Near midnight, he went to bed and when he woke again it was to the front door opening and footsteps. He reached for his gun, but pulled his hand back as he heard a suitcase drop and the door shut and lock. He heard her footsteps in the hallway and felt both surprise and unexpected happiness.
“It’s me,” Katherine said, leaning over him.
“Bonfire.”
“I missed you.”
Her hair cascaded down around his face and he slid his fingers along the nape of her neck and then pulled her on top of him and kissed her. He took her in his arms and touched the ghost streak of white hair at her right temple, traced her spine with his fingers, then the curve of hip and ass and long thigh muscle, as Katherine’s hands slid along his belly and over his chest and face. He took her shirt and bra off and felt the warm heat of her. Then she was smoothly against him and he was in her and for a little while there was nothing else in the night.
15
He woke before dawn and lay on his back, not moving yet, not wanting to wake Katherine. Her face pressed against his chest and he felt the slow rise and fall of her breathing, the quiet exhale. He smelled last night’s sex, the shampoo she used in her hair, felt the warmth of her and was afraid if he moved he’d lose the feeling of having her here again. But when he closed his eyes his cell phone beeped somewhere on the floor near his head. It must have rung earlier and probably it was the ringing that woke him. He slid an arm slowly down alongside the bed, fingers grazing the floor, finding the phone as Katherine shifted.
Five minutes later he was making coffee and talking to dis-patch. It was 5:10. There’d been a call to Fish and Game during the night, a message left that Marquez listened to as he poured coffee.
“Hey,” a man’s voice said, “I don’t want to give my name or nothing, but I know who those guys killed up at Guyanno Creek were selling to. There’s a whole bunch of guys in on that.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not leaving my number, man, but you can reach me through this one.” Marquez listened carefully to the numerals again, moved the pencil swiftly from one to the next com-paring them to what he’d written down the first time he’d listened. The message concluded with, “Leave me a way to get ahold of the warden that was up there at Guyanno and I’ll call him back.”
Marquez clicked off, laid the phone and pencil down, the phrase “the warden that was up there at Guyanno” still chasing him. It was an easy thing to know. The place had been crawling with police and the story of what had happened had gone out from there. It was unusual to get a request for a particular warden, but you could explain that away with the murders.
He turned to Katherine’s footsteps and then held her as she pressed against him. He ran his hand down her bare back, the smooth skin there, the curve of her rump.
“I need your help today,” she said. “Do you think you can be there when I talk to Maria?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll try. When do you want to do it?”
“After school.”
“All right, but I’ll have to call you, Kath. Depends how today goes.”
“This is the kind of thing, John.” She tensed and pulled away from him, from his inability or unwillingness to say absolutely he’d be there, and when she turned it was as if suddenly she was self-conscious of her nakedness and no longer comfortable around him.
He watched her go down the hallway, heard the shower run-ning a few minutes later. He called Petersen while Katherine showered and dressed. Nothing had happened during the night in Pillar Point and Petersen sounded tired, said she didn’t feel well. It was too early to call the number from the tipster and he folded the paper and walked back to the shower to talk with Kath, try to explain what was going on with work and why he couldn’t commit to the afternoon yet. They had coffee together. Katherine said she had to go get Maria to drive her to school, then would head into the city to Presto. He watched her car disappear, walked back into the house, made more calls, and read through a fax he’d gotten on Heinemann. At 7:30 he called Ruter.
“Has the FBI taken over the cases?” Marquez asked.
“It’s a joint investigation. What’s it to you?”
“They stepped in on one of our busts.” Marquez had made the decision to try to talk to Ruter. He figured they could help each other. “They had an informant on the boat we’re after and I get the feeling from talking to them that it ties to Guyanno Creek. Have you asked them about Eugene Kline?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you get back?”
“Nothing, so far.”
“Ask again.”
“Thanks for the advice, Marquez, but I get enough already. I’ve got to go.”
He had a conversation with Chief Keeler after hanging up with Ruter, Keeler telling him he was invited to lunch with Chief Baird and the director of Fish and Game, Jay Buehler, and he needed to be in Sacramento at 12:30 and not be late. He took a call from Petersen as soon as he hung up with the chief.
“Girlfriend is on the move,” Petersen said, and her voice was lighter now. “She went to Starbucks and now she’s at a laundromat. She could wash all her shirts in half a load, but we also made a stop at Rite Aid for quarters, soap, and face cream. I think we’re spinning our wheels following her.”
“Let’s go a day with her.”
“If she orders a hamburger for lunch should we take her down?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, John, that was funny.”
“I’ve got more on Heinemann. He was busted on campus at San Diego State four years ago for peddling dope. He’d been masquerading as a student but wasn’t enrolled. He got away with a suspended sentence and a fine, but that puts him in San Diego while Bailey was still living there, and I’m wondering if those two go back a little further than Meghan Burris thinks. No way is he really enrolled at UC Santa Cruz as she seems to think. Why don’t you check that today?”
“Sure, it’ll give us something to do while she’s getting her astrology charts read.”
Marquez crossed the bay. The paint on his black Nissan pickup had faded to gray in places and the seat cupped around his back in a way that was always a little too tight, but he liked its reliability and unassuming lines. It was old and didn’t stand out. Park it in a beach lot and no one noticed it. He parked on Webster Street in Oakland, three blocks from Li’s shop and threaded through the morning sidewalk crowd. Next door to Li’s place was a large Asian market with a steady traffic of early shoppers this morning, but Li’s shop was empty. Li sold herbs and various other incidentals, things he bought in bulk from liquidators, or odd items like dispos-able cameras past their expiration dates, a mix of stuff he gathered and then moved out again at a slight profit. As Marquez had guessed he would be, Li was in his shop. He could see him at the rear though the door was still locked.
Li wore a black silk shirt and the hospital sling for his collar-bone had been replaced by a red scarf. Marquez watched him through the glass as he shuffled forward. He had to be hurting terribly inside, but they needed to talk today, and it was the con-versation they’d had three years ago after the Santa Rosa trial that Marquez was relying on now. They’d sat at a booth in a chain restaurant and Li had painted, in fragmented sentences, images of the Vietnam War, telling how the Cong officer had executed his parents, how his family came from China originally and how the Vietnamese on either side didn’t like Chinese immigrants. He’d been conscripted and escaped and described watching American fighter jets low and dark overhead, the screaming noise they made as they came in off the water. He knocked over a glass in the restaurant as he told of the bombing of Hue, the decayed pale blue plaster of his father’s high-walled office falling, and American soldiers, one with a face and hair like yours, he’d said. He made it out with the boat people, married in a refugee camp and waited his turn to come to America.