“Let’s not bullshit around,” Kendall said, “you don’t get home much.” He stared at Marquez. “Was she here for sex?”
“No, after you drove up she went into the bathroom and stripped.”
“You’ve got to be straight with me on this.”
“That’s what happened. She told me she followed me from a bar.”
“Sure, back to your motel.”
“I didn’t invite her. She tailed me.”
“And you’re going to tell me she’s so good at surveillance you didn’t notice?”
“I knew someone was following.”
Kendall shook his head, hid his disbelief by looking at his car, where Hawse was helping Sophie into the backseat.
“You let her follow you here?”
“About an hour ago she left a message with a 911 dispatcher that she knew the whereabouts of a gun used to kill somebody in the Crystal Basin. She gave her name and told the dispatcher I’d want to know and to wake me up.”
“Nyland beat her up pretty good. She’s angry.”
“The dispatcher tried to keep her on the line but she said she’d call back. She called back two hours and thirteen minutes later and gave this motel room, said she’d be here with you.” Kendall opened his arms wide. “And here she is.”
“She got here forty minutes ago, knocked on my door. I was in bed, went to the window, saw it was her, and let her in. She told me she wanted to talk.”
“Knew you were Fish and Game.”
“Yeah, my cover is blown.” Marquez looked at the back of Sophie’s head. She’d pulled the sweatshirt hood up around her again. “She needs a doctor. She took a bad shot to her eye.”
“We’ll get her eye looked at.”
“She wanted me to think she was worried about things Nyland might do to me or one of my team now that the word is out who we are.”
“Like what?”
“Like kill one of us. I questioned her about Durham and Petroni and didn’t get anything in particular that’s news, other than she says she hates Durham. She didn’t say anything about a rifle and we didn’t finish our conversation before you drove up, but her ostensible reason for knocking on my door was to warn me that Nyland is looking for a chance to get even with the undercover Fish and Game officers who wrecked his life.”
“You had a close call up there on Weber Mill. Maybe that was Nyland shooting at you. Maybe it’s time to pull your team out of here.” Kendall pointed at the back of the sedan. “What you’re looking at in the back of that car is a rat deserting the ship. She knows the whole damn story, and she’s in the process of switching sides, testing to see how far she can make that work.”
“Could be.”
Marquez walked back into the motel room. He got his toothbrush and razor out of the bathroom and threw them in his gear bag. He packed the rest of his clothes with Kendall standing at the door. As he zipped the bag, Kendall said, “You’ve been in two bar scrapes since I’ve known you.” When Marquez didn’t respond, Kendall asked, “Why did Sophie drive from the Crystal Basin Wilderness to a little bumfuck bar and then park outside and not go in?”
“After a beating maybe she didn’t feel sociable, or maybe as she says, she was going to shoot Nyland.”
Or she took some inner comfort from being near the lights and the people inside. He remembered fifteen cars and trucks, and maybe she’d pulled in among them and he hadn’t noticed her truck because of the state he’d been in.
“Okay, so you’re saying she followed you when you walked out. Recognized you and followed you, didn’t know you were in there. That is, it was a coincidence.”
“I’m not saying it was coincidence.”
“We’ll ask her.”
Marquez picked up his bag. Kendall was still in the doorway.
“You know someone has followed you back here and you respond by going to bed. I haven’t known you long, but that doesn’t jibe. Where are you going now? Are you done here? Going home?”
“Soon.”
Marquez woke the night clerk to check out and then ate breakfast at the Waffle House. Near dawn he called each of the team and told them to take the day off and clean their gear, get some rest. When he told that to Shauf she said she was already on her way to him. Her sister had gone down to the medical center at Stanford with her husband, and the kids were with the grandparents.
“I’ll meet you in Placerville,” she said.
While he waited a call came in from Kendall. “I felt like I owed you the call. Sophie was in a confessional mood. We took a drive with her out to the trailer park, and she led us to a rifle doublewrapped in plastic and hidden beneath the floorboards in the former sales office. We’ll start running tests on it today. Nyland never exactly told her why but he showed it to her one night, wanted her to know it was there, and she got the impression he’d shot Vandemere with it. This was recent, after they got back together, kind of bragging to her. It’s starting to unravel, Marquez. He told her why. She just isn’t telling us yet, but it’s eating at her. She may even have had a role in the killing.”
“Who is the gun registered to?”
“Marion Stuart.”
“Durham.”
“He buys everything huntingwise that Nyland owns.”
“Did Durham ever report a missing gun?”
“No, and if we asked him he’d say he’d didn’t know it was missing, that it was a Sierra Guides gun in Nyland’s possession.
You can hear it, right?”
“Sure.”
“Is Durham your man?”
“He’s at least a piece of the puzzle.”
“But you’re done here, aren’t you? You said your cover is blown, even Sophie knows who you are.”
“It is blown.”
“Things are about at the point where we take over. Think about it and I’ll talk to you later.”