Blue Wolf In Green Fire (17 page)

The captain paused before speaking. “I talked to Ms. Nevelev last night and she did not mention this, but she made a point of informing me of your absences.” Was the captain perturbed? Grant was a proponent of sharing among officers and law enforcement agencies. Information was the lifeblood of the investigational process; unshared, it coagulated, dried up, and turned to dust. But why hadn't the captain made sure the force knew about Grinda's wolf? The man was impossible to read.

“Cap'n, if I have to be at every meeting, I can't do my job. Most of the people on the team are management types or from units where others can cover for them. I'm a working warden.”

“I am not criticizing you, Detective. I am simply relating the conversation with Ms. Nevelev. I told you I trust your judgment, so let's not waste time on this. When I have a criticism, you can be assured you will be the first to know.”

Service felt burned and duly chastised. He was thinking about himself and the captain was focused on the case.

“Nevelev has to be aware of the situation,” Service said. “Joe called in a vet from Newberry to tranq one of the animals and afterward the Feebs moved in and took control of all the wolves. The Feebs told Joe it's not our jurisdiction. What the hell is going on, Captain?”

“Where were the animals found?” Grant asked, ignoring his detective's question.

“Three were still in the compound and one was nearby. I spent yesterday with Yogi Zambonet and he said releasing animals from captivity is a screwy business. He said the explosion might have sent them hauling or it might've hunkered them down; there's no way to predict wolf behavior. I asked Joe to see if I had missed something. I had.”

“I see,” Grant said. “The wolves stayed and Officer Ketchum found them, but the FBI took them. Why didn't the FBI find them if this is all theirs?”

Service kept quiet.

“I cannot understand why Ms. Nevelev didn't acknowledge this,” the captain said. “Have you followed up with Warden Kota?”

The captain's formality grated at him. “Not yet, but he's on my list.” For nearly twenty years he had done his job without having to keep an actual list, but maybe he needed to start keeping one, a thought he found irritating, though he couldn't pinpoint the exact source of his uneasiness. “Captain Grant, maybe there's a lot more going on here than we realize.” This was a statement born not of knowledge but of intuition, and often Service contemplated how the gift of intuition could also be a curse. It was a gift you were born with and presumably had under your control, but once intuition took hold, it could overpower all logic. When this happened all you could do is hope that it held up.

If the captain heard, he kept his own counsel. Service decided enough had been said, enough fuel dumped on the captain's simmering fire.

“Yesterday Yogi and I found a wolf that had been shot. It turns out that this is the second one, both of them beheaded and mutilated and killed with a fifty-caliber. Brass was recovered with both bodies. All of this is a sicko message, probably to us. I just left Elza Grinda. She had the first kill and believes the weapon belongs to Skelton Gitter. It was placed at one time in the hands of his girlfriend.”

“I see,” the captain said, giving no indication he knew about Grinda's wolf or the decision to keep it out of the weekly report. “Officer Hjalmquist's grouse case pointed you to Mister Gitter and Ms. Johns, and Nurmanski pointed you into the same area, and now Grinda is focused there as well. Have you heard from your undercover?”

“Yes, he's in the area and getting established. I'll take in the team meeting tomorrow morning. Any further activity from ‘terrorists'?” He pronounced the last word to leave no doubt that he doubted a conspiracy of the magnitude suggested by the feds.

“Nothing new—at least nothing Ms. Nevelev cared to mention,” the captain said, sounding almost forlorn.

“I'll check in with you after tomorrow's meeting,” Service said.

Service closed the cell phone and shook his head. Did the captain not know about Grinda's wolf? It seemed like every turn revealed new games. Service told himself if this was what detective work amounted to, they could have it. He'd rather be back in his old job in the Mosquito.

Nantz answered the telephone in her Lansing office, “Team 2001, Maridly Nantz.”

Service said, “Do you fool around?”

Her voice brightened. “When I fool around, it's all business, buster. How
are
you, hon?”

They talked for a few minutes. He told her about arrangements he'd made for their animals and hoped she wouldn't ask about Lehto. How long until Jep Niemi's rumor mill or her own network rolled something to her?

“Maridly . . .”

She laughed. “God, Service. You're going to tell me you kissed Lehto when you picked up our animals. I already know. That woman is flat-out ballsy. She called me down here and told me she thought I deserved to know that she still has designs on you. She also made it clear that you were the kissee and not the kisser, an honorable declaration. I told her to go for it. Competition is good, right?”

