Killing a Cold One

by Joseph Heywood

  Service said, “Limpy sweet-talked Daly into letting us search his van. We found a thou in cash, meth, about a pound of weed, all of it creatively stuffed in the spare tire storage area.”

  Friday said, “I confronted Daly, talked about felonies, and he asked me if these are instead of, or on top of, the body charges, and I told him all of the above. He announced he’s got a story to tell, and here I quote, ‘to that big prick, Service.’ ”

  Service pulled the boy out of the truck. “You got something to share?”

  The first thing Daly DeJean said was, “Gimme smoke, dudes. Like, please?” Service lit a smoke for him. DeJean said, “Dudes, wasn’t me found the body, swear to God.”

  “Which god—Pluto?”

  “Pluto, like Mickey Mouse’s bro?”

  So much for cute.

  “Say what you’ve got to say.”

  “I did not find that body, or move it, or nothin’.”

  “You already said that,” Service said. “Get to your point.”

  “Name’s Nepo, lives out to Sands Station, nort’ of the old air base.”

  The former K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base was now Marquette’s airport. “North of the county airport on County Road 553?” Friday asked.

  “Couple of yellow house trailers parked back in red pines. Blue garage.”

  “Who is Nepo?” Friday pressed.

  “Downstater—Rockford, I think. Dropped out fum Northern.”

  “You’re telling us this dropout named Nepo found the body, not you.”

  “Right on, dude.”

  “I’m not a dude,” she said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m not a sir, either.”

  DeJean looked flustered and said nothing more.

  “When did this alleged miraculous discovery take place?” Friday asked.

  “Week ago, dude. Twinny fort, twinny fit, like dat. Dude said he was out here snagging salmon, ya know? Wandered up on the body in the trailer, said the blood even looked wet, and he got hell out of here. Like, it scared shit out of him, man.”

  “Where’s Nepo now?”

  “Probably drunk. He was bad shook.”

  “So Nepo found a dead child and told you about it. Why would he do that?”

  “I wasn’t only one, dude. He probably told others, too. He don’t know how ta keep his mouth shut. I don’t know why he told me. I don’t hardly know the motherfucker.”

  “But you saw it as a profit opportunity,” Friday said coldly. “Pay to see a butchered dead kid, dudes, It’s party time!”

  “Hey,” Daly DeJean said, grinning demonically, “this here’s the US of Pay.”

  Service fought the temptation to flatten the young man.

  “How long you been bringing people out here?” Friday asked.

  “Just tonight. I figured Halloween would get ’em out. Guess I was right,” he added. “My old man says I got me a good head for bidness.”

  15

  Saturday, November 1

  SANDS STATION, MARQUETTE COUNTY

  It turned out that Sean Nepo was no stranger to law enforcement: Two convictions for assault, a DUI, and once charged with attempted rape, charges dropped, reasons not specified. He’d spent less than ninety days in jail, all of them in Marquette County, and his last known address was as Daly DeJean had called it: two yellow trailers in Sands Station with a blue garage, like some sort of weird van Gogh painting, only dulled down by reality and decay. Friday had a photo of the man, from his last stint in jail: six-four, 167 pounds, reddish straw-blond hair, scorpion tattoos on his neck.

  There were no vehicles parked anywhere near the trailers or garage. All of the doors were open, and the buildings were empty. The trailers were set one behind the other, connected by a four-foot walkway. The front door to the northern trailer was ripped away, bent, twisted, and hanging in tatters. There was mud scrubbed with snow scabs, no grass.

  “No need to replace the screen with winter coming,” Treebone said.

  “You reading the deal here?” Service asked his old friend.

  “I saw the tracks,” Treebone said. “Looks like Nepo’s had him a four-legged visitor.”

  “Tuesday,” Service said.

  “Bear?” she said.

  There was a large pile of fresh scat by the front porch. “Looks like,” Service said.

  “Still in there?” she asked.

