Harder Ground Read online

  “And her?” Pointing at a grass skirt dancer.

  “She’d be four bucks. You like girls or something, not that I mind, dude. I’m cool with it, sayin’?”

  “Give me five Black Ice, five hula girls and the sandwiches.” She peeled three twenties out of her pocket.

  The girl said, “Like you gave me too much, ma’am.”

  “It’s a tip,” Wordledge said. “Keep the change.”

  “I’m like totally down with that,” the cashier said. her head wobbling from side to side like a bobblehead doll’s.

  The other officers were already at the Ottawa National Forest HQ parking lot. Nimrod was a legendary hunter, name of the local high school’s mascot, Officers used it as a crude code for the village. The hill meant the ONF lot, the only hill for miles.

  She dropped her tailgate, put down the deodorants, and sandwiches. “Bad day in the truck?” One Four Zero asked with a smirk.

  “Eat, jerkoff.”

  One Thirty Six guffawed. “In that specific order?”

  One Forty chirped, “Asshole.”

  Wordledge said, “I need your focus, men. All of it and right now.”

  One Thirty Six said, “Men? You usually call us boys.”

  “Serious shit?” One Forty asked.

  As she laid out her morning, their jaws dropped lower and wonder in their eyes switched to predatory smiles and nods as anticipation of action grew.

  She let them see the photos and One Forty said, “How the heck did you get these?”

  “Drone.”

  “But you’re not one of the test fliers.”

  “My own drone.”

  One Thirty Six. “How long you had it?”

  “Over a year.”

  “Let me guess,” One Forty said. “You showed it to the sarge.”

  “Even flew it for him. He told me it was too expensive, a waste of money, nothing but a damn toy.”

  “And now the department’s testing them,” One Thirty Six said, “And your name’s nowhere to be seen or heard.”

  “There it is,” Wordledge said. “Focus, men. Forget all that crap and pay attention to what we have to do here. She spread out the deodorants. “Who uses Black Ice?” she asked, and watched their lightbulbs pop on. “Felony Forest,” Thirty Six said. “I heard about this stuff from an UPSET dude. Shit doesn’t work,” he said. “On smokes neither.”

  It was commonly believed that Black Ice would mask dope smoke from cops.

  Wordledge said, “What if it’s not weed they want to mask? It doesn’t have much odor unless you’re right on top of it. What else has a smell needing to be blocked?”

  “Meth,” One Forty said.

  “Meth,” One Thirty Six agreed. “She-it. Must be a damn lab back there.”

  “Got to be thousands of deodorants strung in the corn rows,” Wordledge said. “At three and four bucks a pop.”

  “Big investment for a small op,” One Forty said. “Pit bulls?”

  “I counted six.”

  “I hate all dogs,” One Thirty Six said. “Especially pit bulls.”

  “Animal control,” One Forty said.

  “No outsiders,” Wordledge said. “Just us.”

  “We may not be enough,” One Forty said.

  She told them, “I saw only the one jerk with a rifle and the dogs.”

  “With a rifle is the key observation in that fact,” One Thirty Six.

  “UPSET is made for this,” One Forty pointed out.

  “UPSET’s a bureaucracy. Their clock is a glacier. By the time they get done dicking around this opportunity will be long gone.”

  The men nodded, both said, “Okay.”

  She told them, “We have to assume the shooter saw my drone. The clock is ticking. He fired at the drone, didn’t hit it and sent the dogs. Want to hear what I’m thinking?”

  Both men nodded.

  She drew the farm on her notebook pad. “The stream separates A from B. Main farm is on A, the shit on B. The main concentration seems to be here.” She drew a small x. “Which makes this spot a pinch-point.” She tapped her pen.

  “Ergo the sniper in the pinch-point where he can see the most,” One Forty observed.

  “There it is,” she said. “The dogs came out to my truck here.” She drew another x. “I’m thinking he’s holed up in the narrow area, pinch-point but will cheat his position toward where my truck was while he waits for his cavalry.”

