Strike Dog (37 page)

50

IRON RIVER, MICHIGAN
AUGUST 6, 2004

Service left his Tahoe at the Cedar Inn in Crystal Falls and rode with Eddie Waco in his truck. Waco wore an old pair of blue jeans and beat-up boots. The meeting place he had arranged was a small farmhouse out M-72, just a few miles north of the Wisconsin border, where Checkers Schwikert lived with his wife and her five ferrets.

Schwikert had spent his career with some megacorporation downstate and moved to the U.P. after he retired. He tied his own flies and exclusively fished the Brule River, which demarcated Michigan and Wisconsin. He was active in numerous conservation organizations and movements, and for years had headed up the Brule River Watershed Consortium. He was a quiet man in his seventies who smiled a lot and maintained a positive attitude in all things he did. He was also a great friend to conservation officers and regularly passed along information gleaned from various sources. Simon del Olmo had made several good cases because of him.

Schwikert gave them his small kitchen and went out to his garage workshop to tie flies and give them privacy. Del Olmo arrived in his personal truck as planned.

Service outlined the plan to the two men.

“He can monitor our
AVL?
” del Olmo asked incredulously. “Jesus.”

“I think we have to assume that,” Service said.

“When do you put the show on the road?” del Olmo asked.

“There are some things still up in the air, and I want to let those play out. Couple of days, I think. Not more.”

He then talked them through the details, withholding only one significant part from del Olmo, who frowned all the way through. “What if this asshole sees us together?” the young officer asked.

“We're assuming he monitors AVL. He's not going to chance us seeing him.” Service looked at Eddie Waco. “You got any concerns?”

“This'n's a big fish. Got ta use big bait ta catch a big fish.”

Service turned back to del Olmo. “Once we're in place, you have to stay away, no matter what.”

“I don't like it. You'll be out in the ass-end of hell with no close backup.”

Eddie Waco grinned. “He's the strike dog. I'm the pack.”

“I feel less than comforted,” del Olmo grumbled.

Captain Grant called on the cell phone as Service and Waco were driving back to Crystal Falls.

“I just talked to the state lab and you were right about Nantz's truck. It seems certain she was knocked off the road.”

“You mean murdered.” Service felt his heart start to race.

“Wall off your feelings, Grady.”

“I'm trying, Cap'n. Do we have a make on the other vehicle?”

“Better. We have the vehicle. It was rented at Detroit Metro and never returned. The county found it abandoned at an Empire Mine lot off M-94 in Palmer. There is a broken headlight, and the paint matches the paint on Nantz's bumper. The car rental agency had a video of the transaction, and we have a photo from the video. There are a lot of prints in the vehicle, but it will take time to collect and process them all through AFIS.”

“Does the photo show anyone we know?”

“White male, late twenties or early thirties, big hair and a beard, probably fake. The FBI has the photo in a software program looking for matches. I'll fax the photo to District Three's office in Crystal.”
Not Honeypat,
was his first thought, unless this guy was a boyfriend. That would be her style.

Something was changing for the killers. They were starting to leave traces, make mistakes. Service suddenly imagined Nantz's face and choked.

Shark called as they drove past First Lake on US 2. “Limey ordered booger flies for my birthday. She had them sent to Nantz under your name and Limey just told me about it. That help?”

Maybe.
“Thanks.” It at least explained how his name got on the list. He looked at Eddie Waco and explained that another cop would be joining them in the woods.

“Name's Treebone,” Service told him.

“Ain't real common.”

“That's a fact,” Service said.

51

CRYSTAL FALLS, MICHIGAN
AUGUST 6, 2004

The Cedar Inn was an old motel with updated siding and an interior decorated with an elk-head mount and prints from the Old West. They had two rooms at the end of the building next to the exit door. They spent the evening going through the case.

