Harder Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  Geriomo sat in the nearest chair and laughed out loud, sighed, and looked at her daughter. “Aiie!” send that boy home now. You and I need to talk.”

  “A real talk about actual body parts by name, or more metaphoric bullshit?”

  “Actuals.”

  “Okay!”

  Vachel went outside and was quickly back. “He never would have worked out,” the girl declared.

  Her mother gave her daughter a questioning look.

  “Stench dropped two catheads on the deck. “There’s a puke-pile beside them and Norv’s nowhere in sight. Never breed with a quick puker,” Vachel concluded.

  “A new philosophy?”

  “Inescapable, but more along the lines of unpleasing aesthetics, and like nobody cleans up their own puke, right Ma?”

  I will laugh at this ten years hence, Geriomo Smoon told herself.

  “Is it difficult, Ma?”

  “Is what difficult?

  “Having the kind of talk we’re going to have.”

  “Depends on if I can remember how it works, or if I have to make it up as I go.”

  “Ma.”

  Dancing Hula in Felony Forest

  Her last day, twenty-seven years in a green uniform, nine thousand, one hundred, and twenty-four days spent in every imaginable weather condition (including a water spout in Lake Gogebic), over every kind of terrain, and yet, and against all odds and sheer chance, she had made not one major case of a lifetime, the sort of thing that left a story behind when you were gone.

  Not one case, not even close. She’d made cases, lots of them solid cases for all sorts of violations but a big, mass felony case, not a one and not so much. It was well, like humiliating.

  Not to mention inexplicable. It wasn’t one of those things others talked about to her face, but she was sure there was talk behind her back; she could even feel the pricks of derision at district meetings when everyone gathered. She imagined their words: always average, never a go-getter, your plain-old brown wrapper of an officer, a blivet and a face with no name and gliding to an end of the lackluster skein.

  It irked. It hurt. It made her steely eyed and determined. None in more than a quarter century, but today was today, not yesterday, a fresh, unmarked slate and this could be that big day for the case. For the one.

  It has to be. Because this is the last day forever.

  Why am I like this? It’s what happens to any officer who follows a legend into a county. Her predecessor had made so many major collars they called him Big Case. But me, in the shadow of such glory, nothing, not even a chance to sit in my own name. Oh yeah, what happened to Big Case? Yah, I know your partner, how’s he doing? God, your partner was a thing to behold. All this sucked big time. But she was too proud and too stubborn to transfer. She was determined to prove herself here, no reason why not, just a matter of recognizing a big case when it rolled up on her. A matter of time and patience.

  But a major case had never come my way, and now I’m down to the proverbial and final last patrol, my last set of downs with the ball in a long career, yet, and here is also a gift, a totally free day, with no directive forcing me into a boat, or to anything or anywhere specific. On my last patrol day I can go and do what I choose to do. Not that they want or expect this. The higher-ups no doubt expect me to go quietly through the day and slide into the obscurity of retirement and the long slide after that led to whatever the hell comes next, which has many names, even more theories, and scant evidence qualifying it as anything more substantive than air castles.

  Not that I want to trust to blind faith. Done that for a quarter century, and see where it had led me. No, not fate and no blind acceptance. For once I’ll listen to Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Okay so what do I actually do? What do I focus on, driving serendipitously whereby I can cover a lot of blank miles, hoping to collide with a fate that had always and effectively avoided me, and hope to end an eight-hour shift no differently than the past many thousands spent the same way? No, not that.

