Authors: Joseph Heywood
“Nope, hers. I don’t have a scale.”
“I’m headed your way—I think.”
Moments later Bryan was back on the radio. “We just saw a bear carrying a little white foo-foo dog.”
Service got back into his truck. T-Bone, he guessed, was about to become a snack.
What the hell is Delongshamp doing here?
He tried the 800 again for Sedge and she answered. “Uh-huh,” she said. “How bad’s the fire?”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Just coming off CR 500. Toliver’s team went ballistic over the fire. There was a small rebellion this morning. They heard about it on a cell phone, or iPod or some damn thing, and wanted out. I sent them east to Vermilion with Katsu and Limpy. The professor’s with me.”
“Good call. I’m at Chesbrough Lake, evacuating residents.”
“You want me down there with you?”
“That would be good.”
“Rolling,” she said.
Radio discipline is going straight to hell
, he thought.
Bryan came bumping along from the north and Sedge from the south, the two filthy black patrol trucks converging on Service’s Tahoe.
The lanky sergeant got out of his truck, leaving his door standing open, and walked over. “Your lady friend is in a red cabin a quarter-mile back,” he reported.
“You saw her in the area, or going into a place?”
“I saw her in all her glory going into the red cabin. Totally starkers.”
Sedge wandered over. Professor Ozzien Shotwiff remained in the passenger seat of her truck, but waved a puny salute at Service.
“What happened to Toliver and his diggers?” Bryan asked Sedge.
“Like I said on the radio—revolution. They bugged out and wanted to go back to their pre-dig quarters in Paradise. It was like yelling
Fire!
in a crowded room. The word spread like wildfire, and they were like … outta there, most quick.”
“Katsu and Allerdyce?” Service asked.
“I asked Katsu to keep an eye on the dig team. He can get in touch with me on the cell phone. Allerdyce? No idea. He was behind me and the convoy, and when I pulled onto pavement and looked back, he was gone. But he was a big help Grady,” she said. “He really was.”
Will I ever figure out that old sonuvabitch?
“How’s the prof?”
“Disappointed, I think. He likes being in the woods, and I think he’s lonely.”
“Katsu or Toliver get wind of the other site?”
“Not that I could tell. Did I hear the word
naked
on the radio?”
Service told her what had happened.
“What got into her?”
“Devil rum and analogs, I’m guessing.”
“How close is the fire?” she asked.
“Less than a mile out in the peat and fens.” Service felt the wind shifting toward the south. “If the wind holds it will push it away from here, but the damn wind is swapping around like crazy and without warning. We need to get people out of this area while we can.”
“He saw Kermit,” Bryan told Sedge.
“No way!
Today?
” She looked at Service with unmasked astonishment.
“Thirty minutes ago, maybe, about a third of a mile west of us. He looked back at me and rabbited into the smoke. I started to follow, but figured we have higher priorities.”
“Let’s go fetch Lady Godiva,” Sedge said. “This I have to see.”
“She’ll want a drinkie-winkie,” Service said.
“I bet she will.”
“Don’t mention that a bear was seen carrying her little dog away.”
“Any idea why Kermit is here?” she wanted to know.
“None.”
To Bryan: “Again, Jeffey, you saw Ms. Nudist go
into
the red cabin?”
The sergeant nodded and smiled. “Most people should never sashay around in public in the buff. But this lady is in that small minority who can pull it off, so to speak.”
Service told the sergeant to continue his patrol.
The red cabin was old and made of logs with yellowing broken chinking forming crooked mosaics between the logs. There was a porch on all sides, a couple of small outbuildings, and a large garage-pole building made of aluminum and set on a large cement slab. There were two old buck poles near the large building.
“Want help?” Professor Shotwiff asked as Service walked over to Sedge’s truck.
“Thanks, we’re good,” Sedge told him. “Keep an eye on the fire for us and your ear on the radio. If something happens, honk the horn. We have to gather up an unwilling evacuee. She might be a bit on the drunk side.”
Shotwiff smiled.
Sedge went to the south door and Service went to the north side and stayed back so he could see both the east and west porticos. If she came out he could easily run her down here.
There was gray-white ash curling in the air again, beginning to put a light dusting on the landscape.
Keep your goggles around your neck
, he reminded himself.
“Got her,” Sedge said over her 800. “She’s out, cold as a cod. I’ll firemancarry her out to your vehicle. Can you jump in the cabin and find some clothes for her?”
The cabin was cluttered in a loving, ancient way, the walls covered by photographs of hunters with dead deer and bears and birds and strings of trout. Forty or more small deer antlers mounted on plywood shields had been nailed along the ceiling line throughout the cabin. It was an old place with a lot of history and memories for someone. It would be a damn shame if the fire ate it.
