Shadow of the Wolf Tree (32 page)

50

L'Anse, Baraga County

FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 2006

County magistrate Huw Nugle met Service at the courthouse annex on North Third Street. About sixty, with long white hair and scarred knuckles, the man made it clear he didn't like being held over past normal hours on a Friday.

“Art Lake, eh?” Nugle said, reading Service's affadavit and request for a search warrant. “I ain't so sure about this deal, Detective. Reckless discharge? Cripes' sake, stand around here any weekend night and you can hear guns a poppin' all over da bloody county, eh? You considered the source of the complaint?”

“Rigel Tahti served in Iraq and has an honorable discharge. Does the county have a beef with the man?'

“Just his low-life pedigree,” the magistrate said. “Only reason he ain't got a sheet is mebbe 'cause he ain't never been pinched by youse guys.”

“Never caught or never charged?”

“Pretty tough catchin' them Tahtis, them being a buncha slimy snakes. Whoever pigstuck old Hell did everyone a favor.”

“The grandson is not the grandfather. Last time I looked, there's no guilt by accident of birth,” Service said forcefully. He didn't like Nugle's attitude. “Which part don't you like about the family—the red part or the Finnish part?” he lashed out.

The magistrate looked perplexed. “Art Lake does a lot of good in the community.”

“Doing some good makes them immune to the law?”

“You've got no cause talking like that,” Nugle said. “I'm stayin' past my quittin' time for a bunch of trumped-up shit.” Nugle tapped his chin with a ballpoint pen. “Judge Kallioninen will have to be the one to sign this, and he ain't available until Monday morning, which means you're out of luck, bucko.”

Service knew Kragie and del Olmo were patiently waiting at Art Lake.

“Where is he?” Service asked.

“Her, not him,” Nugle said. “Her Honor spends weekends at her camp up on the Abbaye.”

The magistrate's tone left little doubt that he was passing the buck in the hope Service would just go away and come back Monday so the judge could deliver some major kick-ass. Nugle seemed to be making his view on female judges quite clear: He didn't care for the concept.

“Okay, where
exactly
on the Abbaye is
Her Honor
?” asked Service.

The Abbaye Peninsula stuck into Lake Superior to the northeast of town, splitting Keweenaw and Huron bays. Service had visited the peninsula many times over the years, but could never get a meaningful translation of the French word. Technically it was said to pertain to an area controlled by an abbot, and this usually implied isolation and celibacy, which made the naming at least half accurate, because it was very sparsely populated.

“She's a smidge south of Finlander Bay,” Nugle said with a sneer, handing him an address and camp number on McBeth Road. “Wun't call ahead, I was you. Save gettin' your keester kicked twice that way.”

51

Abbaye Peninsula, Baraga County

FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 2006

The judge's camp was a fairly new and substantial cabin, situated in old-growth cedars and tamaracks above an expanse of naturally terraced sandstone that stretched gradually down to a rocky beach, and the dark blue waters of Huron Bay.

He parked next to a small Toyota SUV on the grassy lane that led up to the house, and got out.

A barefoot woman came out wearing a red apron, her hands covered with flour. “If you're lost, I'm not one of those gadget geeks with a neutered voice to tell you how to find the public outhouse. If you've got business with me, identify youself, and state your purpose. I've got baking to do, and I take it seriously.”

She was about his age, tall, with short black hair in a pageboy, and long arms. “DNR, Detective Grady Service, Your Honor.” He held out the draft warrant.

“You shaking that paper at me like I'm an ill-tempered dog?”

He laughed.

“I'm glad to be the source of your amusement, Detective, but that's not an answer.”

“I need a warrant signed, Your Honor.”

“You see the magistrate?”

“Huw Nugle said you'd have to sign it.”

“Mr. Passive Aggressive,” she said. “He tell you I don't appreciate being interrupted at home and that I'd chew off your head?”

“Something along those lines.”

She sighed. “I wear a dress and high heels under my robe just to remind the likes of Huw Nugle that women do the same jobs as men in these times, and he can't turn the damn clock back. I'd rather wear slacks and tennis shoes, but a woman's got to make her points when she can. You agree?”

“I'd agree to just about anything to get this warrant signed, Your Honor.”

She pursed her lips and looked him over. “I like candid, Detective.” She wiped her hands on her apron and reached out for the paperwork. “Let me have a look.”

The judge immediately looked up at him. “Art Lake?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Pinky know about this?”

“I told the sheriff I was going out there to investigate the complaint and asked him if he wanted to take it. He turned it down and I asked him not to call ahead.”

“I bet that twisted his BVDs,” she said. He agreed.

