Killing a Cold One

by Joseph Heywood

  “Now would be good for me,” Lupo said, taking a last mouthful of stew and jumping to his feet. “But you can call after you talk to your handlers,” he said dismissively.

  Service and Treebone were outside when Denninger called on the cell phone, laughing. “Unreal. Forty tickets in all, and we took eight deer. All the blinds were big-time overbaited, all permanent structures just onto State land. My wrist aches from paperwork. One guy copped to three bears, including a cub. Another pal owned up to four wolves. And get this: Half the guys in camp didn’t buy licenses, and never have. Yet not one of these assholes has a DNR prior. Makes you wonder how long this shit has been going on.”

  “No drugs?”

  “Two pounds of weed, and sixty-one cartons of Indiana cigarettes to peddle. Three locals stopped to buy smokes while we were there. I called ATF and they’re geeked.”

  “How much stuff did you seize?”

  “Everything—wheels, rifles, all of it. You’ll love the photos of the flatbeds and wreckers hauling away their trucks.”

  Grady Service felt a twinge. I should be in the Mosquito right now, not chasing fucking bogeymen. The thought that the Mosquito Wilderness was unprotected made his heart skip and blood pressure go up.

  “Great job,” he told Denninger.

  “Fucking eh!” she said happily. “This feels like a big one for all the good guys.”

  28

  Monday, November 17

  MARQUETTE

  Friday okayed Lupo viewing the remains, and Service was mildly surprised to discover they were being stored at the unofficial satellite morgue in Marquette, a facility he’d never heard of, which made him wonder how many other things he didn’t know. The building had once housed iron-mining shipping operations. It was a sturdy brick structure covered with ivy, now dusted with snow. There were other buildings nearby, all of them with flagpoles and Green Bay and Northern Michigan University flags snapping in the wind.

  Service and Tree came in the Tahoe, Lupo in his own Jeep. Friday wasn’t there yet when the men went to the door and knocked.

  The facility technician was an older man named Pellosio, who shaved his head and wore ankle-high duck boots and a black wool overcoat over a sharply creased charcoal-gray suit. “Chemicals get all over everything down here and destroy shoe leather,” he explained, catching Service’s questioning eye. “Rubber seems to last longer. But it won’t be a problem for you folks. Gotta work in this crud for it to eat your kicks.”

  Pellosio unlocked a massive gray steel door by punching a long sequence into a keypad and jerking the door aside when the light flashed green. He stepped inside, turned on the lights, and waved them in.

  Service saw drawers lining the walls of several long rooms. The place reeked of breath-catching chemicals, disinfectants, and God knows what else. There was a faded hand-painted sign by the front door that read dahmer’s diner. There were three pinwheel stars under the words, the stars fashioned from severed fingers.

  “This work turns us all nutters,” the technician said.

  Friday told the man what they wanted to see and he shook his head. “The little girl is god-awful,” the man said. “Horrific.”

  Service didn’t need to be reminded.

  The bodies were on gray metal mortuary trays in a locked room way in the back, and set aside under a sign—active criminal investigation under way.

  “Instructions from the ME are to not disturb the remains,” Pellosio explained. “Ain’t done nothing but keep our guests nice and frosty.”

  Friday arrived just as the technician pulled one of the trays out of its refrigerated compartment. Lupo bent over and reached down. Service handed him latex gloves and said, “I’m going outside for a smoke.”

  “No need; go ahead and smoke in here,” Pellosio said with a sly grin. “We all do. Who’s gonna tell?”

  “I need to be outside,” Service said. He hated shit with dead bodies, always had.

  Lupo, Treebone, and Friday came out after nearly an hour, all of them rubbing their hands. “I’m starved,” the professor said.

  “After that?” Service asked.

  “They’re just remains. I guess I’m used to them. I’d think cops would be inured to all that as well.”

