Strike Dog

by Joseph Heywood

  “Tree,” the big man said with a nod. “I swept the island and south bank for a quarter-mile in and a half-mile of shoreline. There’s seven bears in the berries on the island, mostly in the patches on the south side of the rocks. If someone’s coming in, they’re patient and careful.”

  Service’s friend had been alone in the woods for three days.

  “Okay, there’s only two easy ways onto the island—at the top and at the bottom. That’s where you and me will be, Eddie. Anybody tries to cross between us, we’ll hear them, and if they get across they’ll be between us and right in the middle of the bears, and that’s where Tree will be.”

  “That might could slow ’em down,” Eddie Waco said with a grin.

  “You’ve got that right. They’ll be eating at night and will take exception to any interference. Once we’re in, no movement—none. Piss in the plastic bottle I gave you. There’s no moon tonight. As soon as it’s dark, put on your night-vision goggles and leave them on until you think you hear somebody coming in. We give one click if we detect someone, two clicks when our goggles come off. It’s possible they may have a blinding light, and to be safe, let’s assume it. Just make sure you keep your side to their movement. If either of us gets somebody, put them down, transmit three clicks, and keep them there until daylight.” Service paused. “Got your jab sticks?”

  Eddie Waco nodded. Tree would not have drugs, was strictly their reserve force.

  “The stuff in there will act fast and last four to six hours. If he wakes up and struggles, stick him with the second stick. It’s a lower dose.”

  “This legal?”

  “Apprehend and secure first; worry about legal fineries afterwards.” Kira Lehto, the vet, had given him the tranquilizer only after a heated argument. When he showed her the photos of what they were dealing with, she quietly unlocked her drug locker and handed him what he needed. The drug was a combination of two tranquilizers, both approved by the FDA for animal use, but Lehto said the combination would act quickly and the recipients would come out of it just as quickly, depending on their size and tolerance. She dosed the syringes for 180 pounds.

  “Zero seven thirty we check in on FRS. One channel for each transmission. You remember the frequency order?”

  The FRS had fourteen channels. Waco said, “We start on channel eight, minus three to five, minus two to three, back up to channel eight, and next time through go to plus five, or thirteen, and plus two to fifteen, which equates to one, and back down to eight.”

  Tree nodded.

  Del Olmo had rigged four Family Radio Service devices with ear mikes and chest buttons. Simon had the fourth. Channel switching would prevent anyone from catching too much of their conversation. The sequence was confusing only to people not used to talking on radios with different bands and frequencies. Michigan conservation officers routinely monitored DNR, state police, county, and city radios, with numerous frequencies.

  “No open commo until zero seven thirty, unless I change the rules. The codebreak word is Green; got it?” The men nodded.

  Grady Service left Waco at the bottom of the island and Treebone in the middle, and made his way to the head of the island, where he climbed on top, built a fire, as he always did, slid back down the rocks into a seam in the boulders at the water’s edge, and settled in to wait. He wore black fatigues and a black face mask. The skin around his eyes, nose, and mouth had been blacked with camo paint. He had used this approach during a night-training session last fall, and none of the other officers had been able to spot him until he stepped out of hiding. Some of them had been within six feet and looking right at him.

  At 10 p.m. Service heard a truck door slam. This was Elza Grinda letting them know that the Tahoe was in place about three hundred yards up a slight rise through extremely dense bush over uneven and rocky ground.

  He felt in his gut that tonight they would meet Rud Hud. Who else was anybody’s guess. He was certain of only one thing: There would be more than one. It was the only thing that made sense.

  The ear mike in Service’s ear clicked once just before 0100. He had heard the bears being contentious on top for nearly an hour and hoped Waco wasn’t spooking. Tree would be fine. He didn’t care for bears, but he knew how to deal with them. At 0114 the mike clicked twice, and twenty minutes later, it clicked three times. Waco had someone down!

  His heart began to pound in anticipation. It was beginning.

