Buckular Dystrophy Read online

  Praise for Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mystery series:

  “Heywood has crafted an entertaining bunch of characters. An absorbing narrative twists and turns in a setting ripe for corruption.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Crisp writing, great scenery, quirky characters and an absorbing plot add to the appeal. . . .”

  —Wall Street Journal

  “Heywood is a master of his form.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Top-notch action scenes, engaging characters both major and minor, masterful dialogue, and a passionate sense of place make this a fine series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Joseph Heywood writes with a voice as unique and rugged as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula itself.”

  —Steve Hamilton, Edgar® Award-winning author of The Lock Artist

  “Well written, suspenseful, and bleakly humorous while moving as quickly as a wolf cutting through the winter woods. In addition to strong characters and . . . compelling romance, Heywood provides vivid, detailed descriptions of the wilderness and the various procedures and techniques of conservation officers and poachers. . . . Highly recommended.”

  —Booklist

  “Taut and assured writing that hooked me from the start. Every word builds toward the ending, and along the way some of the writing took my breath away.”

  —Kirk Russell, author of Dead Game and Redback

  “[A] tightly written mystery/crime novel . . . that offers a nice balance between belly laughs, head-scratching plot lines, and the real grit of modern police work.”

  —Petersen’s Hunting

  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

  Lute Bapcat Mysteries

  Red Jacket

  Mountains of the Misbegotten

  Other Fiction

  Taxi Dancer

  The Berkut

  The Domino Conspiracy

  The Snowfly

  Short Stories

  Hard Ground

  Harder Ground

  Non-Fiction

  Covered Waters: Tempests of a Nomadic Trouter

  Cartoons

  The ABCs of Snowmobiling

  A WOODS COP MYSTERY

  BUCKULAR DYSTROPHY

  JOSEPH HEYWOOD

  Guilford, Connecticut

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Heywood

  Map by Melissa Baker © Rowman & Littlefield

  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: Buckular dystrophy : a woods cop mystery / Joseph Heywood.

  Description: First edition. | Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, [2016] | Series: Woods cop mystery series ; 10

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015037238| ISBN 9781493018864 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781493018871 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Service, Grady (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Game wardens—Michigan—Fiction. | Deer hunting—Michigan—Fiction. | Upper Peninsula (Mich.)—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3558.E92 B83 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037238

  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.

  For Lonnie

  Contents

  ACT 1: PARTNER WITH A PAST

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  ACT 2: UNDER WAY

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  ACT 3: A SOUP CALLED SERENDIPITY

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  ACT 4: “TELL ME AGAIN WHY I DO THIS JOB?”

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  ACT 5: SEASON IN THE BOOKS

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACT 1: PARTNER WITH A PAST

  Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

  —Dr. Seuss, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

  CHAPTER 1

  Harvey, Marquette County

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

  Like Pavlov’s pup to food, Grady Service was programmed to serve, not just during official duty hours but whenever and wherever needed. The veteran conservation officer had the sort of dedication to service almost never seen among the elected politician class but common among rank-and-file state employees. He answered calls and did what was needed, no exceptions. It was his commitment to something larger than a mere job.

  Service debated answering the phone for a millisecond.

  “What?” he mumbled into the cell phone. Why the hell do they make this shit for Munchkins? His fingers didn’t fit the keys, never would. The crap seemed to be getting smaller while the human race was demonstratively growing larger.

  “Grady, it’s Linsenman. My deputies have just had a chase and found a miter saw in a field. There’s hair and tissue.”

  Weasel Linsenman, a longtime Marquette County deputy, was now a sergeant. They had been friends for decades.

  “Human?”

  “Deer. Wake up.”

  “I’m trying. Where?”

  “Al Quaal Trailhead.”

  Al Quaal was a cross-country trail in Ishpeming. “Your people still out there?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Twenty minutes max.”

  “I’ll pass the word.”

  “More stupid deer?” Tuesday Friday asked sleepily, draping a leg over him.

  “Maybe.” The saw intrigued him. He’d found six deer carcasses over the past week, all bucks, each neatly shorn of antlers with a nice clean cut. He’d assumed some kind of battery-powered rig or electric saw, but a miter saw? Huh. All the remains had been dumped in locations he presumed were chosen to irritate the community’s large and vocal tree-hugging, antihunting element. Or the drops cou
ld have been purely random. There was no way to know until he caught the perps.

