Strike Dog (12 page)

Service didn't.

Waco turned off the heat under the boiling liquid, picked up the flask, and handed it to Service. “For what ails you'n.”

Service took a sip, swallowed, felt the fire bloom in his stomach. Eddie Waco also took a sip. “White mule yella corn,” he said. “Best there is, aged some eight years.” He held the flask out to Service again, who held up a hand.

“I'm good.”

Service pointed to the stone on the FBI agent's right buttock. “What
is
that?”

“My great-granddaddy done shot him a white deer, found hit in the animal's belly, done passed hit down to my daddy, and Pa done passed hit on ta me. People down this way use such stones for the rabies.”

“It works?”

“Sometimes, but hit's plenty good for snakebite, you git ta hit soon enough and there hain't too much pizen.”

“What's it called?” Service asked.

“Madstone,” the man said.

“You believe in witchcraft?” Service asked.

“I don't, but if'n I was in a pinch, I'd ask a witch for help, wouldn't you'n?”

Service nodded, knowing desperation was more the mother of invention than pedestrian need.

The tech left Service and Eddie Waco alone with Monica. “She'll live,” Waco said. “Who be in the bag back yonder?” he asked.

“Don't know,” Service said. “I just got a quick look when the storm blew in.”

They sat for two hours, and when the stone fell off the agent's bare flesh, Eddie Waco reheated the stone in the alcohol, which turned green, and applied the madstone again.

“Maybe the stone cauterizes?” Service offered.

“I hain't much on science,” Eddie Waco said.

After forty minutes, the stone came loose again. This time Eddie Waco repeated the process, but the alcohol remained clear and the stone wouldn't stick. He wiped it dry with the faded red bandanna, meticulously refolded it, and carefully put it in his pack. “Snake didn't get much inta her,” he said. “She'll be fine, but we best git her outside to the hospital.”

Service looked up at the sky, which was still roiling, but there were devil's smiles beginning to slice into the canyon, turning the water below them to quicksilver.

“How far to the get-out by boat?” Service asked.

“I reckon six mile,” Eddie Waco said, “but with the watern up, they'll be a heap a' trees pilin' up in the narrers.”

“The poison works on the heart, right?”

The Missouri man nodded.

“We gotta keep her still, limit exertion.”

“Weather clears, we might can get a chopper in,” Eddie Waco said. “Have ta mule her up top, but we got enough men for thet.”

“No boats?”

“Too risky,” the conservation agent said. “Would take too long.”

The water looked like it had come up five feet and was still rising.

“She'll peak in two, three more hours, drop pert fast after thet.”

Service found Monica's radio and gave it to the man. “Can you arrange pickup through your own contacts?”

“Not thim feds?”

“A fed left us here,” Grady Service reminded him. “We can get the body and her out at the same time.”

Eddie Waco nodded and started trying to radio for help.

Tatie Monica stirred beside them. “No cuts,” she mumbled.

“No cuts,” Service said. “Just a little brand for a keepsake.”

She whined. “My ass.”

“Think how good it'll feel when it stops,” Service said. “Let's get some trousers from the others,” he said to Eddie Waco.

“Just gon' cut 'em off when they get her inta the whirlybird,” the man said.

“Looks like you get to moon the world,” Service told her.

“My mother would just die,” she mumbled.

“P'int is, ya'll don't,” Eddie Waco said.

It took two hours to get the agent and the body bag on top of the bluff, and by then a Missouri Highway Patrol Huey was waiting with a medical team. Gasparino looked disoriented and Service couldn't blame him. The past few hours had been tough. Service sent two techs with the body. Tatie Monica was mostly awake, but far from alert, and offered no resistance.

They watched the helicopter rev its rotors, lift a swirl of debris, and lumber away.

“Missouri emblem on the chopper shows two bears,” Service noted.

“They musta snuck up from Arkansas,” the conservation agent said with a grin.

Service called over to the lead tech. “You recover photos?”

“Cameras are with our gear,” he said, “if the wind didn't carry it all off to Kansas.”

“Wind comin' from t'other direction,” Eddie Waco pointed out.

The refrigerated shelter had been shredded. Pieces were pasted like confetti in trees, the metal frame posts twisted and bent. There was no sign of the generator. The crime scene techs' gear was scattered, but most of it had been blown inland. The tops of some trees upriver had been severed by wind shear. Eddie Waco surveyed the trees, said, “Twister jes sorta skipped over top like a flat rock.”

