Die-Off (24 page)

‘And this Sorzak hit it off with him.’

‘She said they recognized something in each other. Colson used to talk about living out their lives in Hawaii in a big house. That was his dream.’

‘According to her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So I’m supposed to accept her version and that you and I are after the same people.’

‘I don’t care what you accept or don’t, especially what has to do with me. What I’m doing is passing on what I learned. Take it or leave it.’

‘Slow down, Marquez, don’t get so hot so fast. I know why you called me and I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t believe there was reason for us to talk and for me to back off you. What else do you know about this Jim Colson?’

‘Between Lisa Sorzak and the owners of the Methuselah, I’ve got a few more things. What he wrote on his employment application at the Methuselah puts him in his mid-forties and Sorzak says that’s about right. She keeps repeating that she doesn’t know anything about him but seems to know he was married and had a son who was eight when he left wherever he came from. The boy got sick and the disease he had caused the doctors to look for a genetic cause, so they tested mom and dad as well and it came out that the boy’s real father was a neighbor down the street. Colson flipped out and left.’

‘Left where?’

‘Could be Texas.’

‘There’s got to be a lot more than one Jim Colson. Have you asked for help in Texas?’

‘I did this morning.’

‘Okay and this Jim Colson somehow got from bartender to trafficking in animals. I’m sure bartending is a gateway to selling animals but maybe you could explain it to me how it works. I mean, if he was selling cocaine and pills from behind the bar I’d believe that, but snake skins?’

‘So you know, Rich, there’s a breed of macaw that Rider deals that goes for one hundred thousand dollars a bird.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘No, it’s true, and he’s the go-to guy in the US for that particular species. He also moves venomous snakes that go for fifty grand and rare turtles and tortoises for twenty-five grand. Elephant tusk is going for a thousand dollars a pound in Beijing. Colson is tapped into the vein and rich enough now to protect his route.’

‘What do you do when you take delivery of a basket of venomous snakes?’

‘You take orders from clients who have pet stores or you deal direct to collectors and you get the buy orders first. The buyers are out there and eager to pay. Colson, if he’s Rider, has warehouses in the LA Basin and one or more in Vancouver. Vancouver is his distribution point for Asia.’

‘And if he gets arrested for two murders that works for you.’

‘He won’t be. This isn’t a guy who would give up a gun he used.’

‘I’ve had cases where I was taunted.’

‘And now you’ve got a suspect helping you with an investigation.’

‘I want to make something clear, Marquez. I’m not apologizing for anything yet and you and I aren’t on the same side of the table until I see a lot more.’

Marquez stared at him wondering if he was wasting his time. He read self righteousness in Voight’s look and believed him. Voight wasn’t apologizing for anything. He debated then continued.

‘There was a raid of a warehouse in LA about a week ago. A robbery unit went looking for a truckload of flat-screen TVs that got lost on its way to a Best Buy distribution point. They didn’t find the truck with the TVs but they did find a murder victim, a young Latino man who was dropped with two shots to the head. They believe he was guarding approximately a million dollars worth of illegal animal products. About three hundred thousand of that was in elephant tusk and the value on all of it may be more. I need to go there and meet with US Fish and Wildlife and it may turn out that murder ties to Rider.’

‘But it’s not tied to him yet?’

‘No, but it was a kid guarding the stash who got executed just ahead of the police raid. He was probably taken out so he couldn’t talk.’

‘I’m listening, but help me out here. What makes elephant tusk worth a thousand a pound? Do they cure brain cancer and heart disease or make your dick hard?’

‘None of the above, they get carved into knick-knacks, bookends, that kind of thing.’

Voight ordered another beer and started to eat again as he put it together. He looked up from his plate as he reached a conclusion.

‘If you’re telling me this, then you’ve already talked to your FBI friends.’

‘I have and they’re helping dig for a Jim Colson who went missing a decade or so ago.’

‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Even if you don’t, I think you and I are on the same side.’

‘Despite everything?’

‘Yes, despite you letting the sheriff tell you how to investigate.’

Voight put his fork down. He leaned back in the booth, started to say something and Marquez cut him off.

