Kirk Russell - Night Game

They’d been separated, come close to divorce, and found their way back, done as much as they could to put it behind them. He closed the file, rested his coffee cup on it to keep the breeze from lifting it, and went inside with Katherine, talked with her for hours. Maria was staying at a friend’s house tonight, and toward dusk they made love on the throw rug in the living room. Now he lay near her, the light fading through the windows as they talked about dropping down to town and getting some dinner. She turned toward him, and he took her in his arms and held her tight. She spoke to him with her voice pressed against his chest.

“You can’t catch all of these guys,” she said.

Later they did go down into town and ate, then came back up and sat outside under the stars with a couple of drinks. The next morning he drove to Placerville, met with Kendall out Howell Road, then drove south. He was in the courthouse at 10:00 the following morning as Judge Faribault set bail for Ungar. A collective murmur of approval went up from Lillian’s friends when the amount was $250,000, but only Marquez and the team had anticipated that Ungar would make bail that day. They knew the money he’d been making, just didn’t know where he kept it. They waited outside for him. With Alvarez’s help Marquez had illegally attached a GPS unit to Ungar’s car, and they watched now as Ungar walked out and scanned the parking lot and the street.

“Looking for us,” Marquez said. “He knows.”

They could hold their breath and hope, but it was up to Ungar.

He walked to his car, got in, started south on the highway out of Bishop, went almost to Lone Pine before turning around and coming back. They watched the satellite readout as he did a number of backtracking moves on his drive north on 395. It took him nearly ten hours to get back to Placerville, though a straight drive would have put him there in five.

Shortly after 9:00 P.M., Marquez made another call to Kendall.

“He just pulled into Placerville,” he said. “He’s buying gas.”

“Christ, I hope you’re right.”

“You ready on your end?”

“Yeah, we’re good to go.”

Then it looked like Marquez was wrong. Ungar got back on the highway and headed westbound. It was Alvarez who voiced the fear tightening Marquez’s gut.

“Lieutenant, he could be driving to your house.”

Marquez hadn’t yet answered when Ungar exited the highway again. He drove into a new mini-storage complex alongside the highway. They saw him punch in numbers and then an access gate swung open. They got the number of which unit he visited, but couldn’t see inside.

“We thought Petroni had a unit there,” Kendall said. “Sophie was sure he had one. That’s the key we were looking for up at Wright’s Lake.”

Ungar was in the storage unit until after midnight. Then, his headlights came on. The car swung out of the lot and back onto the highway. He continued eastbound past Placerville.

Marquez heard the electric change in Shauf’s and Alvarez’s voices and felt it himself. He talked to Kendall, his voice tightening with urgency as Ungar’s car slowly exited at Howell Road. A quarter mile beyond Johengen’s barn he pulled off and parked in the trees.

“We’ve got him just beyond Johengen’s,” Marquez said.

“We’ve got him in view. He’s sitting in the car.”

“I’m starting down Howell.”

It took Marquez twenty minutes to get within a mile. Near Johengen’s the road ran straighter for a third of a mile, and he pulled over before then. He killed his lights, knew where he’d leave his truck and walk. Talked to Kendall again from his cell phone, told him Shauf and Alvarez had moved in from the other direction.

“He’s out of the car,” Kendall said, “getting something out of his trunk.”

“He’ll probably cross the creek and come through the orchard.”

“Half an hour ago I was freezing my ass off. Now, I feel like I’m on fire. Let’s just hope he’s not headed somewhere else in the woods because he’s got something buried. Hold on a second.”

When Kendall came back on, he said, “It might have been a shovel he got out of the trunk.”

Marquez, Shauf, and Alvarez crossed the creek and came up alongside the old farmhouse, seeing it all, the orchard in moonlight, trees skeletal and bone-colored. Marquez saw Ungar first, pointed him out, a dark figure moving, almost floating through the grass. The Bearman. He crossed the orchard to the barn, then disappeared around the back, and they heard boards being pried off, nails wrenching. Light shone through gaps in the siding. A ladder banged against the barn wall, scraped as it slid up to the rafters, and then light climbed the wall, shone through cracks. Along the orchard perimeter the SOU and county officers moved into position.

Ungar descended the ladder, the flashlight marking his progress.

He dragged the ladder back, and the groundhog cameras Marquez and Kendall had buried recorded it all.

They heard boards pounded back into place. When his flashlight went out they waited for him to show at the corner of the barn, but after a minute he still hadn’t. Marquez heard Kendall’s worried “Shit, please no.” There was a chance he’d leave via a different route, climb into the rows of overgrown Christmas trees or come around the front face of the barn. He might even bury it up there and create new evidentiary problems.

Then they saw him leave the corner and start through the orchard, and they let him get out in the middle before lighting him up. He took two steps, froze, and abruptly threw the bundle holding the knife he’d retrieved. Marquez’s flashlight caught the knife that had killed Petroni spinning through the air. It landed near the base of a gnarled apple tree, and Ungar made one dodging move to his left, dropped to his knees, calling, “I surrender, I surrender.”

“Sonofabitch,” Kendall said, “sonofabitch, we’ve got him.”

The next morning Marquez drove to the mini-storage with Kendall. The manager got up from his couch and clicked off the TV when he saw Kendall’s badge. He walked them down and unlocked the unit Ungar rented. Inside, they found a strange scene with candles and a rug and cushions, where it looked like he sat.

There were cardboard boxes they started going through, Marquez taking two, Kendall two, both slipping on gloves first. Kendall lifted a black leather wallet, showed him Jed Vandemere’s face on a California driver’s license, and after Marquez had studied it, dropped it into an evidence bag.

“Must have had Nyland bring him the wallet,” Kendall said.

“Nyland called him Bearman. I don’t think he was lying when he said he’d never met him. Same with the pair we did the buys from. They’d never seen him face-to-face. They’d pick the bear parts or bile products up somewhere remote, and then get an envelope from a bartender somewhere later.”

“What have we here?” Kendall said quietly, almost to himself.

He lifted an ornate wooden box, something made of teak and other hardwoods. For jewelry, Marquez thought, and watched him open it, heard him say, “Marquez,” knew from his tone it was important.

Resting on the velvet lining in the box was a California Fish and Game badge and even after all that had happened, seeing the badge affected Marquez. It turned him quiet and he worked through more of the boxes without saying anything. Crime techs arrived and Hawse. Marquez read through a journal of Ungar’s, his ramblings, what he called essays.

“He’s got tapes here,” Kendall said. “I’ll bet he recorded his conversations with you.” He added, “I don’t know if I told you last night, but we found a voice changer in his car.”