Killing a Cold One (3 page)

Service was almost relieved when Denninger joined them.

“When did you find them?” Friday asked.

Denninger looked at her watch. “Three hours ago.”

“You looked inside the tent?”

“The smell told me I had to.”

“What brought you out here?”

“There's a little brook trout stream near here. It's a magnet for both visiting and local assholes. This time of year the water never gets above forty-eight degrees. I'm not sure where the trout migrate from.”

Service smiled. They were a long way from anywhere, but it was no surprise that Denninger would be out, about, and poking around, searching for miscreants in remote locations.

The Upper Peninsula was as much a state of mind as a piece of geography. Usually you knew the troublemakers in your area, or the people you regularly contacted in the line of duty. Or at least you'd heard of them. Below the Bridge, or BTB, as they say, everyone was a stranger, even your neighbors, and every encounter was potentially lethal. If your mind wandered, you could be quick-dead. In some ways, that was less true up here.

Outsiders thought of Yoopers as antisocial loners, but they weren't. They could be gloriously gregarious when the mood or need struck. Mostly they were private people; they didn't want to
be
alone, they wanted to be
left alone,
a fine line between the two. Collectively they had no use for rules and laws written by gasbag political flatlanders five hundred miles away in Lansing. Service understood the draw of the lifestyle, and his job. Unlike others, this work wasn't a stopover en route to something bigger and more lucrative. This was what he wanted, all he had
ever
wanted, and he was glad to have it back.

The bodies were removed by 10 a.m., overseen by new Marquette County medical examiner, Dr. Kristy Tork, six feet tall, with the build of a ballerina, the voice of a truck driver, and the vocabulary of a sailor on Hong Kong liberty.

“Fricking gorks, even up here,” Tork said, shaking her head. “Who knew?”

Jen Maki, the lead forensics technician for the Michigan State Police, was with the doctor, blotting perspiration from her forehead with a yellow Cub Scout bandanna.

Tork said, “Lopped off their heads and hands, dug out their hearts. I'm guessing we'll find semen in their cisterns.”

“This wasn't about sex,” Friday asserted.

The doctor responded calmly and in a measured voice. “I don't mean to imply it was, Detective. But when men get to doing this sort of shit to women, it seems their dickie-doos are invariably involved in some way. Standard operating procedure to look for pecker tracks. Obviously the perp doesn't want the remains easily identified, yet I'm asking myself—if I'm trying to prevent identification, why would I take heads and hands and leave a leg with a tattoo? What's
that
all about? I mean, Jesus-on-a-Popsicle-stick. My guess is that our Jane Does are Native Americans, and the perp may be a major candidate for the rubber-room short bus.” She banged the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Forgot the tat! Duh!”

“Evidence for Native Americans?” Friday asked.

“Skin tone, hunch—can't say for sure. I might could be wrong, but blood will tell. Tattoo on the one might eventually help. Stylized bear or a dog, not sure which, but I guess prolly a bear. Has a back hump.”

“How often are you wrong?” Friday asked.

“Me? Lots of times, but mitochondrial DNA sequencing is never wrong. It doesn't lie or get confused the way we animated carbon units do.”

Service didn't really understand the science or its nuances, but he'd noticed more and more young officers using animal DNA as a tool in making various cases. He told himself repeatedly that he needed to get up to speed with younger officers, especially in his detective role, but there had never seemed to be time, and now his detective days were over and he could immerse himself in the Mosquito Wilderness.
You were smart to turn down the top sergeant job. You aren't qualified.

“Native Americans are problematic,” Service announced to Tork.

“Meaning?”

“They live in a closed society and move around a lot. There are more Indians in Detroit than in the rest of the state combined. They're hard to trace, and they're basically uncooperative with white cops. A daughter visits her mother in Bay Mills or Hannahville for six months, then one night she books it to Detroit or the Dakotas, Southern Ontario, or the planet Neptune for a year or two without a damn word, and nobody even inquires, because that's just how it is. It's noble to be so free and to move around on whims, but for cops with cases, it's a pain in the ass. No offense, but I hope you're wrong on this,” Service concluded.

