Strike Dog Read online

  “You’ve already looked at the scene differently than any of us might have,” she said. “The more perspectives we can get, the better off we are. Diversity gives us the multiple-view intellectual edge.”

  What the fuck was she babbling about? This was murder and she was spouting politically correct management theory? It still bothered him that the FBI had so much information on him, and he wanted to ask why, but once again decided to hold off.

  Tatie Monica showed him to a tent. “Your crash pad,” she said.

  “Are you out of Chicago or Minneapolis?” Service asked.

  “Milwaukee,” she said. “I got a BS in psychology from Marquette, and then I did most of the work for a PhD in abnormal psychology. I still have to write my dissertation. Then I went to law school in Madison. Ficorelli’s cousin and I were classmates at UW. I finished higher than he did,” she added. “Then I worked in Milwaukee as an assistant prosecuting attorney for three years and found it pretty unsatisfying. It always felt like the prosecution was after all the real action, so I applied to the FBI and they took me. After the academy I did four years in LA. I liked it there, but I wanted to get back to the Midwest, so I asked for a transfer to Milwaukee. Some of my friends said it was a dumb move to a career backwater, but Wisconsin has had a couple of major serial murderers, and I liked the idea of being able to study records close to the scenes. This profiling thing gets overplayed and misrepresented in the media,” she said.

  “Okay,” Service said. He had asked only if she was out of Chicago or Minneapolis and had gotten a professional life saga. Cops were taught active listening skills and to signal receipt of every statement without prejudice. The word “okay” was the most often employed. Service and Nantz had sometimes watched Cops on TV, and they would bet on the number of times the word would be used during a show. Monica had supplied so much information that he wondered if she was trying to sell herself, and if so, why? She was the team leader. What more authority did she need?

  “Down the road I’d like to see profile training be mandatory for all law enforcement personnel, and for all of us to understand all the components,” she went on. “We spend a lot of time trying to profile the killers, but geographic and victim profiling are equally important—all part of the total picture—and both underutilized.”

  Service didn’t interrupt her. He was trying to size her up and not having a lot of success. She had an ego and seemed ambitious, but how competent was she? His make-talk question about her office had gotten him a detailed autobiography. Something was screwy here.

  After a while he said good night, went into his tent, and eased onto a cot. He had just dozed off when he awoke to find her sitting on a cot across from him, a mug of hot coffee in hand. “Have you got something against sleep?” he asked.

  “Talk to me about hunting,” she said.

  “It’s a big subject.”

  “Hunting violets,” she amended.

  He rubbed the corners of his eyes and tried to clear his head. “Game is attracted to certain kinds of habitat at different times of year. Habitat equals food and cover: Where you find the most game, you find legal hunters—and violators. Some locations have better potential than others.” He thought for a minute. “Bears, for example. In the fall when hunting them is legal, they’re pigging out to put on weight for the winter sleep.”

  “You just camp out near their food,” Special Agent Monica said.

  “In the old days hunters would find their trails, put threads across runs to determine if they were in active use, and when they found one, they would track the animal. Nowadays a lot of hunters are too lazy or unknowledgeable to know what they’re doing, so they put out piles of sweet baits and sit above them in tree stands. Other hunters use dogs to chase the bear up a tree.”

  “Dogs are legal?” she asked. “Is that fair?”

  It never failed to surprise him how few people knew anything about hunting or the outdoors. “It’s legal and there’s nothing wrong with it. Hunting for most of our history has been about eating, not sport or fairness. If you go back in time, most hunting was done with dogs. In any event, some hunters have specially bred dogs for bears. Every night they drive the dirt and gravel roads and drag them clean with a metal bar or a mesh screen. First thing in the morning they load their dogs and cruise the roads looking for fresh tracks. The dog with the best nose sits outside in a basket welded to the grill. This is their strike dog. When the hunters find a track, they let the strike dog sniff it, and if it’s hot, he’ll take off. If he keeps going, the hunters release the pack to follow. Then they drive all over hell using radios to try to follow the dogs until the animal is treed.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “The strike dog leads the parade?”

  He stopped talking. “It was my understanding that my being here is a result of a pop-up request from the Wisconsin state attorney general, but you know too much about me for it to be that simple.”

  “Computers enable us to do a lot of things fast,” she said.

  “I thought the FBI was computer-challenged,” he fired back.

  “Since 9/11 we’ve been clawing our way into the new century. You were a sniper in Vietnam.”

  He wondered exactly how much she knew about what he had done during the war. “Actually the mission was long-range recon, but on occasion we did other things.” He didn’t want to get into details.

  “Enemy military personnel?”

  “Right. Sometimes we tried to decapitate certain units to disrupt and harass them.”

  “How did you find your targets?”

  “It was all about the quality of our intelligence. Sometimes we got lucky and stumbled onto someone we wanted, but most often we sent out Kit Carson scouts—enemy soldiers who came over to our side and volunteered to work against the North Vietnamese. Most of them were reliable and good at what they did. The scout would be given a name and he’d slide off into the mountains for a week or two, and sometimes when he came back he’d have located the target and followed him long enough to discern a routine. Then we’d follow the scout and do our job.”

