Hard Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  The ME grunted. “That works for me. Want to type it up? I’ll sign it.”

  “Sir?”

  “That’s a joke, son. You’re the new guy, I bet.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Lighten up,” the doctor said. “You the fella played basketball in Spain? Saw the article on you in the Manistique paper.”

  “Yessir.”

  The ME grinned. “Our dearly departed here was a widely known and much-loathed shitbag.”

  “I sort of got that impression from his wife.”

  The ME grinned. “Her? She’s worse than him.”

  Halter got back into his truck and tried to conjure dancing hares. Twenty-five years, he told himself. This is your second day.

  Last on the List

  They took the Norton−Kramden thing as a left-handed compliment more than a put-down. Not that either man remembered the Jackie Gleason show, The Honeymooners, but they knew what it was and decided it was a good thing. COs Edouard Morton (Norton) and Ralf Camden (Kramden) had patrolled Iron County for years, almost always together. The two men had spent so much time together that each felt like he knew what the other was thinking.

  By contrast, neither man had a clue what his wife was thinking, but out on patrol they rarely talked in depth about personal matters. On duty, wives and kids were superfluous. Neither man saw what they did as work or a mere job. It was a higher calling, like a doctor, a minister, a hooker, or something.

  July 5 was hot and sultry. They were patrolling the Net River country in north-central Iron County, just south of the Baragastan line and north and a bit east of the Wisconsin border in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Morton and Camden had been young Marines in Hue City, where they had been fire-hardened in combat, seen RPGs obliterate comrades, other men die from sniper fire, still others from grenades stuffed in dead dogs or explosives strapped to seven-year-old girls and detonated remotely. Because of their war (it was always their war, their personal possession), the partners had developed and sustained acute senses of situational awareness. Truth be known, Camden’s in-the-moment acuity was a bit better than Morton’s, who was by nature more trusting and garrulous.

  On patrol when their eyes weren’t focused hard outside the truck, they sometimes talked about the possibility of losing the focus and honed edge they had come to call “Big E.”

  Yesterday had been a busy, long twelve-hour marine patrol, checking boaters and fishermen on Chicagoan Lake. They had written a dozen tickets for various safety violations, short fish, and over-limits, but they mostly issued warnings for lesser violations. While laws were written black and white, enforcement happened more in the gray, where keen judgment and quick reflexes ruled.

  “Seems slow,” Morton said now, driving slowly. The roads in this part of the county were almost all rock, brutal on trucks and tires, and human spines.

  “Yesterday,” Camden said. “Busy then, now this. Big yawn.”

  Both men grunted as they topped a small rise and saw a vehicle a couple of hundred yards ahead of them. Camden had the stabilizer binos in hand. “Passenger’s window is open. I count two souls. Driver window’s open, too. I can see his elbow.”

  “Weps?” Morton asked.

  “Not visible.”

  “I’ll hang back,” he said, “barely keep contact, let them roll along.”

  “Works for me,” Camden said.

  The serpentine road was in semi-open country with multiple small rises and dips and now and then a half-mile stretch through a dense hemlock or Norway pine stand or massive popple regrowth.

  “Stop!” Camden said to his partner, got out, fetched a shiny new beer can, still with dregs, which he emptied onto the ground, and tossed the empty into the truck bed.

  “Road beer,” he said as he got back in.

  “I didn’t see him toss it.”

  “Passenger let it slip down his door.”

  “Think they made us?”

  “Nah, we’re good.”

  Morton checked his watch. “Shift’s pushing eight hours.”

  “Okay, let’s see this dealie through, then head for the barn.”

  “Plans tonight?” the driver asked.

  “Sleep,” Camden said. “Too much sun for me yesterday.”

  “One out of five,” Morton said.

  A lame old UP joke: 360 days of winter and five days of lousy sledding, the season downstaters called summer.

  Camden kept his binos on the vehicle ahead. “Looks like a ’59 Buick Electra with fins, a lot of chrome, black ragtop.”

