Running Dark (19 page)

27

THE GARDEN MISSION, FEBRUARY 24, 1976

“We don't need another damn cowboy here.”

He had visited every known rat's house at least once during his nightly forays. One night, he had sat on Middle Bluff watching the rats pull their nets to collect fish, the nets basically in the same location of those he'd helped to seize, which meant the poachers had already replaced them. Where did that much money come from? He had followed them from the Port Bar as they eased their snow machines through the state park's historic ruins, across Snail Shell Harbor, and out onto the thick ice of Big Bay de Noc.

Snowmobiles provided excellent transportation in winter. Soon after their introduction in the late sixties, sales had unexpectedly soared, and now the houses and trailers of even the poorest U.P. residents sported TV antennas and at least one snowmobile out front. Since the machines ran easier on packed, hard trails than in deep, fresh snow, most drivers opted for the path of least resistance and followed the same routes to their various destinations. What appeared unpredictable before now began to take on a pattern as he penciled the rat routes into his notebook. This was information that could be used against the rats when his mission was done. He had sabotaged vehicles on only three occasions, but figured he had three or four days left, and decided it was time to step up pressure in his self-declared psychological war. As a precaution, he wrapped and taped cloth over his boots to blur the pattern and size of his tracks.

Ranse Renard lived directly across Garden Road from Pete Peletier, both houses about a mile north of Fairport, six miles south of Lasurm's. Tonight he had watched both houses since 10
p.m.
Renard had pulled into Peletier's driveway just before midnight, shouting and pounding on Peletier's front door. The door had opened and the two men had disappeared inside. Renard emerged around 3
a.m.,
drove across the street to his house, got out, walked to the front door, turned around, and walked back to his truck, muttering under his breath. He took a flashlight out of the truck, got on his back, and wriggled underneath the truck to check his fuel line.

What was the man
thinking?
He'd just driven the truck across the road. Drunk
and
paranoid, Service told himself. He fought back a smile as he waited for Renard to settle inside the house before he approached the man's truck, popped the hood, pried off the distributor cap, jimmied the rotor loose and took it out, replacing the cap. He threw the rotor into the deep snow on the angled roof of the man's house. When Renard tried to start his truck again, he'd probably assume the problem was underneath and crawl under the truck, only to find that the fuel line was unimpaired. Service jammed a small potato deep into the exhaust pipe.
Give the man two problems to deal with,
Service thought as he got ready to leave—only to see a string of snowmobile lights coming south on Garden Road. Six machines pulled into Peletier's driveway. Their drivers dismounted and began shouting, “Pete—Pete!”

Peletier came to the front door and shouted, “Shut up, boys! My kids are sleepin'!”

Service watched him usher them inside, gave them fifteen minutes, crossed the road, quickly dumped sugar into all six machines, and made a fast tactical withdrawal into the woods.

A quarter-mile south of Lasurm's, he was working his way north through a tree line a hundred yards west of Garden Road as a half-dozen trucks came racing south. He wondered if a rat rally was getting under way. It began to snow as he opened the steel door of the pump house and disappeared into Lasurm's tunnel.

He dumped his pack and outer gear in the storeroom and turned toward the tunnel to the house to find Miss Tillie snarling at him. “Gentle,” he said softly, “you four-legged pile of shit.”

Lasurm was awake and waiting in the kitchen. He looked at his watch. It was not yet 4:30
a.m
. “What're you doing awake?”

“Worrying, fretting, stewing—take your pick,” she said. “You came down here to make peace, but now you're doing anything but that, and they're suspicious. They think an outsider is out to get them, and they're talking about trying to trap him. They're going to travel only in groups now,” she said.

This confirmed what he had seen tonight. “It won't do them any good,” he said.

“I would think a little fear would be a healthy thing,” she said.

Fear and caution were not synonymous. He refused to defend or explain himself. “I'm gonna need more sugar.”

She sighed. “I doubt a truckload of sugar would take the edge off the likes of you.”

“I don't have an edge.”

She sneered, “Any sharper and you could walk through walls.”

“Talk about an edge,” he countered.

She got up, snapped her crutch onto her wrist, and pushed the rubber tip against his chest like a sword. “Grady, it's your job to uphold the law. I don't approve of violence. God knows we've had plenty of that down here. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but you've gone over the line.”

“Stay out of this,” he said, immediately regretting it. She had opened her home to him and probably was taking more risk than him. He wasn't in the mood for this claptrap.

“I
can't
stay out of this!” she said sharply. “I'm in the middle of it, and the DNR is coming today,” she said.

“Says who?” Why would Attalienti schedule a patrol while he was here? To maintain the appearance of normal DNR operations, he concluded, which made some sense, normalcy and routine the best covers for secrecy.

“Word's out. They always seem to know, don't they?” she said.

“They didn't know about me,” he told her.

“They made everybody turn off their lights before you came.”

There had to be another reason, he had already decided, there being no real trail to track him or his plan. Until tonight he'd seen no real caution from them—certainly nothing to suggest they were doing anything but operating confidently on their own ground.

He headed for the cellar stairs, Lasurm following close behind. “Where do you think you're going?”

“Out,” he said.

“You just came in! You don't have enough night left.”

“I'll have to make do,” he said.

“You're letting your testosterone lead you! I wanted a smart, tough game warden, tough being secondary,” Lasurm hissed at him. “We don't need another damn cowboy here.”

