Force of Blood Page 4

  Katsu examined the small man. “And the Menominee claim they killed a thousand enemies on Green Bay, but the Menominee are liars. The real battle was here, and my people were in it.”

  “Whatever,” Toliver said dismissively. He shook his head and looked to Service like he had more he wanted to say, but couldn’t summon the words.

  “The professor wants to dig for artifacts,” Katsu said. “If I wanted to go and dig for pots in Arlington National Cemetery, you think your wabish government would allow that?”

  “Arlington is a cemetery,” Toliver said.

  “This place is no less,” Katsu said with a steely voice.

  Toliver sighed. “I have been issued the requisite state permits to sink-test cores.”

  “Permits issued by whom?” Service asked.

  “The Office of the State Archaeologist,” Toliver said righteously.

  “Toliver and the State both deny the truth,” Katsu said.

  Toliver keened, “Your own state authorities agree that there are no bodies here. I have permits. Everything is legal and in order. Katsu is obstructing a legally sanctioned archaeological dig and academic field program.”

  “There will not be digging here,” Katsu said. “None.”

  “I’ll be back with real cops,” Toliver said.

  “We’re both real cops, dipstick,” Sedge said angrily, nodding toward Service, “and, more to the point, the DNR grants the right to dig, not the state archaeologist.”

  “I’m not going to stand here and argue pointlessly or be insulted anymore,” Toliver said. “These people assaulted us. I want to file charges.”

  “Do what you feel you have to do,” Katsu said flatly.

  Toliver said, “We want our machine back.”

  Service’s eyes narrowed. “You illegally used that thing, so we’ll just hang on to it for now. The walk out will probably do you good.”

  “Illegally?”

  “Riding double, no helmets, nearly plowed into a group of people, riding on the beach, which is against the law—we could keep going with the list, but we’ll leave it at careless operation and just warn you on the other things.”

  He looked at the driver. “Who’re you?”

  “Jane,” she said in a quavering voice.

  Toliver said, “Good God, man—do you realize how far we are from our vehicle?”

  Service said, “More to the point, do you?”

  When Toliver and the woman turned and began to trudge east, several Ojibwa blocked their way. Service intervened, separating Toliver and the woman from Katsu’s people. “Okay, fun’s over. Let these people pass.” He nodded at Sedge, who gave the woman named Jane a nudge toward Toliver.

  The four of them walked down the beach.

  “You saw everything,” Toliver said. “The assaults.”

  “I’m not sure what I saw,” Service said. “How long has this pissing match been going on?”

  “We had the first encounter with Katsu last summer. Flin Yardley, the state archaeologist, had already given permission, but we went back and asked again if he was certain there were no remains here, and he told us we were clear to sink-test holes. Now, every time we show up, Katsu and his thugs are here blocking us. I don’t understand how they always know we’re coming.”

  “A professor where?”

  “Hibernian College near Cleveland.”

  Service had never heard of it. “You teach there?”

  “Twenty years, and I’m curator of the campus museum.”

  “So, if there are bodies here, you can’t legally dig?”

  “If there are bodies, we can dig, but the dig would then have to satisfy federal regs in addition to state regs, and because of NAGPRA, the feds would formally bring Native Americans into the process.”

  “NAGPRA?”

  Sedge blurted out, “That’s the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which says nothing can be done to bones without direction by and from the Indians.” Her voice betrayed extreme frustration.

  “Tribals do tend to complicate some things,” Service said, speaking from experience.

  “You’ve dealt with them?” the professor said.

  “The thing is, mostly they just want people to think about what they’re doing.”

  “Bloody hell, man, I study them and think about them and their past all the time.”

  “And you’re certain this was no more than a fishing village?”

  “Right—a distinctly minor one, more a safe refuge from inclement weather than a serious, established fishing settlement.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Various European accounts, including the Jesuit Relations, all of which formalize the Native oral traditions.”

  Sedge said, “Katsu says you’re wrong.”

  “What does he know? These people didn’t even have a written language until Europeans came along, and even that took a couple of centuries. This group of Katsu’s isn’t a federally recognized tribe. They call themselves the Five-Pack Creek Band of aboriginals under the Grand Island Ojibwa but it’s all made up, with absolutely no historical basis. I know; I’ve made a career of studying these people.”

  “Did you two have helmets?” Service asked.

  “No need. We’re on sand, and I drive carefully.”

  Service stopped walking, took out his ticket book, opened it, and started writing.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Toliver asked.

  “Giving you a ticket for riding your machine on the beach. That’s against the law. But I’ll just issue warnings on the helmets.”

  Toliver said. “You think this is a joke?”

  “A joke? Professor, there’s about two dozen tribals back there, decked out in war paint and carrying some very nasty-looking weapons. The last thing I think is that this is funny. You stir a hornet’s nest, you’ve got to expect to get your sad butt stung.”

  Dr. Toliver set his jaw. “That knife cuts two ways, buddy boy.”

  Katsu was alone by the time Service and Sedge got back to him.

  “Toliver seems pretty insistent about his permits.”

  Katsu said, “I’m telling you, the Office of the State Archaeologist can’t permit him legally because there are remains here. It would be a violation, a desecration—not that such things ever stopped wabishi in the past.”