He could hardly compute what he was hearing.

“Besides, she copped to the fact that she put the old smoocherooski on you, but you drove off and left her standing with a hormone flash flood in her wears.” Nantz laughed. “Turning down a sure thing, Service. That's impressive.”

He was speechless and tried to change directions. “How did your meeting go?”

“Dull, dull, and dull. What a life, giving a performance review to a janitorial service. It took two minutes of face-time and twenty minutes of damn paperwork. Grady, this is crazy to sit here doing nothing all day, every day,” she said. “I'm thinking I might visit Sam.”

“It wouldn't be the first time,” he said. She knew the governor and last summer had confronted him about a case Service was working on. Nantz's visit had forced him to back off. For the first time it struck him that maybe the governor's target with this task force bullshit was actually Nantz, not him. It would fit. He was petty enough to go after her. A feeling of shame began to creep over him. His ego needed reining in.

“You know I wouldn't really do it,” she said. “I was just thinking out loud.” He wasn't so sure, but he didn't say so. “Where are you, hon?”

“Near Nisula, on my way back to the Soo.”

“Please be careful, Grady. You wanna know what I told your horny veterinarian?”

He was sure it was memorable.

“I said, ‘Let the games begin.'”

All he could do was shake his head. His next call went to Bay Mills. DaWayne Kota was still out of the office. After tomorrow's meeting in the Soo, he'd drive out to Vermillion and see if he could locate the never-there tribal game warden.

14

He was driving east on US 41, nearing the Huron River–Peshekee Grade Road that led north into the 17,000-acre McCormick Wilderness, when drivers ahead of him began to slam on their brakes. He flipped on his blue lights and eased into the left lane. No traffic coming; everything had stopped in both directions. A quarter mile ahead he saw a small bright yellow pickup truck on its side in the middle of the highway and people standing around gawking. He called the accident in to the Marquette County sheriff's dispatcher, gave the location, and pulled onto the north shoulder. There was no room around the wreck.

The nose of the tiny Toyota was pushed back, the engine block jammed into the cabin. He looked at the car and saw steam, but no sparks. Gas and other fluids were trickling onto the highway.

“Stay back,” he told gawkers. “No smokes.” Naturally he immediately wanted one.

Service eased up to the wreck and peeked into the cab. No sign of a driver or passengers. A large pink neon sticker in the spiderwebbed back window declared,
i have personally seen jesus 13 times!
Service hoped today wasn't number fourteen. He heard a siren within two minutes and saw a Marquette County cruiser coming from the east with its light-bar flashing. People from stopped cars had moved over to the south shoulder of the road and were staring down a steep incline. Service joined them and saw a massive black body sprawled at the bottom. The animal's forelegs were bent at obtuse angles, one of its hind legs still twitching. Two human legs stuck out from under the moose. Service fetched his emergency first-aid kit and box of disposable latex gloves from the truck, asked people to move away, and slid down the embankment.

“Move your damn cars,” he heard a familiar voice barking. He looked up to see Deputy Sheriff Linsenman sliding down to join him.

Linsenman looked at the moose and said, “Holy shit, there's somebody under there.”

“The moose is still alive,” Service said.

Linsenman nodded, pulled out his nine-millimeter, and shot the animal in the head.

“Not anymore, he's not.” The huge animal lurched once and lay still. Blood spattered the legs of the man pinned beneath and the surrounding grass.

The two law officers asked for help. Several people slid down the incline on their behinds to help shift the moose carcass so the officers could free the trapped man. Linsenman called 911 from the microphone hooked under his jacket epaulet while Service started a quick injury evaluation. The man's face was lacerated, an arm broken and bent at the wrist. He was unconscious, pale, his breathing labored. Shock for sure. Service snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

“Ambulance in fifteen minutes,” Linsenman said, kneeling and gently tucking his coat under the injured man.

“He's shocky,” Service said. “Tell them to step on it.” Shock left untreated would kill. Even with treatment it could bring the same outcome.

Service took off his coat and laid it over the injured man. Linsenman put on gloves and held antiseptic gauze against the cut. They both knew not to move him. A thousand pounds on top of you was likely to cause severe internal injuries. There was nothing to do but keep pressure on cuts, keep the man warm and comfortable, and wait.

