Shadow of the Wolf Tree (33 page)

He couldn't argue. “Allerdyce?”

“The old pervert?”

“Says he sold you some traps.”

“Bullshit. I wanted information and he wanted to get it on, and I told him to get lost.”

“You met with him?”

“No, it was all done by phone.”

So Limpy had lied. Somehow he found this comforting, a natural law being obeyed. This he'd have to follow up on. “Hike Funke showed up in Kenton, no explanation, but there had to be a reason. The only thing I can think of was you, or someone like you.”

“Control freaks,” she said with disgust. “This thing is close to finished. You need to move out and stay away.”

If this was all legit, he could understand her concern. “You're not inside alone,” he added.

“This is not a group exercise,” she countered.

“Fooled me. I saw your shadow, but missed you.”

“My
shadow . . .
?”

Palpable fear in her voice, borderline high alert, not fear.
“To my right,” he said. “Our right. I was angling for an intercept when you jumped me.”

Moments later, silence only. Mosquitoes buzzing languidly.
She's gone, just like that; here, not here. The shadow shadowing a shadow, or something like that. Which one am I?

He got up, brushed himself off, blotted the bleeding lip, which had begun to swell, and resumed trying to intercept the dam. Just five more minutes and he might have had more information from Penny Provo. Had he blown her cover? No way to judge.

He had just reached the dam when a voice ahead of him declared, “That's it. You're done here, Detective.”

It was Ginny. “You're into the next day, and you're finished. You want back, get another warrant.”

“
After
I look at your dam,” he said.

“That is
not
going to happen.”

“I say it is.”

“Sorry, Grady,” a voice said, and Service turned to see Pinky Barbeaux. “Warrant says for yesterday. It's tomorrow by that standard. People have their rights. It's time for you to go.”

Service looked at the sheriff. “Just on my way out.”

Ginny Czuk said, “You're a twisted piece of work.”

“You admire that,” Service told her. Funny shift in attitude. Mears made Czuk out to be her hireling, but she wasn't acting the role right now, was nowhere in sight, and the sheriff was clearly taking his lead from Czuk. The stuff you learn, he noted in his mind.

“Get out,” she said. “Now.”

“I'll be back,” Grady Service said.

“I don't think so,” the sheriff said.

“You talk to the judge?” Service asked.

Barbeaux shook his head.

“I
will
be back,” Service said icily to Czuk.

53

North Bear Town Road, Baraga County

SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 2006

As Grady Service drove away from Art Lake just after 5 a.m., a man stepped calmly onto the road and held up his hands. He was small and compact, with long gray hair, wearing blue jeans, work boots, a camo boonie hat, and a badge hanging from his left shirt pocket.

Service stopped the truck in the middle of the road and got out. “Joe Kokko,” he said, greeting the man.

“Bojo, Twinkie Man. What're a couple of old warhorses like us still doing stumbling around the woods?” Joe Kokko was a full-blooded Ojibwa from Isabella County in the lower peninsula, a longtime federal law enforcement man for the Ottawa National Forest, a former helicopter pilot in Vietnam, with two tours and a chest-full of medals for heroism, and a one-time state trooper who had graduated in the same Academy class with Service and Treebone. They had known each other for a very long time and had rarely worked together. Service couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the man.

“You lost, Joe?”

“Nah. I was working my way down an old two-track, stopped to take a piss, and heard your tires. Glad it's you. Been looking to run into you for coupla weeks.”

“I have telephones.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I had some thinking to do before I got in touch. Pinky told me you might be down this way.”

“So, here I am. What's up?”

“
Maingan mitig,
” Kokko said.

“Wolf something? My Ojibwa vocab ain't what it once was.”

“That wolf tree bit one of your officers?”

Kokko was known as a plodding but thorough officer.

“You got something for me on that, Joe?”

“Young fella, Keweenaw Bay lad.”

“He got a name?”

“Not ready to say it just yet.”

“Because you're missing some facts?”

