Ice Hunter (19 page)

“Yes ma'am, thank you. There was a dead cat found on your porch this morning.”

“Oh my,” she said. “Who found the poor thing?”

“I have it,” he said. He saw sweat pop out on her forehead. “It's pretty rare for a cat to die a natural death in a public place. When they get sick, they usually go off alone to die.”

“I don't understand,” the woman said, her facade cracking.

“Well, when they die in the open like this, we assume there's been an accident or foul play and we investigate.” He was stretching the truth a bit, but he did this all the time in order to encourage people in one direction or another. There was no law that forbade telling lies to uphold the law.

“I didn't see a cat,” she said.

“Do you have a cat?”

“Well, no. I have a dog. I just love dogs, don't you?”

“Not especially,” he said. “I prefer cats. In fact the one on your porch looks like one of mine.”

The woman said, “Oh my.”

“Do you mind if I look around outside?”

“Look around for what?” she asked defensively.

“It's just our common practice to look around in cases like this.”

“Well,” she said. “Maybe I should call my husband.”

“You do that and ask him if I can look inside too. Meanwhile, I'll look around out here.”

He didn't wait for her to respond, heading immediately for the carport. Beside the side door he saw a tuna can that still had bits of tuna in it.

The white-haired woman appeared at the door as he put on a latex glove, picked up the can, and stuck it in a clear plastic evidence bag.

“What are you doing?” she asked through the screen. Her eyes had turned hard.

“I saw this can,” the conservation officer said. “Cats love tuna. They can't resist it. It might have spoiled and made the cat sick.”

“I ate some of that tuna myself and it didn't hurt me.”

“So this is yours?”

“Yes, and I want it back.”

“Why was it here?”

“It probably fell when I took out the trash this morning.”

He walked to the trash can. It was galvanized steel and the interior was immaculate. She obviously didn't put trash in the can unless it was in a bag.

“Ma'am, there's no trash in here.”

“Well, it must've been picked up.”

“When did you eat the tuna?”

“I had some this morning. Yes, I remember eating tuna this morning.”

She was lying. “Is today your regular trash pickup?”

Her face went blank and her color drained away.

“Ma'am, did you put this can here by your step?”

She plastered a new smile on. “Yes, now I remember. I was going to put it in the trash, but I was in a hurry and there was no trash bag, so I just set it down.”

“So you put it here this morning?”

“Yes, but now I have trash bags and if you'll just hand it to me, I'll throw it away. It won't do to have trash lying around. I'm not a litterer.”

“Ma'am, I'm going to keep this can.”

“You can't do that.”

“Yes ma'am, I can. Do you have rat poison or antifreeze in your house or storage shed?”

The smile was gone now. “No.”

“May I look?”

“No. I'm going to call my husband.”

“Please do. I'm going to take this can and we are going to put it under scientific analysis. If there's rat poison or antifreeze, I'll be back.”

“I'm not talking to you anymore.”

Service placed the bag with the tuna can in the back of the truck with the dead cat, drove around the first bend in the road, pulled down a two-track, got his binoculars, and walked through the woods to the field behind the woman's house. He left Newf in the truck with the windows partly down. The woman would either put the rat poison or antifreeze in a trash bag and throw it out, or bring it back in the field and try to bury it, which would then put other animals in jeopardy. It was amazing how many people could kill or torture animals without guilt. Technically animal control would be called in to handle a poisoning, but if she put the rat poison or antifreeze into the environment, he could make the pinch.

He perspired heavily in the midday sun, but after an hour the woman came out of the back door, carrying a trash bag and wearing pink rubber gloves that reached up to her elbows. She had a small shovel and walked into the field about a hundred yards, stopped, and looked around nervously.

Service advanced through high grass toward her as she dug. When she had a small hole, she took another look around and dumped out a bag with the poison and then sprinkled the poison into the hole.

