The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10)

The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10) Page 36

A few minutes later, we were back on the road. We drove northwest until we reached Ely. Compared to Krueger, Ely was a teeming metropolis with thirty-eight resorts, twenty-seven outfitters, six bait shops, thirteen restaurants, twelve bars, nine motels, and two B&Bs, plus art galleries, museums, gift shops, golf courses, parks, and the International Wolf Center. Nearly all of its businesses catered to tourists lured to the area by the fabled Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It had a listed population of 3,700 people, although that number more than doubled during the summer months when people from the Cities opened their lake homes. Which wasn’t to suggest that it was all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Many of the joys of Ely ended fourteen miles east in the charred remains of the Pagami Creek Forest Fire.

A lightning strike caused the biggest fire in state history, burning over a hundred thousand acres of jack pine, black spruce, white cedar, balsam fir, birch, aspen, ash, and maple trees in the BWCA and even threatened the tiny town of Isabella. Plumes of ash actually settled on the roof of Miller Park in Milwaukee over four hundred miles away. Despite that, the U.S. Forest Service—which allowed the blaze to burn unchecked for over three weeks before stepping in—was pretty much nonchalant about the situation, suggesting that a fire every now and again was necessary to clean up the forest. Josie, for one, was skeptical.

“Tell that to the people who rely on the tourist dollars that the BWCA brings to the area, the resorts and outfitters and whatnot,” she said. “As if the Range didn’t have enough problems.”

Josie wasn’t a particularly good driver. She tended to behave as if there were no other traffic on the road. Still, I had her drive back and forth and around Ely for nearly an hour. She became quite nervous when I had her motor past the county sheriff’s department substation on East Chapman and Second Avenue East—twice. Eventually I found just what I was looking for.

“Hey, a Dairy Queen,” I said.

I made her stop, and we both ordered Blizzards; she had Cappuccino Heath Bar, I had M&M’s. We ate them while sitting in the car in the parking lot. While we ate, a county sheriff’s department patrol car parked two spaces down from us. Josie flinched and gave me a panicked look. I rested a hand on her thigh. Her skin was soft and warm beneath my fingers. I left them there while we watched the two deputies enter the DQ. One was short and thin with sandy, receding hair. The other was tall with a beer belly that rolled over his belt buckle and hung there as if it were looking for a place to sit. We could see them ordering through the store’s large windows.

I did not move my hand, so Josie did it for me, taking my fingers and setting them on my own thigh. “Look,” she said. “They’re paying for their treats with the free coupons they’re supposed to dole out to the kids that they see wearing bicycle helmets.”

McKenzie would have been outraged by the sight; Dyson, not so much.

“Scandalous,” I said. Josie gave me a look that suggested she was disappointed in me. “We’re not exactly Ken and Barbie ourselves,” I reminded her.

“These two—James and Williams—they stopped my father a few months ago. My old man, everyone up here knows he does grass. It’s not a secret. So they stop him for no particular reason and search his car.”

“Is this before or after your cousin decided to go into the drug business?”

“Before, and Jimmy—Jimmy was never in the drug business. We put a stop—do you know he had pictures on his cell phone? He went around showing people photos of his plants and fertilizer and equipment.”

“Gotta like a man who takes pride in his work.”

“But that was—ridiculous.”

“Go on with your story.”

“My dad, they stopped my dad. He wasn’t carrying, okay; didn’t have anything on him. That didn’t faze James and Williams. They supplied a baggie of grass for him, pretended they found it in his trunk and told him—they were laughing when they told him, the old man said—that it felt like it weighed more than two ounces. In Minnesota if you’re caught carrying less than one and a half ounces of grass it’s a three-hundred-dollar fine. More than that, it’s a felony starting at five years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. As a favor, though, as a favor to my father, they said they’d call it one and a half ounces and he could pay them the fine, pay them the three hundred dollars. This wasn’t a bribe, oh no—Dad said they were very clear about that. They claimed the law was being upheld and my father was being punished for his crime—which he didn’t commit. The difference was they didn’t have to do paperwork, didn’t have to bother the overworked court system, and the old man wouldn’t be going to prison, thus sparing the state the expense of another mouth to feed.”

“I bet your old man paid,” I said.

“Of course he paid. He was so frightened—going to prison. The odd thing is that Dad smokes a lot more grass, drinks a lot more beer, now than he ever did before it happened. Look, Dyson, it’s not just him. Everyone pays. Don’t tell me the county sheriff doesn’t know about it, either. All the other county deputies, they ride one to a car. James and Williams, they ride together—they’re always together. Makes it easier for them to intimidate people.”

“James and Williams, is that their first names or last?” I asked.

“Last. I think their first names are Eugene and Allen. Bullies with a badge.”