  “We’ll soon know,” Service said. “Tree, take the south entrance door, rear trailer. Tuesday, stay here. Noonan, you take the west end, set up between the trailers so you can cover both end windows. Allerdyce take the east end.”

  “Ain’t got no gun,” Limpy reminded Service.

  “No teeth neither,” Treebone growled. “Make a face at the sonuvabitch.”

  Allerdyce grunted, then grinned.

  “Be ready, Noonan,” Service advised.

  “For what?” the retired Detroit detective asked.

  “Something big, black, and in a hurry,” Treebone said.

  “Just like home,” Noonan said, walking west to get into position.

  The team members had handheld 800-megahertz radio units, courtesy of the Negaunee State Police post commander, who had been faxed an order personally signed by Governor Timms.

  “South side?” Service asked, keying his mike.

  “Closed, secure,” Treebone reported.

  “East and west?”

  “Fine and clear,” came the responses.

  “Entering,” Service told them. He stepped to the north door, looked inside. “Near total destruction in here, and it stinks bad.”

  “I can smell death way out here,” Noonan said over his radio. “Strong.”

  Service stepped inside, his Remington shotgun in hand. He heard the animal, but never saw it as it ripped its way through the back trailer’s west window, then whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp!

  Friday on the porch shouting, “Cease fire, cease fire!”

  Grady Service found Sean Nepo in a bedroom, a shotgun sort of across his chest and right shoulder, only the top of his head gone, brain and tissue bits sprayed on the wall and ceiling, blood and tissue everywhere. Hands still in place, but feet missing. It also looked like the bear had been chewing on the body. The bedroom stank of shit, both human and animal.

  “Got Nepo,” Service said over the radio. He heard Friday coming up behind him, something on the floor crunching under her boot.

  The dead man had black hair down to his ass, and a heavy, wiry black beard. He wore a black Megadeth T-shirt; unlaced black-and-white checked tennies were on the bed by his legs. His feet were gone, bone tips glistening white in the poor light.

  “Description and photo showed him as reddish-blond,” Friday observed.

  “Too much fun for him. Maybe he needed a change. Who shot out there?”

  “Noonan,” she said. “Bear. You’d better come see.”

  “He okay?”

  “May need to change his skivvies,” she said. “Five slugs into a very big animal. It collapsed with a paw on his boot, tore the leather down to the steel toecap.”

  Bears rarely left human dwellings the same way they came in.

  “You talk to him?”

  “He flashed me the okay sign. I asked if he was really okay, and he said he was ‘just dandy,’ but I watched him trying to reload, and he was dropping rounds on the ground.”

  Friday moved to the bed, looked at Nepo’s body, took out her camera, began taking photographs. “Suicide?” she said.

  “Your call, not mine,” Service said.

  Friday used her radio to call the medical examiner and State Police forensic crime scene team.

  Service looked behind Friday, saw Allerdyce creeping silently through the rubble. “Get out of here, old man, and don’t touch anything.”


  “Just wanna help,” Limpy said.

  “Then get outside,” Service said.

  “Hurt my feelin’s,” the old man said.

  Service shook his head. “You’ve none to hurt, so scram.”

  Treebone said over the radio, “Everything good to go?”

  “Noonan shot a bear, and Grady found Nepo,” Friday answered.

  “That don’t sound so sweet for the subject.”

  Noonan came in, tiptoed to the bedroom, looked at the body, clucked several times like an anxious chicken, said nothing, and withdrew.

  “Crime scene and ME en route,” Friday told them.

  “Got a theory?” Noonan asked.

  “Suicide seems obvious,” Friday said.

  “Seems like, but maybe not,” Noonan said.

  “Explain.”

  “Wait for techies,” he said, clucking again, which annoyed Service.

  The conservation officer looked at Noonan’s bear. Big, fat, old, teeth worn to yellow nubs. “Whew,” he declared out loud. “Why’d you let it get so close?”

  “I didn’t. He just wun’t go down. Thought I was going to have to reach down his fucking throat and tear out his fucking heart. Damn thing didn’t know he was dead.”

