Ice Hunter (Woods Cop Mystery 1)

by Heywood, Joseph

  “At home.” She gave him the address.

  “Cause?”

  “Too early to tell,” she said. “Not lightning, though.” He understood. The vast majority of forest fires were ignited by lightning strikes. “I’ve alerted forensics.” The state police forensics people were located in Negaunee, a town west of Marquette, and covered the entire U.P.

  When Service knocked on Voydanov’s front door, a dog with a deep snarling bark started in. Eventually the porch light came on and, when the old man finally opened up, Service was eye to eye with a black Great Dane, its head the size of a Shetland pony’s. Voydanov was in his eighties, bent over and slow moving. Service took a step backward when the dog rammed its snout against the door.

  “Don’t mind Millie,” the old man said. “She’s just noise.”

  Just Noise had saliva cascading from her cavernous mouth.

  “Can we talk about the fire?”

  “Sure.”

  “Outside?”

  “You don’t like dogs?” The old man gave him an inquisitive look.

  “I don’t want to upset her,” Service said.

  “She’s not upset. She’s just curious. Like a kid.”

  A 160 pound kid with fangs, Service thought. “Outside, please?”

  The old man stepped outside.

  “You reported the fire?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wasn’t it a little late to be walking your dog?”

  “My wife died last winter and the truth is I can’t sleep for beans. If it’s bad, me and Millie go out to the Tract and walk around.”

  “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  “It went fast,” he said. “I guess that was good for her.”

  Service sensed the man was about to slip into a melancholy reminiscence. He asked, “What about the fire?” to get them refocused.

  “Almost down to the river when I smelled the smoke.”

  “Did you see anybody?”

  “Nope. Rarely do out there.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Just Millie and me.”

  “Did you drive back to the trailhead?”

  “We walked. Good for both our hearts.”

  “Did you see any tire tracks?”

  “Always tracks on that road. Besides, it was dark, and I don’t need a light when I got Millie.”

  Service considered asking more questions but decided against it. “I hope you can get back to sleep.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m too excited.”

  “Maybe warm milk would help.”

  The old man chuckled. “Hell with that. I had me some Jack. You want a snort?”

  “Thanks, but I’m on duty.”

  Voydanov looked skeptical. “I never knew that to stop a game warden. When I was a young man, the wife and I used to bring our kids up here. No house then. We used to camp in tents during deer season. There was a game warden used to stop by and have a swig or two. He was a good man. Helped me haul out a deer one time. Name was . . . Service. He was a great big fella, like you.”

  “He was my dad.”

  Voydanov cocked an eyebrow. “That so? He still around?”

  “No, he died.”

  The old man looked sorry. “Too bad. He was a good fella. What killed him?”

  “Timing,” Grady Service said. He couldn’t bring himself to tell the old man his father was a drunk who’d died because he’d been having a swig or two with his admirers and informers. “And location. The combination.”

  “Never heard that one before.”

  “Thanks for calling in the fire.” Service started to walk across the yard.

  “You want to know about the truck?” the old man called after him.

  “What truck?” Service asked, stopping and turning back.

  “You know, one of them four-wheel doodads. Big sonuvabitch.”

  “I thought you didn’t see anyone.”

  “Didn’t see a person. Saw the truck was all.”

  “At the trailhead?”

  “Nope, short of there. Saw it when Millie and me walked in.”

  “Can you show me where?”

  “Sure.”

  The old man comforted the dog before they left, then moved slowly out to Service’s truck. Voydanov wore gaudy green plaid pajamas and scuffed leather slippers that were too loose and made slapping sounds when he walked. They drove down the access road. Voydanov stopped Service at a spot a quarter mile short of the trailhead, off to the left of the road.

  “It was back in there maybe a hundred yards. I seen a glint of metal and me and Millie walked back partway to take us a look.”

  “Did you notice the the license number?”

  “Even if I’d paid attention I had nothing to write with. I just figured it was a night fisherman. Sometimes they park back there and cut across to the old log slide. You know it?”

  Service knew the landmark. It was upriver from the Geezer Hole, a place where a century ago loggers briefly slid their logs down a steep embankment to the water. It was the one area of the wilderness that had been scarred by man and it was still eroded, this despite a substantial investment in bank stabilization all along the stretch.

  “But you didn’t see anybody?”

  “Nope. And whoever it was musta left between when we walked up and came back from over toward the fire. That little fire girl give me and Millie a lift home. You know, the pretty little gal with the big bazooms?”

  The old man might be old, but not too old to notice Nantz’s bustline. “What color was the truck, sir?”

  “Dark.”

  “Black, blue?”

  “Just dark. I couldn’t make out no color.”

  Service was pretty sure he’d gotten all he was going to get and reminded himself that when he was dealing with old folks in the future, take his time and ask every question, including the most obvious ones. Elderly people had their own rhythms, did things in their own time, lived in their own inner worlds.

  “Okay, thanks. Let’s get you home.”

