But Service heard more sounds from inside the van. He climbed back on top and used his light. There was a woman in back.
“Are you hurt?”
“Where’s Roy? I need Roy.”
“The driver?” Why had the man said he was alone?
“Roy!” she shouted. “You know Roy?” she asked Service.
The light showed a nasty knot on her forehead, and it was growing. Drunks. He helped her out and looked for the man, but he was gone. Service took the woman to his truck.
“Stay right here.”
The woman began to sob and shake. “Where’s Roy?”
He wanted to tell her that the chickenshit was trying to leave her high and dry, but he kept quiet. Using his light he spotted the man on the road, stumbling along and falling every few feet. He ran to Roy, who suddenly turned and held up his hands and toppled backward on the loose sand road, raising a small cloud of dust.
When Service got him to his feet, the man stuck his hands in his pockets and weaved. Service led him back to the truck and put him inside with the woman.
The woman said, “Where’s the van, Roy?”
“I don’t know nothing about a van,” he said. “I was taking a walk.”
She began to slap him and he struck back in defense. Service wedged himself between them and immediately became their joint target. The woman punched him hard three or four times on the back of the head before he could subdue her. He held the man off with one hand on his bloody forehead; he was too drunk to resist.
Service radioed for Avery, who this time came to his assistance.
They administered Breathalyzers. The woman blew .22 and the man .31. They were way over the legal limit. The man’s name was Boven, the woman Daviros, both from Mackinaw City.
Service read them their rights and Avery drove them away.
He was glad that Kira seemed to be asleep when he got back. It was nearly 4 a.m.
“Everything under control?” she asked in the dark as he crawled onto the bed beside her. Everything except the world, he thought. Nights like this were a lot more common for a CO than most people could imagine, much less cope with.
“It’s fine,” he said, kicking off his boots.
She tried to caress his face. “Well, we’re awake . . . ?”
He said, “I need sleep, Kira.” She rolled over with a loud sigh.
He knew Kira was miffed and he lay there for a few minutes, then got up and called Candy McCants. They quickly made a plan for the morning.
McCants pulled up to his house before sunrise, as promised, towing a steel barrel trap, which they moved down into the woods and baited with a mesh bag loaded with smoked bacon.
“You think she’ll come back?” she asked.
“I hope not,” he said. It was depressing how much time was wasted trapping and moving nuisance bears in summer. August was the worst because the tourist traffic was heaviest, and they all had food along and didn’t know how to take care of it. Bears and idiots: It was a bad combination.
“Your face looks like a waffle,” McCants said.
“You ought to see the other guy,” he said, trying to make a joke.
McCants stayed for breakfast, which Service cooked. While bacon fried, he awoke Kira, who came to the table in her robe and eyed them sleepily.
“Did I miss something?”
When breakfast was done, Kira whispered to McCants, “Tell him to take the day off.”
McCants said, “You tell him.”
Kira was cool when he and McCants went out to their trucks.
“She up to this life?” she asked.
“Is anybody?” he answered.
His formal workday began at the Marquette County Sheriff’s Department, where he made out reports on the drunks and cycle rider. Avery, of course, was off duty and home sleeping, while he was back on duty. Normal. The drunks had told Avery they had left Mackinaw City, “just for a drive,” and begun drinking road beers. They had come well over a hundred miles and were still alive. God watched over drunks. Sometimes.
The cycle rider was still in the hospital in serious but stable condition.
After writing his reports and affixing it to Avery’s Service called Sergeant Parker and told him about the bear and the trap and asked for a suggestion of where to put the sow and her cubs if she cooperated and got into the trap, which was far from a given. Parker told him he expected COs to handle such problems on their own initiative. Classic Parker, never taking responsibility, just credit.
He went to Rollie Harris’s house in Marquette to see Jean and Lanny. Several COs and neighbors were already there, and the kitchen was piled with food. In an emergency people tended to pull together. Why couldn’t they behave this way when there was no emergency?
Jean Harris hugged him tight but didn’t cry. A CO’s spouse was the same as a soldier’s spouse. You kept it together.
“Rollie said you were the best,” she whispered. “He said no matter what happened, no matter how crazy things got, he could always count on you.”
That shit again. “We’ll miss Rollie,” Service mumbled. He thought there might be a creator, but doubted heaven or hell. Dead was dead.
He talked to Lanny for a while. She had puffy eyes but was trying to be brave. Service left Harris’s and went to a pay phone, using a prepaid phone card. He was always picking them up in convenience stores: They were impossible to trace.
Simon del Olmo reported that he had visited the Iron County deeds office. The Knipes had a quite a number of small parcels and lots, all located haphazardly around Lake Ellen, the general area where diamond-bearing structures were rumored to be.
“They’re in the hunt, compadre,” del Olmo said.
“Find out if they’re trying to peddle or lease their parcels, okay? And find out if they have mineral rights for the properties.”
