“Nyland was on that hunt,” Roberts said. “They called him Durham’s right-hand man, the guy in the field, made it sound like Nyland did the real guiding and for Durham the guide business is more of a vanity.”
“Or a cover.”
“Sure.”
“Durham represents timber?”
“Yeah, can you believe that?” She laughed. It threw a new twist at the SOU cover story, pretending to do business in an area this guy might know too much about.
“Keep digging.”
Marquez sat at his desk in the TreeSearch office and worked the phone, computer, and fax. He’d started an “around the world” on both Nyland and Durham, checking for any criminal history.
He drove down to the sheriff’s office and read the file on Nyland- a first confrontation with police at age eighteen, a second three months later, a month in jail, questioning in a burglary, guns stolen, Nyland a suspect in a drug case, charges dropped, then an incident where he’d boxed in a cop in a parking spot, locked his truck, and went into a shop to buy coffee, trapping the car of an officer he’d gone to high school with and later calling it a practical joke. The officer had consequently been unable to respond to an emergency call, and Nyland did five months and service work for that. There was bad beating of a man outside a bar that left the victim blind in one eye, though witnesses testified that Nyland had only defended himself, witnesses who were Nyland’s friends. Got off on that one too. Then the Tuolumne road rage incident and another where he’d tailed a Mariposa cop, a young woman, for days until undercover officers finally arrested him. He’d never given an explanation. He hadn’t been arrested since until the Creekview confrontation with Petroni.
Marquez read the file, then drove back to the TreeSearch office, ate lunch in front of the computer, looking over Durham’s website. He talked to Roberts again later in the afternoon, and she listed the arsenal of guns registered in Durham’s name, including seven hunting rifles, one of which was a .30-30 Winchester.
Later that afternoon he met with Brad Alvarez, having decided Alvarez would be the best on the team to meet with Durham. They roughed out what he’d say, that he had a bear tag and wanted a guided hunt to increase his chances of bagging a bear, that he was looking for the right guide outfit.
“Think I need to shave?” Alvarez asked.
“You could always clean it up a little bit.” Watched him smile.
“But don’t overdo it. They’re selling you, you’re not selling them.”
Alvarez had cut his wiry hair short and lost his black goatee. Put an oily Mackinaw on him now and he’d be the guy who’d come out to the house, climb up a tree, and top it for you. He knew guns, hunting, the woods. He was a confident liar, and cover stories came easily to him, a fact he attributed to being smaller than average and growing up in a tough neighborhood.
“If you can avoid talking about TreeSearch all the better,” Marquez said, “because this might be one guy who knows how to check up on government grants.”
Alvarez studied the driver’s license photo of Durham. It was a hard-to-read face, composed, serious to the point of severe, a left cheek that looked like it had been caved in once. He touched the face in the photo.
“I’ve got a friend who got hit with a baseball bat. It crushed his cheekbone and he didn’t get it fixed correctly so now one nostril runs all the time. His wife left him because she got tired of it.”
“Come on.”
“I’m not kidding. He used to take antihistamines, but he drives a UPS truck for a living and the stuff he’d take would make him fall asleep. I’m not saying he and his wife didn’t have other problems.”
Marquez glanced at the license info again. Durham’s birthday was in a week. He’d be fifty-three. Somewhere Roberts had gotten the idea he’d only been in the state for five years. If so, he’d done well for himself in that time, and except for the damaged cheekbone he looked like a banker type.
“There’s a website,” Marquez said, as Alvarez settled in front of the laptop.
“Let me check my email, and then I’ll take a look.”
When Alvarez clicked onto the Sierra Guides site Marquez stood over his shoulder, though he’d already studied it. “About Us,” “Hunting Tours,” “Home,” and three or four other icons, each with a particular blandness, description, and pictures but nothing really there. A photo of Nyland standing over a big buck. No photo of Durham.
They fleshed out more details of Alvarez’s cover story. Alvarez worked for TreeSearch, was hired in Vancouver where he was from and had just been reassigned here. He liked Placerville okay, mostly liked that you didn’t have to drive far out of town to get into open country. He would trash-talk TreeSearch a little, let them know he was his own man, then take the conversation back to hunting. Tell them some of his hunting stories. In his wallet he had a photo of himself with a bear, a poaching kill the SOU had handled.
He would say he’d hunted with his dad, mostly boar and deer hunting, not all of it legal, then got into bear on his own later in Canada where there wasn’t a lot of enforcement looking over your shoulder. Wasn’t much here anymore either, he’d heard, budget cuts and all. It was pretty much the honor system, or open season, depending how you looked at it. At the right moment, if it came, if Durham or Nyland picked up on the implied, Alvarez would let slip that he was willing to pay to bend the rules if that’s what it took to get a bear. Let them know he’d done that before, but not say where, even if pressed, letting them know he’d keep a confidence.
After they’d worked it out Alvarez headed back to the Crystal Basin to hook up with Shauf and the rest of the SOU. Marquez took a chair and phoned Matt Fong to see if he’d heard anything more on the computer hacking. Matt groused good-naturedly about his desk job, how he was getting soft and missed being with the team, though they both knew he was much happier being able to see his family every night, and the promotion had meant a lot to him. Marquez liked him, was glad he’d made captain, and hoped he would continue up the ladder. He would make a good chief. He listened as Fong downplayed the FBI’s progress.
“John, it won’t go that much farther. There’s no easy way to track where they hacked in. What’ll happen are new firewalls, but we aren’t going to find out who got in. What I hear is that it was someone smart enough not to leave tracks back to his door.”
“I want to float another idea with you,” Marquez said. “You and I were at those legislative hearings in March. I’m wondering if the leak came from someone there. You know, worked its way from a committee to someone on the outside, a friend, a business associate.”
Or a lobbyist, he might have added but didn’t want to yet.
“Not likely,” Fong said.
“Mull it over anyway.”
“I think about this every minute of the day.”
Fong had a terrific memory and might be able to identify more of the people who’d been there. Now, as he hung up with Fong, someone knocked. Marquez walked over and opened the door to Kendall’s face.
“I’m seeing more of you than anyone,” Marquez said. “Come on in and sit anywhere you want. Sorry we’re light on furniture.”
He didn’t particularly like Kendall’s showing up. Anything more Kendall had to say today could probably have been done via phone, and Kendall knew they worried about their cover being jeopardized.
“I’m sorry about today, sorry I’ve had to come after Petroni.” Kendall adjusted one of their flea market chairs and sat down.
“Sophie doesn’t corroborate his story. She says she was attracted to Vandemere and went swimming with him a few times at Loon Lake. Petroni caught them cavorting there.”