Force of Blood (7 page)

The bound facsimile set of the English translation of the
Jesuit Relations
were shelved, a neat row of black books with gold type and a layer of dust suggesting they were seldom touched, much less read. Service went through the index, found VOL. XLVIII, “Lower Canada, Ottawas: 1662–1664.” He went to the shelf, pulled out the book, and took it to a table.

It began with a preface written by Reuben Gold Thwaites, listed as secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The preface was dated 1899. Chapter IV was entitled, “Various Iroquois Wars, and Their Results.” The report was dated September 4, 1663, submitted by one Hierosme Lalemant, S.J.
The old froggies had interesting names
.

He did the math in his head. He was looking at the facsimile of a report written 344 years before—nearly three and a half centuries, photos of the original French-language letter beside the English translation. The report was to the point, and, after a quick skimming, Service found several terms he didn’t understand. He decided to write down the part that he wanted, which was less than half a page long, and chase down the unknown terms later.

He began copying Lalemant’s words:

Definitely way before GPS, and a reminder that Native Americans had no word for
wilderness
until we gave them one
.

Service signed onto a library computer and quickly translated
Agnieronnon
and
Onneiochronnon
to Mohawk and Oneida. He took his notes and went outside to smoke a cigarette and think.

The Saulteurs were obviously Ojibwa in the Soo. This had to be the battle, but this invading force had been made up of one hundred warriors, not three hundred. Also, Father Lalemant’s report was secondhand, not eyewitness, regarding alleged events that had happened six months before. Still, the nut of the report seemed right, and would probably pass Etta Trevillyan’s notions of a reasonable-size attack force. The Iroquois had started up the coast of Lake Huron looking for Ottawa victims and had ended up in Saulteur territory. As far as he knew, the Ojibwa had controlled turf all the
way down the St. Mary’s River to Drummond Island. How had the Iroquois gotten
around
the Soo if the attack had gone down near Crisp Point, or even if it had happened at Iroquois Point?

Something about this didn’t jibe, and there was nothing in the priest’s secondhand report to provide direction, other than making it clear that the invading Iroquois had been effectively surrounded and dispatched. No mention of actual casualties on either side, and the statement that only a very few escaped. What about the old stories of the triumphant Ojibwa purposely releasing prisoners to take the word back to their home nations? The Jesuit said some Iroquois managed to escape. Presumably on their own, through luck.

Do the Iroquois have a version of this story in their oral histories?
He made a note.

He wished he knew more about Indian logistics and such. A hundred warriors: Did that mean fifty canoes? Or were they in the larger Montreal canoes? With five per Montreal they would need only twenty craft, though either fifty or twenty would be damn near impossible to conceal along the coasts. No wonder the Saulteurs found them.

He wished he could read French, but guessed any French he’d recall now would not make reading the seventeenth-century version any easier. Every language tended to shift and vary greatly through the centuries. In college he’d once looked at Old English and could hardly make it out, much less understand it without a lot of sweat, thought, and a lexicon.

Returning to the reference room, he read a subsequent account of eight hundred warriors from the other three confederation tribes going against the Susquahannocks, only to be once again ignominiously banished. After an initial armed skirmish, the Susquahannocks in April 1661 withdrew into their impregnable village. The Iroquois sent twenty-five armed ambassadors into the village to negotiate terms, only the Susquahannocks immediately took them prisoner, put them on stakes on platforms, and burned them to death in front of the other seven hundred–plus warriors waiting for the signal to attack. These warriors reportedly withdrew to their own country with the Susquahannocks screaming they were coming there to burn all of them the way they had burned the first twenty-five.

Had this story and Iroquois Point somehow gotten mixed up? If three hundred is unrealistic, isn’t eight hundred even further off the damn charts?

Further on, Father Lalemant indicated that smallpox began to ravage Iroquois “towns,” which effectively curtailed any significant future forays on the war road.

Service guessed it wasn’t the threat of a road of skulls that kept the Iroquois from coming back: It had been smallpox.

Damn interesting reading by a writer who pulls you right back into his century, but not much there for a police case. Except for the tactical note of the Iroquois being surrounded.
As a recon marine in Vietnam he had seen his share of ambushes on both sides of the equation, and to make one happen with totality you needed the best possible terrain, steady nerve, and a helluva lot of luck.

