Harder Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  “I heard talk in Lansing.”

  “You looked at the Slapback? That’s usually last to catch king runs.”

  “They’re in thick now.”

  “Where, by the parking area?”

  “No. They’re downstream about a half mile in all those S-curves, just upstream of the Old Fed Book School.”

  “Why there?”

  “It’s a long hike from parking, and there’s no easy way to cut off escape. The snaggers’ll be drinking and doping and tired when they get back to their rides.”

  Impressive. “We call that Batboy Bend, a real magnet for outlaws. Hit them after dark?”

  “No, in broad daylight when we can see best. They’ll be there.”

  “They’ll have watchers.” “Not on the other side of the river.”

  “Too deep to cross.”

  “Not if you know the area.”

  “How the hell would you know?”

  “Had a friend in college. We used to come over here to fish for trout and hunt birds. Her grandfather has a camp not far from the S-curves, on the far side.”

  “This too never came out in an interview,” Kort said.

  “Well mea fuckin’ culpa,” Norge said. “I’m also skeptical about God. That didn’t come out either. So what?”

  •••

  Three hours and they watched three different crews, and Norge was about to move in and take fish when Kort saw a new crew wander up the river, herking and jerking away with leaded hooks. “Fuck,” she whispered. “Bryce Hoff.”

  “Who is?”

  “Suspect in a Houghton murder. He disappeared about six months ago,” Kort explained, squeezing her probie’s arm. “Hoff’s one sick puppy, a very dangerous dude. He looks like Howdy-Doody and has the heart of Charlie Manson. There’s an officer warning on him. Approach with no fewer than three badges.”

  “Are you telling me we should bypass this jerk simply because a paper says we need another officer?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the woods and rivers are our house, Didi. This asshole’s wanted for murder, not ganking hubcaps. I say we take down his ass. I checked the duty list earlier today. Logan’s on right now, up county a bit. I’ll call him and ask him to roll down here to back us up. He can meet us in the parking area.”

  “Why there? Hoff is here.”

  “My show, right?”

  Kort wasn’t all that certain. Hoff in the mix changes everything. Doesn’t it?

  “Uh, okay.”

  “We take him in the parking lot as he goes to get into his vehicle. If we try grab him on the river or in the woods and we miss, we’ll have a hell of a time finding him. We’d need a dog and a lot of manpower. But if we wait and converge on him in the parking lot, let him get almost to his vehicle, he’s contained, and all his chances and options are reduced.”

  “He’ll be armed.”

  “We assume,” Norge said.

  “No, we know. This asshole is always armed. Always.”

  “You know him?”

  “Pinch him several times, illegal bear, illegal deer, timber theft, he always fights and he’s always packing at least a knife or two. Take a damn good look at him,” Kort told her partner.

  “He’s a big guy ,” Norge said.

  “The further one goes north the bigger the mammals grow,” Kort said. “Do not let that piece of shit get hold of you. He’s unpredictable and erratic and his temper is downright bloody.”

  “The plan sounds all right to you?”

  She’s asking for input? This is good. “Well, other than having to deal with Mr. Bryce Hoff, it seems good. Yut-yut, let’s do it.”

  Norge used her 800 mhz to call Logan, who immediately agreed to help them.

  Hoff had a spinning rod and was flinging lead fifty yards at a gulp, tearing up fish he hooked in the sides as he reefed on the rod, bending it double, hooking the fish with muscular twitches making the leaded hook shoot along the bottom. They could hear the line swishing out on the cast, the reel barking, the squealing against the drag when a fish was on and being dragged.

  “Quick,” Norge told her FTO. “There’s two trails, one along the river and a less distinct one further inland. You take the close one and I’ll take the other and we’ll meet in the parking area by the road. Your trail hits a pile of boulders, but get off the trail there, and circle around in the water to the trail on the other side. Too easy to get surprised in the rocks.”

  “You really do know this place,” Kort said. “Our boy’s busy—behind us.”

