Chasing a Blond Moon(161)
His shoulder was burning, something not right. He went outside, breathed in the fresh air, saw the snow was still falling. Gutpile suddenly beside him, holding him up. “Steady, partner.”
“How many?” he yelled at McCants.
“Nine,” she said.
“There should be ten.”
He grabbed for his 800, but he had lost it somewhere, and yelled at McCants, “Call Jake, tell him we’re at least one short here!” Moody helped him sit, offered him water.
“The whole lot of these buggers are swacked on something,” Moody said. “Girl scouts coulda took the whole lot of ’em.”
Santinaw sat down beside Service, held his hand. “Mak-wa was frightened. His spirit decided to leave.”
Service looked back at the unmoving animal.
“It was a beautiful animal,” Santinaw said. “Someday I will have to leave, but not until I see the woman in Eben again. It’s hard to leave when you have a good woman.”
Service took another swig of water. “What’s Jake say?”
McCants said, “He’s on the way to the cabin.”
Santinaw patted Service’s hand. “It was brave what you did. I think this animal’s spirit will honor you.”
Service shook his head, offered the bottle of water to the old man.
“Mig-netch!” Santinaw said. “You’re a lot nicer man than your father was.”
They were standing in the cabin with Mecosta and the captain. Alger County deputies were moving prisoners to Munising. Someone had placed a call to the regional agent for U.S. Fish and Game. He lived in Grand Rapids and tried to cover the U.P. from there, which was a joke.
The body on the floor was face-down in a pool of blood. Service put on latex gloves, reached down. The head was blown off, leaving nothing.
“Shotgun,” Jake Mecosta said. “Close range.”
“Preserve the site,” the captain reminded him.
Fuck the site.
Jake said, “I found him this way.”
Service lit a cigarette and walked outside with Mecosta. “Jake, do you still have the anonymous voice mail message?”
“Sure.” Mecosta opened his phone, punched in the numbers for his mailbox, held it up for Service to listen.
“Familiar?” Jake asked.
It was, but not the voice he expected.
41
The apartment was a duplex in the student shopping district on Third Street. Next door was DuPendre’s Café. The sign on the glass had weathered, lost some letters, read, DUPE D CAFÉ. The irony wasn’t lost on him as he rapped on the door of the apartment.
“Daysi,” Service said when Aldo’s Ojibwa girlfriend opened the door. He had met the girl a year ago and she had been pretty, but plump.
Now she was thinner, older looking, with huge eyes, long black hair.
“You called Jake Mecosta,” he said.
“Who?”
“No bullshit, Daysi. I’m not in the mood.” His left shoulder ached from the fall. His right shoulder burned where it had been stitched. The bear had clawed him during his grab of the cage, a reminder of the un-Disney-like reality of nature.
She looked him in the eye, her shyness gone. “I made the call for Aldo. He just gave me words to say. I didn’t know what it meant.”
Service said, “Where is he?”
“At the hospital with his grandfather.”
She pointed toward College Street and Marquette General Hospital, the regional medical center.
42
Aldo was alone in the hall outside ICU. He looked at Service with red eyes and pointed to a door. “He’s dying.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. He was just getting sicker and sicker. I brought him in the night before last. The compound is gone. Burned.”
“Where’s the family?”
“Scattered.”
Service pushed open the door, saw Allerdyce in the bed. Monitors on the wall flashed vital signs. He had a clear plastic mask over his face, two I.V.s, one in each arm. He looked small in the bed, his skin yellow.
Service felt the old man’s eyes track him as he moved around the room.
He leaned over the bed. “When you went to prison, you left Honeypat in charge. When you came out, she wouldn’t give it up and the family wouldn’t back you. She let you play the role, but she ran the show.”
Allerdyce’s eyes hardened.
Les Reynolds had called last night. The preliminary read on Ollie Toogood’s autopsy showed that he had been starved and his heart had given out. Allerdyce looked the same as the photos of Toogood that Les had faxed to him.
“It was going along fine until you made the move on Daysi. People thought Honeypat left in a snit, but she never left, did she?”
Allerdyce blinked, said nothing. “She was trying to crush all the competition and she wouldn’t give you anything unless you went along with her. That day you came to see me I saw you squirrel away your food, barely eat, grope in the trash. You were hoarding, afraid you’d never eat again, fighting back the only way you could.”