Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  “This will be a deep-pockets crowd, very neufy.”

  They lingered in an embrace until she said, “Okay, gotta kick the tires and light the fires.”

  “This thing has propellers,” he said.

  “Whatever,” she said with a wink.

  She got into the Cessna, closed the hatch, and started the engines. He saw her focused inside the cockpit and talking on the mike when she looked over at him, snapped off a crisp salute, blew a kiss, released brakes, and taxied away.

  He watched her take off to the west and bank southeast toward Traverse City, experiencing a surge of fear as he pictured her all alone in the cockpit; but she was happy and knew what she was doing, and if she wasn’t worried, he wouldn’t be either. Too much.

  Next Friday night they would be in Jackson and he would meet Siquin Soong, he thought as Nantz disappeared from sight. He had no desire to see the captain tonight. Instead, he called McCants who was patrolling in the Haymeadow Marsh area. They agreed to meet at a picnic ground at Haymeadow Falls. He was to bring fresh coffee.

  The days were shortening and the tamaracks, aspens, and birches along Haymeadow Creek were beginning to show the result of reduced light, which kicked in chemical reactions that turned needles and leaves a pale yellow or bright gold. Some leaves were beginning to drop, spackling the ground like a sloppy painter’s palette. He breathed in the damp earth and decaying leaves, the perfume of fall hanging in the still air.

  McCants arrived two minutes later. They sat at a picnic table, which had been chained to a tree, and enjoyed the silence.

  “They flew the Garden two nights ago,” he said, “Plucked six violets. How’s the Mosquito been?”

  The Mosquito Wilderness would always be his baby.

  “Quiet. I think you scared everybody away, you big meanie. This last week has been quiet everywhere,” she added. After a look at his face she said, “Almost everywhere . . .”

  “This too shall pass,” he said. “Just keep your feet in the dirt.”

  He remembered a Sunday of nearly twenty years before. It was snowing and raining and miserable outside and he had just pulled out his workbag when Sergeant Peter Slater had called.

  “What’re you up to today?” Slater had asked.

  “Paperwork. You?”

  “Thought I’d take a ride in the woods. Want to come along?”

  The weather was beyond miserable, but Slater was a subtle man with a wry sense of humor, and he agreed to join his supervisor. By day’s end they had written eighteen tickets for an unimaginable array of violations and problems, and the experience had taught him better than any lecture that the only way to enforce laws was to be out where they were being broken. After that he did paperwork at night or in little snatches of time.

  He had known McCants so long that they were content to simply sit and drink in the sounds and scents of the changing seasons.

  Service was pouring more coffee when McCants said, “Swans.” He looked up to see four of the huge birds flying high above the creek descending toward the area where beaver dams formed several small ponds.

  McCants lit up and stared at the creek glissading over gray and black rocks. “I still can’t believe we get paid to do this,” she said, adding, “I heard that sergeants and detectives are going back to the field to fill gaps after the first of the year.”

  “I heard that too,” he said, leaving it at that.

  “You think you’ll work the Mosquito?”

  “I doubt I’ll get to choose.”

  McCants smiled. “You want to work it with me, I’d like that. Is Captain Grant going to be okay?”

  “I hope so,” he said. LeBlanc probably was right about it being another stroke, but if the captain said it wasn’t, he would stick by his captain.

  “What do you think of the senator’s chances?” she asked.

  “What is this, Twenty Questions?”

  “I think she’s a great choice,” McCants said. “Be good to have a woman running the show. If she wins, you think Tenni’s out?”

  “After his contract expires,” he said. “It will depend on the makeup of the commission.”

  “His departure alone will be a plus for all of us.”

  They were walking to their respective trucks when two shots popped over the hill toward the beaver ponds north of them. Instinct stopped both of them as they listened. The swans came back down the creek, lower now, flapping frantically to gain altitude.

  Service counted three.

  “One unaccounted for,” McCants said.

  He ran along behind her as she raced through the trees up a hill, pausing by a downed white pine and putting her binoculars up. They both scanned the ponds through the trees. There was no wind and the air was heavy, promising rain. Somewhere below they heard snippets of voices.

  “There,” McCants said, pointing. “Just inside that little peninsula. The blind’s on the far shore and there’s a camo johnboat against the bank.”

  Service glassed the area, saw what she saw.

  “They must be parked on the other side of the creek,” she said. “Up on the hill line.” She pointed. “We can get in east of the ponds, curve our way in from the south, and come up behind them. They’re probably parked further north. Got your waders?” she asked.

  They’d been in the back of the Yukon at one time and maybe they still were—somewhere in the clutter. In his old patrol truck he had been pathologically neat and orderly because there was so little room, but in the Yukon he was becoming a slob.

  They took both trucks and looked for and located a little-used twotrack that led up to the hill where they wanted to be. The roads were pitted deep and rough, the frames bottoming out. After they had found a place to stash the trucks he rooted around for his waders, found them, kicked off his leather boots and slid into the waders. He strapped his gun belt over them.

  McCants was ready before him. “Search first, confront second,” she said.

