At dawn the next day Nyland drove to the rear lot of a bakery in Placerville and went in through a screen door. When he came back out a tall skinny baker trailed him and helped hump burlap bags across the lot to Nyland’s truck. Bags that were likely full of day-old bread. Nyland cinched a tarp down before getting something from his glove compartment for the baker.
Alvarez, who had the best angle, called it out. “Looks like a bag of dope.”
Whatever it was, the baker pocketed it, lingered, raced a cigarette, shifting like a crane from one foot to the other as Nyland talked. Their breath clouded the air in front of them. A few minutes later Nyland got into his truck and backed out.
The bread wasn’t going to a homeless shelter. This time of year black bear instinctually eased away from protein and turned to a high-carbohydrate diet to accelerate the accumulation of fat for hibernation. Right around now, bread made good bait.
Nyland left the bakery and drove to a health club on the east side of town. He disappeared into a locker room at the rear of the building, then they watched him work out, pumping iron, running on a treadmill for half an hour. Marquez and Shauf were parked well down the street, talking as they waited for Nyland to move again. The rising sun brightened the inside of the truck cab, illuminating Shauf’s face, and looking at her Marquez doubted she’d slept much last night. She talked about her sister.
“She told me she’d give anything to feel normal for a whole day. They’re talking to her about experimental therapies.”
“What do the kids know?”
“Just that mommy is sick.”
“How old are they again?”
“Three and six.”
“How are you doing?”
“Terrible.”
They watched Nyland reappear on the sidewalk in a T-shirt and jeans, his face still red-tinged, hair wet. He loitered in the sun, talked on his cell phone, and a couple minutes later Sophie drove around the corner in her Ford pickup. She pulled up in front of the club but remained in the truck, and they figured Nyland planned to finish the conversation before getting in with her. That would leave the bread and Nyland’s truck here, a precautionary move on Nyland’s part. He would come back when he was ready to feed the bait piles.
But he didn’t get in her truck. Instead, Sophie got out and came around onto the sidewalk in front of him. He held his hand up, shook his head in a not now gesture, then moved away from the club windows. She followed, and they heard fragments of her voice and saw her lash out, sending the phone flying. It blew apart on the sidewalk, battery skittering into the gutter. Shauf laughed as Nyland scrambled to gather the pieces. When he couldn’t put the phone together he threw it down on the sidewalk and turned to her. It was easy to read: “You fucking bitch!” “Makes me homesick,” Cairo said over the radio, but the way Sophie had gone after him was eerie and the rest of the team was quiet. Sophie ran back to her truck, and Nyland hammered the roof with his fist before she pulled away.
“Petroni’s heartthrob,” Shauf said softly.
Nyland stayed in town all day, and at dusk Bobby Broussard joined him. They were playing pool in a second-story billiards hall when Marquez dropped Shauf at her van. Nyland and Bobby walked down to the Creekview Saloon and drank, and at 10:00 Nyland left the Creekview and drove out Highway 49 toward Georgetown, a two-lane winding road. Marquez sent Cairo in an old blue Ford van to catch him. Cairo drove the battered van up on Nyland’s tail, hit the brights, and tapped his horn for Nyland to pull over to the shoulder so he could pass.
Of course, they knew he wouldn’t, had counted on him not to, and Cairo tailgated him until he turned down the road to the Broussard property. Five minutes later Marquez followed, driving to the spot across the valley that they’d used in the past for surveilling the Broussard property. He drove lights-out up a badly rutted dirt road to a clearing where he could see back across the valley. He lowered his window, breathed the cold night air, and waited.
The Broussard property was a piece of cleared land that backed up against brushy terrain too steep for wild pig. A winding dirt road carved by a Caterpillar blade cut through a stand of pines and rose to the main house where Troy had raised his family. Behind the house Troy and his sons had chainsawed a clearing in the woods, and years ago they’d built a second structure that backed up against the steep slope but had never been finished. It still lacked electricity. A garden hose supplied water. The windows were covered with plastic. That was where Bobby lived, and Marquez could see him in the kitchen now with Nyland and Troy, Bobby hopping around like an insect drawn to the light.
