Strike Dog Page 10

  “Sore point with him?”

  She paused to mull this over. “He probably wanted the job, but he seems more interested in his theories than in running the show.”

  “Theories?”

  “I’ll let him explain,” she said. “Right, Larry?”

  “Uh-huh,” the child agent in the backseat mumbled. Gasparino was from the Bronx, less than nine months out of the academy.

  There it was again, explanations lobbed into the future like fungoes. “You’re a cop, right?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then drive like one, for Christ’s sake. Let’s light up this jalopy and haul ass! Every minute we spend on the road is a minute we don’t have at the next site.”

  13

  IRISH WILDERNESS AREA, MISSOURI

  MAY 22, 2004

  They dozed on the plane and were taken in a dented, unmarked twelve-passenger van from the one-time military base in Arkansas north into Missouri and the Irish Wilderness Area in the southeastern part of the state. Their destination was the Eleven Point River, named either because it was eleven-point-some miles from something, or labeled tongue-in-cheek by early surveying crews who legend said had to stop eleven times in the first mile to change and record readings. Their driver said no one could recall the exact point of reference or the precise fraction; his own theory was that the name was an Anglicization of Leve Pont, which appeared on early French maps of the area.

  The van hurtled along narrow, high-crested roads, up Highway 19, crossing numerous razorback ridges, and eventually descending into a deep, verdant valley. They drove into a crudely paved parking lot where four Missouri game wardens waited with canoes and johnboats at a cement step-down boat launch that looked like it had seen a lot of use. A wooden sign said greer springs.

  Tatie Monica had been extremely quiet during most of the drive, but en route made a point of explaining that Missouri’s game wardens were called conservation agents, and properly addressed as agents.

  One of the four men was sparsely bearded with wild gray eyes. He wore a gray shirt and green pants, the same as Michigan conservation officers. “Eddie Waco,” the man said with a slight nod.

  “Grady Service.”

  “Where’s Bonaparte?” Special Agent Monica asked.

  “Died a while back out on some island in the Atlantic, I heard,” Eddie Waco said, deadpan, giving Service the once-over. “You handle a paddle?” he asked.

  Service immediately felt a kinship in that they were both thrown in with feds and Waco seemed neither impressed nor intimidated. “Fat part or skinny part?” Service answered, earning a grin.

  Agent Monica got into a johnboat with one of the other conservation agents. “Move out,” she barked, her shoulders hunched forward.

  Service’s escort tapped a pack in the bottom of the canoe. “Got you’n’s kit?” the man asked.

  Service said, “Somewhere in the van.”

  “Best fetch hit right-quick an’ jes git on in, sit up front, and let me do most of the work. Level’s up some from spring rains, and the current’s pert steady most of the way, so we don’t have to grow us no wings,” he added. Service grabbed his ruck and left the remainder of his gear in the van, assuming it would be brought downriver behind them, or be waiting in the vehicle when they came out tonight or tomorrow morning.

  Larry Gasparino sat motionless in his craft, as if he had been nailed in place and was about to undertake the Bataan death float. Service wondered why some native New Yorkers seemed to disconnect when they were away from their concrete canyons.

  The river was deep and slow as they pulled out of the narrow side channel where the launch was situated, and wide and slow for a while before suddenly narrowing, deepening, and speeding up, the water so clear Service could see huge rainbow trout suspended ten feet down in the deeper runs. Eddie Waco stroked almost casually, using his paddle over the left side both for propulsion and as a rudder. “There an overland way into where we’re headed?” Service asked.

  “More ways ta kill a dog thin chokin’ ’im with buttern,” the man said cryptically. “We been told no fuss and ta keep the button on this.”

  “Have you met Bonaparte?” Service asked.

  Waco shot back, “What part you got in this bug-tussle?”

  “I follow orders,” Service said. He started to explain, but decided against it. The Feebs seemed obsessed with security, and like it or not, he was part of the federal team for now. Keeping quiet seemed the prudent course.

  The Eleven Point River snaked around small wooded islands with thick stands of Ozark cane, and later split a multihued limestone and dolomite canyon, two hundred feet high, the sides clotted with dense stands of white oak, elm, hickory, sycamore, sassafras, and clumps of shortleaf pine and spruce. There was a heavy understory beneath the trees, almost black in the early afternoon sun. Towering rocky outcrops were yellow, black, and green in places, splotched by age and erosion. Service could see numerous small caves and openings in the rocks overhead, as well as the holes of bank swallows. Lily pads dotted side coves of gray-green frog water.

  The four craft eventually reached a heavier riffle with protruding rocks. Eddie Waco guided their canoe expertly into the longest “V” and deftly slid them through the pinch-point. Service wasn’t sure whether the man’s silence was due to shyness or from his concentration on maneuvering.

  When they floated into the head of another long eddy of quiet water, Service’s guide said, “No easy way to hoof inta where we’re a-goin’, but hit’s bin done.”

  Service thought more information might follow. It didn’t.

  Service and Waco had pushed off behind the other three craft, and Eddie Waco showed no urgency to catch up.

