Bad Optics

by Joseph Heywood

  Switch directions. “OK, when did you find it?” Damn Allerdyce is as off the wall as Grady’s father had been, but unlike his old man, Limpy was sober. Crazy maybe, but sober. It was a big step up over the old man.

  “Wah! What da fuck dis, like Twinnydafuckin’ Questions? Was wit’ youse’s old man in da way back.”

  “My old man knew about this . . . thing?”

  “Yah sure, course, he know all sorts places got ole bones, but he don’ pay no tension, hey.”

  The old man had been a legendary conservation officer and stumbling alcoholic—sometimes simultaneously—the latter fact in Service’s mind canceling the former.

  Allerdyce said, “Old bones, nobody give no two shits. Youse need take dis fella, use for pilla.”

  Service drew back in disgust. “I’m not sleeping on a man’s skull.”

  “Youse sleep on own skull, hey, but youse’s choice. Youse da one wit’ da head-pounders.”

  “How do you know it’s from a man?”

  “Who else get seff killed out in da bush? Take look at bone dere, dat slicy t’ing dere, like knife, mebbe, tomahawk bonk on noggin, hey.”

  Service looked, examined the skull, and, after a while, asked, “Is it clean?” He took the human skull, and Allerdyce smiled like a dog with one side of its lip caught on its teeth, teeth which the old man no longer had.

  What was it Treebone was always preaching? If nothing works, try something else.

  He doubted his old friend would put a human skull under his head. But it wasn’t Tree’s head that was hurting. It was his, and he needed relief. So, a skull for a pillow?

  Eddie Waco said that I should get a lawyer, Grady thought, but I’m not jumping into that cesspool. Okay, okay, I get it, I really do get it. You’re right, I hear you loud and clear: I used an ex-felon as my partner for deer season. I can understand that this might ruffle some feathers and bend a few noses, but look at the cases we made. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa; do results count for nothing in this job? They used to count for something.

  And we broke no actual laws, at least none I know of. Okay, maybe I bent the intent of some laws over the letter of them, but not by that much. All they can do is question my judgment in the help I chose. There’d been no money exchanged, nothing. Almost thirty years in uniform, or was it over thirty? I no longer remember the numbers. And after all that shit, now this pettiness? Jesus H. Maybe a hair over thirty years—if I lump military, state police, and DNR law enforcement time together, which the pension folks will. Bastards down in Lansing know I can put in my papers for retirement any time I choose. Could it be that they’re waiting for me to make the move and put in my papers? Is this what those assholes want? Why?

  Which assholes? the voice in his head chided.

  With Lansing’s perpetual fog, you never knew. The place was dipped in the syrup of creative ambiguity, which enabled elected and appointed political hacks to slide in and out of issues and situations, encouraging them to delay decisions until they fermented, went away, or until they simply couldn’t procrastinate anymore and had to face the risks and rewards of an actual decision. Here was the cardinal rule of politicos: Take no personal or professional risks, ever. Well, he thought angrily, fuck them! My scalp is a prize. I know that, and it’s no surprise, but why this shelfing? Why now—after such an incredible deer season? Were these two things connected? Possibly. That voice in your head: You don’t know diddly, Bub. Not enough to go on. Making a case is like cobbling together a statue from driftwood, trying first to find all the pieces and then getting them to fit together so they looked like something. A story and a case needed who, what, when, where, and why, and right now most of those factors were unanswered.

  I’ve known Allerdyce my whole life. I can’t remember when he wasn’t just . . . well . . . here, or there, around, present. The old man had always insisted, “Limpy is half crazy, but he’ll never quit on a real friend.” Two questions lingered after the sloppy drunk’s assessment. Which half of Allerdyce was crazy and what part, if any, defines a true friend? Life’s always a river of bullshit, like after a fight at a hockey game, questions piling on the ice, which leaves some clueless striped shirt to make some sort of half-assed call based on partial information that amounted to a flawed impression.

