Death Roe (10 page)

18

Friday, October 29, 2004

OCQUEOC FALLS, PRESQUE ISLE COUNTY

It was just before noon and Benny Baranov was standing in the parking lot by Ocqueoc Falls, which was fancifully misnamed, it being more a gradual series of low steps than a dramatic cascade. “We got a deal?” Baranov asked as Service walked over to him.

“We're getting close and it's looking good.”

“I get reward?”

“Your reward is I tear up your citation.”

The Ukrainian looked dejected. “My girls could use money.”

“The bank boys still working?”

“Yes, late run on this side of state. Fish on west side are stinking, you know?” The man made a face.

“You still taking eggs?”

“Nossir, you tell me no more. I am a man of honor”

“Does the man of honor
know
anyone who might be taking eggs?”

Baranov grinned. “Perhaps I hear a name or two.”

“Find out when Piscova makes the next pickup from one of those names and call me. You have my number, right?”

Baranov patted his pocket. “I keep you next to my heart.”

“Your heart's on the other side, shithead.”

Baranov looked down and grinned. “You make joke.”

“No joke. Find out when the next buy takes place, or better yet, when it will take place and where, and call me. Where are the best runs now?”

Baranov scratched his chin. “Best maybe is Devils River at Ossineke. You ask much of Benny. I already have given you bank boys.”

“You can do this.”

“Then ticket is gone?”

“It's already gone. That's our deal. I just need help, Benny.”

Rogers said they needed eggs to test. If Baranov came through, Rogers would get the necessary samples for FDA testing.

19

Sunday, October 31, 2004

DEVILS RIVER, ALPENA COUNTY

Word was out that most salmon runs were in the final stages, but Baranov came through in less than forty-eight hours. A man named Jess Smool would meet a bank boy at an old gravel pit south of the village of Ossineke. Baranov said Smool was assured that there would be a bank boy to collect and pay, but the Ukrainian was unable to get an identity or description.

Service wanted Miars to go with him, but Miars was busy with another case, and Service ended up calling CO Dani Denninger, who had been at the academy with Nantz. He had worked with Denninger last summer and liked her aggressiveness. Salmon-snagging crews were among the nastiest and most upredictable violets conservation officers confronted, and he felt Denninger could handle whatever came up.

They met in the afternoon, sixteen miles from the gravel pit. He briefed her only on the night's task, not the case; like any good officer, she didn't ask questions except about the task. “They're going to meet at dark?”

“Right. This guy Smool drives a 2002 Ford F-150 SVT Lightning. We don't know who he's meeting. Your job is to watch the transaction, give me a description of the other vehicle and driver, and let me know when he pulls out.”

“Not a problem,” Denninger said.

“Got your night eyes?” Service asked.

“And thermal imager. Once Smool parks I'll creep close so I can see what's going on. What do you want me to do after it goes down?”

“Go back on patrol, or home, whatever you're supposed to do.”

“I'm on pass starting tomorrow. I wouldn't mind working.”

“We'll see,” he said, having no intention of taking her along. But he also began to think it might be better to have two sets of eyes and ears when he got to wherever the bank boy was headed.

At 5 p.m. Denninger bumped him on the 800. Smool had arrived. She gave Service the plate number, and it checked against what he had run through the computer when Baranov first gave him the name.

At 6:15, Denninger called again. “Twenty Five Fourteen, I have a dark-colored Lexus with a female driver. Solo, no pax. I'm less than thirty feet from her and I can see everything,” she whispered.

“Twenty Five Fourteen clear,” he said, hoping she would stop talking.

Ten minutes later, she called again, out of breath. “I'm boogying to my vehicle, Twenty Five Fourteen. If she goes north she'll have to pass me and I'll pick her up. If she goes south, you'll have her.”

Service could picture the young officer hurtling through the woods and grinned, remembering all the times he'd had to scramble.

“Twenty Five Fourteen, I can see her turning south.”

“Your ride stashed?”

“ 'Firm-ah-tiff,” she said, breathing hard.

“I'll be at your position in two minutes. Be on the road. Twenty Five Fourteen clear.”

He skidded to a stop, Denninger threw her gear behind the passenger seat, jumped in, and he cranked it up to eighty-five, heading south.

