Force of Blood (13 page)

“Briefly.”

“She’s trying to find a camp on Teaspoon Creek, but I can’t raise her. Think one of your guys could see if they can find her truck?”

“You got it. Where are you?”

“West of L’Anse.”

“Okay, I’ll roll and get other help if needed. Bump me when you get closer.”

“Clear,” Service said, closing the cell phone.

“Headed east,” Service told Friday as he flew past Marquette. “Sedge went to creep a cabin. She’s not on her radio, she’s not answering her cell phone, and her truck hasn’t moved.”

“Be careful, Grady,” Friday said.

“How’s the kid?”

“Keep your focus,” she said. “He’s fine, I’m fine, we’re fine. Keep your head in the game.”

Her ability to prioritize sometimes amazed him. “I’ll be back,” he concluded.

“She’ll be okay,” Friday said reassuringly.

My gut’s not so sure
, Service thought. He called Sergeant Bryan as he passed Seney on M-28. “She show?”

“Not yet.”

“Where am I going?”

“Turn north in MacMillan on 415, go till you hit the tracks, and park. The captain will meet you in her RZR.”

Captain Grant? He was confused for a moment, then realized McKower was now Grant’s equal, and to some extent, his superior officer. Talk about a changing world.

• • •

McKower looked worried. “Bring your rifle,” she ordered as he strapped his field ruck and cased .308 on the back of the Polaris. Her hard plastic rifle case was already strapped down. He did as he was told and lowered himself into the right seat. The tracks ran east and west. McKower ran on the left side in the cinders where other four-wheelers had gone before. In Luce County
the damn things went anywhere and everywhere, a constant pain in the ass for conservation officers, county deps, and state police, all of them.

“How far?” Service yelled over the motor.

“Three miles to the Teaspoon on the tracks, then cross-country a third of a mile downstream to the Oxbow.”

“Bolf’s Camp?”

“No, a man named Delongshamp.”

“Godfroi Delongshamp?”

McKower had the hammer down and they were being shaken violently, but she managed to stare at him.

“Why there?” he yelled.

“Her cell-phone chip.”

“What chip?”

“Do you
ever
read your damn e-mail?”

“Don’t need to. You’re telling me what I need to know, right?”

She glowered. “Test program. Sedge and five other officers have GPS tracking chips in their cell phones.”

“Let me guess,” he yelled. “They don’t have to be on.”

“A gold star for our techie-boy,” McKower said.

“No other contact?”

“None.”

“The phone isn’t on?”

“No, the system’s designed passive.”

“Big Brother,” he said.

“Don’t start,” she yelled.

“She briefed you on her case?” he shouted.

McKower stopped the machine on a low bridge, took out a topo map, and handed it to him. The coordinates of Sedge’s cell phone were written on the plastic cover over the map. “Must be hard ground on that finger,” he pointed out, thinking out loud, trying to decipher what he was looking at. “The rest looks like swamp,” he said, sliding into his ruck and slinging his rifle across his chest, barrel down. “My radio will be off until I see what’s what. Where’s Jeffey?”

“Working his way in from the other side of the Teaspoon.

Service entered Sedge’s cell-phone coordinates in his handheld GPS and plunged north on foot into the dense swamp, finding himself knee-deep in
dark water with a root-and-black-mud bottom.
Careful,
his mind warned.
Move steadily, not fast
.

Thirty minutes later he heard three shots, the reports muffled. He had his earbud in but he had heard it, and touched his chest to activate the transmitter on the mike. “Two One Hundred, Twenty Five Fourteen. Shots fired, forty-cal.”

“Copy,” McKower said. “You there? Clear.”

“Gotta be close. Clear.”

When he heard the shots, he had immediately lifted his hand and pointed to where he thought the point of origin was, a technique he and Tree had learned in the marines, and which had persisted over his career, as a lot of his marine training had.

“Twenty Five Fourteen, Two One Oh Three.”

“Go, One Oh Three.” It was Bryan.

“I’m with Two One Thirty. She’s okay. Where are you?”

