Ice Hunter (4 page)

Service thought about eating but didn't feel like cooking. Court tomorrow. He would need sleep to cope with that bullshit.

As soon as he settled onto his sleeping pad, the phone rang.

“Service.”

“You're not out stomping around the boonies?”

It was Kira Lehto. “I've got court tomorrow.”

“You sound beat.”

“No more than usual.”

“Did you lose my phone number?”

“You know how it is.” She ought to. She was a well-known and highly respected veterinarian with a practice she called an ark—meaning she took on whatever came her way, rarely asking if people could pay before she took care of an animal. Just about every conservation officer and ranger in the central and western Upper Peninsula called her when they needed help. They had dated for the better part of a year, but many of their nights together had been interrupted by emergency calls, either for her or for him. The last couple of months they had begun meeting during the day when they could both break away from duty for a couple of hours.

“I'm sorry.”

“No you're not,” she said, her tone a well-delivered jab. So far, she seemed to understand and accept him, showing no interest in changing him, which made her unique. So far. “Will court take all day?”

“Could be. A violet I plucked last September. From Detroit. He's bringing his own asshole lawyer up to fight it.” Violet was the term Service used for violators.

“Iffy?”

“You never know. Tree called. He's driving up the day after tomorrow. His mother-in-law is invading.”

She laughed her hearty laugh. “Want to bring him over for dinner?”

“I don't know what time he'll get in.”

“Okay, see you guys Thursday. I miss you, Grady.”

“I miss you too.”

“We ought to think about a vacation and take a couple of weeks, you know, go somewhere real.”

“And leave all this good stuff to the bad guys?”

“You've got a job, Service. I'm trying to give you a life.”

“That's a big challenge,” he said.

“I'm up to it. Thursday night, then?”

“We'll be there.”

“Good luck in court.”

“Thanks.” He suddenly felt guilty and lonely. “You want me to drive over tonight?”

“I think we should just wait,” she said. “Celibacy makes the heart grow fonder. Besides, you have to face a bad guy in court.”

He grunted. “Okay, Thursday night. Tree can spring for the wine.”

“Be safe, Grady.”

Safe? Did that term ever apply to this job? Had he ever had a job that was safe?

On the Freedom Bird from Da Nang to Seattle, Treebone and he had ridden in silence nearly halfway across the Pacific before Tree mumbled, “I think we're gonna survive, man.”

“If the plane doesn't crash.”

“You're a sick motherfucker.”

His friend hadn't been wrong. You had to be a little sick to deal with the kinds of people they both dealt with now. If you weren't twisted when you started, you got that way over time.

After hanging up, Service walked onto his porch. It overlooked Slippery Creek. Its clay bottom and loonshit edges hosted a nice population of robust brown trout that didn't grow long, but got fat and thick. The DNR had planted hatchery stock many years before, and they had taken hold; now the strain was nearly native and reproducing on its own. He hated the rubber fish that the state's stew ponds produced for public waters, but the state was in the business of managing unnaturally high game and fish stocks for the benefit of the people. Sometimes the artificiality of the whole endeavor depressed him, but there were times when things seemed wild enough that he allowed himself to be pleased. The fish in Slippery Creek had gotten lucky and found a niche because few people knew they were there—and even those who did were mostly not interested in the considerable physical effort necessary to work the water. You needed to be an acrobat to wade a clay bottom. Or a fool.

From the berm that bordered the stream he could hear the tree frogs trilling. Males calling frantically for females, advertising their availability. He thought about calling Kira back, but went inside and settled onto his pallet. He had court tomorrow and this was one sleezeball he wanted to see put away.

6

Service rarely had trouble sleeping, but he had not slept well last night. He could not get the man in the Mosquito Tract out of his mind and decided that he would have to keep a closer watch in the future. Most work you did because it came with a paycheck. But there were some things you would do for nothing, and clearly the Mosquito fit this category. His old man had died protecting the Tract and he was damn well not going to let it slip away on his watch.

The courthouse in Marquette was made of plum-red sandstone hauled over from the quarry in Jacobsville in the last century. The now-defunct quarry was at the far southern tip of the Keweenaw Peninisula, maybe the most isolated spot in the state. An annex had been built onto the old building and looked like square fungus. Things used to be made to last. Now buildings seemed to be built on the assumption that they might stand only twenty or thirty years. Build it, use it, tear it down, build another. This throwaway mentality seemed to carry over to too many facets of life. It made more sense to build for keeps. It used fewer resources and gave a solidity to things that modern life often lacked. He knew he was stubbornly old fashioned in some ways. Kira called him a reactionary.

The district court in the annex handled misdemeanors, and this was where most COs did their court duties. But this case was a felony and being tried in the circuit court in the old building. The venue pleased him.

