Shell Games

by Kirk Russell

  “Could be.”

  “I take it they gave you a description.”

  Ruter nodded. “A photo.” He took it out of his coat and laid it on the table and Marquez heard Petersen shift for a better view. But he could see it wasn’t recent, was maybe a few years after the one he’d gotten in Mexico City. “They’re also looking at Davies. Dope trafficking is part of this, too, at least as far as Huega was concerned. The DEA took his ex-wife in for questioning.” Ruter shook his head ruefully. “I’m up to my ass in Feds.”

  “And what can we do for you?” Marquez asked. “You’ve got more info than we do. What’s changed since we last talked?”

  “I want to solve these cases,” Ruter said, “but the Feds want me to gather information and pass it on to them. I know if you get close to him you’re going to try to take him down and when you need backup I’ll bring an army.”

  “The killings bother you that much.”

  “From the time I was a kid I wanted to be a detective. We had a neighbor who was murdered. He’d played minor league baseball and taught me to pitch when I was ten. He wasn’t even thirty yet and was like a big brother to me. Someone killed him over a small gambling debt. I didn’t get my badge to be a gofer for the FBI.”

  “You don’t want your cases taken away.”

  “No, I can’t stand it, and I know you’re not going to stop look-ing for him.”

  “How do you want to proceed?”

  “By communicating more.”

  “Good enough.”

  Then they were silent and didn’t have enough in common to have a second drink together. Marquez laid a twenty on the bar.

  Outside, the light carried the pale gold of late summer and the wind was colder with the sun setting. There were high cirrus, waves churned against the shore rock, and Marquez wondered if they were going to see a weather change. Rougher weather would make it harder for abalone poachers. He stood in the parking lot with Petersen and Ruter and then said he was going back into the bar to get a coffee for the ride back to Bragg. He used the bath-room, splashing water on his face, which he seemed to be doing a lot lately. He gave the bartender two bucks for lukewarm coffee.

  When he came out Petersen was in her truck on the phone and Ruter was waiting for him near the bumper, lingering there. “Something else I want to ask you about and I didn’t want to bring up inside because it’s not necessarily related to anything,” Ruter said. “But I’m going to run it by you.” He paused, looking past Marquez at the horizon as if the subject was embarrassing. “I just want your opinion.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve had an old black cat that’s been with me forever. Bad breath, bad temper, but I love this cat. I built a cat door into our kitchen door and she’d go out in the middle of the night when she was younger and bring back a rabbit as big as her.” He showed with his hands. “Lately, she’d just sit out in the night and I think it made her feel like a hunter again.” He bit down on his lip and looked at Marquez’s eyes. “Someone killed her last night out near our front gate.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  And he was. He could hear what it meant to Ruter.

  “I got her the day I got my badge and she was my good luck. She’d always wait up for me and you know you get home late at night sometimes. I named her Hero. Aw, Christ, this isn’t your problem.”

  “How’d they kill her?”

  “Looks like a knife. Most likely a neighborhood kid, some sick little fuck. But I’ve thought about Davies and that’s why I’m telling you. We’ve pushed him pretty hard and I’m wondering if you can picture him doing something like this, but maybe that’s having the Guyanno cases on my mind. It’s probably an old case, someone with a grudge against me, or a kid like I said. That’s not some-thing you’d associate with this Kline’s network, is it? There’s no reason he’d take an interest in a county cop, is there?”

  “Someone was trying to get inside your head.”

  “That’s right, and they did it. That’s why I wanted to run it by you.”

  “A knife?” Marquez asked.

  “Yes, and that’s why it’s got me wondering.”

  “It’s not the Davies I knew, but it doesn’t seem that I knew him very well and I can’t think of why Kline would try to get to you. Unless you’ve brushed next to something they have going on. But your cat, that’s got to be someone that knows you.”

  “Or has watched me.”

  “There is that possibility.” Marquez reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” and Ruter shook his head, his thoughts private, and he walked away looking like a man temporarily lost in himself. Marquez saw Petersen had gotten out of her truck and was walking over, wanting to talk again before leaving, and proba-bly wondering what that was all about. Marquez raised a hand, waved to Ruter as the detective drove away. He guessed that Ruter’s theory of a neighborhood kid was probably right. Some kid in a bad space trying out a knife or trying out the feeling of killing. Petersen leaned against his truck and looked uncomfortable.

  “What was that about?”

  “Someone killed his cat last night.” He told her what Ruter had told him and she was quiet, absorbing it, saying she was sorry and then, “In the bar Ruter acted like a man who’d had a religious con-version. All of a sudden he’s a Kline believer. I know you kept a file on Kline, but has the FBI really looked that hard for him all these years and not nailed him? No one can stay hidden that many years.”

  “You wouldn’t think so.”

  “You’re not afraid of him, are you?”

  He looked at her and wondered what had happened to their conversation of the other day. Maybe she hadn’t taken him seri-ously because she didn’t believe he could think about Kline in a clearheaded way. She probably figured his worries were overblown and assumed as Ruter had, that Davies had killed Huega. Now, something in the bar conversation with Ruter had changed her and that surprised him.

