Killing a Cold One

by Joseph Heywood

  Carabiners rattled starkly with the sound of cheap wind chimes. Service and Allerdyce made their way to the cliff edge as Baraga County SAR personnel threw ropes down the drop, about fifty feet from where Johnstone had launched herself. Service saw that the SAR people had better anchor points where they had set themselves up. Any kind of high-angle operation was damn difficult even when everything worked right, and always dangerous: Gravity, temperatures, winds, light conditions, and weather consistently caused SAR team leaders to recalculate and make adjustments to their plans and equipment. Service saw portable klieg lights and generators being pulled up to the edge. He also knew this was strictly a recovery, not a rescue, and time wasn’t pressing. Nobody survived the kind of dive Johnstone had taken. The lights suggested that SAR team leaders were expecting a lengthy search.

  The incident commander, or IC, was fiftyish, retired Coastie Philet Ghoti, five-eight, no excess weight, gray eyes, an in-charge, no-nonsense bearing. “How many you got below?” Service asked Ghoti.

  “Three so far.”

  “POD?” Point of detection.

  “Have to see. One person, known launch point, it’ll be PIW or POG.”

  Person in Water or Person on Ground. “We were here last night when she went over,” Service told the IC. “We’ll be close by if you need us.”

  Ghoti walked on. Allerdyce was seated by the edge, elbows on his knees, puffing a cigarette. “Youse notice somepin’ last night?” he asked Service, not bothering to look up.

  “Such as?”

  “Hear onny one splatch down dere,” the poacher said, using the cigarette as a smoky pointer.

  “Right.”

  “Tink dere ought should be two, eh?”

  The old man had a point. Service followed as Limpy began to shuffle along the ridge, stopping now and then, always peering over the edge . “Look dere, sonny,” he said, squatting after fifty yards. There was a cluster of juniper on the side of the upper cliff. “Under dere—in da middle,” Allerdyce said.

  Service saw snow under the shrubs. “I see snow.”

  “Tracks,” Allerdyce said, pointing, “Come t’ru dere, move our right, keep go dat way, I’m t’inkin’,” the old man said, still pointing.

  “You saying it’s Johnstone?”

  “Little tootsies, mebbe could be, eh?”

  Allerdyce was over the precipice before Service could say any more, and he watched the man moving slowly toward where Johnstone had gone over until the overhang angle made it impossible to see him anymore.

  •••

  An hour later Allerdyce popped back into view, now moving the opposite direction until he found a place to climb up. Service gave him an arm to help him to the top.

  “I t’ink dat girlie, she hit flat grass table, mebbe eight foot down, den she t’row dat red t’ing over and we hear dat hit water.” The conviction in the old man’s voice gave Service a chill.

  “Got a lot of fresh snow.”

  “She got nest down dere, lay dere while we was up ’ere, den later she move, eh.”

  “Climbed up in the ice and snow?”

  “Yep, wit’ gimp leg,” Allerdyce said. “Drags left foot some, sticks to cover. Want me bust trail?”

  “Got your radio?”

  Allerdyce nodded.

  “Go; keep me in the loop.”

  “Youse know da fact dat she know dat spot, mean she been here, mebbe plan dis t’ing, eh. Why’d she do dat?”

  Grady Service had no idea, and went to find IC Ghoti, who was getting ready to put two more men over the side down to the creek.

  “This could be a bastard, Phil. You may want to hold up for a while. I’ve got a man out looking at something now.”

  The incident commander looked at Service. Bastard was SAR jargon for a wasted search. “She’s not down there?”

  “Looking to find out,” Service said. “One of our men found tracks, followed them back to where she landed and lay up. It’s right below the launch point.”

  “Your man good at this stuff?”

  “Probably a lot better than us,” Service allowed.

  He found Noonan and Treebone and told them what was going on, and the three of them went over to the trail where Allerdyce had disappeared and waited.

