Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  Nantz laughed. “God,” she said. “Lori is right. You have the instincts of a politician and don’t even recognize it.”

  “She doesn’t know me.”

  “I think she knows you better than you realize. Don’t be fooled by her appearance, Grady. She’s sharp and she thinks, quote, Grady is underutilized, end quote.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. The captain might be right about Timms, he decided.

  “Is that a dismissal?”

  “I really have to work.”

  “You’re supposed to be resting.”

  “I am resting.”

  “Okay, spoilsport.” She collected the wine bottle, bowls, forks, and glasses and went upstairs.

  Newf padded down the stairs, came over to the table and lay down underneath.

  “What’re you?” he asked the dog. “Second shift guard?”

  The dog wagged her tail.

  14

  Service heard the telephone ring and ignored it.

  “I need to get back to school tomorrow,” Walter told his father.

  “My truck’s in Crystal Falls,” Service said. “Nantz can drop us there in the morning and I’ll run you up to Houghton.”

  “How come you call her Nantz?” Walter asked.

  Service had never thought about it. “Habit, I guess.”

  Walter nodded and paused. It seemed to Service that he had more on his mind, but the boy went upstairs and Service heard the TV come on.

  He put his feet up and tried to think. Violets who committed crimes always left trails and wakes; sooner or later you picked up a strand, and if you were lucky, it let you make the case. All cases had this in common—threads. But habitual criminals were generally more careful than the impulsives. The trick was to find the threads you needed and stick with them. In the Pung case, he still felt blind. He liked Pyykkonen, though her behavior with Wayno Ficorelli had taken him by surprise and made him wonder if she was also impulsive on the job. If so, she’d be jumping from this to that without making progress, letting velocity substitute for direction. Again he wondered about her dismissal from Lansing.

  “You look unhappy,” Nantz said from the stairs. “That was Lori on the phone.”

  “Just thinking,” he said. The homicide was Pyykkonen’s and the shit belonged to Gus and him. But if she didn’t get off her ass and start picking up some of her threads, neither case was going anywhere. He hated being dependent on others, but as a detective this was becoming the rule rather than the exception. Did the captain understand that? The more he thought about it, the more irritated he got. “What did the senator want?”

  “She wants me back downstate tomorrow. She’s going to introduce a bill, hold a quick press conference, and get back on the campaign trail.”

  Service’s mind was elsewhere.

  “This bill,” Nantz said, “will provide a mandatory ten-year sentence in any case where a police officer is injured.”

  “There are plenty of laws on the books now,” he said.

  “She feels strongly about this.”

  “In any case—misdemeanor or felony?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “As it stands now most people plead out on misdemeanors, because the time and money aren’t all that much. But you slap ten years on stuff and they are gonna fight like hell in court, and that’s a disaster for us.” Most conservation officers spent little time in court, in large part because they made good cases, which defendants and their lawyers couldn’t fight effectively. He had spent less time in court than other officers, but if a law like this went on the books, all officers would be spending a lot more time in court than in the woods. With staffing already low, that would put even fewer people out where they should be.

  “Lousy idea,” he added. He explained the unintended effects that might accrue.

  Nantz listened attentively and when he had finished talking, she asked, “Do you mind if I share this with Lori?”

  “Your choice,” he said, quickly adding, “but let it be your response, not mine.”

  “Why? Lori respects you.”

  “I don’t like politicians leaning on me.”

  “You might consider it a sign of respect; and in any event, I brought this up, not her.”

  “She’s playing you.”

  “You’re underestimating me, Service.” And her face made it clear that she didn’t like it.

  “A politician trying to get elected uses everybody and everything they can to get what they want.”

  “Like a detective?” she shot at him.

  “I guess,” he said. “The boy needs to get back to school tomorrow. Can you drop us at Simon’s? I’ll drive him from there.”

  “Simon’s?”

  “I left the Yukon there when Pyykkonen and I went down to Wisconsin.”

  “I can just fly him up to Houghton.”

  “No, I can drive him.”

  “You know what he’d really like? To fish with us.”

  “We don’t have time,” he said. “Neither of us.”

  “You’re supposed to be relaxing, and I can make time,” she said with a tone of voice that told him he was going to be fishing tonight. “I’ll fly you guys to Crystal in the morning and then head for TC. Let’s run up to Slippery Creek. Fresh trout on the grill sounds good,” she said. “All we need is bacon, a little brown sugar, some salt, pepper, and fresh lemons. I’ll run Walter into town to get him a license and then we can get this show on the road.”

  Service knew better than to argue. Once she got a plan fixed in her mind, that was the end of discussion.

  She bounded up the stairs, yelling Walter’s name.

  He called Pyykkonen at home and she took a long time answering.

  “You alone?” he asked.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, “but your friend Shark just left. He made breakfast for us.”

  Shark? Breakfast? In all the time he’d known Wetelainen, he’d never known him to go on dates. He might pick up a woman at a bar and bring her home, but no dates. He was too cheap and focused on other things to tolerate the time demands of romance.

  “He’s a good guy,” she said.

