The stick Nyland had charged the deputy with had flown out of his hand when he fell. Nyland’s broken finger was coated in blood, the violence done to him, the bruising around the nose, bright stain melting new snow near his neck, made him appear the victim rather than the perpetrator. Nearby a snowcovered tree shook loose last night’s drop, and Marquez moved away from Kendall and the other officers and in among the saplings. He saw the deadfall where Nyland had snapped off a stick. Running, dodging trees, was it just final desperation or did he have a place he was supposed to get to? Marquez made his way back to Kendall, kicked the snow from his shoes, drank more water, retrieved his pack, and looked at Nyland’s crumpled body again. He felt little compassion, more regret and anger.
“What do I need to know before you go?” Kendall asked, trying to hold to his detective role.
“He claimed there’s a bear farm in Nevada just over the border in Minden. He said Petroni was kept there, then he got moved to Johengen’s.”
“How did he know all this?”
“Sophie told him and he acted like Troy has been there also.
Claimed he was in jail when it all went down, named Durham and referred to another man as Durham’s partner, called him ‘Bearman’ and ‘the freak.’ He told me Bearman was in charge of everything, even Durham.”
“Do you believe anything you heard?”
“I think there’s a bear farm or farms somewhere, and Nevada just might fit. And, yeah, there might be a Bearman.”
“Where’s Petroni fit in?”
“He didn’t say, but I’m wondering how Petroni got to Nevada. Maybe they lured him there or maybe he found it on his own.”
That was the thought Marquez had been having, hiking out the last mile, that Petroni got there on his own, which meant he was trying to find it. He related Nyland’s story, a ranch with metal buildings and a lot of acreage near Minden, an illegal Chinese immigrant doing the daily work of caring for the bears.
“My team will search for this place in Nevada,” Marquez said. “We have an agreement with Nevada wildlife. We’ll make the call this morning. Nyland didn’t say it, but it sounded like the bear out at the end of the orchard got shot because it was sick and the other bears got moved to another farm in Nevada.”
“Everything while he was in jail, right? He didn’t have a part in any of it.”
Marquez didn’t answer that yet, continued explaining. “We’re sure from scat and food that there were other bears at Johengen’s recently. They moved them somewhere. It makes sense the bears would have a permanent caretaker, and a Chinese immigrant with experience bear farming would be the right person.”
“If Nyland was so innocent, why’d he take off running?”
“He was hiking out to meet a ride.”
“He told you that?”
“No.”
“We checked everything out there, including your people.”
“What about the lake?”
“There are whitecaps, no one is on the lake.”
“My team picked up on a boat in Emerald Bay. Nyland may have thought he was going to cross the road, drop down to the water, and take a boat ride out of here. That may have been what he had in mind.”
The deputy who shot Nyland approached, and Marquez took the moment to step away and call Shauf. She was parked at the Emerald Bay Overlook. He heard emotion choking her voice and for a moment was afraid something had happened to one of the SOU.
“I just talked to my sister,” she said. “She’s turned down the option of more extensive chemo. She wants to talk about what kind of aunt I’ll be to her children.”
Her voice broke off, and Marquez looked back at Kendall and the assemblage of officers with their brightly lettered coats, talking about whatever. Waiting on the coroner. Two officers on horseback were riding up to retrieve Nyland’s pack, and Marquez watched the horses climb into the trees. He heard Shauf sob and looked at Kendall and the deputy who’d shot Nyland. They were the only ones still focused on what had happened here.
“You’ll be the best aunt there ever was,” he said. He waited for her to catch herself, added, “I’m on my way out. Talking with Kendall about the boat right now.”
“It’s a Colbalt with blue trim.” She drew a breath. “After sunrise there were a couple of boats that came into Emerald Bay and we figured them for photographer types trying to get a picture of the bay with the first snow on the mountains. But there was also a lone guy in a Colbalt who circled the island, then sat along the shore for a while. He stayed on this side in the shadow so we could never really get a good look at him. When the patrol units showed up he moved farther back and then took off back out the channel. We got the CF numbers and it’s registered to an Ed Schultz who lives in Palo Alto. We’re trying to get a hold of him.”
“Where’s the boat at?”
“Near Zephyr Cove, starting to work its way up the east shore, and it’s rough out there, rougher still on the east shore.”
“See you soon.” He didn’t hang up with her yet. “Carol, this isn’t the same but I’ve got to say this to you. I had a wife I was so in love with once that after she was killed I didn’t think I’d ever get over it. But what I’ve learned is that as long as you have memories, she’s going to be with you forever.” Part of that is true, he thought.
Kendall was coaching the deputy to remember Nyland charged him with a stick that could crush his skull. He broke from that and turned toward Marquez.
“I’m going to need a formal statement from you. A couple hours with you this afternoon.”
“I’ll call you.”