  He remembered the shy probie she had been, smiled at her confidence now.

  It took twenty-five minutes to get down to the pond, its edge overgrown with tag alders, the bottom of the pond deep in black silt. They crawled through the dense cover, slithering along, easing over blowdowns, trying to avoid stumps left by beavers.

  Eventually the trees ended and they were in brown grass. The cottony white entrails of cattails hung down like the exploded batting of ruined beds.

  “I am so fucking wasted,” a voice said.

  “Shut up,” a second voice said. “Voices carry.”

  “Yeah sure, what I’m gonna do, spook fuckin’ beavers, eh?”

  McCants was almost flat just ahead of him. She turned her head and nodded for him to come up to her. Service sank in sphagnum moss and black water up to his thighs as he crawled. The waders had a leak. Shit.

  “Right there,” she said, mouthing the words soundlessly. She held up three fingers, then looped her forefinger and thumb, lifted her foot out of water and touched it. Thirty feet. McCants delicately cleared a space in some mud and drew a picture for him. They would crawl forward about five yards apart, circle, and come back by different routes. Even the dumbest violet would not keep a swan in the blind. She wanted to find it before confronting the men.

  The cold water coming in through the waders was soaking his pants, and it made him cringe as it seeped through to coat his legs.

  “Goddammit, now I gotta piss,” one of the voices said.

  Service peeked through the grass, could not see McCants, but saw two men in camo clothing.

  He could hear a stream of urine splashing in the marsh water at the base of the brown grass.

  “You jerk!” McCants said with a yelp. “DNR!”

  Service looked through the grass. Candi was standing up and angry.

  “You pissed on me,” she said.

 
The man was trying to button up. “Serves youse right crawlin’ around out here!” the man shouted.

  The second man looked over, said, “What the fuck? Jesus!”

  “Put that little thing away,” McCants told the second man.

  “DNR,” the first man grumbled, eyeing her. He looked over at his partner.

  “A cunt,” the second one said.

  They were weighing options, Service knew. He began to gather himself to intervene.

  “Hey, what’s the problem, Dickless Tracy?” this from the first man.

  “Little girl like you out here all alone.”

  “God is my copilot,” McCants said calmly. “Let’s see your hunting licenses,” she said.

  The second man grinned. “Mine’s in the blind. I’ll just—”

  “Stay where you are,” McCants said, stepping toward the first man. “Licenses,” she repeated.

  “Like Dray says, in the blind.”

  “Sir, move over here,” she told the second man.

  Service thought about standing up, but he was enjoying watching her work.

  The two men were tall and rangy with triangular heads, ponytails, bushy black beards.

  McCants stood at ease, but Service saw her hand resting near the grip of her SIG Sauer.

  “Kneel,” she said.

  The men looked at each other and dawdled but eventually did as they were told.

  “Okay, who shot the swan?” she asked.

  “What swan?”

  “Don’t lie to me,” she said. “I hate liars.”

  “Hey, you see a swan?” the first hunter said to his partner with a crooked grin.

  She said to the first man, “Give me your hat.”

  The man laughed and took it off. She dropped it on the ground.

  Service crawled closer so he could see what she was doing.

  She reached under her tie and pulled out a green pouch.

  “This is a lie detector,” she said.

  “Bullshit,” the first man said.

  “Shut up,” his partner said.

  “Now,” she said. “You’re hunting here, right?”

  “If you say so,” the first man said.

  “You’ve got dope in the blind.”

  “No way.”

  “I smelled it,” she said. “Don’t lie. This pouch always reveals the truth.”

  “What’s in there?” the second man asked.

  “Truth,” she said. “You shot the swan. Four came over, three came back. I was up there on that hill.” She pointed. “Who took the shots?”

  “We din’t shoot no swan,” the first man said.

  “Swear to God?” she said.

  “Swear to God.”

  She looked at the second man. “You swear?”

  He nodded unconvincingly, said nothing. Service was fascinated, wondering what the hell she was doing.

  “I’m warning both of you, if you lie over the bones you will have bad luck you cannot believe,” she said. “The curse will be on you.”

  “You can’t hurt us,” the first man said.

  “God will do it, not me.”

  “Did you shoot the swan?” she asked the first man.

  He shook his head.

  She dumped the contents of the pouch into the hat and nodded solemnly.

  It began to drizzle.

  “Did you shoot at the swan?” she asked, looking up at the man.

  “I didn’t hit it,” he said.

  “Shut the fuck up,” the second man said.

  “You,” she said to the second man. “Did you shoot the swan?”

  “No,” he said, his voice faltering.

  She shook her head and breathed in deeply. “You are in deep trouble, sir. God is about to punish you.”

  The man’s face turned red and he started to stand.

  Service stood up, trying to fight back a laugh.

  Both men were startled by his sudden appearance. The second man screamed, “I did it, I did it!”

  Service got up and walked forward. The first man looked up at him.

  “Roll on your backs and take off your jackets,” McCants said.

  “It’s raining,” the first man whined.

  Both men did as they were told. The second man was wearing a shoulder holster with a Colt 45.

