Chasing a Blond Moon
Page 30
After so many years in the north, Service was completely attuned to the rhythms and whims of the seasons, and he drove at night with two minds operating independently—one of them working actively and silently to assess the hazards and threats along the roads, the other buried deeply in the case that had propelled him all across the Upper Peninsula, east to west and north to south—a case that in many respects was not one case at all.
Harry Pung was the catalyst, and many things had happened since his death. But despite any glaringly clear connections, it felt to him that somehow it was all part of a whole. Siquin Soong might be part of it. That remained to be seen. Trapper Jet might be part of it. Dowdy Kitella’s problems, too. The date-rape bozo in Wisconsin, and now Colliver and Fahrenheit—each element leading in a certain direction and creating a path, but so far few of the paths had crossed. Even so, the tangents made it all very interesting.
In his twenty-one years in the DNR he had never considered investigation either art or science. It was, if anything, more like tracking, where you got on a spoor and followed it to the end, wherever it led. Such things never proceeded in a straight line. It was like waking up in a cedar swamp in a soggy floodplain, the trees thick and close together, whipped, bent and broken by wind, genetics and ice. And underfoot, tenuous ground, quicksand and sink holes, and you knew you had to keep walking to get out, and even when you had some vague sense of where out might be, there was no direct path possible. You advanced ten yards only to retreat the same distance or more in order to get a better angle around barriers. And in the process of finding safer footing and watching your step, you lost total awareness of where here might be—only that you wanted to get out, and that you could do it only one step at a time, forward, backward, sideways, doing whatever worked, while steeling yourself with perseverance and stubbornness until you finally emerged from darkness into light. In an investigation it was always the investigator who started out lost. The details of the case were irrelevant and served only as stepping stones to lead you out.
At the State Police Academy in East Lansing there had been a course in investigation techniques taught by Calvin Shall, then in his sixties and retired but still teaching. Cal Shall had taken a shine to Service and pulled him aside one day to tell him, “Ignore the theories and formulae. An investigation is about two things: luck and determination, and it is determination that makes your luck. When you deal with criminals you will ultimately find that greed is the engine that drives all crime. The shrinks will try to split hairs, but greed is the nexus. People want what they don’t have or more of what they do. The feds will tell you to follow the money, but money can be hidden. I say follow the greed. It will always be there in plain view.”
Following greed, Cal Shall’s creed, had always worked for him, and in this case greed appeared to be the one constant in all the events that had transpired. Despite his efforts he felt no closer to solving anything, and as he drove north he felt increasingly irritable. He was still stumbling in the treacherous footing of the floodplain, still lost, the distance from the light not clear at all.
He called Grinda on the cell phone as he turned northwest out of Iron River to Watersmeet.
“Where are you now?” she asked.
“Leaving IR, should be over there in about thirty minutes. Meet at the casino?”
“We’ll be there.”
“We?”
“Simon and I are working together.”
Simon, not del Olmo. Elza, not Grinda. Service grinned as he raced up US 2.
Duck Creek and the Ontonagon River joined near Watersmeet, which had been so named because of this by the Chippewa of the Lac Vieux Desert band. The Chippewa had once lived on South Island in the lake, now known as Lac Vieux Desert, but called Ka-ti-ki-te-go-ning by the Indians. Over time much of the band had migrated sixty miles northwest to L’Anse, on Keeweenaw Bay. There had been so much traffic back and forth that the route was called the L’Anse-Lac Vieux Desert Trail; Service remembered that nearly three hundred and fifty years ago a Jesuit priest was thought to have disappeared coming south from L’Anse. There were few Europeans in the area then, and it was unlikely much of a search ensued. Back then, if you were lost, you were lost, and life went on. It was not that life mattered more now—sometimes it seemed less valuable—but society, the value of life aside, was intent on being orderly. Disappearing was not acceptable.
The Lac Vieux Desert Casino Resort was two miles north of Watersmeet. The blinking neon complex featured a block building with a long portico, and the tribe’s emblem in bright colors over the walkway. Like most tribal casinos in the state, it was open around the clock. There was a bar lounge, a restaurant, a motel with whirlpool suites, a golf course, and RV hookups for summer visitors. The parking was expansive, and as he pulled into the lot he counted three dozen tour buses. It was interesting to read constantly about the woes of the elderly on fixed incomes and then come to a casino to find busloads of bluehairs balancing themselves on walkers, working one-armed bandits with the intensity of John Henry bashing a vein of coal.
He smoked a cigarette, waiting for del Olmo and Grinda.
Grinda pulled into a space next to him and parked, and del Olmo got out of the other side and came around.
Sheena looked at his face and said, “Oh, my God.”
Simon just shook his head. “You need to learn to duck.”
He explained the reason for his visit and had another smoke.
