“You writin’ a juicy love letter, hon?”
Service looked up, felt confused. Nantz? A waitress with huge eyes was bending down over him. He immediately turned over the pad and she stepped back.
“Dude,” she said icily, “I wasn’t snooping. You want a refill or not?”
He gave the girl his thermos and asked her to fill it with the leaded stuff.
He paid for his coffee and continued north. At eighty miles an hour it would take him roughly three-and-a-half hours to reach the bridge and another ninety minutes to get back to the cabin. Watch for deer, he warned himself, as he went around Lansing on the I-69 bypass and headed north. He tightened his seat belt and tried to put the case out of his mind. Stay in the moment, watch for deer, and don’t forget elk after Gaylord. Damn, it’s dark.
Vince Vilardo’s Chrysler minivan was parked at the cabin. Service got out stiff-legged, and found the retired medical examiner for Delta County asleep on the footlocker bed; a stranger was asleep in his old upholstered chair. Both of them were snoring.
“Vince,” Service said gruffly.
Vilardo stirred. “Two minutes, Rose.”
“It’s Grady, not your wife. What the hell are you doing here, Vince?”
Vilardo sat up like a spring had been unwound. “Huh . . . What?” He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “Grady?”
“What are you doing here, Vince? Do you know what time it is?”
“What time it is?”
“It’s midnight. Stop repeating what I say and wake up.”
Vilardo shuffled over to the sink and splashed water on his face.
“Boy, I was zonked.” He looked at Service, who was looking at the stranger. “That’s Charles Marschke, Esquire. He went to the Gladstone house and nobody was there. He asked the county for help and they called me and I brought him out. He claims he’s one of Maridly’s lawyers.”
One of them?
“Hey,” Service said, nudging the sleeping man’s foot. “Wake up.”
The man opened his eyes and stared up, the sleep falling off like a coverlet. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a business card. “Charles Marschke—Maridly was my client. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You were her lawyer?”
“She had several, but I was her personal affairs lawyer, family friend, and financial manager. I’ll miss her. She never mentioned my name?”
“She didn’t talk about money.”
The man smiled. “That was Maridly. May I ask why you never married her?”
Service kept asking himself the same question. “That’s none of your business.”
The man held up his hands. “You’re absolutely right, and it’s irrelevant. Married or not, she named you her sole heir. It will take a while to transfer everything, but it will be done in six to ten months. Do you have a financial consultant I can confer with?”
Service was confused and tired. “Hell, I haven’t balanced my checkbook in I don’t know how long.”
The man smiled. “If you need a consultant, I’d be pleased to be of assistance.”
“I don’t need a consultant. I work for the state.”
“But you do,” the man said. “You do.”
“I don’t want to inherit anything from Nantz,” Grady Service said.
“You’re getting everything: all her assets, the house in Gladstone, her aircraft, her investments. Those alone come to about eighty, eighty-five.”
“Eighty thousand?”
The man laughed. “Million, Mr. Service, and growing daily. She was a very, very wealthy woman, and now you are going to be a wealthy man.”
Service felt his legs go soft.
Marschke took papers out of his briefcase and took them to a table, spreading them out. “There’s a sticky tag in each place where you need to sign.”
“What if I don’t sign?”
“You’ll still get it all. It will just take longer. This is what you call a done deal. Go with the flow.”
“Sign,” Vince Vilardo yipped. “Sign!”
“Shut up, Vince.”
Service signed the papers and watched the man fold them and put them back into his briefcase. He walked out to Vince’s car with the men and told Vince, “You keep your mouth shut about this.”
When they were gone he sat down on his steps and stared into the darkness. What the fuck was he going to do with eighty million dollars? If Nantz was here now, he’d strangle her, he told himself. Go ahead and laugh, Mar. This is not funny!
At 6 a.m. and with virtually no sleep, he telephoned Special Agent Monica. “Tatie, this is Service. Just wake up and listen. When I was in Arizona, I talked to a CBP agent who was part of the federales team that arrested Ney. He said Ney’s murder in prison was not what it seemed. Ney scammed a guard to kill him because he was dying of cancer and he had only weeks or months to live. He also said that all Ney would tell the federales was that he had completed his life’s work. Nobody knew what that meant.”
He kept talking, couldn’t stop. “After Ficorelli’s funeral, his aunt gave me his fishing gear, including his fly collection. A friend of mine came down from Houghton to look at the flies and he found a unique one called a booger fly. It’s made in only one place, by an old guy down in Curran, Michigan, which is about thirty miles south of Alpena,” he said. “I found the same kind of fly at the kill site. I think Ficorelli got out of the river to retrieve the fly and was killed.”
Tatie Monica perked up. “You found evidence and didn’t tell me?”
