Service tried to read her voice.
“I kept our conversation quiet,” he said.
“But now you’re here to use your truncheon, make me take off my clothes and sit butt-nekkid under a glaring lightbulb?”
“Jesus, SuRo. Two people were killed. And a week ago bombs were found at the campus in Houghton, firebombs planted by ecoterrorists. I was sent here to talk to you because I know you.”
“But not as well as you thought, eh? Are they coming after me?”
“Your background makes you a suspect, but they don’t have shit and that reduces you for the moment to a convenient target.”
“Do you actually think I could be involved in such a thing?”
“Truth? I don’t think so, but I don’t really know. You have a temper.”
“And that makes me a bloody killer?”
“Dial down the hyperbole,” he said. “This is serious, SuRo.”
She crossed her arms defiantly. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Why the hell did you bring up the blue wolf?”
“I heard from a friend the night before I saw you. She heard Vermillion had a blue wolf. Blue wolves are pretty rare and people have a lot of funny ideas about them. Some cultures believe the wolves are thunderbolts sent by God to illuminate the possibilities of heaven. The Ojibwa claim the animals are sacred and can’t be caged. There are all sorts of beliefs.”
“What do you believe?”
She winced. “Verifiable facts, rockhead. Such wolves are rare, but they show up now and then as a recessive gene expresses itself. I don’t attach magic to animals. I’m a doctor of veterinary medicine, not voodoo.”
“What about all the other shit that happened?”
She said, “Mostly it seems to me that citizens are exercising their constitutional right to free speech. You’re familiar with that?”
“By destroying property? The feds are calling it terrorism.”
“When U of M students paint Sparty yellow in East Lansing they call it a prank. Paint can be cleaned up.”
“This is more than paint, SuRo. Nets were cut, a veal processing plant broken into, mink released from a farm.”
“Mink don’t belong in cages, and if meat is disgusting, veal is magnitudes more so. I have no sympathy for these places, rockhead.”
“What about for the people who did it?”
“I don’t approve of killing, but I support citizens’ rights to civil disobedience. This is America, not Afghanistan or China.”
“Where were you yesterday after I left here?”
“Right here. That bobcat demands attention. Is there anything else?”
He couldn’t think of anything. “No, I guess that does it, but you need to take this seriously. The state and feds have you at the top of their suspect list.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. Do I need to call my lawyer?”
“That’s up to you, SuRo.”
Seeing him to the door, she asked, “How’s your hotty?”
Still on slow burn, he thought. “Fine, thanks for asking.” This conversation was going nowhere.
“I did nothing wrong, Grady Service, and that’s the truth, not a semantic evasion.”
He nodded and went out to his truck. His gut said to believe her, but the coincidence of her asking about the blue wolf remained as bothersome as DaWayne Kota’s actions. It occurred to him that after all his years as a cop he was becoming paranoid and cynical. How would Nantz deal with that on a full-time basis?
12
Jep Niemi was standing on the roof of Kira Lehto’s veterinary clinic, holding a large black pail and chewing on a cigar stub. He looked down and nodded. Service wondered how long it would be until gossip started flying. Jep, the odd-job impresario of southern Marquette County, knew a lot of people and talked about all of them, even when he didn’t know what he was talking about, which was more often than not.
Joamoni Christening, Kira’s young door-guard receptionist, had never been one of his fans, and when he stood in front of her desk, she made her usual effort to stare through him. “Doctor is busy,” she said curtly.
“Just here to fetch my critters,” he told her. Joamoni waved him back to the kennel area with an exasperated sigh. He found Newf in a narrow dog run, wagging her tail and jumping up and down. The sight of his dog in a cage irritated him. Logically he knew she couldn’t run loose among the other animals, but this wasn’t right. He opened her cage and she jumped against his chest, knocking him off balance. She whined as she lapped his face. Where was Cat? He found her in a smaller cage in an area off the dog runs and she purred when he picked her up. Cat had always been independent, seldom sought attention, rarely purred, and never sucked up. Today even she seemed glad to see him.
Kira blocked his way as he started to leave.
“You weren’t even going to talk to me?”
“Your gate guard said you were busy.”
Lehto’s face reddened. She waged a continuous war to make Joamoni more user-friendly. “That . . .”
“Thanks for taking care of them.”
Kira said, “There’s always a bed for you, Grady.” She added quickly, “I meant for the animals. Are you headed home?”
Freudian slip or not, her message was clear. “Yes.” He wasn’t leaving them in jail another day.
“You look tired,” she said.
“The ides of BOB,” he said.
She flashed one of her professional smiles, one that she could turn on and off like a switch. “How’s the detective job?” She had locked her eyes on his and kept touching his arm and it was making him nervous.
“Busy,” he said.
“That should suit you just fine,” she said flatly, her smile fading and her hand dropping away.