  But nothing more happened and even the bears stopped bickering.

  A few minutes before 0330, he was startled by a small, intense flash of light back in the woods on the south bank in the general direction of where Grinda had parked his truck. There was just one flash and no sound. What the hell was it? Had he imagined it? He wasn’t sure, but his gut told him he couldn’t stay where he was. He triggered the mike: “Green, Eddie—you secure?”

  “One down, secure.”

  “Stay where you are. Tree, move up to me now.”

  A voice in the earpiece said, “Moving.”

  Treebone slid down beside him. Service told him, “I saw a light.”

  “We both going?”

  “No, you hold here. Might be nothing.”

  “If it’s got you moving,” Tree said, “it’s something.”

  Service gave his friend his jab stick and talked him through how to use it. No more words were exchanged.

  To keep a low profile, he crossed the narrow channel on his hands and knees, ignoring the sharp rocks cutting at his knees. Eventually he eased himself between boulders on the other side and lay still. The terrain here was uneven, difficult to navigate even in daylight, and unforgiving. Tag alders grew in huge clumps around the boulders. He had seen the light flash briefly and had pinpointed the location in his mind. In those times when he came here to fish, he had to prepare himself mentally and physically for the difficulty of getting to the place where the fish were concentrated. The reality was that there was no easy or comfortable route to where his truck was parked.

  He had three choices: Go to the truck first and work out from there; move along the river and move up from the water; or go directly to where he had seen the light. He chose the latter and struck out, crawling and slithering across the rocks and through the tag alder tangles, letting his arms and upper body do most of the work, using his legs for rudders.

  He had no idea how long he had been moving, but there was no light yet in the eastern sky behind him, and he had been moving steadily if not quickly. Get to the light, an inner voice urged. Insects drawn to light often die, another voice amended. Maybe the light was used by the killer as bait.

  A faint sound ahead of him stopped him. He closed his eyes, tried to will all his senses into his ears. What had it been?

  There. Again. Movement? If so, very slight, almost weak. What could it be? Sniffing like an animal, he raised his face and began to crawl forward. Creep, stop, sniff, creep. A hair to the right. He came to a blowdown and got to his feet. It was a cedar covered with soft moss, dank and decomposing. Dirt to dirt, the preacher had said at Elray Spargo’s grave, and the memory gave him a sharp chill. He got a leg up on the log and slid over quietly. Below him he could smell something and he stopped and sniffed. Warm blood. Was there a sound too? Not sure.

  The scent was close, really close.

  There, just below him—a leg!

  He reached out, touched it, got a response. Not much, more of a twitch. He tensed, took his SIG Sauer out of the holster, got his penlight in his left hand, flashed it once. What? Not possible! Blinked it again. Holy shit!

  “Tatie,” he whispered.

  The leg moved. Light on again. She was against the log, holding a jacket or something to her neck. Her upper body and arms were black with blood.

  “Okay, okay,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.” Into the mike he said, “Tree, move to me most ricky-tick. Two stay where you are.”


  He knew it could be a mistake, but he couldn’t assess and work on her in the dark. He locked his light on and now and then flashed it in the direction he had come so Tree could see it. She was cut bad, her eyes wide, scared. Her hand was pressed against the wound and she had slowed it, but it was still pumping. He put his hands on hers and pressed as hard as he could. That she was still alive was a miracle. He wished Tree would hurry, but the terrain wouldn’t allow that. He looked in the agent’s eyes, saw her trying to direct him to the left. “Help is coming,” he said. She rolled her eyes and coughed blood. She knows, he thought. Had Nantz had such a moment? Walter? He felt a gorge rising in his throat and willed himself to stop hyperventilating.

  “I got your light,” Tree said in the earpiece.

  Seconds later his friend was beside him and they were doing everything they could to hold back the blood. “I’ve got it,” Tree said, and Service stood up and called del Olmo on the radio. “We have one down and bleeding. Meet EMS on Deerfoot Lodge Road and guide them in. Hurry; it’s gonna be close.”

