Shadow of the Wolf Tree (16 page)

22

South Branch, Paint River, Iron County

SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2006

Service sat in the Tahoe for a long time, studying the topographical features depicted in the onboard computer. Millitor stood outside, launching blue smoke rings with his cigar.

They hiked to the rock formation where Newf had found the skulls and looked around. “Dig here?” Millitor asked.

“Nah, let's climb.”

“I don't do heights.”

“Gradual slope, not to worry.” Some scree with woody debris, a log here and there. The computer topo showed an elevated knob above the site, which they eventually reached. Millitor sat down and rubbed sweat off his forehead. Service took in the scene.
Fifty yards, here down to there. Would've been snow and ice in December. Visualize,
he told himself, looking around.
Kill up here; why not leave the bodies right here? Less chance of discovery. In a hurry, maybe? Or jacked up on the cocktail of fear and adrenaline? Not used to such work . . . panic? All possible; no way to know. Multiple fractures in both sets of remains, but only vick
number two, the Native American, had been hacked all to hell.

“You thinking or what?” Millitor asked.

“You in a hurry to dig?”

“Just asking.”

There was a log fifteen feet from the edge, at an angle, there a long time, moss-covered, rotting. He tried to move it, but no luck. It was wedged in dirt and leafy decay, as good as cement. He took the pick, drove it hard into the weakest-looking place, and broke through.
Hollow
! He dropped the pick, picked up the sledge, and smashed his way through the rest of it, the log disintegrating into soft, brownish-orange shards of wood, redolent of decay. There was a natural scallop in the rock face behind the log. His flashlight beam lit more white rock in the darkness. “Quartz?” he asked his partner.

“The stone? Yeah. Not a lot, but there's some here and there in this part of the county.”

Service got on his knees with the shovel, scraped at the earth where it had accumulated under and behind the log. He got a chip of something right away and picked it up. Bone. Then a larger piece.
Evidence bags,
he reminded himself, but he kept scraping and sifting with his fingers. Eventually, a long, heavy bone. Gnawed by porkies at some point, but mostly intact, a porous, yellow-gray knob on one end.
Part of a socket or a joint
? He peeked out. “Mike, go back to the truck, call Trooper Smalt, and tell him we need forensics again. Wait until he gets here and show him up.”

“You mean I'll hafta climb all the way back up this bloody hill?”

“He won't get here right away. You'll have time to rest.”

“You?”

“Gonna take a little walk.”

When Millitor was gone he used the sledge to chip off some pieces of quartz, which he put in an evidence bag labeled with a permanent marker and tied to his belt. The topos said the low ridge ran mostly east-northeast. He followed it nearly a mile, breaking off specimens to add to his collection wherever he could find outcroppings.

Before going back to the truck he took samples from where Newf had started the whole thing.

He found Millitor in the truck, napping. “You get hold of Smalt?”

“He ain't in town, and holy smokes, I called the ME and he wigged out. He was out to George Young smacking one of them little balls around. Said to call him when Smalt gets here, only I can't, 'cause Smalt ain't around, so I called the Iron Mountain post and they're sendin Micro Sjovall to cover for Smalt, and now Micro's pissed off too.”

“Is forensic support always like this around here?”

“Every doctor in the county is empowered to be a deputy ME, but he's the only one who's taken it seriously, so I guess we shouldn't complain.”

“How long until the Iron Mountain Troop shows?”

“One hour at the outside, but I went ahead and called Marquette, and they're sendin' a team too.”

When the Marquette forensics people finally arrived, Service gave them the bag of quartz samples. “Assays.”

“We looking for anything in particular?”

“Kryptonite, whatever.”

The ME showed up and puffed up the hill behind Service, not hiding his dissatisfaction. “
Now
what? I was playing the best golf of my life.”

“We think we've got the rest of the bones.”

“Why'd you look way up here?”

Why hadn't the others looked up here?
“You said multiple fractures in both skeletons, only one hacked up. Falls equal fractures.”

“Maybe I should resign, save the county's money, let you game wardens do my job.”

“Whatever floats your boat, doc.”

