Red Jacket Page 9

Hepting furrowed his brow. “That’s why I asked you along. Think Deputy Valo would be worth anything in a scrap?”

  “He’s your deputy, John.”

  “Correction: He’s my inherited deputy. His old man’s on the county board. I don’t have a single deputy I hired. They’re all holdovers, and mostly worthless when the chips are down.”

  “Get rid of him. Get rid of all of them.”

  Hepting glanced at him. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Lute. Politics steers a lot of things. Ain’t right, but that’s how she is.”

  “What if Hannula’s not there?”

  “We’ll wait for him. Got something better to do?”

  “I might,” Bapcat said.

  The sheriff laughed.

  Bapcat asked, “Is there more to this than you’re telling me?”

  “In addition to telling us where he might be, his wife mentioned he’s getting an early start on venison.”

  “She say more than that?”

  Hepting looked at Bapcat. “Up here somebody telling the sheriff anything is by itself a whole lot!”

  There was no sign of Hannula at his shack, but there was some evidence he had been around recently: semi-warm coals in the fire pit, a couple of partly burned cigarettes. One window in the shack was curtained over. The sheriff stepped into the woods and found a place to sit and watch, slapping mosquitoes.

  Bapcat and Hepting circled the cabin slowly, and within a hundred yards, just beyond a sharp bend in the creek, they discovered a cellar storm door in the side of the hill. Bapcat tugged it open and found six deer on a bed of dry ice. No heads, just bodies, skinned, no hides in sight. Without the heads, there was no way to judge how long the animals had been dead.

  When Hannula showed up he was dragging another deer, freshly killed, his arms and clothing bloody.

  Hepting stepped out to the Finn and touched his arm. “You’re under arrest, Hannula. The charge is secreting property.”

  Hannula released the carcass. “What the hell’s that mean, Sheriff?”

  “Means larceny.”

  The Finn wiped his hands on his shirt and leered. “This is because that Jezebel keeps a house of ill fame for prostitutes. I want the strumpet arrested on morals charges.”

  Hepting said, “That business would be between you and your lawyer, Enock, not me. You and me got different business. Are you intending to come along peacefully?”

  The man seemed to be weighing his chances with the sheriff when Bapcat stepped out. “What’s that damn trapper here for?” Hannula asked, taking a step backwards. “Two against one ain’t fair.”

  “Deputy Bapcat’s the game warden now.”

  “Him?”

  “That deer’s illegal,” Bapcat said. “New season’s August one to December fifteen.”

  “A man’s gotta eat.”

  “There’s six more on ice down the creek.”

  “Not mine,” Hannula said, with enough conviction that it gave Bapcat pause.

  “You knew they were there.”

  Hannula gave him a cold stare. “Prove it.”

  “Don’t have to. They’re on your property. That makes them yours.”

  “It’s not my property,” the Finn insisted.

  “Prove it,” Bapcat played back at him.

  “My property don’t reach down that far.”

  “That far? Meaning, you know where the carcasses are.”

  “I said they ain’t mine is all I said, eh.”

  “You said your property doesn’t stretch that far. I just said there are six more iced down the creek, not where.”

  Hannula sighed, hunched over, and clenched his fists.

  Bapcat knew the man was going to fight and bent his own knees, but Hepting wasn’t waiting. The sheriff swept the man’s legs from beneath him, smacked him in the head with a sap—a small fold of leather filled with lead—pinned him to the ground with his knee, and handcuffed him.

  “The whore,” Hannula hissed.

  “Which one?” Hepting asked.

  “All of them,” Hannula shouted, “all of them!”

  Bapcat helped the sheriff get the dizzy prisoner to his feet. “You saw he was going to bolt,” Hepting said.

  “Back, knees, fists.”

  The sheriff smiled. “You learn fast, Lute. Next time don’t give him the chance to act. Strike first and hit hard! What do you want to do about the carcasses?”

  “Can we tie them to your Ford?”

  The sheriff poked Hannula. “You got rope in your camp?”

  “Not for the likes of you,” the man shot back.

  “Break down the door,” Hepting said.

  “You can’t do that,” Hannula protested.

  “When did you become a goddamn lawyer? I have a felony arrest warrant for your apprehension. We need to search for stolen goods. You emptied your place in Copper Falls. And you just resisted arrest.”

  “There ain’t nothing in there.”

  “Open it,” Hepting told Bapcat, who kicked near the handle and shattered part of the door inward.

  The prisoner was morose, but he was partly right. There were no stolen goods in the shack, but plenty of rope.

  •••

  The Eagle River justice of the peace was Hyppio Plew, a small, nervous man with a meticulously groomed beard and a silvery striped vest. He studied the warrant.

  “I want bail,” Hannula announced.

  “And God wants a land free of sinners. Neither of you is getting your way. You want the same lawyer you had last time around, Enock?”

  “I guess he didn’t do me no good first time, did he?”

  “That’s your problem, son.”

  “This ain’t no damn death case,” Hannula muttered gruffly.

