Blue Wolf In Green Fire

by Joseph Heywood

  The sheriff looked puzzled.

  “I found this tape on a road out by Naomikong Creek. I don’t know who it belongs to. I meant to look at it earlier to see if I could identify the owner, but I sorta got caught up in other things.”

  Sheriff Lee smiled impishly. “Let me get this straight. You found a tape in the middle of bloody nowhere and at this very moment you think we ought to look at it?”

  “You don’t have to see this, Fred. Consider this a legal advisory.”

  Freddy Bear Lee took another cigar out of its wrapper, rolled the cigar across his lips, snipped off the end, and lit it. “In for a dime, in for a dollar, eh,” the sheriff said. “Roll that sucker.”

  Service inserted the tape in the VCR and hit play. The tape had been rewound. Did that mean Kota had looked at the whole thing? The picture wasn’t all that clear, but there was a clock on the bottom of the screen, ticking off real time. The real-time clock showed 1801. How long were the tapes, four hours, six, eight? He hit stop and fast forward, and let it run to the end. The time showed 2400, a six-hour tape.

  Why hadn’t Nevelev said anything about security tapes? Service wondered.

  He had gotten the call from Captain Grant just after midnight, Service remembered, reaching to rewind the tape to its start. “Did they fix a time of death?” he asked his friend.

  “Three-hour block before midnight. That’s prelim, but they don’t think it will change much.”

  Service selected slow forward and watched the tape roll until it hit 2130.

  A man and a woman were working in the lab. They came and went through the same door, a door that seemed to open into the wolf pen. Once the woman came leaping through the door, looking shook and gesturing wildly. The man tried to calm her and then they were both laughing hysterically. The woman was Larola Brule.

  It finally hit Service that he didn’t know anything about the other victim.

  “What do we know about the biologist who died with Brule?” he asked his colleague.

  “Lanceford Singleton.”

  “Is that him?”

  “I never met the man, but he looks like the ID photo I saw.”

  Service kept moving the tape forward. Suddenly the angle of the tape changed. It had been above, looking down and now it was lower, perhaps head-high.

  “The camera’s been moved,” Service said, keeping his finger on forward.

  As it flashed through a scene, Freddy Bear said, “Ooh boy.” Service stopped the tape and hit play.

  The man and woman were undressed. She was sitting on a lab counter, her legs wrapped around him. The two men watched in silence as the couple moved around the lab engaging in various sexual acts. They seemed to take pains to stay in sight and range of the camera. A little show for the camera? If so, for whom?

  Nearly thirty minutes after the sex session began the camera picked up a silhouette coming through a door behind him.

  The figure had a pistol in both hands, held out in front. The face seemed bare, but too far back in shadows to make out details. The figure fired without saying anything, and the camera caught the violent and spasmodic reactions of the two people as they were struck and flew out of view. Service saw two fast muzzle flashes and wisps of smoke.

  The figure then whirled and stalked through the door.

  Nothing moved in the laboratory.

  “Bloody hell,” Lee said through clenched teeth.

  Service backed up the tape and replayed the shootings. The woman had been shot first, then the man. He made a mental note.

  “Brutal,” Freddy Bear Lee said. “Just walked in and whacked them, eh? No hesitation. Ya don’t see that shit every day.”

  Service had made the same observation. Cool, efficient, ruthless. All these said professional and experienced. He kept these conclusions to himself. A professional hit, and the woman got it first. What did these facts add up to?

  “What do we know about the vicks?”

  Lee blew a smoke ring. “A helluva lot more than we knew before, eh? I heard rumors that Singleton was a cocksman, which last I knew wasn’t against the law. I guess we can put that in the known column now. He was boffing Brule’s wife.”

  “Jealousy?” Service asked.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time we seen that.”

  “Have you talked to Brule?”

  Lee shook his head. “Still in quote, ‘seclusion,’ unquote.”

  Did Brule know about his wife and Singleton? Had Singleton been involved with other women? Service lit a cigarette and sat down. “I hate this shit. Homicide’s your line, Freddy, not mine.”

  “You did just fine last summer and we both wear badges,” the sheriff said. “Your mind’s not going anywhere mine’s not. Let’s just keep noodling this, eh?”

  “The video resolution’s bad,” Service told his friend. “Too dark, too much shadow, can’t see the shooter’s face.”

  “We got a guy up to Lake State does techie stuff for the county. He might could give us a better picture, maybe blow up the frames,” the sheriff said.

  Service turned to his friend. “Should we turn this over to the Feebs?”

  “Are you loco?” Lee replied. “We’d never see it again.”

  “It’s evidence, Freddy.”

  “Listen, Grady, these shits are withholding from us. Ask me, I say we follow our own leads and use our own resources, see what we come up with. Then we share. We show them ours, they show us theirs, and like that.”

  “You mean a trade.”

  “Whatever,” Lee said, exhaling a ragged smoke ring.

  “We’re crossing a line,” Service said.

  “I’ve crossed ’er so many times before I’ve worn a path,” the sheriff said. “You have, too.”