“Pretty vague,” Grinda said. “A woman who might or might not have worked here, no time frame known.”
“She gets her rooms comped.” Maybe, he reminded himself. From Fahrenheit he had scant information.
“Could be a player,” Simon said.
Service grinned. She was a player for sure. The question was what game.
“We should call in a tribal,” Grinda said. This was her territory, and the tribal police and game wardens, county, DNR, and Troops all worked hard to coordinate and help each other. Lansing often praised Gogebic County police agencies for their cooperation, as if they had chosen to get along. The truth was that there were few bodies, lots of tourists year-round, and without cooperation, there would be chaos.
“Who do we call?”
“Monica Ucumtwi is on duty tonight,” Grinda said. “She just came over from St. Ignace. Young, but smart, and you can count on her.”
The highest compliment one cop could pay another, an astounding comment coming from Grinda, who in the past had tended to trust only herself.
“Okay, give her a bump and let’s get this going. I’ll ask for the night manager, see if we can get a personnel weenie in.”
Grinda smiled. “I think it’s called Human Resources now. They have a complete night shift,” she added. “People get hired and fired around the clock while the money cycles through.”
The night manager’s name was Laura Liksabong. She was in her late forties, smartly if a little too gaudily dressed for Service’s taste, with silver and jade loop earrings. She greeted them as they stood in the lobby overlooking hundreds of clanging, clinking, wailing slot machines, and suggested they move to her office in back. Service saw video cameras at the entrance and assumed there were more above the gambling pit and at the exits.
Liksabong raised her eyes when she heard what Service wanted.
“Wild goose,” she said. Her office was sterile, void of any personal items.
“Do you comp rooms?” he asked. There was a camera in her office, in the corner behind her desk. It would take in the whole room.
“Occasionally, not as a policy.”
“For former employees?”
“It’s possible, but being a former employee is not exactly endearing, is it?”
“We’re just asking that you check your records,” Service said. “I assume you have photographs of high rollers and troublemakers, and anybody who might warrant a comp room.”
How difficult could it be to check a few records less than a month old?
Monica Ucumtwi came into the office and smiled at Grinda. Liksabong didn’t seem particularly glad to see her, but her attitude suddenly shifted to instant and fawning cooperation. “I’ll take a look at the records and see what’s there. Why don’t you grab a coffee or something to nosh on in the Thunderbird—on the house,” she said with a smile and a nod to Ucumtwi, who pulled Grinda’s arm and led them to the crowded sports bar. There was a lot of conversation, but for a bar it was quiet, Service noticed. TVs were showing replays of a Packers game from the 1960s. The players looked almost comical. Few patrons were watching.
Service studied the snack bar menu, which listed muffins, gum, chips, candy, Rolaids, Tums, and cough drops, all under the category of “Other.”
Tums and Rolaids with food? This wasn’t irony; it was a sign of providence. He ordered a cup of coffee. Simon got a basket of jalapeño poppers. Monica Ucumtwi ordered a Coke, as did Grinda.
“The manager’s attitude shifted when you showed up,” Service told Ucumtwi.
“Tribal elections are coming. If she thought that I’d seen her being less than helpful, she’d be afraid I’d tell others. In our elections what people think about you is as important as your paper qualifications.”
“All politics are local,” del Olmo said.
“Tribal politics are the ultimate local event,” Ucumtwi said pleasantly, “but they are taken as seriously as a second coming.”
The decorations around the bar were more Indian-like than genuine, modern representations of all things Native rather than those of a particular tribe, which struck Service as tacky. Several elderly customers in motorized wheelchairs buzzed past en route to the pit. One of them had on a clear plastic mask attached by tubes to a large bottle of oxygen stuck in a pocket beside her. What kind of person would come to a casino to gamble when they were on their last legs? Wouldn’t a prayer in church be a better wager?
Ucumtwi pushed up her brown uniform sleeve and checked her watch. “I’ll go see how things are going,” she said.
“Cameras all over this place,” Service told Grinda and del Olmo.
Twenty minutes later they were in a room looking at still photos taken from videos, most from a camera positioned above the hotel’s registration desk. Manager Liksabong explained that these were from the last two months, and if they needed copies made, she would take care of it for them.
The photos were in large, flat albums, in glycene sleeves.
“There must be four hundred people here,” Service said. “Good thing they don’t comp as a policy.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” del Olmo asked.
“Native woman, dark hair, thirties or forties.”
“That should make it easy,” Grinda said, rolling her eyes. “How does one identify a native?”
Service ignored her sarcasm, and began leafing through pages. In the second book he found someone he recognized, but she wasn’t obviously Native American and she wasn’t in her thirties. It was Outi Ranta and she was dressed for a party.
When each of them finished their allotment of books, they pushed them to the next person so they could look. In this case, redundancy was essential, but the search revealed nothing more and Service was displeased.