  Shark Wetelainen, Chief Macofome, Warden Wayno Ficorelli, he thought. Pyykkonen was a woman who got around. “What’s going on with Pung’s lawyer?”

  “Near as we can tell, he doesn’t have one. He has a firm in Southfield and I never get the same lawyer twice.”

  This information took Service aback. “What about finances?”

  “Told you earlier . . . the house, stocks, but no domestic bank accounts, savings or checking, and no credit cards. He got paid once a month and took it to a local bank to be cashed. We were able to determine that. This guy was the original greenback man.”

  “How much did he make at Tech?”

  “Right at ninety thou.”

  “You find out who he rented his house from?”

  “A woman from Painesdale named Maggie Soper. He paid cash, one grand a month.”

  Painesdale was six miles south of Houghton, along the iron range of old mining villages. “One thou for the camp, another K for the house—that’s thirty percent of his monthly income.”

  “Twenty-seven percent,” she said. “But he stopped paying rent in August and bought the house for one fifty K, all cash.”

  “Jesus. What did he make at Virginia Tech?”

  “One fifteen.”

  “Meaning he took a twenty-percent cut to move here?”

  “Eighteen percent,” she corrected him.

  “Doesn’t that strike you as odd in this day and age?”

  “From what we know, the late Harry Pung was a very odd man.”

  “Somebody who lives a life of cash is about money,” he said. “Where the hell did he get a hundre
d and fifty grand for the house if he doesn’t have bank accounts? Did he keep cash in the house?”

  “We sure didn’t find any in the house or on his person,” she said.

  “Which means robbery could be a motive here.” The words immediately gave him a sinking feeling.

  “What about insurance beneficiaries?”

  “He had a policy from the university for a hundred thousand. His ex-wife is the sole beneficiary. Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, Service?”

  “No way.”

  “Well, it feels like it.”

  In fact, he was not happy that she hadn’t shared some of this information before now. “I’ll be in Houghton tomorrow around noon. You want to grab some lunch, see where we are?”

  “I’ll be at the station,” she said abruptly.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, hanging up.

  He immediately called Simon. “Nantz is flying us to Crystal tomorrow. We’ll plan to land about eight. Can you pick us up? I need to grab the Yukon.”

  “No problem. I’m not on duty until five tomorrow. We can talk then.”

  “You got something?”

  “No, Toogood seems to have disappeared.”

  “See you at nine.”

  Service immediately pulled the files on Ollie Toogood and began to read.

  The records were old, frail and yellowed, copies made on some sort of ancient mimeograph. They were smeared and dark, hard to read. Obviously nobody had looked at them in a long time. There was a space for Toogood’s photograph on the service record. The space was empty.

  Oliver Franklin Toogood was born in Lansing, Michigan, on 4 March 1930, and graduated from Lansing High School in June 1947. He spent two years at Purdue University and in 1949 was accepted into the Air Force Aviation Cadet Program. He was assigned to the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing in Korea at Base K-14, on 3 December 1951. Or was it K-13? The printing was blurred and dark. Shot down on 12 February 1952 and captured near Hoengsong. This was about six weeks after he arrived.

  His medals and decorations included the Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Air Medals, and the Purple Heart. He was credited with shooting down four MiG-15s, one short of ace. For only being in combat for six weeks, Trapper Jet had made quite a record for himself. Maybe his youth had made him aggressive.

  Lt. Toogood was repatriated at Freedom Village, Panmunjom. Was he among the first to be released, or among the later groups? Service wondered.

  The second sheet listed citations from his medals. The one for the Distinguished Service Medal was the most informative.

  Lt. Toogood was a prisoner first of the North Koreans and later of the Chinese Communists from 12 February 1952 to 21 January 1954. During his 23 months of captivity, Lt. Toogood was held in solitary confinement for 20 of his 23 months. He was tortured throughout captivity and lost a leg as a result of injuries suffered during captivity.

  So the injury was from the camps, not from his shoot-down. He was lucky to be alive, given what Service knew of the conditions of camps in those days.

  Lt. Toogood devised a communications system for prisoners and as he was moved from camp to camp, he taught the system until most prisoners in Korea were using it. Despite unrelenting torture and privation, Lt. Toogood was cited numerous times by fellow prisoners as setting an example of resistance that others adopted. For intrepid behavior and courage, Lt. Oliver Toogood is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

  A hard-ass, even then. That fit the Trapper Jet he knew. The signature on the citation was that of General Curtis LeMay. To earn the DSM required genuine heroism—or insanity: sometimes they were too close to distinguish between in combat. In Korea, the next honor after the DSM was the Congressional Medal of Honor—usually awarded posthumously. That’s how it had been in Vietnam too. He had not known about Toogood’s DSM.

  Service flipped to the next page. Trapper Jet had been in a hospital in Japan, and then in VA hospitals in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas until May 1956. Twenty-nine months was a long convalescence, a clue as to how severe Toogood’s injuries had been. There was no mention of a medical disability or a mailing address. Were those bits in a separate file? With the military you never knew.