He found a bedroom with an open suitcase on a twin bed. Woman’s clothes. He grabbed a pillowcase and threw stuff into it, including ankle-high hiking boots. He started out of the room and noticed a framed glass case on the wall filled with arrowheads, shaped like a giant fan. Was this proof of what Limpy had claimed—that this stuff was all over the place up here? He paused to look. Some of the points were copper, turned green shades.
The woman had vomited on herself and his dash by the time he got out to his truck. There was a hose attached to a spigot sticking up from the ground and he stretched the hose to the vehicle. Sedge propped up the woman and Service hosed her down, and when Sedge said, “I think that should do it,” he flipped her the pillowcase and went to shut off the water. “Get her dressed,” he said over his shoulder.
“She’s a looker,” Sedge said. “Sure you don’t want to do this?”
“Just do the damn job and let’s get the hell out of here,” he chirped at her.
As he and Sedge struggled with the woman’s largely dead weight, trying to fasten her seat belt, he said, “The soil sample didn’t work out.”
“You want to cuff her?” Sedge asked.
“Nah, she’ll be okay.”
“So the soil sample was no good?”
“Right, but the techs say there is evidence of a black witch.”
She stared at him. “You mean like the evil sister of Glinda the good witch, or what?”
“It’s a moth,” he said, “size of a bat.”
“I’m not into bats,” Sedge said.
“Need drinkie,” the drunk woman slurred. She looked Service in the eye. “You pack Dr. Ruth?”
What the hell was she talking about?
“Yep, she’s in your bag.”
“Okay,” she blathered. “Gone
need
her.” The woman narrowed her eyes and stared at Service, her head bobbing. “I don’t like your attitude one bit, Bubba.” With this, her chin hit her chest and she was out again.
“You continue to make a big first impression on people,” Sedge said.
“It’s a gift from God. What the hell is Dr. Ruth?”
“Only the most powerful electric vibrator in the history of civilization,” the young officer said.
He was unable to think of a suitable rejoinder. “Follow me into town to the high school. We’ll dump Lois Lane and the professor there.”
“Her name is Lois Lane?”
“That’s what she said earlier.”
Sedge grinned and patted his arm.
Service drove less than a hundred yards when a small white dog came scampering down the two-track toward him. He braked, put the truck in park, and got out. “T-Bone!”
The little dog launched itself into his waiting arms. Service rubbed its ears and put the animal on the floor at the woman’s feet. There were pink spots in the animal’s white fur, probably blood from his ride in the bear’s jaws. But it was just pink, not dripping. “I think you’ll live, mutt. It’s your human I have serious doubts about.”
“Kermit sighting,” Sergeant Bryan announced over the radio. “At the intersection of Lang Trail and Widgeon.”
Service stared at the computer’s rolling map. Based on where he had seen the man, he seemed to be heading northwest into some really nasty, hard country.
“You want us to pursue?” Bryan asked.
“Stay with priorities,” Service told his friend, and followed Sedge toward M-123.
Grady Service had flown in a lot of helicopters, never in circumstances that allowed him to sit back and enjoy the ride, and this time was no different. At least this time there was no one on the ground looking to put a lucky shot into the bird.
Governor Lorelei Timms was dressed in chic blue blouse and black slacks, her hair pulled back, an Army Guard camo flight helmet pulled over her head. Service had never before noticed what intense, lively eyes she had as she listened to Brownmine describe the ugly, blackened, twenty-five-square-mile fire scene below them. “We have it at fifty percent containment, Governor. That doesn’t mean it’s out. It just means we have a ring around it, and with a little luck it will stay inside that ring. Peat and roots could very well burn until fall rains set in and snow comes. There’s a remote but very real possibility we could have some flare-ups next spring, but it’s not likely. In any event, Gar Fox is the local fire officer, the best in the state, and he won’t let this thing jump up on us.”
“No serious injuries?” Lori asked.
“Not so far. Just some minor stuff, and everyone will recover. And only a couple of structures lost. We’ve been real lucky on this one, given the conditions. We turn total squirrel with a fire index of three hundred. It was twice that when this happened.”
Governor Timms reached over and affectionately patted Service’s knee. “You look like crap,” she said. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“A full night? Uh, I can’t remember.”
With somebody? Even longer
.
The governor chuckled and rolled her eyes. “How come you aren’t wearing your uniform?”
“No time to get it, and it’s not practical for this kind of work.”
“Why aren’t you wearing a fire suit?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“We’re not in the fire.”
“There ya go,” he said, earning another laugh.
“You know your new chief, Eddie Waco?”
“I do.”
“You gonna tell me the NRC made a good choice?”
“Do you think you did?”
“Absolutely.”
“There you go,” he said again.
“You pissed at me?”
“Nope, but if I could get Sam Bozian up here, I’d mash his ugly snoot into the ashes and hold it there till he stopped kicking.”
