Blue Wolf In Green Fire

by Joseph Heywood

  “Missing Nantz, eh?”

  He nodded.

  “Ain’t love grand,” she said.

  “Why don’t you get your ass out in the dirt where working wardens are supposed to be,” Service said with a playful growl.

  She laughed and gave him an upside-down left-handed salute. “On my way, Your Surly Detectiveness.”

  Moving his office would be a pain in the ass. He would have to drive two and a half hours to Newberry, load his truck with his files, and backtrack to Marquette to new digs. He didn’t want to move, but the captain’s tone was serious and there was no point in delaying things, he told himself. Some birthday this was turning out to be.

  When he got into his truck, the cell phone sounded. He picked it up, flipping open the lid to activate it.

  “Goddamn motherfuckers!” Nantz screamed. He held the phone away from his ear.

  “Maridly?”

  “Cocksuckers!” she said with a hiss, barely containing her temper.

  He had never heard her so angry. “Calm down, honey. What is it?”

  “I’m out,” she said.

  “Out?”

  “Like out of the fucking academy!”

  He wasn’t sure what to say or even what question to ask next. What could she have done? “Out of the academy?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Blood Hawk pulled me aside this morning after our run and told me that I am being transferred to Lansing.”

  This made no sense at all. “They don’t transfer trainees.”

  “They’re transferring me to something called Task Force 2001. It’s part of the state Emergency Management Division.”

  “What exactly did Chamberlin say?”

  “He said that upon reevaluation of the state’s emergency preparedness in the wake of September eleventh, a determination has been made that EMD needs to be beefed up. Because I am a state employee and because of my past experience I’ve been tapped for the duty. I’m supposed to report there this afternoon.”

  Reevaluation of emergency preparedness? Service’s gut began to rumble. “Reporting to whom?”

  “No name, just a fucking address. I am pissed, Grady, really, really pissed.”

  And hurt, too.

  “I do not understand this, honey,” she said. “I do not understand this. Somebody is fucking with my life and I am pissed.”

  “Calm down, baby. We’ll get it figured out.”

  “I’m ready to march over to the captain’s office and tell him to shove EMD up his tight ass.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m asking you not to.”

  She sputtered momentarily. “I would do this only for you, Grady.”

  “I know.”

  “So I just pack up and go to Lansing?”

  “No choice if you’re under orders.”

  “Fucking assholes,” she said.

  “Do you want me to drive down?”

  “No, I’m a big girl and if I’m going to be a CO I need to deal with this shit. I’ll call you after I get to Lansing. Now I’d better get moving. You seen Kate yet?”

  “Kate Nordquist?”

  “Yeah, Kate. She’s got your birthday present. I love you, Grady, and I’m sorry to be such a bitch.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’ll call you tonight, honey. I love you, Service.”

  He didn’t tell her about his office move because it suddenly seemed irrelevant. His move was no more than an irritating detail. Hers was serious. What the hell was happening to her?

  Service telephoned Captain Grant.

  “I just talked to Nantz. She’s been yanked out of the academy and is being transferred to something called Task Force 2001 in Lansing. What’s going on, Cap’n?”

  “Are you moving today?”

  “I was just about to leave for Newberry. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  “See me when you get to Marquette.”

  Did the captain know? There was no way to read his boss. He usually knew everything that went on in the DNR throughout the state.

  He was in a dark mood when he got to Newberry.

  His office was a tiny cubicle filled with boxes and stained paper cups. The walls were gray, there was no nameplate, and there were no mementos or decorations. He loathed offices, hated every minute he had to sit in a chair.

  Lieutenant Lisette McKower came in as he angrily threw the last of his files into a cardboard box.

  “Hey birthday boy, you planning to do some homework?”

  “No, I’ve been ordered to move my office to Marquette.”

  Her mouth hung open, but she recovered quickly. “Well, it will give you faster access to the west side and you won’t have to drive so far.”

  Service glared at her. “I don’t like being jerked around,” he said, picking up the boxes and storming out to his truck.

  McKower followed him outside.

  “What’s wrong, Grady?”

  “I’m following orders!” he said, snapping at her. “We’re all following orders. Nantz has been yanked out of the academy. She’s been reassigned to some task force in Lansing.”

  McKower said, “That can’t be done.”

  He glared at her. “It is being done.”

  The DNR office in Marquette was not far from the ancient state prison that housed the “worst of the worst” of the state’s burgeoning population of felons. He left the boxes in the truck and went directly to the captain’s office. Captain Grant was talking to his secretary, Fern LeBlanc, and when he saw Service in the doorway, he motioned for him to come in. Fern slid out quietly and closed the door.

  “I talked to Chief O’Driscoll. The transfer order originated in the executive branch,” his captain said apologetically. “Until the EMD releases her, Trainee Nantz is stuck there. I talked to the chief and we’re keeping her position open. If she misses too much time and can’t get back into this class, she will have a slot in the next academy class.”

  “Thanks, Captain, but this sucks.”

  “It’s not for you, Detective. It’s for the department. Nantz is standing at the top of her class right now, and we do not want to lose an individual of her quality.”