Service got an evidence bag from Sjovall, who had arrived minutes before the Marquette contingent. It contained the long bone Service had found earlier.

“Leg? How the hell did Sjovall get the evidence? It should have been locked up at the Iron River Post. You sign for this?” the ME asked the Troop.

“Yeah. Custody trail's pristine.”

Service felt a little better. The doctor held out the bag. “Tibia,” he said, “hip to knee.”

Grady Service told the ME, “Your report didn't indicate any heights.”

“Needed this and/or a femur. Artists can estimate height, but I am compelled by science in my work.”

The doctor's a blowhard.
“Artists?”

“They measure the length of the head. The average body is thought to be eight heads long, four heads from hip, measured laterally at the navel, down to the ankle. Ergo, head times eight gives you a ballpark, which is entirely unscientific and not in the least precise.”

Service listened to the man, who was obviously enthralled by the sound of his own voice, lecturing the untutored. “Currently the consensus is eight, perhaps because humans are growing taller.”

“Eight, huh, not seven?” Service asked, deadpan.

The ME glared at him. “In the Renaissance it was seven.”

“Bit of a diff between seven and eight,” Service said.

“Exactly my point. An artist seeks only
relative
proportions, not scientific verisimilitude.”

“What was his name, Michelangelo? He seemed to get things pretty close. Listen, Doc, just between us, what's your best guess on vick two's height?”

“Six and a half feet on the eight-head model, but this is, as you put it, a guess, not a measurement. I will call you when I can be more precise.”

“When will that be?”

“Good science takes time.”

Not good vibes here.
“When?” Service pressed.

“When I have something, Detective,” the man said, standing his ground. “Tomorrow's Memorial Day.”

“You know why God invented golf?” Service asked the ME, who shrugged. “To keep assholes off trout streams,” Service said, heading downhill with Millitor chuckling and wheezing behind him.

“Don't mind the doc,” Millitor said in the Tahoe. “He's an equal opportunity asshole.”

“I couldn't care less about his religion,” Service said. “All that matters is how good he is . . . and how fast.”

“He was good enough to have been the ME in St. Joe County a few years back. He moved up here to hunt, fish, and play golf. He took the ME's job as a favor to the county commissioners. Nobody else wanted to do it.”

“You think the county could get people to volunteer for our jobs as a favor?”

Millitor stared straight ahead. “Nobody's that crazy.”

23

Crystal Falls, Iron County

MEMORIAL DAY, MONDAY, MAY 29, 2006

Simon and Elza were on patrol. With unseasonably mild weather, CO shortages, and the three-day Memorial Day weekend, they would be knee-deep in fools and idiots. Service got up early, ran, came back, showered, and sat down in front of his friends' computer to surf the Internet with no expectation of results. The question of skeleton height was bothering him. He didn't like the arrogant ME, and didn't trust him to do what was needed. He spent two hours poking around in a site called “Osteoarchaeology,” jotting down notes as he went. Mostly it made no sense.

When his eyes got tired he sat on the porch and called Karylanne to talk to his granddaughter, who slobbered a wet “Bam-pee?”into the phone.

“Goddammit, Karylanne,” he yelped. “We
talked
about this! She can call me anything but
that
!”

“Yes,
we
talked about it, Grady, but now that your granddaughter is learning to talk, I'm out of the equation, and you'll have to negotiate directly with her. Aren't you proud? Her first word is about
you,
not
Mum.
I'm the one who should be bent out of shape.”

“But
Bampy
?” he whined. “Besides, I'm pretty sure she's got a couple of words, and at least one of them is mum.”

“A woman of any age is quite capable of making her own decisions about terms of endearment.”

“She's sixteen months old, not a woman.”

“How little you know . . . Bampy.”

He heard Karylanne laughing as she hung up, and found himself grinning. Karylanne wanted games? Fine; he'd teach Maridly a few words of
his
choosing.
See how Mum likes that!

He finally summoned the courage to call Leukonovich around noon and listened patiently to a series of clicks and fiber-optic burps as the call pinballed its way to wherever the Poland-born IRS special agent was working. Leukonovich practiced yoga nude, and rarely spoke in anything but the third person.

