Force of Blood

by Joseph Heywood

  “Yep. Isn’t that something!”

  “Did—”

  “Yessir, he was an instructor, and working on his master’s. Wingel supervised his master’s thesis.”

  “And moved from there to Stillwater?”

  “Presumably. That’s what the record says.”

  “His record at Oklahoma State?”

  “Stellar, like everywhere he went and everything he touched. The man was a rising star right from the get-go.”

  “Whole lot of weird coincidences here.”

  “Gotta ask yourself—what’re the odds?” Ghizi said sarcastically.

  The two men went silent. “Stones in your gizzard, Sarn’t?”

  “How close was said supervision?”

  “Officially, strictly according to Hoyle. Unofficially around the watercooler, a whole lot of smirks and rolled eyes.”

  “You interviewed people.”

  “We did.”

  “You think they’re in cahoots?”

  “I don’t think there’s a law that clearly defines that as a legal term.”

  “Have you got people bird-dogging Ladania Wingel?”

  “No comment.”

  “Thanks, teammate.”

  “No call for that tone of voice. I can only attest to that which I control, and that Wengel broad sure ain’t part of my brief.”

  “Strict constructionist?”

  “I’m not obstructing, Grady. I just don’t know, and that’s the truth. I can speculate, but I prefer not to. You need anything else?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Have yourself a nice day,” Ghizi said.

  Service started to leave the building to smoke, but remembered that the burn ban was in place, which frosted his ass. Captain Grant’s administrative assistant Fern LeBlanc was in the reception area, pottering around.

  “Where are we supposed to smoke?” he asked her. They had always rubbed each other wrong until Nantz and Walter had died, and then she seemed to have softened toward him.

  “Outside, like always,” she said.

  “What about the burn ban?”

  “Bans don’t apply to cigarettes,” she said. “Unenforceable.”

  Goddamn Lis! She had set him up. He stomped outside, got into his truck, lit a smoke, and inhaled deeply. Need to settle down and think. Damn Lis!

  Marquette County conservation officer Bradley Wurfel pulled his black patrol vehicle into the parking spot in front of the Tahoe. The black Chevy was coated with fine orange dust.

  So Wingel knows Toliver, and Toliver and Katsu were at the same community college together. Good God, this is getting denser than an interstellar black hole.

  Wurfel got out of his truck with a briefcase, waved, and headed for the front door of the office building.

  Service’s cell phone warbled. Caller ID said it was Chief Waco’s number.

  “Chief.”

  “You’re in Marquette?”

  “For now. Came back Tuesday night.”

  “Do you know a man named Heywood?”

  Service said, “Heard of him. Writes bullshit books about COs.”

  “Novels, Grady. Have you read them?”

  “Who has time?”

  “You might want to make time, because he’s asked specifically to spend some time with you.”

  “Like what, an hour? What the hell for?” I don’t need this. I don’t want this.

  “Days, so he can see how you work in your new job.”

  “No way, Eddie!”

  “It’s ‘Chief ’ when we’re conducting business, Chief Master Sergeant.”

  “Goddammit, Chief.”

  “This is a good thing, Grady. Good for us, good for you, good for the state. Besides, his hearing aids are brand-new, and he only stutters a little bit. You get used to it quickly. He was here this morning. I told him you’d be glad to partner with him.”

  “When?” Partner?

  “Up to you. I gave him your telephone numbers. He’ll be in touch. By the way, he has his own vest.”

  “I heard he’s like a hundred.”

  “Nah, he can’t be a day over eighty.”

  “I suppose he has his own walker.”

  “Just a cane,” the chief said, “and it looks like he handles it pretty good, at least in an office building.”

  “A vest. Where am I supposed to take him?”

  “Wherever your mission takes you. Working with our men and women helps him make the stories seem authentic.”

  “But he’s making it all up.”

  “Of course; that’s what fiction is.”

  “Good God,” Service said in frustration.

