Running Dark (5 page)

7

MARQUETTE, DECEMBER 19, 1975

“ . . . you're well suited for this secret squirrel stuff.”

Attalienti had moved to Cosmo Metrovich's office in the Marquette DNR building adjacent to Marquette Prison, which had been built before the turn of the century and housed some of the state's most dangerous criminals. The architecture of the regional office featured a strange roof with hooked ends that resembled the beaks of birds of prey. Officers referred to the regional office as The Roof.

It was almost closing time and Fern LeBlanc, Metrovich's long-legged secretary, gave Service the once-over before ushering him to the captain's office, which looked out toward Lake Superior a few hundred yards away.

Service closed the door and stood in front of the captain's desk at parade rest.

“Relax,” Attalienti said. “Coffee?”

“Had my daily ten-cup ration,” Service said, sitting down.

“Make your contact?”

“Yessir,” Service said, quickly relating the specifics of the visit from Cecilia Lasurm.

The acting captain listened impassively, his hands on the blotter in front of him, and when Service had finished, asked, “What do you think?”

“I think we've never had an opportunity like this before and maybe we won't have another one.”

“How do you want to proceed?”

“I spend time with her, pick her brain, and look over the area.”

“How will you beat the crow line?”

“I don't know yet,” Service said, “but to maintain secrecy once I have a plan, I don't think I should reveal it, even to you.”

Attalienti grinned. “I think maybe you're well suited for this secret squirrel stuff.”

“I want to take two weeks, longer if needed.”

The acting captain looked surprised. “Two weeks is a heckuva long time to arrange coverage for your area.”

“This is either worth doing right or not doing at all. We have time now, and you said we won't start the real operation until April. If I'm going down there, I don't want to waste my time.”

“If you can take the pulse of that place, you won't be wasting your time, but operating alone carries inherent risks.”

“Understood,” Service said.

“Not just the risks to you, but to the woman as well. You have to get in and out of there without footprints. We can't implicate her.”

“She wants to do this, and so do I. My gut says it's the right thing to do.”

“Do you always trust your gut, Grady?”

“Yessir.”

“Good,” Attalienti said. “All I ask is that you let me know the timing so I can arrange coverage. We're going to say you are on leave for a family emergency.”

“Thank you.” He didn't bother to point out that he had no family.

“When you take out the ad in the Manistique paper, use an intermediary to place it.”

“Sir?”

“Let's not underestimate that Garden crowd. At times it seems like they have our playbook.”

“I didn't think we had one,” Service said.

“We don't, but we're trying to develop one, and this is the sort of paranoia those assholes can create. The best way to cover a trail is to not have one in the first place,” the acting captain said.

8

SLIPPERY CREEK, DECEMBER 24, 1975

Naked Skydivers Go Down Faster.

Grady Service pulled into the clearing where his Airstream was tucked away and saw a red pickup that was both vaguely familiar and out of place. He used his radio to report out of service, and sat wondering what this was about. He took out his notebook and leafed through the pages.

On the opening day of deer season Service had found a red Ford pickup parked in the lower Mosquito River area. That night he had monitored the truck until after dark, waiting for the hunter to come out. When it got to be an hour after shooting hours, he began to wonder if the truck had been dropped off and the hunter gone elsewhere with friends. It had snowed steadily since midday, and there were no tracks into the dense line of naked tamaracks that served as a natural windbreak for the massive cedar swamp beyond.

He had called in the license number for warrants and wants and come up empty. The license number in his notebook matched the plate on the truck now parked near his trailer. His notes showed that the truck was registered to a Brigid Mehegen of Harvey, which was just south of Marquette. She had been born in 1947, which made her twenty-eight. That night he had just about decided to drive on when he saw a flashlight bobbing through the trees. He walked over to the truck, keeping the cab between the approaching light and him, and waited.

There were audible grunts interspersed with muted curses, and when he stepped out to identify himself, a woman chirped, “You got a broken back?” She had a rifle slung over her shoulder and looked tired.

“Pardon?”

“I hauled a damn buck all the way to the tamaracks. Least you could do is offer to help.”

“Let's go,” he said.

The deer was just inside the tree line. Service illuminated it with his penlight. It was a huge, black ten-point animal. The tag was correctly affixed to an antler.

“Swamp buck,” he said.

“Here,” she said, working the lever to show him the rifle was unloaded, and handing him a beat-up Winchester 94. She pulled off her hat and ran her hand through medium-length brown hair. “I thought I hit 'im pretty good, but it took me till mid-afternoon to find the sonuvagun. He swam the river and crawled under a blowdown. Funny how wounded deer head for water,” she added. “You think people have the same inclination?”

