Ice Hunter

by Joseph Heywood

  The shower curtain snapped open. Nantz held out a cup of coffee, examining him with her eyes, looking skeptical. “Hurry it up. We’ll get your truck after the funeral. At your speed this morning we’ll be late as it is.”

  “Nag.”

  She snapped the shower curtain shut.

  When he stepped out, she was holding a towel and a suit on a hanger. His only suit, basic black and at least a decade old.

  “Get my uniform,” he said. “I’m a pallbearer.”

  “With that shoulder?”

  “I have two,” he said. “Uniform. Please.”

  She toweled him dry and helped him dress. She was gentle and all business.

  Nantz was exasperated when he insisted she stop at the Marquette County Jail. Limpy Allerdyce looked under the weather and, for once, he could sympathize. He showed Limpy the photograph Nantz had taken.

  “Who’s that?” Allerdyce asked.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Limpy.”

  The prisoner looked away. “I want out of here.”

  “You know the rules. Why did you point me to the Tract?”

  “You’re the fish cop. Figure it out.”

  “This asshole took a shot at me.” Service slapped the photo against the edge of the table.

  Allerdyce still didn’t look at him. “Guys who shoot at people don’t usually miss.”

  There was no amplification of the statement. Meaning? A warning shot? He had already considered that possibility and dismissed it. What was Limpy’s point?

  “I don’t back off,” Service said.

  “Big fucking secret. I got me a lawyer. He says you can’t hold me like this.”

  “There’s a backlog, Limpy. The wheels of justice turn slowly.”

  Actually, he was surprised that all Doolin had done was arraign Limpy.

  “Trey Kerr,” Limpy said. “But you didn’t hear that name from me.”

  “Where do I look?”

  “I gotta do everything for you?”

  Service fought back tears at the cemetery and felt a terrible sadness enveloping him. He took a handle of the casket and gutted it out. His right shoulder still hurt like hell. McKower watched him like a hawk.

  A flag was folded, presented to the widow by Captain Ware Grant, the U.P. field boss. Volleys of shots were fired by an honor guard. “Taps” moaned. The whole thing left him sapped and feeling exhausted.

  Kira was there, smiling halfheartedly in his direction. She mouthed, “I really am sorry,” but made no attempt to approach him. Was she feeling guilty or relieved?

  He saw Doolin and got him aside. “What’s with Limpy?” Service asked.

  “We’re hanging on to him, which is what you wanted.” Doolin lit a cigarette.

  “He says he has a lawyer.”

  “So what? He’s a parolee and he broke the rules. We have enough on Allerdyce to hold him. His lawyer can make legal music, but it won’t come to anything. Limpy’s charged. That gives us a year to work with.”

  “Can you check a name for me?”

  “No problem.”

  “Trey Kerr.” Service spelled it a couple of ways.

  Doolin made a note. “Is this from Limpy?”

  “A little bird.”

  Doolin grinned. “Fuckin’ stoolie bird, I’ll betcha.”

  Service hugged Jean and Lanny Harris, nodded to Rollie’s father, chatted idly with some of his brothers and sisters, others. Family, Nantz had said, and she was right. It was a sad family, trying like hell to be brave.

  Sergeant Charlie Parker looked haggard but sidled up to Service as if they were now asshole buddies. McKower caught this and cocked an eyebrow.

  Service shrugged. He looked for Gus Turnage but didn’t see him. It was unusual that Gus would miss the funeral.

  Flap was there, Hathoot, Sergeant Ralph Smoke. At least thirty field COs, their spouses, friends, relatives, other cops. It was a good turnout; no less than Rollie deserved.

  There had been no eulogy. Rollie wanted it that way, Jean told him, and he understood. What did Rollie care now? He wanted to say it was before Rollie’s time to go, but your time was your time. There was no logic to it. If there had been a logic he and Tree would have never gotten out of Vietnam. When his own time did come he wanted his friends to get drunk and forget all the mumbo jumbo. He had five grand earmarked in his will just for this. It would be a hell of a party, one he’d hate to miss.

  Joe Flap stood next to him. “When your old man kicked off, we were all drunk for three days. I’m headed for Skanee now for a little recce.”

  Kira made her way through the mourners to him, eyeing him critically.

  “Newf is in my truck,” she said. He followed her. Newf bounded out and jumped up, knocking him off balance. When he winced Kira said, “What’s wrong?”

  Newf leaned against him, licking his hand.

  Kira opened her purse and gave him a large plastic vial. “Your stones,” she said, quietly adding, “Under the circumstances, I don’t feel like I can keep them. I’ve talked to Cece and she promises to keep quiet.”

  “Thanks for watching the dog.” He wondered if he could trust Cece. Secrets like this had a way of getting out.

  “Anytime,” she said. “I mean that.”

  When the mourners began to depart for the wake Nantz tried to help him into the truck, but he pulled away and got in on his own, not wanting anybody to see he was hurt. The funeral had sent him into an emotional spin. Newf jumped in back and went from side to side, looking out.