  He dropped Voydanov off and watched the old man walk to his house, then drove back to the site and parked so nobody could get back to the spot and ruin any evidence.

  Nantz pulled up in her truck around daylight. She was covered with soot and her eyes were red. “You want coffee?” she asked. “I don’t do fires without my coffee.” Service wondered how many fires she had fought, and where. He stood by her truck as she poured coffee into a thermos cup. “You run out of gas?” she asked.

  “I thought I’d wait here for forensics,” Service said, pointing. “Voydanov saw some kind of vehicle parked back there. He saw it on the way in, but he thought it was gone when you drove him out.”

  She studied a set of fresh tire grooves pressed into the ferns. “Well, a ghost didn’t leave those.”

  “Did you got a read on the fire?”

  “Just a preliminary.” She got out of the truck and unashamedly pulled her yellow Nomex shirt over her head, not bothering with the buttons. Her breasts were stuffed into a tiny green athletic bra. She was not a subtle woman, Service thought as she reached into the truck and poured more coffee for them, his into the thermos top, hers into a wrinkled Styrofoam cup. “The POO’s in the southwest corner of the site, near the river.” POO, point of origin. “There’s evidence of an accelerant.”

  “You found something?”

  “A pattern, which is enough until the techs take a closer look. Did we get a license number on that vehicle the old man saw?”

  He shook his head, noting she had said “we.” Most fire marshals tended to protect their authority and turf. Nantz was different.

  “Too bad. Probably end up writing this one off as unsolved.”

  “Thanks for putting your people on it.”

  She smiled. “It was small and this time I had the bodies. If we go red flag and get us a bad boy, you know how that will go down.” Red flag was the code for the worst possible fire conditions.

  He understood and it made hi
m sick. It was true that forests regenerated themselves over time, but it took a century or more to restore a forest to its original state—if it made it at all. Lumber companies and loggers lobbied Lansing for all fires to be fought, and this was one of the rare instances where he agreed with the timber people. Not with their reason, but the result. The timber folks wanted trees to cut, and fires stole these. But the Mosquito was not open to logging and if a fire broke out there, the timber industry would stand silently by and let it burn.

  “Let me know how the investigation goes,” Service said.

  “Sure. It’ll be a few days, earliest. Maybe we could get together over a few beers.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  When he backed his truck up, she was putting on a fresh shirt.

  “Keep your shiny side up,” she called out.

  “You too.”

  She gave him a smile as a good-bye.

  Their “regular” meeting place was a township cemetery. Its long looping drive passed by a creek with clear water. The cemetery was no longer in use and had a chain and lock across the entrance. He and Lehto had keys. The chain was down when he got there, and he locked it after he drove through. There was a rare grove of majestic red cedars by the water. A large green Hudson’s Bay blanket was spread on the ground.

  Service plopped down beside her. The sun was unseasonably hot and the sky blue and cloudless.

  “You work all night?” she asked, studying him.

  “There was a fire in the Mosquito.”

  “I can tell,” she said. “Do you have to go back?”

  “No, it’s out and the investigators are on it.” He took off his shoes and socks. “I didn’t have time for a shower.”

  “I like you natural.”

  He ignored her, finished undressing, walked down to the water, waded in, and sat down gingerly. When he got out he came back to the blanket and lay down on his stomach.

  “I called you this morning,” she said.

  She settled in beside him and kissed his shoulder.

  “What say we unloose the moose and get the edge off?” she said.

  “I never met a woman who talked like you.” More to the point, he had never met a woman in such a rush.

  “Gets you going, eh?” she said, laughing lasciviously.

  He rolled on his side and pulled her to him.

  He was asleep, his arm draped over his face, napping lightly. He felt Kira’s finger tracing the line of one of his scars.

  “Nice nap?” she asked.

  “Did I snore?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m not. You know, if we hadn’t done it in the dark the first time, we might not have done it at all. I’ve never seen so many scars. Have you noticed that I’ve never asked about them?”

  “I noticed.”

  “Have the other women in your life been curious about them?”

  “Some were, some weren’t.”

  “How do I add some and some?”

  “You’re the scientist.”

  “I haven’t figured you out yet,” she said.

  “Is that bad?”

  “No, but I’m nosy.”

  “I’m pretty simple.”

  She laughed in his face and poked him in the chest. “Bullshit, Service. You are a complete mystery.”

  “Not to me.”

  “I worry about you, Grady. For God’s sake, you wander around the woods all night with crazies and sleep on footlockers! That’s not normal.”

  “I think of it as training.”

  “For what?”

  “Life. If you get too comfortable, it’s too hard to go out and do what you have to do.”

  “That’s twisted.”

  “It’s reality. People who get too relaxed stop producing.”

  “You’re not a factory.”

  “In some ways I am.”

  “A shrink might have some fun with that.”

  “Shrinks have fun with everybody else’s problems.”

  “Ah, my modern Luddite.”

  “Whatever that is,” he said.

  “Okay, I’ve put this off long enough. Now I’m asking. Tell me about the scars.”

