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Authors: Joseph Heywood

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BOOK: Blue Wolf In Green Fire
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Dessert would be baked apples with Calvados custard sauce, which he would make later in the evening before they went to bed.

When things were coming together he decanted two bottles of the Armagh, Jim Barry 1998 Shiraz, to breathe and set the table, using Nantz's china. He mused over the fact that only a few months earlier he'd been using a G.I. mess kit to eat from. When he had moved in with Nantz he had brought virtually nothing but Cat and Newf and some of his gear. He was nearly half a century old and a man without possessions because he had liked it that way. But he also had to admit to himself that he was enjoying Maridly's things, her comfortable bed, dishes that matched, furniture that fit the contours of their bodies, a lawn, and hot water that never ran out. It occurred to him that he was getting soft and losing his edge, which at the moment seemed irrelevant. Nantz and Newf came in while he was checking the venison, which fell apart under his fork.

“Mmm, it smells good in here!” she said, grabbing him and kissing him hard. “Will you always be my chef?”

He put on a disk,
The Best of Miss Peggy Lee,
and turned up the sound.

“Is that woman's voice pure sex or what?” Nantz said. Peggy Lee was one of her favorites.

When she tasted the wine, her eyes rolled back. “Oh, man,” was all she said. She picked up one of the bottles. “The Armagh. Honey, your piggy bank's gotta be getting empty. How much?”

“It's not important.”

“Grady.”

“One-oh-one.”

She thought for a minute, then circled the table and threw her arms around him. “Ten-one, the date I start the academy. God, you are such a romantic, baby. Don't ever change and don't let the rest of the world know who you really are.”

They began with the galette, had small portions of acorn squash soup with toasted walnut butter, small harvest fruit salads, and the braised venison. Not much wine remained when they were done.

After dinner they sat on the couch while Nantz went through her paperwork for the academy for the umpteenth time. “I can't believe I'm really going,” she said.

“You're ready.” He had tried to give her an edge by starting her training as soon as she announced that she had been accepted for the academy. She'd been running and lifting free weights every day. She was a short woman, five-three on her tiptoes, but with large hands, well-developed upper arms and back, and she was powerful. She had the thighs of an athlete and endurance that was remarkable. More important, she was quick.

He had used a game his father had used with him to develop his hand–eye coordination, tossing colored BBs into the air and yelling a color when he released them. It was her job to grab all of that color that she could, an exercise that most people could never come close to mastering, but she had. In basic defensive tactics, her speed and quick response time served her well.

Only in her firearms training had he found potential weakness. She handled a shotgun all right, but the forty-caliber SIG Sauer handgun seemed to freeze her. She stuck with it, though, and now she could shoot respectable scores and would be able to avoid rubber gun school, the remedial firearms training that seemed to be the destination of a proportion of female officers. She would face challenges and surprises, but she was ready.

“I'm going to do my best,” she said. “For us. It would be awful for Grady Service's woman to disgrace him.”

“It's
your
program, honey. You couldn't disgrace me if you tried. I seem to do that just fine on my own.”

She kissed him gently on the cheek. “Are we going to have dessert?”

He went to prepare the apples and rejoined her while the dessert baked.

“I've got a buzz on,” she said as she started to undress with a gleam in her eye. They finished making love just as the timer buzzed.

Nantz tasted her apple and sighed. “Almost as good as sex.
Almost.

In the shower in the morning she said seductively, “Wanna go again?”

He put both hands up in surrender. “I can't,” he said, shaking his head.

“Thank God!” she said, laughing. “If I have to have a pelvic as part of my medical tomorrow I don't know what the doctors will think! What's for breakie?”

“Fried eggs and asparagus, orange juice, and Trenary toast.”

“No champers?”

“You have to drive today.”

“Ever the cop,” she said.

For lunch he made shrimp and feta cheese pasta and filled a thermos with coffee for her five-hour drive to Tustin. She had been pensive all morning and when he walked her to her truck, she clung to him for a long time. When he looked down he saw tears in her eyes.

