Shadow of the Wolf Tree (37 page)

63

Iron River, Iron County

THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2006

Grady Service had never been easily startled, but when Zhenya Leukonovich opened Tuesday Friday's door at 7 a.m. in the AmericInn, the detective found himself speechless. He looked past Zhenya to Friday, who held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“Zhenya said she would be here, and here she is. She arrived late last night,” the IRS agent announced.

“Where did you call from the other day,
Sagola
?” he shot at her. Sagola was only thirty miles east of Iron River.

“This is an irrelevant topic,” Leukonovich said. “Tell Zhenya about Provo.”

“She was yours?”

“First you talk, then we shall see.”

“The fact that you seemed totally surprised by her death suggests Zhenya is not as well wired as she assumes. If there's to be talk here this morning, it will be two-way, not one,” said Service.

Leukonovich nodded her head once and Service took her through the saga of the late Penny Provo. “She was too obvious in leaving a trail,” he said. “It took a while, but it finally dawned on me that there might be more to her than the obvious.”

“Your talents are wasted in your backwater career,” Leukonovich said.

“Was Provo yours?”

“Zhenya resides in a world where resources travel like tides, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing. Who owns the tide? It is a world one must quickly accept or be lost.”

“Yes or no?” he asked with a growl.

“Technically no, and operationally, partially. She was army CID on loan to a joint FBI-EPA task force. The effort had gotten nowhere until we introduced principles of forensic accounting.”

“Meaning you?”

“Yes.”

“FBI
and
EPA?” he asked.

“An unholy and tenuous alliance.”

“Domestic terrorism?”

“A plague of cases mostly old, with a recurring cast, a repertoire company, if you will. It finally dawned on someone to ask where the finances came from to enable such sustained operations.”

“Chicago,” Friday said.

“Surmised, but not yet confirmed,” the IRS agent said.

Service said, “Provo's mission.”

“Now failed.”

“Van Dalen Foundation sponsors domestic terrorism?”

“Zhenya harbors doubts.”

“But you sent Provo in.”

“Neither my choice, nor my order. Isaac Funke sent her.”

“A decision above your pay grade,” Service said. Parroting something Leukonovich liked to trot out when no detailed or reasonable explanations seemed feasible. “Gorsline runs the Van Dalen Foundation. He's dirty?”

“Not by customary definition,” Leukonovich said.

“Zhenya, I'm in no mood for guessing games.”

“Gorsline has nothing to do with extremist eco-terrorist agendas or operations.”

“Don't make me pull teeth.”

“Elements under Gorsline within the trust organization are involved. Not him.”

“Art Lake.”

Leukonovich nodded. “Evidence suggests that for a long time, funding for extremists came solely and physically from Art Lake.”

“High-grade gold,” Grady Service said.

“
Extremely
high-grade. Unprecedented in state mining history—this ore merits up to five nines on the purity scale.”

“You have assays?”

“Isaac Funke met Provo, who provided the samples.”

“Alyssa Mears and Ginny Czuk,” he ventured.

“Two of numerous pseudonyms, adherents of enforcing their vision and views at any costs, believers in hard-green direct action.”

“I've done a background check on Czuk,” Friday said.

“Save your energy,” Leukonovich said. “You will find nothing. Under these current names, the women are as clean as octogenarian nuns.”

“What was Provo's exact mission?”

“To locate the ore, and she failed.”

“She provided samples.”

“Without seeing the actual vein or learning where it is. They run very efficient security, with state-of-the-art procedures.”

“Their security's not that state-of-the-art. Provo got inside.”

“Only to die.”

“Is there evidence to warrant going in? Provo provided the samples for assays.”

“We do not know the provenance of the samples,” Leukonovich said with a hint of emotion Service read as anger and anguish. “Even the most political of federal judges would be hard-pressed to interpret the evidence as probable cause,” she said with an almost audible sigh.

“In forensic accounting your investigations sometimes look for back doors, right?”

“Zhenya would undoubtedly employ a more precise and technical term.”

“I know where Art Lake's back door is,” Service said, “no technical term needed.”

“Such a thing is impossible. Zhenya has analyzed exhaustively.”

“From your office.”

She raised an eyebrow in protest.

“Boots in the dirt,” Grady Service said. “In my world, that's what counts most.”

When Leukonovich finally left them alone, Service got into the shower and Friday went down to the lobby and fetched coffee.

“I've never seen such a strange woman. She didn't even look at me.” Friday said when he came out of the shower. “Her eyes say she'll devour you. Is there like…history between you two?”

“Business and professional history only,” he said.
Did one describe prior sexual tension and sparks as history?
“She is, I'm told, the top agent in the IRS. She helped me break a big case last year.”

“Have you really found a back door, whatever that is?”

“Could be,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, “but I need the lab to finish some things for us before we take the next step.” Declaration complete, he lay back, folded his arms across his chest, and was asleep.

64

Iron River, Iron County

THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2006

When Grady Service awoke alone, it was nearly noon. He went into the bathroom to take a leak and saw writing on the mirror, in lipstick: office, babe!

Babe.
It sounded right, but he had no idea what it meant, or implied.

He called Karylanne and she picked up immediately. “It's Grady,” he said.

“It's your Bampy,” Karylanne said, obviously to Maridly. He was too groggy to protest.

“We had you MIA,” the mother of his grandchild said.

“Just out and about. What day is this?”

“Things are
that
bad? It's Thursday.”

