Shell Games (28 page)

“You still think this is about abalone poaching, but it isn’t. I know you still don’t believe me,” Ruter had said. “I don’t know about Peter Han. He may have been the equivalent of an innocent bystander, but Davies definitely came to kill Stocker.”

“What more have you learned about Han?” Marquez had asked.

“Neither the ATF or DEA have any record of him, nor do the people we’ve interviewed up here. If he sold dope, the people he sold to aren’t around. His background is sketchy, but we know he was hanging with Stocker and Huega.”

Marquez mulled the conversation as he drove the canyon road,
closing in on the campground now. Down to his left the oaks and bays grew thickly along the creek. Farther up the canyon he could see white sky above the mountains and the rock along the spine. It was beautiful country, yet the first story he’d ever heard about Guyanno Creek campground had been about a group of bikers who’d arrived late one night and then held hostage and repeatedly raped two young Swedish women who were on a trip across the United States, and he believed he could feel that same darkness now as he parked and stepped over the chain.

He limped up across the broken asphalt, stopping short of the creek trail. This had been a torture/execution, but what drew Kline here? What could two abalone poachers reveal to him and why were they worth so much effort? He might kill them for cheating him, but he wouldn’t come all the way up here to do it. Kline would send someone like Molina to straighten it out.

He weighed the idea that Davies had led Kline up here and somehow participated in the killings. He shook his head in frustra-tion. He was going down the wrong path again, it came back to the problem of what would motivate Kline to take these guys out. He tried to think clearly, tried to separate what he really knew from everything else, but his worry and anguish over Petersen kept clouding his thoughts. Why had Kline come to Guyanno Creek? Why kill these two?

He started up the creek trail and hiked to the clearing of dry grass and thistle, then crossed to the tree where they’d been killed. He touched the cut in the bark where the knife had been buried and where the chain had scraped as the men writhed. He saw the tracks of feral pigs, where they’d rooted the earth checking the dried blood at the base of the tree. Stocker here, Han there, and he touched where Stocker’s back had been, thought of the photos of Han sent to Billy Mauro that they’d assumed had a racial slant. Maybe they’d been wrong. Maybe no one had bothered to take any
photos of Stocker. He turned and looked across the clearing and saw the moonlit night in his mind’s eye, heard Davies’s voice in his head, the account he’d claimed that Huega gave him, Huega who’d escaped in the truck. He saw them marched across the clearing, Stocker cooperating, Han breaking and running at some point. What could Han know that Stocker didn’t? He thought about that on the hike back down and called Douglas’s cell phone when he got to his truck.

“We’ve talked about your informant on the
Emily Jane,
but was the FBI also selling abalone to Kline’s network?” Marquez asked. “Were you supplying your informant with abalone so he’d be valu-able?” He heard Douglas breathing quietly on the other end.

“I won’t lie to you, we bought some abalone illegally that we then used. We did that on four occasions. Where are you that it’s an issue this morning?”

“Guyanno Creek. What other ways did you try to infiltrate his network? Did you hire Davies?”

“No, and as I told you, Davies is a loose cannon and he may be the perp in the Huega case.”

“Do you have any proof of that or does it just fit to paint him that way?”

“I don’t need this from you and I don’t have time for it. What are you doing back there anyway?”

“Trying to figure out what I missed.” And it came to him now. Ruter had interviewed Han’s landlord in Daly City and came away thinking the landlord didn’t know who he was renting to. Han’s live-in girlfriend had disappeared fast, and no one up here knew him. He’d showed up with cash and drugs and cultivated Stocker. He heard Douglas’s soft exhale and then the pieces came together. “Han was FBI,” Marquez said softly. “He was one of yours,” and Douglas didn’t answer.

“You need to come here.”

“Not this morning, I’ve got a few more stops. Was he one of yours?” Douglas still didn’t answer. Marquez finished, “I’ll call you later today.”

He clicked the phone off, laid it on the picnic table, and then watched it ring and ring. When it stopped, he picked it up and called Ruter.

