The next morning a tall gold-colored SUV sat in the spot between the eucalyptus trees where Raburn usually parked. The man in the driver’s seat turned to stare as Marquez pulled in between two trees. When Marquez walked up to the edge of the trail to look down the muddy path to the river and Raburn’s houseboat, he heard the man coming up behind him. Before turning to talk to the man he realized that the houseboat windows were broken.
“What happened?”
“Raburn’s boat got shot up.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. It’s always the drunks that survive the wrecks. He’s hiding at his brother’s.”
“You’re not a friend of his.”
“Are you?”
“He called me yesterday and said he had some fish for me. I said I’d stop by this morning. When did all this happen?”
“Late last night. I’m Barry Gant. I’m with the volunteer firefighters. My sister-in-law lives right here. She’s got a four-year-old daughter. Any one of those shots could travel a mile and kill somebody. Whoever came here and did this is here because of him. He draws that element here.”
Gant walked down the muddy path behind Marquez. A line of bullet holes pocked the painted plywood walls of the houseboat, but there were no holes in the flotation, which was interesting, assuming they knew Raburn wasn’t home and wanted to cause maximum damage. He walked the length of the boat, then stepped onto the deck while Gant ranted.
“That dumb sonofabitch had a gallon of gasoline next to a corner outside on the deck. A bullet came within an inch of it.”
Marquez nodded, had seen the plastic two-gallon container each time he’d been here, though he didn’t see it right now. The walls of the boat were nothing more than two-by-fours on two-foot centers with a skin of plywood and a mix of glass and Plexiglas windows. The Plexiglas panels had degenerated under years of bright sunlight and turned cloudy, and now they were marked with bullet holes. The glass windows had been shot enough times to shatter, and he guessed a dozen or more bullets had passed through the boat, probably ricocheted off the rock embankment across the river. Marquez poked his head, looking inside.
“Don’t go in there. The county crime people are coming out.”
“Was there a police report?”
“Last night.”
“Did they find casings on the bank?”
“How do you know all that?”
Marquez decided to let the conversation end. He’d made a guess about trajectory, deciding that the gun had been fired from a position almost level with the boat, a slight downward trajectory so probably just a few steps up the bank, and he looked for footprints but couldn’t find anything definitive. It did not look like the spray of an assault weapon, and he pictured someone standing on the bank pumping shots into the houseboat. Someone who knew Raburn wasn’t inside. Someone unconcerned about the noise the shots made. Ludovna’s guy came to mind. Here to make a not-sosubtle point. The county wouldn’t waste time with this because there were no witnesses and no one was hurt. He turned to Gant.
“Raburn is at his brother’s?”
“A deputy found him down there last night.”
“Okay, I’ll check there. Thanks for all your help.”
The wet corrugated metal of the packing shed roof reflected the morning sunlight brilliantly. The remaining leaves of the pears looked more tattered and bare than just a few days ago. He drove past the equipment building, and the old Scout bounced hard in a pothole. Isaac’s big blue Ford F-350 was in front of the house, parked near the older Volvo his wife, Cindy, drove. Raburn’s truck was hidden from the road and covered with a tarp, so he was either scared or making a show of it. Marquez pulled up alongside Raburn’s pickup, got out, and walked up to the house.
It needed paint. The porch creaked under his weight. He knocked and stood near the railing cap, listening for a moment inside and looking out through the rows of fruit trees. He smelled damp earth, the fall. On the porch railing under his hand, paint had peeled and cracked like a dry riverbed and small beads of water had pooled between the cracks. He knocked again, and the door rattled loosely. The house was probably in need of more work than the money you could make selling apples and pears in a dozen years of good harvests, and Raburn was probably right about his brother’s chances.
It wasn’t until his third knock that Isaac’s son opened the door, then went to get his father. But it was Abe who came to the door rather than Isaac. He stepped out onto the porch and shut the door, his face pale, combative, anxious. He smelled like a hangover, and ashen half-moons of pouched skin sagged below his eyes.
“Lucky I wasn’t home when it happened.”
“Who did it?”
“It’s got to be him. He must know who you are.” Raburn tried to give him a hard stare now. “Either way I’m done with Fish and Game. You can go ahead and arrest me this morning because this sure as hell isn’t worth dying for.”
“I can understand you being scared.”
“You don’t understand shit. I’m fifty-two. I got here when I was sixteen. Do you really think you know more about the fish species that live in the delta than I do? You sure as hell don’t, and there’s no problem with sturgeon. The problem is you trapped me and you’ve made some people angry and if you keep it up you’re going to get me killed just like I told you the first day.”
“Let’s take a drive together and get some breakfast. You look like you need some food.”
They drove up the river to Freeport, and Raburn put away sliced ham, three eggs, potatoes, and coffee. He asked for another order of toast and concentrated on the food, head down, eyes out the window whenever he looked up. Something about the shooting didn’t fit. Raburn’s answers were too dodgy. The accusatory tone, how Fish and Game had entrapped him, had a staged air to it.
“You can arrest me, but I’m going to tell the jury I did everything I could to help and finally got scared.”
“That sounds like your lawyer talking.”
“I’ve done everything you asked. You can’t ask me to risk my life.”
They weren’t offering him any protection, and the DA would roll her eyes and say, look, he’s done enough, we’re not bringing any case against him. They’d plea-bargain something, and Raburn would get a slap on the wrist.
“So you think shooting up your boat was a message from Ludovna?”
“I already said that.”
Marquez handed the waitress a twenty and looked at Raburn again, caught Raburn studying his face.
“One problem with all this is you haven’t given us what we need to take Ludovna down. You say you don’t have records of sales.”
Raburn was scornful. “No one keeps records. Who’s that stupid?”
Marquez drove him back to his brother’s, and Raburn didn’t say a word during the ride. He got out of the Scout.
“Don’t shut the door yet,” Marquez said. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll give you a day to think about everything. You’re hungover, you were up all night, and like you said, anyone would be scared. Think it over. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“I’ve already thought it over. If you want to bust me, go ahead. I know someone else who disappeared, and it isn’t going to happen to me. I got warned last night, and I don’t need to be told twice.”
“Who do you know that disappeared?”
He could see Raburn regretted having said that. He didn’t answer, let the door fall shut, and Marquez watched him go up the porch and into the house.