Killing a Cold One (7 page)

“Probably in his jacket back in the barn,” Delay said. “You want me to call my sarge, ask him to open files for you?”

“We'd appreciate it.”

“Not a problem,” the officer said, and went back to her patrol vehicle.

 

•••

 

Delay's sergeant was a light-colored, wizened Hispanic man who looked like his last meal had been several years before. His uniform hung off him like a flour sack. The whites of his eyes were yellow and pink.

The officers introduced themselves. “Old T.D. up to tricks?” Sergeant Alizondo asked.

“Not sure yet.”

Service looked through the jacket with Friday perched by his shoulder. “Seems to have spent about half his life inside,” Service said.

“Most like him get taken out of the gene pool somewhere along the way,” Alizondo said, “but T.D., he seems to have some kind of protective mega-mojo whenever he's inside.”

“Mojo?”

“Inmates call him Spook-man.”

“You guys know he was dealing weapons?”

“No, but then, nothing about that fool comes as a surprise.”

Service leafed through more pages. “Not exactly pedaling guns legally,” he told Friday. She said to the sergeant, “At one time he had two girls living with him. Are their names in the file?”

“Gotta fetch us a different jacket,” the sergeant said, “but unless you have a warrant, I can't let you see what's in this next one. I
can
confirm the two girls were with him five years back. They were fourteen and fifteen, sisters. Kilani and Marlaeani Kit, his sister's daughters.”

“Photos?”

“Can make you copies,” the sergeant said. “But the photos are five years old, hear?”

“Were they placed with Dog by Social Services?”

“T.D. set that up on his own, and Social Services thought it was a sign he was turning his life around, so they let it ride.”

“Your department squawk?”

“Shee-it. Why waste breath? Social Services does what it wants in this county.”

“Any idea where the girls are now?”

“Can't help you. Try Social Services.”

“No warrant to open doors.”

“We all face challenges, and I don't make the rules,” the sergeant said, and leaned over to them. “Social Services won't have no record on them girls. They washed they hands of all that, left them girls' fate to fate, hear?”

“Their fate may be that they were murdered,” Friday said as the sergeant handed her some photocopies. She stared at them and passed them to Service. Neither of them could correlate the old photos with anything. Without heads, identification was going to approach the impossible.

“Social Services should have prints,” Friday said.

“Prints for what? No hands. And maybe they'd cough up if we have a warrant,” Service said. “I'm guessing. What we need is a break, not paperwork.”

“What about the girls' mother?”

“Dead,” the sergeant said. “Wrapped her car around a pole week after the State kicked her.”

 

•••

 

Later that night they drove back to the tribal center in Grand Rapids and found Rose Monroe walking away from the front door. The woman turned, scowled, and waved them away, but Service flashed his shield and she reluctantly turned around and unlocked the door.

“What is it you want now?” the woman asked.

Service explained about the girls, and at the end of his story showed her the photographs from the campground. The woman showed no visible emotion. “I can't help, and I got to close. We got rules.”

“Think she recognized them?” Service asked as they drove away.

“Couldn't read her,” Friday said. “Okay, now that this day is done, there's one lingering question,” she said.

He looked over at her. Yeah?”

“Just how long
is
a giraffe's dick?”

The two of them brayed like mules.

11

Friday October 24

MACKINAW CITY, CHEBOYGAN COUNTY

It was after midnight. “So much for initiative,” Friday said as she pulled into Mackinaw City off I-75. It had been snowing tapioca since Vanderbilt, and traffic had slowed to a crawl by the time they got to Indian River, thirty miles south of the straits. “I
hate
whiteouts,” she carped, pulling up to the city police building. Signs on the bridge's approach announced it was closed, but not for how long. They went inside, brushing snow off their coats, and found Chief Minky Malette in his office on the phone. Malette waved for them to step in and sit, yelled at someone on the other end of the phone about closing the bridge, and how it had already made for trouble in town.

The chief hung up. “You two lost?”

“Stopping to get a room in the stable.”

Malette guffawed. “Here? Dream on. We got no rooms left in town. You don't mind, though, I've got a holding cell. Use them for prisoners until we can ship them to Cheboygan, or wherever. Got two, and one's empty right now.”

“Any port in a storm,” Service said.

“I hate weather humor,” Malette said.

“Good for local business, though.”

“Screw the shopkeeps,” the chief said. “They get profits, and we get to clean up behind the whole mess while the town fathers shrink our budgets every year.”