The charges also included a federal ding for use of a silencer, but this case was being tried in the state circuit court first. They had enough to put the defendant away without the silencer count; if they could get him on the other charges at the state level, the feds would jump in next to try to bend the man for information about where he had gotten the device. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms rarely passed a chance to follow up on such opportunities. The DNR and other state agencies almost always cooperated.

The judge was Onty Peltinen, a forty-year-old University of Michigan freak who drove a maize-and-blue conversion van and hung four gigantic yellow-block M flags off his front porch on game days. The judge always wore a blue suit, a yellow shirt, and a yellow-and-blue striped tie. If not for trout, Peltinen would no doubt be riding herd over a court nearer to Ann Arbor. As it was, he fancied himself the new John Voelker, the judge from Ishpeming who had written under the pen name of Robert Traver. Peltinen fished for brook trout in his free time and wrote exaggerated accounts of his self-absorbed exploits for obscure trouting journals. He was a short man with razor-cut pale brown hair and a handlebar mustache that sometimes seemed red. No doubt Peltinen liked presiding in the same courtroom where parts of Voelker's
Anatomy of a Murder
had been filmed.

Service had no idea what sort of a judge Peltinen was technically, but he had shown good sense in his rulings and appeared to be an unabashed friend of natural resources and COs. Probably because Service and other COs told the judge about great places to find trout. There were precious few like Peltinen nowadays and whatever his peculiarities and proclivities, they could be forgiven. Especially in the U.P. where everybody tended to skate in the more extreme bands of the eccentricity spectrum.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joe Doolin met Service outside the courthouse. They both lit cigarettes.

“Fuckin' pain in the ass,” Doolin said, “this no-smoking shit. Someday they'll pass laws so's a body can't even smoke in the bloody bush. Mark my words.”

“They'll have to catch me,” Service said.

Doolin looked at him and grinned. “I expect that might be a problem for the no-smoking cops.”

The deputy prosecutor was sixty-seven, of average height, with a crooked nose and missing the lobe of his left ear. Nobody asked how the ear had been injured, and Doolin never volunteered. He had grown up in Ishpeming, been a trouting pal of John Voelker's, gone to school in Illinois, practiced law with a big firm in Chicago, gotten fed up with cities, and returned home to Marquette. In recent years Service had noticed more and more big-timers suddenly deep-sixing their careers and coming home or relocating to out-of-the-way places where the pace of life was slower. Doolin called the trend downshifting, and Service thought that was about as good a description as any. Sometimes he wished he could downshift, but what would be down from where he was, a hermit in Alaska?

“You ready for this doozy?” Doolin asked.

“Let's press on,” Service said, flicking his cigarette away and opening the door for the prosecutor.

There were the usual preliminaries before Service was sworn in for the state and took his place in the witness chair. It was an expansive room with a stained-glass cupola overhead and balconies with glass-fronted bookcases filled with law books bound in red and gray. The carpet was red with green squiggles that looked to Service like snowflakes. The walls were gray with recessed white plaster alcoves and small columns with gaudy gold leaf. The old court's nearly black hardwood paneling and heavy, ornately carved railings made him think of all the people who had sat in the seats for more than a century, following essentially the same process as today. Things were different now, but the law still had force, and this comforted him. In some ways the cavernous room looked like the inside of a cathedral, but the justice sought here was for this life, not the next.

His old man had sat here many times, doing the same job.

“Good morning, Officer Service,” Doolin opened.

Judge Peltinen sat behind a raised black wood desk. There was an American flag nearby and seven white globes on posts on the front corners of the desk. He looked small behind the official barrier.

The conservation officer nodded.

“You were the arresting officer in the case of
State versus Schembekeler
?
”

“I was.”

“Excuse me,” Judge Peltinen said, interrupting with a hopeful look on his face. “Is the defendant any relation to the legendary Glenn ‘Bo' Schembechler?”

Schembechler had been U of M's football coach for many years and was one of Peltinen's personal heroes.

“No, Your Honor,” Doolin said, answering quickly before the defense could jump in. “Different families, no connection, even the spelling is different.” Leaning toward Service he whispered, “I knew that was coming.”

“Just wondering,” the judge said wistfully. “Okay, Joe. Sorry to butt in. Let's move on. I just had to ask.”

“Understood, Your Honor. Go Blue.”

“Go Blue,” Peltinen said brightly.

Doolin turned back to Service and rolled his eyes so that only the conservation officer could see.

“How long have you been a conservation officer?” he asked.

“Twenty years.”

“Before that?”

“I had two years in the Michigan State Police and three years in the U.S. Marine Corps after college.”

“During your police career, how many tickets have you written?”

“I don't know.” Why had Doolin asked that?

“Thousands?”

“Objection,” the defense attorney said. “Leading the witness and this line of questioning has no point.” The attorney was from downstate, some subspecies of Detroiter. He wore a shiny black suit with gold flecks, a scarlet tie, and gold-rimmed pilot's glasses. His name was Hardin Bois.

