Ice Hunter (Woods Cop Mystery 1)

by Heywood, Joseph

  They sat outside on a picnic table and talked.

  “You have to report this,” young Bozian said.

  The question was purely rhetorical. “What happened?”

  “I’m not cut out for this,” Trip Bozian said.

  Before Bozian had arrived for his rotation with Service, he had been briefed: Other officers had noticed that the young man showed a great deal of anxiety in tight situations, and often less-than-adequate judgment. The jury was still out on his ability to do the job. Bozian’s previous failures had been minor, but this error was a strong indicator that the governor’s son was indeed not suited for CO work.

  “I’d rather get bounced than hurt somebody,” Bozian lamented.

  Service didn’t lecture because there was no need. The probie already understood that he wasn’t suited for the nerve-racking job.

  Still, Service didn’t say anything. He would make his report, but it would be somebody else’s call on young Bozian’s fate. Given that his father was the state’s chief executive, Service had a hunch he might be kept on and shielded.

  It came as a surprise when the governor’s son was dropped quietly from the program, but he knew that eventually the department would have to contend with the governor. He’d guessed that eventually the governor’s wrath would be vented in his direction.

  That moment was now.

  “What the hell happened with my son?” the governor demanded again.

  Service took a deep breath before replying. “He couldn’t cut it, Governor.”

  “You encountered violent elements, and my son met force with force,” the governor declared.

  Service wondered what Trip had told his father. “Sir, we encountered some rowdies, and your son drew and discharged his weapon outside department rules.”

  “You were both being threatened.”

  “No sir. We were in discussion with the subjects and it was under control. Our rules of engagement are clear,” Service said. “There were no weapons in evidence and no overt threat, only a crowd of drunks. Your son overreacted.”

  “That’s your version,” Governor Sam Bozian said.

  The implication was that Service was wrong and expected to recant. “Those are the facts, Governor.”

  “And based on your version, you recommended my son’s termination.”

  Chief O’Driscoll intervened. “Governor, Officer Service simply reported the facts, which he is required to do. The decision to terminate Trip was mine.”

  “The shot did not hurt anyone,” the governor said. “Nobody was injured.”

  “That’s irrelevant,” Chief O’Driscoll said. “Civilians were needlessly endangered. Your son experienced previous problems during his probationary assignments. He lacks the requisite self-control to deal with ambiguous and potentially explosive situations.”

  The governor stared at the chief of the law enforcement division. “My son was railroaded,” the governor said angrily.

  “If so, sir, your son laid the tracks himself,” O’Driscoll countered.

  Director Tenni sucked in his breath and cringed, expecting one of the governor’s legendary verbal assaults, but Bozian simply stuck out his finger and shook it at Service. “I have a long memory, Officer Service.”

  Service didn’t like the threat but knew enough to keep quiet. His chief had impressed him by stepping in the way he had when clearly the governor wanted his scalp.

  Bozian marched back to the helicopter, which quickly lifted off, its turbines screaming and pelting them with dust.

  “Thanks for the support, Chief,” Service said to O’Driscoll.

  “The next time you are ordered to report in uniform, it will be the proper uniform,” the chief replied icily.

  Service was wearing the same overcoat his father had worn during his career as a CO. Modern uniforms had superceded the old shapeless horseblanket coats years before, but Service clung stubbornly to the old one.

  “Young Bozian was not cut out for police work,” O’Driscoll said. “Lose the coat. That’s an order.”

  Service had no intention of disposing of the old coat. Michigan had been the first state in the union to hire a full-time salaried game warden back in 1887, and in more than a century since then game wardens—now called conservation officers—had fashioned a proud and honorable record. For more than half their history the COs had worn horseblankets, and Service wore his father’s coat to honor those who had gone before him.

  Service watched his superiors get into the chief’s truck and drive away, leaving him alone, which was how COs lived a great deal of their professional lives.

  A museum employee was standing near Service’s truck smoking a cigarette.

  “Was that Clearcut?”

  This was the nickname the pro-business governor had earned among state employees and conservationists.