  He holstered the 800 and knelt beside Tatie Monica.

  “Your light earlier?”

  She moved her eyes side to side.

  “Someone else?”

  She closed her eyes and opened them. The woman might have personal demons, but she was tough, he told himself. “You’re gonna make it,” he told her. She rolled her eyes again, pulled her hand off the wound, grabbed Service’s hand, and put it down on the ground.

  “Don’t be doin’ that shit!” Tree said frantically. “Grady!”

  Service put both of his hands back on the wound, wondered how far away EMS was, and knew it was not going to end well.

  Tree pressed his fingers to her carotid and sat back. “She’s gone, man.”

  Service kept pressing against the wound.

  Tree touched his friend’s shoulder. “It’s over, bro.”

  Service let himself slump backward.

  He heard sirens coming, but knew the old two-track in was tough, almost impassable.

  Treebone looked at the dead woman. “You know her?”

  “Feeb.”

  Service felt for a pulse again, found none. How she had kept from bleeding out sooner he didn’t know.

  She had looked left. Now he looked that way and shone his light.

  It was a plastic pocket protector. Was this all she had been pointing at? He looked in the direction her hand had pointed and started walking slowly.

  There was a blood trail. She had been hit about thirty feet from where he’d found her, somehow staggered and crawled all that way. The attack had come in the rocks. Lots of blood, no prints. He went back to the body. Monica had still been trying to do her job to the very end. The thought choked him.

  “She part of this?” Tree asked.

  Grady Service didn’t know.

  Del Olmo led the ambulance in and stayed after they took Tatie Monica.

  Just before 0630, Service called Eddie Waco. “Bring yours up to us. Tree’s coming back to help.”

  A half-hour later Eddie Waco and Tree arrived with a man in cuffs. He was thirtyish, with a hawk nose and an earring. He glanced at all the blood on the ground and looked puzzled. Service had never seen him before.

  Eddie Waco took off his pack, opened it, and pulled out a small stainless-steel hatchet and a surgical kit, folded in a gray leather pouch. He looked at Service. “No ID.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “He was good, real quiet and sneaky. I got lucky.”

  Service asked Waco, “You see a light flash?”

  “Nope. You’n?”

  “I thought I saw something.” He turned to Waco’s prisoner. “You got a name?”

  The man grinned, looked away.

  “What have we got?” Waco asked.

  Service took a cigarette, held out the pack to his partners. “I’ll be damned if I know.”

  Elza Grinda drove in to join del Olmo, and the two of them took the prisoner out to Iron County deputies on Deerfoot Lodge Road, who transported him to the county jail in Crystal Falls. Service, Tree, and Eddie Waco dumped their gear in the Tahoe and spent some time examining the area where Service thought he’d seen the flash of light. In such rocky terrain, footprints were out of the question. “Bring a dawg in?” Waco asked.

  “I don’t know. Did your guy act like he knew what he was doing?”

  “Yessir. This case sure hain’t bin easy,” Eddie Waco said.

  Grady Service agreed. He stared at the pocket protector. It looked the same as the one Bonaparte carried. Had Bonaparte and Tatie Monica come out here together, and if so, where was Bonaparte now? There had to be an explanation, and in the back of his mind, where unthinkable thoughts lived, he had an almost overpowering feeling that something else had happened last night, something he had missed. Again.

  53

  CRYSTAL FALLS, MICHIGAN

  AUGUST 8, 2004

  Service drove them back to Crystal Falls in silence, feeling anxious and not wanting to talk. Had they solved the case or not? Waco’s prisoner had the killing tools that fit, but something else had gone down. Special Agent Tatie Monica was dead, and there was no explanation yet for anything that had happened last night.

  Wink Rector greeted them in the parking lot behind the jail. “I saw the prisoner they brought in. Have you seen Monica? I told her yesterday she was acting stupidly, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Service was surprised. “You knew she was coming after us?”