Service didn't know and didn't care. Mid-afternoon: How far back had she been? The river was more than a mile from where they stood. “What time did you shoot it?”

“A little after nine this morning. I took an hour to drink half my coffee to give the big bugger time to lay down, but when I went after him all I found was some hair and a little blood and I figured it was damn gut-shot. I had a partial trail for about two hundred yards, then nothing. Thank God he went to the river and started bleeding more.”

“You crossed the river?”

“Yeah, twice, but it wasn't too bad because the old adrenaline was pumping, eh. Now I'm
freezing,
” she said, her teeth chattering.

He was not sure whether to be impressed at her determination or her foolishness. The thermometer was almost down to twenty, under a bitter and stiffening northwest wind. Being wet in such conditions invited exposure and hypothermia. He grabbed the deer's antlers, but she pushed his hand away and dragged the deer to her truck alone. She let him help her heave it into the bed and he let her get in the cab, start the engine, and turn on the heater. She took off her gloves and put her hands over the vents, waiting for the warm air to come.

She handed him her hunting license and driver's license without him having to ask.

“I've been dogging this big boy since July,” she said. “My own fault I made a lousy shot, but I wasn't going to lose him to jerks or brush wolves.”

Brush wolf was the Yooper term for a coyote. “Been hunting long?” he asked. A woman hunting was unusual. Alone was unprecedented, even in the U.P. where women were famous for going their own way.

“My grandfather started taking me with him when I was ten, and I went on my own as soon as I was sixteen. I've gotten a buck every single year, but this is the best one so far. I used to hunt the high country west of Cliff's Ridge, but the damn ski resort crowd got to be too much to deal with. Bampy used to hunt down this way and he told me where to come.” She paused for a second and added, “Sorry I jumped you for not helping. I can get a tad cranky when I get tired and cold.”

“It's okay,” he said, handing her licenses back to her. Bathsheba had gotten more than cranky when she was cold, and nearly as often when she was warm.

“You're Service,” she said, and added, “I'm Brigid Mehegen, a Troop dispatcher out of Negaunee,” she said. “It's my job to keep track of new law enforcement personnel in the area.”

“Grady,” he said.

“Thanks again,” she said, closing her door and rolling down her window. “With all the deer you guys confiscate, you probably eat venison year-round,” she said with a gleam in her eye. This myth—that they allegedly took home all the illegal game they confiscated—irritated all game wardens.

“Not that often,” he said defensively. In fact, all the illegal game that officers confiscated went to families and shut-ins who needed food.

She laughed out loud. “I'm puttin' you on, guy! I know you're all a buncha Boy Scouts.”

“That old buck is likely to be tough,” he said. Who
was
this woman?

“Not the way I'll cook it,” she said. “See you around sometime,” she said, putting the truck into gear and driving away.

Three or four times since deer season she had been the on-duty dispatcher when he was on the radio, and she had given him a bump and made wisecracks about the cushy life of game wardens and how he'd better be nice if he wanted Santa Claus to come. He had smiled and shook his head when he heard her on the radio, but didn't think much more about it. He met a lot of peculiar people in the woods, and she was just one of many. The dispatcher was totally unlike his ex-wife who had dispatched their marriage.

He had not seen her in six weeks, but as he got out of his patrol unit, Brigid Mehegen popped out of her truck. She was wearing a red parka and beat-up Sorels.

“I hope you have an oven in that little bitty rig,” she greeted him.

“A small one.”

“Size doesn't count as long as it gets hot,” she said with a wink.

He stood staring at her as she opened the passenger door of her truck. “Help?” she said.

They carried two large cardboard boxes and a smaller one into the trailer. He turned up the heat and helped her take off her coat.

“Beer's in the bed of my truck,” she said, taking something in aluminum foil out of a box and putting it on the tiny counter in the area that served as his kitchen and dining room.

There were two six-packs of Strohs long-neckers in a paper bag in the truck bed, and when he came back inside, Mehegen had shed her sweater. She wore a T-shirt that proclaimed
naked skydivers go down faster.
It was clear she wore nothing underneath.

She took two bottles of Strohs from one of the six-packs and a church key out of one of her cardboard boxes, popped the caps, and handed a beer to Service. She tapped her bottle against his and said, “
Slainte.
I cooked the roast this afternoon; now let me get it warming and boil some water for the potatoes. I brought plastic plates. I figure why waste time doing dishes when we can toss them, right? My environmentalist friends would throw an eco-freaky hissy-fit, but what the hey—what they don't know can't sour their stomachs, right? You like garlic in your mashed spuds?”

He nodded, and she said in a husky voice, “Okay, drink your beer and get outta that monkey suit while I do some woman's work.”

