Hard Ground Page 3

  Flyvie left her prisoner locked in the truck and went into the house, where Deputy Henk Jonkheere was in a wall-shuddering scrap with a massive shirtless man whose fat undulated in rolls like swells on Lake Superior. The man was covered with tattoos, and the house stank of cat piss, skunk weed, vomit, and way too much testosterone. Pepper spray seemed to hang in the air and got into her eyes as she let Jonkheere know she had arrived.

  “I’m gonna try to rotate this sonovabitch,” Jonkheere grunted. “When I do, put the fucking lightning to the bastard.”

  The CO pulled her Taser, the deputy turned the man, and she popped him in the back, raising a simultaneous scream and grunt as the man lifted the very large Jonkheere and smashed him head-first into the floor before turning to face her, drool cascading off his chin. She momentarily considered shooting him, but reached instead for her baton, popped it open to full length, put a hard thrust into the man’s throat and a second and third to the outside of his knee, which collapsed him and made the floor shake, by which time Jonkheere was back in the fight with his own baton. Eventually they subdued the man and secured him in cuffs.

  “Thanks,” Jonkheere managed to wheeze. “I thought I was going to have to shoot the bastard.”

  “Me, too. What’s his problem?”

  “Birth,” the deputy said. “Bastard must drink steroids from gallon jugs.”

  “God, he stinks,” Flyvie said.

  Five minutes later a state trooper, another deputy, and CO Igor Copp arrived. Copp was her colleague, a steady, unflappable longtime game warden who looked at her and grinned.

  “A little wrestling, eh?”

  No matter how violent, she never heard fellow conservation officers call any physical confrontation a fight. She didn’t know why and didn’t care. The main thing was, it was over. “He’s a behemoth,” she told Copp.

  “You musta charged right in,” he said. “All your truck doors are standing open.”

  Later Jill Flyvie was sure her heart had stopped at that moment, but she had shoved past Copp, bolted outside, and realized it was true. Finlayson was gone. She began to hyperventilate, partially in anger, partially in fear. Losing a prisoner was a serious transgression, the kind that could kill the career of an officer still technically on probation.

  Copp joined her. “Problem?”

  “I had a prisoner,” she confessed.

  “Take deep breaths,” he said. “Had? Had isn’t good. Have is good, not had. It sucks to be you,” Copp said, and she couldn’t help laughing. “Guess we’d better find the asshole,” the other officer added.

  Flyvie’s radio came on. “DNR One, One Twenty-four, this is Eighty-six, I’m at Mudge and Atlas, found a guy over here wearing bracelets. You missing any?”

  Eighty-six was a troop she knew. “That’s affirm, Eighty-six.”

  “Where you at?”

  She gave him the address. “I’ll fetch him to you,” the deputy said.

  “Holy Christ in the bakery,” CO Copp said when the deputy arrived. “You pinched Jerome Finlayson!”

  “Shining,” she said. “Two kills. Saw both happen.”

  Copp laughed. “Finlayson hardly ever gets caught, and when he does, he almost always escapes.” Copp held up his hands and wiggled his fingers, “Double-jointed or some such shit.”

  “You know this jerk?”

  “Hell, every CO above the bridge knows him. Didn’t Peggy brief you on him?”

  “I’m working with her day after next. Our first time.” Peggy Kee had been a sergeant less than three weeks and was just beginning to ride with her officers.

  “Well, you got his sorry little ass back, and that’s what counts.”

  Flyvie spent all the next morning in Marquette with a welder who put together a series of locks and shackles. “You, like, gonna play Torquemada?” the welder asked. “Is this, like, legal? Can cops really use stuff like this?”

  “When conditions warrant,” Flyvie answered. Torquemada indeed.

  “Far out,” the welder said.

  The next day Sergeant Kee inspected CO Flyvie’s vehicle and equipment. When she saw the chain-and-lock apparatus, she held it up. “Personal or professional?”

  “Hybrid,” Flyvie said. “A personal/professional matter.”

