The woman looked directly at Service. “Poachers shot that buck Monday night.”
Service said, “But it’s tagged Tuesday afternoon at five o’clock.”
The woman looked away. “See, the poachers shot it night before and I seen the animal limping around, so me and Penn went and put it out of its misery because we love animals and we don’t like seein’ them suffer, even wolves, okay? It’s in the Bible to take care of lesser creatures, am I right?”
“I don’t know about the Bible,” Service said. “Let’s try to stick with here and now. You just changed your story from Tuesday night to poachers on Monday night. What time?”
The woman looked up at the sky. “I think it was after midnight.”
“Did you see the shooters?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “It was dark, ’member? As it is now? But I heard the shot.”
“Just one?”
“I just saida I heard a shot. You think I’m lying?”
“I’m only trying to determine how many shots you heard.”
“I just told you that—it was one shot.”
“You heard the shot Monday night, but if this was after midnight, it was actually early Tuesday morning. But you didn’t see the wounded animal until the next day, which would be Tuesday?”
“Right.”
“Where did you see it?”
“Out on the neighbor’s one twenty,” she said.
“Close to here?”
“No.”
“But you heard the shot?”
“I guess the wind was just right and the good Lord intended for me to hear it so I could end that poor creature’s suffering. God doesn’t want any of His creations to hurt.”
Obviously God excluded me from that dictum, because dealing with this woman is nothing but pain. “We’d like to see the place where you shot the animal to end its pain.”
She said to Pymn, “Why don’t you go show the boys.”
“I ain’t all that sure,” the boyfriend said, “me being directionally challenged.”
“Who shot the deer?” Rice asked in a harsh voice. “We’re tired of all this word-dancing.”
“Penn shot it,” the woman said.
“But you just said you put it out of its misery,” Service reminded her.
“Well, I was with Penn. Him and me are always one, you know like when I got my legs wrapped around him real tight and he’s giving it to me, that’s like being one, right, so technically I guess we both shot it.”
“But Penn tagged it,” Service said.
“I meant to,” the woman said, “but everything got real confusing and we were afraid those poachers would come back and hurt us and grab the deer.”
“So Pymn shot it and tagged it?” Rice asked.
The woman stared at the other officer. “Technically, I guess you could say I shot it,” she said.
“With what?” Service asked.
“Crossbow.”
“Show us the weapon and the bolt,” Rice said.
She cocked an eyebrow and stared at him. “I’ve seen you around. You’re local, and you’re taking his side?”
“My patch says Michigan. Just show us the crossbow,” Rice repeated.
“I have the bolt, not the crossbow,” she said. “I sold that.”
“To whom?” Service asked.
“I don’t know, just a guy who come by and made me an offer I couldn’t turn down,” she said.
Grady Service took a deep breath. The two worst kinds of subjects were Sphinxes and Bouncing Betties. The Sphinx types said nothing, no matter what; the Bouncing Betties were all over the damn place and entirely unpredictable—like this woman. “That’s pretty convenient,” Service said. “When was this alleged sale?”
“I beg your pardon? Not alleged,” the woman said. “It’s real. I don’t remember the exact day because I’m a very busy woman , but it’s been since Tuesday, right Penn?”
Pymn didn’t look at her, showed no reaction at all. “Check or cash?” Service asked.
“Cash,” she said.
Herk Rice chuckled.
“How dare you impugn my honor!” the woman yelped.
“What’s to impugn?” Service said. “Everybody here knows you’re lying.”
“That’s libelous,” the woman said.
“No,” Grady Service said. “It’s not libel unless it’s in writing, and there has to be a witness who thinks the statement is wrong. Do you think it’s wrong, Penn?”
Penn Pymn said, “Leave me out of all that shit.”
The woman growled and moaned. “All you fucking peckers are ganging up on me! This is reputation rape; this is rape!”
Service said, “Save the theatrics. I’ve been recording everything since I stepped through the door. Every word.”
“That’s not fair,” she muttered, quieting.
“We’re after truth, not fairness,” Service said. “Where’s the crossbow bolt?”
“Prick,” the woman mumbled and disappeared.
She returned with a bent, twisted partial aluminum shaft. It had no point.
“There’s no blood,” Service said.
“I washed it,” she said, “as a keepsake.”
“The keepsake’s got rust on it,” Service pointed out.
“You know how tough the weather is on things up here,” she said.
“Aluminum doesn’t rust, at least not in a couple of days.”
She answered with a shrug . . . and an insipid look.
Going to be a long and tedious haul to break her. To get this kind, you had to pile her up in so many lies and inconsistencies that she couldn’t bear the ultimate weight. He shook his head. “Show me where you shot the animal.”
She pointed at a nearby field. “Out there.”
“How far?” Service asked.
“All the way south to the property line.”
“I thought the deer was on your neighbor’s one twenty, and that’s not close to here.”
“You have to listen better,” the woman said. “It’s out there.”
“Okay,” Service said. “Let’s go see.”
“Where?” she asked.
“To the place where you shot the deer and to the place where you recovered the body. I’ll shine my light ahead so you can look and show me.