  “Facts,” Service said. “The shooter didn’t hesitate. Demeanor suggests a professional hit. He killed the woman first. She was the main target.”

  “I agree.”

  “I’d like to see the tape enhanced,” Service said, “but if the techie screws up, we’ve lost evidence. We don’t need that on our heads.”

  “How about I make a copy and let him work from that.”

  “Will that work?”

  Lee got on the phone. “Hey, Shamper, Sheriff Lee. We’ve got a tape we’d like to get juiced up, stills enlarged, clean up the video, all that good stuff. But you’re gonna have to work off a copy, not the original. Can do?”

  The sheriff hung up the phone. “Well, he whined and said the original would be better, but he thinks he can do something with the copy and maybe that will convince us to give him the original.”

  “Can he keep his mouth shut?”

  “Well, the man’s a born gossip and a bituva flake, but I’ll pull him aside and get the ground rules clear. He won’t be a problem.”

  The sheriff then got out a blank tape and copied the surveillance tape. He put the original in a safe under a carpet in his floor. “She’ll be fine right there.”

  “We need to talk to Brule,” Service said, “and we need to know if the feds know about his wife and Singleton.”

  He also needed to know what SuRo’s tail had seen if he had followed her when she left her compound. If she was the shooter, the feds would know she had gone to Vermillion and the tape, once enhanced, might prove it. Why were the feds dancing on this one? He wished he could get back to his real job.

  Service slept fitfully on a couch, alternating between weird dreams about Maridly and the blue wolf.

  23

  Service was still asking himself what they were doing parked in front of a house on Vairo Street in St. Ignace at five in the morning. Freddy Bear had awakened him and nearly dragged him out to his Jeep. They were halfway to Iggy before his mind cleared enough to ask what his friend was up to.

  “J
ust follow my lead,” the sheriff said cryptically.

  At 5:15 a.m. a light came on in front of a white bungalow. Lieutenant Eugene Ivanhoe came out to the porch in workout clothes and started doing stretches.

  “Dumb fucker believes his body is a temple,” Lee said. “If so, his only worshipers are half-wits,” he added, quietly opening his door.

  Ivanhoe came down the steps to find a flashlight in his face.

  “You fucking moron,” Lee said with a growl. “You’re a peace officer about to go running in the dark and you aren’t even carrying a piece. Geez oh Pete, how’d you get promoted, Eugene?”

  Ivanhoe held his hand up to block the light and Lee turned it off. “Sheriff Lee?”

  “You betcha.”

  Ivanhoe looked perplexed, lost somewhere between confusion and anger.

  “We’ve got a team meeting this morning,” the state police lieutenant said.

  “We’ll get to that later,” the sheriff said. “Some of us are getting tired of being treated like mushrooms—kept in the dark and covered with shit. You forgettin’ who you are, son?”

  Ivanhoe mumbled something, but the sheriff lit into him before he could respond coherently. “I knew your folks, son, and I know you just got posted back up here, but you’re a Yooper so start actin’ like one of us or we’re gonna make your life so hard that freeway patrol in Benton Harlem will be a step up.”

  No county sheriff had official hold over the state police, Service knew, but a smart sheriff with an agenda had innumerable ways of making a Troop’s life miserable.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s pretty fucking clear, ya bloody nitwit. You ever go to the circus?”

  Ivanhoe said, “Sure, when I was a kid.”

  “You remember how the elephants paraded through town and after they passed, along come a bunch of rowsers pushing brooms and shoveling up pachyderm shit? Those fellows are called gafooneys and that’s what the Feebs have made you. The U.P.’s ours and they’re piling shit on your shovel.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think, Eugene. Don’t you smell anything funny here, son?”

  The state police officer didn’t answer.

  “You feel like the feds are leveling with you?”

  “Of course,” Ivanhoe said with a defensive shrug.

  “Okay, let’s test that,” Freddy Bear said. “Genova was under constant surveillance, is that right?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “So how come they didn’t know right away that Genova had done it? I mean, her tail should have been with her if she drove up to Vermillion and popped those people. If so, why didn’t the tail stop her right there? Or, if he saw her there, how come we haven’t heard that?”

  “They’re being cautious.”

  “Hello!” the sheriff roared. “What about security tapes?”

  “What about them?”

  “They show them to you?”

  “No.”

  “They show you the one that shows the shooter?”

  Ivanhoe began to stammer. “I, I . . .”

  “Aye aye? Is that a yes?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Did the feds explain why they’re tearin’ down the facility at Vermillion?”

  “Public safety hazard,” Ivanhoe said weakly. “Too expensive to replace.”

  “In the middle of the boonies with winter about ready to make camp?”

  “Snowmobiles can reach it.”

  “Are you telling us you couldn’t secure that place if it were up to you?”

  “Of course not, but it’s not my decision.”

  “Exactly. They’re making all the damn decisions, Eugene.”

  “National security,” Ivanhoe said.

  “Whose, theirs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s the point, son. You think they’ve taken you into their confidence, but you don’t know a weasel-dick more than we do, and they haven’t told us shit. They’ve treated us all like we ride the short bus.”