  Deer, bears, wolves, fish, what? Think it through. It’s September for cripe’s silly sake, Labor Day, the last gasp of tourists and . . . get out your notebooks and look back at this same date for many years. Huh, drug bust last fall by the interagency drug team out near Tula, and, of course, this past summer they had been spent countless hours by multiple agencies patrolling the snot out of the same area, which makes and made no damn sense. Why do cops think the other side is dumb? Uneducated, probably, but not dumb. They can be as wily as foxes. If I wanted to grow drugs . . . I’d . . . she got out a plat book. If I wanted to grow drugs, I need water, cover, and geographic anonymity. There are farms south of Imp Lake, which have always rubbed me wrong, though I’ve never been able to say precisely why. Saw corn silage there, year after year. Now I’m wondering, she wondered, who does the farmer sell to? There’re no animals on that farm, not that I’ve ever observed or heard. So it’s not silage for his critters. And it’s a far fling from Tula, and close to Wisconsin for fairly wasy transport north and south. A long shot’s better than no shot. Imp Lake it shall be, my final roll of the dice.

  It’s sort of laughable, this last-day fixation, but never having made a major case has always made me feel somehow like I had shirked duty, which I never had, not even for an hour. Just couldn’t. It’s just bad luck, that’s all.

  Remember when the city cop saw a naked young woman jump off a footbridge in the city park in July? He jumped in immediately and hauled her to shore and been hailed a hero, given the gubernatorial medal for saving a life. Nobody pointed out that the water there was three feet deep over a pea-gravel bottom. Years before I had witnessed the same thing, walked out on the bridge and told the woman, “Stand up, you’re making a fool of yourself.” Unlike the city cop I know every fact and nuance of every square foot of the county, had made it a point to learn it all, so that when something happened, such data was already in my head and could help me quickly sort things out.

  Did that preparation pay off? Chump change only, no significant cases or results. Same situation, different solutions, identical outcomes, why was one glorified and decorated and the other one unremarked? Strange darn world.

  Now I get to roll the bones one last time and Imp Lake wins. No regrets, no looking back, go and do, this can be the one. I hope.

  All right, consider tactics. Just drive on up and say howdy? No that would never works and I have not even a shadow of probable cause, never mind any compelling evidence of anything, much less a crime, even a minor one. You can’t blast onto private property on conjecture, just can’t, and right now your ability to take a next step is contingent on a smart first step. Stop stalling and go do it.

  As a drop-back partner she had Carmen in her backpack, Carmen, her personal drone, which had cost her close to two hundred bucks and had yet to earn a nickel of return. The drone’s real name was EYESKY 1 but she called hers Carmen after the silly damn game she and her sisters had played all those years, “Where in the world is Carmen Somthingeeavo?”

  She liked flying the drone, liked it a lot. It had a 16 megapixel photo resolution, and 300x magnification. She’d bought the camera separately, rigged the mount all on her own, Leica digital, another eight hundred smackers and never mind the lack of payoff. The logic was simple enough. DNR budgets were stagnant at best and they had no money to spare for a plane to fly night shooters and over-baiters. She accepted the reality and created her own aerial capability.

  She had, of course, dutifully passed the drone idea to her sergeant, even showed him the set-up and gave him a demonstration of what it could do. His reaction had been immediate: “Waste of time and money, there ain’t no budget.”

  Six months later there were two state drones being flown by COs, she was not one of them, and her name had never been mentioned in co
ncert with helicopter drone craft. She shrugged it off.

  Maybe there will be something in plain sight at the farm and all I’ll have to do is pull into the farmyard.

  Don’t fool yourself. You ain’t one to get the gimmes. Stand off, let Carmen do the looking, see what she can find for you.

  She took a circuitous route to her destination. She knew an abandoned road nearby, one now mostly grown over with popple and birch land scrub brush. Nature was reclaiming it, but some good hard surfaces remained. The old stretch of macadem was north of the farm and a good place to hide the truck.

  She parked and hiked to the old hardtop where she assembled Carmen, ran though the pre-flight checklist, got a wet-finger read on wind direction, and told the bird to fly. “Get ’em Carmen.”

  It was quite amazing technology for a thousand bucks: But what if Carmen goes down, what can I do legally to recover her? If she was down on government property, no problem. But down on private property? If she was government-owned property I’m pretty sure I could notify the landowner and go fetch. If it was an actual aircraft and not so toy-like, there would be no question of going for it, public or private.

  She’s not real in size, but her capability is real enough.