  “Noted,” her sergeant said. “Good initiative, but next time just stay with your goddamn prisoner, and let someone else rescue the other cop.”

  “You know?”

  Kee laughed. “Copp called me from his truck. There’re no secrets in this outfit, Jill.”

  “How was I to know the asshole was double-jointed?”

  “Stay with the prisoner, and it won’t matter if he’s got detachable limbs, superpowers, and an IQ of two-seventy .”

  “Never leave a prisoner alone,” Flyvie said.

  “Repeat that a hundred times, throw in a couple of Hail Marys, and consider yourself officially forgiven. But don’t let there be a next time, copy?”

  “Copy,” Jill Flyvie said, “Sergeant, ma’am.”

  Symbiosis

  It was opening day of firearms deer season. CO Steven Burdoni made his way cautiously along an old tote road that split off the Norway Truck Trail and encircled a knob locals had dubbed “Mount Pile of Rocks.” Every year on opening morning of deer season in Dickinson County, Burdoni walked into a deer blind here, and the hunter was always over-baited.

  The ground blind sat at the bottom of an opening with a clear shooting lane up the hill. But this year Cotton Nebel wasn’t in his blind. His pickup was parked where it always was, and Burdoni immediately felt anxious.

  Nebel had always been there. A slight, cadaverous man, Nebel wouldn’t tip scales at 120 with his old red wool hunting plaids and boots on. The man looked sickly, was a chain smoker with an owl’s bark of a cough you could hear 200 yards away.

  The man lived in Kentucky but owned a ramshackle deer camp in Dickinson County, used the same blind every season, and Burdoni wrote the same ticket every year. The man always bought an out-of-state license and never shot more than one deer. In all things but baiting, Nebel seemed a law-abiding citizen.

  Burdoni got to the blind, saw a fresh Camel butt in the Sanka can the Kentuckian used for an ashtray. There was a single spent .30-30 cartridge gleaming on the ground and a Winchester model 90 lying on top of an old canvas gun case, the lever action wide open for safety.

  The conservation officer scanned the hill above him and saw a large buck walking nonchalantly across the open area, easily in shooting range. Beyond the deer, a man popped to his feet and waved. Nebel. The man began coughing, which sent the passing buck into flight.

  The game warden worked his way up the hill to find Cotton Nebel’s arms red with blood and a fresh gutpile in a dip below a dead six-point. “You see that dandy buck, Steve?” Nebel asked, wiping a hand on his pants and reaching out a bony hand for a handshake.

  “You shoulda waited for the big one,” Burdoni said.

  “Hell, you know I don’t care none about no such things. Can’t eat them damn horns. Wondered when you’d mosey by.”

  “How much bait this year?” the officer asked.

  “The usual. Hair over two gallons.”

  Burdoni looked at some apples, corn, two sugar beets. “Looks pretty close to two gallons,” the officer said. “And it’s spread out real nice.”

  “Nope, I’m over, Steve, way the heck over for sure. Got at least two wheelbarrys full.”

  Burdoni looked around. “What wheelbarrow?”

  “Was a finger of speech,” Nebel said. “I used my bucket.”

  “You want help getting your buck down to the blind?” Burdoni asked.

  “Be good,” the old man said. “Thanks, Steve.”

  They dragged the dead animal down the hill, and Nebel lit a new cigaret
te and held out the pack, which Burdoni refused.

  “You gonna write me my ticket now?” Nebel asked.

  “Well, you’re not that much over, if at all, and the bait’s spread out pretty good,” the game warden said.

  Nebel looked crushed. “I’m over, I know I’m over. You got to write me, Steve. The law’s the law.”

  Burdoni said, “I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot worse, far more egregious violations.”

  “Steve,” the hunter said, “sir, I’ve already done marked my rifle.” The man picked up the .30-30, closed the lever, and showed the stock to the game warden. It had today’s date at the end of a string of nine other dates.

  “But you’ve already got your buck, Cotton.”

