Force of Blood (32 page)

“But money changed hands?”

“Yes, but not the full price. It was more like earnest money in a real estate deal.”

“This is standard practice?”

“I wouldn’t call it standard, but it happens. It’s not rare or unique if that’s what you mean.”

“But you bought based on photos.”

“I’m an expert. I saw what he had.”

“Seems pretty liberal on his part.” He wanted to say
desperate,
but didn’t.

Toliver shrugged.

“And then you had dinner with Wildhorse after he was released from custody, and he keeled over dead.”

“I don’t know your source, but that is way off base. William felt bad at dinner. I drove him to the emergency room and they admitted him to the hospital. He died later that week.”

“Poison?” Service asked, wanting to see Toliver’s reaction.

“Campylobacter in his cabin’s water.”

“Did he ever present provenance on the stuff you bought?”

“Only his word that the things had been in his family for generations.”

“And he told you this after the FBI let him go?”

“Are you implying something?”

“I’m just trying to get the timelines straight in my head.”

“That’s the story, all of it,” Toliver said. “When can I take my team back to our dig site?”

“When it’s safe out there.”

“But the fire’s at least twenty miles south of our excavation.”

Odd fact for someone who opens the conversation asking if the fire is out.
“You realize this is a peat fire and it’s burning below-ground? It’s not likely to be entirely out until we get our heavy fall rains and snow.”

“Meaning?”

“You may not get cleared back to the site until next spring.”

“Not until April?”

“Realistically, it could be May up there on the shore. The snowfall is huge and stays a long, long time.”

“This is unfair.”

“Would it be more fair if you took your crew back up there and the fire jumped up and killed them all?”

“You’re exaggerating the risk.”

“That’s what cops get paid to do. We don’t take meaningless risks with innocent civilian lives. It tends to piss off the taxpayers.”

“Just a few days could make a huge difference,” Toliver said, probing for some negotiation space.

“It’s in Mother Nature’s hands now, Professor. If we get significant rain, we’ll see what can be done.”

“What are my options?”

“Wait.”

“Is there an appeal procedure?” Toliver demanded.

Grady Service pointed a forefinger up at the sky and smiled. “Try
Him.
”

The reduced speed limit on M-123 was still in force at 25 mph, and Service made his way slowly west and south, driving cautiously. He called Goldie before leaving Paradise and asked for fingerprints, chastening himself for not automatically doing this himself, or asking Sedge to do it.
Some super sergeant
. Traffic was sparse.

The area around Murphy Creek was still littered with pumper trucks, fire paraphernalia, and firefighters milling around in their yellow suits smudged with black soot. The fire had burned to within sight of M-123 but was only smoldering at the moment. Hoses snaked into the open area as water was pumped from the creek to the fire in hopes of drowning it underground.

Service found incident commander Max Stinson at the command trailer, and the two old pals embraced like two bears. “Weather’s staying hot and dry. We’ve got this sucker ringed and we’re moving in the hand crews now.” Max’s Vietnam had been spent on a carrier, crewing a chopper picking up navy pilots who splashed into the Gulf of Tonkin, and sometimes into North Vietnam itself.

“Seems like it’s going pretty smoothly,” Service said.

“If you don’t look too close. We set a backfire up by Pinestump and that sonuvagun turned on us like a nasty snake. Luck prevailed. Yeah, real
smooth
.”

“Any new activity today?”

“Here and there. The Troops are sending us a chopper with infrared and thermal-imaging capability. They’re overhead as we speak. Once we get a picture of hot spots we can have our crews beat-feet into them and put them down.”

“Road closings and evacs?”

“The 420’s still closed, and I have manned barricades to cut down on gawkers. The evac for Chesbrough and Widgeon is still in effect.”

“Any more reports of unauthorized personnel out by Chesbrough?”

“Heard you were out there for the suicide. How many in your career?”

“I haven’t kept count.”
One was too damn many
.