  “Ain’t nobody said it was, son. But fact is, you’re a convicted felon, Hannula, and knowing a little law is like knowing a little medicine—it just makes things worse, so you’d best be still. Sheriff, lock him up until we can perform the examination tomorrow at ten in the morning. Unless, of course, the prisoner waives examination and stipulates to charges.”

  “What’s that mean?” Hannula asked.

  “We review the warrant and the arrest and the two officers here tell me what happened and then you tell me your side.”

  “Will that get me bail?”

  “That’s not in the cards,” Plew said.

  “What’s the point then?”

  “We’re a country of laws, son, not a collection of howling damn heathens.”

  “But I’m going to jail either way?”

  “Until the circuit court can schedule a trial for you.”

  Hannula slumped his shoulders. “Then put me on in. I’m hungry; what’s for supper?”

  Hepting and Bapcat stifled smiles.

  Plew struck his table with a wooden gavel. “Give Mr. Hannula some supper.”

  The Eagle River jailer’s name was Taylor. “Jailer Taylor,” Hepting said, handing the prisoner to him, “Mr. Hannula’s hungry for his supper.”

  “We all got crosses to bear,” Taylor said.

  Bapcat waited until the prisoner was behind bars. “You’ve got bigger problems than deer,” he told the prisoner.

  “I got nothing to say to no damn game warden,” the Finn grumbled.

  Back at Bumbletown Hill Bapcat looked at the sheriff. “What was all that business about Widow Frei and a house of ill fame?”

  “You don’t know? You’re kidding me, right?”

  “It’s true?” Bapcat responded.

  Hepting stammered, “Well, yes and no. She isn’t a working girl herself, and she don’t directly run no string of whores or nothing like that, but she’s built a big business provisioning such places.”


  “Provisioning?”

  Hepting was smiling. “Say your establishment gets raided and the police confiscate all your stuff and close you down, arrest all your girls and such; well, you just get in touch with Jaquelle Frei and she’ll outfit your business with furniture, beds, paintings of cavorting naked angels—even arrange new girls if you need them. She’s sort of a wholesale outfitter.”

  “This was Herr Frei’s business?”

  “Certainly not. Hers alone.”

  “How’d she end up with Frei?”

  “Life’s full of imponderables, and the human heart’s worst of all. She ain’t a working girl, Lute. She’s a businesswoman, maybe the greatest in the history of the Copper Country. ’Course, there ain’t that many.”

  This was too much information to process. “Hannula’s wife told you about the deer?”

  “Claims it’s a business he runs.”

  “Details?”

  “You just heard everything I know.”

  “Be all right if I talk to the wife?”

  “Let me run it by her first. She come to me confidentially, and Hannula, Bible thumper or not, ain’t the real forgiving sort. His Good Book tells him women are the fountainhead of all earthly evil.”

  Bapcat got out of the vehicle, slung the Krag over his shoulder, took a deep breath, and went into the house.

  23

  Bumbletown Hill

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 1913

  “About time you decided to return to the hearth,” Zakov greeted him. “I’m famished.”

  “There’s plenty of food,” Bapcat said.

  “I am recuperating and in extreme pain.”

  “Your tongue seems to be in working order. Where’s George?”

  “Away, and he didn’t say where.” Zakov held up a large book bound in yellowish leather. “I find this tome both instructive and fascinating,” the Russian said. “Almost one thousand pages in all, yet the stipulations that apply to your responsibilities comprise but a meager four pages under the uninspiring title, ‘Game, Protection Of.’ ”

  The book in the Russian’s hands was Tiffany’s Criminal Law, which Harju had given Bapcat, tutoring him through the high spots concerning arrests and warrants. The book was a sort of Bible for justices of the peace, whose jobs required as much understanding of criminal law as circuit court judges. The book covered procedures and defined crimes, and provided reporting and processing forms to be used. Bapcat could read, but had never been overly fond of the practice. “Put it down,” he told Zakov.

  “In this book resides the greatness of this country,” Zakov said, brandishing Tiffany’s. “There’s no equivalent in Russia.”

  “No?”

  “The czar is God on Earth. His minions determine what is legal or not, who lives, who dies. What may be legal today may not be tomorrow. It is capricious at best.”

  Bapcat wasn’t sure what capricious meant. “I thought you were hungry?” He unloaded the Krag and set the carbine in a corner.

  “Da, but I try keeping my mind busy to divert attention from my stomach. This shack has a subterranean cellar.”

  Bapcat looked at the man. “Vairo said it don’t.”

  “Perhaps the Italian is unaware.”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “Nevertheless. I placed my hat on the floor. Tap near it.”

  Bapcat did as he was asked and heard the hollow ring. “Not large,” he told the Russian.

  “As long as the wood isn’t rotten, this should not concern us,” Zakov said.

  “Aren’t you curious about what’s below?”

  “A Russian is immersed from birth in the ambiguous, unexplained, and imponderable. I don’t care what is down there.”

  “I’m not Russian.” Bapcat made a mental note to ask Vairo about the anomaly, and if the former owner’s response was inadequate, he would pull up the floor to see for himself.

