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Authors: Joseph Heywood

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BOOK: Blue Wolf In Green Fire
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“I know the type,” Carmody said.

“I want you to set up in the Ironwood area and hang out at the Copperhead Inn. Nurmanski met Kate there. They threw back a few drinks and nature took its course. He insists she offered serious cash for big racks and he claims she bragged her clients are not just in Michigan.”

“You agreed to a deal with Nurmanski?”

“Your people have moved him to another state. When his time is done, he's on his own. When you get to Ironwood, buy yourself a new rifle at Horns and ask about a gun club you can join where you can practice. Gitter will probably vouch for you to join South Superior. He does this routinely for customers. If you can buy from Johns, even better, but if you don't meet her there, you'll see her at the club.”

Carmody grinned.

Service added, “I expect to hear from you at least once a week, and you're to keep me in the loop every step of the way. We want the whole operation top-down, not just another Nurmanski or Joquist. Davey is covering the cost of the investigation, but you take your directions from me, understood?”

“Aye,” Carmody said. “Now for my rules, boyo. We meet only when I call for it and never closer than thirty miles from the operational area. I'll be pickin' the places and the times and your arse will be there. Capisce?”

“Works for me,” Service said.

“There can't be too many women in those parts like the two you're talking about, boyo.” Carmody said with a grunt.

“If Kate doesn't show at the Copperhead, you'll find Johns at the South Superior Gun Club. Anything else?”

“More here than I usually have to start a case,” Carmody said. “If there's something of substance, I'll find it,” he added, rubbing his nose and winking.

As Carmody got into a dented, rusty black Land Rover, Service felt edgy. There was something about the undercover man that didn't quite sit right, but Barry Davey had backed him and Service needed him. There was no way he could take the risk of slipping an undercover state CO into the case. It was Carmody or back to the drawing board. Time would tell. It was a lot easier to work alone, he reminded himself as he got into his truck and headed toward Brevort.

In six days Michigan's Department of Natural Resources law enforcement forces would find their resources stretched beyond limits as they patrolled the forests and farmlands of the state, citing trespassers and violators, nabbing night shooters, finding the lost, rendering aid to heart attack victims, calling ambulances for those who shot themselves or each other, breaking up fights over wounded deer and wily women, nabbing drunk drivers, and tending to vehicular accidents. Close to a million well-armed and often overly lubricated hunters would be afoot and afield for some or all of the two-week season, primed to shoot at just about anything that moved. Sometimes their bullets would even hit what they were aiming for.

More women hunted now than in past years, but throughout the state, deer season tended to still be largely a male enterprise—if you ignored the fact that while the men went out to their camps to play Dan'l Boone, hunters' red-suit widows banded together and, looking to even the score, still-hunted hometown bars for out-of-town nimrods while their hubbies and their buds bonded in their deer camps. Women and men on the tavern trail caused a lot of trouble for cops and COs. It was the time of year all conservation officers both looked forward to and dreaded, a time when the North Country plunged into chaos, a time when anything could happen, and often did.

This year promised to be worse than normal as the pall of September 11 hung over the country. The day before the terrorists attacked, survivalists were seen as right-wing-fringe loonies; now even liberals were trying to buy gas masks and antibiotics to fend off bioterrorism.

Of potentially more immediate effect, the Michigan courts had the previous summer let stand a new law that required the state to prove why people should not have concealed weapons permits. Under the old system residents had to prove their need and fitness to carry a handgun. The effect of the ruling was to provide a concealed weapon to just about anybody who wanted one. Despite the fact that the governor backed the law, dozens of Republican prosecutors and their deputies had resigned from county gun boards in protest. Because of the change, there would be more handguns in the woods this year. Just what woods cops needed, Service told himself.

