Strike Dog (5 page)

The mercurial Nantz's interests and aspirations had become as compelling as his own. She was the major change and force in his life, even more than finding out he had a son. For the first time in his life he learned what it meant to put someone else's needs before his own. He didn't think much about love or what it meant: It just felt right, and this had sufficed. Love persisted; objects of that love did not.

He checked his watch. Time to move down the creek, cross out to the road, and get back to his truck. There was almost continuous thunder to the north, and he could see shafts of sunlight piercing the dark clouds, what his old man had called “devil's smiles.” The rain was beginning to pick up, which suggested the storm cell was closing.

After fifty yards of stumbling, he decided he'd followed the meandering stream long enough. He looked for the nearest high ground and started directly for it. As he got close to the cedars he thought he saw a flash of light to his left and above. He flinched, thought his heart skipped a beat, nearly threw himself on his face, waiting for the inevitable thunder, but heard only the steady patter of soft rain and saw no more light. What the hell had it been? He sniffed the air. No ozone, which meant the strike, if there had been one, had not been that close. Still, the light had the suddenness and intensity of a close strike, and he was virtually exposed in the open, a perfect target. There was no point bending over to lower his profile. He did not move for nearly a minute, then eased up his binoculars and scanned the tree line for nearly five more minutes. Maybe there had been a light flash, maybe not. It could have been a play of light from the instable sky, or an animal's movement. Why had he overreacted? Weird. Whatever had been there was gone, and he had a long walk back to the truck. A black bear possibly, more likely a deer. Young bears were out scavenging and does were throwing fawns, the whitetails not that long out of their winter yards and still dispersing, some of them en route to their summer ranges up to fifty miles away. Come fall they would reverse course and seek denser winter thermal cover and the sparse food of cedar and spruce swamps.

He smiled as he moved. The backcountry: There was always something new to be experienced, and often it was inexplicable. The forest was an unnerving venue for people with fecund imaginations. The rain was softer now, something between a drizzle and mist. The main cell, he saw, was moving north of him.
Good fishing,
he told himself.

All officers were taught and encouraged to hide their trucks a good distance from where they intended to go, but Service tended to dump his vehicle further away than most, believing that the further away you were, the less chance you had of being detected by shitballs. Some violators used scouts to patrol roads and search for game wardens' vehicles, and with the advent of CBs, cell phones, and other radio systems, instantaneous communications was becoming the rule rather than the exception for habitual violators. A good game warden had to be willing to walk, and put his boots in dirt, mud, ice, and snow, and Service took pride in being a damn good game warden.
Maybe too much pride,
he chastised himself.

He diverted toward the area where he thought he had seen the light and began playing with the ear mike, which was irritating his ear. He was still skeptical about the devices Michigan conservation officers had recently been ordered to use, and more than anything he was constantly picking at his ear, trying to make the damn thing comfortable. Between false teeth and the ear mike, he felt anything but comfortable. He was becoming a damned android, more technology than human. He had heard that some downstate districts had told their officers to forget the new devices, but he wasn't ready to give up on it quite yet. Naturally, younger officers—Generation X or Y or whatever the hell they were being called now, those from the Nintendo generation—embraced any and all new technology, but Service thought it made game wardens look like they were playing at being Secret Service agents or James Bond wannabes. He had the microphone rigged under his shirt, and in order to transmit, he had only to press his hand to his heart. It seemed silly, but he knew there would be times when having silent radio contact and two free hands would be a good thing—
if
he could make it less annoying, Or he could stuff it in his ruck. But he had kept his teeth in and they were uncomfortable. Better to gut it out, try to adjust.

“Twenty Five Fourteen, do you have TX?” a voice asked over the 800-megahertz radio. He had it turned down and didn't catch the caller's code. He glanced at the digital display on top of the 800 stuck in its belt holster and saw he was on the district's channel.

“Twenty Five Fourteen is out of vehicle, TX in fifteen minutes,” he said, touching his chest, adding, “Twenty Five Fourteen clear.” He had left his cell phone in the truck. Even there he'd be lucky to get a signal. There were vast reaches of the U.P. where cell phones refused to operate with any regularity, and other places where they would not work at all.

