Hard Ground by Joseph Heywood

Author:Joseph Heywood [Heywood, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2013-05-06T12:00:00+00:00

Cuffed to a Truck, Left to Die

After twelve years in southwest Michigan, Conservation Officer Shana Lafave finally got her transfer to Watersmeet in Gogebic County. She’d even found a decent little house to rent her first trip up and moved in after trout season had kicked off. It would be weeks before she was actually settled into the place.

Locals had so far treated Lafave with distant respect—the one-step-back politeness Yoopers reserved for all outsiders, newcomers, and people perceived to have some power, not to mention the enemy, which meant any game warden or cop.

It was Friday night, humid and sultry, the best sort of night for brook trout fishing. Long ago her grandma Franck had taken her to Ten Mile Creek every summer, where they loaded fresh brook trout into canvas creels and shared a beer afterward, from the time Lafave was eight. In those days she and Grandma Franck paid no attention to DNR rules and considered the creek’s fish to be their personal eating stock, an attitude shared by many denizens of the Upper Peninsula.

The spot she used to fish with Grandma was a half-mile walk along an eroded razorback ridge. If others were fishing the area, Grandma would park at a little cul-de-sac, currently empty, and walk a couple hundred yards down to the stream. The old gal had told her a lot of locals liked to hike in from County Line Road, which put them upstream of where Lafave intended to stash her truck tonight after a quick look at the stream.

Lafave hiked south, and fifteen minutes later she heard vehicle doors slam at the parking area. She wished she’d brushed away her in-and-out tracks, but it was too late for that, and all but the most serious violators didn’t pay that much attention to anything except what was smack in front of them. She backtracked over a hill, heard voices, and stepped into some trees as the group passed, six men, beer cans in hand, the usual male verbal jabbing and bullshit. She heard them reach the creek and separate upstream and down.

The conservation officer moved toward them and watched one of them drifting worms under the skeleton of a cedar blowdown. Very quickly he had a fish on, removed it from the hook, and dropped it into a clear plastic bag tied to his hipper belt.

The size limit here was eight inches. This trout was maybe half that. The man moved downstream, catching one tiny trout after another, keeping them all. One of his upstream compadres yelled down to say he was “slaying these bitches!” and the man closest to her yelled back, “Same here, dude!”

Dillweeds, one and all, traveled in packs.

The closest man finished a beer and tossed it on the bank, sat down on a log, and rolled a cigarette, which he lit, inhaled deeply, and held. She smelled the skunk weed, real cheap dope. She guessed the men would rendezvous at the parking area after dark and decided to wait there to make contact.

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