Strike Dog (27 page)

34

CLIFF'S RIDGE, SOUTH OF MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN
JULY 16, 2004

He was still deeply troubled about Nantz's accident being something else, but the list of follow-up items in the federal case was mounting, and Service had begun to assemble notes to himself about things that needed to be checked out. He had not seen any further surveillance since Bobbi Temple had ducked out of Snowbound Books, but he had not moved around that much, and despite his mind being preoccupied with Nantz and Walter, he had come to the realization that he needed to reach some sort of accommodation with Special Agent T. R. Monica.

Wink Rector was the lone FBI agent in the Upper Peninsula and a pretty good guy, but also savvy enough to toe the bureau line when he needed to. Rector was rarely in his office in Marquette, and Service was surprised when he answered his phone.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marquette Regional Office, Special Agent Rector.”

“It's Grady Service, Wink.”

“Hey, was that you I saw on the tube with the president?” Rector greeted him.

“Did you know about that beforehand?”

Rector laughed. “Hey, I'm only the resident agent up here. That sort of crap is way above my pay grade.”

Bitterness or resignation? “You got time to talk?”

“Phone or in person?”

“Not on the phone,” Service said. “Cliff's Ridge. The old gravel pit. About an hour?”

“Sounds mysterious. I'll be there with coffee.”

The Carp River was a narrow bedrock river that squeezed through a spot the locals referred to as the Gorge, which was only about forty feet deep. Marquette Mountain ski hill rose immediately to the southwest of the area, and in summer the ski lifts looked like flensed bones sticking out of the landscape. Decades before, the ski area had been known as Cliff's Ridge, but the name had changed, and only those with a long history in the area would remember it by the old name.

Rector was there before Service. A huge thermos and two cups sat on the hood of his Crown Victoria.

“Black like your heart?” Rector said, holding up the thermos.

Service nodded and got to the point. “You know a special agent out of Milwaukee named T. R. Monica?”

“Heard about her, and I might have met her once somewhere along the road.”

“She a pretty good agent?”

Rector took a breath to buy time to think. “Kinda depends on who you talk to. I think she's probably competent enough, but a real pain in the ass. Why?”

“Are you aware that she and her people are running surveillance on me?”

The FBI agent blinked. “On
you?
”

“You heard about the game warden murdered in Wisconsin?”

“It was on the news and I got a bulletin, but there wasn't much detail.”

“I knew the guy.”

“No shit?”

“He's not the only game warden to die.” Service went back to his truck, got out an envelope, and gave it to Rector, who opened it and gawked at the photographs.

“Holy cow,” was all he managed to say.

“Twenty-seven game wardens in twenty-five states, killed between 1950 and 1970. No common MO and no suspect.”

“Suspect, singular?”

“Until three years ago, nobody saw a connection. The kills were spread out over twenty years. In 1982 the killings started again. Most recently Ficorelli was killed in Wisconsin, and a few days later another warden bought it in Missouri. The kills in the second group were by an assortment of methods until 2000. Then they all took the same MO.” Service tapped the photographs. “All just like that. Monica is the one who identified the pattern, and she's lead agent on the case.”

“Onward and upward,” Rector said.

“Not if she fails.”

Rector nodded. “True; the Bureau's got a low tolerance for public failure nowadays.”

“Your people think the perp is targeting me,” Service said, pausing to let the information sink in.

Rector grinned. “This is a put-on, right?”

“It's real, Wink.”

“You don't seem all that broken up. If Special Agent Monica has a team up here dogging you, she must think it's credible.”

“Bingo. Give the man a Kewpie doll.”

“Give me cash instead,” the agent said. “I've got a basement full of crappy gewgaws.”

“Aren't you surprised to be out of the loop on any of this?”

“I guess not,” Wink Rector said. “Since 9/11 everyone's gotten more secretive than before. We've got more compartments than a printer's table these days.”

“Now you know,” Service said. “Monica's got to be here somewhere, and I want to have a sit-down with her.”

“Pick up the telephone.”

“No. I want this on my terms, on my turf.”

“I suppose you want me to arrange it.”

“I figure you've got a stake in this too.”

“Like that would matter,” Rector said bitterly. “When and where?”

“End of the Mulligan Creek road, where it crosses the creek.”

“North of Ishpeming?”