  “That don’t matter none. This here’s a matter of tradition,” the hunter said. “For the both of us. You write a ticket, I get a deer. You get a ticket to start off your law season, and it’s good for the both of us. You and me, we do this every year, like partners. I drove all the way from Kansas City. Left my rig there just so I could make the opener.”

  “I don’t know, Cotton.”

  “How about I make us some fresh coffee?”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Ain’t no bother, and your daft talk’s a-gettin’ me twisterpasted. I’ll make coffee, and you write my ticket. We got a deal?”

  “I have to tell you I’ve seen a lot worse baiting than this, even from you, Cotton.”

  “I know, I know, I didn’t have time to do ’er right this year. Grabbed bait, drove over here, hauled it up the hill, walked back down, looked, and there stood that fool six-point. Had no choice. I picked up the rifle and let fly. Dropped right there at the bait. Didn’t even have to track the dang fool.”

  “Well, the bait’s just not enough to bother me, especially being spread out the way it is. Got your license?”

  “Yut, picked her up in Iron Mountain. Old boy down there stays open all night before the season opener.”

  “Let me take a look.”

  Nebel handed his license to the conservation officer.

  “Says you bought this at oh four-forty.”

  “’Bout right,” Nebel said. “Thirty minutes to camp from IM.”

  “You drove to camp, grabbed bait, and came over here. How long from your camp to here?”

  “Half hour.”

  “How long to walk in, put the bait on the hill?”

  “Dunno, mebbe ’nother half hour, I speck.”

  Burdoni scratched his chin, took out his notebook and pencil. “Oh four forty-five leaves store. That’s oh five fifteen at your camp. Five minutes there, half hour to here, makes oh five forty-five, half hour to walk in, dump bait, and get down to your blind. That gets us to oh six fifteen, I’d say. You have a smoke before you shot?”

  “No time. Looked up, and there he were a-standin’. I put Old Annie’s sights on him an’ squeezed one off.”

  “Shooting light?”

  “Got ’im, didn’t I?”

  “How come you’re just gettin’ to gutting the animal now?”

  “Truth is, I’m gettin’ old, Steve. Going on eighty. Took a while to get the energy to walk up that dang hill again and do what had to be done. Deer was down. No hurry, was there?”

  “I guess I could cite you for shooting early, before legal shooting hours,” Burdoni said.

  “Fine by me, Steve. Whatever you think is right.”

  “But I think we’ll just call it over-bait and be done with it. The fine’s lower.”

  “That’s real good, Steve, just so long as there’s a ticket.”

  Burdoni made out the citation and gave it to Nebel. He explained for the tenth time that the man could pay it by mail, did not have to appear. That it was a civil fine, not criminal.

  They drank fresh hot coffee, and the game warden walked away listening to the old man cough. One of these year’s Cotton Nebel wouldn’t be around anymore, but until then, he’d humor the old man. What exactly a ticket did for Cotton Nebel was beyond Burdoni’s ken, but this was the Upper Peninsula, it was the opening day of deer season, and it was what it was . . . whatever this was.

  Going Viral

  During seventeen years as a game warden in Chippewa and Luce Counties, Marlin Rodgers had earned the name “Hemlock” from local violators who insisted he was like poison to their work. Out in the county’s cedar swamps and boreal forests, outlaws of all shapes and hues developed sudden palsies when he materialized.

  There were some who maintained Rodgers was the most feared man in Luce County.

  His fourteen-year-old daughter, Deven, saw it differently. She rolled her eyes, sighed, even walked away whenever he tried to speak to her. Or she told him, “Like, you need to get a life!” Until she was ten, she would hardly let him go off to work alone. Now she had banned him from her school in his CO uniform, even to pick her up after basketball or softball practice. When he did manage to talk to her now, it seemed almost always at her back. The legend in the woods was persona non grata in his own home. Wife Patsy, a guidance counselor at Newberry High School, constantly reassured him that this was a stage, and it would pass. He was dubious.

  Deven was a first-rate student and, like her friends, addicted to computers, phones, and various electronic contraptions. She talked about Facebook like it was an alternative world—and a much better one at that. Above all, Deven seemed to measure the importance of everything by whether or not it appeared on YouTube.