“Your job, I don’t blame you,” Stinson said. “Some people just snap. We’re going to run hose and piping out to the fire and pump water. Wisconsin loaned us some six-by-six ATVs with water pumps. They’re real handy for this kind of work, great force extenders. Rest of the U.P.’s getting our weather. Got nine or ten other burns going, all under control so far. It’s all late this year. Usually spring’s the annual burn circus.”

“The drought,” Service said, and his friend nodded. “Brownmine used me as his escort to the line.”

“McKower’s here and Jeffey Bryan’s close, so I’m good to go. You can go do whatever it is you do now. I heard they filled your sleeve with stripes.”

“Stripes, yeah. Weird, Max. I’ll probably be northwest of Chesbrough.”

“How far?”

“Little Two-Hearted Lakes, maybe.”

“Bump your folks on your 800 and make sure they know where you are.”

• • •

Grady Service took M-123 northeast to Duck Lake, and drove the curvy back road to a place close to the lake on the west perimeter of the Little Two-Hearted Lakes country. He got his ruck out of his truck and strapped his fire suit and helmet to the outside, just in case. His intent, loosely drawn, was to hike northwest, but he found himself sitting on a stump burned over by some long-ago and now-forgotten fire. No cell-phone coverage here—at least, at the moment. An hour from now this could change. He had no idea why this was so and didn’t care.

At least the 800 was working today. Goldie could get him on the state police 800. “Two One Thirty, Twenty Four Fourteen. You have cell coverage where you are?”

“That’s affirmative, Two One Thirty.”

“Could you give Goldie a bump, tell him there’s no cell coverage where I am, and he can pass results over Channel Two on the 800.”

“Two One Thirty, clear.”

The desire to move and expend energy, even if it was wrong and wasteful, ate at him, but he remained on his log perch. Why was Delongshamp here? He’d seen him near Chesbrough, and Jeffey had seen him northwest of there; he had concluded that Kermit was headed northwest, but now as he sat and relaxed, he realized the truth was that the man could have turned around and gone anywhere. He had made an unwarranted assumption, yet something about Delongshamp was eating at his subconscious and telling him the man was the key.
To what?
That was the real question.

Sleep tickled at him and he tried to resist, but a nap sounded good. “Twenty Four Fourteen, you available?”

“Affirmative.”

“Two One Thirty. Meet me at my place?”

“Twenty Four Fourteen, clear.”

• • •

She was seated on a battered wooden bench on the Bomb Shelter’s front porch.

“Goldie faxed these to us,” she said, proffering a sheaf of papers. He fought the urge to speed-read and made himself work his way slowly through the pages, sheet by sheet. At one point he put the papers under his arm and lit a cigarette. “Wingel,” was all he said.

“She probably has an explanation,” Sedge said.

“Or can’t remember.”

“That’s even more likely. What now, Chief Master Sergeant?”

“We need to think like lawyers.”

“Ooh. That sounds painful.”

“No pain, no gain.”

“Clichés suck,” Sedge said.

“I met with Jane Rain yesterday, cop to cop.”

“She acknowledged her status?”

“I didn’t give her a lot of wiggle room. You said you had to bring that AAG Elvis what’s-his-name up to speed?”

“Elvis Y. Shields.”

“Right, that guy.”

“I put a lot of work into that jerk.”

“Work on what?”

“NAGPRA to some extent, but more on 324-point-76, 102 to 106.”

“Plain language?”

“Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act Number 451, from 1994, or NREPA for short. It all has to do with handling and recovering aboriginal remains and antiquities from state land, and covers human and animal matter.”

“NREPA.” Jane Rain had not mentioned this one.

“And there’s always grave robbing,” Sedge added.

“Is that a joke?”

“No, I’m serious. I even told Elvis about it: 751-point-160, and I quote: ‘Declares that a person is guilty of a felony who, not being lawfully authorized to do so, shall willfully dig up, disinter, remove, or carry away a human body, or the remains thereof, from the place where that body may be interred or deposited, or shall knowingly aid in such.’ The penalty is ten years and five grand.”

“What did Shields say?”

“Nothing. The asshole just shook his head.”

