Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology Read online

  “She did what?” Glen shouted.

  “Fair enough.” Jon removed a file from a dented cabinet that might have been beige a century ago. “Here’s a list of the guys in the Electrical Department. I don’t think anyone else could rig these deaths. If there is a killer, he’s here. Shift change is in fifteen minutes. I’ll get both groups together and let them know what you’re doing . . . or is that a bad idea?”

  “Might as well address it head on,” I said. “I don’t know enough about electricity to fake being an inspector.”

  He circled three names. “It’s an old seniority list. These are the fatalities. The top six guys are on vacation. These twelve,” he placed a circled “1” in front of their names, “are on the shift that’s about to end. Glen and the others are on second shift. We got some replacements who aren’t on this list, but since they weren’t here you don’t need to worry about them. I’ll have Glen take you around. If you need to talk to the first shift guys, stick around for shift change again or come back in the morning. They ain’t gonna stay here any longer than my speech.”

  “Do you know who was working when each of the supposed accidents happened?” I asked.

  “Not off hand. I’ll get the information from personnel. Might not be until tomorrow though.”

  “They got us working twelve-hour shifts,” Glen said. “But they’re long gone.”

  Jon checked his watch. “Showtime.”

  * * * *

  Shelves and bins containing wires and electrical equipment lined the walls in the change room. Bunched in the center were lockers and benches. A huge “Safety is Job #1” poster covered the inside of the door. Guys changed in and out of steel-toed shoes, Carhartt bibs and coveralls while Jon introduced me. Too bad no one immediately confessed.

  The only question when Jon was finished was from a short, baby-faced guy. “We done here?”

  Glen and I hopped into his Silverado. “Learn anything interesting?” Glen asked.

  “Safety is Job #1.”

  “So they say. Let’s do them in the order they occurred. Used to be five separate lakes on this property,” Glen said as we drove to the first accident site. “Pumped them dry, like we do with the big hole. All we got left is the evaporation pond.”

  The “pond” turned out to cover over a thousand acres, larger than most Upper Peninsula lakes. Our arrival startled a flock of mergansers, which skittered across the cerulean water. With a flash of white tail feathers, juncos flitted from the road into tag alders growing near the edge of the pond. Across the road a stand of aspen grew, mute testimony to a self-seeded clear-cut from years ago.

  “This one was labeled a hunting accident?” I asked. “Isn’t the mining property posted?”

  “No legal hunting, which is why Arnold was here. The deer love this grove. Lots of browse, close to water, coyotes but no wolves and no hunting . . . except for Arnold. Everyone knew he hunted this area. Hell, even management knew. They figured it was better that Arnold thinned the population and gave the meat to charity than to let the deer starve. Arnold got a processor in Marquette to make steaks and sausage from his kills and gave them to a food bank. All under the table, eh? See the road past the gate?”

  In the distance, I made out a fence and gate. “He parked there and walked in?”

  “Yeah, that’s a public road. Cops figure he tripped, discharged his twenty-gauge into his left shoulder—not fatal—and fell into the pond. Hit his head and drowned in six inches of water.”

  “Tough way to go,” I said. “This was during last year’s deer season?”

  “Yep. What was Arnold doing by the water? He warn’t huntin’ no mergansers. You ever taste them? Fishy. Warn’t fishing. Nothing but guppies and fingerlings in this pond. Hunting, he’d be in the trees. It’s starting to drizzle again. If this had all been snow, we’d have three feet. You done here?”

  I surveyed the area, tried to picture Arnold’s death. The accident didn’t make sense, but to outsiders how many of our actions do? Everyone knew Arnold poached, so if someone killed him, the list of suspects was endless.

  Caws from a murder of crows cruising toward their evening roost brought me back to the present. Were they a sign? Only in a Bergman movie. I shook the rain off like a dog and got into Glen’s truck. In the dusk, our headlights caught the scurry of hares at the side of the road and a coyote slipping into the brush.

  “Slag heap’s next,” Glen said. After letting a gigantic truck pass, he turned onto the main drag. “A loaded dump truck developed an electrical problem with its lift mechanism at the top of the slag heap. Loaded, it was too heavy to tow, so Donny went up to work on it.”

