Strike Dog Read Online Free Page A

ringing with sympathy calls. Ever since he’d arrived, the cabin had been overflowing with a stream of friends, bearing food and cringing sympathy, most of them at a loss for exactly what to say. His friends and fellow woods cops came one after the other. Gus Turnage, CO from Houghton County, and a fly-fishing friend, arrived just after Treebone. Gus hugged him but had little to say. He had lost his own wife many years back, raised three sons on his own. He had never remarried.
    Their friend Yalmer “Shark” Wetelainen and his wife, Limey Pyykkonen, came in the next morning, followed by Simon del Olmo, the Cuba-born army vet, and his girlfriend and conservation officer, Elza “Sheena” Grinda. Lars and Joan Hjalmquist came over from Ironwood; Wink Rector, the resident FBI agent for the U.P., drove down from Marquette; and DaWayne Kota, the tribal game warden from Bay Mills, also showed up. Last to arrive were the giant CO Bryan Jefferies from Luce County, and Gutpile Moody, and his young girlfriend, Kate, also an officer and close friend of Nantz’s. Moody and Nordquist lived together in nearby Schoolcraft County.
    Vince Vilardo and Rose came up from Escanaba. Vince was the retired medical examiner for Delta County, and a longtime friend.
    Linsenman showed up with an envelope and handed it to him, and Service took it to the side and opened it and scanned May’s phone records. They looked like last month’s, mostly calls to him, Walter, and Karylanne. She had called Walter the day before the accident, but not Karylanne. Nothing there. Shit! He stuffed the records back in the envelope and threw it in a cardboard box in a corner.
    Lieutenant Lisette McKower and her husband drove in from Newberry. McKower was five-five, 120, with short brown hair, a long neck, and the tiny hands of a doll. Service met her for the first time when she had been sent to him as a rookie to train. He thought they had sent him a cheerleader, but she had been twenty-four, had three summers under her belt as a smokejumper out of Montana, and turned out to be as tough as moosehide. She’d risen through the ranks and Service was proud of her, though he’d never have admitted it.
    â€œI’m sorry for our loss, Grady. Hear that? Ours, not just yours.”
    Nantz was to have entered the DNR academy this fall.
    â€œI talked to the captain,” McKower said. “He told me what you found at the auto-body shop.”
    Service nodded.
    â€œThe evidence doesn’t prove anything,” she said. “Are you prepared to deal with it if it’s ruled an accident?”
    â€œIt wasn’t an accident,” he said.
    She sighed. “You always see the world in black and white, Grady. Remember, the Chinese say black has five colors and the Ojibwa have fourteen words for snow, including several colors other than white.”
    He didn’t respond. She was one of those people who was pathologically rational, a woman who overrode intuition with pure intellectual power and had risen because of it. But she had also been a smokejumper and had considerable fire inside. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, she understood the call to vengeance.
    â€œI know you, Grady; you only think you know me,” she said. “You classify me according to what’s convenient for you. If this is not an accident, that does not mean it is automatically a homicide. There are shades, Grady, and there is a system and a process, and we are sworn to uphold both. We both know that the system and the process are no more than social algorithms, not final arbiters of right and wrong; they are only methods we use to determine guilty or not guilty, which has nothing to do with morality. Vengeance is not part of the system or the process,” she concluded, looking directly into his eyes. “I know you will do the right thing,” she said. “The captain says we are to assume this is an accident until the Troops issue a