Blue Wolf In Green Fire

by Joseph Heywood

  He said, “A woman’s body was brought in this morning. The head’s blown off. Which drawer?”

  The technician’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t be in here.”

  “Which fucking drawer?”

  The technician pointed and Service said, “Open it.”

  “I have to get a pathologist,” the technician said.

  “Then get him.”

  A woman appeared in a white lab coat, the technician cowering behind her. The woman had silver hair in a bun and wore a frown.

  “What’s going on here, Officer?”

  “Open that drawer.” He pointed.

  “We have procedures,” she said.

  “Open the drawer,” he repeated.

  The pathologist turned to the technician. “Call security.”

  Service said, “Are you going to open it or not?”

  “You don’t belong here,” the doctor said.

  Service pulled out the long drawer, unzipped the body bag, and worked it down to Haloran’s waist. He used his knife to cut open Haloran’s coveralls and tugged the cloth down to midthigh. He paused for a moment, then lifted the waist of her panties, looked for several seconds, stepped back, turned, grinned, and marched out of the room, leaving the doctor and technician staring at him.

  Gus Turnage had a bandage wrapped around the top of his head and was sitting on the edge of a bed pulling wool socks over his union suit as he carped at a stocky nurse with the countenance of a cocker spaniel. A paper hospital gown was in shreds on the floor near his battered Danner boots. “I am not being admitted,” Gus insisted.

  “You’ve already been admitted,” the nurse countered.

  Irresistible force and immovable object, Service thought.

  “Then I am de-admitting myself,” Gus fired back at her.

  Service left his friend to check on Grinda, who had just been moved into a private room. There was an i.v. stand beside the bed. Her mane of golden brown hair was mashed into the shape of a helmet, her face covered with red splotches. She looked uncomfortable and confused. He had killed enemy soldiers in Vietnam and understood what she was going through. But he had never killed anyone in the line of duty during his DNR career and he suspected that this would feel worse than in a war where killing was happening all around you.

  Grinda looked at him and tried to speak. “I . . .”

  He held up his hand. “You did your job, Elza. You understand the procedure now, that you’ll be put on administrative leave during the investigation?”

  She nodded.

  He rubbed her leg. “Don’t worry. They’ll probably have you answering phones at the district office.”

  Grinda rolled her eyes.

  He debated how much to tell her and how, and decided not to sugar-coat it. “You hit her twice, the first time up on the hill in the dark.” He touched a place on the right side of his chest.

  “I was guessing,” she said. “In her place, I’d fire as I moved, so I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance if I put a quick one to each side. I guess I was lucky.”

  “No, I was the lucky one,” Service said. “She was going to pop me.”

  Grinda’s voice was barely audible. “I went for her head. I would’ve shot sooner, but I couldn’t see her because of snow in the tree. When it fell, there she was. I’m sorry I took so long.”

  “You did great.”

  Sheena Grinda looked unhappy. “Alive, we could have broken the whole operation.”

  “With Johns gone, the operation is finished, or at least regrouping. We’ll clean it up for you,” he said.

  “Still,” she said. “I went for her head. I wanted her dead.” She sounded appalled.

  “That makes two of us,” he said, earning a weak and appreciative grin.

  Carmody had been in surgery and was in the recovery area. Sheriff Lee and Sergeant Parker from the Newberry district office were outside the room with a Marquette County deputy Service didn’t recognize. The self-serving Parker had once been his supervisor. He no longer reported to the man, but Parker remained a jerk. He was here to bask in what he perceived to be glory for DNR law enforcement. If the situation had gone badly there would be no sign of Parker.

  His former sergeant perked up and smiled when he saw him. “Glad to see you, Grady!”

  Service ignored Parker and turned to Lee. “Where’s Carmody?”

  Freddy Bear Lee nodded at the door and pushed it open. “No feds yet but they’re on the way, and the doctors say he shouldn’t be disturbed,” the sheriff said. “I’ll guard the door.”

  “Thanks, Freddy.” Service said as he stepped into the room.

  There were monitors along the ceiling above the bed. Carmody looked awake but his eyes were bloodshot and distant, his skin ashen.

  “They took the bloody leg,” Carmody said without emotion. “ I guess it’s the pirate’s life for me. It is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King. Or shall I become a major-general, join the righteous?” Carmody grinned and sang, “I am the very model of a modern major-general, I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical, from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical!”

  The Irishman was loopy from drugs. “You didn’t know Haloran before,” Service said.

  Carmody said, “Understatement from the mouth of a Yank. Your people killed the bitch.”

  “Funny how the past boomerangs, eh, Minnis?”

  The man in the bed grinned. “I’m under the influence of pharmas, boyo. Nothing I say can be relied upon. ‘You’ve scotched the snake, not killed it,’ wrote Billy the Bard. She’d not come for me. No photos of me, nothing, I’ve become invisible man. ‘And with bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond,’” the man in the bed mumbled. “No shame in quoting the most British of bards. Did you know dear old Willie-boy came to Papism at the moment of his passing? Timing is everything, my friend. Mine got a bit fooked, you see. As Mr. Gilbert wrote it, ‘The policeman’s lot is not a happy one.’”