Service called Station Twenty in Lansing to let the dispatchers know where he was, and Friday called her office in Negaunee.

Malette showed them into the cramped holding-cell area. One was occupied by a young woman with stringy black hair in a black leather skirt just short of the average male imagination.

“Like . . . you one of them or one of
us?
” the girl asked Friday.

“One of them,” Friday said. “Above the bridge.”

“That's cool,” the girl said. “I stuck my old man in the kneecap with an icepick. Come home from work, see, and, like, I found him pounding doggy on my BFF? Guess I sorta freaked?”

“Should have stuck her instead,” Service offered.

“Did,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “Thirty-eighties, they tell me? I din't count, myseff? She, like, croaked? Minky, he say I murderize dat bitch?”

The girl looked fourteen, couldn't have been more than nineteen, definition of PWT. “Crime of passion,” he told her. “It may not go so badly for you.”

“But I done stuck dat ho thirty-eightie? You think dat a record? I ain't never made me no record? I get pissed, I ack out, they tell me? She fuck my ole man, she dis me, see what I'm sayin'?”

Indeed. The urban patois of a long-haul client of the state's social welfare system rolled off the girl's lips. Their fellow resident waved a piece of paper at Friday.

“You want see my baby? Like, they took her from me, dude. I miss my baby,” she keened.

Friday looked frustrated and whispered to Service, “I gotta call my sis about the kid and the animals, and this is how bad my life's gotten, feeling bad for a hormonally driven teenage assassin. I sometimes disgust myself.”

“Thanks?” the girl said to Service after Friday went to another room to make her call. “You want kneel down and pray thanks to the Big God Dude with me?” the girl asked.

“I don't think so.”

The girl shrugged. “I always try to pray a lot?” she said. “I guess it just don't take. You want shove yo junk through them bars? I'll suck that big boy. I ain't much good at much, but I'm real good at that shit.”

“Rain check,” Service said with a wink, thinking,
This is a fellow earthling?
Someone leaving gorks in campgrounds, walking dead gorks in jail, bad omens everywhere for his granddaughter and Shigun. Thoughts of the future made him cringe for kids.

“But it's snowing and there ain't like nothing to do here, dude, sayin'?” the girl whined. “I guess I ain't so smart?”

“Thus endeth social intercourse,” Service said.

The girl looked perplexed and grinned. “I know I know
dat
word, and I'm sure we ain't done that? Did we? But I guess we could?”

Service sighed and sat back. It was going to be a long night. More and more the world felt like it was on the verge of coming apart. Friday came back, rested her head on his shoulder, and was asleep before him.

12

Sunday, October 26

SLIPPERY CREEK CAMP

The recent snow was melting under an intense south wind, and Service was on the porch with Newf. Karylanne had brought his granddaughter down from Houghton. Friday and Shigun had come out from Harvey, and all of them had spent two days in some semblance of a family. It was early Sunday, and he and Little Maridly were making breakfast for the rest of the clan. Shigun, Friday's son, slept soundly like his mom. Maridly seemed to loathe sleep, a lot like her namesake.

The cell phone rang and Service had an inkling to let it go to a message, but after so many years of being available to others, he reluctantly answered.

“Grady, Lori. I'm very sorry to disrupt your pass time.”

“I gave up trying to differentiate my time from the State's too long ago to remember,” he said. “What's up, Governor?”

He'd met the governor years ago, when she was a state senator, just before she ran for the big job. They had been acquaintances since. Maybe even friends. The exact status seemed to vacillate, mostly based on his moods.

“I'm told that Tuesday's handling that ghastly case with the headless girls.”

How does Lori know this? No details have been made public. Had this case climbed the State ladder up to the top?

“You want to talk to her?”

“No. I've been told you're also involved in the case.”

“You know we don't handle homicides. I have what might be a possibly related weapons case, but we really don't know yet.
Possibly related
isn't the same as
related.
”

“I'm a lawyer: Don't split damn hairs, Grady. You hearing some dogman talk up there—a reward, all that panic-the-public nutcase crap?” The governor was a member of the exclusive Huron Mountain Club and had a first-rate network of Yooper informants who kept her tuned in to goings-on above the bridge, politically and otherwise.

“Heard some,” he said, “but it's been a while.”

“What do you think?” the governor asked.

“Think about what?”
Why does she do this shit—come diving into law enforcement and cases without the slightest clue?
But he knew the answer:
She was in political hell, looking for anything to boost her basement-level public ratings.

