‘I’ll send you some money.’
‘You’ll send me some money? What are you talking about? I’m supposed to go hide? Until when? Is it because of what you’re getting into?’
‘It could be, Darcey, and I’m very sorry.’
‘What does that mean, that you’re sorry? You’re crazy if you think I can just pick up and go. Come on, John, is there really somebody out there who would come all the way here to hurt me because of something you’re doing? I don’t believe that. People like that don’t exist.’
‘There is somebody and the task force I’ve joined is targeting him.’
‘OK, then I’ll just leave everything and wait for you to tell me when I can come back. When are you going to tell me that?’
He didn’t have a good answer and he drove thinking about what to do. The Sacramento River was off to his right, green and smooth in the morning sun and he remembered Captain Viguerra saying that there are a few men that you should never go after unless you are prepared to give up everything you love. Some will take it all from you to stop you. Viguerra had brought his hands together slowly to demonstrate Miguel Salazar crushing the skulls of his enemies, then said, ‘But the ones to fear will kill you from the inside out. They will find out what you love and take it away. You will be alive still but dead inside. These you can only fight if you have nothing to lose.’
FORTY-SIX
Maria remembered the island as close to the Antioch Bridge, so he and Shauf worked slowly away from the bridge, island to island. They circled several and returned a third time to one. Shauf dropped him at a rotting dock and Marquez climbed up to a levee road where he found a fishing rod and a tin bucket with anchovies, but no fisherman. He walked the road looking down to his left at the island and watching on the other side in the trees and brush near the water for the fisherman. He figured it was someone was looking for catfish in the tules.
On the island side of the levee was an ancient apple orchard and falling-down sheds with corrugated metal siding. Even from here he could see someone had walked through the dry rye grass between the trees in the orchard to one of the sheds, and momentarily he considered hiking down, but they’d already been on the river four and a half hours and Shauf was ready to call it an afternoon. She needed to get the boat back. He studied the sheds out across the orchard, and then walked back to the rotted dock and Shauf’s DBEEP boat.
On the way home he called Hosfleter and gave her the coordinates of three islands. Then he made another call and a stop in the town of El Cerrito where Alicia Guayas and her son, James, lived in an apartment just off the freeway. Maybe he stopped today because he felt the past returning. Alicia handed him a mug of rich Mexican hot chocolate with canela and frothed milk. A Telenova soap opera played on TV. She turned that off and their conversation turned first, as it always did, to family.
Alicia named James after his father, Jim Osiers, and he was like any other American kid that had grown up here. He sounded and acted like a typical American teenager, and Alicia expressed her worry that she was still illegal and that everything could come crashing down for James. Years ago, Marquez wrote letters for her to try to help her get legal status, but he didn’t think she ever did anything with them. She was either afraid of being deported or blew it off.
On his last trip to Loreto in 1990 Marquez discovered that Alicia had gone north with the baby and crossed the border. It took him two more years to track her down in California and longer to get her to understand he didn’t mean her any harm. He helped her out financially and she paid him back. She always insisted on paying him back. She worked two jobs and had never remarried. Her focus now was on James going to community college next year.
Beautiful Loreto with its sand and Sea of Cortez was just a tourism poster on her kitchen wall now. Sitting at her kitchen table he could hear the trucks going by on the freeway. The hot chocolate mug vibrated on the table when he set it down and stood to leave. He had asked new questions about Jim Osiers and after walking him to the door she said, ‘For me, I just want to be here with my son. For you, the past is still alive, isn’t it?’
When he got back on the road Katherine called and reported factually, but sounded very disturbed as she said, ‘We got broken into today. When I got home the slider to the deck was open.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘In my car waiting for the police to get here. I didn’t go in. Where are you?’
‘Leaving El Cerrito. I stopped to talk to Alicia Guayas and I’m stuck in traffic now. It’s going to take me forty minutes.’
‘Here come the police.’
‘Call me after you walk through.’
Katherine walked through with two police officers and couldn’t find anything missing except a photo of Maria. The photo had been stripped from its frame and the frame dropped on the hardwood floor.
‘Why would anybody do that? Who would do this? It can’t be about getting her picture. They can get that from Facebook. So who is it, John? Who would do that?’
FORTY-SEVEN
Katherine loaded a carry-on suitcase with all the photos in the house of Maria. That included Maria’s baby book. She locked those in her car trunk and then sat trembling on the front steps.
‘I can’t stay here tonight,’ she said, and though he doubted the burglar would return and had already put the sliding door back in its track, Marquez said, ‘We’ll get a room.’
They didn’t drive far, checking into the Best Western in Corte Madera, and then walked across the road to the Il Fornaio restaurant where they found an open table on a small patio off the bar. They ordered drinks and as they waited a waiter brought breadsticks.
‘This happened tonight because you’ve joined this task force.’
‘It could be anybody. It may have been some nut who saw Maria’s face on TV last night as Gant’s former girlfriend.’
‘Then how did they find our house?’
Marquez didn’t have an answer or any real theory yet. He shrugged. He poured his beer into the glass and thought Katherine was overreacting. He looked at her thinking he should cancel the motel room and they should head home.
‘Are you going to say anything? Are you going to answer me or are you practicing your spy craft so you can trap Stoval?’
‘Easy, Kath.’
‘For years I’ve looked forward to the day when we wouldn’t have to think about people trying to get even with you. I’ve looked forward to a normal life like other people have. But instead of that, now you’re going to go after a monster. You haven’t even really started yet, but already things are happening. Stoval knows he’s a target and the FBI knows how dangerous he is, so they’re not sending their agents. They’re putting you out there like some hunting dog.’
‘I was brought on to a task force. There are six others who’ve been working nothing but Stoval for almost a year.’
‘Then why do they need you? And when exactly are we going to have this normal life you’ve promised me and that I’ve waited for? Is that going to be when you’re done locking up all of the people wiping out wildlife? What year should I look forward to, 2025, 2040? Or do I have to wait until the last wildlife is wiped out?’
She lowered her voice to a rushed whisper.
‘You could disappear out there, just vanish because you’ve followed him into some jungle and he knows you’re there. Then what, I sit by the phone and wait and your new FBI boss comes by and holds my hand and reassures me everything is going to be fine, that they’re going to find you? I can hear him saying they’ve got forty agents looking for you. They’re always looking for somebody and they don’t find half of them.’
Her eyes glistened with tears and she formed a fist and hit the table.
‘I’m so angry at you. This isn’t some conniving diver up on the north coast trying to poach abalone. This is a monster and you know it. You left the DEA and got away from this type of person a long time ago. Now you’re bringing the worst of the worst of human beings into our lives. How can you do that to us?’