“Zhenya finds herself vexed and groping for verbiage to adequately express her emotional exhilaration,” she greeted him. “How goes the detective's battle against the forces of darkness in the taiga?”

“You sound wired,” Service said. There was no denying his attraction to the strange woman's blend of raw and refined emotions and mannerisms.

“Does the detective sense my joy in hearing his voice?”

“It would be easier to sense in first person.”

“Nonsense,” she said with a dismissive laugh. “Joy is an emotional force—a state of being, albeit temporary—not a construct of language.”

He felt sweaty. How could a woman who was far from beautiful have such an effect on him?
Keep to business,
he told himself. “I need help.”

“Zhenya would know if such help would be of a professional or personal nature?”

“Professional.”

“Zhenya is listening with a heavy heart.”

He talked her through all the cases and events, starting with Newf finding the skulls, the interview with the professor in Chicago, what she had to say about Van Dalen, his death and obituary, and the prominence of the Van Dalen Foundation.

Leukonovich possessed the closest thing to a photographic memory he had ever encountered, and, as expected, asked him to repeat nothing. “Zhenya is quite aware of this organization and its oleaginous namesake, an early giant in the Windy City oligarchy.”

Oleaginous?
He wrote down the word to look up later. “Is the special agent suggesting there's IRS interest in the foundation?”

Zhenya said, “The accumulation of assets in any form is always of interest to the federal government, especially when said accumulation is alleged to have an undeclared political focus.”

“Does that describe Van Dalen's foundation?”

“Zhenya chooses her words most carefully—except during copulation. She understands what is expected, and will, of course, be in communication with the detective, for whom she maintains an interest outside the bounds of the professional. Zhenya also observes that the detective's financial condition continues to improve, and she salutes the astute management of his personal assets and investments.”

When they had worked together, the IRS agent had taken the questionable initiative of auditing his personal financial situation, something that had irritated him at the time. That she continued to monitor his finances no longer concerned him.

“Zhenya has past satisfactory collaborations with one Captain Isaac Funke, and will confer with the captain regarding the detective's interrogatories. The captain will undoubtedly be in direct communication with the detective.”

“Will you?” he asked.

“Alas, Zhenya is neither seer nor oracle, and cannot predict the future, but all things are theoretically possible, and, given this reality, she would no doubt otherwise welcome telefornication, but pleasure has no priority this day.”

The call was terminated on her end and left him laughing out loud.
Telefornication?

Someone named Funke would be in touch. Leukonovich was aware of the Van Dalen Foundation, and, despite her convoluted syntax, he sensed her excitement. Of all the personnel from the many federal agencies he had worked with during his long career, Leukonovich of the IRS was far above all the rest in professional competence, connections, sense of mission, and trustworthiness as a collaborator. Zhenya was not about heaping credit on her own star—only on getting the job done. Credit was irrelevant, which in his experience made her a truly unique federal creature.

Elza Grinda arrived home after dark, showered, and changed clothes while Service was putting the finishing touches on a dinner of Aztec potato salad, Thai corn fritters, and jumbo prawns marinated in extra-hot dried shrimp Thai chile sauce and grilled over charcoal. Simon del Olmo dragged in fifteen minutes after Grinda, with Tuesday Friday in tow.

Friday looked him in the eye and said, “I need a drink—something strong, straight up, undiluted, and
now
!”

Service pulled a bottle of Absolut Peppar out of the freezer, poured several fingers into a small glass, handed it to her, and watched her drain it, making a sour face.

“She schmucked three deer on M-95,” del Olmo said. “I was two minutes behind her. Man, she blew them up! Her veek's being towed to Iron Mountain. Not totaled, but major damage, man.”

“
Trois un coup,
” Friday said, holding out her glass for another hit, her eyes welling with tears. “A mama and her babies, two itty-bitty fawns. I feel like a mass murderer.” She shook her glass for a refill.

“Let the first one settle,” Service said. “Dinner's on, Simon—five minutes, tops.”

“Into my phone booth now,” del Olmo said.

Friday wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked around the kitchen, sniffing. “You are
cooking,
you who never
eats
?”

“It's my day off,” he said.