“Bueno, Bubba.”
Service stared at the phone. Bueno, Bubba? He laughed out loud. Del Olmo was brash.
The next call went to Joe Flap.
“How we doin’ on that chopper?”
“Hey,” Flap said. “I got the beer. That Nantz broad is a real dilly.”
Dilly? What the hell did that mean?
“No blue chopper yet, but I’m not a quitter,” Flap said.
Service rubbed his eyes and called Gus Turnage but got his machine; he left a message asking him to call tonight. The way his luck was running, Gus would wake him up.
McCants met him for lunch at a pasty shop called Shovels. It wasn’t far from Marquette Prison, where the worst prisoners in the state penal system were housed.
“You had a hell of a night,” she said. “You see Jean?”
He nodded.
“I was over there earlier,” she said. “Pretty damn sad. I can’t believe the LT’s gone. How come death always takes the good ones first?”
“Thanks,” he said. He was nearly a decade older than Rollie.
“Not you,” she said. “Don’t be so sensitive. You think Lisette will get his job?”
He hadn’t thought about it. “Only if no other LT wants it. She’s low man on the totem pole.”
“But she’s perfect for the job, yes?”
He nodded. It was true.
They ordered gravy with pasties. Service drank three cups of black coffee and smoked several cigarettes. The pasties were too dry, but filling. Brought to the U.P. by Cornish miners in the previous century, they were the area’s dish of choice. In essence potpies filled with pork, rutabagas, and onions, the pies folded over to form a half moon, a shape that let miners heat them in the mines on their shovel blades over fires and torches. Service ate only a few bites of the pasty and lit another cigarette.
“You need to cut down on the smokes,” McCants said.
“Are yo
u my mother?”
“You never had a mother,” she said, putting out her hand. “You were born of wild animals in the woods. Can I have one?” she asked meekly.
Lemich would meet him tomorrow morning. How much should he tell the man? Without the hockey-crazy professor’s knowledge, he wasn’t likely to learn much. He thought momentarily about inviting Nantz but decided against it.
He stopped at Silver Creek on the way south and checked the licenses of three men using Mepps spinners for brown trout. They had two seventeen-inch dandies. Their fishing licenses were fine and they were respectful. They were up from Mount Pleasant for a few days and happy to be fishing instead of working.
Service was glad it was summer. In late spring and into June warm-water species spawned and made people crazy. In fall cold-water fish moved up the streams and hunters started in. More craziness. Summer had its share of nuts, but the weather was better.
His thoughts about weather told him he was getting punchy on too little sleep and too much caffeine.
Central dispatch in Lansing called him on the radio when he was on US 41 and told him a man in Ladoga wanted to see a CO right away.
“About what?”
The dispatcher wasn’t sure, which was typical. Lansing wanted control, but didn’t have a clue about what COs needed in the real world where they operated. He got the name and address and headed for Ladoga.
The village, such as it was, was east of US 41, south of Gwinn. The call came from a two-story house across from a fourplex that looked like a cheap motel that had been modified. When K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base had been active the locals had built apartments, hoping to harvest some easy military cash. Now the Air Force was gone, the base decommissioned, and most of the apartments vacant.
The man at the house was named Alping. He owned the fourplex.
“Something I want you to see,” the man said. He was short and obese and badly needed a haircut. He wheezed and puffed as he walked.
There was a terrible stink coming from an end apartment. “Have you been inside yet?” Service asked.
“No way.”
The smell was organic, rotting, but not human. In his experience, dead people had a unique scent.
“Open it.”
“You gonna take out your gun?”
“No.” When people looked at a uniform they tended to see only the badge and sidearm. TV made it seem as though cops shot people every day. Unlike cities, up here everybody was armed. There were fewer burglaries than in cities because northern property owners knew how to shoot and would. The downside was that there were more accidental shootings too.
The smell that rolled out the open door was nauseating. Definitely not human, but definitely something dead and decomposing.
The owner remained outside.
The smell was strongest from the cellar door. Service flipped on the cellar light and crept gingerly down the wooden steps. The floor was littered with the carcasses and viscera of skinned raccoons. Service counted up to twenty and stopped. Skinned and dumped. He trudged back up the stairs and looked at the carpet runner, looking for blood. None was in evidence, meaning they had been brought downstairs and skinned. Where were the pelts? None of this added up.
“Who’s the tenant?” Service asked Alping.
“An asshole four-flusher named Bowin, behind in payments. I told him he had till the end of the week or he’d be evicted. Then he run off and didn’t pay.”
“How do I contact Mr. Bowin?”
“You tell him I’m keeping the damage deposit and I’m gonna sue his ass.”
“Sir?”
“I don’t got a number.”
“How long has Bowin been your tenant?”
“They come last fall.”
They? “Does he work around here?”