He was reaching for the door to his truck when Kira again intervened, placing herself in his way, and delicately took hold of his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Grady. I guess I still haven’t gotten over us.” His schedule as a CO—working all hours of days and nights without a vacation or real break—was the primary cause of their breakup. Looking back, he knew it never could have worked out with her.
Lehto touched his arm. “I talked to SuRo and she told me about your visit. You can’t seriously believe she would be involved with fanatics like that.”
“You know I can’t talk about that, Kira,” Service said. He also wished SuRo would keep her mouth shut.
Lehto placed the palm of her hand on his neck and pulled his head forward. On tiptoes she kissed his cheek then slid to his lips and nibbled, an old signal they had once had. She whispered, “Once you’ve slept with somebody, there’re no secrets left to be kept.”
“Thanks again,” he said, as he pulled away and got into the truck with the animals.
Lehto folded her arms and looked irritated. A rapt Jep Niemi grinned from the roof and waved.
“Darn,” Kira Lehto said without conviction. “You know how that Jep gossips.”
Service understood her little game and bristled.
He got into the truck and opened his window and smiled at Kira. “If I had five minutes, I’d say jump in the truck and let’s find a two-track, but I don’t have five minutes.” Kira had always been a frantic lover who got off at a speed between sound and light. It was a cheap shot, but she had asked for it.
The veterinarian’s eyes gleamed with an emotional mix of desire and loathing. Kira Lehto was not used to being outdone.
Service looked at Newf and said, “I handled that pretty smoothly, didn’t I?” The dog turned and looked out her window. “She did the kissing,” he told the dog in his own defense.
The first order of business was to find someone to take care of the animals at Maridly’s house in Gladstone. He called his friend Vince Vilardo, the Delta County medica
l examiner, and asked if he knew a high school kid who could look in on the animals and make sure they were fed.
The boy’s name was Jimmy Crosbee and he showed up within forty minutes of the call to Vince. Crosbee was a junior at Escanaba High School and a football player who immediately made friends with Newf. Cat didn’t attack him outright, which was as good a sign as was likely to come from that quarter. All the while the boy stared at Service’s uniform.
“What do you have to do to be a CO?” the boy asked.
“First finish college.”
“My old man says you only need a high school degree.”
“That’s the paper requirement. Nowadays most of the people we hire are college grads.”
This didn’t sit well with the kid. “I hate school.”
“You’ve got your football. Maybe you can learn to use it to get what you want.” He had used hockey to get his degree.
They quickly made arrangements for the boy to take care of the animals over the next two weeks. Service had no idea how long the Vermillion thing was going to go on, or where Pidge Carmody’s efforts would take him, but with two active cases hundreds of miles apart and deer season looming, he guessed he was going to be on the move constantly. With the animals secure for two weeks, there was one less thing to worry about.
Yogi Zambonet called him just after 10 p.m. as he napped on the couch. “I got your message. I’ve got to check one of my kids up by Cable Lake in the morning. You want to meet me? We can talk while I work.”
One of his kids. Service grinned. “Sure.”
“Meet me at oh four hundred on CR Six Fifty-Seven where it T’s for Cable Lake. The wolves get active early. Jesse Fulsik will be overhead. Most likely we’ll sit right there all morning, but dress in layers. If we have to do any hiking, we’ll have to cover some ground. I’ll bring plenty of coffee and sandwiches. The temp’s supposed to hit sixty tomorrow.”
Service called the Troop post in the Soo to leave a message for Nevelev that he would not make the next meeting, and went up to Maridly’s bed. Newf and Cat joined him. He took one of her sweatshirts from her dresser and draped it over his face so he could smell her, and was soon asleep.
Zambonet was already at the rendezvous drinking coffee, standing beside his battered truck, when Service arrived.
He parked behind the biologist and got out. It was in the high forties, but the temperature was going up fast, the air feeling almost balmy. The high this time of year was usually in the midthirties, with lows under twenty degrees.
“Some snow would make hunters happy,” Service said.
“And wolves. Snow favors all predators,” Zambonet said.
The biologist poured a cup of coffee for him. Service noticed that he wore faded jeans and nothing more than an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a T-shirt.
“You heard about Vermillion?”
Zambonet nodded. “Green fire. It was all over the news. Probably the first time most folks even knew the lab was there.”
“Green fire?” Service asked.
The biologist grinned sheepishly. “The kind ignited by the animal rights and tree-hugging crowds.”
“The wolves are loose,” Service said.
“New blood for our packs.”
“They’ll fit in?”
“Eventually. We’ve got enough animals and packs now that sooner or later they’ll find a place. If you go to enough bars late at night you can experience the same selection process.”
Service laughed. “What are they doing at Vermillion?”
“Wolf research, whatever that means.”
“You aren’t familiar with Brule and his people?”
“Oh, I know Brule. He’s on the other side of the great debate.”
“What debate is that?”
