Shadow of the Wolf Tree

by Joseph Heywood

  He called Sheena Grinda on her cell phone. “You remember the wolf tree sketch Station Twenty sent out?”

  “Came to us after last deer season,” she said. “What about it?”

  “Public document?”

  “Not hardly. Would serve as a blueprint for every wolf-hater in the state.”

  He scratched his jaw and lit a cigarette. Someone involved in this from the inside? The thought made his stomach flip. A year ago he had broken a case featuring some unethical internal behavior, and it had been the most unpleasant task of his career, from start to finish. He didn’t care to repeat the experience, but neither could he write off theoretical possibilities just because they might be unpleasant.

  “Man,” he said out loud, and telephoned Friday.

  “You headed south?” she asked immediately.

  “Not yet.”

  “Call when you start,” she said.

  “You bet.”

  The boy had seen a photo of Penny Provo and rejected it. There remained other possibilities. An inner voice told him there was an answer close at hand, but he couldn’t pull it up.

  He drove to Art Lake, pulled up to the gate, and announced to the video and intercom that he was there to serve a search warrant. When the gate slid open and Alyssa Mears came out, he snapped a digital photograph of her.

  “Asshole!” she snapped. “Where’s your warrant?”

  Her grace and poise were gone. “Must be some mistake about that,” he said, heading back to his truck.

  He called Lachoix on Bear Town Road and arranged to meet her and William again.

  William Satago looked at the digital photo and shook his head.

  “You’re sure?”

  “That’s not the woman.”

  Service grunted. Theoretically that left only Virginia “Ginny” Czuk, who worked for Alyssa Mears. He was standing with the boy when Kragie called.

  “I got something down here you’ll want to see,” the other officer said.

  “At the wolf tree?”

  “Hundred and fifty yards south of where you and I were earlier today.”

  “What is it?”

  “Better you come and look,” Kragie said. “Look for my sticks.” Sticks were natural markers officers used to subtly point trails for others.

  “Rolling,” Service said, holstering his 800-megahertz radio and heading for his truck. The juxtaposition of the ultramodern talk-just-about-anywhere commo system and the ground sticks once used by Native Americans made him shake his head. Other police agencies might be in the twenty-first century, but a game warden, to be effective, needed to step in and out of a lot of centuries and use whatever he could find and jury-rig.

  He called Friday en route. “Kragie’s got something near the wolf tree.”

  “Grady, the drug team called. They found plat books in a safe in Box’s house marking dope plots in four counties.”

  “He was killed over drugs?”

  “Maybe. The stuff on the plat books has been plotted on different scale maps. There are a few marks that don’t align with the drug fields.”

  “What are they?”

  “I’m not much on map interpretation, but they look to me like your outcrops.”

  Jesus. “Do you have copies of that new stuff?”

  “They left us a set.”

  “Hang on to them.”

  61

  Baragastan

  TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 2006

  Mid-morning, and hot. It took an hour of slow walking and sign checking to find Kragie, who was sitting on a cedar blowdown that looked relatively recent.

  “What’ve you got?” Service asked.

  Kragie took him to where the uprooted tree’s root-ball had torn loose, allowing him to crawl down into the hole the uprooting had created. “Careful, this ain’t stable. I was down here earlier, poking a stick in the dirt, half-assed, and it gave way.” Kragie pointed at a black hole opening into the earth.

  “You look inside?”

  “Yeah, and you should too.”

  Service got down on his hands and knees and took his SureFire light off his utility belt, and shone the beam into the hole. “Rock,” he said over his shoulder to Kragie.

  “Look straight down.”

  Service looked. “Timber.”

  “Hewn timber, flat sides,” Kragie said. “Looks like an old mine.”

  “How old?”

  Kragie shrugged. “Can’t tell. Need someone out here who knows about such things.”

  “You ever hear of mines in this area?”

  “Rumors about way back. You?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We ought to call in backup and technical support,” Kragie said.

  “No time for ‘by the book,’ Junco. We need to go in there,” Service said. “You got rope in your ruck?”

  “Some, and in back of my truck.”

  “Let’s start with what we have. You can play anchor.”

  With a makeshift harness, Service opened the hole a bit wider and Kragie lowered him into it. Only eight or nine feet of vertical descent before his boots hit solid ground.

  “I’m down,” he called up, looking around. He was in a squarish tunnel, all rock, with a few rotten timbers. The tunnel looked blocked to the east, but open to the west.

  “I’m undoing the rope,” he called up to Kragie.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “It’ll be okay.” He unknotted the rope and walked three, then four steps west, using his SureFire. Immediately to his left as he faced west he saw an area exactly like those he’d found in some of the quartz outcrops in Iron County. The image in his mind was that of a carefully excavated tooth awaiting a filling. He moved his face close and shone the light in the dust and saw sparkles. He scooped some of the dust from the area into a plastic bag and saw a green mineral with wispy white stripes piled up on the tunnel floor. He bagged a sample of the mineral too. It weighed next to nothing, and was stringy, like a woven basket coming apart.