  “I hate funerals,” Nantz said. “Everybody is going back to Jean’s for the wake,” she added.

  “Just drive,” Service said. Rollie was dead. Jean and Lanny had insurance, but not Rollie. It was a shitty trade. He had been to too many funerals of good people and what did it all amount to? You worked twenty-five or thirty years, retired, faded away, and died, this last part a mere formality. The truth was that you first died when you turned in your badge. Your physical passing was anticlimactic. Was it worth dedicating yourself to something most people didn’t give a shit about? He was lost in his own thoughts, feeling morose. Had the bullet in the Tract been a warning or a try? The jury was still out, but warning or not, he had once again been inches from his own funeral.

  “We’re here,” Nantz said.

  Service saw his truck and couldn’t recall anything of the long drive from Big Bay.

  “Lost in your thoughts?” Nantz asked.

  He nodded.

  “It happens,” she said.

  It hadn’t happened in Vietnam. Only here, and only in recent years. There, life had meant nothing. But perhaps life was an illusion here too.

  He began talking without thinking about what it was he was trying to say. “I quit hockey because I nearly killed a guy from Michigan Tech. He was their tough guy. We fought in those days, just like pros. Vicious fights, like animals. He never played again. I finished that season, got my degree, and told myself, That’s that. I pitched my skates in the garbage.”

  “We all feel vulnerable at funerals,” she said. “We think about paths already taken and paths that lay ahead, and wonder if any of it means anything.”

  “I don’t feel vulnerable,” he said.

  She shook her head, backed up her truck, and headed back down the dirt road.

  “What about my truck, Nantz?”

  “Yada yada,” she said. “I’m driving.”

  They drove thirty minutes to Gladstone and down a hundred-yard-long driveway through white pines to a large house on the cliff called the Bluff. It would be a pain to plow in winter. The bluff faced Little Bay de Noc. There were no neighbors, and the house was set back in from the road a couple of hundred yards. When she stopped in the driveway, he stared at the house. It was old fashioned in
style, with two stories, painted pale blue with white accents. It had gables and a cedar-shingled roof. There was a wraparound porch and a detached garage painted the same as the house. He saw lumber and sawhorses on the lawn. A face-lift was in progress.

  “Mine,” she said, sensing his curiosity.

  “Yours?” How did she afford this on a government salary?

  “From my dad.”

  He took Newf by the collar and followed her into the house, which was filled with antiques, the walls covered with paintings. The wall-to-wall carpeting was light colored and deep.

  “Comfortable,” he said.

  She got a bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot glasses. She sat on a long yellow couch and patted a cushion. He sat down with her as she filled the glasses. The dog stretched out on the floor and put her head down.

  “Rollie Harris,” she said, holding up her glass. She drank it in one swallow.

  “Rollie Harris,” Service said, doing the same.

  She poured a second shot and then a third.

  “To life,” she said after the fourth one. “Not death.”

  After pouring the fifth shot she said, “Here we are.”

  “Everybody’s got to be somewhere,” he said. They clicked glasses.

  “Profound,” she said, refilling the glasses. “To the Mosquito.”

  And so it went, her face growing red, his mind fogging over.

  She unfolded her feet from beneath her and flipped a shoe, which tumbled end over end across the room. Then she stood, lifted her dress, and peeled off her pantyhose, tossing them in his lap.

  “This is not an invitation to boom boom,” she said, slumping down beside him.

  He laughed.

  “It’s not technically true,” she said wistfully.

  “What’s not?”

  “Cornell.”

  “Where you’re from.”

  “Pffff,” she said, blowing air through her lips. “Grosse Pointe, Lake Shore Drive—an address in the hundreds. Glanceys, Fords, Old Lady Dodge, piles of car money. Old money, old ways, shopping on the Hill, proms at the War Memorial, parties at the Yacht Club, Hunt Club, the Little Club—so exclusive the membership list was top secret. My dad had an advertising agency. GM was his main client. My mom loved the trappings, but Dad was always a country boy. He bought a farm near Cornell. We spent summers there, Mom and me. Us there, Dad in Detroit. Freerange hormones. She went one way, he went another.”

  She added, “Actually, they both went all the way, just not with each other. When the Japanese began to cut into the US car biz, Dad sold his agency. He took half and Mom took half. They split the money and the marriage. He divorced my mom and moved up here. Then he met a woman and he was like a kid again. They married and headed for Colorado.”

  “Did the divorce bother you?”

  She thought before answering. “Not really. I never could see my mom and dad together. It was better this way for both of them.”

  She poured two more shots. “Then he died. Last winter. I was there. The last thing he said? ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for this audit.’ I laughed out loud. My dad could always make me laugh.”

  “Sorry,” Service said.

  “He left me this house and I was fed up with FEMA’s gig.”

  “And here you are.”

  She lifted her glass in salute. “I’m loaded,” she whispered.

  “We both are.”

  “No,” she said. “We are both drunk, but I am loaded.” She rubbed her forefinger and thumb together. “Like that. Geidas, long green, shekels, buckaroos.”

  “Poor little rich girl.”

