Bad Optics Read online

  Bad Optics

  Also by Joseph Heywood

  Woods Cop Mysteries

  Ice Hunter

  Blue Wolf in Green Fire

  Chasing a Blond Moon

  Running Dark

  Strike Dog

  Death Roe

  Shadow of the Wolf Tree

  Force of Blood

  Killing a Cold One

  Buckular Dystrophy

  Lute Bapcat Mysteries

  Red Jacket

  Mountains of the Misbegotten

  General Fiction

  Taxi Dancer

  The Berkut

  The Domino Conspiracy

  The Snowfly

  Short Stories

  Hard Ground

  Harder Ground

  Nonfiction

  Covered Waters: Tempests of a Nomadic Trouter

  A Woods Cop Mystery

  Bad Optics

  Joseph Heywood

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200, Lanham, MD 20706

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  800-462-6420

  Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Heywood

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Heywood, Joseph, author.

  Title: Bad optics / Joseph Heywood.

  Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, [2018?] | Series: A woods cop mystery ; 11

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017055813 (print) | LCCN 2017058752 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493031047 (e-book) | ISBN 9781493031030 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3558.E92 (ebook) | LCC PS3558.E92 B33 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055813

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Lonnie, again, and always.

  For Heather Stein, whose fight against cancer taught all of us the true meanings of resolve, toughness, and courage.

  And for Jordan, Olivia, and Atley, whose whole lives lay ahead.

  Contents

  Contents

  Part I: Aloquot

  1 Midwinter, 2009

  2 Midwinter, 2009

  3 Mosquito Wilderness Tract (MWT)

  4 McFarland Area

  5 Marquette

  6 Mosquito Wilderness Tract

  7 Lansing

  8 East Lansing

  9 Swamp Lake, South of Laingsburg

  10 Maple River Flooding

  11 Soaring Eagle Casino

  12 Chief Waco’s House

  13 Lake Lansing

  14 East Lansing

  15 Ivy Free Hall, MSU Campus

  16 St. Ignace

  Part II: Metes and Bounds

  17 Slippery Creek Camp

  18 Slippery Creek Camp

  19 Point Nipigon

  20 Brevort

  21 Marquette

  22 Skandia

  23 Hancock

  24 Houghton

  25 Wolf Cave

  26 Wolf Cave

  27 North of the Mosquito Wilderness Tract

  28 Marquette

  29 Slippery Creek Camp

  30 Mosquito Wilderness Tract

  Part III: Beyond Boundaries

  31 Slippery Creek Camp

  32 Slippery Creek Camp

  33 Negaunee

  34 Bay Mills

  35 North of Nowhere Camp

  36 Ford River

  37 Slippery Creek Camp

  38 McFarland Area

  39 North of the Mosquito Wilderness Tract

  40 Mosquito Wilderness Tract

  41 Houghton

  42 South of Laingsburg

  43 Mosquito Wilderness Tract

  Author’s Note

  Part I: Aloquot

  Chapter 1

  Midwinter, 2009

  Harvey, Marquette County

  “Listen to me, kid, and do exactly what I tell you. Hop over the back seat and get my service revolver out of the holster. It’s under the horse blanket. Be careful when you pull it out of the holster, then hand it up to me butt-first. Got it?”

  “Yessir, butt-first.”

  “After you hand it to me, get under the horse blanket and stay there ’til I tell you different. Got it?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Okay, go now.”

  Grady Service slithered over the seat, found the weapon, and passed it forward. “Curl up under the horse blanket and stay there, lessen you hear me tell youse different, okay?”

  “Yessir.” The boy crawled under the massive green wool coat, but kept a flap up with his right hand so he could hear.

  “Marquette, dis is DNR Two Six. Dose fellas from over da Soo, I t’ink mebbe I got dose fellas right front of me, hey. Gray Stupidbegger, plates all mudded over. I’m just south Gwinn, M-35, headin’ south t’ward Rock.”

  Stupidbegger. Grady could feel the tension in the clipped tone of the old man’s voice, but still the old man had to make his dumb jokes. He always said Stupidbegger, never Studebaker.

  “DNR Two Six, follow, but await backup, copy?”

  “Yah, yah, Marquette, I hear. Dese jamokes ain’t goin’ nowheres now. I’m on dem.”

  “Two Six, Marquette, be advised you’ve got two of our deputies coming west, two Delta County units coming north, and a state unit in Rock right now, northbound.”

  “Got dat. Two Six,” the conservation officer said as he grunted loudly and yelped, “Hold on back dere, kid. Dese knuckleheads goin’ offen to da dirt but we right on dere butts like a tick on a dog’s butt, and dis my house outen here inta dirt. All clay, dis road, and it startin’ drizzle. Bad for dese fellas. Road gone be like pure snot in one minute, maybe less.”

  The car fishtailed wildly several times. The old man was chuckling as Grady braced himself to stop from sliding around on the back bench seat. “Hey Marquette, dis Two Six. Dat Stupidbegger, she just turn west on Rat River Spur, just before da big-ass hairpin break from north to east on M-35, copy?”