  “The author will call you. Play nice. That’s an order.”

  “I can’t wait,” Service said. He hung up, flung the cell phone out his window, and watched it skitter and bounce across the blacktop parking lot.

  Fuck. He got out and bent over to pick up the phone. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that someone had used a finger to draw a smiley face in the dust on the back gate of Wurfel’s truck.

  He couldn’t stop staring. He got up in a daze and was almost to the front door when it registered. What came into his mind was a business card left by a woman with a tight, bright-red top. The name on the card: Marldeane Youvonne Brannigan. And she had neatly written in immaculate script, “Have a nice day.”

  Holy shit. He scrambled to his cubicle and found the phone number for Cedar Falls Texas police chief Jackie Jay Emerson and punched it into his cell phone, which was suddenly dead. Damn! He grabbed the landline and punched the number into that.

  Be there, be there, be there.

  “Chief, Grady Service up in Michigan.”

  “How y’all doin’, partner?”

  “Good. Got a question: Joseph Paul Brannigan. He one of your local folk?”

  “Nossiree, that ole boy’s a damn carpetbagger, hails from the cheese state—Minnesota, is it?”

  “Wisconsin.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s it.”

  “Thanks, Chief. And he was active down your way around Y2K?”

  “Yessir, but he just sorta drifted outta the pitcher. His jacket don’t say he got busted or nothing, so who knows.”

  Service called Friday. “I have to go to Wisconsin.”

  “When?”

  “Today—now.”

  “What about my sister, or Karylanne, or your granddaughter?”

  “This can’t be helped, Tuesday.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll hold down the fort. How long this time?”

  “Not sure. I’m taking Allerdyce with me.” If he could find the sonuvabitch.

  Silence on Friday’s end. Then, hoarsely, “Now, that scares the hell out of me, Grady.”

  68

  Sheboygan, Wisconsin

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 2007

  It took him until midnight to find Allerdyce and get him into his truck and on their way. Having the old man there was like having the company of a bobblehead doll, chuckling to himself, lost in his own world. No questions, no conversation, not even his stupid grin.

  That morning Sedge had called on the cell phone while he and the old man were eating breakfast at a truck stop.

  “I’ll cut right to the chase. I’m so damn tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. Where are you?”

  “Sheboygan, Wisconsin.”

  “The late Skyler Verst?” she said, with a hitch in her voice. “Her maiden name was Brannigan. Think that has anything to do with our little pal Kermit?”

  “Here’s some more for you to chew on,” he told her. “Katsu and Toliver knew each other at a community college in Hayward, Wisconsin. And Toliver’s supervising professor on his master’s thesis at Wisconsin Whitewater was none other than Ladania Wingel. The night I met Wingel in Jefferson she was with a lady friend, name of Marldeane Youvonne Brannigan.”

  “Holy shit,” Sedge said wearily. “My brain’s too tired to even start processing any of that.”

  “Sleep—I’ll ca
ll you back.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Got Allerdyce with me.”

  “Oh my God. I’m in a nightmare,” she mumbled, and hung up.

  69

  Jefferson, Wisconsin

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 2007

  Aunt Marge Ciucci knew Marldeane and Skyler Brannigan. “Sisters,” she told Service while giving Allerdyce a suspicious look. Wayne had arrested the girls’ brother for poaching from the time he was a kid.

  “Deer, ducks, turkey, bear—you name it, the man hunted it and killed it, and usually sold it, too,” Marge said. “For most people hunting’s a deep-seated drive, a compulsion from the genes, but for J. P. it was a disease, something he had no control over.”

  “Had?”

  “Till the day he died.”

  “J. P. Brannigan is dead?”

  “Yessir, died in September 11, 2001. He was one of those unfortunate folks in New York City.”

  “This was reported in the news?”

  “The girls reported him dead and told the story. It was all in the paper. They even had a funeral, though there weren’t nothing to bury, just a box.”