  “Haloran recognized you.”

  “That night, after I talked to you. She was forever at me about the old country, but I never gave her more than a sniff. Born in Boston, schooled in Dublin, returned to the bosom of Dear Old Uncle Sam like the good native son.”

  “Which of course your records corroborate.”

  “The glories of the stage of shadows, lad. I shall truly miss that leg.”

  “How did she find out?”

  “Ah, a wee slip of the tongue, I fear. ’Twas Horace, I think, wrote, ‘It is the mountaintop the lightning strikes.’” His voice trailed away.

  “Minnis?”

  “Aye, I’m here. The night after we spoke I found a snapshot. She was standing in front of Hadrian’s Wall.”

  Service let him talk.

  “The Caledonian tribes of northern Scotland were under one pugnacious Calgacus, who led his equally pugnacious lads against the Romans at Mons Graupius. The Roman bastards killed thirty thousand that day, but the survivors fled north, took the oath, were never subdued, fought on. Later the Emperor Hadrian built a wall to block all traffic to the north and serve as a reminder. You see the irony?” Minnis asked with a grin. “Force and walls cannot take freedom from men determined to remain free. The field below the battle site became a symbol that so long as a few survive, so long as but one lives, the battle shall never end. The place is commonly called the Field of Blood, but to some it is Heart’s Field.”

  “Some?”

  “Aye, some, the few who fight on,” Minnis said disconsolately. “We were drunk. I saw the photo, made clever about grass growing on the bloody heart.”

  “And then she knew.”

  The man shrugged. “Conjecture. We were headed up the hill for the rendezvous with
the wolf and she turned on me, pistol in hand. She put one into me knee and took me weapon, swearing to give me a proper finish when her work was done. A great Kraut windbag said it best, ‘In revenge and love woman is more barbarous than man.’”

  “She knew you were Minnis.”

  “Draw your own conclusions. What she knew, I believe, she knew from the rat in your ranks, that I was of you, not of her. Not Carmody of the old country, just a cop about to spoil her game.”

  Goddamn Allerdyce. “You took my man’s weapon.”

  “Couldn’t be helped. She’d nicked mine. The need was upon me, my blood risen, even as it gushed forth. I was forced to give the lad a wee crack on the noggin.”

  “We had it staked out.”

  “Aye, and I knew the bitch had taken my leg and intended more. I got a round into her up there on the mountain.”

  “You missed,” Service said.

  Carmody glowered, but lifted his head and looked directly at Service. “You’ll tell SuRo I shan’t be returning.”

  “You can tell her yourself.”

  The Irishman grunted and lowered his head. “‘Light thickens and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood. The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.’ For a Pom, the little bastard had the gift. Perhaps I’ll write my memoirs, give Frankie McCourt a run for his money.”

  The door opened behind Service. Freddy Bear Lee backed into the room holding his hands in front of him like a tackle defending a pass rush.

  “You can’t be in here,” Cassie Nevelev snapped from behind the sheriff. Wink Rector and Barry Davey stood in the doorway behind her. There was no sign of the FBI biggies.

  “I was just leaving,” Service said, leaning close to Nevelev as he squeezed by. “Take good care of Major-General Minnis.”

  Nevelev’s face twisted into a look of total confusion.

  Captain Grant was in a private room. His eyes lit up when he saw Service.

  “Shaved it close,” the captain said.

  “Grinda bailed me out.”

  “She’s a fine officer.”

  “What about you?” Service asked, using his foot to push a chair over to the bed.

  The captain shrugged. “No permanent damage at this point. Lucky.”

  They sat in silence for a moment while Service gathered his thoughts. “Barry Davey gave me Carmody, who was Mouse Minnis, a killer for a fringe IRA group. Things got too hot for him in Northern Ireland and he moved to England and joined an animal rights group. He focused on British companies with links to Northern Ireland. A woman later came out of Northern Ireland and cooperated with the Brits and it got too hot for Minnis. Her name was Bridget Galway.”

  “Larola Brule,” the captain said.

  Service went on. “A second woman was sent to get the first one. That was Haloran—Wealthy Johns. In the wake of Haloran’s arrival in the U.K., Minnis and the first woman ended up in the States, both of them working for Fish and Wildlife.”

  “Grinda shot Haloran,” the captain said.

  Service nodded. “Until the day she showed up in the Mosquito I knew her as Wealthy Johns and we were out to break her poaching op. But Fred Lee brought me a photo of Haloran and when I saw Johns I realized they were the same person. Haloran killed Larola Brule at Vermillion. She was the target. Her boyfriend was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “And the Brule woman—Galway—she was the turncoat who cooperated with the Brits?”

  “Yes. I don’t understand how Haloran got here, or how or why the feds would bring Minnis and Galway across the pond and end up with both of them on the Fish and Game payroll.”

  The captain’s gaze was on the wall at the end of the bed. “Perhaps the two of them were already on a federal payroll.”

  This caught Service short. What had Carmody said about the records not lying? Was he an American after all?

