Ice Hunter

by Joseph Heywood

  “And you get to be the messenger.”

  “I’m your lieutenant.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Give it to me. I can take whatever you dish out.”

  “Whatever I decide, you will accept it.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean it, Officer Service. I want your solemn promise.”

  “You’ve got it,” he said, wincing.

  “Effective immediately, you are on a sixty-day suspension without pay.”

  Shit. He had money in the bank, so that part was no big deal. But sixty days? Usually suspensions lasted a few days at most. This wasn’t a slap; it was a two-by-four between the eyes.

  “When the suspension is over,” she said, “you will report back here to me.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Most of it,” she said.

  “Money doesn’t mean much to me,” he told her.

  “I know that.”

  “Anything else?”

  She stared at him.

  He got up. “You want my badge and sidearm?”

  She nodded. “Under the circumstances.” He placed them on her desk and started for the door, but stopped. There was something peculiar in her voice and manner.

  “Most of it?” he asked, turning back.

  “Thank you for your cooperation . . . Special Investigator Service.”

  He stared at her with an open mouth. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  He charged her desk. “No fucking way, Lis.”

  “You gave me your solemn promise, Detective.” She was grinning. “You snookered me.”

  A smile stretched across her face. “I did, didn’t I.”

  “I am a CO, pure and simple.”

  “Grady Service, you are anything but simple and I will not even attempt to address the purity issue.”

  “No way,” he said.

  “Chief O’Driscoll has decided it’s time to extend the special investigations mission to the Upper Peninsula. You’ll report directly to me, with a dotted line to Captain Grant.”

  “Jesus H. Christ! What are you trying to do to me?”

  “We’re trying to save your ass,” she said. “And harness your power.” She formed a steeple with her fingers and sat back. “Captain Grant and I figure that since your cases always turn complex, why not just immerse you in complexity from the get-go? You’ll be doing what you always do and now nobody can bitch.”

  “What about the Tract?” he asked.

  “Day to day, it will no longer be your concern.”

  “Whose?”

  “McCants.”

  He grunted. She would do a good job and he could always check on her. “You think you’re pretty smart.”

  “No, Grady. I know I’m smart.”

  He shook his head in resignation and flipped McKower a casual salute. “Maybe when I get back in the saddle, the first thing I’ll do is take a long, close look at the governor.”

  His long-ago protégé held her head in her hands and began to laugh uncontrollably.

  23

  Service had checked Nantz’s house on his return from Crystal Falls but there had been no sign of her or his dog. When he got to his cabin he called her but she didn’t answer. Nobody at the district office in Escanaba knew where she was because she had called in to take four vacation days. Just before fire season? Service thought. She was up to something.

  Out of desperation he drove to the Tract, but found no sign of her truck. He hiked the contour trail to the log slide and headed north along the river. She was not there either and he chided himself for hoping she would be. He poked in the water where Newf had found the diamond. He had to find the source and do something about it. What this would be he had no idea, but he had to look, and get his mind off Nantz.

  The bottom here was shallow and the river a series of rocky ledges, like steps. He had gone a mile or so when he sensed something and froze, looking up a slight rise on the eastern bank.

  There sat a grinning Maridly Nantz with Newf beside her. Nantz wore running shorts, a gray tank top, and her work boots. Her hair was in a green doo rag and she was glistening with perspiration. The dog wagged her tail.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked. “I’ve been calling for days!”

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said quietly.

  “You didn’t tell anyone where you were.”

  “I knew you’d find me.”

  “And if I didn’t?”

  “You did.”

  Unassailable logic. Newf bolted down the embankment and jumped into the water, barking and splashing him. They climbed up the incline together and he saw Nantz’s tent pitched about twenty yards back. She had dug a firepit and neatly lined it with stones. He saw a white plastic cooler and two foldable camp chairs.

  “You look pretty smug,” he said.

  “Do I?” She said, rubbing Newf’s ears.

  “I know you, Nantz.”

  “Not biblically,” she said. “Yet.”

  “Don’t tease.”

  “Believe me, I’m not. Teasing time is over, buster.” She got up took his hand led him north. As they walked, he told her what had happened.

  She stopped them at a small, rocky outcrop above the water’s edge.

  He looked at the color and frowned. “Another pipe?” Service felt his belly roll.

  “No, my dear. This is the pipe.”

  The eroding outcrop barely protruded from the bank, about five or six feet over the water. She knelt beside it. Service joined her.

  “The stones come from here,” she said. “And tumble downstream.”

  “It’s a tiny,” Service said.

  “Some good things come in small packages.”

  “We have it all now,” he said. “I just wish I knew who put the muscle on Bozian.”

  She grinned mischievously.

  Suddenly he understood. “You.”

  “I’ve known that jerk forever. Dad had known him since he was in the legislature. Sam said he was happy to see me when I went over to the island, but he wasn’t so happy when I left. I told him the Knipes were involved in two murders and it wouldn’t look too good if he was seen as trying to cut red tape for murderers and thieves. Not with his political stance against crime and criminals.”

  Grady Service suddenly had no words.

  “The deal is this,” she said. “The rock erodes a little each winter. Water gets into the cracks, freezes, expands, and causes pieces to break off. Some of the pieces have gems in them.”

  She stood, held out her hand, and led him into the forest to a little clearing where there was a green tarp. Under it were bags of cement, two shovels, trowels, and buckets.

  “It took me two days to lug all this stuff in here. The gravel for the cement we take from the Mosquito,” she said.