  “What can you tell me about the sisters?”

  “Both good-looking and both like men; they started early on that. Skyler, she’s living around Lansing in Michigan, and Marldeane’s still here. Marldeane got her a taste for the vino.”

  “No recent news about the women?”

  “None I heard or read. Why?”

  “Skyler committed suicide last week. I was there.”

  Something about Marge’s face. “You don’t look surprised.”

  “Not a bit. All three of them kids have been out of control their whole lives.”

  “What does Marldeane do for a living?”

  Marge Ciucci opened her hands. “Nobody knows, but whatever it is, she lives high on the hog—long winter vacations to Key West, the Canary Islands, places like that.”

  “She hangs out with Ladania Wingel.”

  “Wingel runs the school board, and Marldeane is the school’s biggest and most consistent benefactor. Who’s this fine fella with you?” she finally asked.

  “Allerdyce,” Service said.

  Allerdyce bowed his head but said nothing.

  “He doesn’t talk much,” Marge remarked.

  “He doesn’t have much to say that’s worth hearing,” Service said.

  “I guess its good to know someone that well,” she said sarcastically.

  • • •

  Service dropped Allerdyce in town and went on alone. They would reconnect later. He got to Brannigan’s address, a huge older home on a multi-acre manicured lawn set on the banks of the Crawfish River, just south of Aztalan State Park. Service was met at the door by a woman of indeterminate age and short blonde hair. He showed his badge. “I’m looking for Marldeane Brannigan.”

  “She’s not here,” the woman said.

  “And you are?”

  “Not Marldeane,” the woman said.

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “Her sister died. She went to collect her body,” the woman said. “I’m looking after the house.”

  Service got back to his truck and called McKower, who was still at the fire. “Skyler Verst. Her maiden name was Brannigan. Her sister’s en route to claim her body. Has the medical examiner released it yet?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll check and get back to you. Cell coverage?”

  “I’m good.” He immediately called Sedge, who sounded groggy. “Listen, I’m in Wisconsin. Marldeane Brannigan has gone to Newberry to claim her sister’s body.”

  “Where’s she staying?”

  “No idea, but you might want to check the red cabin.”

  “Okay. And you?”

  “Heading back, probably. McKower’s checking to see if the body’s been released yet.”

  “I doubt that. Our medical examiner had a stroke the day after the suicide. They put him on a medevac to U of M. Nothing’s getting done in that office for the moment. It’s frozen. They never even got to an autopsy on the woman.”

  “You know that how?”

  “My turf,” she said. “I try to keep track of everything in my territory.”

  “You know some jerkwad named Heywood?”

  “Sure, I’ve read his books. Why?”

  “Just wondered.”

  McKower called back. “The coroner’s out of action. There’s been nothing done with the body and there may not be for a while.”

  Service drove back to Brannigan’s house and the same woman answered again, drink in hand. He showed his badge again. “Where’s Marldeane staying in Michigan?”

  “Where she always stays—ya know, the place where she can talk to God. Your badge isn’t good here, is it?”

  “I’m a federal deputy too,” he said.

  “Oh” was her sole response.

  “You remember the name of the place where she is?”

  “No, just that it’s way out in the woods and it’s real quiet.”

  “Lands of the Lord?”

  “That’s it,” the woman said. “They don’t have no phones there. Not even running water. Seems to me you should be able to get close to God with a clean behind. You want a drink?”

  “No, thanks.” He cringed as he left.

  Service called Sedge again on his way to fetch Allerdyce. “A source says Brannigan stays at the Lands of the Lord compound when she’s up that way.”

  “You still want me to check the cabin?”

  “To be thorough. I’m heading back. Should be there late tonight. I’ll bump you when I get close.”

  “Do you want others involved?”

  “Can Max Stinson spare you guys?”

  “I’ll check with the captain. Two or three do it?”

  “Two plus us should be plenty,” he said.