He was sitting there tapping a pencil on his chin when Etta Trevillyan sat down across from him and said, “You look perplexed. Something you read?”

“What if the ambush didn’t happen at all, or it happened south of the Soo, not to the west?”

“I think that’s exactly the kind of doubt I was trying to convey when we talked. There’s just no way to know for certain unless someone stumbles upon the actual site. Artifacts and remains would reveal most of the truth.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t mind helping you with this. Native American history has always fascinated me, and anything an old historian can do to to bring clarity to disputed events is a good thing.”

“I could use some help,” he admitted. “Do you know Dr. Wingel of Whitewater State?”

“By reputation.”

She’s holding back
. “Which is?”

“Professionally or personally?”

“Both.”

“Professionally she’s said to be very ambitious and somewhat competent. Personally she’s described as paranoid, cowardly, self-serving, and petty.”

“But her cats probably like her,” he said.

“Based on what I’ve heard I’d find it difficult to believe anyone or anything could do more than tolerate her.”

“I get the sense you don’t appreciate directness.”

The retired professor smiled. “Sometimes, with some people, there just ain’t no way around the honest-to-God, knock-you-twixt-the-eyes truth. What do you want me to do to help you?”

“I want to try to nail down whether this vaunted Iroquois-Ojibwa battle actually took place, and if so, roughly when. Father Lalemant in the
Jesuit Relations
puts a certain battle in the spring or early summer of 1662, which seems to relate to the general story, but anything you can do to clarify would help.”

“And if the battle didn’t happen?”

“Then it didn’t happen.”
Which would make Katsu’s whole effort null and void, clearing the way for Sedge to hammer him with charges if he kept interfering with archaeologists whose work was approved by the State
.
Approved by the State? Does this mean the state archaeologist alone, or are others involved?

“The other day you said both the Iroquois and Ojibwa buried their dead?”

“I did.”

“If you found remains, how would you know which was which?”

“The Ojibwa tended to dress up their dead and have viewings much as we have before burying them in their best clothes. The Iroquois wrapped their dead in birch bark because when the rotting process was done, they would dig up the bones, clean them, and rebury them with a big ceremony. You’d also know by any implements with the remains…. Well, not exactly
know,
but you’d have evidence for an intelligent guess.”

“Thanks, Etta.”

“You want to stop for pastry and coffee next week and I’ll share what I have?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“I’ll call or send an e-mail when I have something,” she said.

“Have you ever worked with the state archaeologist in Lansing?”

“No.”

“Do you happen to know if the SAO is the sole government agency to grant approvals to excavate?”

“I think DEQ gives the approval, based on the SAO’s recommendation. After all, someone is asking to alter the environment, aren’t they?”

When Grady Service saw Limpy Allerdyce’s battered Ford pickup parked next to his cabin, he winced. Allerdyce was one of the U.P.’s most notorious poachers, a felon, the leader of a feral tribe with a remote camp in the swamps of extreme southwest Marquette County, his father’s alleged onetime snitch and now his informant as well. All of this was bad enough in its own right, but what hurt most was that Limpy had somehow eliminated the people who had killed Nantz and his son, Walter, which by unbending Yooper ethical standards now left him indebted to the creep.

He found Allerdyce in a stare-down with Newf on the porch. “Yore dog t’ward me ain’t so frien’ly, sonny,” Limpy said.

“Good for her,” Service said. “You want coffee or arsenic?”

“I don’t like da flavors youse got in dere.” Which meant the old poacher had been inside his cabin. Keeping him out was like trying to cut off air.

“Why’re you here, Limpy? I’m busy.”

“Yeah, youse ain’t here much dese days. Youse still porkin’ dat cute little state trooper?”

Service glared at Limpy, who greeted the glare with a bobblehead grin. The old man was here with a purpose. He never showed up without a reason. “Spit it out, Allerdyce.”

“Word out youse’re lookin’ for errorheads.”

“The ubiquitous ‘word,’ huh?”

Allerdyce ignored Service’s sarcasm. “I had me dis call from pal over Raco, eh.”

