Chasing a Blond Moon(43)

Service said, “Maybe GHB or whatever it’s called. I think our boy Pung is a wannabe chemist.”

“GHB or whatever,” Gus said. “Listen to us. We don’t know shit. Let’s give Pyykkonen a bump. She worked school liaison. She’ll know.”

Service didn’t argue.

Lac La Belle was way out on the Keeweenaw Peninsula in Keeweenaw County. On the way there, Gus hauled out his county plat books and found a property registered to a George Masonetsky. There were several cabins on the east side of Mount Bohemia. None of them were directly on the lake, but were high enough to have a spectacular view. The mountain was more than eight hundred feet tall, steep and pocked with boulders. Some of the local X-sports types tried to ski it from time to time—usually with disastrous results.

They waited on the county road for Pyykkonen.

“Hi, guys,” she said as she unfolded from her vehicle.

Gus told her about the girl and what they had heard, and she listened without interrupting. He ended by telling her that Service thought the girl might have been slipped GHB.

“Possibly,” she said, “but roofies would be better.”

“Roofies?” Gus asked.

“Rohypnol. It’s a sleeping pill. Take the stuff, crush it, put the powder in a liquid. You won’t smell it or taste it. It kicks in within a half hour, even faster if you’re drinking. It sticks in the blood for thirty-six hours if you’ve mixed it with booze.”

“Could you load it in figs?”

“Sure, like I said, dissolve it in water, inject the fig, and you’re on your way. Simple and effective.”

Service shook his head. Yesterday it had been a meth lab, now something called roofies. Things might take time to migrate to the U.P., but they always got there.

“The girl said Pung’s cabin was a couple of doors down,” Service said.

“We can’t go in without a warrant,” Pyykkonen said. “We’ll have to call in the K-County sheriff. This is outside my jurisdiction.”

“She’s right,” Gus said, glancing at Service.

“But it’s not outside ours,” Service said. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep everything nice and clean,” he added, knowing you could always enter a private dwelling if you thought there was a problem or an emergency. You couldn’t search around and root through things that weren’t visible, but if you saw something in plain sight suggesting a crime, you could get a warrant on that. Up here it was easier to get warrants than in some downstate jurisdictions, where judges stuck to process to avoid the ever-present eyes of the ACLU and other watchdog groups.

They split up, Gus volunteering to go with the Houghton detective, leaving Service to do what he needed to do.

The house they were looking for was not a couple of doors away, but four cabins down. Using his flashlight Service could see all weapons safes inside. An arrow was in a vise on a table by the window and for a moment it looked like someone might be there working, but his probing light got no response and he went to fetch the others.

Back at the cabin he showed them a broken window. “Looks like somebody tried to break in,” he said.

“I wonder who,” Pyykkonen said, her voice thick with skepticism.

“You two can cut the bullshit tag team act. I’m a big girl.”

“Door’s locked,” Gus said. “But maybe somebody banged against it and weakened the lock.”

“No goddamned way,” Limey Pyykkonen said. “This is as far as it goes. Let’s get the County out here.”

The two conservation officers did not protest. Service wondered if her insistence on adhering to protocol got her tossed in Lansing.

Gus whispered, “Did you have to bust the window?”

“Hey, I found it that way,” Service said. He didn’t add that it had been cracked and only partially broken and that it had collapsed when he tested it. It had been an accident, but he could have been gentler.

It took thirty minutes for Keeweenaw County to send a deputy. His name was Dupuis, a weary man who looked to be in his sixties.

The deputy looked at the broken window and cursed. “Bloody kids are always breakin’ into cabins out this way.”

“We ought to look inside,” Pyykkonen said.

“Wait,” Service said, feeling an unexpected surge of caution. “Let’s see if we can get the owner out here.” If they were into an evidence stream he didn’t want to lose the case on a procedural technicality. Now he was being cautious and the realization made him smile.

Dupuis gave him a look that said he wanted to get back to what he had been doing and that this was an unneeded distraction, but he agreed after some initial stalling.