Buckular Dystrophy

by Joseph Heywood

  “Died how?” she asked.

  “Rolled over on his face in his crib and suffocated.”

  “My God,” Friday said.

  “I used to cut their grass and shovel their snow and make wood for them. Nice people, bent badly.”

  “No other kids?”

  “Nope. Blame them?” Service saw Tuesday hug her son and shake her head.

  “Those people have been crushed by life and still want to make a deer complaint?” Friday asked.

  “Says something about skewed priorities,” he said. “Life goes on, no matter what.”

  “Ya think?”

  They were in the checkout line when Service saw a man come through the automatic in-door, spy him, and crash back through shoppers in flight.

  “Handle the bill,” he told Friday and took off, catching up to the man at the edge of the parking lot and pinning him to a metal light pole. “Willie Nelson Niemi. What rock did you crawl out from under? I haven’t seen your ass in years. Why’d you do a one-eighty when you saw me?”

  “Din’t see you,” the slightly built man said. “Forgot somepin’ is all.

  Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I forget what I forgot. You scareded me.”

  “Did I? Where you been, Willie?”

  “Vacation.”

  “Yah, where? Jackson?”

  The man hung his head. “Newberry.”

  “For what?”

  “Darn you, Grady, you know ain’t polite ask such of a fella.”

  “You feeling guilty about something, Willie? We’re just talking, a couple of old pals.”

  “My name ain’t Willie. It’s Virpi. Virpi Niemi.”

  “What did they get you for this time?” Service pressed.

  “Meth manufacture. I got set up, I swear.”

  “Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

  “Ain’t no joke. I didn’t do not’in’ wrong.”

  Nothing except to be born into a shallow family’s narrow gene pool of law-breakers. “Guess you won’t be hunting deer with a firearm,” Service said.

  “But I can still hunt with a bow, right?”

  “When did Newberry release you?” Service asked.

  “This mornin’.”

  Good god. “Virpi, I doubt you have the strength to draw back a bow, much less hold it back.”

  “Hey I pushed some iron while I was on vacation.”

  Service laughed out loud. “Please don’t complicate your life with more stupidity,” he told the man. “You need meat, call me, and I’ll bring you a deer.”

  “No, sir, not me never. I don’t take no handouts. . . . You’d do that, bringme a buck?”

  It would beat chasing around a near-lunatic drunk on blood sport. “Sure. But just venison, not necessarily a buck.”

  “But a real man needs buck, show he’s real man.”

  Service grunted. “You want the meat or not?”

  “Okay, yah, t’anks.”

  “You got work?”

  “Cuttin’ pulps for my cousin Swinton.”

  Grady Service gave Niemi one of his business cards. “You need a deer, call me. Just use the number on the card and I’ll hook you up. Okay? And if you hear of any of your asshole old buds screwing up, call me and I’ll get you a buck. How big you want?” he asked.

  “Ten-point?” Niemi ventured.

  “Sure, ten is possible, maybe. I might could organize that—but only for the right information.”

  “How soon?” Niemi asked. “Man needs to get his buck on the opener, ya know.”

  Service knew then that Niemi was thinking about the various area big buck contests, which offered cash prizes. But most contests required a hunting tag on the dead animal, not a DNR donation ticket.

  “I can probably do something on the opener.” Sooner or later he’d end up confiscating a deer. Usually it was later in the season for the big ones, but you just couldn’t predict.

  “Cool,” Niemi said, skulking away.

  “If you call with the right information,” Service yelled after the man, who raised an arm but did not look back.

  “You ain’t such a big prick,” Niemi yelled from the shadows as Friday walked up and said, “I’d have to take issue with that contention.”

  “I think he meant it as a compliment,” Service told her.

  Friday squeezed his arm. “Me too. Did we have some flower business out here in the parking lot?”

  “Violet fresh from the state greenhouse.”

  “Huh,” she said. “Think it straightened him out?”

