Blue Wolf In Green Fire

by Joseph Heywood

  This time of year, most state-owned rest areas and pull-overs in the U.P. were closed until spring, but this was one of the few left open to service travelers. Before the reign of Sam Bozian, rest areas on both peninsulas had been open year-round. Never mind that snowmobiles had led to a greater influx of tourists to northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula in winter than in summer. Clearcut had slashed everything he could, and services to winter travelers had been among the first to go. Here a small cedar log building housed rest rooms and vending machines. The facility was only a couple of years old, which made Service suspicious. It wouldn’t surprise him if one of Bozian’s relatives owned the company that sold the prefab structures to the state. Service left his truck a hundred yards from the building and walked the rest of the way. It was just after sunrise.

  There was one man in the small lobby and he was bumping the pop machine with a Frisbee-sized hand. He was tall with massive shoulders and long auburn hair showing hints of gray and tied back in a bobtail. A red goatee made it look like he had chugged a mug of blood. He had a gourd-shaped head and a thick neck bulging with muscular cords. His nose trended toward bulbous, and his cheeks showed webs of blue veins just under his ruddy skin. He wore an electric-green T-shirt proclaiming irishmen last longer.

  DNR Detective Grady Service paused to scrutinize what he was seeing. If this was Pidge Carmody, he was not at all what he had expected. Carmody looked nothing like a cop and even less like a top undercover man. Most successful UCs were nondescript people who could blend anywhere. Carmody would stand out in a circus. But Barry Davey of the USF&WS had given Carmody his highest recommendation, and Davey wasn’t one to bestow compliments or respect unless it was hard earned over a long period of time.

  “Anything good in the machine?” Service asked.

  The man in the green shirt turned and squinted with the eyes of the nearsighted. It was a strange first impression to be sure.

  “Just disgustin’ nonalcoholic shite,” the man said in an Irish brogue. “You’d be Service?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Carmody,” the big man said, not extending his hand. “Let’s be done with da fookin’ gettin’-to-know-you games and have us a ramble.”

  Service wasn’t sure what to do. He knew how to develop and run snitches, but working a federal undercover agent was uncharted water. It was difficult to tell Carmody’s age. Fifty, maybe fifty-five, he guessed.

  The man led the way down a groomed path from the rest area onto a rocky beach of Lake Michigan. Service automatically noted that the water level continued to be way down despite a wetter-than-normal summer and autumn. The water had been falling in the Great Lakes for years, but Bozian had announced a plan to pipe water to other states. Leave it to Clearcut to turn a pimple into a boil, Service thought.

  “Davey did a fine job describin’ you. What’s this job you’ve got?”

  “You in a hurry?”

  “Let’s not be fookin’ with each other, Service. We’ve both jobs to do, so let’s get on with it.”

  Service was not prepared for such directness. “How much did Davey tell you?”

  “Shite-all, the usual. There’s a job needin’ doin’. You’d be fillin’ in the blanks.”

  “He didn’t have all the details to share.”

  Carmody’s shaggy left eyebrow arched almost imperceptibly, and Service knew the man was wondering what he had on Davey to get a top federal agent assigned undercover to a state operation. He’d let Carmody stew on that for a while.

  Ordinarily the DNR took undercover personnel from their own ranks, pulling officers from other parts of the state, but this poaching operation at least circumstantially seemed well organized and virtually invisible, which suggested a greater degree of sophistication than normal, and he’d decided he wanted an agent who was unlikely to be inadvertently exposed and compromised. He’d not been entirely candid with Davey in their negotiation around Jason Nurmanski, but now that he had Carmody, he intended to use him to the fullest. Maybe Nurmanski would be relevant to the bigger case, maybe not. Davey had agreed because he’d seen the possibilities of a major bust.