“Because he's fourteen—just a kid.”

“He'll be treated as a juvenile, I'd think.”

“White juvie ain't the same as tribal juvie.”

“I don't think the law makes such distinctions, Joe.”

“The courts do,” Kokko said.

Service couldn't argue. An Indian kid in a white court would fare about as well as a black kid. “What do you want?” Service asked.

“Cops write the charges.”

“You want a deal? Is that what we're talking about?”

“Let the tribal courts handle it. Probation, released to the care of his grandmother, and to me as his P.O.”

Service took a guess. “His grandmother special to you, Joe?”

“My old lady without the paper.”

“One of our officers was seriously hurt, Joe.”

“I know.”

“I can't promise anything till I talk to the boy.” He felt Kokko studying him.

“Both the boy's parents,” Kokko said, putting a thumb in his mouth and tilting his fist upward to mimick a bottle. “Bad lushes, hopeless. Kid's a good boy, and smart. Get him away from his parents to his grandma and me, he'll do fine.”

“We're not social workers, Joe.”

“Way I see our job with kids is, if we can keep one going in the right direction, we need to do whatever we can to make that happen.”

“Do I get to talk to the boy, decide for myself?”

“Go easy on him. He's scared to death of you, heard you're the windigo warden, out for revenge.”

The Ojibwa believed that windigos stalked the land in winter and were cannibals. “Wonder where he got that notion?” Service said.

Kokko smiled. “Let me go get my truck out of the woods and you can follow me. We'll cut west through Baraga, then north all the way to the north end of Bear Town Road. Betty's got a small place on Kelsey Creek.”

“Betty?”

“Betty Lachoix.”

• • •

Thirty minutes later they were standing in front of a small house that sat on a low rise over a sparkling creek. A boy with blond hair was standing on the porch with an older woman.

Kokko said, “Officer Service—Betty Lachoix and William Satago.”

The woman said, “I'm
okomissan,
his grandmother.” She touched the boy's shoulder. “You look the man in the eye and tell him what it was you done.”

The boy looked up from the floor. Service could see him trembling. “I set them traps that hurt the lady.”

“What traps?” Service countered harshly.

“For the wolves,” the boy said.

“Wolves are sacred to your people.”

“Din't do it for my people,” the boy said. “Did it for the lady with the money.”

“The lady with the money?”

“She give me the traps, said she'd give me five hundred dollars for a dead wolf.”

“Any dead wolf?”

“Any wolf come into the area where I set my traps.”

“She say why?”

The boy shook his head and looked at the ground again.

“He figured if he got enough money, he could give it to his mom and dad and they'd let him move in with me,” Lachoix said. “He wanted to buy his freedom.”

“They wouldn't wonder where the money came from?”

“
Gawashkwebidi,
” the boy mumbled.

“Alcoholics,” the woman translated. “Drunkards. They're never gonna get loose.”

Service rubbed his eyes and tried to think. A wolf tree set by a fourteen-year-old-boy who was being paid by an unknown woman who wanted wolves dead? Pretty damned outlandish, but this was the U.P., and outlandish sometimes seemed perfectly feasible. “You get any wolves?”

The boy shook his head. “Your lady got hurt and you took my traps.”

“How long had it been there?”

“Just that day.”

This jibed with the estimated time of death for the deer the boy had used as bait. “You kill the deer?”

The boy nodded.

“The traps belong to your father?”

“The woman give them to me.”

“This woman have a name?”

“She didn't say one.”

“What did she look like?”

“Short, dark hair, old.”

“How'd you meet her?”

“Fishin' the Slate River with my friends. She give us beer.”

“You drank beer?” Betty Lachoix asked, alarm in her voice.

“My friends, not me,” the boy said quickly. “She told me just before she left the river she wanted to see me later, not my friends, because any underage kid that would drink beer from a stranger couldn't be trusted.”

“Did you meet her again?”

“Just outside the state park.”

Just north of the town of Baraga.
“She make the wolf tree offer then?”

