Service Dress Blues (12 page)

“She must have a good lawyer,” Rep said.

“The best wampum can buy, but what sprang her so fast is that I refused to press charges. Cops weren't happy about it, but what could I do? I just flat don't think she did it.”

“The cops apparently disagree.”

“Well, they said they found a clerk at Laacke and Joys on Water Street who thought he remembered selling her the knife. What does that tell you?”

What this told Rep was that inside dope the Brady Street Ski Club had patiently collected for Kuchinski over the past week during off-hand conversations with cop acquaintances in locker rooms and bars was right. Members of Wisconsin's Native American community felt that the tribes were getting excessive attention from the government, especially in areas related to money of uncertain and suspicious provenance. Some feds thought that “elements” in that community were ready to move from occasional civil disobedience to violence in their expressions of displeasure about this. This concern ratcheted up several notches in a very big hurry when Midshipman Lindstrom's mugging suggested a Wisconsin connection to a possible presidential assassination attempt. So far, however, the key individuals mentioned in the FBI's discreet reports had been identified only as FNU LNU—“First Name Unknown Last Name Unknown.”

Kuchinski thought the quick collar after the knife incident meant that someone was ready to fill in one of the FNU LNU blanks with “Laurel Wolf.” Rep agreed. He was more interested in learning things from Carlsen than in sharing information with him, though, so he responded with calculated vagueness.

“It seems like pretty ambitious police work for a ho-hum crime against property.”

“That's one way to put it.” Carlsen said. “A cynic might think the cops showed up with Laurel's picture and gave the clerk a little hint.”

“It wouldn't be the first time that ever happened. What have they got against Laurel?”

“Oh, she goes way back with Wisconsin cops. She's a passionate Native American rights activist. Has more arrests than I have parking tickets. All non-violent protests, though. No weapons or rough stuff. So I don't buy the idea that she was doing dirty work for the casinos.”

“She delivered a picture for them.”

“That was for me.”

“That's what she told me,” Rep said. “But I'm having trouble buying it. You didn't have her take the picture, did you?”

“No, she did that on her own.” Carlsen paused, taking a few seconds to read the skepticism on Rep's face before concluding that he couldn't leave it there. “The casinos give mucho jack to tribal causes that Laurel feels are a lot worthier than blackjack and poker. The way she sees it, that's not charity; it's conscience money that the casinos
owe
all Native Americans. She likes to let Randy and the other bagmen know that she's keeping an eye on them, just in case they have their own agenda.”

“I see,” Rep said. “Thank you. That was very helpful.”

***

About a quarter of the way through the condolence line, the senior of the two cops guarding Lena decided that one deputy trained in armed and unarmed combat and equipped with a nine-millimeter pistol and a can of Mace was probably equal to the task of preventing a seventy-two year old woman from escaping. He granted himself permission to leave the irksome detail in the hands of his subordinate and wandered out front for some air.

This didn't come as a surprise to Kuchinski, who was already outside, gulping fresh air and watching the pale winter sun touch the western horizon. The cop offered a wary response to Kuchinski's jovial greeting.

“Say,” Kuchinski said then, as if they were talking about the Packers' upcoming draft, “do you think you could get a message to the DA for me?”

“You wanna get a message to the DA, give him a call.”

“I've been doing that, but he's far too important a man to talk to the likes of me. Also, he seems to have other things on his mind. Thing is, though, it's kind of important. See, he's had my client facing a felony charge for over two months now without doing anything about it, and now he's got her rooming with that bunch of stoners and barflies that pass for criminals in Sylvanus County. If I don't hear from him before noon tomorrow, I'm going to have to file a motion.”

“To get her out on bail?” the cop asked, guffawing. “Good luck with that, counsel. She
jumped bail
.”

“Oh, I won't be moving for bail. I'll be wanting to set a trial date and do it in a big damn hurry. Fish or cut bait kind of thing. The DA thinks he has a right to keep her in jail and I think she has a right to a speedy trial. I kinda like my side of that one.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“Yep, that's supposed to be a threat. Now, I can be a reasonable man. If the DA isn't sure what he wants to try her for, I can understand that. Maybe wants to polish off the rough edges on his order of proof, dot an i or cross a t here and there—well, sure, no need to get all Harvard Law School about this constitutional rights stuff. But if I'm gonna back off my speedy trial motion I'll need him to tell the judge he agrees with me about letting her out on bail. Pass the word, willya?”

The cop gave Kuchinski a long, less than friendly look.

“I'll think about it,” he said.

“I'd appreciate that.”

