Strike Dog (19 page)

“They
all
valuable,” Eddie Waco growled.

“I didn't mean it like that,” the federal agent said. “Some of the states said the victim was their top performer, or
a
top performer.”

“But the killer has focused on
the
top warden in each state.”

“What are you getting at?” she asked.

“How did the killer identify victims before the list?”

She looked at Service for a long moment. “We don't know.”

Service said, “You can't just wander into the woods and hope to bump into the top warden—or any warden, for that matter. Most of us aren't predictable in our patterns. And, if you want to target the top people, it takes time to find them in order to do what you're gonna do. Who supplied evaluations to you?”

“The top law enforcement official in each state.”

“How long to get back to you?”

“A day or two at the most.”

“States don't keep such lists,” Eddie Waco said, “an' the top law dog is the attorney general.”

Service said, “Safari Club gives an award every year to the outstanding law enforcement officer in Michigan. Probably other states, too. The turkey federation also gives an award. Probably Ducks Unlimited too.”

“You ever win any of those?” Tatie Monica asked.

Service shook his head.

“Then they're irrelevant,” she said.

“This list thing isn't helping,” Service said. “The killer has to have a way of picking targets, a connection between the violets other than their jobs. We just have to figure out what it is. Where's that plane?” he asked.

“I said I ordered it.”

Service looked at her and frowned. “It's coming here?”

“Destination?” she asked.

“Iron Mountain. I need my truck.”

She went to her vehicle, got on the radio, scribbled some notes, and came back. “Here's fine. One hour.”

“You'd better call someone and get the lights on here.” Obviously she had not ordered the plane, or was holding it back, hoping she could convince him to stay.

“I really think it would be better if you remained with the team,” she said.

“No chance,” he answered. He still couldn't figure her out, but he had too many doubts about her motivation and competence to keep doing what she wanted.

“You'll be in touch?” she asked.

“If I have reason.”

When she was gone Service looked over at the Missouri agent. “You can go too. I've got plenty of reading to keep me occupied.”

“Pass me some a' them files, partner.”

“Don't you have something to do?”

“I
am
doing it,” the man said.

After reading by flashlight for a while, Waco said, “If the same feller did all these folks, he musta got started whin he was the size of a popcorn fart.”

Service looked over at the man. “I've had similar thoughts.”

“Hard as it is ta find the likes of us, could be more'n one perp, I 'speck.” Waco added, “I'm thinking you want a well, you best be willin' to dig all the way down ta water, and if this ole boy's the perfectionist them feds claim and he's never got hisself caught, how come he'd switch to a new way? Way I read history, ole Babe Ruth never stopped swingin' for fences even if he struck out more times thin he smacked homers. And Old Ty Cobb never stopped slidin' with 'is spikes up.”

The plane arrived and pulled in, Service walked across the apron, verified his credentials, loaded his gear, and walked back to the Missouri agent.

“Good huntin',” Waco said, extending his hand.

“What makes you think I'm going to hunt?”

Waco grinned. “You got the look. You think you get you a scent, call me and we'll make it a pack hunt.” Waco handed him a card with several phone numbers and an e-mail address. “Me'n Cake will look at the site in the morning.”

Service watched the conservation agent standing expressionless in front of his pickup as the plane taxied into position for takeoff.

PART II MICHISSIPPI

Prendre le chemin des écoliers
To take the schoolboy's route

23

WISCONSIN REDUX
MAY 30, 2004

Grady Service found himself beset with jumbled thoughts. The killer had not struck every year in either group. Why? Waco had suggested there was a group at work, and although possible, this didn't seem likely. Still, a group would better explain how the killer might track his targets. More than one killer could explain how someone could get the better of the imposing Elray Spargo, much less drag his huge body alone. Most COs didn't have easy or predictable routines for an outsider to key in on, and often they didn't know from one moment to the next where they would be or what they would be doing.

He knew that successful long-term fish and game violators tended to be fairly well organized, and often the shooters were not the same ones who located the targets. It could also apply to humans. That's what their Kit Carson scouts had done for them in Vietnam.

But if a crew had been operating over so many years, the odds were that one of them, or somebody who knew one of them, would have snitched. And why had there been a gap of a dozen years between the groups? Had “helpers” outlived their usefulness? The death of the Missouri deputy was definitely something the FBI ought to be taking a long, hard look at, but would they? They had known about the killings for three years and not informed game wardens around the country. Jesus. They were running around with a lot of people, and what seemed to him more velocity than direction. What the hell was Special Agent T. R. Monica really thinking? There were moments when she seemed to be on top of things, and others when she seemed almost clueless. Whatever she was, his gut said not to trust her. As he thought about it, he even wondered if she was somehow involved. Why else would the investigation seem so cockamamie and have so many holes? He wondered if he could check her whereabouts against the killings and timing to see if there was a pattern, but decided this was a reach. Sometimes in an investigation you could have some strange notions. It paid to recognize them for what they were and move on. It would take one imposing person or two to take down Spargo, and Monica had been with him in Wisconsin, which eliminated her from involvement. Right?

