Free Die-Off by Kirk Russell Page B

to see the bodies of two young women he went out of his way to meet fourteen hours before they were killed. I’ve heard your explanations but you still need to convince me. I don’t feel like I’m getting the whole story. Do you remember sitting in my car and talking after we looked at Ellis’s body?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘She was half submerged in the water. Whoever killed her took the time to stack rocks on her chest and head to make sure she stayed under. I took you down to see her and you said it looked like a cairn, a grave marker, or that her killer may have worried that the river would rise before she was found and pull her body in. You talked like someone who had thought about it. You had a number of ideas and thoughts you wanted to communicate. You didn’t mention a meeting gone bad with an animal trafficker, but you had all kinds of ideas that day about the murders. Then for a month or two after, you returned my calls. After that it got sporadic. It’s all coming together, John.’
    Marquez nodded as if that got through to him and Voight thought,
we’re getting somewhere. He’s been carrying this. It’s why he went up and retrieved the gun. He can’t let it rest. He’s going to talk.
He softened his voice to show sympathy for the burden of guilt.
    ‘Why was it so important to you to see the body, John? Why didn’t you just get a long way away, fast?’
    ‘It’s the way I’m wired. It’s what I said earlier. I need to see things. I told you about my stepdaughter checking Facebook and finding Sarah writing about camping along the river. When Siskiyou County asked for help watching for their vehicle I called Maria and that was after your county put out a BOLO. Maria said she’d get on Facebook and see if she could learn anything there. She called me back fifteen minutes later and said based on what they had posted they probably stayed close to the river. Is this why you wanted me to come up, so you could tape this and tell me you’re looking at me?’
    ‘I am looking at you. I’m close to naming you as a person of interest if not a suspect.’
    ‘I wouldn’t do that yet. It would do me harm in the long term, and I know that’s fine with the sheriff here, but it wouldn’t do you any good ultimately because I’m not who you’re looking for. But ask your questions, ask all of them. Go ahead.’
    For two hours he asked Marquez questions and pushed him, needled him, threatened him, went and got the printed-out copy of Marquez’s bullshit investigation file and Marquez walked him through the hieroglyphic notes. The notations, the abbreviations, the initials, they did tie together, but a psychopath will create an alternative reality. Still, he got the same twinge, the same questioning of himself he had earlier this morning.
    ‘I work alone a lot,’ Marquez said. ‘My notes are shorthand to myself and I take a lot of heat from my captain for it. He can’t read them either. When you talk with Captain Waller ask him about that.’
    Voight recovered his balance and pushed on. He believed Marquez was close at one point and wanted to get back there. He wanted to strike at this presumptuous fuck in the news for finding the gun, Lieutenant John Marquez, a game warden responding to a tip digging up the murder weapon just before the dam was blown and breathing new life into the murder investigation.
    ‘I’ve got a timeline,’ Voight said, ‘and you keep popping up on it. You’re like the beat cop who discovers the body of the little girl then solves the crime and gets promoted to detective.’
    ‘And later turns out to be the killer.’
    ‘Exactly like that. You have a penchant for being in the right place at the right time and you’re in it again today, only you don’t seem to realize it. If you talk to us now, everything that comes after will go better for you. Nothing is better than a voluntary confession because it says you know it was wrong and you want to make it right.’
    Marquez said