  The car continued to fishtail, but less violently as his father got control, as the boy knew he would. Once the fishtailing stopped, they were hammered by deep ruts that grabbed the tires. He could hear the old man grunting as he willed the car along at high speed. “Kinda bumpy, kid, sorry, youse okay back dere?”

  “I’m good,” the boy said, the bumps making it difficult to talk.

  “Marquette, copy Two Six. Be advised that unit Eight Four is now about one minute south of where you turned off. He should be right behind you now.”

  “Tell Eight Four dis clay like skatin’ rink, tell ’em slow ’er down, I got dese guys good so let’s not do no stupid drivin, hey. Dis road already messy and she gettin’ worse.”

  “Copy, Two Six. Do not engage, copy?”

  “Yah, yah, just dandy dere, Marquette.” Grady Service’s father said into his radio.
Then, “Still okay back dere, kid?”

  “I’m good,” Grady managed.

  “Attaboy. Listen me, dese birds jess slud offen from da road out into swamp muck. We gone try stop now, so hang on.”

  Grady grabbed hold of a metal brace on the bottom of the front seat and prepared to be thrown back against the seat back. He could feel the brakes locking and releasing as the old man pumped like crazy, but his father kept control and brought the car to a smooth stop. And it seemed that, even before they were stopped, the driver’s door was open and the old man was out. Grady was alone. No sound but the Fury’s engine, drizzle on the roof, the radio crackling nonsense, and, after a long few minutes, his old man’s voice again.

  “Kid, kid, your old man needs help. Come quick, kid!”

  The old man needs help from me? Seriously, really? Head spinning, the boy threw off the heavy blanket, then swam over the front seat and out the open door into the black mud. His father had a man on the ground by the Studebaker, pinned down, the prisoner’s right wrist cuffed to his right ankle. The prisoner was not fighting or resisting. There was blood on his face. It looked more black than red.

  “C’mere, kid,” Gibson “Gibby” Service told his son, his voice calm, not the least bit excited.

  The old man held up his service revolver, a Colt .38 snubby that he kept in an ankle holster. Gibson had let his son shoot the short-barreled weapon for years, almost every day and sometimes even at night and in the snow so he could learn to shoot in all weather conditions.

  “Hold dis piece on jamoke’s head, kid. ’Is partner’s run into da cedars down dere and I got go birddog ’im. Dis guy ’ere he even wiggle, shoot ’im. Left eye, like we always practice, okay?”

  “Yes, sir, left eye.”

  The old man let loose a growly snarl of satisfaction and rapped the cuffed man with the back of his left fist, his service revolver in his right hand as he jumped up and surged toward the cedars. Gibson Service stopped and looked back. “Troopers gone be here right quick, Grady. Dey come, you give dat knucklehead to the troopers, tell ’em I fetch back pert quick dat udder jamoke, okay?”

  “Okay,” Grady said meekly, his mind racing, wondering, am I actually supposed to shoot this man? Or is the old man playing poker? He likes to put people on, does it to me all the time. But he said I’m in charge. With a gun. And a real prisoner, like a real cop. God.

  The old man disappeared into the maze of white cedar and black spruce.

  The handcuffed man said, “Listen, brat, I’m gonna kill your old man and then I’m gonna kill you.”

  Grady Service, age seven, pulled back the hammer on the snubby and released a single round right past the man’s left ear. He shifted the barrel back to the man’s left eye. The cuffed man slumped back, yipped, “Fuck,” and had no more to say.

  The troopers arrived with full music and ran to the boy and his prisoner, their weapons unholstered.

  Grady calmly told them, “Dad’s chasing the second guy. He says you guys take this jamoke and he’ll bring back the other one real quick.”

  The troopers laughed.

  The prisoner whined, “Sirs, this crazy-ass kid tried to shoot me.”

  One of the troopers said, “No he didn’t. This is Grady, Gibby Service’s kid. He wanted to shoot your sorry ass, you wouldn’t be breathing now.”

  “This is a nightmare,” the prisoner complained. “This damn U.P. You’re all crazy people up here.”

  The deputy said, “Right, Grady?”

  But Grady Service was thinking about something else that had just happened, something more significant. Grady. “My old man called me Grady,” he told the deputy. Did I really hear that? I can’t remember the last time. It almost never happens.

  “Grady!” the deputy repeated. “You just shot a bullet right beside a man’s head and all you can think about is what your old man calls you?”

  Grady didn’t reply. The old man must be nuts giving me a gun, he thought. Still, it had been “Grady,” not the usual “hey kid.”

  Was there a numerical value assigned to earworms, and this was an earworm, not a dream, right? Or was it just that same damn dream? Yes, your old man called you Grady and you did fire a round past the guy’s head. Jesus.

  *****

  Grady Service awoke in a heavy sweat, rubbed his eyes too hard, as if he were trying to push the memory back inside, hoping it would never escape, but knew too well that what he hoped for had no effect on his future.