“Shut up, Tatie. I also went back to Elray Spargo’s place. He had booger flies in his collection. I drove down to Curran and talked to the man who makes the flies. The old guy grew up in Mongo, in northern Indiana, and invented the fly there, but he moved up to Michigan and has been here fifty years. I plotted all the body sites on maps to see if I could pick up a trend. What threw me is that some were by the ocean. It took a while to remember tides—moving water. Your analyst understood that. I began to wonder if what our victims had in common was that they were all trout fishermen and they used flies—specifically booger flies. The business up in Curran has records only for seven years, but we convinced them to let us compile a list. It’s run by a man called Charles Main Jr. and his son, Charles Main the third. The locals call the younger one Charley the Turd.” Service picked up his notepad and looked at it. “I know it’s a long shot,” he concluded.
“What have you been smoking, Service?” the FBI agent asked.
“You need to listen, and we need to get on the same page. You need to get your people to go through the list, to find out how many of our victims bought booger flies by mail,” he said. “I’ve got an agent in Missouri checking on the Illinois and Kansas victims.”
“One of my agents?”
“No, Missouri conservation agent Eddie Waco—the guy with the beard? We can’t look at the first batch of victims, but we can sure as hell compare the customer list to the second group and see what comes up. If it turns out they were all using booger flies, then we have a potential intersect, a way for the killer to identify certain game wardens. Maybe this is how he picked them, I don’t know. Maybe it was a coincidence that victims were also some of the best in each state. You have the resources to do this; I don’t,” he said.
“How would the killer get their list?” she asked.
This stopped him momentarily. “I don’t know yet. Now listen to this: Mongo was once called Pigeon River. It’s built on the Pigeon River. The name was changed. The fly tier, whose name is Main, never heard of a family named Ney, but he said there was a large family named Pey in Pigeon River.”
Service let her digest the information. “I went to Mongo, where I met the current game warden, and a retired warden. The retired warden introduced us to an old man named Big Ben Pey. The old man told us he had a distant relative named Fran
cois Ney Pey, and that this man went by the name of Frankie. Frankie Pey worked for Sears or Montgomery Ward out of Chicago. He went to college in Marquette, and served in the navy during World War Two. No idea if he graduated, but it’s a starting place, and he was some sort of traveling auditor for his employer and moved all over the country. Apparently he came back to Mongo only to see a girlfriend, who was married to somebody else,” said Service.
“The woman now lives with her daughter just up the road in Sturgis, Michigan,” Service continued. “Her name is Greenleaf, Essie Greenleaf. I talked to her and she’s batty, but she also let me know in a strange and roundabout way that she had a thing with Frankie Pey. She said Pey died in Mexico. When I asked her what he was doing down there, she told me, ‘Completing his life’s work.’ She also confirmed there was a boy with them, but said he was neither his son—nor hers. She said the kid’s name was Marcel. He was about fifteen or sixteen at the time. It can’t be a coincidence that she used the same words the border agent used. Big Ben Pey gave me a photo. He says it’s Frankie just before he left for college, which made him eighteen or nineteen in 1932. I think I can see some similarity to the photo I got from the federales, but you people have specialists and software to take this and age it and see if there’s a potential match, right?”
The FBI agent said, “Jesus . . . This is unbelievable.”
“I know,” he said. “Where is your asshole consultant? We need to talk to him.”
He heard her scratching on paper. “Eighteen or nineteen in 1932; that makes this guy in his mid fifties by 1970.”
“Is that significant?”
“Ballpark age for a lot of serial murderers.”
There was a long pause before she spoke again. “It can’t be this easy,” she lamented.
“It’s not, but it’s beginning to look like we’ve got some meat to grab, and we need to move on it. Are you awake?”
“Okay, okay,” was all she could say. “I’ll get dressed and head out to your shack.”
“I want to talk to your analyst.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice rising.
“I want to find out how he picked up on this whole deal, what his thinking was, how he got one plus one to equal a shitpot more. I’m also wondering why the hell this second batch begins with a variety of MOs and suddenly shifts to the blood eagle? Does this signify some sort of psychological shift? Or do we have a different killer?”
Tatie Monica said, “Why in hell is somebody with your ability wasting himself in the backwoods?”
Service said, “When do I meet your analyst?”
“You won’t,” she said.
He waited for an explanation.
Finally, in exasperation, she said, “I can’t find him, and he won’t respond to my messages.”
Service could hardly contain his rage. “You have got to be shitting me! You’d better get your people dogging his sorry ass, and I mean right now. Maybe this is nothing, but I don’t like this guy pointing us at all this and then taking a sudden hike into Neverland.”
“I’ve already got people on it,” she said. “I’ll be there with Larry and Bobbi in an hour. I take it you’re not off the case.”
“Let me put something else on the table: Ficorelli’s mother and Spargo’s sister died in car wrecks within a month of their killings. My girlfriend and son died in the same way not long ago, dry pavement, no apparent reason. I talked to a guy up here who found something that suggests my girlfriend got run off the road, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. The state police ruled it an accident, despite evidence to the contrary. She was a great pilot. There had to be a reason for the wreck. You ever hear of prey-induced panic?”
“No,” she said.