  “Is there a classic car rally somewhere near here this week?” Morton asked.

  “No clue, and this one ahead of us ain’t classic or tricked out. It’s just old. We’re starting to close on them. Fall back a little, or we’ll have to tow these assholes out of something,” Camden said.

  “Projectiles out both sides,” Camden then reported.

  “Both marked,” Morton said, making mental notes of locations. Reaching the spot, Camden jumped out and fetched two more cans.

  “PBR,” he said, making a face.

  “Got a case on the seat between them. Bet?”

  “Nope, you’re right.”

  “Littering,” Camden said drolly. “Major crime. Jump them now?”

  “Not yet, keep watching,” Morton said.

  Camden looked at his partner. “You feeling something?”

  “Not sure. You?”

  Morton shrugged. “End of shift: My old lady wants dinner out tonight.”

  “Quid pro quo?”

  “Pretty much,” Morton said. “Say when you want me to close on them.”

  Ten minutes later the Buick stopped and didn’t move. Two men got out, pissed beside their vehicle, chugged new beers, and sailed the empties into the weeds.

  “Still don’t see weps,” Morton told his partner.

  “Let’s get this over,” Camden said.

  Morton drove fast without lights until they were thirty feet behind the Electra. Only then did he turn on the emergency blue flashers, headlights, spotlights, and give a sharp whirp on the yelper siren. The Buick rolled and lurched another hundred yards before lumbering and jerking to a stop.

  “Slow reaction time,” Morton said. “Maybe a few too many drinkies for the driver.”

  The two officers went forward cautiously, Morton to the driver, Camden to the passenger window, where he looked down.

  “Got alcohol?” Morton asked the driver.

  “No, man,” the driver said. “Ya know, just road pops.”

  Camden’s passenger stared straight ahead, his body rigid, head down, chin pulled in, slumped slightly forward.

  While the driver was carrying on with Morton like they were asshole buddies, Camden saw the cords tighten in his man’s neck, saw the man had his right hand under the seat, groping around, trying to do it without being seen.

  Camden grabbed the man’s wrist, jerked up the hand clutching an automatic. He could hear his partner still yapping happily with the driver as he got both hands on the passenger’s gun hand, yanked him violently through the window, slammed him hard to the ground, dropped onto the man’s back with his knee, and smashed the gun hand with his fist into the wrist. The gun came loose, and in one fluid motion Camden wrenched the gun hand behind the man, cuffed it, then cuffed the other hand. Camden popped to his feet, breathing heavily from the sudden exertion. He waved the automatic at his partner.

  “Get that sonovabitch out and pat his ass down! The passenger had this under the seat.” Camden felt his heart pounding, adrenaline still pumping.

  Morton made his man show his hands, got him out, cuffed him, and patted him down. “Clean here,” he reported.

  Camden yanked his prisoner to his feet. “You have something in mind?”


  “Blow your ass to hell, bitch,” the passenger said with an uptight wheeze.

  “Guess that plan’s fucked,” Camden said. “Where’s your wallet?”

  “Don’t got one,” the man said.

  “What’s your name?” Camden asked.

  “Fuck you.”

  “That with an F or a PH? Where do you live?”

  The man scowled. “Fuck you,” he repeated.

  “Geez, the name of where you live is the same as the name your mother gave you. What’re the odds of that, dirtball?”

  Dark now, Camden lit the man with his SureFire and studied his neck. Solid tattoos, crudely rendered. “How long you been out?”

  “Fuck you,” the man said with a snarl.

  “Got home today,” the driver volunteered. “Four years in Jackson.”

  Camden used the sole of his boot to swipe the back of his prisoner’s knees and caused him to momentarily lose balance. The man wobbled and twisted his shoulders trying not to fall. “Didn’t they teach you manners downstate?”

  The man stared straight ahead, trembling.

  Morton said, “My guy’s Cosgrove, Dawayne.”

  Camden said, “Who’s your partner, Cosgrove?”