  “They can be like that,” Service said. “Next time, put all your rounds into the head,” and he tapped his forehead to show the man. “There.”

  “Gee,” Noonan said. “I’ll try to remember. How big, you think?”

  “Four hundred plus, could push five.”

  “That good?” Noonan asked.

  “Dead is good, size irrelevant in this situation.”

  Friday was inside when Dr. Tork showed up.

  “Good God,” she declared. “Y’all are like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, your wake spewing bodies. Where’s this poor soul?”

  Service pointed at the front door and watched her march inside.

  “We part of this soiree, or not?” Noonan asked.

  “We’ll have our chance. Be patient,” Service said.

  “Forensics and techie shit aside, this ain’t fucking rocket science,” Noonan said.

  Friday eventually came back outside as Jen Maki and her technicians went inside to join the ME. “Small freezer in the kitchen,” Friday said in a subdued voice. “Three hearts in plastic containers.”

  “Here dieth the beast, by its own hand,” Treebone declared.

  “Bullshit,” Noonan said. “Ain’t no suicide. Been staged to look that way, but it’s not the real deal.”

  The ME came outside in time to hear, looked at the smaller man. “Care to share your opinion, little man?”

  “Sure, sweetcakes. The spatter-splatter pattern ain’t right. Anybody can see that. Man lays down, puts shotgun barrel under his chin, the blast takes some face, top of the anterior skull, middle to frontal lobe. But the posterior plate’s gone on this guy, his chin hanging down like a drool string. He ain’t no suicide.”

  Kristy Tork went back inside, came out ten minutes later, and went directly to Noonan. “What’s your background?”

  “Homicide, retired, Detroit Metro.”

  “You have a name, little man?”

  “Noonan,” he said.

  “Kristy,” she said. “I think you’re right.” She turned to Friday. “Staged suicide make sense to you?”

  “Suggests somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble to help us conclude this is our grank from Twenty Point Pond and the Little Huron. There’s bear hair all over the bed and body. I don’t know what to think. Time of death?”

  “Fast as we can get it,” Tork said.

  The ME stayed close to Jen Maki and her people. The others went outside and gathered. Linsenman showed up with thermoses of coffee and a sleeve of Styrofoam cups, told them he’d talked to old man DeJean, who denied any knowledge of the dead child, or his son Daly’s “nefarious activities.”

  “Nefarious? Great word,” Treebone said.

  “Can we get to the fucking point?” an irritated Noonan asked. “My ass is freezing. I need real food. Some asshole whacked Nepo, big fucking whoop. Are the hearts from the previous vicks, or not? Are they even human? Aortal openings are almost diamond-shaped, and those don’t look human to me. If they aren’t the vicks’ hearts, some dumbass went to a helluva lot of trouble to convince us the shit trail ends here. If the parts don’t match, we may have upped our body count by one. Either way, this is bull, and I need some goddamned food.”

  “Bear chewed dead guy some,” Limpy told the others.

  Friday looked at the man, went to her briefcase, took out a folder filled with crime scene photos, and handed them to the old poacher, who went through them slowly.

  “Ain’t no critter done that,” he said after he was done, pushing the folder back to Friday.

  “You’re sure?” Friday asked the violator.

  “No critter I know of.”

  “Good,” Service said. “Maybe we should use this opportunity to get out to the public, get rid of the dogman red herring right here and now.”

  “Or,” Friday countered, “allow for the possibility of a dogman—or some other kind of creature, yet to be determined or identified.”

  Service couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “Jesus, Tuesday, you’re inviting chaos,” he said. “It’s absurd.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “No, I know it is,” Service said, “and so does Limpy. Let’s see what the vet can tell us.”

  Friday blinked and then stared at him. “What vet?”

  “The one we need to look at Noonan’s bear.”

  “We need a vet?” she asked in a doubting tone.

