The two men trying to escape across the slope surrendered less than half an hour later. Turned out they were Mexican illegals and didn’t speak any English. There was radio chatter as they were taken into custody. Marquez watched it from way up on the slope and far away in his head.
After the county helicopter flew away it was quiet. He waited with Shauf. He waited thinking Sheryl Javits had warned him that the cartels were smuggling in farmers from rural areas of Mexico, paying them fifty dollars a day to tend the crops, and arming them with the warning that if anything happened to the marijuana, their relatives were in danger. Drug cartels had figured out that some of the remote areas of California’s parks and wildernesses made ideal grow locations. They were treating the land as their own and like everything they touched they left it damaged or ruined when they were through.
Brad was dead. A good friend dead. One of his team dead, murdered, a family left behind. Brad with his love of the job killed like this. Marquez couldn’t get his head around it. He looked out at the mountains and hills across the valley as an FBI Evidence Response Team climbed the trail toward them. When they arrived he introduced himself and Shauf and took them in with a numb awareness. He showed two AK-47Ns to the FBI. He showed them the shovels thrown down in the grass and tracks the men left, and where he’d knelt near Brad’s body. None of it would change anything. If he had made the bust earlier and not chased the ab poachers out to the coast last night, none of this would have happened.
The ERT leader wanted to hear Marquez’s full account and Marquez went through it with him, and then watched as they ran tape, set up a perimeter of tape and a second ring beyond that. They placed markers, collected bloody grass, bagged the shovel and guns, and found a spot on the slope for what the ERT leader called his field station, a Nikon NPL-821 that projected a grid they mapped the evidence on. Marquez recorded all of this in silence, watching as if his presence here helped them get it right.
At dusk as the FBI finished and packed up, Chief Blakely arrived at the ranch house. She radioed Marquez from there.
‘I think you should be there with me when I go out to the Alvarezs’ house.’
‘I’ll follow after Brad is off this slope. I won’t be far behind you.’
Near sunset Marquez helped strap Brad’s body into a basket lowered from a helicopter. After Brad was in a coroner’s wagon and the wagon was moving, Marquez left the Capay. He drove toward the Alvarezes’ house with Shauf following, though later he wouldn’t even remember the drive.
Brad’s wife, Cindy, looked both bewildered and in pain. Chief Blakely was there as were other friends of the family, but Cindy couldn’t accept what they were telling her. She’d been waiting for Marquez.
Brad’s six year old son, Shane, asked Marquez, ‘Is Daddy dead?’ and Cindy answered, ‘No, Daddy will be home soon.’ She looked at Marquez and asked, ‘Who was it that got killed? I’m so glad you’re here.’ Her face flushed bright red. Tears sprang from her eyes. ‘Chief Blakely thought it was Brad, but who was it really?’
Then, as she studied Marquez’s face, hers crumpled.
‘John, you know Brad is magic. You know it better than anyone. You know how he is. Nothing can happen to him. He always makes it home. You know that. Please, no, please don’t say that it’s him.’
She reached and gripped his arm, eyes lit with fear, and then welling again with tears.
‘Please, John, if he’s been shot and he’s hurt, I’ll make him well. I’ll take care of him. I can make him well again. Where is he?’
Marquez took her hand and racking sobs started from deep inside. He held her. She sank down and he got her over the couch as her son started to cry. He understood what she meant about Brad being magic. He knew exactly what she meant.
After her family arrived, he moved outside with Cindy’s father, who trembled as he stood on the porch and smoked, his voice gravelly and sad as he spoke.
‘I remember the day she met him and I don’t know what she’s going to do without him. What’s the boy going to do without a father?’
There was no answer for that either.