No Man's Dog (3 page)

“Smells pretty good,” the stranger said. “Cuban?”

“Oh, no,” Mulheisen said. “I think the tobacco is probably Dominican. Care for one?” He offered a leather cigar holder.

The man declined. “I like the smell, but I never got the habit, somehow. You don’t remember me, do you? We met . . . oh, maybe a year ago. Vern Tucker.” The man offered his hand and Mulheisen shook it, warily.

“I remember,” Mulheisen said. “You’re with the FBI, aren’t you? Or was it the DEA? Colonel Tucker?”

“That’s right,” the man said. “I think we share an air force past, if I’m not mistaken. You were in AACS, I think.”

Mulheisen nodded, his interest moderately piqued. “You were a pilot, I think you said. F-105s. Wild Weasels.”

“Very good,” Tucker said, pleasantly. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood looking at the lake. He was not a large man, certainly a head shorter than Mulheisen. He nodded toward the ships and asked, “What ships are those?”

Mulheisen said, “Oceangoing. Probably foreign, trading to and from Chicago, or Milwaukee, Duluth maybe. I couldn’t make out the logos or the names. I used to know all the lake boats. Cleveland Cliffs, Ford, but you don’t see them anymore. There’s an old guy comes out here once in a while, brings a chair and a notebook, binoculars. He used to keep track of all the names of the companies. That was a long time ago, come to think of it. I haven’t seen him in ages. Maybe he’s died, by now.”

“Why would he keep track of the ships?” Tucker asked.

“Who knows? He was interested. Maybe it’s like collecting stamps. He collected ships.”

Tucker shook his head, as if dismissing the silliness of that. “What’s that island, way down there?”

“You can see that?” Mulheisen asked. “You must still have pilot’s vision. That’s Peach Island. It’s at the head of the Detroit River. That’s what the locals call it, it’s on the maps, but it’s really Peche Island . . . the fish, not the fruit. There were never any peaches on that island, but they say that Pontiac, the Ottawa chief, used to hang out there in the summer. He had a fishing camp, probably. People still go out there and camp in the summer, I guess. I haven’t been out there in a long time, since I gave up my boat.”

They chatted about boats for a bit. Tucker wasn’t too familiar with them. He was from a dry country, he said, a river country,
where the idea of a boat was a canoe or a rubber fishing raft. “But imagine,” he said, “Pontiac used to hang out there. A little bit of history.”

“See that island over there?” Mulheisen pointed to a nearby island, across the channel, not more than a few hundred yards distant. “That’s where the Chippewas ambushed Sir Robert Davers and Lieutenant Robertson and their party. They killed Davers and Robertson, and supposedly they ate Robertson.”

“Ate him! My god!” Tucker stared across the narrow channel. “Cannibals! I had no idea that they practiced cannibalism.”

“Well, who knows?” Mulheisen said. “His body was never found, although Davers’s rifle and Robertson’s powder horn were given to one of the French settlers in Detroit. This was in 1762, about two hundred and forty-some years ago.”

“Who was this Davers, anyway?” the colonel asked.

Mulheisen shrugged. “A tourist,” he said. “One of those odd Brits. He was just traveling around, apparently, learning the Indians’ language, sightseeing.”

Tucker gazed at Mulheisen, a good-sized man with thinning, sandy hair, almost homely but attractive in a way. When he smiled, which wasn’t often, he bared rather long teeth. This was a feature that had given rise to his street cognomen, “Sergeant Fang.”

“You seem to know quite a bit about this stuff,” Tucker said, “but I suppose it’s from living around here.”

Mulheisen shrugged. “I’m interested in the history,” he said. “Pontiac was a crucial figure in American history. Where are you from?”

“Me? I’m an American. Oh, you mean . . . I grew up in Montana, up near Great Falls.”

“Great Falls? I’ve been there. Butte, too. Well, you’re from Injun Country, as they used to say in the movies. I’m surprised you’re not more interested.”

“Who says I’m not interested?” Tucker sounded almost indignant. But, in fact, he wasn’t interested. He’d seen plenty of Indians in his youth, been to school with some. There was a Blackfeet reservation not far from his folks’ ranch. Several Blackfeet had worked on the ranch, from time to time. One of them in particular, Albert Sees Crow—or was it “Seize Crow"?—had been fairly important to him at one time. (It was funny, now that he thought about it, he’d never considered that Albert’s name could have been Seize Crow.) Indians didn’t seem exotic or especially fascinating to him, but he supposed that it might be different for someone like Mulheisen, growing up in industrial Michigan.

