Buckular Dystrophy

by Joseph Heywood

  Wooten had made a drive-by on the house and found Animal Control parked out on a nearby gravel road. She was now melded into the entry team.

  Sally Palovar said there was a key, but they couldn’t confirm this until they got to the house. The key would be a big help; lacking that, they had a ram to knock open the door if that became necessary.

  Service got the animal control technician close to him. She was fortyish, with bouncy eyes and a serious squint. “We’ll open the door for you, but Officer del Olmo and I will go in first and clear the space. When we say the word ‘dog,’ come right in and do your thing. If you need help, del Olmo will do that. Just tell him what you need. Your heart rate will be jacked up. This is normal. Try not to hurt the animal.”

  “Let me do my job,” the ACT said. Her face was leathery, her tone resolute.

  “You’ve done this kind of thing much?”

  “What is this, a fucking audition? You don’t get to pick people; you get whoever’s on duty. We don’t hire fuckups.”

  Service grinned. His kind of woman, direct as a punch. He looked at his watch. “Do we have enough evidence tags?” he asked for the hundredth time.

  “Six hundred and fifty,” Volstaad said. “We should be covered.”

  “Don’t be such a worrywart,” Sheena Grinda said. “We need Patton out front, not Jimmy Carter.”

  This made everyone laugh. “Okay, one more time. Enter, neutralize and secure animal, then Simon and I will do a fast walkthrough. We will then clear you into the house with your gear. The plan is to start upstairs and work our way down. Five-minute breaks between rooms. Limpy has sammies and pop and lots of coffee, but that’s for after we finish.”

  “Did you bring a taste-tester too?” Superman asked.

  Allerdyce spoke for the first time in his characteristic cackle. “Sonny say dat your chob, bucko.”

  Service was taking it all in. His partner had been good natured, but he wasn’t going to take shots just to take them. He liked his partner’s flint. Service looked at his watch. “Okay, trucks, we George in three.”

  He and Limpy in the truck. “Ready?”

  “Youse bet, Sonny. Dis is hoot!”

  “Once we go through that door, it’s gonna be go go go go.”

  Said Allerdyce, “Like chug from spiddoon—can’t stop once start, all in one string.”

  “Disgusting,” Service said.

  “But true.”

  “George,” he said over the 800 and pulled out, running the truck hard for the property.

  The key was located where advertised. The dog was flipping out inside as he disengaged the lock and cracked the door. He went through with Simon right on his back. The dog was wolf size with an immense head and fangs and throwing yellow drool all over the floor, its claws scrambling for purchase on a smooth tile. Service said over his shoulder, “Dog,” and the ACT was inside and had the animal by its neck with a catch-stick; she dragged it into the bathroom and closed the door. It immediately stopped making a ruckus.

  “Clear,” the ACT said, “mostly.”

  Service saw fresh and runny dog feces from the front door to the bathroom. They had literally scared shit out of the watchdog. Only then did the stench register. “Good God, Simon,” Grinda said from the door behind him.

  “Not me,” del Olmo said. “It’s the dog.”

  “Typical man,” Grinda said. “Blame the poor dog.”

  “Knock it off,” Service said. “Equipment in, go to the start room.”

  Wooten came in and said, “I’ll clean up the dog’s mess. You guys move on.” Service couldn’t believe the sarge had volunteered, but was glad he had.

  As they piled upstairs, passing walls filled with antlers, Service heard a half dozen whispered “holy shits.”

  Everybody was assembled in the start room. The plan was to work north to south and west to east in every room, no exceptions. Simon took an eightpoint mount off a wall. It was on a plaque marked 1999. Simon said, “Yay or nay?”

  Service said, “Yay?,” the others said “yay,” and del Olmo said, “Echo item number one, one eight-point mount, dated 1999.” He handed this to Volstaad, who filled out the tag and said “Echo One, eight-point mount, dated 1999.” Echo was for evidence.

