Killing a Cold One (31 page)

54

Thursday, January 1, 2009

MARQUETTE

Service and Denninger had cornered Paul Wak after the Zeba meeting the day before and convinced him to call Kelly Johnstone with his cell phone. Wak had handed the phone to Service when it rang, who didn't beat around the bush: “You need to meet with your kid and make peace before he goes postal with this windigo stuff.”

“I calm Dwayne and you promise to lead the hunt; is that what I hear you proposing?” Johnstone countered.

Damn her.
“Hunt and apprehend.”

“But you
will
lead,” she said, and he could hear the satisfaction in her voice. It made him wonder if she'd sent Dwayne to the meeting just to provoke this response.
Geez, I'm becoming paranoid.

“All right, yes—but find your kid and tell him to stop pounding the damn war drums.” While he had her on the line he found out where she was staying and gave the location to Denninger, asking her to go visit and verify it.

“Officer Denninger will swing by to visit and will maintain contact. If you relocate, you inform her. One violation of this and the deal is off.”

Service had radioed Treebone and Noonan and told them to hike out to Arvon Road, where they piled into Denninger's cramped Silverado. She dropped them at their vehicles on Huron River Road. Allerdyce had headed back the way he came, on foot, they said, and without explanation. Service had a pretty good idea what the old poacher was about. He was fascinated by the strange animals.

“Good you called us,” Treebone said. “We were gonna bump you and ask for a ride. See, Noonan here can't handle backwoods treks.”

“I find no joy in a potential broken arm or leg with every slippery step,” Bluesuit complained. “When I gotta be out there, no problem. But if I don't
gotta
be out there, then fuck all this back-to-nature shit.”

Service told them that if they wanted to head home for a break, they were free to do so, but to report back by January 10, latest. Neither man indicated what he would do. They had already missed Christmas and any New Year's celebrations.

Service drove to Friday's house where they spent a quiet night with no talk about any of the cases.

The next morning, she'd elbowed him awake before dawn. “Can we talk
now,
oh manly mute one?” she asked.

“You mean after?” he countered.

“You know how loopy I get afterwards,” she said. “There isn't going to be an
after
this morning. Self-indulgence isn't a luxury we can afford.”

“Okay,” he said sleepily. The bed felt good.

“I went to Lamb Jones's house on Green Garden Road yesterday afternoon,” Friday told him. “Jen Maki assured me that she gave it a good going-over, but something kept nagging at me to go back over there and look less for forensic evidence than for something else. Malcolm Quigley called me yesterday morning and told me he wants to take a murder case forward on Daugherty, and I told him I don't see Terry for this thing. You want to go with me to see Terry? Afterwards, we'll hit Green Garden again. There are some things I want you to see. I've got some ideas, but I want your reaction first.”

Working New Year's Day. That fits.

Malcolm Quigley was the county prosecutor. Barely fifty, he had silky silver hair he brushed back into wings and wore gold wire-rimmed spectacles with quarter-size lenses, suggesting he needed to see only small portions of anything that crossed his desk. He looked more professor than prosecutor but had earned a reputation as a no-nonsense hard-liner with criminals. Surveys by the Michigan Bar Association showed Quigley's sentences to be consistently the harshest in the fifteen counties above the bridge, and third overall in the state.

Quigley had once taught constitutional law at the Cooley Law School in Lansing, had clerked with the Michigan Supreme Court, partnered in a moderately prominent firm in Troy that worked exclusively for automobile clients, and had come north to get prosecution experience to prepare him for a state or federal bench appointment, Marquette being just another career merit badge for the man. His brother Montgomery “Monk” Quigley commanded the Detroit police division that included SWAT and other special operations. Monk was overly aggressive, entirely tactless, overweight, overbearing, muscle-bound, and over-armed. Malcolm was trim and calm, smooth and diplomatic. Both brothers were political creatures with little sense of anything beyond self-promotion, poor models of so-called public servants.
Sleazebags,
Service thought.
Self servants, not public servants.
He couldn't stand either one.

Service took Shigun to Friday's sister's place, told her they'd pick him up by 4 p.m. at the latest, went back to Friday's, parked his Tahoe, and jumped in with her.

Daugherty and his wife lived in an old homestead on the west side of the Kona Hills, south of Marquette. During the Great Depression desperate people had fled cities, thinking they could prosper by living off the land in a U.P.'s alleged Eden. Reality dictated otherwise: Most couldn't handle the way of life, and they either died or headed south. The land here was spiny, the weather relentless, and most economic immigrants had lasted less than two full winters. Oddly, the old cycle was being replayed as the current economic woes of the state and nation crushed people. They still ran north—which remained a stupid choice eighty years later. Daugherty's place was left over from the first wave of economic refugees in the 1930s, one of many decaying homesteads spread around the U.P., testifying to the land's dominance.

Last time Service had seen the deputy's place, it was barely standing. Now it looked pretty solid, and it was obvious Terry and his wife had put some effort and cash into modernizing the place.

Celia answered the door, her eyes red and puffy.

Mrs. Daugherty had been pretty once, but life up here came only in jumbo size and tended to pound everyone. She was considerably younger than her husband, though that wasn't obvious at first glance. She was tall and sincere, with stringy blonde hair and a pockmarked ego. She worked as a teller for a drive-in bank near Harvey.

“Can we come in, Celia?” Friday asked.

The house was sparsely furnished, testimony to Daugherty's previous financial obligations. There had been a kid by a first wife, now in Rhinelander, and two by a second, a local gal. A large part of the deputy's paycheck was being garnished for alimony and child support. The house's interior suggested Celia was trying to maintain some level of dignity for them and hold up her end of the marriage.

