Ice Hunter (Woods Cop Mystery 1)

by Heywood, Joseph

  “Do you know the locations and expiration dates?”

  “Not off the top of my head. It’s been so long since anybody asked me about this I’m going to have to dig around. I’m not sure where the information is anymore. Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m not sure. A hunch, maybe. Can you get the lokes, names, and expiration dates for me?”

  “I’ve got to be at a meeting tonight in Traverse City with some NRC members and Una’s coming along and we’re gonna take a few days off, so it’ll be the end of the week before I can start in on it for you.” Una was Hathoot’s wife. It was well known that she hated the Upper Peninsula and took every opportunity to urge her husband to get a transfer to somewhere “civilized.”

  “That’s fine.”

  The NRC was the Natural Resources Commission, the policy-making and oversight board for the Department of Natural Resources. Since Sam Bozian had been elected governor, old-line NRC members had been replaced by the governor’s well-heeled pals. There were few genuine conservationists left on the commission, and as a result it had become a subject of scorn from the state’s media, the DNR, sportsmen’s groups, and environmentalists as well.

  “Mind if I ask what your meeting’s about?” Service asked.

  “It’s your standard dog and pony. I figure they’re trying to plan next year’s meeting schedule and they’re looking for a unique place to get away to for their annual planning soiree. Everybody with a wilderness property has been asked to meet with them and give them a rundown on what we are and how we do it.” Hathoot added, “This doesn’t have anything to do with our fire, does it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Hathoot chuckled. “If I was the one who started it, I’d sure hate having both you and Nantz on my butt.”

  “She’s a dogger?”

  “As fanatic as you. That’s a compliment.”

  “Have a good one in TC, Doke.”

  Service knew that unless they got lucky and got the vehicle and license number, or some other kind of traceable hard evidence, they’d never get the firebug. Tracking a man on foot was one thing; finding a vehicle was entirely another. He wasn’t sure the lease situation had any bearing, but Limpy had been right and that made it worth a little more attention.

  There were seven COs in the PPCT refresher course: Service; Candace McCants, who covered the northern half of Marquette County while Service took care of the southern part; Gordon Terry from the Porkies; Val James from Iron County; Cathy Ketchum from Newberry with her husband, Joe Ketchum, who worked up toward Grand Marais; and Leo Robelais, who worked the Les Cheneaux Islands and Drummond Island. They were all seasoned vets and he had worked with each of them at one time or another. In the old days, before Lansing started putting tracking devices into CO vehicles, all the COs in the Upper Peninsula, and some from the Lower as well, would meet each year at the end of deer season in some isolated camp somewhere in the backwoods and party for three days. They called these events Howls, and though they were officially outlawed now by edicts from Lansing, they still went on, if somewhat toned down from the old days. This year Gordie Terry would host the event somewhere in the rocky hills south of the Porcupine Mountains.

  There were also two probationary conservation officers in the class: Sarah Pryzbycki, who was currently under the supervision of the Ketchums, and Dan Beaudoin, who had once been a navy SEAL. Pryzbycki and Beaudoin had brought good records from training assignments in southern Michigan. As probies, they would spend a year moving from area to area working with different COs, learning on the job, adjusting to different styles, and being evaluated daily. It was a taxing year for most probies, moving every two to four weeks and working the most distasteful and routine assignments. The word was out that these two would make good COs, and Service saw immediately that they fit in well.

  Sergeant Ralph Smoke was the class instructor. Smokey worked out of District 6 in Mio and over the years had taught nearly every CO in the state how to handle physically unruly people. Smokey was short and muscular with a Hitler mustache and an occasional stutter, but he knew his job and the others listened.

  After twenty years on the job Service had been through every kind of training the DNR had, the fad shit and the real stuff. He believed in training. You could always learn something new or reinforce old knowledge, and if he got one idea at a training session, it was time well spent.

  Still, he had too many things he’d rather do than spend the afternoon putting arm twists and fingerlocks on his colleagues. As far as he and other veterans were concerned, the use of pressure points was pretty limited. A CO’s main weapon was his brain, and his ammunition language and ability to talk to people. To be effective, you had to learn to size up people and situations quickly and talk them into a safe and calm place. You had to learn to listen as if your life depended on it because there would come a time, sooner or later, when it did. If suspects bolted, which they sometimes did, you ran them down and tackled them, or kicked their legs from beneath them, and usually when they hit the ground the fight was gone. If you had to resort to PPCT or anything else physical you were already behind the power curve and on the precipice of failure.

  McKower waggled him out of class before they went outside for practice.

  “Did you talk to Limpy?”

  “I think he’s playing some sort of screwy game with us.”

  “Shall I pass that analysis on to Doolin?”

  “Not yet. I want to play along with him for a while, see where it takes me.”

  She said, “It’s your call.” Then, “I got my score back on the lieutenant’s test.”

  He was surprised and showed it. “I didn’t know you took the LT test.”