  • • •

  He wanted to chastise himself for making a long and unnecessary drive, but he wasn’t sure how he would have gotten the information otherwise. The question to Marge had just been a matter of making nice. Could have called Marge to start, he decided, but done was done.

  Allerdyce was seated in what used to be called a fern bar, drinking a red drink from a martini glass. Service sat down across from him. “We’re going back.”

  “We ain’t done nothin’ here.”

  “The Brannigan woman is in the U.P.”

  “I heard dat,” Allerdyce said. “Prolly up to the Lands Lambs of the Lord place. Folks here say she likes booze, God, and men—in dat order. She sounds like a pip. Want snort for da road?”

  “What is that?”

  “Razzieberrytini,” the old man said, smacking his lips.

  “Down the hatch. We need to roll, fine fella.”

  “Don’t call me dat name.”

  “You didn’t mind it with Marge.”

  “Dat was differ’nt.”

  Allerdyce chugged the rest of his drink, left a ten-dollar bill on the table, and trundled out in front of Service.

  “We gonna use sireen, mebbe?”

  “No. Shut up and get in the truck.”

  “Too bad,” the old man complained. “Always wanted ta run sireen from da udder side a tings.”

  My partner, Service thought, pulling into the street and heading north to connect with I-94.

  70

  Lambs of of the Lord, Chippewa County

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 2007

  The officers assembled west of the religious retreat: Sedge, Sergeant Bryan, Chippewa County CO Korfu, Service, and Allerdyce. Korfu looked like a serious iron-pusher with huge shoulders and a bull neck. Service had never worked with him before, knew nothing about him.

  “She was there yesterday,” Sedge told the group. “I know the guy who owns property to the south of the place, and asked him to go up there and look around. There will be outdoor mass at noon today. Unfortunately, the Kerses are there too—all of them.”

  Shit. “How?” Service asked, shaking his h
ead.

  “I don’t know. Apparently Allegan kicked them.”

  “Just great,” Service said glumly. “What about the fire?”

  Sergeant Bryan said, “Eighteen thousand acres, sixty-five percent control, two hundred and sixty souls on the ground. A recon flight spotted a new smoke near Hulbert midday yesterday, and the incident commander diverted resources off the south line. Fifteen acres, no structures. They knocked it down fast. Rain is forecast for today.”

  “Rain or wishful thinking?” Service asked.

  “Sixty percent chance,” Sergeant Bryan said.

  Service said, “Let’s hope we’re not in the sixty. They need rain on the fire, but we don’t.” Most people never understood that when weathermen announced rain percentages, it meant there would be rain in that percentage of their area. Even COs sometimes forgot this.

  “All previous forecasts have been off on quantity and duration,” Sedge added.

  Service thought about their situation, where the fire was. “What’s our buffer?”

  “Ten or twelve miles, crow fly,” Sedge said, “but we could order an evac for the retreat, pick off Brannigan when we go in to notify them to leave because it’s unsafe.”

  “I believe in sneak attacks and ambushes,” Service said, and they all grinned. “If we get runners, I’d prefer we influence their routes and directions.”

  “Creep it or George it?” Korfu asked.

  “Both. Jingo, you come in from that south property. Bryan and Officer Korfu come in from here, from the west. Limpy and I will block between their boundary and Kermit’s camp on the Betsy. Make a radio call if anyone splits. Alert those the runner will head for. Where’s Toliver?” he asked Sedge.

  “Bitching about lost time, calling Lansing every day. He calls Dr. Ledger-Foley and Director Cheke,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

  “What are they telling him?”

  “Nothing. They both stopped taking his calls, and that really frosts his ass.”

  “What’s our timing?” Sergeant Bryan asked.

  “When’s mass?” Service asked.

  “Noon,” Sedge answered.

  “Okay, noon it is,” Service said. “That gives us three hours, and we should catch them bunched up. I’ll check in on the 800 ten minutes before noon. All of us need to be within two hundred yards of your target by then.”