Killing a Cold One

by Joseph Heywood

  “Legal demise?”

  Treebone shrugged. “I’ve been readin’ a lot since I retired; you know, self-improvement shit and such.”

  The houses along the block were freshly painted, lawns neat, flower gardens—it was unlike any part of inner Detroit that Service remembered.

  They stopped at a house and Noonan ambled out and stared.

  “Man, you still on the State payroll?” Noonan asked Service.

  “So far. Nice place you got.”

  “Amazing what work and a little money will accomplish, eh?” Noonan chirruped.

  Service said, “You hear about the two women in the U.P.?”

  The retired detective nodded. “Saw some shit in the Freep.” Slang for Detroit’s Free Press. “What’s a woods cop got to do with a double homi?”

  “Governor’s idea, and order: Hunt down the killer.”

  Noonan looked skeptical.“You shittin’ me? The governor herself gave you that order? Didn’t think she had the balls.”

  “Maybe not in those words. You believe in dogmen?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “They shit on my lawn.”

  “How about you come help Tree and me run this thing down?”

  “No fake?”

  “Nope; governor’s paying, and I get to pick my team.”

  “Gimme some time to pack. Cold up there?”

  “We’ve already had snow . . . looks like one of those years. I’ll provide snowshoes and other gear. I’m going to step outside for a smoke,” Service said.

  Several boys rode bikes up to the Tahoe and dismounted. A black SUV pulled up behind his truck; a man got out and came up the sidewalk and began shouting: “Noonan, you nasty, nigger-hatin’ little motherfucker, come outside and face your accuser!”

  Noonan immediately came to the door, asked, “Who the fuck you?”

  “Latoma Brown be who I am.”

  “Brown? I know your old man?”

  “You kicked him outten his house.”

  “My house, not his, and he didn’t pay rent for one year, Brown.”

  “You don’t cut no slack for black men.”

  “I don’t cut slack for my goddamn mother. What’s your point, slick?”

  “Gon’ cap your cheap, racist ass,” the man said, charging forward, and suddenly he was on the sidewalk, flailing like he was drowning, the air gone out of him. Service helped the man up, his nose and chin bleeding profusely.

  Service said, “You’ve got to be careful on concrete. Can trip you up real easy.”

  The man was dazed. An old man crawled out of the car, and Noonan saw him. “What’s your son’s problem, Brown? You and me parted copacetic, and here your boy comes up on me at the half-step.”

  “The boy just back from the Afghanistan, thinkin’ he can put righteous whoop-ass on the world’s problems.”

  Noonan said to Service, “Let’s get him inside, clean him up.”

  The kids with the bikes were huddled by the Tahoe. Noonan yelled from his door and darted over to them so fast Service could hardly believe his quickness. “Okay, boys, curfew’s here—time for home.”

  “Ain’t no curfew,” the largest boy said. “Mothafuckah.”

  “Fine, let’s call it a prelude to your funeral instead,” Noonan said with a huge grin.

  The kid took an aggressive half-step toward him and immediately doubled over on the ground, grasping his package.

  Noonan said calmly, “Next?”

  No challengers. “Okay. Get this sorry piece of shit on home, and don’t never come back.”

  Noonan looked at Service. “How long you think this party will last?”

  “Days, weeks, months—don’t know,” Service told the retired detective. “You want to know what your pay is?”

  “Couldn’t give a shit,” Noonan said, and went back inside.

  •••

  As the Tahoe headed north, Treebone said, “Where’re the Browns?”

  “I hired them to protect the block while we’re gone. Latoma is Crotch, Semper fi. The old man’s gonna live in my place.”

  “Semper fi,” Service and Tree said together. Noonan was a unique creature.

  “You get me a Shinob yet?” Service asked as they headed north.

  “Working on that,” Tree said. “Gon’ take a while.”

  •••

  Passing near Gaylord, where US 127 merged with I-75, Service’s personal cell phone rang and he answered it. “Sonnyboy,” a voice rasped.

