“Is the Pung boy in school now?” Service asked.
“No, I heard he transferred to U of M.” This checked out with what Service had heard from Pung’s boss.
“You haven’t seen Rafe since then?”
“No, he kept calling and I told him if he didn’t stop I was going to tell the school what had happened.”
“Did you?”
“No,” she said, looking down at the table. “I figured it was my fault. I never shoulda gone out there with the dude. Can I go now? I’ve got a lot of studying to do.”
Gus said, “How can we reach you?”
“I don’t want to be involved?” the girl said. “I’ve got like, this humongous load this semester and I need to stay on schedule. I made a mistake—can we just leave it at that?”
Service was glad that Gus didn’t push any harder. If they needed to talk to her, they could find her easily enough.
Walter and the two girls got up and started to leave. Service followed and caught his son’s arm. “Are you going to have dinner with us?”
“No, Karylanne and I have to study. Next time, okay?”
Service wanted to chew out his son for poking his nose where it didn’t belong, but the information was promising and he was too much a detective to niggle.
“I guess Maridly’s gonna be gone a lot?” Walter asked.
“Flying for Senator Timms.”
“So you let her go?”
“I don’t let her do anything. She makes her own decisions.”
“That’s cool,” his son said, heading for the door. “See you soon?”
“Absolutely,” Service said, not wanting to fail the test and thinking he needed to get the boy wheels, if the university would allow it.
Back at the table, Gus asked where Walter was. “He went with Karylanne,” Service said.
Gus smiled. “Don’t blame him a bit.”
“Chocolate-covered figs,” Service said. “Too damned much coincidence here to not follow up.”
“Pyykkonen talked to Pung’s lawyer. There isn’t any camp or other house and he’s worth about four hundred grand, mostly in the house and stocks, all of which goes to his ex.”
“What about the son?”
Gus shrugged. “No mention of a son.”
“We’d better take a look at that cabin on Lac La Belle,” Service said, wondering what the deal was with Terry Pung.
They left Gus’s vehicle at his house, loaded some of his gear into Service’s Yukon, and headed across the bridge through Hancock.
“You figure the figs were laced?” Gus asked as Service drove up US 41.
Service said, “Maybe GHB or whatever it’s called. I think our boy Pung is a wannabe chemist.”
“GHB or whatever,” Gus said. “Listen to us. We don’t know shit. Let’s give Pyykkonen a bump. She worked school liaison. She’ll know.”
Service didn’t argue.
Lac La Belle was way out on the Keeweenaw Peninsula in Keeweenaw County. On the way there, Gus hauled out his county plat books and found a property registered to a George Masonetsky. There were several cabins on the east side of Mount Bohemia. None of them were directly on the lake, but were high enough to have a spectacular view. The mountain was more than eight hundred feet tall, steep and pocked with boulders. Some of the local X-sports types tried to ski it from time to time—usually with disastrous results.
They waited on the county road for Pyykkonen.
“Hi, guys,” she said as she unfolded from her vehicle.
Gus told her about the girl and what they had heard, and she listened without interrupting. He ended by telling her that Service thought the girl might have been slipped GHB.
“Possibly,” she said, “but roofies would be better.”
“Roofies?” Gus asked.
“Rohypnol. It’s a sleeping pill. Take the stuff, crush it, put the powder in a liquid. You won’t smell it or taste it. It kicks in within a half hour, even faster if you’re drinking. It sticks in the blood for thirty-six hours if you’ve mixed it with booze.”
“Could you load it in figs?”
“Sure, like I said, dissolve it in water, inject the fig, and you’re on your way. Simple and effective.”
Service shook his head. Yesterday it had been a meth lab, now something called roofies. Things might take time to migrate to the U.P., but they always got there.
“The girl said Pung’s cabin was a couple of doors down,” Service said.
“We can’t go in without a warrant,” Pyykkonen said. “We’ll have to call in the K-County sheriff. This is outside my jurisdiction.”
“She’s right,” Gus said, glancing at Service.
“But it’s not outside ours,” Service said. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep everything nice and clean,” he added, knowing you could always enter a private dwelling if you thought there was a problem or an emergency. You couldn’t search around and root through things that weren’t visible, but if you saw something in plain sight suggesting a crime, you could get a warrant on that. Up here it was easier to get warrants than in some downstate jurisdictions, where judges stuck to process to avoid the ever-present eyes of the ACLU and other watchdog groups.
They split up, Gus volunteering to go with the Houghton detective, leaving Service to do what he needed to do.
The house they were looking for was not a couple of doors away, but four cabins down. Using his flashlight Service could see all weapons safes inside. An arrow was in a vise on a table by the window and for a moment it looked like someone might be there working, but his probing light got no response and he went to fetch the others.
Back at the cabin he showed them a broken window. “Looks like somebody tried to break in,” he said.
“I wonder who,” Pyykkonen said, her voice thick with skepticism.
“You two can cut the bullshit tag team act. I’m a big girl.”
“Door’s locked,” Gus said. “But maybe somebody banged against it and weakened the lock.”
