Rumors of Troy’s abusing Sophie had followed her since grade school, and Marquez knew there’d been at least one incident where an elementary school teacher’s concern had caused the police to pull Troy in for questioning. She’d been eleven years old when that happened, nine when her mother died. There’d been talk at the time of placing her in foster care, but eventually she had come home and the only thing society’s temporary concern had achieved was to mark her and separate her from her friends.
Petroni had grown up in Placerville. He’d known Sophie since she’d been a young girl. He’d known all the Broussards, the stories told about them, their poor southern rural roots and culture of living off the land. Even here in the mountains where many people cobbled together a living through a willingness to work a variety of jobs, the Broussards’ poverty emanated from them like an odor.
Petroni had tried to explain his attraction to her when Marquez had driven with him through the hills behind Placerville. He’d talked of seeing her as a young girl walking through town in the same clothes she’d worn the previous several years, her sweaters hiking up her forearms as she grew tall, thin, and lanky.
He’d described driving out Highway 49 in his first Fish and Game truck and feeling sad for her as she’d walked the shoulder of the winding two-lane highway, alone in a place where she shouldn’t have been. Petroni told him that she wasn’t really Troy’s daughter, but rather the daughter of his wife’s sister who’d died in an accident.
Marquez could understand the feeling of being worth less than everyone else, what it felt like inside. It was easy to remember an older girl telling him when he was seven that he was a throwaway. His parents, unable to deal with raising two children, caught up in the importance of their own lives, had elevated their struggles against drug and alcohol dependency to a level that subsumed any real responsibility for raising him or his sister, Dara. The final abandonment came when their mother dropped them at their paternal grandparents, a temporary solution that was just supposed to last as long as it took her to get it together.
He’d pieced together enough about Sophie Broussard’s life to know that no luck like that had ever come her way. When she’d finally escaped home she’d ended up with Nyland, and now she was back with him, but as she’d admitted at the Creekview, not really with him. From what Marquez had seen in the Lexington bar tonight, he knew she wasn’t with anyone.
While Nyland was inside the Lexington, his Land Cruiser had gotten equipped with an option the rental company didn’t offer, twenty-four-hour tracking, the team’s last GPS transponder. They had his position, knew he’d just turned onto the access road to the Crystal Basin Wilderness. A few minutes later he broke from the paved road onto Weber Mill, and Marquez realized there wasn’t going to be any cat and mouse or doubling back.
“What do you think?” Shauf asked, slowing to a stop along Crystal Basin Road.
“This is it. It’s the bait pile you found or another like it along Weber Mill. It’s a quick and dirty hunt, the big guy doesn’t want to waste time.”
“Not just using the road to cut through.”
“No, I think he rented the Land Cruiser for cover, and I’m guessing Sweeney doesn’t want to do the hijinks, doesn’t want to sit out all night somewhere cold, and asked for the nearest easiest bear to shoot. It could be part of Nyland’s nervousness, he knows we’re out here and wanted to take Sweeney deeper into the woods.”
Marquez called the pilot of the DFG spotter plane. She was south of them and approaching with lookdown infrared equipment.
Ten minutes later the pilot confirmed that there was a stationary heat signal where GPS showed the Land Cruiser had stopped. As the team moved into the Crystal Basin, drifting one vehicle in, then the next, a van, an old pickup, a car, Marquez decided that he and Alvarez would work their way down the steep slope, keeping to the trees and brush, and the rest of the team would cover either entrance to Weber Mill Road.
He alerted the wardens they’d called in for help, then took a cheerful call from ex-chief Keeler who said he was in his camper with his dog and on the road nearing Placerville. He had a campsite reserved at Ice House Lake.
“We’re watching a suspect now who looks like he’s about to hunt.”
“Then I’m too late.”
“This isn’t the one I need your help with.”
By the time Marquez moved down with Alvarez there was a moon rising above the ridge across the canyon. Pale light washed the dirt road below, and they made out Bobby Broussard’s truck parked near Nyland’s Land Cruiser and a second truck near the southern entrance to the road. When Marquez talked with Shauf she reported that Troy Broussard had just passed her position and driven on, slowly climbing toward the lip of the basin.
It grew colder and the moon rose over the river canyon. Voices no longer drifted up from down the slope. Bobby walked the road, standing almost directly below them, glancing upslope as he smoked, farted, moved back to his truck. He squatted there, talked briefly on his CB radio, then started up the road in the other direction.
When that happened, Marquez tapped Alvarez and they scrambled down, crouched as they ran across the road, and dropped into trees. Lying beneath trees on the downslope below the dirt road, they worked over to a group of oaks, belly-crawling through brush, avoiding the gray-white light reflecting off the open slope of dry grass.
Marquez pulled himself forward with his elbows, eased down a little closer, though he heard their voices. Low murmurs and a long silence. The hunting blind was no more than a hundred feet below. He turned, let Alvarez know this was it, they were good. They could record from here.
An hour passed and then a downwind started, and that’s what was needed, heavier air to push the bait pile scents toward the river bottom where a bear could pick up the smells. Bears used the river like a highway at night. Marquez worked a cramp in his thigh, heard faint murmurs from below, then brush breaking and a low growl. With night goggles Marquez read one, then a second bear at the bait pile.
Now came a flicker of laser scopes, gunshots, sharp hard echoes dying quickly, the moaning cries of a wounded bear thrashing, breaking through brush, and Nyland’s voice, clear and author itative, giving directions, going after the wounded one, calling out that the other was down. Spotter lights came on. Nyland led them down, Sweeney and friend trailing well back.