  Service explained the situation. “At the end of last year’s firearm deer season, an Indiana man named Kaylin Joquist was stopped for speeding by Michigan State Police between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. He blew point-two on the Breathalyzer. They had him cold on DUI, but he was not too happy about being stopped and got abrasive. They found ten pounds of wacky weed and three trophy buck heads in his truck. The Troops called us, and one of our District Twelve people responded. The guy refused to talk about anything and got a Chicago lawyer. Every time the case came up, the lawyer got a delay.”

  “Where was his client in the meanwhile?”

  “Cooling it inside the Kent County lockup. Ten pounds of dope and two priors took him out of the bail picture. It turned out that he had two previous felonies, both for distribution, one in Indiana and one in Illinois. He did a year in an Illinois facility.”

  “Did the lad have a go at bail?”

  “Technically, yes, but what his lawyer did was pretty much pro forma. He didn’t even begin to push all the buttons.”

  Carmody nodded solemnly. “Suggesting a symbolic gesture intended to appease outside eyes, and Joquist’s happy enough plopped on his arse amongst the brotherhood of perverts and fudge-packers.”

  “That’s how we read it.”

  Carmody’s bushy eyebrow wiggled again.

  “Joquist was found dead in his cell about a week ago. He’d hanged himself.”

  “And you’d be thinkin’ it’s not a suicide.”

  “Possibly. There’s an investigation, but you know these things don’t break unless somebody spills.”

  “If your boy is in the ground, he can’t be affectin’ a seasonal business above it.”

  Carmody was sharp.

  Service nodded. “We’ve gotten information about a poaching operation specializing in trophy deer heads and bear parts. Our info says they operate throughout the Midwest. You want a trophy, you make a bid, and high bid wins. Earlier this month I busted a young guy with a ten-point out of season. His name’s Jason Nurmanski. He’d stuck an arrow in the bullet hole hoping to pass it off. Like Joquist, he seemed content to stay inside and wasn’t interested in cooperating initially, but last week he changed his tune, dismissed his lawyer and said he wanted to deal. His lawyer was a guy named Tavolacci. He specializes in big-league poachers. We couldn’t figure out why Tavolacci would be interested in Nurmanski, but he was and he didn’t like being fired.”

  “Jailhouse percussionists put a beat on the wire,” Carmody said with a nod. “Nurmanski learned about the suicide.”

  “Not a suicide, he claims. He says the person who hired him to take the deer showed up at the Iron County Jail the day of the suicide and told him that a man in the Kent County facility was going to be taught a lesson that same day. The next morning he heard about the suicide. He hoisted the white flag and asked for a deal.”

  “By his reckoning, it was a hit.”

  “Right, and he was very hinky. We interviewed him and took his statement. He claims he did his shooting for a woman from Wakefield named Kate. He didn’t know her last name and we haven’t been able to identify her, but his story seems to check out. He registered at a hotel with her. We thought it interesting that she drove him an hour south to Ironwood from Wakefield and paid for the room. The next morning she offered the cash-for-horns deal.”

  “And the lad agreed?” Carmody asked.

  “She threw in some enticements,” Service said. “Kate from Wakefield has bright red hair upstairs and down. She’s five-two or five-three and she wants to hire poachers for cash. A woman doing this is unusual.”

  “Tiz a fact,” Carmody said with a grin.

  “Nurmanski didn’t want a lawyer, but then Tavol
acci showed up. We see him a lot. He works for big-time poachers in the west end.”

  “And Nurmanski isn’t of that caliber.”

  “Exactly. He says that Kate of Wakefield hired him to take his case. Here it starts to get complicated. In September a bear guide found a bear near McMillan. The animal had been shot once with a fifty-caliber rifle and only its gallbladder removed. I put out an alert for other COs to be on the lookout for a fifty, and about a week ago I got a call from one of our people in Ironwood. He stopped a man for shooting at a grouse decoy and the old man told him he’d seen a woman shooting a fifty-caliber rifle near the Porcupine Mountains. He identified her as Wealthy Johns.”

