Kirk Russell - Redback

‘Our warden said you were slow opening the door this morning. That’s because you needed to call Holsing first, right?’

Talbot wouldn’t answer, but Marquez knew that’s what had happened. Talbot called Holsing and warned him, and Holsing told Talbot just play it cool, don’t admit anything and tell them you don’t know me. Then he decided to make a run for it. That’s why he left his van on the side of an onramp.

‘Where do the Mexicans camp?’

‘Higher up somewhere. They drink the creek water and crap in the weeds. They aren’t allowed to come down. I just leave their food by a tree and let them beat the animals to it. When they brought me in to work on the house, I didn’t know about any of this. My old man was a contractor. I’m a carpenter.’

He kept talking about himself and Marquez heard dogs baying. The K-9 team had arrived and gone straight to Brad’s truck. They ran the dogs from there and the dogs were on the slope above and to their left. He couldn’t see them but knew from the baying the dogs were coming this way. Marquez looked at the deputy’s solemn face. The deputy knew something bad happened up here.

Marquez led now. He took in the grow field, the stacked bags of fertilizer, irrigation lines, the dam, and the damage to the land the growers always walked away from.

‘What kind of weapons do the guys tending the field have?’

‘I didn’t have anything to do with that. Jeff gave them those.’

‘What do they have?’

‘AK-47s.’

‘Did you hear any gunfire today?’

This time Talbot’s answer came very fast.

‘Nope.’

‘Did you climb any higher than this today?’

Talbot shook his head. He pointed at where he’d left the food. It looked as if he’d just turned the pack upside down and dumped the supplies out. He licked his lips and Marquez left him with the deputy and called Brad’s name as he climbed higher.

Above the small dam he picked up a trail and found a fresh mark that could be Brad’s. He recognized the Vibram pattern and followed the boot prints. They continued up through brush and out on to a grassy open slope, and then he saw blood on the grass. He heard the dogs and their handler. The dogs were closing. The dogs smelled the blood, he guessed.

‘Hold up, there,’ he called out to the handler, his voice suddenly hoarse.

The handler answered and then Shauf.

‘Is that you, Lieutenant?’

‘Yeah, Carol, it’s me, come on over alone. The dogs shouldn’t come any closer.’

When she pushed through the brush, Marquez was kneeling. A droning sound like a cloud of locusts buzzed in his head as he picked up Brad’s badge and saw a bloodstained trail of crushed grass. Without speaking they followed it to where a shovel had been discarded. He saw a mound of newly turned earth with rocks heaped on top, and went forward alone. On his knees he lifted away rocks. He brushed away soil. He dug with his fingers until he reached a dark blue collar and then skin. As he cleared dirt from Brad’s face a terrible grief flooded him. He stared, brushed more dirt, and then had to turn away. He looked at Shauf but couldn’t find words. He knelt again and his knee sank in the soft newly turned soil. Shot him, dragged him up here, and tried to hide his body. Shauf’s voice was leaden, dead. Her hand touched his shoulder.

‘Lieutenant, we shouldn’t touch anything. We shouldn’t be this close.’

Marquez understood that and stood and backed away. He lifted his radio, hesitated, lowered the radio to his side, as if he could change the truth. When he raised the radio again, he keyed the mike, drew a deep breath, and called it in.

The two men trying to escape across the slope surrendered less than half an hour later. Turned out they were Mexican illegals and didn’t speak any English. There was radio chatter as they were taken into custody. Marquez watched it from way up on the slope and far away in his head.

After the county helicopter flew away it was quiet. He waited with Shauf. He waited thinking Sheryl Javits had warned him that the cartels were smuggling in farmers from rural areas of Mexico, paying them fifty dollars a day to tend the crops, and arming them with the warning that if anything happened to the marijuana, their relatives were in danger. Drug cartels had figured out that some of the remote areas of California’s parks and wildernesses made ideal grow locations. They were treating the land as their own and like everything they touched they left it damaged or ruined when they were through.

Brad was dead. A good friend dead. One of his team dead, murdered, a family left behind. Brad with his love of the job killed like this. Marquez couldn’t get his head around it. He looked out at the mountains and hills across the valley as an FBI Evidence Response Team climbed the trail toward them. When they arrived he introduced himself and Shauf and took them in with a numb awareness. He showed two AK-47Ns to the FBI. He showed them the shovels thrown down in the grass and tracks the men left, and where he’d knelt near Brad’s body. None of it would change anything. If he had made the bust earlier and not chased the ab poachers out to the coast last night, none of this would have happened.

The ERT leader wanted to hear Marquez’s full account and Marquez went through it with him, and then watched as they ran tape, set up a perimeter of tape and a second ring beyond that. They placed markers, collected bloody grass, bagged the shovel and guns, and found a spot on the slope for what the ERT leader called his field station, a Nikon NPL-821 that projected a grid they mapped the evidence on. Marquez recorded all of this in silence, watching as if his presence here helped them get it right.

At dusk as the FBI finished and packed up, Chief Blakely arrived at the ranch house. She radioed Marquez from there.

‘I think you should be there with me when I go out to the Alvarezs’ house.’

‘I’ll follow after Brad is off this slope. I won’t be far behind you.’

Near sunset Marquez helped strap Brad’s body into a basket lowered from a helicopter. After Brad was in a coroner’s wagon and the wagon was moving, Marquez left the Capay. He drove toward the Alvarezes’ house with Shauf following, though later he wouldn’t even remember the drive.

Brad’s wife, Cindy, looked both bewildered and in pain. Chief Blakely was there as were other friends of the family, but Cindy couldn’t accept what they were telling her. She’d been waiting for Marquez.

Brad’s six year old son, Shane, asked Marquez, ‘Is Daddy dead?’ and Cindy answered, ‘No, Daddy will be home soon.’ She looked at Marquez and asked, ‘Who was it that got killed? I’m so glad you’re here.’ Her face flushed bright red. Tears sprang from her eyes. ‘Chief Blakely thought it was Brad, but who was it really?’

Then, as she studied Marquez’s face, hers crumpled.

‘John, you know Brad is magic. You know it better than anyone. You know how he is. Nothing can happen to him. He always makes it home. You know that. Please, no, please don’t say that it’s him.’

She reached and gripped his arm, eyes lit with fear, and then welling again with tears.

‘Please, John, if he’s been shot and he’s hurt, I’ll make him well. I’ll take care of him. I can make him well again. Where is he?’

Marquez took her hand and racking sobs started from deep inside. He held her. She sank down and he got her over the couch as her son started to cry. He understood what she meant about Brad being magic. He knew exactly what she meant.

After her family arrived, he moved outside with Cindy’s father, who trembled as he stood on the porch and smoked, his voice gravelly and sad as he spoke.