“I won’t be taking it.”
“It just takes some adjustment.”
“Sure.”
He shook hands with Bell and wished him luck in Washington. The divorce was a deep hurt for him, but he’d survive.
“One day I’m going to come home, turn on CNN, and there you’re going to be,” Marquez said.
That got a weak smile. Marquez had already turned to go, and Bell’s voice caught him from behind on the steps outside, a quieter, far different voice. “Thanks for coming by, Lieutenant, and if there’s anything I can do with the sturgeon, call me. Technically, I’m still with the department another two weeks.”
“There is something, sir, but it means borrowing your house for a night.”
“Okay, explain that to me.”
Marquez walked back and laid out his request. When he left he drove back to the delta along a levee first formed naturally by debris and soil left in the spring runoffs and held in place by trees and brush and grasses. Before all the farmland, vineyards, and orchards, there had been tule and grasses and brush over the layers of peat. The natural levee had been scraped clean and built up with dirt and protected from the currents with concrete and riprap. The road he was on now was smooth and the river safely below, but like a lot of things the levees weren’t what they appeared. They’d deteriorated badly. The severe long-predicted earthquake could cause all of this land to flood.
He went looking for Raburn, figured Raburn had his twentyfour hours to think it over, had time to sober up and cool down. He found him under his truck in the pear packing shed, changing out the master brake cylinder. Raburn got to his feet and dusted himself off.
“My brother is going to use the truck when I’m in prison.” So he’d told his brother what was going on. “The brakes needed fixing. Pedal was getting mushy.”
“That’s touching, but here’s the scenario I’m seeing.”
“That reminds me of this detective I used to know. He’d stop in at Al Wop’s in Locke and I’d sometimes meet him for a drink. His wife liked fresh fish so I traded him fish for drinks. He used to say all scenarios are bullshit.”
Al Wop’s still had peanut butter and pickles on the bar and served fried bread and steaks. He looked at Raburn and remembered the great trial lawyer, David Terrence Hayden, and the crowd that had followed him, stopping for a drink at Al Wop’s after Hayden had turned a jury around and won a case.
“Scenario is a polite word for it.”
“Sure, and polite is the word my father used to use before razor strapping Isaac and me to get the devil out of us. We ran away and survived here by picking pears and apples and fishing for dinner while living in a second-floor room of a falling-down building in Isleton.”
“It just doesn’t get easier, does it? If we arrest you it’ll be for commercial trafficking. There’ll be a conspiracy charge, which is a felony. There’ll be multiple conspiracy charges because you sold to Crey as well. What will count in your favor will be whatever testimony you provide against Ludovna. You can turn state’s witness against him.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
Raburn wiped his hands with a rag, and through the big open door Marquez watched Shauf’s van and Cairo’s truck turn down off the levee road. The green pickup of the area warden was right behind them. Alvarez and Roberts followed. Raburn put his hands on his hips and faced the approaching vehicles. He tried to keep his face impassive.
“Don’t arrest me yet.”
“Then I’ve got to walk out and talk to them.”
“They can’t be here.”
Marquez walked out of the pear packing shed, and the lead truck, Cairo’s, slowed to a stop.
“He’s changed his mind and wants to talk to me alone, so let’s back away. He’s particularly worried about the marked Fish and Game truck.”
When Marquez walked back in Raburn was sitting on the raised metal blade of an old forklift.
“I know you caught me dead to rights, and okay, I admit I shot up my own boat, but you got to understand, Nick is like Isaac and me, he started with nothing, and he’s not going to give it up. He’s a hard guy, and you’re not going to protect me from him.”
“We’ll take your testimony in the judge’s chambers.”
“He’ll know where it came from, and he’ll get me from prison.”
“We’re not trying to get you killed,” Marquez said. “But we are going to shut down the sturgeon poaching.”
Raburn shook his head. “You’re not hearing me. Even if he went to jail it wouldn’t be for more than a couple of years, and I’m more afraid of him than I am of you. You’ll go on to another case, but there’s more than just Nick and they’ll start up again, and then they’ll come find me. There was a guy named Chris Stevens. I used to fish with him, and he sold a couple of sturgeon to Nick when I was just getting started with the whole thing. We both sold to him, and Nick said to us, if you ever fuck with me, I’ll kill you. Said it just like that, and Chris said, if you ever threaten me again, I’ll go to the cops. About two weeks later Chris just disappeared. No one saw him again. The police said he probably got tired of his life and went somewhere to start a new one, but it isn’t true.”
“Did Ludovna ever say anything to you about him?”
“What he did was call me every day for a couple of weeks and we had the same conversation, you know. Like this. He’d ask, do you have a fish for me? If they were biting, then maybe I had one. If they weren’t, then I said no. But if I said no, then he always asked why not, you’re supposed to get me fish. Then he would ask, where’s Chris, he’s not calling me back? Have him call me today? Then it started to be more like, have you seen Chris, and I would say, no, and after a couple of weeks I could tell he was making fun of me by asking. He started asking if Chris had moved. Questions like, how come your friend doesn’t call you anymore? I could always tell he knew where Chris was.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“I went with Chris’s wife and filled out a missing persons report.”
“And he never turned up?”
Shook his head.
“Is his wife still around?”
“I don’t know, but I have something in back.”
Marquez watched him walk into the gloom at the back of the packing shed, heard the door creak open and saw light from the room. He walked back out with a piece of paper in his hand.
A color poster of the cheerful face of a blue-eyed man. In black ink at the top it read MISSING. There was a physical description of Chris Stevens and one of his car.
“Was his car ever found?”
“Nope.”
“Is this number for her still good?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never liked Ludovna but you got involved with him.”
“I had to have the money.”
Marquez turned the phrasing of that in his head. Had to have the money. Different somehow than saying I needed the money. Had to have it for what? He laid a hand on a cardboard pear box with the yellow-orange script of Raburn Pears. A pear tree laden with ripe fruit was the logo, then he said, “I’ll be back in a minute.” He walked outside and called Roberts. She’d be the best one to get on a computer and phone and check.
“You’ll have to go back in the newspapers, the public records,” he said. “We might have to talk to some of the other orchard owners. There’s something there. Maybe we need to talk to a banker in town.”
“I’ll get started.”
Marquez walked back into the pear packing shed. He sat and talked half an hour with Raburn about Chris Stevens and then decided Raburn had suspected Ludovna but had never told a police officer. If that was true, he could only guess at why, but his gut said Ludovna had something on him. With Raburn watching he called Chris Stevens’s wife. She still lived in the same house off Poverty Road in Ryde.
“I’m a Fish and Game warden. I’d like to come over and talk with you if I can about your husband.”