  “My younger brother, Dusty. He’s gonna crash with me till he can get his own place, man.”

  Camden held the automatic in front of his prisoner. “Nine mike-mike, what were you in for?”

  “Meth manufacture and distribute,” Dawayne said for his brother. “Marquette County.”

  “Felon with a firearm: not such a good a day for you, Dusty,” Camden said.

  The man remained silent.

  Camden asked his partner to call the county to request prisoner transport. “We’ll meet them at the jail in Crystal, take care of paperwork there.”

  Morton went back to the patrol truck. Camden looked at Dusty Cosgrove. “Not smart, you with a Wop 9.”

  “We was just taking us a joy ride,” brother Dawayne offered. “To celebrate, you know?”

  “What, a ride back to Jackson for your brother?”

  “That’s real cold, sir,” Dawayne said.

  Morton came back from the truck and pulled his partner aside. “Officer safety caution on Dusty Cosgrove,” he whispered. “When they let him go today, somebody heard him say he’d kill the next cop who stopped him.”

  “All that was in the warning?” Camden asked.

  Morton said, “Affirmative.”

  Camden asked, “How we supposed to know shit doesn’t get passed to us?”

  Morton shrugged.

  Camden walked back to his prisoner. “How about I unlock your cuffs, put the piece on the ground between us, and see who can get to it first?”

  “You crazy, dude,” Dusty said.

  “I am crazy,” Camden said, “and you’d do well to remember that, unlike you, I don’t get caught. I decide to whack your sorry ass, nobody will ever find you. You ain’t inside the publicly funded creep zoo now, partner. Tough talk don’t cut shit out here.”

  “I got rights,” the younger Cosgrove said.

  “If you get out again,” Camden said, “stay the fuck out of our county.”

  An Iron County deputy took custody of the prisoners, and the conservation officers followed the county car south down US 141 to the county seat in Crystal Falls.

  “Goddamn communications,” Morton grumbled. “It’s not right us not knowing.”

  “Listen, dickhead. I hauled the passenger out the window, and you were fucking clueless. No E, man; what the fuck happened out there?”

  Morton hung his head.

  “We don’t need a warning to be alert for assholes, Ed. We’ve got to rely on each other and ourselves. We’re all we got.”

  Morton said contritely, “You’re right, and I’m sorry.”

  “Water over the dam, partner. We’ll get this jerk lodged and head for the barn,” Camden said, thinking one or both of them could be wounded or dead now had he not been paying attention. He felt his hands shaking and wedged them under his thighs so Morton couldn’t see how shook he was. Every close one felt worse than the last one.

  Double-jointed Trouble

  They were in her ninth-grade homeroom. The fifteen-year-old boy pulled the gun when Jill Flyvie’s back was to him; forty sweaty minutes later he surrendered the .38 snub-nose to her, apologizing, nearly in tears. Forty minutes held at gunpoint while the principal and superintendent stood in the hall bug-eyed, doing nothing, staring through the classroom door window like it was a goddamn cable reality show, or a fish tank.

  The charter school was new, another half-ass, overpromising, parental ass-kissing cookie-cutter operation, and the super hadn’t wanted bad publicity. Result: Jill Flyvie had been knowingly held at gunpoint by a mental defective, and the officials never called the police, a total and complete violation of the school’s own lockdown policy.

  When Flyvie came out of the room, found out the cops hadn’t been called, and then announced she would do it herself, Superintendent Dr. Thela Johnson-Malagassy got close to her.

  “This will be a disastrous career move for you,” the superintendent whispered.

  Unintimidated, Flyvie made the call, and the responding cops had publicly berated both the principal and the superintendent, verbally and in the official police report, which got picked up by local newspapers. In April, Flyvie had been informed she would not be “invited back” for the fall.

  Johnson-Malagassy ordered Flyvie to her office for the job-ending sentence. The place was a thirty- by thirty-foot corner room with snow-white carpeting, and all visitors were required to leave their shoes in an anteroom before entering.