“That so?”

“Said red niggers campin’ up Vermilion way got somepin’ in da ground dey don’t want white men ta have.”

Jesus, the U.P. swamp drums are unbelievable
. “
What
sort of thing in the ground?”

Allerdyce shrugged. “I ain’t no monocle like dat ole Nekkidbuttgeezer.”

The poacher’s often sloppy language, twisted logic, and malapropisms made him seem a fool, but he wasn’t. What the man lacked in formal education, he overcame with prodigious natural smarts, raw intelligence, and highly refined woodcraft, the sort of combination that made him a formidable cedar swamp lawbreaker. “What
have
you heard?” Service asked.

“Hectorio, El Spicko Grande, word is he put out word for copper error-heads. You know Hectorio, eh?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Lives Spicklansing, owns tamaletacoteria, nort’side.”

“You mean Lansing?”

“I just said.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Youse need get out, circle-eight, check ’round more.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. You ever find any ‘errorheads’?”

“Pfft. All over bloody place up here, I guess. Not wort’ shit.”

“This you know from experience?”

“Just say I mebbe heard it oot in woods.”

“This Hectorio, he wants copper?”

Limpy sighed. “I never learned ta think Spick.”

“You heard this from your friend in Raco?” Raco was near Bay Mills, which was just east of Iroquois Point. Once a Bomarc missile base, it was now an EPA Superfund Site.

“Dat’s close nuff, but all he tole me was red niggers up da lake, makin’ shit pies.”

“And your source for Hectorio?”

Allerdyce stared at the roof. “Somewheres, don’t member ’sackly.”

“Seriously, you know about such places?”

“You don’t? Dey’re everywhere, ’specially by big lakes, rivers, eh.”

“And you never picked up artifacts?”

“What I want armyfax? Stuff’s ugly, wort’less junk. You pick rotted bloobs?”

Service shook his head.

“Den youse unnerstand, sonny,” Allerdyce said, hopping down from the porch snarling and growling at Newf with such realism it pulled Service up short.

But Service didn’t understand anything except that Limpy was trying to give him information, and obviously the old man knew about Katsu and the fracas with the archaeologist from Hibernian.

Limpy stood beside his truck. “Dat big red nigger dey call Katsu? He done hard time.”

“For what?”

“Ain’t healt’y walk around yard axing why somebody inside, eh. Dat ginch squeeze you got, word is she good gal, fair, not no Dickless Tracy.”

“We were hoping for your endorsement,” Service said sarcastically.

“Youse just take a shot at me?”

Service held out his hands and Allerdyce got into his truck and disappeared.

Oddly enough, he found himself pleased by Limpy’s visit. The fact that the old poacher knew about Katsu suggested the deal on the coast was, first, a big deal, and second, that big money was in play, or Limpy, reformed or not, would be unlikely to have the slightest interest. Allerdyce knew just about everything that went on in the U.P., and although he’d spent seven years in prison for shooting Service in the leg during a scuffle, the detective couldn’t think of anyone who would make a better governor of the U.P., if there was such a thing.

• • •

Back at his office in The Roof he checked his private telephone directory on the computer and called Marge Ciucci.

“Aunt Marge,” she answered after one ring.

“Grady Service, Aunt Marge.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “You done it, boy.
Grazie grazie, prego prego, bravo bravo
, Grady.”

“Am I interrupting anything important?”

“You interrupt? Not possible.
Never
. Anything you want, you get.”

“Dr. Ladania Wingel.”

Long pause. “What you want
that
for?”

“You know her?”

Marge Ciucci let loose a long hiss. “
That
one.
Femmina!
”

“What’s the deal, Aunt Marge?”

“She sweet-talk her way onto school board, get ’erself appointed to an open term. Then all hell she breaks loose,
si?
Only she knows how schools should be run, and if anyone disagree for any reason, she screams racist!”

Wingel’s consistent, at least, always leaning on race. If Tree was here now, he’d kick her in the ass.
Luticious Treebone was a black man, his best friend, a fellow Vietnam veteran, and a retired Detroit cop. They had served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam together. “You know the woman personally?”

“She lives in a condo south of town, only mixes with muckmucks.”

