Shadow of the Wolf Tree

by Joseph Heywood

  “Why’d you look way up here?”

  Why hadn’t the others looked up here? “You said multiple fractures in both skeletons, only one hacked up. Falls equal fractures.”

  “Maybe I should resign, save the county’s money, let you game wardens do my job.”

  “Whatever floats your boat, doc.”

  Service got an evidence bag from Sjovall, who had arrived minutes before the Marquette contingent. It contained the long bone Service had found earlier.

  “Leg? How the hell did Sjovall get the evidence? It should have been locked up at the Iron River Post. You sign for this?” the ME asked the Troop.

  “Yeah. Custody trail’s pristine.”

  Service felt a little better. The doctor held out the bag. “Tibia,” he said, “hip to knee.”

  Grady Service told the ME, “Your report didn’t indicate any heights.”

  “Needed this and/or a femur. Artists can estimate height, but I am compelled by science in my work.”

  The doctor’s a blowhard. “Artists?”

  “They measure the length of the head. The average body is thought to be eight heads long, four heads from hip, measured laterally at the navel, down to the ankle. Ergo, head times eight gives you a ballpark, which is entirely unscientific and not in the least precise.”

  Service listened to the man, who was obviously enthralled by the sound of his own voice, lecturing the untutored. “Currently the consensus is eight, perhaps because humans are growing taller.”

  “Eight, huh, not seven?” Service asked, deadpan.

  The ME glared at him. “In the Renaissance it was seven.”

  “Bit of a diff between seven and eight,” Service said.

  “Exactly my point. An artist seeks only relative proportions, not scientific verisimilitude.”

  “What was his name, Michelangelo? He seemed to get things pretty close. Listen, Doc, just between us, what’s your best guess on vick two’s height?”

  “Six and a half feet on the eight-head model, but this is, as you put it, a guess, not a measurement. I will call you when I can be more precise.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Good science takes time.”

  Not good vibes here. “When?” Service pressed.

  “When I have something, Detective,” the man said, standing his ground. “Tomorrow’s Memorial Day.”

  “You know why God invented golf?” Service asked the ME, who shrugged. “To keep assholes off trout streams,” Service said, heading downhill with Millitor chuckling and wheezing behind him.

  “Don’t mind the doc,” Millitor said in the Tahoe. “He’s an equal opportunity asshole.”

  “I couldn’t care less about his religion,” Service said. “All that matters is how good he is . . . and how fast.”

  “He was good enough to have been the ME in St. Joe County a few years back. He moved up here to hunt, fish, and play golf. He took the ME’s job as a favor to the county commissioners. Nobody else wanted to do it.”

  “You think the county could get people to volunteer for our jobs as a favor?”

  Millitor stared straight ahead. “Nobody’s that crazy.”

  23

  Crystal Falls, Iron County

  MEMORIAL DAY, MONDAY, MAY 29, 2006

  Simon and Elza were on patrol. With unseasonably mild weather, CO shortages, and the three-day Memorial Day weekend, they would be knee-deep in fools and idiots. Service got up early, ran, came back, showered, and sat down in front of his friends’ computer to surf the Internet with no expectation of results. The question of skeleton height was bothering him. He didn’t like the arrogant ME, and didn’t trust him to do what was needed. He spent two hours poking around in a site called “Osteoarchaeology,” jotting down notes as he went. Mostly it made no sense.

  When his eyes got tired he sat on the porch and called Karylanne to talk to his granddaughter, who slobbered a wet “Bam-pee?”into the phone.

  “Goddammit, Karylanne,” he yelped. “We talked about this! She can call me anything but that!”

  “Yes, we talked about it, Grady, but now that your granddaughter is learning to talk, I’m out of the equation, and you’ll have to negotiate directly with her. Aren’t you proud? Her first word is about you, not Mum. I’m the one who should be bent out of shape.”

  “But Bampy?” he whined. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she’s got a couple of words, and at least one of them is mum.”

  “A woman of any age is quite capable of making her own decisions about terms of endearment.”

  “She’s sixteen months old, not a woman.”

  “How little you know . . . Bampy.”

  He heard Karylanne laughing as she hung up, and found himself grinning. Karylanne wanted games? Fine; he’d teach Maridly a few words of his choosing. See how Mum likes that!

  He finally summoned the courage to call Leukonovich around noon and listened patiently to a series of clicks and fiber-optic burps as the call pinballed its way to wherever the Poland-born IRS special agent was working. Leukonovich practiced yoga nude, and rarely spoke in anything but the third person.

  “Zhenya finds herself vexed and groping for verbiage to adequately express her emotional exhilaration,” she greeted him. “How goes the detective’s battle against the forces of darkness in the taiga?”

  “You sound wired,” Service said. There was no denying his attraction to the strange woman’s blend of raw and refined emotions and mannerisms.

  “Does the detective sense my joy in hearing his voice?”

  “It would be easier to sense in first person.”

  “Nonsense,” she said with a dismissive laugh. “Joy is an emotional force—a state of being, albeit temporary—not a construct of language.”

  He felt sweaty. How could a woman who was far from beautiful have such an effect on him? Keep to business, he told himself. “I need help.”

