Hard Ground (4 page)

“Uh-uh. All sorts of people think that you should get a medal for helping that poor man and that she should be in jail.”

The next morning at breakfast he held out his arms to his daughter, who rolled her eyes. “
Really,
Dad? You were viral yesterday. Old news. Today you're just you,” she added.

Patsy smiled, her eyes flashing an emotion somewhere between amusement and sympathy. “Coffee on the table, and there's French toast, Officer Yesterday.”

Laws of Physics

They were headed south on US 141 with the intention of cutting northwest on a county road over to Steger Lake, the patrol boat on the trailer behind the truck, sun shining, middle of July, a perfect Upper Peninsula day, warm and mild with a deep blue sky, blueberries already ripe for picking, and the two officers were talking about taking their wives to pick a few quarts, life proceeding normally, pleasantly, uneventfully.

CO Hoyt Blossom was driving, Sergeant Arlon Rubadue sitting shotgun; the senior man, Rubadue, had three years until retirement, and life was a perpetual grin.

Until a large buck, antlers in green-brown velvet, suddenly materialized in the truck's path. Not there, then there, Blossom thought, like magic, and then he squeaked, “Oh shit” as he hit the animal dead center of the steel deer guard, which would usually shed animals left or right. This time, the deer came up
over
the deer guard and into their windshield, spidering it to crackle glass, ticked, and spun across the roof, grazed the top of the truck's tailgate, rose slightly, spun in slow motion the length of the aluminum boat, struck the housing of the forty-horse outboard, and dropped sideways into the windshield of an oncoming Cadillac Seville, all of this occurring in an elapsed time of no more than two or three seconds, after which Sergeant Rubadue said, “You don't see
that
shit every day.”

For Finbar and Missy Ribey of Green Bay, Wisconsin, it seemed for an instant like the end of the world as their windshield shattered into their laps, and they slid onto the shoulder, where Missy wrestled the Caddy to a stop, the deer's antler stuck through a hole in the windshield, and blood, tissue, and hair spewed everywhere. They were on the way home from visiting their daughter at Michigan Tech, where she was chasing a doctorate in electrical engineering, a long pursuit that might even end this fall after the girl had spent three tax-sucking years in the goddamn Peace Corps on some South Pacific cannibal atoll the size of Door County. If the girl finished the degree, it would be a long overdue miracle, Missy was thinking, when the deer slammed into them.

Blossom and Rubadue were at the Caddy almost immediately, checking the passengers, expecting carnage, and finding instead a distinguished-looking couple with immaculate silver hair staring straight ahead as blood dripped silently through some cracks in the windshield. Rubadue tapped the driver's window, which came down silently. The woman had been driving. “You folks all right?”

“We're a little shook up, but we're fine,” the male passenger volunteered. “No, let us amend that to more than fine, and let us instead proclaim us spiffily fine,” he added. “Or call it extremely heavenly excellent if you insist on labels, though I don't hold with supernatural creators, at least not any the average primitive mind can grasp.”

“We're fine,” the woman said, finding her voice and rolling her eyes. “Thanks to God. Please don't start spouting, Fin.”

“Here, you confront my problem head-on, Officer. This gorgeous female creature, whom every man would want, medical doctor, Ph.D., lawyer, and all her high-falutin' intellectual training prevents her from seeing reality, know what I'm saying?” Finbar Ribey told Hoyt Blossom, who had the passenger door open and was checking the man for injuries.

Blossom sort of nodded, had no clue what the man was trying to say, and wondered if he'd banged his head.

“Don't be a fool, Fin,” the woman grumbled.

“Therein the prejudice of ologies and isms, the in-place, artery-­hardened belief systems of entrenched science and religion,” the man said.

“I'm going to call EMS and a hook,” Blossom told his sergeant and went back to the patrol truck.

“We're perfectly fine,” the driver told Rubadue. “I'm a physician.”

“See?” the passenger said. “She claims she's a doctor, and you accept it on face value. But I declare a cervid projectile was dropped by an alien space vehicle, and I am assumed to be a whackadoodle.”

Rubadue found himself enjoying whatever this was turning into. “Alien space vehicle? You mean, like a UFO?”