  “Have you talked to this archaeology office?”

  “They only talk to other archaeologists. Seems to us the State wants Toliver to dig here, only we can’t figure out exactly why.”

  “Historical reasons?”

  “Or black-market artifacts,” Sedge interjected.

  Service stared at her. “Artifacts … here?”

  Sedge walked over to the four-wheeler and opened a storage case mounted on the handlebars. “If Toliver’s honorable, why’s he carrying a shovel? Archaeologists don’t dig in the dark.”

  “Emergency kit for the four-wheeler?” Service countered.

  Sedge extracted a trowel, a whisk broom, and a small bucket with wire mesh across the bottom. “This stuff look to you like four-wheeler emergency equipment?”

  She had a point, and Service felt a rumble in his stomach, a sure sign that he had rolled into the middle of something he sensed he was totally unprepared to deal with. They chained the four-wheeler to a tree, told Katsu to keep his people away from the machine, and headed out.

  Sedge said nothing during the long hike back to their trucks. Hers was parked next to his. Suddenly she pivoted sharply and raised a fist. “Who in the hell do you think you are, horning in on my case!”

  Holy shit. She’s a damn wildcat. “Whoa,” he said, raising his hands. “I’m not horning in on anything.”

  “I’ve been working this goddamn case for months. I just got an assistant attorney general up to speed, and that asshole jumped ship to another job without a goddamn word. Now I have to start all over.”

  Once some of her fire had been tamped down, Service said, “Look, you don’t wa
nt me in this, I’m outta here; color me gone. It’s that simple.”

  She looked up at him and gnawed the inside of her cheek. “No, you’d better come to my place after we patrol and let me bring you up to speed.”

  “That mean you want me in?”

  “Take my word,” she said strangely. “You’d like that.”

  He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about the case. Talking to her was like running through an unmarked minefield. Keep your mouth shut, he advised himself. It was Friday, and he was tired.

  5

  Bomb Shelter, M-123, Luce County

  SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2007

  They did not get to her place until well after midnight. Service felt vaguely sore from hiking, and he was famished.

  As McKower had told him, the old gas station was right on M-123, just before the Middle Branch of Linton Creek. A large and rusty metal Mobil Oil sign squeaked as the morning wind pushed against it. “That thing looks like it’s gonna come down someday and cause some damage,” Service said, trying to look at the woman without being obnoxious. She stood no more than five-foot-five, had her hair stuffed under her law enforcement baseball cap, and looked like she was borderline anorexic. “You follow my tracks in last night?” he asked her.

  “By the Five-Pack,” she said, adding, “I’m Donna Sedge, but call me Jingo.” She did not stick out her hand. “Saw your truck on the AVL.”

  “Jingo’s a different kind of name,” he said.

  “I’m a different kind of person,” she muttered.

  Service sensed that the anger that had surfaced earlier was still there, but now she was holding it back. Measuring me? he wondered. Regretting inviting me back here?

  “You want me to rustle up some coffee?” she asked.

  They were still outside, between their two trucks. “That’d be good,” he said.

  She made no move to open the door to her place. “Toliver was in Paradise yesterday. Someone I know heard him say he was headed to the beach again.”

  “Were you following Toliver?” Service asked.

  “I don’t have to follow him. Katsu has a plant at the motel where Toliver stays. The informant calls Katsu, then me. Until I saw your truck pop up on the computer and cut your trail,” she said, “I had everything under control. Been up to me I’d never have let Toliver get that close to Katsu’s people, but I saw your call on the AVL and figured I’d already had this out with Katsu; he knows he can’t be messing with Toliver or anyone else who comes out there. It’s public land, and moral right isn’t synonymous with legal right.”

  She seemed on the verge of boiling. “I didn’t intend to interfere. I’ve looked into Toliver’s background. He’s not some scribble-school chump, Detective. He’s highly respected and damn powerful in academic circles.”

  It dawned on Service that Sedge was deeply involved in all this, whatever it was, and that maybe she had neglected to inform her lieutenant. “Have you talked to the state archaeologist?” he asked her, intentionally switching directions to see how she would react.

  She made a growling sound. “Those clowns don’t talk to mere cops. We’re the equivalent of dog turds under their flip-flops.”

  “You know, we have good senior people in Lansing to run interference for such things.”

  “Yeah, and we all know what a big fan of Lansing you are,” she said sarcastically.

  “Does McKower know what’s going on?”

  “Know what?”

  “About Katsu, Toliver, any of this.”

  “Don’t you get it? Eight weeks ago I didn’t know anything. All I heard was that a bunch of tribals were harassing four-wheeler types out here, and I came out to investigate. Katsu and his people had erected a fence with signs asking all non-Indians to stay away out of respect for his ancestors’ remains.”

  She added, “The old village was in a bit of a sandy bowl, eh. Ass-bags on four-wheelers like to rip up and down the dunes, and they were obliterating everything. If you look around in daylight you can see for yourself.” She continued, “I asked Katsu to take down the barriers and to explain to me what the heck was going on, and since then I’ve been meeting with him and learning. I don’t know enough yet to officially talk to anyone downstate, but my instinct was to first go to the attorney general’s office and find out what they knew about this sort of situation. This couldn’t be the first time this sort of thing has happened.”

