“Nature?” Linsenman said. “I have squirrels in my yard. I don’t need anything more. You scraping the barrel for help?”
Something like that. He had seen Linsenman hold his ground and his cool in a shootout a few days before. Such nerve was uncommon. “Meet me at Da Yoopers Tourist Trap and we’ll take my truck.”
“In uniform?” Linsenman asked.
“No need for that. This is a social call.”
Linsenman exhaled and said, “I bet.”
Service said, “You might want to bring your sidearm.”
“Oh, boy,” Linsenman said.
The deputy got to the Trap on US 41 a few minutes after Service, got into the Yukon with a thermos, and looked over his shoulder into the backseat.
“What?” Service asked.
“Wanted to see if you had a rocket launcher back there.”
“We’re just going visiting.”
Linsenman didn’t ask who or where, but as they made their way south into the western part of the county, Service saw the deputy’s uneasiness growing.
“I don’t much care for this direction,” Linsenman complained.
“I thought we’d pop down to Limpy’s, see how he’s doing.”
They were moving at fifty mph when Linsenman opened his door.
Service looked at him.
“I’m thinking of jumping.”
“You’ll get hurt.”
“What difference does it make when or how we get fucked over?” He pushed the door open and slammed it. “We can’t make social calls in daylight?”
“Limpy likes the night,” Service said.
“So do vampires,” Linsenman mumbled.
“We’ll just walk in, offer him some stew, and have a nice visit. It’s a beautiful night. We’re lucky to work in the Yoop.”
The deputy said grimly, “The issue is, will we collect our pensions here.”
The Allerdyce compound was built on a narrow peninsula between North and South Beaverkill Lakes, a long distance from anything that might be termed a town, much less civilization, and it was not the sort of place you just stumbled on to. With water on two sides and swamps on both ends, it was difficult to reach, even if you knew where it was. There was a two-track from a USFS road down to the compound’s parking area, and a half-mile hike from there along a twisting narrow trail through dense and interlocked cedars, hemlocks, and tamaracks. In terms of isolation it was a fortress, and since Service had led police officers into the area the summer before last, Limpy had beefed up his defenses, sprinkling sound sensors and motion detectors along the entry road and adjacent forest.
Service knew that as soon as they got out of the vehicle they would be under surveillance, and if Limpy didn’t want them in the compound, they would not get that far.
The two men carried flashlights, but did not turn them on. Service had spent so much of his life working in the dark that his eyes always adjusted quickly. Even as a boy he had never been afraid of the night, one of the few things his old man had ever complimented him on.
Halfway to the compound they heard a wolf howl in the distance. Too far away to be one of their watchers, Service thought.
The final approach to the camp was dark, and as they squeezed out of a dense grove of cedars he could see dim light and the outlines of the shacks where the clansmen lived. One step further and Service stopped.
Linsenman whispered, “I can’t see shit. What?”
Service remained still, rotating his head slowly to the side and back again. There was movement along the ground, dark shadows stalking. He looked around deliberately and realized that they were surrounded by whatever it was.
“Oh, boy,” Linsenman said.
Service felt the hairs stand up on his arms and neck, his breathing quicken. “Walk in my steps,” he whispered to the deputy, “and don’t look around. Keep your eyes up and on my back.”
“This is crazy,” Linsenman said.
Over the years Limpy had resided in different cabins, but the past few times he’d seen him, he’d been in the same one. Service led them directly to it, his eyes on the tree-based horizon, moving steadily, neither slowly nor quickly. The ink sky was filled with stars, but the light did not penetrate trees.
The cabin was dark, which was not unusual. Service stepped onto the porch and Linsenman plowed into his back, muttering, “Shit.”
