Dead Game (15 page)

Around midday Marquez knocked
on the door of Chief Bell’s house. When Bell answered, his face was puffy, hair uncharacteristically uncombed, and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. He wore jeans, a robe, no shirt, and tasseled brown loafers without socks.

“We haven’t always gotten along,” Marquez said, “but I want to say good-bye. I heard you’re going east.”

“I have a job offer.” He stared as though daring Marquez to challenge the truth of that. “Come in, Lieutenant.”

It was an invitation Marquez had never had. He’d attended a single backyard cocktail party, but only the catering company serving food had been in and out of the house that night. Guests had used the bathrooms in the cabana.

In the kitchen was a long plank table and a fireplace. Marquez took a seat at the bar counter, and Bell moved stiffly around to the other side to face him. He offered coffee.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about my wife.”

“I heard you were served divorce papers at headquarters.”

“Oh, I’m sure the story has made the rounds. Ellen ran off with a friend of ours. I couldn’t count how many times he’s had dinner here. This is a bastard I played golf with and thought was a friend of mine. I called him a day or two after she left to tell him because I needed somebody to talk to. When I found out it was him I had to lock up my gun. You can take that story back to headquarters, I’m sure they’ll like that one too.”

Marquez didn’t know what to say to Bell. His pride was badly hurt, and Marquez didn’t know Bell’s wife, didn’t know much of anything about their marriage. It made an awkward moment.

“What’s the job in D.C.?”

Now Bell had to decide how much he wanted to say to this lieutenant who’d largely been difficult to manage. Bell had hobnobbed regularly with politicians, attended fund-raisers, made speeches about environmental preservation and gave of his time to different candidates. In the single conversation Marquez had ever had with Bell about those ambitions, Bell had been frank, said he felt his place was in the public arena. That’s where his skills were best suited, and maybe that’s what moving to Washington was about. He’d come out of a middle-class suburb, gone to UCLA, pursued biology and law, then served in the National Guard Reserves before coming to Fish and Game. He didn’t have any children, was a hard worker and well liked inside the administration building, though disliked by all field wardens Marquez knew. Shauf had caught it best, saying when she was in his office she always got the feeling she wasn’t supposed to touch anything or sit on the furniture, because Bell drew a clear line between the help out in the field and those who worked administration.

“I’m sure you’ll be happy to see me go.”

“You always had your reasons, and you always seemed to believe them. I thought someday you’d be running the show. But I came to say good-bye because we worked together for years. I figure to turn my own badge in when this operation ends.”

“You don’t mean that. What would you possibly do?”

“I don’t know yet. What’s the job in D.C.?”

“Lobbying for an environmental group at quadruple the pay I made with the department. I get a living expense, a car, and a credit card for entertaining.”

The world didn’t need any more lobbyists.

“When does it start?”

“Next week. My wife and I made several trips to Washington looking for a house to rent.” Bell studied his face. “Lieutenant, I know it’ll be a hard adjustment having the SOU close down, but you’ll get used to a uniform again. Chief Baird has a place for you.”

“I won’t be taking it.”

“It just takes some adjustment.”

“Sure.”

He shook hands with Bell and wished him luck in Washington. The divorce was a deep hurt for him, but he’d survive.

“One day I’m going to come home, turn on CNN, and there you’re going to be,” Marquez said.

That got a weak smile. Marquez had already turned to go, and Bell’s voice caught him from behind on the steps outside, a quieter, far different voice. “Thanks for coming by, Lieutenant, and if there’s anything I can do with the sturgeon, call me. Technically, I’m still with the department another two weeks.”

“There is something, sir, but it means borrowing your house for a night.”

“Okay, explain that to me.”

Marquez walked back and laid out his request. When he left he drove back to the delta along a levee first formed naturally by debris and soil left in the spring runoffs and held in place by trees and brush and grasses. Before all the farmland, vineyards, and orchards, there had been tule and grasses and brush over the layers of peat. The natural levee had been scraped clean and built up with dirt and protected from the currents with concrete and riprap. The road he was on now was smooth and the river safely below, but like a lot of things the levees weren’t what they appeared. They’d deteriorated badly. The severe long-predicted earthquake could cause all of this land to flood.

He went looking for Raburn, figured Raburn had his twentyfour hours to think it over, had time to sober up and cool down. He found him under his truck in the pear packing shed, changing out the master brake cylinder. Raburn got to his feet and dusted himself off.

