Strike Dog (32 page)

42

SLIPPERY CREEK, MICHIGAN
JULY 28, 2004

Service checked his e-mail and phone messages as he drove north. His in-box was empty except for routine notices from division HQ in Lansing. It was getting late.

Captain Grant had called, wondering where he was, and, as usual, the captain's voice was controlled, neutral, and impossible to read.

Special Agent Monica left a one-word voice-mail message: “Asshole.”

Service stopped at the Windmill truck stop south of Lansing, ordered coffee, got out a pad of paper, and tried to make notes about the case. It wasn't long before his mind was consumed and he paid no attention to anything going on around him.

1) First batch of killings: 1950–1970 [27 dead]. Killer inactive, 1970–1982. Second batch: 1982–present (2004) [22 dead]. Ney murdered in prison just before Xmas, 1974. Never confessed.

2) Suspect in Mexico gave name as Ney; FBI had failed to identify Pigeon River as Mongo, unable to find any Neys anywhere in state of Indiana. Per Big Ben, Pey; François Pey, aka Frankie Ney. Was this the Mexico Ney? Former girlfriend Essie Greenleaf says he is/was.

3) Boy involved, named Marcel, relationship and last name unknown. Estimated age 15–16 in 1970, which would make him approx. 48–49 now.

4) A New Mexico game warden killed two weeks after Ney arrested in Mexico. The killer's work, someone else, coincidence? Definitely not Ney. (Pey?)

5) Ney cut Mexican victims along the spine. Precursor of blood eagle? Frankie Pey was trapper as a kid—has skinning knowledge, comfortable with a cutting edge. Also liked to move around. Montreal, relatives?

6) Ficorelli and Spargo both used booger flies mail-ordered from Booger Baits in Curran. What about the other victims? [Waco checking Illinois, Kansas] The list has to be carefully analyzed. FACT: List only goes back seven years; no apparent way to connect flies to the first batch of killings. If Mains use no computers, how could killer access list? Need F/U by Denninger? C. Main III nervous about government oversight. Why? All of this seems to point to ­something, but what?

7) Give photo from Big Ben Pey to FBI to compare with the Mexican photo.

8) Per Big Ben: Frankie Pey may have gone to college “up in Marquette”; from same source, Frankie served in the navy in the Pacific during World War II. Did he graduate? Are there college and/or navy records on the man? Check NMU, DOD.

9) Pey might have worked for Sears or Monkey Ward. [FBI F/U] According to Big Ben: Frankie Pey a sort of roving bookkeeper or auditor. [NOTE: Seems to fit the kind of job and freedom Monica theorizes for the serial murderer.] Way to track his movements over the years and coordinate those with killings? Expense, trip, or sales reports? Anything? How long do companies keep such records, if at all?

10) Frankie's mother murdered the year he went to college, estim. 1932. Throat cut. Speculation: probably a boyfriend. No arrests. Frankie comfortable with cutting edges. Who investigated the case? Were there suspects? Was Frankie ever one of them? [FBI F/U]

11) When will Monica have notes of deceased agent in Toledo? If so, any new leads, information in the dead agent's files and notes?

12) Where is Monica's analyst? Why so difficult to arrange a meeting? What's her reluctance? Is she holding back, and if so, why?

13) Can forensic pathologist/medical examiner look at wounds in Mexico vicks, and those in the blood eagle killings, see a connection or a progression? Something?

14) Initial victims in the second group = no blood eagle. Why the sudden shift in MO. Why change? Something different in killer's state of mind?

15) Nantz, Mama Ficorelli, Spargo's sister: all killed in freak auto accidents: Coincidence, or what? How do these fit, if at all? Ptacek from U.P. Autobody says paint flecks on bumper lining should not be there, indicative of PIT? Need second opinion on evidence. [NOTE: Nantz not an accident. Others misread in WI, MO?]

16) FACT: I'm not on Booger Baits list. Never used the flies, never even heard of them until now. If killer finds victims via fly orders, how would he use list to find me? As of last night, no MI COs on Booger Baits lists—only Shark. Denninger will type Michigan list, double-check.

Most predators in the animal kingdom, he knew, were born efficient, and tended to single out a specific victim, either because it was outside the group or perceived to be weaker than the others. Then it slow-hunted, narrowing the victim's options until it was either trapped or panicked. Prey panic? The phrase stuck in his mind. Were human predators different?

“You writin' a juicy love letter, hon?”

Service looked up, felt confused.
Nantz?
A waitress with huge eyes was bending down over him. He immediately turned over the pad and she stepped back.

“Dude,” she said icily, “I wasn't snooping. You want a refill or not?”

He gave the girl his thermos and asked her to fill it with the leaded stuff.

He paid for his coffee and continued north. At eighty miles an hour it would take him roughly three-and-a-half hours to reach the bridge and another ninety minutes to get back to the cabin.
Watch for deer,
he warned himself, as he went around Lansing on the I-69 bypass and headed north. He tightened his seat belt and tried to put the case out of his mind. Stay in the moment, watch for deer, and don't forget elk after Gaylord.
Damn, it's dark.

Vince Vilardo's Chrysler minivan was parked at the cabin. Service got out stiff-legged, and found the retired medical examiner for Delta County asleep on the footlocker bed; a stranger was asleep in his old upholstered chair. Both of them were snoring.

“Vince,” Service said gruffly.

Vilardo stirred. “Two minutes, Rose.”

“It's Grady, not your wife. What the hell are you doing here, Vince?”

Vilardo sat up like a spring had been unwound. “Huh . . . What?” He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “Grady?”

“What are you doing here, Vince? Do you know what time it is?”

“What time it is?”

“It's midnight. Stop repeating what I say and wake up.”

