Late that night word came that the men had confessed to shooting and burying Brad Alvarez. Marquez and Roberts were at Holsing’s van pulling the sturgeon when the call came. They laid the sturgeon out and measured and videotaped. Holsing had modified the van, removing the backseat and attaching a metal pan with sides high enough to hold fish this big on ice. The pan was six feet long and stainless steel. It conjured autopsies. The bed of ice had melted and drained through a copper tube that dripped out under the van and Marquez shined a flashlight underneath and looked at where it was dripping still.
Two of the sturgeon were just over five feet long, so ju veniles somewhere around twenty years old. The life span of a sturgeon was close to that of a human being. They lived a little longer than us, and they’d been around a lot longer, close to two hundred fifty million years, here with the dinosaurs, but unlikely to survive us. Ten pounds of roe got you twelve hundred black market dollars and the meat three bucks a pound. Marquez weighed, measured, and wrote mechanically. None of this was for tonight. They slid the sturgeon into garbage bags, double-wrapped them, and then put them in Roberts’ van. She’d drive them to Sacramento and cold storage. They wouldn’t be kept long. He watched her drive away and then searched the van again, finding three joints and some pills they’d missed.
When he’d started at the DEA, the HIDTA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area teams, had just come into being and were focused on the Caribbean and Florida. They had some success, but with a predictable twist: as the balloon got squeezed, it popped out somewhere else. Cartels moved their shipping lanes to Mexico. They dug tunnels, floated dope on the Rio Grande, modified boats, trucks, and cars, and flew over the border in small planes that they sometimes abandoned after unloading.
Marquez had fought trafficking for a decade. He knew how the stings, the busts, the hype and press conferences worked, but the only real measure of whether the law enforcement efforts were working was answered with a question, are drugs cheaper now or more expensive? They’re cheaper. Paradoxically, law enforcement had gotten better at intercepting shipments, and in response cartels reduced shipping and bribery costs by moving operations into the United States. That was what happened today. The SOU ran into that change today and Brad died, he thought.
The super meth labs were still in Mexico and big warehouses sat on the border filled with drugs and protected by the police, but some of the meth production had migrated north along with a lot of dope growing. That’s what the KZ Nuts operation had been so long ago, the Salazars establishing a distribution system in anticipation of growing large amounts of dope in California. He felt drawn back into that world tonight as he drove toward home. Its dark presence rode with his grief.
He drove through the delta on the way home. He stopped at the dock in Potato Slough and looked at Holsing’s boat. In the dope operation he knew Holsing was a low level manager who probably handled a dozen grow fields. Sheryl would know much more. He’d talk with her in the morning, but he called Katherine from here.
She started to cry as he told her Cindy Alvarez’s reaction. Brad had been at their house many times. He drove on now. They’d board Holsing’s boat tomorrow and go through his house. Moonlight turned the old eucalyptus along the delta road spectral. Dawn wasn’t that far away when he rose along the curve of the Antioch Bridge. At home he sat outside in the early light with Katherine. She made coffee. He picked at food and tried to communicate the depth of the loss and the responsibility he felt. He showered and held her and fell in and out of brief shallow sleep.
Later that morning Sheryl Javits drove up to the delta and was there when the SOU went through Holsing’s boat. Like Marquez, Sheryl had grayed. She’d thickened a little in the middle, but still had the face you could put on a coin and trust. Decades of law enforcement blunted the emotions of some, but not hers. That was her gift. Her sad smile today acknowledged the reach and the depth of the cartels and she told Marquez what she said she shouldn’t.
‘We know Holsing. We’re working a large operation he’s part of. We’re closing in on a very big bust.’
‘Did you know about the Capay grow field?’
‘Yes.’ She added, ‘They’re using Zetas to keep the farmers in line. They have more sleepers in California than anywhere, except maybe Texas.’
Marquez nodded. It made sense. The Zetas were hired assassins who later formed their own cartel Kerry Anderson taught him about the Zetas years ago.
Nothing came of the search of Holsing’s boat and mid afternoon Marquez was at Fish and Game headquarters as a grim-faced Janet Blakely told reporters the SOU would stand down pending the investigation into the death of Lieutenant Brad Alvarez. She said it was a great loss for the department. She didn’t answer any questions about the killing. That night Marquez saw a sound bite from the press conference on Fox News. They showed Brad’s photo and those of the two shooters, now identified as illegal aliens working for remnants of the Salazar Cartel. Below the TV reporter in large white letters was the question, ‘ Are Mexican Cartels Stealing America? ’ By itself, the murder of a game warden wasn’t enough to sell TV news.
