Kirk Russell: Shell Games

“Tell me more about these killings,” she said. “You said on the phone Davies hiked up the creek canyon from the beach lot. That’s a long walk.”

“That’s what he claims he did. Parked his van at the beach and walked through the culvert under the highway and used night vision goggles to get up the canyon.”

“Why does that creep me out?” Petersen asked.

Marquez reached for his beer and knew what was coming. Davies had made Petersen’s permanent list when he’d surprised her and another warden during a surveillance in Eureka five years ago. He’d thought they were planning to steal from a boat and had bumped the van they were hiding in with his truck. Petersen ended up with a bloody nose and wounded pride and had never forgiven him. She still claimed it had given her a chronic sinus problem.

“He’s a loner, John, he lives on that boat to avoid people. I’ll bet part of him misses military life. Not so much that he wants to go back, but enough to like the connection with you. He needs that action with purpose and wants your respect because it vali-dates him. To keep you talking to him he has to produce informa-tion. No information, no contact with you.”

Marquez scratched the poison oak rash on his left arm and ate a couple forkfuls of oily lettuce. Though he couldn’t generate a real appetite, it was nice to be with Petersen and to hear the voices of people out in the front room. Good to be near normal things after the killing scene.

“He gets a rush out of making a problem for poachers, which is not the same as protecting abalone,” she said.

“Leave it that we don’t really know that much about him,” he replied. The waitress slid the pizza and their check onto the table. He watched Petersen lift a piece of pizza, the strands of cheese stretching before she tore it with her fingers.

“Are you going to eat,” she asked, “or just drink beer?”

He drained the rest of his glass thinking about what came next. “Tomorrow, you and I will try to find this Danny Huega. We’ll go up the canyon first and I’ll show you where they were and what they had going.”

They left the pizza parlor and drove back to the cold house at the outskirts of town, a nondescript brown-painted house with a sizable back garden that had long gone to seed. The department rented the house from a relative of a warden and Marquez was careful how many wardens he had here at one time. Before the last round of budget cuts, when his team had still been ten wardens, it was harder to control the flow. Now, with the SOU down to six, including himself, it wasn’t as hard to keep the neighbors from being suspicious, although they’d already had to decline a request from a schoolteacher neighbor who’d asked that one of them come to her third grade class and talk about the food chain because their story was that they were government biologists studying kelp beds. Lately that had become the joke. When you were late getting somewhere it was because you were teaching class.

Tonight was the first time in years he’d been here alone with Petersen. She made tea and walked into a bedroom, talking on her cell with her husband, Stuart. She was a long time on the phone and Marquez checked Shawn Cairo and Carol Shauf, two of the SOU wardens staked out down the street from Li’s house. Li was done for the night, had backed into his garage and lowered the door, but given the way he’d been at it, they assumed he’d dive again tomor-row. When he hung up, Petersen sat down across from him on the couch. She cradled her tea mug, leaning forward, her eyes on his, ready to say something but still hesitating.

“This is really hard for me.”

“Something happen at home?”

“In a way.” She smiled then looked down at the coffee table. “Stuart wants me to resign tomorrow.”

“Let’s catch this guy first.”

“John, I’m pregnant.”

He reacted slowly, then it began to hit him, and he smiled and felt genuine happiness for her. “That’s great. Congratulations. That’s really great. How much pregnant? When’s the baby due?”

“I know it messes everything up.”

“It doesn’t mess anything up.”

“The timing couldn’t be worse, could it?”

“There’s no good timing for having a kid.You just do it, I think.”

“What do you know about that?”

He remembered a conversation she’d had with him years ago, telling him she wanted to have two kids someday. That was before either had married and in the weeks when they’d slept together, and briefly imagined having those kids together. He’d never told anyone and doubted she had either. It had all come and gone one fall and what came after was a familiar banter and they’d avoided situations where they were alone together for a year or more. He tried to remember Petersen’s exact age. Thirty-two, he thought, and could see the emotion crossing her face. She didn’t need to explain. He knew how much her job meant to her and he knew already how much he’d miss her.

“I’m only ten weeks, but Stuart has been waiting five years, John. This life has been really hard on him and I’ve kept putting it off. He’s never liked me being away so much, never has liked the whole SOU thing.” She reached over and punched him on the arm. “Can you believe it, me, a mom?”

He could see the happiness in the back of her eyes and it touched him. It pushed the killings back. It held the DEA memo-ries at bay.

“And Stuart’s big case settled,” she said.

“The railroad thing?”

She nodded and he remembered her husband, whose self-employed existence as a lawyer had made their finances sometimes rocky. Stuart had confided to Marquez at a Christmas party that he had a case that was going to make them rich.

“Did it work out like he thought?”

“Better even. It totally changes everything.”

He started to ask again what the lawsuit had been about, then stopped himself because it didn’t matter. The railroad lost and Stuart’s client won. What mattered was she wanted to tell him it was time for her to move on and that she was pregnant and going to raise a family.

“You’ll have to name those kids after the railroad.” He looked at her hands. She’d had to put the tea down and press her palms flat on her thighs because she couldn’t stop the shaking. “Yeah, how am I going to make this work without you?” he asked.

“Like you make everything work.”

Nothing was working lately, and he was waking at night having trouble breathing. Except for the case against Li, everything was run-ning hard the other way, and by now, they should have something. They should have a lead to this big buyer and they had nothing.

“I want to stay on another month and you need me to,” Petersen said.

He studied her face. They both knew that the department required a shift to light-duty status with pregnancy and keeping her on meant not telling anyone and assuming the liability him-self. As her direct supervisor it was his responsibility.

“A month from now it’s over for me. I’m not coming back as a uniform,” she said. He nodded but hadn’t answered her request, though they both knew he’d do it. “I don’t need light duty, at least not yet.”

Then, as if she had to because they were here alone or to even things up, she asked about his marriage, how it was going, were Katherine and he getting it worked out.

“We’re talking.” Tomorrow, it would be exactly five months since he and Katherine had separated.

She waited for him to say more and when he couldn’t find an easy way, she said, “I don’t mean to pry, John.”

After Petersen called it a night, Marquez put on a coat and took a walk. The murder scene had left him more emotional than he’d expected and he played it back in his head, the creek trail and clearing. He walked several miles and after getting back to the house wrote out details of the case that seemed too familiar to him. He read for a while trying to lose the uneasy feeling and went to sleep around one.