He looked at the tribal deputy. “These are stills from a video. Can we also look at the video the stills came from?” He showed her the photo of Outi Ranta. There was a computer code along the bottom.
“I’ll ask.”
Thirty minutes later they were in another room with VCRs, and Service was inserting a cassette.
It took a while to find Outi Ranta, but he found her. Two cameras had captured her. One had her alone at the registration desk. Another had gotten her from behind as she walked toward the desk. The dress she wore barely reached her thighs, and walking beside her and looking back at something was Charley Fahrenheit.
Outi Ranta was Hannah. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
“You’ve got something?” Grinda asked.
“Something is a good word,” he said, neither specific, nor with meaning. What was Outi Ranta doing with Fahrenheit? He was back in that swamp, and had just gotten to solid ground when it now appeared to be a patch of quicksand.
“I want a copy of this tape,” he told Officer Ucumtwi, who went away to arrange it.
The night manager personally brought the tape to them. “If you need anything else, please call me directly.” She gave Service her card.
“Do you have the registration card for the person in the photo?”
The manager smiled triumphantly and handed him a fresh copy. “Keep it,” she said.
He scanned it quickly. Outi Ranta of Gladstone, and her address was correct. The box for a comp was checked and on the line beside reason someone had scribbled, “Gold Feather.”
Service looked at the manager. “Gold Feather?”
“A special group of guests who spend at least two weeks a year at our hotel.”
“High rollers?” he asked.
“Something like that,” Liksabong said before she walked away.
Monica Ucumtwi leaned close to him and whispered, “Vendors.”
Ranta and her husband had been in the hardware business for a long time. Service had never known they were gamblers. “Like hardware?” he asked.
“Personal service vending,” the tribal deputy said.
Service was jolted. “A pro?”
Ucumtwi smiled. “The casino certainly doesn’t comp amateurs.”
It was 2 a.m. and Service was too tired to head back to Gladstone. He looked at Simon. “Okay if I bunk at your place for a few hours?”
Simon and Grinda exchanged a glance, and Sheena said, “You can crash with us.”
Service looked her in the eye and she began to smile.
“Us, eh?”
She nodded and kept grinning.
25
Service was first up in the morning, made a phone call to Walter, and started preparing for breakfast. Grinda and del Olmo came through the kitchen in sweats and running shoes. “Don’t play in traffic, kids,” Service said with a chuckle.
When they came back they showered while he started pancakes.
They were in uniform when they sat down at the kitchen table, their clip-on ties side by side between them. “A regular family breakfast,” Service said.
“We’re pleased to be the source of your amusement,” del Olmo said.
“My, we’re touchy today.”
Grinda smiled. Service had no idea what was between them, but whatever it was, it seemed to agree with Sheena.
The three of them stood by their trucks in the early morning sun. “The light’s getting flat,” Service observed. “Winter’s coming.”
He didn’t ask what they were going to be doing. Officers were expected to know their areas, make their own plans, and follow their own instincts.
Walter was waiting on the sidewalk outside his dorm, a backpack slung over one shoulder as he slid into the truck and looked at his father’s face, flashing a questioning look.
“I know,” Service said. “I know. S’up?”
Walter laughed, closed his eyes, put his head back. He seemed both relaxed and tense. “It’s hard here. I’m in the books all the time.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“I’ve never studied so much or skated so hard. I can’t keep up with these guys.”
“You will,” Service said.
They ate sandwiches at a shop near the campus. “You aren’t saying anything about work,” Walter said.
“There are more important things than a job.”
“What I meant is that
you aren’t talking at all.”
Service looked at his son and saw himself looking across a table at his father—in a bar, his father drunk and surly and putting him down whenever he tried to speak.
“Food, us, that’s enough.”
Walter nodded. “Gestalt.”
Service said, “I didn’t sneeze.”
Walter laughed. “You can be funny.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
“That’s what makes it funny,” his son said.
Service started to say something, but Walter stopped him. “I know,” he said. “It’s cool. Is Maridly still flying?”
“She comes home Friday night.”
“I like her,” Walter said.
“It’s mutual,” Service said.
He took his son to a building on campus. They shook hands in the truck. “You all right for cash?”
Walter said, “Too busy to need money.”
Service tried to hand him two twenties, but Walter pushed them back. “You know that commercial on TV?”
“I don’t watch much TV,” Service said.
“The punch line is ‘priceless.’ When you see it you’ll know what I mean.”
“Mar and I will call you Saturday.”
“Make it afternoon. Rocky and I have a practice with our kids in the morning.”
“You like working with him?”
Walter smiled. “He’s different. He loves to get in the net to stop shots. I do all the power skating work. He’s like an overgrown kid.”
Father and son looked at each other, said in unison, “Goalie.”