Kirk Russell - Dead Game

Marquez kept questioning him as they drove back into the delta and past the houses of a couple of guys who fished weekends and worked construction during the week. Guys who supplied him. They crossed the Sacramento River and drove toward Main Street in Rio Vista where Raburn said he routinely sold to the owner of Beaudry’s Bait Shop, a place Marquez knew. According to Raburn, the former owner, Tom Beaudry, had sold out over a year ago to an ex-con named Richie Crey. Sold the sport fishing business, the boat, everything.

“Crey never wants to deal directly with me. He has a couple of guys who pick up the fish.”

“What’s he do with it?”

“I don’t know where he sells it. I don’t even know how he heard about me.”

“Maybe from the same people we heard from.”

Raburn didn’t see the humor. He rubbed the whiskers alongside his jaw.

“You don’t know where he goes with the sturgeon?”

“No, but somebody is buying. Last spring I could have sold all the roe in the world. Somebody wants everything there is.”

“Ludovna?”

“No, it’s not him. I think he buys from me and sells to them.”

They recrossed the Sacramento River on the Rio Vista Bridge and drove upriver past the fishing access where Anna had disappeared. They followed the levee road, winding through the delta towns until they reached Courtland and Raburn Orchards. Then they made the steep drop down to the levee island. A graveled road ran out through deep puddles to the packing shed. Marquez pulled inside under the roof and left his headlights on.

“My room is in back.”

As Raburn went to turn the lights on, Shauf’s van eased into the big shed. She got out as Raburn walked back, and he seemed uncomfortable with her presence. He kept glancing over at her as they started back toward the room his brother let him use. They walked past conveyer belts and sorters and an ancient box machine.

“Does your brother own his packing equipment?” Marquez asked.

“He leases.”

Water dripped through holes in the corrugated roofing twenty feet over their heads, and they dodged that and worked their way around old wooden fruit boxes. Raburn unlocked two tall wooden doors, swung them open. He hit a light switch, and they were looking at two long wooden tables, dirt floor, stainless-steel sinks, stainless-steel pans, a hose, freezers, always a freezer, but not the pots and seines for producing caviar that Marquez was looking for. He opened a freezer and found sturgeon fillets wrapped in white butcher paper. On the end of one of the tables was a scale.

Shauf worked her way around the room with the camcorder. She was the one designated for recording all evidence. If it went to trial she’d be the one called. That was their practice, have one officer designated to avoid having several pinned down by the same trial.

When they finished, Marquez drove Raburn back to the houseboat and dropped him near his pickup. The rain had stopped, though heavy droplets still fell from high in the eucalyptus branches and struck like pebbles on top of the truck cab.

“I’m supposed to buy a sturgeon in the morning,” Raburn said.

“I’ll ride with you to pick it up.”

“You don’t believe me about Nick, do you? You think I’m bullshitting you.”

“I’m hoping you’re not bullshitting us. I’m putting faith in you.”

They had set up surveillance on Ludovna’s house this afternoon. Cairo was there now.

“We’ll meet tomorrow,” Marquez said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Driving away, he returned a call from Cairo, and he’d worked enough years with Cairo to know the differences in his voice. There was a way Cairo’s voice got both quiet and intense.

“Ludovna just got here, and it looks like he’s leaving again. There’s a woman with him, Lieutenant. He pulled up in a midnight-blue Cadillac that looks black in this light. It could be Anna’s airport car. From across a parking lot in the fog it would look black. It’s late-model, maybe last year’s. He’s pulling out now. What do you think?”

“Stay with him. I’m on my way.”

Ludovna came down the street with his date, right hand resting high on her ass before slipping down and up under her skirt long enough to feel the slide of nylon on both legs. His arm was around her shoulders as they went into a restaurant, and Marquez waited until they were at a table in the corner and he could see a waiter opening a bottle of wine.

“You’re good to go,” he told Cairo, and Cairo slid onto his back at the curb and shimmied under the front of Ludovna’s Cadillac. He attached a GPS unit to the engine block, taking his time with the battery pack. He was still under the Cadillac when the waiter returned to pour more wine.

The rain started again as Ludovna and the woman stood up from dinner. When they walked outside Ludovna draped his coat over her narrow shoulders, and rain soaked through his shirt and blew against his face, but he didn’t seem to care or be worried about that or anything else. He held the woman near his chest and sheltered her body as they walked to his car. He was half bald, the remaining black hair slick in the rain, his eyes checking the sidewalk ahead, checking his car, cars passing on the street, checking everything.

Marquez watched them pull away in the Cadillac, an Escalade, an ‘04, last year’s model. He drove toward his Land Park house but stopped at a bar on the way.

“The night is young,” Marquez radioed.

Cairo had run the Cadillac plates and gotten the name Sandy Michaels and a Ventura address for the owner. The digital clock on Marquez’s dash moved toward midnight. He could see the Cadillac under a light in the parking lot and thought about Raburn’s story of Ludovna and the treble hook. Shauf drove up, and he watched her get out and walk up to his truck. She got in on the passenger side, and they talked in darkness.

“My friend Cheryl in administration called me today,” she said. “She told me a story about Bell that might explain why he’s been all over us.”

“Must be a good story to call you on a Sunday.”

From her tone it didn’t sound like it was going to be a happy story, at least not for Bell. Marquez glanced over at her. He’d probably sat through more surveillances with Shauf than with anyone else in his years with the SOU. It was still less than a year since her sister had died of cancer, and, though she seemed like she was doing better, there was still a quiet to her that filled the cab at times.

“This happened the day before Thanksgiving,” she said. “A kid showed up with a pizza delivery for Bell at headquarters. You know how Chief Baird doesn’t like anything brought in, so Bell’s pretty snippy about it when they tell him his pizza has arrived. He’s got to stop what he’s doing, writing a memo to God or whatever it was, and leave his office and tell the pizza kid he made a mistake. So he comes down the corridor and tells this kid he didn’t order any pizza, and what’s more would never order pizza to headquarters. But the kid checks the name again and hands Bell the tag. Pizza is from Bell’s wife. She called it in and sent it there, or so the kid insists.”

“Bell’s wife sent him a pizza?”

“Right, and that’s what Bell can’t figure out. He doesn’t even like pizza.”

Shauf’s face turned in the darkness. She was getting to the punch line, and the streetlights reflected her smile. But in her face he saw her anger at Bell.

“The pizza kid has one of those candy-cane striped shirts and a hat. I wish I could describe him like Cheryl did, but anyway he’s a pimply-faced college kid, and Bell asks, ‘What kind of pizza?’ The kid goes, ‘This kind,’ and opens up the box. He’s a process server, not a pizza guy, and he’s got divorce papers from Bell’s wife. He hands them to Bell and says, ‘Enjoy your lunch.’”