He heard the cell phone buzzing as he unlocked the Tahoe, unclipped the tiny phone from the sun visor, and flipped it open to activate it.

“Grady? Lorne O'Driscoll.”

“Chief.” O'Driscoll led the Law Enforcement Division for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement Division in Lansing. Why the hell was the chief calling
him?
He had already called several times to express condolences and check on him. Enough was enough.

“Where are you?” O'Driscoll asked.

Service toyed with a smart-ass answer and rejected it; the chief was a good man, but a stickler for professional communications etiquette. “Uh, eastern Delta County—more or less.” Hell, if the chief had the Automatic Vehicle Locator up on his computer screen, he could damn well see where he was—to within 25 meters of accuracy.

“We need for you to get over to Florence, Wisconsin. Check in with Special Agent T. R. Monica at the Florence Natural Resources and Wild Rivers Interpretation Center. It's a half-mile west of town at the intersection of US 2 and Highways 70/101; got it?”

The term
special agent
usually added up to one thing. “Feebs, sir?”

“That's affirmative. You'll be there in a consulting role. The order comes directly from the governor's office. Your mission is to remain with them until they kick you loose.”

Just great,
Service thought. “When?” he asked. A consultant to the FBI?
It sounded like a goat rodeo in the making,
he told himself. It figured that the governor was interfering in his life, but he kept this to himself. Governor Timms had been a good friend of Nantz's. He'd already received the expected condolence call from her. He had been through Florence before and knew where the center was. CO Simon del Olmo in Crystal Falls often worked closely with a Wisconsin warden from Florence County. Service had met the man several times, once at the center, where he maintained a satellite office. Florence was about ten miles due south of Crystal Falls. He had a Wisconsin map book somewhere in his truck, and he eyeballed the backseat, but couldn't see it.

“Get there ASAP. I assume you're rolling,” the chief said. “Check in as you can. Any questions?”

“Nine thousand one hundred and twenty-two,” Service quipped, aiming his vehicle south toward US 2.

“Join the club,” the chief said.

“Sir, I've got two furlough days this weekend.”

“Negative. You're working and the feds are paying for your time.”

The state budget was in bad shape. If there was a chance to pick up reimbursement from the feds, O'Driscoll would jump on it. The order to join the FBI was mostly about money, he concluded.

He was about to pull away when he thought about the deer he had seen earlier. Something had registered vaguely as not being right with the animal, but he had been anxious to get to the creek and had shrugged it off. He got out of the truck and went back to where he had seen the deer and found it in the same place, still drinking—and urinating at the same time.

“Oh boy,” he said out loud. The department and the state's 800,000 licensed hunters were worried about Chronic Wasting Disease moving into the state from Wisconsin and devastating Michigan's herd. So far CWD had not been detected here, but all officers had been briefed on symptoms, and this animal was showing some of the classics: spread legs, droopy ears, no fear, constant thirst, and urination. He trotted back to the truck and got on the cell phone.

It was answered after two rings. “Wildlife, Beal.”

Buster Beal was a biologist in the Escanaba office, a man who loved white-tailed deer, took care of the herd as a sacred responsibility, and killed them with equal fervor during rifle and archery seasons. Beal was well over six foot, burly and hairy and known throughout the DNR as Chewy, after the hirsute
Star Wars
character.

“Chewy, it's Grady.”

“You find me a big boy?” Beal expected calls from COs who saw large bucks and most of them complied. “I'm up near Mormon Creek. I've got a buck here, spread legs, droopy ears, doesn't seem the least bit bothered by me, and he's drinking and pissing at the same time.”

“Oh, man,” Buster Beal keened. “Shit, fuck, shit.”

“Hey, I'm not giving it a label; I'm just reporting what I see. How do you want me to play it?”

“Wait for me,” Beal said. “I'll be in my truck in thirty seconds, there in thirty minutes.”