  “I won’t ask when you’ll be back,” Friday whispered. “You want some breakfast?”

  “No time. Stay in bed; you need sleep.”

  “I’m too tired to plumb all the implications of that statement.”

  “Thinking and sleeping don’t mix,” he said, pulling on a Danner boot.

  Friday grabbed him, pulled him back, kissed him hard, and pushed him roughly away. “Tarzan, go!”

  “Bundolo?”

  “Ya think?” his woman mumbled.

  No idea what the hell bundolo actually meant, if anything, but it had been prominent in every Tarzan comic book when he was growing up and made Tuesday chuckle when they bandied it about.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ishpeming, Marquette County

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  He saw only one vehicle on the drive westward to Ishpeming, an eastbound small red Toyota truck with two souls aboard. It wasn’t speeding, and there were no visible problems to warrant a safety stop, yet his gut screamed he should pull them over. He had no probable cause other than instinct, so he pressed on, ignoring the red truck, the sense of a missed opportunity souring in his stomach.

  There were two deputies waiting for him. Tristan Mach was called “Brandname” by other officers. His partner was Bettina “B.C.” Cellini. Both looked like they were sixteen and were said to be sky high on enthusiasm and heart and somewhat lower on thoughtfulness, judgment, and investigative skills.

  “You got a deer for me?” he asked Mach.

  “Yessir.” The young deputy held up an ancient looking miter saw. Barehanded, no sign of latex gloves. Good-bye latent prints. Doofus, a saw wasn’t a deer. Stay calm, talk them through this, harvest what information and clues you can.

  “Gloves?” Service said.

  Mach said, “Cool old tool, James Turner, from Philly, cost you three fifty or four hundred for an antique like this. Been around a hundred years. What good will old prints do?”

  “He knows the value of everything,” his partner said, “and absolutely nothing.” She wore blue latex gloves.

  Service looked at Mach. No sense lecturing a fool. “Where’d you find it?”

  “I found it, sir,” Cellini said. “By that fence.” She pointed. It was still dark. Service shone his light, saw a post and wire.

  “We chased a dark-colored sedan from here, but we lost it,” Mach offered.

  “Take me through everything—from the start,” Service told the deputies.

  Mach deepened his voice. “We come up through the B Road on account of this place is frequented by dopers and couples getting it on. We got up there on that hill and looked down.” The officer pointed where they had been on the hill above. “Us up there, dark as a butthole, and suddenly we see taillights about here and away they go.”

  B Road was a back way into the area. “That’s all? Taillights?”

  “Yes sir,” Cellini said.

  “Did they leave quickly?”

  “Warp speed,” Mach said.

  “We closed on it at fifty max,” Cellini added. “It was pegged on the speed limit.”

  “Did it accelerate when you got behind it, and did you light it up?”

  “No, sir,” Cellini said. “We broke off. No probable cause, no light problems, no anything. We can’t stop every driver who parks in an obscure place, right?”

  “They were probably done with the deed and dressed by the time we rolled up,” Mach offered.

  “He sees everything in the light of money or sex,” Cellini said.

  “They?” Service said. “You saw two people?”

  “Negative,” Cellini said. “Just the one, and that only after we closed on him.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Male, for certain,” Mach interrupted. “Had on a Gucci black leather baseball cap, retails at five Cs.”

  “Dark,” Cellini said.

  “Black,” Mach corrected her. “Only color Gucci makes in that model.

  Where’d you break off the chase?” Service asked. Gucci? Was this deputy for real?

  “County Four Ninety Two, Eagle Mills,” Cellini said.

  “You came right back here then?”

  “Affirm,” Mach said. “Found the saw. Look at the shit on it.”

  “Hair, tissue, probably brain,” Cellini said.

  “You think it’s a deer?” Mach asked the female dep.

  Cellini said, “Yes, and the gore seems fresh.”

  Service agreed. “Did you guys look for the deer?”

  “Didn’t want to screw up the scene,” Mach said, this from he who wore no gloves while handling the evidence. The saw had no rust, had not been out in the elements long. “You get a plate number?” he asked the deps.

  Both officers stared at the ground by their vehicle. “You got close enough to observe the brand of a hat but didn’t get the plate? What’s up with that?”

  The deputies said, “Sorry, sir,” in a pathetic chorus.

  Mach recovered from shame first. “You wanna, like, for us to, like, help you search?”

  “Like, no thanks. You guys can go on.”

