Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  The two state policemen didn’t ask him what was going on. They flattened themselves against his Yukon, weapons drawn, bodies tense, all eyes locked on the berm.

  The Troop with Linsenman waved the pair forward. They waddled awkwardly, hunched over to reduce their profiles.

  Two deputies crept through waist-high bracken ferns on top of the rocky berm to Service’s left, their eyes focused ahead. A few small white birches were twisted and wind-bent among the rocks, too small to provide effective cover. The men worked together, the front man focusing forward, the second man watching the sides, stopping occasionally to scan behind them.

  “Secure,” someone proclaimed over the radio. “Suspect down, get the EMTs up here.” A male voice, not female.

  Linsenman finally lowered his weapon, letting his hand hang limply by his side.

  Service heard voices where the officers had converged on the berm.

  Linsenman slumped to his seat, sat with his legs extended and splayed on the ground, the posture of a dishrag.

  A squat EMS truck crunched up the narrow road, its emergency lights blinking, its grooved tires spitting small rocks that peppered the landscape. Service closed his door to make it easier for it to pass. When it stopped just past Linsenman’s squad, Service eased forward, watching his friend light the filter end of a cigarette, unaware of the stench, the taste, smoking on automatic, needing something, anything, to settle his nerves.

  Linsenman looked up at him. “Are you everywhere?” It was an old joke between them. “This ain’t the same as a moose,” he added. Service saw the deputy’s hand shaking, carefully took his weapon, unchambered a round, slid out the clip, placed it on the dash.

  EMTs hustled a stretcher up the rocky berm, slipping on the loose scree.

  A Marquette County deputy stopped and squeezed Linsenman’s shoulder. “Afraid?”

  “I was too damned scared to be afraid,” he said. It wasn’t a joke.

  The words stuck in Service’s mind. Too scared to be afraid. Only people who worked in the shit would appreciate the distinction.

  The EMTs came back down the gravel berm, juggling the stretcher in the bad footing. Two deputies were on either side, helping stabilize the patient. “Alive,” the front EMT called out, tapping his right shoulder. ­Suspect to patient, Service thought, a severe change in status. No cop would call the man a victim. That would be for lawyers to debate. Linsenman shook his head, sighed deeply. “I’m the worst shot in the department,” he said.

  “Not today,” Service said.

  The female Troop came back, looked down at Linsenman, stuck out her hand. “Thanks.”

  She was young, Service saw. Her voice had remained relatively controlled throughout the situation, but a calm voice could sometimes betray or mask what was really going on inside.

  Linsenman nodded, exhaled smoke, ignored her hand.

  Service pulled her aside. “Why the pursuit?”

  “I got a call to stop a green Ford. When I tried to get him over, he let one loose out his window.”

  Service looked at the vehicle ahead of her squad. Its nose was askew in the left ditch, its ass sticking up like a feeding duck. It was a green Chevy, not a Ford. She’d tried to stop the wrong vehicle and gotten a violent response by sheer chance. “They give you a plate number?”

  She shook her head. “Just a green Ford.”

  He kept quiet. At some point somebody would ask questions, sort out the mistake, try to apply logic to it, fail. Serendipity sometimes had a violent side.

  One of the county’s sergeants came forward. His name was Don and his deputies called him “Padre.” His shirt was wet with sweat, his hair matted. “Get somebody with Linsenman,” Service said. “He’s in shock.”

  Padre said, “We have a procedure.”

  Service bit his lip. There was also a procedure for identifying vehicles, and it had failed.

  “Get help for him.” Shooting another person was not like a movie shooting. You couldn’t put a bullet into a human being and walk away feeling normal.

  “Look,” a cop said from the growing knot of uniforms. He pointed across the small pond. A deer was floating in the shallows. Service saw a fan of blood staining the dark water.

  “Write the fucker for a deer out of season,” a voice said. The cops laughed nervously.

