The next morning a light rain was falling in Placerville as Marquez waited for the county records office to open. No shell casings had been recovered, but a ballistics expert who worked with topo maps and computer modeling thought that as early as this morning he could narrow the area the shots must have come from. There was nothing the SOU could do to help with that work, so Marquez moved them in other directions.
Shauf and Roberts waited on the ridge above Nyland’s trailers.
When Marquez left here he’d join them. They had a search warrant for Nyland’s trailers and were only waiting until Sophie went into work, didn’t want her present when they went through things. Nyland’s arraignment was on the docket for 1:00 this afternoon and that was another reason to go in this morning. They expected him to be released.
Along with the Sacramento police, Alvarez and Cairo had knocked on Durham’s door late last night and talked to a live-in maid who’d told them the owner was out of town for several days.
She reiterated what she’d said to police yesterday, that she didn’t know where he was, he never told her where he was going. They didn’t have a warrant in place yet for his house, they had asked for one and it was questionable whether they’d get it, though they did get a warrant for Sierra Guides. It was Marquez’s plan to search Sierra Guides later today.
He drank coffee and read the San Francisco Chronicle’s account of Sweeney’s adventure as he waited. Kendall had missed his headline, but the Chronicle caught it perfectly. “Fish and Game Does Catch and Release with State Senator Sweeney.” It was a page A4 article, not many inches and with little detail. The arrest had already turned into a nonevent, the writer treating the bust as though it were a bizarre incident Sweeney had stumbled into via well-meaning friends, who according to a spokesman had made all the arrangements for the hunt. No mention was made of the SOU, and Sweeney only made the cryptic statement that he was not a hunter but that there were many hunters in his district and good land management should accommodate the interests of all citizens. The hunting guide would be arraigned today and could face felony charges if convicted of commercial trafficking in bear parts, but it didn’t say anything about why he’d be charged with that. There was no mention of the gallbladders. It concluded with the sentence that poaching a bear in California was a misdemeanor with a maximum fine of one thousand dollars and up to six months in jail, and it noted that the California bear population was thought to be stable at roughly twenty-five thousand black bear but that bear species in general were pressured globally.
When the records office opened he wasn’t sure he was in the right place, but the diminutive white-haired woman across the counter looked like she knew her way around. Her hearing was bad, and he wrote the name on a piece of the newspaper, handed it to her, then watched her evaluate the request.
“On Howell Road,” he said, and her eyes pondered him. Then she gave him the answer without needing to retrieve any files.
“I remember the Johengens. They were Swedish and had family in Minnesota or Wisconsin. He was a very intelligent man and nice mannered. He trained as an engineer in Stockholm, and I remember he always wore a hat.”
She described a felt hat now and seemed to want some explanation of why he was asking, as if perhaps he was prying into her privacy, not the name Johengen. He was close to showing her a badge but prodded her instead.
“Did they live on Howell Road?” he asked.
“For many years. They had a Christmas tree farm and grew apples. I don’t think they called it a farm though. I seem to remember it was Johengen’s Ranch. They had a wooden sign he’d carved.
He was a very capable man until he got sick. Just a minute.”
She went into a back room, was gone twenty minutes, and then came back out with an address on Howell.
“If it was me, I’d look for the rows of trees.”
“Thank you.”
As he left he checked with Roberts and Shauf, told them he was on his way to them, and Roberts reported that Sophie had left and that Alvarez had followed her to Placerville, saw her park and go into work at the Creekview. Alvarez was on his way back for the search of the trailers.
“I think we’re good to go,” Roberts said.
When Marquez arrived they popped the door on Nyland’s trailer and cut the chain on the second one. Two hounds were locked in the main trailer, and they got them outside and clipped them onto long chains attached to a cedar tree. Marquez petted both, kneeling with them for a few minutes before going back up the iron steps.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of dogs. A TV was the focal point in the tiny common space, sitting on the short kitchen counter, facing the table. Marquez worked his way through clothing and belongings back in the bedroom, looking for anything that might help build a bear-poaching case, and Shauf went up to the second trailer to start searching there.
They hadn’t been inside the main trailer long when Alvarez called. “We’ve got company.”
