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inside?”
    â€œWe’ll cross that bridge if you get to it.”
    â€œI report to Miars. Do I tell him what’s going on in my case?”
    â€œNot for the moment. Let’s keep it between us.”
    â€œMiars isn’t going to like it.”
    â€œNobody likes being kept in the dark,” the chief said, “but sometimes it’s necessary. You want to sit in on the rest of meeting?”
    â€œMiars said it’s about me.”
    The chief smirked. “It’s not. Zins is just handing over the reins. It’s a good opportunity for Ware and me to get up to speed on details of the special investigations unit.” Ware was Captain Ware Grant, his previous boss.
    Which meant he had the investigation all to himself, and he had a pretty good idea what that meant. “I’m expendable,” he told the chief, who answered with raised eyebrows.
    Why had Miars told him the meeting was about him? To threaten him and keep him away? “I think I’ll get back to work.”
    â€œSuit yourself,” the chief said, and went back inside. Before parting the chief stopped and looked at him. “We’re all expendable in this profession, Grady. The key is to know what’s important and what’s not.”
    Service wandered over to the garage area to find Billy “Fuzz” Fazzari, who had worked at the center for at least forty years as a maintenance mechanic. From time to time Fazzari had driven up to the Mosquito Wilderness to fish with him. Service considered him a friend.
    Fazzari was puttering with a leaf blower and smoking a cigar that reeked enough to gag a vulture.
    â€œHow they hanging, Fuzz?”
    Fazzari was short, a little overweight, and balding. “Geez, the Great Grady Service. You lost?”
    â€œHad a meeting.”
    â€œI remember the time you and Clearcut went nose to nose out in the parking lot. Boy, you pissed him off. What can I do you for?”
    â€œYou ever hear of a company called Piscova?”
    â€œSure. Their head guy Fagan is here all the time with Fisheries people.”
    â€œWhat’s he like?”
    â€œGlad-hander to all who can help him, a dickhead to those who can’t. He can’t do enough for them Fisheries folks.”
    â€œEnough what?”
    Fazzari shrugged. “I don’t know. I just hear talk. You know, maybe trips to Florida and to his hunting camps, lots of free booze, maybe some broads from time to time. I figure it’s just talk, eh.”
    â€œAnyone from Law Enforcement ever ask you about him?”
    â€œNobody asks a grease monkey shit.”
    â€œThanks, Fuzz.”
    â€œSorry to hear about your lady and your son, Grady. I met Nantz when she was up here for some kind of training. She was a pistol. We all liked her.”
    Maridly Nantz, a former fire officer, had started at the DNR law enforcement academy in Lansing a couple of years ago, but had been attacked by a dirtbag, seriously injured, and forced to drop out before graduation. Nantz had spent some of her recuperation time living with Chief O’Driscoll and his wife in East Lansing. She was scheduled to begin the academy again this fall, but that wasn’t going to happen now. The thought made his stomach flip.
    â€œThanks, Billy.” He did not want to think about Nantz and Walter right now, but the more he pushed thoughts of them away, the more they seemed to intrude.
    Cripes, even the RAM Center’s mechanic had an opinion about Fagan and Piscova. Why had Zins and Miars gotten no place in eighteen months? Rhetorical question, he told himself. The answer was politics, which meant a minefield for which few people had an accurate map.

6
    Wednesday, October 13, 2004
    CEDARVILLE, MACKINAC COUNTY
    Instead of heading for home, Grady Service drove north up I-75 past St. Ignace and turned east on M-34, toward Cedarville. He needed some computer advice, and Joe Colyard was the man to help him. Colyard, nearing fifty