  Sheena then said, “Check.” Del Olmo reached for a small skull cap on the wall, also marked 1999, and they repeated the process. This done, Volstaad started a pile by putting the first two pieces of evidence by the door. They moved on, taking skulls and horns and feathers and skins, as well as four computers, four digital cameras, a bag of flash drives and boxes of disks, some old floppies, and two smart phones, every item carefully noted in their records. It took them almost no time to establish a smooth working rhythm as they tagged and bagged evidence, and before they had finished the rooms on the top floor, Service began to wonder if they had enough storage in their trucks to get the stuff back to Marquette. His truck, Wooten’s, Simon’s, Sheena’s, Volstaad’s, Superman’s, Magic’s, and Herk Rice’s were all there. No worries, he decided; but the rest of the night, he kept silently trying to judge the sheer volume of the take against space available. The stuff Buckshow had accumulated defied logic. How much money had he spent on all this junk? What happened to all the meat? Save the questions, he cautioned himself.

  Wooten popped up every now and then to make sure they had what they needed and to ask if they needed help with anything. It was a new side of the young sergeant Service had never seen before. “Tell Allerdyce to keep sweeping the property and reporting his finds back to Herk. Nobody is to go anywhere on the grounds except Allerdyce until we’re all done here.”

  “Dark outside,” someone mumbled. “Should have rolled sooner, when light was better.”

  Service said, “Knock it off. Stay focused. We didn’t get the search warrant until 1650 hours. Besides, the old man sees like an owl in the night.”

  Securing the search warrant had not been a problem. Judge Callie Doster had not altered a single word or request from the affidavit; had, in fact driven to the Roof with Magistrate Ken Dentso. The judge’s color had gone from tan to red to pale by the time Service laid out what he had seen with a brief walkthrough. The judge said, “You get there and find more, call me directly; we’ll handle it by phone.” She gave him her card with multiple phone numbers. The judge and magistrate had nearly lost their composure when Service told them that the house was owned by Sally Palovar and her husband, who had a different name. It was his opinion that she was probably involved to some extent by being forced to loan her tags as an unwilling participant.

  At the first five-minute break, there was not much small talk. Service could see that the COs were staggered by the sheer magnitude of what they were witnessing. He went to the front door, and Herk Rice came up to him. “Allerdyce says there are poured concrete spider holes, four feet deep, each with a seat, a heater, and one window port that pushes up. Lift the roof, get down into position, close it up, and you’re ready to shoot. Wait until you see.”

  “Lights too?”

  “Limpy’s not seen any yet, but he’s looking. There’s a four-wheeler trail from each spider hole, which makes them easier to find once you see the pattern. Your partner is scary out there in the dark. You don’t hear shit, and suddenly he’s damn near breathing down your neck. He’s like us—only better.”

  “That’s him,” Service said. “But he doesn’t bite.” He hoped this whole deal didn’t come back to bite them all on the ass because he had deployed Allerdyce in the team. More than that, he was worried about Sally Palovar’s safety, if and when her old man got out. The more he thought about it, the clearer it became. Sally had stolen the blind and put it in a place where her husband couldn’t see it, hoping that someone from Pattinson’s camp would drive by, see it, and call the cops. Which is exactly what had happened. Damn clever move on her part, almost too subtle, but he guessed her thinking was that any cop would quickly see the situation for what it was and that the law enforcement cascade would bring
in the DNR. Working for the magistrate, Palovar knew how the county and state worked, or didn’t. Without the stolen blind, none of this would be happening.

  When they came to what Service had named the Main Shooting Room in the middle basement level, the group was struck silent. There was a window with a special automated curtain around it. You stepped to the window, hit a button, and the curtain closed to engulf you at a shooting port. The port also had a movable plastic port; the same switch controlled both the curtain and the port. There was an elevated bed twenty feet from the window. The mattress was built up so that whoever laid there was looking directly out the window. Just to the left of the bed there was a TV on a pedestal and a bookcase filled with porn disks. Next to the bed on a nightstand there was a small red plastic wastebasket overflowing with tissues that contained suspect dry substances.