Powerful spots came on, splashing light across the area they had just crossed. Service looked back, saw more than a dozen pairs of eyes gleaming on the edges of the illuminated area. The eyes moved slightly and he finally saw what they were: dogs—dark, squat animals, all of them staring up at the porch, watching. He felt a wave of panic and pushed it away. They were on the porch; the problem was off the porch. Old Vietnam training: Isolate the problem, and focus on the problem you have, not the one you had, or what comes next. Now counts, nothing more. Limpy was inside, waiting, and Service knew that the dogs had been a reception committee designed specifically for him. Limpy might look like he couldn’t add snake eyes, but he had an amazing cunning, quick to ascertain and exploit a foe’s weakness.
He rapped on the door and waited.
Limpy himself opened it, grinned one of his toothless smiles and cackled. “I’ll be damned, sonny, youse comin’ all the way out here.”
“We happened to be in the neighborhood,” Service said. Allerdyce’s cackle deteriorated into a wheeze, which terminated in a wracking cough.
“Come on in, come on in,” the old man said, clearing his throat and holding the door wide.
Service felt Linsenman pressed up against him as Limpy closed the door and engulfed them in black.
They waited motionless as a kerosene lantern hissed to life, throwing a dull pink-orange glow into the middle of the room, enough to render shadows, but not enable sight. Service heard faint movement to his right, someone brush against something, suck in air.
“Take a seat, sonny,” Limpy said from a chair directly across from them.
“When—” Linsenman started to ask, but Service nudged him to be silent. Limpy usually moved like a wraith in the dark. Not tonight. He had tracked him all the way to his seat.
Service and Linsenman sat in wooden chairs facing Limpy, who sat in an old rocker of heavy wood.
A young woman stepped out of the shadows and Service gave her the container. She took it and withdrew. She looked to be fourteen or fifteen, a child only in her face.
“Brought some stew,” Service told Limpy.
“Kind of you, sonny. More like yer old man every year.”
“This is Linsenman,” Service said.
“I know,” was all Allerdyce said.
Service smelled the stew warming. He had rehearsed several ways to open a conversation but concluded that his presence alone would signal Allerdyce that he was interested in talking. He would leave the old poacher to pick the subject and deliver whatever message he was hoarding.
The girl brought stew in bowls. She served Limpy first.
“Dis little piece is Lixie,” Allerdyce said. “Youse want some, help yourself. She’s a good one.”
One, a piece of property. “Good as Honeypat?” Service asked. The girl was just one more possession, Service thought. Was Honeypat different? Did greed and ownership require Limpy to be the one to share, and that it was not the property’s choice? Probably.
Limpy stared over at Service and glared. “Bring up dat name.”
Allerdyce sipped his stew, made a face, bellowed angrily, “Hotter, you bitch!” He held the bowl out, his hand shaking, the stew spilling onto the floor.
The girl sheepishly rescued the bowl and disappeared. When she brought it back Limpy took a spoonful and made a face. “Hotter, Goddammit! Hot, hot!” She took the bowl and the process was repeated. When she brought it back he sampled one spoonful, stopped chewing, and pl
aced the bowl on the floor. The girl didn’t fetch it.
At least this kid was dressed, Service thought. He had always been offering Honeypat to visitors and now it was this young girl. If he’d offer Honeypat and this girl, why would he come down on Kelo?
Allerdyce stopped, looked over at the detective. “You make dis?”
Service nodded, tasted the stew, put the spoon back in and set the bowl on the floor, mimicking Allerdyce. Linsenman’s spoon was clicking busily against his bowl.
“Youse come out some day, teach Lixie to cook. She knows what ta do in da bed, hey, but her cookin’s bad. Never gets nothing hot but her pussy!”
Linsenman ate faster.
Service said nothing.
“Youse seen da mutts,” Allerdyce said.
“Beautiful animals,” Service said, his stomach immediately beginning to knot up.
“Rescued ’em,” Limpy said. “Got da fight in ’em—all scars and broke stuff, hey. Been beat, shot, kicked, cut, but you gotta kill one to stop it. Born ta be what dey are, hey. Don’t know nothin’ else. Born in dere blood, fight till youse can’t fight no more. One gets jumped, dey all fight. Like family’s s’posed ta.”