  “Has it ever?” the conservation officer countered.

  “There’s Allerdyce,” she reminded him.

  “I’m not buying that program yet.”

  “The man very recently saved your life,” she said. “And I am thankful.

  Nevertheless.”

  Allerdyce. His nemesis in so many ways. A poacher and a felon. And yet, the old reprobate had stepped up more than once to help Service, once to save his life, maybe even twice. Claims he’s reformed, but how does a lifelong violator actually reform? Is it even possible?

  CHAPTER 11

  New Swanzy, Marquette County

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12

  Just as he was driving down Friday’s street, Service’s work cell phone clicked into life.

  “Grady, Chief Waco. Got a minute?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is about those kids in that case you fellas are calling the 8-1.“

  Yes?”

  “The Missouri cigarettes?”

  “What about them?”

  “There’s an ATF agent from Springfield, and she’s an old friend. The cigarette information got passed to the ATF here, and now it’s out in Missouri with Special Agent Gelatine Neutre.”

  “Neutre?”

  “She’s an old colleague and a top agent, a lot like you. She never gives up.”

  Where was this going?

  “She’s coming to Michigan, Grady, and I want you to work with her. She thinks she’s got a pretty substantial case lead.”

  “Eddie, it’s deer season.”

  “You are an acting detective.”

  “I know, I know. When do I meet her?”

  “That’s her call. She’ll be in touch. Be safe, and be gentle with her,” the chief said and hung up.

  Just what I need. Babysitting a damn Fed during deer season.

  His work cell phone rang again just as he pulled into Friday’s driveway. “Service.”

  “Grady, this is Krip.”

  John Krippendore owned Trophy Taxidermy. “I’m off duty, John.

  I’m thinking youse might want to make an unscheduled inspection.”

  “Tomorrow, John.”

  “Tonight, hey? The customer was showing max hinks when she came in.”

  “She, as in her?”

  “Yah, she be a her, eh.”

  “Regular customer?”

  “Never seen her before tonight.”

  “Give me an hour?”

  “Yah, sure; just walk on in. I’ll have ’er all unlocked for yas.”

  • • •

  Friday rolled her eyes and sighed when Service told her about the phone calls. “Might as well pretend we don’t exist for the next two weeks,” she said sourly.

  “Write a blues tune,” he told her.

  “Does this deer season feel different?” she asked.

  “Each one is unique,” he said, “its own weird thing. But the build does seem faster this year.”

  “Want me to push Thanksgiving back into December?” she asked.

  “No, don’t do that, but tell Karylanne we’ll get over there soon, at least for an afternoon.” Karylanne Pengally was sort of his daughter-in-law. That is, she was pregnant by his son Walter when his son and his girlfriend, Maridly, were murdered five years back. Karylanne had given birth to a little girl she had named Maridly in honor of Service’s late love. Little Mar was developing into a pip and pill, truly precocious,
and she owned him emotionally. She and her “brother” Shigun kept him entertained.

  Tuesday Friday stared at him. “The real trouble is that you love dealing with scumbags and I hate it.”

  “There it is,” he said, leaving her unhugged and unkissed. Realizing his mistake, he reversed course back into the house, put her into a bear hug, and laid an atomic smooch on her.

  “Hold that thought,” he said and marched away.

  • • •

  New Swanzy was a nondescript pile of pre-manufactured houses, garages, and pole-barn businesses stretched on both sides of M-35 a half mile east of Gwinn. What the hell was pre-manufactured? It was or wasn’t, right? Visually, New Swanzy seemed a part of Gwinn, like a suburb. Back in mining days, Welsh miners had come to the area to work the iron mines and had created an ethnic enclave three miles from the old village. They had named (although misspelled) their new home Swansea, for the Welsh ocean resort. But there were no operational mines anymore, and no lakeshore or beach for twenty miles. Michigan law required a town to have a post office in order to post town signs; New Swanzy had no post office and posted the signs anyway. Typical of many U.P. places, what townspeople thought often did not mesh with what government and its regulatory agencies wanted.