The chopper had gotten in and out, but the leaden sky continued to threaten, and from time to time they heard thunder and saw flashes of lightning. It took the lead crime scene tech thirty minutes to find the plastic lockbox with the camera and digital crime scene photos. Why hadn't Tatie Monica brought the camera with her when they hauled the body down from the top of the bluff? Panic? Service and Eddie Waco sat on a downed tree and opened the box. The Missouri conservation agent studied the photographs and handed them back to Service without comment, his tanned skin looking a lot lighter.

“Somebody you know?”

“Agent Elray Spargo,” Waco said with a sigh. “Elray was a card-­carrying comminist lib'ral atheist, a by-God, down-to-the-bone secular humanist, which hereabouts is akin to bein' the devil. All that mattered to Elray was the law. That was his only religion, and he wrought legal hell on lawbreakers.”

“He made enemies?”

“Most a' which he sent off to jail. After more'n twinny year, he purty well had control, an' ever-body knew it. Loan me one a thim cig'rettes a' your'n?”

Service held out a pack.

“I got me this feelin' they's more ta this thin just Elray,” Eddie Waco said.

“Yeah?”

“You gonna say different, Michigan Man?”

Service shook his head. “It's a federal show.”

“Way we see hit, kill one a' our kind makes hit our show.”

Service understood and sympathized, but did not tell the man what he knew. “I hear you,” he said.

“We best mosey,” the Missouri game warden said.

“I thought we had to wait for the water to recede.”

“I thought we'd take us a walk. Thim others can wait an' take the boats out.”

Service called Gasparino over. “Agent Waco and I are walking out. Special Agent Gasparino, I guess that makes you in charge.”

“Me?”

“Wait until the water level goes down and take the boats downstream.” Service gave him Tatie Monica's handheld radio. “You'll probably have to wait for more boats to help haul everything out.”

Gasparino nodded solemnly. “Where are you two going?”

“Things ta tend to,” Eddie Waco said, standing up, putting on his pack, and offering no further explanation.

“What about more tornadoes?” the young FBI agent asked.

“Might be, might not,” Waco said. “They come, you best find cover.”

“What if somebody gets snakebit again?”

The Missouri game warden scratched his head. “Best hope hit ain't a big 'un.”

14

FOURTEEN, MISSOURI
MAY 23, 2004

They had been walking in the darkness almost four hours, following military crests, occasionally dipping down to the uneven floors of steep ravines before climbing back up. The humidity was overwhelming in the valleys, but there was an occasional swirling breeze on top, and Grady Service found himself falling into the mindless trance that came with long-distance hiking.

Eddie Waco rarely stopped, and when he did it was usually for less than a minute before pushing on.

During one of their pauses in a canyon bottom, Waco said, “Y'all stay put,” and moved into some stunted yellow-bark trees with intertwined trunks.

Service waited five minutes and looked for shade. He had taken a couple of steps when the bark of a hickory tree in front of him exploded by his head, clipping his shirt and face. He dropped to his belly as a second round took a chunk off a tree just behind him, the reports echoing through the canyon, their source impossible to pinpoint.

He had his hand on his SIG Sauer when he looked up and saw Eddie Waco grinning. “Stand down, Michigan Man,” the Missouri warden said. “Thet's jes' thim ole Mahan boys a-barkin' on you'n.”

Service got to his feet and brushed himself off.

“Whin I say stay, you best heed,” Eddie Waco chastised him.

“Barking?” Service said.

“Thim Mahans got a still halfway up yonder ridge,” he said, pointing ahead. “Anybody they don't know gits too close, they plink a few rounds inta the trees to discourage 'em. They don't shoot to hit nobody.”

Waco cupped his hands and shouted, “Ikey, you and your brother put down them long guns. This here's Eddie Waco an' I'm just passin' through.”

“We seen you hain't alone,” a voice shouted down from some trees on the hill.

“He's the law, same as me. We hain't comin' yore way, boys, but you squeeze off another round, I reckon we gonna come up yonder, all ya'll hear?”

“We hear,” the voice called back.

Waco looked at Service, nodded, and started walking.

“A still?” Service said.

“Don't got 'em up where you'n hail from?”

“Meth labs,” Service said. “And marijuana plots in the state and national forests.”

“We got us a dandy weed crop down this away too,” Eddie Waco said. “I'd rather tussle with moonshiners.”

Seven hours after they struck away from the Eleven Point River, they descended to a shallow, shale-bottom stream running down a steep canyon and walked into a clearing with a half-dozen dark stone buildings that looked like they had grown out of the ground. The dwellings were narrow, one-floor affairs, each with an oversize wooden porch under a steep roof. All of the wood needed paint. The roofs were covered with rich, yellow-green moss. The houses looked like sturdier versions of old mining company houses in the Upper Peninsula's Copper Country.