  Service guessed the man was testing them, and he couldn’t figure out why. “It’s not the remains; it’s the fact that they’ve been murdered, and we don’t have a single viable lead.”

  Lupo grunted sympathetically. “We academics hate unanswered questions, too.”

  •••

  The restaurant was called Autres Temps (Other Times) and advertised its specialty as molten BBQ Louisiana-style baby back ribs. Lupo asked for a double order and extra hot sauce, which he then doctored with a green bottle that materialized from this pocket. “Hmm,” he said after one bite. “C-plus tops, even with the major saucing intervention.”

  “You wanted to see the bodies,” Friday reminded the man. “Now you’ve seen them. What can you tell us ?”

  “Can’t say,” he said, through a mouthful.

  Friday said, “You can’t say? You drive all the way over here and you can’t say?”

  Service could sense her thermometer rising.

  “Life’s a gamble,” Lupo said. “A cop once told me that, and he wasn’t half as good-looking as you,” he added with a wink.

  Service had to force away the urge to bitch-slap the smug asshole.

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for us?” Friday asked incredulously, her voice rising.

  Lupo said, “Did you have extraneous DNA in any of these cases?”

  Friday said, “No.”

  “Then you don’t have a windigo. The thing is, baseline, we’re talking psychosis, a possession, if you will—to put it in the vernacular. Technology aside, a windigo eats his victims uncooked. Logically and syllogistically, get a windigo, you’ll also have his DNA. It’s as simple as that.”

  “It looks like someone chewed on the remains,” Service pointed out.

  “Maybe,” Lupo said. “But are we talking human teeth, or something else?”

  “No endogenous DNA from any other species,” Friday said.

  “Are you telling us there’s no possibility of a windigo?” Service asked.

  “I neither said nor meant to imply that. Windigo is certainly possible, but not in any traditional sense. The cases I’m aware of all involve aboriginals, virtually all males, and they eat the victims with their own teeth. It is possible, theoretically and hypothetically, that someone fabricated a device to rip at flesh and simulate the human bite plate, but this might be a bittuva long-ass reach, eh?”

  “These bodies?” Friday asked.

  “Hypothetically, but you’d have to test flesh for metal fragments.”

  “High-quality steel doesn’t leave fragments,” Service pointed out.

  Lupo said, “I assume that’s true, but I thought investigators wanted to rule out all things that can be ruled out in order to keep focusing more tightly on what can’t be ruled out.”

  Service could almost hear Friday’s mind churning.

  “If it were me, I’d employ a high-end metal detector to sweep the bodies and see what turns up. No ping, I’d surgically liberate tissue samples, put them under an electron microscope, and see what’s there to see. I’d keep pushing until I’d exhausted all possibilities.”

  Out on the street after lunch, Friday said to Lupo, “Next time we call, I hope you’ll have the courtesy of calling back.”

  “If I can,” the professor said, with no hint of commitment.

  Treebone coughed to disguise the word asshole.

  Service looked at Friday. “Pompous jerk.”

  29

  Thursday, November 20

  HOUGHTON

  Service had tried to call Lupo every day since the morgue, but on
ce again the professor was ignoring calls, and it pissed off Service to the point where he decided to drive up to Houghton and grab the silly sonuvabitch by the scruff of his neck and shake some courtesy into him. Lupo’s behavior was not helping Service’s long-standing poor opinion of most academic types. The thing that galled him the most was that he was sure Lupo had seen something in the coffins and had held it back. What had he seen, and why won’t he tell us?

  But when Service drove to Houghton, Lupo wasn’t at home. Next, Service called the university and got transferred to Lupo’s department.

  “He’s gone,” the departmental secretary told him.

  “Gone?”

  “Back up into the snow,” the secretary said. “You know, his customary winter in the bush.”

  “Who’s in charge there?”

  “Professor Spar.”

  “Is he in?”

  “She’s in a meeting and can’t be disturbed.”