  “In the flesh.”

  The man chuckled. “He’s sure got plenty. Pretty unusual the governor meeting up here like this. You get a medal or something?”

  “More like a kick in the ass,” Service said.

  “You don’t look none the worse,” said the man.

  Service took out a cigarette and lit up. He was signed out for the rest of the day and he had to pass the Manistee River. He decided this was a good day to fish for chinook salmon, which were beginning to fill the river. In a way he felt sorry for Trip Bozian, but the young man was simply not up to the job and knew it. He would land on his feet. The governor would take care of his son. He’d also take care of Service if the opportunity came, he told himself as he began to map out his plan for the day’s outing. He would fish into darkness, then drive the five hours back to his district, sleep in the truck, and greet tomorrow’s bear hunters bright and early.

  THE PRESENT

  4

  He drove the tote road with his lights off, as he almost always did when he patrolled, and suddenly the conservation officer saw a glint of light and knew there was a vehicle snugged into the side of the overgrown lane ahead. There was a smidge of moonlight, but not quite enough. The silhouette looked like an older Caddy. Grady Service checked his watch. Ten straight up. McCants would be along any moment and they would be needing privacy to cut from the lane over to the Sand River to get set up for poachers. Kids, he figured. Didn’t they have homework any more? Definitely a Caddy. He slid out of his double-cab and walked stealthily toward the vehicle ahead.

  He was several feet from the Caddy when he heard the springs squeaking. He thought, When a Caddy’s rockin’, don’t come knockin’. Midnight, windows down. He approached from the left rear panel and peered in before clicking on his light.

  The woman had light-colored hair. She was a top-rider, her chin jutted out, head back. Great, he thought.

  He shone his light into the backseat. The woman didn’t flinch, but there was plenty of scrambling beneath her.

  “Whose vehicle?” he asked.

  “Mine,” the woman said, squinting directly into his light.

  “Can I see your operator’s license, registration, and proof of insurance?”

  “We don’t need a license for what we’re doing,” the woman said. She didn’t take her eyes off Service and she didn’t move either. She was a cool customer.

  “I need to see your license,” Service said. “Please.” Conservation officers were expected to be calm in all circumstances and taught to be polite, nonthreatening. But the book didn’t cover walking up on backseat boffers.

  “All right,” the woman said, irritated. She crawled over the back of the front seat and slid behind the steering wheel, making no attempt to cover herself. Service observed a well-defined tan line. Artificial, he decided. Or a flatlander. There hadn’t been much sun so far this summer. Service switched his light to the backseat. The man had a thick neck and covered his face with his hands. Despite the attempt, Service recognized Jerry Allerdyce and felt his skin crawl.

  The woman thrust her license and registration out the driver’s window.

  “
Stay here,” Service said.

  “You care if we finish up while you do whatever it is you do?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer and fought a smile as he walked back to the truck. He called the county’s centralized dispatch to check plates and find out if there were any outstanding warrants on the driver. Her record was clean and clear. Her license said her name was Laudonia Capacelli, with an address in Royal Oak, a Detroit suburb.

  Seeing Jerry Allerdyce did not sit well. He had not thought about the Allerdyce family in a long time. Jerry was the eldest son of Limpy Allerdyce, now serving a stretch in Jackson. Jerry was tall with angular features on a triangular face, long hair in a ponytail, and a ratty goatee. It was hard to understand Jerry and the woman in the Caddy, but Grady Service had seen enough life to know that expectations and reality rarely intersected. What attracted a particular woman to a particular man was impossible to generalize. Given Jerry’s reputation with women, however, Service was nearly certain that Cadillac Lady was not unattached.

  Back at the Caddy he handed the woman her documents. She was still in the driver’s seat. “Get dressed and go.”

  “We like it here. No law against it, is there?”

  “Leave it alone,” Jerry said in a pained whine from the backseat.

  “Never mind,” the woman said. “Mood’s sorta shot, I guess.”

  “Find a more private place next time,” Service said.

