“Total bozos,” he said.
“Job security,” she said, grinning.
“What exactly is in the pouch?” he asked.
“That, Detective, must remain a trade secret.”
28
As soon as Newf was free of the dog run, she ran into the side hedges, snarling and barking. Service tensed, thinking the red dog was back, but Newf soon came back panting and wagging her tail and made straight for the house.
“Miss Congeniality,” he said to the dog, who looked quizzically at him.
There were two messages on the answering machine, the earliest from Pyykkonen, the latter from Treebone.
Tree’s said, “Call you back from a Clark Kent. You probably just off making life miserable for your Bammas.” A Clark Kent was Tree-talk for a phone booth. He had no idea what a Bamma was, but he could guess it related to rednecks. Tree’s wanting to call from a phone booth was a distinctly negative indicator.
He tried Pyykkonen at her office and got a recording. He called her house and the line was busy. It took four calls for her to finally pick up.
“You been trying to get through?” she asked.
“Couple tries,” he said.
“I’ve been online with Shark,” she said.
“Wetelainen online?” It was unthinkable. Yalmer Wetelainen’s life revolved around food, drink, fishing, and hunting—until recently.
“I showed him a site called Flyanglersonline.Com. It’s got loads of antique fly recipes. He loved it, went right out and bought a Dell. Now I’m teaching him e-mail and Instant Messenger.”
Service had no idea what Instant Messenger was, and didn’t care. “You called,” he said.
“I talked to the dean at Virginia Tech who was Harry Pung’s boss. Just as the records showed, he was not aware of a son and had never heard Harry talk about one. I don’t know what the hell to think anymore. I also put out a BOLO to the coast guard, county, and Troops for a blue watercraft. Nothing back yet. I called the locks at the Soo and asked them to scan the tapes. Anything on your end?”
BOLO meant Be On The Lookout. Cops rarely used the term APB anymore. “They have tapes at the locks?”
“Every boat that goes through.” He hadn’t known this and he was impressed that Pyykkonen had thought of it. He had assumed the blue boat had ducked into a harbor in the northern U.P.
“Irons in the fire here,” he said.
“We’re gonna break this,” she said, sounding like she was singing in a graveyard.
He opened a can of Diet Pepsi and leafed through a copy of Atlantic Monthly that Nantz had left when he heard a siren pass in front of the house. He sometimes heard sirens below the Bluff on US 2, but rarely in the neighborhood. He put down the magazine, went out to the truck with Newf on his heels, and clicked on his 800 MHz. Nothing.
There were two radio systems in all DNR vehicles, the 800 MHz for talking to Lansing, all DNR field personnel and district offices around the state, and for talking to Troops. The county and city were on a separate system. With the 800 silent, he dialed in Delta County on the other radio and heard the dispatcher talking to a deputy. “Code 10-54X, Code 3,” she said.
Code 10-54 was a possible suicide; X indicated a female. Code 3 meant get there fast. He depressed his mike button. “Delta, DNR Twenty-Five Fourteen, where’s that Code 10-54?”
She gave him the address, which he automatically scribbled in the notebook he stored by the radio. His heart sank. It was Outi Ranta’s house.
He let Newf into the truck and blue-lighted to the house. Two Delta County cruisers were just pulling in, along with an EMS Ramparts unit. A third county unit was on his heels. He grabbed a pair of disposable latex gloves from a box in the backseat, and got out.
The Delta County undersheriff, James Cambridge, pulled in beside him. Cambridge was sixty, overweight, had a chronic bad back, and would retire this summer. He was the sort of county cop who was gruff, unfriendly, and uncooperative with other agencies. His personality had cost him two runs at sheriff, and only the benevolence of the current sheriff allowed him to keep his job this time around.
“James,” Service greeted him
“I hate calls like this,” the undersheriff said. Service knew Cambridge would soon question his presence.
Service stepped into the house behind Cambridge. There was a young deputy in the hallway. The kid looked pale, about to be sick. Cambridge squeezed his shoulder, a gesture that caught Service by surprise. The undersheriff was not known for giving warm fuzzies to his people.
Service looked into the kitchen. Cambridge said, “Mind your step,” and went back to talking to his deputy.
There were two lower panes of glass gone from the bay window. The rest of the glass and white wood were sprayed with blood and gray tissue. Service saw a body on the floor and leaned to look, not wanting to soil the evidence. It was Outi Ranta, her skirt hiked up around her thighs, one shoe off. She had a corn pad on the uncovered foot. A Colt Python with a four-inch barrel was on the floor. He guessed it was a .38. The two bottles of vodka were where he had last seen them, one of them unopened, the other one looking to have about the same amount as earlier. Ranta’s chair was tipped over. It was the same chair she had been sitting in when he last saw her.
He stepped out of the kitchen and went outside for a smoke. A Gladstone cop pulled up and went inside. Then a Troop Service didn’t recognize joined them. Cop lights always drew crowds. He walked along the side of the main house to the guesthouse in back. It was unlit, small. He tried the door. Open. He flipped on the light, saw the bed was made, no dirty dishes. It looked unlived in. He backed out, circled the small house, looked through a window into the bathroom. Clean towels, new soap in the dish. He sat down on a lawn chair and finished his cigarette.