  “The state archaeologist won’t talk?”

  “Hell-ooo! They talk, but what they say is that cops do not have a right or a need to know where historic sites are, or to know what’s in them, unless a crime is committed on such ground, and if we detect a suspected crime, we’re to report it to them. Only then will the SAO verify a site’s existence. Maybe.”

  What the hell was she telling him? “That makes no sense,” Service said. “How the hell do we patrol something if we don’t even know it’s there?”

  “They’re afraid we’ll reveal secrets the public isn’t entitled to know. Or steal the artifacts ourselves.”

  “We patrol and take care of underwater preserves,” he said.

  “The ones we know about,” she countered. “There’s a whole lot out there we don’t know anything about.”

  Santinaw had propelled him into something that smelled like it could carry him down to Lansing and create a nasty bureaucratic food fight. The thought made Service weary. His every interaction with Lansing was less than satisfying. Last year he had worked a case involving possible graft among personnel in the DNR itself, and he was still disappointed and bitter about the outcome. He had put civilians in jail, but insiders had retired and escaped unscathed.

  “You said you talked to the AG’s office?”

  “I did, and they didn’t know shit, but they handed me off to a deputy and I did a whole bunch of research and got the assistant AG up to speed. Last week, absolutely out of the blue, the sonuvabitch retired and joined an association of archaeologists as its executive director.” She sighed. “My problem is that according to the records Toliver cites, this place was pre-Ojibwa, and abandoned before the Ojibwa even migrated to this area.”

  Service asked, “What about the Iroquois remains he talked about?”

  “As far as I know, nobody’s ever looked for them at that location,” Sedge said. “Only Katsu claims there was a battle here, and even he doesn’t know exactly where. The stories say the Iroquois camped in this region, dragged their canoes onto the sand, and got drunk. They were headed west on the war road. Katsu claims his people first spotted them to the east, closer to Bay Mills, and followed them west, maintaining a safe distance. The enemy force was nearly three hundred strong, plus some captives they’d collected along the way. The Ojibwa had help from their Odawa brothers and some others, and fell on the Na-do-we-se before sunrise. It was over almost before it began. According to the legend, the attackers killed all but three of the enemy, cut the heads off the dead, lined up the severed heads on the beach, and told the survivors to go back to their homeland and tell their people that if they ever again came onto Ojibwa land, the Ojibwa would build a road of skulls all the way back to their land.”

  “Very dramatic. Did they come again?”

  “Apparently not,” Sedge said.

  “Santinaw says humans can’t own land.”

  “There’s so much damn Native American crap to sort from fact,” she said.

  Service said, “Katsu claims occupying is temporary ownership even by old tribal standards, occupation and stewardship being synonymous in some cases for some people.”

  She nodded. “I listened to the same story and told him it’s public land, and he can’t legally block the public from using it. Katsu said to me, ‘Even if they are tearing up our heritage? Every time they shoot through here on their machines, they destroy remains.’ ”

  “I corrected him. ‘Artifacts, not human remains.’ ”

  “ ‘Don’t quibble,’ he told me. He insists there are bodies out there.”

  �
��Corroboration?” Service asked.

  This earned him another sour face. “Not exactly, but I learned that about ten years ago a professor from Whitewater State in Wisconsin conducted a dig there. No bodies were found, but months later—the next spring—she reported finding remains that the winter storms and sand-shifts had uncovered. More likely she was back digging again, the second time without authorization, but, having found a body, was afraid someone would find out, so she reported it as being found on the surface. She said she reburied it, but refused to say where.”

  “Who’d she tell this to?” Service asked.

  “State archaeologist’s office, in writing, and the SAO wrote its own report, in effect declaring, ‘No harm, no foul.’ I had to get the damn thing through FOIA—on my own dime. The department’s lawyers in Lansing were too busy to help me.”

  “But you figure she was digging without proper clearance.”

  “I wasn’t there, but it smells that way to me. There were some known artifact caches that disappeared at that time. The DNR even knew where they were—we’d cataloged them ourselves—then word got out about the remains and the artifacts went missing.”

  “Wouldn’t it make sense to locate the Na-do-we-se burials and push the State to reclassify the ground?”

  “Katsu insists the remains are there and that it’s wrong to disturb them.”

  “You could’ve called me on the 800 last night, let me know you were in the area,” he chastised her.

  “Back at you! Listen to you! Yeah, sure,” she said, “I could have done, but I saw your number and I thought, Holy shit—why’s the Big Dog lifting his leg in my backyard?”

  Big Dog? “Katsu’s father is an old friend. He asked me to look into this.”

  “Katsu’s father?”

  “His name’s St. Andrew, but he’s known as Santinaw.”

  “You should have checked in with me,” she said. “You know, professional courtesy, trust, teamwork, all that other good shit?”

  “Don’t be so territorial,” he said. “I called McKower. She doesn’t know anything’s going on out here, and she asked me to give you a bump, but I wanted to see what I was dealing with first.”