“Mister Bois,” Judge Peltinen said, “you're new in my court and to this area and I need to tell you up front that up here we do things a little differently. If you have good cause for objection, by all means raise it. Otherwise, shut your trap. This ain't gonna be on CNN tonight. We assume you know your stuff or you wouldn't be here, so do your client a favor and jump in when it makes good legal sense. We trout fishermen don't like to waste time on dead water. Am I clear?”

“Very clear. Thank you, Your Honor.” The attorney's face reddened.

“You've written thousands of citations?” Doolin repeated, turning back to Service.

“Probably.”

“You have a lot of experience with violators. Am I correct?”

“Yes, that's correct.”

“How many of your cases have come to trial?”

“This makes about twenty.”

“Only twenty in twenty years?”

“Yes.”

“Is that normal for officers in your position?”

“No. Most are in court more often.” Most COs who wrote a couple of hundred tickets in a year could expect six to eight of their busts to go to court. The fact was that no CO spent much time in court unless there was a complex case. His record was better than other CO's, but only marginally. Doolin would not bring this out.

“I would say that this attests to your thoroughness at your job.”

“Objection,” the defense attorney said.

“Sustained,” Peltinen said. “Dammit, Joe, we all know Grady and
we all know he's a fine officer. Can we just keep this thing moving?” The judge moved his hand like he was turning the crank to a reel.

“Yes, Judge.”

Service guessed that Peltinen had brook trout on his mind.

“Officer Service, please tell the court what happened on September 29 of last year.”

“It was six weeks before the gun season for deer and two days before bow season and I was on patrol. Several times over the summer I had seen a large buck with a pretty fair rack in fields along the edge of the Mosquito Tract. This was up near the headwaters of the river. In our training, and this gets reinforced by experience on the job, we learn that when we see a trophy animal we should assume it will become a target for poachers or illegal takers. It's like following the money in other criminal matters. Our currency is wildlife. Having seen this animal several times, I decided to patrol the area regularly, alternating the times when I was there.”

“To look for poaching activities?” Doolin asked.

“My primary intent was to let my presence deter illegal activity.”

“Does deterrence work?”

“It's a central precept of law enforcement.”

“Continue, please.”

“It was 7
p.m.
, not long until dark. I saw the animal in the same area where he usually was, at the edge of a field, barely out of the woods. Suddenly, I saw the animal's hindquarters flatten. Then the buck got up, made a twisting jump to the right, and jumped down into the swamp. Deer don't behave this way unless they've been startled, frightened, or hurt.”

“Are you an expert on white-tailed deer behavior, Officer Service?”

“I'm not a biologist, but COs accumulate a lot of experience observing animal behavior, and our experience makes us knowledgeable.”

“You're also a tracker, correct? In fact, you are a nationally known tracker who is sometimes asked by other state and also federal agencies to lead various searches.”

“Yes, I can track.”

“In fact, you are a member of a Native American group called the Shadow Wolves. These are trackers who have proven themselves in their profession, and you are the only Caucasian who has ever been inducted by the group. Is this correct?”

“They don't exactly induct you.”

The Shadow Wolves had been created by Ted Owlfeather, a Cherokee who worked for the Texas Rangers. Owlfeather brought together six Native American trackers, called a press conference, and proclaimed them the best in America.

A few years later Service was on his way home from spending New Year's with Treebone and his family in Detroit. Despite a heavy snowstorm, he kept to back roads. About a mile north of Caffee, at the entrance to Fiborn Road, he found an older-model green Torino station wagon with its nose stuck in a snowbank forty yards off M-40. Three doors were standing open, and the interior was piled with blowing snow. He brushed off snow to find a Kansas license plate. He called in the number and was informed that the vehicle had been stolen from Liberal, Kansas, on New Year's Eve.

Service drove into Caffee and talked to the man who ran a wrecker service. He was unaware of the Torino and checked around. Nobody knew anything. The Mackinac County Sheriff's Department had not gotten a call about a car in trouble, and Service decided to investigate. Where were the people who had been in the vehicle?

Long-abandoned Fiborn Quarry was a mile or so north up the narrow lane from the Torino's resting place, the quarry a source of limestone in the nineteenth century. Service took his snowshoes and emergency pack and started down the lane, but it was drifted over; other than a deer trail or two crossing over, there was no sign anyone had been down it. If the people in the car had not headed toward the village of Caffee, they would have moved into the pines, where the snow wouldn't pile up so fast. Why they would head this way escaped him, but after a few minutes he cut a trail in the pines, called in his location with his hand-held radio and continued following three sets of prints. The trail petered out in drifted-over open areas, but each time it disappeared he rediscovered it farther north in heavier cover where there was a protective canopy and easier footing.