  The Missouri conservation agent nosed the canoe onto a gravel bar with softball-size yellow and gray cobble and stepped out. “Got to see a man about a dawg,” he said, stepping under the canopy of some sycamores that acted as an umbrella over the edge of the gravel. Service decided to avail himself of the stop, and when he’d finished and returned, Eddie Waco was sitting with one leg draped over a gunwale.

  “You’n a part of this thing?”

  “Michigan conversation officer,” Service said. “I’m here to consult.”

  “Consult, eh?” Eddie Waco parroted. “What might that be?”

  Service shrugged. “Beats me. You got any idea what we’re doing?”

  “A man’s always got idees, but we been ordered ta walk the chalk,” Waco said, offering a tin of Redman.

  The man’s words seemed a vague complaint, but Service shook his head, said “No thanks,” and lit a cigarette. He had no idea what the man was talking about.

  “Hear-tell you’n make a passel of cars up Michigan way.” He wondered if the man’s accent was real or put-on. The man seemed serious.

  “That would be in Detroit,” Service said, adding, “which many of us don’t consider part of the state.”

  “Like St. Looey hereabouts,” Eddie Waco said with a grin. “You not a city feller?”

  “From the Upper Peninsula,” Service said.

  “Do tell,” Waco said. “Heard you got some bears up thataway.”

  “Quite a few.”

  “We get us some mosey up from Arkansas time to time,” the man said. “Couple years back I think a farmer up north a’ here shot one a’ them wolves a’ your’n.”

  This was true. A young collared Michigan wolf had rambled more than five hundred miles from the Upper Peninsula into north central Missouri, where it had been shot by a farmboy, who had mistaken the animal for a coyote stalking his family’s livestock. It had made the news throughout the Midwest. “I remember,” Service said.

  “Long walk ta go a-clicketing,” Eddie Waco said, smirking.

  A-clicketing? Strange word, but the meaning seemed clear and Service laughed. “Never say never.” The y
oung wolf probably had been seeking a mate to establish his own pack.

  “I reckon.”

  “Shouldn’t we be moving on?” Service asked. They had been sitting on the gravel bar for close to half an hour.

  “Whatever them feds got downriver, I’m thinkin’ the weathern’s gon’ turn a tetch bad.”

  Service looked at the man. “Meaning?”

  “Storms comin’ in—big ole front. Expect ’em in two . . . three hours, if’n we’re lucky. Could bring some black-stem twisters, I reckon.”

  Tornadoes? Service wondered if Bonaparte and Tatie Monica knew this, and, if so, why they were all headed into a wilderness in canoes and johnboats, or headed there at all?

  “I’m sure the feds have a plan,” Service said.

  “’Speck folks up New York–way couple years back might opine differ’nt.”

  Eddie Waco spit a bullet of tobacco juice, straddled the stern, nodded for Service to get in, pushed the canoe away from the gravel, and hop-stepped into the stern, digging his paddle into the bottom to ease them into the current.

  Special Agent Monica was already waiting on a small gravel beach and prancing anxiously at the mouth of a steep trail. She motioned for him to follow her. Service nodded at his boat mate. “You coming?”

  “Feds ain’t give us the secret handshake,” Eddie Waco said, shaking his head.

  Service looked at the swirling yellow-gray sky and started up the steep, sandy trail. He could feel the pressure change in his ears and wondered what it meant.

  Tatie Monica glared over her shoulder at him. “What the hell took you and Pa Kettle so long?”

  The air was heavy, thick, making sweat pop. “Pit stop,” Service explained. “People down here seem to move at their own pace.” A lot like people in the U.P., he thought, which he had always considered a good thing.

  She muttered, “Bonaparte can be a dickhead about being late.”

  “Have you heard a weather forecast?” he asked. He didn’t realize they had an ETA to meet.

  She nodded. “Some rain. Bonaparte will have it covered. He’s the detail man.” Did she mean to imply that she wasn’t? In his experience being an investigator was almost entirely about details.

  “Agent Waco says there could be tornadoes.”

  She looked up and chewed her bottom lip. “Shit happens,” she said.

  There were sycamores and shortleaf pine, sassafras and other trees reaching over the narrow trail. “Not the greatest place to get caught in toothy weather,” he said.

  She said over her shoulder, “I thought you outdoor types thrived on this shit.”

  “You ever been in a twister?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “You?”

  “Once was enough.” He’d been in a cyclone in Southeast Asia. It had wrecked a base camp and killed two marines and a Kit Carson scout named Minh. The only difference between there and here would be direction of cyclonic rotation.

  When they finally reached the top of the bluff, they found an eight-person FBI crime scene team out of the St. Louis field office, and a four-wall, olive-drab green shelter with a generator humming outside. The FBI crime team members were dressed in white biohazard coveralls with hoods and face masks and looked like a NASA team getting ready for a launch. It struck him how a person could be alive and healthy one minute and dead and a health threat the next and this made him think of Nantz and Walter and made his stomach flip. The team’s gear was scattered around helter-skelter. Service studied the area, thought it might have been a campground at one time. There were scars and scorched stones where there probably had been fire-pit rings.

  Monica introduced herself and Service to the lead tech. “Where’s Bonaparte?”

