Buckular Dystrophy

by Joseph Heywood

  When Service got back upstairs, the Basquell boy was mouthing off about needing a smoke and Mach was ignoring him.

  It took some time to talk to each boy, getting their statements. It was obvious they had not practiced a group story. There were differing accounts and descriptions of nearly everything. They were on notice now, and lawyers would probably help them stitch something together, but this crowd was green and unlikely to be able to hold together. In a few years, if they kept on, lies would flow as smoothly as breath.

  The search and seizure took six hours, with the careful logging of every item they took and the preliminary interviews. All the while, Service kept thinking he was missing something, but he put it down to his perfectionist streak and told himself they already had so much evidence they didn’t need anything more. What they needed to do was focus on what they had, not on what they didn’t know they didn’t have.

  The evidence all went into a locker in the regional office in Marquette, and Service drove to Friday’s place and let himself in.

  “It go down all right?” she asked from bed.

  “So far.”

  “There’s some stew in the fridge. You want me to warm it for you?

  Not that hungry,” he said.

  He told her about the filth and the underage girls and the boys.

  “Makes one wonder what lies ahead for younger kids,” she said. As a state police homicide detective, she had seen a lot of death, as had he.

  Friday said, “The good news is you scored a big case. Does this count for deer season?”

  Service stared at her and moaned softly. Two long months remained until the statewide firearm deer season kicked in.

  With luck, maybe everyone he checked in the weeks ahead would be acting lawfully. He didn’t bother to share this with Friday. Even he didn’t believe it.

  CHAPTER 8

  Marquette

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2009

  The antlers taken from the apartment in Little Lake all matched the deer heads in the evidence freezer. All the videos had been reviewed. All the arrests had been made, all charges sorted out. All the boys had lawyered up, but the lawyer for Cair was the one who seemed to be directing an informal group show, the other three taking their lead from him. The forty cartons of Missouri cigarettes remained a mystery. None of the suspects or the girls who had been there claimed to know anything about them. The lawyer for the Cair boy was called Tegardle. He had offices in Traverse City and Rochester Hills and let everyone he met know that, but Service knew he was just a high-priced ambulance chaser who advertised legal defense of the American way while he vampired the system.

  All the boys had pleaded not guilty through their attorneys, until the prosecutor brought Service into a meeting with Tegardle. The prosecutor laid out the charges again and said he would drop some of them in exchange for guilty pleas. A jury would no doubt find the boys all guilty of all charges.

  Tegardle said, “We’ll take our chances.”

  Grady Service said, “You want the jury to see your client on video screwing fourteen-year-olds?”

  “This case isn’t about sex,” the lawyer said confidently.

  “How about this then?” the prosecutor said and turned on a video monitor that showed the boys beating a screaming, squealing raccoon to death with a baseball bat. His client was among those wielding the clubs. “We put that up on YouTube,” the prosecutor said. “Maybe you win in court, but that won’t matter. This town will go berserk when it sees what your client has done. You might want to relay that to your client’s grandfather.”

  “I don’t need to,” Tegardle said. “Let’s talk.”

  The boys were already out on bail. Service had no idea when the judge might rule, but it didn’t matter. His job was done. Time to move on. Only twenty-six days until the firearms deer season kicked off, and so far, following what he was calling the 8-1 case, it had been all quiet on the cedar swamp front. Maybe this would be an equally quiet gun season.

  CHAPTER 9

  Along the Escanaba River, Marquette County

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009

  In the first blush of morning light, Service waded across the gray shallows of the Escanaba River, near where Sawmill Creek dumped in from the giant Cyr Swamp to the north. The CO’s Danner boots were jammed into raggedy, patched rubber hippers, and it didn’t escape him that only ten years ago he would have plunged across the river in his regular boots and said to hell with wet, cold feet all day. No longer. My new reality: I’m looking at . . . God, I don’t even know what, for sure. I’ve got the body of a beat-up forty-year-old but, thank God, the pain threshold of a reptile. I don’t have anywhere near the flexibility I once had, and there’s no way left for me to operate than to work smarter, not harder. Still, he thought, old ways die hard for an old boots-inthe-snow game warden.