There was a third building, a squat unpainted structure, a glorified shed partially hidden by brush, where the dogs slept in winter and where, mountain rumor had it, Sophie used to get locked up for days at a time as an adolescent.
Marquez remembered tracking Troy home years ago after a night hunt. Troy had taken three bears illegally, and Marquez had gotten here in time but lacked a warrant. While he’d stood guard over the house and waited for the warrant to arrive he’d watched Bobby and another cousin fill driveway ruts in the midday heat.
They’d shoveled in dirt, watered it down, then compacted the soil by driving a jeep back and forth over the former ruts, drinking beer as they worked, a boom box hanging from the jeep’s roll cage, playing loud rock and roll while Troy slept. The warrant had never arrived, and at dusk Marquez had left defeated.
At midnight the kitchen door swung open. Nyland and Bobby Broussard walked out, stood in the darkness near Nyland’s truck, Bobby fidgeting, moving with nervous energy in and out of the light, his gawky movements made garish by the larger shadows he cast against the house. A few minutes later Troy joined them, headlights came on, and three trucks wound down the driveway and started toward Placerville, Nyland in the lead, Bobby a half mile back, Troy trailing.
Nyland went through Placerville and got on Highway 50 eastbound, Bobby not far behind, Troy well back, limping up the steep grade past Apple Hill, riding the slow lane, the headlights on his old truck no brighter than Halloween pumpkins, shoulders hunched as he gripped the wheel. Nyland drove past Pollock Pines and dropped toward the river basin, Bobby behind him, Roberts and Cairo trailing Bobby. When Nyland and Bobby crossed the concrete bridge and turned onto Crystal Basin Road, Cairo and Roberts hung back, then slowly followed.
But rather than cross over the ridge and drop toward the basin, Nyland parked on a shoulder before the road crested. Bobby pulled in behind him, and they killed their lights. Cairo and Roberts had the choice of continuing up and driving past them or parking on the shoulder well below.
“We’re pulling over, pretending we’ve got a reason to be here, Lieutenant,” Roberts said, and it was a questionable call, but Marquez didn’t say anything.
They waited for Troy to arrive and thought he’d sweep the road from behind, guessing that he’d drive past Bobby and Nyland and become the lead vehicle as all three moved into the basin.
Bobby would bring up the rear, taking Troy’s place.
But it didn’t happen that way. Instead, Troy pulled off the highway well before dropping to the river, three or four miles from where they were. He parked behind the shell of a long-abandoned diner and sat shielded from the highway, his lights off.
An hour passed before Nyland moved, retracing his route, leaving the basin road and crossing back over the American River.
Somewhere between the river and where Marquez was parked, they lost him. Marquez assumed he was with Troy and decided their best move was to sit tight, so they waited, chattering to stay alert. Marquez backed his truck up among trees alongside the highway and drank from a Thermos of tea. He called Katherine, but she was sleepy and the conversation was short. Then Alvarez said he had something.
“There are lights up on the ridge way above you on your right.”
“I don’t see them, I don’t have the angle,” Marquez answered and saw only a dark, steep forested slope climbing to a ridge.
“That must be him,” Alvarez said. “It’s got to be him.” For the next fifteen minutes they listened as Alvarez called out the progress of the lights. “Okay, they just went out.”
Marquez looked at his watch, marked the time, and tried to put himself up on the ridge and in Nyland’s head, getting out of the truck, in a hurry, dragging the burlap bags of bread. There’d been four bags, so maybe two trips. Awkward lugging those bags in the dark, and his boots would leave marks, the bags disrupting the duff under the trees. We’ll find your tracks tomorrow, he thought, and we’ll find your bait pile.