“Here,” McCants said. The rain was picking up and he could barely hear her.
“Drops,” she said, pointing her light down.
The animal had cut due east, paralleling the bank.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
He followed, making sure to stay two paces off her steps to avoid fouling anything they had missed.
“Here,” McCants said. “Pretty heavy splash. I think it’s close.”
He eased toward her, watched her bend over with her light, studying the ground. “The river’s right there,” she said, “maybe four feet in front of me.” He could hear the water flowing over the rocks, rain peppering it. Her light suddenly turned back toward him and her rifle jerked up. He ducked and looked over his shoulder. They had passed another upturned cedar. The animal was slouched over the lip, its hind legs facing them. Its fur glistened in the light beam, shining deep black, looking ratty from the rain tendrils of steam rising off the body. Not down that long, he told himself, putting his light beam on it. No movement.
He reversed around the upturned roots, pointed his light. The animal’s head was over the edge, staring down. He picked up a stick, touched its eyes, got no response, exhaled. “Candi.”
He waited for her to join him, lit up, didn’t care if the rain destroyed it.
She looked at the bear’s head. “Youch,” she said.
“Big,” just like she said, the word an understatement. This was a five-hundred-pound animal, huge for a U.P. black bear.
He put his light beam on the head, on the lower jaw, which hung down.
“Not hit there,” he said. “No blood. Could be congenital or from a fight.”
“How in God’s name did it live with half a bottom jaw?”
“Same way we would,” he said, “No choice, but do what you gotta do.”
He had never seen a deformity quite like it, but black bears were the ultimate omnivores, eating everything and anything; vegetable matter, larvae, insects, fruits, and nuts. Rarely did they hunt other creatures. Whatever its limitations, this guy had found a way to get what he needed. Service dug in his pack, got out a Leatherman tool and a small knife and pried out a molar he could pass to the area biologist to age the animal.
McCants slid into the crater made by the roots of the cedar. He saw her light on the other side. “Looks like two entry wounds,” she said. “Let’s get it down, do what we have to do.”
Her heard her grunting. “Are you gonna help?”
He pushed on the head, but one of the legs was slung over the top and the animal was hung up. He used a knee to get up on a thick root, pushed, slipped, fell in the slick mud below him. He crawled around to McCants. “It’s stuck up there. We need leverage.”
She stared at the animal for a moment, thinking, then said, “It crawled up there for a reason.”
“Last legs,” he said. “He was ready to defend.”
“All that time with those hunters turned out to be a good thing,” she said.
“Just how it worked out,” he said. “Don’t be groping for divine signs.”
They located a small log, about six feet long with a four-inch diameter. Service hoped it wasn’t dry, climbed up the side of the roots, planted the bottom of the limb under the animal’s wedged shoulder, and heaved upward.
“Any movement?” McCants asked.
“Shit,” was all he said. He pushed harder, lifted more, moved his foot, braced to get a better grip, and heaved. The harder he pushed, the more he felt his traction giving way, until he lost it completely and suddenly bounced off some roots and slid down into the crater. The bear flopped awkwardly and came to rest against him.
McCants held out her hand to help him up. “Born engineer,” she said.
He looked at the smelly animal and said, “Use a toothbrush.”
He wiped rain from his eyes with the back of his muddy hand, grabbed the bear’s front paw and jerked, but the animal moved only slightly.
McCants grabbed the other paw in her hands and pulled until the body shifted.
Service sat in the muddy crater, rain soaking him, running down his neck. “Check it,” he said. He was getting tired and cold.
She got on her knees on the bear’s other side, said, “One entry.” Then, “Two.”
He breathed relief.
“We should get a four-wheeler,” she said, “haul it out, dig out what we need in the open.”
“Let’s just do it,” he said, “I’ll gut it. Help me get it on its side.”
He tugged on his gloves, got his knife from his pack, made an incision at the neck, slid two fingers into either side of the opening and cut steadily down the animal’s belly to its genitals, where he made a cut to the right and another to the left. Making the first incision was simple, but warm air rolled out into the rain and the fetid smell of blood and broken organs enveloped him.
He reached into the bear’s neck cavity, up to his shoulders, severed the wind pipe, put the knife aside, reached in with both hands and ripped down on the viscera, tearing them loose en masse until there was a slippery, steaming heap at the bottom of the animal. He shined his light into the rib cavity and saw immediately where one bullet had penetrated.
“One got through,” he said. He knelt and used his knife to separate the organs, found the heart, intact, and examined the lungs. Nothing. He looked at the stomach, found it badly broken. “Gut shot,” he said, making a face. He pawed around until he found the gall, cut it out and handed it to McCants. “Evidence bag,” he said.
She gave him a questioning look, but bagged the organ and turned to her own work. “The second round is higher,” she said. She took out her knife and started probing through the hide on the other side of the carcass while he checked the other side of the rib cage. The bullet that hit the stomach had not gone through into the other side. McCants said, “Got it! Low neck by the shoulder.” She held up the bullet, “Pancaked.”
“The other one’s got to be somewhere in this slop,” he said. “Toss me a couple of trash bags from my pack.”
