Kirk Russell - Night Game

“What kinds of guns were stolen?” he asked.

“A .30-06 and a .30-30. I’m wondering if there’s a bear angle I don’t know about? The dogs, for instance.”

“Could be. Bear hunters sell pups from the good strike hounds.

Those pups can bring five thousand each, and the market supports only so many breeders, so there’s competition and squabbles about bloodlines. Everybody is selling the best strike hound ever born. Ask him about his enemies in the hound world.”

Shauf came out and said Smith wasn’t either of the pair they’d been buying from, so now they worked out a crude cover story with Kendall. A vehicle leaving here had sideswiped their truck last night and broken the mirror, but they hadn’t reported it until this morning. They’d say they were dropping off a friend after coming back from a party, and they’d confide to Smith they hadn’t called the police earlier because they were drunk.

When they walked into the kitchen what caught Marquez’s eye was an old Westinghouse freezer alongside the refrigerator. A black power cord supplying it ran under a door and out to the garage. He nodded at Eli Smith.

“This kitchen looks just like mine. I mostly quail hunt nowadays, but I used to bear hunt with my dad when I was a kid.” He paused. “I’m sorry about your dogs. We’re trying to help out the deputies, but I don’t know what we saw, just taillights really.” He leaned closer to Smith, out of Kendall’s earshot. “We were pretty lit up or we would have called last night.”

Marquez took in the rest of the kitchen, the old sink, metal stripping lining counters built from what might have been the first piece of Formica ever sold. They stepped into a tiny living room. Smelling dogs, he saw the folded blankets on the floor. Smith pointed at the paneled gun case where the two rifles had been.

He described them, then added that at least they were insured.

Marquez caught Kendall’s skeptical look. You couldn’t stand here without wondering how the guy paid his mortgage every month, and here he was saying his hunting rifles were insured.

“They’re collector’s pieces,” Smith said, talking about the scope on the stolen .30-06. “9X scope, inlay silver on the gun,” keeping an eye on Kendall as he talked. “I had them appraised. They come out to do that before they insure you.”

“What’s that cost a year?” Marquez asked.

“It just adds onto the policy.”

Right, just adds onto the policy, and Marquez nodded he understood, then took the conversation to bear hunting, naming places in Virginia and Canada he said he’d been with his dad. He got a little interest from Smith, but not much.

“Ever hunt off bait piles?” Marquez asked.

“They’re not legal out here.”

“Not legal a lot of places.” Marquez nodded toward Kendall. “If he wasn’t around, I’d tell you a story.”

Smith pulled back at that, wariness showing, and Marquez knew he’d pushed a little too far. Smith moved to his dining table now, rested a hand on it, then lifted the hand after a few seconds and rubbed his cheek. A small nervous man with bad teeth and worse breath. He wasn’t their seller. Marquez took a last look around. He put a hand on Smith’s shoulder, said he was sorry again and maybe he’d see him in town.

“I’d almost rather they killed me.”

“Maybe next time,” Kendall said and wiped his nose again.

Outside, Kendall said, “Not telling the truth, is he?”

“Not all of it.”

“And you don’t recognize him?”

“No, but Bill Petroni might.”

Kendall cleared his throat. “Petroni is coming in tomorrow morning, says he’ll clear things up.”

“Coming into the sheriff’s office?”

“That’s right.”

It surprised Marquez how much relief he felt hearing that.

They got back in Shauf’s van, and Marquez lowered his window as Kendall came around and thanked them for coming. Shauf let the van start rolling while he was still talking.

When they hit the main road she said, “Kendall doesn’t like women in law enforcement.”

“You get that from him?”

She turned and stared hard at him. “He’s an asshole.”

Shauf’s phone rang just after they reached the main road. She eased off the accelerator, and the van slowed, though he didn’t think she was aware of it. The car behind veered around them, driver honking as Marquez listened to a different Shauf, quieting, comforting, gentle as she tried to calm her younger sister.

When they neared the eastbound on-ramp that would take them back to Placerville he reached and touched her hand, then pointed toward the opposite on-ramp and said, “We have time.”

They’d be at her sister’s house in twenty minutes and still have hours to check out where the buy would go down. He heard Shauf tell her sister she’d be there soon. After she hung up, she backhanded tears off her cheeks as though angry at herself for crying.

“What’s happened?” Marquez asked.

“It may have metastasized after all. There’s something in her lungs. They were hoping-” She shook her head, her voice choked off. “Now she’s talking about something crazy, some surgeon in Houston-tries to cut them out.” She glanced over as if bewildered.

“This is my little sister. She’s thirty-six.”

Marquez talked with the team, briefing them during the hour Shauf was with Debbie. Then they drove the winding roads to where the buy was supposed to go down.

Ten miles from Placerville, in a creek canyon thick with brush and trees, they found what was left of an old fire service road. They crossed a wooden bridge over the creek, and below, visible off one side of the bridge, was the dirt track running up the right side of the canyon. Shaded and dark with bay, oak, and pine, the road followed the dark green ribbon of creek as it wound back into the hills. You had to be from around here to know about this place, he thought.

He studied the ridgeline, noted places where the team could take positions, and sketched a plan with Shauf. Two could go in early, Cairo and Alvarez, and find a location near the rock he’d been told to walk to. He locked in GPS coordinates, and they drove on, talking routes out, contingencies, whether to ask for any help from the Placerville or county police. They went on another couple of miles before turning around, coming back across the bridge slowly, talking again about who else they could rely on tonight.

That brought up Petroni’s name.

“What’s the deal between you and Petroni?” she asked. Another time he might have said less, but understood she was grasping for something to take her mind off her sister, and she couldn’t quite do it yet with the buy.

“When I came over from the DEA I didn’t know anyone, and Petroni was a pretty good friend to me. A lot of wardens wanted onto the two SOU teams, and it was hard for them to accept someone walking in from outside without wildlife experience.”

“I’d have trouble with you walking in and stealing a glamour job.”

“You here for the glamour?”

She smiled and then said something that surprised him, “I did it to get out of a relationship.”

He thought at first she was teasing but realized she wasn’t, and in some way it made sense. She could brace a suspect and make an arrest without any hesitation, or back someone off, but he’d just watched her kneel and force her hand through the link fence of the dog kennel to stroke the ear of a dead hound. There was a gentleness about her mixed in with the rest, and he could see her having trouble letting go of a failing relationship.

“This team is the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said, “but we’re talking about you and Petroni.”