He watched Grinda drive away after a quick coffee and went into Watersmeet’s nondescript post office. The postmistress was a tall, gaunt woman. She looked to be around his age, had long straight hair and freckles. He explained who he was and what he was doing.
“I’m not out to violate federal law,” he said, “but I need to know if Oliver Toogood has a mailbox here, and if so, does he get any mail?” He knew that Trapper Jet didn’t have a mailbox at his camp. He had looked and never seen one.
“He doesn’t have a mailbox here.”
“I guess the other question is moot,” he said. He’d try Iron River next. It was on his way to Crystal Falls.
“He had one here,” the woman added, “but I insisted he give it up so I could assign it to somebody else. We only have so many and there’s a lot of demand.”
“Reassign it? Because it didn’t get used?”
“I think I’ve said all I can say.”
“Thanks,” he said. If Trapper Jet never got any mail, how was he getting a disability check from the government? Maybe he wasn’t? If not, why? His mind began to flood with questions all leading off in uncontrolled and unproductive directions.
“You might check Mailboxes Forever. It’s a private business. They opened in June. They’ve got some boxes, but mostly they mail packages and do packing.”
“Great,” Service said. Mailboxes Forever was in a small gray polebarn near the intersection of US 2 and M-47. Service walked inside and found a man at the counter. He had a dozen yellow perch on a sheet of newspaper comics and was cleaning them. The man didn’t look up.
“They biting?” Service asked. There was no size limit on yellow perch, but most people who chased them preferred the fat jumbos, ten inches and longer.
“Were this morning,” the man said. “Hope they will be again tonight.”
Service took out his badge and waved it under the man’s nose to get his attention. “You got a customer named Oliver Toogood with a box?”
The man looked up. “Ought to arrest that sonuvabitch,” he said, with a hard voice. “Came in here last year stinking to high heaven, demanded I give him a mailbox. Can you imagine that shit? Give him one! Said the feds didn’t have room for him no more.”
“Did you rent him one?”
The man’s lips curled up in anger. “I told him to get da hell out. I’m in business here and I don’t need some stinking cripple in here ranking out my customers.”
The man’s hands were covered with blood and the smell of fish was wafting through the place. “Yeah, it pays to keep a clean business.”
“Right,” the man said, returning his attention to his fish.
A quick stop at the main post office in downtown Iron River got him the same answer. Ollie Toogood did not have a mailbox. If not Watersmeet or Iron River, where? He was forced to conclude there was neither box nor checks, which raised the question of what the man lived on. Was the rumor true, that he was baiting bears for hunters willing to pay big fees? Or was he truly self-sufficient?
Just outside Crystal Falls he pulled into the District 4 office in time to see a small black bear lope through the parking lot, headed north toward the cover of a cedar swamp. It looked over its shoulder at him and accelerated as he pulled into a parking slot.
Margie, the district’s dispatcher, waved as he passed by. He stopped into the office to see the district’s lieutenant, but he was out. Service asked Margie if he could use a phone and she told him that since Yogi “Wolf Daddy” Zambonet had retired in the spring, his office was temporarily open. Zambonet was the state’s wolf expert and had been involved in a case with Service the previous fall. Wolf Daddy opted for the early retirement engineered by Governor Sam Bozian to reduce the state’s work force. As with other Bozian initiatives, he had gone for sheer numbers with no thought about institutional memory or expertise needed to provide continuity to state programs. His plan called for the replacement of only one in four who took the early out, but the legislature, led by Lorelei Timms, had risen up and vetoed this. All the early-outers would be replaced, but it would take eighteen months to get the force back up to some semblance of strength. It was one of the few wins against Bozian in his long tenure.
“He come around much?”
“No, he’s been fishing and getting ready for bird season.”
Yogi’s office was empty, devoid of all the wolf posters, equipment, and gizmos he used in managing the U.P’s wolf packs. The place looked sad to Service.
He called the captain again and told him he was going to Wisconsin with Pyykkonen.