“Edge of the high ground south of the Oxbow,” Service said, looking ahead. “You?”

“Other side of the Teaspoon. It’s got a fair bottom if you look upstream about twenty-five yards. You’ll see where Two One Thirty crossed back. Clear.”

Service found the location and crossed holding his rifle and ruck above his head, mosquitoes crawling all over his sweaty body. “Left,” Jeffey Bryan yelled from above.

Sedge was kneeling on one knee, her face beet-red. “You all right?” Service asked.

“She’s mostly pissed off,” her sergeant said, pointing at a cedar next to her. Service saw a crossbow bolt protruding from the reddish bark. Bryan held up three fingers.

Service squatted beside her, got water from his pack, held it out. “What’s the deal?”

“I found the damn camp is what’s the deal.”

“Bolf?”

“Never saw him, but
someone
was living there. It’s on the north edge of that low ridge and down, well camouflaged. It’s just a shanty, but it’s damn near invisible.”

“You spook someone?”

She looked at the bolt in the tree. “Ya
think?
”

“Talk us through it,” Service said, trying to calm her.

“Luck. A laser sight crossed my arm and I hit the deck as the bolt pounded the tree. I heard two more go through the foliage. I actually saw the last shot and then I saw him, and put three rounds over there.”

“
Him?
Can you describe him?”

She chewed her lip. “He was green.”

“Green?”

“Yeah, like Kermit the fucking frog.”

Whoa
, he thought. “You did good.”

“I missed the bastard.”

“You backed him off.”

“I wanted to take him off the fucking
planet!
”

Change the subject.
“Where’s your truck?”

“On County 434 where it crosses the tracks. East-northeast of us.”

“Where’s your four-wheeler?” her sergeant asked.

“At the Bomb Shelter.”

“Any description at all?”

“I told you. He’s fucking
green!
I felt like I’d landed on the set of
Predator,
for Christ’s sake.”

“That bolt isn’t Hollywood shit,” Sergeant Bryan said.

“You saw a laser?” Service asked.

She pointed at her left arm.

“What direction was it moving?”

She paused to think. “I was stationary. It moved right to left,” she said. “I can’t figure out why he was scanning. All he had to do was put the dot on me and squeeze off the shot.”

Service watched her.
Upset, but remarkably under control, reacting much the way I would.
“Where was this Kermit?”

She pointed.

“Keep guiding me.”

He followed her hand signals to a thick cluster of tag alders, separated the trees and branches, and looked down at the ground.

“You’re there,” Sedge said.

“Got him,” Service said. “Frog tracks.”

“You
asshole!
” Sedge screamed.

“Swear to God,” Service said, sorry he’d provoked her with a bad joke.

Bryan joined him, leaned over, looked back at her. “No shit, Sedge, but they ain’t man-size. You think your boy might’ve been decked out in camo paint?”

She buried her face in her hands.

“Let’s go see the camp,” Service said.

Sedge didn’t respond. Service looked at the sergeant and nodded toward the creek.

The two men waded the river and found the shack. They searched methodically, finding nothing.

“Fish camp?” Bryan asked. “Locals say the brook trout in this stretch are something special. It’s one of those cricks they don’t talk about to outsiders.”

“Trapper,” Service said. “This swamp and lower marsh are first-class muskrat habitat.”

Bryan sniffed the air. “Eau de skunk. You’re probably right about a trapper.”

Skunk was a base ingredient in just about all liquid attractants. Service could smell skunk, but wasn’t yet ready to conclude anything. He searched along the water and found a pipe driven deep into the bank. The end of the pipe was capped, with a small steel ring welded to it. The ring was wrapped in rubber to keep it quiet. “For a boat,” he told the sergeant. “Where the hell would you put in a canoe?”

“Carlson Creek or off 405, but way upstream. We’re almost down in the main Tahq here.”

“What’s this place remind you of?” Service asked the other officer.

Bryan shrugged.

“Something you built when you were a kid.”

“A fort … a hideout?”

“Yeah, a hideout. This isn’t the sort of place you stumble onto. Even if you come down in a canoe, you’d have to know it was here.”