Ruter was already at a table
on the restaurant deck, his briefcase leaning against his chair near his right leg. He buttered a saltine cracker as Marquez sat down, and there were bread crumbs scattered across the tabletop. It looked like he’d already finished a basket of bread and seemed self-conscious about it, brushing away the crumbs as Marquez adjusted his chair.

“The cooler weather makes me hungry and at home my wife’s there with a calculator adding up every calorie. There’s no butter in the house. We’ve got this oily shit in a little plastic tub that tastes like cold motor oil.”

Marquez nodded. His mind was on Petersen, and now Han, not Ruter’s eating habits. When the waitress came over Ruter ordered a BLT, Marquez a turkey sandwich.

“I think Peter Han was an FBI agent.”

Ruter’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything and
when a busboy landed a basket of bread Ruter handed the kid the butter ramekin. He pulled a piece of bread, tore it in half, and seemed to be contemplating the Han idea.

“Why would they keep that from us?” Ruter asked.

“Because they were afraid it would jeopardize their Kline operation.”

Ruter nodded as if something in the idea made sense to him, and a new tension began to form in Marquez. He watched Ruter lift the murder book out of his briefcase, open it on the table, put on reading glasses, and then scan his case notes.

“Han rented that house in Daly City,” Ruter said, “but a girl-friend lived there with him, a nice woman, according to the landlord, clean-cut and polite. Why I bring her up is she told the landlord that she was going to arrange a service for Han, said he had no immediate family, which would also fit. The landlord wanted to attend but he never heard from her. He tried to contact her, but the phone numbers she’d provided had been disconnected. I’m talking less than a week after Han is killed. She also never came back for her things.” He stopped as another idea occurred to him. “Han’s body is still at the morgue. Pretty soon, the county will have to deal with it, meaning no one has come forward to claim it. The Feds always take care of their own. They’d never let that happen.”

“Unless he didn’t have family and they felt they had to leave him there,” Marquez said, and thought, or maybe he wasn’t really there and they’d got the coroner to play along.

“Do you want what I learned about Han’s past employer?” Ruter asked.

“Everything you’ve got.”

“All right. Employer was Horizon Industries out of Belmont. You call and a rep will call you back and tell you they’re wind-ing down operations, moving to Nevada for tax reasons. Listed as a California C corporation that buys and sells used electronic equipment. Been in existence since 1997. The man I talked with
confirmed Han had worked there, mostly at a computer screen. He also said Han used to talk about getting a job along the coast somewhere near the ocean.”

Their orders arrived and Marquez studied the turkey sand-wich, thinking that what Ruter had on Han could fit with his idea. He watched Ruter pick up his BLT and hit it the way he’d seen a great white hit a seal off the Farallon Islands last winter.

“Tice,” Ruter said, as he swallowed.

“Who?”

“Lenny Tice. The Bragg police call him Lenny Lice. He’s a local lowlife, one of Stocker’s friends. Tice suspected Han was an under-cover drug agent. I interviewed him and he threw that on the table, so you’re in good company.” He chuckled. “He thought Han was one of your old gang, DEA.” Ruter took another bite, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, wiped his hand deftly on the napkin. “Told me he wasn’t up for the dogs, the bullhorns, the long-haired undercover guys with their riot guns. Tice pointed us toward the dope at Huega’s girlfriend’s house and we waited to see who else would show up. That’s when the DEA got brought in. You’re saying Han was undercover trying to penetrate this Kline organization. Well, what did Douglas say when you called him? Which I’m sure you did before calling me.”

“He wants to sit down.”

“I’ll call him, if you want. As soon as we get out to the park-ing lot.”

Marquez handed the waitress a credit card and ten minutes later they were sitting in Ruter’s sedan, Marquez listening as he looked out at the ocean. He heard Douglas ask, “Are you sitting there with Marquez?”

“Yes, but I’m asking you.” Ruter picked at his teeth with a yellow plastic cocktail stirrer while Douglas hesitated. The FBI no doubt had a plan for how to handle any questions like this. Douglas wouldn’t want to dig a hole for himself but he owed the
investigating detective a straight answer.

“Marquez came to you with the idea, so put him on.”