“My brother is going to use the truck when I’m in prison.” So he’d told his brother what was going on. “The brakes needed fixing. Pedal was getting mushy.”

“That’s touching, but here’s the scenario I’m seeing.”

“That reminds me of this detective I used to know. He’d stop in at Al Wop’s in Locke and I’d sometimes meet him for a drink. His wife liked fresh fish so I traded him fish for drinks. He used to say all scenarios are bullshit.”

Al Wop’s still had peanut butter and pickles on the bar and served fried bread and steaks. He looked at Raburn and remembered the great trial lawyer, David Terrence Hayden, and the crowd that had followed him, stopping for a drink at Al Wop’s after Hayden had turned a jury around and won a case.

“
Scenario
is a polite word for it.”

“Sure, and
polite
is the word my father used to use before razor strapping Isaac and me to get the devil out of us. We ran away and survived here by picking pears and apples and fishing for dinner while living in a second-floor room of a falling-down building in Isleton.”

“It just doesn’t get easier, does it? If we arrest you it’ll be for commercial trafficking. There’ll be a conspiracy charge, which is a felony. There’ll be multiple conspiracy charges because you sold to Crey as well. What will count in your favor will be whatever testimony you provide against Ludovna. You can turn state’s witness against him.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

Raburn wiped his hands with a rag, and through the big open door Marquez watched Shauf’s van and Cairo’s truck turn down off the levee road. The green pickup of the area warden was right behind them. Alvarez and Roberts followed. Raburn put his hands on his hips and faced the approaching vehicles. He tried to keep his face impassive.

“Don’t arrest me yet.”

“Then I’ve got to walk out and talk to them.”

“They can’t be here.”

Marquez walked out of the pear packing shed, and the lead truck, Cairo’s, slowed to a stop.

“He’s changed his mind and wants to talk to me alone, so let’s back away. He’s particularly worried about the marked Fish and Game truck.”

When Marquez walked back in Raburn was sitting on the raised metal blade of an old forklift.

“I know you caught me dead to rights, and okay, I admit I shot up my own boat, but you got to understand, Nick is like Isaac and me, he started with nothing, and he’s not going to give it up. He’s a hard guy, and you’re not going to protect me from him.”

“We’ll take your testimony in the judge’s chambers.”

“He’ll know where it came from, and he’ll get me from prison.”

“We’re not trying to get you killed,” Marquez said. “But we are going to shut down the sturgeon poaching.”

Raburn shook his head. “You’re not hearing me. Even if he went to jail it wouldn’t be for more than a couple of years, and I’m more afraid of him than I am of you. You’ll go on to another case, but there’s more than just Nick and they’ll start up again, and then they’ll come find me. There was a guy named Chris Stevens. I used to fish with him, and he sold a couple of sturgeon to Nick when I was just getting started with the whole thing. We both sold to him, and Nick said to us, if you ever fuck with me, I’ll kill you. Said it just like that, and Chris said, if you ever threaten me again, I’ll go to the cops. About two weeks later Chris just disappeared. No one saw him again. The police said he probably got tired of his life and went somewhere to start a new one, but it isn’t true.”

“Did Ludovna ever say anything to you about him?”

“What he did was call me every day for a couple of weeks and we had the same conversation, you know. Like this. He’d ask, do you have a fish for me? If they were biting, then maybe I had one. If they weren’t, then I said no. But if I said no, then he always asked why not, you’re supposed to get me fish. Then he would ask, where’s Chris, he’s not calling me back? Have him call me today? Then it started to be more like, have you seen Chris, and I would say, no, and after a couple of weeks I could tell he was making fun
of me by asking. He started asking if Chris had moved. Questions like, how come your friend doesn’t call you anymore? I could always tell he knew where Chris was.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“I went with Chris’s wife and filled out a missing persons report.”

“And he never turned up?”

Shook his head.

“Is his wife still around?”

“I don’t know, but I have something in back.”

Marquez watched him walk into the gloom at the back of the packing shed, heard the door creak open and saw light from the room. He walked back out with a piece of paper in his hand.

A color poster of the cheerful face of a blue-eyed man. In black ink at the top it read MISSING. There was a physical description of Chris Stevens and one of his car.

“Was his car ever found?”

“Nope.”

“Is this number for her still good?”

“I don’t know.”

“You never liked Ludovna but you got involved with him.”

“I had to have the money.”

