Redback (28 page)

Katherine talked Maria out of the car but she broke free and ran back and an exasperated Katherine said, ‘I don’t want her in the car out here alone. The car is way too hot anyway. I don’t know what she’s so upset about. I guess the party is just too much excitement for her.’

‘I’ll talk to her.’

And that was probably where he first connected with Maria. He got in the car and asked, ‘Can I sit with you?’

She didn’t answer. She’d had enough of adults and was feeling sorry for herself and very disappointed after all the expectation of what the party would be. She kept her head pressed against the window. Her left hand gripped the hem of her dress and tears still ran down her cheeks, though she didn’t make a sound.

He lowered the other windows to cool the car off and kept talking to her. He talked her into getting into the front seat where he knew she was used to sitting with her mom and hadn’t been since the three of them started riding together. Her world had been disrupted. The mom she’d had to herself, she didn’t have in the same way anymore.

‘Let’s get out of here for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’

Heads turned as he backed out. The hostess looked over reprovingly at this unnecessary indulgence of a little girl who just needed a nap, and this Marquez, this game warden, leaving in the middle of a party that was a nicer event than he’d probably ever been to. With Maria he stopped and got an ice cream. They drove slowly back and looked at vineyards and she told him about starting first grade and the friend she met, and now she was going to be going to a new school and wouldn’t know anybody at all.

They weren’t gone forty minutes. It didn’t affect the party. It didn’t affect anyone at it except the hostess, but it was the first real connection with his stepdaughter and the start of a conversation that was still going on today. He knew something of how she thought. He knew she had said she was going to Yosemite to get away and clear from her head the tag of being labeled the former girlfriend of an ecoterrorist. Maria was stubborn, independent, and smart. She went somewhere last night with her friends where no one would find them. Still, his heart pounded and his voice was a croak as he swerved off the road and answered the phone. And his body suffused with an almost chemical relief when he learned from Desault that the victim in Rayman’s Hummer was not Maria.

FIFTY-NINE

M
arquez took in her face, the widow’s peak, dark thick brown hair, dark eyes, and straight nose. The victim was similar in age to Maria. She wasn’t much older. The bullet was large caliber to do the damage it did to her throat. Marquez’s gaze went from her destroyed trachea to the manicured nails on her left hand and two rings, then back at her young face again. He had just left the victim and stepped away from the county detective when Maria called.

‘We’re on our way home. I’m really sorry I didn’t call back. We were up near the Fourth Recess last night and there was no cell reception. I’m staying with friends the next few days. I won’t be at my house, but I’ll have my phone.’

He heard her friends in the background. He heard laughing and relief swept over him again, and sadness for the victim. Maria signed off as he took a call from Desault. He told Desault he had just talked with Maria and that he was en route from Bishop to Los Angeles.

‘I’ll fly down and meet you,’ Desault said. ‘This may tie to Stoval.’

When Marquez reached the LA Basin it was near dusk. Desault flew in and they ate dinner together. The FBI had picked up on a rumor relayed through the DEA in El Paso that Zeta assassins had been hired to take out the guy who blew the pumps in California. Hired through a third party for big cash, this from a DEA informant considered reliable.

‘What do you make of that?’ Desault asked.

Marquez didn’t make anything of it yet. It was odd. He checked into a motel and the next morning he and Desault sat down with Rayman and his lawyer. When Rayman saw Marquez he said, ‘He took my Hummer.’

‘Who did?’

‘I gave him your message and he took my Hummer, said he was going to borrow it.’

The lawyer tried to shut it down but Rayman kept talking and in twenty minutes they had an account of the meeting with Stoval. Obviously, Stoval knew the police would beeline to Rayman, and so there was some message, some as yet uncovered reason. With the lawyer there he didn’t want to question Rayman much about that. The lawyer was no doubt a cartel lawyer, there to listen as well as advise, and Desault had been told there was a tentative ID on the victim, possibly to be confirmed this afternoon.