“Run the plate,” he said as he sought to catch up and establish the pursuit.

He caught up to the Lexus in Harrisville, where it turned east on M-72. He turned with it, and dropped back to keep it in sight.

Denninger said, “Vehicle is registered to an Alma DeKoening of Traverse City. White female, five-four, one-oh-five, blond hair. DOB, ten thirty-one seventy-nine.”

Service laughed. “She's going all the way to TC on Seventy-Two. We can relax.”

“Prescience comes with your job?” Denninger asked.

“Something like that.”

“If you know what route she's taking, you must know her destination too.”

“Not really.”

“Geez, and I was actually impressed for a minute.”

Service was surprised when the Lexus turned south out of Kalkaska, drove to South Boardman, and pulled into a small mobile home park. They sat on the road with their binoculars and watched. The Lexus sat there. DeKoening got out, was inside for a half-hour, came out carrying her jacket over her shoulder. She opened her trunk and a shirtless man moseyed out of a trailer carrying two white Styrofoam coolers, put them in the trunk, and closed the lid. The man smacked her bottom, the woman got into her car, pulled away, and headed north, back toward Kalkaska.

Service didn't move.

“We're not following her?” Denninger asked.

“Nope. Creep the trailer and see if you can get a plate number.”

Denninger got out and ducked into the trees. She called five minutes later: “I can't tell which vehicle goes with which trailer,” she said.

“Give them all to me.”

She read the plate numbers and gave him makes and model numbers, three vehicles in all, and he told her to come back to the Tahoe. Meanwhile, he started running the plates through the system, and by the time she got back, he had two of the three.

“Is something more going to happen tonight?” she asked.

“We'll see,” he said.

“You want coffee?” she asked.

“You have coffee?”

“Always,” she said, “two thermoses.”

“Hit me.”

They sat for just more than an hour, engine off, windows cracked, the night chill slowly crawling in, but a man eventually came out of the trailer and tossed a bag into the back of a pickup.

Service looked at his computer screen: Louis K. Veatch, age thirty-three. Out loud he said, “Okay, Louie, show us the money!”

Denninger laughed. “This has been the weirdest Halloween I've ever had.”

Halloween?
Service thought. Only two weeks until the firearm deer opener.
Stop thinking about it,
he lectured himself.
You'll be doing something different, something important. And a hell of a lot less fun
. It was not the sort of trade-off he'd make willingly.

20

Monday, November 1, 2004

ELK RAPIDS, ANTRIM COUNTY

It was 3 a.m., and no great surprise to Service that the pickup truck from South Boardman pulled into the Piscova parking lot. The lights were off in the front part of the building, on in the back. He saw a stand of sumac, hid the truck behind it, locked the doors, and headed toward the building on foot.

He tried the door. It was unlocked. He went to a dark side of the building by a cinder-block wall and called the Antrim County dispatcher. “How many Troops on the road tonight?”

“One,” she said.

Service told her he needed backup and asked her to have the Troop call on his cell phone. He got back in the Tahoe with Denninger and waited.

The phone blurped a minute later and he explained to the state policeman what was happening. The Troop gave an ETA of seven minutes.

Denninger asked, “Are we going inside?”

“You saw money exchanged for eggs, right?”

“The woman set her purse on the hood of the Lexus, took out her wallet, and gave some paper to Veatch. It looked like money to me.”

“Good. Probable cause is solid.” The fact that the eggs ended up at Piscova closed the loop. It all seemed to be fitting nicely. He saw Alma DeKoening's Lexus parked in the lot.

“What's the plan?”

“We ID Veatch and I'll take him outside. I'll tell you what to do once we see what we have inside.”

The Troop came into the lot with his lights out, got out, and Service quickly briefed him. He was tall, muscled, and eager, and looked like a high school kid—and not a senior.

Service led them through the door into a cloud of fish smell. Several men were dumping bags of eggs onto a conveyor belt that led to a large stainless-steel tub. Alma DeKoening was leaning over the conveyor belt, picking out eggs and tossing them into a plastic-lined trash barrel behind her. Others were scooping eggs from the steel tub, putting them on things that looked like cookie sheets, and placing them on racks under lights. Service thought: drying racks. Two men were sticking labels on tins. Service saw a half-dozen blue buckets labeled
not for human consumption. sell only as bait
. One of the men was dumping eggs from a bucket into the same container where eggs from plastic bags were being dumped. There were several buckets and bags on the floor. Another man was taking trays of eggs from the rack to a table and putting the eggs into small, unlabeled tins.