Marquez turned the phrasing of that in his head. Had to have the money. Different somehow than saying I needed the money. Had to have it for what? He laid a hand on a cardboard pear box with the yellow-orange script of Raburn Pears. A pear tree laden with ripe fruit was the logo, then he said, “I’ll be back in a minute.” He walked outside and called Roberts. She’d be the best one to get on a computer and phone and check.

“You’ll have to go back in the newspapers, the public records,”
he said. “We might have to talk to some of the other orchard owners. There’s something there. Maybe we need to talk to a banker in town.”

“I’ll get started.”

Marquez walked back into the pear packing shed. He sat and talked half an hour with Raburn about Chris Stevens and then decided Raburn had suspected Ludovna but had never told a police officer. If that was true, he could only guess at why, but his gut said Ludovna had something on him. With Raburn watching he called Chris Stevens’s wife. She still lived in the same house off Poverty Road in Ryde.

“I’m a Fish and Game warden. I’d like to come over and talk with you if I can about your husband.”

“He’s not home right now.”

Marquez wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“Then maybe you and I could talk,” he said.

“That would be fine. I’ve been waiting for somebody.”

“I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll make some tea. You’ll have to knock on the door, the bell doesn’t work anymore. There are a lot of things Chris is going to fix, but he just never seems to find the time. Thank you for coming.”

She hung up, and Marquez held the phone. He asked Raburn again.

“How long has Stevens been missing?”

“Three years.”

“And when is the last time you saw Mrs. Stevens?”

“Not since he disappeared and we filed the report.”

“If you came with me, would it help?”

“No, she hates me. She thinks I got him killed.”

Amy Stevens invited him in,
then seemed uncomfortable having him in her house. He got the feeling she lived quietly, unseen and unnoticed on this stretch of road. The house was too neat. The kitchen window stared out at rows of leafless vines. The kitchen table and surrounding counters were clean and empty. There were no magazines or newspapers, no fruit in a bowl or anything at all. After she suggested it, Marquez sat down at the kitchen table.

“I made tea. It’s almost ready. I don’t know when Chris will get home.”

The mechanical way she moved, movements that started jerkily, then smoothed, the privacy invaded suggested grief and unanswered sadness. It said something about how alone she was.

“I work part-time as a librarian.”

“You do?”

“Yes, but I haven’t worked in a while. I was working full-time three years ago, but there have been cutbacks at the county.”

“Cutbacks everywhere, I guess.”

“At your department too?”

“Some cuts, yes.”

She dropped the lid of the teapot and picked it up. Then she stood quietly at the stove.

“I don’t know why it’s taking him so long to get home.”

Marquez nodded. He laid his badge on the table.

“I’m with Fish and Game, and we’re looking at a sturgeon poaching problem. One of the people I’ve been talking to is Abe Raburn. Abe showed me the posters you and he put up.”

“He didn’t help me.” She turned toward him, and there was another long pause. “If Chris had never gone fishing with him I don’t think this would have happened.”

“Can you tell me about that?”

“I already gave a statement. Haven’t you seen it?”

“No, I’m sorry, I haven’t.”

“They met in a bar, of course. Where else would you find Abe Raburn? Chris came home late one night, and I knew something bad had happened. We always eat dinner exactly at 8:00, and he wasn’t here. I sat down to dinner without him, and when he called he was on a slough road with Abe. Then he brought Abe here. They didn’t get here until after midnight and sat outside drinking beer, if you can imagine.”

“What time of year was this?”

“In the spring. They had both been drinking, and that wasn’t like Chris at all. Abe is a very bad influence on him. I’m sure that’s why he’s not home now. Chris is very organized and very careful.
But Abe is just the opposite. They were probably sturgeon fishing and had engine problems with Abe’s boat.”

She placed tea cups and poured from the teapot, and he realized she’d boiled water but hadn’t added tea. The hot water steamed in the cup. She sat down across from him, her eyes intently on him.

“You will find him, won’t you?”

“I don’t know if I’ll find him. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”

“I was afraid the police had forgotten about him. I told them he went fishing with Abe, and I wish Chris would stop that friendship. He’s gotten home very late a couple of times. The night he didn’t come home at all I thought it was another one of those situations.”

“Was he fishing with Raburn that day?”

“They were going night fishing for sturgeon. I think that’s what Chris was planning to do. Of course, Chris may have left me. I can’t have children, and we wanted children. I would have adopted, but he wanted children of his own. Maybe he couldn’t live here knowing we’d never have any. You see, we both came from large families.” She wrung her hands. “I love him so much, I just don’t understand why he isn’t home yet.”

