Night Game (17 page)

Rumors of Troy’s abusing Sophie
had followed her since grade school, and Marquez knew there’d been at least one incident where an elementary school teacher’s concern had caused the police to pull Troy in for questioning. She’d been eleven years old when that happened, nine when her mother died. There’d been talk at the time of placing her in foster care, but eventually she had come home and the only thing society’s temporary concern had achieved was to mark her and separate her from her friends.

Petroni had grown up in Placerville. He’d known Sophie since she’d been a young girl. He’d known all the Broussards, the stories told about them, their poor southern rural roots and culture of living off the land. Even here in the mountains where many people cobbled together a living through a willingness to work a variety of jobs, the Broussards’ poverty emanated from them like an odor.

Petroni had tried to explain his attraction to her when Marquez had driven with him through the hills behind Placerville. He’d talked of seeing her as a young girl walking through town in the same clothes she’d worn the previous several years, her sweaters hiking up her forearms as she grew tall, thin, and lanky.

He’d described driving out Highway 49 in his first Fish and Game truck and feeling sad for her as she’d walked the shoulder of the winding two-lane highway, alone in a place where she shouldn’t have been. Petroni told him that she wasn’t really Troy’s daughter, but rather the daughter of his wife’s sister who’d died in an accident.

Marquez could understand the feeling of being worth less than everyone else, what it felt like inside. It was easy to remember an older girl telling him when he was seven that he was a throwaway. His parents, unable to deal with raising two children, caught up in the importance of their own lives, had elevated their struggles against drug and alcohol dependency to a level that subsumed any real responsibility for raising him or his sister, Dara. The final abandonment came when their mother dropped them at their paternal grandparents, a temporary solution that was just supposed to last as long as it took her to get it together.

He’d pieced together enough about Sophie Broussard’s life to know that no luck like that had ever come her way. When she’d finally escaped home she’d ended up with Nyland, and now she was back with him, but as she’d admitted at the Creekview, not really with him. From what Marquez had seen in the Lexington bar tonight, he knew she wasn’t with anyone.

While Nyland was inside the Lexington, his Land Cruiser had gotten equipped with an option the rental company didn’t offer, twenty-four-hour tracking, the team’s last GPS transponder. They had his position, knew he’d just turned onto the access road to the Crystal Basin Wilderness. A few minutes later he broke from the
paved road onto Weber Mill, and Marquez realized there wasn’t going to be any cat and mouse or doubling back.

“What do you think?” Shauf asked, slowing to a stop along Crystal Basin Road.

“This is it. It’s the bait pile you found or another like it along Weber Mill. It’s a quick and dirty hunt, the big guy doesn’t want to waste time.”

“Not just using the road to cut through.”

“No, I think he rented the Land Cruiser for cover, and I’m guessing Sweeney doesn’t want to do the hijinks, doesn’t want to sit out all night somewhere cold, and asked for the nearest easiest bear to shoot. It could be part of Nyland’s nervousness, he knows we’re out here and wanted to take Sweeney deeper into the woods.”

Marquez called the pilot of the DFG spotter plane. She was south of them and approaching with lookdown infrared equipment.

Ten minutes later the pilot confirmed that there was a stationary heat signal where GPS showed the Land Cruiser had stopped. As the team moved into the Crystal Basin, drifting one vehicle in, then the next, a van, an old pickup, a car, Marquez decided that he and Alvarez would work their way down the steep slope, keeping to the trees and brush, and the rest of the team would cover either entrance to Weber Mill Road.

He alerted the wardens they’d called in for help, then took a cheerful call from ex-chief Keeler who said he was in his camper with his dog and on the road nearing Placerville. He had a campsite reserved at Ice House Lake.

“We’re watching a suspect now who looks like he’s about to hunt.”

“Then I’m too late.”

“This isn’t the one I need your help with.”

By the time Marquez moved down with Alvarez there was a moon rising above the ridge across the canyon. Pale light washed
the dirt road below, and they made out Bobby Broussard’s truck parked near Nyland’s Land Cruiser and a second truck near the southern entrance to the road. When Marquez talked with Shauf she reported that Troy Broussard had just passed her position and driven on, slowly climbing toward the lip of the basin.