  The three studied the little map with a topographical literacy civilians would be baffled by. With little discussion, they all saw the same picture, understood what the others understood. “One Thirty Six along the center line toward the pinch, which is about forty feet high. He’ll be up there somewhere, watching. You get the high ground. One Forty comes up the creek from this direction.” She drew a small arrow. “I’ll come down the creek from the opposite direction and we’ll all meet in the middle.”

  “Rules of engagement?” One Forty asked.

  Wordledge said, “Order, ‘Drop your weapon.’ One time. Then put him on the ground.”

  “We don’t know that he shot at you,” Thirty Six said.

  “Give two warnings and you’ll be out of surprises,” she told him. “But it’s your call. We’ll use the sun,” she told them.

  •••

  Five o’clock all three moving in, radios squelched, ear buds in.

  “Got one soul,” One Forty whispered over the 800 mhz. “Thirty yards, his back to me.”

  “Alone?” Wordledge asked.

  The radio clicked once. Yes.

  “Your call, One Forty.”

  She kept moving up the creek toward the rendezvous.

  “One Twenty Seven, One Forty is secure with one in custody.”

  “Thirty Six moving up.”

  Wordledge came out of her crouch and raced up the creek bed until she saw One Forty and his prisoner, the man’s face a mess of cuts and blood. “He only thinks he can fight,” One Forty quipped.

  Thirty minutes later they confirmed a huge meth lab. Weed too. She called the Gogebic County Sheriff’s Office, got the undersheriff on the phone, explained the deal. He told her backup was rolling.

  They found the six pit bulls, freshly shot. Wherever the lone shooter was going, the dogs weren’t welcome.

  Wordledge looked down at the prisoner, Hispanic male, sixteen maybe. Who can tell? Just a kid. “You got help coming?” she asked him.

  “Puta,” the boy said, and spit blood. Wordledge hoped there was a tooth in the mix.

  No more bad guys showed.

  But Gogebic County came in force. The U.P.S.E.T., followed by G.I.A.N.T., the Gogebic Iron County Narcotics Team, a cross-border hybrid. State troops were the last law enforcement to arrive, but there were three cars. Then reporters trooped cautiously in at the end.

  The very last in, the tailend Charlie, was their beloved and anal sergeant, who cornered her. “You retired two hours ago.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t file for overtime.”

  The three officers split and headed their separate ways. One Forty stayed with the other cops. He would sign the report she would write for him.

  Wordledge’s family was waiting at her house in Ramsay, three grown kids, two grandsons. There was cake, champagne.

  •••

  She watched the late news. It was all about U.P.S.E.T’s major bust. The next morning she found an AP story, which also told how the U.P.S.E.T team had monitored the lab for a long time and calculated the raid for when cooking was not under way. The last sentence in the last report said, “DNR officers assisted.”

  Trailer Fly

  Michigan State Police lieutenant Patrick Kneff had his charm dialed up to full-on, but it had not worked its customary result and eventually he sighed, for
ced to come clean with the truth. “Charity, we are desperate here.”

  Conservation Officer Charity Riordan had known Kneff for years. Patrick’s wife was one of her closest friends. He was one of those types who breathed “Trooper” and marched around with a ramrod back, but he was a good guy and a hopeless prude in all things related to women. Sex only in the dark, his wife Ruby had told Riordan. “Light and naked bodies seem to embarrass him.”

  “Not we, Patrick. You mean you are desperate and that forced you to come to me.”

  “Straight talk now,” Kneff said. “Man to man.”

  Riordan rolled her eyes and saw him gasp, let him simmer in his own juice.

  “Uh we’ve ah uh used uh ah our only female troopers, uh. We can’t use them ah again. They’ll see us coming, uh a mile uhway.”

  “You might want to reconsider your word choice, El-Tee.”

  Kneff paused and pinked like a redfish in a frying pan. Riordan added, “I am not an enthusiastic booster of poontang pinch parties, even when I’m not in the lineup. These are victimless crimes, Patrick.”

