Strike Dog (34 page)

45

M
C
FARLAND, MICHIGAN
JULY 29, 2004

The farm was typical of many that lay on the plateau south of Marquette, toward Rapid River: several ancient apple trees, a few acres of potatoes, a small field of stunted corn, some multicolored chickens running loose to provide free-range snacks for local coyotes, three sway-back dairy cows, a half-dozen beefs, and a small flock of dusty sheep; all in all, a virtual walk-up cafe for wolves and other predators. The house was low with multiple roofs to help reduce winter snow loads, the fences hadn't been painted since soldiers wore brown boots, and there were two rusted-out tractors in a rock-strewn field serving as hotels for various birds and rodents.

The farmer was sixtyish, gaunt, dressed in all his agrestic glory: a flannel shirt with missing buttons, unlaced muddy, green, high-top Converse All Stars, a Budweiser can in hand.

“Took youse long enough,” the man greeted him.

Service looked at his watch: thirty-two minutes had elapsed since he'd left the regional office lot. When you were part of the DNR in the U.P., there were myriad ways to disappoint locals, and few ways to make them happy. This was not going to be a happy interaction. Many Yoopers welcomed the return of wolves to the area, but there were few farmers in the pro-wolf forces, and Service was fairly certain that more than a few wolves were being quietly shot and disposed of. The state had a reparations program for animals lost to wolves, but in most instances the predation was done by wild dogs or coyotes, not wolves. No matter; some farmers blamed wolves for virtually all the ills of the northern part of the state, including seasonal cycles in deer populations.

The man led him to a ramshackle shed tilted precariously to the east, and showed him the dead calf. Service looked at two sets of footprints in the mud and dust in the area around the building. They were too small for wolves: coyotes or wild dogs, he guessed. He could see where they had approached, not in single file like wolves, but apart.

“Not wolves,” Service told the man.

“Youse telling me I don't know a bloody wolf when it come sniffing around?”

“I'm just telling you that these tracks and signs indicate coyotes or dogs, not wolves.”

“You buckos always got answers,” the man complained. “Tink the rest of us a buncha emptyheads?”

There was no point arguing. “Tell me what you saw.”

“Da she-wolf, she was up to da side a' da shed over dere, and she looked back, and a smaller one come up behind her.”

“You saw them go inside?”

“Seen 'em on da doorstep. Din't see no coyotes.”

“But you didn't actually see wolves on the kill?”

“Din't have to.”

Service looked at the carcass. “How do you know it was a
female
wolf?” he asked.

“Big one and a little one.”

“Twenty pounds—fifty, eighty?”

“I din't weigh 'em, eh.”

“What position was the tail?”

The man looked confused. “I wasn't watchin' no damn tails!”

Service asked the man to look at the carcass. He explained, “Wolves have a fairly regular pattern of eating. They start by stripping the rump and organs. They don't hit the legs and other musculature until the bigger portions are consumed. This calf's legs have barely been chewed. Two wolves would have done a lot more damage.”

“I don't know why 'n hell dey tell us ta call da state when all youse do is stonewall us.”

“If you call the biologist from Marquette, he'll tell you the same thing I'm telling you.”

“Bloody DNR, da whole worthless bunchayas.”

“I'll call for you.” Service gave the man one of his business cards and wrote down the name of a biologist in the Marquette regional office. “His name is Herndon. I'll try to get him out here today.”

“I see dem critters again, I'm gonna shoot first,” the farmer said.

“I wouldn't advise that,” Service said, trying to retain his composure and be polite. There were so many crank calls about wolves and other things that it was easy to write callers off, but his job was to find out what happened, not discourage citizens.

As far as he knew, confirmed U.P.-wide wolf predation over the past two years had amounted to a dozen dogs, eighteen cows, a dozen chickens, and a few sheep. Since the 1990s the state had paid less than $20,000 in reparations to farmers, who claimed the DNR was purposely misidentifying predators in order to not pay them for their losses.

Leaving the farm, he had no interest in going back to the office. He called Paulie Herndon, told him what to expect, and headed south into northern Delta County to look around and think. Parking near the Escanaba River, he called Buster Beal. The visit to the farmer had started some unformed notions rolling around in his head.