“It’s similar to the one that revolves around trout planting. Do you plant rubber trout in habitats that are marginal and unlikely to support reproduction, or do you focus on the habitat and food and let the fish choose where they’ll establish themselves? The argument is wild fish versus planted fish. And it’s similar for wolves. A grad student at Northern tried to transplant wolves in the seventies, but it didn’t work. The idea and most of the money came from the Huron Mountain Club and the wolves were released there and all of them were dead in three months.”
“The Huron Mountain Club?” The club was an exclusive enclave.
“Tree-huggers were all over their cases, and they were trying to jack up their image with the greenies. All the wolves here now came over from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Or across the ice from Ontario into the eastern Yoop. The point is that the animals have chosen to be here. They haven’t been planted. They wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t right for them. Here’s an interesting fact. When wolves disappeared from the state, they were last seen around Floodwood Lakes, north of Channing. And when they returned forty years later, they headed right for the same area.”
“Why?”
“In the fifties the heaviest deer population in the U.P. happened to be north of Channing. To a wolf, deer equal food. When they came back, they went to the place where the best conditions had been before they left. We don’t have a clue how this could be, but that’s how it was. We found three wolves in 1989 and the first breeding pair a year later. I’ve been watching the packs grow ever since. There’s so much we don’t know about wolves that it boggles the mind.”
“Brule is a proponent of transplants?”
“He believes a steady influx of transplants will keep the gene pool healthier.”
“But you don’t agree.”
“No, his point is biologically sound, but it’s irrelevant in our situation. We already have an infusion of genes from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario, so the real issue here is, how many animals can our prey population support? We’re nowhere close to that limit yet, but if we begin to artificially introduce animals, we’ll reach saturation faster, and saturation and a shrinking food population make predators turn strange. Wolves have come back here naturally. I’d like to see them hit their natural limit the same way.”
“Does Brule have a lot of supporters?”
“Brule’s irrelevant and he’s full of shit, more politician than biologist. He’s got the degrees, but his work . . .” Zambonet left the statement unfinished.
“Was he planning to release his animals?”
“I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter because he couldn’t let them go without our permission and we weren’t going to give it to him.”
“Does he know that?”
“Damn right he knows.”
“So he’s basically spinning his wheels and wasting money. His facility is pretty elaborate.”
“He talks about genetic improvements and all that, but I have the distinct feeling he wasn’t preparing those animals for release, at least not here. He’s got a lot of federal grant money, and what he built at Vermillion was learned at Yellowstone and applies only to a transplant program.”
“The oval shape?”
“Right, no corners. Wolves know instinctively that man is dangerous. They’re curious about us, but they don’t like us. They pace all day long in an enclosure and they spook when they wind or hear the keepers. When you keep them impounded too long, their tempers get short. If you have corners, the alphas and elders end up tearing up the younger animals.”
“So what’s Vermillion’s purpose?”
“I don’t know,” Zambonet said. “Brule doesn’t talk about it. His idea of teamwork is him and another person in a two-person sailboat and he’s the captain.”
“Did you know there was a blue wolf in the compound?”
“I’d heard that, but I thought it was just bar talk. Wolves inspire a lot of fanciful things to be said, most of them wrong. Last week I had a guy at the Mill Town Inn in Foster
City explaining to me how wolves take down prey by hamstringing them. I told the guy this wasn’t true, that trying to grab a moose by the lower leg was inviting yourself to get the shit kicked out of you, but I don’t think he believed me. Do you know that there is not one confirmed case in history in this country of a healthy wolf attacking a human being? Yet how often do you hear stories to the contrary? It drives me batty.”
“Blues are the result of a recessive gene?”
“Probably. They come along now and then. I saw two while I was in Alaska, but they have way more animals up there.”
“What about here?”
“We’ve got fewer than three hundred wolves spread over the entire area. Odds are we’ll never get a blue.”
“But there’s one out there now. Does that create a problem?”
“Not biologically, but I’d think a blue wolf loose in deer season might find a tough road to hoe.”
“As a trophy?”
The biologist nodded solemnly. “I’d think so. When you get something that occurs maybe once in ten thousand times, trophy hunters always take notice. Look at what happened to the deer in Marquette.”
Presque Isle Park in Marquette had been home to several nearly tame albino deer, which somebody had shot. The case was still open.
Zambonet added, “If it’s big or odd, man will kill it. That’s what makes us the most dangerous predator of all. The wolves cull the young or the weak because they don’t have the stamina to take down healthy animals except in rare circumstances. Wolves kill to eat and survive. But man doesn’t need the food and we have the wherewithal to take the breeders and best specimens and we do. We kill for sport.”
“How do you keep track of your animals?”
“Radio tracking collars, but we don’t have the money to collar them all. We try to collar one in each pack to serve as a marker. The batteries last about three years. Our budget here has been about thirty grand a year, but even if we had more cash I doubt we’d collar more animals. We have what we need. Between the collars and our winter tracking surveys we have a pretty good fix on what’s going on.”
Blue Wolf In Green Fire Page 13
