Redback (17 page)

‘It’s possible. I mean, it really is. Like you, the eye description grabs me. If he’s putting money into movies, that’s news to me, but, sure, it’s possible.’

Marquez called Muller, the warden in Bishop. Muller listened and then jumped in.

‘I got a call from a biologist monitoring the radio collars on bighorn sheep in the zoological preserve on Mount Williamson,’ Muller said. ‘Two collars haven’t moved for a couple of days. He wanted to know if I’d heard anything from anybody coming off Williamson.’

‘Can he pinpoint the locations of the collars?’

‘He can get close.’

Marquez thought about that a moment. He had time available he wouldn’t otherwise have.

‘If I drive down there, do you want to hike up there tomorrow with me?’

‘Let me check what I’ve got going on, but I think I can do that.’

After hanging up, Marquez made another call, this one to Ted Desault.

‘I heard about your warden, so I understood why you didn’t call back,’ Desault said. ‘I’d still like to meet with you.’

‘I’m driving to the southern Sierra in very early morning.’

‘I’m in Reno. Which way are you driving down?’

‘Do you know Lee Vining?’

‘Sure, the little town just before the road up to Yosemite.’

‘Meet me there at 8:00.’

‘Are you going to get there that early?’

‘I’ll get there, and there’s a place near the center of town called the Latte Da. See you there.’

THIRTY-TWO

D
esault’s dark blue Bureau car was parked up against a chain link fence on a side street half a block from the Latte Da. He sat upright in his seat, but his eyes were closed and after watching him a few moments Marquez realized he was asleep. He read the fatigue on Desault’s face, dark slashes under his eyes, the sag in his cheeks. Etched lines marked his mouth. We’re all older, he thought, and then rapped lightly on the glass.

They bought coffee drinks at the Latte Da and drove across the highway to the Mono Lake Visitors’ Center in Marquez’s truck. There they walked out through the gray soil and sage to a rock overlooking the lake. Gulls wheeled through a blue sky above the tufa islands in the lake. The water was topaz-colored, the snowless mountains to the east pale. The wind smelled of sage and it struck him that neither he nor Desault could have ever imagined that here was where they would meet and measure each other again.

‘I was too much of a hard charger in those days,’ Desault said. ‘I was full of ambition to make a mark and I made a mistake with your DEA group. I still owe you an apology I’ll make now. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I used to think you get information out of people by being tough. It took me another decade to learn it’s the opposite, but then I’m not a fast learner.’

‘Neither am I. I wouldn’t be here if I was.’

‘You’re here because you have to be. You haven’t forgotten what he did.’

‘So make your pitch.’

‘All right, let’s get to it. What I’m doing with the task force is taking a shotgun approach to bringing down Emrahain Stoval. We’re going to try every angle and one of those is an animal angle, the illegal trophy hunting, the trafficking in animals and animal parts. That’s how your name came up. I’d like to bring you on and make you a TFO, a Task Force Officer. Deputize you for a year and give you a Bureau badge. I’ll also run you by the US Marshal’s office and get you deputized there, so you’d be cleared for both articles twenty-one and eighteen. We give it a shot for a year and when it’s over you go back to Fish and Game, or maybe you’ll like being a Fed again. Maybe that’s the big circle for you and you become the animal guy for the Department of Justice.’

Desault took a sip of coffee and continued.

‘I’m talking about giving you a license to chase Stoval around the world. You’d be the one and only for the Bureau, the James Bond of wildlife enforcement.’

‘James Bond.’

‘Sure, why not? The Department of Justice needs a wildlife agent, so it really could grow into something. I’m told you still talk to Kerry Anderson of the DEA. That says you haven’t forgotten, and this is a funded opportunity, Marquez. We’re going to use terrorist dollars and get him. All we have to do is prove he smuggles mixed contraband into the US and leave a few question marks about the contents of the contraband and we’ll be funded.’

‘OK, so I’m James Bond with fur and chasing him around, with what goal?’