  Limpy Allerdyce. Most of the Allerdyce clan lived in a compound in southwest Marquette County, on a narrow peninsula between North and South Beaverkill Lakes. The area was a long way from civilization, not the sort of place you stumbled across by mere chance. With water on two sides and a cedar swamp on both ends, it was difficult to get to. There was a two-track from a US Forest Service road down to the compound’s parking area, and then it was a half-mile walk along a twisting trail from there into the camp itself. In terms of isolation, the place was a fortress, which was just as well. Limpy’s clan had poached all over the Upper Peninsula for decades.

  Many years ago Service had challenged Allerdyce for poaching fish with dynamite. The CO had no idea where the shovel had come from, but it had caught him hard, breaking his right shoulder, and a subsequent shotgun blast caught him in the left thigh. He was lucky it was a slug, a twenty-gauge, that somehow missed the femoral artery. Allerdyce spent seven years in Southern Michigan Prison and came out professing to have changed his ways, which, over the years, Service was reluctantly beginning to believe. Especially since the old man had helped him solve several major cases and even saved his life.

  The apparent fundamental shift in the man was hard to accept, or believe. Limpy was no accidental violator. He had few normal emotions, was a predator in human form, a demon, a shape-shifter, a crow pocketing a bauble at Wal-Mart, a wolf taking easy, helpless prey. Allerdyce, no matter what he claimed, was cold-blooded and calculating, a dirtbag who had for most of his life taken what he wanted with no remorse. In the man’s twisted mind, all that mattered was what he wanted, and if you didn’t agree, you were in deep trouble. The tricky old poacher claimed he had been Service’s father’s informant in the old days, and since his release from prison downstate, he had decided to do the same for Grady.

  Owing such a person for saving your life was galling beyond words.

  “What do you want?”

  “Heard somepin’,” the man said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like some punk-ass high school kittles talking ’bout some Holloweenie party up in da Whorons.”

  The man slaughtered language in unbelievably cockeyed ways. “What of it?”

  “Heard dis in bar over Amasa Hotel.”

  Amasa was a long way from the Huron Mountains. “And?”

  “Somepin’ sick go down, I t’ink.”

  “You know the place?”

  “Mebbe.”

  “Call Marquette County and tell them. Ask for Sergeant Linsenman.”

  “I call you, not dat weasel,” Allerdyce insisted. “He don’t like me.”

  Service said, “I don’t do kiddie parties.”

  “You know dat case, dose two dead girlies up Twinnypointpond?”

  “Yes.” Now what?

  “Hear sick like dat, mebbe.”

  “And somebody was blabbing about this in the Amasa Hotel?”

  “I heard it for sure, and I believe it, sonny.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Your place, talkin’ your dog. I really like dis mutt. I call your girlie, tell her I comin’ oot here. I go his sis’s, she give me dog and cat, eh.”

  “You broke into my cabin again?”

  “Ain’t no break-in. I got key.”

 
“I didn’t give you one.”

  “Had it made, eh,” Allerdyce said.

  “From what?”

  “Last time I was out dere.”

  Service sighed. There was no way to change some behaviors, and inexplicably, both his dog and cat loved the old bastard.

  “Where youse?” Limpy asked.

  “Downstate, rolling north.”

  “Take ’er easy. We’ll all be right ’ere. Stop, get bottle Jack, eh. Youse’re low.”

  Great, Service thought, and broke off the contact. Something Allerdyce thought might relate to the case up at Twenty Point Pond? His gut fluttered. He knew this would somehow be something of substance, but not what. Not yet. Limpy always seemed to know what was going on all across the U.P.

  “Who that?” Treebone asked.

  Service said, “You brung a nigger into my camp?” This is what Limpy had said when Service took Treebone with him to meet the man in his camp the night he came home from prison years ago.

  Treebone exhaled loudly. “That motherfucker Allerdyce.”

  “He’s waiting at camp. You guys can catch up and make nice.”

  Noonan said, “Can I turn on the tunes? You two go on like couple of dried-up old women.”