Willem Vandeal approached them, huffing, his eyes bugging out. “You aren't authorized to be in here.”

“Louis K. Veatch,” Service said. He saw Alma DeKoening look over at him and look back to the conveyor belt.

“What's he done?” Vandeal wanted to know.

“Where is he?”

“Veatch,” Vandeal called out. A man finished emptying a plastic bag and walked toward them. He was skinny with the shaved-head look that had replaced backwoods Kentucky waterfalls in recent years. He wore blue jeans, a plaid shirt, an earring, a black rubber apron, scuffed black Doc Martens.

“Louis K. Veatch?'

“S'up, dude?”

“Come with me.”

“I'm working, dude.”

Service saw Vandeal nod at the door and Veatch started outside, fumbling for a cigarette as he went through the door.

Service leaned over to Denninger. He had given her vials for samples in the truck. “Fill ten vials from what's on the conveyor belt, ten from the tank, ten more from the racks, and ten from that guy over there who's putting them in tins. Also, grab an empty New York bucket and a full bag. Give them a receipt when you've got everything we want.”

Veatch inhaled deeply and stood still.

“All right, Louie,” Service began.

“It's Louis, dude.”

“You're in a lot of trouble, Louis. I'm going to take you back inside and you are going to show me the plastic bag you brought tonight.”

“No way, dude.”

“It doesn't matter, Louis. We'll get fingerprints, and we have photos of you taking the bag out of Alma DeKoening's Lexus at your trailer. We followed you here from your place in South Boardman. So lose the attitude or you are going to be royally fucked.”

Veatch seemed to mull over the situation. “S'up, dude?”

The vocabulary of young people had never been particularly extensive in Service's experience, but in recent years it had seemed to shrink even smaller. “Don't play me,” Service said. “You're mixing eggs in there.”

“Duh,” the young man said. “That's the
job
, dude.”

“You always do this at night?”

“Yeah, it's the special product line.”

“Worked here long?”

“Do I like, ya know, need a lawyer, dude?”

Service recited Miranda rights to the man and added, “We can get a lawyer if you want one, but we'll have to put on the cuffs, take you to jail, charge and book you. Or you can just talk to me here.”

“Dude, me and jail don't mix for shit, hear what I'm sayin'?”

“You've been arrested before?” Service asked.

“For what?” the man replied.

“You tell me.”

“Nothing big,” Veatch said.

Service had his doubts but pressed on. “Then talk to me.”

“You sure I'm not going to jail?”

“If you don't talk, you are; if you do talk, you might—but what I want here is information. What happens to you will ride on how much you give me, and how useful it is. What's the deal with Alma DeKoening?”

She had been inside his trailer for thirty minutes, and had been messing with her hair when she came out. “You fucking her, Louis?”

Veatch made a sour face. “Dude, she ain't
my
old lady. She belongs to the
man
.”

The young Troop stuck his head out the door. “You'd better get in here!”

Service grabbed Veatch, shoved him ahead, handed him off to the Troop as he went inside, and saw Denninger being circled by two men who outweighed her by a hundred pounds each.

“Back off!” he shouted and charged.

Before he could get there, Denninger had a man on his back and her knee on his throat. Service grabbed the second man, spun him, slammed him against a wall, pulled his hands behind him, and cuffed him.

“You can't,” the man mumbled.

Vandeal came over, looking shook. “This is totally wrong,” he said.

“No shit,” Service said.

“You can't take product.”

Service said, “Get out of my face, Vandeal, and tell the rest of your people that if there's any more trouble, they're all going to jail for assault and resisting.”

Vandeal held his arms out like a priest trying to settle the multitude.

Veatch tried to twist away from the Troop, who was holding him, but the Troop tripped him and pinned him after one step.

Service hauled Veatch to his feet and frog-marched him outside. “What is your
major malfunction
? That was fucking dumb, Louis!”

“Dude, I'm, like, on probation.”

“Running is going to make it better?” Veatch hung his head. “Just talk to me, all right? You've got a thing going with DeKoening.”