  Service didn’t laugh with them. He waded the perimeter of the pond, getting wet to his knees, got the fawn by a leg and dragged it to dry land. There was a gaping hole in the neck, unaimed bullets as lethal as aimed ones. In more than twenty years in law enforcement he had rarely pulled his weapon and never discharged it at another person. History aside, he knew the day might come when somebody would leave him no choice. He looked at Linsenman sitting with his head down and understood what he was feeling. In Vietnam he had done it too many times and it had exacted a price. He sat down on a patch of reindeer moss and lit a cigarette. Better him than me.

  Why couldn’t he remember Linsenman’s first name?

  Fern LeBlanc, Captain Grant’s secretary, looked disapprovingly at Service’s muddy boots and pants. She held out several callback slips, did not speak to him. Fern had worked exclusively for the captain for a long time and seemed to resent Service’s presence. Sometimes she seemed frazzled by his ways, all the calls that came in, his abruptness. The feelings were mutual. LeBlanc was chemically blonde and fifty-two years old with the figure of a thirty-five-year-old. Men and women around the office talked about her, but nobody challenged her. She was the captain’s gate guard.

  Service sat in his cubicle. The captain stopped in the doorway and Service cringed, expecting a rebuke for being on duty and not at home, but the captain said only, “You’re bleeding,” and walked on. Service touched a tissue to his upper lip, found blood.

  He set the slips aside, punched in the code for his voice mail. There were several messages.

  Nantz: “Crazy schedule, honey. There’re two high schools down here, Everett and Eastern. I have to find out which one used to be Lansing High. Love you.”

  Del Olmo: “The missing remain missing. Sorry I wasn’t there this morning. Something came up.”

  Gus: “Thirty-two bucks to see a stiff? Sorry I missed that.”

  Deputy Linsenman: “Thanks, man. You are everywhere.”

  Walter: “Enrica’s okay. Thanks for the fly rod.”

  Chief O’Driscoll: “Give me a bump, Detective. No rush.”

  Service picked up and read the callbacks, shoved them into his in-basket, which was already full.

  He called Pyykkonen, got a busy signal, and was switched over to her phone mail.

  “It’s Service. I’m in my office.”

  When the phone rang, he expected Pyykkonen, but it was Nathaniel Zuiderveen.

  “You hear about Dowdy Kitella?” She-Guy began.

  “Hear what?”

  “Somebody beat hell out of him last night outside the Amasa Hotel.”

  “You sound pleased,” Service said.

  “Don’t try to mind-fuck a mind-fucker.”

  Pyykkonen called after Zuiderveen. “We put the prints through AFIS and we got a hit. The prints are those of Tunhow Pung. They were in the immigration file.”

  “But that’s not Terry Pung in the morgue.”

  “It becomes curiouser and curiouser,” she said. “I’d say Pung had his stand-in fully covered with paper and that he actually came through immigration in Terry’s place.”

  “When?”

  “Most recent entry was July 2001.”

  “Pung was a student at Tech ’01–’02, right?”

  “Somebody was,” she said.

  “You get the ex-wife’s name and address?”

  He heard her shuffling papers. “Here,” she said. “Siquin Soong.” She spelled the first name, pronounced it again, “That’s She-quin. She’s remarri
ed.”

  He wrote down the name. “Address?”

  “Nine One Two Two, Orchard Apple Circle, White Lake. It’s in Oakland County. She owns a business in Southfield, White Moon Trading Company. I talked to her lawyer in Ann Arbor. She is quote, unavailable, end quote. It’s the same firm as her late husband’s.”

  “Did you ask about the son?”

  “Ms. Soong is in seclusion,” one of her lawyers says. “End of quote.”

  “I bet,” Service said. “Talk to you later.”

  He dialed his friend, Luticious Treebone.

  “Hey,” Tree said. “What up?”

  “The usual,” Service said.

  “Yeah, scut. I talked to Nantz. She told me about Wisconsin. Said you are a busted up old man.”