Brad’s body was autopsied and released to Cindy Alvarez four days later. He was cremated and a service was held in Folsom on an afternoon when thunderclouds boiled over the Sierras. Marquez attended the service in uniform. Katherine and his stepdaughter, Maria, came with him. He spent the next day with Yolo County detectives jointly investigating Brad’s murder with the FBI. He walked back up to the grow field with them.
A fugitive warrant was out on Holsing, but there were no leads, and that night Marquez packed and told Katherine he’d be back in three days. At first light the next morning he left for the Sierras. He crossed to the eastern slope and drove down to Mammoth. There, he caught the shuttle out to Red’s Meadow and hiked into the Minarets and up the trail to Lake Ediza, arriving after the sun had fallen behind the rim of the mountains and the small lake rippled with cold late afternoon wind. There was little snow this year and even now in late May the stream that fed Ediza was easy to cross. He drew water from the lake and set up a camp.
Brad was always collecting things and the running joke between Marquez and him was that he always later imbued those things with special powers, the smooth quartz pebble that carried good luck, a bear claw pulled out of tree bark that warded off evil, part of an antelope horn, a polished piece of petrified redwood he’d once given Marquez. He wasn’t a guy who wore ornaments or believed in much he hadn’t seen firsthand, yet he was funny about these natural fetishes. And he was passionate about Fish and Game work.
Marquez understood that. You didn’t get into this work for the money. It was a calling and Brad just liked being out there. When he’d started across the slope to see where Holsing and Talbot were going, good chance that a part of him was just glad to be outside on that open slope in the spring morning.
Marquez carried the piece of redwood with him, zipped it into the pocket of the jacket he’d wear tomorrow. He heated water on a gas stove as the Minarets reflected the setting sun and snow on the shoulders of Mount Banner and Ritter turned a rose hue. Before it got dark he slid his sleeping bag into his bivvy sack and got out the things he would carry up the mountain tomorrow.
Then he boiled water and cooked noodles and cut up two tomatoes he’d bought in Mammoth. He emptied sardines out of a tin on to the noodles. He tore up basil leaves, folded everything in, and cracked pepper onto the pasta. He ate out of the pot. It felt good to eat. He used the last piece of bread to wipe the inside of the sardine can clean and left the gas stove out to boil water for coffee in the morning. He washed the pot and packed up everything else he would carry out. Black bear were always around, but he doubted any were up here yet in this part of the late spring, and left his pack cinched tight, leaning against a rock. And maybe it was the grace of the mountains or the exertion of the hike in and finally eating. Whatever it was, he was able to sleep.
At dawn it was quite cold and he made coffee, ate bread, cheese, and dates, and then walked down to the lake and filtered enough water for the hike up. He slid the water bottles into the pack. He slipped the pack on and started up with an ice axe in his right hand.
There was no trail or any real need of a trail. The weather was fine and he could see ahead and knew his route. It was steep and long and jumbled with granite and talus, and then he climbed on snow. It was steep and there were places where you wouldn’t want to fall, but nowhere did he need a rope. On the saddle between Banner and Ritter he drank half his water and cleaned his sunglasses before starting up again. Here, the snowfield steepened and he kicked the toe of his boot in harder and used the ice axe.
When he summited Mount Banner just before noon he could hear Brad’s voice in his head. On top, it was cold and clear. Over the Minarets the sky was dark blue. He caught his breath sitting on a rock looking down at Lake Ediza, small and beautiful below, and at Thousand Island Lake and east toward the desert, and then down the long reach of the Sierras. This was a place Brad loved and Marquez walked the summit looking for a spot, then climbed down between rocks and found a place to tuck in Brad’s good luck talisman.
We do things to say good bye that defy rational explanation. You take what you remember and loved in a human being and you hold it in your heart, but still at times you need a photo or a ring or piece of clothing, something you can touch, a tombstone to visit where you can talk. Marquez knew from time to time he’d come back to this mountain. When he could no longer climb it, the mountain would still be here, and if part of Alvarez’s spirit lingered with it, and if the talisman held any good luck, the mountain would be safer for those that climbed. What better spirit to guard climbers than Brad?