“Are you threatening a former elected official?”
“No, ma’am, just dreaming. Dreams are still legal, right?”
“Some of them,” she said. “I think.”
“I’m sorry things are so bad,” he said to her, and she looked at him and nodded. He thought he even saw the hint of a tear, but Governor Timms, as ladylike as she seemed, was also as tough and resilient as tempered steel.
“When we land and can find a quiet place, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” he said.
She nodded and turned her attention back to the fire scar and smoke tendrils and clouds below.
• • •
Back at Four Mile Corner the governor had just finished a radio broadcast in a local radio station’s mobile broadcast trailer. Service saw that her anxious handlers were all vying for her attention, but she made eye contact with him and motioned for him to join her.
“Let’s go see the Red Cross people,” she said, and led him into the old store, which had become a warehouse for donated goods. The Red Cross people were immediately fawning, but she waved them off. “Could we have the room alone for a few minutes, folks?” she asked.
Just like that, they were alone.
“Nice to have power,” he said.
“I wish. What is it you wanted to talk about?”
“It’s not fire-related.”
“Fine, tell me.”
He took her through the situation with the state archaeologist, and how conservation officers were charged with protecting antiquities, but the State would not reveal locations unless a crime had been detected and the officer thought to ask if it was a state archaeological site.
“You’re making this up, right?”
“No, ma’am. It’s real.”
“You’re supposed to protect something you can’t even know is there?”
“Catch-twenty-two,” he said. “Sort of like that.”
“You realize I’ll have to get the attorney general on this. These damn rules never seem to operate on common sense. I’m not promising I can change it through the legislature. The Republicans there would vote to keep me from ever taking another crap in my own home if it would win them imagined points with voters. But I
can
issue an executive order. The next governor sitting in my seat can also quickly undo that.”
“Anything would help. It’s not fair to ask our people to do something, then handicap the doing.”
“I agree with you, Grady. You know anything about some very strange billboards that popped up all over the state—like morels?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Why is my skeptic-meter full right?”
“Don’t know.”
“Any other business?”
“No, that’s it.”
“Good. The billboards made me laugh out loud! How’s our Little Mar?”
“Precocious.”
“I am not surprised. Your new lady, Detective Friday. When do I get to meet her?”
Obviously she had somebody watching him. “When will you be in Marquette?”
“Maybe after the Labor Day Bridge Walk. I’ll call ahead. It’ll probably be a rush thing. This life is all about rushing around. My kids hate it.”
“And you?”
“I thought I’d be able to do more than I’ve been able to do, and I don’t much like that feeling, Grady. I love this state. There’s a helluva lot of politicians in this state that give lip service to that, but I mean it.”
She added, “I’m buying some top-line Yooper swampers for the next governor and will tell them to be prepared to wade through shit every single day. They should look at the teamwork on this fire to see how things should work,” she added.
The fire “event” had not gone as perfectly as it looked to the governor. A controlled back-burn near Pine Stump Junction had nearly gotten out of control and taken out everything in that area, but nature in the form of another wind shift had saved them. The radios didn’t work for shit. People two hundred yards apart resorted to sending runners to pass orders, like World War I or something. Different agencies couldn’t talk to each other at all. And of course cell-phone coverage was virtually nil in most parts of the northern county.
Far from perfect, but the thing had been beaten. So far. Downstate the state police were rumored to be warning all citizens to stay out of any part of the U.P. because of the fires, and at least one toll attendant at the big bridge had been warning tourists away from anywhere in the eastern U.P.
Governor Lorelei Timms looked at him. “Do you know that local people are doing laundry for firefighters?” She shook her head. “This place …,” she said. “These people …” Her eyes were clearly tearing up, and she was unable to finish.
Suddenly she stiffened. “You’re
sure
you don’t know anything about those billboards all around the state?”
“Heard about them. Even saw one.”
“I bet you have,” she said with a taut jaw. She squeezed his arm. “Okay, let’s get our butts back to work, big boy.”
They stepped out of the room to be greeted by a growing gathering of Red Cross workers and citizens and firefighters, and she began to mingle, which she did with such ease and with such genuine feeling, it was hard to understand how anyone like Lori had ever ended up in the damn swamp of state politics. The state didn’t deserve her, and she sure as hell deserved better from the entire state.
Brownmine walked over to him. “Good lady, eh?”
Service said. “For a politician.”
“You want to ride the circuit with me today?” the incident commander asked.
“You da boss. Something up?”
“Flying over a fire with the governor and dancing the edge are different things. I like knowing from close-up what I think I’m seeing from above. Make sense?”
“Absolutely.”
“There’s still a lot of burning over in the Two-Hearted Headwaters, and I want to hike in that way and see what I can see,” the incident commander said.