  “Go around the rocks in the river. You said this guy is erratic and we don’t know for sure where he is right now.”

  Cautious, maybe too much so. Need to keep an eye on this. Could be the first sign of cracking. Some candidates looked fine in training, but melted in reality.

  Norge showed Kort the shallow ford and they hurried across. Norge kept going inland and Kort turned on the riverside trail.

  •••

  There was a black state CO truck pulled up on the road near the parking area. Norge moved on the truck. Logan was called Logjam by other officers for reasons unknown. This juvenile fixation on nicknames rubbed her entirely wrong, more evidence of a frat-house culture suffusing the largely male conservation officer corps. Nicknames. How lame.

  “Kort’s on the river trail,” she told Logan. She’d met him briefly twice before.

  “Whachyouses got going?”

  “Bryce Hoff snagging down at Badboy Bend.”

  Logan said, “That makes my day complete. That asshole. Why aren’t we downstream?”

  “Grab him at his vehicle, limit his options, hem him in. Too much space for him to run on the river or in the woods.”

  Norge activated her radio. “Two One Sixty, Two One Forty, copy?”

  No answer. She felt hairs go up on her arms and the back of her neck.

  Logan stared at her. “Call backup,” she said.

  Logan was immediately on the radio, requesting help.

  Norge cut through the parking lot to a row of pickups nearest the river trail. All but one was pointed downstream, only one truck backed in and pointed out. The exception was a rusty white Jeep Grand Cherokee. The Jeep had a red rear pull-up door, and a brown driver’s door.

  She was surprised by Kort’s silence, and worried. She toyed with calling again, but decided against it. She took a post near the back of the Jeep and listened on her radio as county deputies began streaming toward the area.

  She looked down the trail and saw nothing and a moment later saw Bryce Hoff. He had Kort by the neck and was dragging her, her toes bouncing off the ground.

  Norge said into her radio, “One, One Forty has a visual on One, One Sixty. The suspect has her. Tell all vehicles to come in quiet, no lights or music.”

  “One One Fifty Eight clear.”

  She heard the calls going out from the county dispatcher to deps as she watched Hoff moving with Kort toward the truck.

  Kort’s hair and face are bloody. Her body is bent like a rag doll and she’s not resisting, which suggests she’s stunned, her brain not hitting on all cylinders. Get back into cover and take a knee. The giant Hoff went right in front of her and grabbed at the rear door, slapped Kort several times, and chucked her in back. He’s laughing. Whoa. Move deliberately, don’t let your temper go.

  She moved on him as the man tried to get into the driver’s seat. He had Kort’s pistol and she was somewhere in back. Norge caught him with a punch in the temple, but he somehow slid on down into the seat, got the key in the ignition and started engine. She had hold of him through the driver’s window and kept punching him over and over and over, all to the side of his head, but the Jeep surged forward and the door was still open and she got her left arm hooked on the window frame and kept punching up at
the man’s throat with her right fist as the vehicle veered and she nearly let go, but he shot out onto the gravel road and accelerated. When he steadied the Jeep, he reached over and tried to mash her left hand and she got a punch into his nose sideways and blood shot out and then they were fishtailing and she was sure they were dead, but Hoff somehow righted the vehicle on the gravel until he hit something hard and the vehicle bucked into the air and she was hanging on, knowing if he shed her she was going to get hurt bad. Hang on, don’t let go, look for an opportunity. Focus on him, nothing else.

  The Jeep was semi-airborne and swerving. Her mind was clear, all life now in the slowest of motion. She managed to bend her right knee up to her chest and get her backup .38 out of her boot holster as Hoff slashed at her with a huge knife, and she yelled “Conservation officer, stop!” He kept driving, she yelled again and then calmly pulled the trigger. Pulled it twice. The Jeep hit some sort of obstacle and flipped onto the passenger side, slid through a marsh area, and no matter how hard she tried to get inside or to let go, she seemed attached to the damn thing. This is not so good, was her final thought.