  Conservation Officer Sander “Superman” Torvay was somewhere beyond the river, operating the drone, an RC Silent Screamer, their newest technological tool. It was rare in this era to have enough budget to put actual pilots and aircraft overhead for surveillance. But cheap-ass drones the state could afford, so it was drones overhead, not pilots in the sky. The idea of increasingly coming to depend on cheap toys like the noiseless Screamer rubbed him wrong. The drones were the result of some sort of deal with the military, arranged by Chief Eddie Waco. Had the chief arranged for the cost of maintenance too? Sometimes the department acquired new systems with what seemed to be an assumption they’d never break down, which meant the new stuff sometimes crashed and was little used thereafter.

  “One, One Forty, you good for a TX?” Service radioed.

  “That’s affirm, Twenty-Five Fourteen.”

  Grady Service’s life had been topsy-turvy for more than two years. He had been a detective (equivalent of corporal rank) before a sudden, unexpected, unwanted promotion to a newly created position—the state’s senior noncommissioned officer for DNR law enforcement. He endured this for almost a year before turning his stripes back to Chief Eddie Waco. Top NCO had put him in endless meetings in district office buildings and kept him out of the field, which was where his heart lay. This far into a career, he wanted only to return to being the CO for the Mosquito Wilderness, where his old man had served before him. The chief had reluctantly accepted his resignation from the top NCO job and approved his request.

  Then Detective Norm Kro developed some sort of ticker problem and was off duty for the next six to eight months. Chief Waco had called him last month and asked him to temporarily go back as a detective, with the stipulation he could work both as a detective and keep his boots in the Mosquito Wilderness and nearby terrain. Today he was in his dark green Class C uniform. If realities called for a detective, he’d switch to civvies. Maybe.

  Service hit speed dial and called Torvay. “I’m across the river. You need my heading?”

  “Negative, just don’t take off your hat and Rosie will find you.”

  The CO’s baseball cap had a small reflective patch Velcroed on top. The drone would use metallic fibers in the patch to find him and scan based on his position and directions. Service remembered how many times in his game warden career he had literally and painfully crawled miles through swamps and over nasty rock ridges hunting bad guys, found nothing, and limped back to his truck, bruised and bleeding.

  Below the Bridge, especially in far southern Michigan counties, there were so many people that lawbreakers seemed to fly at COs in swarms; but up here Above the Bridge, officers often had to hunt their troublemakers, which required superb tracking skills and a lot of experience. The damn drone could make recon, surveillance, and following quarry a lot easier—if the weather cooperated, if there were no mechanical glitches, if, if, if. But when the drones worked as advertised, they were glorious tools and made the job so much easier. Still, he wasn’t sold on the new toyology, not by a long shot. New did not automatically mean better.

  Male COs were giving their drones female names and female operators were giving the
irs male names, some sort of stupid psychological switchyditchy dance he chuckled at but had no interest in understanding. He had even been offered a one-week drone training class and guessed it was because of his age, that some up-tops in Lansing might be thinking he was no longer up to the physical demands of the job. Or someone down there was just trying to mess with him, which seemed more likely. He’d turned down the drone class with the explanation that flew through the ranks statewide: “I’m not worth a shit at naming stuff.”

  Deep down, he knew—jokes and skepticism aside—that the new toy could come in handy. Only three more days remained until the firearm deer season opened, and dirtbags from far and wide were already gathering in the camps that dotted the Upper Peninsula’s cedar swamps and hardwood forests.

  Torky Hamore had showed up at the house last week, standing in the front yard bellowing like a moose in heat for Service to “Show your bloody self.” Service lived with Michigan state detective Tuesday Friday, and it pissed him off that Hamore dared invade their privacy. As a CO, he was used to it, but other cops didn’t have to suffer such baloney from the public.

