Killing a Cold One (19 page)

29

Thursday, November 20

HOUGHTON

Service had tried to call Lupo every day since the morgue, but once again the professor was ignoring calls, and it pissed off Service to the point where he decided to drive up to Houghton and grab the silly sonuvabitch by the scruff of his neck and shake some courtesy into him. Lupo's behavior was not helping Service's long-standing poor opinion of most academic types. The thing that galled him the most was that he was sure Lupo had seen something in the coffins and had held it back.
What had he seen, and why won't he tell us?

But when Service drove to Houghton, Lupo wasn't at home. Next, Service called the university and got transferred to Lupo's department.

“He's gone,” the departmental secretary told him.

“Gone?”

“Back up into the snow,” the secretary said. “You know, his customary winter in the bush.”

“Who's in charge there?”

“Professor Spar.”

“Is he in?”

“
She's
in a meeting and can't be disturbed.”

A set piece, delivered flawlessly, the answer to all questions and unwanted requests.
Classic gate-guard, verbal-foot-in-the-door security tactics.

“Disturb her,” he said, explaining that he was a cop and part of a multiple homicide investigation.

“Why don't youse just bite my head off?” the secretary groused.

A new voice came on the line, mature, clipped, sure. “This is Chairwoman
Dr.
Spar.”

“Conservation Officer Service. I've been working with Grant Lupo, and we need to reach him, but your secretary tells me he's away.”

“I'm not aware of any collaboration with the police.”

She said the word
police
with a tone some might reserve for dog shit stuck to a shoe sole. “He's been asked to keep it confidential. Look,” Service went on, “I don't want to be rude or pushy, but in five minutes I can have the Houghton County sheriff in your office, ordering you and all your bosses to do what we want.”

“I don't care for your tone,” Spar said.

“Back atcha,” Service said. “Where
is
he?”

“Legally we can't say. As I understand it, he flies into Winnipeg and from there out into the bush to work.”

“Where in the bush?”

“Somewhere on the Nelson Ojibwe-Cree Reserve.”

“How far is that from Winnipeg?”

The woman sighed. “I have no idea, and if there's nothing more, I really do have more pressing business.”

“How long is he supposed to be gone?”

“I really wouldn't know.”

“What about his classes?”

She paused meaningfully. “Professor Lupo teaches no classes. He holds an endowed research chair.” Her voice suggested that she disapproved of this arrangement.

“You've been helpful,” he said sarcastically and hung up.

Service called Friday. “Tree and I are going to spend the night with Karylanne. I'm thinking I want to talk with Lupo face-to-face, but he's gone to Canada for fieldwork and probably won't be back until next spring, or whenever. Nobody seems to know for sure what the hell he does, where he is or what he's up to. It's a closely guarded state secret.”

“Why talk to him again?” Friday said. “It seemed to me he gave us what he had. You think differently?”

“My gut says there's more, and Lupo might be a key.”
To what, he had no idea.

“I hear in your voice that you're gonna follow him. Are you traveling as a homicide dick or a creature hunter?” she asked.

“Seems to me circumstances are trying to make those things one and the same.”

“When will you go?”

“We'll drive to Duluth tomorrow, and then fly to Winnipeg.”

“What about your team?”

“Noonan can help you, and Allerdyce will do whatever the hell he does.”

“You want me to keep Newf and Cat?”

“Please.”

“Do you know where Lupo is?”

“Not exactly, but I used to be a detective, remember?”

“Vaguely,” she said.

30

Sunday, November 23

MARQUETTE

A major snowstorm had dumped on the Great Lakes and turned out to be far more severe than predicted. Friday had called late the night before and said, “Lamb Jones is dead.”

“When?”

“Just come back. Where are you?”

“Still in Houghton. The airport's closed. We couldn't get out. Suspects?”

“One in custody,” Friday said.

“Is it like the others?”

“Come home, Grady. Please.”

Her voice and the storm settled where he and Tree would go, but getting back was not easy. They met Friday at her office at 11 a.m.

