Kirk Russell - Shell Games

“I did what you told me, but they must have had that old Chi-nese guy set up.”

“We know that and everything is cool. Don’t worry so much. I’m going to give you directions you need to remember, so maybe you want to write these down. You want to make this meeting. You don’t want to fuck up any more than you already have.”

“Why do you have Meghan?”

“Don’t worry about it, she’s having a good time. She likes to party.”

“This isn’t right, man. She doesn’t have anything to do with this shit and I did what I was supposed to do.”

“We’re going to talk to you and I want to know about the peo-ple that interviewed you, the game wardens, who it was and then you and your sweetheart will be together again.”

“It doesn’t have to be so heavy.”

“It’s not heavy. You just fucked up, that’s all.”

“There were two of them. One was a big guy with kind of short blond-brown hair. He’s like six-foot-three or something and the other was a blonde woman and stocky.”

“I want names.”

“I don’t have them. He’s a lieutenant, I guess. She called him Lieutenant.”

“You’re starting to sound stupid, kid.”

“What’s the big deal with the names?”

Good, Marquez thought. Hit back at him. The only chance of keeping this going was Heinemann pushing back.

“They offered you a deal, didn’t they?”

“Sure, and I strung them along. That’s why the charges are still hanging. They think I’m going to do something for them.”

“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”

“Look, all I want to do is get back to my boat and then we can meet or whatever. If you want me to dive a couple more days, that’s cool.” The man didn’t say anything in return until Heine-mann asked, “You there?”

“Keep driving south and go through San Jose. At 7:00 call this number.”

He recited a number, had Heinemann read back what he’d written down, then hung up. Marquez cued his radio, talked to the team before calling Heinemann. “It’s over,” he said, “a no go. We’re going to have to find out whether they’ve really got Meghan Burris and we may have to ask the locals for help.”

He took a call now from the phone company. They had a cell number on the caller, a name and billing address. He called Heinemann.

“We’re done, Mark. They know something is up. Do you have other numbers to call Meghan at?”

“Yeah, her house. She shares a house.”

“Start making calls.”

“And then what? Keep driving south like he said?”

“We’ll play the game until we know she’s okay. Are you good with that?”

“Yeah, totally.”

“But you’ve got to do just what I tell you because it may get complicated, and we’ll probably have to ask for help taking them down if it turns out they have her.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Marquez called the CHP, gave them a heads up they might have a problem they’d need help with. They drove past San Jose and toward Morgan Hill. Heinemann made the 7:00 call and got instructions to exit the freeway fives miles up the road. He drove east into dry hills that climbed toward a reservoir and a park. Beyond that was ranch land, a lot of it steep terrain, hills of rye grass that folded into ravines dark with scrub oak and brush, all of it dry as kindling this time of year.

Shauf and Alvarez went ahead, their headlights cutting the dark a mile apart. Marquez followed, reading the GPS on Heinemann’s truck and relaying the info.

“He’s off the paved road. He’s on one of the dirt roads in those hills. When he slowed down someone must have been there on the road and directed him.”

They found the cutoff, a cattle rancher’s dirt track, a chain cut, a gate that swung open when Alvarez pushed it. Marquez looked up at the black outline of the hills and couldn’t see headlights, but GPS said he was up there, back about two miles. This was someone’s ranch. He reconfirmed the readout with Alvarez looking over his shoulder, double-checking him. The blue glow showed the Datsun had stopped and they debated their next move. Then it started moving again and accelerated rapidly, then stopped again, and he wondered if there was a problem with the GPS transponder.

“What was that about?” Alvarez asked.

“I don’t know.”

Nothing more happened for several minutes, then a flicker of light showed way up in the hills and they backed away and then a van came down the dirt road and ran through the gate without slowing. It hit the asphalt, turned back toward 101, and there was only Roberts and Cairo on that end. Marquez talked to them, told them to follow initially but to ask the locals to move in and help pull the van over if they couldn’t get a CHP response.

“There are at least two men and probably armed. We’re going up to look for Heinemann.”

They turned up the dirt road, dust kicking up behind the truck as they climbed. The road was well graded but steep and Marquez had to sit in second gear and take it slow as they wound through the ravines. As they crested a ridge and could look out toward the darkness of the Central Valley to the east, the readout showed they should be close. But he didn’t see the vehicle and kept going up until the road flattened on an open shoulder of the mountain. He checked in with Roberts while studying the screen. Heinemann was about a half mile back, according to the GPS readout.

“We’ve temporarily lost them,” Roberts said. “We called the CHP and the sheriff’s office but they left 101 before any backup got here. They headed west on Springer Road and we had to give them room and we lost them around a curve. They’re here somewhere. There are some rural properties out here. We’ll have to go house to house.”

“You need local deputies for that.”

“10-4.”

They drove back down to where the readout said the transpon-der was and Marquez shined a flashlight off the side of the road, standing on the edge in the loose soil left after the road had been bladed. His light only shone partway down the steep ravine. He looked for marks and then saw broken grass and walked down to a gash in the dirt and realized the Datsun had rolled end over end. It had started straight and then the tracks through the grass ended and the next mark was where the front end of the truck had dug into the slope. He called back up to Alvarez.

“Stay up there and I’ll check it out.”

“Should I call anyone?”

“Not yet. They may have dumped the truck. Heinemann may have told them it was wired.”

The dry grass was slippery and he dug his heels in and still slipped several times. He kept checking ahead with the light, could see where the ravine bottomed well below, but there was brush there and the truck must have carried into it, because it wasn’t visible. He was finding parts now, glass, the hood folded like a discarded napkin, and he hoped Heinemann was in the van and had con-fessed to the GPS and the wire, and someone got the bright idea to lose the wired Datsun down this ravine.

Now he reached the brush and could see tires and realized that the rusted cab had collapsed. He smelled gasoline and heat from the engine and fought his way in through the brush. He leaned over, broke a piece of greasewood off and tried to shine the light in the driver’s side. He smelled blood before he saw it and then a hand that he knew wasn’t Heinemann’s. He climbed over the truck to the passenger side and when he got the light positioned it took him a moment to reconcile what he was seeing. Meghan Burris’s head was lying between her shoulder blades, pinned by the crushed truck cab. She’d been nearly decapitated, perhaps had gone through the windshield. He figured he’d seen enough over the years, but he had to turn and take a deep breath before cuing the radio, relaying the situation to Alvarez. They searched the slope for anyone else, wondering if they’d find Heinemann thrown from the truck.