It grew colder and the moon rose over the river canyon. Voices no longer drifted up from down the slope. Bobby walked the road, standing almost directly below them, glancing upslope as he smoked, farted, moved back to his truck. He squatted there, talked briefly on his CB radio, then started up the road in the other direction.

When that happened, Marquez tapped Alvarez and they scrambled down, crouched as they ran across the road, and dropped into trees. Lying beneath trees on the downslope below the dirt road, they worked over to a group of oaks, belly-crawling through brush, avoiding the gray-white light reflecting off the open slope of dry grass.

Marquez pulled himself forward with his elbows, eased down a little closer, though he heard their voices. Low murmurs and a long silence. The hunting blind was no more than a hundred feet below. He turned, let Alvarez know this was it, they were good. They could record from here.

An hour passed and then a downwind started, and that’s what was needed, heavier air to push the bait pile scents toward the river bottom where a bear could pick up the smells. Bears used the river like a highway at night. Marquez worked a cramp in his thigh, heard faint murmurs from below, then brush breaking and a low growl. With night goggles Marquez read one, then a second bear at the bait pile.

Now came a flicker of laser scopes, gunshots, sharp hard echoes dying quickly, the moaning cries of a wounded bear thrashing, breaking through brush, and Nyland’s voice, clear and author
itative, giving directions, going after the wounded one, calling out that the other was down. Spotter lights came on. Nyland led them down, Sweeney and friend trailing well back.

“I got him,” Alvarez whispered. “I got Sweeney shooting. He got the bear that’s down. His friend wounded the other.”

They heard Nyland’s sharp warning to the men to stay back, saw his light sweep through the brush below the bait pile, heard a sharp crack of a rifle shot. The moaning stopped. The voices of Sweeney and his friend, their excitement, the adrenaline release, carried up the slope as they reached the bait pile. Alvarez lifted the camcorder and recorded Sweeney’s putting another bullet in the bear lying there.

“You ready?” Marquez asked, and as Alvarez nodded, Marquez radioed Shauf to bring the other wardens up, to get ready.

“Bobby’s coming your way with an ice chest,” she said.

“Okay, we see him.”

Bobby Broussard went past them, half sliding on the dry grass, carrying a cooler. Below, Nyland skinned the bear at the bait pile. They heard Sweeney giving Nyland advice and watched as the gallbladder was removed, dropped in the cooler, the hide cut off and folded. Bobby was given the bloody task of humping it back up while Nyland went to skin the other bear.

“Bring everyone in,” Marquez told Shauf.

Bobby brought the first skin to the road and went back for the other as Nyland started up with the cooler. Marquez and Alvarez climbed back up the slope, waiting near the lip of the road as Nyland crested it.

Sweeney and his friend wouldn’t be a problem. Nyland was the one to watch. Sweeney and friend stood catching their breath at the road’s edge, moonlight on their faces, looking down at where they’d hunted, savoring the moment, while Nyland and Bobby loaded the vehicles, bloody hides going in Bobby’s rig, Nyland in a hurry to
leave. Sweeney play-punched his friend on the shoulder, talking loudly to him, made brave by the excitement of the kill.

“Did you see that bear drop?”

“Aw, come on, you had to put another one in him.”

“Big damn bruin, isn’t he?”

“He’s big all right.”

“He’s the biggest goddamned bruin I’ve ever seen in this state.”

“I’ve seen bigger in the backyard at my cabin.”

“The hell you have.”

They both laughed, and Nyland walked over. His parka was bloody and nothing the other men wanted to be too near.

“Guess I need to wash up,” Nyland said, and Marquez gave the signal. A powerful halogen light shone on Nyland’s face, and voices rose, calling out, “Fish and Game! Fish and Game! No one move!” The uniform wardens closed in, Marquez and Alvarez coming over the road lip with their masks on. Cairo stepped out from behind Bobby’s pickup, gun drawn, and the uniform wardens already had Nyland and Bobby lying down, faces turned toward the darkness, getting Mirandized. Nyland got cuffed and loaded into one of the warden trucks.