Kendall nodded and as Marquez started to leave, started walking with him, leaving the deputy. Marquez knew what was coming. He stopped and watched Kendall gesture back toward the stick Nyland had brandished.
“The sheriff is an old pacifist. He’ll want to know there was no other way with Nyland, so he may want to talk to you. But you saw it.”
“I didn’t see it, I heard the shot.”
“You must have heard the deputy order him to stop.”
“I heard Nyland yell.”
“You didn’t hear our deputy order him to stop?”
“No.”
“All right, then, answer this for me,” and Kendall pulled his hand back. “Why wasn’t he handcuffed?”
“One wrist was clipped to his coat. I had him cuffed for most of the hike out, but his hand with the broken index finger had swollen so much I felt I had to take the cuff off that wrist so he’d have circulation and better balance for the steeper parts. His hand might have frozen.”
“So you devised this deal where he was cuffed to his coat.”
“That’s right.”
“With his hand hidden behind his back, the deputy thought he might have a rock or a knife. We didn’t know you’d cuffed him.”
“Did anybody hear me yelling while Nyland was running?”
“I heard you, but they were down here trying to find him.”
They looked at each other, and Marquez knew there hadn’t been much warning given. His guess was the deputy had shot him as soon as Nyland lifted the stick, and yet, what Kendall said about the hand hidden behind his back carried weight.
It didn’t take long to hike out, and Shauf picked him up in the parking lot. He ate a ham sandwich, an apple, and drank coffee that Shauf had in a stainless Thermos. He felt better almost immediately and wished he could comfort Shauf more about her sister, but she seemed to want to focus on what was at hand.
Lake Tahoe is twenty-one miles long, twelve wide, with the state line separating California and Nevada running through the middle. If the boat worked its way very far up the east shore, Marquez knew it would be harder to track where the road climbed away from the shoreline. They could call for help and get a patrol boat out, but he was reluctant to call unless they had more to go on, and so far, the Colbalt pilot was just a guy who’d motored into Emerald Bay and was dogging through the waves to wherever he was headed back to. Then Alvarez called and said they’d gotten through to the boat owner, Schultz, a doctor in Atherton. Marquez shifted the coffee cup and listened.
“They have a condo they rent in Richardson Bay. It’s leased right now to a man named Ben Karin. He’s got permission to use the boat because he’s thinking of buying it. Schultz bought a new one.”
“This Karin leases their condo in Richardson Bay and docks the boat there?”
“That’s right, and there’s no boathouse. They pull it out in the winter and park it in a garage at the condo. It’s one of those condo developments set up for boat owners. You know, with the big garage and heated just enough to keep things from freezing. Karin is a nature photographer doing a calendar on Lake Tahoe.”
“So he’s probably legit.”
“Could easily be,” Alvarez acknowledged. “But he’s the one who caught our eye this morning. If he was there to get a good photo of the first snow on the mountains, seems like where he was didn’t have that angle. ” Richardson Bay wasn’t far south of there and with the lake as rough as it was, Karin wasn’t out for a pleasure ride. But then, maybe he was testing the boat to see how it handled rougher water. Marquez turned to Shauf, asking Alvarez to hang on because Shauf had Roberts on the line.
“She’s got him in sight still and says he’s still getting pounded,” Shauf said.
“He’s going somewhere,” Marquez said, and Alvarez told him now that the Schultzes had called the realtor who handles the lease. She was going to call back in a few minutes.
Half an hour later they met the realtor, a middle-aged woman in a baby blue parka and bright red lipstick, at the condo complex in Richardson Bay.
“I have another appointment soon,” she said. “What’s this all about anyway?”
“We don’t know yet,” Marquez said. “How well do you know the tenant?”
She pointed out the condo, a corner unit up a flight of stairs, and when they asked about boat storage, she pointed at the high garage doors. She’d done the original lease but hadn’t seen Ben Karin in four months. She checked her watch again.
“Shall we go up and knock?” she asked, after no one answered the phone. “I have the owner’s permission to go in.”
“Hold for just a second,” Marquez said. “We want to show you some photos.”
Alvarez slowly flipped through six photos, including Durham’s face, and she fingered Chief Bell, said he looks most like him only with very black hair.
Marquez touched Bell’s photo and said, “We’d like to lock him up, but he’s not the guy we’re looking for today.”
“I admit I’ve only seen him from a distance. Oh, well, this man’s is too old anyway. Mr. Karin has a different build. He’s bigger in the shoulders. He wrote on his application he was thirty years old, but we did everything by mail and he prepaid for a year.” She added, “There’s maid service that comes in once a week.”
Shauf took a call from Roberts as Marquez went upstairs with the realtor. She knocked twice, unlocked the door, and called for Karin. Marquez followed her in and didn’t see any personal belongings.
While the realtor was talking he started looking around and in the bathroom found a wastebasket and in it wadded bloody bandages. He unfolded those, saw the quantity of blood, then flipped his phone open and called Roberts, told her to stick with him no matter what and they’d call for all the help they could get.