  Grady Service pushed open the door to John Krippendore’s gameprocessing establishment and felt the temperature drop. The snow had stopped outside, but the temp out there was warmer than inside. Krippendore was a retired DNR wildlife biologist from downstate, a fact he kept carefully close. COs had gotten innumerable leads to good cases from Krippendore, who knew how to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut. Known as a world-class taxidermist, he also was registered to process all kinds of game meat.

  “Sorry about the timing,” he said when he saw Service. “It’s in the cooler.”

  Grady Service opened the cooler door and immediately saw the object of interest.

  “Fourteen points?” he said, counting quickly.

  Krip was right behind him, his white smock smeared with blood. “I rough-scored that thing at one eighty-eight.”

  “Holy moly!” What do we have here? The Boone and Crockett typical whitetail buck record is something like 210, a total of inches taken from the thickness and length of various parts of the antlers tallied into an overall score. A near-190 was pretty much unheard of almost anywhere in the Yoop. “She say where it come from?” Service asked. The license had been bought November 10 at 4:30 in the afternoon in Escanaba, twenty-five miles away. According to the tag, the deer was killed at five o’clock that same night. Not very likely—on the basis of geography alone—unless it was killed in downtown Escanaba, which would open another bucket of worms. This was typical thinking among some residents: First shoot a deer, then go get a license. Why waste money until you have a sure thing?

  “You get a name?”

  “Arletta Ingalls is the one who brought it in. Said her boyfriend shot it. Sort of.”

  “His name?”

  “Penn Pymn.” Krippendore spelled it out.

  “Seriously?”

  “You want to watch and hear the conversation?”

  “You taped it?”

  “Put the system in last winter. Button behind my counter. I’ll put it through to the big screen for you.”

  Service watched a computer screen on a shelf behind the man’s cash register counter. The woman he saw had bright green-and-orange hair and electric-red lipstick that made her look like a clown. Multiple earrings dangled from both ears, and she had multiple other piercings, in her lower lip, right nostril, and her tongue.

  Krippendore said, “It was like talking to a cricket with a lisp, that damn metal post ticking against her damn teeth. It gets annoying fast.”

  The woman was on the other side of the counter from the camera. “I click shot click ’is click beauty, click.”

  “Shot?” Krippendore asked on the tape.

  “Click croth click bow,” she said. “Go click not shot click. You click want click, me to click, click to click say I click bolted click it?” she asked dismissively and laughed nervously.

  “So this is your deer?” Krippendore asked her.

  “Click yah click no click. Is click me click boy click frien’s, his click bigges’ click ever and I click wanted to click prise him click with a click shoulder click mount.”

  “So, you took it with a crossbow?”

  “Click I just click said click, click eh?”

  “You want to look at the range of shoulder mount forms?”

  “Sure click, click good.”

  “Where’d your boyfriend bag this monster?”

  “Click in’ click a click field,” she said.

  “Private or public land?” Krippendore asked.

  “I click got click mind to click take click my click business click elsewhere,” she said.

  “I’m licensed,” Krippendore explained. “Which means I’m required to gather certain information, and you’ll have to answer the same questions no matter where you take it.”

  “Click damn click governmenth,” she said.

  “State or private land?” he asked again.

  “Uh click private, mostly click.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Ran click, ya click know?”

  “How far?”

  “Didn’t click measure the click distance. Some, ya click know? I wasn’t click there. My click boy’riend, he click tole me.”

  Service watched them agree on a price and delivery date, which she sealed with a hundred dollar bill.

  “She say where the meat is?” Service asked.

  “Nope, probably in her freezer. It has to be a big-ass old swamp buck.”

  “Age?”

  “Seven, pushing eight.”

  “Holy crap, an old guy for sure.”

