Kirk Russell - Dead Game

“Not if they scare you. The safest thing is to go up to the road, and I’ll stay on the phone with you. I’m going to walk to the truck now. If we lose connection I’ll call you back. Tell me what you can about the men and their car.”

“They’re like middle-aged white guys, but I can’t see them that well. The car is newish and looks expensive. It’s a black four-door.”

“What model?”

“I don’t know cars, but like one of those airport cars.”

“Like a limo?”

“No, smaller than that, a black four-door, modern looking.”

A late-model black four-door didn’t sound like a couple of guys hanging out at a fishing access, but still, it was no reason to worry, and Anna wasn’t that deep into their operation. Yet it was troubling because it didn’t make sense that Don August, the suspect she was helping them with, had anything for her to hold for him. He couldn’t see August trusting her to hold something overnight for him. He didn’t know her that well.

A nervous energy started in Marquez. The feeling of relaxing with the beer was gone, but at least the beer would finally be cold when he got back, and he’d buy Anna dinner here after retrieving her. Christmas lights came on around the bar windows as he crossed the marina deck. Through the windows he saw the same three fishermen at the bar, the owner, Lisa, bartending.

“I can’t walk up to the road because I was really stupid. I left the car unlocked and my purse is in there. As long as they can see me on the phone they know I can call 911.”

So she wasn’t that scared. He registered the difference as he got in his truck and thought about her waiting this long to tell him about the purse in the unlocked car.

“It’s going to take me fifteen to twenty minutes with the fog to get there.” When she didn’t answer he repeated, “Anna, walk up to the levee road and wait there. You have a bad feeling about these guys-you can watch from up there.”

He drove up to the road and turned downriver. Anna was bigboned, athletic, high cheekbones, cheeks pocked by acne, brown eyes, nothing demure about her, a river rat who guided boat tours and mountain expeditions for a firm called Adventure USA. They were legit, had been around awhile, and Anna’s face was in their brochure and on their website, an experienced river guide, diver, and climber. The website carried a picture of her on the saddle of a Himalayan mountain. They’d checked her out every way they could, including her credit history, as they chased a rumor about her kiting checks. From Immigration they’d gotten record of her moving here from Russia with her mother twenty years ago.

She’d climbed some serious peaks and guided trips on Class IV rivers. She’d told him tales of stuff that had happened to her in remote places, in particular because she was a woman. She’d struck him as tough, not easy to intimidate, and he’d never heard her talk about being scared of anything. Now, suddenly, her voice was lighter and louder. She laughed.

“Guess what, I really am a total idiot, they’re leaving. They’re backing out. They’re going to pass me here in a second.”

Marquez heard a car engine idling somewhere near her, then Anna’s startled, “Wait, oh, no,” and a man’s voice calling, “Come here, bitch.”

“Anna, run!”

But she answered the man instead, her words unintelligible to Marquez.

“Get your ass over here before I use this on you.” The man’s voice was abruptly much louder, closer. “Don’t move, don’t make any noise. Drop the fucking phone.”

She screamed. The phone clattered and died. Marquez jumped on the accelerator. He reached for his radio. He was still ten minutes away.

Anna’s green Honda was in the middle of the lot, passenger door wide open, contents of a purse dumped on the seat. Marquez shined the flashlight beam into the wheel well at a soft leather purse turned inside out, lying like a rag in the corner. He went back to his truck and talked to the Sacramento County watch commander again. Far away, out across the delta, he heard the first siren. He read off the license plates and told the watch commander he recognized her car.

“I’m going to take a look out along the water.”

But he swept his flashlight over her car again first. In the backseat was a nightstand, a desk lamp in an IKEA bag, sandals, running shoes, clothes folded and stacked on a seat as though she planned to carry them from the car to a drawer. He knew she was moving back to Sacramento, the company she worked for no longer willing to contribute rent toward a San Francisco apartment.

“Anna!”

He’d called her name when he’d gotten here and called for her every twenty yards as he moved away from her car now. He stepped into the reeds, the flashlight beam fracturing as it shined through them. He walked the path out to the river, checked between driftwood logs, picnic tables, the reeds and brush and swept the light across the dark water of the river. Across the river the lights of Rio Vista shone hazily through fog. Seals barked out on a buoy. She was a strong swimmer, but the man’s voice had been right there. The phone had hit something hard, clattered. The voice had been so close he didn’t see her running away.

A CHP unit, its light bar milky, siren loud, dropped down from the levee road, and Marquez lifted his badge as the officer put a light on him. County units began to arrive. They gathered near her car, and one CHP officer recognized it. He turned to Marquez.

“Dark-haired woman, right? I pulled her over a week ago. She was close to a DUI. How’d you end up working with her?”

“She’s helping us on a sturgeon poaching case.”

He left it at that and organized a search. Through the incident command system, until someone with higher rank and more experience arrived, Marquez was in charge. They covered the reeds and brush, the embankment up to the road and into the field on the other side. A Sacramento County deputy found a crushed cell phone in reeds not far from the picnic table.

Forty minutes later a Sacramento County detective named Brian Selke took over, and a K-9 unit from Contra Costa crossed the Antioch Bridge and dropped into the delta. Marquez related the phone conversation to Selke and gave him what he had for addresses and phone numbers on Anna Burdovsky and Don August. He gave Selke license plates and a description of August’s Porsche.

“Are you going out with an All Points Bulletin?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

Selke was a solid-looking guy, balding, broad nose, thick wrists, shoulders rolled forward. He stood close to Marquez as he asked his questions, then left him when a dog found a wallet in the brush. Selke bagged the wallet, waved Marquez over.

“Let’s look at this together.” He opened the evidence bag so Marquez could see the wallet and asked, “Why was she meeting you tonight?”

“It just worked out that she was coming through the delta. I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks, so it was really just to touch base.”

“Are you married?”

It took Marquez a moment to register what he was being asked. He nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ve got a wife and stepdaughter. There’s nothing between Anna and me.”

“If she was going to stay in your room tonight, now would be the time to tell me.”

“Nothing like that.”

Selke showed him the contents of the wallet. An REI card, Macy’s, membership in the Wilderness Society, a couple of folded Visa receipts, both from gas stations, three photos, one that was probably her mother, one of a much younger Anna standing in snow with a building behind her and a young boy, a toddler in a coat that came down to his shoes standing next to her. A man was alongside her. The third photo was of a landscape, a lake and green-blue forested mountains climbing behind it. Marquez lingered on that photo a moment.