He found Vince Vilardo stepping out of the house when he got back to the front. He was telling Cambridge and the deputy, “Body temp says two, three hours max. Who found her?”
Cambridge gave a soft nudge to the young deputy, who said, “A neighbor two doors down thought she heard a noise, but she was making supper for her kids. Later she come over and saw the broken glass and blood, and called.”
“When did she hear the noise?” Vince asked.
“Suppertime,” the kid cop said.
Cambridge said, “Go ask for an actual time—even if it’s an estimate.”
The young deputy took off on a run. Cambridge looked at Service and shook his head.
Vince nodded for Service to follow him. They went to the side of the house. “This wasn’t a suicide,” Vince said quietly. “Paraffin shows no traces of nitrates on either hand. The projectile appears to have traveled downward, right to left. Nitrate and appearance of the wound suggest five, six feet away. I’ll verify all this in the lab, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“You wondering why I’m here?”
“I gave up speculation long time ago.”
“You’re sayin’ homicide, not suicide?”
“Ninety percent,” Vilardo said.
“Thanks, Vince.”
Cambridge drifted back to them. “Thanks for responding,” he told Service. “We’ll take it from here.”
Translation, “Butt out and adios.”
Vince leaned close to Service, whispered, “I’ll call you in the morning.”
When he got home there was still no call from Tree.
Why had Outi Ranta been killed? She and Honeypat had had a falling out. Was there someone or something else? He started to make a list but pushed the pad away. Not his business. Most victims knew their killers and most murders were crimes of passion, unplanned events that simply happened. He had not taken a close look, but it looked to him like there had been no struggle in the kitchen. Did Outi think she was alone or had she let someone in? Leave it be, he told himself. Let the process run its course and let the count
y do its job. Still, he couldn’t help feeling that there was something he should have done to prevent this. He had seen her only two nights ago, and though she had been upset, he was sure she was all right and strong.
He fed Cat and Newf and let them out. Cat stayed out to hunt. Newf came running in and raced upstairs to the bed so she could claim it. He didn’t bother pushing her off and slept fitfully.
29
Up before the sun, Service skipped the free weights and rode the stationary bicycle; his routines were always timed for maximum benefit, but today he just got on the device and pedaled, his mind still locked on the death of Outi Ranta. Sometimes sleep facilitated solutions to problems, but not last night, and not this morning. After an hour on the bike he showered and boiled water for instant oatmeal. He dumped a handful of dried Traverse City cherries on the powdered mix, poured on boiling water, sat down to eat, and found after two spoonfuls he had no appetite. He set the bowl on the floor for Newf to finish and grabbed the telephone.
Simon del Olmo answered, “Wha?” He sounded confused and still asleep.
“Where’s Kitella?”
“Grady?”
“Is he still in jail?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out, okay?”
Treebone called at seven, just as Service was getting ready to put Newf in her pen.
“Got my ass kicked,” Tree began. “The commanding officer for Major Crimes landed on me like a five-hundred-pound wet turd, told me I got ‘epizootics of the blowhole,’ woompty woompty. Said the Feebs ripped him a new asshole because of me and that as far as he was concerned I should make like D. B. Cooper and disa-fucking-ppear.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“I don’t know, man. I was just trying to help you. I called my man at the Feeb house but he suddenly had lockjaw. You know Feebs, they always spooked by something, worse since nine-eleven.”
“They’ve always been political.”
“Never seen ’em quite like this. They got a new top dawg and he’s changin’ it all around.”
“Change makes everybody edgy.”
“Whatever. Couldn’t get in that door, so I called Shamekia.”
Typical Treebone—once on a mission, he would not be put off. Shamekia was an attorney in the prestigious Detroit firm of Fogner, Qualls, Grismer and Pillis. She had once been an FBI agent who filed charges against the Bureau for discrimination and had won a huge settlement. Officially she was persona non grata in the bureau, but she had enough contacts to get inside whenever she needed to. Last year she had helped him solve a case that had gotten convoluted and polluted by conflicted police agency agendas. She was a striking-looking woman, intelligent and straight-talking, and had been a childhood friend of Tree’s.
“Shamekia says she hit walls too, but she’s got more juju with the black suits. She says she found out that the people most interested in Siquin Soong are out of Justice OCRS.”
“OCRS?”
“Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.”
“Mafia hounds.”
“Not just. They track the old Cosa Nostra, what’s left of them, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, and the Russians. They coordinate with DEA, FBI, others. OCRS squeezes all potential federal prosecutions through the prism of RICO.”
RICO was the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a broad statutory umbrella. It had only recently been used to apply to Fish and Game law, though the division’s attorneys in Lansing predicted a lot more.
“Shamekia says the Detroit U.S. Attorney’s Organized Crime Strike Force has a visitor from the Washington Litigation Unit. Apparently this is a signal that the strike force is getting ready to drop a bomb.”
“On Soong?”
“That’s her read. She says Justice doesn’t send in the LU until it’s time to pull the trigger. They like to make sure the target is directly in sight.”
“Meaning they don’t want anybody to disrupt their gig.”