  “Any ethical concerns?”

  He shook his head. “We targeted soldiers, not civilians.”

  “That’s where you developed your tracking skills?”

  “Honed them,” he said, and guessing where she was going, he added, “but we always had a name and an identity, and usually a general location. We didn’t just go out and wander around looking for someone. Hope is worthless in tracking.” He listened to himself. Wouldn’t this apply to this killer too? How did he find game wardens to kill?

  She chuckled. “You’re not very trusting.”

  “I prefer to think of it as an acute sense of situational awareness.”

  “I appreciate your candor,” she said. “We have tried like hell to look at the victims to develop a suspect list, but the only suspects we’ve identified were local types who might have held a grudge against a particular murdered officer. Our perp is a bigger thinker, working on a much wider plane. You ever run into anyone like that among your violets?”

  He didn’t need to think long. “Not really,” he said, leaving it at that.

  “Bullshit,” she snapped at him. “You helped take down an international poaching group last fall. You’re like every other cop,” she added.

  She knew too much about him, and again he wondered why. “How’s that?”

  “It’s called key fact hold-back, and that’s not the name of a poker game, though cops act like it is. Cops don’t willingly share with outsiders.”

  “What I ran into last year wasn’t like this in any way,” he countered.

  She glared at him. “The person we’re looking for has the ability and wherewithal to travel freely, and move around unimpeded. He’s either independent, unemployed, or has a job that gives him the freedom he needs. The fact that he displays the bodies has us
scratching our heads. Usually killers who display and arrange their victims are sexual predators, but there’s no evidence of sex in these killings.”

  “But the guy is communicating,” Service said.

  “It’s more like he’s waving the medicus,” she said.

  “Medicus?”

  “An antiquated English word for the middle finger.”

  The way she said it made it almost funny, but the memory of Wayno’s mutilated body wiped away any humor.

  12

  FLORENCE COUNTY, WISCONSIN

  MAY 21, 2004

  Service’s internal clock had him awake before first light. His first thought was of Newf. How could he have forgotten his animals? He was definitely not fully aware. Not a good condition to be in with a serial killer stalking the woods. He pulled on his wet boots and shirt and slipped outside the tent. He called and woke Candi McCants and asked her to check in on and feed Newf and Cat. He told her he wasn’t sure when he’d be home.

  He walked back into the tent and poked Monica’s shoulder. “You coming?” he asked.

  She snapped up and swung her feet off the cot. “Is the sun up?” she asked in a sandpapery voice.

  “Soon,” he said. He went outside, found an urn with fresh hot coffee, and filled two Styrofoam cups.

  The FBI agent walked stiff-legged out of the tent, stretched, and dug a stick of gum out of her pocket. Her hair was molded to her head.

  “You ready?” he asked, handing her a cup.

  “Like the white chick said in Dances with Wolves, ‘I go where you go.’”

  “They were married,” Service said.

  “Don’t nitpick,” she shot back, sipping her coffee. “Do I need hip boots?” she asked.

  “Only if you’re afraid you’ll melt,” he said.

  She shook her head and said, “Lead on, Natty Bumppo.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense for the killer to leave the bodies where he killed them?”

  “Most serials do. They kill, do their thing, and boogie.”

  “This guy wants you to find them.”

  “But not too easily or too fast,” she said.

  “What about the eyes?”

  “We’re clueless on that,” she said. “One shrink talked to us about mal occhio, the evil eye, but that line of inquiry went nowhere. We had a serial in Texas who cut the eyes out of three victims. In some Arab countries they ­remove eyes as punishment for certain crimes. Because of the blood eagle we had a hard look at Viking practices and beliefs and drew a blank.”

  It occurred to him that maybe the eyes were irrelevant, but he was locked into another question. “Why did the Texas killer take the eyes?”

  “So the victims wouldn’t remember him.”

  He looked at her. “How could they if they were dead?”

  “Exactly. He said he only intended to rape and release, but he ended up killing them. Then he gave us a line of bullshit about taking the eyes to confuse us.”

  He pondered this. Misdirection? In the natural world misdirection was something prey did, not predators. Or did they?

  They crossed the river. The four-wheeler trail continued on the other side of the river, and to his right he saw the cement pilings of the old bridge.

  “How far back is Wayno’s truck?” Service asked as they splashed quietly across the cobble bottom.

  “Maybe three hundred yards. The road’s bermed on the south terminus to keep out civilian vehicles. He parked east along a two-track that sort of parallels the river over there,” she said, pointing.

  Tire marks showed that four-wheelers worked both sides of the river, and Service knew that Ficorelli, like any competent game warden, would never leave his vehicle where it would be obvious or easily found, even when he wasn’t on duty.

  “Thorkaldsson and Ficorelli were friends?”

  “Long time, I gather. The sheriff says they came here to fish three times a year, spring, summer, and late September.”