Daugherty sat morosely on the couch, looking even worse than his wife, who followed behind them, saying, “He told me everything—all about what him and Lamb done.” Her words trailed off and she sobbed. “
Everything . . .
”

“You said you'd help me,” Daugherty said, looking at Friday. “I got a call that charges are coming down.”

“Nothing's changed, Terry. It's in Prosecutor Quigley's court. You know that.”

Daugherty sniffled and rubbed his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “Can't you do nothing?”

“If a warrant's issued, someone will have to serve it,” Friday said.

The deputy gulped and groaned, his words deliberate and slow. “
But I didn't do it.
”

“He couldn't,” Celia said, coming to her hubby's defense.

Friday looked Daugherty straight in the eye. “Bottom line, there's enough circumstantial evidence to make a case, Terry. C'mon, you
know
what the hell is going on. Quigley has certain political goals, needs feathers in his cap, and we've got too many unsolveds around here right now to let one go if he thinks he can get a fast verdict and put one in the win column. And you're a cop. There's no bigger feather than a dirty cop.”

“
I'm not dirty!
” the deputy insisted, but looked away, took a deep breath, and said, “So that's it: I take the fucking fall, no matter what the truth is? What happened to justice?”

“Terry,” his wife said softly, trying to calm him.

“It's all right,” Friday told him. “I told Quigley the evidence alone won't carry this case.”

“Jesus,” Daugherty said with a moan, “what did I ever do to that asshole?”

Celia suddenly shook a fist in her husband's face and her own face flushed. “Did you do
his
goddamn wife?” she yelped.

Daugherty fell back against the seat back and blinked. “Did I do his wife?”

“She wanders,” Celia said. “Both of 'em do. God, I thought everybody in town knew!”

Service nudged Friday. It would be comic under any other circumstances, but Celia and Daugherty had just brought something to the surface they'd not heard before. Daugherty's response to his wife's charge indicated that perhaps he
had
diddled the prosecutor's wife, which might explain Quigley's aggressive stance on this case.

“What am I going to do?” Daugherty asked Friday.

“Get a lawyer,” she said. “The biggest prick you can afford.”

“But I didn't do it,” he said, sobbing.

Celia walked them to the door. “Terry can't help himself, really he can't. He just likes women, is all. I knew that when I met him. It's like diabetes. You don't stop loving somebody because they've got diabetes,” she said. “Do you?”

“You hear that about the Quigleys?” Service asked when they got out to Friday's vehicle.

“Rumors—but you know how it is up here. It never even crossed my mind to connect Daugherty and Margaret Quigley, Miss Arm-Candy Trophy Wife.”

“And now?”

She puffed. “Good God, Grady. I just don't know. Let's go look at Lamb's house.”

 

•••

 

The house was relatively new and small, built on two or three hundred yards of frontage on the Chocolay River, a weathered cedar deck facing the river with a great view of all the sweepers hanging out over deep riffle water along the west bank. Yellow police tape still ringed the house:
police investigation—do not cross or enter
.

They found everything dumped on the floor. Service said, “Was it like this yesterday?”

“Nope,” she said.

“Doesn't look like kids,” he said.

“Agreed,” Friday said. “Somebody wanted to find something.”

“Something you saw yesterday?”

“I don't know,” she said, and pointed him toward Lamb's bedroom.

Closets had been gutted, drawers turned over, clothes everywhere. “Got your camera?” Friday asked.

“Yeah. Let's both take shots.”

He got out his digital, set the lighting for cloudy day, and began shooting for the record. “Robbery?” he asked.

“Possible, but it somehow doesn't feel like that to me,” she said.

“In this economy, B and E's like a plague,” he said. You could almost measure the health of the local and state economies by the number and rate of camp break-ins. He stood looking at a pile of underwear—silk, sleek, scanty, everything so small it would compress into less than a handful—not the sort of thing you ordered from the Sears catalog.

“Lingerie,” he said out loud.

Friday looked over at him and arched an eyebrow. “Point?”

“Lingerie—that's froggy for frilly scanty panties and such, not for everyday underwear. You know this sort of stuff's mostly for messing around, the other stuff for workaday. There's gotta be thirty sets of scanty pants here. Where's her other stuff? Most women I know, they've got maybe a coupla scanty-pants getups, but this?”

Friday said, “You
know
most women and the difference between lingerie and underwear?”

“That's a cheap shot,” he complained.

“Good observation, Grady. I had the same one yesterday.” She went into the closet and came out carrying a pile of catalogs:
victoria's secret, frederick's sex on satin, amorous undies
. “There's a whole arsenal of sex toys on the floor in there, too,” she added.

“Well, someone was in here looking for something, and I've got to believe whatever it is, it is in this vein, so to speak. When you can't easily find what you want, you know what your next step is?” he said to Friday.

“Stop and think?”

“No, start ripping the shit out of everything.” Which he did, with gusto.

An hour later they had a shoe box he'd found inside a tackle box, hanging from a nail in the cellar. It contained three savings account books and a safety deposit box key stuffed into bubble wrap, and a small red teddy bear with
escanaba upper peninsula state fair 1992
embazoned on its chest. The accounts held $68,000 as of last month, at least two years' worth of Lamb's state income. Nobody could save that much and buy a house with frontage on one of the Upper Peninsula's best steelhead and salmon streams. Most of the deposits were in cash. One entry for five hundred was monthly, going back two years.