Mulheisen said, “Are you familiar with the period?” He gestured toward the channel, the lake, as if history were lying there. As a matter of fact, that was often the way it seemed to Mulheisen, like a not quite visible panorama or tableau.

“Not very,” Tucker said, hesitantly. He wasn’t prepared to hear a long presentation about an obscure episode. Mulheisen had the air of one of those enthusiasts, an amateur who had immersed himself in a subject and was not above bending one’s ear with his theories. “I’m sure it’s fascinating, but as it happens I came out to see you for a reason.”

“I assumed you did,” Mulheisen said. “Shall we?” He gestured toward the distant house and they turned to walk back.

“It’s about the bombers,” Tucker said. “The ones who almost killed your mother.”

“I don’t think she was the target,” Mulheisen observed.

“Oh, no, of course not,” Tucker hastened to agree. “An innocent bystander, fundamentally. But I thought you might be interested. We have begun to develop a different line on them.”

“Really? I thought it was some Muslim group,” Mulheisen said. “The terrorist was killed in the explosion. Isn’t that right? Do you know who he was?”

“That’s the point,” Tucker said. “We thought we had an identification. This group that claimed responsibility—a Gulf group—even provided the name of the so-called martyr. But now it looks like that was just an attempt to make us believe one of their key operatives was dead. It’s a useful ploy, not uncommon. The man whose name they put forth is still in action, in Germany, we think.”

“Hah. That’s clever, sort of,” Mulheisen said. “So who did do it?”

“We’re not sure, but we suspect it wasn’t a Muslim or even a foreign group at all. We think it was homegrown.”

“Locals?” Mulheisen asked. “You mean, Detroit people? Arabs? Some other group?”

“Actually, more homegrown than that. A right-wing American group, radicals.”

“Hah. Like the Oklahoma City bombing?”

“Something like that,” Tucker said. “There was a Michigan connection in Oklahoma City, you’ll recall.”

“Oh, yes.” Mulheisen stopped. They were halfway back to the house. He looked over at his study, now already closed in, although the roof wasn’t shingled. He started to point it out, then decided the man wouldn’t be interested in his domestic plans. Instead, he shook his head with a rueful grimace, then looked up and around. “I’ll be damned.”

Tucker stood by, watching him.

After a minute, Mulheisen snorted, then shrugged. “Well, when you think about it,” he said, “what difference does it make?”

Tucker looked shocked.

Mulheisen noticed and hastened to add, “I mean . . . well, I’m glad you’re on to them, of course, but it doesn’t make much difference to my mother, does it? It was in the nature of an accident. She was there, the bomb was there. The two aren’t connected. It’s like that airplane that crashed in Brooklyn, a couple days after
the planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. Everybody thought at first it was more terrorists, but it wasn’t. But what difference did it make? To the people who were killed, I mean, and their families. And then . . . naturally, you thought about the ones in the towers. What did that mean? Wasn’t it the same as the crash in Brooklyn? Those people weren’t
involved
with the terrorists, either. It might as well have been a bolt of lightning that struck the bus. The bomb wasn’t aimed at her, after all.”

Tucker’s amazement was very evident—eyes wide, mouth agape.

Mulheisen felt compelled to reassure the man, to explain himself. “It’s a horrible thing,” he said. “Madmen. But, you see, on a personal level . . . well, I suppose people in the Blitz, or in Vietnam, say, who were injured by bombs falling out of the sky . . . not meant for them, of course, but for a ball-bearing plant, or a railroad . . . they probably couldn’t help feeling personally attacked, I suppose. Who could blame them, eh? You always hear about country people, mobs, attacking downed airmen . . .”

Mulheisen hesitated, catching a wince from Tucker.
Of course,
he thought,
the man had been a bomber himself, in Vietnam.
"Of course, it’s not the same, is it?” he said.

“No, certainly not,” Tucker responded. “That’s a war, a declared war. There are bound to be civilian casualties, but the action was aimed at the enemy’s resources, the industrial infrastructure.”