“There's only one road in from the south, which means it will be fairly secure.”

“Okay, when?”

“Soon as. She can pick the time.”

Rector took a sip of coffee. “I'll get on it today and give you a call when it's set.”

“Thanks, Wink.”

“You realize that bringing me into this is going to piss her off, and some others above her as well.”

“Never had a doubt, but I also felt pretty sure you'd want to know what was going down in your own backyard. I would.” This was an allusion to a wolf-killing case Service had been involved in three years before, a time when Rector had held back information from him, and the FBI had impeded his investigation.

“You were right to tell me,” Rector said. “I've put in my papers, and I'm hanging it up December 31. Everything's set. I'm waiting now for my replacement to show so I can bring them up to speed on what's going on up here.”

“This fits the category of what's going on up here,” Service said.

Rector's reply was a muffled grunt as he picked up his thermos and cups and got into his vehicle.

35

MULLIGAN PLAINS, NORTH OF ISHPEMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 19, 2004

Service loaded his Honda ATV into the bed of his personal truck, stowed the portable ramp beneath the four-wheeler, and started north on County Road 550 toward Big Bay. He thought he spotted a tail near the Northern Michigan Campus, cut north, and lost the follower by going off-road to the west up a power line where only a high-centered four-wheel-drive vehicle could get through. He continued west, until he hit County Road 510 and turned north, for the Triple A Road, more than twenty miles north.

He had received the package of information from Shamekia. The photos of the victims were nothing like those of the blood eagle killings, but they were gruesome all the same.

Halfway across the Yellow Dog Plains on the Triple A, he hid the truck, offloaded his Honda, and rode the ATV south across the Yellow Dog River into the southern fringe of the Huron Mountains. Eventually the trail connected to the road that ended at Mulligan Creek. This route required a great deal of extra time, but he wanted to make a point with the FBI. The meeting was set for first light and he was in place nearly an hour early. He hid the Honda a quarter-mile away, on the north side of the creek, crossed the makeshift one-lane snowmobile bridge the DNR had built a few years back, and found a place to wait in the popples on the lip of a rise just above where the road from the south dead-ended in the shadows of steep rock bluffs.

On the sandy two-track to the west he saw a gray wolf trot northwest, nervously glancing over its shoulder in his direction as it passed. Then he heard vehicle tires swishing through soft sand on the two-track above the creek. The wolf had been spooked by the vehicle, not him.

Wink Rector drove his own vehicle to the edge of the creek, backed up twenty yards, parked, and got out. It was getting lighter, but the sun itself remained hidden by ridges to the east.

“Where the hell is he?” Tatie Monica asked when she got out.

Rector got out his thermos and poured coffee. “Game wardens don't announce themselves.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You see fresh tire tracks on the way in?”

“No. So he's behind us?”

“My guess is that he's already here.”

“Games,” she said.

“It's not a game,” Wink Rector corrected her. “This is how these people live. If he asked us to meet him here fifty times, he wouldn't come in the same way twice.”

“We're not the enemy,” Tatie Monica said.

Wink Rector remained silent.

“I don't know why the hell he got you involved,” she complained.

“Things work differently up here,” Rector said. “The Bureau is just one more law enforcement outfit and we all have to cooperate to graduate.”

“You've never had to keep things close?”

“I was ordered to stonewall him once, but never again. Once you earn trust up here, you do
not
want to lose it.”

Service saw the woman check her watch impatiently, pick up her radio, and make a call. He couldn't make out what was being said, but he was pretty sure she had left a rear guard south on the two-track.

“Trust me, he won't come in from behind us,” Rector said.

Service eased out of the tags to the side of Rector's Crown Vic and waited until Special Agent Monica turned away to step out beside Rector, who immediately spilled his coffee. “For Pete's sake!”

Tatie Monica turned around and glared at him.

Service said, “Special Agent Rector knows all about what's going on, so there's no need to play cute this morning.”

“You had no right,” she said. “
Either
of you.”

“I've got my retirement date,” Rector said. “I plan to live here. That give you a hint where my priorities are?”

She ignored Rector and stared at Service. “What the hell is this about?”

“To bring you up to speed,” he said. He then laid out the situation in Mexico and watched for a reaction to see if any of it was familiar to her. It ­didn't appear to be.

“Why didn't you call me with this as soon as you had it?”