  “Sorry we didn’t get a plate,” Cellini said. “Truth is, we never got that close to the vehicle.”

  “But you got a hat brand.”

  The young woman shrugged. “On that topic, I got nothing.”

  “It’s not a total loss,” Mach said. “How many dudes in this county wear five hundred–dollar ball caps?”

  “What if hat-boy isn’t from here or is a girl, not a boy?” Cellini shot back. “You fucked the prints, dude.”

  “It’s an expensive antique,” he offered.

  Which explained nothing. Clearly the young partners had cooperation and trust issues to iron out—not exactly a partnership forged in paradise. “Thanks again,” he told them. “I’m done talking now. Beat it.”

  The woman laughed and smiled, the man frowned, but the two got into their cruiser and slid silently away, the only sound their tires on cold night hardtop.

  Grady Service cursed the absence of snow. The deps had shown him where the saw had been found, close to the sedan’s alleged parking spot, though given how incomplete the officers’ work had been, he couldn’t assume any of it was accurate. For the moment, he decided to use the post where the saw was found as his base point for searching. He marched up and down the field, following a tight mental grid picture, until first light but found nothing, ending the night with a miter saw and low-level exasperation for young cops. He’d give the saw to Friday for the state police tech people to examine for print and fibers, anything, but he knew this amounted to nothing more than going through the motions.

  Part of my six-deer case or not? No way to tell. Six carcasses dumped in very public locations, but this spot, while near a trailhead, is not nearly as prominent as at the other dump sites. Six with loped antlers, all the rest of the remains untouched, backstraps included. This was not about meat. It was about antlers—worthless, inedible bone.

  Are they selling the antlers? Possibly, but six deer aren’t enough. The market for such stuff tends to be largest in states with few deer, if such a place exists. Deer antlers were being sold as chew toys for dogs, and at exorbitant prices, but most of the stock for such products came from commercial deer farms. Again, could this deal be about selling antlers? If so, it would be a first. Stop speculating. Stick to evidence. You don’t have shit so far. But there’ll be more. With hornophiles, there’s always more. They can’t help themselves. And you have the video.

  Service had promised Friday he’d stop smoking, but when he was on a case he found it impossible; he lit up now and sat back. They had gotten a surveillance video from a tractor store near the first dump site. The time stamp read 0300 and showed, in grainy black-and-white pictures, an older model dark pickup he was calling “the black” and a tricked-out light-colored Silverado extended cab they were calling “the white.” The white truck had gone i
n with its cap cover raised and come back past the camera with the cap closed. Had the driver dumped something? He was theorizing and assuming it was three deer carcasses and that they had come from the white truck.

  Now there may be an additional sedan, and does that have anything at all to do with the two trucks or the six deer carcasses? No plates on any of the vehicles, sedan included. A Gucci hat but no plates. He laughed out loud. Okay, stay focused. Is the sedan related to the trucks or not? If not, why the saw? There’s more than one night cheat in this county. And what about the red Toyota I saw on the way to meet the deps? Should have stopped it, dammit. No evidence. You couldn’t stop it legally. But that little red truck is something related to something. All I have to do now is define the somethings. Got six heads in the evidence freezer in Marquette. Maybe seven, if there is another deer here. So get off your butt and go look. You’ve got light coming on fast.

  No, first get your blood-coffee titers up.

  • • •

  It wasn’t until he was carving link sausages and eggs that he realized today was the anniversary of 9/11. He could no longer remember Pearl Harbor Day either. This was the reality of the world and history. Today always trumps yesterday.

  CHAPTER 3

  East Marquette County

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  Marquette County officers had worked with Service on night-shiner patrols all weekend, seeing none and catching none, not even recreationalists operating after the statewide 11 p.m. curfew. He had seven deer in his case now, the latest a nice ten-point, a trophy buck by anyone’s definition; he had found it a hundred yards from the saw the deps had recovered. His search that morning had taken an hour before he found the buck in a densely wooded fencerow. He had not seen it until he glimpsed a patch of color that seemed out of place, and then it was nearly underfoot. Lucky to find it at all. Horns intact, but the post where the saw was found was clearly visible from where the dead animal lay. Had to assume this was the same damn crew, but now they had no saw. What would they do about that?

  He cut off the head, gutted the deer, and dropped the unprocessed carcass at a homeless shelter, where the director would cut it up and pack the meat in the freezer for future use.