“Ditto,” Jen Maki added.

“I'm just the messenger,” Dr. Tork said, noisily peeling off her gloves.

Service looked at Denninger. “Is there a vehicle?”

“Not that we've found.”

“Somebody drop them?”

“Or whacked them and ganked their wheels,” the young CO suggested.

4

Thursday, August 7

MARQUETTE, MARQUETTE COUNTY

The morgue and medical examiner's office were in the Marquette Regional Medical Center's emergency department complex, between College and Magnetic Avenues. Service said good-bye to Denninger and followed Friday only as far as the complex. He knew she wanted to attend the autopsy, as did Linsenman.

“How was your seminar?” he asked Friday before they entered the morgue.

“You coming in for the autopsy?” she asked, dismissing his question.

“Not a chance,” he said. “See you at your place later?”

“Yep,” she said distractedly.
Her head's buried in the case already.

Service drove to Friday's place, relieved her sister of kid-care duties, and checked to make sure Friday's son, Shigun, was asleep.

When Friday got home, Service handed her a glass of white wine. They sat on the bed, undressing, and performing nightly rituals.

“Feebs think they have all the answers,” she said with a derisive snort. “They don't even have all the damn questions yet. I picked up some good tidbits on DNA, though. The feds want to set up a national DNA bank similar to AFIS.”

“Must be nice to be able to print money,” Service said with a snort. The State of Michigan was broke and sucking fiscal carbon monoxide. AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, had been pioneered by the FBI; major city cop houses had adapted the system to create local crime data banks, which helped to catch some criminals, but missed most, and cost taxpayers a bundle to maintain. The cost of a national DNA bank, he guessed, would make the AFIS look like chump change.

“So damn young,” Friday said suddenly. “Eighteen and twenty. Jesus! Messy work on their necks, done in a hurry, machete or a hatchet. Hacked off heads and hands. The heart deal is really weird. I mean, what's
that
all about? I think he knew what he wanted, but I don't see any finesse at work. We may have us a power boy, a real grank-and-crank. I'm thinking we should do a statement for the media, the usual drill. Found two bodies of unidentified young women, approximately eighteen to thirty years of age, discovered yesterday in a remote location in Marquette County. Cause of death not yet determined, but foul play is suspected, and the investigation is under way, yada yada. Do I mention animals might have gotten at the remains?”

Service considered the critter what-if and rejected it. No real evidence. Wolves or coyotes were possible, but not likely. He could tell that her mind was absorbed in the case. Granks were killers who tore apart victims. “Leave out the animal part. No proof.”

“I'm keeping everything on the table with me for the moment.”

“No task force?”

“Not unless forced,” she said. “It's a sad world when people begin to verbigate nouns,” she added.

What the hell was she talking about?

“Linsenman checked between toes, and what was left of the arms. No tracks.”

“They could be play-for-pay girls,” Service offered.

“A possibility lacking evidence.”

“The lab will mine all the cavities.”

“Meaning vaginas, not teeth?” she challenged, clearly not pleased with his word choice.

“I hope Forensics can match the hatch,” Service said. “Unsubs complicate everybody's life.”

“Ya
think?
” Friday yowped at him with a half-growl.

“We're not going to fool around tonight, right?” Service said.

She tilted her head and looked over at him with blank eyes. “What did you say?”

5

Friday, August 8

TWENTY POINT POND

Denninger called on his personal cell phone at 0400. “Can you get loose?” she asked.

“Shouldn't you be back in your own house by now,” he said, “getting—what's it called—oh yeah,
sleep?
”

“I found something you should see.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Now,” she said. “Please?”

He heard the pleading in the young CO's voice, pushed down the covers, said, “Soon as I can get there,” got out of bed, and began to dress.