“I’m thinking a lawyer would say a war club isn’t a body.”

“I’m just trying to convey what I know that might help us. I can’t get it out of my mind that Wingel found a body out there and reburied it, and can’t or won’t say where. Jesus, the photo we got from Oregon shows she’s a damn thief. She balled her sensei at Oregon, got caught by his old lady, and Wingel, nee Ence, boogeyed eastward. I keep asking myself, why McGill and Canada with so many good schools in the U.S.?”

Service listened politely, his own mind churning. “Wingel ends up in Wisconsin at Whitewater State. Toliver’s late dealer was in Wisconsin. Toliver visited said dealer in Wisconsin.”

“We need more on Toliver’s background,” Sedge said.

“I’ll bird-dog it,” Service said.

“When this case began, you said it was mine.”

“It still is.”

“Then why do I feel like it’s slipping away from me?”

“Federal involvement.”

“Is that supposed to appease me?”

“It’s supposed to make you shut up so I can think, and so you can get back on patrol.”

“Your NCO bedside manner needs serious work, dude,” she said.

“Sergeants don’t do bedsides,” he retorted.

“I’ll bet your old lady would confirm that,” she said, and headed for her truck in a huff. He halfheartedly sailed his ball cap at her.

He had been home two nights. Friday called Service from her office in Negaunee. “I just put salt in my coffee, thank you very much!” she said.

“Jell-O mode?”

“Ya think? Geez, Grady, I sometimes think being together full-time could kill the both of us.”

Jell-O mode was a sort of spaciness Friday went into for up to eight hours after lovemaking. Her ob-gyn recently diagnosed it as a phenomenon called SIPAS, Suspended Intellectual and Physical Ability Syndrome. It affected fewer than 1 percent of women, the doctor had told her.
Together full-time? Where is that coming from?

“You get word on the burn ban?”

“What’s that? I’ve been digging.”

“All counties except the southernmost tier are on fire ban, first time this widespread since 1998, including no smoking outside.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Unenforceable.”

“My sister’s coming for dinner tonight. You’re the chef, eh? You know I can’t cook when I’m in this condition.”

“Hot dogs work?”

“Don’t be a goof.”

He meant it; he was of no mind to cook, much less socialize.

“Karylanne’s bringing Little Mar for the weekend. She has to do something in the Soo tomorrow and is leaving Mar with us.”

This made him grin. His granddaughter was a hoot—most of the time. And a load. Sometimes she was also a PITA in training—pain in the ass.

“I’ll cook something.” He had no idea what.

He called McKower and she said, “We’re at sixty-two percent and holding. Evacs remain in force. Big wind gusts blew all morning, but the line seems to have held so far.”

“Sedge?”

“Somewhere on the northern fireline with Jeffey.”

He ended the call and pushed his cell phone to the side of the computer. He hoped the calls were done. He needed to concentrate.

This morning he had tried to talk to Hibernian College in Velvetick, Ohio, but the human resources queen there had been an unvarnished bitch and refused to confirm or deny anything about Toliver, whom she slipped and referred to as Tolly, and just as quickly got lockjaw, saying it was because of “regrettable Republican-driven privacy rules. I’m afraid you will require a subpoena for any records. This is a private, not a public institution.” The phone call left him scratching his head and seething. He started to surf the web without a plan but suddenly decided on a different route. He found Smoke Ghizi’s card in his wallet and called him.

“Hey,” he greeted his one-time marine comrade, “Service here.”

“What’s up?”

“Working the case’s backstory. Where the hell did Toliver go to college? I called Hibernian and they dribbled me against the academic stone wall.”

“Give me a minute to pull the file,” Ghizi said. Moments later, “Okeydoke, Sarn’t, what can we do you for?”

“His college degrees.”

“All of them?”

“Please.”

“AA degree in 1980, from LCOO Community College, Hayward, Wisconsin; in 1983, BA in history, University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. Two years later, 1985, MA in anthropology, U Wisconsin Madison. In 1990, doctorate in Native American studies, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. Want his thesis title?”

“Sure.”