  “Yah,” the taxidermist said. “Like us, Grady.”

  Grady Service ignored the comment and said, “An animal that size with that rack and that old, there has to be a lot of locals who knew about him.”

  “I reckon,” Krippendore said. “With all the wood ticks we’ve got up here, even big ass old swamp bucks get seen from time to time.”

  Service considered the rack size again. The Boone and Crockett record was not much larger, 210 or so. A mounted 188 Yoop buck would be worth serious cash from collectors and exhibitors at sporting goods and hunting equipment shows.

  “Does she know you taped her?” Service asked.

  “No, sir. You want the disk?”

  “Please, I’ll dump it into my truck laptop, and give the disk back to you.” Krippendore gave him the disk, and Service went outside to his truck and transferred the record. Back inside, he asked, “Got an address for her or the boyfriend?”

  “Same place for both. La Branche.”

  Service said, “Menominee County?” This was pretty far away.

  “Said she wanted an artist to render it.”

  “Did you feel the love?”

  Krippendore laughed. “No, but I had the distinct impression she was seriously interested in trading certain favors for a price break. Flooze like that would kill me,” he added.

  “Did she mention where her boyfriend’s bolt hit it?”

  “I quote, ‘Right where you’re supposed to hit ’em.’”

  “You buy that?” Service asked.

  Krippendore said, “Feel under the left ear.”

  “Okay if I pull it out into better light?”

  “Sure, I doubt it’s gonna be staying here,” the old biologist said. “Go for it.”

  Service pulled the head into the outer room, pulled on disposable blue latex gloves, and poked and probed. “I feel a hole. Your learned opinion?”

  “Same as yours. Small caliber round.”

  “Bullet still inside?”

  “Hard to predict. Probably fragments, but you never know until you look. Depends on the jacket, charge, all that stuff.”

  Service said, “I hope it’s intact,” knowing it was unlikely a
nd that he couldn’t match the round to a weapon.

  “She’s a real lulu,” Krippendore said, shaking his head.

  La Branche, Service thought. Forty miles crow-fly from where they stood, twice that by road—a long damn way to drive for “art.” He copied the names and address into his notebook.

  “She said they’re north of M-69,” Krippendore said.

  “That’s not known as big buck country,” Service remarked.

  “That might change,” the taxidermist said. “Are you taking the head?”

  “No choice, Krip. She give you a down payment?”

  “She did.”

  “Keep it for your trouble; sorry you’re losing the mount job.”

  The retired biologist shrugged. “Not my first dance.”

  Grady Service got into his truck and inserted the woman’s address into his Garmin.

  The sensible thing to do would be to go home and sleep, but he knew from experience that the best way to handle a situation like this was to take it head-on and as soon as possible, to get into the potential violator’s face with as much surprise as you could bring to the moment. Middle of the night was perfect.

  He headed south for Menominee County and called CO Herk Rice on his personal cell phone. Rice had transferred up from Grand Traverse County to be closer to his kids’ grandparents in Stephenson. Rice lived near Spalding.

  “Herk, Grady. I know it’s late. You out or in?”

  “Just now walked in. What have you got?”

  Service explained and Rice said, “I kinda heard a big buck mighta been taken up that way, but never heard any details. Lots of talk with no specifics. You’re heading this way now?”

  “Yup.”

  “Want company?”

  “You bet. And do me a favor; call our kid-sarge and let him know. My gut says we’re going to have to seek search warrants on this. The sarge might want to be involved.”

  “See you about a mile south of the house,” Rice said. “Take her easy. The rut’s on down here, and the animals are out of their freaking minds.”

  “You know Ingalls and Pymn?”

  “Not him. Her vaguely. No previous contacts, but I’ve seen her around. She sorta sticks in one’s mind.”

  Service called Friday, woke her up, and told her where he was headed.

  “Maniacs,” she said. “I hope they don’t shoot your ass over a stupid deer.”