The police arrived but didn’t want to go anywhere until they had interviewed Chole. It was another hour and a half before Chole was able to say what had happened. He showed the police chief a dart hole in his right side under his ribs. Stoval had shot him there last night and his best guess was that the dart had an animal tranquilizer. He didn’t remember the ride or getting to the house. He came to in a shed with his ankles and wrists in cuffs, and Stoval prodding his face with a stick. He’d lost three teeth. He had five broken ribs. Every bone in his left hand was broken.
He looked at Marquez as he told the police chief, ‘I told him I was going to arrest him for killing two condors. I told him I had proof.’
‘Where did you get it?’
Chole nodded toward Marquez.
They drove back out there in two police vehicles, Marquez and Verandas riding with the chief and another officer. The chief rode in the front seat and the officer drove as they got up on the plateau. As they came alongside the main house the chief turned and said, ‘You wait here.’
They went inside after the police disappeared into the trees. A maid had showed up and was working, but she was frightened when Verandas told her she needed to open the study doors. She wouldn’t do it, but retrieved a hidden key and let Verandas open them. When he sat down in front of the computers she tried to stop him and Marquez guided her out of the room. Verandas got online and checked in with FBI headquarters in Washington. Within minutes they were running a supercomputer at Stoval’s encryption and outside Marquez heard shots fired and then an engine as the police chief and officers returned. The police chief was very direct with Marquez.
‘Get in the jeep.’
‘Did you find them?’
The chief did not answer the question. Despite the cold he was sweating profusely and though he had ridden in the passenger seat on the way out, he was now driving. He drove down the road and through the water, and as if to compensate for the bouncing ride he went slowly up the other side. He kept talking about the hyenas and looked over at Marquez and shook his head as they pulled into the clearing.
Marquez opened his door and got out. He walked toward the iron hoop and a hyena backed away with a bone. The chief fired into the air and the other hyenas moved into the brush.
‘They are disgusting,’ the chief said, and Marquez looked down at a stained shred of Trocca’s shirt. The ankle cuffs were blood-smeared. There was a shoe, but it was empty and chewed. There were other small pieces of clothing and not much else, though there was fighting between the hyenas deeper in the brush. The chief did not want to remain in the open clearing and they got in the jeep. The police chief turned to Marquez, as if explaining to him.
‘You did what you had to do to free the warden and protect yourself. Then we came here as fast as we could. We came straight out.’
‘Yes.’
‘No time was lost at the hospital.’
‘Not much.’
‘None at all, nothing was lost.’
‘OK, no time was lost, but Stoval went into the brush that direction. We need to find him.’
‘Let me finish,’ the chief said. ‘They had the conservation warden chained to the iron hoop. You saw he was badly injured and when you went to rescue him they tried to shoot you.’
‘Trocca fired twice at me.’
‘You could not protect Chole and escape without locking them up first, so you locked up General Trocca and Mr Stoval escaped.’
‘He killed Trocca with a knife before running into the brush.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘My guess is he wanted to draw the hyenas so he could escape. I’m going to go look for him.’
‘That’s crazy.’
‘Bring your guns and come with me.’ Marquez pointed at the iron hoops. ‘There are other bones there. You’ll need to search the site. Chole wouldn’t have been the first.’
The chief refused to go but sent his two officers and Marquez led the way through the trees. He moved toward the sounds. They were feeding. No question about that and the officers shot two of the hyenas before they moved away. One of the hyena dragged what was left of Stoval. It was awful to look at and an officer shot that hyena and another pulled Stoval’s remains back into the brush. They were that hungry. Marquez looked at bloodstained shreds of Stoval’s jacket and pointed at the fence.
‘He must have fallen,’ he said, but neither officer was listening. Both shot into the trees and brush at targets they couldn’t see. They backed up the trail taking more random shots and Marquez turned and walked back to the gate alone.
They drove back to the main house and picked up Verandas who looked very happy. An officer searched him to make certain he hadn’t taken anything and Verandas protested as he held his arms out wide, but he nodded to Marquez. He’d gotten it all. They rode back in the chief’s vehicle and nobody had much to say on the road back to Bariloche.
SIXTY-NINE
In the 1980s when Marquez was still DEA, the Bahamas were known as the cocaine islands. If you got your start in those days then you heard about the opulence, the boats, beachfront palaces, the cars, parties, and beautiful women who arrived when the money did. Marquez located Anderson’s house and was unsurprised to learn it wasn’t a vacation rental, but that Anderson had recently bought it. It was a nice enough house, a little worn, yet with a wide view of the beach and cay below.
Anderson knew Stoval was dead. He knew the FBI had stripped his computer. And he must have known after years of working with Stoval how meticulous Stoval was. Stoval kept very good records. There were over six hundred photos of the dead dating from 1972 forward. Among them was a recent one of Jack Gant lying on his back out in the desert somewhere. The only clue was two creosote bushes caught in the photo. That narrowed it down to a few hundred thousand square miles.
No one at the FBI could say yet who had ordered the hit on Gant. The client hadn’t been identified, but the Gant hit was in Stoval’s files. It was nothing personal toward Gant, strictly part of a business enterprise. Stoval trafficked in death on a scale bigger than anyone had ever imagined. In the file on Gant the client was anonymous, but it was recorded that a quarter million dollar fee was paid to a hit team of two men and one woman.
Desault and Hosfleter believed it was Ben Marsten, Gant’s old friend and the wealthy founder of 1+1Earth, who had him killed to break the link to himself. Hosfleter thought it was Marsten who’d tipped them. According to Desault, she had a whole theory about the hit squad making contact with Gant through Marsten and then convincing Gant to let them help him escape. Hosfleter believed the hit team moved Gant’s vehicle to Tioga Lodge, and maybe Gant thought he was home free and on his way to Mexico when they pulled off on a sandy desert road.
Terri Delgado was the most recent photo. The two Zetas that killed her were identified by name. Both were arrested in Dallas later the same day. That was the way Stoval had his files set up. It was all there so that if he ever went down, many people would go with him. Or maybe the files were carefully kept so that if the day ever came and he needed to trade, he had information.
Marquez had his own theory. He figured Stoval had the files and photos so anytime he wanted to he could have the pleasure of revisiting the thrill. He kept files on his hunts and the photos there were the standard photos of the proud hunter near the body of an elephant or black rhino or one of the last tigers, whatever it was he’d shot, the same photos we’re used to seeing mounted on a wall in a bar or bragged about in a club. There were records also of animal trafficking and Marquez knew he’d be months unraveling those.
The murder files went back to 1972. The earliest shots looked like old Polaroids that lately were scanned into computer files. Among the first were four women, one left alongside railroad tracks, one in an alley, two on road shoulders. In the San Francisco Field Office everyone wanted to see the photo of Gant, but Marquez never looked at the Gant photo. He did study the early photos and especially one of a woman lying on a road shoulder. There was no notation of money paid and his guess was that Stoval took the photo himself.