Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  “It’s all shit,” she said back to him.

  After the photographs were taken, another deputy arrived and helped her to lift fingerprints. They then began a long, slow inspection of the interior of the Saturn, using tweezers to collect fibers and hairs and anything else they could find that might help in the investigation.

  Eventually Pyykkonen cleared Service to collect the animal scat, which he placed in a plastic evidence bag in a cooler in the back of his vehicle. He found several long hairs mixed in the feces and several scrapes on the leather seating. Scratches? He wondered.

  “Got a learned opinion?” she asked.

  “Bear shit, I’d say. I’m not sure about the hair. Feels and looks like bear, but the colors are wrong. These are blond, almost white.” He added, “Out West black bears range in color from light to dark, but ours are all deep black.”

  “Maybe this fella found a polar bear shitting in his backseat and his heart stopped,” she said.

  “That would do it for me,” Service said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll ship the samples off to our lab and Gus can give you a bump when we have results.”

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Couple of days,” he said, not sure how much work the Rose Lake Lab had these days. “Maybe a week,” he added, amending the estimate.

  “No prob,” she said. “The shit’s not likely to be crucial here.” Maybe, Service thought, but you didn’t often find bear scat inside a vehicle. On them sometimes, but not in them. The scat might not be critical, but it meant something, his gut told him.

  Pyykkonen went through the man’s wallet. There’s a Tech ID in here,” she said. Michigan Technological University had been founded to produce mining engineers but had since branched out to become one of the country’s premier engineering programs.

  “Pung Juju Kang,” she said, examining a business card, “Professor, Department of Structural Engineering. Probably we ought to get over to his house, notify his next of kin. You want to come along?”

  Nantz would be whipping up a breakfast for Gus and Walter around now. “Sure,” he said with a shrug, cursing himself for letting his curiosity have its head.

  The house was made of cedar logs that glowed a flamboyant orange in the rising summer sun; it was more tall than wide and looked relatively new. There was a detached one-car garage. The severely pitched roof of the house had been built to ward off heavy winter snows and was lined with green ceramic tiles. The lawn was trimmed but there were few flowers or shrubs out front.

  Pyykkonen knocked on the door several times and rang the bell, but got no response.

  Service stood behind her, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, bored with the whole thing, wishing he had gone back to Gus’s.

  “I’ve got a search warrant coming,” the homicide detective said not more than a minute before a beat-up Jeep Eagle clattered up the driveway. A towering man with white hair got out with a paper clenched in his beefy fist. He had a ruddy face and needed a shave.

  “Judge Pavelich. I could have had somebody pick it up, your honor.”

  The judge grunted dismissively. “On my way over to the Hurons to annoy some trout,” he said. “This is right on my way. No sense sending somebody else.”

  “Judge, this is Grady Service,” Pyykkonen said.

  “Otto,” the judge said, extending his hand. “Heard of you, Service. Twinkie Man, right?”

  “Guilty,” he said with a nod, trying not to grimace. He had arrested a poacher a couple of years ago who tried to claim that sugar had made him temporarily insane, which then led to his violations. The man had lost in what was becoming a legendary court case that Service saw as just another bout with an asshole violet, his term for a violator.

  “You found the guy dead?” the judge asked Pyykkonen.

  “In his car down to the fish house in Hancock, eh,” she said. “The M.E. thinks it could be cyanide.”

  “Poison,” Pavelich said. “The tool of chickenshits.” The judge ran his hand through his thick hair and rolled his shoulders. “Guess I’ll be getting on.”

  He left without further comment.

  Before Pyykkonen could open the door, a Houghton County patrol car pulled into the driveway. command was painted in gold script on the door by the driver’s side. A red Jeep Liberty pulled up behind the squad car.

  “Sheriff Macofome,” the detective said to the approaching officer, who was short, squat, neckless, and hatless, his hair trimmed in a military whitewall.