  “We thought we had,” she said haughtily.

  Service walked back to his truck, got a cigarette, lit up, and stood outside. People, he thought. In this job you just never knew what was next.

  The Caddy made a lugubrious stop-and-go turnaround on the lane and came back toward him. The woman had not bothered to dress. She leaned out her window, smiled, and winked as the automobile slid by.

  Service waved her on. Down the road they could be arrested for exposing themselves, but that would be the county’s problem. He had his own business to attend to.

  Ten minutes later he heard another vehicle moving up behind him, lights out. McCants.

  As soon as she got out of her truck, she said, “Was that Caddy back here?”

  “Coitus interruptus,” he said, holding out a pack of cigarettes.

  There weren’t many smokers left among other COs. Especially among the young ones, who seemed annoyingly health conscious. CO Candace McCants was an exception. Four years on the job, she was Korean born, five-six, a muscular 160. He liked working with her. She wasn’t afraid of anything and had inordinate common sense, a rare combination.

  “Kids?” she said, lighting her cigarette.

  “Something like that.”

  “You write ’em up?”

  “For what?”

  She laughed. “Getting more than us?”

  “People wanna bonk in the boonies, no problem for me. We’ve got enough to do tonight.”

  “What did the guy look like?”

  He jabbed her shoulder. “Jerry Allerdyce,” he said. “Ready to work?”

  “Jerry? Yuck!” she said. “Lemme grab my gear.”

  Service was dozing when McCants touched him to wake him.

  “What?”

  “Doors slamming.”

  Service blinked to clear his eyes and mind and hit the on button. They had a surplus Russian night-vision scope bought from a forestry professor at Northern Michigan who ran a side business selling surplus Russian military equipment, offering it to sportsmen at huge profits but at cost to COs. The equipment was excellent, all digital, and would hook into a VCR. Whatever happened, they could freeze-frame and print excellent black and whites. The state also issued American-made night scopes. Most COs preferred the Russian models.

  Through the lens, the world appeared in shades of green.

  “Who is it?” McCants asked.

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  “Jesus. The Veldcamps?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “I hope not literally. We got them here last year. Same damn spot.”

  “They haven’t done anything yet.”

  “They will,” she said. “Bone stupid. Can you believe they’re back in the same spot?”

  “Maybe they believe lightning won’t strike twice in the same place.”

  “If so, we are definitely going to mess with their minds tonight.”

  The Veldcamps were first cousins, both in their early forties. They lived together in a cabin below Gwinn, the place surrounded by discarded tires and automobile parts. They were both members of some half-baked militia group and longtime poachers. Taking away their hunting and fishing privileges didn’t stop them from doing what they had always done. In some ways Service could sympathize with them, but the law was the law.

  From their blind in the tag alders beside the creek, Service could see the Veldcamps wriggling into their waders, like too small casings for way too much sausage.

  Last year they had arrested the pair for firing shotguns into a school of spawning whitehorse suckers. Now that the suckers were back for their June spawning run, so were the cousins, as predictable as the sun every morning and not as welcome.

  The creek rose from a spring pond about a mile above where they were hidden and flowed down to a culvert under the hard-packed dirt road. Just below the culvert was a wide bend and a hole where suckers tended to stack up. Service had seen as many as a hundred fish at one time here. This was the only such place for a good thirty miles and not ten miles from the Veldcamps’ cabin, a natural gathering place for fish, poachers, and law officers.

  Service watched the two men wade into the stream. Then the splashing and cursing began.

  “What?” McCants asked.

  “I’d say . . . softball bats.”

  “Idiots,” she said disgustedly.

  “Your idiots, this year.”

  “Let’s just shoot ’em.”

  “Out of season.”

  “I meant just in the legs.”

  “Out of season,” he repeated with emphasis, smiling.

  “Ooh-kay,” she said with mock disappointment.

  “Be careful,” he told her. She answered with a soft grunt.

  While she cut over to the road, Service put down the night scope and made his way quietly through the tag alders to streamside.