“Any other Whitewater faculty members in Jefferson?”

“
Professore
Crispin Franti—he teaches soil science at the college, works the state extension service here in town.”

“Good guy?”

She made a smacking sound with her lips. “
Numero uno
: the best.”

“Got a phone number?”

“
Minuto
,” she said, left the phone, and came back with the number.

“Thanks, Marge.”

“You gonna be in Jefferson, you stay with me, you hear? Marge take care of you like her own bambino.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said hanging up.

He walked outside to have a cigarette.

Persia Hunger was already outside. She was his age, a longtime employee in the Department of Environmental Quality. “You know anything about DEQ permits for archaeological digs?” he asked.

“I’m water. You need to talk to dirt—Verlin Ponozzo—but he’s in Lansing all week.” After a moment of silence she said, “You think DEQ and DNR will ever be merged again?’

“I ain’t no monocle like old Nekkidbuttgeezer,” he said, quoting Allerdyce.

“
What?
”

“Sorry, that was a poor play on words. I really don’t know the answer, Persia.”

He knew she asked because he was a friend of the governor. Everyone assumed he and Governor Timms talked a lot. Everyone assumed wrong.

He called Friday at her office. “I think I’m headed to Wisconsin,” he told her. “What’s your day been like?”

“Like a week of water torture—phone calls, witness reports, transcripts, files, all the glory of law enforcement in one day.”

“The kid okay?”

“More resilient than us. How’d things go for you?”

“ ’Puters and phones, ’puters and phones. Oh, and Allerdyce showed up at camp.”

“My, aren’t you blessed.”

“Believe it or not, I think he was trying to tip me on the artifact case.”

“That
creature
is scary,” she said.

“Yeah, but every cop knows him.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“He asked if I’m still porking you.”

“Are you?”

“Not often enough.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“He thinks you’re cute.”

“Well I am, right?”

“And hot.”

“Hold that thought until I have energy again. When to Wisconsin?”

“Tonight maybe, back later this week.”

“That should work good. I should be brimming with energy by then.”

“I would hope so.”

• • •

Professor Crispin Franti was at home, seemed friendly, and agreed to meet him for lunch at the Havelock Café in Jefferson the next day at noon.

A call to Marge Ciucci got him a bed for as long as he needed it. “You mind if I bring my dog?”

“He’s welcome too.”

“She.”

“Even better.”

The last task of the day was to follow up on Allerdyce’s statement that Katsu had done time, and a quick check showed it to be true. He immediately called Jingo Sedge.

“Sedge? Service.”

“S’up?”

“Tell me more about Katsu’s criminal record.”

“Grand theft. He was in a bar, drunk, bought a car from a drunk cowboy for two hundred and fifty bucks, cash. Katsu drove it away. The cowboy staggered home, sobered up, and his old lady wanted to know where the fuck
her
wheels were. Hubby calls the cops, claims the ride was stolen. The cops pick up Katsu that same day. He had a previous conviction for aggravated assault. He was barely twenty then. The prosecutor in the car case got the previous conviction into the record, and Katsu’s public defender stood mute with his thumb up his ass. The jury found him guilty in twenty-five minutes flat and the public defender told him, ‘Better luck next time around, chief,’ and bogeyed into the sunset. This was in Montana, state of Big Sky and tiny minds.”

“This doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

“Quite the opposite. Given his background, it takes some balls to knowingly protest what he considers to be a moral and social travesty.”

Service said. “Okay, if that’s your gut, go with it. But consider the flipper: Maybe the bigger magnet for his interest is the amount of money at stake.”

Silence on the other end.
Good, she’s listening.

“You got something specific?” she asked, after a long pause.

“Allerdyce dropped by my place to specifically tell me about the goingson, and that Katsu’s an ex-con.”

“Based on what that scum told you, you assume Katsu’s out for money?”

“That
scum
knows more about what goes on up here than you and me combined. He would not have dropped by unless there was substance for us.”

“So you trust one con’s word against another’s?”

“Yep, that’s a tidy description of our work. I’m on my way to Wisconsin.”

“To see Wingel?”

“Probably. Later, Sedge.” He heard her suck in breath just before he hung up.