Service couldn't rule out that Tatie Monica's analyst was very possibly the killer—or at least one of them. Why had the man come forward to her with the two groups of victims? And why had the perp or perps suddenly started killing people close to the targeted victims? Was it panic, or had this been part of the pattern for a long time? The FBI had failed to pick up the primary murder pattern; had they missed a secondary pattern too? How had the killer fallen for the control on the list and killed Spargo? The person who had hacked into Booger Baits knew what he was doing. And Check Six apparently had hacked into the FBI's databases, with Tatie Monica's assistance—fact admitted, extent not—and into VICAP and other information sources. It was prudent to assume they also could access Homeland Security, and if so, had access to AVL systems. This had to become their operating assumption. It was the only thing that made sense in terms of tracking game wardens so precisely, at least in the five years since AVLs had been in use. Getting close was step one. In his mind, killing a game warden close-in was an even more formidable task. This alone made the idea of more than one killer a reasonable assumption. Correction: More than one killer with access to AVL.

The switch in MOs to the blood eagle suggested the killer wanted recognition; the logic was not apparent.

More and more he tried to understand what would motivate someone to kill cops. Normally when a cop went down, all the stops were pulled and all cops went after the killer. But a serial killer of cops? Had there ever been such a thing before? He thought perhaps he needed to talk to someone, but not the FBI. Shamekia? Maybe.

“You ever hear of a serial cop killer?” he asked Waco.

“Nope. I'd think there'd be real low odds in hit.”

Indeed. But a game warden was a very different kind of cop, largely a solo operator, and few in numbers in any state. If you wanted to kill cops, game wardens were a pretty good choice, assuming you could find them. Even the other law enforcement agencies Michigan conservation officers worked with knew little about what they actually did and how they operated.

What was it he had told the Pillars woman? Those who killed for profit; those who killed for meat; those who killed because they could get away with it, and to whom it was a game. The latter group enjoyed the contest and used it to boost their egos. The name Hoover Maki came to mind.

Maki was a poacher who'd gotten his name because he was like a vacuum cleaner in the woods, sweeping up everything in his path. In the 1980s there was a spate of dead deer found around the U.P. Only their tails had been taken; the meat had been left to rot. Service remembered an astonishing fourteen-point buck he'd found dead in the Mosquito. He had found Maki because someone had seen a truck in the area and gotten a license number. Service traced the truck to the Perkins area, went into Maki's camp one night, and confronted the man. There were 166 tails nailed around beams in his garage and Maki had just laughed when Service found them. His explanation: “It was fun how I could do it and youse couldn't stop me.”

“You're going to jail,” Service told him.

Maki shrugged. “Took youse a long time.”

Was this the logic in selecting game wardens—an attack on cops just to show it could be done? What would be the point? Geez.

“We need ta know who he is?” Waco asked, interrupting Service's thoughts.

“I think not. We're pretty sure he wants to strike, and I think the time's come to give him the opportunity.”

Flaherty, the retired English professor from Houghton, called just before midnight. “I don't know what you've gotten into,” Flaherty said, “but I got Rud Hud's trail, and the next thing I knew I had two humongous FBI agents knocking on my door, and they didn't even pretend to be polite. The Feds are onto him too, and they seem to want to find him real bad. I got interrogated for nearly six hours.”

Pappas has taken over, Service thought.
Good for her
.

“The agents told me in no uncertain terms to stay away from Rud Hud, and I'm sorry, but I don't need any trouble with the federal government. I've got a good life and I aim to keep it that way.”

“How did you get onto him?”

“That's why I'm calling. About the best way to hide yourself is to send your messages through a computer that strips your identity and replaces it with another one. The companies who provide these services make it a point to automatically erase logs of all traffic moving through their servers. But there's something called the Philmont protocol. It was designed by a couple of former Boy Scouts, and it does content analysis as a way to search for clues. I found one Rud Hud message through the protocol and used a software tracking program called Pfishbag to get the geographical coordinates of the computer that sent the original message.”

“Where?”