  Stop worrying. She’s never failed you before and she won’t fail you today, not this day—of all days. She put her mind to flying instead of crashing and worrying, pulled her cloth hood over her head and watched the laptop monitor she put on a stump. She used her plat book and a quadrangle map to guide Carmen over standing corn. Never thought about this before, but with a hard freeze possible any day now, why is the corn still standing? Random fact: Corn won’t germinate in soil that’s fifty degrees or colder. When does dirt this far north ever warm up?

  She guided the drone down a long row, activating the Leica’s still-photo function on a regular basis. She had programmed for an automatic dump into a mission file on her computer, a file she had labeled “Last Chance.”

  There’s something odd about the corn rows, but you need to stay focused on flying and do analysis after Carmen is safely home.

  Mental Note Number One bumps Mental Note Number Two. You’ve thought this was odd for years, something not right, but not enough to pull you in for an up-close look. Dry corn was dry corn, what’s the difference? Carmen flew up a row and she turned her right 90, and left 270 to run south along another swatch. Flying was mesmerizing and she understood how pilots could get addicted. The activity was methodical, somewhat instinctive, and could be very creative in some circumstances, especially if you let your mind lag behind the craft.

  What the hell was that? A flash? What the fuck?

  Check controls, all good, what the heck? Yellow red-white, I know I saw something. Bright, a burst. Circle, descend, take another look. OK, up, 90, 270, steady, Carmen flying with no more than whispery nudges from her forefinger against a small plastic extrusion. OK the map and plat book say the farmer has two forties, the second one across an unnamed creek, she’s a long way off now, maybe near the outer control limit. Hope this wasn’t the day I out fly my drone’s radio leash and prang the poor girl. Be still, stomach.

  Eyes on, concentrate, creek down to a trickle, let’s look at the second forty, big jack pine stand with hint of some sort of yellow, a hut maybe, set back deep, more yellow and red flashes now, all along the corn rows. It’s green corn in September, that’s not right. Wrong color, wrong time of year. Green is for mid-summer, yellow is for fall. That’s out of place, something seriously wrong, the old non-sequitur in the woodpile, OK, lower look time, descend watch for obstacles, careful now.

  She hovered the little craft ten or twelve feet off the ground and ripped off a long line of still photos, turning the craft ninety degrees after each shoot. That done, climbed Carmen back upstairs above the trees. What next? The building in the red pines? Why not, you’re here, she’s there and operatin fine. Do it all, girl, leave no stone unturned, this is your last damn chance.

  Again, down lower, lower, low hovering, swinging the nose, it made her think of square dancing. Got the structure into focus and what else . . . what the hell is that? Next to the structure, a small quonset of Korean War vintage, covered by a camo net, the kind you saw in newsreels of World War Two, stretched over artillery and tanks hiding from aerial recon. Green stuff under the camo tarp, she could see that, took Carmen closer, fired away with stills and saw it was military-type netting for sure. There was one displayed outside General Jim’s surplus in Clare.

  Flash! No color this time. Light, bright light, blinding! Muzzle flashes? Jesus! Pull Carmen up, climb, climb, no more side trips, bring the girl back safe to her home in your backpack.

  The small chopper landed twenty feet away and toppled on its side. She fetched the craft, removed the photo card, popped it into her computer. Hood over her head again, she unloaded the take. The corn? Reaction immediate. It doesn’t look real. Look closer later. Skip to the end, skip to the flash, what the hell had that been? Clear photo of an asshole in a Cabela’s ghilly suit playing sniper. She lit a cigarette, her first one in six months, inhaled deeply, studied the photos. Sniper for sure, guard over a dope grow. A big-ass dope grow, a monster dope-grow.