  “Kline almost took me out when I was looking for him and I still don’t understand how he found me. I still think about that at night. Yeah, there’s something off the planet about him.”

  “I’ve never seen you scared of a criminal. I don’t know what to do with that.”

  “He’ll go down this time.”

  “That kind of male bravado doesn’t usually come from you.”

  “If we find him, it’ll be us or him.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel better.”

  “You’re not going in the line of fire, Sue.”

  “You think that’s why I’m asking? Because I’m pregnant?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I may as well turn in my equipment today.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Then don’t lay this male bullshit on me.”

  “It’s not bullshit.”

  “It’s not? Okay, Lieutenant, see you back in Fort Bragg.”

  She went to her truck and he turned his back as her engine gunned. Her anger left him feeling lousy and he sat in his truck sipping the coffee, then shaking off the feeling and calling Roberts to see if anything more had turned up. He checked his voice mail, surprised he still hadn’t heard anything from Keeler after the con-frontation with the FBI yesterday. As dark closed in, he started for Fort Bragg and his phone rang as he climbed the steep road up from the cove. He stared at the screen before answering, somehow had known he’d hear from him.

  “I’ve got a lead you want,” Davies said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “It’s got to be in person. Where are you at?”

  “Shelter Cove.”

  “You want to meet me in Fort Bragg?”

  “All right.”

  “They’re after me.”

  “Who is?”

  “I don’t know who they are. Call my cell when you get into town. I don’t want to wait anywhere public.”

  “I’ll call you,” and Marquez hung up first.

  22

  Five miles from the cutoff that would take him back to
Fort Bragg, Marquez crested a rise, saw a long line of brake lights and in the dip below, flashing lights of emergency vehicles and the highway patrol. The driver of the car in front of him was out of his vehicle with a foot up on his rear bumper. His head turned toward Marquez’s headlights and he squinted, face scrunched as if to say, don’t you get it, buddy, we’re not going anywhere soon. A half hour later the traffic was still at a dead stop and he’d learned that it was a logging truck that had jackknifed and there was a fatality. He called Petersen, thinking she might have to meet Davies and keep him in Fort Bragg until he could get there.

  “It must have happened after I drove through,” she said. “How come you talked down to me like that?”

  “I wasn’t talking down.”

  “You were patronizing me.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, but if you want to say being pregnant is the same as not being, then we’re not on the same page.”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  He didn’t understand the intensity of her reaction, but knew she was serious and apologized again, although the apology didn’t sit that well with him. He swallowed his pride, did it anyway, and then checked the action below. They had something like a 988 Cat with log forks and a top clamp moving logs off the roadway. The opera-tor looked experienced and maybe they’d get the road open soon, but there was no way to know for sure and he told her about Davies’s call.

  “He wants to meet tonight in Fort Bragg and claims he’s got information.”

  “That he couldn’t give you over the phone?”

  “He wants to talk in person, says he’s being followed.”

  “Yeah, by little people in his head.”

  “I’m wondering if the Feds are tracking him.”

  “I think we should write him off. Skip the meeting tonight. He’s trouble and he hasn’t been straight with us.”

  “You’re right, but I want to keep a conversation going. How about checking Noyo for his boat and then call me back?”

  “This guy makes my skin crawl, John. He’s up with two murder victims at Guyanno, then he’s dumping Huega off his boat after torturing him and you still want to meet with him. I don’t get that.”

  “He’s not all smoke. He’s had contact with our abalone buyers.”

  “You don’t know that, but if it’s true, what’s that say about him?”

  “It says he’s got his own agenda.”

  “I’ll check the harbor and call you.”

  There was a part of him that completely understood taking Huega up the coast and questioning him. He knew the feeling, but had never given into it. Davies was sure he’d been set up by some-one and Marquez didn’t think that part was an act, though he knew he was the only one who believed that. He hung up with her and saw the first cars crawling through down below. An hour later, as he drove through Leggett he took a call from Katherine.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Up near Fort Bragg.”

  “That’s four hours away, isn’t it?”

  “Almost.”

  “We had a funny thing at Presto today, John.”

  “What was that?”

  “A couple of men came in after you left. They ordered cappuc-cinos and then just watched me.”

  “Were you behind the counter?”

  “For a while and then I went in back because they made me nervous.”

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “I tried to but they stood off on one end of the bar. Sara was afraid they were going to rob us, that’s how weird it seemed.”

  “What did they look like?” She gave him a description now and one sounded like the black-haired man they’d videotaped with his friend outside Li’s house. The other she described could be the prison-buffed Hispanic Meghan Burris had told them about. The man who called himself Carlo. She described a thick white scar on his left forearm and he heard the huskiness in her voice, knew she’d been affected by it, and wondered how they’d found the coffee bar. Had he been followed by more than the FBI the other day? He asked her to walk through a description one more time. “They sound like a couple of guys we’ve been after. I’ve got a videotape I’m going to show you.”

  “You mean they followed you here?”

