, Marquez talking.

  “Here.” Marquez moved the flashlight beam to a place where the hide met unevenly. “Looks like a bear hide but it’s been sewed together.”

  Kendall turned to Hawse. “We’ll need a backhoe.” To Marquez, “How deep would you guess?”

  “Thirty feet.”

  Kendall turned back to Hawse. “Tell the operator we need to get down at least twenty feet, maybe more. No, at twenty we can lower someone. Tell the operator we need a deep trench. He’ll know what to bring.”

  “Might be easier to lower someone,” Hawse said, and Marquez stepped away from their debate. He saw Bell working his way through the officers on the driveway, Bell handing over a card rather than showing a badge. Marquez raised a hand so Bell knew where he was. Three TV vans were parked out on Howell, and Bell had waded through volleys of questions from the media but didn’t seem displeased about it. Marquez showed him the well, the carcass in the orchard, looked in the barn with him while they waited for a backhoe.

  When the backhoe operator fired up his machine, diesel smoke plumed into the cool air, a curling black cloud rising against the white sky. The teeth of the hoe pulled at the concrete rim, lifted one edge, flipped and dragged it away from the well. It looked like a concrete donut lying there. The hoe repositioned and began to dig a trough, the bucket arm unfolding, teeth chattering as they scraped over stones. A pile of earth and loose rocks built alongside the backhoe, and a trench formed and deepened.

  The operator worked steadily without looking long at any of those watching. Kendall stood with his hands on his hips, his eyes periodically surveying the overall scene, directing the work like a construction superintendent, while Marquez walked back out into the orchard and then looked in the house, the one bedroom painted, carpeted, much cleaner than the rest of the place. There was a dresser but no belongings in the drawers.

  His gut tightened as they waited. He had trouble focusing on Bell’s questions but brought him up to speed on the search for Durham and Nyland, told him that he’d had another call from Ungar, one he hadn’t answered yet, and that it was Ungar who’d visited Keeler at Ice House.

  When a Fish and Game truck arrived with a bear trap chained down in the bed there was more waiting to confirm that all plaster castings of tire impressions had been taken. They’d share castings with the county. When the crime techs finished, the DFG truck backed into the barn. Marquez figured they could coax the bear with food into the trap, but the warden had a plan of his own and more experience. He was also quick to say he doubted the bear could be saved, had lost too much of its undercoat.

  “We’re going to try anyway,” Marquez said.

  More diesel smoke plumed upward as the hoe engine pulled against a rock and reached a point where it couldn’t dig any lower without risking a cave-in. The operator climbed down, shaking his head, saying he needed more shoring, more steel plate. Phone calls got made, and they waited for shoring to arrive, Kendall fuming because he’d made it clear how deep they needed to go before the operator came out.

  Then a call came from Roberts. She’d heard from the lawyer for the Johengen estate. He’d looked at the faxed photo and recognized Durham’s face.

  “He’s positive,” she said. “Durham or Marion Stuart is three years into a five-year lease.”

  “The photo faxed through clear enough for him to be certain?”

  Marquez asked, knowing the faxed quality wasn’t that good.

  “Remembers Durham’s bad cheek. He’s sure. Said his checks are always on time. What’s going on in the background behind you?”

  “A backhoe digging out a well.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “Something down there, not sure what it is yet, but dead.”

  She was quiet a moment, moved back to Durham.

  “Sac police will assist on a stakeout of Durham’s house.”

  “Thank them for us.”

  “I did.”

  When he hung up he told Bell the lawyer had ID’d Durham, then watched a young deputy get lowered into the newly shored trench. He fumbled with a rope and after a couple of unsuccessful tries were made, vomited, and readjusted the rope and the harness they were trying to slide under it. Then the carcass began to slowly rise. The chain extending from the hoe arm to wrap around it pulled taut, and the hide with whatever was sewed inside bumped against the sides of the well as it rose. Kendall directed the hoe operator to a wide sheet of clear plastic and the operator placed it nearly in the center. The chain hooked to the ropes got unclipped, and the hoe arm swung clear.

  Marquez moved in closer, trying to make sense of the stitching.

  He brushed away the arm of a deputy trying to hold him back. It appeared a bear hide had been sewed with fishing line. He knelt with Kendall, their knees on the plastic sheeting as they studied the rough stitching. Kendall cut through with a knife and opened a small section. He repositioned Hawse, who was videotaping, and backed Marquez up and took another look himself, then motioned Marquez forward while holding off Bell.

  “There’s a body inside the bear hide,” Kendall said. “I’m going to open more of it and I want you to take a look at the face with me.” He added, “If there is one.”

  The hide made a sucking ripping sound as it pulled apart, and Marquez could see hands and it was funny but he knew from the hands alone. He saw a gaping wound under the ribs and then Petroni’s face as Kendall reached and lifted more of the hide. As he saw Bill’s face a
nguish gripped him, a hard wave of sadness.

  “I’m sorry,” Kendall said very quietly, and then talking to himself, “and I really did think he killed his wife, may have, I still don’t know. If not, someone tried to make it look like he did. Those were his boot prints in her blood in the house. We found brochures and asked the Mexican authorities to watch for the Honda. I was sure we’d find him in Mexico.”

  Marquez thought of a time when the SOU was new and he and Petroni each headed a team. He remembered in the first days after they’d met each other, driving along Highway 1 in a former drug dealer’s car they’d bought off a police lot on their way to sell abalone to a black market dealer they planned to sting. They’d stopped for a beer afterward and met another guy in the bar who wanted in on the abalone action. The guy had insisted on buying their beer and they’d laughed about that later and it had seemed then that the new undercover units were going to make a real difference.

  All these years later and he found himself wondering if he was making a difference.

  “We’ll check to see if they threw anything else in the well,” Kendall said. “We’ll be out here a while, and I’ll need to be able to get a hold of you. We will find who did this, Marquez. I promise you that.”

  Kendall’s words meant little to him. Kendall had been looking hard for Petroni, and his theories were all upside down as near as Marquez could tell. How had Petroni gotten here? That was a question to get answered. He had another and turned to Kendall with it.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  Kendall seemed to consider the question. When he spoke it was quietly as though the conversation was strictly between them, though Hawse hung at his elbow.

  “I’ve seen bodies discarded like trash. Rape-murders where the body is dumped on a road shoulder. This is what it reminds me of. Take the warden, wrap him in a bear skin, and throw him down a hole.”