It was Friday and the firearm season for deer would not open until the following Thursday morning, but the highways were already jammed by an armada of vehicles: mini vans, Mercedes and Beamers, rusted-out pickups with dangerously tilting campers, cars and SUVs of every description, all of them streaming north to cross the Straits of Mackinac. The hopeful nimrods would be slugging down tepid coffee, lousy doughnuts, road beers from longneckers, root beer schnapps from pocket flasks, and puffing on homegrown dope and store-bought cheap cigars. They would be of all ages and all occupations and this year, with all the problems and layoffs among Detroit's auto companies, a lot of them would be headed into the Upper Peninsula for the full two weeks, rather than a few days. Every deer-hunting season took on its own personality and no two were the same. This one would be no different in asserting itself, but Service's gut told him this one would be memorable for him if for no other reason than he would not be covering the Mosquito.

He couldn't wait to see Nantz. Since her posting to Task Force 2001 she had been assigned every weekend to immediate-call status, meaning she couldn't leave Lansing.

Until she telephoned yesterday to confirm that they could meet, he had feared that she would be trapped in Lansing again. He had already decided to drive there if he needed to.

“Tomorrow at noon, Banger,” she'd said. This had been his nickname during his college hockey days. “At the Brigadoon in Mack City,” she added. “The room's my treat and you won't need a change of clothes.”

“Has this been cleared?”

“All the boys down here must be thinking only about bagging their bucks. I think they forgot to assign me to my weekend cage.”

“I'll be there,” he said quickly.

“Damn right you will,” she said, laughing with a lightness he had not heard in her voice for a long time.

They would have this afternoon and the next two days to themselves. It promised to be a sleepless time.

But before that he had one more item of business to tend to.

A couple of miles east of Brevort he pulled north onto a long gravel driveway, stopped at a closed gate, got out of his truck, and stared up at a small video camera several feet above him.

“You in there, SuRo?”

“No meat eaters may violate these hallowed grounds,” a raspy voice replied. “Got any extra smokes?”

Service laughed and countered, “Tobacco is grown in fields fertilized with animal offal and harvested by pork-eating rednecks.”

The voice chuckled. “C'mon in, rockhead.”

A buzzer sounded and the gate swung open.

Summer Rose Genova was founder and operator of the Vegan Animal Rescue & Reclamation Sanctuary. Service had known SuRo for nearly eight years. He had happened upon her during an altercation with two hunters who had gut-shot a handsome buck. When they followed the injured animal out of the cedar swamp they found her squatting beside the dead animal, smoking a cigarette. She had shot the animal once through the head to put it out of its misery. The men demanded she surrender their trophy and she refused. One of them leveled a Remington 30.06 at her and she responded by pointing a nickel-plated .380 Walther PPK at him. Service was passing by, saw the pointed weapons, read the situation in an instant, and stopped.

He ordered the men to put down their rifles. SuRo put her automatic back in its holster and, before Service could react, charged the men, knocking one aside and punching the other in the nose, splattering it. When the second man recovered, he tried to intervene, but SuRo dispatched him with a crisp elbow to the jaw that sent him sprawling into a deep ditch. Fight over. After a long and heated discussion he sent the men back to their camp, and ordered the woman into his truck. He drove her into the town of Rock to buy her coffee.

“You can't take an animal from hunters,” he said as they drove. “And you can't beat the shit out of people.”

“Fucking idiots couldn't piss on a barn if they were resting their pencil-dicks against it.”

“That's not your business.”

“Fucking eh! It's yours, rockhead. You goddamn grayshirts let people run around who are dangerous to themselves and the animals.”

“The law doesn't require hunters to be marksmen.”

“It ought to.”

She had a point. “I enforce the laws as written, not as I might want them to be. What were you going to do with the deer?”

“Bury it. What the hell else would I do with it?”

He had stopped the truck and stared at her.

She said, “I save animals that can be saved. If they can't be salvaged, I put them out of their misery.”

“You'd waste the meat?”

“I don't eat meat.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Summer Rose Genova, DVM. I just moved up here. I've got property near Brevort. I'm going to establish an animal recovery and rehab sanctuary.”

