Shadow of the Wolf Tree (9 page)

“That poor deer,” Denninger muttered. “Why would somebody chain a dead deer to a tree?”

“Relax, Dani. Stop talking.”

“Easy for you big macho types to say. Try being a girl.”

The steel deer guard of del Olmo's truck nosed through the hawthorns. “Stop
there
!” Service radioed.

“Am I bleeding out?” Denninger asked.

“No, you're okay. Hang in there.”

“I see her,” del Olmo said, getting out of his truck.

“Don't move,” Service said. “Wolf tree.”

Service heard del Olmo moving equipment from his backseat to the front.

“Junco, Willie, we need to clear a path to her.”

The two men came over, started forward.

Service took off his coat. Del Olmo came forward with two aspen poles he always carried in the bed of his truck. They put the poles through the arms of the coat and zipped it up to form the bed of a stretcher.

The four men carefully lifted Denninger onto the makeshift litter and carried her to the truck, easing her into the backseat, back-first. Kragie got in from the other side, got her by the shoulders, and eased her across. Denninger winced, but didn't cry out. Tears streamed from her eyes. “I dropped my flashlight. All my stuff's back there.”

“Don't worry,” Service said, rubbing her neck. “We've got you covered.”

“Take it slow,” he told del Olmo as he slid behind the wheel.

The three officers walked beside the truck in case it got stuck.

Grinda reported in on the radio. “Covington EMS is two minutes out.”

The EMS personnel worked quickly, loosened the tourniquet, got Denninger onto a gurney and into their ambulance, and started an IV drip.

One of the techs leaned close to Service's ear. “Compound fracture.”

Service patted the man's arm to let him know he'd heard. He'd seen the protruding bone when he'd found her, had said nothing about it.

“We'll bring a bottle of wine to the hospital,” Service said as they began to close the ambulance doors.

“White,” Denninger said. “Seen enough red for tonight. I just bought fuck-me heels,” he heard her tell one of the techs, who said, “Way cool.”

Two Troops came bouncing up the road in their patrol units. The five conservation officers and two state policemen took del Olmo's truck back to the site and the COs began disarming the seven traps that hadn't been tripped.

“This is some deeply disturbed shit,” a young Troop said as he watched the conservation officers work.

They took photographs of each trap and its location, and when the traps were cleared, got photos of the deer cabled to the tree. Kragie brought up his handheld GPS and dropped markers.

“Where's the Art Lake fence?” Service asked the Baraga County officer.

“Over that way. Close.”

The two men stood by the fence, which was less than a hundred yards from the wolf tree site.

Celt joined them. “Junco and I will hang here tonight, look this place over closely in the morning. Any idea what this is about?”

My fault. I sent her here.
Service shook his head ruefully, and checked his watch. It was just after 4
a.m.

Service, del Olmo, and Grinda drove to Baraga County Memorial Hospital in L'Anse. Some years back Service had spent some time in their emergency room after a nasty fight with a mentally unbalanced man north of Baraga.

Captain Ware Grant called on the cell phone while they waited outside Emergency.

“You find her?”

“She's in with the docs right now. It was a wolf tree, Cap'n. She stepped on a wolf trap.”

“Leg?”

“Compound fracture, right at the ankle. Don't know the extent or what else yet.”

Silence from the captain.
Then, “The people who did this, Detective?”

“Sir?”

“No quarter.”

Three hours later she was in Recovery. She would keep the foot and have full use if rehab went right. Service told the doctor no sedatives until they could talk to her.

“Make it quick,” the doctor said. He had blood on his smock. “The tourniquet saved the foot.”

“I'll tell her.”

“Drink?” Denninger said, when he stepped in with her.

Service tipped a cup of water with a flexible straw to her lips, adjusting the straw for her. “Just a sip. You did good out there.”

“No, I didn't. I really fucked the pooch.”

“Just bad luck. We've all had it.”

“Not me. I'm naturally lucky.”

“What happened?”

“You told me to snoop the place. That's what I was doing.”

Service felt sick to his stomach.

Denninger grabbed his sleeve. “I swear I never saw it.”

Service looked at the nurse and nodded. She added something to Denninger's IV. “We'll talk again when you wake up,” he said.

“I'm totally
serious
about those shoes,” she whispered.

“C'mon,” Service said to the other officers.

The captain says no quarter. So it shall be.