  “She’d never say that.”

  “That don’t mean it’s not true.”

  “I need information.”

  “You mean you need it again. You lived in civilization you wouldn’t need to call me all the time.”

  “You’d be lonely.”

  “I’d find a way to deal with it. What’s the name.”

  “Siquin Soong,” Service said.

  “White Moon Trading.”

  “You know her?”

  “Big donor to the Democrats, beaucoup money into the Timms campaign.”

  “Never knew you to follow politics.”

  “This is Dee-troit, dawg. We breathe that shit. Got to keep you pale-skinned barbarians outside the gate.”

  “There’s no gate there,” Service said, “but that’s an idea worth thinking about.”

  “Racist,” Tree said.

  “Soong’s squeaky clean?”

  “Ain’t nobody squeaky clean, brother. Not even us.”

  “You gonna give me the Paul Harvey?”

  Tree chuckled. “The rest of the story. . . . Feds think White Moon is a front, that the lady is into a lot of shady shit, but nothing sticks.”

  “Her husband’s name is Soong?” Service said.

  “Her old man’s Buzz Gishron.” The name meant nothing to Service . “He was a deputy ambassador to the UN under Carter. He teaches constitutional law at Wayne State, where he has also been a major donor. If anybody’s squeaky clean, it’s Gishron—patron saint of individual rights and lost causes.”

  “Married to her?”

  “It got people shaking their heads when it happened. He’s an old fart. She’s late forties, major bootie and high maintenance. Got all the moves and the looks and money to make the moves work. Local society queen and the rights king—a marriage made for People magazine.”

  “They covered it?”

  “Everybody covered it. You don’t get news up there? What do you want with Siquin Soong?”

  “You got a cup of coffee close by?”

  “Jolt Cola. Shoot.”

  Service walked his friend through the case, starting with the finding of the body in the Saturn, through the discovery of the second body in the shower in the house in Houghton.

  “People think cities got all the savages,” Treebone said. “The bodies still in a cooler up there?”

  “Pending release by the prosecutor.”

  “Don’t sound like nobody wants those folks.”

  Tree’s statement struck a chord. A respected professor had been murdered and who had come forward to speak for him? “Can you get me some details on Soong, her business, all the stuff the feds think?”

  “Can try, but Snoop-Doggin’ a big-time Democrat could raise a few hackles and get my very black ass kicked, sayin’?”

  “Whatever you can do.”

  “Nothing in writing, okay? I don’t want no paper trail.”

  “I’ll come to you.”

  “Good, and bring Nantz. We’ll have dinner with Kalina.”

  “Your wife is culinarily deprived.”

  “Man, I wouldn’t subject nobody to Kalina’s cooking. We step out. How’s that boy of yours?”

  “Settled into school, I think.”

  “You see much of him?” his friend asked.

  “Stayed with him last night.” He didn’t amplify with details.

  “I knew you had that father shit in you. You hear anything from Eugenie in Grand Rapids?”

  “She the P.I.? Not yet. Yell when you have something on Soong,” Service said.

  “Semper Fi,” Tree said.

  Service got a cup of coffee and stepped outside to light a cigarette. Fern LeBlanc saw him and flashed a look of scorn. She neither smoked nor drank and saw both habits as signs of moral weakness.

  How could he dig up information on Harry Pung?

  Lieutenant Lisette McKower pulled up in her truck, hopped down and stretched.

  “Bumpy roads,” she said, twisting her head to stretch her neck. She looked at his bandages. “If that’s cosmetic surgery, you need to find another surgeon.”

  “If that’s a joke, you need to find another writer.”

  “How’s the arm?”

  He lifted it. “Sore.”

  “How’s the captain?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  She hesitated. “He seems tired to me, Grady. Distracted.”

  “We all get tired.”

  “Not you and the captain.”