Ruter handed the phone over. “He wants to talk to you.”

“What’s the game we’re playing here?” Douglas asked.

“I’m looking back at everyplace the SOU has been and who we had contact with and that has to do with Petersen.”

“We’ll talk and no bullshit, but not over a cell phone. That okay with you?”

“That’s fine, but when?” Marquez asked.

“Today. Now what are you doing with CATIC?”

“I got a list of boats from them yesterday.” CATIC was the California antiterrorism coordinating body set up after 9/11. All boats coming into California ports were supposed to go through a notification process and be boarded by a team before coming into port. Marquez had requested a record of all vessels sixty feet or longer docking in California in the last two months. From that he’d culled his list. “Nothing has changed since we last talked. If we find anything, we’ll call you first.”

Douglas relented. “He was one of the good guys, Marquez.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It hit us hard.”

“I’m sure it did.”

Marquez hung up and handed the phone back to Ruter, and told him Douglas had finally confirmed that Han had been an FBI agent. A half hour later he was at Van Damme State Park. There was a kayaking outfit in the parking lot getting their clients ready to paddle out to the sea caves. He looked at the expectant faces of the largely middle-aged group and wondered if he’d ever visit those caves again in his life. He didn’t turn into the parking lot but into the camping area on the other side of the road and found Alvarez and Roberts looking glum, sitting on Alvarez’s tailgate up near the end of the paved area, drinking Calistoga juices. Brad’s hair was wet and he wore a wetsuit peeled down to his waist.

“We checked the caves and didn’t find anything there, but up the coast we found a wetsuit, booties, a mask, and gloves. They were in the same area we checked yesterday with the FBI.” Alvarez reached around and leaned into the pickup bed and slid out a large plastic evidence bag. “Nothing says it’s theirs but you’ve got to figure. It’s a wetsuit and gear and maybe you’ll recognize it. Kind of an unusual color.”

Marquez opened the bag and pulled the suit out. It was pale gray, same color as the suit the Irishman had been wearing. There was at least a chance of pulling DNA off the suit, but whether the Irishman was in any database, or whether that would do them any good was another question.

“Nice work. I’ll drop this with the FBI this afternoon.”

“Where are we going to take it from here?”

“We’ll work the list on these boats, harbor to harbor. I’m going to divide the state up between us, but a lot can be done by phone first.”

He carried the dive gear over to his truck and brought copies of the list back. He distributed the list knowing he was the only one who held any real hope that it might matter.

The ocean was gray-green
at the horizon, the sky white and smooth overhead when Marquez left the coast. He followed a camper in a long line of traffic, taking two hours to get back up the canyon, past Boonville, and on out to Highway 101. He had a hard time with the slow traffic and sweat started on his forehead. He lowered his window, thinking they’d blown the ransom handoff, botched their best chance. They were running out of time, if they weren’t already out. She couldn’t die. That couldn’t happen. He came around a slow line of cars and edged in front of the leading car. The young woman driving flipped him off as he accelerated away.

At 3:30 he crossed the Golden Gate and fifteen minutes later handed the evidence bag to Douglas, getting no answer of how quickly the Bureau could do anything with it. He listened to an agent recount to Douglas some vague new tip of a terrorist threat, some FBI-speak passing between them on how it was being handled. Always overwhelmed here, he thought. Making decisions based on
priority and resource, and with Petersen they had nowhere to look, no current leads.

Marquez followed Douglas into his office and took a chair to read the files he was finally willing to share. Records of boats they’d searched. Their undercover operatives. A blown bust.

“It’s unlikely we’ve missed a boat,” Douglas said, as he handed over a marked list.

“It’s one we’ve already seen. It’ll be right under our noses.”

“Is it? We have forty agents out there looking for Kline. Tomor-row, we’ll have more. If you want to help us, focus on the divers and the things your team knows. Maybe someone will make a mistake there that leads us in, but you’re not set up to board boats. Leave that to us and I’ll let you know on this wetsuit as soon as I know.”