  What corn farmer has snipers guarding his fields? Stupid non-­question. None. Can feel my heart rate elevate, okay, calm down, regulate your breathing. Be calm. You are in charge, stop hyperventilation before it takes the controls. Next, the tarp. Definitely a tarp, camo, loose mesh, the green underneath too blurred to see with any distinction. Back to the yellow structure and along the corn rows, blinking red and yellow like some sort of psychedelic mirage and her mind thought curtain and Casbah and she laughed out loud. You’re outta your mind, woman. Wait, no value judgments yet. Use your brain, not your feelings. Black posts in the corn rows, she could see those, had two good stills and all that blinking yellow and red and finally, gloriously an amazing close-up of a . . . hula dancer? She rubbed her eyes. Hula dancers hung from wires strung between the black poles in the corn rows. And among the hula girls little black pine trees. What the hell?

  All right, tie it up. Shots at the drone. Probable cause? Was the shot at the drone, or at another target, something she couldn’t see from where she operated Carmen? A coincidence? No matter, the damn barrel was pointed almost straight up and that’s reckless discharge of a firearm in my book. What about the stuff under the tarp? No way to tell, no positive idea, just weirdness at this point. Hanging hula girls and black pine trees? Those were real for sure, out of place to be sure. Call U.P.S.E.T., the UP Substance Enforcement Team? No, they’ll take the information into processing and I’ll never see it again. Probably nobody will. What could this mess be but a dope grow? Reall: A legal one? Nope, it was way outside those idiotic rules. HIPAA hamstrings cops. The Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996 makes scaling the confidentiality wall an insurmountable hurdle, forcing agencies to spend resources, get warrants, and serve then. And only then will the Feds tell you if the grow was righteous or not. How the hell could agencies even pretend to be on the same team? Idiocy.

  Got to think clearly here and now. She disassembled Carmen, pushed her into her ruck, put the laptop in its case, and started for her truck when she heard dogs closing on her position. Moving fast. No bear-hound practice is allowed now and bear hunting has not yet started. What the heck? Not hounds, something else. Shit, girl. Run! She ran full-out to the truck, and threw her gear inside. She had slowed twice along the way to brush her ball cap on the ground.

  Whatever the hell is coming, I want it to come right to the truck so I an see and if needed, photograph it. Even a nose-dead dog could follow the trail I left for it, or them.

  She radioed the county, let dispatch know she was back in her vehicle, said nothing beyond that. Her engine start would activate her Automatic Vehicle Locator system and let Lansing know she was in the truck, motor running, no need for radio contact.

  She kept her eyes on
the trail she’d come out on, felt her heart thump. Tree huge pit bulls came flying at the truck with three more behind the first wave. She put the truck in gear and pulled away as animal bodies thumped against her doors. What . . . the . . . hell?

  Conclusion One: This is something.

  Conclusion Two: You can’t handle this alone. She set her 800 mhz to the district frequency.

  “One, One Four Zero, One, One Twenty Seven.”

  “One Four Zero.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Highway Thirty Two Ten, just north of Smoky Lake.”

  Good. Less than ten miles. “You want to grab lunch? Say Nimrod hilltop, ASAP?”

  “Say again, One Twenty Seven.”

  “Nimrod. Hilltop. Think.”

  “Gotcha,” One Four Zero said. “One Thirty Six is with me. We just joined up.”

  “One vehicle?”

  “Two.”

  “Four-wheelers on board?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “See you soon. One Twenty Seven clear.”

  •••

  One officer had become three and One Four Zero was famous across the state for his electronic and computer acumen. Not to mention he had the work ethic of a logger on boar-foot pay.

  She turned her truck into Nordine’s Food Plaza, gassed up with the state credit card, wrote down her mileages, and went inside to buy rubber sandwiches, pickles and roast beef, and American cheese. She stood at the counter, in line, waiting to be served and did a double take. Hula girls, red tops, yellow grass bottoms, colors so bright they burned your eyes, each dancer holding a ukulele, Bahama & Copy Air Fresheners. And Look . . . look . . . black ice deodorants for vehicles. “How much?” she asked the cashier, who had a gold ring in her right eyebrow.

  “I ain’t rung you up yet. I only got me one hand.”

  Wordledge saw two hands. God. “Those deodorants, how much?”

  “Black Ice, three bucks.”