  “They want me in Lansing next week for the interview.”

  To advance to sergeant and lieutenant in the DNR you had to take a written test; if you scored high enough, a grueling interview followed. Those with the highest scores and best interviews got put on a waiting list. When a lieutenant’s job opened, the most qualified got the first call.

  “You’d move?”

  “It goes with the territory.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He still thought of her as his youthful probie of long ago. “What’s Jack say?” Her husband was a self-employed electrician.

  “He says they need juice other places, just like here.”

  Jack was a no-nonsense guy. Not much of a sense of humor, either. Service had always thought she deserved better, but she never complained and in the final tally it was none of his business.

  “The kids?” She had daughters, nine and four.

  “You know how kids are. They won’t want to move, but if we do, they’ll adjust.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  She said, “You’re not taking this very well.”

  Service said, “Sorry.”

  McKower had been a sergeant for six years now and although he was not one of her direct reports, he had come to depend on her. She had been a great field officer and was an effective sergeant who knew how to lead and direct. She’d make a great lieutenant and down the road she could probably run the whole Law Enforcement Division, but he just wasn’t ready to part with her.

  “I’ll let you know about Limpy. Guess I’d better get outside in the dirt.”

  McKower laughed and squeezed his arm. He walked outside and Candy McCants jumped in front of him, screaming, “I know PPCT and I am a lethal weapon!”

  Service raised his hands in mock defense. “I know first aid and I’m not afraid to use it!”

  After that, the group pretty much went through the motions. Sergeant Smoke lost his temper and told them they all had to buy beer for him after class.

  When Service got home, Kira’s truck was parked in the place where he usually parked. He immediately thought about moving her truck, but gave it a second thought and reminded himself, Use the time you have.

  “I’m home, honey,” he shouted as he pushed open the front door. Lehto was sitting on the bed, wrapped
in a blanket. “We have the flu,” she said.

  “We?”

  “I figure twenty-four hours for you,” she said with a raspy voice.

  “I’ll make chicken soup,” he said.

  “It won’t help. It’s a virus.”

  “And fern tea.”

  “Fern?” She made a face.

  “You’ll see.”

  She moved to the table in her blanket while he boiled water and heated chicken soup from a can. She kept the blanket tight around her and shivered continuously.

  “I ought to put you back in bed.”

  “Maybe you should sleep on the footlockers tonight,” she said.

  He shot her a look. “No way.”

  She sipped the tea tentatively. “It tastes . . . fresh.”

  “Most people use the leaves. I use them too, but this month and next you throw in a few nuts to add flavor.”

  “I like how you know stuff,” she said, sniffling. “It’s a turn-on.”

  “Yeah, well, Mister Know-It-All learned something today he didn’t know before. The state owns all the land in the Tract, but some parcels have been leased out to private individuals for ninety-nine years.”

  “So?”

  “So, just when you think you know everything about something, you find out that you don’t.”

  “So?”

  “You sound like a kid saying, ‘Why?’ The so is this: What else don’t I know about the Tract?”

  “Life and death hang in the balance,” she said sarcastically.

  “You get surly when you’re sick.”

  She said, “We’ll see how you well you handle it when your turn comes.”

  “I don’t get the flu,” he said.

  She gave him a look. “It’s a virus. It’s neither intimidated nor dissuaded by hardheadedness.”

  “It won’t affect me.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Would you like your soup now?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Service.”

  “I’m just taking care of you, honey.”

  A tear formed in her right eye. “I know and I’m being a bitch.”

  “You’re just being sick.”

  “Same thing,” she said.

  She ate all the soup and made sounds of appreciation.

  In bed that night, he spooned in behind her.

  She said, “I parked in your place on purpose. I wanted to see how you’d handle it.”

  He said, “I thought about moving your truck.”

  She sighed. “But you resisted the urge.”

  “So far,” he said. “It’s not morning yet.”

  She put an arm around his neck. “We are doing so good.”

  11

  Maridly Nantz sounded tired and unhappy when she called Service. “There’s been another fire,” she said wearily.

  “Been?” He was trying to wake up and sort out her words. Usually he was instantly awake in the night, but not this time.

  “About five acres,” she said, “but it’s contained and we’re sitting on it tonight in case hot spots flare up. I think you’d better come take a look. I’ll meet you at the old log slide.”

  “The fire was near there?”

  “The fire was there,” she said.

  “Rolling,” Service said. Nantz had a cool head.

  Kira asked, “What is it?”

  “Another fire in the Tract.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Go back to sleep,” he said.

  “You don’t have to twist my arm,” she said, folding a feather pillow over her head. He gently squeezed her foot when he was dressed. No response. She was an instant and deep sleeper.

  The log slide. The night of the Geezer Hole fire, the old man called Voydanov said he thought the driver of the vehicle he’d seen may have been fishing the log-slide area. Why had he thought this? More important, Service thought, why hadn’t he asked Voydanov more about his reasons for thinking the stranger had been fishing? Got to get yourself focused, Service, and stay that way, he chided himself as he raced the truck down dark gravel roads.

