Kirk Russell - Redback

He couldn’t see all of Phelps’ face, but could see he was very still. When Phelps spoke again his voice was quiet and low.

‘That was family money. It was a real estate deal after my dad died. Sheryl wasn’t entitled to any of it. I paid her just to back her off.’

‘I’ll need it in writing tomorrow morning.’

‘That’s going to get the IRS on my back.’

‘It’s your call, take on your wife, or take on the IRS. You decide which is worse, but I need to hear from you by nine in the morning.’

He got it in writing at 9:30 the next day and called Beth Murkowski. Then he made two copies and did what she asked, took the original to the San Diego DEA Field Office.

He called Sheryl, talked to her, and then he sat down with a double espresso and thought about it. It came down to timing and who had all the needed information and access. He flipped his phone open and flipped it shut, thought some more and then phoned Kerry Anderson. But it wasn’t Anderson who answered. It was a young woman who told him she was Kerry Anderson’s replacement. Anderson’s retirement party had happened last Friday. He’d left on a long awaited Caribbean vacation. She had a phone number and he copied that down and then read an email on his Blackberry from Desault.

It read, ‘Victim identified. Call me.’

‘ Her name is Terri Delgado and we can’t and neither can the DEA connect her to Raymond Mendoza. So far, there’s no apparent link. She lived in the LA area, in Brentwood. The family had money and she was trying to break into the film business as a producer. Her parents filed the missing persons report. Does any of this ring any bells with you?’

‘I know who she is. I’ve talked to her. She tipped us to Stoval’s bighorn hunt in the eastern Sierra. She met him at a party in LA and he invited her to go to Vegas with him after his hunt. Instead, she called us.’

‘Called the DFG hotline?’

‘Yes, and it sounds like I got her killed.’

‘You can’t draw that conclusion. What you’ve told me about the hunt may have gotten back to Stoval. It’s been discussed by everyone on the task force.’

‘Yeah, but Raymond’s vehicle, the timing.’

‘The timing works because he was already here to kill her. He wrapped the meeting with Raymond Mendoza into that and improvised with the Hummer. Probably didn’t get the idea to use Mendoza’s Hummer until he was sitting in it.’

Marquez called Chief Blakely at Fish and Game and told her. Then he sat in a room in the LA Field Office with the lights off and once more listened to the archived CALTIP recording of Terri Delgado. In Terri Delgado’s voice he could hear her youth and a mix of guilt and desire to do the right thing in calling a tip, snitching on a guy who’d invited her to four days in Vegas.

It brought him way down. He couldn’t add it up any other way. At Fish and Game they relied on the public, and Marquez felt protective toward anyone who helped them, and yet he may have gotten her killed out of concern for his own family. Stoval would have come for her anyway, Desault claimed, but Marquez wasn’t sure. Rayman gave the message and Stoval questioned Rayman, then took his Hummer and either had Delgado kidnapped and delivered to him – most likely that – or abducted her himself. More likely kidnapped and drugged, Marquez thought, and maybe in response to his threat to Stoval. Or as Desault said, he was here to kill her.

Stoval was getting inside his head. First his name in an intercepted phone call, then a hired gunman sent to Alaska, and now this exhibition murder of Terri Delgado. He didn’t need to kill Delgado. Nothing more was going to happen with the bighorn. He wants to get inside my head, Marquez thought.

What happened next was Rayman got kicked loose. There was no way to hold him, no evidence he had anything to do with Delgado’s murder. Marquez was still in LA and heard about the killing over the radio. When he drove there firemen were hosing off the sidewalk in front of two ATM machines outside a Wells Fargo bank. This was in a mall parking lot less than a mile from Rayman’s stucco house in the hills.

In the bank video Rayman arrived at 3:34 p.m., just hours after his release. A man wearing a motorcycle helmet with a dark visor walks up on Rayman’s left side. A second man with a Dodgers cap and sunglasses is to his right and slightly behind him, but crowding him so may have held a gun to his back. That man is with him as Rayman withdraws money. Motorcycle man arrives after Rayman has already punched in his PIN and withdrawn the money.

The adjacent ATM was in use and a second witness told the detectives she was walking from her car toward the Wells ATMs when Rayman’s convertible Mercedes pulled up and double-parked. It annoyed her that they had double-parked and would get to the ATM ahead of her. Her name was Patti Wright and she didn’t realize at first that a violent crime was in progress.

‘I didn’t know the man who got out of the car with him had a gun. I knew there was something odd about how he was moving and staying close, but I just didn’t put it together. The other man on the motorcycle I didn’t even see arrive, though I think I remember hearing the motorcycle. By the time I noticed him, he was holding a gun to the other man’s head.’

Rayman’s lawyer dropped him off at home at approximately 12:30 and Rayman left the house in the convertible Mercedes soon after. He drove to an In-N-Out Burger and returned home at 1:30 according to a DEA surveillance team. The two agents watching mistook the man who showed up at 3:18 p.m. for a friend – it was still possible he was an acquaintance – it was very likely, Marquez thought, that the man they sent did know Rayman. This ‘friend’ was seen leaving the house via the front door accompanied by Rayman. The ‘friend’ wore a hooded sweatshirt with a sleeved pocket in front that likely concealed a gun.

Rayman and that man drove from the house to the mall and the Wells Fargo ATM. They double-parked, got out, and then the man on the motorcycle arrived. This was the part Marquez hooked into, executing him in front of a camera. It keyed with something Kerry Anderson had said years ago, and, in fact, he’d jotted down in one of his old logbooks.

The motorcycle rider walked up as Rayman and the unknown first assailant approached the ATM. Rayman slid his ATM card in. He entered his PIN and the bank record showed a two hundred dollar withdrawal. That money was disbursed by the machine, but left there, and if there was some meaning in that Marquez didn’t get it.

At this point, motorcycle man was along Rayman’s left side, still with his helmet on as he raised a gun. The woman standing in line, Patti Wright, and the teenage boy using the second ATM both reported having heard the command, ‘Look straight ahead!’

Rayman started to turn his head and the bank camera captured the spray as the bullet exited the right side of his head just forward of his right ear. Both men fled on the motorcycle. DEA surveillance did not pursue. They called it in and secured the scene. Marquez stood in front of the Wells Fargo ATMs and then flipped open his cell and called Desault as he walked back to his truck.

‘Kerry Anderson once told me that Stoval likes or requires photo verification from the Zetas or any other hired gun,’ Marquez said.

Marquez called Anderson but didn’t reach him. He flew home to San Francisco late in the afternoon and stopped at the DEA as he came through San Francisco. Murkowski came to talk and gloated, her cheeks reddening with the thrill at being the first to tell him.

‘You’re too late. She resigned this afternoon.’

‘Why did she quit?’

‘Well, Agent Marquez, I think it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t belong here.’