“Where are we?” Service asked.

“Fourteen,” Eddie Waco said.

“Fourteen what?”

“Jes Fourteen's how hit's called.”

Service stopped, knelt, and splashed cool water on his neck and face. It had misted off and on during the hike, but the longer they walked the more the sun stayed out. Tendrils of steam rose off the rocks and ground. He stood up and looked: buildings but no people. “Ghost town?”

Eddie Waco grinned. “They's likely fifty sets a' eyes on us hain't ghosts, I 'speck. Long guns neither. The Spargo clan's partial ta goin'about armed.”

“Elray Spargo lived here?”

“Lived up top, but he was a-born and reared down here. These here is his people and they need to know what's gone on.”

“We should be moving,” Service said, thinking of the FBI and his own ambiguous role in the undertaking.

“People got their own pace back this way,” Waco said. “Do you good, stand down a bit, pay attention, listen, mebbe learn some.”

A man in a rumpled brown suit appeared from the tree line and walked slowly toward them. He had a shotgun slung over his shoulder, the sling made of soiled gray rope. He wore a thin black tie, distressed high-top logging boots turned gray from use, and a dusty black porkpie hat cocked rakishly to the side and back of his head. Service realized the man had the hat pushed back to keep his eyes clear for possible shooting. He had done the same thing too many times to not recognize it for what it was.

“How do, Agent Waco,” the man said, staring at Service. “Your'n partner be sippin' thet crick watern, he'll soon be havin' runs a-spurtin' outen 'is backside.”

“You drink the watern?” Waco asked.

Service shook his head.

“Not too much trouble, we could use some sweetwater, Cotton,” Waco said.

A young girl came out of the woods with a couple of quart jars and gave one to each of the two game wardens. Service noted that she kept her eyes down. She wore new white Asics tennis shoes with gaudy red and gold trim.

The water was cold and pure. Service looked at the girl and thanked her as she slunk back toward the trees.

“Sir, I done come ta talk,” Waco told the old man.

The man in the brown suit walked over to them, gave Service the once-over, and squatted. Waco and Service squatted with him. “Cotton, I'm ­powerful sorry to tell you'n Elray got hisseff kilt.”

With no emotion in his voice or face, the man said, “That what the ruckus over to the Leven Point was about?”

“Yessir, hit was.”

“Did the boy die brave?” the man asked.

“He lived plenty brave; I expect he died the same,” Eddie Waco said.

The man reached down and scooped up a handful of white dust, which he let play through his fingers. “Was a jimsonweed Christian,” the man said. “The Lord never took hold with the boy.”

“He was a lawman,” Eddie Waco said.

“I reckon. You on your way to tell Fiannula?”

“Yessir.”

The man nodded solemnly. “Reckon I'll jes mosey along with all y'all. You'n know how Fi kin git.”

“Suit yerseff.”

It occurred to Service that Waco was overly deferential to the old man.

“Fiannula packs 'at scattergun whin Elray's away,” Cotton Spargo said.

“She knows me,” Eddie Waco said.

“She frees thet wildcat, thet won't matter,” Cotton said. “They gon' fetch my boy home?” the man asked.

“Thought I'd use the radio at Elray's to take care of it.”

“Be good, we get the boy on his way to the Lord. How long since he done went?”

Waco looked at Service, who said, “About forty-eight hours.”

“We ain't got much time left, this weather'n all,” Cotton Spargo said.

The men stood up. No other people appeared. The man in the brown suit led the way with Waco and Service following. The man walked with remarkable grace at a brisk pace. Service guessed he was in his eighties.

“The body's legal evidence,” Service whispered to the Missouri agent as they marched up a steep hill surrounded by a thick forest of gnarled pines.

“Things is differ'nt in these here hills,” Eddie Waco said.

“Jimsonweed Christian?” Service whispered.

“Hush,” Eddie Waco said softly. “Save your questions.”

The house on the hill was built in a clearing with no trees closer than two hundred yards. The building was one story with rooms protruding at different angles. Something about it reminded Service of base camps in Vietnam, designed so that anyone approaching would have to cross a long stretch of open ground. Open space and the way rooms jutted out at ninety-degree angles suggested the place had been designed to create shooting lanes. It looked like a tidy fortress. Unlike the houses in the valley, this one was all wood and freshly painted, but in a brownish-gray color that made it difficult to see until you were actually in the clearing.