  The superintendent stared at Flyvie with a greasy smirk. “Whatever possesses you white girls to think they can bring something to our precious black children?”

  Flyvie had always been under the impression that children were everyone’s responsibility, race being irrelevant, but she only shook her head at the superintendent’s ignorance, what her kids called being “ig-nant.” The woman was a self-serving racist and megalomaniac, and Flyvie was glad to be shed of her bullshit, though it hurt a lot to leave her kids.

  Flyvie had a B.A. in education, minors in Spanish, entomology, and history. She left the classroom, left Chicago, and graduated from a police academy at Northern Michigan University, took the state civil service test, scored in the 98th percentile, and was hired six months later as a conservation officer assigned to Marquette County.

  After half a year she felt her decision to become a CO had been the best she had ever made. Never mind that her CPA ex-husband couldn’t tolerate her spending long nights alone with other men and left her after an ultimatum that came down to career or marriage. She chose the former and had no regrets. Bill’s soul (if he had one) was missing the joy gene; the man was petty, unimaginative, uninspiring, and unfulfilling in bed. No loss there. Nada.

  Flyvie was scheduled to ride with her sergeant, Peggy Kee, in two days. Tonight she had a shiner complaint south of Gwinn. It was off one of the unnamed two-tracks in a maze of trails that paralleled the Escanaba River. A camp owner down that way had called the toll-free Report All Poaching line in Lansing to notify authorities about shots last night after midnight in a cutover south of his camp.

  She had been in place less than fifteen minutes when a slow-roller came bumping down the logging road, flicking a spotlight on and off. Both her windows were down. The shot startled her when it came. The truck stopped, and she watched a man fetch a deer, heave it into his truck bed, and continue to drive slowly onward.

  Flyvie had her windshield and hood covered with a camo see-through tarp that prevented any bounce-shine off her metal or glass. As the shooter continued north, she ripped her cover away and, running black, followed a hundred yards behind him,
watching him spotlighting other cutover fields until he stopped and shot again. This time she saw a muzzle flash, and when the man dragged the second deer back to his truck, she raced forward and lit him up, bolting from her patrol truck almost before it was stopped.

  The violator put up his hands and grinned stupidly. He was a little guy, five feet nothing, bearded like a French artist, a ponytail down his back, earrings, Keen walking shoes. His name was Finlayson, Jerome, out of Skandia. The retail sales system computer check showed no DNR licenses for Finlayson to hunt, fish, trap, or do anything else, and three outstanding felony warrants on him with a note to arrest and detain from both counties involved: Menominee and Ingham. Ingham indicated it would send an officer to fetch the man. Ingham was eight hours distant. The man was bad news, but he looked like a wimp, a total nobody.

  She made Finlayson gut both deer and load them in the bed of her truck. She noted that he eviscerated the animals quickly and efficiently, no wasted effort. He wasn’t new to this work. Gutting done, two deer in the truck bed, Flyvie put her prisoner into her truck in the passenger seat, cuffed and belted him, and called Station Twenty and the county to let them know she was transporting a prisoner to the Marquette County Jail.

  As Flyvie turned north from Gwinn, the county dispatcher called. “One One Twenty-four, we have a domestic in progress, 507 Jupiter Street, Sawyer Village. Officer needs back up fast. You close?”

  “Affirmative, One One Twenty-four is heading for Jupiter.” How many times do you get to say something like that, she thought, and smiled inwardly.

  The address led her to a four-plex, four two-story apartments built for the United States Air Force in the 1950s and now used as low-cost government housing for low-income citizens. The base had been closed decades ago, and with the new residents, cops of all ilks were in and out of Sawyer continuously. She pulled up behind the Marquette deputy’s patrol unit, got out a triple set of cuffs, which she used as a makeshift chain, attached one end to her prisoner’s cuffs and the other to the steering column. A voice in the back of her head was muttering, “Never leave a prisoner alone,” but a louder, real voice was screaming over the county frequency, “Where’s my backup?”