‘A couple of years ago, after you and I first bumped heads, I asked a friend at LAPD how good you were as a homicide detective. He told me he’s seen a lot of detectives and only a handful that really have what he called the unteachable thing. He called it unteachable because you can’t identify it when you interview and promote someone. He said you had it.

‘So if you’ve got it, I know you’re not looking at me and never were. You know I didn’t kill Terry and Sarah. The sheriff may think I did kill them but I don’t believe you do. In Harknell’s world Fish and Game is something he occasionally steps in and has to scrape off his shoe and rub off his boots on the lawn grass before he can go back inside a building. I’m sure he encouraged focusing on me and has asked for updates and to be kept in the loop. That’s how I hear him and you can tell me I’m full of shit.’

‘You generally are.’

‘Am I wrong?’

‘As long as I’m lead investigator you won’t become a suspect without hard evidence. It’s a cold case until we learn something new that I can work with. I had hoped the gun was that.’

Voight glanced at two guys seated at the bar but no one was hearing this.

‘There’s a deputy he’s grooming for my job. That’s why he rides me about my weight and everything else. When I brief Harknell, Deputy Turner is in the room to listen and learn. He’s ambitious. He’s got a wife and two kids. He’s a vet and the sheriff trusts that, but he’s also a smart kid and he doesn’t mind volunteering off duty on a Saturday morning to put up ‘Harknell for Sheriff’ signs.

‘But it’s hard to be from a rural area and learn how to manage a homicide investigation. There are only forty-five thousand people in the county and there aren’t that many homicides, not yet anyway, so the job involves a lot of other things as well. Turner is already as good as or better than me at some of those and he’s loyal to the sheriff, and he’s a good guy, but combat doesn’t teach you investigative skills and that’s all that’s holding Harknell back from replacing me.’

‘Then let me help you in any way I can. I want to see their murders solved. I want to take Colson down if he’s Rider. Let’s join up here.’

He couldn’t read anything in Voight’s eyes so he said, ‘Think about it and call me.’

When he left Voight was staring out across the room, but he did call. By then Marquez was a hundred miles farther south and the rain had started.

‘All right, Marquez, I’m in. We’ll try to work together, but use this number when you call me. It’s my personal cell and no one other than me looks at what calls I’ve made. I’ll try calling Lisa Sorzak tonight.’

M
arquez knew a retired warden who lived in a cabin at timberline in the eastern Sierra. There was no road to the cabin and supplies were hiked in or brought in by mule. Rossini was the ex-warden’s name and he stayed there from late May until the first heavy snow of the fall and then took a bus to Arizona and lived the rest of the year in a mobile home in the driveway of his sister’s house in Phoenix. He didn’t own a car. He told Marquez he was done driving. He had patrolled enough to never want to drive again, and had once told Marquez that the same thing would happen to him.

Marquez understood that. After the long drive home tonight and food and a shower and two in the morning sex with Katherine that left him deep asleep he did not want to move. Nor did he want to answer his phone but maybe he sensed what was coming. He slid his hand from the warmth of Katherine and answered his cell phone as he slid out of bed. He picked his clothes off the chair and walked down the hall to the front room. Lisa Sorzak’s voice was warm and alert and edged with something offered as humor but wasn’t.

‘Are you in bed with your wife?’

‘I’m home.’

‘I called the investigator.’

‘You called Voight.’

‘That’s right, and it wasn’t very satisfying. It was like talking to a door knob. I’m calling you because Jim wants to meet with you. He wants to make a deal but you have to go to him alone.’

Marquez dressed slowly and listened as he moved into the kitchen and made coffee. The intensity of her voice, its low controlled urgency disturbed him.

‘When did you talk to Colson?’

‘Tonight and I told him you found me in the cabin and that you were there when it burned. I hope you don’t mind this, but I said you knew that he sent the two goons.’

Marquez didn’t know that. He knew she might have left in the boat if he hadn’t gotten back down off the slope in time. He didn’t know anything about where the men came from except that they were hired guns, a Nebraska con who skipped out on parole and a local named Tom White. They were paid five thousand each up front and promised another five grand after she was confirmed dead. They didn’t know who hired them. It was done through phone calls and a third party whose name they hadn’t yet given up.