  A set piece, delivered flawlessly, the answer to all questions and unwanted requests. Classic gate-guard, verbal-foot-in-the-door security tactics.

  “Disturb her,” he said, explaining that he was a cop and part of a multiple homicide investigation.

  “Why don’t youse just bite my head off?” the secretary groused.

  A new voice came on the line, mature, clipped, sure. “This is Chairwoman Dr. Spar.”

  “Conservation Officer Service. I’ve been working with Grant Lupo, and we need to reach him, but your secretary tells me he’s away.”

  “I’m not aware of any collaboration with the police.”

  She said the word police with a tone some might reserve for dog shit stuck to a shoe sole. “He’s been asked to keep it confidential. Look,” Service went on, “I don’t want to be rude or pushy, but in five minutes I can have the Houghton County sheriff in your office, ordering you and all your bosses to do what we want.”

  “I don’t care for your tone,” Spar said.

  “Back atcha,” Service said. “Where is he?”

  “Legally we can’t say. As I understand it, he flies into Winnipeg and from there out into the bush to work.”

  “Where in the bush?”

  “Somewhere on the Nelson Ojibwe-Cree Reserve.”

  “How far is that from Winnipeg?”

  The woman sighed. “I have no idea, and if there’s nothing more, I really do have more pressing business.”

  “How long is he supposed to be gone?”

  “I really wouldn’t know.”

  “What about his classes?”

  She paused meaningfully. “Professor Lupo teaches no classes. He holds an endowed research chair.” Her voice suggested that she disapproved of this arrangement.

  “You’ve been helpful,” he said sarcastically and hung up.

  Service called Friday. “Tree and I are going to spend the night with Karylanne. I’m thinking I want to talk with Lupo face-to-face, but he’s gone to Canada for fieldwork and probably won’t be back until next spring, or whenever. Nobody seems to know for sure what the hell he does, where he is or what he’s up to. It’s a closely guarded state secret.”

  “Why talk to him again?” Friday said. “It seemed to me he gave us what he had. You think differently?”

  “My gut says there’s more, and Lupo might be a key.” To what, he had no idea.

  “I hear in your voice that you’re gonna follow him. Are you traveling as a homicide dick or a creature hunter?” she asked.

  “Seems to me circumstances are trying to make those things one and the same.”

  “When will you go?”

  “We’ll drive to Duluth tomorrow, and then fly to Winnipeg.”

  “What about your team?”

  “Noonan can help you, and Allerdyce will do whatever the hell he does.”

  “You want me to keep Newf and Cat?”

  “Please.”

  “Do you know where Lupo is?”

  “Not exactly, but I used to be a detective, remember?”

  “Vaguely,” she said.

  30

  Sunday, November 23

  MARQUETTE

  A major snowstorm had dumped on the Great Lakes and turned out to be far more severe than predicted. Friday had called late the night before and said, “Lamb Jones is dead.”

  “When?”

  “Just come back. Where are you?”

  “Still in Houghton. The airport’s closed. We couldn’t get out. Suspects?”

  “One in custody,” Friday said.

  “Is it like the others?”

  “Come home, Grady. Please.”

  Her voice and the storm settled where he and Tree would go, but getting back was not easy. They met Friday at her office at 11 a.m.

  “Bad over to the west?” she greeted him.

  “Not good,” he said. “What’s the deal?”

  “Lamb’s body was found up on the Ice Train Plains near an old landing field. A high school kid had his dogs out, hunting snowshoe hares, and the dogs found her.” Friday stopped talking.

  “And?” he said.

  “You’d better see for yourself.”

  •••

  Returning so soon to the satellite morgue disturbed Service. A small handwritten sign had been tacked outside the entrance: our day begins when yours ends. What was it with people who handled dead bodies?

  Lamb Jones was on a mortuary tray next to the other four, the little harvest growing.

