Beyond the structure, Gus had briefed him, there was an old stone wharf and a series of decaying hundred-year-old pilings that the tribal tugboat tied up to in order to offload catches. It was not clear anymore, Gus said, who actually owned the building—perhaps the tribals, perhaps the state—but the business was called Lake Superior Fisheries, and despite operating from such a pathetic site, seemed to be making it. It periodically fell to Gus to work with a tribal commercial fisheries officer to perform various inspections on the fishing tug and facilities. There had once been fifty commercial fishermen spread from Baraga to the tip of the Keeweenaw. Now there was one Native American commercial fisherman operating out of Hancock, and the waters in the area had been so severely depleted by overfishing and lampreys that tribal netters from Baraga didn’t waste their time or fuel coming up this way anymore.
Away from the building he saw the flickering gumball of a police vehicle. Beyond the squad car there was another vehicle. Off to the other side there was the silhouette of a pickup truck.
Service waited until he was less than fifty yards from the police car to announce himself by toggling his blue lights. He was met by an officer wearing a drenched dark slicker, with HOUGHTON COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT airbrushed in yellow block letters.
“You guys always seem to pop up outta nowhere,” the officer said as he got out of his Yukon. “There’s a better road down from the hospital,” she added.
“We prefer the scenic routes,” Service said. It always pleased him to take people by surprise, especially other cops.
“Limey Pyykkonen,” the officer said, extending her hand.
“Grady Service.”
“How’s Gus?”
“Recovering.”
“You one of the replacements?” she asked. The state legislature had put the kibosh on the governor’s plan to not authorize replacements for officers who took an early retirement package designed to reduce the state government payroll. As a result, a small number of replacements were in the pipeline, but it would be a year to eighteen months before some areas had coverage again, and even then the force would not be at full strength.
“I’m out of Marquette. I was visiting Gus.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“What do we have?”
“Stiff,” Pyykkonen answered, turning on her flashlight, lifting the yellow tape she had strung around the area, and leading him to the vehicle.
Grady Service stared at the bloated corpse in the blue Saturn. It had been raining off and on for days and the car was mud-spattered. Under the red beam of his MAG-LITE , the corpse looked larger through the windows. The dead man’s arms were raised in front of him, like he had died reaching for something. “Why the DNR?” Service asked. “We don’t investigate dead bodies.”
“The body’s mine, but it looks to me like an animal took a dump in the backseat,” Detective Limey Pyykkonen said, adjusting the hood of her rain jacket. “The shit’s yours,” she said with a smile.
Service shone his light and saw the dark pile. “Got an ID on the vick?”
“Not yet,” she said. “They found him,” she added, nodding at a couple in rain gear standing in front of a Ford pickup away from the Saturn. “The M.E.’s on the way. I got the door open, checked for a pulse, took one sniff, and called for help. I don’t want to soil the scene.”
Service grunted. She had already cordoned off the dead man’s vehicle and immediate area.
“No signs of violence,” Pyykkonen said. “Natural causes maybe. Or a suicide. The doors were locked.”
“Arms in the air,” Service said. “That mean anything?”
“Possibly,” she said. “He could have died somewhere else and been placed in the vehicle, but let’s not let our imaginations fly until we see what we have.”
Service stared at the stiff’s distorted features. Native American or Asian—it was hard to tell with the body so swollen. “I guess we wait. You new?” Pyykkonen was a strapping, angular woman with a small round face, close-cropped hair, and worm-thin lips.
“Larry DeNover retired and I got his job. I was doing school liaison before this.”
Service knew DeNover. He was Houghton County’s longtime homicide detective, a slow-thinking, deliberate man whose workload fit his style. The county had few homicides. “School liaison?”
“D.A.R.E., listening to kids caught in hormone hurricanes, that sort of thing. The kids refer to me as Saint Narc.”
“Good job?” he said, passing time and trying to decide if Saint Narc was positive or negative. He also considered asking her for insight into the mind of a sixteen-year-old, but said nothing. Walter and he were still trying to work things out, which meant they were polite and answered when spoken to. It was uncomfortable for him, but Nantz seemed to have fared better and Walter yacked away with her. The first night the boy was in Gladstone, Nantz had given Service signals that she wanted to fool around, and he had told her they couldn’t with Walter in the next room. She had only laughed and pressed the issue, whispering, “He’d better get used to it.”