Ice Hunter

by Joseph Heywood

  ICE HUNTER

  ALSO BY JOSEPH HEYWOOD

  Fiction

  Taxi Dancer (1985)

  The Berkut (1987)

  The Domino Conspiracy (1992)

  The Snowfly (2000)

  Woods Cop Mysteries

  Blue Wolf in Green Fire (2002)

  Chasing a Blond Moon (2003)

  Running Dark (2005)

  Strike Dog (2007)

  Death Roe (2009)

  Non-Fiction

  Covered Waters: Tempests of a Nomadic Trouter (2003)

  ICE HUNTER

  JOSEPH HEYWOOD

  THE LYONS PRESS

  GUILFORD, CONNECTICUT

  AN IMPRINT OF THE GLOBE PEQUOT PRESS

  Copyright © 2001 by Joseph Heywood

  First Lyons Press paperback edition, 2005

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to The Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

  The Lyons Press is an imprint of The Globe Pequot Press.

  Text design by Georgiana Goodwin

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  E-ISBN 978-0-7627-9459-1

  This novel and those to follow in the series are dedicated to the elite corps of more than two hundred men and women who wear the gold badge of conservation officers andserve the people and natural treasures of Michigan in ways and to degrees those of us who are served can hardly imagine.

  ICE HUNTER

  THE PAST

  1

  It was the week after his sixteenth birthday, four days after deer season had opened. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was blanketed in heavy wet snow. His father was out on patrol and Grady Service was buttoning up for the night when he saw headlights flash across the front of the house and heard a car door open and slam.

  Grady went to the front door and peered out though the curtain.

  There stood Conservation Officer Pease DuPlechet, his father’s closest friend and one of the old man’s regular drinking buds. Like his father, DuPlechet was a World War II veteran. A gunner on a destroyer at Okinawa when kamikazes struck, he had earned the Navy Cross stubbornly manning his gun through the bloody attack. He was a small, pugfaced man with leathery skin and a whitewall haircut.

  Usually Pease just came in but this time he stood there fidgeting.

  When Grady opened the door, DuPlechet flicked away his cigarette and stood rigidly. “Grady, your dad’s dead.”

  The boy showed no emotion. The old man had always taken life head-on. The only son was expected to do no less.

  “No varnish on this, kid. He stopped up to the Two-Woof Camp and had one too many. On the way out he stopped to help some hunters and got hit by a truck. He shouldn’t have been boozing on the job, but that’s done now and it’s never gonna get said again. You’ve got a right to know the truth.”

  “Thanks.” The only word Grady Service could manage.

  DuPlechet handed him his father’s wool overcoat, the amorphous garment COs called a horseblanket. “He’d want you to have this,” his father’s friend declared. “You want me to stay?”

  A gorge rose in the boy’s throat. “I’ll be all right.” He had always been all right and always alone, his father out chasing poachers or drinking with his friends. He watched Pease DuPlechet drive away, closed the door, turned on a light, and looked at the coat, which was stained with blood.

  No tears were shed, no sorrow racked him, and he did not mourn. He behaved the way the son of Gibson Service would be expected to behave.

  Conservation officers and DNR personnel came from all over the state to the funeral in Negaunee, where his father had been born. The cemetery was crowded with dignitaries, uniformed officers, and reporters. Michigan’s governor gave the eulogy.

  Silken words were purred over a cold corpse, the congressman declaring his father “an original and a hero.” The surviving son stood stiffly in the bloodstained green overcoat, not hearing the words and thinking that he was even more alone now than before.

  2

  It was late in the third period of the annual battle with Michigan Tech, whose ice hockey team soared among the elite of the country every year while Northern Michigan University’s new varsity program struggled to earn respect in the NCAA hockey community. They had played twice in two years and Northern had been twice humiliated, but tonight the teams were playing evenly and scoreless.

  Grady Service had played hockey most of his young life, and now as a senior he was captain of the green-and-gold-clad Wildcats. As a left-winger his job was less scoring goals than punishing the opposition, a job he undertook with passion. His opposing winger was a muscular Canadian from Toronto, a two-year All-American who would no doubt move on to the National Hockey League when he graduated. The winger, Toby Blanck, had size and speed and the disposition of a wolverine guarding a fresh kill. For two periods Service and Blanck had shadowed each other relentlessly, each hammering the other every time the puck was touched. Both of them played with a ferocity that caused others to veer clear of them at every opportunity.

  Service felt his coach tap his shoulder pad to tell him he was up next, then lean down to whisper, “We need a dinger, Grady.”

  The line changed on a whistle for an offside and Service moved into position beside Blanck.

  “Your asshole a little tight?” Blanck hissed as they waited for the linesman to drop the puck.

  Service said nothing. When the puck was dropped he leaned into Blanck and tied up his stick as the puck was flicked backward. He immediately disengaged and cut toward the boards, keeping his head up. Blanck was caught by surprise by the burst of speed and grunted to catch up. Service heard the other player’s skates crunching the ice in pursuit.

