“You betcha. The old guy’s name, I think it was Main. The old man, he was a strange duck, always going on about astronomy and physics. His shop was like something out of a Hollywood back lot, shit everywhere. But the man was a genius when it came to inventing flies. Had him a whole line of booger flies: brown drakes, gray drakes, green drakes, Hexagenia, even a white-gloved howdy.”
“In Curran—south of Alpena?”
“Yeah, that general area.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Once. I’d been striper fishing down in Kentucky, and I was on my way back to the U.P. I’d heard about this guy, so I stopped in. He and I had one helluva discussion about flies and their histories.”
“You bought the flies then?”
“Nah, I needed what dough I had for gas to get back to Houghton. He gave me a cheap mimeographed catalog, and when I got back I wrote him a letter and placed my order. See, his shop isn’t listed officially as a shop. It’s in his house. There’s nothing about it in the Yellow Pages. If you asked around Curran, everybody would play dumb because he was a foul-tempered old coot and he let his neighbors know the only way people could find out about the place was through word of mouth from other trout fanatics. To know about the place, you had to hear about it and get directions from somebody who had been there. Talk about brilliant marketing! The old man didn’t even have a phone. I’ve heard about guys who drove a thousand miles to see him, and when they got there he was gone fishing. I doubt the old bastard cared about missed sales. The flies were just something he did when he wasn’t chasing trout.”
“Have you still got the catalog?”
“Somewhere, but it’s, like, ancient.”
Shark’s place was a virtual graveyard for old fishing supplies, but he was generally organized.
“Give a call when you get home and give me the address, okay?”
Shark Wetelainen shrugged. “Yah, sure.”
“Let’s eat, boys,” Limey announced.
Shark said with a grunt, “Man, it’s about time! You know, if I remember right, New Mexico tried to plant sea trout in mountain streams about fifteen years back.”
“Ocean-runs or spotted?” Service said.
“Holy Wah!” Shark snorted. “What’s wrong with your head? Ain’t no place to run from into New Mexico, boy. It was spotteds, I think.”
The thing about Shark was that once somebody flipped his switch, it was hard to shut off. As they sat down to eat, he said, “Zane Grey claimed ocean-run browns were the kings of the trout world, toughest fighters by far.”
Limey Pyykkonen said, “Yalmer,” and he was immediately silent.
Service looked at his friends and knew that Shark Wetelainen was head-over-heels for the cop who stood a good six inches taller than him.
He also realized that it had been a booger fly he had recovered from the Ficorelli kill site, and his gut was telling him this was important. If it was as rare and valuable as Shark said, it helped explain why Wayno got out of the river to try to recover it. There was one other realization: The bodies were found not just near water, but moving water, and according to Shark, it was probably all trout water. This was the funny thing about investigations. They could stall for eons and suddenly vault forward on some seemingly insignificant fact that all at once became significant. Nantz would really appreciate this. She’d be running around the room right now, pumping her arms in triumph.
“Grady,” Limey Pykkonnen said. “Are you coming back soon?”
He looked at the woman and said, “I’m back,” picked up his fork, and began eating. All the while he ate, he saw Nantz sitting next to Limey, the two women yakking away at each other. He knew she wasn’t really there, but it felt right to imagine she was.
33
MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN
JULY 16, 2004
“I might have something for you to work with,” Shamekia said. The former FBI agent tended to get right to the point. Service was sitting in his cubicle, planning to spend the morning contacting state fishery agencies to verify if the places where murdered game wardens had been found held trout. Looking at a map wasn’t enough, because over many generations, most state agencies had finagled with natural orders, planting all sorts of species in places where nature had never put them, and they couldn’t and didn’t survive, including Shark’s odd story about sea trout being planted in New Mexico. In many states fishery people were torn between planting rubber fish from hatcheries and managing the rivers to create naturally reproducing wild stocks. Michigan was moving steadily toward the latter strategy.
Shamekia added, “I’m sending everything I have via messenger, there tonight. Want it at your house or office?”
“House,” he said, then gave her the Slippery Rock address and told her the messenger should leave the package and not wait for him to be there to sign for it.
She said, “Okay, it’s going out the door now, but here’s the short version.”
She continued, “June 1970, the Mexican federal police arrested a U.S. citizen in Ciudad Juárez—that’s across the river from El Paso. A woman reported her husband being assaulted by an Americano in a black El Dorado. About the same time, a couple of local cops stopped the same guy in town, probably to shake him down, and he resisted. There was a fight and they put the cuffs on him. Turns out he was driving a black Cadillac. Had a woman and a boy with him. The locals found blood all over the trunk of the Cadillac, and the assaulted man identified the adult male as his assailant. The locals called the federales to brag themselves up some, and the federales immediately swooped in and intervened. They took the vehicle and the prisoner. Turns out that there had been three brutal killings in Nogales, Mexicali, and Matamoros, all male victims with mutilations along their spines. A black Cadillac had been reported near two of the killings.”