“Chewy, Grady. You know much about wolf behavior?”

“Some. When you manage deer, you learn about wolves. Deer herd is like Mickey D's to a wolf pack.”

“The adults in the packs bring food to the pups, right?”

“While they're in the denning area. When the pups get to about twenty pounds, the pack moves to a rendezvous area for the summer and remains fairly stationary as the pack teaches the young ones to hunt. By September pups are thirty to forty pounds and strong enough to get in on the chase, but in summer the wolves are more likely to be eating beaver than deer. They'd rather wait until deep snow in winter for their venison. Kills come a lot easier then.”

“The mothers teach the pups to hunt?”

“Roles aren't that clearly delineated. Adult males and females all take part in the hunt, and the pups follow along and mimic what they see the other pack members doing. Hey, it's not a lot different than the men in the family taking a kid out to deer camp and his dad, grandpa, uncles, and older brothers all teaching him how it's done.”

“Do wolves ever kill individually?”

“Beaver sometimes, but not larger ungulates. Too risky. With wolves, eating and killing are group activities.”

“Single wolf and a pup kill a calf?”

“Could,” the biologist said, “but usually it's only the adults doing the killing and the pups just jumping in for their share of the grub.”

“Thanks, Chewy.”

“That help you?”

“Maybe,” Service said. The wolf incident got him thinking about Frankie Pey, Essie Greenleaf, and the boy called Marcel. He wasn't sure why. The border patrol agent said that the prisoner Ney had called the boy his creation.

He was beginning to formulate a thought, but it remained vague and he couldn't quite pull it together. Not yet.

46

SLIPPERY CREEK, MICHIGAN
JULY 29, 2004

It was dark when Grady Service got home. McCants still had Newf and Cat and he thought about fetching them, but decided to wait until the next day.

Two Crown Vics were parked at the cabin. It looked like Gasparino beside one of the vehicles. Tatie Monica was on the porch. He invited her in and made a fresh pot of coffee. Her face was splotched with something that looked like hives, and there was a vein sticking out of her temple. She wore a black business pantsuit, black pumps with low heels, her hair in a bun, her face masked with heavy makeup. She looked like she was dressed for a vampire's coming-out party.

“What's the deal?

“I've been summoned to the Bureau to eat a shit sandwich,” she said.

“Ketchup or mustard?”

“It's not a joke! I may soon be off the case, in which case they'll send a yessiroid to replace me.”

She looked and sounded broken, but he couldn't summon much sympathy.

“I'm ex officio, not part of the team,” he reminded her.

“If they pull me out, you're probably not going to have a choice, and you've gotten to places alone that we never got to.”

“Meaning?”

“I can make sure they pull you in and sit on you.”

“Control to the end,” he said.

“You don't know what you're dealing with,” she said.

“And you do?”

Tatie Monica held up her hands. “I'm not here to fight or threaten,” she said quietly. “My analyst was not authorized by the Bureau. My career was in the incognito Batwoman mode, like going nowhere, and Check Six popped up and set the case on my platter. I hadn't heard anything from him since LA, and he was righteous that time. What would you have done?”

“Check Six?”

“Shut up and listen. You need to understand the context. The Bureau has been trying for years to claw its way out of the interregnum of Hoover and bring computers into the main culture. Freeh started a project called Trilogy, which was supposed to provide us with online connectivity and shareware built around something called the Virtual Case File. But Freeh retired after the debacle in New York. Pickard came in as interim director, and then Mueller was named to be Freeh's permanent replacement. Mueller has balls: He served in Vietnam with distinction, but now he's caught dodging political hacky sacks filled with C4. With the creation of Homeland Security, he's been dealt out of the top power loop. The bottom line is that Trilogy doesn't work and it's not going to work. The Bureau's spent close to six hundred mil and we have bupkiss. I'm guessing that within a year you'll hear that the custom-designed program will be junked for off-the-shelf technology. Meanwhile, those of us who need to share and search information haven't had shit to work with. This guy came to me and I jumped on it.”

“Which your bosses didn't approve.”