  Grinda said, “I’m guessing that’s not a sinus condition.”

  “Disgusting,” Volstaad said.

  “People are disgusting,” del Olmo said. “Only cops see the reality, and somehow we still don’t want to believe what our eyes and noses are telling us. This Buckshow has some serious issues.”

  “Sally Palovar is married to . . . this . . . thing?” Grinda said.

  “Unfortunately.” Service told himself, Okay, knock this off and back to work. He told his friend, “I think the marriage status is in the process of changing, as we speak.”

  They went to work on the room, and Service didn’t try to stop all of the nasty cop jokes and black humor that flowed.

  He telephoned Linsenman at their next five-minute break.

  “This better be good,” the sergeant said.“It’s Grady.”

  “Are you still working?”

  “You bet.”

  “Crazy fucker. How do they find people like you?”

  Service said, “There’s a whole roomful of us here. Who the hell is this Buckshow?’

  “Retired from Corrections ten years ago on a full medical.”

  “Medical as in what?”

  “Not clear. I know he was a sergeant at the prison.”

  “Marquette?”

  “Yup, for eighteen years, and by all accounts he was a hard-nosed, nononsense motherfucker feared by residents and other officers alike.”

  “Power tripper?”

  “I don’t know the medical term. What we heard unofficially is that he got crossways with an inmate from Detroit, black dude name of Tyrene Talent, hitter for some dope mob down to the Twat. Inmates call him T-Rex. We heard Buckshow made this guy lose face, and the man jumped Buckshow and did some serious damage before Buckshow’s people intervened.”

  “That’s what put him on the medical?”

  “No. He lost some teeth is all and took some stitching and staples and such, but his people say Tyrene took Buckshow’s cojones that day; he never came back to the job full-time, not even on light duty.”

  “Medical injuries and problems real or imagined?”

  “You’d have to consult with a pill pusher.”

  “I’m hearing talk of ALS.”

  “That’s news to me,” Linsenman said. “The judge is holding him through the weekend.”

  “Good. We ought to see if we can arrange to talk this Talent into making a conjugal visit with Buckshow.”

  “Cops are not allowed to say such things out loud, Sergeant. You can think ’em, but you can’t say ’em.”

  “You must have ESP. I never said nothing out loud.”

  Service closed his cell phone, decided he wanted to see Tyrene Talent and talk to him eyeball to eyeball.

  The team left nothing unexamined, and at 2330 Service summoned a wrecker with a flatbed to take Buckshow’s pickup truck, side-by-side ATV, and his golf cart. They took thirty-four rifles, five shotguns, two crossbows, two compound bows, arrows and bolts, and four handguns out of the house, all of the firearms loaded and laying around in the open. They also took boxes and boxes of ammo, a Russian-made night-vision scope, an infrared scope, three top-end Zeiss binoculars, and a spotting scope.

  Their photo sticks contained close to 1,000 photos and a couple dozen videos. There were six freezers in the garage and various rooms in the house, all of them empty. One hundred ninety antler sets went into the trucks, 174 of which would eventually make it into the indictment, along with turkey fans and wolf pelts. Service guessed as they loaded evidence that the court might very well take the man’s house. Too bad for Palovar, but she had put up with it. He had some compassion for her, and a lot of admiration over how cleverly she had engineered this thing, but there was real help for people in her situation, and she had not come forward.

  They transported the haul to the Roof, unloaded and sorted it, and stood around talking. Service knew they were unlikely to ever see another take of this magnitude. The team estimated that Buckshow had killed an average of twenty deer a year, some on borrowed tags, but most with no tags at all. He had not bought tags himself since retiring. These were just the deer they knew about. They had no idea how many more there might be, or how many he had wounded and left to crawl off and die. Wolves killed for food. Buckshow? For the sheer pleasure of killing, it seemed. Sicko.