  “Zhenya would know if such help would be of a professional or personal nature?”

  “Professional.”

  “Zhenya is listening with a heavy heart.”

  He talked her through all the cases and events, starting with Newf finding the skulls, the interview with the professor in Chicago, what she had to say about Van Dalen, his death and obituary, and the prominence of the Van Dalen Foundation.

  Leukonovich possessed the closest thing to a photographic memory he had ever encountered, and, as expected, asked him to repeat nothing. “Zhenya is quite aware of this organization and its oleaginous namesake, an early giant in the Windy City oligarchy.”

  Oleaginous? He wrote down the word to look up later. “Is the special agent suggesting there’s IRS interest in the foundation?”

  Zhenya said, “The accumulation of assets in any form is always of interest to the federal government, especially when said accumulation is alleged to have an undeclared political focus.”

  “Does that describe Van Dalen’s foundation?”

  “Zhenya chooses her words most carefully—except during copulation. She understands what is expected, and will, of course, be in communication with the detective, for whom she maintains an interest outside the bounds of the professional. Zhenya also observes that the detective’s financial condition continues to improve, and she salutes the astute management of his personal assets and investments.”

  When they had worked together, the IRS agent had taken the questionable initiative of auditing his personal financial situation, something that had irritated him at the time. That she continued to monitor his finances no longer concerned him.

  “Zhenya has past satisfactory collaborations with one Captain Isaac Funke, and will confer with the captain regarding the detective’s interrogatories. The captain will undoubtedly be in direct communication with the detective.”

&n
bsp; “Will you?” he asked.

  “Alas, Zhenya is neither seer nor oracle, and cannot predict the future, but all things are theoretically possible, and, given this reality, she would no doubt otherwise welcome telefornication, but pleasure has no priority this day.”

  The call was terminated on her end and left him laughing out loud. Telefornication?

  Someone named Funke would be in touch. Leukonovich was aware of the Van Dalen Foundation, and, despite her convoluted syntax, he sensed her excitement. Of all the personnel from the many federal agencies he had worked with during his long career, Leukonovich of the IRS was far above all the rest in professional competence, connections, sense of mission, and trustworthiness as a collaborator. Zhenya was not about heaping credit on her own star—only on getting the job done. Credit was irrelevant, which in his experience made her a truly unique federal creature.

  Elza Grinda arrived home after dark, showered, and changed clothes while Service was putting the finishing touches on a dinner of Aztec potato salad, Thai corn fritters, and jumbo prawns marinated in extra-hot dried shrimp Thai chile sauce and grilled over charcoal. Simon del Olmo dragged in fifteen minutes after Grinda, with Tuesday Friday in tow.

  Friday looked him in the eye and said, “I need a drink—something strong, straight up, undiluted, and now!”

  Service pulled a bottle of Absolut Peppar out of the freezer, poured several fingers into a small glass, handed it to her, and watched her drain it, making a sour face.

  “She schmucked three deer on M-95,” del Olmo said. “I was two minutes behind her. Man, she blew them up! Her veek’s being towed to Iron Mountain. Not totaled, but major damage, man.”

  “Trois un coup,” Friday said, holding out her glass for another hit, her eyes welling with tears. “A mama and her babies, two itty-bitty fawns. I feel like a mass murderer.” She shook her glass for a refill.

  “Let the first one settle,” Service said. “Dinner’s on, Simon—five minutes, tops.”

  “Into my phone booth now,” del Olmo said.

  Friday wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked around the kitchen, sniffing. “You are cooking, you who never eats?”

  “It’s my day off,” he said.

  Friday picked up the vodka bottle, poured herself another drink, and sat morosely while he plated the shrimp, fritters, and potato salad. He brought the plates inside and drizzled sweet pepper sauce around the rims. Elza opened a bottle of Coppola Rosso and poured while he put the plates on the table.

  Simon tasted the shrimp, closed his eyes, and said, “When you retire, will you become our personal chef?”

  “You don’t like my cooking?” Grinda challenged.

  “You don’t like mine,” he countered.

  “Everyone knows you’re a terrible cook.”

  “I have saving graces,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s what you keep telling me.”

  Tuesday Friday ate so slowly that Service found it almost painful to watch. “If you live up here,” he said, “there’s two classes of people—those who have hit deer, and those who will. If you work as a CO, you will hit a lot of deer. You’ve never hit one on road patrol in your blue goose?”

  “Never; I’m a careful driver,” she said. “And realities aside, I still think it’s sad.”

  “A dead human is sad,” del Olmo said. “A dead deer is just roadside protein for other critters.”

  “You people are so insensitive,” Friday said.

  They didn’t deny it.

  “You’re supposed to be home,” Service said.

  “Tomorrow is a work day and it’s a two-hour drive. Better tonight than early morning.”

  “How’s Shigun?”

  She took a drink of wine. “Cuddly, thank you.”

  Service rinsed the dishes after dinner and loaded the dishwasher. Friday tried to help but he shooed her away. Simon and Elza sat in the living room, talked a little about their day, and fell asleep next to each other on the couch.

