Die-Off (33 page)

‘The first round died of a virus, the second was stopped, and this is the third. If it makes it into the river there’s nothing we can do and you’ll become known as the biologist who micro-managed a multi species die-off. You’ll go to prison and you’ll see a flood of civil suits that will continue after you’re out of prison as the pike take over and the natives die-off. You’ll never see a share of the money Hauser promised you, but the good news is you’ll never have to worry about money again. You won’t have any. How much did Hauser promise you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about?’

But he did and Marquez could picture Peason’s role now. Hauser had promised him something substantial, enough to where Peason had hung on until the end. Peason had gambled and lost and couldn’t accept that. He didn’t see ENTR trying to pin it all on him and Hauser and the promise of money going away.

He gave Peason a few minutes and then stepped away and called Wheeler to see if he could get his plane in the air. Wheeler said thirty minutes. Questioning Peason could wait. All that mattered now was stopping that truck. He walked back over to Peason and sat down.

‘Do you want to stay and help us or should we run you down to the county jail and get you booked?’

Turned out the scientist in him didn’t need much time to do a deep analysis. Five minutes was all he needed to think it through. He wanted to help.

M
arquez took Peason with him. He knew Peason hadn’t told him everything and when Wheeler couldn’t find a blue pickup with an orange tarp over the bed after flying Highway 99, his gut feeling got a little deeper. He watched Peason nervously adjusting his glasses and the zipper of his fleece coat and asked again, ‘Orange tarp, blue Ford pickup?’

‘Same as I told you before.’

‘We aren’t finding it from the air.’

‘Maybe your pilot flew over when they were under a gas station canopy.’

‘Or maybe they took a different road.’

‘This is the highway they’re supposed to drive.’

‘Call the driver.’

‘I don’t have his number.’

‘Someone knows where they are. Call them.’

‘Your plane will find them.’

But the spotter plane didn’t find them. It was Muller and four of the SOU team in the late afternoon who picked up on a white pickup towing a power boat, its bed covered with a gray tarp. The pickup pulled in at Brannan Island State Recreation Area and drove through and drove out and continued up the road to the Isleton Launch Ramp near the Ramos Oil Company. The two men in the pickup started to back down that ramp then changed their minds and pulled out and Muller kept two of the team with them as they checked out other boat launches before returning to the Brannan Island Recreation Area.

But they didn’t launch their boat, and instead spread food out on one of the picnic tables and started a charcoal fire in one of the barbecue stations. Two steaks marinated in a shallow plastic dish as the coals readied. One of the men walked down at the boat launch and toed the invasive water hyacinth that had grown up the launch ramp while the other swigged beer and served potato salad onto paper plates and kept the sea gulls at bay.

Muller pulled out the SOU wardens just as the steaks were hitting the coals. He told Marquez they had another pickup to check out on a levee road above prospect Slough, and the pair at Brennan were cooking and eating, so probably the wrong pickup.

Marquez reached the delta soon after. He pulled off on the shoulder outside Isleton and turned to Peason.

‘You’re not going to ride any farther with me, Barry. I want you to get out and face the truck. I’m going to arrest you and there’s a warden on the way who will take you to get booked.’

‘Why are you doing this after I gave you the Oregon and Washington hatcheries?’

‘You mean, why am I double-crossing you?’

‘Yes!’

‘I don’t want you riding with me as we look for the pike you raised. I’m in a bad mood, Barry, and I don’t trust you much. Turn around.’

Marquez put restraints on his wrists and a warden arrived and Marquez touched Peason’s right shoulder. ‘Stay here. I’m going to talk to the warden a minute before we get you loaded up. And I’m going to borrow your phone a minute too.’

He pulled a cell phone from Peason’s coat as he stepped away and Peason yelled, ‘You can’t do that. You don’t have the right. That’s illegal.’

Marquez checked text messages and then forwarded the last dozen to himself. The last text Peason sent read: ‘launching rio.’ He read emails and scrolled through Contacts and forwarded several to himself. He pulled the battery from the phone and gave it to the warden after turning Peason over.

‘Where’s my phone?’