She began to get more and more agitated, and he got the feeling that every night as 8:00 approached she imagined her husband walking in the door. It was difficult and probably wrong to ask her questions, but he continued.

“Do you have a reason to think he was going fishing?”

“Yes, he took his gear. Abe told the police they weren’t going fishing together, but I’m sure you know that already. He told the police he didn’t see Chris that day and that they weren’t mixed up in anything illegal, but I’ve been very worried.”

“Were you worried he was mixed up in something illegal?”

“Oh, no, not Chris.”

She took a sip from the tea cup, and Marquez nodded, listened to her description of Chris, the honesty, the gentleness.

“I’m very lucky. The police thought he left me, but he would never do that. They drove around and looked for his car but that was about it. I made posters and put them up and somebody tore a lot of them down, but Chris doesn’t have any enemies. He’s a very sweet man.”

“Did he tell you he was going fishing with Abe?”

“He said he thought they were going to meet after Chris got off work down at the boat landing at the state park.”

“Brannan Island?”

“Yes, and the police checked. Chris didn’t go through the booth. You know, you have to pay a fee. No one knows where he went. He just disappeared with his truck.”

“But he had his fishing gear with him?”

“Yes, he has it.”

She folded her hands in front of her, and his heart went out to her. He knew what the police had likely alluded to, what they would have suggested without directly saying it. She needed psychiatric help in a big way, but he also guessed she knew Chris was never coming home again. Her instincts told her it had something to do with Raburn, which made him wonder why Raburn brought the poster out when he did.

“I don’t know that I’ll find out anything, but if our investigation overlaps anything to do with Chris’s disappearance, I’ll call you.” He paused. “Do you have family in the area?”

“No.”

“Any close friends?”

“Not since I went part-time.”

“I think you need someone to talk to. I’m going to call somebody.”

“I don’t accept visitors unless it’s about Chris.”

She stood, and he put an arm around her shoulders, held her for a moment, thanked her for talking to him, and left. He didn’t want to make any calls that triggered her ending up a ward of the state. She was obviously getting by somehow, feeding herself, must have some income. But she needed help.

He talked to the team, then started for home, didn’t want to sleep in the safehouse tonight. On the run back to the Bay Area his phone rang, and when he saw the number he knew Katherine and Maria were home.

“We just got in and stopped at the store and picked up some food for dinner,” Kath said. “Where are you?”

“An hour away and welcome home, but aren’t you three days early?”

“Four.”

When he got home it was tense between Katherine and Maria, though both were in the kitchen cooking. Kath’s cool fingers laced through his, and he kissed her, saw fatigue on her face, disappointment in her eyes.

“How was it?” he asked Maria.

“It was great.”

“How was New York?”

“Didn’t I already tell you?”

A pasta was on the table, and the room smelled like bacon. Maria tossed lettuce with oil, vinegar, and an expensive French salt she’d been trying to get her mother hooked on. The dinner was stiff. He asked the only questions, and neither wanted to talk, begging off by saying they were jet-lagged, but obviously the
decision to come home was unhappy. No great school had become the sweetheart hope, no mother/daughter bonding.

After dinner Marquez opened the heavy iron damper in the old stone fireplace and built a fire, an old defense for him. Wind gusted hard over the mountain, rattling the windows, and it took a while to get the fire to draw. The quiet coming off of Katherine was like a weight dragged around. The kindling caught and then small oak branches he’d been drying for a couple of years. He pulled a chair up close to the fire.

“I’m thinking of starting to serve tea at the coffee bars,” she said, and he thought of Amy Stevens. “It may be too late since everyone knows them as coffee bars, but I’m playing with changing the store identity.”

She’d made another tea to try a different flavor and offered him a cup. He adjusted a log, and Katherine launched into it.

“She was more interested in shopping in New York than looking at schools.”

“I already got that part.”

“But you didn’t get it with attitude.”

Marquez adjusted the fire again, liked the pungency of the oak. He got up and found the bottle of a Cuban rum he’d been given last spring. He loved the taste and smell of the rum and poured an inch. The windows rattled in the wind. Another storm was forecast to hit a few days from now. If it stayed on track across the Pacific it would drop several inches of rain and maybe a couple feet of snow. The rivers would swell, and the runoff would churn the bottom. Sturgeon loved the brown muddy water.

Katherine’s cool fingers touched his right hand. She slid her chair over as Maria walked down the hallway.

“Dad, can I ask you something in my room? Mom, I’m going to bed.”