  “Split,” the crime scene tech said.

  “When?”

  “Three hours ago, maybe less. He said the weather was turning and he couldn’t afford to get trapped out here. He said to tell you you’re in command—you’d know what to do.”

  “Did he?” she said, her response clipped, her voice low and oily. “What do we have?”

  The man led her to the shelter. “Refrigeration unit,” he said. “Bonaparte said he wanted the site left untouched until you got here.”

  Untouched? How had they set up the shelter without fouling the site? Service wondered. The sheriff in Wisconsin had done a professional job—but this?

  The man said, “Walk the green tape.”

  Service saw tape held to the limestone surface with small rocks.

  The air inside the shelter was almost frigid, and while Service welcomed the cold at first, he quickly wished he had a jacket or a sweater. Dumb to leave his extra clothes in the van.

  There was nude male body on the ground, mutilated in exactly the same manner as Wayno Ficorelli’s. The man was huge, with red hair and a flaming red beard.

  “What have we got?” Special Agent Monica asked.

  “One very sick puppy,” the tech said quietly.

  “How long has the body been here?” she asked.

  “By ambient air and body temperature, thirty-six hours, give or take. We can’t be more accurate until we get the remains back to the lab.”

  She looked at the man. “How’d you get here?”

  “Down the river, same as you.”

  “Did Bonaparte take a boat out?”

  “Chopper,” the man said with a disapproving grunt. “He seemed to be in a hurry.”

  “Who found the body?” Service asked.

  “Don’t know,” the man said.

  “You hear there’s severe weather coming in?” Service asked.

  “We heard, and if the winds pick up, this place will be toast. You got a plan?”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Agent Monica said. “But do it fast.”

  “Mostly we’ve been waiting on you. We’ve done most everything we can do here. Bonaparte insisted we leave everything as is until you got a look.”

  “Not much blood,” she said, leaning over the corpse. “Kill site?”

  “Doubtful,” the technician said, shaking his head.

  The plastic walls began to snap and shake as the air turned blustery.

  “Shit,” the tech said. “That wind gets worse, it’ll turn this thing into a parasail.”

  “You looked for alternate shelter?”

  “No, ma’am. Our orders were to stand by, wait, and not talk to the locals.”

  Tatie Monica turned to Service. “We need a safe place to store the body—and us,” she said.

  “I’ll tell the Missouri agents,” he said, stepping out into the wind. He squinted as sand blasted his face. The storm was coming in fast. He felt a tug on his arm and found Larry Gasparino. “Weather’s heading south; am I right, or what?”

  “Way south,” Service agreed, glancing at the swirling, dark clouds.

  He bounced his way down the trail, found the watercraft tethered to chains at the end of nylon ropes on the beach. There was nobody with them. He sniffed smoke, looked at the pea gravel, saw impressions leading around a huge boulder on the downstream side, and followed them.

  The prints and path led to an overhang six feet deep and high, and ten feet wide.

  The four Missouri agents were squatting around a small Sterno fire. Eddie Waco looked up at him.

  Service said, “Feels like the twisters are ahead of schedule.”

  “Always got they own minds,” Waco said.

  “We have a body up top and we need to get it under cover before the storm hits full force.”

  The conservation agents followed him at a jog to the top, without comment. Crime scene techs had already transferred the corpse into a black rubber bag. Service and the Missouri men labored down the steep trail as the wind suddenly stopped and everything became still.

  Not even birds sang.

&
nbsp; Service had one corner of the bag as it began to sprinkle. Eddie Waco said, “She be upon us, boys.”

  They dragged the bag under the overhang cave just as the rain started. It came down like marbles, a giant spigot opened wide, the rain coming in a steady roar. The eight techs, four Missouri agents, Larry Gasparino, and Tatie Monica pressed in with them, fifteen people and a corpse in a bag crammed into a tight space.

  “What direction are we facing?” Service asked Waco. The trip down the twisting river with heavy overcast had pretty much obliterated his sense of direction. There was no sun to orient him.

  “Southwest,” Eddie Waco said. “More or less.”

  “Figures,” Service said. A tornado would blow directly in on them. “We should find another place.”

  “Thet dog hain’t a-gonna hunt,” the conservation agent said. “Have to ride ’er out here.”

  Special Agent Monica got out her handheld radio and tried to get a chopper to evacuate the body, but was told through massive static there would be no flying until the storms passed.

  Service thought she looked outwardly calm. He wondered what her real emotions were. He was on edge. Did she not realize what could happen? Could she be that clueless?

  The steady rain turned to huge, loud drops that sounded like stones.

  The drops changed to golf ball–size hailstones that clicked and ticked and ricocheted like bullets.

  The temperature plummeted.

  The wind started changing directions, intensified, and began to blast them with chips of chert, dust, and shards of bark. Everyone in the stone shelter covered their heads with their arms and turned their backs to the opening.

  Service heard a roar he first thought was a helicopter, a thought he amended to a train a moment before his brain put it all together: Tornado! The afternoon sky was as night.

  Large things began crashing and thumping against the side of the cliff.

  “I’ll be go to hell!” one of the techs cursed from his crouch.