  “The wilderness of mirrors,” his captain said. “Images within images and none of them real. What will you do next?”

  “Gus Turnage and I will talk to Skelton Gitter, squeeze him, see if he was part of Haloran’s poaching op. I’ll be interested to know when and how he met her. Did she come here first and then learn about Brule, or did she come here because of Brule?”

  “Some answers are not worth the effort to obtain them.”

  A veiled warning from his supervisor? “Gitter was or wasn’t part of it and case closed, is that it?”

  The captain nodded. “Done is done.”

  “Allerdyce was involved,” Service said. “I don’t know how or when he met Haloran, or what his role was other than feeding information to her about what we were doing. I thought he and I had an understanding, but he damn near got us killed.”

  “Arrangements with informants rarely persist. Better to limit such arrangements to one transaction at a time.”

  “The thing is that without Limpy’s involvement we might have lost the blue wolf. And because of him we nearly lost the animal anyway. I don’t know how to keep score anymore.”

  “Your wolf killer is no more,” the captain said. “This is the only score that matters. All the rest is detail.”

  “Details matter in our business,” Service said.

  “Only until a case is closed, then you move on, Detective. The feds have impossible jobs and they’re forced to do things and work with people the likes of which most of us cannot imagine. You’ve done your job, Grady. Now let it go and go home to Maridly. She and I have had some meaningful discussions. She has agreed to fly for the department on a contract basis until fall. Now go home, Grady. I’m pleased you’re still among the living.”

  “I’m glad we both are,” Service said, extending his hand.

  He was moved by the captain’s sentiments and advice, but despite the captain’s view, some details did matter, and he had more to attend to.

  33

  Skelton Gitter’s establishment sat in full view of Mount Zion north of Ironwood. The showroom walls were covered with stuffed-animal mounts; just inside the door there was an eight-foot-tall Alaskan brown bear on a pedestal, standing on its hind legs, its mouth frozen in a snarl.

  Gus Turnage stared up at the animal and said, “How’d you like to deal with the likes of that?”

  “No thanks,” Service said. The state had enough trouble with its black bears.

  There was a gun shop off one end of the showroom and a shop filled with fishing gear off the other end.

  Service was accompanied by Gus Turnage, a Gogebic County deputy sheriff, and Special Agent Eddie Bernard, the BATF man from Grand Rapids who had responsibility for the U.P. Lars Hjalmquist, Betty Very, and some Ontonagon County deputies had search warrants for Gitter’s camp and the camp owned by the man from Fort Wayne. Both camps were close to each other south of the Porcupine Mountains.

  Service timed it so that his group arrived at the shop an hour before its scheduled opening. They were greeted by a frowning Skelton Gitter. Service introduced everyone, and Special Agent Bernard handed search warrants to Gitter.

  The proprietor pointed toward an office. “Can we sit down like civilized people?”

  He led them into the room and plopped down behind a polished oak table. There was a Dell computer in the corner and distressed credenza that stretched along one wall. There were photographs of Gitter and his hunting trophies in rows on the walls.

  “We have some questions,” Service said.

  “I knew you’d be coming,” the man said.

  Service sat down across the table from Gitter.

  “Do I need my lawyer?” the man asked.

  “Be good, you call him,” Service said. “We want to talk about Wealthy Johns.”

  Gitter stared at Service, picked up his phone, and punched in a number. “Sandy, I’m going to need you.”

&n
bsp; Tavolacci, Service thought. This was interesting. Tavolacci had tried to spring Jason Nurmanski from the Iron County Jail. Why would Gitter have Tavolacci as his lawyer? It was like hanging out a sign. If Sandy worked for Gitter, would he also work for Johns and not tell Gitter? Not likely.

  “She was killing wolves and poaching deer.”

  “I do not poach,” Gitter said.

  “But you knew something was going down.”

  The man shook his head. “I barely knew her. I met her two years ago over to the gun club.”

  “That would be South Superior?”

  Gitter nodded. “I never met a woman who could shoot like her, and her knowledge of weapons was astounding. I hired her.”

  “You barely knew her, but you hired her and then she moved in with you.”

  “Eventually. At first she was just an employee. Have you never made an error?”

  Knowing how Haloran worked, Service doubted the relationship had evolved.

  “If you knew about the poaching and didn’t report her, that’s conspiracy,” Service said.

  “I trusted her. She could sell sand to Saudis and she brought in a lot of new business.”

  “She was hiring freelancers to make kills for her,” Gus said.

  “I didn’t know,” Gitter said, his voice betraying frustration. “She was a unique woman.”

  “How so?” Service asked.

  “Different, direct,” Gitter said. “And unpredictable. She was wide open in some ways and totally closed in others. She refused to talk about her past and would tell me only that she was from out east. She had an accent then, Massachusetts, Maine, something out that way.”

  “She had an accent then?” Service asked.

  “Right, but within weeks it was gone and she talked like she’d grown up right here.”

  “Do you do background checks on employees?”

  “I only hire former customers. Because they’ve bought weapons from me I’ve already gotten a clean background on them and there’s no need to do it again. My procedure is more efficient.”