“How much do you know about Art Lake?” she asked.

“Not much. Artist retreat, whatever that is, apparently very exclusive, owned and operated by a foundation out of Chicago.”

“That's pretty much the extent of what we know,” the judge said, “but Art Lake spreads their money and largesse around the area strategically, which they believe entitles them to some privacy.”

Service expected her to refuse to sign the warrant, but she took another angle.

“Did your complainant actually witness the alleged shooter or shooters?”

“No, ma'am. You can't see through the Art Lake fence.”

“Then said complainant can't prove the shots came from the Art Lake property.”

“He served in Fallujah in Iraq, and said he got real familiar with fixing the origin of sniper shots. I served in Vietnam and had a similar experience. Over time, you get so you know where shots intended to kill you—or those meant to get your attention—come from.”

“Granted, but you have no probable cause to enter buildings,” the judge said. “You will restrict your search to the grounds, and if that yields something, we'll look at another affadavit with a warrant with greater reach. That float your boat?”

“Yes, ma'am, Your Honor.” It would get him inside the compound, and right now, that's all that mattered.

“Hand me a pen and give me your back,” the judge ordered. Service did as he was instructed and felt her scratching the pen against his back.

“Call me Taava. I happen to know who you are, Detective. That's the thing about reputations up here: They can open doors or close them. You've been around a long time, and you're one of the game wardens judges up here love to gab about. Twinkie Man, right?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, accepting the pen and the warrant. He once arrested a man for poaching who claimed that excess sugar had made him break the law. After that, a lot of cops and judges around the U.P. began referring to him as Twinkie Man.

“All of us in the law enforcement community were very sorry to hear about your lady and your son,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“I deleted dwellings from the writ. Grounds only, Detective, but if you get something, come back to me and I'll open that place like a ripe fish. You wonder why I'm so agreeable?”

He nodded.

“Have you met Gorsline, Art Lake's too-smooth-by-a-mile mouthpiece?”

“I talked to him on the phone.”

“Make you want to take a shower afterwards?”

“Pretty much.”

“There's more to this than what you're telling me, right?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, and took her through all that had happened from the second day of trout season until now. By the time he finished he was helping her pull a cookie sheet out of the oven and finishing a cup of raspberry-flavored coffee and she was staring vacantly at Lake Superior and shaking her head.

“The people up here are good folks, and the U.P. is absolutely one of God's most beautiful natural creations anywhere. That aside, I swear we're a mega-magnet for assholes and troublemakers. Let Fish Live Free? What the hell is wrong with people? We've got starving kids, economic problems big enough to choke the world, and the zanies are worried about
fish
feeling pain?” She paused and took a breath. “Out of judicial propriety, I think I'll say no more. You've got your warrant, Detective Service. Do your duty.”

It was just before 10 p.m.

He drove away from Judge Taava Kallioninen's place thinking she was a helluva person and probably one very hard-ass adjudicator. All in all, the U.P. had some peculiar personalities on the bench, but most of them were pretty solid, and more were supportive of the DNR than weren't.

He called Kragie on his way south. “Any activity down there?”

“Not that we've seen. You get the warrant?”

“Sitting on the seat next to me, and I'm on my way now.”

“This ought to be interesting,” Kragie said. “You want us to hang around?”

“Absolutely. Should be there in forty minutes at the outside.”

52

Art Lake, Baraga County

SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 2006

The three officers pulled their vehicles up to the compound's gate. Service got out, used the outdoor phone, and held the warrant up to the lens of the surveillance camera.

Alyssa Mears eventually slid out through the gate.
Looks like a teenager,
he told himself. He handed the paper to her. “Open the gate,” he said.

She took a pair of reading glasses out of her shirt pocket and put them on. “First I read, then we'll see,” she said with complete external emotional control.

“Everything seems to be in order,” she said after she finished reading the warrant. She looked up at the camera, nodded, and the gate slid open.

Service got into his Tahoe and drove in with Mears walking beside his front left fender. A dirt-and-grass two-track led about two hundred yards back to a three-story wooden building that looked like a grand sportsman's lodge from a different era, something built and maintained by someone with beaucoup resources and not interested in scrimping. The house was built on bedrock and below, as Rigel Tahti had reported, there was a long, narrow pond with small cabins strung along the shore, including one directly below the main lodge. There were no outbuildings or sheds in sight, and no vehicles in evidence.

“I'll accompany you,” Mears announced as he got out of the truck.