  “She’s angry, Captain.”

  “Talk to her,” Grant said.

  Executive branch? Service suddenly understood the game—the governor’s office. It was Clearcut again. Nantz’s transfer was intended as a message to him; the coward was using her to get at him.

  He told himself that somehow, some way, he would get even with Sam Bozian.

  Nantz called at 10 p.m. She had reported into the office on the south side of Lansing. The office was empty; she was the only person there. A woman from EMD’s human resource unit had dropped by, helped her set up her computer and e-mail, and gone through a quick orientation to the building and its facilities. When Nantz asked to whom she would report, the woman said vaguely that the task force was in the process of being formed and at some point others would begin to arrive. Until then, Nantz was to keep regular state office hours and check e-mail for instructions.

  “I feel like a prisoner,” she said.

  “Do you want the CO job?” he asked her.

  “Goddammit, you know I do.”

  “Then you have to hang in there and stick it out.”

  “When did you become an organization man?”

  “This is Bozian’s work,” Service told her.

  “Sam?”

  “It’s aimed at me, not you.”

  “Sam. Jesus,” she said. Her voice said she couldn’t believe it.

  Nantz had known Bozian for much of her life. The governor had been a friend of her father.

  “Whe
re will you live?” he asked.

  “I’m at a Motel Seven for now. The HR broad said something about housing at the Troop School, but I don’t want that.”

  Another little shot at him through her. Pull her out of the DNR academy and let her live so she could watch Troop recruits experience what she was being denied.

  “Captain Grant talked to Chief O’Driscoll. Your slot is being held for you in Tustin.”

  “Yeah, but when will I get back to it? I don’t want to fall behind, Grady. You can’t believe the load there.”

  “The captain said you are at the head of your class, Maridly.”

  “I am?”

  “Number one.”

  “How the hell can I stay number one if I’m down there and my class is racing along ahead of me? I hate this, Grady!”

  He did too. The whole thing had one goal: to drive her to resign, and to get back at him.

  “You want to be a CO, baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s just ride this thing out. The captain and the chief are in your corner.” He didn’t tell her she’d have a slot in the next class if she were away from the academy too long to finish with this one. She had suffered enough blows for one day. “Bozian will get his,” he said, as much for him as for her.

  “Maybe I should just call him up and talk to him.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  She waited to answer and said gently, “You’re right. I’d blast out his eardrums. But he wasn’t always an asshole, Grady.”

  Service had a different view of the governor. “What’s the hotel and your room number?” He wrote them down as she spoke and added, “I moved my office to Marquette today.”

  “Why?”

  “The captain’s idea. So he and I could be closer—or so he can keep an eye on me.”

  “Our whole world is turning upside down,” she said.

  “We’ll get it righted,” he said, hoping he wasn’t whistling in the dark.

  “I miss you, Grady.”

  “Hang in there, honey.”

  “I’ll try,” she said skeptically. She sounded really down and trying to be brave.

  “Seen Kate yet?” she asked, her tone lightening.

  “No.”

  “You will.”

  At 11 p.m. Gutpile Moody and Kate Nordquist pulled up the driveway and came to the door.

  “What’re you two doing here?” Service asked.

  Nordquist handed him two boxes and said, “Happy birthday.” Then she kissed him firmly on the mouth, prying it open with her tongue. “That’s from Maridly. But it was pretty good for me too,” she added with a giggle.

  The larger box felt like a cake. “Are you two working tonight?”

  “We had to interview a loser in Kipling,” Gutpile said. “We’re on our way back to Manistique now.”

  “Have some cake with me.”

  “We can’t,” Nordquist said.

  “I can,” Gutpile said.

  Nordquist took Moody by the arm and started leading him back to the truck. “We’re going now.” She glanced over her shoulder and winked at Service. “Enjoy your cake, birthday boy.”

  He sat down at the kitchen table and opened the box. The cake was covered with purple frosting, and in the middle was a photograph of Nantz totally nude, posing suggestively. In the second box was a Marble knife with a carved curly maple handle. The Marble Arms Company in Gladstone made some of the finest edged weapons in the world.

  He laughed until he cried and then slid the cake into the freezer. He would save it until they could enjoy it together. He called the hotel and asked for her room.

  “I can’t believe you had Kate deliver that!” he said.

  “I wish we were together tonight, Grady, so I could give you a real birthday present.”

  5

  The day was off to a fast and rocky start. E-mails were pouring in from COs and Lansing, and Grady Service’s telephone wouldn’t stop ringing.

  Fern LeBlanc, the captain’s secretary, stepped into his cubicle with a couple of call-back slips and put them on his desk. “It used to be quiet around here,” she said.

  The necropsy results of Griff Stinson’s bear had come back from the state wildlife laboratory at Rose Lake, the bullet fragments recovered from the dead animal confirming it probably had been killed by a fifty-caliber weapon.

  The state’s Report All Poaching (RAP) line in Lansing had gotten a tip from a man in Menominee who claimed knowledge of an illegal commercial minnow operation. The RAP people had passed the tip to him, expecting him to investigate.

