Killing a Cold One (17 page)

25

Friday, November 14

L'ANSE

The meeting took place at the L'Anse State Police post. Jerry Dove, the county's medical examiner, was tall and slightly bent, with a cigar-shaped head and a razor-thin aquiline nose. Noonan took one look at the man and whispered, “Dye that fucker green or blue and he's a dead ringer for a Muppet.”

The ascerbic Dr. Dove had the antithesis of a sense of humor and lived up to Denninger's premeeting descriptor of a “prick practitioner.”

“I do not want an explanation for the presence of game wardens at my meeting,” the ME began. “I simply want them out of my sight. This is not a DNR case.”

Baraga County sheriff Sulla Kakabeeke turned red. “Excuse me,
Doctor,
but they were witnesses to the suicide.” The sheriff was new to her office, a retired State Police sergeant Service had worked with in her previous life.

“There is no suicide until I declare it so,” the doctor said officiously. “
Nullum corpus, no regere.
”

“Dis guy don't spick no 'merican?” Allerdyce whispered.

“And who and what are you, sir? Identify yourself.”

“Consultant,” Service said quickly.

“Consultant in what area of expertise?” the doctor inquired.

“Search and recovery,” Service said.

Dove crossed his arms. “All right, Mr. Consultant, tell us where we might find the alleged
corpus delicti.
”

Allerdyce didn't bat an eye. “You want body, she down dere Blood Creek.”

“If said location is so readily known, why has the body not been recovered?”

Allerdyce said, “Mebbe 'cause youse stand up here in orifice pontious-piffleating 'stead climb butt down bloody cliff and do youse's job.”

“I
beg
your pardon,” the doctor snapped.

“He's suggesting that if you let us focus on body recovery, we can get things moving,” Service said. “The body is in an extremely difficult location to reach safely, much less to recover. There's some chance, in fact, that you may have to descend with us to do your job, or you may have to authorize us to preliminarily declare death until we retrieve it.”

“Do you know precisely
where
the remains are?” the doctor asked.

“We know where the body was last night—not where the river might have taken it overnight.”

“In other words, it has not actually been located.”

“No, not yet,” Sheriff Kakabeeke said.

Dove coughed. “I see no reason to continue this charade. Go do your jobs and inform me only when it is time to perform my official duty.” The ME departed without small talk or social grace and nearly collided with Tuesday Friday as she arrived.

“You guys piss off that man?” she asked, coming into the room.

“Local ME,” Denninger said. “He lives in a permanent state of pissed-off.”

“What's the deal here?”

Service explained.

“Suicide, cut-and-dry, seems to me,” Friday said. “Did you hear the body hit?”

“Heard something,” Service told her.

“Had to be the body,” Treebone said.

“We
think,
” Service corrected his friend. “But we don't know.”

“Why am I here?” Friday asked. She looked weary.

Service hooked her arm and walked her outside into the parking lot where he lit a cigarette.

“There's no dogman,” he said after a couple of hits.

“You know this how?” she asked.

“Is there any extraneous DNA in the remains?”

“In what regard?”

“Human or animal.”

“No,” she said, her voice trailing off. “What's going on?”

“You ever heard the word
windigo?
”

She nodded. “Somewhere, I think.”

“How about
dire wolf?
”

This time she shook her head.

Grady Service said sheepishly, “That's all I got for now. We have to go find a body.”

“You're sure it's a suicide?”

He gave her a quick description of the events.

“Hundred feet plus, straight down?”

“Have to rope down to get her, I'm thinking,” he told her.

She squeezed his arm. “Be careful.”

PART TWO

SKIRR OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

26

Friday, November 14

BLOOD CREEK, BARAGA COUNTY

Six inches of fresh wet snow had fallen. The scene at the campground was chaotic, the entrance blocked by the Baraga County Search and Rescue (SAR) team's equipment and massive RV, multiple emergency vehicles, from fire department and county sheriffs to Michigan State Police, and a Bay ambulance pulling an elongated trailer. There was a steady flow of men and women in baseball caps, orange and electric-yellow Job Sight high-visibility vests, biking and climbing helmets, a rainbow of coats and colors and the clank of climbing harnesses and large bundles of ropes and lines. An ATV with four triangular tracks instead of tires pulled a blue, bullet-shaped Plexiglas trailer that looked like a stretcher on wheels. All together, just chaos, with a purpose visible only to those trained in the art of finding and recovering people, or bodies.

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 turn 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.