“Just like NATO,” Service said. He squinted to see better and caught the outline of a pile of books off to his left. He could read a couple of titles. Cookbooks. What was going on here? Books for the girl?
“Da town?” Allerdyce said.
Linsenman sniggered quietly. Nadeau was a village in Menominee County.
“Like the treaty organization in Europe,” Service said.
He had never seen Limpy eat so lightly; tonight he had barely touched his food. When he’d taken Limpy to McDonald’s, he had eaten one nugget, put the rest in his coat, and later he had seen him dig through a trash can. Something was definitely going on.
Allerdyce stared at him. “Youse know I’m not stupid, sonny,” he said. “Lixie,” he added. “Fetch da mutt.”
Service heard claws scraping the wooden floor. The girl emerged from the dark with a rope attached to a short-haired, low-slung dog with piles of loose skin, only one ear, and scars crisscrossing its fur. Some of them looked new. “Youse take ’im,” Limpy said. “Got no fight. It stays I got to put it down. Don’t earn da keep in da family, don’t get to keep da take, hey. Don’t want to waste lead.”
The animal did not look at Service or Linsenman. It watched only Limpy. Service took the rope from Lixie, let it hang slack, wishing it was longer. The animal didn’t cringe, it just stared at Allerdyce, who grinned and rubbed his whiskers.
“Youse don’t act like family, youse gotta go,” Allerdyce said. “Dat’s da law here.”
Lixie placed the empty plastic container in Service’s lap. It had not even been rinsed.
Limpy put his hands on his knees, tried to get to his feet, but couldn’t seem to manage it. Lixie held out her hand and helped haul him upright. He shuffled unsteadily on stiff legs to the door with his visitors, straining for breath, wheezing like he was exhausted.
“Good grub, sonny. Youse best be careful dem mutts out dere. Dey don’t much like dis one, ya know.”
Service and Linsenman stepped onto the porch and the door slammed behind them. They heard a bolt click.
“What . . . the . . . fuck . . . was . . . that?” Linsenman whispered.
Service ignored him. The spots were no longer lit; the dog on the rope was pulling and growling low like he had a bee trapped in his throat.
“Side by side this time,” Service said. The dog was surging, straining to go.
When they stepped down from the porch the area erupted in snarls and barks and growls, and dark forms pranced around herky-jerky. Service’s hand was shaking, his heart pounding.
“Give me the leash,” Linsenman said calmly.
For the first twenty yards the dogs charged in to snarl at them and retreat, snapping their jaws.
As soon as they were in the trees they could hear the animals crashing en masse through the underbrush on either side of them.
From time to time, the dog on the rope would snarl and lash out, or freeze suddenly until whatever captured his attention moved away.
The last hundred yards they heard nothing, and the dog on the rope settled into an easy walk until it saw the Yukon and balked.
“You can let him go,” Service said.
“So that old asshole back there can kill him? You don’t want him, I’ll take him.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Service said.
The dog snarled when Linsenman opened his door, but the deputy talked softly to the animal, reached down, and hoisted it into the truck.
“I think I’ll call him NATO,” Linsenman said. “You see how those other dogs danced at him, but none of them had the balls to take him on. I think Limpy is dumping him because he couldn’t handle him.”
NATO lay his head on Linsenman’s knee.
“You get what you want?” the deputy asked.
“Maybe,” Service said. “Understanding Limpy is like trying to read hieroglyphics.”
“That’s good,” Linsenman said. “That stew was great, but I’m never ever going on another night hike with your woods cop ass.”
The deputy rubbed between the dog’s ears, said, “If this man ever comes to our house, you can bite his balls off.”
Service was happy to see that the dog didn’t respond.
