Force of Blood (14 page)

The billboard east of Marquette near the Chocolay River was prominent, with bright red lettering on a pale green background:
FELLOW VIOLATORS—POACH AWAY. MICHIGAN’S GAME WARDENS DON’T HAVE THE $$ TO CHASE YOU
.

Grady Service smiled as he turned his civilian radio to WFXD, a commercial station in Marquette that carried country music and news.

“Get this,” an excited radio jock yelled into his mic. “I’m not kidding! The cops in Luce County are, as we speak, hunting for Kermit da Frock! Details after this!”

A thirty-second ad for a Wildcat Pizza special followed.

The jock came back. “You heard right, boils and goils. The po-lice from Luce County over in the eastern U.P. put out a BOL today, asking all us Yoopers to be on da lookout for Kermit da Frock. The authorities are not providing any details, other than saying the frog is a person of interest. Person? Kermit is a
person?
I guess we all sorta assumed that a long time ago.

“I’ve got Captain Ware Grant from DNR law enforcement in Marquette on the line. According to him, ‘Facial characteristics—even unusual ones, no matter how far-fetched—can help citizens identify the people we want to talk to.’ So, Captain Grant, you’re not actually looking for Kermit—just some human being who might
look
like the Muppet character?”

“Yes,” the captain responded. “Resembles the character.”

“Thank you, Captain, and good luck with your search.”

Service heard a click, and then the radio jock added, “Ribbit, folks—ribbit. Sometimes weird fact trumps way-out fiction. Hey, we’re in da Yoop!”

Service’s cell phone buzzed. “Grady, where are you now?” It was Friday.

“Marquette.”

“Have you heard about the billboards?”

“I just saw one about the DNR,” he said. “That what you’re referring to?”

“Can you believe
that?
Your department will be a laughing stock.”

“We already are. DNR stands for Do Not Respect. Where are you?”

“My office.”

“Check BOLs.”

She hung up and called right back, laughing. “What the hell is
that
about?”

“Sedge saw a guy who looked to her like Kermit.”

“So?”

“Just as he fired three crossbow bolts at her.”

“Good God! Is she all right?”

“Fine; mostly pissed off.”

“The world is flipping out,” she said. “I’ll be at camp about seven.”

“Wine will await thee,” he said.

“To start,” she said with a leontine growl.

• • •

Allerdyce’s truck was parked at his camp again. Newf sat beside the old violator, wagging her tail. No sign of Cat.

“Word is da spick was impressed, youse Georged right in dere like dat.”

“What do you want, Allerdyce?”

The old man opened his hand and a small leopard frog sprang to the ground and hopped away. “Dat da guy youse guys want, or you want bigger?”

“Kiss my ass, old man.”

Limpy laughed so hard it sounded like he was choking.

“Go away before I douse you with Oust.”

“Lighten up, sonnyboy. It true youse guys got no money?”

“We have money—just not enough, and not in the right places.”

“Lotta dat shit dese days, eh.”

“Why did you send me to Hectorio?”

“See if youse is serious, mebbe.”

“About what?”

“Assholes rob da dead, dat shit.”

“You disapprove?”

“Ain’t right bodder dead mens.”

“What dead mens do you mean?”

“Out dere, Coast of Deads, you bet dere’s heapsa dead mens in da sand, eh.”

“And you, of course, know the locations.”

“Mebbe Limpy know somebody knows more den a few, eh.”

“Your chum from Raco?”

“What’s it wort’ he shows you da place?”

“What’s he think it’s worth?”

“I check wit’ ’im.”

The old man seemed to be enjoying himself.

“I saw Honeypet in Lansing.”

Allerdyce’s head rolled like a Bobblehead. “Holy wah! She pull dat twin sister shit on youse? Ain’t no Honeypet,
just
ole Honeypat.” Allerdyce wiggled his finger at his temple. “She’s batshit, dat one, give you good girl, bad girl, twoferone, you pork her, got dat double twat personality shit goin’ on.”

“Did she call you?” Service asked.

“What dat bitch an’ me got talk about?”

“Ask your pal how much he wants for information and what kind of guarantee we’d get.”

Limpy got up and shuffled toward his truck. “How much cash you take for dat big mutt yers?”

“She’s not for sale. You can have her if she’ll go with you.”

