“No case,” Service said. Yet, he thought.
“Anything I can do, you only have to ask.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Okay, let’s see if you can get a bigger trout out of that herd.”
“I have to get on, but thanks for everything.”
The old man walked him back to the truck. “Word is that congratulations are in order.”
Service didn’t ask Scaffidi where he got his information. He was better connected than anybody he knew.
“A son,” Scaffidi said. “That’s a blessing for a man. Nothing against girls, but a son . . . ” His voice trailed off. “You bring him over, let him have a go at the brookies.”
“He’s enrolled at Tech. Maybe we can come by in the spring.”
“It’s an open-ended invitation.” Scaffidi leaned against the truck with a furrowed brow. “These bear guys, they’re elusive as hell. They hit a place and move on. They don’t homestead. If you think there’s a crew working here, take my advice and get expert help.”
“You have someone in mind?”
The old man pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I thought you said you don’t have a case?”
Service weighed his answer. Scaffidi was officially clean and a self-proclaimed conservationist who gave generously to various causes and programs, but there was always an air around him that made Service want to be cautious. “Maybe the start of something.”
“Such as the figs in the Houghton homicide?” Scaffidi said.
“That’s not public knowledge,” Service said, recoiling.
“Things don’t have to be in the public domain to be known, Detective. Word travels through a lot of circles and some of them overlap. I’m hearing cyanide.”
“No comment,” Grady Service said.
Scaffidi smiled and squeezed Service’s elbow. “A no comment is a comment, my friend. We are in the days of spin, which means you want to cover your tracks, you gotta use words, not silence. Plead the Fifth, you’re guilty by inference. I might have somebody knows something about this business we’ve been discussing. Maybe he’ll talk to you, maybe not. Worst he can say is no. You want me to make the call?”
“Thanks,” Service said. As usual Scaffidi suddenly looked and talked like something more than his official record suggested, and Service did not feel comfortable about it. Frontier Alaska had once attracted society’s extremes; he wondered if this applied to the Upper Peninsula as well.
“Probably take a little time to make the arrangements,” Scaffidi said. “You’ll probably have to go to him—this okay by you?”
Service nodded. “Thanks again.”
Scaffidi smiled. “My pleasure to do my duty as a law-abiding citizen.”
4
It was mid-afternoon and Service and Gus Turnage were in the late professor’s office at Michigan Tech. Steve Adams sat with them at a small table, looking glum. Homicide detective Limey Pyykkonen stood in the doorway. Service was impatient, wanted to get the interview going. He had driven almost two hundred and fifty miles today and would log more than a hundred more on the way home.
Service found it interesting that Pyykkonen chose to stand at the door. This was definitely an interview set up to put some pressure on Adams, but he wasn’t sure why. With her in the door, almost at the man’s back, he would be forced to keep looking back and forth from the homicide detective to the conservation officers who were seated with him. It was not an arrangement designed to make an interviewee comfortable, and as far as Service knew there was no reason to suspect Adams of anything. Is this what Lansing homicide cops were taught?
“Dean Adams,” Service said.
“Acting department head,” Adams said, correcting him. “Leave it at Steve.”
“Okay, Steve,” Pyykkonen said from behind the man, forcing him to turn to see her.
“I can’t believe someone murdered Harry Pung,” Adams declared.
“Are you aware of anyone who might have had bad feelings for Pung?” she asked.
“No.”
Pyykkonen smiled benignly.
“When we met you at Professor Pung’s house, you told us he was a hunter and fisherman,” Service said. “But there are no guns, no rods, no gear of any kind at his place.”
“So he must’ve kept the stuff elsewhere.”
“Are you aware of another place he might have kept his equipment?”
“Like I told you before, he was a loner. Maybe he had a camp. Everybody up here seems to have one out in the bush. If there’s other property, I assume it would be in his will, or with his attorney.”
“We will be talking to his attorney,” Pyykkonen said, “but he lives downstate in Ann Arbor and we thought Professor Pung’s associates might help us get some answers quicker.”