She threw them to him and he stuffed one inside the other, then opened the double bag and began piling viscera into it. When the body cavity was clear he rubbed his hands around the bottom, which acted like a reservoir, illuminated the interior with his light, looked for a bullet, found nothing. She gave him a small hatchet from her pack and he hacked through the pelvic bones, began scooping pooled blood out of the reservoir like he was paddling. When it was as empty as it was going to get, he raked slowly through the liquid with his fingers several times, felt nothing.
“Are those bags going to hold?” McCants asked.
He said, “Go back to your truck, grab one of my canvas tarps and more trash bags, back your truck down to the swamp edge. We can work better out there.” He handed her the spare keys to his Yukon.
“I’ll be quick,” she said.
He cut a stout stick, wrapped the end of the plastic bag around it, fixed the handle with duct tape from his pack, tested it. Hefty but moveable. The guts weighed close to a hundred pounds, more with the rainwater that had gotten in. He put on his pack, lifted the handle toward his chest with both hands, and started the haul, centering the load between his feet, bending his knees, lifting and sliding sideways six to twelve inches at a time. Lift, move, stop. Lift, move, stop. His broken finger was throbbing, his bloody, sopped glove slipping on the handle. He had to stop frequently to wiggle his fingers and bend his wrists to release cramps.
McCants met him halfway to the clearing. He was kneeling, legs splayed, the bag between them, rain pecking relentlessly at the plastic.
“Tarp and bags,” she said, holding them out to him.
She helped him jam the original bags and contents into the new ones. They pulled the bags onto the canvas tarp and used duct tape to reattach the handle, looping twisted tape through a couple of metal g
rommets.
“Side by side?” McCants asked.
“I’ll drag, you push,” he said. “You’ll probably have to straddle it.”
“Ah, face to face,” she said, “and me on top—my favorite.” She began to laugh.
“Get serious,” he said.
“It’s always serious when I’m on top,” she said, laughing harder, and soon they were both laughing, neither of them sure why, neither of them caring.
They had not moved from where she had found him when his cell phone buzzed. He tried to reach into his coat, but dropped the phone. McCants picked it up from the mud. “McCants,” she said. “He’s right here.” She handed him the phone.
“What the hell is going on?” Nantz asked. “Candi can hardly talk.”
“We’re in the Mosquito.”
“Still?”
“Bear hunters,” he said.
“You’re breathing like—”
“Working,” he said, cutting her short.
“Let me talk to Candi.”
He handed the phone back to McCants.
She said, “He’s tired, Mar,” added, “count on it.”
McCants put the phone in her own pocket. “She said I should keep an eye on you.”
He got to his feet, started pulling on the tarp. “Let’s do it.”
“No foreplay?”
“Shut up, Candi.”
It took close to thirty minutes to drag the remains into the open field beyond the cedar swamp. McCants reached inside her truck and turned on her lights, including the spotlight on the driver’s side. The rain continued to fall, varying in intensity, but never stopping as he knelt in the grass and mud, reached into the plastic bags, and began searching for the second bullet.
McCants filled a cup with coffee for him and held it out. He stopped working, took the cup and sipped.
“Some nights, it’s just not a pretty job,” she said.
32
They drove their trucks to Guilfoyle’s near Cornell, which was across a road from the Escanaba River. Guilfoyle’s was one of those Upper Peninsula taverns that kept its original name and decor while it went through revolving owners. The current proprietor was D. J. Reardon, a retired tool company executive from Wisconsin. He had owned the place going on seven years, and welcomed cops of all flavors.There were fewer vehicles in the gravel parking lot than usual, but it was a weeknight and the rain continued to come down.
Their work done, Service and McCants had checked off duty with Station 20 and gone looking for hot food. It was late, but Reardon played loose with last call, especially for cops coming off patrol.
The juke was low. Two men were watching a TV on a pedestal above the bar. Riordan’s wife, Susie, was holding down the cash register.
The conservation officers sat at a table, stripped down to their soft armor vests. “We reek,” Candi said.
Riordan’s wife came over to the table. “Kitchen’s closed but I can whip up grilled cheese.”
“Thanks, lots of pickles on the side,” Service said.
“There are some Troops in the back room,” Susie said with a smirk. “Poker night with D. J. and open to all badges. But by the look and smell, you two already had way too much fun tonight.”
The sandwiches came within fifteen minutes and they ate in silence. “You ever sleep in your truck?” McCants asked.
“Too many times.”
“Bear hunters,” she said, shaking her head. “I may sleep in my bathtub tonight.”
“You could drown.”
“That would be a bad thing?”
“Only the paperwork afterwards.”
She grinned. “Thanks for being there tonight.”
He flexed his injured hand. “You’d do it for me.”
“Sooner or later, more and more people are going to discover the Mosquito,” she said. “It’s inevitable, Grady.”
He nodded, knowing she was right, but he was not in the frame of mind to talk philosophically tonight.
“We should have gotten a four-wheeler, hauled the animal out and taken it to town for an X ray, then pulled the slug,” she said. “But you didn’t want anybody to see the size of the animal, and know it came out of the Mosquito.”