“I don't think so,” Service said. He checked to make sure they all had digital cameras and good batteries in their 800s, and sent Simon south along the west perimeter, and Kragie south along the eastern fence. At the south end the two men would turn toward the middle and the three of them would meet in the center of the south boundary. “Bump me if you need anything,” he told them. “When we're done I want to be able to piece together a fairly accurate map of the grounds. Use GPS, look for footprints, vehicle prints, loose brass, anything man-made where it shouldn't be.”

Mears had left them and was standing next to the porch of the main building. Again Service looked for vehicles and saw none. “Who else is here?” he asked her.

“Ginny and me.”

“Is Ginny a guest?”

“She works for me.”

“Just the two of you?”

“Disappointed?”

“Introduce us,” Service said.

“Is that necessary?”

“It is. Did you talk to Gorsline?”

“That's not your concern, Detective.”

Translation: She has.
“Guns inside?”

“There are no firearms on these premises,” the woman said.

“Then you won't mind if I look around inside.”

She grinned. “Nice try. We've got nothing to hide, but your warrant says ‘Grounds only.' Please adhere to the specifications of your warrant.”

No rancor, but his ploy had not worked. Usually it got him permission to get into vehicles and dwellings. Either she had a legal background, or she had been well prepped. It had taken the better part of six hours to deal with the magistrate and get the warrant from the judge, and now it was evening and the mosquitoes were swarming in the humid air. “I'd like to meet Ginny,” he said.

Ginny was small and wiry and squinted like the prescription for her contacts was no longer right. Unlike Mears, she avoided eye contact. “Identification?” Service asked.

Ginny looked at Mears, who nodded.

Service read the driver's license: Virginia Czuk of Palinko, Illinois. Current, and the description and photo matched her. “You live here, Virginia?”

“It's Ginny,” the woman said. “Yes.”

“What's your job?”

“Assistant coordinator.”

“Like Alyssa?”

“My assistant,” Mears said, interrupting.

“Hierarchical organization,” Service said. “I thought nonprofits operated differently than General Motors.”

“Artistic chaos, or a commune populated by eccentrics—is that what you mean?”

“Those aren't my words,” Service said. “I'm just trying to clarify. Just the two of you, or are you between guests? Or are guests just not in the compound at the moment?”

“Just us,” Mears said.

“You're not making this easy,” Service said.

“Easy isn't in the warrant,” she said. “It's nothing personal, Detective. We each have a job to do.”

Mears was clearly in charge and uncowed. “Penny Provo around?”

Mears blinked and tried to hide it. Czuk visibly flushed.

“She here?” he repeated.

“There's just Ginny and me,” Mears said.

Clearly, Provo's name had registered reactions.
Press now, or search first?
He opted for searching, leaving them to stew on Provo's name.

• • •

It was after midnight when the three officers convened on the southern fence.

“Big-ass chunk of land,” Simon said. “Varied terrain, lots of gullies, swales, ravines, and some major nasty underbrush. They keep the foliage thick along the fences, have paths paralleling them, about three yards in, with trails to the fence itself here and there, but no peepholes or signs of duck-throughs. Maybe they use periscopes?”

“Prints?”

Simon del Olmo shook his head. “Would take a lot longer and a lot more of us to do this carefully,” he said.

Kragie added. “Nothing along the east fence.”

“You look at the dam?” Service asked.

“Quick look but didn't linger. Got a spillway, and another concrete block with a culvert splitting the outfall, steel grate over the culvert.”

“Diameter?”

“Four foot, give or take.”

Odd setup; worth a
closer look?
he asked himself.

Service led his colleagues to the area close to where Rigel Tahti thought the shots had originated. It was dark and hot, and although they looked hard for signs, there was nothing obvious.

“Maybe they were in front of the fence,” del Olmo suggested.

Service mopped the sweat from his eyes. He hadn't considered this angle. “You guys want to swing around the outside when we get out of here, look around?”

Kragie said, “I think we're wasting time. These people seem almost anal about procedures and upkeep.”

“Humor me,” Service said. “If you wanted to use a rifle to scare off someone, how would you do it?”

“Offset the aim a few feet to hit branches and make some noise, close enough to frighten, but by a wide-enough margin to make sure a piece of bark didn't kangaroo and hit the target. I'd shoot off a stand to make sure I hit what I intended,” Simon del Olmo said.

“Branch?”

“Something less flexible. The fence might work, especially against a post.”

The fence again. Who had installed it, and when?

“Swap sides on the way back, Simon north along the east, Junco north along the west. Look for a manufacturer's name, a brand, lot number, anything.”

“What about you?” del Olmo asked.

“I'm heading for the dam.”

It was just after 2 a.m. when he released his partners to head back to the north. They were all tired and frustrated, but he welcomed some time alone to think without distraction. When they got back to the main building they would go outside and circle the fence to look at the area where the shooting allegedly had taken place.

