Killing a Cold One (27 page)

46

Friday, December 26

NEGAUNEE

Christmas had been an abbreviated moment, hardly marked, just him and Shigun and Tuesday. Service and his team were gathered in the State Police post's conference room, ready to hear what Friday had learned.

Kristy Tork had sent prints earlier that week and results were back from the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS).

“The hit-and-run victim is Wendell John Bellator, seventy-eight, of Nett Lake, Minnesota,” said Friday. “He was a member of the Bois Forte Chippewa tribe, retired sergeant with the Nett Lake Police Department.” Friday looked at the men. “Korean vet, Purple Heart, Silver Star, Combat Infantryman Badge. The Nett Lake chief told me Bellator was very low-key, but an extremely efficient cop.”

“This Bellator lived on a rez?” Tree asked.

“The chief didn't say. No relatives. He's the last in his line. I got the feeling our colleague was telling me just enough to get me to go away.”

“Surprise,” Service said.

“The chief said the man's Indian name is Na-bo-win-i-ke, and that he was in Michigan on a hunting trip. I told the chief the regular deer season ended eighteen days ago, and he said, ‘I heard that, too.' ”

“The red wall,” Service said. Meaning silence. Indians often had little use for white cops and their courts.

Friday looked at the men. “Anne Campau woke up this morning. She has no idea how she ended up where she did. The post CO talked to her. She said she got Chet Saville's call, went out to meet him, and sent Chet to get Jack Igo and his tracking dogs. Then she thinks she saw something under the tree where the body was hanging, so she moved over to it, and the next thing she knew, she was at the bottom of the canyon and there was a rotted pack with the signal panels at an old camp site. She rallied long enough to make a fire and set up the signal.”

“Does she have any idea who grabbed her, or why?

“No, only that she thinks he came down out of the trees and knocked her cold. She thinks he drugged her, but tox panel shows nothing. Once she got dumped, her body metabolized whatever he used. There was some evidence of ketazamine, which suggests she got stuck with the trank, but it's just not possible to know.” Friday looked worn out and frustrated.

“How'd she end up in the canyon?” Treebone asked.

“She said she was strapped to the back of the four-wheeler and came to and managed to throw herself off the thing, and then she scrambled like hell and went over the lip and fell into the gorge. There was a small bag of energy bars on the vehicle and she managed to get hold of those and take them with her. Stuffed them in her shirt. God must have been looking out for her. She could have been killed. Whoever grabbed her must have assumed she was dead and went on. She found the refuge where you found her, and prayed.”

Doesn't exactly advance our cause,” Service said. “What did she see under the trees?

Friday exhaled and shook her head. “That's all she remembers. Next item, the body out there that day is not Sarah Root. She took her kids downstate and she's still there. Campau confirms it wasn't Root because she knew the woman and had written two OUILs on her. The body is someone else.”

Friday paused. “Next item, the ME says massive trauma is the cause of death on Mr. Bellator; time of death is zero seven hundredish, catastrophic damage on the victim's entire left side. He must have pivoted at the last second before impact. Walking along, his back to traffic, he might have sensed or heard something, turned, and
bam.
His left hand deformity is congenital. Also, he's got major scarring on his face, very old damage. Dr. Tork thinks the scar coloration indicates an old wound, but there are also some very large, nasty scars down the man's chest, and they don't look as old as the facial stuff. Tork told me the chest scars looked like they came from claws, or talons. I think she was joking.” She looked around. “No comments?”

Service said, “Somebody needs to get out to Minnesota to gather information face-to-face from the dead man's tribal chairman.”

“You volunteering?” Friday asked Service.

“At some point,” he said. “I don't exactly feel it pulling at me.”

“Next item: Jen Maki got paint flecks off the vick's clothes.”

“Chrome?” Treebone asked.

“Blue paint.”

“Miracle in the day of plastic cars,” Noonan griped.

“She ought to have a solid shot at a manufacturer match,” Friday said, adding, “She's working on it now. Last item: I'm going to release Lamb Jones's body for burial. Her mom and sister are coming up from Niles. Figure a week, maybe ten days from now, early January.”

“Cremation and memorial?” Service asked.

“Don't know yet. She was Catholic, and her mom will have to find a place. Whenever it happens, we ought to be there to see who shows up,” Friday said, and added, “I know Terry beat up on his wife, but I just don't see him as the killer.”

Service agreed.

47

Saturday, December 27

SLIPPERY CREEK CAMP

There was a black Cadillac hearse parked against the snowbank along the road just beyond Service's cabin when he returned Saturday night. It was an older model with prominent fins and a bulging hump-like trunk.
champ's funeral home
was printed on a square magnetic sign affixed to the side door. Lights were on in the house. Allerdyce, he expected.