They left Rayman, and then Marquez left for San Diego.

‘This is about Sheryl Javits,’ he told Desault. ‘I’ve got to go see a guy I knew as an ATF agent years ago.’

SIXTY

P
ete Phelps had a belly he didn’t used to have. He had a wife, a big white stucco house in San Diego with a pool, and a couple of little Phelps who looked like they were eight to ten years old. They looked like sweet kids so maybe they had their mother’s genes. Marquez watched Phelps leave the house, drop the kids at school, and then stop and pick up coffee before going into the office. It turned out Phelps was a mortgage broker not a real estate broker. He specialized in subprime loans. Business was off lately.

Using binoculars he watched Phelps in his office flirting with his receptionist. Watching him was boring, but toward the end of the afternoon he saw him lean over and give the receptionist a long kiss. He cupped the back of her head with his hand. He held her face to his and glanced outside as he let her go. That wasn’t much leverage, probably would get a laugh out of Phelps, but maybe he could work with it. He called the private investigator friend he’d worked for years ago as he was trying to figure out a career post DEA.

‘You’re anxious to move on this?’ his friend asked.

‘Yeah, I can’t sit in a car in San Diego much longer and watch this guy.’

‘He’s married, got a wife, two kids in school?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then he’ll have it down to a routine. Give him twenty-four hours more. That’s my advice.’

Marquez followed as Phelps picked up the kids and brought them home. His wife arrived and unloaded a Suburban, and it was one of those warm nights where you walk your dog and think you’re lucky to live in a place like this. Lights went off in several rooms at around 10:30 and then Phelps left the house and went grocery shopping. Could be that was his deal, shop when the store was quiet. Except that the real estate firm’s receptionist pulled into the store lot as he went through the checkout line.

Phelps carried two bags of groceries to his car. Then he followed her out of the lot, talking on his cell phone, probably to her, and Marquez trailed them to the driveway of a house for sale. She pulled in and parked where her minivan didn’t show. Phelps parked down the street and walked back. He got in the minivan.

Marquez figured Phelps was working with a window of time and that he wouldn’t waste any now. He gave him five minutes and then walked down the driveway and rapped on the door. He pulled out his badge, held it at window level and said, ‘FBI, open up.’

He knew it would be Phelps who slid the door open and, from working joint operations with the ATF in Baja, that Phelps wouldn’t be intimidated. Not only that, he’d probably recognize the voice. Phelps slid the door open, looked at Marquez and the badge, and then asked with genuine curiosity, ‘How did you end up working for those dipshits?’

‘Get your shoes on and let’s talk.’

Phelps slid the door mostly shut and put his shoes back on and their voices murmured. When Phelps got out she slipped into the driver’s seat, but not before Marquez took a few candid photos. That got everybody angry.

As his girlfriend pulled away, Phelps asked, ‘Is this Sheryl’s bullshit? Is that why you’re here?’

‘Let’s talk in my car.’

‘I’ve got a better idea, how about if you just fuck off.’

‘I can talk to you or talk to your wife, it’s up to you.’

‘When did you turn into a sleaze bag?’

‘Look, Phelps, I’m not here because I want to be. But I’ll do whatever it takes to get the truth out of you.’

‘About what?’

‘You’re not listening.’

Marquez was back in his car before Phelps came up the sidewalk. When Phelps got in on the passenger side and before the door shut, he told Marquez, ‘I showed them canceled checks. I told them her other story was a crock, so what do you want?’

‘I believe Sheryl.’ He waited a beat and lied to Phelps. ‘I don’t care where the money came from and she’s going to lose her career out of this either way, but if you gave her part of the divorce settlement money at the back door, she shouldn’t be going to prison for life.’

‘What are you talking about, prison for life?’

