Chasing a Blond Moon (22 page)

“Terry Tunhow, which is an alias, and not Pung's son.”

“Presumably,” he said. “Is there a police artist here?”

“Get real,” she said. “There's a Troop in Negaunee, if we can get her.”

“We need to get something on paper we can start working with. So here's how it looks to me. Somebody had a bear in the cabin at Lac La Belle, brought it down to the canal by the fish house.”

“Harry Pung,” she said.

Service nodded. “As far as Hancock. He loaded the bear in a boat to motor down here.”

“But Harry missed the boat,” she said.

“Right, and then Terry gets in the big boat here and disappears, leaving his stand-in to a nap with the fish.”

“You think it all fits?”

“It never all fits until you have somebody in custody and can work it through,” he said. “I'm too tired to think. My brain is fried.”

“You gonna hang around town?”

“I've got to get back to Marquette.”

“I'll call you as soon as we have something,” she said. “Thanks for the help. Remember, I've never lost a killer.”

There's always a first time, he thought.

16

He was just across the Marquette County line when a Troop came up on the county radio. “Shot fired, in pursuit, officer needs assistance, westbound US Forty One, two miles east of Champion.” It was a female voice, calm, almost detached. In the U.P. cops were few; even so, all officers in the various police jurisdictions had discretion in responding to calls of other agencies, based on location and other factors. But
shots fired
was one you went to, no matter what you were doing. You went because the day might come when you'd be making the call. He toggled his mike and told the Marquette County dispatcher. “DNR Twenty-Five Fourteen responding.”

“Where are you, Twenty-Five Fourteen?”

“Forty One, eastbound, just passing the county line.”

Another voice chimed in and Service recognized Marquette County Deputy Sheriff Linsenman. Almost a year ago, in the same area, the two of them had responded to a moose–vehicle collision. Linsenman had dispatched the animal, which was at the bottom of a ditch on top of the driver, who had been thrown out of his pickup.

“Suspect in green Ford pickup running eighty-plus,” the female Troop reported, her voice up only slightly. “Westbound on Forty One, approaching Van Riper.”

Van Riper was a state park, six miles ahead in his twelve o'clock position. Suspect in what? It would help to know. His adrenaline began to spike. Shot fired and pursuit. Next to domestic disputes, it was the worst call of all.

“Suspect is turning north on the Pesheke Grade Road,” the Troop radioed. “Following,” she added, her voice beginning to betray the strain of the chase.

There'd be no eighty-miles-per-hour pursuit on that road, Service told himself. It was steep, washboarded, studded with large rocks, narrow and winding as it snaked over the southwestern slabs of the Huron Mountains. At the first summit there was a deep gouge in the road between two huge stone abutments, a precarious squeeze even when you were going slow and had the vehicle under control.

Linsenman reported turning up the grade.

Service began to slow for his turn to the north, searching his memory for a shortcut to an intercept, but there wasn't one. He'd have to go all the way around by Skanee and come back south and it was at least a hundred miles around, which is why the Pesheke grade was a popular cut-through for locals.

The washboarded road pounded his undercarriage, making the vehicle lurch and fishtail. The vehicles ahead of him were kicking up heavy dust, which hung in the air like a cloud of cocoa powder. He switched on his headlights, but they made no difference, and his blue lights seemed to bounce off the dust and make visibility worse.

The Troop came back on the radio. “Suspect out of vehicle,” she said, her words clipped.

Linsenman radioed, “Vehicles in sight.”

Service kept his eyes on the road, both hands firmly on the steering wheel.

Loose gear in back of the Yukon was flying all over the place, bouncing off the windows and roof. For weeks he'd been telling himself to put things away, tie it all down, but he'd never gotten around to it.

Service bounced out of a severe left turn and saw emergency lights ahead on a long, rising straightaway. Two police vehicles were on the road, their doors open. Dust lingered in the air. He saw Linsenman behind the open driver's door of his squad, looking ahead. A blue state police cruiser was ahead of Linsenman, but Service couldn't see the driver. The Pesheke River was on their left, just over the lip of a steep, boulder-strewn berm that looked like it had sprouted teeth. It was good defensive cover for a shooter.