“I got him,” Alvarez whispered. “I got Sweeney shooting. He got the bear that’s down. His friend wounded the other.”
They heard Nyland’s sharp warning to the men to stay back, saw his light sweep through the brush below the bait pile, heard a sharp crack of a rifle shot. The moaning stopped. The voices of Sweeney and his friend, their excitement, the adrenaline release, carried up the slope as they reached the bait pile. Alvarez lifted the camcorder and recorded Sweeney’s putting another bullet in the bear lying there.
“You ready?” Marquez asked, and as Alvarez nodded, Marquez radioed Shauf to bring the other wardens up, to get ready.
“Bobby’s coming your way with an ice chest,” she said.
“Okay, we see him.”
Bobby Broussard went past them, half sliding on the dry grass, carrying a cooler. Below, Nyland skinned the bear at the bait pile. They heard Sweeney giving Nyland advice and watched as the gallbladder was removed, dropped in the cooler, the hide cut off and folded. Bobby was given the bloody task of humping it back up while Nyland went to skin the other bear.
“Bring everyone in,” Marquez told Shauf.
Bobby brought the first skin to the road and went back for the other as Nyland started up with the cooler. Marquez and Alvarez climbed back up the slope, waiting near the lip of the road as Nyland crested it.
Sweeney and his friend wouldn’t be a problem. Nyland was the one to watch. Sweeney and friend stood catching their breath at the road’s edge, moonlight on their faces, looking down at where they’d hunted, savoring the moment, while Nyland and Bobby loaded the vehicles, bloody hides going in Bobby’s rig, Nyland in a hurry to leave. Sweeney play-punched his friend on the shoulder, talking loudly to him, made brave by the excitement of the kill.
“Did you see that bear drop?”
“Aw, come on, you had to put another one in him.”
“Big damn bruin, isn’t he?”
“He’s big all right.”
“He’s the biggest goddamned bruin I’ve ever seen in this state.”
“I’ve seen bigger in the backyard at my cabin.”
“The hell you have.”
They both laughed, and Nyland walked over. His parka was bloody and nothing the other men wanted to be too near.
“Guess I need to wash up,” Nyland said, and Marquez gave the signal. A powerful halogen light shone on Nyland’s face, and voices rose, calling out, “Fish and Game! Fish and Game! No one move!” The uniform wardens closed in, Marquez and Alvarez coming over the road lip with their masks on. Cairo stepped out from behind Bobby’s pickup, gun drawn, and the uniform wardens already had Nyland and Bobby lying down, faces turned toward the darkness, getting Mirandized. Nyland got cuffed and loaded into one of the warden trucks.
Then from the other end of Weber Mill, a mile or more away, a horn honked a warning and Shauf chuckled, said, “A little late,” assuming it was one of the guys standing guard trying to warn Nyland. Then, just as he got his rights read to him, Sweeney, who’d said nothing and been docile, jerked free of the warden holding him and vaulted over the road lip, tumbling as he landed on the steep grassy slope. Flashlight beams tracked him and he looked comic, except that as he arrested the slide he ignored the called warnings to stop and soon disappeared downhill into darkness.
“He must have a phone on him,” Marquez said. “Heading for the highway. Let’s get everyone except his friend out of here.”
They watched the wardens back out with Nyland and Bobby Broussard, and when they were gone Marquez walked across and questioned Sweeney’s companion.
“What’s your friend’s name?” Marquez asked.
“I’m not going to give any information, officer. I’m sorry.”
“At least give me a first name so we can talk to him. He’s making a dangerous mistake.”
“Are you threatening him with violence?”
“No, sir, we’re going to try to talk him off the slope with a bullhorn unless you think you can do that. If he’s still there at daylight, we’ll get a helicopter and dogs. That’ll bring the media, so you’re not doing him any favors by holding his name and you might be putting him in danger. Is he armed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do me one better than that.”
“There’s no way he’d shoot at you.”
Marquez looked away from him now. He looked past the man down the dirt road and saw Shauf walking toward them. She carried the cooler that Bobby had brought up. Her hands were bloody, and she showed Sweeney’s friend two bloody gallbladders in plastic bags laid out on ice. Marquez fished one of the bags out and held it up close to the man’s face.
“Your friend has run from a felony arrest.”
“What are you talking about?” Now he put it together. “That’s the goddamned guide who cut those out. As a matter of fact, we didn’t shoot anything. The guide shot the damned bear. He’s the one with the tag.”
“There’s no tag.”
From behind him, Alvarez added, “We videotaped you.”
“Maybe I took a shot but I didn’t hit anything, and my friend didn’t have time to shoot.”
“We have videotape and audio of him bragging about your kill.”
“You people are too heavy-handed.” He stared at Marquez, showing a little steel now. “You could ruin your career. You’re making a mistake you don’t understand.”
“You’re not helping your friend.” Marquez turned his back on the man and said quietly to Shauf, “I’ll go get him. He’s not armed.”
He checked his watch. There were still four hours before dawn, but Sweeney might not have gone any farther than the bait pile or where they’d skinned the second bear. If Sweeney was there, Marquez figured he could talk him up. He touched Shauf on the shoulder.
“Get the documentation done, then pull out.” He turned to Sweeney’s friend again, asked, “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a lawyer and I promise you if anything illegal was done here, it’s the guide who’s the problem.”
“Your friend ran from an arrest. You’re a lawyer, you know what that means and you probably understand he’s not going to escape. It makes a lot of sense to give me his name before I go looking for him.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Are you his personal lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Then when I find him I’ll tell him he needs a new one.”