Service explained his current location. “I'll move my truck, meet you where Mormon is cut by the forest service road, but you've got to step on it, Chewy. I just had a call from my command and I have to get somewhere posthaste.”

“Sit tight,” the biologist said. “Neither of us wants the first case of you-know-what in the state to be on our watch.” Last year Michigan had sold 800,000 hunting licenses, and this money, and that spent by hunters, remained a major plus in the state's crippled economy. Even so, there were fewer hunters every year. Not long ago the state was selling more than 1.5 million licenses every year.

The biologist was there in less than thirty minutes, his face red with excitement and nerves. Service led him back to where he had parked earlier and walked him to the deer, which had not moved. They stood six feet away and Beal observed for a couple of minutes until he shook his head and said, “Still in its winter coat.”

“What do you want to do?” Service asked.

“Well, if it's you-know-what, the animal hasn't started to waste. He's thin, but coming out of winter, that's not abnormal. But we need to play this safe. You want to put it down?”

Service took out his 40-caliber SIG Sauer and walked over to the deer. Beal told him to wait, ran back to his truck, and returned quickly with a blue plastic tarp and a box of disposable latex gloves.

“Not the brain,” Beal said. “Pop the heart. I want the brain and spinal column tissue in good shape. And don't put him down in the water. Let's limit blood loss just to be safe.”

Beal waded into the water beside the deer and poked it with a stick, but the animal refused to move. Finally he had to put both hands on its back haunches and shove. Only then did it reluctantly stumble up to higher ground, its ears finally perking up, its movement still clumsy and uncoordinated.

Service took aim and fired. The animal collapsed, kicked once, lay still.

The biologist handed him latex gloves, and the two of them pulled the animal onto the tarp and dragged it back to the biologist's truck, where they loaded it in the bed.

“You gonna send it to a lab?” Service asked. The state wildlife laboratory was in Rose Lake, just north of Lansing.

“After I take a good look for myself. Let's don't get too many bowels in an uproar over this,” the biologist said. “There are several diseases that present similar symptoms, and coming out of winter yards, most deer are not at their best.”

Service knew the biologist was trying to think positively.

“Well, if it turns out to be bad news, we've at least got a governor who won't sit on her ass,” the biologist added. “Lori's got the best interests of sportsmen and resources at the center of things.”

Service shared the biologist's opinion. Despite Republicans calling her Limousine Lori, the governor was a lifelong hunter and sportswoman. Shortly after taking office, Governor Timms had transferred responsibility for the inspection of commercial put-and-take game farms with captive elk, deer, and more exotic animal populations from the department of agriculture to the DNR. It previously had been the DNR's responsibility until Governor Sam Bozian suddenly reassigned part of it to Ag, a move which had upset sportsmen and conservationists alike. Now it fell to conservation officers to inspect the state's nearly eight hundred game farms and operations, and being so short of people, this was pulling officers away from other law enforcement duties. Time management issues aside, the governor's decision had been the right one, and he was hearing from other officers that at least half of the game operations were out of compliance with the most essential regulations.

Service knew a necropsy had to be done—and fast. The outbreak in Wisconsin was thought by some to have originated with animals, probably elk on a cheesehead commercial game farm—animals allegedly imported from Colorado, which reportedly had been infected by Canadian imports. The whole thing with fenced-in hunt clubs and game farms bugged Service. They were playgrounds for the lazy and well heeled—a quick way to bag a trophy if you had the cash, but no time for a real hunt outside the enclosures.

The two men discarded their rubber gloves in a white plastic pail in the rear of the biologist's truck and headed their separate ways. Service had a hard time shaking the image of the strange-acting deer. He did not enjoy putting any animal down, but this was necessary. The first one he'd had to dispatch had been during his first year near Newberry. An elderly man had called during the summer to report that a deer had been hit by a car. Service's sergeant suggested the man shoot the animal to put it out of its misery, but the man wasn't a hunter, didn't own a gun, and said he couldn't kill anything. Service was sent to handle it.