Limpy chuckled and clucked at her as he opened the truck door and she charged down from the porch, set her front legs, snarled, and began barking wildly, spraying drool strings all over him. This time the old man didn’t respond in kind.

“Guess not,” Service said.

• • •

In the hours after midnight, Friday lay beside him, rubbing his shoulder. “Really, Grady. Kermit the
frog?
”

“You’ve never seen suspects who look like animals or famous people?”

“I suppose,” she granted. “But this borders on an awful joke.”

“If it gets results, who cares?”

“You always think for yourself,” she said.

“I don’t like trails that are already there,” he said. “Know why?” He didn’t let her answer. “Because people who stay on the trails shit on the trails, and I don’t like wading through other people’s shit.”

“A mental picture and metaphor I’d rather not dwell on,” Friday said. “How long do we have this time?”

“If I was to say just tonight?”

“I’d say, let’s get to it again. Like right now.”

“And if I’m here till Monday morning?”

“I’d say the same thing,” she said. “I got a ton of unexpressed energy, and I really don’t care if I spend the whole damn weekend in Jello-O mode.”

Unexpressed energy?

He kissed her tenderly and she responded in kind. He felt whole when he was with her and Shigun.

Sedge gave him a contorted look when she opened her door.

“Trouble?” he asked, stepping inside.

She led him to a widescreen TV hooked to a disk player. “Lemme kill the lights,” she said.

Service stared at the screen and a grid seemed to materialize, coming in from one side, fading to the other, sort of sagging, blurry, hard to see, but the pattern of squares, whatever it was, seemed pretty evident.

“Any theories?” Sedge asked from beside him.

The camera had been set to snap stills when triggered by motion.
What the hell kinda motion produced this?
“Not really. You?”

“Volleyball net?” she offered, adding, “It is a beach … sort of.”

No idea what I’m looking at. Hell, it might be a volleyball net for all I know.
“What’s the other stuff show?”

“I haven’t looked at it. I was sort of waiting for you.”

“How much coffee we got?”

“Enough to start our engines.” She put another disk in the player.

“Nothing more on that first one?”

“Just what you saw.”

By noon they were rewatching a disk showing a small bright flash, moving left to right across the screen. “Jingo?” he said.

Her answer was an ambivalent grunt. “Something pink? Red? Can we get this stuff magnified at a lab somewhere?”

On the same disk they had a pretty good picture of a twelve-point buck moving through the field of vision, tail and nose and ears all twitching, looking nervous, moving stiff-legged, all signals he was preparing to bolt. “He’s winding something,” Service observed.

“God, he’s big,” Sedge said.

Service agreed. “I’ll drop the disks at the Marquette lab on the way home. There’s a guy there named Saugus.”

“That grid thing seems familiar,” Sedge said. “Or should.” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Enough,” Service said.

“What next?”

“Go back out to Teaspoon Creek and take a real microscopic look, but take reinforcements with you.”

“You want to go?”

“No. I’ll see if I can get Professor Shotwiff over here Wednesday or Thursday.”

“What should I tell Katsu?”

“Leave it at we have someone we think he’ll be interested in meeting.”

“He may not buy it.”

“Persuade him,” he said.

• • •

Service was on his cell phone most of the way to Marquette, his last call to Chief Waco. “Where are you?”

“Mason Building,” Waco said. “You?”

“Yoop. There’s a department called the State Archaeologist, man named Yardley. Could you give him a visit and ask him to explain state policy vis-à-vis law enforcement?”

“Important?”

“Could be. Read his guts if you can.”

“How quickly?”

“Not urgent, but soon will do.”

“Grady, I think you’re right about McKower.”

“You two will make a great team.”

“You sew on your new stripes yet?”

“That would be a negative.”

Eddie Waco laughed loudly in his ear. “Let us know when you’ve identified your choice for state master sergeant.”

“Roger that, Chief. And, thanks.”

Forensic technician Waldmar Saugus was waiting at the Michigan State Police Forensics Laboratory’s front door.

“Am I screwing up your weekend?” Service asked, stepping inside.

“Like you people, we don’t have weekends. Whachu got?”

Service handed him the two disks, saying, “One is stills only, the other moving. Only three images: a huge buck, a square thing, and a moving pink light. They all could be important.”