The warrant was a one-time shot. Probably he could stretch it for another day, but Mears and Art Lake were strict constructionists, and it would be a battle to extend it.

He zigzagged his way north up the middle of the property, shading east a bit with the intention of intercepting the outlet creek where the dam was.
How the hell had the Tahtis gotten inside? Is the setup different now than it was back then? Had the Art Lake people plugged a security hole?

He became aware of his shadow about fifteen minutes after separating from del Olmo and Kragie. The shadow had exquisite sound-suppression skills, but his night vision gave him an edge, letting him pick up motion where most people couldn't.
Paralleling me? Mears? The other one? Choice to make: Confront or be aware, and watch the watcher? No. Stupid to conduct solo recon and try to guard your six. Safer to deal with it head-on.
Course of action decided, he began angling toward the shadow, trying to calculate a place where he could pinch off the route along the fence, and pounce.

Workable plan,
he told himself, just as something caught him hard and low behind his head and dumped him straight down into pine duff and dirt, mashing his nose and causing his eyes to flood involuntarily with tears.

A female voice, right at his ear, whispered, “What the fuck is your
problem, man?
”

Not the shadow. He was still seeing the shadow when this happened. Someone else, someone he'd not seen. Two people out there.
He tried to will the cobwebs out of his brain, touched his upper lip, felt blood, tasted salt, spit quietly. “If you wanted to talk, you just had to say so,” he whispered. “Penny Provo, right?”

“I was warned you're stubborn.”

Warned!
“You are Provo,” he repeated. “Warned by
whom
?”

She popped his head again. “Man, names mean shit.”

“You're undercover,” he said softly.

“Keep your fucking voice down,” she whispered back.

“Things have been bugging me since the beginning. As good as the army says you are, you've left more tracks than a moose at a muddy waterhole in a drought. I asked myself, why is she so sloppy? Hike Funke showed up in Kenton, which is right next to Left Testicle, Mars. We have good photos of you, know about your interactions with the meth chef in Big Bay, have a perfect description from your Guard mates. There had to be a reason beyond gross incompetency. The army says most walkaways are caught fast. You've been away for almost a record length of time. Finally it dawns on me: You're laying tracks for a case. The question is why, and what case?”

“Stubborn and imaginative,” she said. “You're sabotaging the gig.”

“I haven't done anything.”

“Being here, inside, that's everything. All the silent alarms are going wacka-wacka dingdong. Lots of questions will be asked. I'd gotten past all that shit; now it will start up again.”

“I could help,” Service offered, and thought he heard her chuckle.

“There was all sorts of optimism and confidence at the Little Big Horn and the Alamo, and it didn't mean shit for either,” she said. “You have no idea what is going down.”

“Enlighten me.”

“You want to help, get out and stay the fuck away from here.”

“What's in it for me? I've got cases to deal with. A man was killed on the river, shots were fired from this compound, and another man was murdered.”

“Shot at and shot are not synonymous,” the woman said. “All locals need to stay the hell away from here.”

“Who did the shooting?”

“Who do you think?
I did,
and I always hit what I shoot at.”

“Even with spring guns?”

“Jesus, that shit down on the river? Those guns had nothing to do with this,
nothing.
”

“There was more on the river than spring guns.”

She said, “You need to back off. The spring guns were set by someone else, not us.”

“You used the word
this.
”

No response this time. “What about the wolf tree?”

“The
what
?”

He described the cause of Dani Denninger's injuries.

“No clue, man. There'd be no point.”

“Deterrent?”

“If so, didn't work for shit, did it? It's got you and your people crawling all over the place.”

“Mears runs the show here?”

“Hardly.”

“Let Fish Live Free.”

“They're real,” she said. “And totally irrelevant.”

“What
is
relevant?”

“Man, this is not a bonding moment. You need to get the fuck off the property and stay away before you destroy everything we've done.”

“I'm not good at walking away.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Why approach me at all?” he asked.

“Professional courtesy—I don't know. If you leave now, this may settle down for me.”

“This—you keep saying this. What about Rankin Box?”

“What about him?”

She doesn't know.
“Dead, and not of natural causes.”

He heard her breath catch. “Not in the media,” she managed.

“You know the drill on murders.”

“I saw Box. Nice old man. He was fine the last time I saw him.”

“Why did you see him?”

She sighed with frustration. “Spring guns.”

“You said—”

“Original plan called for spring guns with blanks, but we dumped that notion. The plan changed direction. Then some asshole set up spring guns with live ammo. Bad serendipity, man. Karma of the sucky sort. Without those guns, I doubt you'd ever have shown up here.”