“No goddamned way,” Limey Pyykkonen said. “This is as far as it goes. Let’s get the County out here.”
The two conservation officers did not protest. Service wondered if her insistence on adhering to protocol got her tossed in Lansing.
Gus whispered, “Did you have to bust the window?”
“Hey, I found it that way,” Service said. He didn’t add that it had been cracked and only partially broken and that it had collapsed when he tested it. It had been an accident, but he could have been gentler.
It took thirty minutes for Keeweenaw County to send a deputy. His name was Dupuis, a weary man who looked to be in his sixties.
The deputy looked at the broken window and cursed. “Bloody kids are always breakin’ into cabins out this way.”
“We ought to look inside,” Pyykkonen said.
“Wait,” Service said, feeling an unexpected surge of caution. “Let’s see if we can get the owner out here.” If they were into an evidence stream he didn’t want to lose the case on a procedural technicality. Now he was being cautious and the realization made him smile.
Dupuis gave him a look that said he wanted to get back to what he had been doing and that this was an unneeded distraction, but he agreed after some initial stalling.
The name on Gus’s plat book said r. brown. “You know the owner?” Gus asked the deputy.
“Met ’im coupla times. Lives ta Houghton, works ta college.”
“Let’s get him out here,” Pyykkonen said.
“Tonight?”
“Soon as he can get here,” she said.
“I’m t’only uniform on duty in da county tonight,” Dupuis whined as he shuffled off to his patrol car to make the call.
“This may be nothing,” Pyykkonen said.
“Maybe,” Service said, but two incidents
involving laced chocolate-covered figs and both involving the same family name made him think they’d caught a break.
R. Brown turned out to be Reinhardt Brown, who was assistant head of maintenance for Michigan Tech’s Student Development Center. It was close to fifty miles from Houghton to the cabin, all along twisting, narrow, and unlit roads, and it took the cabin owner more than an hour to get there. He drove a several-years-old Toyota pickup with bad suspension and an engine that was spewing blue exhaust and sounded ready to cough up a rod.
He pulled up in the trees below the cabin and waddled up the wooden steps. Service saw a wide-bodied small man with a shaved head and long neck, with the overall effect of a lightbulb on steroids.
“Da blazes is dis?” Brown greeted them as he huffed up the stairs. He had a high-pitched, cartoon voice. His face was flushed from the short walk up from his truck.
“Looks like somebody tried ta break into your cabin,” Keeweenaw deputy Dupuis explained. “We need ta get inside and look around, make sure everyting’s okay.”
“Dis couldn’t wait? You know what’s on da tube tonight?”
Service, Turnage, and Pyykkonen introduced themselves.
Brown grunted. “Youse like da fuckin’ Untouchables or somepin’?” He took out a key and opened the front door. He stepped inside, turned on the lights, and held the door open for them.
The officers pulled on latex gloves before they went inside.
The first thing Service noticed was that the interior was too dust-free to have been unoccupied long. There were no cobwebs along the windows or in the corners. Pyykkonen went directly to the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was empty.
“That would’ve been too easy,” she said over her shoulder.
The room he had seen through the window looked like the main living area. Service stood by the table with the vise and looked at the arrow. Graphite, not bamboo. It looked like someone had shaved some of the fletching.
“What’s in the gun lockers?” Service asked the owner.
“Don’t got a clue,” the man said.
Gus stared at him. “What did you say?”
“Don’t got a clue,” the man repeated. “None a dis junk’s mine, hey? I leased da place last spring.” He quickly added, “If Deputee Dog woulda gimme half a chance, I woulda tolt ’im on da Bell, hey? But no, he makes me drive all da way out. Youse know how much gas costs?”
“Who leased it?” Service asked.
“Gook prof from da college.”
“Professor Pung?”
“Yah, guy croaked on da canal Hancock, hey?”
“Was there a contract?” Pyykkonen asked.
“We done cash, month at a time,” Brown muttered.
“How much a month?”
“Why I gotta tell youse?”
“We can get a court order,” Pyykkonen pressed. “This is a felony investigation.”
“A thou.”
“One thousand dollars a month? That’s way over local prices for a place like this,” Service said. Even with the view the place was old and too modest in size for a thou.
“Now I’m gonna have to pay bloody taxes on it,” Brown complained.
Service stayed out of it. The U.P. had a well-established barter-and-cash economy that existed outside the official economy. Some Yoopers would go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes.
“Did you write receipts for the professor?” Pyykkonen asked.
“Shook on ’er, man to man,” Brown said. “Don’t need paper for dat, eh?”
Gus Turnage said, “Play ball with us and maybe your cash business stays yours.”
Brown looked at Gus. “For real?”
“If you play ball,” Gus said.
“If you don’t cooperate,” Limey Pyykkonen chimed in, “I will personally go to the IRS.”
Brown quickly raised his hands in surrender. “I’m in da game, guys.” He made a pained face, said, “TV’s shot all ta bloody hell anyhow. I got beer inna truck. You guys want one?”