“Care to say where this is?”

“You mean the twelve-point?”

Saugus grinned.

Service said, “No way.”

“Didn’t think so, but I had ta ask. Is this urgent?” the technician asked, handing him the necessary paperwork and securing the disks in an evidence bag.

“Soon as you can, but don’t break your back.”

“You guys busy?” Saugus asked.

“Always. Assholism never takes naps.”

• • •

Service relieved Friday’s sitter and was holding Shigun when his mom came through the door at her place in Harvey. “You
do
know how to keep a girl guessing,” she said, obviously pleased he was there.

Service laughed. “If we’re still guessing at this stage, something’s seriously wrong with the both of us.”

She exhaled. “That’s a fact. How long do we get to have you this time?”

“Until Wednesday morning.”

“What if we can’t stand each other that long?”

“We’ll deal with it. I’m going to go replenish food for Cat at camp, and bring Newf back with me.”

“That guy Kermit?” she said.

He looked at her. “Did the BOL produce?”

“Not quite, but I checked National Crime Information Center for Deslongshamp, and came up empty. Then I called a Troop friend of mine, Sergeant Ellen Wegerlee out of the Gaylord Post. She keeps an unofficial database—weird nicknames, odd crimes, cop facts. Calls it E-Coplection.”

Stupid name, techie humor
. “And?”

“There’s a male subject cops in Wisconsin nailed on a cattle-rustling charge from Texas. They refer to the guy as Kermit.”

He rotated his forefinger like a crank. “Stop dragging this out. And?”

“He was in jail in a place called Paladullah, and Wisconsin was waiting for Texas to send someone to fetch him, but he escaped and hasn’t been found. This was three years ago. I have a mug shot.”

Friday opened her briefcase, removed an envelope, and held it out to him. He passed a grinning Shigun to her and slid the photo out of the envelope.

Holy shit.
He turned over the photo. The name: Joseph Paul Brannigan.
Name’s sort of familiar? From where?

“Sure as hell looks like Delongshamp,” Service said. “Does this birdbrain have a jacket?”

“Probably, but I didn’t have a chance to pull it. I can run to the post and look at NCIC.”

“Hell no, this is our time, and work can damn well go hang. But why does the sergeant in Gaylord have him in her pocket file?”

“CR—cattle rustling—someplace near Dallas. You don’t hear that charge very often nowadays. That, and the fact that the man looks like a human clone of Kermie.”

Service studied the face again. In some ways it looked more amphibian than human. “How’d you like to go through life looking like
that?
” he asked Friday.

“You know, it’s just that sort of perception that tips some borderline personalities into lives of crime.” She added, “I’m not joking.”

Naturally he started laughing and went out to his truck. He’d met the man. Not seen the resemblance. You’re not part of Sesame Street Nation, he told himself.

• • •

He was halfway to Slippery Creek when Waldmar Saugus from the lab called on the cell phone.

“Service, Saugus here. I’ve looked at the stills, and I’m going to do a lot more manipulations to be positive, but I’m pretty damn sure you’ve brought me a photo of a net.”

Volleyball net, Sedge said
. “Net?”

“Yeah. Can’t say for sure yet, but it looks like a live-trap net, what they call a cloverleaf snapper.”

“How can you tell that?”

“I can’t yet—I’m just giving you my first impressions. But I do volunteer every year to help your deer biologist out of Escanaba capture animals to radio-collar them, so they can monitor deer-yard migration routes. My grandpa has a camp in north Delta County. Where’d this photo come from?”

“Does it matter?” Service answered.

“Hey, I’m not talking about the twelve-point. What I’m saying is, it might make sense to ask the biologist from that district if he’s running tagging ops out where you got the photo.”

“It’s the wrong time of year for that, but it’s also a helluva good suggestion. Thanks, Waldmar.”

“Just a thought, but I figured you’d want to know.”

“I do. Thanks again.”

He got on his radio and turned to the District Two channel. “Two One Thirty, Twenty Five Fourteen.”

“Two One Thirty,” Sedge answered.

“Got coverage?”

“Affirmative, for the moment.”

“Twenty Five Fourteen clear.”

He punched in her speed-dial number on his cell phone and she answered immediately. “What?”

“Is there a deer biologist in the Newberry office?”