Then from the other end of Weber Mill, a mile or more away, a horn honked a warning and Shauf chuckled, said, “A little late,” assuming it was one of the guys standing guard trying to warn Nyland. Then, just as he got his rights read to him, Sweeney, who’d said nothing and been docile, jerked free of the warden holding him and vaulted over the road lip, tumbling as he landed on the steep grassy slope. Flashlight beams tracked him and he looked comic, except that as he arrested the slide he ignored the called warnings to stop and soon disappeared downhill into darkness.

“He must have a phone on him,” Marquez said. “Heading for the highway. Let’s get everyone except his friend out of here.”

They watched the wardens back out with Nyland and Bobby Broussard, and when they were gone Marquez walked across and questioned Sweeney’s companion.

“What’s your friend’s name?” Marquez asked.

“I’m not going to give any information, officer. I’m sorry.”

“At least give me a first name so we can talk to him. He’s making a dangerous mistake.”

“Are you threatening him with violence?”

“No, sir, we’re going to try to talk him off the slope with a bullhorn unless you think you can do that. If he’s still there at daylight, we’ll get a helicopter and dogs. That’ll bring the media, so you’re not doing him any favors by holding his name and you might be putting him in danger. Is he armed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do me one better than that.”

“There’s no way he’d shoot at you.”

Marquez looked away from him now. He looked past the man down the dirt road and saw Shauf walking toward them. She carried the cooler that Bobby had brought up. Her hands were bloody, and she showed Sweeney’s friend two bloody gallbladders in plastic bags laid out on ice. Marquez fished one of the bags out and held it up close to the man’s face.

“Your friend has run from a felony arrest.”

“What are you talking about?” Now he put it together. “That’s the goddamned guide who cut those out. As a matter of fact, we didn’t shoot anything. The guide shot the damned bear. He’s the one with the tag.”

“There’s no tag.”

From behind him, Alvarez added, “We videotaped you.”

“Maybe I took a shot but I didn’t hit anything, and my friend didn’t have time to shoot.”

“We have videotape and audio of him bragging about your kill.”

“You people are too heavy-handed.” He stared at Marquez, showing a little steel now. “You could ruin your career. You’re making a mistake you don’t understand.”

“You’re not helping your friend.” Marquez turned his back on the man and said quietly to Shauf, “I’ll go get him. He’s not armed.”

He checked his watch. There were still four hours before dawn, but Sweeney might not have gone any farther than the bait pile or where they’d skinned the second bear. If Sweeney was there, Marquez figured he could talk him up. He touched Shauf on the shoulder.

“Get the documentation done, then pull out.” He turned to Sweeney’s friend again, asked, “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a lawyer and I promise you if anything illegal was done here, it’s the guide who’s the problem.”

“Your friend ran from an arrest. You’re a lawyer, you know what that means and you probably understand he’s not going to escape. It makes a lot of sense to give me his name before I go looking for him.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Are you his personal lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Then when I find him I’ll tell him he needs a new one.”

The bait area reeked
with the smells of rotting fish and chicken. Marquez shone the light on the skinned carcass, then knelt near bear tracks, making his presence known by moving the light around. It was important that Sweeney saw him coming. Not that he expected a problem but still didn’t want to frighten him. He turned and spoke toward the dark trees and brush below.

“If you’re here and you’re listening, you want to give yourself up. Come on up and we’ll forget you ran. You can ride in with me.”

After waiting a couple of minutes Marquez moved down the slope and tried it again. He found the second bear, saw Nyland had done a rushed job skinning it.

“If you hear me, give me a yell and we’ll talk.”

His flashlight beam skimmed broken grass, followed it across the slope, and he radioed Shauf before starting across the slope.

“I think I see the direction he ran. How are you doing up there?”

“The lawyer is still threatening us, but he’s about to take the ride to the county jail.” Marquez had the feeling the lawyer could hear her talking. “I’m about to drop down to the bait pile. Any luck yet?”

“No.”

She said the county had set up a perimeter to catch Sweeney and Marquez saw the police flashers below. Sweeney must see them too, but Marquez also knew they wouldn’t be able to hold the county along the shoulder of Highway 50 indefinitely, at least not this kind of presence. He read the long strides Sweeney had made without light, running as though afraid for his life. He followed the tracks across to a stand of oaks, listening for movement, knowing Sweeney saw flashlight. Under the trees it was easy to track him. Sweeney had gone steeply downhill, heels gashing the soil, then cutting sideways.
He must have rested here in the trees.
Several of the county cruisers parked on the highway shoulder below pulled away, sirens sounding as they accelerated. Marquez’s phone rang. It was Roberts below with the county officers.