  Service grimaced. Routine could be fatal to a game warden, even off duty. Ficorelli seemed to have possessed the self-protective paranoia that all good game wardens needed, but how many people knew about the fishing trips, and why did the two men park on opposite sides of the river?

  Thick tag alders and cedar bordered the narrow road cut by four-wheelers. Tatie Monica triggered her handheld. “Julie, I’m coming up with a colleague.”

  “You’re in our optics,” a male voice squawked back over the radio.

  “Julie?” Service said.

  The agent smiled. “Julius White.”

  Another nondescript dark Crown Vick was parked sideways just behind the berm. Two agents met them. They were wearing blaze orange vests over navy blue polo shirts, with fbi in large black letters across the backs of the vests. “Anything?” she asked one of the men.

  “We had a couple down here on a four-wheeler about midnight,” he answered. “They drove down to the berm, stopped, stripped off their gear, and went at it on the seat.” He pointed. “Right there.”

  “You talked to them?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What about Nelson?”

  “He was makin’ mud when they came racing by, but he radioed to us that they were coming.”

  “Did Nelson talk to them on the way out?” The annoyance in her voice was palpable.

  “Yeah, he got their names and checked IDs. They told him they had a few too many. They live a few miles south. He said the woman was in tears. The guy she was with wasn’t her husband.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A playmate,” the agent said, tongue in cheek. “Also a neighbor. She lives in Milwaukee and summers up here. Her old man only comes up weekends.”

  “They summered hard last night,” the agent called Julie chirped.

  Monica said menacingly, “Somebody needs to talk to them again. I want full statements. How often do they come down here? Did they see anything the night of the killing? We need to be thorough, milk every lead.”

  “Nelson’s got their names, addresses, phone numbers. He took licenses and ran them. No wants or warrants. They both came back clean.”

  Service left her talking to the agents, and walked down the two-track, where he found Ficorelli’s pickup backed into some white pines. It was roped off with crime scene tape, but no FBI personnel were around. Shouldn’t there be security here?

  Special Agent Monica caught up. “I think your guys enjoyed the show last night,” he said.

  “Julie’s an FOA—First Office Agent,” she snapped back. “Which is no excuse. He shouldn’t have let the couple head back to Nelson once they got past him. They should have been detained and interviewed right there.”

  He agreed, and wondered if 9/11 was causing the FBI to ramp up manpower, and lower standards in the process. “This is where the truck was found?”

  “As you see it.”

  The sun was beginning to illuminate the eastern sky with a band of low lavender and pink light.

  “Your people check for foot tracks on the four-wheeler trail?”

  “There are some matches with those on the other side, but that doesn’t tell us much. We haven’t found any that might be Ficorelli’s by their size.”

  “Felt soles,” Service said. “They keep you from slipping on rocky bottoms and leave a flat print like Bigfoot, but not distinct. Was Ficorelli wearing waders, and did his boots have calks?”

  “He was naked. Calks . . . you mean, like metal spikes?”

  “Not necessarily metal. Where are his boots, waders, vest?”

  “We haven’t found anything.”

  “Anything found from the previous victims?”

  “Them either. Probably at the kill sites, but we haven’t found one yet. What about calks?” she asked.

  “They leave distinctive prints if th
ey’re not worn down.” His own needed replacing, which he kept putting off. “We’ll assume he moved directly downstream and fished back up to the meeting place. We ought to be able to find some sign of where he went down to the river and got out.” It always amazed him that people with no outdoor interests had so little curiosity about it. In the U.P. even the least outdoorsy person knew a lot because the outdoor environment was everywhere around them and affected everyone who lived in it or near to it.

  He moved slowly, using the increasing light to augment his penlight. He picked up on a trail not far from the black truck, but it looked more like a game trail than a fisherman’s path. Still, he saw the muted prints of felt soles, and they were small enough to be Ficorelli’s. No calks for sure. He marked two tracks with sticks, and thirty yards on, he found a pile of bear dung. The FBI agent didn’t seem to notice and he didn’t call it to her attention. It was a small pile, not particularly fresh.

  The bank on the south side of the river was low, the water in front of it slow and skinny, not likely to hold fish. He saw no tracks or impressions in the gravel, and stood, looking across the river where the current was closer to the bank, where large rocks protruded and a lot of downed timber hung down in the water. “Let’s angle down and across,” he said.

  They waded downstream until the bottom began to tail away, the water deepening into rapids with some energy. “The soft edges of this heavy water would be best for fish,” Service said, thinking out loud. “But if he had to meet Thorkaldsson, he’d probably stop short and loop back upstream to meet him.”

  “Soft edges?” she asked.

  He tugged some hairs on the back of his arm. “Prickly water looks like that,” he said, showing her the arm.

  “You can look at the river and tell what people would do?”

  “I can guess what an experienced fisherman would be most likely to do. With an inexperienced one, all bets are off. With an experienced fisherman, every movement in the water is about finding and positioning to cast to fish.”