Chasing a Blond Moon(3)

“The job sucked,” Pyykkonen said, “but I liked the kids. If you take the time to really listen to them, they have a lot to offer,” she added. “I was a patrol officer before the school job, but I kept dinging vehicles. The sheriff put me in the schools to keep me off the roads.”

“Why’d they send Homicide?”

“The department didn’t. The kids called me when they found the body. I knew them from my liaison work.”

“You trained for homicide?”

“Three years as a Lansing cop, and three years in homicide. I blew it in a case involving the daughter of a city councilman and got the gate.”

“And you came here?”

“Followed a boyfriend. He moved on. I stayed.”

“Must be the weather,” Service said.

“You bet,” she said, cracking a weak smile. “Especially the driving.”

“Anybody else around?” he asked, tired of small talk.

“What we see is what we get,” she said.

“You talk to the kids?”

“Yeah, they came down here for a little backseat aerobics. The stiff was already here. They waited for him to leave, but when they saw he wasn’t moving they figured he was a drunk sleeping it off and decided to wake him up. They knocked on the windows and when he didn’t respond, they called me. The boy is Jesse Renard. The girl is Jeannie Miltey.”

“As in Miltey Boat Company?” The company was located in Chassell, and when fishing was in its heyday, M.B.C. had built many of the tugs used by commercial fishermen. Now the company built a line of aluminum sportfishing boats and some custom wooden jobs. Joe Miltey, who ran the boat company, had been busted more than once for fish and game law violations and was a vocal critic of the DNR.

“That’s her father, but her parents are split and she lives with her mom. Mother and daughter are both pips, eh.”

“Pips?”

“They don’t walk on the wild side, they sprint it. Enthusiastic pole vaulters.”

Service looked around. There were no lights nearby. A few twinkled dimly on the Houghton side of the canal, two hundred to three hundred yards across from them. The fish house was isolated, yet no more than ten minutes from downtown Hancock or Houghton. Service walked to the brick building and used his light. The construction was shoddy and a not-so-professional light-colored facade had been affixed to the front of the building; in back and on the ends, the bricks were mottled black and white and falling apart. Brick shards littered the ground. He went to the old wharf and stared down at the pilings in black water. There was a stench of fish. He didn’t know the area and he wasn’t much interested in getting involved. He would do what he could, pass what he had on to Gus, and let him deal with it when he was back on duty. One thing seemed certain. If you wanted privacy, this place had it.

He wondered if Tech students knew about the place and decided that college kids always knew about such places. He was curious about Walter’s first day of orientation but had not had a chance to get any feedback. Their relationship was forming slowly, but was still difficult to describe. The boy didn’t seem to bear grudges and when Nantz needed something done, he couldn’t do it fast enough. When Service asked, there was always a negotiation. His own old man had issued orders and expected them to be obeyed, but his father had died just after his sixteenth birthday. If the old man had lived, maybe their relationship would have changed. The irony of the situation didn’t escape him: He had unexpectedly lost his father at sixteen, and now all these years later had gained a son who had just turned sixteen. Had he been philosophical or religious he might have tried to make something out of this, but he was neither; mostly, he was concerned about doing things right for the boy. His son. The thought still made him dizzy and the word stuck in his throat. Why the hell had Bathsheba not told him about Walter? There had been no angry outburst when she pulled out; she had seemed more disappointed and tired than pissed, another example of how badly he had misread her.

“Your name?” Service said. “Limey. That’s a new one.”

“Finn all the way, eh? I grew up near Jacobsville where the limestone was quarried. That’s where the Limey come from.”

“I thought they quarried red sandstone there.”

“The limestone operation wasn’t as well known.”

Service grunted acknowledgment. A local girl who had been a cop in Lansing, now back in the U.P. Service made the observation, didn’t pursue it.

The medical examiner arrived in a muddy black Suburban. He looked harried. A vehicle with three technicians followed close behind him.