“There’s been a car accident,” she said. “That’s why you’re seeing cruisers pulling away.”

“How many left?”

“Three.”

“I’m on his tracks. See if you can get the county to reposition farther up the road. That’s the way he’s moving.”

“Okay.”

Marquez followed faint marks and climbed, thinking now that Sweeney had a problem with one leg, was limping, dragging the bad leg uphill, trying to stay under the cover of trees and work across and up, moving parallel to the highway. He heard noise ahead, brush snapping, knew it was Sweeney. Then his flashlight beam caught movement, Sweeney’s coat. He let Shauf know, and she began to bring everyone around, rotating the perimeter like a baseball infield moving for a particular hitter.

Marquez closed on him, the light steady on Sweeney’s back, then his face, no real hurry, giving him time to come to terms with the inevitable and give himself up. A call came from Roberts.

“They’re telling me there’s a dark green Blazer that just made its third pass on the highway,” Roberts said. “That could be his ride. I’d bet he’s been on the phone.”

“All right, I’m going to try to talk him down again. He’s not far above me and he’s hurt.”

Marquez lifted his badge as he walked up the slope to where Sweeney waited next to an oak. He held the badge so Sweeney could read it.

“I’m going to ask you to put your hands on that tree and not do anything sudden. You’re under arrest.”

“My ankle is hurt.”

“We’ll get you down to the highway.”

Marquez quietly gave him his rights and arrested him, though Sweeney all but begged him not to. Because of the steep slope and Sweeney’s sprained ankle, Marquez didn’t handcuff him and led him down slowly as Cairo and two deputies hiked up to meet them. Marquez turned to Sweeney.

“That’s a Fish and Game officer coming up to meet us, but I want to ask you before we get out, how you hooked up with this guide outfit.”

Sweeney’s response was clipped. He’d gone from pleading to angry. “My assistant hired them. Talk to her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Janet Engle. She told me the hunt was completely legitimate.”

He added sarcastically, “Why don’t you arrest her? She’s a nice woman. Maybe you’ll get your picture in the newspaper before I get your budget canceled.”

“Why’d you run away?”

Marquez paused, gripped Sweeney’s arm to steady him, waited for an explanation that didn’t come. He looked down at a Blazer
that had pulled in near Roberts and still hesitated, waited for Sweeney to explain. Below, the driver was out and talking to Shauf.

“I didn’t shoot anything,” Sweeney said.

“We’ll look over the videotape together and you can tell me who’s who.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“You can tell me any time you want.”

“You’re going to be very sorry. You’re going to throw away your career.”

“That’s what your friend kept saying. It’s getting old.”

Marquez watched Sweeney loaded into the back of a county cruiser, then phoned Bell and briefed him as he stood looking down the slope.

“He took it hard. He called us a paramilitary organization that it would shock California taxpayers to know they were supporting. They may claim we didn’t identify ourselves or inform them of their rights. He says he’s going to put us out of business and he’ll personally make sure not a dime gets through on next year’s budget.”

“He might have to stand in line to do that. No one knows where next year’s money is coming from. Did it get rough?”

“He hurt himself when he ran.”

“But you didn’t struggle with him?”

Marquez drew a slow breath, looked at lights on the highway.

“No, sir.”

He left it with Bell that they’d immediately get warrants to search Sierra Guides and Nyland’s trailer park. Marquez could send the warrant application from his laptop this morning. They’d be racing the bondsman and Nyland’s posting bail, but the local judges were baby boomers who were generally cooperative on commercial poaching, and as charges were filed this morning they ought to be able to hold him through arraignment. He told Bell
he’d call him again after the booking and then drove toward the sheriff’s office at sunrise.

Kendall and Hawse were waiting when he got there. “You’re up early, gentlemen,” Marquez said.