“Was Spargo ex-military?” he asked as they started across the clearing.

“Taught survival skills ta flyboys out ta Washington State,” Eddie Waco said with a frown. “No more questions.”

There was a small woman waiting on the porch. She had a sawed-off side-by-side shotgun in the crook of her right arm and a baby in the crook of her left. She had auburn hair in a severe bun and looked to be in her late thirties, her skin leathery from too much sun. She wore oversize bib overalls embroidered with colorful flowers, and yellow flip-flops. Service saw small faces in several windows. The woman's eyes were dark coals in red beds. She had been crying.

“Fiannula,” the elder Spargo said.

Her eyes were locked on Eddie Waco and Service.

As they got closer Service smelled something sweet. The woman looked over her shoulder. “You young 'uns git away from them winders or I'll be cuttin' me a switch!” The faces disappeared instantly.

“Word done come about Elray,” she said, turning back to her visitors. “I was jes about ta put on the black.”

Service wondered how she knew, but Yoopers also had a grapevine that often surprised him in its speed and accuracy.

“They gon' fetch him home?” she asked

Cotton Spargo said, “Agent Waco here will see ta Elray, Fi.”

“Obliged,” the woman said with a faint nod to the conservation agent.

“Okay ta use the base radio?” Waco asked.

The woman nodded toward the house and made eye contact with Service. “Furriner,” she said.

“Game warden from Michigan,” Waco said. “Good man.”

The woman sighed, said, “All y'all c'mon in the house,” and shouted, “You kids fetch tea!” She had the bearing and demeanor of a drill instructor, Service thought.

The interior was neat and clean. There were bouquets of forget-me-nots in mason jars on every surface.

The woman led them into a large room with a long table and ten chairs around it. Everything appeared to be handmade, but there was nothing amateur about the work.

A boy of nine or ten brought a pitcher of tea and glasses.

They all sat down. “They best be gettin' my husband home right quick,” she said. Service considered telling her that the authorities were slow to release bodies in cases of homicide, but this was Missouri, not Michigan, and he was a game warden, not a homicide detective. Curiously, the woman did not ask any of the normal questions about Elray's death, and he wondered how much she knew.

A couple of younger girls came into the room and crawled into Cotton Spargo's lap. Service drank his sweetened tea and kept quiet.

Eddie Waco came back and poured tea for himself. “Doug Hakes will make sure Elray gets brung up by helicopter, have him here at dayspring.”

The woman nodded. “Them feds gon' raise a fuss?” she asked.

Service wondered how she knew about the feds.

“Sheriff's a-takin' care of hit,” Eddie Waco said.

The woman's fingers tapped the trigger guard of the shotgun, which lay on the table. “Elray tell about his dream to you'n?” she asked her father-in-law.

The elder Spargo nodded. “I told him not to go see the man if'n he had the dream two nights in a row.”

What dream? What man?
Service wondered.

“I told 'im the Lord works in mysterious ways,” the woman said. “But Elray, he laughed at me and said hit was my job in the family ta talk ta the Lord.” She shook her head and flashed a wistful smile. “No way ta change thet man,” she added. “You
Spargos
.”

The old man said, “My Liddy used to say stubbornness takes more men 'n pride.”

The widow clucked her approval. “My Elray was a stubborn one.”

Service wanted to ask questions, but Eddie Waco pressed a knee against him and Service got the message.

“You seen Cake?” Eddie Waco asked.

The woman stared at Waco, got up, and took the baby and shotgun away.

While the woman and her kids made dinner, Service and Waco sat on the porch in handmade wooden chairs. “What's going on?” Service asked.

Waco said, “I wanted to get over here and hear what got said. People here­abouts got they own ways.”

“Nobody seems overly broken up about this,” Service said. “What was Spargo's dream, how come his wife's not asking for details and knows about the feds, and how are you going to get the FBI to release the body?”

Waco grinned. “You'n listening real good, Michigan man. I done asked the sheriff and he'll take care of it. These people need to git Elray inta the ground. Feds want to exhume later, they can go through the courts. Old Doug Hakes will get 'im up here and the fun'ral will be tomorrow afternoon. You'll see plenty of sad then. Right now they's blinded by the git-evens.”

“Like the start of a feud?” Service asked.

Eddie Waco chuckled. “You git thet from some ole Hatfield-McCoy movin' pitcher?”

Service felt like a fool, but the other man interrupted his embarrassment. “The real old days was sure 'nuff like thet, but it always got kept betwixt hill people. If an outsider done this, they got other ways. Widder will ask for a champeen.”