  Sometimes investigations were easy. This one wouldn’t be, but there was a thread: Lansing. If he got desperate, he would try to wend his way into the Department of Defense system, but only as a last resort. If Toogood was from Lansing, why had he come to the U.P. and remained here? Were there relatives in Lansing? Had he had contact with them after his release? So many questions and no good answers.

  He was studying the map again when Nantz returned.

  “Gear’s loaded,” she said, hardly able to contain her excitement.

  “Do me a favor in Lansing?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  He handed her the folder. “Oliver Toogood, Trapper Jet. He graduated from Lansing High School in 1947. There ought to be an old yearbook with a photo.”

  “If they haven’t cleaned the attic,” she said. “I’ll give it a try.”

  She nuzzled his neck. “Let’s move it, big boy! We’re burning daylight!”

  Walter looked at the unpainted cabin as they put on waders and asked, “What’s this?”

  “Where your father lived before I dragged him back to civilization,” Nantz said. “The term ‘lived’ is figurative,” she added with a wink.

  “Looks like a hermit’s place,” Walter said.

  Service shot a dirty look at his son, but saw that the boy was smiling.

  “Chill, it’s a joke,” the boy said.

  Nantz said, “Some joke. It looks even more pathetic inside.”

  Slippery Creek was difficult to fish with a fly rod. It was overgrown with wild grapevines and tag alders, but there was a promising riffle about two hundred yards downstream. Service led them to it through several groves of white birch, letting Walter lug the portable grill and cooler.

  Nantz took rods out of their tubes and put them together while Service checked the grill to make sure they had gas. “I checked it at home,” Nantz said. “Let’s fish.”

  She handed two rods to Service, both of them eight-foot 4-weights.

  “Rig Walter,” she said. “I’m gonna fish.”

  Walter’s initial casts were clumsy, and like most beginners with a fly rod, he broke his wrist like he was trying to throw a ball. Service showed him how to point his forefinger down the rod and to lock his wrist. “It’s a lever,” he explained. “The weight is in the line, not the fly. The line takes the fly out to the target. It’s like a slap shot. The trick is timing, not back swing or force.”

  “Yessss!!!” Nantz shouted.

  She had a fish on and was letting it run, enjoying the tug.

  “You don’t have to exhaust it,” he reminded her.

  She laughed. “It’s gonna be in our bellies in an hour. This is catch-and-digest night.”

  He loved watching her fish. She took it seriously, learned quickly, and over time had become a pretty good caster.

  Walter hooked a small brook trout after about fifteen minutes of trying. His son fished with a singular focus and made corrections without comment. The trout slashed at a Size 18 royal stimulator, a dry fly that did not mimic a particular insect. He played the fish pretty well and got it to his leg. “It’s a trout,” the boy said, “maybe eight inches.”

  “Let it go,” Service said. “Let’s shoot for ten-inchers.” He looked over at Nantz. “How big was yours?”

  “Big enough,” she cackled.

  Service never rigged his rod. He watched Walter and Maridly and coached, and they groused and laughed, but in an hour they had six fish gutted and ready for the grill.

  He sprinkled them lightly with brown sugar, inside and out, salt and pepper, and set them aside on tin foil. He fri
ed bacon slices in a small pan until the bacon was beginning to firm up, then put one strip inside each trout and another on top. He cut lemons into thin slices and put slices inside and on top of the fish and pinned them with twigs he had whittled. When the fish were ready, he put them on tin foil on the grill.

  Walter and Nantz continued to fish, releasing what they caught.

  “Smells good!” Nantz shouted. “There’s wine in the cooler.”

  He opened the cooler and dug around. Not wine, but champagne, Taittinger. There were also three glass flutes.

  “Three?” he called over to her.

  “His first fish with a fly rod. We’re gonna celebrate as a family. Firsts matter.”

  “Why the brown sugar?” his son asked as he stared at the trout on his paper plate.

  “Takes out the iodine flavor.”

  The boy inhaled the two fish and wanted more. “Cook a couple more if I get ’em?” he asked his father.

  Nantz poked Service. “Sure,” he said, “but they aren’t always so cooperative.”

  It took the boy fifteen minutes to catch two more of the right size and clean them.

  Service cooked them, then sat back with Nantz and watched the boy eat.

  Nantz poured champagne and handed out the flutes. “To your first fly-fishing success,” she said, raising the glass. “May this be the first of many!”

  “I really like this,” Walter said, staring at the reel. “Can I take a rod back to school?”

  “Season closes end of the month,” Service said.

  “I want to practice casting all winter.”

  “Take the one you’re using,” Service said. The champagne bloomed nicely in his belly and made him feel warm. Nantz leaned against him and kissed his neck. “If it was earlier we’d slip into the woods,” she whispered.

  He kissed her and ignored the pain in his lip.

  “I did good,” she said, “didn’t I?”

  “Always,” he said.

  “All ways,” she added. “I’ll find that photo for you,” she said. “Has Simon seen the old man?”

  Service shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “That’s not good,” she said.