Chasing a Blond Moon(143)

A good lawyer would have Kelo on the streets in a blink. All they had were claims, and those only from Colliver. Fahrenheit thought Colliver was working with an older man and would not be able to corroborate. “Whatever floats your boat, Les. I doubt you’ll find him.” There was no point in telling the warden about the Allerdyce clan and all that entailed, including their ability to disappear when they needed to.

Fern LeBlanc called right after he finished talking to Reynolds. “You had a call yesterday from a doctor named Ferma and she sounded rather unhappy you weren’t available. She said she’s in Cambodia and would e-mail you some information.”

Tara Ferma. Service smiled. “I’m heading back to the office now.”

He found the captain in his office staring at a computer screen.

“Cap’n?”

Grant swung his chair around. “You found your way back.”

“I’m here, somebody wants me there. I’m there, somebody wants me here. I feel like a dog always on the wrong side of the door. I can’t be everywhere.”

The captain smiled. “You seem to manage: McCants and the meth lab, coming to the assistance of a Troop when shots were fired, swan killers, a junkie, Indians trying to scalp each other, and McCants and bear hunters.”

“Those things aren’t getting my case solved.”

“I agree. Everything you’ve done is commendable, but how many of these diversions required your participation? McCants is a good officer with a fine mind. The county and state were coming to the trooper’s aid. There are times when the bad guys are going to get away with things. If they repeat, as many are wont to do, the odds swing to us. You have to husband your time, Detective. And your energy. A detective’s beat is his mind, not geography.”

“I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”

“What you’re doing is trying to recalibrate your expectations. You used to work the Mosquito. Even when you had a quiet day, you were physically there, acting as a deterrent. Detectives don’t deter. They can only react to what is passed to them and go from there, to dig out the facts, find and assemble evidence.”

It was not a satisfying conversation, despite what seemed like sympathetic words.

Service returned to his cubicle and called up his e-mail. The blinking mail icon indicated a lengthy message coming through and after five minutes, he left the machine to download on its own, got coffee in a paper cup, and went outside for a smoke. It was sunny and cool, Lake Superior a dark green and fading to its winter color. By November it would be the hue of spent charcoal and treacherous, the most dangerous time to be on the water. Traffic raced by on US 41, mostly trucks bristling with antennae. Without trucks life in the U.P. would be even more hardpressed than it was. The U.P. tended to lag behind most states in choices for people, but they always got here sooner or later, both the good and the bad, and most of it by truck.

Four consecutive automobiles went by with women talking on cell phones. Nantz was always on the cell phone, and while initially he had not been receptive to having one, it had proven its value. He mashed his cigarette in a red bucket filled with sand and went back to his office. The e-mail was still downloading and he hoped a power interruption wouldn’t knock it off-line. He picked up Outi Ranta’s telephone record and studied it. She averaged six or seven incoming calls a day: the bank, power company, standard fare. Three or four calls went out, the two main recipients S. Imperato and L. Ranta, her sister-in-law. Lenore Ranta had worked for years at Marble Arms in Gladstone, selling knives, and was married to a knife-maker at the factory. Not many calls between sisters-in-law, but some. Service looked back to the spring. More then than now, few since Onte’s death. Significance of the reduced frequency? The Ranta brothers had been partners in the business at one time, but Onte had ended up with the whole shebang at some point. Hard to say what any of this meant, just numbers to look at. Still. . . .

Cambridge needed to get hold of her business records. If there was nothing more to this case, they all needed to know. It was tangential to his interests, but a tangent was like a small hole in a tooth: It felt larger than it was. Why weren’t there calls from Ranta to her own business? There were until June, but after her husband’s death, none, which was when she took over the running of the business. Most small businesspeople lived their work. Odd. He looked through the records. No calls to the store, absolutely none. That seemed unusual at best.

Ranta’s work reminded him that Honeypat told him she was working at HPC as a bookkeeper on the night shift. He had somehow ignored this, maybe thought it was bull, but it was a detail and he had time.