Finbar Ribey smiled benignly. “UFO is a sadly outdated term, shunned by the cognoscenti. To be precise, it was a small Yankee Class Vector 7 that lifted its invisible force shield to discard the cervid. They do this after the experiments are complete. I saw the whole thing. It materialized from nowhere, struck your truck roof and the outboard motor, which spun it down into our path. If you examine the carcass, you'll find they took the animal for interspecies experimentation and, having gotten what they needed from it, dropped it back to earth. Nobody's fault. It's just how the universe works.”

Rubadue asked, “If they've got a spaceship, don't they got, like, stuff to, you know, like, get rid of, you know, stuff?”

“Undoubtedly,” the man said. “But put yourself in their gravity boots. You're a megajillion miles from your mother ship, or your home planet, and why waste energy? It's a lesson mankind could stand to learn from them.”

“Okay,” Rubadue said. “You sure you folks don't need some medical attention?”

“Our sheepskinned expert says no, and in this I shall defer to her judgment, despite the fact that she will never acknowledge, much less defer to, my knowledge base.”

“Cryptozoology is bunkum,” Missy Ribey said. “A sham world for fools without intellectual ballast.”

“Then let us examine the carcass,” Finbar Ribey demanded and nearly fell out of the Caddy as CO Blossom returned just in time to prop the man up on his shaky legs.

The three men stared at the gore after the officers took photos, pulled the carcass down off the Caddy, and lugged it into the ditch. “You can see bone fragments,” Ribey said. “The aliens break them to measure tensile strength and record parameters and other physiological values.”

“You
know
these aliens?” Rubadue asked.

“Of course not,” the man said. “It's common sense, a simple process of deduction and analysis.”

“But you told us we can't understand the aliens with our primitive intellectual development,” the wife said from several feet away.

“I guess I heard that, too,” Rubadue said.

“Kudos for a fine job of listening, but I do not include myself in that general declaration. You see, I've been trained by the best.”

“Who trains the trainers?” Rubadue asked. “Seems to me your aliens had to intervene somewhere along the line; otherwise, how would teachers know now what to teach others?”

“Not to put too fine a point on this, my new friend, but I presume neither you nor your august partner has the training to understand nuclear physics, yet, and this too is an assumption, you must surely accept the existence of nuclear weapons. My field is more arcane than nuclear weaponology.”

“What school?” Blossom asked.

Finbar Ribey rolled his eyes. “That question is irrelevant.”

Blossom said, “I hope it's not one of those online for-profit schools that run up debt for students. We heard about a woman over to Iron River who spent eighty grand for some advanced science degree but couldn't get a job because the school's curriculum wasn't accredited.”

The man sulked. “My program is
fully
accredited,” he said, “and all doubting Thomases are like plagues of locusts on the earth.”

A long black RV pulled up behind the Caddy, and a muscled young man bounced down, talked to Missy Ribey, and came over to the men. “Finbar, Missy tells me you're becoming contentious.”

“Not in the least,” Finbar Ribey said. “We are embarked upon a fine and stimulating intellectual discussion here. I'm presently showing these fine officers of the law the clear evidence of alien experimentation on the deceased cervid.” He pointed at the carcass.

“The bone splinters I see are typical of any deer hit by a vehicle,” Sergeant Rubadue said. “Flesh and bone are no match for a steel mass and momentum.”

“But you are no doubt referencing
earthbound
physics,” Finbar Ribey countered with a shrill voice. “Such science has no more validity in these circumstances than old wives' tales about vampires.”

“I'm just saying what I know after seeing hundreds of deer−vehicle collisions.”

“You refute my training and authority?”

“No, sir, just your conclusions—and only in this instance.”

“Doctor, you badged cretin,” Finbar Ribey barked nastily, his gentle demeanor gone.

The young man said, “Okay, Finbar, that's enough stimulation for today,” and firmly grasped Ribey's upper arm.

“Am I to be placed in the mother ship?”

“Yes, sir,” the young man said, “straightaway.”

“And my wife, the illustrious academic?”

“She wants to remain with the wreck to see to repairs or replacement.”

“Not another Cadillac, my darling,” Finbar said, holding up a finger. “Clearly these things have been earmarked as targets by our alien visitors.”

The RV driver said, “Yessir, Dr. Ribey, whatever you say.”

The man gave the two conservation officers a leer and a strange Nazi-like salute. “You see,
this
young man accepts my title and my authority.”

Finbar climbed into the RV, and it drove away.