“No, first time we just talked. We met again about a week later, and I said yes, and she give me the traps and a hundred dollars. She drove me to where she wanted the trap set and told me to put a red mark on a tree outside the state park if I got a wolf, and she'd get in touch with me.”

“How?”

“She never said, and I never got no wolf.”

Service looked at Joe Kokko, who raised an eyebrow.

Service said, “The wolf tree was set all the way down by Art Lake. How'd you get down there?”

“My old man's four-wheeler. He's always too drunk to use it.”

“Did the woman give you any idea why she wanted this exact location?”

“Nope.”

“And you didn't ask,” Kokko added.

“What's going to happen to me?” the boy asked.

“A woman was seriously injured,” Service said. “A conservation officer. She almost lost her leg.”

Tears began to dribble from the boy's brown eyes.

“She'll keep the leg, but it's serious, and I'm not going to kid you, William.”

“I didn't mean for nobody to get hurt,” the boy said. “I just needed that money.”

Kokko said to Service, “The boy ain't learned the difference between want and need. We might want two assholes, but we only
need
one.”

Service shot a look at Kokko. “Did you tell your grandmother about this beforehand?”

“No, she would've got real mad at me.”

“Where'd you get the deer?”

“Down in that area.”

“I'll talk to the prosecutor,” Service said, looking at the boy's grandmother. “He's going to move in with you?”

“Yessir, if you turn this over to the tribal court, I think they'll take care of it.”

Service loathed turning matters over to tribal courts. Some of them were good at upholding the laws, but magistrates in other tribal jurisdictions ignored all charges transferred or lodged by white law enforcement. He looked at the boy. “You ever see this woman, besides in your meetings?”

“Just them times.”

“Anything special about her?”

“Just dark hair and old, and she wasn't so big, eh.”

“Not so big. Like skinny?”

“Not skinny.”

Service dug out a photo of Penny Provo. “This her?”

The boy held the photo in both hands and stared hard. “Nossir.”

Service took back the photo. “Where are you staying now, William?”

“Here,” Betty Lachoix said. “He's not going back to that house again. His folks want to see him, they can come here sober.”

Service tried to evaluate what he'd heard. “How'd you know how to set up a wolf tree, William?”

“The woman give me a pitcher.”

“Like a schematic?”

“I don't know that word,” the boy admitted sheepishly.

“Like a drawing,” Service amended his statement.

“Yeah, really fancy.”

“Fancy?”

“Done by somebody really knows how to draw,” the boy said.

Service and Kokko talked by their trucks. “How'd you get on to this?” Service asked.

“Heard about the wolf tree, started nosing around. Wolves are sacred in these parts, so I figured no tribal adult would be doin' this. I heard some kids alluding to this and that, and some kid who'd done something, and I just kept track of who was doing the talking, and who they hang out with, and when I found five or six of them hanging with the one who was always silent, I guessed it was William. I confronted him, and he confessed. I think guilt was getting to him.”

“What's so special about the area west of Art Lake?” Service asked.

“Not a thing I could point to,” Joe Kokko said. “Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?”

“Not yet,” Service said.

Kokko smiled. “Ever seeking justice, Twinkie Man.”

“You're not?”

“End of this year I'm filing my papers. Tribe here talked to me about head game warden for them, but I told them I just want to settle down with Betty and raise William and hunt and fish to make up for all the time I lost over all these years. Tribal CEO told me if I run across you, to let you know they'd be interested in talking to you about the job.”

“Me, a tribal game warden? I
have
a job, Joe.”

“Just passing along what I got told. Working with the tribe's a dang good job,” Kokko added. “The state's in rough shape.”

Jesus, is he recruiting me?
“Thanks for the pass-along.”

“You going to turn the boy over to the tribal court?”

“Probably. Thanks for coming forward with this.”

“You want to go down and walk that wolf-tree country, I'll go with you.” Kokko handed him a business card. “Just call. Ain't a lot of routine in our line of work.”