Killing a Cold One

by Joseph Heywood

  “Thank you.”

  Friday called again. “We’re taking off. Jen says the attack took place in the kitchen area. We’ve got blood traces, but not a whole lot. There were spongy fragments in a crack in the kitchen counter. Jen thinks the material is neoprene, and she’s guessing five to seven millimeters.”

  “Waders?” Service asked.

  “Great guess. Or, a very old wet suit,” Friday said.

  “You’re sure there’re no trees near the trailer?”

  “Not near, but there are some trees, and there’s an old wooden ladder back there, leaning against a tree.”

  “Have someone climb up and look at the branches, specifically for abrasions and cuts, chips, signs of extreme stress that are not natural. Also, where do the trees lead?”

  “Lead?”

  “Never mind the last,” he corrected himself.

  Friday’s next call came as Service neared Slippery Creek. “Bunch of marks, grooves, like something got dragged up and over,” she reported.

  “Better block off the whole tree area.”

  “You think our guy is Tarzan?” she joked.

  66

  Sunday, January 18

  NEGAUNEE

  Her sister unable to babysit, Friday brought Shigun to the office that morning. The kid went directly to Limpy, crawled onto his lap, and went to sleep. Service rolled his eyes.

  Once again they pounded all the cases and evidence methodically, and Service presented their findings/theory from WoJu, all the while thinking more about the timing of Lupo’s death, now officially a homicide, not yet made public. I questioned Varhola about knowing Lupo on Wednesday afternoon, and a day later Lupo is a murder vick? Coincidence?

  Jen Maki and crew were back in the trees at Carlock’s trailer. Service put her on the line with Allerdyce, who explained what to look for above the ground. So damn many pieces now. Service made a note to hit WoJu again, take yet another look out there. Carlock’s license with the Secretary of State put her weight at 245. Big woman: Pretty amazing for someone to move that much dead weight without some kind of help, mechanical or human. Of course, such strength wasn’t totally unknown. Varhola had lifted and moved a quintal like it had been a loaf of bread. Boy.

  Not just WoJu. Service suddenly realized they also needed to look at the Little Huron River site differently. There were trees everywhere there, and in close proximity to the trailer where they had found the child’s remains.

  Service said, “I think we ought to call Senior Special Agent Pincock. She deals with this crap all the time.”

  Friday glared at him. “And I don’t? I’m a homicide detective.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Not normal for her to be touchy like this. Pressure coming from her chain of command? He’d have to ask later, if he could remember.

  Friday steered the discussion to Varhola, told the others, “He’s a person of interest. We can get him in for a voluntary interview, but a prosecutor will need to be on board with that approach. There’s no evidentiary link to him at this point.”

  Service said, “Our source at Nett Lake told me that the man Bellator came here to hunt Lakotish. I have one source who has identified Lakotish as Varhola. My read on this is that Lakotish switched identities with Varhola in Vietnam. His line infantry unit moved him over to Special Services after his platoon sergeant caught him with a bag of Vietnamese heads and hands. Bodies were found, too, many of them with cuts along their spines, same as the victims here. The real Varhola was found headless and handless and burned beyond recognition in a fire. ID was based solely on blood type. The two men had the same blood type.

  “We’ve gotten wood chips from every body site, except Lupo’s, and these chips are from a rare wood. Varhola has a workshop filled with tools whose handles have been made from that wood. The priest claims his predecessor made the tools and he inherited them. It should be possible to find parishioners who knew the previous priest and if he was a woodworker. The Bois Forte Chippewas think Lakotish is a windigo. It all fits, more or less.”

  Friday shook her head. “It’s still all circumstantial and theoretical. There’s no convincing physical evidence linking Varhola to the vicks.”

  “I’d still get him in here and talk to him,” Treebone suggested. “Officially declare him a person of interest and see how he reacts.”

  “I think we should talk to Pincock,” Service pressed.

  This time Friday didn’t snap at him. “You trust her?”

  “I do.” Treebone and Noonan nodded agreement.

  “We need to hit all the sites again, look for neoprene traces, if that’s what it is,” Service said. “And find Varhola’s fishing gear, including his waders.” He took the tool Allerdyce had found and placed the plastic bag on the conference table.

  Friday stared at the bag. “Explanation?”

  “Limpy found it outside the priest’s workshop. We’re gonna return it to Varhola.”

  The State Police officer hissed. “Dammit, Grady, there’s no warrant! This could fuck up the case!”

  “It was found fair and square outside. There might be fingerprints.”

  “A good lawyer would get this excluded in a nanosecond. No link to Varhola.”

  “Even with prints?”

  “A good lawyer would get them tossed as illegally gotten. And I wouldn’t blame him.” She looked Service in the eye, said slowly, “What tool?”

  He took it off the table. They’d have to return it to the priest and apologize.

  •••

  JoJo Pincock was waiting for the phone call. Service had alerted her the night before.

  Friday went through the developments and the FBI agent listened.

  “Moving on,” Friday said, “Lupo was a big strong man. It would take someone with equivalent strength to take him down. Varhola is of average size at best, but very strong in the shoulders and arms.”