  By now you’d think I’d start to figure out some of this crap and begin to see some sort of big picture. But there are no miracles like that, no way. Reality and my own observations make it seem that most folks stumble through life, many of them just faking their way until they fall over dead. Not a comforting thought.

  Man, you need an attitude check. Maybe the skull will clear your thoughts.

  Chapter 3

  Mosquito Wilderness Tract (MWT)

  There was a hint of first light in the woods along the wilderness area’s northern perimeter road when Service found some kind of media truck. What the hell? he thought. Damn media correspondents were everywhere, acting like endless variations of amateur hour. There’s no common sense in these snot-nosed reporters these days, he thought, their hair slicked back like pimps, all of them on their high horses, preaching and prancing, blind to any other viewpoint, especially a cop’s. Until they really need one.

  Who the hell was out here, and why? Not that he had ever trusted the likes of them, but it wasn’t always like this. For a long time, reporters seemed more like partners—at least the good ones did, the old pros who had learned the rules and hung with cops and learned their ways. The old pencils knew how to keep their eyes open and their yaps shut, and they didn’t ink their personal opinions as news. But this was a new era and a new bunch, operating at full volume all the time, and they went on and on and on about this and that and things they didn’t have a clue about and never would.

  Seriously, Grady Service reminded himself, don’t normal people look out a car-door window before opening the door and getting out? Don’t women clutch their purses tighter when they see certain people who tickle some sort of inner warning system? Don’t people cross the street to avoid an unsavory character, or watch the guy fumbling at the end of the bar and move away from him? Everyone profiles. It’s a practical way to analyze and evaluate your situation and location, a question of safety and self-preservation, not some stupid political ism. All people have to weigh their safety and their chances, and act accordingly. People profile faces, clothes, voices, races, religious beliefs, accents, manners, vocabularies, shoes, jewelry, tattoos, hairstyle, you name it, anything noticeable to help cull good from bad.

  As a trooper in Detroit, before moving over to the DNR, he’d seen city do-gooders profiling cops, and black folks profiling white folks, a human process that rolled along 24/7, then, now, and tomorrow. Situational awareness: This was a term that described how to stay safe and alive.

  Get back to now, doofus, he told himself. Don’t let your mind wander. That’s how shit gets missed.

  The truck seemed to be backed up to the trees, like it could go right or left when it pulled out. He used his binoculars to scan the silver Ford 350 two hundred yards in front of him. A decal on a door panel caught his eye: DRAZEL SISTERS L.L.C. SATELLITE SERVICES & EARTH SURVEYS. The name was painted in a bright red Old Englishy script on the doors, with a cartoon blue-and-green earth above the company name and eight small gold satellites, presumably global positioning system units.

  Tuesday’s voice in his mind from this morning echoed again. “Grady, honey. You don’t have a badge. You’re not on duty. You need to stay clear of the Mosquito. It’s not your concern.”

  “Always been my concern, always will be,” he’d countered. “First it was my old man’s, now it’s mine.” His old man had guarded the area after World War II, and Grady had defended it ever since it was declared a wilderness area.

  “You hated your father,” his girlfriend reminded him. “You’re hopeless,” she concluded.

  “I’m not doing anything, jus
t looking,” he told her.

  “Right, stalkers sing the same stupid song,” Tuesday said. She was a Michigan State Police homicide detective, covering all of the Upper Peninsula. “You don’t have colleagues to cover it?”

  “Nobody knows the Mosquito the way I do.”

  “And you believe that somehow they will magically and miraculously learn if you keep hovering and pushing them away?” She was seething.

  “I’m neither hovering nor pushing,” he said.

  “Men,” she hissed. “Like hell you’re not! You and that crazy old man Allerdyce.”

  “That crazy old man has saved my life—at least twice.”

  “And shot you once and did seven years in Jackson for it. How do you even score that shit? Why would you?”

