Force of Blood Page 6

  She laughed out loud and placed a cup of coffee and a small turnover in front of him. “I can warm it, if you’d prefer.”

  “This is fine,” he said, nibbling the turnover.

  “No sugar in the crust. I make a thin crust of sugar as I take them out of the oven. That way the sweetness doesn’t overwhelm. Enjoy.”

  The flavor was indescribable.

  “You like?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Good, now try this.” She opened the oven and pulled out a pasty, one that had already been cut. She gave him a chunk on a small plate. The flavor coursed through him like a bolt.

  Trevillyan nodded happily and raised an eyebrow. “The trick is to freeze the lard, then grate it fine. The juniper berries I picked last year, and froze. The morels are last year’s whites, dried and hung. You can use either Marsala or Madeira, although I prefer the latter. I call it a U.P. shroompasty.”

  “You could market this.”

  “Then the fun would be gone,” she said. She took two pasties from the oven, put them in a cloth bag, and set it on the table by him. “For later,” she said, sitting down and refilling their coffee cups.

  “Iroquois and Ojibwa wars,” she began. “Like most things historical, it seems a simple request, but one fraught with complications.”

  “Such as?” he said.

  “Dates, to begin with; aboriginals don’t think in terms of calendar years. History places your battle in 1662, thirty miles east of the mouth of the Tahquamenon, but that’s European white history, not Native American history, and I doubt white men were in the fight, so what we get from Europeans is all secondhand—which is to say, their slant or spin. I think that’s the word nowadays, spin.”

  “Suggestions?”

  “One, definitely look at the Jesuit Relations. All Jesuit missionaries were required to file annual reports—so to speak—to their home offices, which they called mother houses. All the original reports from Upper and Lower Canada reside in Quebec City, but most reports from Canada have also been translated into English. There’s a chance one of the priests reported the battle, and while it’s unlikely he was an actual witness, he might have heard an early version of the oral account. It might be useful for you to compare that with the story as it is spun now in more contemporary retellings.”

  “Jesuit Relations.”

  “Don’t be intimidated by the title. The reports make fascinating reading.”

  “Where do I find them?”

  “The J. M. Longyear Research Library in the Peter White Library, right here in town,” Trevillyan said. “I’ll call and let them know when you’re ready to do some reading. I have to tell you … there are aspects of the legendary battle that have always bothered me.”

  He let silence work.

  “Mainly, it’s the scope. Instances of large belligerent aboriginal forces going head-to-head to the death are exceedingly rare in history. War back then was a way to scare up more women and manpower for the tribe, and for personal aggrandizement, rarely for territorial conquest or acquisition. Some accounts report three hundred dead Iroquois, which would make the size of the war party and the fight unprecedented, perhaps for the entire Midwest. Scholars believe at the height of their power the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederation could marshal no more than five thousand warriors—tops. After smallpox began to decimate the Iroquois, their war-fighting capacity was a helluva lot less than that. Seriously, who risks six percent of their army in one fight?”

  “What about the bit with the road of skulls?”

  “No-te-pe-ti-go? It’s plausible, but not probable. Aboriginals were and are big into symbols….”

  “But,” he said, anticipating her pause.

  “The fight could have been in 1662, or ’72 or ’52, or none of the above. It could have been no more than baloney and wishful thinking, and if it happened, it might have happened at what we now know as Iroquois Point—or not. Nothing is certain. The Ojibwa had no written language at that point in their history. The Iroquois did, but they weren’t going to write about getting their butts kicked. For the Ojibwa back then, everything was moved by word of mouth, and as a police officer, you know what historians know: Oral tradition and hearsay might be interesting, but they aren’t worth a damn in court or as an accurate verification of fact.”

  “If you were trying to pinpoint the site, how would you go about it?”

  “You can see that I like to run?”

  “I guessed that.”

  “I run because I like to eat even more. By running a lot I can eat a lot and not gain weight. It’s a way to offset my weakness with strength. The point is that the Ojibwa had no written language in the ordinary sense, but their Midewiwin Society used a form of pictographs that are quite detailed and rich. You familiar with the Mide?”