13

Iron River, Iron County

MONDAY, MAY 22, 2006

The drive from Baraga seemed to drag as Service made a mental list of follow-up tasks, trying to make separate lists for each of the three incidents. It didn't matter how or if the wolf tree was related to the other cases; Denninger had been hurt, and he wasn't going to let go of that until someone was held accountable. Eventually the details got too confused to keep organized in his head. He pulled off the road in northern Iron County and typed a preliminary list into his computer:

Paint River homicide: wire source, spring guns, woman who went to Box for help and was sent on to Allerdyce; Hjalmquist's records?

Skull case: Bernalli's widow. Black immigrants. Who were they, what did family lore tell (if anything) about their aborted adventure in the U.P.? Can descendants be found? How? Not in papers at the time, or just not found? Records somewhere? Catholic priest O'Neil
—real or fake, and does it matter? Flour gold in remains? Germane?

Denninger and the wolf tree case: Who set the traps, and why there? Were there others? What about Art Lake, what's the deal there? Who pays their taxes?
He underlined taxes several times.

Kragie and Sergeant Celt were still out at the Art Lake property.

He called Kragie's cell phone. “Service. Anything?”

“Found a couple more sites where there might have been wolf trees, chain marks on bark, that sort of thing; nothing definite, but possible,” Kragie said. “There's no crossing we can find through the fence to Art Lake, and no beaten-down trails, but not that far from Denninger's spot, there's a path cut along the fence and another coming from the north. Looks like both get traveled a lot. We can see a couple of surveillance cameras in trees inside the fence. Pretty well hidden, no doubt professionally installed.

“One path may be for internal perimeter security,” Kragie continued. “No footprints outside other than Denninger's and ours, but we pretty well trampled the ground getting her out, and if there were prints, they're history. On the other hand, good trappers don't leave tracks or scents, and it seems to me that only an experienced trapper could put down a wolf tree. The Troops took the traps to dust for fingerprints. We should be clear of here noonish.”

“Anyone from Art Lake come down to see what all the lights and ruckus were about?”

“Didn't see anyone, but that doesn't mean they weren't watching.”

Service updated the wolf tree case list:
Private security at Art Lake? Bodies—primarily passive technology, or a mix? If bodies, who and how many?

Passing a large facility on the left on US 2, a mile west of the DNR district office in Crystal Falls, Service saw a sign that said
Victorian H
eights.
He swung the Tahoe into the parking lot and called Friday. “Petersson said the Bernalli woman is in a nursing home in Crystal Falls. Call him and get the name of the place and let me know, okay? I'll wait.”

Half a cigarette later, she called him back. “Said he misspoke. The woman is in assisted living, not a nursing home. The place is called Victorian Heights.”

Assisted living, nursing home. What the hell is the distinction
? “I'm there now. I'll pop in and try to see her.”

“Push back our meeting again?”

“Nope, we should be okay.”

“You going to have time for lunch?”

“Not sure.”

“Mike and I are picking up some stuff from Angelli's deli. We'll have something for you. Any preferences?”

“Calories.”

Friday sighed. “Me too.”

Friday and Millitor were easy to work with.

Service walked into the lobby and showed his badge at Reception. “I need to talk to Mrs. Bernalli.”

“Let me call her.”

A minute later the receptionist pointed down a hall. “Room 140, on the right.”

The woman said “Come in” when he knocked, but didn't get up to greet him.

He found her in a small apartment decorated with fabric flowers, with a stove, fridge, and microwave, and no dust anywhere. She was seated on a small love seat with a red-white-and-blue-plaid afghan draped over her legs. He sat in the only other chair, maple wood, a frilly cushion with Italian flags needlepointed into the fabric.

“I'm Detective Service with the DNR,” he introduced himself. He took out a business card and held it out, but when she ignored it, he put it on a small table by the love seat. Maybe she was arthritic. “I'm sorry about your husband,” he began.

“It's been five years,” she countered.

High titers of prickly, and absolutely no trace of an accent.
“I believe Theo Petersson talked to you about your late husband's father.”

“He talked,” she said through tight lips.

Why the attitude
? “We've got a difficult case,” he said.

“The skulls near Elmwood, or the man shot the second day of trout season?”

“Elmwood,” he said. The woman might be elderly, but she was mentally sharp and obviously keeping track of area goings-on.