“Shot fired,” the Troop reported on the radio.

Service braked, got out, opened his door, and used it as a shield while he studied the situation. He had heard no gunshot.

What he heard was Linsenman yelling at the Troop, “Where is he?”

He,
Service thought, evil's gender always assumed to be male and usually true. The recent fourteen-year-old shooter had been an anomaly, though his experience said the gap was narrowing between males and females in the arena of violence.

“Left side,” she yelled back. “Above the river.”

Service tried to will the two of them to get on their radios. Yelling only helped the suspect know where they were. He started to call out to Linsenman to tell him to get on the radio, but stopped. What was Linsenman's first name? All these years and he'd never known. He'd always been Linsenman. Service reached into the backseat and uncased his rifle. It was new, issued to all officers in midsummer. He'd shot about twenty rounds through it. The sights were true, but the weapon would be too heavy to lug around. It was intended officially for dispatching large animals, but every officer knew that handguns or shotguns were not matches for perps with rifles.

He bolted a round into the chamber and checked the safety on. A shot sounded while he was hunched over with the rifle.

He popped up to see Linsenman aiming his sidearm toward the berm.

Two more shots popped. Handgun, Service thought. Big bore.

A third shot answered from the Troop's position.

Linsenman was holding tight, the pistol in his right hand, his left palm under the butt, his left thumb flat against the barrel for stability, exactly as it was supposed to be.

Sirens were bleating behind them on the grade. The radio was alive with voices and static.

Linsenman remained still.

Service found himself mesmerized.

The next shot was blended with another—two shots merged as one. Linsenman's windshield exploded and Service saw the deputy's arm jerk in recoil. His mind did the replay: windshield, then the arm. A fire-back, a response. Nobody moved. Sirens drew closer. What sick dickhead invented modern sirens?

Linsenman stayed by his door, his weapon still pointed across the road. Smoke snaked out of the barrel and blended with lingering dust particles. The Troop from the car ahead of him hustled low in the ditch on Linsenman's right, reached his vehicle, pulled open his passenger door. Linsenman never looked at her. Service could hear her trying to talk to him, but couldn't make out her words.

Focused, Service told himself, watching Linsenman.

Two Troops, including a sergeant, came up behind Service.

Nobody spoke.

A gentle breeze lifted and rattled through the tamaracks to Service's right. Soon their needles would yellow and fall. Beyond the trees there was a small pond. He hadn't noticed it when he pulled up. See it all, he chided himself. Be here, nowhere else.

A ragged formation of geese started to descend toward the pond, looked at the situation and scrambled to climb back out, making a lot of noise. Service admired their good sense. There were lots of times when he wanted to fly away from the shit. Like now.

A white-tail doe and her fawn had crept to the far edge of the pond. The fawn was small for this time of year, late birth probably. It would die this winter. The mother watched across the pond while the little one stood in the water drinking delicately, its little tail flicking nervously. A raven in a dead tree beyond the pond yawped forlornly. Its call went unanswered.

The two state policemen didn't ask him what was going on. They flattened themselves against his Yukon, weapons drawn, bodies tense, all eyes locked on the berm.

The Troop with Linsenman waved the pair forward. They waddled awkwardly, hunched over to reduce their profiles.

Two deputies crept through waist-high bracken ferns on top of the rocky berm to Service's left, their eyes focused ahead. A few small white birches were twisted and wind-bent among the rocks, too small to provide effective cover. The men worked together, the front man focusing forward, the second man watching the sides, stopping occasionally to scan behind them.

“Secure,” someone proclaimed over the radio. “Suspect down, get the EMTs up here.” A male voice, not female.

Linsenman finally lowered his weapon, letting his hand hang limply by his side.

Service heard voices where the officers had converged on the berm.

Linsenman slumped to his seat, sat with his legs extended and splayed on the ground, the posture of a dishrag.

A squat EMS truck crunched up the narrow road, its emergency lights blinking, its grooved tires spitting small rocks that peppered the landscape. Service closed his door to make it easier for it to pass. When it stopped just past Linsenman's squad, Service eased forward, watching his friend light the filter end of a cigarette, unaware of the stench, the taste, smoking on automatic, needing something, anything, to settle his nerves.