  14

  Friday, October 31

  LITTLE HURON RIVER, MARQUETTE COUNTY

  CO Dani Denninger rang Service’s duty cell just before first light. “You know the DeJean family?”

  He mumbled, “Yeah, Old Man Guy, his six asshole boys, and me go way back. Why?”

  The DeJeans had poached Baraga and Northwest Marquette Counties for decades. Yearly fish runs seemed to mentally unhinge the family, like some strange genetic seasonal disorder. The family would haul out truckloads of salmon and steelhead, or walleyes, or northern pike, whatever was making spawning runs. And every year they seemed to try a new method. One year they tossed quarter-sticks of dynamite, stunning the fish. Another year they used two sixteen-volt car batteries to make a crude fish shocker. Another year they were using buckshot from twelve-gauge shotguns, ­marble-size pellets flying all over the woods and two of the boys catching wounds from them. The family’s U.P. roots traced to Chippewa County more than a century ago, and patriarch Old Man Guy recognized no higher earthly authority than himself. In some ways Service could empathize with him. Change was getting harder and harder to stomach, for law-abiding citizens and criminals alike.

  The one thing they used to be able to count on was that Guy DeJean and his boys were nonviolent and saw competition with the DNR as a dicey game to be played and enjoyed.

  “Been a while since you’ve seen him; he’s got ten sons now,” Denninger said. “His youngest, Donte, called me last night and told me some high school kids have something sick going on up along the Little Huron, east of Bald Mountain.”

  “He say which kids, and define sick?”

  “Negative. I let him walk last black-powder season on a tagging violation. Told him he owed me. I think this is the payback.”

  “Halloween,” Service said.

  “Go figure. The night when assholes howl at the moon.”

  Service felt himself popping awake. “I heard something similar from Allerdyce a few days back. If it’s coming from those two sources, you’d have to think it has substance. You want help?”

  “I got a real gut-twister on this one, Grady, maybe because it isn’t that far from Twenty Point Pond.”

  Grady Service blinked a map into his mind. Allerdyce had offered the same observation. “I hear you. Be me plus three.”

  “Sounds like an army,” she joked.

  “It is an army,” he said, no hint of irony in his tone.

  She said, “You know the two-track right after you cross Big Erick’s Bridge, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Keep on that until you get to the first major crossroad. The south leg is passable. Pull up to the south a half-mile or so and wait. The place we want is north, where a two-track cuts east over the river and a pair of culverts. I’ll meet you, and we’ll take both trucks down after dark. Seven work?”

  “We’ll be there. Allerdyce says he knows the way.”

  “I bet he does,” she said, and hung up.

  •••

  Treebone and Noonan didn’t ask where they were going, or why. “No snow,” Service told them, “but we’ll be in the western Hurons right on Superior, so anything is possible. Dress warm.”

  Allerdyce had not been at the cabin the previous night and did not appear until morning, just as they were getting into the Tahoe. Service thought the old man might be trying to avoid Treebone and was surprised when Limpy walked directly over to Tree, and, sticking out his bony hand, said, “I’m real sorry what I call you dat time out my camp.”

  “Nigger,” Tree said. “I’m certain that was the word you employed.”

  Allerdyce hung his head and mumbled “I’m real sorry” again.

  Treebone said, “Apology accepted, you sawed-off, wrinkled, white trash motherfucker.” The two men shook hands, and Limpy cackled.

  They’re both looney tunes, Service thought.

  •••

  They were parked where Denninger wanted them, and Service monitored her signal working its way toward them on the Automatic Vehicle Locator. Denninger was running dark, just as they had, about five miles out and closing.

  Eventually she drove quietly past them, turned around, and pulled alongside Treebone’s window. “All sorts of fresh vehicle tracks coming in,” she said truck to truck, through open windows. “I called the sarge; he’s coming, too. Ought to be here soon. Willie says there’s an abandoned trailer near the west bank of the river, about a mile south of the mouth, a hundred yards below the culvert road.”

  “You know the place?” Service asked.