The last of the mourners had almost reached Lena when Kuchinski strode back into the funeral parlor's visitation room. He took a quick, mildly concerned look at his watch. He had expected the cop to tell him to go to hell. “I'll think about it” meant that he'd taken Kuchinski's threat seriously, which suddenly introduced a whole new level of urgency into the afternoon.

Gephardt was job-one. He spotted her and began to move in her direction, but then he saw Soederstrom approaching the podium and realized that something liturgical was in the offing. With a resigned shrug he found a folding chair in the back row and waited patiently for Soederstrom to read
Death Be Not Proud
and excerpts from
An Essay on Dramatic Poesy
, sandwiched around some of the more presentable Ole anecdotes he'd been able to find.

Soederstrom did this quite smoothly, like a guy who'd been there before and knew his business. When he wrapped things up with, “Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee,” someone actually said, “Amen.”

Well done, Rev
, Kuchinski thought.

He stood up while thinking this, looking anxiously for Gephardt and retreating toward the door to intercept her in case she had her heart set on a quick exit. As the bulk of the attendees began to file out, however, he spotted Gephardt in front, standing next to the peace tree. Carlsen, equipped with a camera, was standing about six feet from her. As Kuchinski made his way toward them, Gephardt chose a prayer from the base of the tree and spiked it on one of the iron branches. Carlsen snapped half-a-dozen shots. Twelve feet away, both Lena and the cops with her looked up in surprise at the electronic flashes.

“ 'Afternoon,” Kuchinski said. “Should be a good shot. Like they say, I guess there is no off-position on the genius switch.”

“I like the symbolism,” Gephardt said casually. “Would you like me to put a peace prayer on for you?”

“Depends. Is there one there that says something like, ‘Lord, please help the US and allied forces bring eternal peace as soon as possible to the terrorists murdering innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan?'”

Gephardt snapped her head toward her left shoulder and Carlsen scooted away. When she looked back at Kuchinski, he couldn't tell whether he read anger or admiration in her flinty blue eyes.

“You are a piece of work, aren't you?” she said, not without appreciation.

“So I've heard. That shiner of yours is healing up nicely. No sunglasses and yet I wouldn't even have noticed it under the makeup if I hadn't known it was there.”

“I think we're done here.”

“That's up to you,” he continued. “I've heard one story about how you got that boo-boo. I'd like to hear yours.”

“And I'd like an end to world hunger. But that isn't going to happen either.”

“It's no big secret how you try a murder case for the defense,” Kuchinski said thoughtfully. “You offer the jury as many alternative suspects as possible—as many people as you can think of who had motive and opportunity and did something that maybe doesn't pass the smell test. I'm no Karl Rove, but it seems to me that speculation like that in a highly publicized trial could have an impact on those tracking polls.”

“Are you seriously talking about including me in your parade of imaginary suspects?”

“Getting your clock cleaned by a man is surely motive enough for someone who cares as much as you do about battered women.”

“
Ole
?” Gephardt demanded in a harsh whisper. “Someone told you that
Ole
hit me?”

That wasn't what Kuchinski had said, but he felt that this wasn't the time for excessive clarity.

“Like I said,” he shrugged, “I'd like to hear your version.”

No ambiguity clouded the look Gephardt gave Kuchinski now. It convinced him that if she were elected attorney general it would be a long time before he got another traffic ticket fixed. But the rational circuits in her brain hummed with brisk and monotonous efficiency, and when she spoke again it wasn't her emotional reactions that did the talking.

“Ole didn't hit me,” she said with resigned disgust. “Lena did.”

“And not in a barroom fight over a sports bet, I'm guessing.”

Gephardt sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Ole had set up a meeting for me with a potential major donor—the kind who makes you think about skipping public financing. No, I'm not going to tell you who it is. I was flying back from D.C. that morning. The plane was supposed to land at ten o'clock-something but there were delays and it didn't get in until past noon. It was Midwest Airlines. You know the date and you can check. I'd had to get up very early, I'd spent most of the day hassling with airport stuff and plane stuff, and when I finally met Ole at the Pfister Hotel I was frazzled and looked like hell. There wasn't time for me to go home to River Hills and change. He gave me the key to his room and told me to go up, take a hot bath, and freshen up.”

“So you did.”

“So I did. Lena popped in at what you might call the worst possible moment. She found me in her husband's hotel room, stark naked and trying to make myself look presentable.”

“One of those ‘it's not what you think' kind of things.”

“Right, like some lame screwball comedy from the 'thirties.” Gephardt's throat rattled with a brief, bitter laugh. “Lena punched my lights out and screamed a few epithets that in a pre-feminist age would have been called unladylike. Then she left, looking like she was after some more blood. You have a very violent client on your hands.”