  Service stopped for a breath. “Johns works for Skelton Gitter, a taxidermist who owns a gun shop called Horns in Ironwood. She also lives with him. I sent our people to see her, express an interest in the fifty-cal, and see what flopped out. She said it had been owned by Gitter, but he’d sold it to a man in Indiana. Wealthy Johns is five-two or five-three, with short black hair, and she’s a gun expert who hangs out at a bar called the Copperhead Inn in Wakefield.”

  “The place where the lad met the mysterious Kate,” Carmody said.

  “Right, and Johns is a regular at the South Superior Gun Club and said to be an accomplished shooter. Gitter’s been in business nearly thirty years. He’s always been clean when we’ve inspected his taxidermy operation, and BATF has never had a violation on him. In fact, he’s usually first to blow the whistle on competitors who step over the line.”

  “The paragon of the public-spirited citizen. God save us from righteous bastards.”

  “Gitter has a reputation and he is good at his craft. He’s done mounts for all sorts of species and has clients all over the world. He’s won international awards for his work.”

  Carmody made a face. “Cosmetics. An undertaker can’t bring the dead back to life.”

  “The woman Nurmanski described closely resembles Johns except for hair color, so we’ve been quietly taking a closer look at Johns, but there’s nothing there. It’s like she landed in Ironwood fully grown with no history. What we know is that she’s a gun expert and spends a lot of time at the gun club.”

  “Johns is to be the object of my attention then?” Carmody asked.

  “Yes, but if this operation is real and as big as it seems, we need to assume Gitter and Johns are in it together until we determine otherwise. Gitter is one of those types who are always in full control and well connected.”

  “I know the type,” Carmody said.

  “I want you to set up in the Ironwood area and hang out at the Copperhead Inn. Nurmanski met Kate there. They threw back a few drinks and nature took its course. He insists she offered serious cash for big racks and he claims she bragged her clients are not just in Michigan.”

  “You agreed to a deal with Nurmanski?”

  “Your people have moved him to another state. When his time is done, he’s on his own. When you get to Ironwood, buy yourself a new rifle at Horns and ask about a gun club you can join where you can practice. Gitter will probably vouch for you to join South Superior. He does this routinely for customers. If you can buy from Johns, even better, but if you don’t meet her there, you’ll see her at the club.”

  Carmody grinned.

  Service added, “I expect to hear from you at least once a week, and you’re to keep me in the loop every step of the way. We want the whole operation top-down, not just another Nurmanski or Joquist. Davey is covering the cost of the investigation, but you take your directions from me, understood?”

  “Aye,” Carmody said. “Now for my rules, boyo. We meet only when I call for it and never closer than thirty miles from the operational area. I’ll be pickin’ the places and the times and your arse will be there. Capisce?”

  “Works for me,” Service said.

  “There can’t be too many women in those parts like the two you’re talking about, boyo.” Carmody said with a grunt.

  “If Kate doesn’t show at the Copperhead, you’ll find Johns at the South Superior Gun Club. Anything else?”

  “More here than I usually have to start a case,” Carmody said. “If there’s something of substance, I’ll find it,” he added, rubbing his nose and winking.

  As Carmody got into a dented, rusty black Land Rover, Service felt edgy. There was something about the undercover man that didn’t quite sit right, but Barry Davey had backed him and Service needed him. There was no way he could take the risk of slipping an undercover state CO into the case. It was Carmody or back to the drawing board. Time would tell. It was a lot easier to work alone, he reminded himself as he got into his truck and headed toward Brevort.

  In six days Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources law enforcement forces would find their resources stretched beyond limits as they patrolled the forests and farmlands of the state, citing trespassers and violators, nabbing night shooters, finding the lost, rendering aid to heart attack victims, calling ambulances for those who shot themselves or each other, breaking up fights over wounded deer and wily women, nabbing drunk drivers, and tending to vehicular accidents. Close to a million well-armed and often overly lubricated hunters would be afoot and afield for some or all of the two-week season, primed to shoot at just about anything that moved. Sometimes their bullets would even hit what they were aiming for.