“You can do this,” he said. “You're ready.”

She blotted at her tears with the back of her hand and laughed. “Not the academy, you dolt. Us. I can't stand being apart, I really can't, Grady. I feel like we're halves of one person now, joined at the hip.”

“Wrong location,” he said.

She punched him lovingly in the arm. “You.”

“Us,” he said, turning serious. “Us.” No other words would come out.

She said, “I adore you, Service.” They kissed and hugged tenderly for a long time while Newf sat watching them.

He stood beside her truck as she started the engine.

She rolled down the window.

He said, “I'm proud of you.”

She looked at him, tears cascading from her eyes, nodded and pulled away, but stopped after a few feet, jumped out and ran back to him, hugging him with such power he almost fell.

When she got back into the truck again, she stared at him with her focused look and said, “I'm going to drive down to that academy and knock their dicks off.”

4

It was his fiftieth birthday and Grady Service was alone, missing Nantz and feeling down. She had been gone nineteen days and it seemed like forever.

It had been a typical morning in his new job. An e-mail from the director of the Ralph MacMillan Center at Higgins Lake reminded DNR personnel of the meeting facility. Service didn't blame the guy for trying to keep the center full. Under Bozian, budgets were always at risk. At one time the RAM had been earmarked almost exclusively for DNR use, but DNR budgets had been chopped and the RAM had been forced to look elsewhere for users. Now on rare occasions when DNR personnel needed to use the place, there wasn't space.

A half dozen e-mails came in from headquarters in Lansing pointing out deadlines for various reports.

He had another e-mail from Glen Sheppard, editor of
The North Woods Call,
asking for the name of a man at Wakely Lake who was developing a new form of bluegill popper.

An e-mail from Parks and Recreation provided a preliminary report on summer state campground use and explained that the new advance reservation system for camping permits was a success in its first season.

There had been eight phone calls. He passed a question about deer hunting in the Mosquito to McCants after fighting the temptation to take care of it himself. A woman from Gwinn called to complain about illegal trash dumping on state property. A magistrate from Escanaba called for clarification of a ticket Service had written last spring. Lansing called to say they were forwarding a pile of computer reports of nonresidents who had used false IDs to buy resident hunting and fishing licenses.

Pure scut work, the whole lot.

Too damn much time talking on telephones, he told himself. Twenty years on the job and he had been reduced to this. A recent talk with Hoagy Chalk still lingered in his mind. Chalk, the commercial fish specialist assigned to Naubinway on Lake Michigan, had stopped by for a beer a few days after Nantz left for Tustin.

Having spent many years in open boats on the Great Lakes, Hoagy was always tan. He was a short man, built like a miniature sumo wrestler. He had been in Vietnam as a Navy river rat, been wounded twice, and came home with a Silver Star.

“You hear about Laurie Aho?” Chalk asked.

Aho was a retired CO who had covered the Keweenaw for years, a dour Finn who did his job and never had much to say. Aho's wife claimed they would sometimes go months without passing a word.

“The cancer got him,” Chalk said. “Another horseblanket into the ground.”

The little fish specialist didn't wait for a response. “Guess we're both getting to that age,” Chalk continued. “I see these old horseblankets going and I think I've gotta get out of this shit so I can live a little before I become worm chow.” He took a slug of beer and burped. “I've put in my papers, Grady. When I go, you'll be about the last of the Vietnam guys left,” he announced. “When are you going to hang it up and get a life?”

Service grinned. “They'll have to carry me out in a box,” he said.

Chalk didn't laugh. “It's getting tougher out there, Grady. It's a game for the young officers, not old dinosaurs like us. Hell, those kids look at us like we're horseblankets.”

