Ice Hunter Read online

  “I don’t want to know any more about your scars,” she said solemnly.

  “I’ve never been shot in the back,” he told her.

  “That’s enough, Grady. I don’t like the implications of any of this.”

  “My ex-wife said I had a death wish.”

  “Was she right?”

  “Not usually.”

  “You’re not particularly adept at comforting a lover,” Lehto said.

  “We were married four years and she never complained. One night at dinner she said, ‘I’d like another helping of cauliflower and a divorce.’ I looked at her. She said, ‘You have a death wish and I don’t want to be a young widow.’ She left after she finished her second helping of cauliflower. She was already packed.”

  “Baloney,” Lehto said.

  He made a sign over his chest. “It’s the absolute truth and as close to verbatim as I can make it.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Away. She never said and I never asked. She filed for divorce in Nevada and after that, who knows?”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Not after that cauliflower business.”

  “Don’t joke,” she said. “We’re having a serious discussion. You never tried to get her back?”

  “Nope.”

  “Would you have taken her back if she came back on her own?”

  “I don’t do hypotheticals,” he said.

  “C’mon, Service. Open up.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know, she might have been right,” Lehto said. “So she became a young divorcée instead of a young widow. Practically speaking, what’s the difference? Alone is alone. She must’ve been really afraid of losing you.”

  “That’s illogical,” he said.

  “These things don’t have to make sense.”

  “See!” he said, brightening. “It was that way with Grandma’s shotgun too.”

  “That poor woman. She must’ve been shattered.”

  “She called me a fool. My old man took her shotgun away from her and gave her a ticket.”

  “You made that up.”

  “Only the ticket part,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t have surprised me.”

  She lay her hand flat against his penis and pressed. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “What?”

  She took him in her hand. “What do I call him?” she asked in a whisper.

  “What the hell are you talking about Kira?”

  “It’s an important move forward in our relationship,” she said. “Personal names for our private parts. It’s what couples do when they start to fall in love. It’s in all the textbooks.”

  “Not any textbooks I’ve read,” he said, adding, “my ex and I didn’t have any personal names for anything.”

  “I rest my case,” she said. “You’re not with her anymore.”

  “And you think I’m crazy?”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore,” Kira Lehto said.

  “Okay by me.”

  They dressed slowly after their lovemaking. Dressing was the only thing Kira did slowly.

  “We needed this,” she said.

  He smiled.

  “Excuse me, but that was an invitation to make a date for the next time.”

  “Whenever you want.”

  She put her hands on her hips and thrust out her jaw. “I’d like to hear some want from your end. This isn’t an open-ended take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing for me, Grady.” Her voice had suddenly risen to a high pitch.

  “Why’re you mad?”

  “I’m not mad. I’m disappointed. I care about you and I want us to spend more time together. Normal time, not so-called quality time, which is a loser’s term for something is better than nothing. I thought you wanted the same thing,” she said with frown. “No, I take that back: I’m disappointed in me.”

  “I don’t understand what the problem is.”

  “Your grandmother was right about you! You are a fool!”

  Her truck tires spit gravel when she departed.

  He had a sour stomach. Why did his relationships always go this way? What did she want, a billboard on US 41 to let her know he cared about her?

  When he drove across a bridge over Wallen Creek he saw a woman in blue waders and a lavender vest, casting a fly into a pool by the road. Her bronze Maxima was pulled off the shoulder of the road. It had Lansing plates. There was a bumper sticker, a navy blue fish with the words love ’em and leave ’em.

  He got out and eased down to the rock-strewn shoreline. She was twenty feet away.

  “Hi,” the woman said warily. She had reddish blond hair, round cheeks, a nice smile, her hair in a neat French braid that stuck out the back of a red-and-black baseball cap. The hat had a lansing lugnuts emblem on the crown.

  “Do any good?”

  “Just some dinks, but it’s fun.”

  “Rainbows?”

  “Yep, you wanna check my license?”

  “No.” He saw she had a wedding ring. “Your husband with you?”

  She paused before answering. “No.”

  “Does he fish too?”

  “When he can get away. He travels a lot in his job.” She was giving him a suspicious eye.

  “Is that a problem for the two of you?”

  She laughed nervously and unconsciously stepped back. “Are you coming on to me?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  He could see her evaluating him. After a bit, she waded to shore, brushed the dust and debris off a flat-topped boulder with her hand, and sat down.

  “I’m Jerrijo Burke,” she said, extending her hand.

  She had a solid grip.

  “Grady Service.”

  “Chuck travels a lot. Fifty percent a year on the average. Some years it’s worse. I used to be a CPA in a good practice. Now I just do taxes for friends. It makes me a little fishing money and keeps me in the business.”

  “Downshifting?”

  She smiled. “Getting back to basics.”

  “You’re happy?”

  “What’s this about?” she asked, her eyes declaring concern.

  “I’m trying to work something out.”

  “Yeah, I’m happy,” she said.

  “Him too?”

  “He hates being gone all the time, but sure. We’re both happy.”