Instead, he found Joan Champ sitting on a chair in the kitchen, her arms and legs crossed, frown on her face, body language Service interpreted as the fortress: No entry, me here, you there, keep it so. There was a small-caliber nickel-plated snub-nosed revolver on the table in front of her.

“I had to get inside,” she said. “Your door was unlocked.”

He doubted her story.
“That piece loaded?” Service asked.

“Wouldn't be worth much without bullets,” she shot back. “You'd think a cop would know that.”

Service got his hand on the pistol and eased it aside. “What's going on?” he asked, sitting down. She was skinny, baby-faced, sensual in a way that was more than the sum of her parts. He looked around the house, saw nothing unusual.

“I could use that drink now,” she said.

He hadn't offered. “Preference?”

“Strong hootch, poured stiff, if you don't mind.”

He fetched a bottle of Jack Daniel's, found a glass, put it in front of her, and poured a couple of fingers.

She gulped it down and set the glass in front of her. She drank without coughing, flushing, or sweating. Down the hatch with no effect seen.

“Hit me again.”

“Limit of one in this joint,” he announced.

“That might be a mistake,” she countered.

He had no idea what she meant.
Why is she here?
He was in no mood for company. “The whiskey?”

“Me coming here,” she said, “considering your reputation with women. People tell me you're peculiar, the legendary rugged individualist, and you have a way with women—that they're drawn to you. Although as I look at you, I simply cannot imagine why. I thought I'd see you in an official capacity tomorrow . . . one might say that was my intention . . . but I happened to see your camp, you know, and it seemed like a safe harbor. I felt compromised. Do you mind my saying that?”

She's scared shitless.
“I don't mind,” he said.
First the fortress body language, now this, whatever this was, a half-baked come-on. Very serious crossed wires here, mixed signals, meaning extreme complications.
“You're safe here,” he said.

“I spent the afternoon at work with my father,” she said. “People think my sister and I don't know what's going on, but we do, we surely do. He'll never get better. I've always taken pride in my ability to deal with reality, the world as it is, not as I might wish it to be—you understand?”

Which reality is hers?
“Better tell me about it,” he said.

“Never mind that I've never known how I really wanted to be,” she said, turning toward him. “I've been very,
very
naughty at times, I can assure you. The point is that when I got home tonight, the door was wide open. My sister is in Minneapolis, diddling her latest beau. I locked the doors before I left earlier today. Do you know the difference between a doctor and an undertaker?”

New page from a new songbook.
He decided to say nothing.

“If you're dead, who cares?” she said, and let loose a sort of scared, yelping laugh. “I've never killed a customer; how about you?”

Shock for sure.
He left her sitting there for a moment, eased over to the phone, and dialed Treebone, who had stopped at the Happy Hour Bar for a drink with Noonan. “You guys hit the point of no return yet?” he asked Tree. Noonan was with him.

“Both of us are having trouble gettin' off the ground,” his friend reported gloomily.

“Call a county road cop and get over to Champ's Funeral Home in Ishpeming. Do it fast and quietly. Tell the deps no lights or woo-woos. There may be a B and E, and it may be in progress. I'll meet you there.”

“On it,” Treebone said, and hung up.

“Ms. Champ,” Service said.

“Technically it's Mrs. Dragadis, but I prefer just Joan, like
I Married Joan
on TV, or that d'Arc tootsie of history, though I am certain my pain tolerance is considerably less than either namesake.” She looked into his eyes. “I can assure you I'm no saint, and only technically a wife, legally speaking. My husband is a major in the US Army, currently in Iraq with his gun. We've never gotten around to filing the papers and so forth.”

Rambling—volume of words as a shield, blocking out reality.
“We have to go back to your place,” he said.

“I'm not liking this insistence on the collective pronoun and must confess I lean toward never going there again. Like for-fucking-never. Can I please have one more snort?”

He poured her another shot of Jack. “We have to go check it out.”

“May I offer another alternative,” she said, starting to unbutton her blouse.

“No, ma'am,” he said, tossing her coat at her.

48

Sunday, December 27

ISHPEMING

It was closing in on midnight on Saturday as they waited in the hearse while Noonan, Treebone, and a deputy named Berghuis went through the funeral home. The portable 800 crackled with static on the seat between them. Joan Champ stared straight ahead, showing no interest or emotion. Service wondered where her mind had gone.

“Grady, Suit. You might want to bop on in. We're in the basement.”

“What's in the cellar?” Service asked Champ.