“Bad over to the west?” she greeted him.

“Not good,” he said. “What's the deal?”

“Lamb's body was found up on the Ice Train Plains near an old landing field. A high school kid had his dogs out, hunting snowshoe hares, and the dogs found her.” Friday stopped talking.

“And?” he said.

“You'd better see for yourself.”

 

•••

 

Returning so soon to the satellite morgue disturbed Service. A small handwritten sign had been tacked outside the entrance:
our day begins when yours ends
.
What was it with people who handled dead bodies?

Lamb Jones was on a mortuary tray next to the other four, the little harvest growing.

Service was not overwhelmed with the desire to see the body but willed himself to look. Lamb had favored baggy dresses and unisex clothing, so he was shocked to see that the forty-year-old had the figure of a much younger woman. A moment later he blinked as he realized her head was where it was supposed to be, as were her hands and feet. But Lamb's throat had been cut, her eyes gouged out, and there was a hole in her chest where her heart had been removed.

“He cut off the end of her tongue,” Friday pointed out.

Lamb's pretty face was distorted by swelling, her lips crooked. “Who's the suspect?”

“Terry Daugherty,” she said.

Service laughed out loud. “Terry? Jesus, Tuesday, don't joke.” Daugherty was a longtime county deputy, flawed, but basically a good man.

“I
wish
it were a joke,” she said. “Boomer was cleaning a cruiser, found bloody clothes stuffed under a seat.” Boomer Andreson was responsible for maintaining the county's vehicle force and had a lot of work. The newest cruisers were three years old, the oldest going on ten years old, some barely able to operate. “Boomer took the clothes to Shirley Davis in Evidence. She found name tags and called the sheriff, and the sheriff called me.”

“The body had been found by then?”

“No, shortly thereafter. All of this went down last night.”

Name tags. Service wasn't surprised. Lamb Jones was known for her possessiveness, as well as her competence as a dispatcher. She put name tags on everything, including a mountain of paper clips she kept in a bowl on her desk. She wrote her name in microscopic print and Scotch-taped the labels to every paper clip. Obsessive for sure.

Everyone in the department teased her, but she was undaunted. “Name tags can be very useful,” she would tell people. Ironically and sadly prophetic.

“The sheriff checked the duty manifest. The vehicle had been checked out to Daugherty. We tried to find Lamb, but she never made it to work. We went out to see Terry, told him what we found, and he broke down, said he didn't want a lawyer and refuses to talk to anyone but you.”

“Me? I don't know him any better than others in his department.”

“He says only you.”

“What's Linsenman's take on this?”

“He says that the deps trust your integrity,” she said.

“He's not a killer, Tuesday,” Service said. Daugherty's reticence in physical confrontations was well known. On the other hand, he also had a rep for hitting on women, though formal complaints had never been filed. Mostly he was considered harmless, the sort of pushy, insecure male you ran into at every job.

“Nothing adds up,” he said.

“We can only hold him so long,” she said. “We have to charge him or kick him.”

Service took a final look at Lamb Jones and found his mind drifting to asshole Lupo's sudden trip to Canada. He looked at Friday. “This one is different,” he said.

“There are mutilations,” she said.

“But it's not the same,” he insisted.

 

•••

 

Terry Daugherty was still in his civvies and came into the interview room at the jail with his eyes down.

“Terry,” Service said.

“I
di'n't
do it,” the man said, his eyes filling with tears.

Friday quietly left the the room.

“Lamb's clothes were in your cruiser.”

Daugherty exhaled loudly. “I didn't to it, Grady. I swear to God I didn't.”

“Was she in the car with you?”

Daugherty looked up with red eyes. “She was, but she was fine when I last saw her.”

“Where and when was that?”

“Ice Train Plains.” Until earlier today Service hadn't heard of the obscure spot in years. The Ice Train Plains was an isolated section of the Yellow Dog Plains, northeast of the McCormick Wilderness, and northwest of Marquette.