Service had never thought of himself as a dinosaur or a horseblanket. Horseblankets, what the real old-timers were called, worked 24/7 and never stopped chasing a poacher until they had him in court. In those days juries often decided the outcomes and more often than not they let the worst poachers off, fearing retribution if they brought in guilty verdicts, but that didn't stop the horseblankets from hauling the same perps in over and over. Some of these contests raged on for years and took on legendary status. The real dinosaurs were his father's contemporaries, the generation of COs who had been through the Second World War and did their jobs without complaint or expectation of better pay, much less promotions.

“You learn to work smarter,” Service countered.

“Maybe,” Chalk said. “Right now hanging it up seems the smart thing to do.”

It had been an unsettling conversation. He had called Maridly that night and talked to her about it.

“You should hear the way they talk about you down here,” she'd said.

“I can imagine.” He'd been in and out of hot water throughout his career.

“The instructors believe in you, Grady. They tell trainees about you, how Grady Service does things.”

“How will I know when it's time to retire?” he asked her. He couldn't imagine it being an arbitrary date on a calendar.

“You'll know, honey.”

He wondered if he would. Was he really the last of the Vietnam guys? It was a disconcerting thought.

Captain Grant had called Service at the house while he was lifting weights at 6 a.m. and told him he wanted him to move his office to Marquette to be nearer to him. Rationally the decision made sense. His office was a cubicle in the District 4 office in Newberry and he was seldom there. Another change, he thought. Everything was changing around him, people retiring, retirees dying.

Later Lieutenant Lisette McKower called to wish him happy birthday, saying nothing about his office move, which left him wondering if she knew. McKower was the senior officer in Newberry. Then Candace McCants dropped by unexpectedly with fresh cinnamon rolls from Gerties in Kipling and they drank a pot of coffee.

“Missing Nantz, eh?”

He nodded.

“Ain't love grand,” she said.

“Why don't you get your ass out in the dirt where working wardens are supposed to be,” Service said with a playful growl.

She laughed and gave him an upside-down left-handed salute. “On my way, Your Surly Detectiveness.”

Moving his office would be a pain in the ass. He would have to drive two and a half hours to Newberry, load his truck with his files, and backtrack to Marquette to new digs. He didn't want to move, but the captain's tone was serious and there was no point in delaying things, he told himself. Some birthday this was turning out to be.

When he got into his truck, the cell phone sounded. He picked it up, flipping open the lid to activate it.

“Goddamn
motherfuckers!
” Nantz screamed. He held the phone away from his ear.

“Maridly?”

“Cocksuckers!” she said with a hiss, barely containing her temper.

He had never heard her so angry. “Calm down, honey. What is it?”

“I'm out,” she said.

“Out?”

“Like out of the fucking academy!”

He wasn't sure what to say or even what question to ask next. What could she have done? “Out of the academy?”

“Yes,” she said. “Blood Hawk pulled me aside this morning after our run and told me that I am being transferred to Lansing.”

This made no sense at all. “They don't transfer trainees.”

“They're transferring me to something called Task Force 2001. It's part of the state Emergency Management Division.”

“What exactly did Chamberlin say?”

“He said that upon reevaluation of the state's emergency preparedness in the wake of September eleventh, a determination has been made that EMD needs to be beefed up. Because I am a state employee and because of my past experience I've been tapped for the duty. I'm supposed to report there this afternoon.”

Reevaluation of emergency preparedness? Service's gut began to rumble. “Reporting to whom?”

“No name, just a fucking address. I am pissed, Grady, really, really pissed.”

And hurt, too.

“I do not understand this, honey,” she said. “I do not understand this. Somebody is fucking with my life and I am pissed.”

“Calm down, baby. We'll get it figured out.”

“I'm ready to march over to the captain's office and tell him to shove EMD up his tight ass.”

“Don't do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I'm asking you not to.”

She sputtered momentarily. “I would do this only for you, Grady.”

“I know.”

“So I just pack up and go to Lansing?”

“No choice if you're under orders.”

“Fucking assholes,” she said.

“Do you want me to drive down?”