“That doesn't exactly set a precedent with me,” Kuchinski said. “Thanks for your help.”

He realized that he was moving with unseemly haste as he hustled away, but he had to catch up with Rep and Melissa before they left the parking lot. The Gephardt interview had taken longer than he'd expected, and only a brisk and incongruous trot through the funeral parlor's front door and down the sidewalk got him to their Taurus just as they were climbing in.

“Got a big favor to ask,” he panted.

“Shoot,” Rep said, pausing as he was about to duck into the passenger seat.

“I need to be at the mausoleum with Lena when they deposit Ole's ashes, but I turned over a rock while I was chatting with one of the county mounties. I'd like you to drive my Escalade to Loki and park it outside the Lindstrom house while I hitch a ride with Melissa.”

“Okay, I guess. But why?”

“I think I left the deputy with the idea that Lena might be loose on bail again as early as tomorrow morning. He and his chums might decide to take one last look around the Lindstrom estate before she gets back. Seeing my car there might remind them to play it by the book.”

“I love Rep to pieces,” Melissa said, “but it's getting dark and one of his few faults is that he's navigationally challenged.”

“The Escalade has a world class GPS.”

Rep knew that he should have thought things over before saying yes, but he didn't. Back in the sixth or seventh grade, when he'd first gotten the idea that he wanted to be a lawyer, clicking through cases in
LEXIS
on-line or plugging reservation-of-rights clauses into trademark licenses wasn't what he'd had in mind. This kind of hustling, bluffing, street-law stuff was. He'd gotten bravely over all that intellectually, but boyhood fantasies die hard. So after securing Melissa's resigned nod—a nod that meant not approval but acquiescence—he agreed. Kuchinski tossed him the keys and he scurried with unbecoming eagerness to the Escalade's parking spot, two spaces away.

After all
, he figured,
how complicated can it be?

Chapter 15

“Turn left in…one mile.”

Rep drew immediate comfort from the digitized female voice, even though it managed to make “mile” into a two-syllable word: “my-ull.” The voice spoke with quiet confidence, its tone authoritative but not domineering, like a patient elementary school teacher trying to help a dull student. Driving through the dark along the unlit and unfamiliar bleakness of Sylvanus County Highway M, Rep had started to fear that he had somehow overshot Loki—it was, after all, easy to miss—and was now moving steadily
away
from his destination toward the trackless (to him) reaches of northern Wisconsin. He told himself that if he started seeing Royal Canadian Mounted Police he'd turn around for sure.

But the voice and its left-turn warning reassured him. He wasn't lost after all. Yet.

He decided to roll down his window so that he'd have a better chance of spotting Veblen Street when he passed it. The intersection of Veblen and County M pretty much defined downtown Loki, and he remembered that Ole had walked home from there after smacking Lena at the Northwest Ordinance Tavern. It was the last landmark he had before Ole and Lena's street—or now, he guessed, just Lena's.

Unfamiliar with the Escalade's door-mounted controls and unwilling to take his eyes off the highway where the snow had been packed down rather than plowed, he fumbled blindly until he hit something that produced a
clunk
. Whatever it did, it didn't roll down the window.

“Relatch the…door,” the voice said.

He fumbled again. The window rolled down just in time for him to spot “
VEBLEN STREET
” in white on green at the top of a street post illuminated by the glowing Miller Genuine Draft sign on the Northwest Ordinance Tavern.

“Relatch the…door.”

“Okay,” Rep muttered distractedly.

Before he could try to comply, he heard a siren somewhere behind him. He saw nothing in the rear-view mirror and 34 on the digital dashboard speedometer, which meant that he was less than five miles over the limit. So what was the siren all about? Cops carrying out a discreet and unofficial search wouldn't drive up with their sirens blaring. Would they?

“Turn left in…one…half…mile.”

Okay, time to start paying attention
.

He hunched forward in his seat and squinted through the windshield. He heard the siren again, still faint but nearer. This time he saw red and blue lights flashing when he checked his mirror, but they were mounted much too high for a patrol car and they were more than half-a-mile away.

“Turn left in…one…quarter…mile.”

Headlights on bright, Rep peered into the blackness in search of the street where he was to turn. He thought he saw it, nothing more than a change in the shadow pattern on the snow—but that was enough for him.

“Turn left…now. Destination on your…right in one…hundred yards.”

He flipped his turn-signal on and eased the steering wheel to his left, wary of the icy surface but anxious to complete the turn before the flashing lights got too close.