Thirty minutes later they were stopped at the property line. “There,” she said, pointing down a fencerow.
“Where?”
“Over there! Do I have to do everything for you?”
“Save your crap, and just show me, ma’am.”
“Over there,” Ingalls said, waving her hand.
Service looked in that direction and found nothing. “No joy, Arletta.”
She scrunched her face. “What’s that mean, no joy?”
“It means there’s nothing there.”
“It’s dark. Wait until morning and then you’ll see it.”
“I have a good light.”
Service saw another flashlight beam bobbing toward them through corn stubble. It was Wooten. “We squared away out here?” the young sergeant asked.
“This is Arletta Ingalls,” Service said. “She says she put a deer out of its misery after poachers wounded it. We’re trying to locate where she killed it.”
“Forget that,” Wooten said. “Where’d you gut it?” he asked her.
She sighed dramatically. “I supposed you’re another one who don’t like pussy.”
Service said, “She’s trying to shift attention. Where’s the gut pile?”
“Did she call us when she put said creature out of its misery?” the sergeant asked.
“She did not. She took the head to a taxidermist.”
Wooten turned to the woman. “You should have called us, ma’am. And it’s against the law to possess an illegal deer.”
“Ain’t no point in wasting a creature, and I ain’t no baggy-ass old ma’am. I’m Miz Arletta Ingalls, not Miss, not no damn ma’am. I ain’t hitched, weighed down, nor nothing. I’
m sorry we didn’t call, but those poachers scared us and that is the truth.”
“Where exactly did you shoot the animal?” the sergeant asked.
Service let Wooten take the lead for a while.
“Bolted, not shot. Crossbow, not rifle. Can’t none of you people get nothing right?”
“Okay, bolted. Where?”
“Here . . . somewheres. We were just looking when you showed up, and now you’ve gone and got me all flummoxed. All this shit looks the same at night.”
“Let’s go look at the gut pile.”
Service watched them stumble around, heard a voice in his earbud. “Pymn here is being very cooperative,” Rice reported from the house. “The deer was shot close to the house with a rifle, not out there with a crossbow. There’s a spotlight mounted on the back of the house. It’s covered by a hood that’s lifted by a switch inside. You can’t see the light until the hood lifts. The deer was gutted back here too.”
Service let the charade with Wooten continue for ten more minutes before he walked over to the searchers. “Is it possible you took the dead animal back to the house and gutted it there?” he asked.
The woman took the bait. “Yes, of course. I forgot. See what happens when you pressure people?”
Wooten said, “So you drove out here and loaded the deer after you killed it.”
“Right,” she said.
“Why a crossbow if you wanted to end the animal’s suffering?” the young sergeant asked.
Pretty good question, Service thought. She answered, “Well, it’s not gun season is it?”
“Penn helped you load the deer?” Service asked.
“No, I did it all alone.”
“Really?” Service said.
“I can’t lie. Pymn was sky high and of no use to anyone—for anything, if you know what I mean.”
“This was in the afternoon?”
“No, the night before, right after the shot. I saw headlights, drove over here, and took care of the wounded animal.”
“So you killed it Monday night, not Tuesday afternoon.”
“What difference does it make? It was a mercy killing for God’s sweet sake.”
The deer in the garage, Service guessed, was well over 180 pounds with the guts out. Live weight would have been close to 250 pounds. Few men of any size could handle that much dead weight or an animal of this size alone. “You lifted this deer all by yourself?”
“I’m a lot stronger than I look,” she said.
Ingalls was short and emaciated, bone-thin, a hundred pounds max, Service guessed. “Okay, you loaded the deer into your truck alone and drove it home.”
“That’s right.”
“And gutted it at the house.”
“Yes, I remember now. I was afraid the poachers would come back and grab me and the buck.”
“Let’s go,” Service said. “And for the record, Miss Ingalls, I hate liars more than violators.”
“Good, because I always tell the truth and play by all the rules, the way the Good Book says we should,” Ingalls said. “It’s Miz, not Miss.”
Service laughed out loud and thought he could feel her glaring at him as they stomped back across the corn stubble.
• • •
It was one hour later. They were back at the house, there still was no gut pile, and the verbal dancing and sparring continued. They looked everywhere she directed, and eventually Service asked, “Could it have happened behind the house?”
“Let’s try there,” Sergeant Wooten said.
“There’re no guts behind the house,” the woman insisted.
“Humor us,” the young sergeant told her.
“Do you like pie?” she asked.
“Sure, thanks,” the sergeant said, “but first let’s look behind the house.”
“That is not allowed,” the woman said firmly. “My backyard is a registered trademark and off-limits. You cannot look back there. I could lose some of my proprietary secrets.”
“Come again?” Service said.
“I am a professional wildlife photographer, and that’s my controlled and proprietary limited-access, top-secret restricted work area. Nobody is allowed back there, even Penn.”
Sergeant Wooten said, “Go back inside, ma’am, and warm up. We’ll get back to you in a while.”
The woman left them and Wooten looked at his officers. “Are she and this thing for real?”
“Seems like,” Service said. “I’ve got the head of a one-eighty eight buck in my truck.”
“Holy shit.”