Mulheisen was annoyed by this shameless defense. “Oh sure,” he said, drily, “but you can’t expect folks to appreciate the difference when they’re being blown up. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Vietcong tossing a grenade into a beer hall full of American troops, or American airplanes tossing a few tons of bombs into the heart of a rail depot where there are civilians working, or a factory . . . or maybe just dumping their ‘unused ordnance,’ as they
say, as they climb out of the bombing run, only it happens to fall on a hamlet. Wouldn’t you say? Just from the vantage point of the civilians?”

Tucker was not to be drawn. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. He seemed to have regained control of his anger. “In this case, however, there may have been more to it.”

“How so?”

“Perhaps, if only obliquely, your mother was a target.”

“Oh, come on,” Mulheisen said. “A bird-watcher? So, who was this, some bird-hater? Are there such people?”

“An antienvironmentalist, perhaps,” Tucker said. “Your mother was more than a bird-watcher. She was what some would call an activist. There are quite a few people who get upset at environmental activists. Out where I come from, it’s common to refer to all environmentalists as extremists. Wasn’t her group, in fact, at that city hall to present a protest at the draining of a marsh area?”

Mulheisen frowned. “I think they were objecting to the proposed building of a power plant, a not very clean plant, in an important drainage zone. There was a question of contamination of—what do they call it?—the aquifer. But I’m not all that sure about it. I was more concerned with my mother’s injuries, so I didn’t really pay that much attention. I suppose I should have.”

“Oh, no, no, my dear fellow,” Tucker said, quickly, “you were quite right to be focused on the problem at hand. I’m just saying . . . the possibility can’t be ruled out that, in some weird, far-fetched way, these nuts were targeting your mother’s group. There was also, you may recall, an Arab restaurant next door. It’s possible that the restaurant was the target. It was a popular meeting place for some prominent Arab leaders in the community. There is a very large Arab population in these parts, as I’m sure you know. We can’t rule out any of those possibilities. But my point is, it wasn’t by any stretch a legitimate military target.”

So, Mulheisen thought, he was back to that. The man must have been a bomber pilot. Rather than debate the issue, Mulheisen decided to let it go. “I take your point,” he said. “So who were these guys?”

“We have a few leads,” Tucker said, evidently relieved to put the ambiguous aspect of bombing aside. “But it occurred to me . . . you’re free, aren’t you? That is, you’ve left the police force? I thought so. I was thinking you might be interested in joining us, assisting us, in this investigation.”

Mulheisen quickly shook his head. “No. I’m retired. I have plenty to do, just taking care of my mother. No, my detective days are behind me, Colonel. Nowadays, I spend my free time, in the evenings, reading about Pontiac, doing a little amateur research on the period.”

“I understand, I understand,” Tucker said, “but, you know, it’s not good simply to subside into the woodwork. You have hired a nurse, possibly you could get a little more help, and that would free up some time. . . . We pay very well, you know.”

“Who is ‘we’? The DEA? CIA? Who are we talking about?” Mulheisen asked.

“It’s actually a coalition of agencies,” Tucker said. “In fact, it’s a special task force, under the new Homeland Security aegis. I’m running it. You’d be answerable only to me. So you see, if you’re concerned about joining some government agency, it wouldn’t be like that. No training, no elaborate security clearance, no civil service exam or requirements. You would be simply a civilian contractor, for a set fee. Say, one hundred thousand dollars?”

Mulheisen stopped. “A hundred grand? For the duration? I mean, what if it gets wrapped up in a couple of weeks? Or in two years? What then?”

Tucker liked the way this was going. As long as Mulheisen was in negotiation, other issues could be shunted aside. “A hundred
grand for the duration of the investigation . . . that is, until we have our perpetrators.”

“Ah. Until you have them? Identified them? Arrested them? Convicted them?”

“Identified them,” Tucker said, “to our satisfaction, at least. And, naturally, we’d want to know where they are, if they’re still alive, but that wouldn’t necessarily involve tracking them down and arresting them. But, that could be part of it, if you’re interested. Let’s say the investigation runs longer than six months . . . we could negotiate an additional fee. And so on . . . for the duration. Sound okay?”

“Okay? It sounds too good. I never got anything like that on the force.”

“These are special times,” Tucker said. “Congress is responding to the anxiety of the public. The funds are there. And you’re a man with special abilities, with a special interest. You’re motivated.”

“You mean, my mother? Well, to be honest, Colonel, I’ve never quite bought into revenge as a motive.”