Night Game (16 page)

“I don’t have the answer.”

“You’ve asked yourself?”

“Sure.”

“He’s turning to you in his time of need when everything is on the line.”

“Let’s hear your theory.”

“All right. He’s taking bribes and learns your team is in the area and starts worrying you’re going to find out. And by the way, I’ve got testimony from more than Brandt.”

“If the other is Bobby Broussard, you can throw it out.”

That surprised Kendall. He put his beer down.

“What’s the matter with Bobby Broussard?”

“I’ve seen him perjure himself.”

“I still think it all fits. Sophie is tied in with Nyland, Nyland is tied in with poaching, and Petroni suddenly has new financial demands. He knows the bear population is relatively stable, and he can let these guys take a few. I’m saying he’s got a financial need, there’s a conduit through Sophie to make an offer, and he crosses the line.”

“As long as I’ve known him he’s been proud to be a game warden.”

“Right, and he was an Eagle Scout too, so were some of those Enron guys, weren’t they? But let me finish. You’re up here with your team and he doesn’t want anything to do with you, but in order to keep track of your whereabouts he’s got to weave you in.

So lately, he’s started to make contact and feed you information.”

“He didn’t make contact all summer. We barely spoke.”

“This theory has a few gaps, but hear me out. Stella figures out that he’s got more money than he should have. She lived with him a long time and she knows the money. She senses something is wrong, confronts him, and maybe even tells her lawyer to start threatening him and he panics.”

“How much money are you talking about?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s not going to be big money unless some guide is passing it on to a client. Maybe a grand a month otherwise.”

“That could be the margin of difference.”

“It’s a big step for a warden.”

“Big step for any cop.”

“I can’t see Petroni doing that.”

“Right, and deep down he’s actually a really good guy who talks shit about everybody because he has an insecure streak we
should all forgive him for. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck.

We’ve got people talking bribes and Petroni evasive about who he’s talked to and when. I don’t like the way it feels, and I’ll throw another one at you—Jed Vandemere figured it out, saw Petroni involved in something.”

“Then he wouldn’t be the guy I knew.”

“Marquez,” and Kendall’s frustration surfaced, “Petroni doesn’t have anything good to say about you.”

Marquez pushed back from the table. They left it that they’d talk tomorrow or as soon as either knew anything. Then as Marquez walked out he saw Troy Broussard’s truck parked near Kendall’s sedan. A cigarette glowed in the darkness behind the windshield, and Bobby, sitting in the passenger seat, called “Hey, you,” as Marquez walked past. Though he knew he shouldn’t, he veered toward them.

“They’re going to put him down like a dog when they find him,” Bobby said. “We’re calling everyone to help hunt him down.

Detective has asked our help finding him.”

Troy turned to face Marquez more directly. “Don’t you think we know you, you sonofabitch?”

“Who is it you think I am?”

Troy started his engine and touched his forehead. “A man kills his wife like that deserves a bullet right here.”

Marquez watched their lights disappear down the road and found his hands were shaking as he got in his truck. He sat for several minutes before picking up the phone, checking with Cairo again, then Shauf. Cairo reported Sweeney was downstairs at the casino and happily gambling. Shauf had watched Nyland load restaurant waste and scraps at the back door of a Chinese restaurant.

“Looks like egg rolls at the bait piles tonight.”

“Is he alone?”

“He is and he’s worked hard to lose anyone tailing him, but it’s hard outrunning a satellite.”

“Give him plenty of room tonight.”

“We will.”

Near midnight he called Katherine, and Maria answered, saying Mom was asleep and she was on Highway 395, it was beautiful and she wasn’t tired at all.

“The clouds are really white in the moonlight and I can see these tall mountains off to my right. I guess I got driving from you, because I feel fine.”

“Those mountains off to your right are the ones John Muir called the Range of Light. We’ll hike up there together someday. You okay taking it in from there?”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“I’m sorry about this, Maria, sorry we’re doing this to you. I know it’s hard on you.”

“I already have a C in chemistry and I’m going to miss an English test.”

“At least you’ll get to see your grandmother.”

“Grandma isn’t going to take the SATs for me.”

“How’s your cell phone working?”

“I’m talking to you on it.”

“Call me when you get there, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

He heard her quiet “I love you too,” and then hung up.

The next morning he heard
from the Stockton vice cop, Delano. The bust had gone splendidly, yielded four pounds of crystal meth and six suspects. They’d also found more bear paws.