  The puck bounded softly off the boards onto Service’s stick. Realizing that Blanck had him lined up, he cupped the puck gently with his blade, dug his skate blade edges into the ice, and let the pursuing winger’s momentum carry him past. With Blanck beyond him, Grady Service cut straight to the slot, looking for his center or the other wing to pass to, but no green socks appeared in his peripheral vision. No choice but to try to split the two defensemen, who were trying to pinch him. He dug hard, pushing the puck ahead of him, his mind racing as knowledge and instinct mixed.

  Blanck would be right behind him in angry pursuit, but Service did not let his presence cut into his concentration. He aimed for a point between the converging defenders then slid the puck outside to the right, rammed his left shoulder against the left shoulder of the nearest defenseman, and bounced past him, gathering the puck back to his stick. Grady found himself one on one against the goalie. He faked to the keeper’s catching glove then cut sharply to his own left, flipping a sharp backhander low over the goalie’s stick.

  He did not see the puck go into the net. He heard the start of a roar from the fans and then felt himself driven hard into the boards behind the net. As he bounced off he felt fists pounding on the side of his head. He dropped his gloves, took a stride to get separation, and saw the wild eyes of Blanck. There was no time to think. He grabbed Blanck’s sweater with both hands, freed his right hand, and began punching wildly.

  The next thing he knew Blanck wa
s on his back unconscious and bleeding as teammates pulled Service away.

  Grady watched from the penalty box as trainers carried Blanck off the ice on a stretcher. He shuddered at the huge stain of blood coagulating on the slushy ice behind the net.

  The locker room was bedlam afterward. His coach gave him the game puck. Northern had won 1–0, its first win over its archrival. It was a meaningless victory. Tech was headed for the playoffs and Northern had long ago slipped out of contention for the postseason.

  After showering and getting dressed, Grady stepped out of the locker room to find a man in a baggy suit and garish flowered tie waiting in the tunnel. The man wore a charcoal-gray fedora with a small red feather in the hatband.

  He looked at Service’s bloodstained green wool coat and said, “You’ll need a new coat when you hit the Bigs. I’m Billy Veach, head scout for the Red Wings. We like your game, Service. Tell the truth, we don’t care much for the college game, but we’ve watched you a long time and we think you can play. We’re going to draft you this summer and you’ll get an invite to camp in the fall. What to you think about that?”

  “I don’t know,” Grady Service said.

  Veach, an NHL all-star in his playing days, looked perplexed. “The hell you say?”

  “How’s Blanck?” Service asked.

  “The sawbones are looking him over, eh? Overrated, that bugger. Good size, but a pretty boy. You put him in his place.”

  “I’m not proud of it,” Service said.

  “Hey, breaks of the game, Service. You give and you take.”

  Service headed for the opposing locker room and Veach followed, slipping a card into the young player’s coat pocket.

  Tech’s coach was John McInnes, a legend in college hockey. As soon as he saw Service, he said, “Toby’s gonna be okay.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

  “Hell, we all know that. You just did your job, and he took the first swing. Let’s mark her down to frustration and be done with it.” The famous coach stuck out his hand. “Good luck in the NHL, eh?”

  But Toby Blanck was not okay. His skull was fractured and he was critical for nearly a week before pulling through. A surgeon was flown up from Ann Arbor and operated, declaring afterward that he had put a metal plate in the player’s head and his hockey career was ended. Grady Service watched the developments from a distance and made up his mind that he too was finished with the “game.” He graduated that year, got his degree, volunteered for the Marine Corps, trained at Parris Island and was shipped to Vietnam, where the violence was not in the interests of a mindless game.

  3

  Department of Natural Resources Director Eeno Tenni stood wringing his hands as the wash of the blue and white state police helicopter swept across the empty parking lot.

  Conservation Officer Grady Service stood behind the director and next to Lorne O’Driscoll, chief of law enforcment, the DNR’s division charged with enforcing the state’s fish and game laws.

  The call to the Higgins Lake meeting had come late the night before, while Service was patrolling north of the village of Ralph, near Flat Rock Creek. It was early October and black bear season was under way; Service had spent a long day checking hunters and their bear dogs. The call for the meeting had come down not through channels but directly from the chief. Despite a poor sense of humor, O’Driscoll was widely respected by the state’s conservation officers. He set high standards for the force and would not allow such standards to be compromised.

  It had been a brief telephone conversation. “The governor wants to see you at the CCC at zero eight hundred.” The CCC was the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum at the north end of Higgins Lake in the north-central part of the state, a five-hour drive from Service’s home halfway between Escanaba and Marquette. “Be in proper uniform,” O’Driscoll warned tersely before hanging up.

  Service didn’t have to ask the subject of the meeting. He had known this was coming. All that had been in doubt was when.