  Service then related the quintal episode, but Pincock seemed uninterested. “What did Varhola say about Lupo?”

  “Self-promoter, glorifying his ego.”

  “That’s it?” Pincock asked.

  “We told him that thanks to Lupo, we have a suspect, and an arrest is near.”

  Pincock said, “Lupo’s murder could be a gauntlet thrown at you. Tell me what else you saw when you visited Varhola.”

  Service related what he had seen, and Friday did the same. Then Allerdyce got up from the table and walked around, reeling off every item in the workshop like he was looking at a photograph in front of him. Service was fairly certain he was experiencing a perfect example of eidetic memory, something he’d heard of but never witnessed. No wonder the old bastard was so good in the woods. He saw and remembered everything!

  When Allerdyce finished, Pincock said, “You have a highly organized killer at work. The priest fits the pillar-of-the-community portion of the profile. The eat-off-the-floor workshop shows organization, perhaps even a degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder. You need to put your suspect under a microscope. All your bodies have been dumped, the killing done at yet other sites. You need to find where those other sites are.”

  “Multiple sites?” Friday asked.

  “I didn’t mean to imply that,” Pincock said. “With an organized killer, I’m thinking there’s one secure site or area where he can come and go with relative assurance that there will be no interference.”

  “Off the beaten path,” Service said.

  “That doesn’t mean in the boonies,” Pincock said. “Could be an old building. Could be anything that others have little or no access to.”

  “Church land,” Allerdyce said. “Churches and sky pilots up here got proppity all over place in U.P.”

  “That’s a reasonable starting point,” Pincock said. “Are you officially asking the agency in, Detective Friday?”

/>   “Not yet, but I’m also not ruling it out,” Friday said.

  “That’s cool; you can get ahold of me anytime. But would you permit me to make some inquiries from the Bureau? I’m talking low level with my own contacts, off the books.”

  “I don’t know,” Friday said. “Explain.”

  “If the Lakotish-Varhola switch is real and the evidence is there to support it, the army and Pentagon will be caught in a situation where they’ve been sitting on top of—and protecting—a possible serial killer, and mixing up the identity of war remains. The church has a problem, too. All of those problems with pedophile priests, and now a serial killer impersonating one. The DOD and Rome are a lot alike. They don’t like airing their dirty laundry, don’t even want to admit they have any, and the golden rule for both organizations is to protect the group first.”

  “They won’t stonewall?” Friday asked.

  “They will as long as they can, or if the issue goes the wrong way, but there are ways to encourage cooperation,” the federal agent told them.

  “I’m reluctant,” Friday said.

  “I might be, too, in your shoes,” Pincock admitted, “but what if they’re sitting on evidence that could help you clear the case?”

  “The key word in that statement is if.” Friday looked over at Service, who nodded at her.

  “Okay,” Friday told Pincock, “low-level, non-threatening, off-the-books contacts you know you can trust.”

  “Only the ones I use when I’m on a data-mining expedition,” the senior special agent said.

  Pincock still on the line, Treebone said, “He’s impersonating and assuming the identity of another person—that’s a Class B felony in Michigan, and probably every state he’s been in. I’m guessing the multiple-state angle brings federal interest into the mix. If nothing else, we can haul him in on this and use it to squeeze him.”

  Friday said, “My intuition tells me there’s more to this.”

  Pincock added, “Mine, too.”

  “Sounds like a duck,” Treebone said.

  “Not hearing a convincing quack yet,” Friday said, terminating the meeting and the phone call.

  67

  Monday, January 19

  MARQUETTE

  They met in Service’s old office in the regional DNR building everyone called the Roof because of its odd architecture. Between his office and the Forestry Divison, there were plat books for every county in the U.P., and all sorts of other maps, from topographical to harvest scans.

  Over breakfast at the Roof, they debated going over to the Marquette County Register of Deeds office, but Service ruled it out, calling it a fishing expedition at this point. Besides, he wasn’t sure Marquette County was anywhere in the solution. Last night he had sat down with his own maps and marked body-recovery sites, and it hit him that they were watching a slow, mostly western migration from where the first bodies had been found. Lamb Jones’s abduction and Campau’s were outside the flow in that sense, and so too was Norma Carlock, though her body remained missing. Lupo’s murder? Hard to fit that in, too, but still the feeling persisted that events were moving westward. Where Carlock’s body turned up might tell them if the trend was real or not. Maybe. His gut was telling him the answer was further west, probably not even in Baraga County, but beyond, in Houghton, Ontonagon, or Iron, but this was pure speculation at this point.

  Friday joined them, and the first thing out of her mouth was “You think he’ll kill again?”

  Service hoped not but had no answer for her.

  “You guys want me here?” Friday asked.

  “Stay,” Service said.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Any property owned by the Church of the Wilderness Redeemer. It’ll probably be abbreviated CWR, or something along those lines. Tight squeeze in plat books.”

  “Baraga County?” she asked.