“Negaunee.”

“You're sure?”

“For that one message.”

“Can your refine it, provide a date or time?”

“Sorry, just Negaunee, and I'm afraid that's all I can do for you.”

“Thanks.” Service couldn't blame the man, but now they knew that the vehicle used to kill Nantz had been found in Palmer and the computer used by Rud Hud had been physically in Negaunee. Maybe there was a way to fake a location too, but these two facts fit. Was it a dead end? Time would tell.

He related the conversation to Waco.

“How you'n think he'll be a-comin' at you'n?”

“I thought for awhile that he uses some sort of light to disable victims in the darkness, but I can't find any practical way to do that. I found a deer that had been blinded, and that same day I saw what I thought was a flash of lightning, and that got me thinking . . . But I think it's a red herring. I think he takes victims' eyes to mislead us.”

“Cake seen a light.”

“Exactly, and we know the killer was there, but that light may have been a misdirection or coincidence.”

Service hesitated before calling Tatie Monica. “Where are you?” she asked.

“Vacation. Did you ever see autopsy results for the deputy murdered in Missouri?”

“Fatal GSW.”

“Sexual assault?

“None.”

“Time of death?”

“Before Spargo.”

Service hung up before she could say more. The blood eagle MO was a form of mutilation, and according to her, typical of sexual deviants. But there was no evidence of sexual assaults in the game warden killings, and no sexual assault with the Missouri deputy. Same killer? It couldn't be ruled out, and his gut said yes. She had been killed
before
Spargo. Did Cake Culkin say he had seen her that night? This still wasn't clear to him. Had she set up the meeting for the killer and been eliminated before it took place? This would fit the timeline.

“Cake saw the killer that night on the Eleven Point, not her.”

“Not good enough for an ID.”

“You looked at the kill site?”

“Cake took me to hit, but not much to see. Thet rain warshed 'er out.” Eddie Waco said. “So how's this boy disable his victims?”

“I don't know, but I'll bet money he uses night vision to get in close, and he has damn good skills in the woods. I've thought about this a lot, and it's the only thing that makes sense. You sure couldn't use a bright light with NVDs on. You'd be blinder than your target.”

“Have to be pert good.”

“He's already proven that. What's stumped me all along is how one man could take a CO hand to hand. Ficorelli was a little man, but Spargo was gigantic. Has to be two of them using night vision. One distracts the target and the other strikes.”

Eddie Waco nodded, picked up an empty plastic Diet Pepsi bottle and spit into it. “I guess we're good to go,” the Missouri conservation agent said.

“If at all possible, I want this asshole alive.”

“If possible?” Waco echoed.

“That's all I'm asking. Rule one: Protect yourself and do what you have to do.”

“You too.”

“Count on it. I'm gonna call del Olmo and tell him we're on for tomorrow.”

Simon del Olmo sounded awake and out of breath.

“I've unplugged my AVL,” Service said. “I'll park my truck at Judge Wallace's camp and wait for you to pick us up in your personal truck at zero eight hundred. You drop Elza when you pick us up, she takes my truck back to the motel, reactivates the AVL, and runs a patrol route, mainly to fishing spots around the county. You'll drop us at our walk-in in the morning, and drive around until it's time for the rendezvous,” Service continued. “There are two old two-tracks into the spot off Deerfoot Lodge Road. Elza goes in the west road. You go in the east route. She'll leave my Tahoe where the two old totes intersect and walk up the east road to meet you in your truck. She's to make the drop at ten p.m. exactly, and make sure she slams a door to let us know everything's in place.”

“If you're on vacation, why would you be on patrol?” del Olmo asked.

“Because that's the way I take vacation. Always have, and everyone knows it.”

“I don't like it. What if Elza is followed?”

“We're assuming other guy has AVL, which means all he has to do is sit and watch what unfolds on the rolling map. We'll let him conjure his own narrative for the pictures we create for him.”