He drove through thick fog, overshot the slough, had to backtrack, and now he drove out the dirt road on the levee above the slough. He saw the lights up ahead, counted eight vehicles and a coroner’s van. A deputy stepped out and blocked the road as he got close.
“Selke’s up there,” the deputy said. “You’ll see him.”
“When did they find the body?”
“I heard there was a tip or something a couple of days ago, and one of the detectives drove out here this afternoon and saw where the riverbank was torn up, so they got a diver out and he found the refrigerator after dark.”
A small crane had been brought in, and as Marquez parked and walked up, the crane operator was leaving. The road was lit with klieg lights, and the light reflected brightly off the fog. A sheet of thick clear plastic had been unfolded on the dirt road, and a white household refrigerator lay on its back, door open in the middle of the plastic, the effect almost comical. Selke stood with a group of men near it but not too close, as a county photographer worked his way around it.
If it was Anna, Marquez wasn’t ready yet and looked from the men back to the refrigerator, then stopped. The open door of the refrigerator made him think of a coffin. He made out the darker color of the body inside. He listened to the men talking and the hum of the klieg lights and a sound in his head like ocean waves breaking on a shoreline.
When he started forward he saw metal banding, the type used to bind pallets or a load of lumber, and guessed that the refrigerator had been banded shut when they craned it out. He didn’t want anyone to tell him or talk to him yet. He acknowledged Selke and lifted a hand to let Selke know to hang on another minute. He didn’t understand the camaraderie of detectives. He just wanted to look and if it was her, take it in alone. Selke walked over.
“Take your time,” Selke said. “No hurry. Her face is so badly damaged you won’t recognize anything, but there are other identifying marks you may be able to help with.” He added quietly. “I hear you’ve seen bodies before.”
“Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember.”
“No one I talk to seems to remember anything. How was she found?”
“A couple of fishermen who haunt this stretch for catfish snagged on the box and knew it hadn’t been there long. One of them is a diver, and since they didn’t like what it was doing to their trolling he went down for a look. He saw the bands and of course he knew about Burdovsky being missing, so because of the bands we came out. We figured with the banding it was more than the old tradition of throwing old appliances in the river.”
“Do you believe these two men?”
“I had the same reaction, but we’re talking about some fiftysomething guys that everyone around here knows. The one who went in the water was a Navy diver in Nam. He’s kept on diving so it was no big deal for him to go in. Neither one of them has any money.” Selke looked at him. “You ready?”
Marquez’s legs felt weighted, and from the way Selke held himself he knew Selke believed it might be Anna. As he followed Selke, he felt like he was floating away from his body and looking down into the refrigerator cavity from a height where he saw her folded, head tucked to her knees, lying on her side. The black hose of a small pump curled over the refrigerator, and he realized they’d drained the water and saved it. Her hands were shrunken, gray and curled like bird’s claws, her face destroyed, nose and eyes gone, a knife taken to her cheeks and lips. Someone had started to scalp her, then stopped. Part of her scalp and hair lay to one side, the hair wet and twisted like something cleaned from a drain. There was no face to identify, but Selke pointed at a small tattoo on the back of her neck.
“That would have been up under the hairline,” Selke said.
“I don’t remember seeing a tattoo there on Anna.”
“What about a little tattoo on her right breast?”
Marquez looked at the breast tattoo, a butterfly, shook his head. “Never saw this part of Anna.” He felt a need to touch her, and Selke stopped him. He couldn’t shake the sense of being outside himself, his shock at the brutality, but he didn’t know if the body was Anna Burdovsky’s. He backed away, walked down the road away from the group with Selke, listening to him recount again how they found her, as if in the retelling a truth would reveal itself.
“If you had to guess,” Selke asked.
“I’d guess it’s not her. Shoulders don’t seem right. The body is heavier.”
“I can tell you’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
Marquez nodded. “Cartel wars,” he said. “Yeah, I saw some bad stuff when I was DEA.”
More than enough for a lifetime. Enough to where he’d lost his tolerance for it, and he knew Selke was probing for more than that reason. Selke had wanted him to see the body just to watch his reaction. He had wanted to point out the breast tattoo and gauge Marquez’s face. The guy was pure detective.
“Can you see someone doing this to her over sturgeon poaching?”
He wasn’t sure he needed to answer. The young woman was badly mutilated, and that was more than hiding her identity. It was rage, and Selke knew that better than he did.
“No, I can’t. It looks to me like they quit when their anger got spent.”
Selke just nodded, left it at that. They walked toward Marquez’s truck.
“I’ve got something for you as long as you’ll scan the photos and email them to me. We found these in Burdovsky’s Sacramento apartment.”
Marquez got in his truck and got out the evidence bag. He unfolded it and got out the passport and photos, told Selke about his meeting with the FBI and the possibility they could help him with Burdovsky. He gave Selke Stan Ehrmann’s name but not the phone number Ehrmann had given him. Selke could start with the duty officer, and Marquez didn’t doubt Ehrmann would talk to him.
“Ehrmann is very interested in Russian immigrants. He’ll call you back.”
An hour later Marquez helped get the corpse out of the refrigerator. They slid her into a body bag, and the refrigerator got loaded onto a truck, and the police vehicles left one at a time, Selke last and slowing alongside Marquez’s truck, asking him why he was still here.
Marquez stayed until dawn. He slept a few hours in his truck. When the sun rose he looked at the ruts on the slough embankment the refrigerator had made sliding down the steep slope. It wouldn’t take Selke long to find out what kind of banding tool was used, who made it, and where the bands came from. Then he’d find out who sold it, and they’d trace the refrigerator back. They’d be able to say how she died and how long she’d been dead. But the kind of mind that butchered a face that way, you couldn’t find the answer for that anywhere.
He knew it wasn’t Anna but felt a need to prepare for the possibility it was. He thought of August’s coming in and sitting for a videotaped interview, no lawyer, combative and unconcerned. August had no problem admitting she’d stayed at his apartment, even suggested she was lovesick and that Selke “dredge the river.” Whatever the sarcastic comment had been about Anna drowning herself. Marquez turned these things in his head as he watched morning light come to the slough. The water was very calm and dark green. He watched a mallard fly the length of the slough. It was clear and cold, and he stood on the bank and watched another duck go past before walking to his truck. It was unlikely, he thought, that in the history of the world there had ever been a species crueler than his own.
16
“It’s cold,” Katherine said.
“Where are you?”
“In Vermont looking at Middlebury College.”
The way she said it made it sound like that wasn’t necessarily fun. Maybe it was the cold.
“How are the roads?”
“Oh, they’re fine. It was snowing this morning but it’s stopped. White sky, cold wind, it all makes me remember why I moved to California. I was hoping she’d like Middlebury, but it’s the wrong time of year.”