“There are laws regulating that.”

“I know the laws, rockhead. I do everything by the book.”

“Like carrying a sidearm?”

“I have a CCW permit,” she said, taking it out of her purse.

There was something about the woman he liked. “I'm Grady Service.”

“People call me SuRo and you can help me by telling your fascist colleagues about the sanctuary. They find an injured animal, they can call me.”

“Even if they're meat eaters?”

She grinned. “Hell, I can overlook depravity if it serves the animals.”

“You could have . . .”

She interrupted with a sarcastic laugh. “Gotten shot by those morons? More likely I'd have had them both on the ground before their fingers got to the triggers.”

“That would be murder.”

“Murder is what the state licenses them to do.”

They spent nearly an hour sharing coffee and cinnamon rolls. Genova was over six feet tall, built like a linebacker and as opinionated as a revolutionary. But Service sensed a gentle heart and a genuine interest in providing a service that was badly needed in the eastern Upper Peninsula. He told her he would talk to the hunters she had tangled with and smooth it out and he had, though it had not been easy. At first the two men were adamant about filing charges for assault against the woman. He had to explain to them that it was their word against hers and that he had found them all pointing weapons at each other. If they didn't let it go, he'd arrest all three of them, confiscate all their weapons, and put it before a judge, which would not happen until long after deer season, in which case the two hunters would be done hunting for the year. The men reluctantly agreed that a complaint would not solve anything.

Since then SuRo had established herself and, in the process, become well known and respected throughout the U.P. Approaching her sixties, she seemed more stooped now, but as vigorous as when he had first met her.

The sanctuary consisted of 400 acres closed in by twelve-foot-high cyclone fencing. She lived in a one-room cabin attached to a larger building where she tended her animals. In recent years she had become a major proponent of the state's wolf recovery program, which was a misnomer because the wolf packs had developed from a few animals that had drifted in on their own from Wisconsin and Minnesota, or across the winter ice of the St. Mary's River from Ontario.

Genova was standing outside her cabin holding a wriggling buff-colored bobcat when he pulled up. He grabbed a couple of extra packs of cigarettes and held them out to her. The cat's fur bristled as it pressed against her chest for protection.

“You ought to smoke a better brand,” she groused.

“I only smoke these because you hate them.”

“That's my rockhead,” she said, turning her head to the side for a kiss on the cheek. “What the hell have I done this time?”

“Hunting season starts Thursday.”

She grimaced. “Don't remind me. The bridge packed?”

“Probably like sardines.”

“Always with the meat metaphors. Breakfast and coffee?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

He followed her into the cabin. The young bobcat launched itself onto a bed and circled to paw a nest in the covers while Service sat down at the table in her kitchen area. He watched as she whisked pancake mix and brewed a new pot of coffee.

“Where'd the cat come from?”

“Her mama was hit by a pickup over by Pickford. Some kids found the kitten and now she's trying to take over the sanctuary. Rumor has it that Grady Service and Kira Lehto are toast and the rockhead has a new squeeze. Word is she's hot.”

Genova and his former girlfriend were both veterinarians and good friends.

“Is she better in bed than Kira?”

“None of your business.”


Everything
is my business, rockhead! What's your hotty's name?”

“Nantz.”

When the coffee was brewed, SuRo lit another of his cigarettes and filled his coffee cup.

“You hearing anything out of Vermillion?” she asked.

Vermillion was the federal wolf laboratory north of Paradise on the south shore of Lake Superior. “Should I?”

“Just wondering.”

SuRo wasn't big on small talk. When she asked about something she usually had a good reason.

“It's said they have a blue wolf up there,” she said.

Service laughed. “Do they keep it next to a white buffalo?”

SuRo didn't smile. “Why do the ignoramati always dismiss what they don't understand?”

He had to search his memory and the best he could come up with was, “A blue wolf, like the one the Ojibwa believe brings bad luck?”

BOOK: Blue Wolf In Green Fire
2.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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