“Sophie’s back?”
“No, it looks like Kendall, Hawse, and two or three cruisers.”
Marquez walked forward, looked through the window, and saw the vehicles crossing the meadow, Kendall and Hawse leading in a county SUV.
“How do you want to handle this?” Alvarez asked.
“Keep going until we know otherwise.”
Alvarez had finished with the little kitchen and hadn’t found anything, was flipping through magazines on the table now. A checkbook would help, a record of Nyland’s banking.
“Gentlemen,” Marquez said, when Kendall and Hawse clanged up the iron steps to the door. He took a look at their faces and guessed correctly they didn’t have a warrant to search the trailer.
“We came out to look at that fire pit you found the bone in, but why don’t you invite us into the trailer?” Kendall said. “It is a piece of femur though very old. We’ll have a warrant for the trailers by afternoon and if I’d known you were here, I would’ve asked you not to come in ahead of us.” Kendall studied Marquez’s face, shook his head. “If I were you, Marquez, I’d be sitting in a bar counting my fingers and toes.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you?”
“I’d like to find Durham.”
“We’re doing what we can. You know Nyland will be out today.”
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other, not saying anything, the moment awkward. Kendall didn’t want them here, and they weren’t leaving without a search. Marquez asked about the piece of femur, though he could tell Kendall already had some sort of explanation.
“It’s very old, and it may explain vandalism and grave robbing in the old cemetery in Placerville. They’ve had a problem with it for a couple of years.”
“Not someone Nyland murdered.”
“Would I be asking you to invite me in?”
Kendall and Hawse followed him back to the tiny bedroom. Hawse picked up a pair of Sophie’s panties and started moving them along, walking them across the room as though Sophie were in them.
“Like to see that,” he said, and Kendall jumped him.
“Cut it out or wait outside,” Kendall said.
“Hey, I was just making a joke.”
“Make it outside.”
“Christ, what’s the matter with you today?”
Hawse left, muttering to himself, and Kendall asked without touching it, “What’s this skull?”
“Bobcat.”
The bobcat skull was very white, probably bleached, and sat on a little polished wood stand with an iron spike running up through where the brain had been. The spike tilted the skull so that the eye sockets stared straight forward. Near it was a necklace of claws strung on a silver chain and a photo in a gold gilt frame of a smiling Sophie naked and sitting on a horse. From the background, it might have been taken here in the meadow. There was also a black-andwhite photo of a man in a much smaller frame. He looked enough like Sophie that Marquez wondered if that was her biological father.
There were hunting rifles and two handguns that Marquez bagged and tagged. In a drawer he found a razor-sharp hunting knife beneath Sophie’s folded clothes and a small jewelry box that held maybe fifteen human teeth, three with gold crowns.
“Now, that starts my spine crawling,” Kendall said.
And still Marquez had found nothing salient to their case.
They were asking for Nyland’s phone records as well as those of Sierra Guides, trying to ride the momentum of the bust, but phone records could be harder to get. Some judges were reluctant. He found a diaphragm with a happy face drawn on it and then looked at the teeth again and re-examined the knife. He touched the edge of the blade and cut through the latex glove.
“What are you doing with the teeth, Marquez?”
“I’ll bag them if you want, but it’s going to be hard to argue they have anything to do with bear poaching.”
“We’ll have our warrant this afternoon, but he may get out first. Bag ‘em now, if you don’t mind.” Marquez turned at the order, studied Kendall, realizing the detective had hid his true feelings about finding Fish and Game here. He’d hid his anger and frustration so he could get inside.
Marquez bagged the teeth though, and they moved back out into the little living space. When they took the cushions off the seats built around a table bolted to the floor they found more storage.
In those compartments were boxes of ammunition, including .30-caliber shells. These got loaded into Shauf’s van and they would go to DOJ. Kendall wrote down the box numbers and photographed them.
In the second trailer were stacks of bear hides and a workbench area where Nyland stored his power tools, a Skilsaw, a cordless Makita drill, a white five-gallon plastic bucket with a carpenter’s nail bags in it, a router and power planer, and then among the hand tools on the bench, Marquez pointed out a couple of surgical saws. There wasn’t enough here for someone in the hunting guide business.