  “Thought I’d see if I could lend a hand,” Houghton’s new sheriff said. He had been appointed a couple of months before, replacing the chief who had held the job for nearly fifteen years before he died suddenly of a heart attack. The way Macofome looked at Pyykkonen made Service wonder if his helpfulness was something more than professional. Not his business, but she clearly had been rescued from school liaison to get the homicide job.

  The man behind the sheriff looked antsy. “I’m Adams,” he said. He was of medium height and balding, with a shape that suggested he spent too much time behind a desk.

  “Harry Pung works for me. I got a call that I might be needed here. Is something wrong?”

  Service thought of correcting the tense, but kept his mouth shut.

  “Is it doctor or professor?” Pyykkonen asked, impressing Service with her political savvy.

  “This ain’t MIT. Call me Steve.”

  “Steve,” Pyykkonen said tentatively, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Pung Juju Kang was found dead this morning.” Adams stared disbelieving at the detective. “Is he married?” she asked.

  “Was,” Adams said. “The ex lives downstate somewhere—Detroit, I think.”

  “You called him Harry Pung,” Service said, confused by the name. “His ID says Kang.”

  “Standard Korean naming convention,” Adams said. “The family name is always listed first. He adopted the American name when he moved to this country. What happened to Harry?”

  “We’re looking into that,” Pyykkonen said, offering nothing specific. “How was his health?”

  “Harry? Fine; ya know, like the rest of us. We could all lose a little weight, eat better.”

  “History of heart problems, anything like that?”

  Adams said, “He hunted and fished and hiked a lot. He was a tad overweight, but he seemed to be in good enough shape.”

  “What was his reputation up to the college?” Pyykkonen asked.

  Adams contemplated the question. “Harry isn’t one to make a good first impression. He’s a bit gruff and direct, but when you get to know him, he’s fine. First week of classes I had students bitching, but then they settled in and his student evaluations were excellent. He worked the kids hard. In Korea, it was tough to get slots in good schools and Harry thought students here ought to be as serious about their work.”

  “His colleagues like him?”

  “Harry pretty much sticks to himself. He serves on department committees and does solid work. People think he’s a bit eccentric, but hell, that’s almost a badge of honor in academia.”

  “What did he hunt?” Service asked. Adams was still in present tense, had not processed the reality of Pung’s death.

  Adams shrugged. “Beats me. Lots of hunters and fishermen on the faculty, but Harry pretty much does his own thing.”

  “You said he was divorced?” Pyykkonen asked.

  “Before he came here,” Adams said.

  “When was that?” Pyykkonen said.

  “A year ago this month.”

  “From where?”

  “Virginia Tech. He was a real catch for us. He has an international reputation in structural materials.”

  “Like cement?” Pyykkonen asked.

  Adams showed a hint of academic superiority. “He’s working on heat-resistant materials to be used for heat-s
hielding in high-speed aircraft.”

  “Government contracts?”

  “No, but they’re most certainly in the offing. His work is just getting recognized by the Department of Defense. His work to date has been more involved with the chemistry than applications, but he was moving into applications.”

  “Sounds like a smart guy,” Pyykkonen said.

  “He was,” Adams said after a pause.

  “He have kids?”

  Adams again pondered the question. “One son I know of: Tunhow. He was a student here last year, but transferred to U of M this fall.”

  “The son have problems here?” Pyykkonen asked.

  “Not book-wise. The boy made dean’s list both semesters. Came in with great credentials.”

  “Engineering?”

  “Zoology,” Adams said, glancing at his watch.

  Service said, “You said no problems book-wise. Were there other kinds of problems?”

  “Standard stuff—booze in his dorm room, fake ID—nothing major. The kids here hit the books hard and the competition is tough. Some students play hard to offset the pressure. Is there anything else?”

  “No, sir,” Pyykkonen said. “We appreciate your help.”

  “You need anything else, you be sure to give a shout, eh?”

  “Yooper?” Pyykkonen asked.