“Why out there?” Service asked. “In a storm?”

“
Her
idea. We used to meet at her brother-in-law's place on Lake Independence and take off from there. She had a thing for getting it on in patrol cars.”

“You dumb bastard,” Service said in a whisper.

“She wanted privacy, and the Ice Train is pretty private.”

“You did her in your cruiser? Are you
stoopid,
or what?”

“Hey,” Daugherty said, “it was more like she did me. It was her idea all the way. I wanted to use her brother-in-law's cabin at the lake.”

“You two were an item?” Service asked.

“We kind of hung out for a couple weeks is all. It wasn't nothing serious, Grady. We were both just looking for some fun. Pure slam-bam short-time, that's all. Celia don't know,” he added. Celia was his wife, mother of their four kids.

“Okay, you admit you were with her. Good. Just keep telling us the truth. You said she was all right when you left her. Tell me about that. At her car . . . at the Ice Train?”

Here Daugherty averted his eyes. “We were still out there. She got out to cool off, said somebody had been watching us and it creeped her out big-time. I got out to investigate, got my riot gun and followed tracks cross-country into some pines, but it was cold, I was pretty underdressed, and I was starting to freeze, so I backtracked to the cruiser. When I got there she was gone. Tire tracks, but no footprints. Looked like they had been swept clean right by the cruiser, mine included. There were vehicle tracks, so I figured she'd called somebody and split. You know how hinky-dink she could be. She was just like that, up and do whatever the hell she wanted.” Daugherty looked at Service. “I would never hurt her, Grady. I couldn't.”

“What did you follow into the woods?” Service asked.

“Tracks she'd pointed me to. I figured they belonged to whoever had been watching.”

“Were those tracks still there when you returned?”

“I don't remember. I was so damn pissed she was gone, I wasn't seeing all that clearly.”

“How long were you gone from your patrol?”

Daugherty shook his head. “Twenty minutes, thirty—I don't know.”

She had called someone and been picked up in twenty or thirty minutes. Not likely, even if she could get cell service way out there.

“Did you go back to her car or her home, to see if she was all right?”

“I meant to, honestly, I did, but when I got into the patrol car, I got a call from Central. There was an eighteen-wheeler wrapped around another truck out on US 41, and the Troops were screaming for county help, so I rolled. By the time I was clear of that, my shift was almost done. I checked out and went home. Celia don't like me being late.”

Service guessed Celia wouldn't much like him screwing a coworker, either.

Nonetheless, it seemed unlikely that Terry was a killer, and the mutilation of Lamb Jones aside, it seemed impossible that he had killed the other victims. “Did you guys have an argument?” Service asked.

“No,” Daugherty said. “We just, like, did the deed, and we were getting ready to leave. She said she wanted to cool off and went outside. Everything went downhill from there. I figured she went squirrel and into one of her snits, and bugged out. Geez oh Pete,
everybody
knows how flighty she is.”

Flighty enough to take off in the snow naked?
Service wondered.

“Terry, you want to take a ride out there with us and walk us through what happened?”

“I keep thinking maybe I ought to get a lawyer,” the deputy said.

“You know your rights, Terry. If you want one, just say so. But remember—­I'm trying to help you. Maybe you should let this work first, then decide. I'll read you your rights officially and you can keep them in mind as we go through this. What do you think?”

“Okay; I know you're a stand-up guy.”

Friday came back into the interview room. “For what it's worth, Terry, I also don't think you killed her, but you know the drill. You need to understand that we're going to pull all the evidence we can and let that talk. Even if you didn't kill her, you've got yourself in a bad jam. I can't believe a man of your experience would be so stupid as to knock off a piece in uniform in a patrol vehicle while you're on duty. It's ludicrous at best.”

“I don't want to go to prison,” the deputy said disconsolately. “Or lose my job, or my pension. I have a family.”

Service sympathized, but figured the job and the pension—hell, maybe even the family—would soon be history, no matter how the murder investigation went. Some mistakes weren't fixable.