  There was a chill in the early-autumn air as Service and his superiors stood in the parking lot that served as a convenient helipad. In the distance the hardwoods were fading to pastels, while towering white pines maintained their dark green. A sloppy vee of geese passed over the tree line, their sounds drowned out by the approaching helicopter.

  Governor Samuel Adams Bozian hopped out of the state police chopper and strode purposefully toward the men, his wispy silver hair whipped by rotor wash.

  The governor was an undistinguished, rotund man who had been in politics since college. He appeared soft but was well established in his first term as a formidable politician with a firm hold on the state’s reins and a burgeoning national reputation.

  Eeno Tenni rushed forward to greet the governor, but Bozian ignored him and marched directly on to Service and O’Driscoll.

  “Service,” the governor said, fixing his hard blue eyes on the conservation officer. “This meeting is off the record. I’m here as a father, not as governor.”

  “Yessir,” Service said, knowing full well that Bozian was always acting as governor.

  Bozian’s son had been a probationary conservation officer, and in one of his rotating assignments had been sent to Grady Service, whose job it was to train and evaluate him. All probationary officers spent a year in such rotations before being declared qualified to handle the demanding and taxing work of a fully certified CO. Getting to this point was tough for any candidate. Of five thousand candidates, only four or five a year made it all the way through probation to full duty. The governor’s son, Samuel A. Bozian III, was called Trip, looked nothing like his father, and lacked all of his father’s fire.

  In July Service and Trip Bozian had been called to a private campground near Rapid River to handle some rowdies, who turned out to be very drunk members of a Flint motorcycle gang called the Blood Moon Barbarians. As motorcycle gangs went the Barbarians were more unruly than dangerous, and Service had bumped heads with them before. They usually showed up somewhere in his district in July, after the Fourth, which was a good thing because on Independence Day the campgrounds tended to be filled with families.

  The two COs’ arrival had been greeted by a cacophony of drunken catcalls and a long string of profanity.

  Service recognized the group’s leader, a man in his thirties with a stringy blond ponytail and a small gold dog bone in his nose, which gave rise to his nickname, Nosebone.

  The diminutive and muscle-bound leader stepped forward to meet Service, grinning the way he always did.

  “Bone,” Service said.

  “What’s happenin’, officer?” the biker replied.

  “Your crowd’s over the top, eh?”

  The biker grinned. “Just enjoying the beauty of nature.”

  “You’re gonna have to break it up and dump the beer, Bone.” No doubt some of the bikers were on drugs too, but Service was neither stupid nor heroic about such confrontations. Two against many were lousy odds. They’d need more backup to shake them down. Better to calm the scene now and, if circumstances warranted, call in help later to check for illegal substances. Mostly he just wanted to shut them up and be finished with it.

  “Dump the brews? The state gonna pay us back?”

  “It’ll be cheaper to dump the alcohol than call in a lawyer and make bail,” Service said calmly.

  Nosebone had a long rap sheet, but Service could see that this wasn’t one of his dark moods. He’d bitch, dump the alcohol, get his troops in order, and the COs could be on their way.

  “Yah, I guess,” the biker said. “Gettin’ so you can’t have a little howl anymore.”

  “How it is,” Service said, not unsympathetic to the biker’s feelings. “You got a problem with the laws, talk to your state rep. I just enforce the laws they give me.”

  “Yah,” Nosebone said.
>
  The exact sequence of what had occurred next was stuck in Service’s mind. Trip Bozian sort of swaggered up to half a dozen bikers and ordered them to put down their beer cans. Service noticed too late that the probie’s gun holster had been unsnapped.

  “Fuck off,” one of the bikers growled at Service’s partner.

  Trip Bozian fumbled for his firearm, and before Service could intervene the weapon was out and the probie’s hand was shaking. The PCO ordered the bikers to move, but the men stubbornly held their ground. When they didn’t respond, he fired one round into the ground across the front of them, kicking up small clods of hard dirt.

  The shot caused a momentary scramble as the bikers retreated, roaring in one voice.

  “Fuck this,” Nosebone said. “Barney Fife can’t shoot at us like that.”

  Service was in a difficult position. Bozian had made a major mistake, drawing his weapon and discharging it, but he couldn’t let the bikers react and he couldn’t reprimand Bozian in front of them or this would split them and give an edge to the rowdies.

  “Dump the suds and call it a night,” Service said with a steely voice to the biker.

  Nosebone studied him momentarily, tipped his can, let the foamy beer run out, and told the others to do the same, which they did, but not without grousing.

  “Time for you to take your herd and clear out,” Service said.

  “We paid ahead,” the leader complained.

  “You shoulda thought about that before you turned loose the menagerie.”

  “The what?”

  “Move out,” Service repeated, and after taking a moment to consider his options Nosebone gave the signal. The bikers went to their hogs, cranked them up, and departed, several of them doing dirt-spewing wheelies and playing cowboy in pathetic displays of opposition.