“Right. Do you know any computer geeks?” She didn't wait for a response. “This guy is your classic prototypical hactivist, believes the Bureau's inker mindset threatens national security. How he got into our records, I have no idea, but he did, and he found this and I took it and away we went.”

“And bodies kept piling up.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly. “I don't even know his real name. I lied to you about that. Check Six is one of his handles. Another is Rud Hud, and our relationship is what geeks in Electronland call h4xxOr, which means illegal. He's not supposed to be in the data he's in, and I'm not supposed to employ anyone who hasn't been vetted through Bureau security.”

There was a tone in her voice that suggested an undecipherable smugness. “My out is that I haven't actually employed him in the sense of paying for his services. Officially he's like an unpaid informant, a patriotic citizen willing to help.”

“You think your bosses will buy that?” asked Service.

“You don't understand how they can circle the wagons to protect the Bureau's rep. I've seen some major fuckups and messes swept quietly away because the Bureau decided the guilty ones didn't intend to do anything technically illegal or immoral, and were simply trying to work their cases. The Bureau likes initiative. If I can give them a reason to let me keep going, I'm hoping they'll take it. With all the criticisms after 9/11, they don't want more, especially in the area of domestic law enforcement. The meta-logic is: Okay, we kinda, sorta, maybe fucked up a skosh on 9/11, but we're still the country's top cops, and since the seventies the crown jewel in the agency's reputation has been our record with serial murderers. Never mind that most of them were caught by accident, by local agencies, or in the backwash of their own fuckups; the Bureau has used serial murder and profiling as a sexy publicity engine for showing the public how great we are. They've milked it in ways you cannot even begin to imagine,” said Monica.

“What does this have to do with me?”

“You remember the shit with Hanssen?”

“The agent who sold information to the Russians?”

“He was like a total head case. What most people don't understand is just how badly the agency screwed the pooch. They had been tipped about him by another agent four years
before
Hanssen was arrested, and it was only after the fact that they learned he was mucking around in databases where he ­didn't belong, asking questions he wasn't authorized to ask, not to mention leading a private life with more red flags than a Chinese picnic. Nobody had bothered to look at his electronic trail, or his personal life. You think any of us in the trenches were surprised by the 9/11 meltdown? You can't ever acknowledge a potential personal mistake or weakness because it could point upward. Hell, we are all selected for the Bureau. If we fail, the Bureau fails, and the Bureau won't allow that. That's the culture Hoover nurtured,” she said. “What I'm telling you is that your sources may be able to quietly take a look and see if they can find a trail for Rud Hud. I don't begin to understand the minutiae of the cyberworld, but the truth is, I can't find him, and the only possible way is through his tracks in our files.”

“This is way outside my expertise,” he said. “Are you thinking this guy is more than a public-minded bird dog?”

“I don't know what I'm thinking, but you want to talk to him, and I want to talk to him, and I can't find him, and I know you have some sort of back door into the Bureau. I've seen the results.”

“Your people will stay off my ass?”

“That's
our
deal, but if they replace me, that deal is off.”

“How much contact did you have with this Check Six, Rud Hud?”

She reached into a portfolio and pulled out a neat stack of papers under a clip. “I printed this for you. I'm gonna be incomputerado for awhile.”

When she drove away from the cabin, Gasparino came to the porch, begged a cigarette, and lit it clumsily. “She's freaking out, am I right?” the young agent asked.

“She thinks she's gonna be pulled off the case,” Service said. “She's headed back to Washington.”

“Oh shit. Professional Instant Death Syndrome.”

Whatever that was
. More and more he was finding that people around him were using vocabularies that eluded him.

“Fuck,” Gasparino said. “If she goes down, that could mean East Jesus for me.”

“East Jesus?”

“Yeah, sixty miles past Bumfuck. Nobody comes back from East Jesus, hear what I'm sayin'?”

Service invited the young agent inside for coffee. It was disconcerting how important careers were to federal officers.

“For real, you think she's out?” Gasparino said.

“She said it's possible.”

“Squared shit.”

“Does it matter?” Service asked.

“Hey, she's got tunnel vision and she pisses off a lot of people, but she's a pretty good leader, ya know? I trust her with my six,” the young agent said.

