Strike Dog (36 page)

48

MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN
AUGUST 2, 2004

Karylanne Pengelly had left for Canada three days ago, her pregnancy confirmed, the baby due sometime in December.

Fern LeBlanc stood in the opening of his cubicle. “You seem to be in here a lot. Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” he said. “Just a lot of work to do.”

“That's never kept you in the barn before,” she said.

When he looked up at her she was smiling.

He called Wink Rector. “Hear anything on Monica?”

“Nothing on her, and nothing on my replacement.”

Fern LeBlanc came in and put a
Detroit Free Press
news clipping on his desk. The headline read
homeland security rescues local dnr officer
.

The story said that CO Miller French of Port Huron had confronted a group of intoxicated fishermen at a campground, and that six of them had jumped him and beaten him. Homeland Security personnel from the Blue Water Bridge detachment had shown up, and disarmed and arrested the assailants. French was treated at Mercy Hospital for a broken arm and facial lacerations, and later released. The assailants were lodged in the St. Clair County Jail.

He walked out to Fern's desk with the clipping. “Why'd you give this to me?”

She nodded at Captain Grant's office.

The captain was alone, his face to his computer. “Cap'n.”

Grant swiveled around.

“Sounds like Frenchy got lucky.” Miller French had trained under Gus Turnage several years back. Gus thought he was a good officer.

“Very lucky,” the captain said.

“How did Homeland Security know to come to his aid?”

“Excellent question,” Captain Grant said, and turned back to his computer.

Service stopped at Fern's desk. “Can you get Miller French's phone number for me?”

She came into his cubicle moments later and handed him a piece of paper.

He dialed the number and the officer answered.

“Frenchy, it's Grady Service. I just heard. You okay?”

“Just dinged up. I'm in a cast for awhile, no biggie.”

“Six on one isn't your normal wrestling match.” Conservation officers seldom referred to even the most violent physical confrontations as anything other than wrestling.

“Thing is, I got two down, but another one of them blindsided me with a piece of firewood, and once I was one-armed, I was done.”

“You hit your panic button?” The panic button was a remote signal device an officer could activate during an emergency outside his vehicle. The button activated a silent alarm in the Automatic Vehicle Locator transmitter, which alerted Lansing and the rest of the state that an officer was in deep trouble and needed help.

“Soon as the pukes turned on me.”

“How long till Homeland Security got there?”

“Ten minutes, maybe less. Mouse was fifteen minutes behind them.” Mouse Frissen was French's sergeant.

“You surprised to see the Homeland Security people?”

“Hell, I would've welcomed help from the Sisters of the Poor at that moment, but yeah, I never expected them.”

“Take care.”

“Thanks for the call.”

Service called out to Fern LeBlanc. “Can you get me Sergeant Mike Frissen's cell phone number?”

“Reaching for it now,” she said. She brought him another piece of paper.

He rang the cell phone, got no answer, and didn't want to leave a message.

He activated his 800 megahertz and changed the channel to District 10. “Ten, One Oh Three, this is Twenty Five Fourteen. Have you got TX?”

“Affirmative TX; it was off, Twenty Five Fourteen. Turning it on now.”

“Twenty Five Fourteen clear.”

He dialed the number and Frissen answered. Mouse Frissen was a longtime CO who had spent most of his career in Cheboygan County before being promoted and moving down to St. Clair County. He was a small man in stature but big in performance, and word was that he was an excellent sergeant, who knew how to lead people without interfering with their ability to do their jobs. Service had been in many training sessions with him. “Mouse, it's Grady. I just heard about Frenchy.”

“He's okay,” Frissen said. “Bad luck that those asswipes broke his arm.”

“Were you surprised to find Homeland Security ahead of you?”

“And how. I asked them how the hell they got the alarm, and they said they were just passing by.”

Service detected a tone. “You buy that?”

“Hell no. The Port Huron paper tried to write a story and Homeland Security killed it. But a wire service kid filed and the
Free Press
picked it up. I guess the wire service kid also got bullied by Homeland Security; you know, the usual federal national security baloney, but his boss backed him, and he filed.”

“The
Free Press
ran it.”

“And
The News
didn't. Political leanings in our state's largest news­papers? Wow, who woulda thunk it.”

Service made small talk, hung up, and went to see the captain. “I talked to Frenchy and Mouse Frissen. Mouse said Homeland Security claimed they were just passing by.”

“You're skeptical?”

“I didn't just fall off the potato truck. The odds against just passing by are too damn high, and they got to the scene before Mouse. Frenchy activated his alarm. Is it possible that Homeland Security is wired into our AVL?”

“Not legally,” was all the captain said.

Service went outside for a smoke and took a cup of coffee with him. If Homeland Security was wired into their AVL, who else had access?

“Fuck,” he said, halfway through the cigarette. If you were wired into the AVL, you could pinpoint an officer's location at all times, as long as the GPS system was up, or the officer didn't disengage it. He mashed the cigarette and went back to the captain's office.

“How could they get our software?” he asked. The DNR AVL software, as far as he knew, was tailored solely for Michigan's DNR law enforcement division.

