Bad Optics

by Joseph Heywood

  An old CO in Luce County called Tombo Smyks had gotten in his face at a district meeting not long after he transferred from the state police. “You think all the time you spend on the job will actually change—anything? Look how it turned out for your old man.” Smyks had been a contemporary of his father, one the old man never much cared for.

  “Wouldn’t be in uniform if I didn’t. What would be the point?”

  “All you young bucks with your hair on fire. Listen, Service, all that does is get your head burned. No one person ever makes a difference, a least not the likes of us.”

  “Jesus made a difference,” he’d retorted, said it just to be a smart-ass.

  “Ain’t none of us Jesus,” the old CO had come back, “and thank god for that small favor.”

  He’d ended up laughing that day. The old COs were damn good at their jobs, and a lot of them far more dedicated than some of the newer breed. Never mind that they were underequipped, poorly trained, sadly underpaid, little appreciated by the public, and worked over pretty badly by prosecutors, juries, and judges. None of this mattered. The good ones were all committed, keen observers, hard-nosed, in-your-face curmudgeons and eccentrics.

  Concentrate, he told himself. Get refocused.

  He said to Marthesdottir, “I’d like to know when and if Stafinksi bought those eighties and how and when the state got hold of them. There’s a myth up here that Stafinski once owned almost all of the wilderness property. Is that true?”

  “I doubt that but I’ll do what I can,” she said. “But you aren’t asking where exactly the activity is that I called about.”

  “Because there is no Stafinski fox farm,” he said. Humor her, “Okay, where?”

  She gave him the section and plat book numbers again. “No Fellow, there’s nothing down there, and what the hell are you doing monitoring a place that’s six miles from the nearest road?”

  “Steady, Grady. The section numbers changed after the 1920s. The numbers I’m giving you are current in the newest plat book.”

  This shut him up. “I’ve always understood that the original survey lines were done before the Civil War, and not changed afterwards.” As he said this, he was recalibrating the coordinates and realized now that she was talking about the shortest route into the Wolf Cave area. Shit.

  Fellow said, “As with most things in life, there’s no ‘always.’ Stuff we’ve learned sometimes turns out to not jibe with what actually happened. Michigan’s survey history is . . . interesting, to say the least. You want details?”

  “Only to the extent that it relates to the Mosquito.”

  “Well, I don’t yet know how this exactly relates to the Mosquito Wilderness Tract, or even if it does, but most surveyors were contracted and their work results varied a lot, despite specific contractual requirements. A lot of the work was apparently pretty damn shoddily done, and later large tracts had to be resurveyed and maps and charts readjusted. Most of the U.P. was laid out in the period 1845–1849, but some parts weren’t done until 1850–1853. Every surveyor was required to draw a precise map in triplicate to reflect what he had done. One copy went to the US Surveyor General and another to the state land office. The USGS got the original, and what’s on record now may vary some because of poor administration, fires and floods, and other disasters that hit record storage,” she said. “Still with me?”

  “Like a tick,” he said.

  “This is interesting. The only place in the United States that has a complete set of the originals and copies is Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor. Only place in the whole country and nobody knows why or how they landed there. Purely a fluke maybe, but get this, we’re also the only state of fifty with two principal base lines. This is the point where the baseline intersects the Meridian. The baseline runs east to west along the north borders of Wayne, Washtenaw, Jackson, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, and Van Buren Counties,” she said. “And the principal meridian runs north–south with the two lines coming together on the Ingham-Jackson County lines.”

  Okay, this was too much. “Shoddy work had to be redone?”

  “That’s the short of it, but here in the U.P. you have to remember that county boundaries shifted as regularly as teenage girlfriends, and over decades new counties were made from portions of old ones. I’m sure you know what kind of strife that must have caused.”

  He knew about the historical scrap between Crystal Falls and Iron River over which city would be the county seat, with the former winning out after a nefarious card game and midnight raid that moved records to Crystal Falls from their original place in Iron River. There were still hard feelings among some old-timers over in Iron County, the same way that residue from the Civil War still hung like a pall and irritating reminder over southern states. That bloody war was supposed to remake the country and give everyone a new start. The laws changed, but sympathies and emotions didn’t, and some conflict still remained. “There could be errors involved up here?”

  “We shall see,” she said.

  “How soon?”

  “The unanswerable question. Shouldn’t you be more concerned over the traffic I’ve been seeing?”

  Service thought, Why does my mind keep wandering? “You’re right.” He closed his eyes to again explore his mental map, this time with the new information. Now he could picture it in his mind. “How much activity?”

  “Sometimes daily, sometimes every other day.”

  “Any sign of law enforcement?”

  “No sir, none.”

  What the hell is the name of the new CO who’s supposed to be partnering with me? Can’t remember. Some female. She’s being paid, so why the hell isn’t she patroling the Mosquito, learning her territory?

  “The Drazel trucks again?”

  “Yes, and some ORVs as well.”

  Wheeled vehicles of any kind, even bicycles, were outlawed throughout the Mosquito Wilderness, and ORVs were major no-nos. Where the hell is my partner?