  Adams looked embarrassed as he turned back to face her. “Slips out, ya know? Yah sure, born and raised over to Rock.”

  Pyykkonen’s question didn’t surprise Service. Yoopers had a tendency to try to identify each other, as if place of birth conferred a certain level of verisimilitude.

  When the professor was gone, Pyykkonen and the sheriff exchanged glances. “Not all that broken up,” Pyykkonen said.

  “Let’s get on inside,” the chief said.

  The foyer was standard western, with a closet and a high ceiling. From the foyer they moved into a long room with a rough-hewn wood floor.

  Pyykkonen said to nobody in particular, “Should we take off our shoes?”

  “Nobody to bitch if we don’t,” Chief Macofome said.

  The first room was huge, perhaps twenty by forty feet, with a squat black enameled table in the center. The table was surrounded by embroidered black satin pillows. There was a huge digital TV in one corner. No books, no flowers. The ceiling was covered with jade green colored paper. There was a sliding glass door at the end of the room, looking out on a garden that seemed to be a collection of small twisted trees, plots of raked sand, and boulders of various sizes, shapes, and colors. The base of the walls on both sides of the room was lined with low chests of drawers. Some of the chests had pillows on them.

  “Not my idea of cozy,” Service said, the barren interior reminding him vaguely of how he had lived in his own place before he had fallen in love with Maridly Nantz and moved in with her. Nantz had brought a distinctly positive change to his life. What effect his son would have remained up for grabs.

  There was a bedroom that was barren except for a wide low bed with nightstands and bulbous brown lamps on them. The bed was centered on a mat that looked to Service like varnished paper. Behind the bed there was a large, stark painting of a creature that had a lion’s mane and a longish snout, like a combination of a lion and wolf, but it was not so much a wolf as something else, which Service couldn’t place. He studied the painting for a few moments and gave up. As in the main room, there were cumbersome wooden chests along one wall.

  “Homey,” Pyykkonen said, wrinkling her nose.

  Service was disturbed by the place. He’d always prided himself on not accumulating stuff when he lived in his cabin on Slippery Creek, but this looked barren and sterile, and he wondered if this was what people had seen when they came to his cabin. It was not a reassuring thought. There was nothing here but bare necessities—no personality, no decorations, no joy—just that peculiar painting.

  The kitchen was small and equipped with all the conveniences, but it was so clean that it looked hardly used. Like the rest of the house it was virtually empty save a package of chocolate-covered figs and an untouched six-pack of OB Lager Beer in the fridge. Service looked at the bottles with the blue labels: Bottled by Oriental Brewery Co. Ltd. Seoul, Korea. “Never seen this brand before,” he said.

  The figs were in separate compartments like chocolates, and three compartments were empty. The fruits were each wrapped in gold foil.

  She said, “Tough to be overweight when there’s no food.”

  “Maybe he ate out a lot,” Service said. The idea of a steady diet of restaurant food turned his stomach. He might not be adept at much, he told himself, but he knew good food and put a high value on it. Cooking was a way to lose himself in something that didn’t involve work and carried an immediate payoff.

  The other two ground-floor rooms were empty, though one of them had some scrapes on the floor, suggesting recent use; perhaps the son moving out? But hadn’t the dead man’s son lived in the dorm? Not your business, he reminded himself.

  “See anything interesting?” Pyykkonen asked.

  “One thing bugs me,” Service said. “He’s supposed to be an avid hunter and fisherman. Where’s his gear?” Outdoor enthusiasts were rarely far from their equipment.

  The homicide detective shrugged.

  Macofome came up from the basement, shaking his head. “Better take a look.”

  Service and Pyykkonen followed him down the steep steps and found the basement empty except for a large cement statue. It was the same ugly animal as depicted in the bedroom painting.

  “Lion built by committee,” Pyykkonen joked.

  Service nodded, but he had lost interest in the statue and painting as he pondered why there were no guns or fishing tackle in the house.