The two men looked at the head and got into Service’s truck. Herk Rice stood outside the driver’s window while they all drank coffee and Service typed a search warrant affidavit. Forms done, he telephoned CO Nick Rolvig in Menominee.
Sleepy voice on the other end. “Grady Service here, Nick. I’m out at La Branche with Wooten and Rice. We need a search warrant. I’m sending the form electronically. Can you get it into the system, sworn and signed, and call me back?”
“What have you guys got out there?”
“Illegal fourteen-point buck.”
“Are you serious?”
“I got it from a taxidermist check. We’ve been here since before midnight.”
“What time is it now?” Rolvig asked.
“Oh three thirty.”
“Okay, be there in one hour with paper in hand. This I have to see for myself.”
“Thanks,” Service said, but Rolvig had already hung up.
Service got out of the truck and showed the officers where he thought the lethal round had lodged. Both men felt around and agreed it was a .22 or a .17. The sergeant couldn’t take his eyes off the antlers.
“That was shot here?” Wooten asked.
• • •
They served the search warrant at 0500, and by then a lawyer had been summoned by Ingalls from Iron Mountain. The lawyer was a former trooper named Alyse Merikanto, tall, sleepy-looking, yawning as she took her time going through the writ. “Four officers for one deer,” she remarked. “Seems like overkill, a waste of public resources. There’s nothing personal at play in this, one hopes.”
“We’re starting the search,” Service said, “unless Miss Ingalls can produce the weapon she used to kill the animal.”
“It’s Miz, I told you, not Miss, and I already showed you the damn bolt,” Ingalls said.
Grady Service said calmly, “We’re looking for a small caliber rifle to match the hole in the animal’s skin.”
“Goddammit,” Ingalls said. “How many times I got to tell you people it was a crossbow, not no bullet?!”
“Please get the bolt,” the woman’s lawyer said, “and we’ll all take a look together.”
They went out to the deer head in the truck, and Grady Service used a small pocket knife to open the skin to the hole in the neck. Ingalls placed the bolt on the small opening and pushed and grunted and struggled with all her might, to no avail. It would not fit the hole.
“There’s no point on the bolt,” the sergeant said.
“I think it mighta broken off inside,” Ingalls said. “When we put the deer in the truck.”
“We put the deer in the truck?” Service asked.
“I meant I, me,” the woman said. “I guess when I put the deer in my truck. This is too broke up to fit.”
Rice volunteered, “I have a good bolt with a point in my truck. I’ll get that.”
Despite a great deal more effort, and truly impressive grunts, Arletta Ingalls could not push the bolt with the point into the hole. Even so, she continued to stab at the wound until Service gently grasped her wrist. “That’s enough. We know the truth,” he said. “The head will be sent to Michigan State for X-rays, and a necropsy will determine what’s inside. Let’s get on with the search.”
The woman loosed another shriek. This time there was no coyote refrain. The backyard showed hundreds of gallons of corn, sugar beets, browning apples, grains—all sorts of deer baits and feed—and animal tracks crissc
rossed the yard. Not thirty yards from the house they found a pile of viscera. Service looked back and shone his flashlight up at a spotlight mounted on a roof peak. It had a hinged metal cover, but there was clearly a light under it.
“That device’s strictly for my photographs,” Arletta Ingalls said. “I sell my pictures and donate the proceeds to KOPA.”
“Very commendable,” Service said. “Where’s the rifle?”
“What rifle?”
“The .22,” he said.
The woman led him to a room with a dozen rifles of various calibers and makes, all of them loaded and uncased, standing in corners or against bureaus or bedposts. Empty and loose cartridge and cardboard ammo boxes littered the floor.
“Not these,” Service said, listening to Herk Rice’s voice in his earbud. “The boyfriend says there’s a scoped .22 mag in the red bedroom.”
“Red bedroom,” Service told the woman.
“That’s my sewing room,” she said.
“Show us,” he told her.
The woman went in first, reached into the closet, and threw an ancient single-shot .22 on the bed. “There, happy now?” Ingalls asked with an anxious snort. “You got me.”
Grady Service sniffed the weapon. It did not smell like it had been fired recently. He tried to work the lever action, but it was rusted tight. “This hasn’t been used for a long time,” he announced.
The woman said. “Swear to God, that is the only .22 in this house.”
Service walked to the end of the bed and saw a flat case between the bedside and the wall. He picked up the case, lay it on the bed, and unsnapped the locks to reveal a small rifle with a scope. “What’s this?” he asked, picking it up.
“Got no idea,” Ingalls said. “It must be Penn’s. Typical man; he never tells me nothing.”
It was a Browning .22 magnum with a ten-round magazine and a Browning 5X scope. Service held the weapon out to the woman.
She looked away. “I have never seen that thing before,” she said, folding her arms.
“What will fingerprints tell us?” Service asked.
She stared at the rifle. “Game wardens can do fingerprints?”
“Can and will,” Grady Service said.
“That really sucks. Okay, I guess it could’ve been my rifle. You know, I got CRS, Can’t Remember Shit disease.”
“You shot the deer with this.”
Buckular Dystrophy Page 9