Shadow of the Wolf Tree (13 page)

“Sure have! Helluva good man to take your six in a fight. Really sorry when he died. He used to take his family up to the cabin for vacations. Why?”

“Are you an artist, Colonel?”

“That was my late wife. She passed two years ago. She loved it up there, and I can't bring myself to clean out her studio.”

Service choked up at the mention of the dead wife and terminated the call without another word and looked at Friday. “We need a drink.”

“I think we missed last call by several hours.”

A county deputy came out of the cabin and said, “No prints inside—
nada.
This place is cleaner than the pope's privy.”

Service rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Do you think Provo's living rough?” Friday asked. “Off the land, breaking into cabins? Got a bunch of safe houses?”

He hadn't thought about this. “No, she knew about this place. She didn't have to break in. If we ask the owner, I'm sure he'll tell us where he hides the key. I think someone's aiding and abetting here, maybe wittingly, probably not. She almost has to have help.”
Escape and evasion—E & E—with minimal assistance.

“Safe houses?”

“Doubtful, but I guess it's possible.”

Friday was looking at a note Service had made during one of his phone calls. “Nympha?” she asked.

“That's what the soldiers in Provo's unit called her.”

“She must be funny-looking.”

Service turned to look at her.

“Nympha,” she said with a grin. “You know, cattails—the weeds you see growing along roadsides in swamps?”

A light came on in his head. Grady Service wanted to kiss her.
Nympha's a weed
!

Later he saw her yawn. “What about the old woman in Chicago?” she asked.

“Lower priority than this.”

“She's not getting any younger.”

“You want to take it?”

“Not alone,” she said. “I don't care for big cities.”

“Ditto.”

“We can parse the angst,” she said.

18

Silver Lake, Dickinson County

THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2006

Service took M-95 south, with the intention of going east to Crystal Falls from Sagola. Five miles north of Silver Lake in Dickinson County, Tuesday Friday growled, “Food, dammit! I
need
food.”

“You'll never lose those eight pounds.”

“You have a
problem
with food?”

“I like food—I just hate to waste time eating it.”

“Abnormal,” she carped. “Did you check your messages?”

He looked over at her.

“Two came in while we were waiting. I kicked both of them over to your voice mail.”

He pulled over, checked his voice mail. Milo Miars again, and Zhenya Leukonovich. He called Miars instead of listening to his boss's message. “Grady here, el-tee. I'll have that report to you this afternoon.”

Miars sighed. “You make supervision a sentence, Detective Shit Magnet.”

“Look at the bright side: It's not for life.”

“I heard about Treebone. LeBlanc told me you're working out of Iron River, but the post dispatcher told me you're never there.”

“Can't detect with my butt in a chair.”

Another sigh. “Report, end of day—yes?”

“Absolutely, yessir, Lieutenant Miars.”

“You make rank sound perverse.”

“Meanings are in people, not in words.”

“End of the day,” Miars repeated, trying to sound menacing but failing, and hung up.

Her machine answered: “Zhenya is battling the forces of darkness. She also is greatly interested in hearing what Detective Service may have to say. He may call Zhenya at the following number at his convenience.”

Service wrote down the number. Her voice did something to him, something inexplicable. Leukonovich was a very strange woman, intelligent, professionally intense. There had been sexual chemistry, real and powerful. That they both had resisted it when they had worked together did not make the attraction less potent.

Service and Friday went into a little restaurant overlooking the black-water lake. The sign outside the place said only
Food
. A middle-aged man with a gut and splotchy white beard brought them menus and glowered.

“Let me guess,” Service said. “You don't like wolves.”

“You got it, fish cop.”

Hating and second-guessing the DNR was the unofficial state sport, especially in the North Country. Service ignored the man, ordered two eggs, over easy, American fries, and unbuttered rye toast. Friday ordered the same, plus a full stack of pancakes.

“Damn DNR,” the man grumbled when he took the order, not bothering to hide his disgust.

Service got up, followed him back to the kitchen, and looked around. “The health inspector been around here recently?”

The man handed the order slips to a woman with a red gingham apron and stepped outside.

“Don't see trout on the menu,” Service said to her.

She didn't look back. “Ain't nobody wants trout for breakfast but old-timers, and they all come in early, eh. Ask tonight.”

The man was outside, sitting on a stump and smoking a cigarette. Service stepped outside with him. The red pickup was parked nearby. Service felt the hood, which was still warm.”

“I got a license and registration for it. You gonna rag on
me
now?”

“Your cook says you've got trout on the evening menu. I hope you have a bill of sale for it.”

“I don't know nothing about no fish, and dere ain't no evidence says different.”

“This time,” Service said. “Make sure we get those breakfasts—without spit seasoning.”