  “You miss each other when you’re apart?”

  “Of course, but we’ve learned to focus on our time together, not our time apart.”

  “That works?”

  “It seems to,” she said, with a deep laugh. She dug her fishing license out of her lavender vest and held it out to him. “Check me, okay? I want to be official.”

  He gave the gaudily colored document a cursory look. “You’re legal.” He gave it back to her, noting that it was a shame that the state under Sam Bozian had done away with trout stamps as a way to save money.

  “I’ve never met a game warden before and I just wanted to make it official. What’s her name?”

  “Who?”

  “Look, officer, you started this. Your girl, her name.”

  “Kira.”

  “That’s a nice name. Do you love her?”

  It was time to shift the subject. “Do you want to catch some big brook trout?”

  “Who doesn’t?” she said. “Big as in how big?”

  “Well, fifteen-inchers aren’t uncommon.”

  “Jesus—excuse my Greek.”

  “You go west to the next intersection and turn right. Go about two miles. You’ll see an old barn on the right. There’s a faded sign for Redman chaw. There’s a gate across the road. No lock. Open it and drive to the e
nd of the two-track. You’ll see some birches in a big clump across an open field. Walk over there and go down to the river. It’s the upper part of Wallen. Fish guys have been planting triploids, sterile males. They grow like crazy. Usually they put them in brook-trout-only lakes and try to raise trophies. This is a new angle on that. Use a Green Stimulator or a Long-Legged Skunk and the bigger and bushier, the better. Around five, switch to a Green Caddis, say a twelve. Come sundown, forget it; they won’t hit anymore. This afternoon, fish the shadows under the cedar trees where they hang over the runs.”

  “Is it private land?”

  “Nope, it’s just not publicized. Be sure to close the gate behind you.”

  “I don’t know what to say. This is a really odd moment.”

  He smiled, “I know. Thanks for talking to me.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Enjoy,” he said.

  He watched her drive away and thought any other day he’d drive up and hear her laugh as she hit big one after big one. What had Treebone said, a fish cop and a dog doc? Lots of people had jobs that kept them apart, but somehow managed as couples. He drove around feeling unsettled. He did not like how he and Kira had parted.

  “Focus on the time you have,” he said out loud. Kira wanted more time. So did he. Maybe it was time to make time. Shit or get off the pot, his old man used to say.

  He made two stops on the way to Kira Lehto’s office.

  Her receptionist looked up at him when he walked in. “Doctor’s in surgery.”

  “Cancel her appointments for tomorrow.”

  “What?” the young woman asked.

  “You heard me.”

  “I can’t do that without confirmation from the doctor.”

  “Yes you can.”

  Lehto was suturing a jagged laceration that zigzagged through a patch of shaved skin on a large brown mongrel. She wore a surgical mask decorated to look like a dog’s snout, green scrubs, pale yellow latex gloves. She glanced at him when the door opened and said, “Scrub in, Officer Service, or stand clear.”

  Her surgical assistant pointed to a sink. “Disinfectant, then soap and water. I’ll glove you and mask you when you’re done.”

  He did as he was instructed but stayed back from the table.

  The sutures were in. “She got mixed up with a porky. I have to pull some quills from her face,” Kira said to him. “Want to hold her head?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “A porcupine did that to her belly?”

  Kira Lehto raised an eyebrow. “She tried to run away and got hung on some sharp metal in a barn. What do you mean, ‘can’t’?”

  “Can we just talk about this later?”

  Lehto looked at her assistant. “Did he say ‘can’t’?”

  “It sounded that way to me.”

  After the dog was placed in a post-op cage and her assistant had gone to do something else, Lehto peeled off her gloves and dropped them in a stainless-steel can. “Why are you here, Grady?”

  “Making the most of our time together.”

  “Jesus, Grady. Get to the point.”

  He hesitated. “I canceled your appointments for Monday.”

  “You did what?”

  He took her hands, but she resisted instinctively. “Come with me,” he said.

  She cocked her head to the side. “Have you gone crazy?”

  “I’m not qualified to diagnose.” This time when he pulled, she followed.

  They went into the reception room. The receptionist looked at Service with annoyance.

  “Did you make the cancellations?” he asked.

  “Not until the doctor says so.”

  “It’s okay, Jean. It’s . . .”

  “Call it a unique personal emergency,” Service said.

  The receptionist started to get up. “Are you all right, Doctor Lehto?”

  “She’s not good,” Service said. “She’s fantastic.”

  Lehto laughed. “I’m fantastic,” she said, smiling at her receptionist, who looked flustered.

  When Lehto saw the suitcase on the front seat she said, “That looks like mine.”

  “It is,” he said, moving it to the small bench behind the bucket seats.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Home,” he said sheepishly.

  Dr. Kira Lehto crossed her legs and her arms, looked straight ahead, and smiled. “So far this is one damn interesting day.”

  When they got to his place, he opened the back of the truck and began to unload.

  “That looks like my bed,” she said.

  “It is.”

