Irvin Wan allegedly had a camp in the U.P. His connection to Pung, if any, was not apparent. He couldn’t just sit around. He needed to start preparing to look, and western Alger County looked like the only logical starting place.
He hoped.
37
Six-foot-six Jake Mecosta pulled on his rain slicker, uncapped a tin of Marvil Hot, and tucked a pinch between his cheek and gums. Mecosta was one of a few Native American officers in the DNR, a Baraga-L’Anse Chippewa. Mecosta and Service were the same age, longtime friends who shared a love for wild brook trout.
“Hope I can find the way,” Jake said, eyeing the angle of a steep ridge overgrown with beech and maple.
Service grunted. “We’ll just have to walk a little more. You take care of your feet and I’ll take care of navigation.”
Jake Mecosta grinned and nodded. He had long been an effective officer, but he had a couple of weaknesses—he was both clumsy and had an amazingly poor sense of direction. Fellow officers teased him about it; he had laughed at himself, and said it just caused him to walk a little more than his colleagues, so he kept himself in better shape. Neither man was perfect: For Service it was dogs, for Jake, direction.
Service did not know western Alger County well enough to make a one-man search. The boat had to have been dumped in this area for a reason. Last night he had studied maps and plat books and given up. Nothing fit, and his time was limited. He had called Jake Mecosta, who covered western Alger.
“Let’s talk to Santinaw,” Jake had said after hearing the problem.
“He’s still around?”
“Eighty-five and still going. Walks down to Eben and back once a month, eight-mile round trip.”
Santinaw was Huronicus St. Andrew, a Munising Ojibwa who had served in the Pacific in World War II, and come home in 1946 after some time in Japan. As a boy, Huronicus pronounced St. Andrew as Santinaw, and that had been his name ever since. He lived alone, never married, and occasionally worked as a hunting or fishing guide. Service’s old man had known him well, but Service hadn’t thought about Santinaw for at least fifteen years.
His cabin was in the deep ridge area of the headwaters of the Rock River, east of the Laughing Whitefish, and they were getting ready to hike in to find him.
“Santinaw’s been living here since he come back from the war,” Mecosta said. “If anybody knows the area, he’ll be the man.” But you did not call St. Andrew on a telephone. You had to go to him, and before you got to him, you had to know where he lived.
Service studied the ridge. “This doesn’t look too bad.”
Jake Mecosta grinned. “Isn’t too bad—for a bit—then she turns nasty. This rain and all that slate, we’ll be lucky not to break a leg.”
“How far?” Service asked.
“Mile, maybe two,” Jake said. “It twists around a lot.”
“Your route, or Santinaw’s?”
“Santinaw never walks the same way twice; claims it keeps his footprints out of the forest.”
The rain was falling steadily and it was cool.
“Let’s do this,” Grady Service said.
If Santinaw would allow it, Jake would remain with him in order to use the 800 MHz radio to maintain contact with Service, who would hike out and head for Jackson for the meeting with Siquin Soong.
The first quarter-mile was uphill, through a relatively clear maple and scrub oak forest, until they came to the lip of a ridge, where the terrain dropped straight down into an alder and cedar swamp bottom with braids of a small stream wandering through.
“We can climb down here,” Mecosta said, moving to Service’s right. “Further along, we might need our ropes.” They both had harnesses and safety lines in their packs.
A man in his eighties walked around here year-round, Service reminded himself.
After an hour’s walk along the cluttered streambed, Mecosta stopped. “I think we gotta climb back out somewhere around here.”
Service looked up at the rock ledges that seemed to stick to the cliff wall like a five-year-old’s Legos.
“You got a favorite route?” Service asked, looking up into the rain.
Jake sighed. “Seems like I always take a different one.”
They used their green lights to climb, so they wouldn’t be throwing wide, bright beams all over the woods. It was dark.
Sweat was pounding out of Service when they got to the top. “Now where?”
“East, down a bit, south over a ridge, and there we are.”
Which translated into two sweaty, tricky hours, and a small cabin built near a rock shelf looking down on what was the beginning of the Rock River.
They smelled smoke before they got to the cabin, and as they approached, a small bear came hurtling past them. Even in the green beam its fur was deep black and shiny. Both men laughed.