More sirens announced the arrival of additional help.

Twenty minutes later the injured man was strapped on a board, his head immobilized in a brace, and he was carried onto an ambulance that headed west toward L'Anse, which was closer than Marquette. Service and Linsenman stood outside the DNR truck, smoking and sharing coffee while two other deputies directed traffic and a wrecker hauled the Toyota away.

There was blood where the animal had been struck, but no tire marks. Could be the driver never saw the moose, Service thought. But the area was fairly open and this didn't seem likely, especially this time of year when most drivers had their eyes on the edges of the woods, fields, and swamps looking for deer.

The two lawmen asked people in the other vehicles what they had seen, and got as many stories as there were witnesses. Only two facts met agreement. The driver had been alone, and the man under the moose had been the driver. How he had ended up yards away, down the embankment and under the animal, was the subject of intense speculation.

“Not even Day One,” Linsenman said.

Service nodded. “Day omega for the moose.”

The deputy patted his sidearm. “Too bad it wasn't a bull.”

“Too bad there's no moose season,” Service said. Moose and wolves were under state protection.

Linsenman laughed. Service called the DNR office in Baraga and reported the dead animal. They'd collect it so biologists could do a necropsy. Unlike wolves, which had come back into the region on their own, moose had been transplanted, their numbers fluctuating ever since due to various parasites and diseases. As with the wolves, every moose death was taken seriously. Quite a few moose fell victim to vehicles every year. Service had once had a tourist ask where he could photograph a moose and told him, “Just drive east and west on the M-Twenty-Eight and try not to hit one.”

Service was first on the scene, but Linsenman took on the task of piecing together the details of what had happened. He would talk to the driver if and when the man could talk, and issue a citation or not.

Service was five miles east of the scene when he got a cell phone call.

“Carmody. Where are ya, boyo?”

“Sixty miles east of you, give or take.”

“Perfect. You know a place called Silver Mountain Lookout?”

“I know it.”

“Get there as soon as you can.”

The remains of the abandoned old fire tower on Silver Mountain sat on the northern perimeter of the Sturgeon River Wilderness. Sturgeon River Gorge lay about four miles to the southeast as the crow flies; between the two points, there were three-hundred-foot-deep canyons up to a mile wide. The dark, dense forests were thick with cedar and tamarack, hemlock, popple, sugar maple, basswood, aspen, and paper birch. The wilderness area was comprised of nearly fifteen thousand acres, and inside it there were few trails. It was a good deer-hunting country, but only the toughest and most competent hunters would tackle it. If the snows fell heavily when you were in such turf, you could have serious problems. It was one of those areas where a compass was mandatory and not a place Service relished chasing troublemakers.

The roads back to the small parking lot at the old fire tower were muddy, washboarded, and difficult to negotiate. Service took it slowly and kept both hands on the steering wheel. The ass end of his truck kept bouncing sideways, and the transmission was up to its usual tricks.

There were no other fresh tracks on the road, which struck Service as odd given that this was two days before the two-week deer season opened. There had seemed to be plenty of hunters coming north last Friday. Apparently not that many had come all the way over here, which showed how unknowledgeable some hunters could be. The bulk of the deer were here, not to the east. The lack of tracks also told him that either Carmody was yet to arrive, or would come in from the south and west. There was no sign of his undercover when he pulled into the gravel lot.

Service used his time alone to retrace the past few days. SuRo's non sequitur mention of the blue wolf at Vermillion bugged him. Her background, the feds insisted, made her a prime suspect. He didn't buy it. The facts of Vermillion were simple: a bomb and two bodies. What was the status of the autopsies? Were there security tapes? And what had DaWayne Kota been doing there? Why was Wink Rector not in the loop? Wink was FBI, he was competent, and it was a federal facility. Why had Wink been given the lead in Houghton? The BATF almost always took the lead when there was a bomb. What made the bombs in Houghton a lesser matter than Vermillion? Fatalities maybe, but there was something else and it bothered him to not be able to see it. Rector said BATF was all over Houghton, but they weren't even on the team in the Soo. Why had it taken Joe Ketchum to find that four of the five wolves were still there, and why had the FBI chased him off? He should have found them, he chided himself. Why had Nevelev not told his captain about the wolves being recovered? And who the hell gave the FBI the power to declare the wolves outside DNR's jurisdiction? He had so many questions about Vermillion that he didn't want to deal with the wolf case or Gitter and Johns. He would learn soon enough what Carmody wanted.