  He set it up in the main room and when it was done he got a glass of water, drank it down, went over to the bed, and began to take off his clothes. “Is this moving forward or backward?” he asked.

  She began unbuttoning her blouse. “It’s too early to predict ultimate direction, but the rate’s rather promising.” Late in the night, after he made bacon, eggs, and toast, they sat at his tiny table across from each other.

  “Well?” he said.

  “You’re afraid of dogs?”

  “Stop laughing,” he said. “It’s not funny.”

  “I can’t stop,” she said, as tears ran down her cheeks.

  The telephone rang at 6:30 a.m. and they looked at each other and Service got out of bed and went to the phone and turned the receiver upside down in the cradle.

  “One good sign after another,” Kira Lehto said, patting the mattress.

  10

  All the next day they made love, cooked, puttered, and talked, and on Monday Grady Service asked Lehto to move in with him. It was an impulse, he knew, but he convinced himself that this was the right thing to do for both of them.

  Lehto told him his house was as barren as an army barracks and it wasn’t what she considered to be normal bachelor emptiness; it was something entirely different. He could tell she didn’t like it.

  “It’s pathologically empty, Grady. It’s like nothing in your life sticks to you. Even your cat doesn’t have a real name.”

  Service felt a twinge under her criticism but was surprised that he wasn’t more offended by anything she said. She was candid and affectionate at the same time. They had dated for nearly a year, but after the past thirty-six hours together he decided that he was only meeting the real Kira for the first time. There was a rational, practical side to her and a wide-open, almost reckless side. She ranged between pensive and manic, one moment making a list of the groceries and other things they would need and an instant later pressing wildflowers in one of his books. It was as if she were two people in the same body and having thought this he laughed, because she had said more or less the same thing about him. Maybe it was the same with everyone. Certainly his ex had turned out to be someone else.

  She agreed to living together on the condition that they split time between her place and his. She said she could get a telephone device that would automatically transfer their calls, which meant they could be either place and still take care of their professional responsibilities.

  When he dropped her at the clinic he felt a brief tug of separation, but she patted his face and said, “Tarzan may now get after the bad guys. It was a wonderful interlude, Grady. I only wish we were leaving on a real vacation, away from everything.” They both laughed and he drove away feeling happier than he could remember feeling. Despite this, her words about vacation gnawed at him. He couldn’t remember the last legitimate vacation he had taken. In his time off he found plenty of things to do. Why did you have to go somewhere else to do that?

  His afternoon would be spent at the District 3 headquarters in Escanaba. He was scheduled for refresher training on PPCT, pressure point control tactics, wherein COs would go through the motions of sharpening their abilit
y to bring troublesome violets to their knees using a minimum of physical force and some practical body mechanics.

  His first call of the morning went to the fire warden, Nantz.

  “Well, it’s man-made,” she said. “I was pretty sure, but the lab has samples from the POO and will run mass spec to try to pinpoint the compound. Maybe that’ll help, maybe not. The state forensics people got tire prints from the truck Voydanov saw. They’re definitely from a full-sized SUV. Which make is anybody’s guess. We caught the fire in time. I guess we should be satisfied with that.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  “Neither am I,” she said. “I’ll keep you in the loop and anytime you wanna have that beer talk, just say the word.”

  “Thanks, Nantz.”

  When he got through to Lisette McKower she asked, “Where have you been?”

  “Personal time. I’ve got PPCT this afternoon.”

  “You’re supposed to keep your supervisor informed. Parker’s been trying to reach you. He’s in a real snit.”

  Sergeant Charles Parker was McKower’s counterpart and Grady’s direct supervisor. Each of them oversaw half the COs in the district.

  The first time Service worked with Parker was the morning after a severe thunderstorm. They had been called to a residence near Trenary. The residents had gotten up in the morning to find three dead deer under a large maple tree behind the house. Despite the rain, the grass around the animals was black, and two huge branches had broken off the maple’s main trunk. Parker ruled immediately that the animals had been killed by a lightning strike, but Service had doubts, and as he walked around the scene his eyes kept returning to the garage where ATVs and snowmobiles were stored along with the longest spool of insulated electrical wire he had seen since Vietnam. He had asked the residents what the cord was for and was informed it belonged to their high school junior son, who had it for some kind of science experiment. His supervisor was antsy to resume their patrol and Service finally agreed to move on, but that night he went back and confronted the family’s high-schooler, who reluctantly confessed to setting up a booby trap, baiting it with apples and corn. When the deer wandered into the grid, he tripped the juice, killing them. There had been a lightning strike into the tree early that evening and the boy decided that nobody would be the wiser if he conducted his experiment. His parents had been bowling in Escanaba when the events took place. Service cited the boy for illegally killing deer and for creating an illegal fire. He went back to the office that night and filed his report and the next day had Parker on the phone, asking him why he had gone back after he had decided the cause was lightning. Service said the ground pattern didn’t look right and he just wanted to be sure. Parker had already told others about the incident and how he had proclaimed it lightning before Service could decide. He had never forgiven Service for making him look bad, but he had also pretty much left Service alone after that.