He described them, then added that at least they were insured.
Marquez caught Kendall’s skeptical look. You couldn’t stand here without wondering how the guy paid his mortgage every month, and here he was saying his hunting rifles were insured.
“They’re collector’s pieces,” Smith said, talking about the scope on the stolen .30-06. “9X scope, inlay silver on the gun,” keeping an eye on Kendall as he talked. “I had them appraised. They come out to do that before they insure you.”
“What’s that cost a year?” Marquez asked.
“It just adds onto the policy.”
Right, just adds onto the policy, and Marquez nodded he understood, then took the conversation to bear hunting, naming places in Virginia and Canada he said he’d been with his dad. He got a little interest from Smith, but not much.
“Ever hunt off bait piles?” Marquez asked.
“They’re not legal out here.”
“Not legal a lot of places.” Marquez nodded toward Kendall. “If he wasn’t around, I’d tell you a story.”
Smith pulled back at that, wariness showing, and Marquez knew he’d pushed a little too far. Smith moved to his dining table now, rested a hand on it, then lifted the hand after a few seconds and rubbed his cheek. A small nervous man with bad teeth and worse breath. He wasn’t their seller. Marquez took a last look around. He put a hand on Smith’s shoulder, said he was sorry again and maybe he’d see him in town.
“I’d almost rather they killed me.”
“Maybe next time,” Kendall said and wiped his nose again.
Outside, Kendall said, “Not telling the truth, is he?”
“Not all of it.”
“And you don’t recognize him?”
“No, but Bill Petroni might.”
Kendall cleared his throat. “Petroni is coming in tomorrow morning, says he’ll clear things up.”
“Coming into the sheriff’s office?”
“That’s right.”
It surprised Marquez how much relief he felt hearing that.
They got back in Shauf’s van, and Marquez lowered his window as Kendall came around and thanked them for coming. Shauf let the van start rolling while he was still talking.
When they hit the main road she said, “Kendall doesn’t like women in law enforcement.”
“You get that from him?”
She turned and stared hard at him. “He’s an asshole.”
8
Shauf’s phone rang just after they reached the main road. She eased off the accelerator, and the van slowed, though he didn’t think she was aware of it. The car behind veered around them, driver honking as Marquez listened to a different Shauf, quieting, comforting, gentle as she tried to calm her younger sister.
When they neared the eastbound on-ramp that would take them back to Placerville he reached and touched her hand, then pointed toward the opposite on-ramp and said, “We have time.”
They’d be at her sister’s house in twenty minutes and still have hours to check out where the buy would go down. He heard Shauf tell her sister she’d be there soon. After she hung up, she backhanded tears off her cheeks as though angry at herself for crying.
“What’s happened?” Marquez asked.
“It may have metastasized after all. There’s something in her lungs. They were hoping-” She shook her head, her voice choked off. “Now she’s talking about something crazy, some surgeon in Houston-tries to cut them out.” She glanced over as if bewildered.
“This is my little sister. She’s thirty-six.”
Marquez talked with the team, briefing them during the hour Shauf was with Debbie. Then they drove the winding roads to where the buy was supposed to go down.
Ten miles from Placerville, in a creek canyon thick with brush and trees, they found what was left of an old fire service road. They crossed a wooden bridge over the creek, and below, visible off one side of the bridge, was the dirt track running up the right side of the canyon. Shaded and dark with bay, oak, and pine, the road followed the dark green ribbon of creek as it wound back into the hills. You had to be from around here to know about this place, he thought.
He studied the ridgeline, noted places where the team could take positions, and sketched a plan with Shauf. Two could go in early, Cairo and Alvarez, and find a location near the rock he’d been told to walk to. He locked in GPS coordinates, and they drove on, talking routes out, contingencies, whether to ask for any help from the Placerville or county police. They went on another couple of miles before turning around, coming back across the bridge slowly, talking again about who else they could rely on tonight.
That brought up Petroni’s name.
“What’s the deal between you and Petroni?” she asked. Another time he might have said less, but understood she was grasping for something to take her mind off her sister, and she couldn’t quite do it yet with the buy.
“When I came over from the DEA I didn’t know anyone, and Petroni was a pretty good friend to me. A lot of wardens wanted onto the two SOU teams, and it was hard for them to accept someone walking in from outside without wildlife experience.”
“I’d have trouble with you walking in and stealing a glamour job.”
“You here for the glamour?”
She smiled and then said something that surprised him, “I did it to get out of a relationship.”
He thought at first she was teasing but realized she wasn’t, and in some way it made sense. She could brace a suspect and make an arrest without any hesitation, or back someone off, but he’d just watched her kneel and force her hand through the link fence of the dog kennel to stroke the ear of a dead hound. There was a gentleness about her mixed in with the rest, and he could see her having trouble letting go of a failing relationship.
“This team is the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said, “but we’re talking about you and Petroni.”
“Petroni taught me how the department works, and we hit it off. We were working the coast, mostly abalone. I taught Petroni some things about undercover work, and he taught me about poachers, boats, the coastal towns.”
“What happened if you were such good friends?”
“All I know is when things changed. My team made a bust up the north coast in Albion. In the last few days before the takedown we were on the suspects every minute. Petroni was down south, and I was out of communication with him before and then during the bust. He found out we’d made it by talking to our chief, and after that he was a lot less friendly.”
“Why would it matter to him like that?”
“I got the feeling he thought he was running both teams, and he should have been told. Not long after that we both got called to Sacramento, and Petroni’s team got shut down.”
“Bam, shut down just like that?”
“Yeah. The chief wanted both of us there at 9:00 that morning. At 9:10 Petroni’s team was over with.”
“Who gave you the word?”
“Chief Keeler, so you can picture it. Petroni thought I’d kept this other operation secret from him as a way of making my team look better, and that somehow I knew it was all going to go down.
He threw that theory at me in a parking lot in Placerville a year later.”
“He was hurt.”
“Yeah, and it didn’t make any sense to him. He was the one with the wildlife experience.”
He told her a little more but not the whole story as they drove back to Placerville. When they reached the safehouse Marquez called Bell and told him the team was kicking in the money and would wait to get reimbursed. They were going forward with the buy. Alvarez and Cairo were getting their gear ready, everything spread on the dining table. Roberts and Shauf stood in the kitchen talking.
“I don’t like how you’ve done this,” Bell said. “I feel like you went around me.”
The conversation ended badly, and he felt lousy after hanging up. The team had all grouped into the kitchen, Roberts and Cairo laughing at some joke they’d shared.