  “How the hell did you find me, Torky?”

  Hamore laughed. “Your woman. Wah, everybody know where youse two are, eh. So what’s with the bloody deer herd?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. Wolves eatin’ ’em all.”

  Not this crap again. “You know better ’n that, Torky.” The man was a wealthy, successful logger in the central U.P., held a forestry degree from Michigan Tech, but like so many others, tended to dive off the flipping deep end every deer season, which in the U.P. was at least as important as monthly Social Security checks.

  “Youse been out my camp, Grady, youse seen what’s there.”

  Service had indeed. The camp was located in remote Delta County, an old log cabin filled with a collection of giant swamp buck heads dating back to the 1930s, when Hamore’s great-grandfather bought the land and built the first camp building. Torky’s father had passed the camp to him, as he would pass it to his sons. This was the U.P. way.

  “At least one wall-hanger every year, some years two,” the man said gruffly. “Until eight, ten years back, and since den, not a bloody one, eh. We didn’t even see no damn does last season. I’m tell youse, she’s got to be the bloody wolves.”

  Hamore, like many Yoopers, believed only bucks should be hunted, and that this approach to culling helped the reproductive health of the herd. In truth, buck laws had been instituted in 1913–14 solely as a safety measure, to require shooters to have a distinct target in their sights before pulling the trigger. Contrary to the baloney from old-timers, who bragged what great hunters they’d all been back in the day, historical records showed near mass incompetence then, with widespread disregard for safety and largely nonexistent marksmanship. Most deer hunters in the earliest twentieth century had had no clue about their sport, or made up their own rules. Was it any different now?

  “You know that deer populations fluctuate,” Service said. “Cycles are nature’s way.”

  Torky Hamore stuck out his jaw and shook a fist. “Since way back in thirties, one monster buck a year, now none for eight. That’s bloody disaster, or a tragedy, and not no damn cycle. We got down to camp same natural feed, cover, genetics, but no damn deer. Explain that!” the man bellowed.

  “I can’t,” Service admitted.

  “Well, it don’t make no damn sense, Grady. Tell you this: Me and the boys see a wolf this year, it won’t never get seen again.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Torky.”

  “Youse always been good guy—fair, talk, and shoot straight with people—and I thought youse should know. And we ain’t onny ones think wolves are killing the deer. All camps out by us havin’ the same damn experience.”

  Grady Service watched the man march stiff-legged back to his Chevy truck and roar down the street. Tuesday Friday came outside and looped her arm around his waist.

  “Informant?” the state police homicide detective asked.

  “Complainant,” he said.

  “Good one?”

  “Same line we hear every year at this time,” Service muttered. Yet he shared the man’s concern and could understand his frustration. Cycles didn’t happen at such rates, and department biologists, for all their impressive learning, did not always have answers to everything. Annual petty arguments simmering between various kin and camps somehow stayed tamped down between firearm deer seasons, but they were starting to fire up again, as invariably they broke out this time of year, every year, some of these tiffs dating back decades and generations. Talk about cycles. And all the damn fuss over . . . deer? What the hell is wrong with people? It was a strange phenomenon all around, and whenever he and Friday went somewhere and there was a mounted deer head, she would whisper, “Penis on a plaque.” Like a lot of humor, it was based on truth.

  Firearm season for deer. Complaints were starting, as they did every year, and almost every warden in the state was hearing whinging and carping complaints, and was on the alert for preseason oddities.

  In that same vein, there was one particular situation that continued to nag at him. For going on two weeks he had seen a new red Chevy Silverado pickup truck parked in the same place every time he drove past a certain spot off one of the badly rutted Escanaba River Truck Trails. An all-day, everyday bow-and-arrow hunter? Bird hunter? Not all day. Both of those events were limited to certain times of day in specific habitats. Unh uh, this was something else here. Had to be. His gut churned each time he saw the truck, and this morning he finally stopped and ran the Illinois plate through the Michigan Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN) a statewide computerized information system, which had been around since the late 1960s. The plate matched the truck and came back to a male named Kimball Gambol of Evanston, age sixty. A quick run through the Retail Sales Records database showed that Mr. Gambol had no Michigan hunting or fishing licenses for this year, or any other year, going back at least five years. Before that, who knew? So what the heck was Gambol doing out in the woods all day?

