“Petroni in the backseat already dead?”
“Yeah.”
Kendall grunted, didn’t really respond.
“Either way, there were other bears,” Marquez said. “One got shot and was probably sick, the others got moved. I’m going to take another run out to Johengen’s tomorrow and look for what we missed.”
“You were going to come in this afternoon and sit down with me.”
“It’ll have to wait.”
Later, Marquez talked to Katherine from his truck cab, sitting outside a restaurant where Shauf and Alvarez waited inside. The initial search in Minden had turned up no obvious buildings, and they’d driven back to Placerville after dark. Roberts had reported that the dogs keyed on the scent of a piece of bloody bandage. Almost certainly, whoever’s blood that was had been in the boat and hiked up to the road. The trail had ended there, and the dog handler eventually got nervous about his bloodhounds searching along the edge of the highway. They’d held traffic for a while, then concluded the man driving the boat had gotten picked up along the road shoulder.
“And now you think it’s a different man?” Katherine asked.
“The informant that started us on this case.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, and we’ve got the same problem with our house. You and Maria are going to need to stay in the city.”
“Then we’re going to rent a hotel room and start using the construction money.”
There was a mixed message in that, one he’d have to think about. When he hung up a wave of depression mixed with exhaustion swept over him. Ungar was Nyland’s Bearman, but where was he? San Francisco police had gone to his apartment an hour ago and he wasn’t there, and not only that, they said there weren’t any computers anywhere inside, so he had to be moving one step ahead of them again. Marquez went in and ate with Shauf and Alvarez, registered Shauf’s sober face and Alvarez’s questioning look as he told them he wanted to make another search of the barn out at Johengen’s before leaving for Nevada tomorrow morning.
Alvarez sopped chicken gravy with a piece of bread and kept his eyes on his plate. His silence told Marquez he thought they were just spinning their wheels going back to Johengen’s. Marquez knew Shauf and Alvarez thought the right thing to do tomorrow was devote everything to searching for the Minden ranch.
Alvarez’s lean face betrayed another question, this one about Marquez’s judgment.
“Tell you what, I’ll go out there early alone and then we’ll go over to Nevada midmorning,” Marquez said.
48
Well before first light Marquez drove out Howell Road. A light rain was falling and the road ahead dark. At Johengen’s the gate was open, but likely it was just someone with the county who’d forgotten to lock it. The dirt driveway was slick, and his headlights caught fluttering pieces of crime tape as he came around the bend. He saw where the backhoe operator had refilled the trench, soil humped and looking like a long grave. With the key Kendall had given him he unlocked the barn.
Inside, it felt another ten degrees colder, and the cold reached him. His body was still bone-tired from the hike and stiff from wrestling with Nyland. He located the light switch at the far end and lit the string of bulbs hanging from the rafters. A bat squeaked overhead and then the only sounds were the rain and wind, the big door creaking as the stronger gusts moved it. It was dank, the bear smell still strong. The barn had been cleared except for cages yet to be hauled away by Fish and Game. The stuffed and mounted bears, the contents of the freezer, were gone, the freezer no longer running. The drying station was gone, even the racks of antlers that had been on the walls. What was left were old rusted garden tools and the carcass of an ancient pickup sitting on jacks in a dark corner.
He stood a few minutes looking at the cages, then turned his attention to the tire tracks. He studied the whitened areas where plaster castings had been taken. Kendall was checking out the rental agencies and trying to come up with a tire match, and Marquez had his team working on that now as well. He followed tire tracks toward the cages, saw where the DFG truck that picked up the bear had parked. Then, beyond that point he spotted a faint divot in the earth that he guessed was where one skid had rested as the Honda was rolled off and out into the yard after Petroni’s body had been dealt with. That’s when you loaded the cages. That’s when you moved the bears to Nevada or wherever you moved them, and that’s how Petroni’s car got here with him in it. It would have taken at least two people and a way to winch the cages up into the truck. The truck was probably rented near where the other farm was. As it fell together he contemplated calling Kendall, then decided to think it over more first. He called Shauf and suggested she and Alvarez get some breakfast and he’d check one more thing in the barn, then they’d drive tandem over the mountains and into Nevada.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“Looking at the tire tracks. I’m going to check one more thing before leaving.”
“What else are you going to do out there?”
“I had an idea last night that no one checked the rafters. There’s a ladder in the barn. It won’t take me long.” Before she could ask, he added, “Because of the hunting shack.”
There was a long wooden ladder, its round rungs worn smooth by years of boots. The ladder had two metal hooks that slipped 334 over the bottom chord of the roof trusses. He slid the ladder along the barn wall, climbed up the sixteen feet, and used his flashlight, scanning the top plate where the roof trusses rested. It wouldn’t take another fifteen minutes to cover the perimeter of the barn, and then they’d be on their way to Nevada. A stronger gust blew rain in through the doors, and the big door swung shut with a loud noise. So far he’d found only cobwebs and bat guano, but now, as he climbed the ladder in the area above the empty cages, he shone the light on what looked like a rag or a towel. He had to climb down again and move the ladder before he was close enough to see it well. The towel was bloodstained.
He climbed down and retrieved latex gloves from his truck. Peeling one corner of the towel, he saw a knife hilt and part of a bloody blade, then let the cloth fall and stood frozen on the ladder. Below were the bear cages, the dark floor of the barn, above the sound of the rain on the roof. In the pocket of his coat his cell rang as he tried to imagine the mind that put this here.
He came down off the ladder and lowered it, leaving the towel and knife up there. He had to throw his shoulder into the barn door to get it open. He called Shauf from the truck after he’d relocked the barn and was on the road.
“They’ve got her,” she said. “I just called you. Or they’ve almost got her. She’s in the Crystal Basin with a string of police cars behind her, doesn’t seem to be trying to get away, doing kind of an OJ thing, driving slowly with the police behind her.”
“Alone?”
“No, there’s a man in the seat next to her.”
Going home, he thought. Going to where she’d always sought refuge. He stayed on the line with Shauf, telling her about the knife as he turned onto the highway and pushed his speed past eighty, heading to the Crystal Basin. By the time he got there Sophie was trapped by police vehicles on a dirt road outside Yellowjacket Camp. Durham had been identified as the passenger and was possibly wounded. He wasn’t moving. Neither had responded to orders to get out of the truck, and a debate was underway about what to do next.
Marquez argued his way toward the front where Kendall was crouched down behind a police door. A marksman had moved into a position where he could shoot either Sophie or Durham, but he had just reported that Durham was either unconscious or dead.
Kendall talked to Marquez with his eyes still on the pickup.