  “I’m guessing something west. Could be Iron, Onty, Houghton—just don’t know yet. The body finds seem to be working slowly westward.”

  “Does that tell us something?”’

  “Maybe if he has the safe place Pincock described, he may be working closer to it to keep from getting caught too far from his hidey-hole. The further from home he ranges, the more risks he runs.”

  Friday took the Baraga plat book; Service took Houghton/Keewenaw. Allerdyce took Ontonagon, Treebone took Iron, and Noonan took Gogebic, though Service thought that might be a bit too far.

  Private land showed as white in the plat books. Last names of owners were indicated, along with a number representing the total acres owned by that person, anything five acres or more in size. Where lots were physically separated, arrows linked them. No sign of Varhola’s name, or Lakotish, or the church.

  “Leased land will show in the landowner’s name, not the lessee’s,” Service told them.

  “Leased?” Friday asked.

  “Right; a lot of private land up here is owned by people who live a long way from here, so they lease out hunting or fishing rights to help cover their tax bills. That way there’s no negative effect on their cash flow, and the value keeps appreciating. Lumber and power companies offer public right-of-ways, or get a tax break from the State if they list the land under the Commercial Forest Act, opening it to public use. You can hunt, fish, trap, camp, do whatever you want on most CFA land, and you don’t need written or verbal permission. You can just go and do it, treating it pretty much like it’s public land.”

  “But leases are different,” Friday said. “Owners might pop in at any time. I doubt he’s using leased property.”

  Her thinking made sense to Service. “No security.”

  “Probably not public land, either,” she added. “Same concern. He’s got to have privacy, a secure refuge, something he alone controls, a place he can be sure about, Pincock told us.”

  Service heard her. She was right. It had to be private property, and if not in the woods, something in a town.

  Friday added, “It’s got to be a place where he belongs, where he has total control, and a place where he blends in. If people see him, they’d think nothing of it because he belongs there.”

  Varhola’s interest in trout fishing. “I’m gonna guess there’ll be good trout water either on the property or close to it.” The names of places in the plat book fascinated him. Flying Snake Lodge. Fat Jack’s Deer Chops Club. Brasiere Bay Association. The Red Hot Antler Club. The Ecumenicals.

  Actually, the plat said ECU. Service had to flip to the index of owners in back to find the full name, “Ecumenicals.”

  “What’s this?” he asked, showing the book to Friday. She had no idea.

  Service called Shark Wetelainen, put the conference phone on speaker, and asked him. “Plat book, extreme south Houghton County, property called the Ecumenicals?”

  “Oh, yeah. What about it?”

  “You know it?”

  “Yeah, sure, some dandy little brookie cricks down that way. Methodists and Presbyterians bought the property together in the seventies for a rustic church camp for kids.”

  “What about bead-shakers?” Noonan asked.

  “Catholics,” Friday whispered loudly to the retired Detroit detective.

  “Yeah, they once had a camp there, but run out of money to operate, eh.”

  “Where?” Service asked.

  “Gimme a minute,” Shark said, and came back rattling pages. He read off the township, section, and range. The area was west of Sidnaw and labeled DOM.

  Service looked it up. Diocese of Marquette.

  “Accessible by road?” Service asked his friend.

  “Somewhere in there is dinky road, I guess, mebbe traces of old tote roads, but youse don’t use ’em, they grow over, eh. The woods prolly took whatever was there. It don’t take long for Mother Nature ta get her own way,” he added, then asked, “Why the
interest?”

  “Filling squares on a case,” Service said noncommittally as he noticed a 40-acre parcel marked R King Trust. To Shark, “What’s R King Trust?”

  “Oh, yeah, that would be Regis King Trust, pastor of the Church of the Holy Shepherd in Baraga.”

  “There’s a church by that name in Baraga? I never heard of it.”

  “What’s that church up in Assinins called?” Shark asked.

  “Church of the Wilderness Redeemer.”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s the one. Ownership, she got transferred. County don’t pay much attention to land off tax rolls.”

  “You know that property?”

  “Sure, pretty good trout there. Used to be three, four cabins, big lodge hall, but she all burn down, no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. Supposed to be for Indian kids, but it cost too much to run, and the church let it revert to nature.”

  Service thanked him and hung up. “We need to go take a look at that land.”

  “It seems to fit what Pincock told us to look for,” Friday said.

  Service looked at the others. “Three veeks: Tree and Suit, Limpy in his, me in the Tahoe. Allerdyce will drop that tool back at Varhola’s office,” Service added, looking at Friday.

  “No idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

  68

  Monday, January 19

  SLIPPERY CREEK CAMP

  Service dug two plastic bags of frozen venison stew from the freezer, thawed them in the microwave, and dumped the contents in a pan on the stove. Meanwhile, he mixed coleslaw with sliced almonds, raisins, dried apricots, hot pepper flakes, and green onion slivers. He dumped in most of a jar of Marzetti slaw dressing and mixed everything together. Two frozen baguettes went into the oven, and he put a case of Miller Lite on the front stoop to take advantage of nature’s fridge.