  Denninger came on-site and joined them, heard what Allerdyce was doing, and said, “I’m leaving, Grady. Deer opener’s tomorrow, and my hours are limited. Let me know if you need me.”

  “Where are you working tomorrow?”

  “Glitter Creek, not that far from here. You guys?”

  We’re dry leaves in wind. “No idea yet,” he said.

  Why would Johnstone fake her death? Obvious answer: She’s desperate to disappear. But why? And from what?

  •••

  Two hours later, Service’s 800 barked to life.

  “Hey, dere, sonny, better come, ’bout mile an’ half west youse, ole tote road crosses crick, dumps inta ’turgeon. No ’urry,” the old violator said.

  They found Allerdyce chewing his fingernails. “T’ink somebody wait up here wid truck. Catch ’er coming, give it to ’er den. I seen prints fum truck, hunnert yards back, mebbe.”

  “What kind of truck?” Service asked. “Could you tell?”

  “For’n,” Allerdyce answered, shrugged, took a breath, and added, “Looks it swurft over onc’t, but I got good tracks for plasiturd gunk youse guys carry.”

  “Swurft?”

  Allerdyce made a motion with the flat of his hand. The old man shrugged and said, “Show youse.” Which he did.

  Vehicle tracks only; no human signs of any kind. The truck had been parked. Had it been waiting for Johnstone? Unlikely anyone would accidentally come to this place. Whoever it was had either followed, or knew her plan, was maybe part of it, all of this prearranged, a conspiracy. Of what, why? What the hell was going on?

  Service called Willie Celt. “You see any other vehicles while you were watching her place last night?”

  “A small white station wagon pulled in two houses down from Johnstone’s.”

  “How long after that did you see her?”

  “Fifteen minutes, give or take?”

  “Did you see that vehicle again on the way to the campground?”

  “Nope, but I wasn’t payin’ much attention, either.”

  “You catch the make?”

  “No, but it looked a few years old, not something new.”

  Service went over to Allerdyce. “How’d you know it was foreign?”

  “Skins,” the poacher said.

  “Guess a make?”

  Allerdyce chuckled. “I ain’t no Hootdini.”

  Grady Service rubbed his eyes.

  “We gon’ eat tonight?” Noonan complained. “I can go without pussy for days, even weeks, but food I got to have every day, an’ more’n once.”

  Service led them back to his truck, and Friday called as they pulled into the motel parking lot. He could tell by her tone she wasn’t happy.

  “The damn hospitals over here don’t have footprint records,” she complained. “They’ve never scanned them into their systems, or kept backup copies, even on disks. The woman in Records thinks some local churches used to come in and make copies for their own files, but she’s not sure which churches, or when. What the the hell is wrong with people?” she said, adding, “I’m going home.”

  She had a cockamamie idea that she could match victims’ feet to hospital footprints used as mementos. It had seemed an extreme and desperate long shot to him right from the start.

  “We found Johnstone,” he told her. “Not a suicide. She faked the jump and climbed back to the top after we were gone. Looks like somebody picked her up.”

  “Why would she do that?” Friday shouted.

  “Got me.”

  “You think I should t
urn back to L’Anse?”

  “No,” he said. “Go home. Relax. Have a glass of wine.”

  Dinner at the Hilltop didn’t help the group’s collective mood. Allerdyce was with them for a while, but got a cell call, and later got into a brown truck and disappeared, not returning until almost midnight.

  “Do ’morrow?” the old man asked Service.

  “Probably head home.”

  “Opener, eh?”

  “Like clockwork, every November on the fifteenth.”

  “Hear mebbe dere’s crew up Black Crick Road, mebbe up ta stuff.”

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Not ’zackly.”

  “Competition?”

  Allerdyce cackled. “I ain’t in dat game no more.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Timber, baits—youse know, all dat stuff goes ’hind lock gates.”

  “You know where this camp is?”

