Kirk Russell - Dead Game

“Are the Feds looking for Anna?”

“It’s not clear, but Ehrmann talks like she’s alive and they might know where she is. I told him you were very worried about her. I played it up. You haven’t slept at night since she vanished. You’re consumed with guilt, that kind of thing. I’m trying to get him to tell us more, so this is your heads-up on that.” He chuckled. “You cry every night over Burdovsky.”

“When did the father run with the boy?”

“She was in school in Moscow, got pregnant, married, and then things went south. He didn’t want her to take their son, so he grabbed the boy and took off. Russia was a mess so there was no one to go after him, or he was connected enough to keep it from happening.”

Ehrmann had formed the boundaries of an imaginary tumor with his hands as he’d described the malignancy Eurasian Organized Crime represented. He wasn’t against the word mob but said it didn’t cover it.

“I think Ehrmann will tell us more if we both work him,” Selke said. “They’ve got their investigation and there’s more overlap than he’s let on. He’s returning calls too quickly. I just get that feeling. We need to play off each other when we work him.”

Marquez doubted that either he or Selke would work Ehrmann successfully for information. And he wasn’t even sure he wanted to know what Ehrmann saw when he looked at a county detective and an undercover warden. But neither did he really care. He knew why his team was here. They weren’t shutting down arms traffickers, but they were trying to protect a species that had been on this earth since the dinosaurs. An arms trafficker might come up with an elaborate rationalization for how the arms they sold actually helped the oppressed, the same as market poachers taking bear might claim to feed a market for traditional medicines. Fundamentally, both were about greed, and he had the feeling Ehrmann was sympathetic to what the SOU was trying to do because he understood the commonality.

But, like Selke, Marquez felt the hand of the Feds brushing closer. He knew if the stakes were high enough with this arms trafficker, then the FBI might even be listening in on the SOU conversations. Unlikely. Still, he turned the idea as he drove home to Mill Valley.

When Marquez pulled up to Loch Lomond Marina, Ruax was sitting in her truck. He backed the boat trailer down the ramp, and the Fountain slid into the water. He waited until Ruax was on the boat and the engine idling, then eased the boat trailer back up the ramp and parked. Calm water broke smoothly off the bow as they headed out the channel.

“I brought a thermos of coffee and picked up some cinnamon rolls on the way in,” he said. “They’re from a bakery in San Rafael.”

“I don’t eat that kind of stuff.”

“I know you drink coffee; I’ve seen you do that.”

“I had a cup earlier.”

He poured her one anyway, and they came slowly through the buoys, keeping to the five-mile-per-hour limit. He opened the bakery bag, showed her the cinnamon buns, fresh, still hot and sticky, and she shook her head, a look of disgust crossing her face.

“Take the coffee, Jo. It’ll keep your hands warm even if you don’t drink it.”

He wasn’t much of a pastry eater himself, had only a bite or two, and checked out the bay ahead, looking for other boats. Ruax fixed her gaze on the seismic work underway on the Richmond/ San Rafael Bridge. Sparks flew from welding work. Then they were out of the channel, turning the stern to the bridge and San Francisco Bay behind it. He bumped the speed, and they ran across the gray water toward the red light at the horizon.

The sky streaked with pink and magenta. Marquez tapped the throttle gently forward, and the bow rose. A deeper roar came from the engine, and Ruax wouldn’t have to talk now. She could look through the windshield at whatever she was thinking about and brood. He pushed the speed past fifty, adjusted the flaps, and the boat began to plane across San Pablo Bay. Along the east shore commuter traffic was already thick. Ahead, the new span of the Vallejo Bridge stood like a gray sentinel, and the sun began to rise through delta fog. They left a white wake under the bridge, swept past Benicia and into the wide shallow upper bays.

He cut their speed, clicked on the baffling system to dampen the engine noise, slowed more as they left the last sunlight and moved into fog that at first was thin wisps, then wrapped thick around them, cold on their faces. He steered around a log floating off to their left, a branch from it extending like an arm reaching for the sky.

Now they started passing sloughs, Cache and Steamboat, and he saw a few fishing boats out. No one liked a powerboat at dawn. They drew looks. He got sarcasm from Ruax.

“Not as quiet as you think,” she said.

But neither would anyone likely associate the Fountain speedboat with law enforcement. As the river narrowed and fog thickened, Marquez slowed more. He offered Ruax more coffee, poured himself some.

“What are you going to do with the time off?” he asked.

“Take a vacation while they figure it out.”

“Use your vacation time?”

“No, Baird says they’ll do something about all that.”

“How’d your crew take it?”

“They’re angry. Everyone wants more explanation, and we had a lot of things we were working on.”

“Our operation isn’t just in the delta. You could still work with us.”

“I’m supposed to stay away from anything associated with sturgeon poaching. That was the advice of the FBI for all of my crew.”

“ Advice is the word they use when they can’t step in and control. Strongly advise is one of their favorites. They’re also the largest single buyer of black marker pens.”

That last bit went by her, but then, she hadn’t seen the transcripts. Passing Riera’s Marina not all the buildings were visible, still wrapped in fog. Marquez avoided a ship coming downriver and watched Ruax pour herself more coffee, her face changing even as she didn’t want it to, and he could tell she loved the river, loved being out here this morning. She turned to him.

“We were on the water when those concrete bridge pieces came downriver from Stockton. They were huge.”

“Pieces for the new Bay Bridge?”

“Yes.” She described the barge and the pieces for the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge going past her DBEEP boat. “You turn in up ahead not too far,” she said. “These guys were taking sturgeon before you showed up. That’s why you haven’t heard about them before now.”

“You didn’t owe us anything. You were working your own things before we arrived, and you’ll have new ones when we leave.”

“We knew they were dealing with Raburn, and we knew he’d sold sturgeon in Rio Vista. His brother’s wife rode with him a couple of times, but we never tied him to the new owner at Beaudry’s like you did. I should have told you those things.”

Marquez nodded. He understood completely. The SOU had cases they worked and didn’t talk to anybody about until they needed to. Ruax had taken a wait-and-see attitude on the SOU operation and hadn’t risked cases that DBEEP was building. Anna’s disappearing would have only reinforced that, and Ruax didn’t have to apologize for any of it.

“How much do you know about Isaac’s wife?” she asked.

“Not a lot. Raburn told us she does some gutting and cleaning but doesn’t know anything about the illegal business. He says she doesn’t even know the laws. How did you get onto her?”

“Followed her.”

The boat punched slowly up the river. Up off to the left Marquez made out the water tower behind the Ryde Hotel, then the red lights of the TV tower marking the location of Walnut Grove. Without the light you’d see only gray fog.