by Kirk Russell
“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.
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br /> “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.
30
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 wou
nded 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.