  “That boy’s been there again too,” Marthesdottir reported.

  “Tyrus Redpath Dotz?” he said. “On an ORV?”

  “No, he’s on foot and he gets there well after the women have headed into the area.”

  “Women, plural?”

  “Yes, the two of them in a side by side. Looks brand new, a Ranger RZR 800.”

  “Let me guess, painted silver?”

  “Red logo and blue earth ball too.”

  Are they clueless about the law, or don’t they care? No motor vehicles are allowed in the wilderness. Has someone told them they’re not exempted for whatever reason? “Are they in there today?”

  “No, and they didn’t come out to their truck until late last night. The boy didn’t get back until just before sunup. If history holds, Drazel will be back tomorrow, get there about seven o’clock and push off.”

  “Oh seven hundred. Okay, we’ll take a look. Thanks. Let me know about that Stafinski thing, all right?”

  “It’s your dime,” she reminded him.

  “Take a look at what?” Treebone asked.

  “That fish you’ve got smells like a locker room.”

  Tree grimaced. “Well, that answers that puzzle. Look at what?”

  “We doesn’t include you.”

  “Does now, right old man?”

  Allerdyce shuffled along chuckling. “Three muleteers, dat’s us. Wah, team!”

  Service sighed.

  “Seriously,” Treebone said again. “Look at what?”

  “Drazel Sisters. They’re running ORVs in the Mosquito.”

  “That’s neither legal nor copacetic. Who’s your department got covering the Mosquito with you out of the picture?”

  “Why?”

  “Uh, you’re suspended. Ask your partner to deal with the problem.”

  “I am a CO and that’s my turf”

  Treebone shook h
is head. “Really, is your head that hard?”

  Son of a bitch. Tree was a strict constructionist in some ways. When did this happen? Back in Vietnam he’d been the definition of loose and going with the flow.

  “We’ll just do a little recce for her,” Service said smugly.

  “Her whom?”

  “W something.”

  “You haven’t met your partner?”

  “Don’t use that tone of voice with me, you big asshole. I had no reason, I’m suspended, remember?”

  “You’re a jerk is what you are.”

  The name suddenly came to him. “Wildingfelz.”

  “Her mama give her a first name, this Wildingfelz?”

  “Harmony,” Service said sheepishly.

  Treebone laughed so hard he had to grab his old friend by the shoulder to steady himself. “Lansing give the great Grady Service a partner named Harmony? I love this.”

  “I wasn’t asked.”

  “Imagine that,” Treebone said with his eyes bulging.

  “We gone jaw all night?” Allerdyce complained. “She nice girlie, dat new one,” Allerdyce said as he bit off a chunk of stinky fish.

  The two men turned and stared at him. “You know her?” Service asked.

  “Somebody got greet new girlie. I don’t hang out wit’ youse all time.”

  Service looked at Treebone, who was suppressing a laughing fit.

  “Get in the truck you two,” Service ordered. “There’s work to do.”

  Treebone said, “You may have a honey-do list with Tuesday, but your DNR list is empty.”

  “Get in the damn truck and stop your damn preaching.”

  Chapter 21

  Marquette

  Marquette County

  Dotz was on camera going in and out of the wilderness area, ostensibly following the Drazel Sisters. Service wanted to hear firsthand from the boy why he was interested in them, if at all, and what, if anything, he had seen or done. After that he’d call Wildingfelz and put together a plan for tomorrow morning, if today’s meeting pointed to the Drazels in any way at all.

  The address took them to an apartment building just south of the Northern Michigan University campus. The place was on a tree-lined street with hundred-year-old houses, most of them freshly painted in pastel colors and in some stage of gentrification. When he paused to look, it struck him how prosperous beat-up old Marquette was becoming. He wasn’t sure if such prosperity and the reams of out-of-town traffic were positive things. He’d once read that if it took you more than a morning to walk out of a town, it was too damn big. How much longer will the city qualify? This place felt like deep-seated liberal-land, with every lawn showing various political signs or flags declaring anti-gun, pro-recycling, anti-capitalism, and LGBT rights, the whole array of the liberal philosophy. If such a place reflected conservative values, the liberals would flip out and tear down the signs. Can’t stand extremists, left or right, religious or secular. Whatever happened to live and let live? Nowadays, politics was about taking your opponents’ souls and bathing them in your beliefs.

  Treebone looked up at the stairs that led steeply up to Dotz’s apartment. They stretched up the side of the house, nearly straight up. “Like the damn Matterhorn and not one damn landing,” his friend complained. There was one small landing up top at the door, and it reminded him of a time when they were in training with the Marines. A serial rapist had gone up a similar set of steps and had been shot by a young wife from Brooklyn, both she and her husband the children of made-men. She had grown up with guns and had put three 9mm slugs into the intruder, lit a cigarette, and calmly called the police. The officer climbed the steps, looked at the body, which was half inside the door and half on the landing, and asked her if she had any coffee. She did. The officer took a cup and, according to base scuttlebutt, told her, “I’m gonna go back downstairs and drink my coffee and have a smoke. When I come back up, I want to take another look at the body, inside the house, right?”