  “They were medicine men, elders mostly, rarely accepting of whites. You know a Mide priest?” he asked her.

  “Sorry, ethnography isn’t my forte, but what I can say from my limited knowledge is that virtually none of the Ojibwa oral history checks out factually. Let me repeat: I’ve got serious doubts, though I admit up front I’ve never given any of this serious thought or scholarly focus. We are left with something like three hundred dead Iroquois warriors, give or take, which would be about one in twenty of their total amalgamated fighting forces. The accounts don’t mention Ojibwa losses. I doubt the victors would have left any of the dead to scavengers, but Ojibwa and Iroquois burial practices were different. The Iroquois buried the dead in the flex position—sitting up —facing east. The Ojibwa put their remains aboveground in spirit houses. After time, the Iroquois dug up the bones, cleansed them, and put them all in a community ossuary with great reverence and ceremony.”

  “If the Iroquois weren’t buried?”

  “The remains would have been scattered by scavengers and weather. Porcupines would have eaten some of the bones. There’s something else that strikes me as odd. According to what I know, which admittedly is not that much, the Iroquois were a top-down military society, and it was their custom—if their leader fell in battle—to melt away to regroup and fight another day under a new leader. They didn’t stick around leaderless in the hope of some Pyrrhic victory.”

  “What if someone dug up remains that had been buried?”

  “I’d assume they were Iroquois, and that the victors buried them to honor them.”

  “After removing their heads.”

  “That’s not unusual or odd for aboriginal thinking, but hell, we do the same sort of things. We kill our enemies by the millions, then rebuild the vanquished countries. It’s thoroughly human, and therefore without logic. Human beings make Alice in Wonderland look like a veritable documentary.”

  Grady Service laughed. I like this woman. “Jesuit Relations, that’s your recommendation?”

  The woman spread her hands in resignation. “Got a card?” He handed one to her.

  “In case I think of something else.”

  Nice words, he thought, but just words. No conviction. She’s the kind who doesn’t like to disappoint. “How extensive are these Jesuit Relations?”

  “Close to two hundred years’ worth.”

  This is helpful?

  9

  Slippery Creek Camp

  SUNDAY, MAY 6, 2007

  Newf, his 130-pound Presa Canario, a Canary Island mastiff, stared at him with a look that said, “Where have you been, jerkwad?” Even misanthropic Cat hissed spitefully, which she did, happy or angry. She had only one mood: bad. The dog had been a gift from a former girlfriend who thought it might help him get past his fear of dogs, and he’d thought it was working until the pit bull the other day.

  On the way home he’d stopped at Econofoods in Marquette and bought boneless chicken breasts. Since Nantz’s death he tended to cook in multiple batches, freezing what he didn’t eat for road chow. Friday enjoyed cooking, but where he and Nantz had been wild and sexual in the kitchen, Friday was more restrained, measured, orderly, and s
he was also always on time.

  He would have shopped closer to his camp, but the Upper Peninsula’s independent grocery stores in small towns and villages were dying fast because of the competition of big chains and the crush of the state’s failed economy.

  Service whipped up a salad of lettuce, English cukes, grape tomatoes, slivers of Spanish onion, California golden raisins, dried apricots, chopped dates, ground pecans, fresh avocado and clementines, and scallions. He set the salad aside and began assembling the meat. He would microwave sweet potatoes for them. He got a dozen Thai red peppers out of the freezer and chopped them finely. He mixed hot curry powder, salt, and pepper and rubbed the mixture into the chicken breasts. He set a nonstick frying pan on the stove while he grated lemon zest. Finally, he poured two glasses of Barolo and looked out the front window.

  With Friday’s entry into his life he had once again put away the footlockers he’d slept on for years, replacing them with a king-size bed in the upstairs bedroom (which he had finally gotten around to finishing).