  The blockage to the east didn’t look solid, and neither did it look old. He wasn’t sure why, but his heart was really racing now.

  Back in the light Kragie said, “Anything I should know?”

  “Definitely an old mine.”

  “What else?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  He needed to get the new samples to Gabby in Marquette, and somehow she needed to dump the “seven- to ten-day service” mantra and get this assay done most ricky-tick. Tonight he wouldn’t be able to get back to Iron River, and Friday probably was not going to be happy about it.

  “You hear about the feast at Pinky’s?” Kragie asked, breaking his train of thought.

  “Feast?”

  “All county law enforcement’s invited. Word’s going ’round that Pinky’s going to retire and he’s throwing a party on Sunday.”

  “Kinda sudden,” Service remarked.

  “Yeah, lots of people are thinking that,” Kragie said. “I had calls from our guys downstate. They’re invited too.”

  “Our guys, as in downstate COs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d the word get to them?”

  “He’s got a list. Most retirees do, so they can stay connected. Guys send stuff to retirees all the time. You get an invite? It was by e-mail.”

  “Haven’t noticed one.”

  “Should be a good time. Peel the politician’s hat off Pinky and he’s a good guy.”

  “I bet,” Service said, wondering what had led the sheriff to the seemingly sudden retirement decision. “Don’t say anything about today,” Service told his colleague.

  “No problem. We done here?”

  “I don’t want to leave the site unattended.”

>   “We don’t have the bodies to sit on it.”

  “Can you cap it with plywood or something?”

  “Explain.”

  Service did. He wanted the hole covered so nobody would slip into it – or find it.

  “I’ll get Simon to help me,” Kragie said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Heading to Marquette.”

  “Man, you cover beaucoup ground.”

  Yeah, Service thought. All velocity and no direction until now. Was a break in the making? It sure felt like it.

  He called Friday again. “I’m going to Marquette, then to you in Iron River.”

  “Shall I have breakfast waiting?”

  “You’re in a motel room.”

  “Mickey D’s is in walking distance.”

  “That’s not a breakfast place. Can you get on your computer?”

  “For what?”

  “Get everything you can find on Virginia “Ginny” Czuk of Illinois. If she’s got a sheet, let’s see it all.”

  “I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep tonight, but didn’t think it would be because of a computer.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “You’ve got that right, brother.”

  62

  Allerdyce Compound, Southwest Marquette County

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2006

  Service called Gabby on his way to Marquette and met her at the lab.

  “I’m going to try to accelerate your results,” she said, accepting the latest assay requests.

  “Is it possible?”

  “I hope so—you’re exhausting me,” she said, adding, “What is it this time?”

  “More rock with something taken from an empty vein. Also some dust from the same source, and some green rock from the floor of an old mine.”

  She looked at the green substance. “The green is serpentine; the white stuff is asbestos. This combination is commonly associated with gold-bearing ore.”

  His heart skipped. “Can dust be carbon-dated?”

  “Not with the specificity to tell you how old your mine find is, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Don’t waste time on the floor dust.”

  “I can’t promise this will actually go faster.”

  “Do the best you can,” he said.

  • • •

  Limpy Allerdyce answered his cell phone. “Grady Service. I’m on my way to your place, and I don’t feel like hiking all the way back to the compound. Meet me in the parking area.”

  “Why?”

  “Just meet me.”

  “Might as well,” the old man cackled. “Youse wokened me up.”

  Service got there before Allerdyce, who came through the darkness without a light. Even with his superior night vision Service told himself he’d have a hard time in a cedar swamp at night. Despite his age, Allerdyce moved fluidly, a true creature of the darkness. And he was carrying a thermos.

  “Youse want coffee?”

  “Thanks. That sounds good.”

  “Night fuel for wardens and violators,” Allerdyce said.

  Service couldn’t help smiling. He took out his digital camera and thumbed his way through the photographs. Once again he showed Penny Provo to Allerdyce, who said, “Girl from da grave, not da girl met me.”

  When the photo of Alyssa Mears came up, Allerdyce chuckled lasciviously. “White and tight, eh.”

  “You know her?”

  “She’s da one met me in Gwinn.”

  “You sold her traps.”

  “Wun’t nothin’ illegal in dat.”

  “Not saying there was.”

  “Den we done each other,” the old poacher said. “Long time boom-boom. Youse were in Vietnam, ’member boom-boom?”

  He rarely thought about Vietnam. “You seen her since Gwinn?”

  “Nope, but she’s da voice we heard da night we found da stiffs.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “She’s one a dem likes ta sit on top, bark orders, eh. Like a jockey strap.”

  “She never gave you a name.”