‘I slid it back into your pocket. Have you ever been arrested before?’

‘No.’

‘You’re going to have to give up your phone and wallet when they book you. Same thing when you do prison time, but they’ll give it back to you when you get out. The warden has your phone battery. If you remember anything before you’re booked and charged then call me and I’ll sit with the district attorney’s office and tell them in the very end you helped us. Or you could do that right now. What’s “launching rio” mean?’

Peason shrugged and Marquez could only come up with one answer for the biologist to do this. Money.

He talked to Muller as he pulled away. ‘I’m five minutes from the Brannan Recreation launch. Peason got a text off as we were driving that reads, “launching rio,” and this isn’t Rio de Janeiro.’

It was Muller’s team and Muller’s call about how to do this. Muller said, ‘Hold on, John,’ and got on his radio as Marquez passed a slow car and got back into his lane. Thirty seconds later, as he made the left turn into the Brannan Recreation Area, the driver he had passed sat on her horn and flipped him off as she went by. He wound along the narrow asphalt road and Muller came back with, ‘Are you there?’

‘I’m here and the boat is in the water with one guy in it and the other running down to the boat right now. He’s going to get in before I get to him and I’m looking at coolers stacked in the back. This is it.’

The second man climbed on the bow and the boat chugged into reverse. They watched Marquez drive down to the boat launch and jump out and though they weren’t looking at a uniform, they knew he was after them. One was Hispanic, one white, both young, the driver’s gaze leaving him as he straightened the boat out and put his sunglasses on. The stern rode low with the weight of the fish coolers and the boat slowly started upriver.

Marquez didn’t yell Fish and Game because he didn’t want them to dump the evidence. He called Muller, who said they’d get a boat in the water, but what they really needed was a helicopter and all he could do now was follow the boat from the highway. He drove out of Brennan and the steel frame of the Rio Vista Bridge came into view as SOU recruited a fisherman’s boat. Two SOU wardens got on-board and Marquez stopped at the Rio Vista Bridge.

He jogged out the pedestrian walkway and saw the boat with the pike upriver and read the uncertainty of the two men in it. Their boat slowed and he talked with Muller and said, ‘I’m standing on the rio part. I can see the SOU wardens on a fisherman’s boat and they’re trying to hail the guys with the coolers right now.’

The pair with the coolers were probably expecting a call with directions on where to empty the coolers, how close to shore, how far apart. Maybe that call would have come from Peason, but they were on their own now and in trouble. When they saw the boat with the two wardens coming toward them they turned and accelerated downstream. Marquez read that as they were giving up and running back to their truck.

He ran back to his own truck, shoes clanging on the metal bridge and traffic slowing as a driver or two turned to watch him. Before he reached his pickup the boat passed beneath him. When he got to the Brannan Island Recreation Area he was ahead of Muller and any of the SOU and the two men were already out of the water.

One was unhitching the boat trailer and the other in the driver’s seat starting the engine. He had them easily, but the boat was still in the water and he saw they had freed the ties holding the coolers and guessed their plan was to empty the coolers and then let them float off before dragging the boat out.

But he was wrong. They were leaving the boat behind. One man ran back to it just ahead of Marquez. He shoved the stick in reverse and jumped out of the boat into the water and made his way out as his buddy backed up to pick him up.

Now the boat was thirty yards offshore and drifting with the river as it spun circles in reverse. Stern heavy, it was taking on water and moving toward shoreline trees. Marquez ran down the shoreline, pulling his coat off. He kicked off his shoes and was in the cold water and swimming as the right rear of the boat tipped up against a snag. The engines whined as they tried to push the boat and it was heavy with water when he got there. He pulled himself onboard just before the props swung and caught him as the boat came free of the snag.

He climbed over the coolers, knocked the stick into neutral, reached for the bilge pump switch as one engine died. He needed to back out of the willow branches and now, and when the remaining engine coughed he went to full power and as the water-filled boat churned in reverse he thought
there’s no other way, I’ve got to bring it around
.

He knew if the engine died here it was over but the boat came around and he got the bow pointed back toward the boat launch ramp. He made slow forward progress and the boat with SOU wardens closed in. He tied the line they threw to the bow just before the engine died.