“Embalming. My dad calls it the beauty parlor. His business is everything to him. He was like an artist, really. Now hear this: I am
not
sitting out here alone while you go inside.”

Still loopy.

Together they entered the basement, painted white with a white tile floor and intensely bright overhead lights. It was sterile, overwhelming. There was a small laboratory off the main work area. A sign on the door said
autopsy samples
. A stainless-steel refrigerator was on its side, the door broken off its hinges and flung across the room, broken glass scattered everywhere, twinkling in the bright light. Stainless-steel containers were scattered about like discarded toys. No need to ask what was in the fridge. Every morgue and funeral home had one or more just like it, but Grady Service sensed he was missing something obvious.

“How much was here?” he asked Champ.

“Not that much,” she said. “Two sets awaiting lab reports.”

“Who?”

“Two elderly patients from Doc Rhine Poppo; you know, cancers he thought he'd arrested, but he was wrong. Doctors always seem surprised when they're wrong. Have you ever noticed that? No wonder they bill themselves as practitioners,” she added, not looking at him.

He got her point.

“Doc Poppo wanted a post for curiosity as much as anything. Curing is a bit less exact than embalming.”

The wreckage didn't seem to faze her. “I assume it wasn't like this when you last saw it.”

“A place for everything and everything in its place. We've been well trained by Daddy,” she said.

Be direct.
“Did you see this damage when you came back from visiting your father?”

“I thought I was perfectly clear on that point,” she said. “I got precisely and
only
as far as the open back door and departed immediately.”

So she hadn't seen this.
“Have you had break-ins before?”

“Two or three amateur tries last summer—jimmied doors, broken windows. They never actually got in,” she said.

“Did you report them?”

“ ‘Kids,' my dad said. Why bother? He said the cops have enough real problems to cope with. He's the mellow, understanding sort, very empathetic, believes some kids are hugely fascinated by dead bodies, the same way he was. I tried to convince him he's wrong. Did I mention I
hate
dead bodies?”

Talk about unstable and unhappy.
“There were samples, right? And you have paper on them?”

Joan Champ nodded, took him to a freestanding metal file cabinet, manipulated a built-in combination lock, pulled open a drawer, extracted folders, and held them out to him.

“Anything unusual about the autopsies, the samples, or the patients?” Service asked.

“Not really. Doc just wanted the organs saved for later study.”

“
Whole
organs, not sections?”

“Right. Livers, a kidney from each, the usual grisly mementos of the biz. He had permission from both families.”

Why whole organs?
Service wondered.

They left Deputy Berghuis to watch the premises and to await Jen Maki and her techs.

Service told Champ, “You'll be okay. Berghuis will stay tonight. Tomorrow we'll have a more thorough look around.”

“Do you want a ride?” she asked.

He gave her keys back to her. “I'll ride with my guys.”

“I'm never going back in there,” she said.

“Where will you go?”

“Dunno. I feel fragile, violated or something. I refuse to live with the dead.”

Oh boy,
he thought. “You can bunk with us tonight, but the best I can do is a mattress on the floor.”

He took back the keys and drove her to camp. When they got there, he dug a sleeping bag out of the storage room and placed the bag and the woman in the living area on couch cushions. He'd left the cabin unfinished for years, but fixed it when he fell in love with Maridly Nantz. After her death he had reverted to his old ways, letting the place go, but when he'd met Tuesday Friday, he put the place back in order, trying to assemble a real home.

Noonan and Treebone came in, looked at the woman, shook their heads, and went to bed.

“Do you enjoy your work?” she asked from her sleeping bag.

“Mostly,” he said.

“I feel a kinship with you,” she said.

“How's that?”

“Both of us clean up other people's messes. We both deal in the past, don't we?”

He'd never thought of it that way before, but she was already snoring. He left a lamp lit in case she got up during the night.

 

•••

 

Explosions brought Service clawing his way out of bed, his ears ringing, disoriented, heart pounding. Cordite hung in the air, bringing him to a standstill.
Inside the house?
He had his Sig Sauer in hand. Joan Champ was sitting splay-legged on the floor, a large-caliber revolver with a long barrel held convincingly in both hands. Service moved toward her, and she raised the weapon and pointed it at him, her eyes wide and bulging.

“Easy,” he said quietly but firmly. “It's me.” He hugged a wall just in case.

She was trembling, glassy-eyed.

“Service,” he said, “Remember?”

“Outside,” she said, rolling her eyes toward the window, half its glass gone and snow wafting in. He knew he had to get the weapon away from her, couldn't risk moving around while she was spooked and armed, but Noonan was suddenly beside her and talking softly, easing the weapon from her grasp. “Where'd this old hogleg come from?” he asked.

