Ice Hunter (Woods Cop Mystery 1)

by Heywood, Joseph

  Service let his friend continue.

  “What’s interesting is that he bought the land way below assessed value from Wildcat, Inc., and sold it all off over a five-month period. Even with capital gains, he made a very nice profit.”

  “When?”

  “Last year. He took the money he made and parked it in Cayman Island banks. The feds say it will be tough to get at. Does any of this compute?”

  “Not yet.”

  They ate a quick lunch. Service went out to his truck and called Wink Rector at his office in Marquette.

  “FBI, Special Agent Rector speaking.”

  “It’s Grady. Are you involved in an investigation of a man named Fox at Tech?”

  “Why?” the agent asked suspiciously.

  “Other agencies may have their own interests in him.”

  “For what?”

  “A number of things. I’ll fill you in later. Right now I’m curious about his land dealings in Pelkie. He bought land on the cheap and sold at a considerable profit.”

  “Who the hell have you been talking to?”

  “Is it true?”

  “Yah.”

  “How much land was involved?”

  “A thousand acres, give or take.”

  “Sold in pieces, not as a chunk.”

  “Right.”

  “How did he do it?”

  The FBI man said, “Scam. People in Pelkie got the cockamamy idea that the land might contain diamonds. Can you believe that?”

  “Where did the people get the idea?”

  “From Fox, using an alias. Will or Willie Chamont.”

  WC. Things were starting to close.

  “You’re sure it was Fox?”

  “We had a complaint and we were following up. Since he was making noises about diamonds, we wondered if there was some sort of connection to Tech.”

  “And when you got there, you found more problems?”

  “Who is your source, Grady?”

  “The guy scammed money off grants at the university and off the land deals in Pelkie. How come this didn’t hit the news?”

  “We’ve only recently gotten into this. People down there talked to some lawyers about suing Fox, but the land deals were legally binding and there was nothing on paper about diamonds. The people were had and didn’t want others to know.”

  “But somebody came to you guys.”

  “Yes, an infuriated young woman. Her father lost a bundle, and she wanted to help him. Her call started the ball rolling.”

  Service inhaled and shook his head, remembering the young woman he had met in Pelkie.

  “Fox has a long record of scams. He’s been inside twice, once in California, once in Missouri. How he got hired at Tech is beyond me. Damn universities don’t check backgrounds for shit.” Neither did federal grantors, Service thought.

  “Does Fox have a degree?”

  “Two engineering degrees from the Colorado School of Mines. Now it’s your turn to answer some questions.”

  “Later, Wink.”

  “Asshole, you milked me.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” Service said, signing off.

  Would Knipe sell land he knew to contain diamonds? Not likely. The question was, Were the Knipes part of the scam or had Fox acted alone in Pelkie?

  Passing through Chassell, he decided to visit Pelkie again.

  The old man was in the gas station and looked like he hadn’t washed his coveralls or hands since the last time Service had seen him.

  “Is your daughter around?”

  “What’s it to you?” Fatherly concern or misanthropy? A little of both, Service guessed.

  “Just thought I’d say hello.” She was a good-looking woman and probably he wasn’t the first man to come in asking after her.

  “She’s out back,” the man said disgustedly. “Catchin’ rays, whatever the bloody hell that means.”

  Service found her on her stomach on a bent, rusty chaise lounge near a lime-green Rambler on blocks with weeds poking up through the chassis. The young woman wore a two-piece bathing suit, faded by the sun. She was covered in tanning oil, her top undone in back.

  “Hi,” he said. “Sorry, I never caught your name. I’m Grady Service.”

  She looked over at him calmly, pushed up tiny sunglasses, and grinned. “Tish. You looking for rocks again?”

  “Not rocks, but I’m hoping you can help me with something.”

  “Sure.” She started to sit up, realized her top was undone. “Whoops,” she said, grabbing hold of it.

  “Will Chamont,” he said.

  She said in an accusatory tone, “The FBI guaranteed my name wouldn’t be made public.”