  “That dream again, hon?” Tuesday Friday asked.

  “Pretty much,” he mumbled.

  “Your father caught the second suspect, right?”

  But not in his dream. “Yah, caught ’im.”

  “And got a medal.”

  “Yah, a medal.”

  She said, “My sympathy is with that poor jerk on the ground, held prisoner by an armed seven-year-old. The Upper Peninsula runs on A.C. while the rest of the world runs on D.C. or whatever,” she whispered sleepily. “Who the hell trains a seven-year-old child to shoot things, much less in the left eye only? Would you have shot that man?”

  “Dunno,” Grady said, but he did know, and knew with certainty. He hated the old man, but he would have done what he was told to do, especially after the old man had called him Grady.

  “You do know,” Friday said. “And I know, too. You would have followed the orders of the man you loathed. You would have shot that man.”

  “You weren’t there. And I didn’t shoot anyone.”

  “No, I wasn’t there because I had a normal upbringing.”

  “It was family, you know, different, not duty, not family exactly, but something like both things—something you have to do.”

  “Duty? Listen to yourself, Grady Service. You feel a dedication to this state and its citizens which they do not reciprocate in the slightest. Almost everyone you talk to out in the woods thinks you’re a wart on the ass of their progress and freedom. Do you understand that in the greater scheme of things, sense of duty or not, you do not count, and neither do I?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he whispered. She was wrong, he thought. You matter as long as you make yourself matter.

  “Go back to sleep,” she mumbled. “Please.”

  To what, the same damn dream? He’d had this one every night now for weeks, but never twice in a night. He got out of bed, stepped over Newf, their 130-pound Canary Island mastiff, and went to their son’s bedroom.

  The five-year-old boy was sleeping with his mouth open, as he always did. Shigun Friday. Not his son legally or biologically, but his son now and forever. The boy was about the same age he’d been when the old man started teaching him to shoot. Not much younger than when the old man gave him the loaded .38.

  What the hell had the old man been thinking that day? Had he been drunk? Certainly he was hungover. Hungover was Gibby’s normal condition. He was always drunk, drunk or hungover, these were his father’s only two states.That morning they had been on their way to the Escanaba River around Cornell when they chanced upon the escapees. The old man had come back with the runner, as bloodied as his partner, but being dragged like a sack of freshly dug potatoes.

  They remained with the Studebaker until a wrecker hauled it out of the muck and then continued on with their fishing expedition.

  Grady hooked a big trout on a bedraggled fly of brown fluff that the old man had tied to his leader. He dragged the fish up onto the pea-gravel bar where it made him think of the cuffed prisoner. He was studying the fish when the old man shouted, “One fish don’t make you no fisherman, kid. Get your butt back to work. We can’t have no fish fry without no fish, and one ain’t enough for the likes of us.” Just like that, from kid up to Grady and back to kid, he thought. My lot in life.

  Grady patted his boy’s head and went back to bed, and the dream did not come again. How did little moments like this stay w
ith you, and why? It was like a cancer or something. You couldn’t get rid of it—even with so-called modern science.

  Chapter 2

  Midwinter, 2009

  Slippery Creek Camp

  Grady Service’s life was like a wet shroud draped over everything, the thing so clingy, tight, and heavy it was impossible for him to peel it off. Add to this a recent (and totally unanticipated) decision pushing his professional suspension to July 1.

  The whole damn thing was a pain in the ass. And all his contacts in Lansing had suddenly seemed to have gone deaf and dumb, even his friend and ultimate boss, Chief Eddie Waco. No one could give him a full explanation for the suspension, no matter who he asked.

  He kept telling himself that this was a preview of retirement, or death, which were the same thing. Nothing to do after decades of action, his ship now dead in the water, becalmed in a Sargasso Sea, perhaps permanently. Bad enough, but now the stupid recurring dreams and headaches were plaguing him—those sudden, blinding, and painful headaches, hurting beyond the reach of any known drugs or therapies. Endure. He knew he had to muscle his way through this crap, but it was not that easy, yet there was something deep down pushing him to keep fighting. For one of the rare times in his life, he had no idea how or whom to fight, much less what.

  Limpy Allerdyce held the mottled, yellowed thing in two hands, like a supplicant to his master. “Dis take care dose headaches, Sonny. Youse betcha.”

  Service looked down. “A human skull?” What the hell is this old man’s major malfunction?

  “Yah sure, you betcha,” Allerdyce said, thumping the bone with a knuckle.

  “Whose skull?”

  “Wah! How ’my ’pose know dat? Some dead Ind’in? Dunno.”

  “You know it’s against the law to possess human body parts, right?”

  The old man winced. “Dese bones ain’t no real parts. Ain’t got no meat on it, jes da olden head bone.”

  “From where?”

  “Down in ’Skeeto.”

  “Where exactly . . . down in the Mosquito?”

  “Have to show youse. Don’t got no words for da place.”