About thirty degrees into the turn he slammed on his brakes. His headlights picked up a small figure in dark clothes gliding skillfully on skis across the Lindstrom property and then the property of the house next door to it. No elegant
schusses,
for there was little slope to the land. This was cross-country skiing, arms working the poles with fiercely labored intensity and legs thrusting hard and fast.

That in itself wasn't bad, necessarily, he thought. Just odd. But two men appeared out of the shadows around the Lindstrom home. They were chasing the skier, and one of them had drawn a pistol. That was bad. Really, really bad.

The two men were at least twenty yards behind the skier when Rep first saw them, and they were losing ground every second as they ran through the deep snow the skier was skimming over. An accomplished cross-country skier can out-distance a horse in deep snow, much less a human being. As the skier scooted from the last front yard on the block onto the hard-tamped, tire-shredded snow on the street, Rep figured the pursuers didn't have a chance.

On the other hand, Rep reflected, their bullets might. Because the skier now seemed to be headed almost directly at him, Rep found this thought unsettling. Time to close the window and get flat.

He hit the door control panel again. He heard a lighter
thunk
and then, instead of the window going up he saw the door swinging open.

“Close…the…door.”

“Not now,” Rep said, as the skier suddenly seemed to fill his field of vision.

“
SON-OF-A-
BITCH!
” the skier yelled in a mask-filtered voice that was unmistakably female.

Rep understood her sentiment, for the door he had inadvertently opened was swinging directly into her path. She swerved nimbly, raising her left leg high, leaning far to her right, and cutting through the snow on the far edge of her right ski. The bottom of the left ski scraped the door's edge, but she recovered her balance and quickly got both skis back on the snow.

In an instant she had slipped behind the Escalade and was off the highway and snowplowing aggressively up the embankment that led to open ground on its far side. She moved sideways up the slight hill, going almost parallel to the highway but sidestepping with a forward push, alternately lifting one ski and thrusting with the other in almost perfect rhythm, so that she was moving forward and up at the same time. The pursuers were now within ten yards of Rep but by the time they reached him the skier was up the hill and skiing forward again at a steady, confident rate across the vast expanse of open ground that lay beyond. By the time the two cops had run past Rep the skier's lead was back to twenty yards or so and darkness was closing behind her.

Against the ululations of the ever approaching siren, Rep heard the dull thuds of running steps as one of the pursuers came back to him. He knew from a dozen action-adventure movies what was coming next:
Sir, police officer! I am commandeering your vehicle!

“Need your truck, bub,” the guy said instead, flashing a badge.

Hollywood gets it wrong again
, Rep thought sourly as—with considerable physical encouragement from the cop—he exited the Escalade. He had taken off his overcoat and hat before starting the trip so that he wouldn't get overheated in the SUV, and he deeply regretted them now.

“Close…the…door.”

“You tryin' to be smart with me, bub?” the cop demanded as he vaulted behind the wheel.

There's a snappy comeback for that question but Rep didn't use it. The guy was doing his job, his job was a lot harder than Rep's, and he didn't deserve aggravation from people whose idea of occupational hardship was the espresso machine going on the blink. Besides, the siren's wail would have drowned out any impudent riposte.

The cop slammed the door, smashed the Escalade impatiently back into gear, and began turning in an ungainly oval to circle back toward the embankment. He apparently hoped to pursue the skier cross-country by muscling the SUV up the embankment and into the countryside abutting Highway M.

This strategy was plausible enough, but it reckoned without the fire engine, which was what the flashing lights belonged to and which was now closing in.

“Look out for the truck!” Rep yelled as he scurried for the far side of the highway.

The Escalade's brakes squealed as the cop frantically tried to turn away from the suddenly looming monster. With a fog-horn reinforcing its klaxon, the pumper truck swerved clumsily toward the center of the highway. The Escalade nosed over the edge of the highway and into the bottom of the embankment. Rep heard a loud pop inside the SUV and saw what looked like a quick, white balloon burst. Slipping repeatedly on the snow but falling only once, he hurried to the Escalade and opened the driver's side door. The cop was shaking his head like a flanker who'd just gotten his bell rung by a cornerback. Blood streamed profusely from his nose.

“Recalculating…Make a…legal U-turn as soon as…possible.”

“Where are we supposed to be going?” an exasperated voice yelled from the fire truck.

“Where's the fire?” Rep demanded of the guy in the Escalade, realizing with a guilty shiver that he had
always
wanted to ask a cop that question.

“Back of the house,” the cop said groggily. “This side.”

Club room. Had to be.

“How badly are you hurt?”

“Nothing broken, I guess.” The cop's voice was dull and detached.