“Who was that?” Friday asked.

“Denninger.”

“This case?”

“Don't know yet.”

He kissed the top of Friday's head and went out to his Tahoe, wishing he'd gotten real sleep. Two 0400 wake-ups in a row was a decidedly crappy trend. He'd once challenged Friday on how obsessed she became by her cases, and she had looked him in the eye and said, “Pretty much like looking in a mirror, ain't it?” Right now was a case in point.

Denninger was parked in the lot with the trail that led north to Twenty Point Pond. She was standing behind her truck, tailgate down, a coffeepot on a small burner.

“You can't work twenty-four, seven,” he said.

“Sure I can, and do, same as you. They just don't pay us for it.”

“What have you got?”

“Coffee first, then we'll take a walk.”

Walk, to a conservation officer, could amount to anything from a few hundred yards to several miles.

“South, I bet,” Service said.

“You know your geography.”

“Fields to the south, good grasses to attract bait.”

Bait
was a CO term for deer feeding in a field, where they served as magnets for violators. “Been lots of busts up here,” Service added.

After coffee, they hiked to the crime scene and Denninger led him beyond the camp, taking him in a giant loop back to the south. She shone her flashlight in the dirt, showed him three huge canid tracks.

“Seen anything like that before?” she asked.

Service knelt, measured with his hand. The tracks were a good seven inches long, five wide. “If that's a wolf, it's the biggest sonuvabitch I've ever heard of,” he told her.

“C'mon,” she said, striding off to the south across a field of basalt, the smoothest he had ever seen. Strange geography: Basalt was rarely exposed to this extent, at least in this area.

“Laurentian Plateau, Canadian Shield, whatever,” she said. “We're on the very eastern edge of it here. Keweenaw's part of it, too. The animal crossed this rock field, stayed on the hard surface maybe to hide its tracks,” she said, and started moving down the sloping rock until she got to a gigantic white pine that had blown over, exposing its massive root-ball. Denninger pointed. “More tracks.”

Service looked.
Geez. What does she want? Wolves are stealthy and cautious but don't hide their tracks.
“Okay, you found tracks; what about them?”

“They're the sideshow,” the CO said, and lit the bottom of the root-ball with her light. Service saw something smooth and shiny, reflecting light. “Plastic?” he said.

“Look closer,” she said. “I think they're gun cases.”

He looked at her. “Did you look?”

“Didn't want to until I got you here to witness it, so we can keep the chain of custody untainted.”

Serviced asked, “What's this got to do with the gorks? Anything?”

Denninger said, “Something, nothing—who the hell knows? Crime scene techs found an empty box of .308 ammo down by the parking lot—presumably the victims' or the perp's, or maybe it fell out of a vehicle. I don't know. Boot tracks from the parking lot led me to the cache. Let's see what we have before we jaw more.”

“Fair enough,” said Service.

Denninger handed him her digital camera and snapped on latex gloves. “I'll be the talent, which in TV lingo means the body in front of a camera.”

“Whatever,” he said. He couldn't help liking the live-wire Denninger, who had nearly lost a leg to a deadly wolf trap early in her career.

She pulled the package out from under the root-ball and undid the shiny cloth, revealing a hardback weapon case, locked, of course. It took her less than ten seconds to spring it with a tool from her pocket.

Grady Service stared at the two weapons. “Serial numbers?” he asked.

She gave the rifles a thorough examination. “Erased,” she said. “Acid.”

“That ain't good,” he said.

“More here,” she added, pulling out another package, smaller, unwrapping it and quickly picking another lock.

Service stared and lit a cigarette. “Night scopes. You know what we've got here?”

“Trouble?” she said.

“Those rifles used to be called M40s by the Marine Corps. Remington manufactured them
only
for gyrene snipers. They made fewer than twenty-five hundred of them, and outside military custody, you'd have an easier time getting rough sex from the Virgin Mary than laying your mitts on one of those jobbies.”