“Ma'am,” he announced. “You're violating the dumping ordinances and you are putting poison into the environment.”

She squawked and stood shaking as she glared at him, her mask of innocence gone.

“Ma'am, I want you to use your shovel to dig up all that poison and put the dirt in the bag you brought.”

“I'm not wasting a trash bag,” she said angrily. “They cost money and my husband and I are on a fixed income.”

“Do you want me to call for backup and have a bunch of people out here digging up this field? I suspect there are other cats buried back here.”

She was shaking badly now and looked ready to cry.

“Dig,” he said.

“I have arthritis,” she whined. “This isn't my fault. My husband makes me do this. I'm a good Christian woman and I do what my husband tells me to do.”

“Lady, if you put that tuna out and a dog or kid got it, they could die. You want to be responsible for killing a kid?”

She sobbed and dug, showing no evidence of arthritis. He couldn't stand to look at the woman. He had seen people like this so many times before. Appearances told you nothing about a person's substance.

When the bag was filled, he made her shovel other dirt over the hole, then escorted her back to the house where he wrote a ticket for obstruction of an investigation, illegal dumping, poisoning the environment, improper use of a dangerous substance, and poisoning a cat. He couldn't think of other charges or he would have dropped those on her too.

He told her she had to appear at court within a certain period and plead guilty or not guilty. “If you plead not guilty, I am going to get a warrant and we are going to come out here and go through your house and we are going to dig up the entire back area and then we are going to throw the book at you. Do you understand?”

She said, “Why are you being so mean to me?”

“Ma'am, you are getting off light.”

People like this disgusted him nearly as much as Limpy. People like this spouted Christian doctrine, went to church, ran PTAs and school boards, and all the while killed innocent things because in their twisted minds the only things that mattered were those they wanted to matter.

He left the woman in tears and didn't care.

When he got home, Kira wasn't yet there. He put the bagged cat in the freezer and left the bag of poison dirt in the truck. He'd have to take care of that tomorrow. He locked the back of the truck to be sure nothing got in. Newf hopped onto the porch and Cat hissed at her. Service said, “Knock it off, you two.”

He made corn bread with diced habanero peppers and Vidalia onions and a pot of Texas chili, which came out differently every time he made it.

Kira came in, shed her coat, kissed him, and changed into shorts and a halter. “It's hot,” she said. She went to the fridge for ice water, but while she was there she opened the freezer. He saw her jump back.

“What the hell is
that?
”

He laughed. “Evidence. A woman poisoned a cat with rat poison. I was going to ask you to do the necropsy.”

“In
our
freezer?”

“It was too far to the office or your clinic. I thought we'd just keep it overnight.”

She turned and looked at him. “I suppose our freezer will be used for
evidence
other times?”

“Yep.”

“God,” she said.

“Hungry?”

“Yep.”

Kira wolfed down two bowls of chili and they each had a beer.

“Do you know Cece Dirkmaat?” she asked after dinner. They were sitting on the porch, looking out at the creek.

“I don't think so.”

“She teaches art at Northern and makes the most incredible jewelry. I gave her the pebbles to polish and see if she could make a bracelet or necklace for me.”

He made a face. “Those ugly pebbles?”

“Leave it to a woman to find beauty in the mundane,” she said. “I like it that you gave them to me, and Cece thinks they'll polish up nicely.”

“You drove up to Marquette?” He didn't think she had time.

“Cece lives at Little Moose Lake with Glynnis Fayard, a librarian at Northern. Cece brought their cat in this morning. The poor thing has a sour tummy.”

“She and this Glynnis are roommates?”

Kira looked over at them. “Yeah, and they also sleep together. Is that a problem for you?”

“Nope,” he said. “Might be a problem for them, but not for me.”

“Cece and Glynnis are university people.”

“Little Moose Lake is not liberal territory.”

Kira smiled. “True.”

Cat jumped onto the porch with a headless chipmunk and purred loudly. Kira complimented the cat and scratched her chin.