  Service felt tired, his arm was sore, and his face stung. Ten years ago he didn’t need sleep or much time to recover, but this had changed. McKower was five-five, one hundred and twenty pounds, but it looked to him like she had added a few pounds and her dark hair was showing a few strands of gray. When he had been her training officer he thought they had sent him a cheerleader. She was twenty-four then, had spent three years as a USFS smokejumper, and was as tough as they came, mentally and physically. Later she had been promoted to sergeant, and last year to lieutenant. For one month, long ago, they had been intimate; when they realized their mistake, there had been some anger and a lot of embarrassment, but they had gotten past their indiscretion and had remained close as colleagues and friends. She was married now and had two daughters.

  “How goes the el-tee life?” he asked.

  She curled some of her hair in her fingers. “See the gray?”

  “What gray?”

  She smiled. “Seriously, I’m worried about the captain and you look like shit.”

  “Leave it alone, Lis.”

  She cocked an eye. “Whatever you say.” She reached over and squeezed his wrist. “Be careful, okay?”

  “Is that like safe sex?”

  She walked through the door and Service turned his mind back to Harry Pung, but found no quick answers. He went back to his cubicle and started looking at the callback slips.

  Detective Jimmy Villereal in Benton Harbor had busted some people illegally harvesting ginseng near Van Buren State Park and wanted to know if he had similar cases in the Schoolcraft County coastal zone along the northern Lake Michigan barrier dunes. Ginseng? How the hell was he supposed to know?

  North Trails Riders wanted an instructor for a snowmobile program. Somebody else could have that.

  A female reporter from St. Ignace wanted a technical definition of hunter orange. Let her look it up for herself.

  A man with a cabin on the Ford River wanted to lodge a complaint about a man in an ultralight aircraft, shooting airborne ducks and geese. Which county, Marquette, Delta, or Dickinson? He hated callbacks, wished Fern would take more information.

  A magistrate in Marquette wanted to clarify some information on a ticket Service had written.

  He threw the callbacks on the desk. All of it could wait.

  McKower came into his cubicle and sat down in the chair next to his messy desk.

  He talked her through the Pung case, including his need to ferret out more about the dead professor. She thought for a second, said, “Stretch
Boyd.”

  “The departmental PR guy?”

  “Budgets are tight, but I have it on good authority that he has access to LexisNexis.”

  “Which is?”

  “About the best electronic library in the world. It’s expensive, but you can quickly pull up litigation or news. Call Boyd and ask him to help.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “He’s a trout-fishing addict. Give him a few spots and he’ll bury your work in his budget. But don’t give him any eastern Yoop spots.”

  “Because you’ve already done that,” he said.

  She smiled. “I’m keeping those for me.”

  He called Boyd as soon as McKower left the office and explained what he needed—any articles on Siquin Soong, White Moon Trading, or bear poaching.

  “You understand there’s a quid pro quo?” Boyd said.

  “Yeah.” Service gave him three spots, all of them good, none of them well known.

  “Man, cool,” Boyd said. “Talk to you tomorrow?”

  Service didn’t feel like cooking. He stopped at the Duck Inn, a tavern at a crossroad south of Marquette. It was a worn-out place favored by COs, loggers, cops of all flavors, a few lawyers, and a couple of judges.

  He was not surprised to find Linsenman sitting at the bar, nursing a nonalcoholic beer. “The real stuff might help more,” Service said.

  “I gave it up for Lent,” Linsenman said.

  “You gonna eat?”

  Linsenman nodded.

  Service said, “I’m buying.”

  “This isn’t a celebration.”

  “Any meal you can eat is a celebration.”

  Linsenman smiled.

  “What the hell is your first name?”

  Linsenman pursed his lips. “Weasel.”

  “Your parents named you Weasel?”

  The deputy shrugged. “My mom said it was a difficult pregnancy. Call me Linsenman.”

  17

  Newf jumped up, put her paws on his chest and stretched. Cat floated up onto a table in the foyer and extended her head so he could scratch her.