  Service was not overwhelmed with the desire to see the body but willed himself to look. Lamb had favored baggy dresses and unisex clothing, so he was shocked to see that the forty-year-old had the figure of a much younger woman. A moment later he blinked as he realized her head was where it was supposed to be, as were her hands and feet. But Lamb’s throat had been cut, her eyes gouged out, and there was a hole in her chest where her heart had been removed.

  “He cut off the end of her tongue,” Friday pointed out.

  Lamb’s pretty face was distorted by swelling, her lips crooked. “Who’s the suspect?”

  “Terry Daugherty,” she said.

  Service laughed out loud. “Terry? Jesus, Tuesday, don’t joke.” Daugherty was a longtime county deputy, flawed, but basically a good man.

  “I wish it were a joke,” she said. “Boomer was cleaning a cruiser, found bloody clothes stuffed under a seat.” Boomer Andreson was responsible for maintaining the county’s vehicle force and had a lot of work. The newest cruisers were three years old, the oldest going on ten years old, some barely able to operate. “Boomer took the clothes to Shirley Davis in Evidence. She found name tags and called the sheriff, and the sheriff called me.”

  “The body had been found by then?”

  “No, shortly thereafter. All of this went down last night.”

  Name tags. Service wasn’t surprised. Lamb Jones was known for her possessiveness, as well as her competence as a dispatcher. She put name tags on everything, including a mountain of paper clips she kept in a bowl on her desk. She wrote her name in microscopic print and Scotch-taped the labels to every paper clip. Obsessive for sure.

  Everyone in the department teased her, but she was undaunted. “Name tags can be very useful,” she would tell people. Ironically and sadly prophetic.

  “The sheriff checked the duty manifest. The vehicle had been checked out to Daugherty. We tried to find Lamb, but she never made it to work. We went out to see Terry, told him what we found, and he broke down, said he didn’t want a lawyer and refuses to talk to anyone but you.”

  “Me? I don’t know him any better than others in his department.”

  “He says only you.”

  “What’s Linsenman’s take on this?”

  “He says that the deps trust your integrity,” she said.

  “He’s not a killer, Tuesday,”
Service said. Daugherty’s reticence in physical confrontations was well known. On the other hand, he also had a rep for hitting on women, though formal complaints had never been filed. Mostly he was considered harmless, the sort of pushy, insecure male you ran into at every job.

  “Nothing adds up,” he said.

  “We can only hold him so long,” she said. “We have to charge him or kick him.”

  Service took a final look at Lamb Jones and found his mind drifting to asshole Lupo’s sudden trip to Canada. He looked at Friday. “This one is different,” he said.

  “There are mutilations,” she said.

  “But it’s not the same,” he insisted.

  •••

  Terry Daugherty was still in his civvies and came into the interview room at the jail with his eyes down.

  “Terry,” Service said.

  “I di’n’t do it,” the man said, his eyes filling with tears.

  Friday quietly left the the room.

  “Lamb’s clothes were in your cruiser.”

  Daugherty exhaled loudly. “I didn’t to it, Grady. I swear to God I didn’t.”

  “Was she in the car with you?”

  Daugherty looked up with red eyes. “She was, but she was fine when I last saw her.”

  “Where and when was that?”

  “Ice Train Plains.” Until earlier today Service hadn’t heard of the obscure spot in years. The Ice Train Plains was an isolated section of the Yellow Dog Plains, northeast of the McCormick Wilderness, and northwest of Marquette.

  “Why out there?” Service asked. “In a storm?”

  “Her idea. We used to meet at her brother-in-law’s place on Lake Independence and take off from there. She had a thing for getting it on in patrol cars.”

  “You dumb bastard,” Service said in a whisper.

  “She wanted privacy, and the Ice Train is pretty private.”

  “You did her in your cruiser? Are you stoopid, or what?”

  “Hey,” Daugherty said, “it was more like she did me. It was her idea all the way. I wanted to use her brother-in-law’s cabin at the lake.”