  “She had your AVL,” Rector said. “She wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  “Our AVL,” Grady Service repeated. He’d been right about that. Sort of. Why did Tatie Monica have the AVL, and what did it mean?

  Service looked at Wink Rector. “Special Agent Monica is dead, Wink.”

  Del Olmo showed up, handed Service a fax of the photo from the captain. It could be the guy Waco got, but the quality of the fax was poor.

  “Federal forces are en route,” Rector said in a thin voice. “If you’re going to talk to the prisoner alone, you’d better use what little time you’ve got.”

  Service met him in a small interview room with cream-colored walls. “Rud Hud?”

  The man shrugged.

  Service understood that this was very likely the man who was responsible for the deaths of Walter and Nantz. He was overwhelmed by the temptation to grab the man’s throat and choke him to death on the spot, but he heard Nantz’s voice telling him to keep his temper in check. He felt that he ­couldn’t breathe and went back outside to Wink Rector.

  “She had our AVL?”

  “Yep, told me about it yesterday.”

  “How’d she get it?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Did you see an agent named Bonaparte in Marquette recently?”

  “Yeah, the BAU guy. He was here yesterday. He and Tatie met in my office.”

  “With you?”

  “Just the two of them.”

  “What about Pappas?”

  “Haven’t seen her.”

  “You know where Bonaparte is now?”

  Rector shook his head.

  Del Olmo approached. “Her vehicle was out near the Deerfoot.”

  “She walked all the way in there on her own, and without NVDs?” She had been desperate, and now she was dead, and he felt empty and deflated.

  54

  MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN

  AUGUST 14, 2004

  The events on the island in the Fence River had taken place a week ago.

  Alona Pappas had cornered him at the jail in Marquette and ripped on him for five minutes, accusing him of everything from blowing the case to causing Tatie Monica’s death. He found it interesting that Bonaparte had been in Marquette the day before it all went down, and had not been seen since.
/>   Wink Rector came into Service’s office. “You hear Bonaparte’s missing?”

  “Missing?”

  “No contact with anyone since before the island deal went down.”

  “What’s the Bureau’s take on it?”

  “A BOLO will be issued today in conjunction with a press conference this morning in Washington.”

  The captain and Fern LeBlanc joined them in the office conference room to watch the press conference on CNN. The FBI director was not at the conference and an assistant director officiated. The conference was short. No media questions were answered though the reporters waved their hands and pens and created a ruckus. The basic news was that the acting assistant director of the Behavioral Analysis Unit had been missing for a week. Bonaparte’s photograph was shown. The assistant director profiled Bonaparte’s career, called him a “founding father” of profiling, and concluded by saying that Bonaparte had been actively pursuing an investigation when he disappeared.

  Service looked at his captain. “Why’d they do that?”

  Captain Grant waved a hand in the air. “When you can’t score on substance, you go for style points,” Grant said. “You ought to be aware that the Bureau is making noise about the unauthorized use of animal tranquilizers in the apprehension.”

  “They ought to be focused on identifying the asshole we got, not how.”

  So far the man remained unidentified and uncooperative. He had not said a dozen words since his arrest. He had not requested a lawyer, but one had been appointed, and he promptly resigned after time with his client. A second lawyer was now on the case and claimed he wasn’t getting anything out of the man either and had no idea how to mount a defense. Tough shit, Service thought. Waco arrested him with the packet of tools. The guy was part of it, but not all of it. How did Bonaparte’s pocket protector get on the scene? Had he walked in with Monica? Had he followed her or had she followed him? Service had given the pocket protector to Pappas as evidence, to pull fingerprints, and she had not said anything about it since then. Service knew in his gut there was more. The DNR’s only source of information was from Wink Rector. Pappas and other FBI personnel had nothing to say. The fingerprints of the man in custody didn’t come up in databases anywhere in the world. Neither had his DNA. He was about as close to a nonperson as Service had ever experienced.