  A look into the truck showed no ammo boxes; no signs of bait or blood; no rifle, bow, or crossbow case. So what the hell is this guy doing in the woods? Pats and woodcock are still legal, but morel mushroom season ended six months back. Fall shrooms? This was a remote possibility. Harvesting illegal dope grows? Nah, that’s pretty much done by now. Photographer? Maybe. Or just a guy who likes to walk in the woods? The CO had called Station Twenty in Lansing, and Dispatcher Colleen Gonzalez had dug some more for him and found that Gambol’s address came back to an empty lot in Evanston, owned by Northwestern University. Probably the identity was false too. The questions remained: Why, and who the heck is this wing nut?

  Weird, troubling, and impossible to guess. Today Service was hoping to finally have an answer to the truck mystery. He had been back on duty only since late April, after he had been shot last winter and sidelined for a while. He called COs Torvay and Simon del Olmo. Del Olmo had driven up the River Road on the east side of the Escanaba and stashed his truck. The plan was for him to move up the east side of the feeder creek. Service slid on his go-pack and said into the mike near his chin, “One, One Twenty-Two, your position?”

  “The creek we talked about earlier. You want me to move parallel to you?”

  “Negative; the tracks I’m following, indicate due north, west of that creek. Come up your bank to where the next creek feeds in and then cross over toward me. Let me know when you’re at the crossing.”

  Click-click, del Olmo replied, keying his mike twice.

  It’s the goddamn Federal Communications Commission’s fault that we have to operate like this. FCC rulings had made it possible for manufacturers to create scanning devices that enable civilians to monitor all 800 MHz transmissions. What had once been an exclusive, private system for law enforcement and first responders was now totally public, which allowed violators and others to track cop operations. Typical cycle of the for-profit world bug
gering the country: First you give cops a tool to increase their safety and effectiveness and invest in all new equipment, and then you render it out of date and give it to the yahoo public. Typical bullshit from profitchasers and by so-called public servants.

  “Twenty-Five Fourteen, I think I remember an old tote road over by you. It runs due north and veers west to the river again,” Torvay radioed.

  “Affirm, but the sign is between there and the creek.”

  Click-click.

  “Fourteen is moving out,” Service radioed.

  Who the hell is Mr. Kimball Gambol of Evanston, Illinois? Fake name? As it developed, tracking Mr. Gambol, if this was he, was not an easy task. His sign showed him doubling back, possibly to check his six for pursuit, and he made frequent sharp changes in direction before gradually returning to the original heading more or less toward the dense black spruce swamp to the north. Gambol’s trail had led Service almost two miles, including crossing a two-track, which would have saved the man a good two miles of hard hiking. Is this guy a masochist? Or doesn’t he know the area that well? Latter seems more likely. You never know what sort of eight balls and ass-hats you’d encounter in the Upper Peninsula during deer season or just before the official opener.

  The trail eventually led into some aspens. Service took a knee to look, listen, and sniff. Sometimes you could smell a hunter’s cigarette or cigar smoke. No smoke today, though, and no sound. He stood and moved cautiously on, his gut telling him the quarry was not far ahead. Thick swamp in front, river behind; there’s no way for the man to go anywhere except where he was headed. Service touched his radio transmitter, “One, One Forty, Rosie up yet?”

  “Affirmative,” the CO answered. “I have a good picture of you on Channel Three.” Service switched his handheld monitor to the channel and saw himself kneeling in the swamp. Talk about an out-of-body experience. All officers were issued small video monitors to carry when working under drones.