“I'm in a fairly complex case. Couple of weeks should sort it out. You want to bring Mar to Slippery Creek, or me to come up there?”

“No classes right now,” Karylanne said. “We'll drive down to your place.”

“I'll call as soon as I can nail down some pass days. Put the kid on.”

He heard cooing and slobbery sounds on the phone receiver. “You know who this is, Maridly?”

“My Bampy!” the little girl shrieked into the phone.

Her
Bampy? “Yeah, close enough,” he said, a lump in his throat. “I'll drive up to you guys after this breaks,” he told Karylanne.

• • •

Friday and Mike Millitor were in the office at the post.

“She tell you what's going on?” Service asked the Iron County homicide detective.

“Something about back doors. She wasn't so precise, eh.”

Service changed directions, looking at Friday. “Where are the maps from the drug team?”

She bent down to open a box, took them out, and began unfolding them.

Service walked over, leaned over, and began looking. After a while, he smiled at her.

“Your outcrops?” Friday asked.

“Sure looks like. Who had the maps?”

“Gogebic County found them at Box's place. They also found a name on a slip of paper.”

“Name?”

“Tikka Noli.”

“Mr. Willie Pete himself.”

“Turns out Noli allied himself with green groups to hide his dope operations. There were substantial plant colonies near where the burning deer appeared.”

“Who marked the outcrops on these maps, and why?”

“We don't know,” Friday said.

“Where's Noli?”

“Still lodged at the county jail,” Millitor said.

“He lawyer up with Sandy Tavolacci?”

“No, his lawyer is out of Oak Park, Illinois.”

“That's Chicago, right?”

Friday nodded. “Western suburb.”

Not Sandy? Huh.
“Name?”

“Rosemary Slick.”

“Solo wolf or pack lawyer?”

“Not sure.”

“Find out, okay?”

“I'm all over it,” she said, turning to her phone.

The maps, gold dust and ore, Provo, Box, Mears, Czuk, Art Lake, Gorsline, Van Dalen—his gut told him that all the pieces fit, but he couldn't see how yet. The only real outliers were the two old bodies unearthed by Newf at Elmwood.

“Beloit, Singe, and Merriman,” Friday said, closing her phone. “Guess who one of their clients is.”

Service grinned. “Van Dalen Foundation.”

“We're on a roll,” she said.

“Does the Slick woman handle Van Dalen?”

“Not that I can discern,” Friday said. “But you can ask her yourself. She's in Crystal Falls.”

“I could kiss her,” Service told Millitor.

“I ain't stopping youse,” the detective said.

“I'd have to cut off your lips,” an unsmiling Friday said. “By the way, Noli's four-wheeler?”

“What about it?”

“One of the tires has a missing chunk, and the print matches casts taken from where you heard it that morning.”

“Does Noli know this yet?”

“I don't think so.”

“Cut off my lips,” he said. “What would you do if I had no lips?”

“Make do,” she said.

65

Crystal Falls, Iron County

THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2006

The lantern-jawed Rosemary Slick carried herself like someone who trolled courtrooms looking for fights with any and all takers.

“Who're you?” she asked Service, ignoring all social conventions and pleasantries.

“Detective Grady Service, Wildlife Resource Protection Unit, Michigan Department of Natural Resources.”

“I hope like hell they pay you by the number of letters in your bona fides,” she quipped. “What the hell is a game warden doing in my client's business?”

No verbal sparring here,
Service told himself.
She wants to punch it out, go toe to toe right from the bell, see if she can get an edge on me.

“To begin with, your client tried to kill me.”

“You have an expansive imagination. Perhaps you've spent too many hours alone in the forest. My client was protecting his crop.”

“You mean his
dope.
”

“I mean potatoes and rutabagas. My client is not in the dope business.”

“Won't argue that,” Service said.

“Discretion and so forth?” Slick countered.

“Not at all. I'm not a lawyer. I collect evidence and refer cases to prosecutors.”

“It's the same system everywhere,” she said.

“What I know is that the day my colleague and I were assaulted, there was a four-wheeler nearby. Casts from the tire prints are identical to the tread on the tires of your client's all-terrain vehicle.”

Unintimidated, the woman leaned forward. “And you can testify that you saw my client riding said phantom machine? He reported it stolen a month before.”

“The day I asked him about it, he told me the machine was at his house in Gaastra.” Service laughed. “Welcome to the Upper Peninsula. It's standard practice up here. You think you're in trouble, you stash your toy assets—four-wheelers, snowmobiles, motorcycles—report them stolen, and collect the insurance money. Your client screwed up his timing on this one.”

“You have no proof of that.”

“We will.”

“Is there a reason you are taking up my time?” Slick asked, shifting tones.

He told her about the plat books and maps, and she denied her client had any knowledge of such things or any involvement in the drug business.

Stonewalling all the way.
“You represent Van Dalen Foundation?”

“My firm does, not me. I've never had that honor.”

“And you probably won't,” Service said. “Van Dalen's about to go down in public flames. The IRS is all over them.”

Slick blinked but remained silent.

“Call the home office. I'm sure they'll confirm.”

“My client has no connection to Van Dalen,” she said, after a long pause to collect her thoughts.

“Really? Ask him about the X's marked at certain points on the maps and plat-book pages. When Van Dalen goes down, it will be like the
Titanic,
sucking down everything close to it, vendors included.”

“Are you an attorney?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“I didn't think so.”

“Phone home,” Service said, “for your own good.” He dropped a business card on the table and left.