“Don't jerk me around,” Governor Timms snapped at him. “I'm in no mood for your lip,” she added.

“Okay,” he said. “Here's my take: There's no such thing as a dogman, Sasquatch, skinwalker, vampire, werewolf, windigo, zombie, whatever. They are all total bullshit.”

“Yet many people ardently believe in zombies and vampires,” the governor countered.

“So what? They believe angels are real, too.” Service affectionately patted his granddaughter's head and whispered, “Tell your mum and Tuesday and Shigun it's time to get out of bed. Breakfast on the table in ten minutes, max—and don't jump on Shigun,” he added as she scampered away.

“Listen, Lori, people also believe in the damn Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus,” he said in a whispered growl. “Belief does not bestow biological reality.”

“The latter examples are benign, the former are not.”

“They are
all
bullshit, Governor.”

“All of those entities you mentioned,” she said. “What do they have in common, Grady?”

“They're not real, and only kids, assholes, and jerks believe in them.”

“You skipped over the fact that they are all animal forms.”

“The Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus?”

“Don't quibble and don't patronize.”

“I repeat: None of them are real, Governor.”

“People
think
they're real, and perceptions matter. You're not listening to me, Officer Service.”

“Because you're not making any goddamn sense, Governor. Your political advisors feeding you the dogman tidbits? Or did your people do a damn poll?”

“I did not call to debate or argue with you, Grady. I've talked to Chief Waco. You are to hunt down this creature, whatever and wherever it might be. And having located it, you will do whatever is necessary. Am I clear?”

“Because you and your crack political team have surgically parsed the situation and concluded a little crime might hurt your party's chances against the Republican candidate?”

The Republican candidate was a filthy-rich, squeaky-voiced man who had started chasing the office years before the election, spending millions of his own dollars, which disgusted Service. “Have you been drinking?” he jabbed for good measure. More and more it was becoming clear that buying political office was the route to power for some rich people.

“You fight dirty, Grady. You always go right for the throat. But this time that's good: I want you to go right for the throat of this damn thing, whatever it is. Find out who killed those women, and make it go away.”

There was no turning her down if Chief Waco had already been pressured to sign on. “All right, but here's the deal: I pick who I need and want to help. And it's all on your budget bucks, not Chief Waco's.”

“All right. Who are you thinking of?” she asked.

“My call, not yours,” he told her.

“I'm just curious.”

“Treebone, Glenn Noonan, and Allerdyce. Tree and Noonan used to be top detectives, and Limpy's the best man in the woods I know. Tree and Noonan will help Friday. Limpy and I will work our own angles. I shouldn't have to pull any other law enforcement,” he added.

“You need more, you call them,” she said. “You amaze me. You analyzed this and decided on a course in an instant. Your talents are wasted in the woods, Grady.”

“Especially in a fricking, horseshit wild goose chase like this,” he said. “My team, your budget, Governor.”

“Carte blanche,” she said. “Whatever and whoever you need. Just get that damn thing, fast. You have your orders,” she concluded, and hung up.

Little Maridly was back beside him. “Was that Lori?” she asked

“It was.”

“Is she coming to breakfast with us?”

“She'd like to, but she's busy ruining the state and forcing individual citizens to dive into trashbins.”

“Is Lori the boss of me?” the girl asked.

“She thinks so.”

The little girl's face hardened into a grimace. “I'm my
own
boss, Bampy.”

“Good for you, hon. Your mum awake?”

“Yep, I jump-ed on her and tickle-ed her.”

“Did she laugh?”

“No, she said a real bad word. Wanna hear me say it?”

“No.” Grady Service smiled as Shigun came running from the bedroom, arms outstretched, and jumped to be caught. “Was Maridly nice to you when she woke you up?”

The boy smiled.

I've got the Mosquito Wilderness back and a great start on a patched-together family. Why the hell can't the governor mind her own damn business? Fucking dogman!

Karylanne and Friday padded in at the same time, both in long fuzzy robes and slippers, neither fully awake. Friday mumbled, “Coffee,” and held out a cup. Karylanne did the same.

“We'll talk to you two when you get closer to the runway,” Service told the women. To Maridly, “Get the platter. We've got to get food into these poor old women.”

Ten minutes later the breakfast was on the table, and they were all working at it slowly. Service nodded for Friday to follow him to another room.

“I just got a call from Lori,” he said when they were alone.

“I know. My boss called me from Lansing a few minutes ago, too.”

“I didn't hear your phone.”