“Don’t know. He and his whore were in and out at all hours. I’d see ’em one day, then not for several days. One time I never seen ’em for a month or more.”
“Is the woman his wife?”
“I don’t know and he never said. You want my opinion?”
“Did he have a vehicle?”
“Yah, a brown van with a lot of Bondo. Piece of shit was falling apart.”
Service closed his eyes. Could it be?
“What is Bowin’s first name?”
“Roy,” the man said. “Or so he claims.”
“Did Bowin have a lease?”
“Nah, he paid cash, three months in advance, but now he’s been here for six more and he owes me.”
“You never saw his driver’s license?”
“Didn’t need it. It was cash up front and at first he seemed decent enough. A few years back I’d never have taken him, but those assholes in Washington closed the base and a body has to recoup investment, right? What’s the state gonna do for me? That’s what I want to know. You can kill only so many raccoons, right?”
“There’s no limit on coons.”
“That don’t sound right to me.”
Service was not going to dig out his regs. “That’s the law. Please don’t move the carcasses until I get back to you.”
“You just gonna let them stink up my place?”
Service said, “We’ll take care of them later. Right now they’re evidence.”
Alping was still boiling when Service left and drove to the county jail. Alping had given him the name Roy Bowin and described a brown van. At the jail he had a Roy Boven and a brown van. These were not likely to be coincidences.
The couple from the previous night were still in jail. They were not going to be arraigned until this evening. Service arranged to talk to them separately.
The man looked sick, his skin pallid gray-green; he had the sweats. “You remember me, Mister Boven?”
The man half looked up, muttered, “I’m so sorry about this.”
“You have no previous OUILs. Why this time?”
No answer.
“Is the van yours?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you hunt or fish? Trap?”
“No, never.”
“You live in Mackinaw City, right?”
Boven nodded unenthusiastically. A bandage stretched across his forehead where the cut had been repaired.
“Ms. Daviros too?”
Another nod. He was obviously hurting.
“Are you married, Mister Boven?”
Boven looked up with panic in his eyes. “Did you call my wife?”
“No. Ms. Daviros isn’t your wife?”
The only answer was a hangdog look.
“Do you like raccoons?”
Deep sigh, no answer, no response.
Service met the woman next. She was charged with drinking in a vehicle and could have been released last night, but refused, saying she wanted to remain with Boven. Not an unusual request. The deputies had housed her in the jail. She was mid-thirties, a little plump, looking better than Boven, but she had a nasty blue-and-violet knot on her head.
“How long do we have to stay here?” she asked.
Time to push. “Not much longer. I had a call today from a man named Alping. You and Boven have been using different names. He claims you owe him rent for an apartment in Ladoga. He’s filed a complaint and can come in and identify both of you, if that’s what you want.”
She looked past him, looking weary. “You don’t have to do that. It was us.”
“He says you left without paying back rent.”
“That’s a damn lie,” she said, her head snapping up. “Roy paid him ahead in cash. We have receipts. He’s a total jerk, that guy. When we weren’t there, he turned off our heat and electricity. Once last winter the pipes froze and he tried to stick Roy with the bill. We told him we were moving out. Yesterday was our last day.”
“What about the coons?”
The woman had a blank look. “What coons?”
“Never mind.” She didn’t know anything about them. Neither did Boven. “You two aren’t married.”
“We’re married . . . just not to each other.”
“You drove a long way.”
“We wanted to be careful.”
“But you told Alping you were moving out?”
She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We’ve both told our spouses we want divorces. There’s no sense driving all this way anymore.”
“How’d Alping react when you told him you were moving out?”
“He flipped out. The man has a temper and he’s a bully. He said we had a one-year lease and he was going to sue. But there was no lease, I swear. He’s trying to hold us up. He said he was going to get us and make big trouble for us. We’re in trouble,” she added.
Service tried to reassure her. “This is Boven’s first OUIL. He’s going to get hit hard, but it’s worse for repeat offenders.”
“I’m not talking about that trouble,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”
Service blinked several times.
She said, “Not by Roy or my husband. By another guy,” she said with a catch in her voice. “God, I can’t believe this has happened.”
Service had heard enough. “Roy used the name Bowin to rent the apartment?”
She nodded.
Service left her and made some telephone calls. He found out that Alping had a fur harvester’s license from the previous autumn.
When Service got to Alping’s yard, the man came out quickly. “I called your superior,” he said. “Now we’ll see who does what.”
Sergeant Parker pulled in moments after Service. He looked smug. Parker wouldn’t leave his office unless he thought he could get something on Service.
Alping ranted about his no-good tenants and the conservation officer. Service kept quiet. Parker listened politely, then the sergeant asked for the key. When Alping said he would come along, Parker told him to stay where he was.
Service wondered what was up.
Parker looked at the rotting carcasses with an impassive face. “What’s your read?” he asked his subordinate.
Ice Hunter Page 22