“This was 1970? Near El Paso?”
“Mid-June.”
Service immediately checked the list of killings he had gotten from the FBI. The body of a New Mexico game warden had been found in late June 1970. He looked quickly at the atlas he kept on his desk and saw that El Paso, Texas, was not that far from New Mexico. Geographic coincidence? “What did the federal police do?”
“My sources say they interrogated the man with great vigor.”
“Car batteries and wires?” Service interjected.
“The Mexicans believe in going right at the bad guys—unless, of course, they have some political clout and can get back at them. But this was just some asshole gringo, so they probably did a number on him. Only he wouldn’t crack. He insisted he’d done nothing and, according to the reports, remained silent, no matter what they did. They tried him in 1972, found him guilty of three homicides and one attempted, sentenced him to death, and packed him off to some shithole prison in the south of the country to await execution. But before they could carry out the sentence, the American was murdered by a prison guard. This was just before Christmas 1974,” said Shamekia.
“There a name for this guy?”
“Wellington Ney from Pigeon River, Indiana.”
He’d never heard of a town called Pigeon River. There was a river by that name in northern Indiana, close to the Michigan border, but not a town. “What about his wife and kid?” asked Service.
“It’s not clear it was his wife or his kid. The reports say simply a woman in her thirties, and a boy of fifteen or sixteen. The locals kicked them after they pinched the guy. They split after the arrest and were never seen again. The federales called in the Bureau, but the town name was bogus, and there was nobody named Ney anywhere in Indiana.”
“False name?”
“Maybe. The Mexicans weren’t that competent in those days, and it was easy enough to hide your identity, even in this country,” said Shamekia.
“Did you get the names of the Bureau agents who worked the case on this side of the border?”
&
nbsp; “Lead man was Special Agent Philip L. Orbet. He retired in 1976 and died ten years later.”
“Others on the case?”
“Just Orbet after a while. Apparently he was obsessed with the case, thought there was something more to it, and kept looking into it after he retired, but he died before he got anywhere with it. You know how cold cases go,” she added.
He did. “But this wasn’t a U.S. case,” Service said.
“Right, but Orbet was one of those old-time G-men who felt that if this guy had been a serial killer in Mexico, he probably did it up here too.”
“Where did Orbet live?” Service heard the lawyer leafing through paperwork.
“Toledo, Ohio.”
“You think this fits?” he asked.
“You tell me: The victims had an ax taken to their ribs along the spine,” she said.
“Hmmm,” Service said. “Photos in the paperwork you’re sending?”
“There are. Photos of the victims and of the man Ney.”
“Can you get me an address for Orbet in Toledo, names of his survivors, all that?”
“It’s in the package. You thinking he left behind his case notes?”
“Could be,” Service thought.
“Okay,” Shamekia said, “write this down.”
34
CLIFF’S RIDGE, SOUTH OF MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN
JULY 16, 2004
He was still deeply troubled about Nantz’s accident being something else, but the list of follow-up items in the federal case was mounting, and Service had begun to assemble notes to himself about things that needed to be checked out. He had not seen any further surveillance since Bobbi Temple had ducked out of Snowbound Books, but he had not moved around that much, and despite his mind being preoccupied with Nantz and Walter, he had come to the realization that he needed to reach some sort of accommodation with Special Agent T. R. Monica.
Wink Rector was the lone FBI agent in the Upper Peninsula and a pretty good guy, but also savvy enough to toe the bureau line when he needed to. Rector was rarely in his office in Marquette, and Service was surprised when he answered his phone.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marquette Regional Office, Special Agent Rector.”
“It’s Grady Service, Wink.”
“Hey, was that you I saw on the tube with the president?” Rector greeted him.
“Did you know about that beforehand?”
Rector laughed. “Hey, I’m only the resident agent up here. That sort of crap is way above my pay grade.”
Bitterness or resignation? “You got time to talk?”
“Phone or in person?”
“Not on the phone,” Service said. “Cliff’s Ridge. The old gravel pit. About an hour?”
“Sounds mysterious. I’ll be there with coffee.”
The Carp River was a narrow bedrock river that squeezed through a spot the locals referred to as the Gorge, which was only about forty feet deep. Marquette Mountain ski hill rose immediately to the southwest of the area, and in summer the ski lifts looked like flensed bones sticking out of the landscape. Decades before, the ski area had been known as Cliff’s Ridge, but the name had changed, and only those with a long history in the area would remember it by the old name.
Rector was there before Service. A huge thermos and two cups sat on the hood of his Crown Victoria.
“Black like your heart?” Rector said, holding up the thermos.
Service nodded and got to the point. “You know a special agent out of Milwaukee named T. R. Monica?”
“Heard about her, and I might have met her once somewhere along the road.”
“She a pretty good agent?”
Rector took a breath to buy time to think. “Kinda depends on who you talk to. I think she’s probably competent enough, but a real pain in the ass. Why?”
“Are you aware that she and her people are running surveillance on me?”