  “Nope. Figured it was like dat New York writer talked, you know, da zipperless fuck.”

  Service stared through the darkness at the old violator. “Erica Jong?”

  “I ain’t much for names. Dere anyting else, sonny?”

  “Nope.”

  They finished the coffee and Allerdyce took his thermos and faded into the night.

  Allerdyce had been with Mears; he could testify to that. The boy William Satago had dealt with Ginny Czuk. Why the division of labor? Not important now. Evidence of conspiracy. What the hell was Penny Provo doing in there, and who sent her?

  He punched in Friday’s phone number. “I’m forty-five minutes out, wildlife permitting.”

  Tuesday Friday laughed and said, “Step on it!”

  63

  Iron River, Iron County

  THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2006

  Grady Service had never been easily startled, but when Zhenya Leukonovich opened Tuesday Friday’s door at 7 a.m. in the AmericInn, the detective found himself speechless. He looked past Zhenya to Friday, who held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “Zhenya said she would be here, and here she is. She arrived late last night,” the IRS agent announced.

  “Where did you call from the other day, Sagola?” he shot at her. Sagola was only thirty miles east of Iron River.

  “This is an irrelevant topic,” Leukonovich said. “Tell Zhenya about Provo.”

  “She was yours?”

  “First you talk, then we shall see.”

  “The fact that you seemed totally surprised by her death suggests Zhenya is not as well wired as she assumes. If there’s to be talk here this morning, it will be two-way, not one,” said Service.

  Leukonovich nodded her head once and Service took her through the saga of the late Penny Provo. “She was too obvious in leaving a trail,” he said. “It took a while, but it finally dawned on me that there might be more to her than the obvious.”

  “Your talents are wasted in your backwater career,” Leukonovich said.

  “Was Provo yours?”

  “Zhenya resides in a world where resources travel like tides, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing. Who owns the tide? It is a world one must quickly accept or be lost.”

  “Yes or no?” he asked with a growl.

  “Technically no, and operationally, partially. She was army CID on loan to a joint FBI-EPA task force. The effort had gotten nowhere until we introduced principles of forensic accounting.”

  “Meaning you?”

  “Yes.”

  “FBI and EPA?” he asked.

  “An unholy and tenuous alliance.”

  “Domestic terrorism?”

  “A plague of cases mostly old, with a recurring cast, a repertoire company, if you will. It finally dawned on someone to ask where the finances came from to enable such sustained operations.”

  “Chicago,” Friday said.

  “Surmised, but not yet confirmed,” the IRS agent said.

  Service said, “Provo’s mission.”

  “Now failed.”

  “Van Dalen Foundation sponsors domestic terrorism?”

  “Zhenya harbors doubts.”

  “But you sent Provo in.”

  “Neither my choice, nor my order. Isaac Funke sent her.”

  “A decision above your pay grade,” Service said. Parroting something Leukonovich liked to trot out when no detailed or reasonable explanations seemed feasible. “Gorsline runs the Van Dalen Foundation. He’s dirty?”

  “Not by customary definition,” Leukonovich said.


  “Zhenya, I’m in no mood for guessing games.”

  “Gorsline has nothing to do with extremist eco-terrorist agendas or operations.”

  “Don’t make me pull teeth.”

  “Elements under Gorsline within the trust organization are involved. Not him.”

  “Art Lake.”

  Leukonovich nodded. “Evidence suggests that for a long time, funding for extremists came solely and physically from Art Lake.”

  “High-grade gold,” Grady Service said.

  “Extremely high-grade. Unprecedented in state mining history—this ore merits up to five nines on the purity scale.”

  “You have assays?”

  “Isaac Funke met Provo, who provided the samples.”

  “Alyssa Mears and Ginny Czuk,” he ventured.

  “Two of numerous pseudonyms, adherents of enforcing their vision and views at any costs, believers in hard-green direct action.”

  “I’ve done a background check on Czuk,” Friday said.

  “Save your energy,” Leukonovich said. “You will find nothing. Under these current names, the women are as clean as octogenarian nuns.”

  “What was Provo’s exact mission?”

  “To locate the ore, and she failed.”

  “She provided samples.”

  “Without seeing the actual vein or learning where it is. They run very efficient security, with state-of-the-art procedures.”

  “Their security’s not that state-of-the-art. Provo got inside.”

  “Only to die.”

  “Is there evidence to warrant going in? Provo provided the samples for assays.”

  “We do not know the provenance of the samples,” Leukonovich said with a hint of emotion Service read as anger and anguish. “Even the most political of federal judges would be hard-pressed to interpret the evidence as probable cause,” she said with an almost audible sigh.

  “In forensic accounting your investigations sometimes look for back doors, right?”

  “Zhenya would undoubtedly employ a more precise and technical term.”

  “I know where Art Lake’s back door is,” Service said, “no technical term needed.”