  “It’s good procedure to compartmentalize.”

  “Not if you create an interagency team, for Christ’s sake.”

  “What do you want?” Ivanhoe asked, finally mustering some defense.

  “For you to do your job. You look real pretty in front of a mirror, but take a closer look and you’ll see there’s nothing there. You could be a fucking vampire, Eugene. There’s no there, there. You following me?”

  “No.”

  Lee said, “Grady?”

  “Where’s Brule?” Service asked.

  “Transferred,” Ivanhoe said. “Convalescent leave.”

  “Where to?” Lee wanted to know.

  “National security.”

  Service said, “Did they tell you Brule’s wife was banging Singleton?”

  “She was?” The trooper’s tone was one of total surprise.

  Service intervened. “Did they tell you the wolf lab wasn’t there to transplant wolves?”

  “What’s it for?”

  “We don’t know, but we ought to, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” Ivanhoe said, after considering the question for a moment.

  “Have your people interviewed Vermillion employees?”

  “No, the feds are doing that.”

  “Really? Have you seen the interview reports?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You betcha, and you’re never gonna,” Lee said. “Look,” he went on, softening his tone, “the feds are good at this divide-and-conquer shit. They barre in, make a lot of noise, talk about cooperation, and do what they bloody well want. It’s like phone sex, all talk and nothing left but sticky hands when it’s over.”

  Ivanhoe’s heavy brow pushed out over bugged-out eyes.

  “Me and Grady know for a fact that Genova didn’t shoot those people. It was her gun, but not her pulling the trigger.”

  Service knew this wasn’t completely accurate. The video showed the shooter but not clearly enough to make an ID, but he took his cue and joined in. “And we know that Genova told the truth about what happened in England. She wasn’t responsible for deaths, and she wasn’t part of the AFL. The FBI knows this, so why are they lying to us?”

  Ivanhoe looked crestfallen.

  Sheriff Lee asked, “Do you have a list of Vermillion employees?”

  Ivanhoe nodded.

  “How come we don’t?” Lee asked.

  Ivanhoe said nothing.

  “We need a copy of that list, Eugene. Are you with us or are you siding with that buncha liars?”

  “I need to think about this,” the state policeman said.

  “Well, don’t think too long, son, or all this will be swept under a great big federal carpet and that will be the end of ’er. And maybe your career too.”

  Back in the Jeep, Freddy Bear said, “Ivanhoe grew up in Iggy. His old man worked bridge security. Eugene’s probably okay, but he’s a tightass more concerned about politics and appearance than getting the bloody job done.”

  There was a different air in the meeting room in the Soo when the team convened.

  Cassie Nevelev wore a black jacket over a deep blue turtleneck and had multiple strands of silver and jade draped around her neck. Judge Vengstrom wasn’t there. Neither was the Chippewa County prosecutor. Ivanhoe sat to the federal prosecutor’s left, his uniform so crisp and wrinkle-free it looked like he had been teleported directly from the dry cleaner to the meeting room. Phillips, the ASAC from the Detroit FBI office, wore the standard Feeb uniform, a black suit with a dark tie and a starched white button-down shirt.

  Barry Davey was unshaven and wore blaze-orange camo clothing.

  N
evelev eyed Service before speaking. “We’re sorry about Ms. Nantz,” she said.

  Did everybody know about Nantz and him?

  “Where’s Doctor Brule?” Freddy Bear Lee asked with the same hard edge he had employed earlier with Ivanhoe. The Chippewa County sheriff had hardly spoken during the ride back to the Soo.

  Nevelev raised an eyebrow. “He’s on convalescent leave and will be reassigned when he’s recovered.”

  “On leave from which agency?” Lee asked gruffly.

  “U.S. Fish and Wildlife,” Nevelev said.

  “How is it that you know he’s on administrative leave?”

  “I’m in charge of the team,” she said.

  “I forgot,” Lee said. “With all due respect, there are several of us here this morning who’d like answers to some questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as why Vermillion’s been demolished.”

  “An engineering assessment showed that the cost of repairs would be excessive. It was a simple economic decision.”

  “So what happens to the so-called project they had out there? You got four of the five wolves back,” Lee said.

  “That’s Fish and Wildlife’s call,” Nevelev said.

  “Is it now?” the sheriff said sarcastically. “When do we see a report of interviews with employees of the lab?”

  “The team is being provided with all relevant information.”

  “Relevant to what, the federal government’s private agenda?”

  Nevelev’s face reddened. “Did we have a bad sleep night, Sheriff?”

  “I haven’t slept for shit since this whole thing began, and the longer it goes the less sleep I get. I don’t like it when I don’t get my sleep.”

  “Perhaps you should consult your physician,” Nevelev said.

  Service had no idea where his friend intended to take his line of questioning, but the whole thing was deteriorating. “When will Genova be arraigned?” Service asked.

  “This afternoon,” Nevelev said.

  “In the Soo?”

  “Yes, in the Soo.”

  Which meant Wiggins had prevailed. “Do you have a motive?” He emphasized the pronoun deliberately.