  Captain McKower showed up with bottles of nonalcoholic champagne and led them in a toast to the team’s success. They ended the night by securing the take in evidence lockers and in one whole room of the Roof that McKower gave them for the case.

  It was 4 a.m. when they finished. They drove to Friday’s. Allerdyce fell onto the couch, Cat materialized and hopped on the old man, and Newf almost knocked Service down as she raced down the stairs while he was headed up. He undressed and got into bed, wondering if his dog had even wagged her tail at him on her way to Allerdyce.

  “Am I dreaming again?” Friday mumbled.

  “Probably.”

  “What time is it?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Maniac.”

  “No argument.”

  She moved her hand to his shoulder. “Pew,” she said.

  “I’ll jump in the shower.”

  “Like hell,” she said, clutching him tightly. “I’m not letting go.”

  “Limpy’s on the couch,” he whispered.

  “You sure know how to charm a girl.”

  “Really?”

  “No, fool. Go to sleep.”

  “Not . . . you know?”

  She started giggling and punched his arm playfully.

  CHAPTER 40

  North of Helps

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25

  Grady Service called Harry Pattinson’s camp late morning and reached a machine instead of a human. “This is Grady Service; I need to talk to you and your landowner compadres, Harry. You have my number.”

  Three minutes later his cell phone rang and Harry Pattinson asked, “When?”

  “Let’s say one this afternoon. That will give your guys plenty of time to get back out for the afternoon hunt after we’re done.”

  “We’ll try.”

  “Do better than try, Harry. Make it happen. You and your guys swagger around shooting off your mouths, and now you need to sit and listen to what I have to tell you.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m not doing this five or six times, Harry. Just get the gang there; I’ll explain to all of you then. They don’t show, tell them I won’t be doing individual encores.”

  “Why the hard-ass?”

  “Just do as I say, Harry, and make sure Torky Hamore shows up.”

  “You must’ve heard something that brings you this way.”

  “Should I have?” Service countered, letting the question hang and closing his phone.

  • • •

  It was like old home week with all the camp owners and their hunters all gathered in one place, most of them irritated to be called away from the woods. The place stank of BO, flatulence, smoke, and garlic, something less than a chichi sachet.

  The whole crowd was crushed into the great room, all of them talking, trying to t
alk over and outdo one another, the typical all-out competition of male lions basking in the sun on a hill.

  “Seeing any deer?” Service began.

  “Some does is all,” Torky Hamore said. “But no bucks. Damn wolves.”

  Service said. “Torky, do you think wolves eat only bucks?”

  “Din’t say that.”

  “You said, and I quote, ‘No bucks. Damn wolves.’”

  “The DNR got roving English teachers oot in da woods now, eh?”

  This drew snickers from the gathering.

  “Why’re we here?” Kermit Swetz asked. He owned a small grocery store chain that stretched from Sutton’s Bay to Alpena.

  Service ignored the man’s question. “Answer me this: If you’ve seen a wolf during this hunting season, raise your hand.”

  No hands went up, but Hamore said, “But we seen no bucks either, eh.”

  “If you’re not seeing wolves, where have they gone?”

  “To where there’s food,” Attilio Haire said. He was a prosthodontist in Marquette.

  “Exactly. They’ve gone to where there’s food because it’s not here.”

  “Onaccount wolves killed and ate it all,” Hamore said.

  Grady Service said. “No deer and no four-legged wolves.”

  This last phrase stopped the buzz. “What the hell is this about?” Pattinson demanded. “All wolves got four legs.”

  “Do they?” Service said.

  Now he had their attention.“Do you guys know Jesper Buckshow?”

  Hamore said, “Cripped prison guard from up Marquette. What about him?”

  “The county busted him for a dope grow, took a huge number of plants out of his house.”

  “Good God,” Pattinson said.

  “Your call on the stolen blind took the deps to the house. When the man opened up, they smelled the dope, and that gave them probable cause to enter and do a limited search.”