  CO Vilnus Balcers called from Carlshend. A farmer had found a black bear sow and two yearling cubs dead in one of his pastures. The animals had four arrows in them. The arrows were marked and belonged to a retired air force master sergeant who lived at Little Lake. The sergeant had been arrested for illegal bears twice in the past three years. He was claiming the arrows had been stolen, but he had not reported the theft to the local police. Did Service want to take a look?

  Virgil Haluska, a forester in the Baraga office, called about the suspected theft of timber from state land near Channing and thought maybe it was a crew who had been working the area for nearly two years. He could use some help in developing a case.

  CO Bob Putnam called from Stephenson. He had busted an unlicensed taxidermist in Wallace and found ten boxes of live massasaugas. The Michigan rattlesnakes were endangered and protected by the state’s Endangered Species Law. Did Service want in on the case? The taxidermist told Putnam he was selling them to collectors and was willing to deal.

  Minnows, dead bears, stolen trees, illegal snakes? Grady Service had his mind on the commercial poaching case. He was thinking it might make sense to drive down to Grand Rapids to interview Kaylin Joquist, and—being so close to Lansing—maybe he could pop over to see Nantz. He definitely wasn’t going to chase after other shit right now. He didn’t need new cases to work. He was worried about Nantz, who called him every night and sometimes during the day, her own mood growing fouler.

  Simon del Olmo called while Service studied the necropsy report.

  “When did you transfer? I called Newberry and McKower said you’d moved to Marquette,” del Olmo said. Simon had been an officer going on five years. He had been born near Traverse City to migrant workers who worked Michigan in summer and spent their winters in Texas. Despite a peripatetic life Simon had gotten all the way through the University of Michigan and had served as an officer in the Air Cav during the Gulf War, where he had been involved in a fight with the Republican Guard inside Iraq.

  “Not long. The dust is still settling,” Service said.

  “Cool. I got a call from a woman who claims her ex-boyfriend is poaching.”

  “And?”

  “You called me back in September and asked me to be on the lookout for big-buck specialists.”

  Service had called several COs as he took over the case, hoping one of them would kick loose something useful. To get leads you sometimes had to put out a wide net.

  “She claims he’s looking for trophy racks. I thought you might want to come on over and we’ll take a look,” del Olmo said. “The woman told me where this guy hunts. She said he’s staked out a couple of animals and is doing his work in broad daylight.”

  “You believe her?”

  The young officer chuckled. “Well, there’s a jealousy factor. She says he dumped her for another woman, so she wants to get even. It wouldn’t be the first time we got righteous info from an outraged woman.”

  “When?”

  “She says he’ll be out there this afternoon. He’s working the hardwoods near Lower Hemlock Rapids on the Paint River.”

  “Okay. Two hours?” Anything to get out of the office.

  “Si, je
ffe.” The aggressive young officer gave Service the coordinates of their rendezvous and added, “Wear your mouthguard. The roads out there will rattle your choppers. I’ll bring lunch. Sommers subs. Got a favorite?” Sommers was a sausage shop in Crystal Falls, its meats and sub sandwiches renowned across the western Upper Peninsula.

  “Italian meatball on a rye bun, lots of onions and jalapeños. See you in two hours,” Service said.

  Downstate cops liked their doughnuts, but Yoop COs preferred cinnamon rolls and sub sandwiches, when they remembered to eat, which some days took on a low priority. Service wondered why a retired CO had never opened a sub shop.

  “The area’s on the west side of the river,” del Olmo said. “Take US Forty-One to CR Six Forty-Three, then south. As soon as you cross the bridge over the Paint by the gravel pits, take the first dirt back to the north. Keep working your way north until you get up into the hardwood country. We’ll meet about five miles north of the gravel pits.”

  “In two hours?”

  “Think throttle, jeffe,” del Olmo said with a laugh as he hung up.

  Service told Fern LeBlanc he was heading toward Crystal Falls. She seemed relieved. He radioed the office in Newberry from the truck to let them know he was in his vehicle and moving. They could look at the Automatic Vehicle Locator computer to see where he would end up.

  It was only 9 a.m., but the temperature was aleady in the high forties, at least twenty degrees higher than normal. The sun felt good coming through the windshield as he headed west on US 41 past Negaunee and Ishpeming.

  He was glad Simon called, but he didn’t like relying on others to send him work. He’d spent his career taking care of his own business, and he reminded himself with some bitterness that it was not as if he had chosen this job. He had been placed into the position, more a bureaucratic thumb at the governor than an earned promotion. Ironically, if he hated the job or flubbed it, the governor would get the last laugh. At heart he was a field officer, happiest when he was in the bush. Despite his misgivings, he had to admit that so far the captain had proven to be a boss he could work with, but Fern LeBlanc was a potential problem. She was used to quiet and having the captain to herself.

  In two weeks the firearm deer season would kick off. If there was a commercial poaching operation, it would be in full-blood mode from now through early December. He reminded himself that if you kept your focus on a case sooner or later something came your way, either because of the path you followed or through serendipity, which to his way of thinking amounted to the same thing.