“Position’s vacant right now. Tina Calabreeze retired in April. No replacement named yet.”

“She retire locally?”

“Yes, got a kid who’s a junior in high school at Engadine. Why?”

“She run deer radio collars to track migration routes?”

“When she had money in her budget. She retired partly because she felt the job was badly underfunded for essential field work.”

“You ever work the collaring detail with her?”

“Once. I couldn’t walk right for nearly a week afterwards. Too dangerous to trank the animals, so we ran them into nets and bulldogged them to the ground.” There was a pregnant pause. “Oh my God! The net on the camera.”

“The technician just called me. He had a similar epiphany. Can you call Calabreeze, find out if she ever worked our target area?”

“You bet. Anything else?”

“Kermit may be Joseph Paul Brannigan out of Wisconsin.

“I thought Delongshamps was Kermit.”

“Delongshamp is probably an alias. Brannigan is wanted in Texas for cattle rustling. He was picked up in Wisconsin, but got away.”

Sedge was laughing. “Cattle rustling? Are you shitting me, Chief Master Sergeant?”

“CR—that’s what the record says.

“Good God. You want me to get out to his little cabin and dust for prints?”

Damn good idea.
“Yes, that’s good. Can’t hurt. You talk to Katsu?”

“He can meet your guy either day.”

“Tell him noon at the same place on the Coast of Death. I’ll RZR the professor down the beach from Vermilion. I doubt he can walk all that distance.”

“Cool. I’ll bring coffee and sammies.”

“You’re a very civilized lady,” he said.

“I’m neither,” she said, “but when I need food and can’t get it, I elevate
bitch
to new levels. I’ll let Katsu know and give you a bump after I talk to Tina.”

• • •

He put food out for Cat at the cabin, opened some windows a crack to air the place, loaded Newf and her food in the truck, and began the return trip to Harvey.

The cell phone rang. “Waco here. I called that Yardley fellow at his home, which like to give him apoplexy. He refused to talk on the phone on a weekend, so I drove on over there in uniform. Then thet old boy went totally ballistic.”

“Disproportionate reaction,” Service said.

“By Ozark miles,” the chief said. “Once he calmed down he refused to invite me inside, claims law enforcement in the past has revealed historic, archaeologically rich sites, which has led to looting.”

“You buy that?”

“I told the man I want names, times, places, dates, evidence, reports—the whole shebang.”

“Is he talking about DNR law enforcement?”

“Nope, other agencies.”

“When do we get the information?”

“Says he’ll work on it next week, but he’s short on people and it won’t be priority.”

“You believe him?”

“Nossiree. Come Monday I speck to have his lawyers wantin’ ta palaver with our lawyers.”

“Make you wonder what’s going on?”

“Sure does, but I don’t like connecting dots too soon. You still on the case with Officer Sedge?”

“I want to see it all the way through,” Service said.

“That’s your call, Grady.”

“We put trail cameras on the artifact site.”

“Get anything?”

“Got us a real fine photo of some kind of net,” Service said sarcastically. “The Troop forensic tech thinks it’s the kind of net used to capture deer for radio collaring.”

The chief said nothing for a long while. “First, Sergeant Service, do you know what the most lucrative domestic wildlife crime is nowadays?”

“Animal parts? I’m not much on tracking megatrends.”

“You need to change your ways, Grady. It’s gonna be your job to keep the big picture in mind when our people are focused on the little picture, day to day. The biggest crime is that whitetail deer are being live-trapped from states that have animals of superior size and genetics, and these animals are
then shipped to destinations where such fine specimens can fetch up to a hundred grand, cash money.”

A hundred grand for a damn deer? What the hell’s wrong with people?
“Deer from Illinois and Minnesota?” Service asked.

“Kansas, too. U.S. Fish and Wildlife calls it CR, for cervid rustling. We made a half-dozen fine cases in Missouri just last year.”

CR?
“Michigan doesn’t have those kinds of gene pools.”

“Don’t much matter. You live-trap a monster buck in the 175 class and you’re looking at immediate big money, and whatever you have, they all go to the same place: Texas.”

The chief hung up. Service sat and thought; closing his eyes, he kept seeing the face of Kermit the frog.
CR … cervid rustling … CR … cattle rustling. CR, CR, CR. What the hell have we stumbled onto?