Early on she had seemed most interested in his tracking abilities. Why? What trail was he supposed to follow? He was on the list. Okay, but what else? He didn't know if he was tracking a chimpanzee or a chickadee. He had a record of finding people who were
known
to be lost. And he had a good record of intervening in outdoor crime because he had experience and pretty good instincts about where things might happen. Wanting to protect him seemed ludicrous, but she had used political connections to pull him in, and she had admitted it to him. Maybe she believed having him close was the right thing to do.

Whatever her reasoning, he decided there was only one trail, and that was in Wisconsin. He knew from experience that when you lost a trail, you often had to double back to where you'd lost it—all the way to the beginning, if necessary.

He was still in the parking lot of Ford Airport in Iron Mountain when he decided he would not head home. He drove toward Florence, deep in thought.

Why would the man who had killed so invisibly in so many different ways in the first group, and most of the second, suddenly switch to the blood eagle, which was impossible to hide? He had tried not to think about the gruesome details of the most recent killings, but he had a curious thought that such butchering required a fair amount of knowledge about the human anatomy, and some cutting skill. How the hell could someone just jump into killing like that unless they'd first tried it out? Could forensics see a difference in the technique of the mutilations from killing to killing? Was the killer getting better, or worse; was he changing his cutting methods . . . anything? There was no analysis of techniques in the reports. He knew from experience that gutting and butchering a large animal was not something you did perfectly the first time. The more you did it, the more efficient you got.

The fact that he'd never heard of the blood eagle didn't mean it had not been used somewhere; maybe not the whole thing, but part of it. If the killer was truly a perfectionist, as Bonaparte insisted, and he wanted to get it right, he'd do all kinds of homework about game warden habits and movement patterns. Wouldn't he also do the same in creating the blood eagle? So why had his timing been off in Wisconsin?

Only Monica and her analyst knew about the control. Significance? He wasn't sure. Why didn't Bonaparte know? Had she intentionally withheld it from him and other agents? And if so, why?

And what was it that Bonaparte had said to him that struck an odd chord? He couldn't remember the specific thing, only that it had jarred him momentarily.

Something Eddie Waco said had stayed with him: “Babe Ruth never stopped swinging for the fences.” In hockey when you tried to score a goal on every shot, you were bound to score some, miss some, and have some blocked or saved. So why didn't this killer ever miss?

This thing was way out of his league, he decided, but he had to do something, and he knew he needed help.

Special Agent Temple met him when he parked at the command post on the hill above the Pine River. Her hair was mussed, her clothes dusty, her shirt soaked with sweat. The temperature was in the low nineties, the humidity unbearable, especially for those who lived this far north. Yoopers would walk about on a sunny thirty-below-zero day talking about the nice weather, and carp incessantly when the temperature got above eighty in summer.

She said. “Tatie called me about what you found in Missouri.”

He nodded. “Anything new here?”

“Not a lot. The techs don't think the vick got it in the water. No drag marks up to the kill site, just down that other bank. Something or someone got him to get out.”

The techs
thought?
“That's it?” Service said, mulling over the information. This wasn't new. Dammit, he'd read the signs himself, pointed them out to Tatie Monica.

“I swear this asshole could clean my apartment,” Temple added. “He's a neat freak.”

If so, why hadn't the neat freak picked up Ficorelli's fishing gear in order to mask the kill site? He felt like blowing up, but took a deep breath. This wasn't Temple's fault. “Where's the vick's vehicle now?”

“Impounded in town.”

“Has it been announced yet?”

“If it had, I'm sure you would have heard about it,” she said. “We've been able to sit on it so far.”

Given where he'd been the last few days, he might have missed the opening of World War III. “Does his mother know?”

“She died last month.”

Service sucked in a breath. “She died?”

“Car wreck.”

Another car wreck?
Service said, “This needs to be announced. If the media finds out you've been sitting on this for so long, they may jump on you and play the story in a bigger way than they might have.”

“You're singing to the choir. Special Agent Monica has her own mind and ways of doing things. Her orders are to sit on it.”

Service said, “If it's made public, we might get some people coming forward, maybe find someone who saw something that could help us.” This tactic had worked with fish and game violations and had led to the conviction of illegal wolf and bear killers.

“More likely to pull in cranks and nutcases,” she said.

