The ocean darkened and the horizon fog went from purple to black as night fell. Marquez stopped in Half Moon Bay and picked up three chicken tacos and a large coffee to go, then drove to the condo they’d borrowed to watch Pillar Point Harbor. Shauf and Alvarez were waiting there. After he’d pulled into the lot and gotten out, he took another call from Ruter. He put the tacos and coffee on the roof of the Explorer and leaned back in to get the phone.
“We can do it tonight, after all,” Ruter said, and Marquez hesitated, thinking about it before answering.
“See you in four hours,” he said.
Marquez called Shauf and Alvarez rather than walk up the two flights, told them the situation and was backing out of the parking space before remembering the tacos and coffee were on the roof. The coffee bumped off a side window and splashed onto the street, but the tacos hadn’t slid off yet and he dropped them on the passenger seat, thinking he’d stop for coffee again somewhere up the road.
But he never did. He called Ruter when he was a half hour out and checked in with the team again. They’d placed a GPS transponder on Bailey’s boat after he’d gone to a bar in Half Moon Bay. Tracking the boat with the GPS unit should be easy, but Marquez wanted visual surveillance and had called the Coast Guard about a helicopter flight. It was a funny thing; they’d found that poachers were used to the orange and white copters and didn’t associate them with game wardens. He bit into one of the cold tacos as he listened to Ruter go on about Davies and it occurred to him he’d have to give Petersen a heads-up that he’d be getting into Bragg later tonight.
Davies was in the interview box alone, his eyes tracing the walls, when Marquez arrived. He held out his arms to show Marquez the cuffs.
“They’re trying to charge me for Huega’s murder, Lieutenant.”
“Were you at Guyanno when Stocker and Han were killed?”
“No.” Davies stared back at him. “I came up with that to scare Danny, but it turns out he was there.”
“Huega was?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How do you know?”
“We were selling to the same people.”
“Selling abalone?”
“It was the only way to get close to them. I’ve got the money, I’ve been holding it for you.” When Marquez didn’t respond, Davies repeated, “It was the only way.” Marquez thought he saw sadness before the steady intensity returned to Davies’s eyes. “I didn’t kill Danny. He swam in and I watched him start down the beach.” Davies wiped the side of his face on his shoulder. His forehead carried the dull gleam of oil and he was unshaven. According to Ruter, he’d refused to eat or drink. “And he was fine then.”
Marquez wanted to keep the questioning on Huega being at Guyanno during the murders, but went with the shift now.
“Somebody knew where to find Huega,” Marquez said. “But you were the only one who knew where he was. What explains that?”
“Somebody was keeping track of him, but, hell, you know, around here you just listen to the police radios and they were buzzing that night. Any fool can keep track of what these cops talk about.”
“They think you set Huega up.”
“Look, the fat man out there listening had Danny ready to testify he’d seen a knife like the one used at Guyanno on my boat. I mean, he was cutting a deal with him, Lieutenant, as in dirty cop, and Danny was going along because they had him on a dope dealing charge and they were trading that with him. Anything I did, I had to do.” Marquez had heard this self-righteous rap from Davies three or four times now. He felt the long, fast drive up, the two cups of coffee he’d had getting briefed by Ruter when he’d arrived. The coffee made his nerves vibrate and his stomach sour. He knew Ruter was convinced of Davies’s involvement and was frustrated that he couldn’t bring charges or get Davies to confess to assisting the killers. Davies was admitting to being in contact with these poachers and selling abalone to them, but wouldn’t take it any further than that, even when they hinted at immunity from prosecution. He’s not giving me the numbers either, Marquez thought. So why’d Davies want me here? Just to confess he’d sold abalone? That seemed small in light of everything else.
“You’re thinking I’m a head case, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“I’m thinking this is the time to tell me what you really know.”
“Danny got into dope with them and that was the part that went bad on him. It was more than just abalone. They’ve been running dope for growers up in Humboldt and selling it to these same people buying abalone.” The crow’s feet around Davies’s eyes, the wrinkles that lined his mouth, whose cause Marquez had put down to sun and wind, he now saw formed in part by anxiety. “They took out Stocker and Han because those two had cheated them. They were already looking for Danny when he got on my boat.”
“You sound like you’re sure of that.”
“They asked me where to find him after Guyanno. Stocker, Han, and Danny, they were rotating their diving so two of them are out every day the weather permits. They’d been going at it for seven weeks, trying to pull a hundred abalone a day, about five grand worth. That was their goal, but their deal was another five bucks each if they delivered it already shucked, so Stocker started looking around for a place no one would pick up on him. Danny said they’d been beating their average for seven weeks, so I figure they’d been paid a quarter million so far. Some of that cash they used to buy dope, and then they sold the dope to the same abalone guys. It was all a big circle and they were making it big time. That’s why they couldn’t keep quiet about it. They used the Lost Coast for some of their dope smuggling and that’s why I ran Danny up there, so he could show me where.”
“And did he?”
“We never got that far. He pulled the gun and we got into it and then I found he was wired up.”
Marquez had heard the gun story, the fight on the boat Davies had described to Ruter. Skepticism must have shown on his face because Davies reacted now.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Tell me what Huega told you about Guyanno.”
“Do you think I’m in with them?”
“No.”
“But you think I’ve fucked up.”
“You’re in a fucking mess, I’m sure of that. What happened? Were they robbed?”
“Okay, look, this is what Danny told me. He’d been drinking in town with Stocker and Han and they were all going to party a little more that night and dive in the morning.”