  “You brought all this in here? Alone?”

  “If we cap the rock, we can stop the erosion. We just need to check on it from time to time and do some patching.”

  “The weather will get to it.”

  “Not if we keep capping.”

  “You’ve got this all figured out.”

  “No diamonds, no rumors. No rumors, no stampede. I called Rocky, who told me what to do.”

  Service peeled off his shirt and hoisted two bags. The pain was agonizing. One more time, he told his shoulder. Don’t give out now.

  They worked all afternoon. First they covered the outcrop with thick plastic. Then they installed wire mesh over the plastic. Finally they poured the cement, and Nantz finished it by placing other rocks and logs in the wet cement to make it look more natural.

  “I don’t know,” Service said when the work was done.


  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Nature always takes over.”

  “Always?”

  “Yeah and right now she’s saying forget work.”

  They hauled shovels and empty bags and other gear back to the campsite.

  “I’m suspended for sixty days,” he said as they walked.

  “Did you deserve it?”

  “Probably,” he said.

  Nantz smiled. “You mean you have two months of summer with nothing to do?”

  “Looks like.”

  “I hope it rains cats and dogs,” the fire marshal said. “I think you are going to have one hell of a lot to do inside.”

  They both laughed and kissed tenderly.

  Dark was falling. They cooked freeze-dried pasta and Italian vegetables over a two-burner Coleman stove. Nantz opened a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino and cracked two loaves of hard bread into pieces.

  After dinner they went down to the river and bathed in the icy water. It felt good.

  “Tree huggers would kick our asses for using shampoo in the water,” Service said.

  “Let ’em kick,” Nantz said as he rubbed shampoo into her hair.

  They carried their clothes back to camp. Nantz added wood to the fire.

  Nantz produced a bottle of champagne and poured it into tin cups. “To an end or to a beginning?” she asked, raising her cup.

  “To us,” he said.

  She touched his arm. “Okay, Banger, it’s time we determine the validity of that handle.”

  The sky was filled with stars and Service lay beside the fire on an air mattress, Nantz on top of him. He had no idea how long they had been making love. Time was suspended and even his shoulder no longer ached.

  In the distance a bottle rocket flashed up from treetops and burst into a shower of gaudy sparks.

  “Somebody’s shooting fireworks,” Service said.

  “We’re making our own,” Nantz whispered.

  “They could start a fire.”

  “Let ’em. It won’t be anything compared to the one we’ve lit.”

  EPILOGUE

  It was nearly daylight. The rain fell softly and steadily as it had for nearly a week. Cat meowed to be let out and Newf sniffed at her as they waited impatiently.

  Maridly Nantz let the two animals out, stretched and yawned.

  Service began to dance slowly around the porch, looking out on the creek.

  Nantz poured two cups of coffee and sat on the glider she had bought the day before at Forsberg’s store.

  She watched Service for a while and said, “Is that a dance or a palsy?”

  “Rain dance,” he said, continuing.

  “We have rain,” she said.

  “I want more,” he said.

  She smiled and raised her cup in salute. “Dance, baby, dance.” After a pause she added, “I have to fly down to Lansing at the end of the week.”

  Grady Service stopped dancing and sat beside her.

  “For what?”

  She looked smug. “I took the CO test,” she said.

  He stared at her.

  “I’ve already talked to Lis and Captain Grant and now they want me in Lansing.”

  “You never said anything about this.”

  “There was nothing to say before now. How do you feel about it?”

  He had no doubt that she would be good at the job.

  “I was thinking about this before we met. I want work that counts all year.”

  Service said, “As a probie they’ll move you all over the state for a year.”

  “Whatever it takes,” she said. “Does that bother you?”

  It did and he said so.

  She reached over and rubbed his neck. “Good answer.”

  They had been taking it a day at a time and not talked seriously about a future together. Since their time in the Tract they had split time between their places.

  Nantz kissed his cheek, patted his hand, and whispered, “Don’t worry. We’re going to be just fine.”

  “We are?”

  “Damn right,” she said, giving him a long passionate kiss he wished would never end.

  “Hungry?” she said, breaking away.

  “The cupboard is empty.”

  She went into the house and got his fly rod but didn’t hand it to him. “Nature always provides.” She picked out a size-eighteen Adams and tied it on quickly. He followed her down to the creek and sat down on a log.

  “Tough casting down here.”

  She ignored him, stripped out some line, and cast across the creek and slightly upstream, mending automatically. On her fourth or fifth cast a large fish sucked the fly under. The rod immediately bent under the fish’s weight. It took a few minutes to get the fish to the bank, and by then Service had fetched a net, which he slid under the struggling trout. It was a good eighteen inches.

  “Perfect for two of us,” he said.

  “Let it go,” she said. “Others need its genes.” Newf came down, sniffed the fish, and galloped back up the bank.

  Service gently released the trout into dark water and felt her arms slide around his neck. “I won’t kill a fish like that, and I won’t do anything to kill us either.”

  She felt good in his arms.

  “What do we have?” he asked.

  “A very interesting future, Service.”

  When she went back to fishing, he returned to his log and watched her silhouette as she worked the water gracefully and efficiently.

  After a while he said, “Is there anything you can’t do, Nantz?”

  “I think we are in the process of finding that out,” she said as she deftly threw another cast.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joseph Heywood is the author of The Berkut, Taxi Driver, The Domino Conspiracy, The Snowfly, and the Woods Cop Mystery Series, featuring Grady Service. Heywood lives in Portage, Michigan.