Die-Off (8 page)

V
oight put on his coat before going out to bring Marquez back. The coat was a Men’s Wearhouse number that was too big for him years ago but that fit him now, though nothing fit him this morning. He was uncomfortable with most of what they had planned. He knew he was getting ahead of himself and that was reinforced as he saw Marquez.

He shook Marquez’s hand, Marquez looking about the same—broad-shouldered, rangy, tough, but not a woodsy type and that was really about the eyes. This wasn’t a uniform Fish and Game warden in a DFG vehicle driving around looking for violators. This guy was as dangerous as he was casual.

‘We’re going to do this in an interview room, John. Everything I do with this investigation gets taped, but don’t read anything into it. You okay with that?’

‘That’s fine.’

‘Thanks for making the trip north. You must have come up last night.’

‘I drove up this morning.’

‘You got an early start.’

‘I did.’

Three murder files waited in the interview box, smack in the middle of the table, and Voight encouraged Marquez to open the first file. This was how he was going to roll with it, let him look through everything, a fellow law enforcement officer getting to peruse murder files, though they were not exactly complete. He had removed everything that mattered but no doubt Marquez anticipated that.

Voight explained how they were organized, his face coloring, a light sweat starting on his forehead that was probably blood pressure and expectation. He knew this needed to go just right and he had real doubts about everything he had laid out yesterday with Harknell’s encouragement.

Sheriff Harknell walked into the room right on cue and was all smiles. He clapped Marquez’s back and thanked him for being here. Harknell couldn’t stand the Department of Fish and Game. Harknell heard they were changing their name to the Department of Fish and Wildlife soon and half an hour ago was joking about what he would call the department if he were naming it.

Harknell was proud of his part in getting Marquez here, but the stupid ass didn’t realize it was really Marquez at the wheel, not him. Marquez was trading nothing. The investigation file he sent on this Rider character was a mess, initials for suspects, short notes, references to other Fish and Game investigations, something only an insider could read.

Harknell looked from Marquez to him and without warning asked, ‘Did you get your walk this morning, Rich?’

‘No time for it today.’

‘We have to make time. It’s important. Go take it right now.’

Voight was stunned.

‘What are you talking about, sir? I can’t go anywhere right now.’

‘No, I mean it, and I’ll get started with the warden. I need to get caught up on where we’re at anyway and Warden Marquez needs to read and I’m sure that’ll take some time.’

The way he said it insinuated that Marquez had trouble reading, but if the insult bothered Marquez at all it didn’t show. Marquez looked much more curious that Harknell was sending him off on a walk and making a different statement.

Harknell pulled out a chair and sat down across from Marquez with a concerned frown, talking now as if Voight wasn’t in the room, saying, ‘Rich has a medical condition we’re accommodating as long as he sticks with it. He’s got everything you don’t want—labile hypertension, pre-diabetes, and a list of other conditions he’s got to take care of. We have an agreement that he’s going to do that.’

Harknell turned to Voight.

‘Get out of here, Rich. Go do the walk. We won’t get that far while you’re gone.’

‘I’ll do it later and it’s my business, no one else’s.’

‘You’ve made it department business and you’re going to walk now.’

Voight felt anger surge and the heat that came when his blood pressure jumped. He spent half the night getting ready for Marquez to look at it and didn’t do it so Sheriff Hardass could sit in his chair.

‘Go.’

Voight stood over his chair. He didn’t sit down and the room got smaller. He had a moment of dizziness. Harknell didn’t know shit about homicide investigation. Harknell’s top skill was handing out paper plates at a Kiwanis pancake breakfast and leaning on donors for checks whenever he ran for re-election. He knew zero about solving a murder or getting a suspect to talk.

‘Get going, Rich,’ Harknell said in a stronger voice. ‘The warden and I will still be here.’

The sheriff winked at Marquez.

‘You and I both know Rich already stripped the files. I’m surprised there’s anything left for you to read.’