‘Build a wildlife trafficking case or help bring him down for poaching a black rhino in Africa. If it’s in the right place, the locals will help.’

‘No one will hold him. He’ll pay and go.’

‘I think we can slow him down and if he shoots the wrong animal or traffics in animals and you can prove it, I think we can lean on police in some of these countries to hold him. If he pays and goes and gets tried in absentia, that’s still a score for the good guys. At that point he’s a fugitive. That’s how we’re going to get him. We’ll bleed him out one small cut at a time. But, look, we’ve studied him. Hunting is a passion for Stoval. He’s less careful there and he’ll make mistakes you’ll be able to work with. I’ve got the money, Marquez. I can send you anyplace he hunts or traffics in animals.’

Even after all this time it reached Marquez. He went years looking to the day he caught up with Stoval. He looked down at the wind-riffled water of Mono as Desault continued.

‘I want your expertise, your grit, your ability to get it done. No one else has your resume. I’ll pay for translators, guides, vehicles, equipment, whatever you need. Anywhere the US flag flies you’ve got jurisdiction. In most foreign countries we’ll have to work through the State Department, but once things are in place I can bring agents in to back you up. That’s a sketch but you’ll have all the latitude you want. I’m looking to you to figure it out. I’m your backstop. I’m resource when you need it. I’ll get you new creds and a passport, and you’ll travel on behalf of the US Department of Justice. You’ll go anywhere in the world you think it’s going to help us take him down.’

‘You’ve said that. I get it. I’m just wondering if it could work.’

‘Look, I’ve got people trying to unravel bank accounts, people tracing the arms trading, drugs, counterfeiting, money laundering, you name it. I’ve got an army trying to smoke this guy’s operations and I tell my guys all the time, we are not as bright as Stoval, but we can wear him down.’ His voice rose a notch. ‘We can bring this guy down, Marquez. We can finally bring him down. I’m giving you a chance to go after a major player in the black market for animal parts who killed friends of yours.’

‘No, it’s like you said, you’re looking for a new angle for your task force and when you started looking at poaching, my name made the list.’

Desault shook his head. ‘Shit, I thought you’d jump at this.’ Marquez didn’t answer that and Desault misread his silence.

‘All right, at least I offered it to you.’

‘Hey, thanks for thinking of me.’

That was everything about the Bureau and task forces Marquez didn’t like. Look around for who would be useful and call them up and tell them how lucky they are to be chosen. He poured his coffee into the gray sand and said, ‘I’ll take you back to your car.’

After they crossed the highway and Desault got out, he didn’t shut the passenger door, instead held on to it and leaned in to talk at Marquez.

‘Not everybody agrees with me, Marquez, but I think the same person who got him the Fifty-twos he gave you in the bull ring is still active. They went dormant for a long time and then started up quietly again. In the last year they’ve been very active. Information is going out and some of it is getting sold to the wrong people. There’s so much suspicion my task force isn’t even in the real loop. That’s what this is about. We’re back to the wall with this guy. That’s why we’re looking for any legal means, including animal trafficking and his bullshit trophy hunting. I talked with a couple of US Fish and Wildlife agents before you. I wasn’t eager to dig up the past with you, anymore than you were eager to see me. But, you know what, those guys over at Fish and Wildlife do a lot of administrative stuff. They sit in on too many meetings and I started thinking that if I send one of them after Stoval, I may as well send them out with body bags so they can be mailed home.

‘Then I really began to ask around and that’s when your name kept coming up. So now I’m saying to you, tell me what you need and I’ll get whatever it is you want. You’ll have autonomy. We’ll work together, but you’re the animal guy.’

Marquez reached around and grabbed his logbook. He opened it to a blank page and handed the book to Desault.

‘Give me the best numbers to reach you at and several more days and I’ll call you.’