Newf came up from wading the edge of the creek and curled up at Service's feet.

“How was your day?” Kira asked.

“You know about the cat. That kind of shit makes me sick.”

“I'm a vet. I see it all the time.”

“I'm still on that fire thing,” he said. He hadn't told her about Jerry Allerdyce. Once again, he wasn't sure why he was holding back on her. “Radar painted a chopper over the Tract two days before the fire, but they don't know who it was or where it came from. ATC has radar tapes.”

“Well, it's not an alien,” she said. She took off her sandals, turned her chair, and put her feet in his lap. “Rub?”

He began rubbing her feet. “What's that mean, not an alien?”

“If the chopper exists, it has to be somewhere.
You're
the tracker. So track.”

How did you track a chopper? In Vietnam they either came to extract you or they didn't and you humped out on foot. How many hours had he and Tree spent in the belly of a Huey? A heap of trips, but not that many hours. Why? Limited range. The more people, cargo, and weapons the bird carried, the shorter the distance it could fly. Range, he thought.

“Grady?”

“I'm just thinking.”

“
Rub
the foot, honey. Don't squeeze it to a pulp.”

He looked at her foot and saw that it was red. “Sorry.”

What
was
the range of a Huey? Three hundred miles, give or take? At a speed of 120 to 130, slower if it was lower. If you flew somewhere and didn't refuel en route, it was an out-and-back and your range was limited by the fuel you carried. Some choppers, he knew, carried extra fuel in internal and external tanks, but how much? How much fuel was their reserve? The three-hundred-mile-range figure stuck in his mind. He had heard it during the war probably. Without refueling or extra tanks, your distance was halved. Not to mention wind and other variables that could affect range. Half to go out, half to come back. One hundred and fifty miles one way. Add in two hours of hovering and take away twenty percent for reserve fuel for emergencies and that reduced theoretical range to 120.

“Earth to Grady,” Kira said.

“One hundred and twenty miles,” he said.

“What?”

“This chopper probably didn't refuel en route. The pilot wouldn't want people to know, so he flew from its base to destination and back. That limits it to a distance of about 120. That means we can draw a circle around the place where it was seen and its base has to be inside that circle, more or less. This gives us a pretty good search area.”

“Pi r squared,” she said. “With a radius of 120, that makes for an area of about eleven thousand square miles.”

“No,” he said, his excitement growing. “Remember, we're on a peninsula. Lake Superior is north, Lake Michigan is south.” Service closed his eyes to visualize the map. “Let's say that thirty percent of the area is water, maybe more. The 120 radius reaches to Canada, and we can be pretty sure the chopper didn't come from there. You can't just bop across the border in an aircraft, free-trade agreements or not. It also stretches down to about Traverse City but there's only a small arc of land, sweeping northeast to the straits, and the chopper isn't likely to have come across Lake Michigan because radar would have an easier time painting it over water, even if it was wave-hopping. To the west, the area stretches down as far as Green Bay, and out into the western U.P.”

“Grady, it's still the
whole
U.P.”

“No, the glass is half full. Listen to me. The bird surely didn't come from Canada because of the border, or from the Lower Peninsula because radar would have painted it over Lake Michigan. So it had to fly east or west. East of the Tract, the land is as flat as a stamp and easier to see on radar. To the west there are hills and ridges a chopper can use to hide itself from radar until it gets here. By coming from the west, the radar can't easily track its route in; from the east it can. We used to do this in Vietnam, use the hills to avoid detection. We know the pilot was low. He knows what he's doing. So he had to come from the west, which means we can draw the arc in that direction and now we have really reduced the search area.”

“You're guessing,” she said, wiggling her toes.

“You said I should track. What do you think tracking is? It always involves a lot of educated guesswork.”

She took his hand and slid it under her halter. “Track this for a while.”

He began to caress her, but suddenly jumped up and her feet banged the porch.