He rejoined Friday. “Is it always like this for COs?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” he said.

“And I thought Troops had it tough.”

“They do,” Service said. “Same menu, different entrees.”

“Something you ought to know,” she said. “My sister's taking care of the kid—that's why I'm not going home weekends. There's a father who used to be a husband, but he's not in the picture anymore. When he found out I was pregnant, he beat hell out of me, so I filed charges and sued for divorce. My sis loves the kid.”

Service said. “You seem to be maintaining.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

“You want, I can probably get you some help for the kid, or get your sis some help. Or you can spend weekends with them.”

“Not your problem,” she said. “But thanks.”

19

Norway, Dickinson County

FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006

They had worked the phones all yesterday afternoon. A call to Major Sutschek of CID got Service the name and phone numbers of two Guard soldiers not being deployed to Iraq—one because she was pregnant, the other because he had a slot in Officer Candidate School in July. He called both soldiers, and they'd agreed to meet for breakfast that morning at Nardine's Mining House Restaurant in Norway.

Friday called Rillamae Thigpen in Chicago and learned that she lived in Hyde Park, in an upscale neighborhood that included most of the University of Chicago campus. Friday said the woman talked slowly and seemed to take some time to process information; speed aside, she seemed competent—even anxious—to talk about Elmwood.

Their plan was to interview the two soldiers in Norway and afterwards, drive to Chicago, 320 miles south. In any other location, flying would be faster and probably less expensive, but flights from the Upper Peninsula's few commercial airports to major hubs were priced beyond belief, and by the time plane changes were made, if everything ran on time, which it rarely did, it would be faster and cheaper to make the five- to six-hour drive. Friday made arrangements for them to stay with a friend of hers in Lincoln Park.

“The zoo,” he said. “Marlin Perkins, his sidekick Jim; see, I did have a childhood!”

She rolled her eyes.

The restaurant in Norway was in an old mining company row house, the interior filled with iron-mining memorabilia.

The soldiers were in civvies, seated and waiting. Both stood when the police officers entered. Specialist Aimee Balto-Shillito, Service knew, was a month short of her due date, but looked two months beyond it. Sergeant Harris Griz was tall and straight-backed, with a lantern jaw—a billboard soldier. Both soldiers made direct eye contact.

The soldiers and Service ordered light breakfasts. Friday ordered more than the other three combined. Service thought,
She learns fast.
Once he got working, it irritated him to stop. She was adapting.

“This is about Specialist Provo?” Sergeant Griz began.

“You both served with her?” Service asked.

“Yessir,” they said in unison.

“Soldiers in the company called her Nympha?”

“Sir, the name was her idea, sir,” Balto-Shillito said. “Sir, she acted like it was a private joke, sir.”

“What's it supposed to mean?”

Both soldiers shook their heads.

“What kind of soldier was she?”

“Sir, she was pretty good at doing things, but not cooperative,” the specialist said. “Took care of her job, but not real interested in the team, sir.”

“Okay,” Service said, “I was a marine a long time ago, and an NCO, not an officer, so let's shit-can the sirs and all that formal crap. I'm Grady, she's Tuesday.”

“Yessir . . . ma'am,” Griz said.

“So, Provo wasn't a slacker?”

“Not exactly,” Balto-Shillito said with a glance at Griz. “It was like she could do everything faster than most of us, and with minimal effort. Some of us felt she could have been the best soldier in the company, but being best didn't seem to motivate her. It was like we all had eight gears and she had ten or more, but always operated at six or seven. You agree, Sarn't?”

The sergeant was slow to answer. “Sure, pretty much.”

“Was she close to anyone? Who did she pal around with?”

“Stuck to herself,” Griz said. “The company's pretty tight, but she never partied with us.”

“Was that a point of contention in the group?”

“No, but it would've been if she were still here. Now that the company's deploying to Iraq, nobody wants to wade into the shit with someone they haven't seen all sides of.”

Service understood this, but thought the sergeant a little melodramatic. “She had a couple of OUILs, which cost her a teaching job.”

“Not from drinking with us,” Griz said.

“I don't drink,” Balto-Shillito said. “Does that make me suspect, Sergeant Griz?” The sergeant blushed.

“Did she ever talk to anyone about her teaching?” Service asked.

“I couldn't see her as a teacher,” Balto-Shillito said. “She never shared, didn't seem interested in others. She wasn't what I'd call a helpful person.”

“Any hot buttons?” Service asked.

“Just one,” Griz said. “DUs.”

DU meant depleted uranium, the basis of a number of modern military munitions. “Arty and Air Force,” Service said. “MPs don't handle DUs.”

“Correct, sir,” Griz said.