He watched him write and fold the book shut and lay it on the passenger seat. He leaned in before shutting the door and said, ‘Call my cell. I don’t care what time of day. I keep my phone with me always. I’ll be waiting for your call. I’ve got a feeling about this. We need you.’

‘Enough.’

Desault pointed a finger and said, ‘Call me.’ Then he let the door fall shut.

THIRTY-THREE

A
drian Muller kept his head buzzed and stood about six foot, two hundred pounds with little fat. He ran every other day and cycled or mountain-biked in between. After three tours in Iraq he also flinched at a car door slamming and had a jumpy restlessness that the mountains might eventually take care of. Or it might stay with him for life, hard to say. Marquez knew several Vietnam vets who never got over it.

Muller returned home to Bishop in the Owens Valley within sight of the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada. He’d gone through warden school in Santa Rosa a couple of years ago. He was new to warden work but not to the mountains. He was ambitious, smart, and confident. His wife, Jen, was a minor celebrity as a climber, and moved here for the rock before Muller met her. Eight months ago, barely a year and change into being a warden, Muller had applied to join the SOU and Marquez had met him then. He left it with Muller that he needed to work as an area warden longer first. That was not the answer Muller wanted, so there was some tension this morning as they shook hands.

The Fish and Game office was on West Line Street in a building that looked like a converted motel. A sign on a window read
California Department of Fish and Game
. Out front was a small lawn, hedges, and a place to park Marquez’s truck. They drove south toward Independence in Muller’s Fish and Game rig.

‘It’s going to be a steep climb up to Anvil Camp,’ Muller said. ‘How are you with altitude?’

‘I’m usually fine.’

‘If you think it’s a problem at all, I don’t mind going up alone.’

Marquez smiled.

‘I think they spent a night there,’ Muller said. ‘I found a backpacker who may have seen them.’

‘You found a backpacker after you talked to me?’

‘I called a friend who works at the ranger station in Lone Pine and she checked permits for me. Three backcountry permits got pulled for Anvil Camp, none in the name you gave me. What is it again?’

‘Maitland. Patrick Maitland.’

‘Right, and there aren’t any in that name, but I’ve got names and numbers on the other backpackers. Do you want them?’

Marquez copied those numbers down as they drove. In Independence they went west toward the mountains on Onion Valley Road until they reached the dirt track that broke off toward the Mount Williamson trailhead. Few peaks in the lower forty-eight were bigger than Williamson. Only Whitney and White Mountain Peak were taller. California bighorn summered above ten thousand feet and in the winter, if mountain lion didn’t force them to stay high, they dropped out of the preserve to around five thousand feet for better grazing. Right now, after the unusually light winter’s snow, they were moving back into the high country. But Muller and Marquez weren’t chasing the bighorn. They shouldered backpacks and hiked toward the stationary radio collars.

The trail followed Symmes Creek, crossing it several times before making a long switchbacking climb up through trees and rock, rising twenty-four hundred feet to a saddle that looked across at the big granite face of Mount Williamson. Many of the chutes had already melted off and the rock was dark. It was the earliest melt Marquez could remember, but he was glad it was as warm as it was this morning and after the climb up from Symmes Creek, it felt good to sit in the sun and take a break.

They slept at Anvil Camp that night and at first light Muller spread a topo map and marked the route he thought they should follow. Half a mile along that route they stowed their gear and hiked five miles through loose talus and the occasional stand of limber pine, both climbing and descending as they followed sheep trails. On the steep talus slopes they sent loose rock sliding with each footstep as Muller worked off a hand-held GPS unit and they moved toward the coordinates the biologist had given.

When they got closer they smelled the carcasses. It happened just as they crossed under a small outcropping of rock. The wind carried up the mountain and on it the dead. Then it was easy to find them, two male bighorn, both decapitated, and not just horns but the heads gone as well. Not easy to carry a head out from here and Marquez stopped and thought about that. The body of one lay with its hind legs in the flow of a small snowmelt stream, the other in the sparse brush. Coyote and birds had fed on both.