Marquez checked Nyland again, a guy uncomfortable in his own skin, something eating at him tonight. Maybe he doesn’t think he’ll be able to deliver a bear, or maybe he’s thinking about us. Nyland’s eyes kept darting toward Durham, who ignored him and entertained the others with a story, gesturing with his hands, smiling, a complete about-face from the grim guy who’d grilled Alvarez.
Then, Marquez saw Sophie walking down the sidewalk toward the hotel in a dress so tight it showed all the lines of her legs and cupped her breasts. She crossed the lobby and entered the bar. Sweeney and Durham got to their feet. Sweeney kissed her on the cheek, and she sat down next to Durham, not Nyland.
There was another quick round, a final before Nyland, Sweeney, and Sweeney’s companion stood. Durham shook Sweeney’s hand, though he didn’t stand, more the handshake of two equals, one leaving now. The trio moved to the hotel door, and Marquez caught Nyland’s glance back as Durham covered Sophie’s hand with his own. As the others stepped out into the cold fall air and went to Nyland’s Land Cruiser, Durham urged her to slide closer.
30
Rumors of Troy’s abusing Sophie had followed her since grade school, and Marquez knew there’d been at least one incident where an elementary school teacher’s concern had caused the police to pull Troy in for questioning. She’d been eleven years old when that happened, nine when her mother died. There’d been talk at the time of placing her in foster care, but eventually she had come home and the only thing society’s temporary concern had achieved was to mark her and separate her from her friends.
Petroni had grown up in Placerville. He’d known Sophie since she’d been a young girl. He’d known all the Broussards, the stories told about them, their poor southern rural roots and culture of living off the land. Even here in the mountains where many people cobbled together a living through a willingness to work a variety of jobs, the Broussards’ poverty emanated from them like an odor.
Petroni had tried to explain his attraction to her when Marquez had driven with him through the hills behind Placerville. He’d talked of seeing her as a young girl walking through town in the same clothes she’d worn the previous several years, her sweaters hiking up her forearms as she grew tall, thin, and lanky.
He’d described driving out Highway 49 in his first Fish and Game truck and feeling sad for her as she’d walked the shoulder of the winding two-lane highway, alone in a place where she shouldn’t have been. Petroni told him that she wasn’t really Troy’s daughter, but rather the daughter of his wife’s sister who’d died in an accident.
Marquez could understand the feeling of being worth less than everyone else, what it felt like inside. It was easy to remember an older girl telling him when he was seven that he was a throwaway. His parents, unable to deal with raising two children, caught up in the importance of their own lives, had elevated their struggles against drug and alcohol dependency to a level that subsumed any real responsibility for raising him or his sister, Dara. The final abandonment came when their mother dropped them at their paternal grandparents, a temporary solution that was just supposed to last as long as it took her to get it together.
He’d pieced together enough about Sophie Broussard’s life to know that no luck like that had ever come her way. When she’d finally escaped home she’d ended up with Nyland, and now she was back with him, but as she’d admitted at the Creekview, not really with him. From what Marquez had seen in the Lexington bar tonight, he knew she wasn’t with anyone.
While Nyland was inside the Lexington, his Land Cruiser had gotten equipped with an option the rental company didn’t offer, twenty-four-hour tracking, the team’s last GPS transponder. They had his position, knew he’d just turned onto the access road to the Crystal Basin Wilderness. A few minutes later he broke from the paved road onto Weber Mill, and Marquez realized there wasn’t going to be any cat and mouse or doubling back.
“What do you think?” Shauf asked, slowing to a stop along Crystal Basin Road.
“This is it. It’s the bait pile you found or another like it along Weber Mill. It’s a quick and dirty hunt, the big guy doesn’t want to waste time.”
“Not just using the road to cut through.”
“No, I think he rented the Land Cruiser for cover, and I’m guessing Sweeney doesn’t want to do the hijinks, doesn’t want to sit out all night somewhere cold, and asked for the nearest easiest bear to shoot. It could be part of Nyland’s nervousness, he knows we’re out here and wanted to take Sweeney deeper into the woods.”
Marquez called the pilot of the DFG spotter plane. She was south of them and approaching with lookdown infrared equipment.
Ten minutes later the pilot confirmed that there was a stationary heat signal where GPS showed the Land Cruiser had stopped. As the team moved into the Crystal Basin, drifting one vehicle in, then the next, a van, an old pickup, a car, Marquez decided that he and Alvarez would work their way down the steep slope, keeping to the trees and brush, and the rest of the team would cover either entrance to Weber Mill Road.
He alerted the wardens they’d called in for help, then took a cheerful call from ex-chief Keeler who said he was in his camper with his dog and on the road nearing Placerville. He had a campsite reserved at Ice House Lake.
“We’re watching a suspect now who looks like he’s about to hunt.”
“Then I’m too late.”
“This isn’t the one I need your help with.”
By the time Marquez moved down with Alvarez there was a moon rising above the ridge across the canyon. Pale light washed the dirt road below, and they made out Bobby Broussard’s truck parked near Nyland’s Land Cruiser and a second truck near the southern entrance to the road. When Marquez talked with Shauf she reported that Troy Broussard had just passed her position and driven on, slowly climbing toward the lip of the basin.
It grew colder and the moon rose over the river canyon. Voices no longer drifted up from down the slope. Bobby walked the road, standing almost directly below them, glancing upslope as he smoked, farted, moved back to his truck. He squatted there, talked briefly on his CB radio, then started up the road in the other direction.
When that happened, Marquez tapped Alvarez and they scrambled down, crouched as they ran across the road, and dropped into trees. Lying beneath trees on the downslope below the dirt road, they worked over to a group of oaks, belly-crawling through brush, avoiding the gray-white light reflecting off the open slope of dry grass.
Marquez pulled himself forward with his elbows, eased down a little closer, though he heard their voices. Low murmurs and a long silence. The hunting blind was no more than a hundred feet below. He turned, let Alvarez know this was it, they were good. They could record from here.
An hour passed and then a downwind started, and that’s what was needed, heavier air to push the bait pile scents toward the river bottom where a bear could pick up the smells. Bears used the river like a highway at night. Marquez worked a cramp in his thigh, heard faint murmurs from below, then brush breaking and a low growl. With night goggles Marquez read one, then a second bear at the bait pile.
Now came a flicker of laser scopes, gunshots, sharp hard echoes dying quickly, the moaning cries of a wounded bear thrashing, breaking through brush, and Nyland’s voice, clear and author itative, giving directions, going after the wounded one, calling out that the other was down. Spotter lights came on. Nyland led them down, Sweeney and friend trailing well back.
“I got him,” Alvarez whispered. “I got Sweeney shooting. He got the bear that’s down. His friend wounded the other.”