He turned around and looked up at her, knowing she was right. He had come to the Garden with a mission, and had gathered the information Attalienti wanted. Would it help in the future? He didn't know. But his gut had driven him to step over the line and violate the captain's directive against action, and now if COs were coming down today, they might encounter more anger than usual—anger he had created by sabotaging rat equipment. Daylight be damned; he had to go out and support his people any way he could. “Don't forget the sugar,” he reminded Lasurm, avoiding her eyes.

28

GARDEN PENINSULA, FEBRUARY 24, 1976

One thing was for sure: None of them walked alone.

The only on-ice net activity he had seen had been off the state park, and based on this he headed north from Lasurm's, hoping to get into position on Middle Bluff. To keep himself hidden he kept to the woods as much as he could, eventually climbing out to an overlook on the bluff where he saw seven snowmobiles and Stone's green truck and another DNR vehicle on the ice. It was now 8:30
a.m.
; it had taken only two hours to get to the bluff from Lasurm's house.

Where were the rats?
If this thing was about money, they couldn't afford to lose more nets, could they?

He sat watching his DNR pals until around noon when he saw men with ski masks filtering their way on foot through the woods along a buttonhook peninsula on the south side of Snail Shell Harbor. He saw no snowmobiles, but eventually a truck drove out across the harbor ice and made its way toward the DNR men. He could see through his binoculars that it was Ranse Renard's truck. Why weren't the others with him? Renard drove forward slowly, almost like a man with a white flag. Where was Peletier?

As he watched he heard grunting in the snowy woods just north of him. He immediately ducked into the trees to try to locate the source.

A man in a tan-and-white snowmobile suit was working his way down the crest of the bluff toward the cliff. He was carrying an uncased rifle with a scope.
Shit.
He couldn't just sit and watch the man take a shot at the officers. But he didn't want to show himself.

The man reached the lip of the bluff and knelt by a broken birch tree not more than thirty yards away. The winter sun was low and in their faces, the sky gray with hints of pink.

Service took off his pack, got down on his belly, and crawled through the trees behind the man, who had taken out a pint bottle, poured something, took a drink, and held up a sandwich, obviously in no hurry. Service could see lettuce hanging out the sides of the bread. The man took several hits from the bottle while he ate. Nervous, Service told himself, keyed up.

The rifle was standing against a fallen tree, the black barrel silhouetted against the surrounding white. The area was strewn with boulders, including several directly behind the man, most of them sunk into a depression. Service was within five yards, the man slightly above him, and he still hadn't decided what to do.

The man picked up the rifle, worked the bolt, and said, “Shit!” He immediately put down the gun and charged east along the path he had followed across Middle Bluff. Service had no idea what had set the man off, and he didn't care. He waited until he was out of sight, crawled upward through a seam in the rocks, and grabbed the rifle, a Remington bolt-action with a Weaver K4 scope. He retracted the bolt: no shell ejected. He checked the magazine: empty. The man had forgotten ammo! Service used the barrel to helicopter the weapon over the edge and retreated to his position, quickly hiding his tracks as he went.

The man was back in fifteen minutes. Service saw him use binoculars to watch Renard out on the ice. A figure in black was standing next to the truck. Probably Stone. The other officers kept working.

When Renard's truck turned around and headed back toward land, the would-be shooter began cursing and stomping around the rocks, kicking clods of ice and snow.

Service crawled south and saw the men on the opposite peninsula walk out of the woods to meet Renard, who stopped to let several men climb into the bed of the truck before continuing across the frozen harbor. Other men in the woods began to withdraw on foot in twos and threes. Renard had six men in his truck. Was this the core group? If so, what role did the others have—active sympathizers or merely curious observers? One thing was for sure: None of them walked alone. But where was their leader?

The shooter stopped cursing, snatched up his gear, and departed at a clumsy jog. Service trailed him across the bluff to a road, where a dirty pickup truck was snugged nose-first against a snowbank. He used his binoculars to get the license number, wrote it down, and waited for the vehicle to leave. The truck was dirty and slush-covered, but something about it seemed familiar.

He suspected the man would return with help to search for his rifle, which meant Service needed to vacate the area.

There were several possible routes, but he decided on one through the thickest woods to cover himself while daylight remained. When he got close to the Port Bar, he saw there were no vehicles; he hiked farther south another half-mile and found a place under some logs. He scooped out an opening and settled in to wait for darkness. Waiting patiently and alone was what game wardens did best.

While he waited he thought about what he had seen. Even on foot the rats were clinging to each other, and the fact that they came in on foot suggested he had crippled enough machines to make them wary. He had not gotten to all that many machines, which further suggested the rats were not as numerous as the DNR had suspected. He also knew that each time he struck, he was costing them time and money—and each time Peletier went untouched, his followers had to wonder why he was exempt.

Lasurm looked at him warily when he wrote down a telephone number and told her what he wanted her to do. “You want me to call Attalienti and tell him there's a rifle on the rocks at the base of Middle Bluff?”

Service held her coat out to her and nodded. “You have a party line here,” he said. “Best use a pay phone.”

She slammed the door on her way out. He felt bad about the way he ordered her around, but she was beginning to challenge him, and he didn't need complications right now. Attalienti was going to be pissed that he'd taken the man's rifle—but what was he supposed to have done? Let him shoot, or jump him before he could get off a round? This solution was a compromise that had allowed him to remove the threat and maintain his anonymity. To fight a rat you sometimes had to act like one.