“Dude, if the big boss finds out, I'm toast.”

By the time they got back inside, the Piscova people were all sitting with their backs against the wall like schoolboys on a timeout, and Vandeal said, “Our lawyer is en route.”

It was the same lawyer Service had met before, and once again she seemed sweaty and wore the same tracksuit, but her attitude was calm and businesslike. “What's the problem here?” she asked Service.

Vandeal said with a grunt, “
I'm
the client.”

Service shrugged and watched the two huddle. The Troop was standing by the boys on the wall and looked like he was hitting on Denninger.

The lawyer came back to him. “Constance Algyre.”

“I remember,” Service said.

“My client has nothing to say. If you have charges, file them.”

“Hardball,” Service said.

She shrugged. “It's the client's call.”

“We're not charging anyone with anything at this time. We just came here to talk to Louis Veatch and we've done that. There will be warrants later.”

The lawyer looked skeptical. Willem Vandeal didn't object.

Service looked at Veatch, who went and fetched a plastic bag filled with eggs. The lawyer blocked Veatch's way and said. “You need a warrant to seize product.”

“Probable cause. We watched the company's employee acquire illegally taken eggs from an illegal source and bring them here.”

“
Those
eggs are not in the company's product.”

Service looked at Veatch holding his bag of eggs and wondered if he had screwed up. Technically the lawyer might be right. Would it be better if they had waited until Veatch's batch was already mixed? “Probable cause,” Service said weakly.

“This won't stick,” Algyre said.

“Go,” Service told Denninger.

“Carry on,” Service said from the doorway. A couple of employees showed him the bird.

They drove to the state police post, got evidence coolers and ice, repacked the eggs, had coffee with the Troop, thanked him, and headed for Gaylord.

Denninger nodded off, awoke with a start, and said, “Do you ever sleep?”

“When I have to,” he said. “You give that Troop your number?”

She laughed. “You mean pink-cheek boy? No way.”

Pink-cheek boy
. How had he gotten so old?

When they got to the Gaylord office, Service called Roy Rogers in New York to tell him he had eggs, but offered no details of the seizure. He handed the phone to Denninger to get instructions on how to pack and ship the samples and left the room.

Since something had popped in his leg on the Pine River, his calf had been aching like hell. He had iced it for two days and since then, had tried to ignore the pain and tightness. But tonight it was hurting in such a way that he knew he couldn't ignore it anymore. He took off his boot and sock and saw that the ankle was swollen twice its normal size, the foot a rainbow of ugly colors that suggested internal bleeding. Fuck!

He called Vince Vilardo at home in Escanaba. Vilardo was a longtime friend, internist, retired medical examiner for Delta County, and the only doctor he would go to.

“Geez, Grady, why can't you operate during normal hours?” Vilardo complained sleepily. Service explained what had happened and asked his friend if he could meet him at the hospital in Escanaba the next day.

“Are you out of your mind?” Vilardo yipped. “Get your butt to the nearest emergency room and tell them you need a CT scan. Is there any redness in your leg?”

“I haven't looked.”

“Look now.”

Service slid down his trousers and looked. The swelling reached above the ankle, but there was no redness. “Looks okay to me,” he reported.

“You had any shortness of breath?'

“No.”

“That's good—but go and get the scan.”

“Or what?”

“If there's a clot in there it could blow up your heart or your brain.”

Service grimaced and hung up.

Denninger came back into the room, looked at Service's naked legs, and grinned. “All packed and ready. We can ship first thing in the morning. You want me to leave you alone?”

“I need to go to the emergency room,” Service said.

Denninger raised an eyebrow. “What's wrong?”

“Did something to my leg,” he said, showing her the discolored foot.

“Totally yuck,” she said. “Does it hurt?”

“Not much. Mostly it's swollen. I called my doc in Escanaba and he wants me to get a CT scan.”

It took five hours in the ER to get a technician in to do the scan and for a doctor to show up. The doctor declared no clot and told him he could keep exercising. They visited a stop-and-rob to replenish Service's ibuprofen, got back to the district office at 6 a.m., pulled up chairs in the conference room, and tried to go to sleep, but Service kept replaying the night's sequence of events and wondered if he had overlooked something.