Service opened the bathroom door to serve as a wall, shed his uniform, and put on sweatpants, wool socks, slip-on logger boots, and a plaid wool shirt.

Mehegen was sitting down when he stepped back to the other end of the Airstream. She held up her bottle like a pointer. “It's Christmas Eve and neither of us has another to fuss over, but I don't want you jumping to the conclusion that I came here to get laid,” she said.

He had no idea how to respond.

“Unless
you
think that's a good idea,” she added. “Do you?”

He felt his face reddening and she laughed. “Okay, I can see the Boy Scout game warden's not all that comfortable with a direct female. No sweat. Let's just enjoy this dinner and get to know each other. But no cop-shop talk. I talk to cops all day, every day, and while I appreciate what all you guys do, I get sick of the yammer. Okay by you?”

He found himself dumbly nodding.

She got up when the water boiled and dropped small red potatoes into the pot. Then she took something out of the smallest box and put it on the table.

“You know about
Luciadagen?
”

“Is that like Sadie Hawkins Day?”

She laughed so hard that tears formed in her eyes. “It's a Swedish deal, ya big lug, ‘Saint Lucia's Day.' The Swedelanders in the old country used to celebrate it around December thirteenth, and considered it the first day of winter—never mind that they were a good week ahead of the actual solstice. They'd crown a young girl as the
Luciadagen
queen, and the women would start cooking around midnight. In the morning there'd be a feast, and afterwards they'd all go out skiing, maybe the men would shoot their rifles a bit, then they'd all jump in the sauna.”

He stared at the glistening concoction on the table. It was shaped like a cat that had been hit by lightning.

“
Lussiketbröd
,” she explained. “It's part of the festival. Saffron dough brushed with egg whites, filled with sugar, cinnamon, chopped nuts, and raisins. Go ahead and knock off a piece,” she said with a wink, handing him a small jackknife.

“Isn't this dessert?” he asked.

“Hey guy, it's Christmas Eve and we're celebrating. We don't have to stick to the rules, eh? Time for you to eat some of my cat,” she added, lowering her eyes and smirking.

He did as she ordered and tasted the bread, which was light and sweet. “Good,” he said.

“My cat tastes good?” she asked as he chewed.

“A little dry,” he said.

She laughed and said, “That's the spirit!” She touched his arm. “She gets wetter as the meal goes on.”

“Mehegen isn't a Swedish name,” he said, awkwardly changing the subject.

“Yoopers, we're all a buncha mongrels, eh? We take what we like from all the cultures around us.”

She took several garlic cloves, smashed them with the flat of a knife, took off their skins, snipped off their tops, wrapped them in aluminum foil with a little butter and chopped fresh chives, and put them into a warm oven.

When the potatoes boiled, Service tested them with a fork, drained them in a colander over the small sink, transferred them back to the pot, and mashed them for her. She insisted on adding the salt, pepper, garlic, and butter, and stuck the batch back on the burner.

She took his empty beer bottle, set it aside, and opened another for him. “Your wife left you over to Newberry,” Mehegen said, opening another bottle for herself. “She couldn't cut it,” she added.

Before he could react, she said, “Hey, I'm
not
snooping. Every cop in the Yoop makes it a point to know everything about every other cop up here.”

He didn't bother to point out that she was a dispatcher, not a road officer, and as far as he was concerned, his private life was none of her business. Not that he had much of a private life anymore.

When the roast and potatoes were done to her satisfaction, she sent him out to her truck to fetch two bottles of wine from a warm sack in the backseat.

She let him open both bottles to let them breathe. “Red wine should be room temp, right? I bought that warming sack over to Green Bay. Cost me way too much, but up here with so much bloody cold, how do you carry wine around and drink it properly if you don't keep it warm? Be damned if I'll stoop to screwtop wine.”

“Right,” he said as she filled two plastic wineglasses with dark red liquid, handing him one as she sat down. “You want to say a prayer?” she asked.

“No, but you can.”

“I don't pray,” she said. “I plan.” She held her glass up and touched it to his. “Dig in.”

Service expected the roast to be tough, but it was tender and flavored with slices of onion, garlic, basil, and rosemary. Over dinner and wine she gave him her life's story. Age twenty-eight, divorced twice, not planning to trouble herself with marriage again. No boyfriend at the moment. She was working for the Michigan State Police, taking law enforcement classes at Northern. She had applied for the Troop Academy in Lansing even though the Troops had never hired a woman. She said her post commander assured her that it was being “seriously pursued at the senior command level,” and in a couple of years would happen. Meanwhile, she would finish school and, if necessary, take a county job where she could find one.