  “They may have, but I don’t know what it means that they came in and stood at the bar. Whether they’re checking it out or sending a message. Did they talk to anybody?”

  “Just to order coffees.”

  “I’m sorry and I’ll do something about it.”

  “Do what? What can you do?” He didn’t have an answer for that yet and she continued. “I went up to the house today and got a couple more things. I took that light that I like.”

  “Did you think about what I said the other day?”

  “I’m thinking about everything.” Marquez didn’t have any-thing to say to that. “The deer ate your last tomatoes,” she said after a silence. “I guess they got up on the deck.” They were wel-come to them. “And Maria said she saw your hawk this after-noon.”

  “Maria was with you?”

  “Yes. She says she can tell the hawk from the others.”

  With Maria he’d nursed an injured redtail back to health. For a long time it stayed close to the house, roosting in the redwoods alongside the driveway. They’d raised mice and it was a hard lesson for Maria to watch the hawk swoop down and take a mouse. He hadn’t expected the bird to make it, thought it would end up sitting on a roost someplace like the Lindsay Museum in Walnut Creek. But the hawk had recovered and he and Maria made a game out of spotting it flying up on the mountain.

  “I’ll have to talk to her.”

  “You won’t tonight. She’s already in bed.” He pictured Kather-ine’s little house in Bernal Heights. She’d planned to rent it out long-term and he was going to make improvements to it over time. He knew how hard it must have been for her to move back there and remembered how excited and happy she’d been the first year up on Mt. Tam. Katherine went on, “We had a fight after she left the dinner table and headed straight to the bathroom. She thinks I lurk outside the bathroom door every time she goes in there.”

  “Were you outside the door tonight?”

  “Am I going to get it from you, too?”

  “I’m asking.”

  “You know, John, you’re one person who doesn’t get to judge me. She looks like a famine victim but thinks she looks like a fashion model.”

  “We’ll get through to her. Regardless of what happens between us.”

  “I think we’ve already had this conversation.”

  He hung up with Katherine and drove into Fort Bragg thinking over the conversation. But there was nothing in this one he could draw from. He’d made the offer to leave Fish and Game, find another job, and that didn’t ring true for her. She didn’t believe he’d do it, he guessed. Or maybe she was already further down-stream from the marriage than he realized. He knew something was going to have to give; they weren’t going anywhere this way.

  When he hit a stoplight he punched in Ruter’s number, because that was the way they’d left it, that he’d communicate whenever he heard from Davies. Ruter’s voice was slow and it sounded like he’d had a couple of drinks.

  “He called me, too,” Ruter said. “I think he wanted to hear my voice after killing my cat.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “That Huega, Stocker, and Han, all dealt drugs, and that it’s common knowledge up here. He knows we found dope at Huega’s ex-wife’s, and says Huega moved dope at night out of some of these coves where they used to ship timber. Davies says the dope is going to the same people buying abalone.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Where I’m headed is I think this is looking more like a dope smuggling operation than an abalone poaching ring.”

  “Then you know more than you’re telling me.”

  “They pulled half a kilo from the ex-wife’s house.”

  Marquez listened to more on the dope smuggling theory, Hueg
a, Han, and Stocker moving dope by boat for growers in Humboldt, the spin the DEA had put on it for Ruter to keep the detective out of their hair. Marquez knew because he’d been there himself, knew what lines they would have fed Ruter. Huega, Han, and Stocker putting into these secluded coves at night, dope ferried out to their boats and then transferred to the main buyer, the DEA on the edge of a big bust they’d been working for a year. He could hear it, but his problem was a poaching ring. The dope smuggling would go on forever up here. All you needed to know about the war on drugs was that prices had dropped steadily over the last decade. Match that fact with the basics of supply and demand and you had your answer.

  Ruter changed subjects. “Here’s a story about Davies you might not know. Last Christmas, Davies walked through a restaurant park-ing lot with a Zippo lighter, firing up the American flags everyone was running around with on their cars. He’d set five or six on fire by the time they grabbed him. He then told the arresting officer the flag isn’t the country and people are getting confused. He said the founding fathers would have cleaned their rifle, not flown colored cloth.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Fort Bragg.”

  “He’s right, I guess.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Marquez.”

  He heard liquid pouring, a glass placed on a hard surface, ice tinkling. “Then there’s one other idea I’m going to throw out there. In this one Davies isn’t the bad guy. He’s being used by an unknown party. I can’t tie anything together; I’m just throwing it out there because you’re the guy to keep kicking that around. Call me after you meet with him. I’ll keep my phone next to me.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  A few minutes later he talked with Petersen and she said Davies’s boat wasn’t at Noyo. She chuckled but not with any humor. She really didn’t want any more to do with Davies. “Maybe he spotted people hiding up in the trees when he docked,” she said, “or a black helicopter hovering overhead. They’re probably chasing him down the coast and he’s just barely staying ahead of them.”

  “I’ll call him.”

  “I wouldn’t. If you ask me, we should let him go. He isn’t worth it and he’s never been who he says he is. But he’s sure got your number, doesn’t he?” She hung up quickly, still angry, he thought.