The undercover man didn't arrive for another ninety minutes and when he did, he looked muddy, disheveled, and tired. “Where's the bloody tower?” Carmody asked.

Service pointed. “That way, around the rocks and up.”

“Let's climb,” Carmody said, pushing past Service and trudging up to the tower.

“Why? We can talk here.”

“Humor me,” Carmody said.

Service followed and saw that Carmody was moving with great difficulty, limping slightly.

When they got to the top Carmody exhaled dramatically, pulled a flask from his coat and held it out.

“It's your meeting,” Service said, waiting patiently. He didn't need a drink.

Carmody took a hit from the flask and said, “Sodding British,” as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Flat tire. Fooking jacks are worthless. I'd have a fag, if you'd be offering.” Service handed him a pack of smokes and didn't tell him the Land Rover was probably assembled in the United States.

“Keep the pack. I've got more.”

Carmody sucked smoke deep into his lungs and waited. “The grand mating dance has begun,” he said.

“Johns?”

“Aye. I was sighting in the new long rifle and she came up and challenged me to a bituva shoot. Gorgeous creature, that. We had our contest and I let her win by a wee bit, you see. But make no mistake, the woman can shoot. Afterward she generously treated me to thin and tasteless American beer and invited me to lunch, where she plied me with Kentucky whiskey. After lunch and more than a few shots, we motored to her camp, had another whiskey or two, and she proposed another contest. Only this time she pulled out a fooking cannon of a rifle, a fifty-caliber behaymouth with a scope that would let you be countin' pubic hairs on a dwarf at two miles. We drove up a mountain called Ogidabik, which she said is local aborigine gibberish for ‘on the rock.'”

Service listened.

“We each fired three rounds at plastic bottles hung from tree branches a good two kilometers distant. We both struck all three targets and repaired to her little hideaway in the forest. It's down a maze of logging roads east and north of your Presque Isle River. Bloody awful ground. We had a lovely evening, more whiskey, shooting pistols at everything in range, had a go in bed, drank more, had another go in bed, and I would be quick to point out I'm not referrin' to a quick slam-bam, doink-and-boink, but a marathon go. I had doubts I could keep up with her. This morning she makes an offer: a thousand dollars cash for the head of a deer with, and I quote, ‘impressive horns.' To match her own, no doubt. I told her I needed neither the money nor the meat. She said it was a matter of sport. And what sport might that be? asks I. ‘Gettin' away with it,' says she. And if I were to agree? She says she'll put me on to something even more lucrative. What constitutes impressive? I ask her. ‘Use your judgment,' says she.” Carmody shook his head.

“This is all pretty quick,” Service said. “Whose camp did she take you to?”

“Gitter's methinks. The woman's bloody daft,” Carmody said. “I've seen all kinds, mind you, but nothing such as the likes of Wealthy Johns.” He added, “I told her I don't know the land, have had no opportunity to scout for animals. Says she: ‘Think of it as a fine test of your resourcefulness.'”

Service waited.

“I find myself faced with a wee problem. I need an ‘impressive head.'”

Service immediately thought of the animal that Sheena Grinda had confiscated that morning. He said, “I have an idea.”

They returned to the trucks, and he used his radio to call the Baraga office. He was told Grinda was “clear.” He got her home telephone number and punched it into his cell phone.

“I have a favor to ask,” he said when she answered.

“Service? You seem to ask for a lot.”

“The buck you confiscated this morning. Where is it?”

“In my truck. I'll put it in the evidence locker tomorrow. Once it's checked in, we'll give it to somebody who can use the meat. If it doesn't spoil in this heat. I should've put it in the locker today.”

“I want it,” Service said.

“For what?”

“Bait.”

Grinda grunted. “Bait for what?”

“Headhunters.”

She didn't react right away. “The animal is evidence.”

“Use your camera. I'll swear as a witness that I was there when you hauled the man out. I'll take responsibility.”

“I think working with you is going to make me weary,” she said.

He arranged to pick up the animal within two hours. Carmody would wait nearby, and Service would deliver the buck to him to take to his “employer.”