  Her face turned serious. “Kira seems nice. What’s with you two?”

  “Nothing,” he said, the truth in one word.

  He sort of remembered stumbling up stairs together and falling onto a king-sized bed.

  There were no memories after that. He awoke naked with an equally naked Nantz beside him, her leg draped over his, her dark hair mussed, her eyes swollen. His shoulder ached.

  “We buried your LT,” she said. “And we could have been killed. Your lady moved out. We got drunk, end of story. We had to sleep somewhere.”

  She blinked and rubbed her eyes. “You know what your lady said? ‘Good luck.’ How do you like being a baton that gets passed?”

  He said nothing. Nantz said, “She’s nice enough, but too soft for you.”

  She rolled over on her side. “Now I need more sleep. Don’t wake me unless there’s food.”

  And she was out.

  He had never met anyone like her.

  Which could be good or bad.

  He slept too.

  Doolin answered his phone later that morning. “Doolin here.”

  “Trey Kerr,” Service said.

  “Where are you? I’ve been leaving messages. This Kerr is a piece of work. You name it, he’s done it. Rap sheet as long as a muskie. He was in Jackson but the conviction was overturned on a technicality and they had to let him walk. Right out of sight. There’s another warrant out on him now. He had a fight in a bar, and the other guy croaked from a heart attack. Nobody’s seen Kerr in months and guess what: That little bird you talked to was his cellmate for a while.”

  Limpy did know something, maybe a lot more than he was letting on.

  “Jerry’s autopsy?”

  “Done, ruled a homicide. You don’t sound well.”

  Service said, “Can we release the body?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “I do, and I also want you to withdraw charges on Limpy and let him go.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  It was a distinct possibility. “I need him out. Tomorrow. I’ll pick him up.”

  “It’s gonna be hell getting a judge to buy this.”

  “Talk to Onty Peltinen. He’ll play ball.”

  “What the hell is going on, Grady?”

  “I’m trying to maintain momentum.”

  Pause at the other end. “You’re a crazy fucker, just like your old man.”

  Service smiled at the association, hung up the phone, and opened Nantz’s refrigerator.

  Nantz drove him back to his truck after a lunch of pancakes and sausages.

  “Thanks,” he said. “For everything.”

  “Anytime, anyplace,” she said. “What should I do with the pebbles?”

  He gave her the packet Kira had given him. “Hang on to all of them.”

  What should they do about them? Not just those they had, but all those just lying in the stream, awaiting discovery?

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yep,” he said. It was not quite true. What was happening between them? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “You know, you don’t have to carry the whole load,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You have good people you can depend on. People who maybe know how to do things you don’t.”

  She flipped him a half salute, started to walked away, stopped and came back.

  “I don’t want to leave this hanging and I can see in your eyes that you don’t get it. The answer is no, we did not do the deed. When we do, and please note I said ‘when,’ not ‘if,’ we will do it when we are both completely sober and in full possession of all our faculties. Any further questions?”

  He shook his head dumbly and watched her get into her truck and drive away.

  Was Maridly Nantz real?

  Service let Newf run around outside while he called Gus Turnage, who picked up his phone on the first ring. “We missed you at the funeral,” Service said.

  Turnage sounded harried. “No time. Rollie would understand. This Fox guy? He’s a rotten apple for sure. He got grants on false pr
etenses, embezzling money from the feds and the university. Tech kicked him out in the standard academic way. No blame, just git. And they don’t want publicity. They hope it will just go away. And here’s a kicker: Fox has done work for Knipe’s company.”

  It figured. Disparate atoms orbiting the same flawed nucleus.

  “Great job, my friend.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now.”

  “You want a photograph of Fox?”

  “You bet.”

  “Bearclaw is headed over to HQ today. I can give it to her to bring to you.”

  Bearclaw was Betty Very, the CO in Ontonagon. She was a very tough lady who had handled more trouble bears than anybody in the history of the DNR and had a terrible set of scars on her face as proof.

  “Ask Betty to leave an envelope with my name on it. I’ve got a photo for you too. The name is Kerr. He’s tied into all this, I just don’t know how yet.”

  “Consider it done. How’re Jean and Lanny?”

  “Coping,” Service said.

  “That’s about all they can do,” Turnage said.

  Limpy nodded when he saw Service.

  “This your doing?”

  “Yeah, and I’m your taxi. I win all the prizes today.”

  “You shoulda sent Honeypat,” Limpy shot back.

  “I’m a cabbie, not a pimp.”

  Limpy grinned.

  They headed south in the truck. Service had picked up a six-pack of beer and gave it to Limpy.

  “You were Kerr’s cellmate.”

  “Yah, he’s a crazy fuck, eh.”

  “What’s his connection to Jerry?”

  “Kerr called me, said he needed help for a couple of jobs. Nothing serious. He needed a pulpjack. I figured they were going to snatch a little lumber, you know?” Service knew. Timber theft was a continuous problem. “Said he’d pay good. I gave him Jerry’s name.”

  “You think he killed Jerry?”

  Limpy looked straight ahead, said nothing.