He also worked hard and had kept doing so through the low morale of the budget morass. Few people had advanced much in the last four or five years. The Fish and Game Academy had been shut down, a hiring freeze went into effect, and the department had hunkered down for the ride as the state deficits ballooned. The SOU went from ten to seven to five, now three.
“Cheryl says he went in his office, closed his door for an hour, and then left for the day.”
“I wouldn’t have hung around either.”
It wasn’t that long ago that he and Katherine had a rough couple of years, and she had wanted to separate. He hadn’t realized until much later how numb that had made him.
“I hate him for making this thing with Anna the reason for closing us down,” Shauf said. “I can understand deciding three wardens isn’t enough for the team. It’s not enough. I know it isn’t; you know it isn’t. What I hate about Bell is he has to make us look like bad guys first. We embarrassed the department. That’s the kind of pure bureaucratic bastard he is.”
Marquez was listening but distracted now by a man working his way through the parked cars. At first it seemed he was looking for his car, but now he was stopped alongside Ludovna’s Cadillac.
“Do you see this guy coming across the parking lot?”
Shauf stopped her riff on Bell.
“Where?”
“He just got in Ludovna’s car. He must have had a key.”
The Cadillac lights came on a few seconds later, and the car backed out and started hard for the street. Marquez turned to Shauf, but she already had her door open.
“We go with him. Cairo can stay with Ludovna.”
Shauf went for her van, and Cairo read out the position of the car on GPS. Within minutes they were behind it on I-5 southbound, Shauf quietly calling it out over the radio.
“Lane one at seventy-five.”
Then they were into agricultural land the subdivisions hadn’t yet reached. The Cadillac exited, crossed under the freeway, and went eastbound on a county road. It started showering, and Marquez hit his wipers. The Cadillac lights blurred in the distance, and he went back and forth with Cairo as they figured out that the Cadillac was following a dirt road running between planted fields and a railroad bed.
“We’re trying to figure out where the car is. He went out a road following the rail bed, and his lights are off now. We can’t see him. He may be out there stripping it with a buddy or still driving.”
It was several minutes before Cairo came back. “I’ve got him stationary. You don’t see him?”
“No.”
“He’s about a mile and a half off the road.”
“Hold on, we’ve got lights coming at us, but from farther away.”
“The Cadillac isn’t moving.”
It took a couple of minutes to sort that out. The car stopped, and its lights were small dots out in the dark open fields. Marquez hit his wipers again. He lowered the window and used his binoculars as Cairo guessed that the other car was an accomplice, then cut himself off and said, “Ludovna is outside the bar with the babe. He’s looking around for his car and just pulled his phone like it’s a gun. Who are you going to call?”
“It’ll be the police to report it stolen. This was planned.”
Marquez used his scope and wanted to drive down the access road for a better position but figured he couldn’t risk it. He watched car lights start to move again and went back and forth with Shauf.
“Which car is moving here?” she asked.
“Car number two.” The lights swung away from them. “Turning around.”
“He may have gotten away fast, but he didn’t strip it that fast. So what’s going on?”
Marquez didn’t have an answer, but they were looking at taillights as the other vehicle moved away. He gave them another minute. They were moving fast.
“Let’s go recover our GPS unit,” he said.
He started down the access road. On his right was the elevated railway bed, and fields were planted on his left. About a quarter mile in he saw Shauf’s headlights follow, then ahead, a flash of light, white and quickly orange-yellow, a ball of fire and a low heavy whump as the sound reached his truck. Gasoline. Ludovna’s car burning, the fireball ballooning, then straightening. He knew that the kid who’d brought the Cadillac out here and whoever had picked him up were also watching and would see Shauf’s and his headlights approaching. But their headlights could be anybody, police, someone who saw the fire and got curious, anybody.
He drove fast but knew it was too late. When he got there, flames curled out of the interior and around the roof, the heat like a hand pressing against his face. The burning shell blocked the road and the rain did little to slow the fire. Even with the cold wind and rain, the air was thick with the odor of burning plastic, leather, the stink of paint frying. It illuminated the wet rail bed. With Shauf he watched the car burn and a twenty-thousand-dollar GPS unit with it. Marquez watched the flames and could think of only one reason for Ludovna to have his car intentionally stolen and burned.
9
The blue tarp was folded back onto the roof of the houseboat and weighted down with cinder blocks. It glistened in sunlight. The river was smooth, and Raburn held a garden hose in his left hand, a Corona beer in the other as he washed duck guano off his decks. He turned the water off and poured the rest of his beer into the river, his sandals squeezing water out of the Astroturf as he walked back across the deck. He was less nervous today, close to flip and a little devil-may-care, as though life had tossed him a curve and he was just going to make the best of it. He’d also been drinking with his lawyer last night.
“My lawyer told me not to agree to anything until I have something signed by your superiors.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“That’s what I told him. Let me get the boat, I’ll be right back.”
He untied a dinghy to row over to his boat and then couldn’t get the Honest Abe started. The engines sputtered, died, and when they finally caught he over-revved them before they’d warmed up. He yelled back across the water again.
“These engines are junk, but I haven’t had the money to do anything about it.”
As they went upriver Raburn talked about his brother. “What Isaac should do is tear out the trees and put in vines. Everyone in the delta is doing that.”
“That might be a good reason not to.”
“The money isn’t in pears.”
They left the river and turned into a slough. They passed under a small bridge and, after rounding a bend, were in the quiet of the slough.
“Look, I’ve got to know for sure I’m not going to get prosecuted later. Do you really have the authority to do this?”
“I do.”
They came around another bend in the slough. Along both banks the trees leaned over the water. In the cold clear chill on the slough this morning, Raburn wasn’t such a bad guy. He obviously cared for his brother and his brother’s family. He pointed up ahead.
“It’s not much further. One of these guys got laid off from work and he’s got a kid sick with leukemia so he fishes sturgeon to pay for medicine. The fish they called about isn’t huge but he says it has roe.”
“How many times have you bought from them?”
“I don’t know. Enough.”
Raburn cut the throttle as they came through the bend. The bow dropped, and they slowed.
“Let’s talk about Beaudry’s Bait Shop,” Marquez said. “What else you know about Richie Crey?”
“He did time for drug dealing and he doesn’t want to go back in. That’s the thing you’ve got to know about him. He won’t deal directly with you. He’s got these two guys who work for him who handle the fish.”
“What are their names?”