  When Friday pulled into his road he went outside to help her and the baby, who clung to him as he bounced him happily. Newf jumped and whimpered, wanting her own share of kid time.

  “Gotta feed His Majesty,” Friday said, after giving Service a lingering kiss. She carried a bag with bottles and baby food. Service packed more formula into the fridge.

  The solidly built Shigun was a placid, happy eighteen-month-old toddler until he was hungry or needed a diaper change.

  “You want me to start cooking?”

  “Go ahead, the kid eats like you—fast. What’s on the menu?”

  “Something new.”

  “I don’t need fancy,” she said, meaning it.

  “It’s basic,” he told her.

  “I bet,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Shigun can sit with us while we eat.”

  He handed her a glass of wine. “Trying to ply me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know that exact word, but if it means making reckless boomboom, yeah.”

  He put four chicken breasts in the pan and cooked them six minutes a side, cooking until three batches were done. He spooned two small breasts on each plate and left the rest of the meat to cool on the counter. He’d put the remaining eight breasts in plastic freezer bags after dinner. Which reminds me—I need to pull some meals out of the freezer for Sedge and me.

  Service combined lemon juice, water, and sugar-free apricot jam in a saucepan and heated and whisked until the mixture was smooth. Then he spooned the sauce onto the plated breasts and sprinkled them with lemon zest and finely minced Thai red peppers.

  “Jesus, Grady. That smells unbelievable. What’s it called?”

  “Curried apricot-lemon chicken.”

  “You call this basic?”

  “Have I ever led you astray?”

  “Kehh!” she said with a snigger. “Every chance you get.”

  “I meant gastronomically,” he said, correcting himself.

  “No.”

  “Eat.”

  He watched her sample the chicken and close her eyes.

  “Damn,” she whispered.

  They ate in earnest for a while, quiet, no talking. When Friday had the hungries, conversation went bye-bye.

  After a while she said, “This Sedge kid, what’s she like?”

  He told her about the paintings and got her laughing so hard she nearly choked. “Jesus! Her hunkus?” Friday punched his chest with the heel of her hand and laughed out loud. “You’re making that up!”

  “It’s true, and let me say at the outset—and for the record—that I cannot testify to the veracity of her work.”

  No laugh this time. “Better keep it that way, buster.” Then, “I noticed you left the little detail of pussy paintings for our second night together.”

  He shrugged.

  “Our case last year involved eighty-year-old remains; now this. Has it ever struck you as odd, the range of your responsibilities?”

  “This archaeology thing is entirely new to me, and probably it’s the same for most officers on the force.”

  “Sedge up to the challenge?”

  “She seems to have a lot of gears. I talked to Etta Trevillyan today.”

  “Can you believe that woman is seventy-five? She dates a forty-five-year-old emergency-room physician from Munising.”

  “No way she’s seventy-five,” he countered.

  “Way, dude. Was she helpful?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “The old ‘academic balance’ deal?”

  “More or less.”

  “Heading east tomorrow?”

  “Early. Sunrise at Sedge’s place.”

  “Conservation officers keep shitaceous hours,” she said.

  “No argument from me. Is that a real word?”

  “It is now. You gonna call Little Maridly tonight?”

  “After dinner and the dishes.”

  “Sure you’re up to it?”

  His granddaughter, who would be three in December was precocious and already exercising the vocabulary of a balls-to-the-wall ten-year-old.

  “She’s gonna be a load when she’s a teeneager,” Friday said.

  “Shigun isn’t?”

  “Boys are way easier to raise than us girls, dude.”

  They loaded the dishwasher and Friday took Shigun for his nightly bath while he picked up the phone and dialed Houghton.

  A tiny voice answered, “Pengelly residence, this is Maridly.”

  Don’t tear up, he told himself. “This the rugrat who eats dirt?” he challenged her.

  He heard her giggle and inhale. “I only eated it once and I did not like it, and I am a pretty little girl—not a rugrat.”

  “Better a rugrat than a rat on a rope.”