  “Hands out like you are on a cross,” McCants said.

  The men did as they were told. Service cautiously removed the .45 and pointed it toward the hill. “Safety’s off.” He pulled the clip, checked the chamber. “One in the boiler.” He emptied the clip into his hand and put the rounds in his pocket. He removed the round from the chamber and put it with the other bullets.

  “Shoot a lot of ducks with this?” he asked the second man. He grabbed the man by the shoulder and pulled him up. “Licenses. You get them both.” Service went with him into the blind, was gone three or four minutes, and emerged with two shotguns, two wallets, and a wood duck decoy. “No plugs. There’re fifty rounds of lead shot in there, two expended.” He flipped wallets to McCants, who looked through them and shook her head. “No hunting licenses, no waterfowl stamps.”

  Neither man spoke.

  “A whole bag of these decoys inside,” Service said. He turned over the one he was carrying and asked, “Which one of you is Bruce Mosley?”

  “Neither,” McCants said, holding the wallets.

  “And the boat?” Service asked.

  “Mine,” one of the men said. “The decoys belong to a friend of ours.”

  “That’s good,” Service said. “There’s no registration on the boat.”

  “Okay,” the first man said, “I shot the swan. It was gonna fuck up our duck huntin’.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” McCants said. “This area’s closed to duck hunting this year.”

  She walked over by the blind, took her 800 MHz off her belt, and called the driver’s licenses in to Lansing. She gave Station 20 the name and phone number of the decoy owner and the driver’s license numbers of the two men. It took ten minutes to get answers.

  The first man was Dray Boekeloo, forty-one, of Thompson. He had two outstanding Schoolcraft County warrants, for possession of meth and contributing to the delinquency of minors. The second man was Jordie Rockcrusher, thirty-six, who was wanted for felonious assault in St. Ignace. The owner of the decoys had reported them stolen two weeks before. He’d never heard of Boekeloo or Rockcrusher.

  “You guys hit the jackpot,” McCants said. “Possession of stolen goods, killing a swan, lead shot, no plugs in your guns, a loaded, concealed weapon without a CCW permit, the unregistered boat, no waterfowl stamps or hunting licenses, and hunting in a closed area. I warned you not to lie over the bones. Where’s your vehicle?”

  Both men pointed north.

  They cuffed the men and took the guns and decoys and started marching out of the swamp up the hill. It was easier going out than the way they had come in.

  Up on the hill McCants called Delta County and asked for deputies to meet them out on the Rapid River Truck Trail to transport the prisoners. There was no way for a patrol car to get back to them. Service laughed thinking about this. Until a few years back all COs had were sedans, and they took them into places the manufacturers would never believe. Got them hung up and trapped a lot too. The trucks weren’t perfect, but size and four-wheel drive had opened a lot of new territory to officers.

  They took one man in each truck, made the handoff, and went back across the creek and along the hills until they found the men’s truck. Service dropped McCants, who walked back to the beaver pond and started north in the boat. Service was waiting for her when she bumped the nose of the boat against the grassy bank. It was a struggle to pull the boat up to the truck, but they got it done, securing it with bungee cords. McCants drove it out to the m
ain road to meet the wrecker driver, who hooked it up and hauled it away. Service took McCants back to her truck and called the captain at home. “I’m with McCants. Do you still want me to come by?”

  “No. There are rumors in Lansing and Detroit that the feds are exorcised by a woods cop sniffing around one of their investigations.”

  Siquin Soong? Service wondered. He still hadn’t heard back from Tree, which was unusual. “I haven’t talked to the feds, Captain.”

  “Are you in tomorrow?”

  He said he would be.

  McCants said, “Want to grab a burger? I’m gonna sit on a field tonight.”

  “Want company?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  They bought burgers at the McDonald’s in Gladstone and headed to a potato field not far from the Mosquito Wilderness. They backed the truck into some spruce trees and sat inside with the windows cracked, eating burgers and fries. “Good field?” McCants asked.

  “Got a lot of shiners here over the years,” he said. Too many to count.

  At 11 p.m. a small buck walked past the truck, no more than ten yards away, sticking close to a wild olive hedgerow. McCants got antlers out of the back of the truck and rattled them together. The animal stopped and turned back to see what the sound was. The buck’s brisket was not swollen. It would take colder weather to turn on the rut, but deer were naturally curious, which got a lot of them shot every year.

  When the deer winded McCants, it sprang away and disappeared into the hedgerow with its flag up in alarm.

  McCants got back into the truck, turned on a small red light, and started her paperwork for the day.

  Service said, “Where the hell did you come up with that pouch routine?”

  “Red Eacun,” she said.

  Eacun was a sergeant who had retired ten years ago, spent winters is Arizona, summers at his home in Cheboygan. He was a horseblanket, like his father, an old-time conservation officer who wore a full-length wool coat. Horseblankets were considered a breed apart by their successors.

  “He said one of his guys used to use it. Works about ninety percent of the time if you size up the violets right.”

  “You read those two right,” he said.

  “It was sweet,” she said.