  “In my country, God anoints the czar and he controls everything, even if he is an utter fool, as our dear, dear Nicky surely is. The czar’s leadership was entirely absent in the war against the Japanese. I was at Mukden. Tens of thousands of my comrades died. I swear in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonder Worker, everything our dear pathetic Nicky touches becomes disaster. The day he was crowned, horses bolted, and more than a thousand citizens died for no other reason than he wanted a spectacle, a crowd of thousands to see him crowned. This is my Russia. And you, my friend, you have Tiffany’s. In this regard I think you Americans have the better of it.”

  “Would you rather eat or discuss the state of the world?”

  The Russian sulked.

  “Peel potatoes,” Bapcat ordered.

  “I am invalided.”

  “Peel or starve.”

  “You have the emotional insensitivity of a czar,” the Russian chirped, using a crutch to rise to his feet. “The boy should assist,” Zakov said with a nod toward Gipp, who walked in, grinning.

  “I don’t mind helping,” Gipp said.

  Bapcat held up a hand. “You’re our driver. Zakov can earn his own keep.”

  The Russian scowled. “At least fetch water to boil,” he told the boy, who looked to Bapcat for a nod, which he got.

  “Nicholas the First abolished serfdom in 1861, the year your own civil war commenced.”

  “You’re not a serf,” Bapcat said.

  “Worse,” the Russian keened. “I am a wife, the most powerless creature on God’s Earth.”

  “You believe in God?” Gipp asked the Russian as he brought water from the well.

  “Only if he believes in me, and so far there is no evidence to support such a conclusion,” Zakov said.

  24

  East of Bootjack

  FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 1913

  Late Friday morning, Gipp dropped Bapcat along the road that ran south from Lake Linden to White City, a new resort town. “You want, go on down to White City and look around,” Bapcat told the boy. “I’ll meet you here around dark tomorrow night.”

  “Yes, boss,” Gipp said, “but I’ve got a ball game in Red Jacket this afternoon.”

  “Take the truck and I’ll see you tomorrow night, George.”

  Yesterday Bapcat had returned to the Eagle River jail to talk to Enock Hannula, who continued to deny responsibility for any deer other than the one they had caught him carrying. Hepting promised Bapcat he would be in touch if the Finn changed his story, or when the circuit court scheduled the trial.

  No meandering this time. Bapcat made his way directly to the hill he’d found on his last visit, and situated himself so he could see the Indian fence below. There would be no fire tonight. He had cold potatoes and biscuits in his pack. He made a quick examination of the area and found no fresh sign other than what seemed to be abundant deer sign not in evidence last time. He made a place for himself at the edge of the woods and sat back.

  Two hours after dark-fall he heard what he took for activity in the field, just over a slight rise north of him. Wheels needing grease? No voices, no motor, just a low-grade squeal and rock crunching. He was tempted to drift into the field toward the sound, but held tight. Harju had emphasized this: “When you decide to sit on a situation, stay still, and use your eyes and ears, not your legs. You’re not going to make arrests until you have evidence. Patience, thought, and careful observation lead to evidence.”

  “Not even if I see a crime being committed?”

  “You have to ask yourself if the violation you see is as important as what led you to be there in the first place. It’s like that Jesus thing, you know: Feed yourself once, or set up something longer-range and farther-reaching, to feed multitudes.”

  The point had eluded him.

  That was training, and now he was on his own. Hearing the sounds, he was at a loss as to wh
at to do, and sighed. He’d been hunting almost all his life and he knew this: It was usually best to let the prey come to you.

  Several torches suddenly glowed just over the field crest, but he couldn’t make out any more than vague blobs of moving light. There were no shots, no sign of illegal activity, nothing to show for a night of sitting and waiting.

  Early Saturday morning he made his way to where he had heard sounds and seen light, and on the other side of the hill found cart prints and boot prints, nothing conclusive. The wheel tracks were indistinct. Had they been draped with cloth to make them quieter? Waste of damn time. He followed the cart track north until it joined a larger wagon trail which led north and westward toward Lake Linden, blended with other ruts and tracks, unfollowable.

  George Gipp was waiting for him as arranged that night.

  “You look hot,” Gipp said as Bapcat slung his gear in the truck.

  “Let’s stop in Red Jacket,” Bapcat said.

  “Kind of late.”

  “Still,” Bapcat said.

  “Okay, you’re the boss.”

  25

  Red Jacket

  SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1913

  Dominick Vairo was looking nervously at a corner table in the small tavern, which was half full, when Bapcat came in and stood at the bar and ordered a beer.

  “The cabin, Dominick—you said there’s no cellar.”

  “Si, got no basement,” Vairo said.

  “Which mine owned the place before you bought it?”

  “Hell’s Creek.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Never got past exploration, yes? They builda cabins, coupla buildings, but not mine, ’cause no good rock.”

  “Miners’ shacks?”

  “No, for their capitanos. The mines they plan make for short-time bunkinghouses.” Vairo glanced at Bapcat and averted his eyes.

  What the hell is he so jumpy about? Why does he keep glancing at the corner?

  Bapcat knew that captains ran operations for mine superintendents and rated far better houses than the miners they supervised. “So Hell’s Creek isn’t actually a mine?”

  “They dig some holes, but no good, bad assays, no good, shut down before lose too damn much money making dry holes.”