“There it is,” Treebone said. “You and Nantz coming down?”
“Next Saturday.”
“Kalina will be a happy woman.”
“We’re in Jackson Friday night. We’ll call you Saturday morning, drive over that afternoon.”
“Check it out,” Tree said enthusiastically. “We’re gonna hit Shinto for chow, then down to BoMac’s for some late night tunes.”
The BoMac Lounge was on Gratiot next to Harmonie Park, a downtown neighborhood that had undergone gentrification in recent years and now housed lofts, restaurants, clubs, and art galleries. BoMac’s was famous for Detroit R&B and had been around for ten or fifteen years. It had once been the hangout of the Funk Brothers, whose music Tree was addicted to. The Funk Brothers were the studio musicians who helped make Barry Gordie’s Motown frontliners famous—on call every day of the week, paid ten dollars a song no matter how many takes. The Funk Brothers were Motown’s unseen backbone. He had first heard about them when he and Tree were in Vietnam, and they remained one of his friend’s favorite subjects.
“Never heard of Shinto.”
“You too far up in Bammaland. Serious money outta Tokyo opened it up on Lakeshore.”
“In the Pointes?”
Tree chuckled. “Bought one of the old Windmill Pointe mansions, did it up, brought in one of those chefs you see on TV. Kalina’s been dyin’ to go before the locals shut it down. Some of the bluebloods got pissed, filed suit. We don’t go now, we might never, sayin’?”
“Call you from Jackson.”
“Word on the street here your senator gonna get the job. Kwami came out for her.”
Timms. “We’ll see.” The opinion of the mayor of Detroit had the weight of a popcorn fart outside the city, Service thought.
“I hear ya. Sorry I couldn’t get more for you. Gotta skate, dawg. Semper Fi.”
Luticious Treebone, an original.
Service left water and food for the animals, put Newf in her run, and headed for Marquette. Fern LeBlanc ignored him as he headed directly to the captain’s office.
Ware Grant looked the way he always looked, back straight, freshly pressed, hair combed, white Van Gogh trimmed.
“Close the door,” the captain said.
Service closed it and sat down. The captain remained behind his desk, which was unusual. “It was not one of our people stirring the Federals,” he said. “It was someone from the DPD.”
DPD was the Detroit Police Department. Service waited for the captain to finish. He always spoke deliberately, letting his words loose only after they had been thoroughly processed, each one carefully considered for its impact. “Chief O’Driscoll is relieved. I believe if it were one of our people, that person would be in serious trouble.”
“Feebs are always getting bent out of shape,” Service said. Did the captain guess it was Treebone? Probably. He didn’t miss much.
“Sometimes with justification,” the captain said.
“Good thing we’re not part of it,” Service said.
“This is for your ears only,” the captain went on. “If Senator Timms is elected there is going to be massive and profound change in the department.”
“New party in Lansing.”
“It’s more all-encompassing. DNR and DEQ will be reunited under a single head. No more rubber-stamping on the environmental side. It will be back to the old values. There will be separate budgets, but the director will rationalize goals and priorities. Two budgets will allow lawmakers to track the costs of both parts.”
“A total merger would be more effective,” Service said.
“After all the budget cuts we’ve been through, improvement and stability are more important. But if the Senator doesn’t win—”
“It will be Clearcut Redux,” Service said.
“Yes, which means that the chief does not want anything to hap
pen that might hurt the senator’s campaign.”
The captain’s steely eyes drilled into Service.
“Are we becoming politicized?” he asked his boss. Was this meant to warn him off Soong?
“We always have been politicized at the Lansing level, and the chief does not want to be the author of our downfall.”
“Does that mean we’re to back off investigations?”
“There is backing off and there is assuring that evidence is solid and in place, am I clear?”
Not at all, but this wasn’t unusual. “Make sure what we’re shooting at.”
The captain nodded once and looked down to the paperwork on his desk. Service had just gotten to his feet when he heard, “God has been reported on Spruce Street.”
Service said, “Beg pardon, Cap’n?”
Grant looked up at him. “I didn’t say anything.”
Jesus, Service thought.
When he passed Fern LeBlanc’s desk, she said, “Does he continue to insist it was a concussion?”
Service ignored her and continued on, but LeBlanc followed him and sailed a piece of paper on to his desk. “He gave this to me to type, just before you went in to see him.”
The scribbles were unintelligible. Normally the captain wrote small in perfect penmanship, but this. . . .
“Did he mention God?” she asked.
“I thought I heard him say something about God and Spruce Street.”
She nodded. “Yes, God has been reported on Spruce Street.”
It was Service’s turn to nod.
She said, “He told me the same thing, and when I questioned him he looked at me and said, “God can eat his desserts when he wants.” LeBlanc glared at Service and left. His gut said he should do something, but he had no idea what. Was the captain’s mind crashing?
A call from del Olmo interrupted his thinking.
“Kitella was released on bail the day before yesterday.”
“Go see him, Simon. Find out where he was last night between four and midnight.”
“What’s going down?”
Service stared at the captain’s scribbles, said, “Just fucking do it.” And hung up.
Chasing a Blond Moon Page 33