The fisherman’s boat had a lone Evinrude engine without much horsepower but it was enough to slowly drag the pike boat back to the launch. Then they used the trailer the two men had left behind. Marquez stayed with the boat as it was pulled out and under his hand resting on a cooler he felt the pike moving. He felt their force and the vibration of their movement, but it was a thing again to see them as they cleared the water and parked and opened the cooler lids. Thousands of pike fingerlings writhed over each other, and he stared and then looked at the warden on the phone with Muller who signaled now with a fist pump that the two men had been apprehended.

Now there was a debate about transporting the fish and Marquez cut it off. They had videotape and they could take samples. They had all the evidence they needed. He pointed.

‘Over there in the grass.’ He picked up one handle on one end of the cooler nearest him as one of the SOU grabbed the other handle and they dumped the first cooler in the grass. With everybody hauling the rest, sixteen coolers were empty in ten minutes. The pike fingerlings flopped in the grass and one of the wardens moved his truck closer and put his headlights on as the dusk came on.

Marquez stood in the cold in his wet clothes waiting for the last one to die. But there was no righteousness in that. There was only relief and when they were dead they shoveled them back into the coolers and the coolers were loaded onto the area warden’s truck with jokes about the smell.

He walked back to his truck and found a dry sweatshirt and jeans and changed standing in the darkness. He started the engine and got the heater going, but he didn’t leave yet. He pulled his phone and read the emails he’d forwarded from Peason’s phone then went back over the text messages and sat there a long time thinking about Hauser and Peason and Colson and Barbara Jones and the sheriff. He thought about everything that had happened with Colson and it hit him. There was only one answer that fit.

A
call came from Voight the next morning as Marquez got into Weaverville and drove past a huge stack of logs that steamed in the early sun. Voight was huffing but his breathing slowed as he talked, so maybe he was coming off one of his morning walks.

‘I won’t string you out. We don’t have enough to charge Harknell yet, but we’re going in the right direction.’

‘What did you find on the boat?’

They had found a locked waterproof first-aid cabinet with a box of ammunition in it, two folding combat knives, a disassembled Glock hand gun, fifteen hundred dollars in cash, a Droid X cell phone minus its battery and very water damaged. The cell phone’s serial number did not match Sarah Steiner’s missing phone and Harknell wouldn’t say why it was there. In the cabinet was also a short club made of black walnut with a leather wrist band and a piece of steel inset into the fire-hardened head of the club. There was blood on the head of the club, enough to pull DNA samples.

‘Do any of those items mean anything to you?’

‘Are Ellis’ and Steiner’s names in the notebook?’

‘They are and so are half a dozen groups and organizations that focus on water.’

‘Send me a photo of the club.’

The photo came through a few minutes later but he didn’t look at it yet. He parked. From here he could see the green metal roof of Sorzak’s bar and the lot out front. There were no cars in the lot yet. It was early and cold and the air smelled of wood smoke. Now he opened the photo of the club head and thought about Harknell, who didn’t keep this club as a defensive weapon, but rather as something to wield control. He enlarged the photo, studied the rounded head and saw the dried blood Voight talked about.

He remembered Colson leaning over, showing him the back of his skull. The rounded curve of the dark walnut was a good match for the wound. He stared at it and called Voight.

‘It’s going to be Colson’s blood on the club.’

‘That’s what I think too, but why did Harknell do it?’

‘Colson wouldn’t pay him anymore. Colson wanted out. He wanted to quit his business and disappear.’

‘Who killed him?’

‘Whoever plans to take over his business.’

‘And who’s that?’

‘I have a pretty good guess, but that’s all, right now. I’ll call you later.’

The slump-shouldered bartender’s green Chevy Tahoe pulled in now and Marquez watched him get out, unlock, and go inside. He looked eager to get out of the cold. A few minutes later a white panel van pulled up and parked alongside the bartender’s rig. Two men got out and one knocked on a service door and the other moved down along the side of the building as if looking for somebody hiding. Marquez put that down to caution. He reached in the glove compartment for binoculars.