A Killing in China Basin - By Kirk Russell Page 0,45

feeling like he was jet-lagged, he deviated from his plan and took the cut-off for a state park, following a road rising toward dry hills and a reservoir. In this rural country a little state park wasn’t going to be crowded, and he needed to be somewhere he could sit and think because he was screwing up.

He pulled in and parked next to a brown and white trailhead sign. Fifty yards to his left was a cinder block toilet structure for hiking types. Two other cars were in the lot, an old Subaru with a bike rack and a Chevy pickup. It felt safe enough and he locked his car and walked up a trail to a stand of pines, hoping the cool air and sunlight would help him calm down inside. He found a place to sit where he could still see his car, and then tried deep breathing. He lay on his back for a while thinking about everything that had happened in the last week and a half.

Then, as he was close to leaving, another car drove into the lot, a late model, white four-door Buick with a trim gray-haired man getting out, a guy in his early sixties, who immediately looked through the windows of Stoltz’s rented Nissan. He got something out of his car, laid down on the pavement and reached under the Nissan. Stoltz moved around the back of a pine tree and watched the man dust himself off as he stood up, nothing in his hands any more. He got back in his car and pulled out. Like in a movie, like something you wouldn’t believe had happened unless you saw it.

Stoltz drove back to the freeway and then north thirty miles before taking an exit that led to a shopping mall. He needed a place to park and look under the car. He drove through the mall and had a crazy idea as he saw two California Highway Patrol cars parked side by side, with an open space between one cruiser and a mammoth Ford Expedition blocking the officers’ view, where they sat at a table in a Fresh Mex.

He pulled into the parking space, walked around, opened his passenger door, leaned over, then sank down and slid under the Nissan. He scanned the dark underbody until he found it, like a blister of metal attached to the chassis. He wrenched it free. Nothing but magnets had held the GPS tracking device in place, so he figured he could do the same with the CHP car. He slid out and then underneath the CHP chassis. The magnets snapped against metal as the device grabbed, and Stoltz was on his feet, locking the Nissan before going into the Mex Fresh to buy food to-go. He was still waiting for his food as the CHP officers left. He watched them drive away.

Then he did a lot of driving and doubling back. He didn’t turn in the rental until after dark and took a cab to the warehouse. At the warehouse he rethought everything and changed his plan yet again.

THIRTY-FOUR

Raveneau waited for a call from an old friend, Bob Moore, who’d built a consulting business doing credit card fraud work. A decade ago Raveneau tried to help him learn the truth after his daughter died illegally bungee jumping off a railroad bridge in northern California. Moore couldn’t accept the conclusions of the local sheriff’s department and his anguish over it was so intense that Raveneau had done his own investigation. He concluded what the sheriff had, that her death was accidental but needless, and that recklessness by the more experienced bungee jumpers she was with had contributed but wasn’t malicious. He did that investigative work at his own expense and would never have considered asking for money.

But yesterday he’d called Moore asking for a favor. Moore was an industry expert. He booked months in advance and Raveneau asked him to jump Alex Jurika to the front of the line. When the phone rang it was Moore calling back about the cards they’d found in Jurika’s apartment.

‘One of those cards had fifteen thousand four hundred forty-two dollars charged to it from January sixth to July one this year. So that’s more or less twenty-five hundred dollars a month. Alex Jurika or whoever used the card also made regular payments and not all of those were the minimum payment. She paid down a thousand dollars in April and made another sizeable payment later, could have been in