“Because their minds are already made up.”
“And you’ve been making up stories,” Marquez said.
“I’ve been fucking with them because they’re stupid. They don’t get the imperative, you know? They don’t get it.”
“You told the detectives earlier that there were three men. Was that coming from Danny Huega?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s get the detectives in here.”
“Bring them in and I’m done talking.”
“Then give it to me slowly, everything you can remember Huega saying. Start with the time. What time of night was this?”
“I never asked him that. They probably closed a bar. He went to sleep smoking a joint, he probably didn’t even know the time.”
“Describe the men one by one.”
Marquez took notes and the account didn’t vary much from Davies’s earlier telling. Two men had guns, one had a ponytail and the other was smaller, slight of build, wiry. The third man had come behind them, but he couldn’t read any of their faces. The third man was the tall one, the one running things. He’d had an accent of some sort and had stepped into the moonlight not far from where Danny Huega was holding his breath. Davies grinned at that thought. “Danny said he walked like he was floating across the grass. He had hair that reflected the moonlight and Danny saw a blade, but that’s about it. He didn’t even say what color he was either, just the hair and the way he came out of nowhere.”
“Dealing with these poachers have you ever heard a descrip-tion of a man like this?”
“No, I’ve been dealing with Mexicans and with a white guy whose face you’d want to forget.”
“Describe his face.”
When he did Marquez knew they had their first link. It was the pair in Oakland, the white with the hatchet face and the Hispanic who was vaguely familiar. He was sure if Davies saw the video he’d recognize him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to show it to him.
Ruter opened the door and Davies stopped talking. Marquez listened to the detectives try to get him to say more, but Davies was done and Marquez left the room. Around midnight, Ruter came out and they stepped outside.
Marquez felt like the whole encounter had been disjointed and strange, but that Davies had mixed in truth. Either Huega or Davies had been at Guyanno during the murders. There was some indefin-able thing he could feel, some truth mixed in. Ruter believed it had been Davies, that Davies was wobbling and close to confessing. He’d seen this before.
“That’s why he asked for you,” Ruter said. “He wanted to confess to you, not us. Then he got a little more spine while you drove up here. If you’d been twenty minutes away, he would have confessed. He was right on the edge.” Ruter pounded a fist into his palm, “But dammit, we can’t hold him.”
“What happens now?” Marquez asked.
“We’ll have to kick him loose until we can tie him in.”
“Let me know when he’s back out there.”
“Oh, I will. Hell, he’ll probably call you. You’re the only pure play, remember?”
When he got on the road Marquez called Petersen, told her he’d pick up a couple of beers for himself and whatever she wanted to drink and meet her in Fort Bragg. They met on Elm Street and walked down the old road alongside the Georgia-Pacific property, between the blackberry bushes and down to Glass Beach where for decades earlier in the past century the citizenry of Fort Bragg used to dump its garbage into the ocean. Over the years the broken china, glass, and metal had been worn by the ocean, the glass rounded like small stones that glittered now in the moonlight. They sat on a rock and Marquez handed her a mineral water and opened the beer, a bottle of Indica from the Lost Coast Brewery.
“What do you think about Davies now?” she asked.
“I think he’s got a private agenda he mixed up with ours.”
“What do we do with him now?”
“Nothing. He’s a suspect.”
“At least Ruter is talking to us,” Petersen said. “He’s opened up to you.”
“Yeah, we’re tight now.” He saw her white teeth in the dark-ness. He listened to another wave break and his head was buzzing in a way that made him wonder if he’d ever sleep tonight. “This is what I think probably happened. Davies gave Huega to the people who’d killed Stocker and Han. Maybe that was about abalone or maybe it was dope, but the bottom line was money. Some deal went sour and Davies delivered to gain credibility with them. If it’s Kline, he’d need to do that. He made comments to Ruter about crossing an abyss there’s no returning from.”
“Or he was there and he killed Huega.”
“That’s what Ruter thinks.”
“Ruter can count me in on that one, too. Either way, I guess you don’t have to defend Davies anymore.”
“Is that how I’ve sounded? You think the detectives are right about that?”
“Definitely.”
Marquez opened another beer. He wasn’t sure yet what it meant, but he knew what had changed tonight. Any connection he had with Davies was gone.
12
The Pacific Condor floated on a darkening sea, its rust stains lost to the fading light. Bailey was at the stern, Heinemann in the cabin. From the cliffs Marquez and Roberts watched Bailey finish a Coors, then crumple the can and send it spinning like a coin across the water.
“Jerk,” Roberts said. “That was for us.”
“He’s making me thirsty.”
They lay in low scrub brush and dry grass and it had been hot with the sun on them all afternoon. Now the fog was on its way in. Melinda’s face was flushed, her eyes bright. It seemed to Marquez that her anger toward Bailey had grown steadily.
“Don’t let him get under your skin.”
“Except that can is more litter in the water now. The guy is a dock toad and so far we’re watching a party boat. That’s about his sixth beer.”
“They’re waiting for twilight.”
He couldn’t hear what she said next but he could feel the pulse of the air compressor on the boat. Bailey had turned it on when he pulled this last beer from the cooler. They watched the sun redden, the black jagged face of Elephant Rock smooth with shadows, and Roberts was right, the clock was running down. He glanced at her. She looked cold now, apple spots on her cheeks.
The cabin door opened and the bow-legged, black-bearded Heinemann came out. They watched his white-foaming splash as he entered the water, trailing an air hose, a hookah spooling from the compressor at the stern where Bailey worked as tender and kept watch, operating the davit, swinging the boom out and waiting, while underwater on the floor of the cove Heinemann used the air hose to inflate pop-ups, urchin baskets with floats. Two bobbed to the surface and in steady succession six more, and they were both quiet on the cliff until Heinemann’s head broke the surface. He lifted his mask and hooked the first basket to the boom as Marquez refocused the camcorder, the light-enhancing feature turning Bailey’s hair white as the first basket swung toward the boat. The urchin basket bulged and was edged in a way that said hard abalone shells were pushing at the fabric, not the small forms of urchins. Marquez videotaped and listened to Roberts’s careful recording of the facts as the baskets were lowered into the hold.
Within ten minutes the anchor rose and the Condor turned south toward San Francisco. They hustled back up the trail and Marquez drove as Roberts talked to the Coast Guard and tracked the boat with the GPS locator. So far, it had gone as Bailey had said it would. He listened as Roberts let the rest of the team know and then talked with Petersen who’d swung in behind them. He felt upbeat. It had gone well. They had good footage; they’d have Bailey’s testi-mony and if Bailey was right about Sausalito, they might get all the way to the buyer tomorrow. The Marlin and the Coast Guard would help track the boat the catch was transferred to and he hoped that would take them all the way home.
“Signal good?” he asked.
“Perfect.”