  Nantz was soot covered and frowning through bloodshot eyes. “It’s too damn early in the summer for this. It hasn’t been dry enough for natural causes and the tourists don’t invade until the Fourth,” she said angrily.

  They waded into the river and stood in knee-deep water. The bottom was loose cobble, which made for unsteady footing. They shone their lights up the steep embankment on the east side. It was denuded of vegetation and blackened by fire. Tendrils of smoke plumes curled upward from the charred ground.

  “It came all the way down to the water’s edge,” he said.

  “I think it started down here by the water and burned upward,” Nantz said, correcting him. “The wind was west-northwest at about four knots, gusting to eight. Behind our backs. We have to climb up to see the rest.”

  Service followed her downstream to where the land dipped down closer to the water; they got out and cut back to the northeast on a gently rising game trail. He was impressed that she seemed at ease walking in total darkness. Most people couldn’t deal with it; many conservation officers labored to overcome natural fears of the night. When they closed in on the southern edge of the fire site, Nantz switched on her light.

  “There,” she said. “See it?”

  There was a fire line, three feet wide, scraped cleanly down to the mineral earth.

  He was surprised. “You and your people worked quickly to contain it.”

  She got down on one knee, keeping the beam of her light on the earthen scar as she pawed at the dirt. “We didn’t dig this,” she said disgustedly.

  What was she trying to say? “No?”

  “Whoever started this used the river on one end like an anchor and dug a line around the other three sides. They even chain-sawed some trees to keep the fire from jumping the line. It looks like they didn’t want it to spread. They made a fire, but not too big. I don’t get it.”

  Service understood what she was describing, but couldn’t imagine a reason. “You mean it’s a deliberate, controlled burn?”

  “It sure as hell looks that way,” Nantz said.

  Service examined the fire line again. “Were your people up here?”

  “No, one of them spotted the line where it came down to the river on the north end. As soon as I saw that, I came up here alone and checked to the south and east and found that the line was all the way around the burn. I kept my people back. I didn’t want them bollixing any evidence. They’re downriver now, in a clearing. I’m on watch for hot spots.”

  “As usual, you’re right on top of everything.”

  “This deal pisses me off.”

  “We should hole up and wait for first light,” he said. “Is arson coming?”

  “They’ve been notified.”

  “When will they be here?”

  She shrugged. “First light at the earliest. They don’t like working nights. We can brew some coffee by the river. I have chow coming in the morning for the crew. You bring your fart sack?”

  “I can doze by the fire.”

  “Don’t let me fall in,” she said.

  Service built a small pit fire using green wood to make heavy smoke. They both doused themselves heavily with DEET in an oily preparation. The mosquitoes were bad, and billowing smoke would keep them at bay. Blackflies wouldn’t attack until sunrise; nothing would stop them when they came, and it would be well into July before they were finished.

  Nantz lay down on her side, using a small pack for a pillow. She looked over at Service.

  “How’d you find this one?” he asked.

  “I was downriver at the first burn and smelled smoke.”

  “You were out here?”

  “I wanted to walk the other area when it was cold. Another fire,” she said. “Goddammit!”

  Service got water from the river for coffee and set the pot on a small gas grill she had brought in.

  Nantz was aslee
p before the coffee was ready. He found himself staring at her. She was good at her job, committed, too good for this to be her first time. Like some women in jobs that used to belong exclusively to men, she could be pretty abrasive and aggressive, but she was a dedicated professional. Her behavior reminded him how tough it was to be a woman in what was still largely a man’s world. He could remember when the first female COs were hired and all that they had gone through to prove themselves. Some couldn’t deal with it and moved on, but many stayed and some of them were now sergeants and lieutenants; some, like McKower, might very well run the whole show someday.

  Service didn’t sleep. He kept the fire going all night and swatted at bugs. At first light he left Nantz and began scouting the fire line, looking for tracks, tool prints, anything to give them a lead. The blackflies were thick, but he tried to ignore them.

  Nantz showed up during his second circuit. Her face was smudged, her hair matted and greasy.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “Not so far.”

  “Figures,” she said. “Whoever dug this line knew what they were doing. It looks to me like they intended to keep the site clean.”

  Logical conclusion, Service thought. “Is it safe for us to move into the burn yet?”

  “Safe, but let’s wait. My people will make a sweep soon and they’ll go over the ground methodically. We should wait until they finish. Besides, some of the bigger rocks in there may still be hot.”

  He looked at her, thinking he had misheard. “What rocks?”

  She told him to get on a nearby snag and pointed into the burn. “See those outcrops?”

  It took a minute for him to focus, then he saw them. Granite. In fact there seemed to be a dozen or so in a rough, curving line. Between them were charred white and gray, chalklike stones. What the hell was this?