  More women hunted now than in past years, but throughout the state, deer season tended to still be largely a male enterprise—if you ignored the fact that while the men went out to their camps to play Dan’l Boone, hunters’ red-suit widows banded together and, looking to even the score, still-hunted hometown bars for out-of-town nimrods while their hubbies and their buds bonded in their deer camps. Women and men on the tavern trail caused a lot of trouble for cops and COs. It was the time of year all conservation officers both looked forward to and dreaded, a time when the North Country plunged into chaos, a time when anything could happen, and often did.

  This year promised to be worse than normal as the pall of September 11 hung over the country. The day before the terrorists attacked, survivalists were seen as right-wing-fringe loonies; now even liberals were trying to buy gas masks and antibiotics to fend off bioterrorism.

  Of potentially more immediate effect, the Michigan courts had the previous summer let stand a new law that required the state to prove why people should not have concealed weapons permits. Under the old system residents had to prove their need and fitness to carry a handgun. The effect of the ruling was to provide a concealed weapon to just about anybody who wanted one. Despite the fact that the governor backed the law, dozens of Republican prosecutors and their deputies had resigned from county gun boards in protest. Because of the change, there would be more handguns in the woods this year. Just what woods cops needed, Service told himself.

  It was Friday and the firearm season for deer would not open until the following Thursday morning, but the highways were already jammed by an armada of vehicles: mini vans, Mercedes and Beamers, rusted-out pickups with dangerously tilting campers, cars and SUVs of every description, all of them streaming north to cross the Straits of Mackinac. The hopeful nimrods would be slugging down tepid coffee, lousy doughnuts, road beers from longneckers, root beer schnapps from pocket flasks, and puffing on homegrown dope and store-bought cheap cigars. They would be of all ages and all occupations and this year, with all the problems and layoffs among Detroit’s auto companies, a lot of them would be headed into the Upper Peninsula for the full two weeks, rather than a few days. Every deer-hunting season took on its own personality and no two were the same. This one would be no different in asserting itself, but Service’s gut told him this one would be memorable for him if for no other reason than he would not be covering the Mosquito.

  He couldn’t wait to see Nantz. Since her posting to Task Force 2001 she had been assigned every weekend to immediate-call status, meaning
she couldn’t leave Lansing.

  Until she telephoned yesterday to confirm that they could meet, he had feared that she would be trapped in Lansing again. He had already decided to drive there if he needed to.

  “Tomorrow at noon, Banger,” she’d said. This had been his nickname during his college hockey days. “At the Brigadoon in Mack City,” she added. “The room’s my treat and you won’t need a change of clothes.”

  “Has this been cleared?”

  “All the boys down here must be thinking only about bagging their bucks. I think they forgot to assign me to my weekend cage.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said quickly.

  “Damn right you will,” she said, laughing with a lightness he had not heard in her voice for a long time.

  They would have this afternoon and the next two days to themselves. It promised to be a sleepless time.

  But before that he had one more item of business to tend to.

  A couple of miles east of Brevort he pulled north onto a long gravel driveway, stopped at a closed gate, got out of his truck, and stared up at a small video camera several feet above him.

  “You in there, SuRo?”

  “No meat eaters may violate these hallowed grounds,” a raspy voice replied. “Got any extra smokes?”

  Service laughed and countered, “Tobacco is grown in fields fertilized with animal offal and harvested by pork-eating rednecks.”

  The voice chuckled. “C’mon in, rockhead.”

  A buzzer sounded and the gate swung open.

  Summer Rose Genova was founder and operator of the Vegan Animal Rescue & Reclamation Sanctuary. Service had known SuRo for nearly eight years. He had happened upon her during an altercation with two hunters who had gut-shot a handsome buck. When they followed the injured animal out of the cedar swamp they found her squatting beside the dead animal, smoking a cigarette. She had shot the animal once through the head to put it out of its misery. The men demanded she surrender their trophy and she refused. One of them leveled a Remington 30.06 at her and she responded by pointing a nickel-plated .380 Walther PPK at him. Service was passing by, saw the pointed weapons, read the situation in an instant, and stopped.