At least one of Allerdyce’s messages was clear: Animals that refused to run with the pack and pull their weight were out of the pack, and Limpy was the alpha male. Did this refer to Kelo, Honeypat, or Aldo? The subtext wasn’t clear at all. What really rubbed at him was Allerdyce’s curious qualification about a family acting the way it’s supposed to—all for one and one for all.
Ten minutes after Linsenman departed with his new pet, Service realized that while his decision to go to the compound had been an impulse, his reception there was not, and such a reception meant that Allerdyce had been expecting him, which made the message even clearer. Or was the message one of misdirection? Limpy’s mind was unconventional and anything was possible. Superficially, a reasonable person would assume that Honeypat and Kelo had been thrown out because they wouldn’t abide, but Service knew that it had been Honeypat who chose to walk. The circulating story made it seem like she had hooked up with Kelo and been thrown out. That didn’t fit facts or history as he understood it.
More importantly, the man he had met the last two times was not the man he had known and battled for so many years. If Allerdyce was sick, it wasn’t a passing bug.
35
Cambridge was patiently watching him go through the phone calls in and out of Ranta’s house. Cambridge had thoughtfully hand-printed a name beside each number, but there was no Kelo, Colliver, Fahrenheit, or Honeypat—no nothing.
Cal Shall had always preached to his students: “There’s always something in every case that’s not clear or obvious until it’s over. Sometimes that something is nothing.”
“Satisfied?” the undersheriff asked.
“Can I get a copy?”
“Keep that one.”
“What about her business calls?”
The undersheriff rolled his eyes. “It just goes on and on with you.”
“James, we’re trying to get to the bottom of this.”
“No, Detective,” Cambridge said with a snarl. “This is my jurisdiction, my case, and I am trying to get to the bottom, but you keep trying to dig the basement deeper.”
The undersheriff did not say he would seek the business phone records.
Les Reynolds called at 10 a.m. while Service was driving north toward Marquette.
“Colliver says that photo is the guy he dealt with. You got a name?”
“Jukka Kelo, but most people call him Skunk.”
“I think we’re going to BOLO the man, all
agencies, detain for questioning in connection with a felony investigation.”
A good lawyer would have Kelo on the streets in a blink. All they had were claims, and those only from Colliver. Fahrenheit thought Colliver was working with an older man and would not be able to corroborate. “Whatever floats your boat, Les. I doubt you’ll find him.” There was no point in telling the warden about the Allerdyce clan and all that entailed, including their ability to disappear when they needed to.
Fern LeBlanc called right after he finished talking to Reynolds. “You had a call yesterday from a doctor named Ferma and she sounded rather unhappy you weren’t available. She said she’s in Cambodia and would e-mail you some information.”
Tara Ferma. Service smiled. “I’m heading back to the office now.”
He found the captain in his office staring at a computer screen.
“Cap’n?”
Grant swung his chair around. “You found your way back.”
“I’m here, somebody wants me there. I’m there, somebody wants me here. I feel like a dog always on the wrong side of the door. I can’t be everywhere.”
The captain smiled. “You seem to manage: McCants and the meth lab, coming to the assistance of a Troop when shots were fired, swan killers, a junkie, Indians trying to scalp each other, and McCants and bear hunters.”
“Those things aren’t getting my case solved.”
“I agree. Everything you’ve done is commendable, but how many of these diversions required your participation? McCants is a good officer with a fine mind. The county and state were coming to the trooper’s aid. There are times when the bad guys are going to get away with things. If they repeat, as many are wont to do, the odds swing to us. You have to husband your time, Detective. And your energy. A detective’s beat is his mind, not geography.”
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”
“What you’re doing is trying to recalibrate your expectations. You used to work the Mosquito. Even when you had a quiet day, you were physically there, acting as a deterrent. Detectives don’t deter. They can only react to what is passed to them and go from there, to dig out the facts, find and assemble evidence.”
Chasing a Blond Moon Page 40