“Scopes come with them?”

He looked and declared, “I'm not familiar with these optics. We'll check into it.”

“You ever seen one of these in the hands of a violator?”

“These are relics, but they're the real deal, and I'm betting they're worth a small fortune to collectors.” He failed to mention that he had on occasion been a sniper in Vietnam and had used the same weapon.

“If the rifles belong to the victims?”

He had no answer for her. Just shook his head.

She said, “Maybe it pulls us into it as well. Could be they were making a delivery or something?”

“Don't speculate,” he said. “Not our business.”

“Or someone came to get the rifles, and the deal turned bad?”

“You don't know that, and absent prints, you can't link the weapons to the vicks.”

“Grady,” she said, “that wolf approached the camp, circled, came to this spot, and moved on. Curious how the animal's trail mirrors our route to this spot. Maybe the victims stashed the weapons. It sure wasn't the wolf. This is freshly disturbed soil.”

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “We'll get Friday out here. This is
not
our business. More likely it'll be ATF or FBI—if the weapons are involved.”

Denninger stared at him. “What if I told you there's some talk of a dogman being seen in far western Baraga County. Bar talk says there's even a bar bounty out on the damn thing.”

Dogman?
This was the Michigan version of what the French called a
loup garou
—a werewolf. From what he remembered, the dogman was the fictional creation of some downstate radio disc jockey. “We don't need this kind of shit,” he told her. “You're pulling my leg, right?”

“No joke, Grady.”

“Shit.”

By training, conservation officers could deal with just about anything, but if you really wanted to get them talking, all you had to do was ask about UFOs and other semimystical supernatural phenomena they'd encountered in the woods. Real or not, the dogman was one of those things that made some COs cringe while fascinating them at the same time. Service was certain all such fantasies were just so much crap.

“Do we take the weapons to Friday?” Denninger asked.

“We don't
do
homicides. If the weapons belong to her vicks, and her case, she can take them, and if not, she can pass them to whoever catches the weapons case.”

“My gut says this is all in the same stewpot,” Denninger said.

Grady Service shuddered. “You don't have a gut,” he told her.

In fact, Denninger was a hard body who slaved to maintain it. His own scarred gut was suggesting the same connected mess. It was not something he cared to think about. Not that he believed such junk, but a lot of nut-job civilians would, and if this became public, all hell would break loose as every self-appointed monster-hunter in the state (and the country) would probably arrive in Michigan, trying to bag the alleged beast. Especially if there was a bounty on it.

“You need to find out for sure about that bounty: who, how much, when, why, everything.”

“You?”

“I'll call Tuesday and wait here for her.”

 

•••

 

An hour later he was feeling dozy when he sensed he was being watched. Instinctively he remained perfectly still and began to scan the surrounding areas with his eyes, but nothing looked suspicious. After fifteen minutes, the strange feeling passed.
Not a wolf.

Shakespearean lines filled his mind: “Or in the night / imagining some fear / How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”

The lines made him laugh.
Yeah, probably a bear prowling around.

Where the heck was Friday? He stepped past the root-ball to urinate, looked down, and saw more of the giant wolf tracks. “Geez,” he said out loud.

Friday arrived, took photographs of the weapons cache, and they carried and loaded the rifles and scopes into the patrol unit.

“Any theories to share?” she asked.

“Nothing supported by evidence,” Service said. He decided to tell her nothing about the wolf man until Denninger got more information on the so-called bounty.

Friday wore latex gloves and hefted one of the rifles. “This thing's heavy, and would be even heavier with one of these scopes. Our vicks don't look strong enough to handle them.”

“Could be irrelevant,” he said. “May have nothing to do with Twenty Point Pond.”

“Then what?”

He held out his hands and rolled his eyes. “It's the U.P., eh?”

Friday looked at him. “I bet you're glad you're not on this case.”

“Like,
totally,
” Grady Service said, grinning.