They said no. Brown and Pyykkonen left the cabin together. Service lit a cigarette while Gus disappeared through a door and down some stairs.
“Come down here,” Gus shouted up at him.
The basement was one room. There was a large low rectangular object in the center, covered with a paint-spattered canvas drop cloth. Whatever was underneath looked to be six feet by four feet.
Gus picked up a corner of the tarp and looked underneath.
“Geez,” he said, carefully peeling off the entire tarp.
The box turned out to be a collapsible cage made of half-inch stainless steel tubing. Gus knelt to click open the release mechanism. He looked around inside, took out tweezers and a plastic evidence bag, and began picking things up.
“Got something?” Service asked.
His friend held up a clump of hair. “Looks like the same you got from the professor’s car.”
“I hope the cap’n uses this to light a fire under the fed techies.”
Gus grinned.
About forty minutes after they began, Sheriff Macofome showed up at the cabin and Service immediately wondered who had called him and why. He was dressed in cut-off sweatpants and a tank top in the style most cops called a wife-beater.
Sheriff Macofome carried a leather bag filled with special tools and old keys. He had the first gun cabinet open in ten minutes. The other two took even less time. All of them were empty.
Macofome and the two DNR officers helped Limey Pyykkonen dust the cabin for fingerprints. The local deputy sat outside on the stoop with the owner.
They covered the cabin methodically and it was nearly 3 a.m. before Pyykkonen and Macofome declared they had had enough.
“No point sticking around,” Pyykkonen told them. “We’ll clean up and you can all call it a night.”
Brown had finished two six-packs while they worked, and Gus told him he’d drive him back to Houghton. “Bunk at my place?” he asked Service as he and Brown were getting ready to depart.
“See you there.” Service paused before getting into Gus’s truck to follow the Toyota.
When they got to Gus’s, Shark was there, tying flies on a small table in the kitchen. There were bits of feather and fur all over the floor. Shark barely looked up. “Salmon,” was all he said.
Service peeled off his bulletproof vest and shirt, unlaced his boots, and curled up on the sofa. He did not think about the case. He wondered where Nantz was and hoped she was being careful.
10
A phone was ringing just out of his consciousness. Service rolled over and squinted at the time on Gus’s VCR: 7 a.m. He groped for his cell phone, but couldn’t find it, heard Shark’s voice in the kitchen, then nearer, pushing the phone at him.
“It’s Walt,” Shark said.
“Sorry to wake you up, but Karylanne and I were up all night with Enrica. We’re at the Sheriff’s Department. She’s giving a statement to an officer. We promised her that if she told the cops, they’ll do something to get this creep.”
“Okay,” Service said, wondering what the hell Walter was thinking, making deals with a witness. Emotion, he reminded himself, got in the way of police work. Still, he was impressed that the boy had not stopped with the meeting last night. He had shown initiative and doggedness. He wasn’t happy Walter had gotten involved, but if he hadn’t, things might be completely stalled. Because of Walter, they had direction again. It might pan out and it might not, but movement was better than stasis.
His son said. “When she’s done here, we’re gonna take her back to campus.”
“You did the right thing,” Service said, feeling the words stick as he spoke them. Had his old man ever been happy with anything he’d done?
“Your life really weirds out, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
/> Service called Pyykkonen at home. She answered on the first ring. “Enrica is at the station right now, giving a statement.”
She hesitated. “I’m Homicide.”
“I know that, but all of this is connected and right now Rafe Masonetsky’s our only link to the Pungs.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “I’m headed down there now. I’ve already talked to Foxy Stevenson,” she added. Stevenson was Michigan Tech’s longtime football coach who had earned his nickname by recruiting lesser athletes than his opponents and somehow winning games through unorthodox leadership, flawless preparation, and creative game plans. Coach Stevenson put a premium on players learning to think for themselves and perform under stress.
“What did he have to say?”
“Masonetsky failed his second drug test last spring. Anabolic steroids. Foxy gave him the boot and the boy didn’t bother to finish the semester.”
“You get an address?”
“Jefferson, Wisconsin. I guess his old man called Foxy and thundered like hell. He threatened to sue, but never followed through. Foxy said the kid’s a loose cannon and we need to exercise caution.”
Jefferson, Service thought. Things were beginning to come together, at least geographically. “You’d better get a move on,” he said.
“I’m walking out the door now. Talk to you later.”
He checked in with McCants. “How’re you feeling?”
“Sore. I took yesterday off and called Wisconsin. The jung director’s name is Randall Gage. He’s not Korean and he’s not interested in talking to cops. He says jung membership is a private matter and if we want names, we’d better bring a subpoena.”
“You tell him we can do just that?”
“No, I figured you’d take care of that.”
He made toast for breakfast and later called Captain Grant in Marquette.
“We’ve found more of that hair and Gus’ll get it off to the fed lab. I think it’s time to turn up the burners.”
“Are the samples similar?”
“They look identical: ursine and blond.”
“Get the samples in the mail to the lab and consider the heat to be up.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
“How’s your arm?”
Chasing a Blond Moon Page 14