  “It hasn’t been made public, but I am looking at Chamont for something else. Would you tell me what happened?”

  “The FBI has my statement.”

  “You want Chamont caught, right? Work with me, okay?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “Chamont showed up last summer. He hung out at Skidreams, that’s a bar not far from here? He passed himself off as an amateur rock hound. He was good looking and smooth as all get out.”

  “He told people about the diamonds?”

  “No way, eh. There’s a woman who waits tables at the bar, Vicki Baily. They started going out. That’s a euphemism,” she added. “Chamont showed Vicki some sort of government report saying they found the kind of rock near here that could contain diamonds. Vicki told her brother and pretty soon everybody around here was whispering about it, you know, a secret that takes on its own life?”

  “Then what?”

  “Chamont said that the land the government report talked about was owned by the Knipes, but that he had bought most of it and had put himself in hock. He was looking to unload some of the land to get some of his investment back. He offered some to Vicki and her brother and pretty soon he was selling to all sorts of people.”

  “Your father included?”

  She frowned, then sighed. “My dad, too.”

  “Did it strike anybody as odd that he was selling land that might have diamonds on it?”

  “It sure struck me that way and I told my father so, but he wouldn’t listen. You know parents. They don’t want to hear kids’ opinions.”

  His old man had been the same way. “Why did people buy?”

  “You’re asking a logical question. But you get people’s minds filled with treasure and they don’t use logic. Chamont sparked greed. You know people up in these parts. They like being able to get something for nothing.”

  “After they found out the land was worthless you’d think somebody would have gone after him.”

  “Some people talked to their lawyers, but the contracts were legal and there was no mention of diamonds on paper. A rumor got started and people started buying. It was a scam, I think, but not a scam, if you know what I mean. I talked to a lawyer and he just threw up his hands.”

  “So you called the FBI.”

  “Somebody had to step up.”

  “Is Chamont still around?”

  The woman laughed and tossed her hair. “He’s long gone and it wouldn’t be healthy if he showed up again, eh?”

  Service went back to his truck and got the photographs. He gave them to Tish, who set them on the chaise lounge and went through them slowly.

  “Hey,” she said, holding up a photograph. “This is Chamont.”

  Chamont was Fox. Fox was connected to the Knipes. Knipe to Novotny. Novotny to Bozian. It was shaping up as a neat chain. Now all he needed was evidence to make the case.

  “What about the other individual in the picture?”

  “I haven’t seen him in years,” she said. “but he looks like Ike Knipe. Been a while since we saw him and his father. They moved down to Crystal Falls some years back.”

  She paused to reflect and continued talking. “I’ve thought about this a lot. The Knipes weren’t real popular here, but they had money. Chamont told people they shouldn’t talk to the Knipes about this, that he was ju
st going to put one over on them. He said rich folks deserved to get outhustled sometimes.”

  “Did he say specifically that the the Knipes didn’t know about the diamonds?”

  She looked up at Service. “I guess they wouldn’t have sold if they knew.” She rubbed her mouth. “This is too sick,” she said. “This guy spins a buncha bull and everybody jumps in and maybe the Knipes didn’t have a damn thing to do with it. Maybe Chamont was legit. Maybe he was just a dreamer and everybody got sucked into his dream?” She began to laugh. “Yoopers,” she said. “We’re dillies, eh?”

  “Thanks, Tish.”

  “I don’t want my dad’s name in the papers,” she said, but he did not respond. He wouldn’t use her name, but he could make no promises for the FBI.

  Service sat in his truck thinking. It had nearly been a perfect scam, entirely worthless land sold on nothing more than rumor with no trace of the rumormonger to the landowners. If rumor alone could do this, what could it do to the Tract? Destroy it.

  Crossing the southern end of Keweenaw Bay, Service swung the truck north from L’Anse, taking the road up to Skanee. It seemed like ages since the stakeout of the black helicopter.