“I’ll explain it when you get here. Also, Frankie Pey was a trapper as a kid, and the year he left for college his mother was found murdered, with her throat cut. The case was never solved. I’m in this sonuvabitch to the end,” he said.
“I’m running out the door now,” Monica said.
Service lay on his footlocker bed and tried to sleep. The case was no longer in his mind. He had exorcised that. Now all he could think about was what the hell he should do with eighty million dollars that he had no right to. Couldn’t he somehow trade it all back for Nantz and Walter?
PART III
GREEN BEAR ISLAND
Omnes una manet nox
The same night awaits us all. —Horace
43
SLIPPERY CREEK, MICHIGAN
JULY 28, 2004
While he waited for Tatie Monica, Service made fresh coffee and started making more notes, mostly questions. If the killer had access to Main’s customer list, how had he gotten it, and when? Was it possible that Charley the Turd and/or his father were involved? Had the list been used for both groups of killings? Pey died in 1974 in prison in Mexico. Where did Marcel go? Was Marcel a killer? The killer?
“Too many holes,” he said out loud, crumpling the notes and bouncing them off the wall.
He awoke on the floor to find Tatie Monica standing over him. She had the crumpled notes in hand and was trying to read them. “How long since you’ve slept?” she asked.
“Not sure.”
“An exhausted investigator fucks up. Go to bed.”
“I don’t have a bed,” he said.
She gave him a quizzical look and he pointed to the footlockers. “Sweet Jesus,” she said. “Give me all your notes and I’ll take them back to Marquette with us. You sleep. That’s an order.”
“I don’t report to you.”
“Think of me as your mother.”
“She died in childbirth.”
“Probably lucky for her.” Special Agent Monica stormed out the door and Service lay down to try and sleep.
His mind refused to shut off. He got up and grabbed his handheld and called Officer Denninger. “I need your help again.”
“Whatever you need,” she said.
“If the Mains aren’t computerized, how could somebody get their list? Did they ever report a theft? Talk to the county and the state, and then talk to the old man alone. Charley the Turd will just try to stonewall you again.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Service called Eddie Waco. “Anything on the men in Kansas and Illinois?”
“I’m in Illinois now. The officer’s name here was Retucci. He was a fly-fishing nut and he had booger flies. I’m headed to Kansas next. I’d call ahead to the family, but it’s better to show up in person. Gives it more weight.”
“I agree. Thanks.”
“I’ll be back to you’n quick as I can. You gettin’ close?”
“Maybe.”
“Count me in for the finish.”
“Your supervision will approve that?”
“You let me worry about that, Michigan Man. You’n call, I’ll haul. Heck, I might even get to see me a bear.”
Grady Service liked Eddie Waco. But were they really beginning to get close to something? He wasn’t sure. This was like hunting blind. He dozed off thinking about hunting and bears, and he slept through the rest of the day and night.
44
MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN
JULY 29, 2004
Most of the regional HQ was dark when Service parked in the lot south of the building, but there was a light on in the captain’s office. The fog this morning had been thick, the driving slow.
The captain had already made coffee. Service poured a cup for himself and made his way to Grant’s office.
“You look perplexed.”
Service took him through the case, omitting nothing and emphasizing the accidents of Ficorelli’s and Spargo’s relatives. As was his way, the captain listened and made notes before asking questions.
“The analyst aspect is disturbing,” the captain said.
; “It’s a major loose end,” Service said.
“You know the preferred tactic for weathering a shit storm?”
Service looked up. His captain never used such language.
“You sit under a good strong roof until it’s done falling,” Grant said.
“Are you telling me you’re going to chain me to my desk?”
“You know better than that. If Nantz and Walter were killed intentionally, the killer is trying to rattle you. I’m going to insist that the state lab people go over the wreck again. What you do is keep pushing and prodding.”
“Eventually there’s going to be a collision,” Service said.
“I have no doubt,” the captain said, “but when it happens, let it be you who determines the location and rules of engagement.”
“I’ve already had that thought.”
“I was certain you had,” Captain Grant said with a nod.
When Service got back to his cubicle, there was tapping on his outside window. He looked out to see Limpy Allerdyce standing there. Service knew Allerdyce would not come into the building. He got a cup of coffee for the old poacher and went outside to meet him.
“Proud of you,” Service joked. “You actually touched the building.”
Allerdyce squinted. “Youse tink more about youse’s gal?”
Service suddenly picked up on the old man’s rage, which he was struggling to contain. He pointed a finger at Allerdyce. “I don’t need your help, thank you very much.”
“Up here we take care of each udder, sonny.”
“What’re you gonna do, take my back?”
The old man grinned and said nothing.
“You get caught with anything that even faintly can be construed as a weapon and you’ll be in violation of your parole, and you will go back inside. You want to ruin your image with your girlfriend?”
Allerdyce drank his coffee, scowled, and looked out toward Lake Superior, which was beginning to lighten in the rising sun. “My day,” he said, “I never t’ought twice ’bout shootin’ dogs, runnin’ deers an’ such. Dere’s some t’ings a man don’t turn ’is cheek to.”
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