“
Seventeenth-Century Iroquoisian Militarism in the Great Lakes
.”

“Okay, got it.”

“Anything else?”

Service kept underlining U Wisconsin–Whitewater.
Is this the same as Whitewater State?
He had lived most of his life in the U.P. and had never heard the Wisconsin college called anything
but
Whitewater State, which did not mean he wasn’t behind the name curve. “I’m good; thanks, Smoke.”

“Keep your knife sharp, your powder dry, and your hand grenade in your belt, son.”

No mention of the conversation with Jane Rain. Had she not told her boss?
Was
he her boss?
Odd
.

He typed his initial search information into Google and stared at the first result: “Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College.”
LCOO is a Native American school, and Toliver went there?
The site said that 75 percent of its students were Native.
Huh
.

You could access a catalog by clicking on a small icon, which was so tiny he couldn’t make out any of the words. All he could see was something that looked like a shiny smiley face.

He dialed Ghizi again, who answered, “Figured you’d be calling back.”

“Toliver’s Native?”

“No tribal card, but some of his closest friends carry them. He grew up right there in Hayward. His old man ran an antiques store, and he went to the community college for two years and transferred to—”

“Whitewater State.”

“Officially it’s the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, UWW; this is a bit of a sore point because most people confuse all the parts of the Wisconsin system with the flagship campus in Madison.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me about Toliver?”

“You said you had enough information.”

“Okay, what else do I want to know?”

“Guess where Katsu went to college?”

“Same time?”

“Pretty much.”

The two men clearly disliked each other. “Does
their thing
date back to their LCOO days?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, but this has never been confirmed.”

“Which means you’ve talked to people about it.”

“More than plenty.”

“At the community college?”

“Uh, they are not real welcoming of federal badges. You might have more luck.”

Service knew he wouldn’t. The problem was being
wabish
, not the carrying of a badge.

“You want Toliver’s employment history?”

“Please.”

“In 1991, he was a history instructor at UWW, and moved as an associate professor to Oberlin College in Ohio, in 1994. From there he moved to the Stella Sixkiller chair, a lifetime appointment which automatically gave him the department chairmanship at Hibernian.”

“Instructor to department chair and full professor in eight years?”

“Whoosh, just like a rocket,” Ghizi said, “but Custer went up faster. Anything else?”

“Did Katsu earn a degree?”

“He did indeed, and went to the University of Illinois where he eventually graduated from dental school.”

“Katsu’s a dentist?”

“On paper. He’s got no practice.”

Jesus
. “Toliver was an instructor at Wisconsin–Whitewater?”

“Yep. Isn’t that something!”

“Did—”

“Yessir, he was an instructor, and working on his master’s. Wingel supervised his master’s thesis.”

“And moved from there to Stillwater?”

“Presumably. That’s what the record says.”

“His record at Oklahoma State?”

“Stellar, like everywhere he went and everything he touched. The man was a rising star right from the get-go.”

“Whole lot of weird coincidences here.”

“Gotta ask yourself—what’re the odds?” Ghizi said sarcastically.

The two men went silent. “Stones in your gizzard, Sarn’t?”

“How
close
was said supervision?”

“Officially, strictly according to Hoyle. Unofficially around the watercooler, a whole lot of smirks and rolled eyes.”

“You interviewed people.”

“We did.”

“You think they’re in cahoots?”

“I don’t think there’s a law that clearly defines that as a legal term.”

“Have you got people bird-dogging Ladania Wingel?”

“No comment.”

“Thanks, teammate.”

“No call for that tone of voice. I can only attest to that which I control, and that Wengel broad sure ain’t part of my brief.”

“Strict constructionist?”

“I’m not obstructing, Grady. I just don’t know, and that’s the truth. I can speculate, but I prefer not to. You need anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Have yourself a nice day,” Ghizi said.

Service started to leave the building to smoke, but remembered that the burn ban was in place, which frosted his ass. Captain Grant’s administrative assistant Fern LeBlanc was in the reception area, pottering around.