  “It was on accident,” he mumbled.

  She squeaked. “By accident, not on accident; even your language skills are eroding because of that creature.”

  “You’re too hard on him. He likes you. And the cat and dog love him.”

  “Cat and a dog, yeah, that speaks highly of their judgment. Good god, Grady Service. You really are hopeless. Are you going to be back here tonight or bunk out to camp?”

  “Camp. I’m not great company these days.”

  “Fooled me,” she had said, closing the front door behind her, and headed for work. He had bundled Shigun in his snowsuit and taken him out to the truck to drop him at Tuesday’s sister’s house. Allerdyce had already been riding shotgun, but got out to strap the boy into his car seat in back.

  Stay focused, he thought, get back in this moment. This morning is gone, runway behind you. Gone, okay, no value to anyone.

  There was a single person in the silver 350, in the driver’s seat, a woman with a cigarette and a red coffee cup. He got out of his vehicle and walked up to the truck, where he stood silently by the window waiting for her to notice him. He knew he could announce himself, but better to see how she handles surprise.

  She bucked visibly when she discovered his presence inches from her window. She slid the window down and hissed at him, “What the hell is your problem, dude!? What is wrong with you, creeping up on me like that?”

  He said nothing, preferring to let unresponsive silence work its ambiguous magic.

  “Seriously,” she muttered. “Are you like lost or something?”

  She glanced at her rearview mirror, then the passenger-side mirror. “How did you even get here?” she demanded, tugged up her brown Carhartt coat sleeve and looked at her wrist. What was it about startled people that invariably made them look at their watches? Some sort of weird wiring, some kind of biological default.

  Again she asked, “Really, where did you come from?”

  “My mum,” he said. “And God. She’s dead. He’s not.”

  The woman’s face flushed red, her neck too.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “What’s okay?” she came back.

  “Your being here,” he told her.

  She smirked, looking something between nervous and irritated. “You’re telling me that it’s all right for me to be here on state land? That’s rich.”

  “My land,” he said. “But it’s okay. Just tell me why.”

  Her look changed from surprise to a flare of temper. “This is state land, not yours. Mosquito Wilderness Tract. There are signs. You can read, right?”

  “Mine,” he said, still grinning. “You think state land is yours?”

  “Don’t think it, know it.”

  “What’s your name?” the woman asked. She looked late twenties, though age among the young was getting more difficult for him to determine.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “One name is as good as another one.”

  “Jesus,” she said.

  “No, definitely not Jesus,” he said quickly. “Have you got business out here?”

  “My business is none of your business.”

  “It’s my land, ergo, it’s my business.”

  “This is so much bullshit!” she said, fumbling her way out of the truck and scurrying away from him, then stopping suddenly, turning back, and barking, “Stay,” like he was a dog. “I’ve got work to do,” she added.

  “Okay. What work?”

  “Go away,” she said.

  “My land. What work?”

  The woman took a cell phone out of her pocket and walked down the snowy perimeter road. “I’ve got great ears,” he called out to her. “I can hear owls breathe at night.”

  She stopped and looked back, and he said, “You’re still in my range.”

  She scuttled even farther away.

  Perfect. She ought to be right by Allerdyce’s position now.

  He watched her talking and gesturing, her voice coming up in little bursts of angry breath. The cell phone conversation was muted, but the pantomime was instructive to watch. Did humans think gesturing while on a phone call added meaning or clarity? This behavior had always puzzled him.

  When she was done, she marched past him back to her truck, got in, turned it around, and raced away from the wilderness area.

  Allerdyce tramped out of the snowy woods. “Dat blondie got mout’ like swabby. Turnt my ears green she did.”

  “Could you hear what was said?”

  “She not happy youse be ’ere. Udder voice tell ‘he not posed ta be dis way.’ Dis one, she describe youse. Udder, she say, ‘Can’t be him. He on da sheff, been putten outten da way.’”