  “Did the bear chew on the corpse?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “If you think a bear gnawed on Nepo, a vet has to take a look and do a necropsy on the dead animal, the whole nine yards. That’s SOP when an animal is suspected or accused of mauling or killing a human.” He remembered when he’d killed a bear that had killed a three-year-old girl in the Eastern U.P. The local vet had retrieved the child’s hand from the animal’s stomach.

  “Can’t you just take care of it?” she asked.

  He nodded. “It’s your case. You want this done by the book or not?”

  “You know the answer to that,” she said.

  “Then we need to get a vet here, let them do their thing, look for hair samples and so forth and so on, and send them in for tox work, just like human evidence.”

  “Seems redundant,” Friday said. “An animal can give us cover,” she argued again. “On the upside, our perp may believe we’ve been diverted. If rumors are floating a dogman, fine, let’s give them one. Let them all talk dogman.”

  What the hell is wrong with her? It’s insidious, but she has a point.

  It just wasn’t one he planned to accede to. “Repeat, invites chaos. You want to pull a public fake-out on this deal, then you need a vet here to confirm evidence and our story. You can be damn sure reporters will ask every possible question and draw whatever conclusions they think they can, and to hell with the impact. I’m telling you, if we even hint at a dogman or any kind of so-called ‘creature,’ we’re going to be swimming in assholes and cameras from legit big-time media, and never mind all the half-asses and Internet shit. Some hunters wig out over a big deer; what do you think they’ll do with a mythical creature?”

  “Are you overstating to make your point?” his girlfriend asked.

  Her tone pissed him off. “Hell, no. I’m telling you how it is, no more, no less. You must have a vet you work with,” Service said.

  Friday went into the trailers, and after talking to Dr. Kristy Tork, came back out shaking her head. “She’s already called a vet—also by the name of Tork.”

  “Tork, like her?” Service asked.

  “Her
daughter Annastasia. She taught at Michigan State, now practices in Trenary. Should be here anytime. She’s worked homicide support in the Lansing area. Her mother confirms a vet is de rigueur if animals are involved in any way. You were right,” she said, looking directly at Service, who was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

  Anna Tork was thirtyish, blonde, thin, big-eyed, and vibrating with life. Mother and daughter hugged momentarily and disappeared back inside the trailer. The younger Dr. Tork came out ten minutes later and asked to see the dead bear. Service and Noonan showed her. She carried a large black tackle box, which she opened, peeling out a pair of latex gloves and putting them on.

  “Can you guys help? I need this old fella over onto his back in a semi-sitting position. I want good access to the viscera and the helping hand of gravity when I start exploring and digging around.”

  Service called for Treebone and Allerdyce, and the four men together barely managed to get the dead-weight bear up into some semblance of a sitting position. “Jesus,” Tree complained. “This old guy needed to be on Weight Watchers.”

  Anna Tork knelt in front of the bear with a hunting knife, scraped it on a whetstone several times, and began. She unzipped the animal like she had done it countless times. “Look at the thickness of the fat layer,” she told them, pointing.

  Service looked down and saw a three-inch layer of glutinous yellow tissue.

  “This is one big animal,” the vet said. “You guys put him on scales?”

  “No,” Service said.

  “We need to,” the vet said. “Jen Maki’s got scales in her truck.”

  “You’ve worked with Jen before?” Service asked.

  “No, but we’re friends, and we trade publications and professional information.”

  Tork isolated the animal’s stomach, severed the connecting tissues, lifted it, and set it on the ground. It was grayish-blue, shaped like a huge, slimy water bottle. She set aside her knife, peeled the wrapping off a new disposable scalpel, and looked around. “Hold this,” she told Allerdyce and put his hand on one side of the stomach.

  “Hold anyt’ing youse want, girlie.”

  “Is he a cop?” she asked Service.

  “No,” Service said.

  “Thank God,” Tork said, and waved the scalpel in a riposte near the old man’s belly. “May have to give you more to hold if you don’t act nice,” she said with a snarl, and Allerdyce drew back before recovering his composure.