Missy Ribey got out of the Caddy and lit a cigarette as the wrecker pulled up. “Where are the most dealers, et cetera?” she asked Rubadue.

“Probably Iron Mountain.”

“Got to call my boss to haul that far,” the wrecker driver said.

“Do call him,” Missy said. “I'll be paying cash.” She turned to the officers. “I hope my husband wasn't too much of a bother. I got him out of the institution in Appleton to visit our daughter.” She looked Rubadue in the eye and said disgustedly, “Aliens, for God's sake. The man failed at everything he ever tried to do, so I guess he had no choice but to escape to something where no earthly measurement is possible.”

The wrecker driver came back. “Boss says we're good to go.”

“Permissible that I ride with you?” the woman asked.

“Yes, ma'am. Hop on up while I get your Caddy on the flatbed. It won't take long.”

“Do I need to make a report or something?” she asked the conservation officers.

“Call your insurance company right away,” Rubadue said. “We'll make out an accident report.”

“You can do that . . . like
real
police?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Rubadue said. “Just like real police, we get fully certified from a book-learnin' school and all.”

“How unexpectedly fascinating,” the woman said and climbed into the cab of the wrecker.

Report done and wrecker gone, the officers got back into the patrol truck, and Blossom shrugged and said, “Laws of physics.”

“Or fruits and nuts,” Rubadue said. “Sometimes it's hard to differentiate.”

Informant

Paul Rajala liked working with his sergeant even when Sergeant Delain Max whined all day about the poor condition of the county roads or Rajala's driving (“Stop! Back up! You missed a rock!”). Max also asked a million weird theoretical questions about his subordinate's decision making; it was almost as if the sergeant wanted to create as much tension as possible to see how he'd handle it. So far, he had done fine, but today was another day, and his supervisor was uncharacteristically quiet as he picked him up at the Michigan State Police Office in Stephenson.

“We have us a plan today, Officer Rajala?” the sergeant asked even before he was belted into the truck. And when he spoke again he said, “We have to make a quick stop at a house down by the dam.”

Rajala glanced at his sergeant, who remained mute until they rolled over the bridge below the dam. “Keep going,” Max said, “it's the purple house on the left.”

Rajala had seen the house before, wondered what sort of weirdo would choose to live in a purple house. “Pull into the driveway?”

“No. Go down one block to the first road and turn left. Right away on the left again, there's a grassy lane behind the house where we can park the truck.”

Rajala did as he was instructed, parked in a grove of red maples, and looked at his sergeant. “This okay?”

“Turn off the engine, go up to the back door, and knock. This place belongs to Telford Kinlaw, our informant. I've made countless cases with his help, not to mention those I passed to Wild Life Resources Protection. They made three humdingers with info old Telford laid on us.”

“He's
your
informant. Why would he talk to me?”

“He talks to the badge, not the man.”

Rajala got out of the truck, and his sergeant said, “Piece of advice. We get hired in great part for our ability to talk and listen to anyone.”

“What's your point?”

“He don't bite. See youse when you're done.”

He don't bite?
Delain Max was pretty damn odd in his own right.

The person who came to the door was tall, at least six-four, skinny as an Ethiopian vegan. His hair was golden blond with long curly tresses. He wore a shimmery purple kimono and gold three-inch satin mules. His fingernails were long and black and if they had been clipped somewhat differently would qualify as illegal double-edged knives.

“I'm Officer Rajala. Sergeant Max told me you wanted to talk to one of us.”

“Kinlaw,” the man said, extending a hand and commencing to crush Rajala's with a viselike grip that made him want to pull away and shake off the pain.

“Sorry,” the man said. “Whenever I meet a new officer, I find it useful to establish some testosteronal credentials at the outset. And with it comes a speech, which goes like this: I'm not queer, not in the slightest, never have been, never will be. I just like to dress this way and always have, all the way back to high school. You have a problem with that, Officer Rajala?”

“No problem, no sir,” Rajala said, thinking, BIG problem; this guy's fucking bonkers. Is this one of Sarge's sick jokes, or what?

“Good,” Kinlaw said. “We have the basics of an understanding, and now we can proceed like any normal couple, right, sweetie?”

Couple? Sweetie? Did he just say that? Sweet Jesus, what the hell has Sarge gotten me into? Rajala simply nodded.