Vilardo shuffled over to the sink and splashed water on his face.

“Boy, I was zonked.” He looked at Service, who was looking at the stranger. “That's Charles Marschke, Esquire. He went to the Gladstone house and nobody was there. He asked the county for help and they called me and I brought him out. He claims he's one of Maridly's lawyers.”

One
of them?

“Hey,” Service said, nudging the sleeping man's foot. “Wake up.”

The man opened his eyes and stared up, the sleep falling off like a coverlet. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a business card. “Charles Marschke—Maridly was my client. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“You were her lawyer?”

“She had several, but I was her personal affairs lawyer, family friend, and financial manager. I'll miss her. She never mentioned my name?”

“She didn't talk about money.”

The man smiled. “That was Maridly. May I ask why you never married her?”

Service kept asking himself the same question. “That's none of your business.”

The man held up his hands. “You're absolutely right, and it's irrelevant. Married or not, she named you her sole heir. It will take a while to transfer everything, but it will be done in six to ten months. Do you have a financial consultant I can confer with?”

Service was confused and tired. “Hell, I haven't balanced my checkbook in I don't know how long.”

The man smiled. “If you need a consultant, I'd be pleased to be of ­assistance.”

“I don't need a consultant. I work for the state.”

“But you do,” the man said. “You do.”

“I don't want to inherit anything from Nantz,” Grady Service said.

“You're getting everything: all her assets, the house in Gladstone, her aircraft, her investments. Those alone come to about eighty, eighty-five.”

“Eighty thousand?”

The man laughed. “
Million,
Mr. Service, and growing daily. She was a very, very wealthy woman, and now you are going to be a wealthy man.”

Service felt his legs go soft.

Marschke took papers out of his briefcase and took them to a table, spreading them out. “There's a sticky tag in each place where you need to sign.”

“What if I don't sign?”

“You'll still get it all. It will just take longer. This is what you call a done deal. Go with the flow.”

“Sign,” Vince Vilardo yipped. “
Sign!
”

“Shut up, Vince.”

Service signed the papers and watched the man fold them and put them back into his briefcase. He walked out to Vince's car with the men and told Vince, “You keep your mouth shut about this.”

When they were gone he sat down on his steps and stared into the darkness. What the fuck was he going to do with eighty million dollars?
If Nantz was here now, he'd strangle her,
he told himself. Go ahead and laugh, Mar. This is not funny!

At 6 a.m. and with virtually no sleep, he telephoned Special Agent Monica. “Tatie, this is Service. Just wake up and listen. When I was in Arizona, I talked to a CBP agent who was part of the
federales
team that arrested Ney. He said Ney's murder in prison was not what it seemed. Ney scammed a guard to kill him because he was dying of cancer and he had only weeks or months to live. He also said that all Ney would tell the
federales
was that he had completed his life's work. Nobody knew what that meant.”

He kept talking, couldn't stop. “After Ficorelli's funeral, his aunt gave me his fishing gear, including his fly collection. A friend of mine came down from Houghton to look at the flies and he found a unique one called a booger fly. It's made in only one place, by an old guy down in Curran, Michigan, which is about thirty miles south of Alpena,” he said. “I found the same kind of fly at the kill site. I think Ficorelli got out of the river to retrieve the fly and was killed.”

Tatie Monica perked up. “You
found
evidence and didn't tell me?”

“Shut up, Tatie. I also went back to Elray Spargo's place. He had booger flies in his collection. I drove down to Curran and talked to the man who makes the flies. The old guy grew up in Mongo, in northern Indiana, and invented the fly there, but he moved up to Michigan and has been here fifty years. I plotted all the body sites on maps to see if I could pick up a trend. What threw me is that some were by the ocean. It took a while to remember tides—moving water. Your analyst understood that. I began to wonder if what our victims had in common was that they were all trout fishermen and they used flies—specifically booger flies. The business up in Curran has records only for seven years, but we convinced them to let us compile a list. It's run by a man called Charles Main Jr. and his son, Charles Main the third. The locals call the younger one Charley the Turd.” Service picked up his notepad and looked at it. “I know it's a long shot,” he concluded.

“What have you been smoking, Service?” the FBI agent asked.

“You need to listen, and we need to get on the same page. You need to get your people to go through the list, to find out how many of our victims bought booger flies by mail,” he said. “I've got an agent in Missouri checking on the Illinois and Kansas victims.”

“One of my agents?”

“No, Missouri conservation agent Eddie Waco—the guy with the beard? We can't look at the first batch of victims, but we can sure as hell compare the customer list to the second group and see what comes up. If it turns out they were all using booger flies, then we have a potential intersect, a way for the killer to identify certain game wardens. Maybe this is how he picked them, I don't know. Maybe it was a coincidence that victims were also some of the best in each state. You have the resources to do this; I don't,” he said.

“How would the killer get their list?” she asked.

This stopped him momentarily. “I don't know yet. Now listen to this: Mongo was once called Pigeon River. It's built on the Pigeon River. The name was changed. The fly tier, whose name is Main, never heard of a family named Ney, but he said there was a large family named Pey in Pigeon River.”

Service let her digest the information. “I went to Mongo, where I met the current game warden, and a retired warden. The retired warden introduced us to an old man named Big Ben Pey. The old man told us he had a distant relative named Francois
Ney
Pey, and that this man went by the name of Frankie. Frankie Pey worked for Sears or Montgomery Ward out of Chicago. He went to college in Marquette, and served in the navy during World War Two. No idea if he graduated, but it's a starting place,
and
he was some sort of traveling auditor for his employer and moved all over the country. Apparently he came back to Mongo only to see a girlfriend, who was married to somebody else,” said Service.