Kirk Russell: Night Game

“Troy Broussard trap the young bears?” he asked Ungar, taking in his mocking expression, not getting any answer, just a blank face.

Ungar grinned, said, “Do you want to play this game again?”

Ungar turned and as an aside explained to one of the Nevada wildlife officers that he’d been under suspicion ever since coming forward to help.

“But why would I have anything to do with undercover wildlife officers if I was engaged in something like this.”

To keep track of us, Marquez thought, and because you’re driven by hate so strong you have trouble controlling it. You found a like spirit in Durham. U.S. Fish and Wildlife shut Durham down in Michigan, and somehow you two found each other out here. Thing is, Durham didn’t have quite your ambition and he also had another successful business life. “Do you know Joe Durham?” Marquez asked.

“No.”

The Nevada wildlife officers began to question him. They’d take him in, start there. Before leaving here they’d ask him to remove his coat, check his arms for a wound. He’d have to provide the cousin’s name, whereabouts.

Cairo and Roberts went back for camcorders, notebooks, what they needed to start documenting. The first thing was to find a legitimate way to hold Ungar more than overnight. Marquez listened to the wildlife officers start with Ungar again, their patience infinitely greater than his own, and he walked out and down to the second Quonset hut. No bears were inside, but the cages were set up, the trough, the systems in place. He looked around outside again, the desert, neighbors far away, plenty of room. When he walked back into the first building he heard one of the Nevada officers liken the Quonset hut to a hog farm, the most apt description yet.

After everything had been recorded, but before the bears were moved, Marquez walked the cages alone, looking at each bear again, counting the yearlings, eight of them. He walked farther into the hut, empty cages stacked in a dark corner, the smell of bear excrement thick down here, despite the roof fans whirring overhead. Then he saw what he’d missed, a cage with a crumpled blanket, what looked like a pet bowl with dried spaghetti strands. He smelled urine, heard Nyland talking in his head, knew it was true.

He brought the wildlife officers down. They called a detective, handed the phone to Marquez, and he related what Nyland had told him and gave the detective Kendall’s phone number, said he’d wait here for him.

The SOU began documenting, and Marquez went to Ungar.

They were getting ready to arrest him because he’d refused to produce a way to reach his cousin.

“I have nothing to do with this,” Ungar repeated. “You’re incompetent. You’re fools. You’re the same as he is.” He indicated Marquez.

An officer moved in, and Ungar struggled against the handcuffing, fought three officers, but it was Marquez who reached over and gripped the bicep he’d seen Ungar favor. Lifted him by it and a cry of pain came out of Ungar. Cuffs went on, his coat got stripped, an officer explaining they wanted to make sure they hadn’t hurt him.

The bandage wrapping his right bicep was exposed.

“Is that a bullet wound?” Marquez asked.

“A hunting accident,” Ungar said. “A kill I haven’t finished yet.”

“I don’t think you ever will.”

“Oh, you can bet I will,” he said, as they walked him toward the door.

Nevada held Ungar while they tried to sort out the situation with the help of the California SOU. The ranch was owned by a Marion Stuart aka Durham, and Durham couldn’t answer questions, might not ever be able to. He had yet to regain consciousness and according to doctors attending him, suffered an as yet undetermined degree of brain damage due to oxygen deprivation. One doctor suggested in private to Marquez that Durham’s future, if he had one, was in a vegetative state in a nursing home. He was, the doctor added, perhaps unlucky to have been rescued.

Marquez returned home, asked Bell for a week’s vacation, and worked on the case against Ungar from there. Without testimony from any of those directly involved it was particularly difficult, and they had yet to obtain a warrant to search Ungar’s apartment.

Nothing had been found in his car or on his person.

Alvarez and Shauf also requested a week off, and for the same reason, one Marquez had yet to inform Bell of. Then a call he’d waited two days for came from Kendall. His voice was hoarse, said he’d been battling a fever.

“The knife you found in the barn was used to kill Petroni. The fingerprints on it are Ungar’s, but the DA doesn’t like the chain of evidence. He’s got a problem with you finding it alone after we’d already made two thorough searches of the barn. He sees a defense attorney tearing into us, you on the stand.” He coughed and added, “They’d come after you personally.”

“That’s all right.”

“That’s what I say too.” Kendall coughed again, apologized for having a cold, then said, “But you see the problem.”

“Sure, but aren’t there enough other pieces?”

“The problem is Ungar will claim he didn’t do the actual killing. In fact, he didn’t even know what the knife was. He saw the dried blood on it, picked it up, asked Durham or Nyland, and got told it was used on a bear. With those two out of the picture he’s free to say whatever he wants.”

“Any luck with Troy?”

“Sticking with a story that Nyland drove him and showed him the inside of the first Quonset hut on a day when no one else was out there. He just wanted him to know where it was and what the Bearman was doing.”

“Why’d he want him to know?”

“He wouldn’t say. What’s your guess?”

“That Troy supplied some of the bears. Yearlings. Cubs.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Ungar needs to stay behind bars.”

“I hear you. What’s going to happen in Bishop with your daughter and her grandmother?”

“They showed Lillian photos and she can’t pick him out. Her memory of the whole thing is still hazy. Maria is scheduled for a lineup tomorrow.”

“But he wore a mask into the house?”

“Yeah. There was some blood recovered out front but it could be argued it was contaminated, and it’ll be weeks if not months before it gets analyzed. If there’s enough corroborative evidence, he may argue he came inside because Lillian had tripped and hurt herself. That he never meant any harm.”

“Same problem I have.”

“Basically.”

“What’s the judge like?”

“Law-and-order type, a ball breaker, or so they tell me. The hope is he’ll set a high bail, or if we’re lucky, continue to hold him pending DNA and blood results.”

“Can your daughter pick him out of a lineup?”

“Based on what I’ve heard her say, I doubt it.”

“Then it’s like you said, hope for a high bail. You going to be there?”

“Yeah, I’ve taken some vacation time and so have a couple of others on my team. I’m also going to come see you. I’ve got an idea I want to run by you.”

“Good. There are a couple of things I want to show you, including Sophie’s journal.”

“Kept a journal?”

“She did. She was a lonely woman. There’s a few entries with Vandemere, one that got me thinking. I’ll show it to you when I see you. Listen, before we hang up, will you tell me what you’re planning?”

“I’ll come see you tomorrow.”

After Marquez hung up with Kendall he made some coffee and worked at the picnic table out on the deck. An hour or so later he heard the front door open, leaned around, and saw Kath was home.

“I took off work early,” she said, paused, “to be with you, because if you remember we were never going to let this happen to us again.” She straddled the picnic bench, sunlight on her face and bright on the ghost streak of white hair that ran from near her temple. “That’s all I’m going to say.”