Kirk Russell - Dead Game

Isaac’s arms were along his side. The right side of his face rested in blood. Marquez looked from Isaac, to Abe, to the boy on the far end and couldn’t say why, but saw Cindy and the boy shot first. Shot before anyone knew they were going to die. Then questions asked of Isaac and Abe. Cindy’s hand looked as though it might have rested on her daughter’s back and slid off. Why the kids? On the risk that they’d overheard something?

“John, you look rough,” Shauf said. “Maybe you want to sit down.”

“This happened because I leaned on him.”

“Then he called somebody.”

“Yeah, he probably did.”

“I know it sounds hard but that’s one more mistake he made.”

Except that we don’t really know, he thought. He felt sweat start under his arms and along his spine. He was sure this had happened because he’d cornered Raburn and forced him to it.

“If we’d just taken him down like you wanted to, this never would have happened,” he said, then turned and asked her, “Where’s your camcorder?”

With Shauf he videotaped the scene inside the canning shed. He heard sirens now, heard leaves rustling in the wind through the grove, smelled the heavy mineral blood smell seeping from the door, and took everything he knew about the operation, Raburn’s face yesterday, a fleeting look of shame at shooting out the windows of his own boat. He saw August with his fine Italian leather coats, his black driving gloves, the meticulous Porsche, the goatee trimmed to try to make him look hip.

“They’re here,” Shauf said. “They just turned off the levee road.”

Marquez walked out in the road and caught the eye of the lead driver, stopped him from getting close to the canning room. He watched an ambulance turn down, then an unmarked county unit and a detective getting out. The detective had talked with Selke. He was waiting for Selke but walked in to view the bodies. He set up a perimeter and took statements from them.

At dusk, hours after the coroner had come and gone, Marquez drove away with Shauf. He drove home and plugged the camcorder into his TV and made two tapes. Later, in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep, he watched the tape again. Cindy’s long hair had blown the same direction as her daughter’s, and that fit the wind out of the east. The door had been open, the wind blowing, and Marquez could almost hear voices, the questioning. Not caviar though. Not this kind of killing. What possible threat were the Raburns? Not Cindy. Not with her routine of kids and school and work. Not Isaac who almost lived among his trees. It was Abe. What did you see, Abe? Was it something you saw, and you made the mistake of telling somebody or threatened to tell us? You called somebody after I came by, didn’t you? What did you say to them that brought them out last night?

In the late afternoon Marquez waited for Selke on the deck of Raburn’s houseboat. He looked through the windows and saw the same disarray as last time, a man of modest means living alone with his habits. The bed was unmade. Magazines and fishing lures covered the table. A green Heineken can sat at one end. In the kitchen, smoked fish rested on a plate. A big pot sat on the stove, and he remembered Raburn talking about making chili. He’d never finished trimming the windows, and the same can of primer sat under the sawhorse. Paint had dried on the brush. Honest Abe hadn’t been bailed since the last rain and sat low in the water. It was impossible to look at the scene without wondering how much of what had happened was set in motion the rainy Sunday when they’d offered Raburn the deal.

The last sunlight was a pale gold-white on the water when Selke came down the path. Marquez got up from the chair. The cold had never let up today, and he felt it in his feet and hands.

“Raburn had keys in his pants. I forgot to bring them,” Selke said.

They didn’t need keys. He’d watched Raburn lift the door, then slide it over. He’d said the lock was a pain in the ass anyway, and people in the delta, or at least the old-timers, all knew each other and didn’t worry about theft.

They went inside. He wasn’t sure what he could do for Selke here but was in no hurry to go anywhere else, and there was a chance Raburn had written something down.

“A name you’ll recognize and I won’t,” Selke said as they searched. He added, “I’d like to find something that helps us get a warrant for Ludovna’s house, but we’re not exactly going to find a diary, are we? Did Raburn have any girlfriends?”

“None that we ever saw.”

“What about boyfriends?”

“I don’t think so. He talked about different friends. A lawyer here in the delta that he threatened us with, but I don’t know whether that was real or not.”

“I’d like to talk to this lawyer. There’s got to be an address book or something. We didn’t find anything in his pickup.”

“I think he was close to his brother and otherwise largely a loner.”

The pot on the stove did have chili in it. There was more beer in the refrigerator and a vodka bottle, ice, and wrapped cuts of fish in the freezer.

“He didn’t own much in the way of clothes,” Selke said. “There’s no desk or anything. He had a cell phone on him, and it’s beeping that he’s got messages. I won’t know who those were from until tomorrow. I’d like to get from you a list of all the contacts he introduced you to.”

“Sure.”

“Who do you think killed him?”

He’d already answered this question earlier, told Selke that he thought Raburn had called the wrong person, that it somehow came back to the meeting that should have happened this morning with both brothers, Cindy, and Shauf and himself.

“His brother had unpaid debts and old debts that got negotiated down to pennies on the dollar after a near bankruptcy. You need to look there too. Let me ask you a question. Why would anyone kill the children?”

“Children are hard,” Selke said softly. “They’re hard. I’ve only seen it a couple of times in eighteen years as a detective, and both of those were for the same reason, a divorced husband deciding his ex wasn’t entitled to remarry and start a new life. But that’s not what we have here.” Marquez didn’t respond, and Selke said, “You’re quiet.”

“Like you say, the kids are hard.”

Selke found an address book and flipped through with Marquez watching. Mostly initials next to numbers. He talked as he examined the pages.

“The FBI will take this case. This is execution-style murder, and given what’s happened in the last week I’m surprised they haven’t already showed up. It’s got a caviar connection, and it’s too close in timing to Weisson’s. If we don’t solve it tonight, they’ll step in by noon tomorrow, and I don’t think we’re talking about a joint investigation either.”

He was probably right. Selke found the light switches and turned them on. He stepped out on the deck and came back in.

“We’ve got sightseers,” he said, and Marquez glanced up toward the eucalyptus and saw a handful of people, probably neighbors. By now, the word would have gotten around. The river darkened, and the riprap, the rock lining the opposite bank, lost its reflection.

“The boy was barefoot,” Selke said. “Somebody walked him and his sister down from the house, possibly the wife as well. I’m guessing there were at least two shooters. From your end, what are the possible reasons to kill the kids? I mean from a poaching angle?”

“To get information.”

“Threaten to kill the kids if they don’t talk?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you think Raburn would hold back confessing he was working with Fish and Game and let the kids get killed one at a time?”