Kirk Russell - Dead Game

“Can you see someone doing this to her over sturgeon poaching?”

He wasn’t sure he needed to answer. The young woman was badly mutilated, and that was more than hiding her identity. It was rage, and Selke knew that better than he did.

“No, I can’t. It looks to me like they quit when their anger got spent.”

Selke just nodded, left it at that. They walked toward Marquez’s truck.

“I’ve got something for you as long as you’ll scan the photos and email them to me. We found these in Burdovsky’s Sacramento apartment.”

Marquez got in his truck and got out the evidence bag. He unfolded it and got out the passport and photos, told Selke about his meeting with the FBI and the possibility they could help him with Burdovsky. He gave Selke Stan Ehrmann’s name but not the phone number Ehrmann had given him. Selke could start with the duty officer, and Marquez didn’t doubt Ehrmann would talk to him.

“Ehrmann is very interested in Russian immigrants. He’ll call you back.”

An hour later Marquez helped get the corpse out of the refrigerator. They slid her into a body bag, and the refrigerator got loaded onto a truck, and the police vehicles left one at a time, Selke last and slowing alongside Marquez’s truck, asking him why he was still here.

Marquez stayed until dawn. He slept a few hours in his truck. When the sun rose he looked at the ruts on the slough embankment the refrigerator had made sliding down the steep slope. It wouldn’t take Selke long to find out what kind of banding tool was used, who made it, and where the bands came from. Then he’d find out who sold it, and they’d trace the refrigerator back. They’d be able to say how she died and how long she’d been dead. But the kind of mind that butchered a face that way, you couldn’t find the answer for that anywhere.

He knew it wasn’t Anna but felt a need to prepare for the possibility it was. He thought of August’s coming in and sitting for a videotaped interview, no lawyer, combative and unconcerned. August had no problem admitting she’d stayed at his apartment, even suggested she was lovesick and that Selke “dredge the river.” Whatever the sarcastic comment had been about Anna drowning herself. Marquez turned these things in his head as he watched morning light come to the slough. The water was very calm and dark green. He watched a mallard fly the length of the slough. It was clear and cold, and he stood on the bank and watched another duck go past before walking to his truck. It was unlikely, he thought, that in the history of the world there had ever been a species crueler than his own.

“It’s cold,” Katherine said.

“Where are you?”

“In Vermont looking at Middlebury College.”

The way she said it made it sound like that wasn’t necessarily fun. Maybe it was the cold.

“How are the roads?”

“Oh, they’re fine. It was snowing this morning but it’s stopped. White sky, cold wind, it all makes me remember why I moved to California. I was hoping she’d like Middlebury, but it’s the wrong time of year.”

“What has she liked most so far?”

“Shopping in Boston.”

“What about you, Kath? How are you?”

“I’ve been better. Maria is in looking at the library, then we’re going to get lunch in town.”

“And then north to Colby?”

He’d memorized their circuit, or thought he had.

“South.” There was too long a pause before Katherine said, “We’re headed to Vassar.”

“I don’t remember Vassar on the list.”

“It wasn’t, but now that she’s told me what she told you a month ago we’re abbreviating the trip.” This was the quiet moment where he knew he was supposed to explain, but his heart wasn’t in it. “You don’t have to explain,” Katherine said. “I know she asked you not to say anything, so I understand.”

“But your feelings are hurt.”

“Wouldn’t yours be?”

He looked at the dark almost black line of Mount Diablo and the high concrete curve of the Antioch Bridge, the three-bladed white windmills with the dark blue sky beyond them. His feelings probably would be hurt, but it was still Maria’s to explain, not his. He’d respected her wish not to say anything, and Maria had procrastinated. You kept your word to Maria, he thought. Let her take her own heat; she’s old enough.

“Oh, she’s told me some things,” Katherine said. “Like she’s not going to college next year and we’re wasting our time on this trip. She wants to live with her two friends in the city, keep working at Presto, and go clubbing every night. How much trigonometry do you think she’ll remember after a year of clubbing, excuse me, after taking a year off to recover from the rigors of high school? I raised a kid who is so selfish she thinks she’s doing me a favor to come back here. I would have given anything to have what I can give her. Why did she wait to tell me?”

“I don’t think she knows her own mind yet, Kath.”

“Well, she’s not going to spend next year screwing around in San Francisco. What’s life going to do to her if she can’t handle high school and needs a break to recover? I need you to help me bring her around, and I don’t understand why you’re defending this idea of hers.”

“I’m not defending anything, but Maria is seventeen going on eighteen, and the days when we can tell her what to do are almost over.”

“So is she going to start paying her way?”

“You can’t make her want to go to college.”

“No, I really can’t, and now I’m wondering if she even sent all her applications. I didn’t read her essays. Did you?”

“If she said she sent them in, she did.”

“Here she comes. I’ll call you later.”

She hung up, and he drove, thinking about how he might help close the rift between Kath and Maria. He had interrupted several of the fights and tried to mediate and had heard about the worst ones when he wasn’t there. Maria was as stubborn as her mother, and each time she got punished she came back harder, and yet she continued working for Katherine at Presto on Union, rather than try to find a different job.

When he hung up with Katherine he returned a call from Ruax, and she was cheerful this morning.

“I’ve got a fish for you,” she said. “You’re becoming quite the dealer.”

“Any roe?”

“I can’t promise roe.”

“It’s got to be fresh or I won’t take it.”

She chuckled, and they picked a spot to transfer the sturgeon to his truck later that morning. He called Richie Crey.

“Do you want it? It’s just out of the water.”

“Okay, guy, let’s give it a go. Let me tell you where to take it. Guys that work for me will be at the house when you get there. It’s not far from my shop. You take it there. They’ll know what to do.”

Marquez picked up the fish from Ruax and drove over the bridge to Rio Vista. He planned to cut through these two front men and sell directly to Crey. In their remaining three weeks they were going after Crey, Ludovna, and August, and they’d need to deal face-to-face with Crey to generate enough evidence to build a case the DA would accept. Now he circled the block once. He parked and knocked twice before a man opened the door.

“I’m looking for Lou Perry.”

“That’s me. Are you the guy with the fish eggs?”

Marquez nodded and saw a second man on the sofa watching TV. Stale air flowed from inside, bad breath, dust, the sweet smell of dope.

“What’s your name, Mr. Fish Eggs?”

“John. What’s yours, sport?”

“Lou.”

Marquez smiled as though the name Lou was funny sounding. He wanted to make it clear early on that they weren’t going to be friends.