  “I’ll take you to the AmericInn,” Service told Friday as he started the dishwasher, but when he looked up he saw that she was asleep in the easy chair.

  He clapped his hands together. “Okay, kids, everybody go night-night.”

  Simon nuzzled Grinda’s neck as they shuffled toward their bedroom, looked back, said, “Bags in truck,” and disappeared. Service guided Friday into the room he’d been using, and turned back the covers. “Drank too much,” she said. “Bet you never do that.”

  “You’d lose that bet.”

  “I did good,” she mumbled, looking around. “This isn’t AmericInn.”

  “I’m sure you did,” he said, to appease her. “No, it’s not.”

  “Poor, poor baby deer. Bad mommy.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Poor baby deer,” and closed the bedroom door.

  He fetched Friday’s bags, smoked a cigarette, curled up on the couch, and awoke to find a ghost hovering near him—Friday with a sheet draped around her like a toga, her hair askew. She reached for his hand, said nothing, led him into the bedroom, patted the bed, fluffed pillows on both sides, and got in. “Just cuddle,” she rasped in the dark. “Newbie sex and drink not good.”

  He lay down beside her and listened as her breathing changed to a sound not unlike a mourning dove.

  When he awoke early he found Friday on her side, propped up on her elbow, her head on her hand. “I have a really low tolerance for alcohol,” she whispered. “But never a hangover.” She leaned close to his ear, her voice barely audible. “Grady, there’s something I’d like very, very much to do with you, but it’s been a long time for me, and if we’re to do this thing, I would be consigned to Jell-O mode, and that would be a terrible thing on a work day.” She added, “Correction: Not terrible; more like disastrous.”

  Jell-O mode? He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Three deer,” she said.

  “Elza’s count was at fourteen last I heard. You’re just getting started.”

  “Fourteen?”

  “She’s very hard on vehicles.”

  “And deer,” Friday said.

  “And deer,” he agreed.

  “I need caffeine,” she said.

  “Coming right up.”

  Grinda and del Olmo were in their stirruped uniform pants and bulletproof vests, still in their stocking feet, and said nothing when he joined them in the kitchen, though Grinda gave him a playful hip-bump as he poured coffee into a cup and took it back to the bedroom.

  Friday was on her side, sheets at her knees. Her left shoulder had a softball-size patch of pink scar tissue, as did her left hip. Her work clothes hid a lot more than the scars, and he tried not to look. “Shower’s in there,” he said, pointing at a door. “Full breakfast or a quickie?”

  He immediately regretted his words.

  “Is both an option?”

  “What about that Jell-O mode thing?”

  “Might be worth it,” she said, winking.

  He tossed a towel at her. “I’ll get things started.”

  “I think I already did that,” she said as he closed the bedroom door.

  24

  Iron River, Iron County

  TUESDAY, MAY 30, 2006

  Millitor was already in their cubbyhole at the MSP post, feet propped up, unlit cigar clenched in his teeth, coffeepot full. Service poured a cup. Friday sat down, looking smug, and Service wondered if the look related to last night.

  Nothing happened, he told himself. Really.

  “I was busy over the weekend,” she said, opening her briefcase and hauling out a sheaf of papers. “There’s this man I sort of know? He grew up in Negaunee, went to U of M, Stanford, and retired as vice chairman of Northern California Equities. He moved home
for his so-called golden years. He’s only fifty-five, but came home with a whole lot more than he left with. I asked him if he’s aware of the Van Dalen Foundation. He is, and he told me it’s the most complex organization in the country—that California Equities had done an in-depth study of it, and he can get us a copy of the Van Dalen Foundation’s organizational charts, including contact names and numbers, current as of three years ago. It will take him a week or so. He’s got to go to San Francisco next week for a board meeting and will bring the information back with him.”

  “Did he offer an opinion of Van Dalen?”

  “Too long in big business politics, too diplomatic, but he’s eager to help, and maybe that says something?”

  A week’s not bad, Service told himself.

  “That’s my first item,” Friday said. She gave each of the men some papers stapled together. “Here’s the second: Provo’s transcript from Adams State College. I used a highlighter to mark some of the more-interesting courses she took.”

  Service read through the transcripts, trying to categorize. Under history: Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Movements; The Lessons of Sun Tzu: Direct Action and the Global Environmental Movement; Roots and Antecedents of the French Revolution; Guerrillas, Resistance & Public Opinion in Open and Closed States; Trends in Counterrevolution; and the History of Colorado Copper Mining.

  Under anthropology: Native American Culture and Aboriginal Healing Practices.

  Under geography: Advanced Map Reading for Outdoor Professionals.

  Science: The Ecology of Salmo Trutta, and Botany of Midwestern Lacustrine Ecosystems.

  General studies: Community Action Workshop.

  From physical education: Orienteering in Extreme Environments and Climates.

  The rest of the classes looked like basic college requirements that all students had to complete, and a heap of ambiguous, stupid-sounding education courses for her major.

  Provo’s final GPA had been 3.87. Not an average student.

  “The curricula have changed since my day,” Service said.

  Millitor quipped, “Curricula—is that a Cuban dance, or what?”