Voight left the office fuming and headed out on a walk which took him straight to his car. He drove over to the Burger King, bought coffee and then a bite to eat, a breakfast burrito, a large order of hash browns, and two sausage biscuits. This whole set-up was wrong and he knew Marquez sensed it. That’s why he showed up so early.

Questioning him would run through lunch and maybe a lot longer, so it made sense to eat something now. He ate sitting in his car in the sun and then drove the route he was going to say he had walked. As he did, he turned the idea of quitting the department and suing the sheriff. Harknell was way out of bounds ordering him to go walk and it was incredible that his life had come to this, working for this pompous bastard who treated Siskiyou County as a private fiefdom. He finished the last of the coffee and biscuits and walked through the moves with Marquez one more time in his head before parking and going back in.

Marquez’s stepdaughter, Maria, was key in this. She communicated on Facebook with Ellis and Steiner and somehow, he didn’t know precisely how yet, the right information got passed on to Marquez. It let him build his cover and claim he was looking for a suspect the day he showed up at the town meeting and met the girls. He was supposed to be on an undercover buy but instead he was in a high-school gym with Ellis and Steiner and other people who didn’t have to work for a living and could sit around and debate freeing the Klamath River by taking down dams.

Late that night the girls were attacked along a dirt road by the Klamath River. Next day Marquez shows up after the bodies were found. They put out a ‘be-on-the-lookout’ call to all law enforcement for a suspect vehicle and within an hour Marquez is at the crime scene. Siskiyou County has six thousand miles of road and with something like this it takes everybody, but Marquez showing up at the scene was strange.

Voight shook the crumbs off his shirt and coat and when some of them fell on the seat between his legs he lifted himself high enough off the seat to brush a hand under and wipe it clean. That jammed the steering wheel into his gut. He didn’t like the weight he had gained or the sad despair that seemed to dominate his nights and he was alone too much. He didn’t like it that he didn’t just tell the sheriff to go fuck himself; didn’t like what he was willing to take to keep the job.

He hadn’t solved the Ellis and Steiner murders or gotten anywhere on a recent homicide, three months ago when a young man was beaten, kicked and stomped to death by two men. He had good leads on that one that he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. All three had been in the bar drinking and argued and still he hadn’t solved it.

Last week Harknell had asked him to take a ride with him and tell him where things were at on that one. The parents of the young man killed were people he knew. The county only had forty-four thousand people in it, but it was bigger than three US states, something the sheriff seemed to forget. It was a lot of territory to cover, though it did bother Voight that he didn’t seem to have the stamina he once had or the clarity of mind.

He had turned into a note taker – and worse, having written something down, having both heard it or read it and written it down, he still needed to look at the notes later. That never happened when he was younger and he knew the sheriff was looking at him sideways now, thinking of making changes. A deputy, an ambitious Iraq vet who wanted his job, kissed the sheriff’s ass every day.

Voight cleaned the Burger King litter out of the car and walked it over to the trash barrel before going back in. He knew he smelled like fast food, but fuck Harknell.

‘What did you learn?’ he asked Marquez as he pulled a chair back and sat down across from him, smiling, his mouth tight like it was being pulled open with pliers. ‘Did you find the tie to your investigation?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe there isn’t one.’

‘I’m going to tell you why I’m here. The day I met Ellis and Steiner at the high school I had set up to buy from an individual whose identity I didn’t know. He was supposed to meet me and do a small deal with me that would set up a bigger one, but I think he probably always knew who I was. I think this recent tip call says that might have been Rider.’

‘Do you have any other evidence it was?’

‘No, I’ve just been thinking about it.’

‘No.’

‘Do you have a full name or a photo of him, or any kind of likeness?’

‘No.’

‘But you’re sure he exists.’

‘He exists.’

‘Has anyone ever questioned whether he really does exist?’

‘Sure.’

‘Who?’

Marquez smiled. He wasn’t getting it, Voight thought.

‘The captain I report to.’

‘What’s his name?’

He got ready to write it and Marquez watched that and said, ‘Captain Waller. He oversees the SOU and I told him you’d be calling.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Every question you ask is headed that way.’