Kinlaw led him through a frilly, flowery house cluttered with bric-a-brac and gaudy and astonishingly realistic needlepoint animal pictures on the walls. That and one of two half-human, half-horses mouth kissing. At least there was a gun rack, filled with an array of weapons and two black gun safes. “You hunt?” Rajala ventured.

“Just shoot,” the man said, walking him into a kitchen walled in the most beautiful pine Rajala had ever seen. “No heart for killing. Alabama pine,” the man added. “I think those old boys down in those parts think it's junk wood, but the color about makes me swoon. You agree, hon?”

Hon? Swoon? Was this shit never going to end? “What about the door jambs?”

“Those are striped maple. Grows up by Lake Superior. Virtually unknown these days, but it's hard wood. I like hard wood. How about you?”

Oh, shit.
“I'm no carpenter,” Rajala said quickly to regain his composure, which was fast slipping away.

Kinlaw did a slow vamp. “You like?”

“Uh, great pine,” Rajala said.

“You big green warrior, are you blushing? I have fresh-baked scones, from-scratch razzie or orange-cranny. What's your pleasure?” the man asked.

“Neither.”

Kinlaw put his big hands on his hips and glowered. “Listen, mister, nobody comes into this girl's house and goes away without repast. It's always been a human custom to feed visitors, you savage, a matter of hospitality, an extension of the Rule of the Good Samaritan.”

“Orange whatchamacallit,” Rajala managed to mutter, trying to ignore the other man's words and tone.

“Orange-cranberry scones, hon. Take a seat. Caf or decaf?”

“Caf, please.” Or an ejection seat.

“Black or cream?”

“Black,” Rajala said. “No sugar.” His heart was racing, sweat pooling under his arms. He wanted this shit over so he could strangle his goddamn sergeant.

Kinlaw arched an eyebrow. “Okay, sweetie, you need to take a nice deep breath and calm down. I can tell you're really a sugar-and-cream fella, but types like you come in here, see me, my place, my fine things—and they
are
fine, are they not?” The man stuck a shaved leg through the split in his robe and wiggled his foot. “You get to thinking . . . and it scares you, and you default to your basic masculine black, no sugar, no milk.”

“Black coffee,” Rajala repeated. “No cream, no sugar.”

His host poured coffee into tiny cups and sat down across from him. “You poor man, so insecure in your own gender and sexuality. Sister, do you ever feel confused and troubled?”

Sister?
Rajala's voice had fled to parts unknown.

“Delain loves my razzie scones. That's the one on the left. And he also likes his coffee black. Shall we proceed?” Kinlaw picked up a cigarette pack, took one out with a long fingernail, pushed into a long pink holder and slid a golden Zippo across the table. “Light my fire, babe?”

Goddamn that Delain.
Rajala fumbled with the lighter, but Kinlaw reached over and steadied his wrist as the flame took hold. “Slow is best in all intimate human interactions, honey.”

Rajala could manage only a sort of nod.

Kinlaw exhaled smoke. “Do you think I'm a joke?”

“No, sir, no joke.” Maniac, maybe; joke, no. Except to Sergeant Asshole Max.

“Of course you do, you prevaricating hunk. Admit it or get out.”

“The concept of joke has not once entered my head, sir.”

“Telford, please.”

Rajala nodded.

Telford Kinlaw smiled. “Good, I'm not a joke.” The man looked to Rajala to be on the verge of tears. “Nobody wants to be a joke. It hurts.”

“Yes, I agree; no sir, not a joke, nobody wants that.”

“Try the coffee.”

It was delicious.

“Your sergeant and I go way back. I thought at first he was the thuggish warrior type, you know, All-American jockstrappado, but it has developed that he's a thoughtful, lovely, open-minded, and sensitive gentleman, a truly beautiful man.”

Sergeant Delain Max?

“Yes, love, your delicious supervisor.”

Rajala had to press his boots to the floor to keep from running out, but he knew enough to let the informant think he was in control.
The sergeant is delicious? Disgusting!

The conservation officer sampled the scone.
Wow.

“You approve?” Kinlaw asked.

“Yes, ma . . . sir.”

“Please do call me ma'am. I won't be at all insulted,” Kinlaw said. “Humor me.”

“Not sure I can do that, sir . . . ma'am.” Did I just call this freak ma'am? Somebody please shoot me, but not until I shoot Delain.