  “Not the trailer,” Denninger said. “That’s new to me. I usually work the river in the riffles and holes up this way. The river flows west and turns ninety degrees to the north just below the intersection we came through. It parallels the road north down past the culvert road and ends at the mouth.”

  “Does Willie want to lead the charge?”

  “Don’t know,” she said. “But he knows this area.”

  Allerdyce said, “Trailer got put dere nineteen ninety-t’ree by Finndian fum over Sidnaw. Name was Tom-Tom Joseph or some such. Use as deer blind an’ camp when fishy runs was on.”

  Service looked back. “You’ve been there?”

  “Seen it, but never ast me in for coffee.”

  “Where’s Tom-Tom Joseph now?”

  “Tree fell on ’im two t’ousand six. Lived mebbe twelve hours, but too much busted up in guts to fix ’im.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Perfectional pal, you could say, but dem was old days, not now.”

  They watched Sergeant Willie Celt on the AVL, his truck turning up the road and stopping. Then he was at Service’s window, on foot. “There’s a one-lane wood bridge with a two-track a mile south of the river mouth.”

  Service looked at the AVL map. “You think we should go on foot?”

  “The DeJeans, high school kids, Halloween, salmon, and steelhead seem to me a pretty dicey concoction. There’s sure to be booze and weed and speed and God knows what else. We’ll probably need all our vehicles to hold prisoners, at least until we can sort out the assholes. I’m going to call Baraga and the Troops for support, see what we have. Probably too far for Marquette deps.”

  “Okay, lead us on down,” Service said.

  Denninger said from Treebone’s side, “How about I slip down there first? I’ll stash my ride and creep the place, give us some sense of what we’re dealing with. Give me one hour before you guys roll?”

  Celt said from the other side of the truck, “Works for me. Donte’s tip wasn’t that specific?”

  Denni
nger said, “Something sick . . . here . . . tonight; that’s about the extent of it.”

  “That damn family wallows in sick,” Celt said bitterly.

  Denninger said, “Donte’s not a bad kid, and I’m hoping he’s giving us the tip because his family isn’t involved. You can’t help what family you’re born into.”

  “Think Old Man Guy will be there?” Service asked Celt.

  “If there’s fish, that sonuvabitch will be somewhere in the area. He can’t help himself.”

  “Saw plenty of fish last week, all the way up to the upper crossroad,” Denninger said. “Salmon are sort of playing out, but I saw some fresh chrome steel up high. I expect lower holes will hold a lot of fish. Gotta go.”

  Service checked his watch. Fifty-five minutes. He found himself thinking about Guy DeJean and his six—now ten—sons, the DFC, DeJean’s Family Circus, some cops called them. What the hell are they up to this time? Whereas the Allerdyce clan was deadly mean and smart, the DFC tended toward playfully mean, and dumber than a bag of rusty nails.

  Celt moved without saying anything on the radio, and Service followed. No lights, no moon. At least it wasn’t snowing. “Tree, take Noonan down the west bank. Allerdyce, hang with me across the culverts and down the east bank.”

  Service could see the occasional glint of Celt’s truck ahead of them. Nosing down the steep road, it dawned on Service that his new army had no radios, or call signs. He’d have to solve that tomorrow. They could probably operate on a special event channel and not step on other operations. Details you should already have taken care of, he chastised himself. Good reminder why you didn’t deserve stripes. You’re no good at staff shit.

  They stashed their trucks side by side in thick underbrush and started downhill on foot through the woods, west of the two-track. In the distance they could hear the thump of music, voices, the usual din of a backwoods party.

  Denninger’s voice came up whispering on the 800 MHz. “They’ve got a bonfire by the river, weed clouds in the air, a lot of screaming. There’s a couple doing some vigorous unh-unh in a white van out by the culvert road. I left them alone. The river’s pretty loud: They won’t be able to hear much. I’m at the end of a finger-rock ledge, and I can see the trailer beneath me. The fire’s just west of the trailer, which they don’t seem to be paying much attention to, at least at the moment.”