“I stand moot before the court,” he said.
“It’s mute.”
“It was a pun,” he countered, knowing that a rotting carcass in the Mosquito was not likely to be discovered. If seen in town, word would spread wide and fast.
McCants lifted her arm and sniffed. “Eau de ursus. I may need an acid bath.”
They collected their gear after eating, left some cash on the table, and walked out to their trucks.
“I’m going to put the dog in the evidence locker tonight, extract the slug tomorrow.”
McCants opened her cooler and took out an evidence bag. “What do I do with this?” she asked, holding up the gall in the plastic bag.
“Put it in the freezer. We might use it for a buy sometime down the road.”
“Always thinking,” she said.
Not long thereafter he was in his old cabin, taking in how barren it was. He peeled off his bloody, muddy clothes and dropped them in a heap. He grabbed a blanket and stretched out on the footlockers that for so many years had served as his bed. He no longer lived in the cabin, but kept it maintained year-round. A thin cushion served as the mattress, and tonight he could feel the hardness of the footlockers pressing against him, but he was tired and set his wristwatch alarm for 7 a.m. Discomfort was part of the job, always had been, always would be. It was fine to sit in an office talking on the phone and looking at a computer, but discomfort and pain told you that you were doing something real. Tonight he felt like he had done real work and he went to sleep almost immediately.
He awoke to the buzz of his watch alarm, heard and felt his knees and shoulder pop when he got off the footlockers and went into the shower, which was built against the wall on the ground floor in the main living area. The upper floor of the cabin remained unfinished. He stood in the shower under scalding water, watched his skin turn red. When he finished rinsing off the soap, he grabbed a towel he’d slung over the shower wall and stepped out, drying his hair.
“Geez-oh-pete, youse shoulda done that last time we talked, hey.”
He pulled the towel from his eyes and saw Honeypat holding up his blood-drenched pants and smiling. She was wearing cutoffs, and a charcoal gray tank top. Her hair stuck out at angles and badly needed combing. She wore ankle-high hiking boots that had seen a lot of use. She was dressed but looking more like the Honeypat of old.
His nose told him that coffee was brewing. He glanced over at the pot.
Honeypat said, “It’s stale, but what the hey. Good to start the day with a jolt. I seen youse at Guilfoyle’s last night.”
He had not seen her.
She made a face and dropped his clothes on the floor. “I like a man isn’t afraid ta get bloody,” she said with a lecherous smile.
“You saw me last night?”
“With McCants. But I’m gettin’ me a better look here, hey.”
“What do you want, Honeypat?”
She winked at him. “What I need youse ain’t gonna give up, so I’m tellin’ youse, word’s goin’ ’round some tootsie from Wisconsin killed Outi.”
“The radio said it was a suicide.”
“Youse were at da house, you seen her. Don’t it strike you a bit odd, a woman killin’ another woman just ’cause she give it up?”
Had she been watching his cabin? “I expect you have a theory.”
“What I know is ain’t many women gonna drive that far and use a pistol in cold blood. In ta heat, sure—pow. But cold blood?” She grimaced and shook her head.
“What do you care?”
“She was my friend and it worries me that maybe Limpy l
earned about us.”
Service considered confronting her with what Outi had told him, but held back to hear what else she would say.
Honeypat walked over to the coffeepot, blew dust out of a couple of mugs, filled one of them, brought it to him, held it out.
When he took the cup her other hand shot under the towel and pressed firmly between his legs.
“Oh, what I could do with that guy!” she said.
He tried to turn away, but she pivoted with him, kneading and laughing until he twisted away, spilling some of the coffee on the floor.
“You broke into my cabin.”
“Door was unlocked,” she countered.
Probably true. He rarely locked it. “Get out,” he said.
She pursed her lips, shook her head, and walked toward the door where she stopped and looked back at him. “Youse don’t use that guy, youse could lose him. That’s medical fact.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, following her. “I thought you were on the run from Limpy.”
“No way the old bastard’s findin’ me now. I been with him too long, know all his ways.”
He watched her get in the gray Honda and drive away. The license plate was missing.
He went to his truck, called all channels, asked for a BOLO on the plateless Honda, knew it was a waste of breath. She’d not be found, but it was worth the off chance of hassling her.
There was nothing to eat in the cabin. He dressed in fresh clothes he kept in the Yukon and told himself he had to get home to Gladstone. Home: The word made him smile. The cabin no longer felt familiar. It was the skeletal remains of a former life he had no desire to return to. Home was Gladstone. Walter? No time to think about the boy now.
Newf pouted when he let her out of her run. No sign of Cat again. He threw his dirty clothes in the washer.
What did Honeypat mean, she’d been with Limpy too long, knew all his ways? Did she believe she could outthink and outmaneuver him? Was she telling him she saw Limpy go into the house, that he had killed Outi? He doubted that. Limpy was a lowlife, but he wasn’t a killer.
He and Newf drove into Escanaba and parked in the lot facing Little Bay de Noc and went inside to the sheriff’s office.
Chasing a Blond Moon Page 37
