Shell Games

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When Marquez saw the forested ridge at the end of the canyon he knew he was close. He rounded the last curve and lowered the driver’s window, smelling pine pitch and dry grass as afternoon heat swept the truck cab. As he slowed to a stop near the steel posts at the campground entrance, Davies stepped out onto the road and started toward him, a smile on his sweat-streaked face as though they shared some joke played on the dead men.

“Guess they weren’t as smart as they thought, Lieutenant,” Davies said.

“Guess not. Where are they?”

“About half a mile up the creek trail.”

Marquez drove over the entry chain and the quarantine sign attached to it. He parked near a rusted iron barbecue at one of the campsite slots and sat on a picnic table, his fingers tracing initials carved in the top as he phoned the sheriff’s office in Mendocino. He identified himself as the patrol lieutenant of California Fish and Game’s covert SOU, the Special Operations Unit, telling the detective he was with a Mark Davies, who’d found the bodies of two men along the canyon wall northeast of the Guyanno Creek campground, south of Fort Bragg. The detective drew a breath and Marquez heard a pen scratch paper.

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