“We’re starting to wonder if we’re going to run into a live bear.” Delano laughed and said, “I can fax info on the guys we busted. I should also tell you the local warden here, Ann Knight, is on her way in. She says she knows you.”

Marquez gave him the fax number at the TreeSearch office. He knew and liked Ann Knight and was glad to hear it was her. “How many paws?” he asked.

“Sixteen in two coolers in a refrigerator in a garage, but they’re in bad shape. We also recovered two rifles from the garage and a vehicle there has an address up your direction.”

“What’s the name on registration?”

“Edward Broussard.”

“He goes by Bobby Broussard up here. He was in the Crystal Basin last night.”

“What’s that, another meth lab?”

“Different crystal, it’s a wilderness area. He was feeding bear bait piles with someone we’re watching.”

“We’d like him to explain what his car is doing in Stockton.”

“I can lead you to him.” Marquez paused a moment before committing to more, yet felt the first bubble of excitement. “Tell me about the rifles.”

“A .30-06 and a Winchester .30-30, numbers filed on both.”

“Have you called Kendall?”

“Just talked to him.”

“Do you want me to do anything about Bobby?”

“I already called Detective Kendall. I’m waiting to hear back from him.”

“You’re going to ask Kendall to bring him in for you?”

“I already did.”

“Will you ask Ann Knight to call me when she gets there?”

Half an hour later Knight called. She reported that the actual paw count was seventeen, about half from yearling bears, four from cubs, the rest adult. They were in poor shape, not salable, and it was Marquez’s guess that the sales pipeline had been interrupted by some event, possibly the earlier arrest of Nine-O. Knight would photograph the paws and bring them to Sacramento. He could get a look at them there, if he wanted. He told her about the two rifles, what he’d said to Delano about them, and added that he’d call her if anything came of that.

He checked in with Cairo as he drove out Six Mile Road. Sweeney had left the casino and gone to a lakefront estate near Tahoma on the west shore.

“I’m parked where I can see over the fence,” Cairo said. “It’s one of these multimillion-dollar houses on the water. There’s an
oiled redwood gate in front, and his car is inside in the courtyard.

People are getting here. It must be a lunch deal.”

“Does Sweeney still have a driver?”

“Yeah, the driver is with the car, standing outside it talking on his cell.” He heard Cairo yawn. “What’s going on down there?”

“I’m on the ridge above Nyland’s trailer waiting for Shauf to get here. We’re going to check out the firelight I saw the other night. I’ll call you on the other side of that.”

Below, the dry meadow was yellow-brown. He saw a couple of Walker hounds on long chains, the chains silvery in sunlight. He heard Shauf approaching and figured they’d need twenty minutes to cross the slope and drop down near the last trailer. When they did, the chained hounds started barking and a third leaped out of the doorless trailer and charged upslope. Marquez sat down on a rock, coaxed the dog over, and quieted her. Then the hound followed them but only as far as the last trailer. They picked up a trail and followed it along the rim of a reed-filled depression, what might have been a shallow lake a hundred years ago. A quarter mile later, after it ended in a small clearing, Marquez looked back up at the ridge where they’d started and knew they were roughly in the right spot.

“There’s your fire pit out in the middle,” Shauf said.

It was built of concentric circles of stones fitted tightly together like a woven basket of rock set into the ground. Capping it was a circular iron plate that had an eye ring that a stick or something could be slipped through to lift it off.

“There was firelight and then it winked out. This explains it.

Look over there.”

Shauf walked over to a neatly cut stack of split pine kindling and a jug she said smelled like kerosene. Marquez found a stick and stirred the ashes, met resistance, and stuck his hand in. He pulled out fragments of bottle glass, fused and melted, a blackened
metal button, then a piece of bone, short and thick, like a piece of femur, one end crushed and broken. He put the heavy cap back on and studied the bone fragment again before handing it to Shauf.

He walked the rest of the small clearing, checking out the stacked wood, rusted axe, gallon container of kerosene. He tried his phone and couldn’t get a signal.

“I can’t tell what it’s from,” Shauf said.

“Looks to me like it could be human.”

“It’s old.”

“Yeah.” It was quite dark, mineralized. “We’ll bag it and take it.”

They walked back, and Marquez again quieted the hound. He looked in the trailer with the missing door, saw folded horse blankets, and heard another dog growl from the shadows. There didn’t seem to be anything else there, and they hiked back up to the ridge.