Marquez set the rum down gently on the hearth. He walked down to the room he’d added on and still hadn’t finished. It had been a year. The walls were sheetrocked and painted, but the trim work wasn’t complete, and he wasn’t a carpenter.

“What’s the question?” he asked.

“Is my bathroom door ever going to work?”

He’d hung the door himself after watching a rerun episode of
This Old House
on a cable channel. The door latch didn’t meet properly. He knew he was going to have to remove the casing and rehang the door, and he hadn’t gotten to it.

“I talked to Mom on the way home, and she’s afraid it’s going to offend you if we hire a carpenter to finish the room.”

Offend
was not a word Maria would have used a year ago. Marquez tried the doorknob out of habit. It still didn’t work.

“Will it offend you?”

“I’d still like to fix it for you.”

“Dad, it’s not happening, and Mom has plenty of money.” She quickly added, “I don’t mean it like that.”

“Then don’t say it that way. Tell you what, if I don’t get it fixed in the next two weeks we’ll hire a carpenter.”

“The door swings open when I’m using the bathroom.”

They’d had this conversation a few times. “Shut your bedroom door when you use the bathroom.”

He thought of Raburn talking about the room he and his brother had rented in Isleton after they’d left home and moved to the delta. They were younger than Maria was now. Raburn had
said the bathroom was downstairs and they didn’t need a window because the wall was open to the back of the lot. The shower was a garden hose with a nozzle set on the spray function and held pinned in place by two nails. He and Isaac had gotten to be great fishermen just so they could eat. It was why Isaac wouldn’t eat any fish anymore, or so Raburn said, and the more Marquez turned in his head the way Raburn talked about his brother, the more likely it seemed that Isaac knew absolutely everything going on.

Now as he got ready to leave her room, Maria said, “It’s not my fault we came home early. We got in a fight, and Mom said there was no reason to stay. I made her sad. I’m a big disappointment to her. She wishes she had a different daughter.”

That was a mix of childish and true and a way of getting it out.

“What were the schools you liked?”

“The University of Virginia and Boston College, but I won’t get in to either.”

“You won’t?”

She explained as though it was obvious. It was all demographics, and she had nothing going for her. She hadn’t excelled at a sport, didn’t have any extra-currics. She’d done some community service but not enough. She didn’t have legacy anywhere. You just about had to have better than a 4.0 GPA, and she didn’t have that. You needed top SAT scores, and she’d taken them twice and said her combined total still sucked.

“What’s your combined total again?” he asked.

“1305.”

He’d graduated from high school, gone to a state college for two years, then two in the National Guard and back to college.
He’d met and married Julie, and they’d planned to travel the world for a year, finding work wherever they could. When Julie was murdered in Africa everything changed.

“I think what you’ve done is pretty amazing.” She’d turned her grades around completely in the past two years. Kath had driven her to better herself, and the effort had taken root, but only because she had it in her. “You’re too hard on yourself sometimes.”

“Mom pretty much thinks I’m wasting my life.”

“I’ve never heard her say anything like that. If you want to take a year off and work and earn money for college, go for it. But whether you go next year or the year after, you should get a degree and you should find something you really care about to learn.”

“I know I’m just the ungrateful kid, and I should listen to both of you, and I don’t know anything about the real world.”

“It’s got to be a conversation, Maria, not an argument, not a posit ion statement, and I don’t really need you to tell me how I think. I’ve got a pretty good idea already.” He repeated it. “You and your mom need to try to have a different conversation. You need to give each other a chance.”

“Tell that to her.”

Then he was out in front of the fire again with Katherine. He took a sip of rum.

“What did she say to you?” Katherine asked.

“She feels like she’s failed you and she’s lashing out, but I also hear something I haven’t before. She sounds afraid she’s going to be rejected everywhere she has applied.”

“Every kid has the same challenges and most don’t have the advantages. It’s time for her to grow up.”

“It is time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that insecurity isn’t figuring into saying she doesn’t want to go to college.”

“There’s always another excuse.” After a pause, Kath added, “I’m going to go unpack.”

He stayed near the fire, drawing some comfort from it, his head not in the college issue. He heard Katherine unpacking in the bedroom and thought about the SOU ending, whether Baird would hold him to the Christmas deadline if they were putting together prosecutable cases. He added another small piece of wood, and the wind was a low moan blowing over the top of the chimney. Kath came back out, wearing only a robe now, sitting near him, the robe sliding off one leg, her skin golden in the firelight. He reached and touched her smooth thigh.

“How’s your team taking the shutdown?” she asked.