  There was no point in arguing. He propped himself up on his elbows.

  “Bottom to top. Left thigh, that’s from Allerdyce, 20-gauge shotgun slug. Left ab, Vietnam, rocket fragment. Right ab, AK-47 round, also Vietnam. It hurt like hell. Left forearm, a fifteen-year-old squirrel hunter accidentally potshot me with a .22. Upper right thorax, Vietnam, grenade. Upper left arm, deer hunter with a 30.06; he took exception to my presence in his woods.”

  She touched the upper center of his belly. “That one?”

  “Grandma, .410 shotgun slug.”

  Her mouth was agape. “Jesus, Grady! Your grandmother shot you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She poked him again. “We’re making good progress, Grady. Don’t go south on me now.”

  “Why is progress important?”

  “A relationship is either going forward or backward. It doesn’t stand still.”

  “That sounds pretty arbitrary.”

  “Trust the doctor on this, Grady. About Grandma?”

  “She used to plink woodchucks that came up to her garden.”

  “You’re too big to be mistaken for a woodchuck.”

  “I stepped in front of the round.”

  She sat up and stared at him. “Stepped . . . as in accidentally, right?”

  He shook his head. “I wanted to see what it felt like.”

  She sucked in a breath. “You what?”

  “I was curious. It was like an experiment. You know about experiments.”

  “You could have been killed!”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Jesus, Grady.” She put her head on his chest. Neither of them talked for a while. He wasn’t sure if she was angry, shocked, or both. Her mood shifts could be mercurial.

  “I don’t want to know any more about your scars,” she said solemnly.

  “I’ve never been shot in the back,” he told her.

  “That’s enough, Grady. I don’t like the implications of any of this.”

  “My ex-wife said I had a death wish.”

  “Was she right?”

  “Not usually.”

  “You’re not particularly adept at comforting a lover,” Lehto said.

  “We were married four years and she never complained. One night at dinner she said, ‘I’d like another helping of cauliflower and a divorce.’ I looked at her. She said, ‘You have a death wish and I don’t want to be a young widow.’ She left after she finished her second helping of cauliflower. She was already packed.”

  “Baloney,” Lehto said.

  He made a sign over his chest. “It’s the absolute truth and as close to verbatim as I can make it.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Away. She never said and I never asked. She filed for divorce in Nevada and after that, who knows?”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Not after that cauliflower business.”

  “Don’t joke,” she said. “We’re having a serious discussion. You never tried to get her back?”

  “Nope.”

  “Would you have taken her back if she came back on her own?”

  “I don’t do hypotheticals,” he said.

  “C’mon, Service. Open up.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know, she might have been right,” Lehto said. “So she became a young divorcée instead of a young widow. Practically speaking, what’s the difference? Alone is alone. She must’ve been really afraid of losing you.”

  “That’s illogical,” he said.

  “These things don’t have to make sense.”

  “See!” he said, brightening. “It was that way with Grandma’s shotgun too.”

  “That poor woman. She must’ve been shattered.”
<
br />   “She called me a fool. My old man took her shotgun away from her and gave her a ticket.”

  “You made that up.”

  “Only the ticket part,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t have surprised me.”

  She lay her hand flat against his penis and pressed. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “What?”

  She took him in her hand. “What do I call him?” she asked in a whisper.

  “What the hell are you talking about Kira?”

  “It’s an important move forward in our relationship,” she said. “Personal names for our private parts. It’s what couples do when they start to fall in love. It’s in all the textbooks.”

  “Not any textbooks I’ve read,” he said, adding, “my ex and I didn’t have any personal names for anything.”

  “I rest my case,” she said. “You’re not with her anymore.”

  “And you think I’m crazy?”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore,” Kira Lehto said.

  “Okay by me.”

  They dressed slowly after their lovemaking. Dressing was the only thing Kira did slowly.

  “We needed this,” she said.

  He smiled.

  “Excuse me, but that was an invitation to make a date for the next time.”

  “Whenever you want.”

  She put her hands on her hips and thrust out her jaw. “I’d like to hear some want from your end. This isn’t an open-ended take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing for me, Grady.” Her voice had suddenly risen to a high pitch.

  “Why’re you mad?”

  “I’m not mad. I’m disappointed. I care about you and I want us to spend more time together. Normal time, not so-called quality time, which is a loser’s term for something is better than nothing. I thought you wanted the same thing,” she said with frown. “No, I take that back: I’m disappointed in me.”

  “I don’t understand what the problem is.”

  “Your grandmother was right about you! You are a fool!”

  Her truck tires spit gravel when she departed.

  He had a sour stomach. Why did his relationships always go this way? What did she want, a billboard on US 41 to let her know he cared about her?

  When he drove across a bridge over Wallen Creek he saw a woman in blue waders and a lavender vest, casting a fly into a pool by the road. Her bronze Maxima was pulled off the shoulder of the road. It had Lansing plates. There was a bumper sticker, a navy blue fish with the words love ’em and leave ’em.