“That wasn't so difficult, was it?”

“No . . . uh,” Rajala said, sensing another blush rising.

“Ma'am,” Kinlaw said.

“No, ma'am, it wasn't so difficult, ma'am.”
Kill me now, whoever's in charge.

“And you are Paul. Delain already told me.”

Already told him? Damn setup. That bastard. “Yes, ma'am, Paul.”

“May I call you Paulie?”

“My name is Paul.”

“Yes, I know, properly biblical and all that silly soup, but Paulie is more personal and informal, more endearing.”

“I guess Paulie's fine.”

“Um,” Kinlaw purred. “Do you know Chigger Selberg?”

“Drives snowplow for the county? Yeah.”

“That's our Chigger, love, a naughty boy since our days in high school, and the year of our matriculation I shall not specify, for I find it quite depressing.”

“What about Chigger?”

“Married a female whose papa owns a sheep farm off the grade down near the Brule. I have it from an unimpeachable source that Papa-in-law has our dear Chigger over for wolf shooting in a friendly competition, with substantial wagers.”

“They bury the carcasses?”

“Burn them once a month and settle the tally on the spot. Can you imagine their audacity, Paulie, killing our gorgeous and deliciously glamorous wolves for mere lucre?”

“No, ma'am, I mean, yes, ma'am.”
What the hell is lucre?
“You and I both know how some people can be.”

Telford Kinlaw giggled. “Indeed we do, sweetie.”

“What's the father-in-law's name?”

Kinlaw told him and added, “I believe you fellas have had previous business with the ape.”

“We know him,” Rajala said. The wolf thing was right down the man's crooked line. “You wouldn't happen to know the burn date?”

Kinlaw raised an eyebrow.

“Ma'am?” the officer said.

“I'm led to believe it happens always at 7:00 p.m. on the last Friday night of the month, which gives Chigger time to get home from the far reaches of the county, if that's where he's been working.”

“On his father-in-law's property?”

“Yes, love, on the northernmost corner of his northernmost forty. A lovely friend of mine owns the adjacent eighty and would without doubt grant permission for you girls to enter.”

Rajala tried to keep his hand from shaking as he wrapped the sarge's scones in a pink napkin.
Permission for you girls to enter? Jesus, God.

Kinlaw escorted him to the back door. “Don't be a stranger, Paulie love, and tell dear, sweet Delain this one's a freebie. I am most pleased to have met you, Paulie. Please drop in anytime so I can show you more of my wood.”

Rajala stalked angrily to the truck, jerked open his door, and threw the wrapped scones at his sergeant, bouncing the package off his stomach.

“Whoa, Officer Rajala, whoa!” Sergeant Max shouted, holding up his arms to defend himself.

“You fucker!”

“Calm down; you get something?”

“Other than totally fucking creeped out and embarrassed? Yes, and he says it's a freebie, whatever the fuck
that
means dear . . . sweet . . . Delain.”

“Good,” the sergeant said. “Every time I recommend an informant for RAP money, it seems to take forever for a check to come through.” RAP stood for Report All Poaching, a state-sponsored, statewide toll-free phone line manned around the clock. Some callers got rewards, usually at the discretion of the officers they had worked with.

Rajala laid out the information and concluded, “But this one sounds too good to be true, and too damn easy.”

“Telford only gives us sure things,” said Sergeant Max. “It's a matter of pride about his reputation, his trademark, you might say.”

Rajala said incredulously, “What reputation? That he swishes around like some wannabe Lady Gaga?”

Delain Max said only, “Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is fine. Relax, girlie. Time will come when you'll be glad for coffee with Telford, just you girls jabbering your foolish little heads off.”

“Who the hell is Stefani Joanne whatever?”

“Lady Gaga. Don't you pay attention to current events?”

“I hate all that showbiz shit.”

“Keep that to yourself. It would break Telford's vulnerable heart and cause the department to lose the state's most productive longtime snitch.”

“The state's?”

“Multiple agencies. You jealous?”

Rajala could only stare.

“Can you imagine the headlines that will come from this wolf case?”

“Our bust?”

“Hell no, don't be so shortsighted and selfish. We give this to Unit Twenty-five's secret squirrels, let them do the honors, and we'll assist.”

Rajala sat behind his steering wheel. “You set me up, eh?”