  “There’s sexual slavery,” the lieutenant managed.

  “Agree, so go after that, not some slob johns.”

  “In or out?” an exasperated Kneff said.

  “Word choice again,” Riordan said, turning him redder. “If I say no will you guys have to scrub the detail?”

  “Yes,” Kneff said.

  “If I don’t go, you don’t go, like that?”

  “There it is.”

  She could see him weighing words, but too uptight to let them loose. “What’s my motivation here?” she asked.

  “You pretend to be a prostitute,” the lieutenant said in a whisper.

  “No you moron. I know what a hooker wants and that’s to make money. Duh. I mean me, Charity Riordan, your female colleague from the DNR, your wife’s best pal. What do I get?”

  “Eternal gratitude,” Kneff mumbled, staring down at his gleaming patent leather oxfords.

  “If it can’t be spent, poured in a glass, put in a bank, or eaten, it’s neither eternal, nor gratitude.”

  “You dicker like a hooker,” Kneff said.

  Riordan let the words hang. This was kinda fun. “Words, Patrick, words, and how would you, of all people know how hookers dicker . . . a word I employ only because you got it up first.”

  “A letter of commendation to your chief for your file,” the lieutenant offered.

  “You do know that thunder surrounds the capital, Patrick. Just what I need is my big boss envisioning me in a hooker’s gear and fuck-me-heels. She heard the state trooper gasp. “Here’s the deal, I do this for the boys in blue, and you get me the latest version of an infrared scope.”

  “You have to get that equipment through your own purchasing channels and budgets.”

  “Normally, but this isn’t a normal deal, is it? You need me to say yes and I just stated the price, which given what you’re asking seems like perfectly acceptable terms.”

  The man’s shoulders slumped. “Deal.”

  “Before I go out on the detail, not at the same time or at a date to be named later.”

  He nodded. “OK, before is fine.”

  “New not used, fully functional, not some jerk’s broken cast-off.”

  “All of that,” Patrick Kneff said.

  “Good,” she said. “See how easy that was?”

  “You can be a pain,” the lieutenant said.

  “I know,” Riordan said. “It’s an art. Does this little op of ours have a name?”

  The state police loved to name operations and details. “Operation Trailer Fly,” the lieutenant said.

  “Who came up with that?”

  “Regional command.”

  That meant Marquette. “Do you even know what that means?” She knew his idea of outdoor activity was an acre-square lawn or riding a golf cart. Fly fishing would be like Mayan to him.

  “It’s a fishing term, Patrick. You put on a large fly to attract the trout’s attention and you tie a second fly behind the attractor fly. The attractor fly gets the trout’s attention and usually it takes the second offering, the trailer. So if I’m the trailer, who’s the attractor?”

  Kneff looked to be in great pain. “There’s just you and the take-down team.”

  “I thought we wanted the john to take me down.”

  “We do.”

  “You’d better talk to Marquette. I think the op’s missing something, the flashy attractor. I think this detail, by its name alone requires two females, not one.”

  “We don’t have two.”

  “Technically you don’t have any, Patrick, by your own admission. I’m not one of yours. I’m a loaner, a volunteer and there’s just one of me. You need two.”

  “Where from?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “County deps, Park Service, it has to be another woman.”

  “Region wants this done, it’s part of a big push statewide.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to talk to them.”

  “I don’t want to talk to Marquette. I hate talking to Marquette.”

  “And I don’t want to be the damn trailer. I’d rather be the attractor, first team, not second team.”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Never mind, I’ll figure something out.”

  “You could dress drag,” she offered, scoring a scowl. “When is this thing supposed to happen? My sarge needs to know for our chain of command.”

  “It’s not,” Kneff said.

  “What about the infrared?”

  “There won’t be one.”

  “That’s not fair. You promised and I agreed to help you. Do you know what sort of emotional adjustments a woman has to make just to agree do this sort of slimy patrol?”

  He nodded, said, “Yes, I don’t know.”

  “And the infrared?”