“Where are we supposed to smoke?” he asked her. They had always rubbed each other wrong until Nantz and Walter had died, and then she seemed to have softened toward him.

“Outside, like always,” she said.

“What about the burn ban?”

“Bans don’t apply to cigarettes,” she said. “Unenforceable.”

Goddamn Lis!
She had set him up. He stomped outside, got into his truck, lit a smoke, and inhaled deeply.
Need to settle down and think. Damn Lis!

Marquette County conservation officer Bradley Wurfel pulled his black patrol vehicle into the parking spot in front of the Tahoe. The black Chevy was coated with fine orange dust.

So Wingel knows Toliver, and Toliver and Katsu were at the same community college together. Good God, this is getting denser than an interstellar black hole.

Wurfel got out of his truck with a briefcase, waved, and headed for the front door of the office building.

Service’s cell phone warbled. Caller ID said it was Chief Waco’s number.

“Chief.”

“You’re in Marquette?”

“For now. Came back Tuesday night.”

“Do you know a man named Heywood?”

Service said, “Heard of him. Writes bullshit books about COs.”

“Novels, Grady. Have you read them?”

“Who has time?”

“You might want to make time, because he’s asked specifically to spend some time with you.”

“Like what, an hour? What the hell for?”
I don’t need this. I don’t want this
.

“Days, so he can see how you work in your new job.”

“No way, Eddie!”

“It’s ‘Chief ’ when we’re conducting business, Chief Master Sergeant.”

“Goddammit, Chief.”

“This is a good thing, Grady. Good for us, good for you, good for the state. Besides, his hearing aids are brand-new, and he only stutters a little bit. You get used to it quickly. He was here this morning. I told him you’d be glad to partner with him.”

“When?”
Partner?

“Up to you. I gave him your telephone numbers. He’ll be in touch. By the way, he has his own vest.”

“I heard he’s like a hundred.”

“Nah, he can’t be a day over eighty.”

“I suppose he has his own walker.”

“Just a cane,” the chief said, “and it looks like he handles it pretty good, at least in an office building.”

“A vest. Where am I supposed to take him?”

“Wherever your mission takes you. Working with our men and women helps him make the stories seem authentic.”

“But he’s making it all up.”

“Of course; that’s what fiction is.”

“
Good God
,” Service said in frustration.

“The author will call you. Play nice. That’s an order.”

“I can’t wait,” Service said. He hung up, flung the cell phone out his window, and watched it skitter and bounce across the blacktop parking lot.

Fuck.
He got out and bent over to pick up the phone. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that someone had used a finger to draw a smiley face in the dust on the back gate of Wurfel’s truck.

He couldn’t stop staring. He got up in a daze and was almost to the front door when it registered. What came into his mind was a business card left by
a woman with a tight, bright-red top. The name on the card: Marldeane Youvonne Brannigan. And she had neatly written in immaculate script, “Have a nice day.”

Holy shit
. He scrambled to his cubicle and found the phone number for Cedar Falls Texas police chief Jackie Jay Emerson and punched it into his cell phone, which was suddenly dead. Damn! He grabbed the landline and punched the number into that.

Be there, be there, be there
.

“Chief, Grady Service up in Michigan.”

“How y’all doin’, partner?”

“Good. Got a question: Joseph Paul Brannigan. He one of your local folk?”

“Nossiree, that ole boy’s a damn carpetbagger, hails from the cheese state—Minnesota, is it?”

“Wisconsin.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it.”

“Thanks, Chief. And he was active down your way around Y2K?”

“Yessir, but he just sorta drifted outta the pitcher. His jacket don’t say he got busted or nothing, so who knows.”

Service called Friday. “I have to go to Wisconsin.”

“When?”

“Today—now.”

“What about my sister, or Karylanne, or your granddaughter?”

“This can’t be helped, Tuesday.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll hold down the fort. How long this time?”

“Not sure. I’m taking Allerdyce with me.”
If he could find the sonuvabitch.

Silence on Friday’s end. Then, hoarsely, “Now,
that
scares the hell out of me, Grady.”