“I knew you were here somewhere. I saw Bobbi the day Bush was here, and that's when it dawned on me that you had a team dogging my ass.”

She didn't deny it. “You're wasting my time. I could have been following up on Special Agent Orbet.”

“You could have, and whatever you learned would still leave me in the dark.” He did not mention what he had learned about the sites where the bodies had been found, or Shark's identification of the booger fly. One thing he had learned as a detective was that you had to keep a few cards back, not play them until they mattered most.

“What are you suggesting?” Monica asked.

“We do some of this my way.”

“You have no experience with this sort of thing. You told me that ­yourself.”

Service said, “Don't underestimate the value of someone who doesn't share your experiences and prejudices.”

Wink Rector kept out of it.

“Okay,” Tatie Monica said, “spell out what you want.”

“First, I think we should go together to find Orbet's survivors and see if he left any records.”

“Everything would have been turned over to the Bureau,” she countered.

Service nodded to Wink Rector. “Is that how it is?”

“Officially he would have turned over all his paperwork when he retired, but if the case stuck in his craw, he'd have copies at home, and if he continued to investigate, there'd be paper for that too, I guess,” Rector added.

“Which means there could be notes, or something.”

“If his family didn't pitch the whole lot,” Rector said.

“Okay,” Tatie Monica said. “What else?”

“Call off your surveillance.”

“It's for
your
protection,” she said.

“It's also an arrow pointing right at me, not to mention a waste of time and manpower,” he said. “If I want to become invisible, I can, and there's no way you can follow me.”

“You're pretty sure of yourself,” she said.

“There's a whole lot I'm not so good at,” he said, “but finding my way around in the woods without being detected isn't one of them. This is where I live, who I am.”

“Is that it?”

“I need to revisit Elray Spargo's widow.”

“Why?”

“I'll explain later.”

“How about now?”

“Later. That's how you usually answer me, only later never seems to arrive. I also want to meet your analyst.”

“You're asking for the whole ball of wax,” Monica said.

“If your theory's right, that I'm the final target, the whole ball of wax reduces to me. Either you get this guy this time, or—”

“Point taken,” she said, cutting him off.

“Are we agreed on this or not?”

“We'll get in touch with Orbet's family to see what they have, and if they have something, and if they're agreeable, you and I can go visit them. I'll also go with you to Missouri. As for surveillance, I don't want to call it off, but I'll agree to it—with the stipulation I can turn it on again if I think we need it.”

Service said, “What about your analyst?”

“He may not want to talk to you,” she said.

“If we go to Toledo, Detroit is right on the way.”

“I never said Micah Yoder lived in Detroit. I said he operated out of there.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“This is the electronic age, Service. With a computer, cell phone, and modem, you can work from anywhere.”

“Meaning he doesn't live in Detroit?”

“I don't really know where he lives.”

Holy Christ,
he thought. “That doesn't bother you?”

“It's the twenty-first century,” she said.

“Either you and I meet him, or I go my own way and you go yours, and we'll see if we intersect somewhere down the line.”

“How did you find out about Orbet and Mexico?”

Service grinned. “That information came right out of the Bureau.” This was not technically correct, but he knew Shamekia retained sources in Washington, D.C., which she seemed to be able to use at her pleasure.

“Bullshit,” Tatie Monica said. “If the Bureau had this information, I would have known.”

“Not if you didn't ask the right questions,” Service said.

“What else?”

Service said, “If I think of something, I'll let you know.”

“All right,” she said. “I'll get my team moving on the Orbet thing, and I'll talk to my guy and see if the family's amenable to a sit-down.”

“And you'll call off the minders?”

“For now,” she said, offering her hand.

“And Wink here joins your team,” he added, causing her to drop her hand momentarily.

She looked at Rector. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Hey,” he said, “what can they do to me? Pack me off to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and forget about me? Oh, wait—they already did that. Yeah, I'm sure.”

Monica asked “Your source sent you records?”

“They're in the mail,” he said, lying. “You know how the post office can be.”

“I'll get back to you,” she said.

“Wink, did you see the wolf tracks up the road?”

Rector shook his head.

“Crossed two minutes before you guys drove in.”

“Wolf?” Tatie Monica said, her eyes wide.

“Don't worry,” Grady Service said. “Little Red Riding Hood was just a fairy tale.”