  Allerdyce nodded and flashed an insipid grin.

  Service came outside to have a smoke with Noonan. “That old fart’s dangerous,” the retired Detroit cop said. “I can feel it. I know a hard case, and I got me lots of comparitors.”

  Not exactly news. Real issue: What is Limpy now? Service couldn’t say with any certainty.

  He called Dani Denninger. “I know you and Willie have a plan tomorrow, but if I were you, I’d take a drive up Black Creek Road.” Service gave her the name of the camp and its approximate location.

  “I’ll talk to Willie,” she said.

  “Let me know if it works out,” Service told her.

  27

  Sunday, November 16

  HANCOCK, HOUGHTON COUNTY

  Grady Service telephoned his retired CO friend Gus Turnage to run down an address for him; it took about fifteen minutes. He didn’t call ahead to the house. The man would be there or not.

  The strange pouches were never far from Service’s thoughts. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t help wondering about the pouches surrounding the red effigy at the campground. Indians being snatched and killed and butchered. The other word he couldn’t shed: windigo. Jesus.

  Allerdyce had come back, and Service sent the poacher and Noonan home and took Treebone with him. Father Bill Eyes had mentioned the pouches and said he’d get a contact number for this Grant Lupo, but so far, no dice. Service kept the radio tunes blasting loudly the whole way, as if decibel level alone would crush the awful things they had seen, but he knew deep down it wouldn’t work. Monsters, real or imagined, had to be confronted individually and face-to-face. There was no option in this. He also knew the word monster really translated to human, not to other species. Man was the only true monster in this universe.

  They found the house, overlooking Mont Ripley Ski Resort. The old Quincy mine smelter and brick stack were almost directly below them on the shore of the Portage Lake Ship Canal; south, they could see the buildings of Michigan Tech. There was a Jeep in the yard, and Service parked behind it. It had patches of salmon-colored Bondo mixed with splotches of pea-green primer, ugly beyond description and only partially covered by fresh snow.

  The man who came to the door was remarkably tall—six-eight, at least, Service thought—muscular, lean but strong, late thirties, with long blond hair that stuck out in all directions, a well-trimmed Vandyke with an orange tint. He wore a T-shirt proclaiming remedial calculus don’t add up, faded jeans with holes in the knees, and unlaced logging boots reaching almost to his knees. Reading cheaters hung around his neck on a faded purple shoestring.

  “We would have called,” Service said, “but we ran out of time. We’re looking for Grant Lupo?”

  “That’s me,” the man said, stepping back to let them in. His handsome face had a used quality to it, leathery and shiny, as if it would soon crack like an unoiled baseball glove. His eyes, on the other hand, were almost animal-like. Oddest eyes I’ve ever seen, Service thought, pale green with the sparkle of peridot.

  “Father Bill Eyes call you?” Service asked, showing his badge.

  “Yeah, sure; I think I saw a message from Bill somewhere in my call-back pile.”

  “You didn’t call back.”

  The man smiled. “See, the way it is, I get maybe fifty phone calls a day, and a hundred to two hundred e-mails. I figure if people seriously want to talk, they’ll find a way. That saves my time, which is what matters most to me. It’s not a perfect system, but it seems to work. You found me, right?”

  Tree laughed out loud.

  Lupo asked, “You guys want to do lunch? I did graduate work in NYC at Columbia, and I love how two-one-twos talk to each other. Do lunch . . . Is that a hoot or what? Happy horseshitisms from Great Gobshites of Gotham. I’ve got fresh venison stew. My recipe. I like wild game, about all I eat. Can’t handle factory meat drowned in antibiotics.”

  Service knew Tree had never met a meal he didn’t like and said, “Sounds good.”