  The two men Bambied when Candy’s spot lit them up.

  “Who?” one of them said.

  “DNR,” McCants said, moving toward them. “Put the bats on shore.”

  Sonny Veldcamp poked his bat into Win Veldcamp’s chest, knocking him backward into the water. “I told you these fucking bats were too loud!”

  McCants stepped down to the streambank. “Put it down, Sonny.”

  “Oh Christ! It’s that gook bitch again,” Sonny Veldcamp yelled. He immediately took a step toward her, brandishing the bat.

  McCants stood her ground.

  “Drop the bat,” Service said from behind Sonny.

  “Fuckers!” Sonny screeched. He lunged for McCants but as he put a foot up on the bank, she gave him a sharp kick in his support leg and sent him back into the water.

  Service hopped into the water and pushed Win Veldcamp under the surface long enough to make his point. Win came up snorting water from his nostrils.

  Sonny stared into the light. “We own these fish, you fucks. We pay taxes.”

  McCants laughed out loud. “You have to have a job to pay taxes, Sonny.”

  “We’re Americans, rice nigger.”

  Whoops, Service thought.

  McCants stepped toward Sonny, took hold of his shirt, and jerked him forward. He went down like he’d been headshot. She dragged him onto the grass, folded his arms behind him, and cuffed him.

  Service pushed Win forward to join his cousin.

  “You’re not gonna arrest us,” Win said. “We got no fish.”

  “You like hockey, Win?” McCants asked.

  “What of it?”

  “It’s like spearing.”

  “Huh?”

 
“Intent alone will draw a penalty.”

  “What spears?”

  “Bone stupid,” McCants said.

  “Shit, man.” This from Sonny.

  “Quiet,” McCants said. “The UN troops in the woods may hear you.”

  Militias believed that the United Nations was conspiring to take over the United States and had troops hidden all around the country.

  “You hear that?” Win asked Sonny.

  “Give ’em Miranda,” Service told his colleague.

  Ordinarily they’d just write a ticket for a court date, but the Veldcamps were multiple offenders and likely to go hermit. They were set up to watch the sucker hole all night so they called the county, who dispatched a deputy to whom they transferred custody of their prisoners. When they got back into their blind, they opened thermoses of coffee.

  “Rice nigger,” McCants said. “That’s a new one.”

  “The cousins have a gift for language,” he said.

  She laughed. “How many hours until we can stop having fun?”

  “Quiet,” he said. “You’ll ruin business.”

  After a while she asked, “How have you done this job for twenty years?”

  Service said, “Just like cons, one minute at a time.” Being obsessive didn’t hurt either, he told himself.

  The remainder of the night was quiet. They returned to their vehicles before sunrise, McCants looking as fresh and alert as if she had just had a full night’s sleep. Youth, Service thought. All these kids joining the department. Young and competent. His youth was long gone and he needed to work harder just to keep up with them. It wasn’t that he loved the job so much as it was all he had. Raised on duty, dipped in it, fire hardened in too many ways. Truth be known: This was all he wanted.

  The night left him tired but not sleepy. He knew how to take care of this. As he drove back to his place, he ticked off his duty list for the next day. He’d sleep this morning. Then head over to the Mosquito. It had been a few days since he had been in the area, and to protect it you couldn’t leave it alone too long. This had been one of his old man’s axioms and now it was his.

  5

  The Mosquito River passed lethargically under US 2 to merge with Lake Michigan through a channel that bisected a series of low scabs of cobble and indestructible grasses. The river, which was seldom wider than thirty or forty feet and much narrower at the mouth, was stained orange by tannin from the hemlock forest upstream. From the highway bridge it looked like just one more shallow, slow-moving, mosquito-infested trickle, an appearance that belied its reality. The river ran more or less north to south through an area called the Mosquito Wilderness Tract. At the bridge it was a shallow, sluggish stream suitable only for suckers and spring smelt runs, not the sort of place to attract a casual sportsman motoring past at cruising speed. The name on the sign at both ends of the bridge added to the river’s image of inhospitability.