Friday picked up the vodka bottle, poured herself another drink, and sat morosely while he plated the shrimp, fritters, and potato salad. He brought the plates inside and drizzled sweet pepper sauce around the rims. Elza opened a bottle of Coppola Rosso and poured while he put the plates on the table.

Simon tasted the shrimp, closed his eyes, and said, “When you retire, will you become our personal chef?”

“You don't like
my
cooking?” Grinda challenged.

“You don't like mine,” he countered.

“Everyone knows you're a terrible cook.”

“I have saving graces,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “That's what you keep telling me.”

Tuesday Friday ate so slowly that Service found it almost painful to watch. “If you live up here,” he said, “there's two classes of people—those who have hit deer, and those who will. If you work as a CO, you
will
hit a lot of deer. You've never hit one on road patrol in your blue goose?”

“Never; I'm a careful driver,” she said. “And realities aside, I still think it's sad.”

“A dead human is sad,” del Olmo said. “A dead deer is just roadside protein for other critters.”

“You people are so insensitive,” Friday said.

They didn't deny it.

“You're supposed to be home,” Service said.

“Tomorrow is a work day and it's a two-hour drive. Better tonight than early morning.”

“How's Shigun?”

She took a drink of wine. “Cuddly, thank you.”

Service rinsed the dishes after dinner and loaded the dishwasher. Friday tried to help but he shooed her away. Simon and Elza sat in the living room, talked a little about their day, and fell asleep next to each other on the couch.

“I'll take you to the AmericInn,” Service told Friday as he started the dishwasher, but when he looked up he saw that she was asleep in the easy chair.

He clapped his hands together. “Okay, kids, everybody go night-night.”

Simon nuzzled Grinda's neck as they shuffled toward their bedroom, looked back, said, “Bags in truck,” and disappeared. Service guided Friday into the room he'd been using, and turned back the covers. “Drank too much,” she said. “Bet you never do that.”

“You'd lose that bet.”

“I did good,” she mumbled, looking around. “This isn't AmericInn.”

“I'm sure you did,” he said, to appease her. “No, it's not.”

“Poor, poor baby deer. Bad mommy.”

“Yes,” he said. “Poor baby deer,” and closed the bedroom door.

He fetched Friday's bags, smoked a cigarette, curled up on the couch, and awoke to find a ghost hovering near him—Friday with a sheet draped around her like a toga, her hair askew. She reached for his hand, said nothing, led him into the bedroom, patted the bed, fluffed pillows on both sides, and got in. “Just cuddle,” she rasped in the dark. “Newbie sex and drink not good.”

He lay down beside her and listened as her breathing changed to a sound not unlike a mourning dove.

When he awoke early he found Friday on her side, propped up on her elbow, her head on her hand. “I have a
really
low tolerance for alcohol,” she whispered. “But never a hangover.” She leaned close to his ear, her voice barely audible. “Grady, there's something I'd like very, very much to do with you, but it's been a long time for me, and if we're to do this thing, I would be consigned to Jell-O mode, and that would be a terrible thing on a work day.” She added, “Correction: Not terrible; more like disastrous.”

Jell-O mode?
He had no idea what she was talking about.

“Three deer,” she said.

“Elza's count was at fourteen last I heard. You're just getting started.”

“
Fourteen?
”

“She's very hard on vehicles.”

“And deer,” Friday said.

“And deer,” he agreed.

“I need caffeine,” she said.

“Coming right up.”

Grinda and del Olmo were in their stirruped uniform pants and bulletproof vests, still in their stocking feet, and said nothing when he joined them in the kitchen, though Grinda gave him a playful hip-bump as he poured coffee into a cup and took it back to the bedroom.

Friday was on her side, sheets at her knees. Her left shoulder had a softball-size patch of pink scar tissue, as did her left hip. Her work clothes hid a lot more than the scars, and he tried not to look. “Shower's in there,” he said, pointing at a door. “Full breakfast or a quickie?”

He immediately regretted his words.

“Is both an option?”

“What about that Jell-O mode thing?”

“Might be worth it,” she said, winking.

He tossed a towel at her. “I'll get things started.”

“I think I already did that,” she said as he closed the bedroom door.