More like fear they weren’t making enough of an impact. They hadn’t gotten close to the bear farmer and were feeding him money. Shauf was still talking when he fell asleep.
He dreamed he was in Siskiyou County with his SOU team and they’d found a grizzly, an impossibility in California, where the last grizzly had been exterminated more than fifty years ago and lived only on the state flag. In the dream he swam in the Eel River alongside a giant silver-tipped male. His strokes kept pace with the bear, and the grizzly didn’t turn to attack or seem to have any problem that he was nearby. Water rippled in smooth waves from the bear’s shoulders, and he didn’t know where they were going, but ahead he saw a line of men filing down on the left side of the riverbank. He watched them raise their rifles and aim. Bullets peppered the water around him, and dark weaving strands of blood trailed from the bear. The grizzly roared and bit at the air as one slug, then a second struck its head. It stopped swimming, its body rolled with the current as the riflemen packed their weapons and ascended a trail in single file, their job finished.
“You were making all kinds of noises in your sleep,” Shauf said.
Marquez checked his watch, saw he’d slept four hours. He glanced out the window at the late afternoon and got heavily to his feet. He showered, changed clothes, drank coffee, ate a peanut butter sandwich while leaning against the cabinets in the kitchen.
“Turning into a strange day,” Shauf said. “The Stockton police called while you were asleep. Dispatch put them through because whoever called from there said you’d called them.”
That got Marquez’s attention, awakened him more than the coffee. He turned and looked at her more closely.
“Yeah, I called a list of departments in the valley after I met with Kim Ungar. He told me his cousin had moved to the Central Valley. What did Stockton have to say?”
“They’ve arrested someone in a drug sting and found bear paws and what sounds like gallbladders in the trunk of a car.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
She handed him a scrap of paper with the Stockton vice cop’s phone number. After he’d finished the sandwich he punched in the phone number and walked outside into the cooler air to talk. He connected to a smooth-talking vice cop named Steven Delano, who told him they were holding a man with the last name of Kim.
Not every immigrant Korean family took on the Western habit of putting the first name ahead of the surname. Kim Ungar and this man with the last name of Kim could be from the same family, or it might even be Kim Ungar and he used both names. He listened quietly to Delano, mulling over the cousin conversations he’d had with Ungar. Delano said the Kim they were holding would probably make bail tomorrow.
“He’s got the money for a top lawyer, so what’s that tell you?”
Delano asked but didn’t wait for a reply. “If you want to drive down, we’ll pull him out for another interview this afternoon.”
“Will his lawyer let him talk?”
“I think I can get Kim to sit down with us.”
“You’ve got other stuff on him.”
“We’re working on it.”
“I can be there in an hour and a half. What’s this Kim look like?”
“Black-haired. Tall. Thin. Runs with gangbangers up here.”
“You’ve known him a while?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely, we’ve been trying to nail him. He comes complete with a street name. Tell you more about him when you get here. I’ve got another call holding I’ve got to get back to.”
Marquez thought a second. It wasn’t Kim Ungar out of San Francisco, who had a different build, stocky, a little above average height. Nor would Ungar run with gangbangers.
“I’m out the door when I hang up.”
“Good enough.”
He called Katherine on the drive to Stockton. She was behind the counter at her Union Street coffee bar, Presto, and mildly worried about a couple of calls Maria had answered at the house last night. She wanted his take.
“The caller ID read ‘Unavailable,’” she said. “So it was probably some smart-ass working for a telemarketer. Or it could be one of Maria’s friends messing with her.”
“What got said?”
“A man asked her name and stayed on the line trying to get her to talk about herself. He asked her what she looked like, if she’d started dating yet. Told her she sounded cute. She’s pretty sure the same guy called back about an hour later. She’ll tell you about it.”
“Where is she?”
“She went over to a friend’s house after school.” Marquez heard the light clattering of a cappuccino saucer and then the espresso machine running. “It’s probably nothing, John.”
“Which friend?”
“Bruce.”
“I’ll call her there.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“This is the boy she has the crush on. She’s over there with her friend Laura and if you call, you’ll embarrass her.” She added dryly, “This is her way of getting even with me for not letting her have a cell phone.”
Marquez knew Maria had wanted a cell phone and Katherine had told her she would have to bring her chemistry grade up first and then find a way to pay for the phone. After that Maria started being difficult about taking calls from her mother when she was at a friend’s house. Either Katherine would have to set her straight or he would, and he knew he’d been waiting for Katherine to do it.
“I think her imagination ran away with her, John. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, so I’d wait to talk to her.”
“Will you tell her I’ll call her tonight?”
“We’re not going to see you?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Then I better tell you something else. She got a speeding ticket in Mill Valley yesterday.”
“Great.”
They’d been warned by their insurance broker to pay out of pocket for any fender bender that Maria got into in her first few years of driving. Insuring her and the old car they’d bought had been much more expensive than they’d expected and the bill had come with a second warning, if she got any moving violations, the insurance would jump.
“Forty-five in a twenty-five zone. I told her I was going to talk to you before we did anything.”
“What’s she saying?”
“Well, she figured out a good one. She claims she thought some guy was following her.”
“I’ll talk to her tonight. I want to hear about these phone calls.”
“Where are you now?”
“Driving to Stockton to talk to a vice cop.”
For a state agency like Fish and Game the phone companies charged up to a thousand dollars to check where a phone call came from. It didn’t cost them anything like that to do the trace, but never kill a cash cow. The Feds, the FBI, had the money and the equipment to go real time on calls, but at this level, particularly with the home number where Marquez would need Bell’s approval, the process was slower, the cost harder to justify. Still, there’d been the threat from their seller, and he could probably leverage that if there were more calls. He hung up with Katherine, saying he’d check back after 7:00. He took another call before reaching Stockton, this one from an upbeat Alvarez.
“We’re on,” Alvarez said. “I’ve got an appointment for tomorrow with Durham. Nyland returned my call, and he wouldn’t be too hard to handle. He’s eager to please. He wants the business.”
“Wants to be a hunting guide?”
“Exactly. Suggested we meet for a beer and tried to tell me I didn’t really need to meet with Durham, but I kept pushing for a meeting with the owner. Told me he runs all the hunting trips and Durham basically does the books and bankrolls the business.
Durham doesn’t like to meet with clients. He’s busy with other work.”
“How’d you leave it?”
“He wanted a couple of numbers to call me back on, not just a cell, so I gave him TreeSearch.”
Bear season opened in just a few days, and Alvarez could legally take one bear. He’d told Nyland he wanted to be damn sure he bagged one, no matter what it took, and not a skinny or sick bear or some gawky yearling, but a fat bruin he could get good meat from and a rug. That’s why he needed a guide who knew the area. He’d told Nyland he would pay extra freight if they guaranteed him a bear.