Sincerely, T. Ferma, Ph.D.
He checked the top of the note. No copies. The professor apparently didn’t wish to share her speculations with others—or share credit if her hunch was right. Goddamned metrics. He got out his dictionary, looked under the listing for measures, converted kilograms to pounds, which worked out to ninety to one hundred forty.
He looked at the sepia print for a long time. A light-colored bear (nearly white against the brown background) was locked in what looked like a huge birdcage, suspended in the air. Despite the print’s poor quality, the animal’s terror seemed palpable.
The captain came over after Service called him, read the note without comment, and studied the photo on the computer. When he was finished, he looked up at his detective and said, “Siquin Soong?”
Service forwarded the e-mail to his home computer before leaving the office, and called Les Reynolds, who was just leaving his house for night patrol. “Can you talk to Colliver? We need to know if he ever called Kelo, and if so, the number. Otherwise, how did they communicate?”
“Consider it done,” Reynolds said.
Les Reynolds was a pro, unflappable, thorough—very unlike Wayno Ficorelli.
36
Nantz called at 5 p.m. “Did I catch you eating?”
“Thinking about thinking about it,” he said. His mind was too occupied to be hungry.
She laughed. “You’re not thinking about food. I’m hungry for you, Service, what about that?”
“That’s different,” he said.
“Jackson on Friday, right?”
“We’re all set. I talked to Tree. He and Kalina have a plan for us. Fourteen hundred hours at the airport, right?”
“I’ll have to be handcuffed to not attack you on the tarmac.”
“I’m ready,” he said.
“I talked to the people at the Lansing Board of Education and they did some poking around. It turns out that the yearbook photographs of Toogood and another kid got flipflopped by mistake that year.”
Service sat back and put his hand on his forehead. A mistake?
“You’re not talking. Do you want the right photo faxed up to the office?”
“Yes, to tie off the loose end. Thanks.”
“You’re still not talking.”
“Stuff on my mind.”
“Hope it’s the same stuff I have on mine,” she said. “How’s our kid?”
“Good. I stopped to see him the other night.”
“I know, he called me. He was really pleased, Grady.”
“Is this a conspiracy?”
“Of the best kind, honey. Nothing but the best.”
Her voice made him smile, did something to his chemistry. “I love you, Mar,” he said.
“Friday, babe,” she said. “Gotta scoot.”
Service greeted the sun, sitting on the back steps with Newf and Cat, who had decided to grace them with her presence. They shared a raspberry Pop-Tart.
Les Reynolds called later that morning as Service sat in his office, staring at the photograph of the blond moon bear on his computer screen.
“We got a number from Colliver. It’s a cell phone.”
“Prepaid?”
Reynolds paused. “Just a cell phone. We called the number, but no answer. The vendor gave us an address in Nelma, Wisconsin, that’s Forest County. I’m there now with the county people and the Wispies. There’s a body.”
Wispies were members of the Wisconsin State Patrol, the state’s equivalent of the MSP.
“Who does the phone belong to?”
“It’s registered to an Oliver Toogood of Iron County.”
Service sat back and blinked. Trapper Jet? “Did you find Kelo?”
“The deceased is an elderly male with one leg. There’s gonna be an autopsy.”
“That’s Toogood,” Service said. “He claimed that Kitella burned his cabin.”
“You don’t say.”
“Get the autopsy results to me soon as you can, okay?”
“One of the Wispies used to be a registered nurse. He says the old man looks like he starved to death.”
Service went outside to walk around and clear his head and the captain followed him.
“Are you all right, Detective?”
Ollie Toogood had not been the only nearly blind man.
Trapper Jet and Honeypat had teamed up against Kitella. Skunk had helped. This made sense, he tried to tell himself, but there was something still gnawing at him. The cell phone in Nelma had not been disconnected. Somebody wanted them to find Ollie. They would not find Kelo, Service expected, dead or alive.
The fax from Lansing came in just before noon. The student photo was definitely Ollie Toogood.
Service wished Eugenie Cukanaw would call back with information on Magic Wan, but after their one brief conversation with the investigator, she had not returned his call. He pulled up the picture of the bear again. The blue boat had been scuttled off Laughing Fish Point for a reason. The bear could have been moved with a lot less trouble, but Terry Pung had taken the boat there, and sunk it. Why?