Rep hustled over to the fire engine and pulled himself up on the running board.

“There's a police officer in that SUV. The airbag deployed. He needs help.”

Without hesitation, one of the firemen swung out of a club cab behind the front seat with a first aid kit in hand and ran toward the Escalade. Rep pointed at the Lindstrom home around the corner and up the street.

“There!” he yelled. “Go up the driveway, and I'll show you from there!”

The siren cranked up again, the lights seemed to flash faster, and the pumper lurched forward and turned onto the intersecting street. Rep hung on as the wind blew his hair straight back and billowed his suit coat. When he started for Loki half-an-hour ago he had been acting out a twelve-year old's fantasy of a street-smart Perry Mason. Now his fantasy life had regressed to six: he was playing fireman.

“As far back as you can go!” he yelled as the pumper careened onto the Lindstrom driveway.

The truck chugged to the end of the driveway, just beyond the turn-in to the garage, which sat at a right angle to the back of the house.

“This way!”

He jumped off and began running around the garage toward the club room on the far side of the house's back. He was wearing a wool Hickey Freeman suit and Allen Edmonds Park Avenue oxfords. Neither was designed for running through seven inches of snow. He floundered as if he were trying to run in clown feet. The snow seemed to cut his shins like an icy knife. By the time he reached the deck in back of the club room one of the firemen, in full gear and lugging a large fire extinguisher on his back, had passed him.

Rep pointed through the patio doors, now unblocked by either curtains or flags, at a glowing heap in the middle of the club room floor. The mound was over a foot high, with the top layer, at least, consisting of American flags unfurled and laid in overlapping layers, suggesting a grotesque parody of a patriotic patchwork quilt. Flames leapt from it. They flickered as well on the surrounding carpet, where they went out and then flared again.

The fireman grabbed Rep's right arm in a grip that reminded Rep of a blood pressure cuff at systolic peak. He pulled Rep backwards, away from the deck.

“Stay right here!” he barked. “Stay
away
from the glass!”

Rep nodded. The firefighter clumped forward onto the deck and through the partially opened patio door into the club room. Then he closed the door to cut off the draft of winter air fanning the flames—in the process, of course, blocking his own retreat from the crackling blue and yellow flames consuming the middle of the room. Rep caught his breath at courage like that, displayed unthinkingly, in this casual, day-at-the-office manner.

The fireman swung the battered black fire extinguisher around, pointed its cone at the flaming mound, and began spraying something that looked cold and white at it. The flames retreated without disappearing. Gray-black smoke that had been gathering near the ceiling now seemed to move menacingly downward.

A second fireman came running up to Rep, dragging a heavy fire hose behind him. Body tensing, he looked into the club room for three or four seconds. He apparently saw something that Rep didn't. When he spoke his voice had a
this-is-serious
tone to it.

“We're a man short because our number two hose-jockey is helping Deputy Hairston,” he said. “Do you think you can hold a hose?”

“I can try.”

“Try real hard. If you let go, you're the one who's gonna have to inform my next of kin.”

The fireman stepped forward onto the deck. Rep grabbed a healthy section of the fire hose, full and heavy but still static. He tried to imitate the grip the fireman had on his section, wrapping his right arm around the thing until he had buried it in his armpit against his body, with the fingernails of both hands digging into the hose's fabric cover.

The fireman banged the hose's long brass nozzle on the glass in the patio door. His colleague inside the club room turned around. The fireman on the deck made an emphatic
get-out!
motion with his right hand. He pointed to where flames had leapt from the mound and were dancing hungrily up the east wall.

The fireman inside nodded, crouched, and plunged through the smoke toward the club room's inside door.

“Get ready, now,” the guy on the deck yelled at Rep. “Don't panic when it flares.”

With conscious finesse, almost gently, he used the nozzle to nudge the patio door open, creating an aperture barely wide enough to let the nozzle itself through. Even that minimal width sucked in enough air to produce a brilliant burst of upsurging flame that seemed for an instant to fill the room. Rep started to jump back on pure reflex, but then tightened his grip on the hose and managed to hold his ground.

“Okay, here it comes!” the fireman on the deck called. “Hang onto that hose like it's your—”

“That's okay!” Rep yelled. “I'll make up my own simile!”

With an emphatic twist the fireman turned an L-shaped valve key mounted on the back of the nozzle. The hose came alive. Writhing like a pain-crazed python it slammed Rep's armpit and then his ribs and then his forearm, all in less than two seconds. His palms burned as if he'd scalded them. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt his face contort in pain and heard something simultaneously inarticulate and unambiguous escape from his mouth. But he didn't let go of the hose.