  This time Service had no concerns about entering private property. He now had evidence of crimes, and Fox had been seen on the property. The black chopper was still under its camo net. He checked under the net and smelled fuel. From what? Not fumes from when he had been here. Those would have evaporated. This was something new. He checked the connector and found that it had been tightened. Somebody had found his tampering and the chopper had been refueled. He wished he’d had the manpower to have maintained the stakeout, but they had gotten onto Fox and there was no compelling reason to spend more resources. He looked around for fresh tire tracks, but the summer was already dangerously hot and the ground brick hard. If this kept on, it was going to be a terrible fire season. He’d never see Nantz. Indians danced rain dances, which were mostly baloney and wishful thinking. Still, he might try one. Just in case. He wondered if Nantz would appreciate his effort.

  If the chopper was refueled, that meant it was ready to go.

  More flights ahead?

  Yes, and he had a disturbing idea where. When, was the question that lingered.

  He called Nantz’s house and got no answer. Frustration was replaced by concern. It was late afternoon when he drove to his cabin to take care of chores he had been neglecting.

  Donning shorts, he went down to Slippery Creek with his fly rod, threw half a dozen casts over the head of the pool below the house, hooked a foot-long brown, played it in fast, whacked it on the head, cleaned it, went back to the house, and cooked it.

  He sat at his table, picking at the fish and looking at the photographs from Simon. There was more there than he was seeing, but whatever it was, it was refusing to declare itself and his mind wasn’t cooperating.

  He gave the remains of the trout to Cat, who bumped against this leg the whole time he ate, and went outside to water his tomato plants. While he watered, he decided he needed a couple of bags of fertilizer. Manure, not chemicals. Gardens up here were a gamble. He always waited until after Memorial Day to plant. Downstate it rarely froze after that, but U.P. weather was different. He kept the plants covered at night until after Independence Day. Most people who had tried to farm in the Yoop had gone under. The growing season here was too brief to grow almost anything of value.

  He drove to a store called U-Name-It-We-Got-It. It was not false advertising. There was a crowd of people in the sprawling store even though it was out in the middle of the boonies.

  Owner Rune Forsberg drove by in a forklift with a pallet of potted blue spruces. He waved and kept going.

  Service got two bags of manure. Forsberg’s daughter, Sissel, was working one of the cash registers. She was six-five, a sophomore at Wisconsin on a basketball scholarship, a big change since he was young. Newspapers in the U.P. said Sissel might be on the next US Olympic team, but up here they touted anyone with the slightest possible Yooper connection to glory. National pride in an area that was neither a nation nor a state, but very much its own place, four hundred thousand independent-minded people in an area the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined.

  On his way out, he saw Rune headed back to the nursery for more trees, the pallet dancing on the metal forks. Service stopped the truck and watched until the man was out of sight. Why this fascination? His own mind was sometimes as much a mystery to him as to others.

  He was sweating when he finished spreading the manure.

  Cat lay on the porch watching him. A chipmunk ran across the porch. The feline scrambled, got a paw on the tiny creature, picked it up in her teeth, and trotted across the yard like a mother carrying a wayward pup. The cat dropped the rodent near the trees and began batting it with razorsharp claws. He thought about rescuing the chipmunk, but this was nature’s design and he let it take its course.

  “May have to change your name to Bad Mama,” he told the cat, who was busy eviscerating the animal.

  Unlike Newf, Cat was content with proximity. The dog needed contact and affection. Where the hell was Nantz and where was his dog?

  Pallets, chipmunks, pallets, chipmunks, images moving and undulating in the subconscious swamp, popping out suddenly as something else.

  What had he missed in the photographs?

  He looked again, spreading them out on the porch.

  Pallets with equipment on them. Big deal.

  Pallets with huge U-bolts.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said out loud. Choppers in Vietnam hauled cargo on pallets suspended from the aircraft, using cables affixed to the pallets with U-bolts. Just like these.

  A quick check of the photos showed that every pallet had the bolts. The pallets were awaiting chopper transport. And the black chopper was refueled and ready.