Balto-Shillito intervened. “But sometimes we're around that stuff. We were at Camp Grayling for summer training and were assigned security on the armor range. M1E1s were firing DUs, and when Specialist Provo heard this, she started asking lots of questions, and no matter what answers she got, she posed more.”

The M1E1 was the Abrams tank. “What kind of questions?”

“About downwind radioactive dust potential.”

“
Is
that a problem?”

“Nossir,” Sergeant Griz said.

“What Sergeant Griz says is
probably
true,” Balto-Shillito said, “but there have been a lot of scientific reports, and results vary from no effect to severe effect, depending on proximity, time, and dose of exposure. For us, probably nothing, but no one knows for sure. It's a source of concern for a lot of soldiers.”

“She afraid?”

“More like she was pissed,” Griz said. “We were still in formation, and she went off on the platoon sergeant. He ended up taking her off the duty roster for the day.”

“Was there disciplinary action from the blowup?” Service asked.

Balto-Shillito said, “Nossir. She apologized later, said it had been a bad day, and we moved on.”

“That's all—nothing else?”

“Practical jokes,” Griz said. “Stupid, high school stuff. One day she filled the company coffeepot with carrot juice. She thought it was funny. The rest of us didn't get it.”

“There was the range thing,” Balto-Shillito said to her colleague.

“Right, also at Camp Grayling,”Griz said. “We were like scheduled for the range with M16s. The night before, our sergeant brings out the ammo can and gives us ten-round stripper mags and tells us to load them, which we did. Next morning we get on the line and not one round will fire. The range sergeant took one of the unfired rounds and pried it apart: The gunpowder had been replaced with sand. The weight of the rounds felt normal, but they were duds. Someone had taken all 840 rounds out of the can and done a switcheroo. It was like totally strange.”

“Repercussions?” Service asked.

“They couldn't pin it on anyone. Grayling's security people couldn't even figure out how the hell someone breached their secure area to do it. No prints, no nothing. It was slick. We were all pretty sure it was Provo, but we were all questioned and nobody reprimanded.”

“The ammo was in a secure area?”

“When we go to Grayling they control and manage all ammo. Ours is secure back in our armory here.”

Service looked at Friday to see if she wanted to ask something, but she was chewing bacon and only smiled.

“Were either of you surprised when she was DFR?”

“Nossir.” Two voices as one again.

“You thought she was what—unreliable, unstable?”

“Just Nympha,” Specialist Balto-Schillito said.

Griz nodded agreement. “Nympha, out there . . . like, way out there.”

“Was she afraid of Iraq?” Service asked.

“Sir, Iraq was not on our deployment horizon when she was in the unit, but Provo was not a coward,” the specialist said.

“Mountain,” Griz said. The specialist nodded, and Griz continued. “We had this soldier named Hartz, a humongous, very tough dude. We called him Mountain . . . you know, Hartz Mountain? One day at drill he started running off his mouth about being unbeatable in a baton fight, and he challenged us to prove him wrong. Nympha called him out.”

Balto-Shillito said, “Mountain didn't get in a single lick. Within ten seconds it looked like she was going to kill him, and we had to pull her away.”

“Hurt bad?”

“Bloody and sore, but nothing crippling or anything like that,” Balto-Shillito said. “But when Hartz's stint was done, he didn't re-up. I think she broke him. She was quick,” the specialist added, “but the difference in the fight was her emotional control. I'm talking stone-cold. I guess that's the only time we saw her tenth gear,” she concluded.

“She lived in Kingsford?”

“She had a duplex here for drill weekends, but I think she actually lived in Trout Creek, or the Ewen area,” Balto-Shillito said.

“Maintaining two places seems extravagant on a teacher's salary.”

“Winter,” Griz said. “Several soldiers keep rooms here, either apartments or cheap motels, several to a room, to keep costs down.”

“Did she share?”

“Never,” Griz said.

“Either of you ever wonder how a soldier with fifteen years' service was still at specialist grade?”

Neither soldier reacted.

• • •

As they drove south, Service said, “You were quiet.”

“I was listening.”

“And packing away the chow.”

“That too,” she said with a grin.

“Observations?”

“First of all, 840 rounds with their powder switched to sand: That takes know-how, planning, patience, nerve. Why does a person like that need Box or Limpy to teach them about guns? Second, if the room here was only for drills, where did she actually live? Third, the concerns about depleted uranium seem a little out there . . . and my first thought was that's the sort of thing an environmentalist would go ballistic over. Fourth, and finally, I think they're sending the wrong soldier to OCS.”

Her last observation made him laugh out loud, but what was hanging in his mind was what the soldiers had said about Provo having ten gears. The CID major had said Provo seemed to have a sixth sense.
Six senses, ten gears, E & E training. Not a great combo for law enforcement,
he told himself.