“Some of the things cranks and nut jobs see are real,” he reminded her. What had Bonaparte said—that the perp had never tried to communicate with law enforcement? Would an announcement stimulate that? Maybe, maybe not. “What else have you got?” he asked. “Did those people seen down by the river that night get interviewed?”

“Transcripts for you,” she said, pulling a clipboard out of her vehicle and handing him some stapled pages.

“You mind if I look around the site?” Service asked.

“You know the drill,” she said.

The only change he saw at the kill site was an orange-string grid and several marker flags inside a yellow-ribbon perimeter. Other pennants had been placed where he had found the rod and fly box. Service thought himself through what he'd seen previously, and retraced the discovery of the kill site. After an hour he moved over to the riverbank and sat on a cedar blowdown to read the transcripts. The man and woman both had been interviewed. Neither had been shown a photograph of Ficorelli. All the questions had been about movements on the road on the other side of the river, and questions about any suspicious activity they might have observed. What the hell was the FBI thinking? They'd missed the point.

Service tapped the pages. They had not just missed a potential trail, but also ignored the possibility of another angle. He corrected himself: They had no way of knowing firsthand about Wayno's predilections, so he couldn't fairly hang an oversight on them. But not announcing the killing to the public could have played into the law of unintended consequences, and he had a hunch. Not exactly a hunch; more like elevated curiosity. Monica knew Wayno couldn't keep it in his pants, but it was doubtful she knew the extent of his philandering.

Service didn't let Special Agent Temple know his real intentions, but asked permission to take his truck through the river at the four-wheeler ford. When he asked her for a photograph of Ficorelli, she hemmed and hawed before providing one.

According to transcripts, the woman's name was Sondra Andreesen, married fifteen years to Monte, who owned Super-Saver Appliances & Electronics, a chain headquartered in Milwaukee, with stores stretching from northern ­Illinois up to St. Paul, Minnesota. She was forty-four, her husband, forty. The man the FBI had caught her with was Jinks Schwarz, thirty-nine, a house painter and year-round resident of the area; no criminal record, not even a traffic citation.

He saw no point in talking to Schwarz until he met the woman.

The Andreesen house was five miles south of the river. It looked new and out of place, a three-story glass-and-steel-beam monstrosity that towered over a grove of five-year-old aspens like a botanical goiter. A driveway curved about a hundred yards from the road to the house. The road to the river was invisible from the house.

When he arrived, a woman was standing on the porch. She wore a yellow sundress draped to her ankles, and stringy gold sandals with soles as thin as vellum. She had a deep, unseasonal tan, no jewelry or makeup, but reddish polish on several fingernails. It looked like she had been interrupted. He could smell fresh nail polish.

“Mrs. Sondra Andreesen?” He showed his FBI ID. “Do you have an electronic security system?” Service asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“It looks to me like you were out on the porch waiting for me.”

“I was just on my way out to run some errands.”

Service said, “I thought maybe your system alerted you I was coming in.”

“It's an eye or something,” she said, blinking furiously. “I don't really pay attention to it.”

“You didn't finish your nails.”

She instinctively curled her fingertips to hide them.

“Can I have a few minutes of your time?” Service asked.

“I have some errands,” she said. “Really.”

“This won't take long,” Service said. She was uptight.

“I already talked to the other agents,” she said, adding, “and I'm ashamed. Are you people ever going to leave me alone? I don't even know what the point of this is.”

He could sense she wanted to let loose her indignation, but was holding back. Her eyes were wide, her posture tense. She was nervous as hell about something.

“If you give me a few minutes, maybe I can clarify the situation,” Service said.

She reluctantly opened the door and led him into a great room with one wall of windows and half a roof of sloping skylights. The place was shades of white, totally sterile, no sign of children. “Plenty of room,” Service said, looking around.

“This house was Monte's idea,” she said. “I wanted a little cabin in the woods and of course he wanted an investment. With Monte everything is about money.”

A less-than-blissful union, Service observed.

She didn't offer a seat or refreshments. “What's this about?” she wanted to know.

Service handed her a five-by-seven photograph of Wayno Ficorelli.

She lurched visibly, but tried to recover her poise.

“Do you know this man?”

She answered, “With Monte's business we meet so many people.”

“His name is Wayno Ficorelli,” Service said.

“I just don't remember,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Is it important?”

Service considered his options. The woman had been caught in
flagrante dilecto
with one man, and there had to be a reason other than fishing for Ficorelli to keep coming back to this area. It was a long shot that felt right. “He's been murdered, Mrs. Andreesen.”

Blood ran out of the woman's face and she started to wobble. Service caught her by the arm and guided her down into a chair. She shook her head listlessly and stared at the floor, her breath coming fast. “When?” she asked.