A hideout was what Bolf needed.

“Let’s put out a BOL,” he told the sergeant. “We might as well get the rest of law enforcement worked up over this.”

“Be On Lookout by name?”

“Hell, by shoe size, IQ—whatever it takes.”

Bryan made the radio call to McKower. “She’s fine. We need a BOL for Peewee Bolf.” He gave her the specifics and heard her immediately get on her radio and call the Luce County and Troops dispatcher, who covered several counties.

They found Sedge almost where they had left her, but she was smiling. A broken crossbow lay at her feet in the weeds. “One of my rounds broke it and he dropped it.” She was wearing garish blue latex gloves.

Service saw the laser sight mounted atop the weapon and sucked in a deep breath. Rumors were flying that it wouldn’t be long until the Natural Resources Commission liberalized the use of crossbows for hunting in the state. As it was now, it required special permitting.

“Barnett Wildcat C5 crossbow with a Pro-40 Multi-Dot scope, carbon bolts.”

“You know about crossbows?” Service asked her.

“Yeah, and I’m betting this ain’t your plain brown-envelope Barnett. The feet-per-second power on this sucker has got to be out of sight.”

“Be nice to get prints,” Service said.

“Like
that’s
gonna happen,” she quipped, and he agreed.

“Still gotta go through the steps,” he reminded her. “You never know.”

“I think I’ll fix the weapon, and when we catch this asshole, I want to put a pea on his dick and tell him I’m going to shoot it off.”

Let her blow off steam
, he thought.
But keep an eye on her. She’s got quite a temper
.

She tapped his hand and looked into his eyes. “No bull, Service; the perp even looked like Kermit, and I’m neither crazy nor hallucinating.

Sedge was too set on this to argue with her. Let it ride for now.

Custody of evidence from the camp on the Teaspoon was formally transferred to CO Afton Radaskovich, who was headed to Ishpeming for a National Guard weekend. The Michigan State Police forensics lab in Marquette would try for prints and other micro-evidence.

McKower, Service, Bryan, and Sedge were crowded into the new assistant chief’s office cubicle. The air was stale. A BOL had been issued on Peewee Bolf, and it turned out after checking that Peewee wasn’t the man’s nickname.

McKower was trying to rehash various phases of the case, and asking Sedge a lot of questions. Service found himself tuning out, preferring to contemplate other things. During the hike out with her he’d sensed he was missing something obvious, but the harder he tried to bring it into focus, the dimmer it got. He was hungry and tired and his clothing reeked of creek water and black muck; he just wanted to take a shower and eat a good meal and forget all this nonsense.

“You headed back to Marquette?” McKower asked, breaking his reverie.

“Not sure yet.”

“I agree that you and Sedge ought to check the site again, see if there’s been any activity.”

When had this plan been put forth? Pay attention, you jerk
. “Okay,” he answered.

Out in the parking lot he asked Sedge, “Why
Kermit
the frog and not some other frog? You saw a face?”

“Sort of; maybe. I’m not sure. Whatever it was, Kermit’s what my mind connected to.”

Service left her and walked back into the office to find McKower pouring herself another cup of coffee. “That shit will stunt your growth,” he said.

“It already has. I thought you two had left.”

“You up for something off the wall?”

“From
you?
That won’t exactly plow new ground.”

“We put Peewee Bolf’s description out with the BOL, but we didn’t have a photo.”

“Standard,” she said, sipping the coffee and making a face.

“Can we add a picture of Kermit the frog to the alert?”

She spit coffee and guffawed, but then stopped and stared, wiping her chin. “Jesus, you’re
serious!
”

“Call it a hunch.”

“I call it ridiculous,” Assistant Chief McKower said.

“Have my hunches paid off in the past?”

She rolled her eyes. “We
will
be the joke among law enforcement everywhere.”

“And the public,” he said. “Don’t forget the public. The media will jump all over this.”

“Oh God,” she moaned. “I
hate
working with the media.”

“Are you turning me down?” he asked.