  They followed the man down a long hall lined with dozens of rifles on racks, or slung on wooden pegs. The rooms they passed were stacked with books, or wooden crates filled with tents and sleeping bags and sundry outdoor equipment, cardboard boxes, steamer trunks with lupo stenciled on the sides in white. The house looked like a pass-through for a small transient army, and the kitchen looked like it had been decades since its last cleaning. When he saw it, Service mumbled, “Not hungry.”

  Lupo grinned. “This only looks like the Ptomaine Palace. I cook great. What I don’t do so great is clean up.”

  The professor ladled rich, dark brown stew with floating cranberries into a red Styrofoam bowl and gave it to Tree, who sniffed it approvingly. Lupo looked at Service, who grudgingly nodded. Damn stuff does smell good.

  They ate with black plastic spoons embossed with huskies in yellow script. Lupo got a bowl of white onions and thin-sliced red peppers from the fridge and set it in front of them. “Recipe’s got jalapenos, but you can’t see ’em because I grind ’em fine to spread the seeds. I like things hot.”

  The concoction was thick and surprisingly savory, with a robust bite. The professor grabbed a paper bag from the floor, pulled out a flaky baguette, and tore it apart. “Fresh,” he said. “Bakery in town’s run by a psychotic Estonian who claims to have once been persecuted by the KGB. Could even be true, but nobody cares. His bakery is outstanding, and the world’s not as neat or categorized as it once seemed. Beer or wine?”

  “Neither,” the officers said in chorus.

  “On duty,” Service explained.

  “Beer with everything for me,” Lupo said. “It’s hard to spoil beer.”

  The man wrenched a top off a Labatt Blue long-necker and tossed the cap in the sink. “So what’s the yank?” he asked, taking a swig. “People aren’t usually in much of a hurry to see people in my line of work.”

  Service thought the professor seemed unusually energized, unorthodox, and earthy, and not at all what he had anticipated. His relative youth was most surprising, and for some reason disconcerting. He’d thought of expert academics as in their sixties or seventies—at least closer to his own age.

  The conservation officer opened his briefcase and handed an envelope to Lupo. “We’d like for you to take a look at these; if you want to wait until after we eat, we’ll understand, but we’re interested in knowing your impressions.”

  Lupo put the photos on the table, raised an eyebrow, and took another heaping spoonful of stew.

  “We think they’re tribals,” Service said. “DNA.”

  Lupo said nothing until he had gotten through all the photographs. He spent considerable time looking at each one. “Interesting,” he said, returning the photos. “Where’d you get those?”

  “Marquette County,” he said.

  Just “interesting”? Service thought.

  “Recent?” the professor asked.

  Service said, “
The two older females in August, the child at Halloween, the other female about a week ago, and the effigy, just a few days ago, in Baraga County.”

  Lupo scooped another spoonful of stew. “They’ve been buried properly, I assume.”

  “No, the bodies are being retained as evidence in the investigations. There’re no legal reasons to hurry. We’ve got them secured.”

  Lupo went through the photos again and pulled out one of the little girl from the trailer on the Little Huron River. “Where’s this one?”

  “With the others.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing all of them.”

  “Why?” Service asked.

  “I assume you want me to gauge whether or not you’ve got a windigo on the loose,” the professor said. “There’s no other reason I can think of for you to be here. I’ve heard about the murders and wondered, based on the dogman rumors floating around. You do know what windigo translates to, right?” Lupo didn’t wait for an answer. “It translates into English as ‘evil spirit that devours humans,’ but this has been shortened to ‘cannibal’ over the years. I’d like to see the bodies. Every tribe in the north has its own version of, and word for, windigo.”

  “Sounds like a lot of hooey to me,” Service said, adding, “We’ll have to see about you taking a look at the bodies.”

  “People always need to believe in something,” Lupo argued. “Consider transubstantiation. For Roman Catholics, communion is partaking in the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. Literally, not figuratively. Is that not cannibalism?” Lupo grinned. “May I ask why the DNR is involved in this?”

  “All agencies are short on manpower,” Service said. “We’re assisting the State Police.”