The call came after he’d returned to the safehouse. He flipped open his cell phone and heard the now-familiar electronic whine, the pitch-altering adjustments their bear farmer made as he began to talk. You could buy a voice changer on the Internet for either a landline or a cell phone for as little as twenty bucks, but their seller had spent more. The audio expert who’d analyzed the recordings speculated that he had state-of-the-art equipment, near the quality a government spook might have.
Shauf slid Marquez a notepad and he looked at her, thinking that for a long time the best they could do was make a buy from him every six weeks to two months. But now he was very available and calling them. Marquez turned the notepad so everyone at the table could read.
He’d written, “Talking about bear farming. Wants to talk about it, could be our opening.”
“I studied with the Chinese, but they haven’t tried to improve their methods in a thousand years.” There was a high-pitched whine, the voice changer shifting settings, and the flat mechanical voice started again. “The Chinese can’t legally import and they aren’t going to anytime soon. They think they’re going to educate the world about their medicinal practices, but it isn’t going to work like that. I’ve got bear bile products right here that are better than they’re selling, and they’re going to do nothing but run into problems with the UN geeks and the wildlife groups.”
“My clients want pills, not powders, and they want to know the farms are sanitary. They want me to take a look,” Marquez said. “I need a lot of pills. And I’d like to know who I’m doing business with.”
“I answered questions about my business one time to a young woman who turned out to be with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. She’d told an associate of mine she was going to Utah on a vacation, a backpacking trip. She fell off a cliff near Zion. It took them months to find her.”
“Were you there?”
“I hid her backpack between two rocks. You couldn’t see it unless you were standing right over it. She caused me a problem in Idaho, and when I walked up the trail in Utah she knew what was going to happen. She begged and cried after I dragged her over to the edge. I can still hear her scream in my head.”
“I’m buying for people that want to heal, so that makes a story like that hard to hear.”
There was a long staticky pause, and Marquez had the sense their seller was debating.
“Who do you sell my product to?”
“Mostly to Koreans in LA and San Francisco. I had a wife who was Korean. She died of cancer, but her family deals in traditional medicines and I work with them. They’re connected in the community and ship some of it home. They want more. They ask all the time for more.”
“What was your wife’s name?”
“I’m not going to give you any names.”
“Then why do you ask so many questions?”
The line went dead and Marquez still gripped the phone, surprised at the abruptness and not sure what to make of it. He laid the phone down softly.
“He hung up,” Marquez said, then looked at Roberts. She would help him track down this Utah story. He slid the pad to her and she made her own copy of what he’d written down. They went down a list of assignments, and Marquez recounted details of the phone conversation so he didn’t forget them. An uneasiness stayed with him after they’d all left the table. He couldn’t shake it. A couple hours later he called home and talked with Maria about the speeding ticket. Her fingers clicked away on a keyboard, no doubt instant-messaging her friends. Lately, it was too much for her to have only one conversation. Even when he asked her to stop typing and stick with this conversation he heard her fingers lightly moving.
“We can talk now or later,” he said.
“I already know I have to pay for the extra insurance and I’m really upset, okay. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll baby-sit or get a job at Starbucks.”
“You told your mom a man was following you.”
“He was and I know no one believes me.”
“Where were you?”
“Leaving town.”
“Mill Valley?”
“Didn’t Mom already tell you this?”
“I want to hear it from you. What did this man look like, what was he driving?”
“Because you and Mom think I’m making it up.”
“I’m not saying that, Maria, I’m just asking what he looked like.”
“I couldn’t really see him.”
“What was he driving?”
“Like a regular minivan, or something.”
“A van that had side doors?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any idea of the model or make?”
“I knew you were going to interrogate me.”
“Maria.” His own exasperation showing. “I’m not challenging your story, just tell it to me.”
“That’s all there is.”
“If you say it happened, that’s good enough for me, but when I get home we’re going to retrace the route you took. I want to see it.”
“Because you don’t believe me.”
“No, because I want to think about and understand it.”
He didn’t believe or not believe her. She’d always been a very truthful kid, though in the past year or so she’d leaned more toward telling them what they wanted to hear. He asked now about the phone calls from the man who’d stayed on the line, and she was funny about them tonight, downplaying them, defensive, dismissing both the calls and his interest in them. Marquez told her he loved her, then said good-bye and sat for a while thinking it over.
Midmorning the next day Marquez drove out to Eli Smith’s house with Shauf. They found him sitting on a small campstool near the front of his old truck. The right wheel was off, and Smith worked on an axle. His hands were black with grease as he showed them a crushed ball bearing, holding it in his palm as if it were a gold nugget.
“We were on our way down the highway and thought we’d stop in and see if you had anymore ideas on who killed your dogs. I just can’t get that out of my head,” Marquez said.
“I don’t think I ever caught your name,” Smith said.
“John Croft. Hell, I thought I gave you a card. We’ve got an office in town. The business is TreeSearch. We’re only here on a government contract, though I like it so much I may move to Placerville.”
Marquez fumbled in his coat and made sure he didn’t find a card.
“We were just thinking about you and your dogs and we’re in the area on a tree count. But I can see you’re busy, we’ll leave you alone. It’s none of our business anyway, just thought we’d stop and see how you’re doing.”
“Y’all are here because you’re interested in how I’m doing.
Funny, the detective was back this morning too.”
“Good. Has he figured out who did it?”
Marquez put on his best face but wasn’t sure it was carrying, figured they’d back out of here. Then Smith surprised him.
“I owe five hundred dollars to a man for a hound I bought. She didn’t never hunt worth a damn so I never paid him in full and he’s been after me ever since. ‘Bout a month ago he said he was going to even things up. I gave the detective his name this morning.
He’s the only one I can think of, but I don’t have any proof.”
Smith reached for a Pepsi can on his hood and drank. He wiped the soda pop that foamed off his chin and pointed toward his house.
“He knows where I keep the key.”
“Why’d you wait to tell the police?”
“Because I’m not sure what else he’d do if he killed my dogs.”
“Like come after you?”
“He’s the type.”
“What’s his name?”
“I already gave it to the detective.”
They left him standing by his truck and drove back to Placerville. Later that afternoon Marquez phoned Kendall from his truck while watching Alvarez shake hands with Nyland and Durham.
Durham wore a flowered shirt, cleanly pressed khaki slacks, and brown leather shoes. His narrow face turned toward Alvarez. He’d crossed his legs after sitting down and folded his glasses, looked oddly prissy for a man with a hunting guide business. Nyland moved toward Alvarez, opened a leatherbound album, and showed photos of hunting trips.
“Eli Smith called me,” Kendall said. “He wanted to know if you really are what I told him you were. Might not have been such a good idea to go back out and rattle his kennels.”
“Did he give you a name of a friend that sold him a dog that wouldn’t hunt?”
“No, he danced around it. Nothing has changed with him, and you ought to let me handle him. You don’t do yourself any good questioning him as concerned citizens. He’s not a fool.”
“Let you handle it like you’re handling our bear operation for us.”
Kendall was quiet, then coughed. In the distance the mountains looked smoky and cumulus towered behind the highest peaks.
“You’re short with me today, Marquez.”
“You shouldn’t have gone back up there so fast.”
“I told you I wouldn’t do it unless I had to.”
“Why did you?”
“I can’t go into this with you.”
“Talk to you later.” Marquez hung up.