McKower stared at her subordinate for the longest time before sighing deeply and theatrically. “I hesitate to ask this, but do you have a picture?”

“That’s what the Internet is for,” he said.

“Get out of my office,” McKower said, launching a pencil at his back.

Sedge was waiting outside. “Where were you?”

“Frogging around,” he said.

The sun was beginning to rise from the direction of Vermilion Point. It had been a long night, the air filled with biting, stinging, chewing insects.

After the meeting at the district office, Service and Sedge had driven to the Bomb Shelter where he had taken a long shower. Sedge loaded her four-wheeler into the bed of her truck, he hitched his trailer with his RZR, and they had headed north, leaving their trucks and his trailer hidden in a birch forest at the end of Maple Block Road.

They had come most of the rest of the way to Katsu’s site on their four-wheelers, but had dumped them a mile south of the location and hiked the rest of the way, taking up positions above the site. It was dark by the time they had gotten into position, the June night air warm and humid. The insects were bad, but Sedge seemed to ignore them just as he did. He liked seeing this quality in her. Good wardens ignored the weather and all biting insects. They neither saw nor heard any activity down where the artifacts were, and had taken turns sleeping during the night.

With first light coming Service made a small fire and got tea makings out of his ruck. He never went into the woods without tea, a little sugar, and a small tin of Pet milk.
Never milk in tea or coffee at home, but always in the bush. Old habits die hard. Thank you, Vietnam
.

Sedge woke up as he started his small stove. “You did good at the Teaspoon,” he told her.

“I don’t need your approval,” she said with a growl.

“Are you always this social in the morning?”

“Depends on how good last night’s sex was,” she said with a grin.

After tea they moved into the sandy area. Sedge stood with her hands on her hips, clearly irritated. “The damn markers haven’t been touched.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Let’s put new disks in the cameras.”

“You got some?”

“In my truck. You have a video disk player at your place?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not me.”

She grinned and shook her head. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I have a nice Victrola, though.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Record player?”

“What’s a record?”

“Never mind,” he said, glumly. He wondered suddenly if she could tell time on a nondigital watch. Most youngsters no longer could.

After collecting the old disks and putting in new ones, Service said, “Let’s take our time, search the whole area.” He walked toward the sandy expanse that looked from some angles like a bowl or sanded-in harbor. He made a point of moving sluggishly, but as at the other site, saw nothing protruding from the sand. At the site they’d investigated earlier, he and Sedge had found all sorts of things. Was it possible that the wind and weather were responsible for uncovering artifacts? Could it be that Wingel was telling the truth about the burial bundle she’d found?

Sedge eventually drifted over to him.

“You trust Katsu?” he asked her.

“Like I said before, I want to.”

“How about we ask him to come out here and we put him with Professor Shotwiff?”

“For what?”

“Let them do the male dog butt-sniff on each other, watch the chemistry, see what happens.”

“I guess,” she said.

“Every case has its doldrums,” he told her.

“
Doldrums?
Yesterday some asshole was trying to kill me, and this morning I’m crawling around in a big fucking sandbox.”

“You sure he was trying to kill you?”

She knocked sand off her pant leg. “Are you kidding?”

“Think about it.” He had.

She looked at him for a long time. “The laser dot,” she said. “I was standing still.”

“That’s what you said.”

“At twenty yards that should be an easy kill.” She pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Warning shots?”

“Can you rule it out?” he asked.

“No.”

“There you go,” he said.

“But why?”

“If we knew that …”

“Let’s put Katsu with your professor,” she said decisively.

“Let me check Shotwiff’s availability. We’ll try for Wednesday or Thursday. Shark can bring him to us.”

“Who’s Shark?”

“A very peculiar individual.”

“Like you?” she said.

“I’m not the one painting hunki close-ups,” he countered.

“
Hunkuses
. If you’re gonna take shots, get it right.”

“Hunkuses,” he said, enunciating and grinning.

“Feels good in your mouth, don’t it.”

“How did you
get
this job?”

“Ya know,” she said, “I ask myself that same question all the time.”