Linsenman looked up at him. “Are you everywhere?” It was an old joke between them. “This ain't the same as a moose,” he added. Service saw the deputy's hand shaking, carefully took his weapon, unchambered a round, slid out the clip, placed it on the dash.

EMTs hustled a stretcher up the rocky berm, slipping on the loose scree.

A Marquette County deputy stopped and squeezed Linsenman's shoulder. “Afraid?”

“I was too damned scared to be afraid,” he said. It wasn't a joke.

The words stuck in Service's mind. Too scared to be afraid. Only people who worked in the shit would appreciate the distinction.

The EMTs came back down the gravel berm, juggling the stretcher in the bad footing. Two deputies were on either side, helping stabilize the patient. “Alive,” the front EMT called out, tapping his right shoulder. ­Suspect to patient, Service thought, a severe change in status. No cop would call the man a victim. That would be for lawyers to debate. Linsenman shook his head, sighed deeply. “I'm the worst shot in the department,” he said.

“Not today,” Service said.

The female Troop came back, looked down at Linsenman, stuck out her hand. “Thanks.”

She was young, Service saw. Her voice had remained relatively controlled throughout the situation, but a calm voice could sometimes betray or mask what was really going on inside.

Linsenman nodded, exhaled smoke, ignored her hand.

Service pulled her aside. “Why the pursuit?”

“I got a call to stop a green Ford. When I tried to get him over, he let one loose out his window.”

Service looked at the vehicle ahead of her squad. Its nose was askew in the left ditch, its ass sticking up like a feeding duck. It was a green Chevy, not a Ford. She'd tried to stop the wrong vehicle and gotten a violent response by sheer chance. “They give you a plate number?”

She shook her head. “Just a green Ford.”

He kept quiet. At some point somebody would ask questions, sort out the mistake, try to apply logic to it, fail. Serendipity sometimes had a violent side.

One of the county's sergeants came forward. His name was Don and his deputies called him “Padre.” His shirt was wet with sweat, his hair matted. “Get somebody with Linsenman,” Service said. “He's in shock.”

Padre said, “We have a procedure.”

Service bit his lip. There was also a procedure for identifying vehicles, and it had failed.

“Get help for him.” Shooting another person was not like a movie shooting. You couldn't put a bullet into a human being and walk away feeling normal.

“Look,” a cop said from the growing knot of uniforms. He pointed across the small pond. A deer was floating in the shallows. Service saw a fan of blood staining the dark water.

“Write the fucker for a deer out of season,” a voice said. The cops laughed nervously.

Service didn't laugh with them. He waded the perimeter of the pond, getting wet to his knees, got the fawn by a leg and dragged it to dry land. There was a gaping hole in the neck, unaimed bullets as lethal as aimed ones. In more than twenty years in law enforcement he had rarely pulled his weapon and never discharged it at another person. History aside, he knew the day might come when somebody would leave him no choice. He looked at Linsenman sitting with his head down and understood what he was feeling. In Vietnam he had done it too many times and it had exacted a price. He sat down on a patch of reindeer moss and lit a cigarette. Better him than me.

Why couldn't he remember Linsenman's first name?

Fern LeBlanc, Captain Grant's secretary, looked disapprovingly at Service's muddy boots and pants. She held out several callback slips, did not speak to him. Fern had worked exclusively for the captain for a long time and seemed to resent Service's presence. Sometimes she seemed frazzled by his ways, all the calls that came in, his abruptness. The feelings were mutual. LeBlanc was chemically blonde and fifty-two years old with the figure of a thirty-five-year-old. Men and women around the office talked about her, but nobody challenged her. She was the captain's gate guard.

Service sat in his cubicle. The captain stopped in the doorway and Service cringed, expecting a rebuke for being on duty and not at home, but the captain said only, “You're bleeding,” and walked on. Service touched a tissue to his upper lip, found blood.

He set the slips aside, punched in the code for his voice mail. There were several messages.