  •••

  Ambulances, EMT vehicles, state police cruisers, deputies in SUVs, the dull day illuminated red, white and blue. Norge and Kort were slumped on the lip of an EMT truck. Norge’s back hurt like hell, both of her legs were torn up by the dragging, and a med tech was picking gravel out of her right knee and shin. Her right hand was bandaged.

  “Knife cut,” the EMT said. “Not serious. It’ll stitch fine.”

  “Okay,” Kort said in a business-as-usual tone. “Critique for Day One, Phase Three: Get to your partner sooner and if you have to shoot another asshole like Hoff, blow his fucking head off.”

  “I was aiming for his head when we hit that last bump,” Norge said.

  “Don’t make excuses.”

  “How’d I grade out on being there for others?” Norge asked.

  Kort said, “What do those assholes in Lansing know. You all right Mossa?”

  “Been better, Didi.”

  “Can’t do no better than come home alive at the end of your shift,” Kort said.

  Logan stood with them, listening, looking worried and relieved. “Balls,” he said.

  “Beg your pardon?” Norge said.

  “Your new name, it’s Balls.”

  “I like the one my folks gave me better.”

  “This one you had to earn,” Logjam said.

  She smiled inwardly. Maybe this nickname thing isn’t so juvenile after all.

  Two-riffic

  “You’d write Jesus a ticket for fishing without a license,” Brother John said with a pained yelp.

  “What’s your point?”

  John had legally changed his name at age eighteen to Turk and started his own church, the Church of Christian Compassion in the Here and Now. He had gotten a minister’s license over the Internet. Jerrilyn Virtue thought Turk an odd name for a Christian minister, but Brother John was not one for hearing criticism or suggestions, especially from women. He saw his mission and job as directing, steering, and whipsawing the unenlightened, a category that included his eldest sister, the cop (yuck).

  Despite his holier-than-thou superiority and her pushiness, Jerrilyn loved him. All right, it seemed dumb, but Turk was an actual and ardent believer in the achievability of world peace, forgiveness, golden rules and all that other goody two-shoes stuff. It rankled Turk that his sister was in law enforcement, carried a handgun, pepper stray, a taser, baton, and cuffs. What rankled him most, she suspected, was that she could arrest and charge lawbreakers and he could only rail at those outside his rules. Sheer envy, she thought, which made it funnier. And sadder. Poor Turk.

  “’Member, sis, compassion. We are all God’s creations, all his children. Not every lawbreaker is a criminal. Most of us innocently make mistakes. Even the dishonest make honest mistakes.”

  “Love the mistake-maker, hate the mistake, right?”

  “Amen, Sis. Go forth with forgiveness in your heart.”

  And my ticket book close by, she thought. Some people did make innocent mistakes, but these were easy to identify. Many others, however, knew exactly what they were doing and some days it was so many more than many, approaching the extreme wall of all, every damn contact she had would be way off the reservation and by steely-eye choice, not chance, accident, or serendipity.

  Today was supposed to be a marine patrol day, all day in her boat on the big lake, but it was raining a soft warm rain and she knew the worm dunkers would be drowning garden hackle in pursuit of fat brook trout in the cricks, and so it was she spent her day looking for trout-cheaters and arranged her day’s route so as to arrive tonight at a moose marsh she had found last fall, and had been watching for the last month.

  There was a huge bull in the area. She’d seen him a half dozen times in the month, always at the break of dark into night. Last night she had walked out closer to the marsh and bumped into a shooting shack erected on a four-foot berm to give the shooter a full look at the open marsh, the perfect view, a shack situated by someone who knew what he was doing.

  It wasn’t enough that all the local rabbit and bird hunters hated wolves because they feared for their hounds and dogs, but those same people considered area moose to be community pets.

  To whack moose in these parts was akin to homicide. Local and summer folk alike treated the odiferous creatures as royalty, even to the point of naming them. Pearlie. Big Horns, Betty Luna and her calves Ulrich and Uta. It was insane. Names for moose, for God’s sake. Ridiculous.