In Placerville at their office the fax from Delano had come through, and Marquez read the rap sheets on the men arrested last night. None of the names caught his eye, but he called Kendall and left a message listing the names and asking Kendall to flip through Petroni’s logbook and call him back if he found any matches.

Marquez didn’t hear back from Kendall all afternoon, and Sweeney began to move in their direction. Within an hour he was less than forty miles from Placerville. Then they watched him drive into town and stop in front of the Hangtown Grille on Main Street. Both Sweeney and the driver went inside, and a third man showed up minutes later and joined them at a table. Alvarez walked past.

“Sweeney is eating a steak,” he said. “I don’t recognize the third man, but the steak looks like a sirloin and it’s making me hungry.”

When they’d finished dinner it was dark, streetlights were on, and Sweeney and his friend, a middle-aged man, walked down the sidewalk while the driver drove to the hotel and carried the bags in ahead of them. After Sweeney had checked into the Lexington the
team moved into positions around it. They watched him get into an elevator with his luggage, a bellhop, and the friend. A couple of hours later a green Land Cruiser with Nyland at the wheel drove past the hotel entrance and parked on a side street. Nyland walked back wearing a down parka, canvas pants, and boots. He paused in the lobby, looking uncomfortable and stiff in his new clothes. The gel in his short hair gleamed under the lobby lights.

“Here’s the hunting guide,” Marquez said.

“And maybe that’s why Durham followed you,” Shauf theorized.

“He knew this hunt was coming and was jumpy about it.

It’s got to be Durham who set this up. He’s the lobbyist. He must know Sweeney. But what’s he doing this for? He’s got a nice house, must be a decent job consulting and lobbying. The money he makes guiding a hunt can’t be worth it.”

“He likes being the game hunter, and maybe he’s our bear farmer.”

Marquez watched Nyland nervously appraise the lobby, then move toward the bar.

“Nyland looks like a Ken doll,” Shauf said. “Ken goes hunting.”

“He wants this,” Marquez said.

“What do you mean?”

“The guide business, crooked or not, he’s invested himself in it.”

“He belongs in jail.”

“He may get there tonight.”

Roberts slipped into the Lexington, went to the bar, took a place in the shadows, and ordered a drink but didn’t touch it until Sweeney and his friend walked in. Nyland got to his feet, came around and introduced himself, and everyone shook hands, Nyland acting as though Sweeney were some sort of celebrity.

As the others took a table in the bar Durham’s car rolled up to the hotel entrance. Marquez watched him hand the keys to his Cadillac to a teenage valet.

“Head honcho coming in,” Marquez said, as Durham strode through the lobby. Unlike the others, he wore a sport coat and slacks. “Not making the ride tonight,” Marquez said, wondering again if Durham was their bear farmer.

Drinks got ordered, and Marquez could see Sweeney was here to relax and cut loose. He smiled easily and seemed perfectly comfortable with the situation. He obviously knew Durham, and only Nyland looked out of place. Marquez kept his focus on Durham.

From the way Durham had talked to Alvarez, it was clear he prided himself on his other big game exploits. There were photos from Africa, Canada, South America, and Siberia on the walls of Sierra Guides. Sweeney’s presence proved the guide business dovetailed with lobbying work, but it was still a long step from there to trafficking bear parts or farming.

Marquez checked Nyland again, a guy uncomfortable in his own skin, something eating at him tonight.
Maybe he doesn’t think he’ll be able to deliver a bear, or maybe he’s thinking about us.
Nyland’s eyes kept darting toward Durham, who ignored him and entertained the others with a story, gesturing with his hands, smiling, a complete about-face from the grim guy who’d grilled Alvarez.

Then, Marquez saw Sophie walking down the sidewalk toward the hotel in a dress so tight it showed all the lines of her legs and cupped her breasts. She crossed the lobby and entered the bar. Sweeney and Durham got to their feet. Sweeney kissed her on the cheek, and she sat down next to Durham, not Nyland.

There was another quick round, a final before Nyland, Sweeney, and Sweeney’s companion stood. Durham shook Sweeney’s hand, though he didn’t stand, more the handshake of two equals, one leaving now. The trio moved to the hotel door, and Marquez caught Nyland’s glance back as Durham covered Sophie’s hand with his own. As the others stepped out into the cold fall air and went to Nyland’s Land Cruiser, Durham urged her to slide closer.