  “Yes, I mean no,” he said, his frustration growing fast. “No detail, no reward.”

  “I didn’t scrub the detail, you did.”

  He said nothing. Riordan said, “I didn’t scrub the mission, did I?”

  He nodded, said, “No.”

  “Right, you did. I kept my end but you didn’t keep yours. I earned the infrared with my attitude alone, my willingness to demean myself as a woman and law enforcement officer.”

  Kneff was chewing his lower lip so hard there was some blood. It looked to her like he would swallow his tongue before he’d utter another word. “I’m deeply disappointed, Lieutenant Kneff.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Because you disappointed me or because you’re gonna piss off Marquette.”

  “Yes,” he said. Then, “Should never even think you can help. You COs don’t think like normal people.”

  She smiled and watched him march away stiff legged. He stopped when he got to the door, turned and looked at her. “You.”

  “Sir?”

  He went through the door and did not look back.

  Three Hours in the Chair of Wisdom

  This was not on the schedule, in fact the whole notion of it was so dainty-girlie it made her grumpy, but here she was at the hairdresser, summoned like some commoner by hair-care royalty, the summons issued with some compelling rationale there had been no way to refuse.

  Ergo here she sat in the chair as still as a cadaver on a morgue slab, frog on a biology lab table waiting for some geeky student to hack away, guinea pig in a psych lab, helpless as a lab animal, the clear and unforgiving spotlight steadily on her. It was not a happy moment. It almost never was, not once in her life.

  “Ohmygod Ruthie . . . honey . . . your hair looks like mice been nesting in there and mind you how many times I got to tell youse youse got to be in the chair mont’ly or at least six wicks an’ I know that sounds ’spensive and tell me tr
ue girl you would trade a few sheckels to avoid that look you come in with, matted rat dog. I do swear this is the worst it’s ever been, a look I might add here would put a man’s feet to flight at first sight. Youse stay on this schedule, youse’ll never find a man, hon. You want a regular fella, youse got to pave the way, dear. It’s in your hands, not God’s, though a great part is in my hands too, if youse’ll just come in when youse’re ‘posed to.”

  “M. C.,” Mildred Pythia Culvert, had been married five times, all to men named Frederick, which she ranked by their performance in bed, not in order of matrimony. Chronological Frederick Four was Performance Fred Number One, and they’d still be married, she insisted, if but a few weeks into their sexual bliss and legal union his heart hadn’t blown out its arteries and killed him instantly while he was installed atop of her.

  “You want the usual rush job, Ruthie honey, the rush job on your mouse nest? Or can we relax for once and do this thing right with artistic flair in the full three hours that top results require?”

  “The whole three, please,” Ruth Brennan said with a forced smile. She was sitting stiff-backed like she was installed in steerage class on the latest soak all passengers, no-frills airline flight from Lansing to Tampa. Most women could not tolerate Pythia Culvert for anything close to three hours. If a wagging tongue could be translated into iron-pushing terms, M. C. was the world clean-and-jerk champion, by a wide margin.

  The woman’s jaw started ratcheting when you came through the door and did not stop until you were a half mile away in your car on the way home. She’d start with a verbal clean, and go on all day till well past dark when her mouth and eyes closed simultaneously to complete the long delayed jerk.

  Three hours was more than enough to crush even the average extrovert’s tolerance for drivel.

  Contrary to appearances, Ruth Brennan was neither an extrovert, nor average. What she was, was a sponge, with a gift for full and accurate memory of every word she heard and everything she saw, and even better she could retain such drivel indefinitely and pull it up like it was a book on a shelf right next to her. Psychologists did not yet have a term to describe her unique ability.

  No mere and petty gossip, Pythia Culvert was the self-declared font of all knowledge and dirt, real or imagined in Luce County, a twenty-first century Delphi Oracle of Colossal Proportions. At five-nine and three hundred admitted pounds (another hundred or so went unclaimed), she moved with the grace of Alice B. Toklas and focused like a magnifying glass set out in the sun by a kid to fry ants on a sidewalk.