“Can't help you,” she said. “My family brought me to America in 1941. I never lived in Elmwood. Mr. Bernalli and I lived only in Iron Mountain.”

“I thought you might have heard some things about black families who lived in Elmwood in the 1920s.”

“Ancient history,” the woman said. “You move to a new place and you either adapt or perish. It's the same everywhere.”

“Which means you did hear things.”

She glowered. “I didn't say that.”

“But you knew they had moved here, and that wasn't in the papers.”

The woman glared at him, the corners of her mouth drooping, and he knew the interview had ended. Like Petersson, he had gotten nothing.

He touched the business card on the table, nodded, thanked her for her time, and stepped into the hall. A bent woman with hair like coarse blue straw was standing in a walker outside the room. “Real social, ain't she?” the woman said. “I'm Helmi Koski. Heard youse're DNR.”

He hadn't been in the building ten minutes; word here traveled more quickly than on the normal Yooper word-of-mouth grapevine, which rivaled fiber-optic cables in speed. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Nobody talks to the old biddy. Thinks she's better'n everybody. To live here people gotta cooperate and help each other. That one. . . .” She shook her head and didn't finish. “Something I can do to help youse? I'm the nose-tube crew's social director.” She put two fingers to her nostrils and made heavy breathing sounds.

Nose-tube crew
? He had to swallow a laugh. “I doubt it. How long have you lived in the county?”

“Born right here Crystal Falls, 1917. I'm eighty-nine years young next month!”

“So you would have been ten in 1927?”

The woman laughed. “That some sort of arithmetic question for senior citizens?”

“No, ma'am. Just wondering.”

“Ten in 1927, that's right.”

“Do you recall hearing about a group of black families who moved to Elmwood in the west county in 1926, to grow potatoes?”

The woman scratched her chin and rolled her head. “We never heard they was there. But we heard there was some trouble, and that the sheriff went and brung them to town. I went down to the station when the sheriff brought them in. He took them up to the poor farm for medical care and food. Believe it or not, the poor farm was right here where this building is now. They looked terrible, poor things. I run home and got some of our old coats and boots and took them to the poor farm for a couple of girls our age.

“Thing I remember is that bad as things were for those folks, they looked proud, looked you right in the eye. They stayed three days. I got to know a girl named Rillamae Garden. Same age as me, almost to the day. We got to be good friends, Rillamae and me. We both cried when she had to leave. We promised to write each other every day for the rest of our lives.”

“Did you?”

She puffed up her chest. “Helmi Koski don't make promises she don't keep. We still exchange Christmas cards. Both got bad backs and eyes now, but we
always
get out our cards. We both lived hard lives.”

“She's alive?”

“Still kicking last Christmas.”

“Do you have an address or a phone number for her?”

“Follow me,” the woman said. She started off down the hall in her walker at a pace slower than a snail's. Fifteen minutes later Grady Service had an envelope in his hand, the address on an AARP sticker. A shakily written phone number was scribbled diagonally on the face of the envelope, the writing so erratic he could hardly read it.

As he started through the lobby, he spied Mrs. Bernalli, who frowned and made an obscene gesture with bunched fingers.
Okay, then. No arthritis in that hand.

• • •

Back at the office, he dropped the envelope on the table in front of Friday and said, “Some days it pays to be nice to old ladies.”

“Bernalli's widow?”

“With her attitude she could have been Mussolini's mistress.”

Millitor picked up the envelope. “Mrs. Rillamae Thigpen?”

“Married name. She was Rillamae Garden when she was in Elmwood. She was still alive last Christmas. There's a woman in the assisted living home named Helmi Koski. She met Rillamae Garden when they were both ten. They've been writing to each other ever since.”

Millitor began to smile. “Holy cow. Only in the Yoop, eh?”

Tuesday Friday pushed a bowl of cottage cheese toward him. “I guess the legend's got substance,” she said.

“Elmwood?”

“No,
you.
” Friday then announced that she had gotten the name of a small wire manufacturer in Eagle River, Wisconsin. Service took a spoonful of cottage cheese. “Maybe there's more than one legend in this room.”

“I just want to get the scum who did this,” Friday said.

“That's exactly what fuels legends,” Service said.

Mike Millitor took out a cigar stump, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and grinned. “Haven't had this much fun in years, and I ain't done doodly-duck yet.”

“Lunch first, then let's make us a list of things we have to get done, and start really pounding this case,” Service said.