“We heard about the excitement. Your hard-charging Stockton friend, Delano, is also coming up early. He’s got to be in court later and promised to buy us breakfast if we met him here.” Kendall’s eyes lit with wary humor. “Don’t worry, Marquez, I’m still not getting any sleep. Hawse is going for coffee. You want any?”

“Sure, I’ve got to type a warrant app.”

Kendall smiled. “Arrests make happy times. We’re hoping some of that rubs off on us.” He leaned conspiratorially, ran a hand over his new short hair. “We’re making a little bet about what the headline will be. Twenty bucks whoever is closest on Sweeney. You want in?”

“I haven’t got a guess yet.”

“Here’s mine: ‘Sweeney Running from Office.’” “Too long, too long,” Hawse said, his big frame shaking, tears dribbling down his cheeks as he laughed.

Marquez was grateful for the coffee. He booted up the laptop and filled out the warrant application, knowing if he didn’t he’d fade away into exhaustion. He thought about Petroni’s story of finding Kendall parked down a dirt road with a runaway he was supposed to be transporting. He couldn’t look at him this morning without wondering about it.

He’d hoped to question Sweeney and his lawyer, but as expected, neither was willing to talk. They’d post bail later in the morning, a lawyer was already here and making noise. The county would continue to hold Nyland, who’d made threats to a law enforcement officer on the way in. Charges against him wouldn’t file until later in the afternoon. Marquez’s team would go through the impounded rented Land Cruiser this morning, and after the
warrant app was processed he’d try to get a judge to sign. Now he walked out with Kendall, took him to his truck, and handed him a Ziploc bag with the fragment of bone.

“We found it in a fire pit back behind Nyland’s place.”

“And you’ve been driving around with it?”

“I knew it was old. Take a look at the mineral in it.”

Kendall flipped the bag over, looked at the dark bone from the other side. “You’ll have to show me today.”

When Marquez described the fire pit more carefully, Kendall told him a story about the meadow and what he called a crackpot local theory that the real estate development out there had been doomed from the start because the meadow was haunted. There’d been rumors that during excavation for the foundations they’d dug up bones.

“Years ago there was a confrontation between Native Americans and gold miners who’d staked a claim to the area. I think they were Miwoks. Didn’t I already tell you this story? The gold miners panicked, started shooting, and killed six or seven. Buried them out there without telling anyone, and it didn’t come out for years. After the miners died in freak accidents in that area, the local bright lights decided the area was haunted. More like the economy up here is what’s haunted. Recession took that real estate project down.” He held the bag up. “We’ll check it out. I agree it’s old and as you know bone doesn’t last long if it isn’t protected, so I don’t think we’re looking at Native American bones.”

“Different question for you—where’s Petroni’s log?”

“I’ve got it.”

“Can I see it?”

“Delano is here, can it wait? Don’t you want to see these guns?”

Delano got the guns from his trunk. The silver inlay, the scrollwork, Kendall read aloud from Smith’s description of the stolen rifles.

“These are probably Smith’s,” Kendall said. “We’ll have to get him in here today.”

“Problem is I can’t turn them over today,” Delano answered.

Delano chewed on gum and stared back at Kendall. His black hair was slicked back and he wore a leather jacket and jeans. He looked like Hollywood next to Marquez, Kendall, and Hawse. The detectives started trying to work out a plan, and Marquez got the logbook from Kendall, then left them. He went through the logbook and found the name Mark Ellison with a question mark after it. There was also a license plate number. He copied that down, talked to Roberts, and they ran Ellison’s name and came up with nothing.

Later in the morning Marquez rode out in Delano’s car to the Broussard place. He took Delano to the lot his team used for surveillance and pointed out the tar-paper-wrapped A-frame in the back of the lot where Bobby and another one of the cousins lived.

It impressed Marquez that Delano still wanted to see where to find Bobby later, though he was very easy to locate this morning in the county jail.

Delano dropped him back in Placerville and half an hour later Marquez checked into the Gold Nugget Motel, into a stuffy room smelling like dusty carpet and oiled plastic. He’d backed the team away from the safehouse and spread everybody out. He opened a window, let the cold fall air in, laid his cell phone on the bed where it would wake him up. He wanted to take a shower but didn’t, called Katherine instead and was talking to her, the phone still in his hand when he fell asleep.