Marquez put the call out to all the locals and reached Kendall, who was close by on his way back to South Lake. Kendall drove up as they were trying to figure out how to get the garage door open.
The realtor thought she had a key for the side door, but complained about it not being keyed the same as the main door, about people subletting their garage spaces when they weren’t supposed to. She went to her car to get an extra set of keys.
Durham had staged out of here, Marquez thought. From here it was easy to drive over Echo Summit and down to the Placerville area. He had run the buys they’d done at the lake from here.
“Okay, I have it,” the realtor said. “But now I’m late for my appointment.”
When the garage door rose they were looking at Sophie’s Ford pickup. No one said anything until Kendall muttered, “I’ll be damned.” Marquez walked in first and saw the truck was locked. Then a woman came out of a nearby condo and told Alvarez that the pickup had arrived a couple of hours ago with a dark-haired young woman driving, and that she’d left in another truck, a green one with a camper shell. She didn’t know the make, but it was definitely a “snow car,” a four-wheel drive.
“When did you see her last?” Marquez asked Kendall.
“Late yesterday afternoon. We had her with us to try to talk to Nyland.”
Marquez looked inside the truck and then felt the hood. It was still warm. Judging from the cold in the garage it hadn’t been a couple of hours, more like an hour, he thought. Then he put it together.
“She’s Durham’s ride. He’s taking the boat somewhere, she’s going to pick him up. He was supposed to get Nyland at Emerald Bay, and she would have picked up both of them.”
“All right, I’m going to tell you all some things you need to know. Yesterday, Sophie gave me everything else we need to charge Nyland. We had someone from the DA’s office there to assure her we’d work out a deal with her. What she explained is that she’s been scared to come forward, but Nyland bragged to her he’d killed Petroni and sewn him into a bear skin. He told her all about it and that’s when she called him stupid and he beat her.
Nyland said he’d stabbed Petroni once for every time the warden had fucked with him. Sophie was shaking and crying and talking about the things he’d done to her, and now her truck is here.” Kendall turned to Marquez, a look of open surprise on his face. “I don’t get it. On top of that, we had surveillance on her. She must have slipped away.”
“Did Nyland kill Petroni?”
“Are you going to tell me you believe Nyland’s story?”
“I’m asking you how reliable Sophie is. You wanted a confession from her that she knew how Vandemere got killed and you got it. You cut your deal with her and got your star witness, but now she’s screwing everything up by fingering Nyland for Stella and Petroni as well. She’s got answers for everything.”
“How do you know about Stella Petroni?”
“I’m making a guess.”
“Well, you’re right. We recovered bloody clothes and boots that belonged to Petroni. They were there with the rifle in the old sales office. Nyland hadn’t decided what to do with them yet.”
“Nyland or somebody else.”
Kendall nodded and Marquez saw he understood. “Sophie told us she took them from the place she and Petroni were housesitting.
She gave the clothes to Nyland. It was all part of a plan to frame Petroni.”
“A plan like that is over Nyland’s head, but I don’t have to tell you that.”
“She says Nyland wore those clothes to kill Stella. He told her about it later. He thought she’d enjoy hearing how he stomped her face because Stella had come into the Creekview earlier this summer and insulted Sophie, called her a whore.”
“I’d bet he got paid to kill her, and I’ll bet he got money to kill Vandemere.”
“Then why is she here today?”
“With her I think it’s hard to know, but if Durham is behind this, he might have good reasons to get rid of Nyland. Rescue him, then lose him out on the lake, put a bullet in him and push him overboard. She might be here for that.”
“That’s just more speculation.”
“I know.”
Kendall moved toward his car and the radio there. She had to be across the lake. The truck she was driving couldn’t be that hard to find. But there was also something off here that the realtor had revealed. Ben Karin was likely another alias for Durham, yet the realtor was sure his build was different and his hair darker. He’d waved to her from the boat the day she’d come down to meet him.
He’d worn sunglasses and talked to her from his cell phone, but he hadn’t motored into shore despite assuring her he wanted to say hello. She’d said that it had hurt her feelings, which made her all the more likely to remember him.
Shauf touched his arm, “Ready?” Marquez glanced over at Kendall, saw his car was already rolling, and looked back at Shauf. “The realtor,” he said. “She didn’t describe Durham.”
“But it’s Durham in the boat. Melinda is certain.”
“Who did it sound like the realtor was describing?”
“It was a pretty sketchy description. She never saw his face without sunglasses and it sounded like she was looking at his body. Besides, he was on a boat a hundred yards from her. How much could she have seen?”
“Who came to mind?”
“I don’t know, didn’t really match with anybody.”
“But who did you think of?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“Try me.”
“Ungar.”
“It’s him-we’ve got to get a call off to Nevada Wildlife.”
“Then let’s do it from the van.”