  Over in Thwart Lakes, Ronette Pare of Hot Ron’s Pasty Post had a three-county wall map covered with acetate. Every morning Ron and the locals met to mark the locations of sighted moose. They were tracking twenty different animals and every morning over coffee you could get great directions to see one of the giant animals.

  Tourists and summer people could be a pain in the ass. Over a dozen years she had gotten pretty good at predicting the behavior of certain locals, not all of them and not all the time, but enough that it became a deterrent by putting them off balance. Locals had reasons for doing things, but tourists and summer folk were prone to just doing, on the spur of the moment, pure impulse creatures, they were often trouble. There was no way to predict them.

  It was as if crossing into the Upper Peninsula sucked out peoples’ brains. She sometimes fantasized having a huge cinderblock building on US 2 outside St. Ignace with a sign, Visitor Brain Storage Service Here. Rates by Day, Week, or Month.

  Nobody had been in the shooting shack last night, but today was Saturday and she guessed the would-be wrong-doers might indeed be installed. The blind itself was new, homemade, but beautifully engineered, she guessed it could be popped up in five minutes or less and it was substantial. Best camo job she’d ever seen, designed to make it look like cattails, both spectacular and effective. Blind on a moose marsh, definitely a place to sit on Saturday night.

  Might just be a photographer, but her gut said no.

  •••

  Bad skeets tonight. It was August now and they should be mostly gone, but this was a wet summer and there had been an unpredicted, unexpected second hatch, and this crowd seemed particularly pesky and carnivorous. Still, it was summer and not February, drowning in a three-hundred-inch snow accumulation, the kind of weather that caused snowmobilers to check their tiny brains before mounting their high-speed toys.

  Virtue stashed her truck a half-mile from her destination and made her way across a massive beaver dam flooding and halfway across she came nose to nose with a pair of wolves, who turned tail and ghosted away from her, looking back now and then. This was prime wolf rendezvous country where the packs taught cubs to kill by starting them on beaver.

  Nice and dark when she reached the blind, and it surprised her to see a handicapped van with a hydraulic lift door/entrance. T
he front had a small bench seat and the steering wheel in the center of the dash, not on the left side. Geez. How much did this kind of engineering cost? Geezohpete. Two large rifle cases were open on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

  Felt her heart rate pick up. What had Turk said, that even the dishonest could make honest mistakes? The mistake this bozo made was coming into her area. Virtue whispered into her 800 mhz radio and ran the plate, which came back to a two-year-old Hummer, not a new Ford van. The owner’s name was Galway Twist out of Ann Arbor.

  Two rifles likely meant two people. Hard to predict any more than that. Virtue ducked into a cedar line that terminated near the blind, plopped herself on the ground against a tree, and nibbled a strawberry cereal bar.

  The blind was not twenty feet away from her and it was eerily quiet. Most people made some kind of sound, even when they were trying to be still, but not tonight. Dead silence. Weird. And also pretty impressive. She didn’t have to like what someone was up to in order to begrudgingly admire and respect skills. Virtue and her colleagues trained year-round, man-tracking, hand-to-hand fighting, shooting various weapons, using a boat as an offensive weapon, various drive schools. Conservation officers were defined by so many skills it was hard to squeeze them into an application form. Summer survival, winter survival, first aid, trapping, wilderness survival, all the skills based on what the job required and hammered home by constant unrelenting practice until she could walk into a situation and pluck forth the exact skill she needed.

  Still silent in the blind, too much so. Had the shooters bypassed it for another shack located elsewhere? Damn. Get closer, look and listen.

  Had on her NVG goggles, which turned the world a sickly green, evanescent, surreal.

  The large blind struck her as too large. She fingered a Velcroed flap, eased it open, looked ahead, saw nothing, hunched to enter.

  “You’re half in,” a voice said.

  “Half-out,” another voice chirped.

  “Be of one mind and decide, like a big girl,” the first voice said.

  “Or not, and hang in the balance, neither in,” this from voice two.