  Pyykkonen looked over his shoulder. “If he had a bear in here at least it didn’t shit,” she said. Then she sniffed the air. “Ammonia. Somebody did some heavy duty cleaning down here.”

  “The whole place looks too clean,” Macofome said. “Sterile.”

  “Well,” Pyykkonen said, “We’ve had our walk-through. It’s time to go over the place inch by inch and get photos.”

  “Nothing more here for me,” Service said. “If you don’t mind I think I’ll shove off.”

  “Good idea,” Macofome said, breaking a smile. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Gus will give you a call when the lab results are back,” Service told Pyykkonen, who followed him upstairs.

  “Thanks,” Pyykkonen said at the front door.

  Gus Turnage was one of Grady Service’s best friends. An elf of a man with the shoulders and arms of a blacksmith, Turnage had once been voted CO of the Year in Michigan and nationally in the same year, but had shrugged off the honors. He was also the longtime scoutmaster of a troop that won national recognition every year, but you would never hear this from him. Gus’s wife, Pracie, had died in a head-on collision with a logging truck almost ten years ago, and he had raised three sons on his own. All of them were away at college now and Gus was alone. He and Service had become COs the same year, and over the past twenty years their paths had crossed continuously. They’d had a lot of fun together, and both knew they could rely entirely on the other in a tough spot.

  Gus lived east of Houghton, not far from their friend Yalmer “Shark” Wetelainen, who managed the Yooper Court Motel and spent the bulk of his time tying flies and reloading shotgun shells for his two passions in life. Shark was forty, short and thin, and partial to beer and any and all food. Despite copious drinking, neither Gus nor Grady had ever seen their friend drunk, and once, in disbelief, they had administered a Breathalyzer only to find that he barely registered a blood-alcohol level. They decided there and then that he had the metabolic system of a shark and the name stuck.

  Since Pracie Turnage’s death, Shark was at the house as often as at his own place in the motel, and t
his morning was no different. His beat-up pickup was parked at the end of the driveway and one of his scrawny bird dogs was stretched out on the porch working over a bone.

  “Just in time for breakfast, babe,” Maridly Nantz said when Service walked into the kitchen. Shark had a leaning tower of flapjacks on a plate and a stack of toast in front of him. Gus was sitting at the table looking pale, but grinning. Walter was at the counter, manning the toaster. He did not acknowledge his father’s arrival.

  “Big night?” Nantz asked, giving Service a lingering hug.

  “Found some shit,” Service said.

  “Normal night,” Gus said, grinning.

  “Bear shit in a Saturn,” Service said.

  “In the car?” Shark asked.

  “Backseat.”

  “There’s a story begging to get told,” Gus said wryly.

  “You get to tell it,” Service said sarcastically, putting the plastic bag with the bear scat in the refrigerator. “I’ll send the bag to Rose Lake for you. When the report comes back, it’s all yours.”

  “The work of a game warden,” Gus said. “Pracie would’ve hit the roof if I dumped shit in the fridge.”

  “She’d have had a right to,” Nantz said.

  “You sleep all right?” Service asked his friend.

  “Your woman was at my bedside all night,” Gus said with a mock frown.

  “Easy boys,” Nantz said, setting down a cup of black coffee for Service.

  “Lorelei called early this morning,” she said.

  State Senator Lorelei Timms was running for governor against Sam Bozian’s handpicked toady and surprising everyone by suddenly jumping up in the polls to pull even with the three-term governor’s anointee. “She got a problem?”

  “Of sorts. She wants me to fly for her,” Nantz said.

  “Not sure that’s a good idea,” Service said.

  “Me either, but I’ll make a good decision.” She kneaded the small of his back.

  “Sounds cool to me,” Walter said, placing a dish stacked with toast on the table and sitting down.

  “Thanks for the support,” Nantz said.

  “This isn’t your business,” Service said, immediately sorry that the words had slipped out.