“In the wake of 9/11, the president authorized a lot of new initiatives,” the captain said.

Service had only vaguely followed news reports of wiretaps and other methods of tracking terrorists, methods the public had not been told about until journalists broke the stories.

“Would the governor have to approve such a thing?” he asked his captain.

“Not necessarily. It could come through the attorney general and, depending on the power granted to the federal government, the AG might be obliged to keep it quiet.”

“But the director would know.”

“Not necessarily,” the captain repeated.

“Do the Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas DNRs have AVLs?”

“I think almost all states have their own systems now. Some share with highway patrols, but it's pretty common.”

“Captain, what if the killer has access to our AVL? He could track us with no problem.”

“What if he did have access?” the captain asked, turning the question back.

Service thought for a minute. “He's a federal employee?”

“A reasonable assumption. Or he's somehow hacked his way in.”

Grady Service immediately considered disabling the AVL in his Tahoe, but the captain read his mind. “Think this through, Grady. If you know you're being watched on the AVL, that gives you the advantage.”

As he almost always was, the captain was right. The captain thought like a chess master, and regrettably, Service thought like a half-ass checkers player. He had tried to tell the captain several times he wasn't smart enough to be a good detective, but the captain refused to hear it.
Calm down,
he told himself.

Every August he drove up to an isolated spot on the Fence River to fish for brook trout. August was a time when most U.P. water was warm and low, but in this one spot there were some seeps and springs, and the water seldom climbed above fifty-two degrees all summer long. The frigid water was a magnet for brook trout from up and down the river, and he had caught so many fifteen-inch fish here over the years, he had lost count.

He went back to see the captain. “I'm gonna take my fishing vacation.”

The captain looked at him and nodded. “Send me an e-mail and copy the chief.”

Service understood. If someone was in the AVL, they were probably also poaching e-mails.

Was it the killer or was it Check Six? Or were they one and the same?

He called Eddie Waco on his cell phone. “How long will it take you to get up here?”

“Where's here?” the Missouri conservation agent asked.

“Crystal Falls in Iron County.”

“Three days' work?”

“Drive your personal vehicle,” Service added.

He called Simon del Olmo on his cell phone. “I'm going to need your help.”

“Si,
Jeffe
.”

The Booger Baits list bothered him. Why was his name was on it? He had never seen a booger fly until he found Ficorelli's, and even then, he ­hadn't known what it was. But Nantz was always ordering flies from catalogs and other mail-order services. It had to have been her, and it was possible Shark might know something. She was always calling him and talking about flies.

He called his friend. “Did you know Nantz ordered booger flies?”

“She did? News to me.”

“You're sure?”

“Hell yes. I never even told her about them.”

Damn,
Service thought.

49

MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN
AUGUST 3, 2004

He stopped by the office, called Treebone in Detroit, and talked to him about the case. The call was cut short when Tatie Monica and Wink Rector walked into his cubicle.

“You're back,” Service said.

Rector stood back with a look Service couldn't quite read. “She's my replacement,” Rector said, “the new resident agent for the Upper Peninsula.”

“You're good with this?” he asked Tatie Monica.

“They pulled me off the team, but they're leaving me here. I can still get the guy.”

“Working outside the team.”

“No biggie. They gave the team to Pappas.”

“I thought she was cyber.”

Tatie Monica shrugged. “The powers that be have decided that this has morphed into a cyber case, that Check Six's activities make it so. What have you learned since I've been gone?”

“Nothing; I've pretty much stuck to my own business.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “You aren't easy to read, but I'm starting to get wise to you. You're like me. Neither of us can let go. Neither of us
will
let go.”

“I don't think so,” he said. “I'm headed out for a few days' vacation.”

“
What?
”

“Vacation—you've heard of it, right?”

“You're up to something.”

“I go every year about this time.” Not quite true, but close enough.

“Where?”

“My vacation is none of your business, Tatie.”

Wink Rector grinned throughout the conversation. “I think you guys are going to have an interesting working relationship.”

“My stay here is strictly temporary,” Tatie Monica said. “One of our psychiatrists talked to that old lady in Sturgis while I was in Washington. He says the woman is certifiable and would be unreliable as a witness. He says she's bottled up a lot of stuff and the more we press her, the deeper she retreats into
Jeopardy
. Man, that's gotta suck.”

“What about the list from Booger Baits?”

“Everything's been turned over to Pappas.”

“How does Bonaparte feel about her appointment?”

“Who knows. He's in his own world, that one.”

“You saw him in Washington?”

“No, he was here yesterday, but he left again. He's on the road almost all the time.”

“Several cases?”

“I have no idea. He pretty much goes and does what he wants, when and where he wants.”

“Must be tough.”

“Why?”

“I saw his cane and assumed he's got some sort of physical problem.”

“Just part of his shtick. The pencil smudges are to make him look like a hard worker and a common man, not one of the suits. He thinks the cane creates sympathy, and causes people to underestimate him. I never got any details, but somebody in his group once told me that he hikes all over hell by himself. He's a fitness freak.”

As soon as they left the office, he called Treebone back and finalized plans.