  It didn’t matter that Knipe had permits for the Crystal Falls area; the equipment had to be headed for the Tract. There were no diamonds in Crystal Falls, but he knew there were diamonds in the Mosquito, and somehow Knipe knew too. He had encountered Ike carrying a rock hammer, and now he knew why. Ike had been scouting. The chopper had been used to take magnetic readings. Equipment would be flown into the Tract by chopper, equipment to be used without a permit and in an area where all mining was against the law!

  He called McKower at home.

  “Service.”

  “Do I want this call?”

  “This is another of those things that never happened.”

  “I thought I told you that was done.”

  “Lis, Knipe has a compound near Crystal Falls. He’s gathered mining equipment on pallets equipped for chopper transport. I think he’s going to drill in the Tract. I have photos of the pallets. It took me awhile to figure this out. The site at Crystal Falls is a red herring.”

  “He can’t drill without a permit.”

  “He can’t drill legally,” Service said, correcting her.

  “Evidence, Officer Service?”

  “Everything points to this, Lis. And if he does, I’ll be there to stop him. What worries me now is if some of his pals in the NRC or Lansing suddenly push through a permit for him in the Mosquito. We need to know what’s going on down there . . . and stop it.”

  “You’re out on the edge, Grady.”

  He knew that. He’d been there one way or another his whole life. “Are we going to let this jerk do whatever the hell he wants? Bozian has crapped on the state and on us and if he knows about this and lets it go through, he’s a partner in rape. Somebody has to step up and say, ‘No more.’ If it costs my job, so be it.”

  “You’ll go that far?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “I will.”

  He knew she was thinking it through.

  “All right,” she said. “What’s the point of being an LT if you don’t fight for what’s right? Get them, Grady. I’ll deal with Lansing.”

  He wanted to cheer. “I love you, Lis.”

  She laughed
. “Yeah, and the next time I get in your way you’ll hate my ass too. Anybody this dumb should never be promoted,” she added before hanging up.

  Okay, Knipe.

  The gloves are off. Now we rock ’n’ roll to my music.

  20

  Del Olmo called early the next morning. “Bad news. We’ve lost Fox.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime yesterday. His Bronco is still at the house, but he’s not. We usually see him come out to the mailbox for the morning papers, but he didn’t come out yesterday and we figured he was just sitting tight. I sent a mail carrier up to the house this morning and nobody was there. I have no idea how he slipped past us. What do you want us to do?”

  “Give everybody a heads up, leave somebody at the house, and keep a tight watch on Knipe’s compound.”

  “Sorry, Grady.”

  “Don’t be,” Service said.

  He immediately telephoned Joe Flap.

  “Can you get up to the chopper ASAP and watch for activity?”

  “What kind?”

  “I checked yesterday. It’s been refueled and it’s ready to fly.” Was Fox headed for the chopper? “If it lifts off, radio Simon del Olmo and call me on my cellular.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s important, Pranger.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Hunting the hunter.”

  “Good luck, son.”

  As he drove south, Service sensed he would soon have a rendevous with Fox. He parked his truck outside the Tract, got his pack and sleeping bag, and headed into the forest. He didn’t want to leave his truck where he usually parked, so he picked another location about ten miles from Knipe’s parcel. Figuring three miles an hour hiking cross country through the bush, he would be there in three hours, give or take. He moved as quickly as he could, leaving little sign that he had passed. In the woods Grady Service was just another animal, silent and invisible. He was in his natural habitat.

  The hike took longer than he expected. The air was humid, the temperature unseasonably hot.

  He was certain that if Fox came, it would be by chopper, which meant he could lay back a distance and move in when the bird appeared. This was the most likely scenario, but over twenty years he had also learned the hard way that he needed to cover all options because criminals and violators didn’t use normal logic. Fox might have given surveillance the slip, but Service knew that sooner or later he would come to the Tract. Everything pointed to it. While the chopper was his most likely means of arrival, he also could come in on foot. Either way, Fox was going to find a surprise.