“When was this?”
“The night they were killed. He left his truck near the bar and rode up with Stocker to the campground, figuring to get his truck the next morning because they were going out early anyway. He was in the cab of Stocker’s truck because he didn’t have a sleeping bag. Danny said after they’d gone to bed, he smoked a joint and listened to the radio while lying on the truck seat. He went to sleep and he wasn’t sure what woke him up. He didn’t hear their car, didn’t see headlights, but he thinks it was yelling that woke him up, maybe Stocker yelling. There was no one in the campsite and then he heard screaming farther up the trail. They were putting all their attention to Han when Danny got near enough to see. Han broke free and ran and they shot him, then dragged him back and he saw the man with the silvery hair bend over him. He said Han’s screams carried down the canyon. It was Han they really wanted to hurt.”
“He saw it all?”
“No, he took off, got his ass down that trail, rolled Stocker’s truck out of the lot and started it before the road bumps up. The truck is somewhere up in those dirt roads in the mountains along the Lost Coast. Huega’s ex knows where he hid it. So you know they came down, saw the truck was gone and put it together. The next morning I met you there and by the afternoon they’d called me looking for Huega.”
“Why didn’t you tell the detectives?”
“Because their minds are already made up.”
“And you’ve been making up stories,” Marquez said.
“I’ve been fucking with them because they’re stupid. They don’t get the imperative, you know? They don’t get it.”
“You told the detectives earlier that there were three men. Was that coming from Danny Huega?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s get the detectives in here.”
“Bring them in and I’m done talking.”
“Then give it to me slowly, everything you can remember Huega saying. Start with the time. What time of night was this?”
“I never asked him that. They probably closed a bar. He went to sleep smoking a joint, he probably didn’t even know the time.”
“Describe the men one by one.”
Marquez took notes and the account didn’t vary much from Davies’s earlier telling. Two men had guns, one had a ponytail and the other was smaller, slight of build, wiry. The third man had come behind them, but he couldn’t read any of their faces. The third man was the tall one, the one running things. He’d had an accent of some sort and had stepped into the moonlight not far from where Danny Huega was holding his breath. Davies grinned at that thought. “Danny said he walked like he was floating across the grass. He had hair that reflected the moonlight and Danny saw a blade, but that’s about it. He didn’t even say what color he was either, just the hair and the way he came out of nowhere.”
“Dealing with these poachers have you ever heard a description of a man like this?”
“No, I’ve been dealing with Mexicans and with a white guy whose face you’d want to forget.”
“Describe his face.”
When he did Marquez knew they had their first link. It was the pair in Oakland, the white with the hatchet face and the Hispanic who was vaguely familiar. He was sure if Davies saw the video he’d recognize him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to show it to him.
Ruter opened the door and Davies stopped talking. Marquez listened to the detectives try to get him to say more, but Davies was done and Marquez left the room. Around midnight, Ruter came out and they stepped outside.
Marquez felt like the whole encounter had been disjointed and strange, but that Davies had mixed in truth. Either Huega or Davies had been at Guyanno during the murders. There was some indefinable thing he could feel, some truth mixed in. Ruter believed it had been Davies, that Davies was wobbling and close to confessing. He’d seen this before.
“That’s why he asked for you,” Ruter said. “He wanted to confess to you, not us. Then he got a little more spine while you drove up here. If you’d been twenty minutes away, he would have confessed. He was right on the edge.” Ruter pounded a fist into his palm, “But dammit, we can’t hold him.”
“What happens now?” Marquez asked.
“We’ll have to kick him loose until we can tie him in.”
“Let me know when he’s back out there.”
“Oh, I will. Hell, he’ll probably call you. You’re the only pure play, remember?”
When he got on the road Marquez called Petersen, told her he’d pick up a couple of beers for himself and whatever she wanted to drink and meet her in Fort Bragg. They met on Elm Street and walked down the old road alongside the Georgia-Pacific property, between the blackberry bushes and down to Glass Beach where for decades earlier in the past century the citizenry of Fort Bragg used to dump its garbage into the ocean. Over the years the broken china, glass, and metal had been worn by the ocean, the glass rounded like small stones that glittered now in the moonlight. They sat on a rock and Marquez handed her a mineral water and opened the beer, a bottle of Indica from the Lost Coast Brewery.
“What do you think about Davies now?” she asked.
“I think he’s got a private agenda he mixed up with ours.”
“What do we do with him now?”
“Nothing. He’s a suspect.”
“At least Ruter is talking to us,” Petersen said. “He’s opened up to you.”
“Yeah, we’re tight now.” He saw her white teeth in the darkness. He listened to another wave break and his head was buzzing in a way that made him wonder if he’d ever sleep tonight. “This is what I think probably happened. Davies gave Huega to the people who’d killed Stocker and Han. Maybe that was about abalone or maybe it was dope, but the bottom line was money. Some deal went sour and Davies delivered to gain credibility with them. If it’s Kline, he’d need to do that. He made comments to Ruter about crossing an abyss there’s no returning from.”
“Or he was there and he killed Huega.”
“That’s what Ruter thinks.”
“Ruter can count me in on that one, too. Either way, I guess you don’t have to defend Davies anymore.”
“Is that how I’ve sounded? You think the detectives are right about that?”
“Definitely.”
Marquez opened another beer. He wasn’t sure yet what it meant, but he knew what had changed tonight. Any connection he had with Davies was gone.