‘He laughed when I told him the cabin was gone.’

‘Did you hike back up there?’

‘Yesterday. It burned to the ground and trees around it will die. He said now I have no place to hide. If you go on his terms you need to be very careful.’

‘Why does he want to meet?’

‘He says he wants out of the business. That’s all I know.’ She paused before adding, ‘You don’t have to meet him and I wouldn’t if I were you.’

‘Set it up.’

‘He may try to kill you.’

‘Do it anyway.’

‘Keep your phone close.’ She broke the connection a moment later.

L
ate that morning Faesy parked his food truck and walked a half-mile to an underground parking garage in San Francisco’s Sunset District. Fifteen minutes later as he drove a ten-foot U-Haul van out of the garage Marquez got a call from Muller.

‘He’s headed your way in a U-Haul and we’re on him. It looks like he plans to cross the Golden Gate Bridge.’

‘Okay, I’m rolling.’

Marquez stayed on the phone with Muller as he left the house and drove down off Mount Tamalpais to the freeway. Muller’s voice crackled in and out.

‘If he crosses the Golden Gate he’s probably going north and we’ll fall back and let you lead for fifty miles if you’re okay with that. Last time we followed him as far as the California/Oregon border and then let him go. I couldn’t get cleared to go farther. Hang on, he just ran a red and almost took out a cyclist. I’m not sure what he’s doing here.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s dropped off and down to Crissy Field and watching his side mirrors. He may know we’re here but he doesn’t seem to know the rolling door on the end of the truck isn’t latched. It’s bouncing up and down every time he hits a rut. It’s almost bouncing high enough for me to get a look inside.’

Marquez reached the freeway and got on southbound toward San Francisco. As he did, Muller’s voice filled the pickup cab again.

‘Here we go, he’s committing to that little road that feeds the bridge northbound. Coming your way, John, and whatever he’s got in there is starting to slide out.’

Muller laughed and someone else on his team started laughing too and Marquez could hear the laughter was real. They usually had to work hard and still get lucky to get a glimpse of what was being shipped, and here Faesy’s load might slide out the back on the steep climb up from Crissy Field.

From Muller’s back and forth with his team Marquez gathered the load was wrapped in a white tarp held together with duct tape. On the climb up from Crissy it slid halfway out. He heard Muller’s disbelief and an SOU warden speculating that Faesy would get out at the stop sign before entering the bridge traffic and close the back. But he didn’t seem to realize it was happening and drove as if trying to lose a tail.

When Faesy reached the stop sign he barely slowed and the cars that honked behind didn’t do so to let him know his cargo was sliding out. They honked because he cut them off and veered hard left as he passed the toll booths. The bundle was slung sideways as he swerved into the next lane and just before the south tower it fell out of the truck. The tape tore loose as it hit the roadbed and the contents scattered across the north and southbound lanes.

Brake lights rippled and traffic slowed to a stop just as Marquez got onto the bridge. The SOU and Faesy were on the northbound side and trapped in stalled traffic. Marquez had an idea. He called Muller.

‘Can you see what dropped?’

‘No, my view is blocked by cars. I see Faesy is out of his truck and trying to get whatever it is back in his truck.’

‘Can you get there?’

‘I can’t get anywhere. It’s bumper to bumper.’

Marquez looked across at the northbound side of the bridge. Everybody ahead of the U-Haul kept going and was off the bridge and the lanes ahead of Faesy’s parked U-Haul were empty. He looked at that and Muller spoke again. ‘It looks like a couple of guys are helping pick up what spilled. What do you think?’

‘I think I can get there. I’m going to cross to the northbound side.’

Marquez drove through the orange cones and then accelerated up the empty lanes. When he got to mid span he saw the U-Haul with the driver’s door open. He closed in and saw Faesy and two other motorists carrying elephant tusks and wheeled his car around and parked just ahead of the U-Haul. He got out fast and stopped the clean-up operation, then took photos that included the U-Haul and the tusks. He counted twenty-two tusks and arrested Faesy and moved him next to the U-Haul before the CHP arrived.