  “You heard those exact words?”

  Allerdyce gave him his bobblehead nod. “Just told I did.”

  Is he me? Grady wondered. How could a stranger know about my suspension? “She say anything else?” he asked the old violator.

  “Call youse mean old coot,” Allerdyce chuckled happily. “We gone hike bush all day or go get some five-scar breakfast, hey?”

  He was hungry too. “Got somewhere in mind?”

  “Know place, she cooks real good. Make your ears water.”

  “Mouths water, not ears. We’re just gonna drop in?”

  “You hear her voice your ears water. Yah, we drop by, she likes t’ings quick like dat, s’prises, like lil honeybird she is.”

  “Sounds dubious.”

  Allerdyce looked him in the eye. “Dubious? He ain’t president no more . . . and ’member, I seen her first.”

  God. “Got it. You saw her first.”

  “She’s Yoopnique,” Limpy said. “Youse betcha.”

  Chapter 4

  McFarland Area

  Marquette County

  The house was on County Road RE adjacent to a swamp and the meager, nearly invisible headwaters of the Rapid River, a couple of dozen sinewy miles south of Lake Michigan. As towns went, McFarland wasn’t much of a place, more a post office than anything else. But when he found the location, he saw two manufactured housing units shoved together in the shape of a V, with a mud porch between and a bread truck–sized antenna in the open crotch of the buildings, the whole place hacked out of white cedars, which stood as natural barriers on three sides.

  “This part of the SETI operation?” he asked Allerdyce. SETI was a government program tasked with searching for extraterrestrial life, which involved a series of quasi-government and public listening posts. Or it used to be. He wasn’t even sure it existed anymore or if it itself was now quasi-governmental and not run directly by the government. This kind of freelance information floated through his zone of awareness as he went about his life and popped into mind at odd times.

  “Ain’t no bloody Yeti,” Limpy said. “What wrong youse’s head, Sonny? Dat skull not workin’ yet?”

  “There’s always hope.”

  The old man maneuvered himself behind Service and pushed him toward a door.

  “Now what? You’re sure this is all right?” Service asked the old man,
who was hunched behind his right shoulder.

  “Yah sure, she’s a peach she is. Hot peach.”

  “Do you know anybody who’s not a hot peach?”

  Allerdyce frowned. “Why I do dat?”

  “And we just drop in and she whips up breakfast, just like that? You’re suspending my suspended disbelief.”

  “You ain’t got no subpenders. Don’t talk jabbershit, we need chow.”

  Grady Service was hungry. He knocked on the door and got no response.

  “Go on in,” Allerdyce whispered, pushing at his back. “S’okay.”

  “You’re sure this is all right?”

  “Yah. Go on.”

  The main door opened into a foyer with a door to the right and another to the left. Allerdyce pushed him toward the left door. Monty Hall, Service thought and fought off a grin. The door opened into a long hallway. No decorations on the walls, some kind of interlocking rubber blue mat down the center of the floor with a hard tile surface on either side.

  Not much of a decorator, he thought as they entered an area filled with electronics, screens, drives, phones, antennae, wires curling everywhere like balls of snakes. When he looked up, he found the business end of a 1911 Colt .45 in his face, pointed up at his chin, not two inches away.

  The woman holding the pistol said calmly, “I squeeze one off, you think it’s got enough to plow through you and hit that worthless little beast trying to hide in your butt-shadow?”

  “Probably not,” Service said. “If you let that thing go at that angle, it’ll just plow through my empty head, and if you lower your sights, I’m wearing a vest, which might bust some of my ribs, but won’t go any further than that. You ask nice, I’ll just step aside and give you a clear shot.”

  When Service tried to move, Allerdyce squeaked and clung to his back.

  “Pity,” the woman said. “How about you just scrunch sideways and I pop the little weasel in the back while he attempts to flee after an attempt to break into my house?”