“People think cities got all the savages,” Treebone said. “The bodies still in a cooler up there?”
“Pending release by the prosecutor.”
“Don’t sound like nobody wants those folks.”
Tree’s statement struck a chord. A respected professor had been murdered and who had come forward to speak for him? “Can you get me some details on Soong, her business, all the stuff the feds think?”
“Can try, but Snoop-Doggin’ a big-time Democrat could raise a few hackles and get my very black ass kicked, sayin’?”
“Whatever you can do.”
“Nothing in writing, okay? I don’t want no paper trail.”
“I’ll come to you.”
“Good, and bring Nantz. We’ll have dinner with Kalina.”
“Your wife is culinarily deprived.”
“Man, I wouldn’t subject nobody to Kalina’s cooking. We step out. How’s that boy of yours?”
“Settled into school, I think.”
“You see much of him?” his friend asked.
“Stayed with him last night.” He didn’t amplify with details.
“I knew you had that father shit in you. You hear anything from Eugenie in Grand Rapids?”
“She the P.I.? Not yet. Yell when you have something on Soong,” Service said.
“Semper Fi,” Tree said.
Service got a cup of coffee and stepped outside to light a cigarette. Fern LeBlanc saw him and flashed a look of scorn. She neither smoked nor drank and saw both habits as signs of moral weakness.
How could he dig up information on Harry Pung?
Lieutenant Lisette McKower pulled up in her truck, hopped down and stretched.
“Bumpy roads,” she said, twisting her head to stretch her neck. She looked at his bandages. “If that’s cosmetic surgery, you need to find another surgeon.”
“If that’s a joke, you need to find another writer.”
“How’s the arm?”
He lifted it. “Sore.”
“How’s the captain?”
“Fine,” he said.
She hesitated. “He seems tired to me, Grady. Distracted.”
“We all get tired.”
“Not you and the captain.”
Service felt tired, his arm was sore, and his face stung. Ten years ago he didn’t need sleep or much time to recover, but this had changed. McKower was five-five, one hundred and twenty pounds, but it looked to him like she had added a few pounds and her dark hair was showing a few strands of gray. When he had been her training officer he thought they had sent him a cheerleader. She was twenty-four then, had spent three years as a USFS smokejumper, and was as tough as they came, mentally and physically. Later she had been promoted to sergeant, and last year to lieutenant. For one month, long ago, they had been intimate; when they realized their mistake, there had been some anger and a lot of embarrassment, but they had gotten past their indiscretion and had remained close as colleagues and friends. She was married now and had two daughters.
“How goes the el-tee life?” he asked.
She curled some of her hair in her fingers. “See the gray?”
“What gray?”
She smiled. “Seriously, I’m worried about the captain and you look like shit.”
“Leave it alone, Lis.”
She cocked an eye. “Whatever you say.” She reached over and squeezed his wrist. “Be careful, okay?”
“Is that like safe sex?”
She walked through the door and Service turned his mind back to Harry Pung, but found no quick answers. He went back to his cubicle and started looking at the callback slips.
Detective Jimmy Villereal in Benton Harbor had busted some people illegally harvesting ginseng near Van Buren State Park and wanted to know if he had similar cases in the Schoolcraft County coastal zone along the northern Lake Michigan barrier dunes. Ginseng? How the hell was he supposed to know?
North Trails Riders wanted an instructor for a snowmobile program. Somebody else could have that.
A female reporter from St. Ignace wanted a technical definition of hunter orange. Let her look it up for herself.
A man with a cabin on the Ford River wanted to lodge a complaint about a man in an ultralight aircraft, shooting airborne ducks and geese. Which county, Marquette, Delta, or Dickinson? He hated callbacks, wished Fern would take more information.
A magistrate in Marquette wanted to clarify some information on a ticket Service had written.
He threw the callbacks on the desk. All of it could wait.
McKower came into his cubicle and sat down in the chair next to his messy desk.
He talked her through the Pung case, including his need to ferret out more about the dead professor. She thought for a second, said, “Stretch Boyd.”