‘Then we’ll just go there now and get to it.’

‘That’s fine, but before we leave this, Rider is why I’m here. I don’t think you have anything to offer me or would if you did, and that goes double for you, Sheriff. I don’t even have a full name on this guy calling himself Rider and it took me a long time to believe he exists because I’m like you, Rich; most of the time I have to see things to believe them. But I’ve heard the name too many different places and their trafficking operation is large.’

Voight let Marquez talk his wildlife going away thing and his fantastical pursuit of a ghost named Rider. It made him wonder if Marquez was delusional. He was either one hundred percent the real deal or way out there and it was good to get this on tape. Jesus Christ, the taxpayer was funding this guy.

When Marquez finished his explanation for being here and tied it to the search for the gun, Voight made his move. He started it with a lie and though he was good at this with suspects it was still the delicate part.

‘We know you questioned the same people we were talking to after the girls were attacked. It’s not in the files you looked through because I took it out. I took it out along with the rest of the evidence that points toward you as a person of interest.’

Voight paused. He read Marquez’s face and saw Marquez wasn’t making any effort to hide what he felt. He looked disappointed and saddened though everyone in the room knew this conversation was coming and probably the real reason Marquez got an early start was he couldn’t sleep.

‘There was never anyone you were going to meet to do a buy. You tricked your SOU into believing it and used them for cover. The meeting didn’t go down with your animal parts dealer. There was no buy and the undercover team pulled back and you went to the high school where Steiner and Ellis had been invited to sit on a panel and debate. Did you follow them when they left there? We have a witness who says you did and I’ve got more than that. I’ve been piecing things together and you can wave your arms in shock, outrage, and feigned disgust, but it won’t change the facts.

‘You didn’t get the crime scene location from anything we put out to other law enforcement, yet you showed up at the scene within an hour of our BOLO. At some point as an investigator the facts stare you down and later you ask yourself,
why didn’t I see that sooner?
This is one of those times for me.’

‘You’re making a bad mistake, Rich.’

‘Then convince me, because I see a Fish and Game officer who shows up at just the right time in an enormous county and asks to see the bodies of two young women he went out of his way to meet fourteen hours before they were killed. I’ve heard your explanations but you still need to convince me. I don’t feel like I’m getting the whole story. Do you remember sitting in my car and talking after we looked at Ellis’s body?’

‘Of course.’

‘She was half submerged in the water. Whoever killed her took the time to stack rocks on her chest and head to make sure she stayed under. I took you down to see her and you said it looked like a cairn, a grave marker, or that her killer may have worried that the river would rise before she was found and pull her body in. You talked like someone who had thought about it. You had a number of ideas and thoughts you wanted to communicate. You didn’t mention a meeting gone bad with an animal trafficker, but you had all kinds of ideas that day about the murders. Then for a month or two after, you returned my calls. After that it got sporadic. It’s all coming together, John.’

Marquez nodded as if that got through to him and Voight thought,
we’re getting somewhere. He’s been carrying this. It’s why he went up and retrieved the gun. He can’t let it rest. He’s going to talk.
He softened his voice to show sympathy for the burden of guilt.

‘Why was it so important to you to see the body, John? Why didn’t you just get a long way away, fast?’

‘It’s the way I’m wired. It’s what I said earlier. I need to see things. I told you about my stepdaughter checking Facebook and finding Sarah writing about camping along the river. When Siskiyou County asked for help watching for their vehicle I called Maria and that was after your county put out a BOLO. Maria said she’d get on Facebook and see if she could learn anything there. She called me back fifteen minutes later and said based on what they had posted they probably stayed close to the river. Is this why you wanted me to come up, so you could tape this and tell me you’re looking at me?’

‘I am looking at you. I’m close to naming you as a person of interest if not a suspect.’

‘I wouldn’t do that yet. It would do me harm in the long term, and I know that’s fine with the sheriff here, but it wouldn’t do you any good ultimately because I’m not who you’re looking for. But ask your questions, ask all of them. Go ahead.’