“He’s storing equipment somewhere else,” Marquez said. “Out at the Broussards’, maybe.”
Now he walked Kendall out the trail to the little meadow with the fire pit. They lifted the iron lid off, and Kendall knelt and began sifting through the ashes as Marquez showed Hawse what else they’d found out here. Kerosene. Firewood stacked near a tree. Marquez could see the detectives planned to be here a while, and he let Kendall know he was leaving.
“Marquez,” Kendall called to him. “You’re not going to want to hear this, but we’re looking at the possibility Petroni took the shots at you.”
“He’d aim at you first.”
“What if your bear farmer is Petroni? What did you tell me you’ve paid for bile products so far? Thousands, right? And you’re telling me there’s a lot of money in this. That’s real motive for a guy starved for cash and in a position to set up shop. Maybe that’s what Stella knew about.”
“You still don’t have any idea of where’s he’s gone, do you?”
“Doesn’t matter where,” Kendall said. “Mexico, wherever, we’ll bring him home. Do you know someplace in the mountains he’d go to hide?”
“No.”
“Did you think anymore about what I threw at you the other night?”
Kendall kept talking and Marquez stood in the dry grass twenty feet from him but only half listening, his head buzzing, their bear farmer’s voice and the shots still loud in his head.
“Petroni would have good reason to use a voice changer.
Think about it,” Kendall called, as Marquez turned and walked away.
After driving away from the meadow, Marquez took another call, this one unexpected but initially hopeful. It was Ungar.
“Hey, did you make that bust with the politician?”
“No, those were uniform wardens.”
“I figured it was you for sure, and there were a couple of other busts in Stockton.”
“How do you know about Stockton?”
“My cousin called and told me he lost a shipment of bear paw that was supposed to go to LA.”
“Those were his?”
“So you know about them?”
“Yeah, we got notified. We hear about everything.”
“I talked to him about your offer.”
“What he’d say?”
“He wants to go for it but wants me to set it up.”
“He must really trust you.”
“I started feeling lousy after you were here last, thinking about what you’re doing humping through the woods and driving around and not getting paid much.”
“Don’t let it get you down.”
“You kind of pissed me off early this summer and I haven’t shown you the right respect since. I mean, what I’m saying about my cousin, that’s true, I don’t want him going down. His life is messed up enough. He owes for the bear product that didn’t deliver in Stockton, the stuff the police got. He’s afraid it’ll get him killed.”
“Who’ll kill him?”
“The man he’s delivering for.”
“Delivering where in LA?”
“I’ll get it all for you. He’ll come in and give you names, but we’ve got to work it all out first. I want to make a deal where he gives you what he knows and he gets immunity.”
Marquez looked at the road ahead and drove and was quiet a moment.
“He’s tied in with the guys in Placerville,” Ungar said. “He knows who you’re looking for. He knows the guy behind it all, the guy doing the bears in cages.”
“Okay, get one piece of that from him, one piece that I can check out and we’ll make it happen.”
“I’ve got it.”
“You’ve got it now? Let’s hear it.”
There was a long pause, Ungar drawing it out and anticipation flooding into Marquez. He knew Ungar had been up here several times. They’d always known Ungar knew more; the question was how much.
“It’s not the type of guy you’d expect.”
“You’ve already got a name.”
“This guy is like me, he’s got a successful business. He works out of Sacramento.”
“Lives there?”
“That’s right.”
Durham. Has to be Durham. “I need a name.”
“Hey, I know, but not until we meet and you’ve got the deal done on your side. Then I want to meet you alone.”
“Let me see what I can do, I’ll call you back.”
“When?”
“Soon.” Marquez knew he could say yes right now, but something restrained him. “I’ve got to talk to my chief and the DA. I need more of what your cousin has been involved in. You told me before that all he did was deliver, but now you’re saying he owes money. I need to know how involved he is before I can negotiate something. They’re not going to approve anything without knowing first who they’re dealing with.”
“I’m giving you a way to get to the man you’re after.”
“Call your cousin, call me back.” Marquez hung up.