To trust someone with your six was to entrust your life to them. This was the first positive thing Service had heard about Tatie Monica. But Gasparino was green and didn't have enough experience to understand how few people you could truly trust.

Her sudden contrition had no currency. His gut said she was a game-­playing screwup with major personal issues who would never have been able to lead an investigation had it not been for the luck/courtesy of Check Six/Rud Hud. The major question now was, Who is he, and what the hell is his angle?

Gasparino departed with a sad face and Service wrote down the name
Rud Hud
several times, underlining each iteration.

He thought about sleeping, but there was too much loose detail in his mind. Even with the list, how did the killer actually
find
game wardens in the field, much less get the better of one? This case had all sorts of threads of varying lengths, like wires someone had randomly chopped. How did you reassemble spaghetti?

The phone rang several times before the sound registered, and when he picked it up, there was nobody there. What the hell?

He lit a cigarette, stripped to his undershorts, and called Candi McCants. “It's Grady. I'm sorry to call so late.”

“They're fine,” she said. “Don't worry.”

“I don't know when I can pick them up.”

“Really, Grady, they're just fine. Newf loves everyone and Cat—well, she's Cat.”

Service was groping for words when headlights flashed in front of the cabin.
Jesus,
he thought. “Candi, I gotta go.”

Karylanne Pengelly, his late son's girlfriend, stormed into the cabin without knocking. Service scrambled for his trousers but she walked over to him, put her arms around him, put her head on his chest, held tight, and began to sob. He tried to pry her loose but couldn't break her grip; he had to stand helpless, feeling her body convulse.

Eventually the sobs relented. He led her to a chair at the card table, sat her down, gave her a box of tissues and a glass of water, tugged on his trousers, and joined her at the table.

She wiped her nose and glared at him, saying nothing. One minute she was clinging to him and now her eyes looked like they could kill.

After a long pause she said, “How
could
you? What kind of monster are you?”

Before he could say anything she shouted, “You didn't even bury them, you selfish bastard!”

He decided to keep quiet and weather the storm.

“Do you have any herbal tea?” she asked, wiping her nose again.

“Coffee.”

“I can't have caffeine.”

“A little won't hurt,” he offered.

He lit a cigarette and she slapped the table angrily and screamed, “Put that out!”

“It's my house.”

“Secondhand smoke is dangerous for the baby!”

Grady Service looked across the table at her. Baby?

She glared at him. “That's right,” she said slowly. “I'm pregnant, and you're gonna be the grandpa, but there isn't going to be a father.” The sobbing started all over again.

He had no idea what to say. And so it went: periods of sobbing followed by increasingly longer periods of rationality, and bit by bit she told him how she had been on the pill, but it wasn't 100 percent, and Walter died not even knowing. She had learned a few days before he died and never got to tell him. She had her heart set on finishing school, but she wanted the baby more than anything. She did not want to go home to her parents in Canada.

Service had learned from Maridly Nantz that women sometimes simply wanted to vent to a sympathetic ear. They were not looking for male problem solving, and this seemed like one of those times.
Grandfather?
Geez . . . He'd barely had time to adjust to being a father. But a grandfather? Christ, he was too damn young to be a grandfather!

“I wasn't going to tell anybody about this,” she said, “but when I saw you I couldn't keep it inside. Do you ever get the feeling that God is a mean sonuvabitch?”

“Sometimes.”

She looked up at the ceiling and shook a fist. “You can kick my ass, but you can't break me.” She looked back at Service. “I guess I'll have a little coffee. Have you got cream?”

He nodded dumbly, poured coffee for her, added powdered cream, and stepped outside to have a smoke.

“Hey,” she called out, “come back inside. I was out of line. This is your house. You can smoke in here—it's okay. Really,” she added, “I just panicked a little. I mean, it's only been two months; it could be a false alarm.”

Two months?

“Have you been to a doctor?”

“No. I used an over-the-counter test and it was positive, but I also know they have false positives. Nothing is ever a hundred percent, right?”

He flicked the cigarette away, stepped back into the cabin, sat down, and looked at her. She reached out a hand. “Can I have a cigarette?”

Grady Service pushed her hand away. “Not a chance.”