“Vibrated. I'm leading the case, but you're going to work to find the so-called dogman angle. What the devil
is
a dogman?”

Service told her what he knew.

“You knew about this and never told me?”
She's pissed.

“It seemed irrelevant. And still does. Hell, it
is
irrelevant. It's
bullshit.
”

Friday flashed a dark look. “Any chance said investigations will converge?”

“Only in our governor's zany political fantasy world.”

“What else have you withheld?” she asked.

Service got his cell phone, pulled up a photo of the tracks he and Denninger had found near Twenty Point Pond.

Friday raised an eyebreow. “And
that
would be?”

“We're not sure,” he said. “Could be a humongous wolf track.”

“A wolf is like a dog, right?” she asked.

“This is
not
a dogman,” he insisted.

“Then what is it?”

“I don't know yet.”

“When will you know?” she pressed.

“I don't know.”

“You haven't even started to try to find out, have you?”

“I have to do some thinking on it,” he said.

“Where was that damn track?”

“By the rifle cache.”

“And you never said
anything.
”

“Seriously, I didn't see a connection, and I still don't. Did Forensics find any animal evidence on the vicks?”

“No,” she said.

“There you go.”

“But the governor thinks differently.”

“She wants me to hunt the dogman, which does not exist,” he said. “It's all political posturing—all PR.”

“So why does she want you chasing a phantom?”

“Our governor has gotten it into her mind that this thing is theoretically an animal, which drops it in the DNR's lap. Her thinking is not just stupid, it's twisted.”

“She actually
said
the thing is real?”

“Pretty much.”

“Did you piss her off?”

“I'm not sure. She hides her emotions like an actor.”

“Duh: She's a politician,” Friday said. “What's next for you?”

No time to think it through thoroughly.
“Lori said I can have who I want, and it's all on her dime. The first thing I'm gonna do is pull Tree in.”

Grady Service and Luticious Treebone had both finished college, Service at Northern Michigan University, where he had been only a fair student and a competent hockey player, and Treebone at Wayne State, where he had played football and baseball and graduated cum laude. They had both been on the verge of being drafted, so they volunteered for the US Marine Corps, met at Parris Island, and served together in the same long-range recon unit in Vietnam. They had been through hell together and had rarely spoken of the war since.

When they got back to “the world,” they had both joined the Michigan State Police; two years later there had been an opportunity to transfer to the Department of Natural Resources, and they both accepted, but within a year his friend had taken a job with the Detroit Metro Police. He had retired a couple years back as a lieutenant in one of Metro's vice squads, and Service had bought a camp in remote Chippewa County for his friend, a place called North of Nowhere, where they could escape to hunt and fish. They had remained close friends for going on thirty years, during which time Tree's idea of wilderness had been unhappily reduced to Belle Isle on the Fourth of July. But now that he was retired, he was spending a lot of time at his camp.

Service couldn't remember the last time he'd thought about his two years as a state trooper in the Detroit area. The post had been on Grand Boulevard in the city. He wasn't even sure if the post was still there, much less still operating. The MSP had been forced by budget losses to drastically reduce the number of posts—manpower, too, but not as much—over recent years.

Detroit had been an incredible assignment right out of Vietnam and Troop school. Those had been the days of smack, and before crack cocaine. Actual zombies (not the living dead, but the dying-live) crawled alleys at night, whacking anything with warm blood, stealing anything that could be hocked to fuel habits, even prying gold fillings from teeth, the dead serving to keep the dying alive a little longer. They didn't call heroin “horse” for nothing; upkeep on a golden arm was steeper than maintaining Secretariat. And deadlier.

Service remembered when Sergeant Jack Creekmore one morning described to the shift a series of six killings that had left body parts strewn around three Detroit police precincts. Creekmore gave Service a piece of paper with a name: Arthurine Snowden. “See the woman,” his sergeant said.

“Metro has its own homicide dicks, right?”

“Don't question me, rook. See the woman,” Creekmore growled, and added, “Metro's got so many bent dicks they don't want no good leads to get shat upon. You the man, Service. Arthurine, she the woman, and she claims she got most righteous poop. We copacetic?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Arthurine Snowden ran a news kiosk outside a black biker bar called Lazy Fare. She also worked numbers for a crew called B&B (for Black and Bad) and traded favors with the law. The Cass Corridor in downtown Detroit was filled with genetic defects, losers, mouth-breathers, and sundry bottom-feeders. They were predatory and omnivorous, consuming anything and everything, but they were not without their own rules and ethics.