  Rodgers had looked at all the computer crapazola and rejected it as escapist at best, toys for kids with a little money. It was bad enough how electronically tricked out his own patrol truck was these days, like Big Brother rode on his shoulder, monitoring every move he made.

  Having checked his snailmailbox slowmailbox at the district office, Rodgers picked up a new elastic ammo sleeve for his shotgun and slid it over the stock of his .12 gauge. He put eight shells into the sleeve, with the lips pointed down so he could pull them downward into the palm of his hand during a firefight, a maneuver officers called a combat release, something they all practiced.

  Rodgers had just slid the shotgun into its case when Central called. “Current location, Two One Nineteen?”

  “Just leaving the district office.”

  “Just got a report of a man covered with blood in the woods, two miles south of your location on a two-track that veers west by a red barn. Troops and our people are tied up.”

  “I know the place, Central,” he said, getting into his truck. “Two One Nineteen is rolling that way.”

  Man covered in blood. This could be nasty or nothing. You never knew until you were on the scene to assess for yourself. Eyewitness reports, so called, were generally useless and often totally inaccurate.

  He found a young woman waiting out by County Road 403, and when he pulled up, she was shrieking, “Help him! Please God, somebody help him, he’s bleeding bad!”

  “Calm down, ma’am,” Rodgers said in a firm but quiet voice. “Who is bleeding?” he asked as he snapped on blue latex gloves.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know! I was, like, walking in, like, you know, like, the woods, and I saw him. Oh my God, there’s so much blood!”

  “Where is this man?” Rodgers asked. The woman was jacked up on adrenaline and fear.

  “Follow me, follow me!” the woman said and started running down the two-track with a grassy hump in the middle.

  Rodgers picked up his emergency first aid kit and walking briskly, followed her until she neared a shed, began stabbing with her finger, and screaming, “There, there, there!”

  Rodgers got close and saw nothing except a caved-in building with tarpaper walls. “Where exactly, ma’am?”

  The woman ran to the ruin and pointed, “There, there, oh my God!”

  Rodgers felt his h
eart jump. Bad news: bloody and behind cover. He moved in at an angle, got to the corner of the derelict shed, looked around, and saw the man up on his feet: fifties, sixties, wife beater shirt, balding with what remained of a mullet cut, both arms dripping blood, flies buzzing around in hungry armadas.

  Secure the scene, the cop voice in his head preached. The man had what looked to be a Bowie knife in his left hand, same arm that seemed to be cut. Big-ass knife, blade bloody. Oh boy.

  “Sir, I’m Conservation Officer Rodgers, and I want to help you, but first please put the knife on the ground.”

  “Wha . . .?” the bloody man mumbled, staring blankly.

  He was weaving, unsteady, high, drunk, shocky maybe. No way to assess injuries yet. Secure the scene. “Sir, please put the knife down,” Rodgers repeated, standing back.

  “So confused,” the man said, taking a step forward. “Dizzy…”

  “Stop. Look at me!” Rodgers ordered. “Sir, look at me now! What’s your name?”

  “Dunno,” the man said, looking up slightly. “What’s going on? Huh?”

  “Put the knife down!”

  “I don’t know,” the man said, stepping forward again. “Where am I, what’s going on?” Not just holding the knife, he was now brandishing it clumsily. Dandy, Rodgers thought.

  “Sir, put the knife on the ground and step away from it.”

  “Knife?”

  “In your left hand. Put it down!”

  The man gathered himself and looked like he was going to charge forward. Rodgers unsnapped the strap of his .40 cal and held his hand on the grip, ready. “Sir, I can’t help you until you put the knife down!”

  Still no compliance. Rodgers drew his weapon and held it behind his leg. “Put the knife down and step away from it, sir. Do it now!”

  “You can’t shoot him!” the female shrieked. “Why aren’t you helping this poor man, ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!” The woman was holding something in her hand, jumping up and down erratically. He snuck a look with his peripheral vision. She had a cell phone. Just great.