Marquez drove home under the pale orange light ahead of sunset. Inside, he turned on the news, checking to see if anything was running about Petersen, if they were still putting out the infor-mation, but an airliner had gone down on approach to Heathrow with over two hundred aboard, including the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Already labeled a terrorist event, all news was focused on the crash. He looked at the row of houses the jet had plowed through, listened to what was known so far, and then heated soup Katherine had brought last night and called Billy Mauro at home.

Mauro’s voice was unnaturally bright. “I met with the FBI again today,” Mauro said. “They want me to only talk to them, then they’ll talk to you.”

“Yeah? Have you heard from Bailey?”

“Not from anyone. I have a number for the FBI for you to call.”

“Thanks, Billy, I already have it.”

After hanging up, Marquez drank the soup and took a couple of aspirin. He lay on the couch with a blanket, the TV on low, throwing blue light in the otherwise dark room. Holding the lists of boats he called Shauf and Roberts who were up in the Fort Bragg cold house. They’d worked the phones all day and he crossed off
the boats they said were no goes. He phoned Alvarez, who’d driven north and was in a Crescent City diner. Alvarez would take the northernmost part of the coast, starting up in Coos Bay, Oregon, early tomorrow morning, and work his way down.

Katherine wouldn’t be coming up tonight, but he called them now, talked a while with Katherine about the note from Maria, the conversation last night. Then he heated more chicken soup and made some toast before moving equipment from the Nissan to the Explorer, figuring to switch vehicles tomorrow. Later, when he fell asleep it was on the couch, and near midnight his cell phone rang and he reached for it, afraid of the news it would bring. He looked at the screen expecting Douglas or Chief Keeler, then clicked off the TV and said hello.

“It was 7:55 A.M. when Pearl Harbor was attacked. That’s when they came in. Not many people remember that,” Davies said. “That’s what time I made the first call to you from Guyanno.”

“Where are you now?”

“Not far from you.”

“Yeah, why is that?”

“I’ve done some things lately that are going to send me to hell, Lieutenant. But I had to prove myself to him to get inside. He puts you right to the test.”

“Is she alive?”

“She was when I saw her, but it’s not a good situation. She lost that baby and I tried to help her, but he had me deal with something else. That’s his way of putting it to you. He knows how to do that like no man I’ve ever known. He doesn’t leave you a way back, Lieutenant.”

Marquez moved off the couch and across the cold floor to the kitchen. He found his shoes.

“What have you done for him?”

“He wants me to kill your wife and the girl and bring you in. I went by your wife’s coffee place today. I saw your daughter there.”

“Stay away from her.”

“He’s got a power about him, doesn’t he?”

“We tried to pay the ransom. What do we have to do to get our warden back?”

“She was in a warehouse but I hear she’s on a boat now. What I hear is you’ll know the boat by the moon.”

“Where is this boat supposed to be?”

“They’re getting ready for something. I can tell. When he sent me out he said if I can’t bring you to him, he wants me to bring back your thumbs and he’s got people who’ll run your fingerprint.”

“Bring me where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

The line went dead and Marquez called Katherine, then Douglas.

“Marquez,” Douglas said, his voice flat, and Marquez could hear sirens and vehicle traffic. Douglas was on a street somewhere.

“I just got a call from Davies.”

“Yeah?”

Marquez heard more sirens. “What’s happened?” he asked.

“We missed him, Marquez. The hit was a Florida judge out here vacationing from Dade County. He was shot leaving a restau-rant in San Francisco tonight. We didn’t know. We didn’t have any way of knowing. We thought it was a local they were after. We’d narrowed it to a couple of possible drug cases here, but this was it. This was the cartel hit. They’re trying one of the Cardoza family in Miami next month. I don’t know how we could have known. Christ, if we’d only known the judge was here we could have put it together. Kline will leave now. Jesus Christ, he came here and made the hit. I’m sorry, Marquez, what about Davies?”

After Marquez related the phone call, Douglas said, “I’ll get agents to your wife’s house and yours. Give me ten minutes. But I think he’s just a crackpot, Marquez. I think he just likes making the calls. I wouldn’t worry about it, but we’re on our way.”