The FBI agent blinked. “On you?”
“You heard about the game warden murdered in Wisconsin?”
“It was on the news and I got a bulletin, but there wasn’t much detail.”
“I knew the guy.”
“No shit?”
“He’s not the only game warden to die.” Service went back to his truck, got out an envelope, and gave it to Rector, who opened it and gawked at the photographs.
“Holy cow,” was all he managed to say.
“Twenty-seven game wardens in twenty-five states, killed between 1950 and 1970. No common MO and no suspect.”
“Suspect, singular?”
“Until three years ago, nobody saw a connection. The kills were spread out over twenty years. In 1982 the killings started again. Most recently Ficorelli was killed in Wisconsin, and a few days later another warden bought it in Missouri. The kills in the second group were by an assortment of methods until 2000. Then they all took the same MO.” Service tapped the photographs. “All just like that. Monica is the one who identified the pattern, and she’s lead agent on the case.”
“Onward and upward,” Rector said.
“Not if she fails.”
Rector nodded. “True; the Bureau’s got a low tolerance for public failure nowadays.”
“Your people think the perp is targeting me,” Service said, pausing to let the information sink in.
Rector grinned. “This is a put-on, right?”
“It’s real, Wink.”
“You don’t seem all that broken up. If Special Agent Monica has a team up here dogging you, she must think it’s credible.”
“Bingo. Give the man a Kewpie doll.”
“Give me cash instead,” the agent said. “I’ve got a basement full of crappy gewgaws.”
“Aren’t you surprised to be out of the loop on any of this?”
“I guess not,” Wink Rector said. “Since 9/11 everyone’s gotten more secretive than before. We’ve got more compartments than a printer’s table these days.”
“Now you know,” Service said. “Monica’s got to be here somewhere, and I want to have a sit-down with her.”
“Pick up the telephone.”
“No. I want this on my terms, on my turf.”
“I suppose you want me to arrange it.”
“I figure you’ve got a stake in this too.”
“Like that would matter,” Rector said bitterly. “When and where?”
“End of the Mulligan Creek road, where it crosses the creek.”
“North of Ishpeming?”
“There’s only one road in from the south, which means it will be fairly secure.”
“Okay, when?”
“Soon as. She can pick the time.”
Rector took a sip of coffee. “I’ll get on it today and give you a call when it’s set.”
“Thanks, Wink.”
“You realize that bringing me into this is going to piss her off, and some others above her as well.”
“Never had a doubt, but I also felt pretty sure you’d want to know what was going down in your own backyard. I would.” This was an allusion to a wolf-killing case Service had been involved in three years before, a time when Rector had held back information from him, and the FBI had impeded his investigation.
“You were right to tell me,” Rector said. “I’ve put in my papers, and I’m hanging it up December 31. Everything’s set. I’m waiting now for my replacement to show so I can bring them up to speed on what’s going on up here.”
“This fits the category of what’s going on up here,” Service said.
Rector’s reply was a muffled grunt as he picked up his thermos and cups and got into his vehicle.
35
MULLIGAN PLAINS, NORTH OF ISHPEMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 19, 2004
Service loaded his Honda ATV into the bed of his person
al truck, stowed the portable ramp beneath the four-wheeler, and started north on County Road 550 toward Big Bay. He thought he spotted a tail near the Northern Michigan Campus, cut north, and lost the follower by going off-road to the west up a power line where only a high-centered four-wheel-drive vehicle could get through. He continued west, until he hit County Road 510 and turned north, for the Triple A Road, more than twenty miles north.
He had received the package of information from Shamekia. The photos of the victims were nothing like those of the blood eagle killings, but they were gruesome all the same.
Halfway across the Yellow Dog Plains on the Triple A, he hid the truck, offloaded his Honda, and rode the ATV south across the Yellow Dog River into the southern fringe of the Huron Mountains. Eventually the trail connected to the road that ended at Mulligan Creek. This route required a great deal of extra time, but he wanted to make a point with the FBI. The meeting was set for first light and he was in place nearly an hour early. He hid the Honda a quarter-mile away, on the north side of the creek, crossed the makeshift one-lane snowmobile bridge the DNR had built a few years back, and found a place to wait in the popples on the lip of a rise just above where the road from the south dead-ended in the shadows of steep rock bluffs.
On the sandy two-track to the west he saw a gray wolf trot northwest, nervously glancing over its shoulder in his direction as it passed. Then he heard vehicle tires swishing through soft sand on the two-track above the creek. The wolf had been spooked by the vehicle, not him.
Wink Rector drove his own vehicle to the edge of the creek, backed up twenty yards, parked, and got out. It was getting lighter, but the sun itself remained hidden by ridges to the east.
“Where the hell is he?” Tatie Monica asked when she got out.
Rector got out his thermos and poured coffee. “Game wardens don’t announce themselves.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You see fresh tire tracks on the way in?”
“No. So he’s behind us?”
“My guess is that he’s already here.”
“Games,” she said.
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