“No, I'm a big girl and if I'm going to be a CO I need to deal with this shit. I'll call you after I get to Lansing. Now I'd better get moving. You seen Kate yet?”

“Kate Nordquist?”

“Yeah, Kate. She's got your birthday present. I love you, Grady, and I'm sorry to be such a bitch.”

“You're not.”

“I'll call you tonight, honey. I love you, Service.”

He didn't tell her about his office move because it suddenly seemed irrelevant. His move was no more than an irritating detail. Hers was serious. What the hell was happening to her?

Service telephoned Captain Grant.

“I just talked to Nantz. She's been yanked out of the academy and is being transferred to something called Task Force 2001 in Lansing. What's going on, Cap'n?”

“Are you moving today?”

“I was just about to leave for Newberry. I'll be back this afternoon.”

“See me when you get to Marquette.”

Did the captain know? There was no way to read his boss. He usually knew everything that went on in the DNR throughout the state.

He was in a dark mood when he got to Newberry.

His office was a tiny cubicle filled with boxes and stained paper cups. The walls were gray, there was no nameplate, and there were no mementos or decorations. He loathed offices, hated every minute he had to sit in a chair.

Lieutenant Lisette McKower came in as he angrily threw the last of his files into a cardboard box.

“Hey birthday boy, you planning to do some homework?”

“No, I've been ordered to move my office to Marquette.”

Her mouth hung open, but she recovered quickly. “Well, it will give you faster access to the west side and you won't have to drive so far.”

Service glared at her. “I don't like being jerked around,” he said, picking up the boxes and storming out to his truck.

McKower followed him outside.

“What's wrong, Grady?”

“I'm following orders!” he said, snapping at her. “We're all following orders. Nantz has been yanked out of the academy. She's been reassigned to some task force in Lansing.”

McKower said, “That can't be done.”

He glared at her. “It
is
being done.”

The DNR office in Marquette was not far from the ancient state prison that housed the “worst of the worst” of the state's burgeoning population of felons. He left the boxes in the truck and went directly to the captain's office. Captain Grant was talking to his secretary, Fern LeBlanc, and when he saw Service in the doorway, he motioned for him to come in. Fern slid out quietly and closed the door.

“I talked to Chief O'Driscoll. The transfer order originated in the executive branch,” his captain said apologetically. “Until the EMD releases her, Trainee Nantz is stuck there. I talked to the chief and we're keeping her position open. If she misses too much time and can't get back into this class, she will have a slot in the next academy class.”

“Thanks, Captain, but this sucks.”

“It's not for you, Detective. It's for the department. Nantz is standing at the top of her class right now, and we do not want to lose an individual of her quality.”

“She's angry, Captain.”

“Talk to her,” Grant said.

Executive branch? Service suddenly understood the game—the governor's office. It was Clearcut again. Nantz's transfer was intended as a message to him; the coward was using her to get at him.

He told himself that somehow, some way, he would get even with Sam Bozian.

Nantz called at 10 p.m. She had reported into the office on the south side of Lansing. The office was empty; she was the only person there. A woman from EMD's human resource unit had dropped by, helped her set up her computer and e-mail, and gone through a quick orientation to the building and its facilities. When Nantz asked to whom she would report, the woman said vaguely that the task force was in the process of being formed and at some point others would begin to arrive. Until then, Nantz was to keep regular state office hours and check e-mail for instructions.

“I feel like a prisoner,” she said.

“Do you want the CO job?” he asked her.

“Goddammit, you know I do.”

“Then you have to hang in there and stick it out.”

“When did you become an organization man?”

“This is Bozian's work,” Service told her.

“Sam?”

“It's aimed at me, not you.”

“Sam. Jesus,” she said. Her voice said she couldn't believe it.

Nantz had known Bozian for much of her life. The governor had been a friend of her father.

“Where will you live?” he asked.

“I'm at a Motel Seven for now. The HR broad said something about housing at the Troop School, but I don't want that.”

BOOK: Blue Wolf In Green Fire
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