  The little girl squealed with delight. “Bampy!” she screamed into the phone. “When are you coming to see me?”

  “Soon baby. Where’s your mom?”

  “Mum’s right here.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  Pause. “She says she guesses. I love you, Bampy.”

  “Shigun’s here.”

  “We like Shigun,” the girl said. “He’s cute!”

  “I know we do, hon.”

  Maridly’s mother had been his son’s girlfriend. Karylanne had been pregnant when Walter was killed, and he had taken the girl and her baby into his life as if they were his own, which, in his mind, they were.

  Karylanne Pengelly was trying to finish a master’s degree at Michigan Tech, and when that was done she’d begin looking for a job. The thought of her moving away with his granddaughter made his stomach roll.

  Friday met him upstairs, wearing nothing but a backwards baseball hat.

  “Shigun’s asleep already,” she said, smiling. “How’s the kiddo?”

  “Steering the planet through space,” he said. “What’s with the hat? You calling balls and strikes tonight?”

  She lowered an eyebrow and said, “Just balls.”

  10

  Coast of Death, Luce County

  MONDAY, MAY 7, 2007

  Sedge looked half-asleep, but as promised had a thermos of fresh coffee sitting on the tailgate of her work truck. “Big Dog,” she greeted him.

  “Pocahunkus,” he replied.

  “You ready to roll?” she said, eyeing the trailer with his Polaris RZR. “Holy shit!” she said with a yelp. “Eight hundred XP, Bimini roof, winch, spare tire, full windshield, steel deer guard—that bitch is totally tricked out. Lemme guess: This is not department-issue.”

  “Mizz Einstein. Grab your brain bucket.”

  “Don’t need one in the RZR.”

  “You haven’t ridden with me.”

  “Point taken.” She went into the Bomb Shelter and came out carrying her helmet bag. “Take off from here?”

  “Let’s take the truck and trailer north, unload up there. Toss your gear in my truck. No point taking two.”

  Sedge said, “Let’s cruise up CR 500, head into the ar
ea from Crisp Point.”

  “Rationale?”

  “Luce County is a magnet for every ATV outlaw and moron for five hundred miles. Good PR to be seen, and let them see us with the RZR, which will get them to thinking.”

  “Head-bending is good,” he said. “The endless psyops between good and evil.”

  Despite early snowmelt and no spring rain, back roads were in terrible shape, county graders not yet deployed. Service drove slowly over the endless washboarding, preferring to be off on two-tracks, but Sedge wanted to fly the department flag, and as her partner he was all for it.

  “Ever hear of Jesuit Relations?” he asked.

  “I thought those dudes were celibate,” she quipped. Then, “No.”

  He explained what they were and ended with, “The super-sensitive Dr. Ladania Wingel—you know where she lives?”

  “Jefferson, Wisconsin.”

  He stared at her. “Are you kidding?”

  “Hardly. What’s the big deal?”

  Jefferson was home to the late Wayno Ficorelli’s ferocious aunt, Marge Ciucci. Wisconsin Warden Wayno, who had worked with him on a case, and had been murdered by the same person or persons who killed Nantz and his son. Ficorelli had been a hard-charging Wisconsin game warden. Ciucci had wanted vengeance against her nephew’s murderer, and had not danced around it with delicate language.

  “Might be good to visit Dr. Wingel, give her the up-close eyeball.”

  Sedge said, “There’s no budget, and that sounds like a nasty trip to me.”

  “I know someone I can stay with for free in Jefferson.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’d probably want to paint your hunkus—or something.”

  She smiled. “I might just.”

  “I’ll call my contact over there, see if she knows Wingel, can fill us in on the professor’s local reputation.”

  “She? You keep a ‘she’ in Wisconsin?”

  “No, my she is in Marquette,” he said, thinking, And not kept. “Aunt Marge Ciucci is in Jefferson. Last time I saw her she told me in Italian not to break her balls and nobody fucks her in the ass.” My ‘she.’ I wonder how Tuesday would like that description.