‘They’ve built a case against her that says she took bribes and set Jim Osiers up to get killed. She fed information to the Salazar Cartel and they paid her through a bank account in La Paz. Not only that, but over her career she’s worked any number of joint operations with the FBI and the theory goes she was leaking information for money paid by Emrahain Stoval. She used the money you gave her as an unexplained payment on her house in San Francisco. That money is the bottom brick in their case and they’re searching for the rest. You might hate her, but this isn’t right.’

He couldn’t see all of Phelps’ face, but could see he was very still. When Phelps spoke again his voice was quiet and low.

‘That was family money. It was a real estate deal after my dad died. Sheryl wasn’t entitled to any of it. I paid her just to back her off.’

‘I’ll need it in writing tomorrow morning.’

‘That’s going to get the IRS on my back.’

‘It’s your call, take on your wife, or take on the IRS. You decide which is worse, but I need to hear from you by nine in the morning.’

He got it in writing at 9:30 the next day and called Beth Murkowski. Then he made two copies and did what she asked, took the original to the San Diego DEA Field Office.

He called Sheryl, talked to her, and then he sat down with a double espresso and thought about it. It came down to timing and who had all the needed information and access. He flipped his phone open and flipped it shut, thought some more and then phoned Kerry Anderson. But it wasn’t Anderson who answered. It was a young woman who told him she was Kerry Anderson’s replacement. Anderson’s retirement party had happened last Friday. He’d left on a long awaited Caribbean vacation. She had a phone number and he copied that down and then read an email on his Blackberry from Desault.

It read,
‘Victim identified. Call me.’

SIXTY-ONE

‘
H
er name is Terri Delgado and we can’t and neither can the DEA connect her to Raymond Mendoza. So far, there’s no apparent link. She lived in the LA area, in Brentwood. The family had money and she was trying to break into the film business as a producer. Her parents filed the missing persons report. Does any of this ring any bells with you?’

‘I know who she is. I’ve talked to her. She tipped us to Stoval’s bighorn hunt in the eastern Sierra. She met him at a party in LA and he invited her to go to Vegas with him after his hunt. Instead, she called us.’

‘Called the DFG hotline?’

‘Yes, and it sounds like I got her killed.’

‘You can’t draw that conclusion. What you’ve told me about the hunt may have gotten back to Stoval. It’s been discussed by everyone on the task force.’

‘Yeah, but Raymond’s vehicle, the timing.’

‘The timing works because he was already here to kill her. He wrapped the meeting with Raymond Mendoza into that and improvised with the Hummer. Probably didn’t get the idea to use Mendoza’s Hummer until he was sitting in it.’

Marquez called Chief Blakely at Fish and Game and told her. Then he sat in a room in the LA Field Office with the lights off and once more listened to the archived CALTIP recording of Terri Delgado. In Terri Delgado’s voice he could hear her youth and a mix of guilt and desire to do the right thing in calling a tip, snitching on a guy who’d invited her to four days in Vegas.

It brought him way down. He couldn’t add it up any other way. At Fish and Game they relied on the public, and Marquez felt protective toward anyone who helped them, and yet he may have gotten her killed out of concern for his own family. Stoval would have come for her anyway, Desault claimed, but Marquez wasn’t sure. Rayman gave the message and Stoval questioned Rayman, then took his Hummer and either had Delgado kidnapped and delivered to him – most likely that – or abducted her himself. More likely kidnapped and drugged, Marquez thought, and maybe in response to his threat to Stoval. Or as Desault said, he was here to kill her.

Stoval was getting inside his head. First his name in an intercepted phone call, then a hired gunman sent to Alaska, and now this exhibition murder of Terri Delgado. He didn’t need to kill Delgado. Nothing more was going to happen with the bighorn. He wants to get inside my head, Marquez thought.

What happened next was Rayman got kicked loose. There was no way to hold him, no evidence he had anything to do with Delgado’s murder. Marquez was still in LA and heard about the killing over the radio. When he drove there firemen were hosing off the sidewalk in front of two ATM machines outside a Wells Fargo bank. This was in a mall parking lot less than a mile from Rayman’s stucco house in the hills.