  While he was downstairs, she pulled the dead body inside.

  The cop had come back and looked at the body and said, “Yes ma’am, righteous shoot, him being inside your house and not outside.” Odd thing to recall, Service thought.

  Treebone was still grumbling about the steep climb. “This place has the reek of landlord liability.”

  “You’re just too damn lazy to walk all the way up,” Service told his friend.

  “There is that. I’m not lazy. I economize my energy. You remember our Juicy Fruit run? That was ’posed to be straight up too.”

  Service remembered. An Air Force F-4 had crashed in the karst of Laos and the two crewmen had punched out. They made contact with Search and Rescue Forces, reporting they had parachuted into the middle of a huge swarm of bad guys in what amounted to impossibly difficult terrain.

  Service and Treebone were recon guys, not ordinarily involved in Air Force Search and Rescue efforts, but this time someone reached out and they were selected to go to the location to “assist the extraction.”

  The plan was to drench the area with Juicy Fruit, code name for a central nervous system gas that put people out cold for fifteen minutes to a half hour. The gas was new and experience with it in combat meager. Their CO, a mustang captain named LaFarge, had choppered out with them and given them the rules of engagement. “These ain’t mine, copy?”

  “Copy, sir,” they had answered in unison.

  “We are to use Juicy Fruit solely to extract our fliers. Call Jolly 5 when you have them, and pop red smoke, copy?”

  Again in unison, “Yessir.”

  The captain was not quite finished. “The bad guys may be recovering by the time you’re ready to get pulled out of the shit. If they are afoot and armed and threatening you, you have the green light to engage, copy?”

  “Sir, yes, sir.”

  “But,” the crusty old combat veteran continued, “so long as said bad guys are incapacitated by the gas, they are to be left alone. Your mission is to save two of ours, not to ice bad guys.”

  “What fool drew up this monkey fuck?” Treebone had asked.

  Their captain grinned and rolled his eyes. “I share your frustration, Marine, but rules are rules. We are not the goddamned barbarians. They are.”

  “Dinks don’t got rules,” Treebone insisted. “Why do we?”

  “Because we’re not them,” the captain said.

  “Too motherfuckin’ bad for us,” Tree had muttered.

  “Inerts are off-limits, men, red-lined all the way, copy?”

  Eight hours later they rode the sling back up to a chopper from the crash site. The fliers were extracted first and had been taken back to their base in Thailand. Wiggling into the belly of the chopper, the two Marines braced their backs against a bulkhead. Treebone unsheathed his K-Bar and wiped dark blood on his fatigues. Service did the same.

  Jolly 5’s crew chief said, “Skipper says great job, thanks for your help. This was our first Juicy Fruit dance. Any problems?”

  “None,” Treebone said.

  “How quick were they waking up?” the crew chief asked.

  “They weren’t,” Service said, and didn’t elaborate.

  “Guess that shit lasts longer than the test-tubers expected,” the chief said.

  Treebone had said at the time, “Ain’t that the truth.” He did not look at his partner.

  Allerdyce went up the apartment stairs like a mountain goat.

  Treebone asked, “How old is he?”

  “Older than us.”

  “That man is scary, like supernatural,” Treebone muttered.

  Dotz did not answer the door. Instead, an entirely naked redhead with both arms covered with tattoos opened the door and yawned. “Like, what time is it, man?”

  Service showed her his watch and she grimaced. “I need me a real clock, old guy, not o
ne of them sundial-dealeys.”

  He understood. She had grown up in the digital age and could not read a clock with hands—a sad comment of social directions. “It’s seven p.m.,” Service said.

  “Shit,” the girl said. “I got to be at work in half an hour. Don’t know why you people here, but thanks.”

  She padded to a bedroom and prodded her bedmate. “Ty, Ty, Dotz, wake up dude, you got like three old fuckers want jaw-jaw.”

  Dotz popped up, rubbing his eyes, and asked with a slurred voice, “S’up?”

  Treebone popped the bottom of one of the boy’s feet. “Delicious thing like that running around and you grabbing z’s in the rack?” Treebone said. “Shame on you, son.”

  “I had a difficult night,” Dotz said.

  “We saw,” Service said, sitting in a purple and orange chair across from the trashed bed. “We’d like to hear all about what you’ve been up to since last we met.”

  The girl flounced back into the bedroom in tights, Ugg boots, and a fisherman’s knit sweater. “You gone again today?” she asked Dotz.

  “No, I’ve got stories to write today. I’ll be out tomorrow.”

  “Good,” she said, kissed him hard enough to break his neck, said, “back at four, dude, see you then,” and bounded away.

  “Mr. Dotz,” Service said.

  “Can I get a drink of water and take a piss?” the boy asked.

  “Have at it. Who’s your girlfriend?”

  “Just a friend,” Dotz said.

  Treebone said, “Friends don’t sleep with each other, man.”

  “Her name is Ballou, and she’s my bunkie.”

  “Bunkie?” Treebone asked.

  “Right, bunkies. Like we sleep together but it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You’ve been down in the wilderness,” Service said, trying to redirect the group’s attention. “More than once.”