“Two's better'n one,” she said. She had an uncanny way of interjecting unexpected logic at odd times.

“I'm not afraid,” she told the men.

“I am,” Service said.

Noonan said, “Forty-Four Maggie.”

Joan Champ was doe-eyed and rigid. Service watched her draw her legs up into a fetal position.

“Your shots?” he asked her. “At what?”

“Of course. Outside.”

Less precision than he'd hoped for. “At what outside?”

“Something lurking on the porch, near the window.”

Not likely. The windows were taped with plastic for insulation, and they were airtight. You could barely hear a forty-knot wind from inside during the winter. He went back into the bedroom and got a shotgun and a flashlight, slipped on his boots, went out the back door, moved around the house, saw and found nothing out of place.

“What was it?” she asked when he came back in. “Did I hit it?”

“Nothing.”

“But surely you found tracks?”

Needs justification, reinforcement.
“I can't see that well in this light. The snow's picked up some.”
Lie for a good cause, mutual peace of mind. He had found squat.

“I know I saw
something,
” she insisted. “I may be a coward, but I have superior senses, including my hearing.”

“You have a permit to carry?”

“You bet your bippy,” she said.

Not to mention a jacked-up imagination.
He went to the basement to find plywood to seal the window.

A voice called thinly from outside, “Comin' in. Don't shoot no more.”

Limpy Allerdyce came in, both hands held high. “I din't do nuttin', ” he yelled to Service. The old man was deathly pale, eyes like Ping-Pong balls.

 

•••

 

The house was cold when they awoke the next morning. The light outside was a dull gray, the kind of partial light that would serve as daylight for the remainder of the seven-month winter. A flow of air told him the window needed a lot more work and he'd better call someone competent to do it right.

“I'm really sorry about this,” Joan Champ greeted him from her sleeping bag.

“No problem,” he said.

“Does your shower have hot water?”

“Try the handle with the ‘H' on it.”

He made coffee while she was in the shower and handed her a cup when she sat at the end of the table with a towel wrapped around her head. “I got really spooked last night.”

“Happens,” he said. He'd been terrified more times than he could remember. Fear never went away. You learned how to tamp it down so it wouldn't destroy you or prevent you from acting. It was an ongoing struggle.

“People who work with bodies aren't supposed to spook,” the woman said.

“Don't worry about it. Last night is over.”

“Everybody knows something is dreadfully wrong up here,” she said.

“Do they?”

“Murdered women and children are bad for tourism.”

Lacking specificity; is she fishing for something?
“You know I can't talk about cases,” he said.

“You think I'm pushy?”

No good answer for that.
He kept quiet.

“
Have
I been pushy?”

Nearing his limits.
“Whatever. It's fine.”

“You should learn to say what you mean,” Joan Champ chided.

“I do try.”

Pause, a sour face. “You saw last night, did you not?”

“I saw a lot of things last night.”

“I mean my place,” she said, “the sample containers.”

“All over the floor,” he said. “There are lots of disturbed people in the world.”

“Granted, but eating human organs?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The samples—something took them and ate them.”

“Your imagination is overactive,” he countered.

“I've been trained to observe,” she said. “Same as you, I presume.”

“I looked at everything.”

“Don't play the fool,” she said, studied him and exclaimed, “My God, you
didn't
see! Those trays contained tissue samples and organs!”

“I got that,” he said in his own defense.

“No; there's always residual blood and some tissue on the stainless, but all of them were spotless.”

“There's probably a reason,” he said.

“No dirty towels or napkins, nothing on the floor but broken glass and stainless steel. Where did those naughty fluids go . . .
Where?
”

She had already demonstrated an overactive imagination. “Crime scene specialists will look at the lab,” he said. “We were all pretty tired last night.”

“I was beyond tired,” she shot back, “but I know what the hell I saw. You ever see a pie pan licked clean?”

He cringed, trying to block the image, which fit, and might even have occurred to him, but in truth he'd not seen it, had missed everything. “I think we'd better keep this to ourselves,” he told her. “There's already enough speculation.”

 

•••

 

Returning to the funeral home mid-morning they joined Jen Maki and her people, and Service read through Dr. Poppo's files on the elderly dead. One had an address on North Stone Road.

“This the Indiantown Manitu Ridge area?” he asked Maki. He still had trouble keeping road names straight out that way. He could remember landmarks like his own body parts, but not street and road names, especially when every damn county seemed to name the same road something different than the adjacent county, more evidence of the past wanting to screw up the present.

He'd insisted Champ come along with them, pulled a chair over to her. She smelled clean and soapy. “This woman was Indian?”

“Both were,” she said.