  We turned onto a narrow road and serpentined up a hill. Eighteen-inch berms provided the only protection from dropping hundreds of feet into the mine pit. The outsized equipment below looked like matchbox toys. Butterflies tickled my stomach. I focused straight ahead, ignoring the increasing chasm out my window. We caught up to a three-story truck lumbering up the hill.

  “Here’s how it works,” Glen said. “The engineers know the iron content of each face they’re excavating, so if a truck’s load contains enough iron, they cart it to the crusher. We’ll visit that last. If the rock is overburden—not enough iron in it—the truck hauls it up here and adds it to the slag heap.”

  Partway up, Glen pulled so far to the right his tires rode slightly onto the berm. He yanked the emergency brake and hopped out. “Here we are.”

  I slithered onto the berm and inched around the front of the truck to join Glen. One slip and my next stop was a hundred feet lower. He pointed to the middle of the road. “Donny ended up here. Fell from up there.” He waved vaguely toward the hill on our left. “Busted half the bones in his body. You be careful getting back into the truck now.”

  The top of the hill was flat, providing distant views of lights twinkling in the surrounding towns and, to the north, was the black void of Lake Superior.

  “Can’t build the slag heap no higher, otherwise we exceed the highest point in Michigan. Now that would cause a real stink.”

  The dump truck we followed proceeded to the far end of the plateau, deposited its load and a dozer pushed the slag over the far edge.

  “If the trucks dump on the far side, why was Donny over here?”

  “The accident inspectors found a cigarette butt nearby. Figure Donny took a break, slipped and met his maker.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Probably happened that way. He liked the view from on top. Only other possibility is somebody took a chunk of ore and whapped him on the head, threw him over. Cops never found no motive.”

  I closed my eyes on the trip down and opened them once I felt the vehicle reach flat ground. Pale yellow light leaked from distant buildings growing harsher the closer we came. Glen stopped at the far end of the building where they made iron pellets.

  “Got your earplugs, right?” He turned off his truck and screwed plugs into his ears. “We’ll need them once we’re inside. You know how we make the pellets?”

  “Not so much,” I said, raising my voice to accommodate the earplugs.

  “First we crush the rock. Watch this guy.”

  We hopped out. The dump truck, with tires taller than our vehicle, backed toward the side of the building, the beep-beep-beep loud enough to warn off folks a county or two away. The truck backed until a light on the building turned from green to red. I felt the rumble of the huge truck’s diesel engine through the soles of my feet. Nothing happened until a second light changed from red to green. The dump truck raised its box and a load of iron ore rumbled into a circular hole in the ground with the sound of Niagara tumbling over its falls. Even before the truck’s box returned to level, the dump truck had pulled out and a second truck maneuvered to back in.

  “Not your mother’s blender,” Glen said. “Those big chunks of rock all end up as powder. Let’s get in out of the rain.”

  We walked through a narrow door, down a corridor and into a control
room where the operator monitored the crusher.

  “See them gauges?” Glen pointed to a row of displays along one wall. “Show what’s happening in the crusher. Only two things stop this operation. A rock jams up the works, and they gotta knock it loose. Or a gauge goes kerflooey. Then they call us.”

  The operator, half-listening to Glen’s narration, shot me a “who-the-hell-are-you?” look.

  Glen continued his narrative. “When a jam occurs, the sensors automatically trip a circuit breaker. The operator resets it once they clear the jam. It’s different for electrical problems. The electrician cuts all the power to the crusher. See the red switch?” He pointed high on a wall in a dark corner. “Four hundred eighty volts. He turns off the power, tapes it down and signs his name. The operator’s gotta leave the room. Only the signing electrician can remove the tape.”

  The operator was now paying more attention to Glen than to the gauges.

  “Paul grabbed a live wire. Cops decided he didn’t totally disconnect the power. Least it was quick.”

  The operator yelled to Glen. “More OSHA? Man, I’m glad it wasn’t my shift. Stunk to high . . . never mind.” He turned around and stared at the gauges.

  We backed out of the room and Glen shut the door. “You want to see the exact location?”

  I shook my head. “You think someone flipped the switch?”

  “This is why Jon thinks if there’s a killer, he’s an electrician. You saw where the switch was located? Only people who know are electricians, a few managers and the operators in that booth. If he didn’t screw up, it had to be one of us.”

  “Your tone of voice says you think he did screw up.”

  “That’s what everyone except Margie believes.”

  * * * *

  I spent hours talking to the electricians, alternately soaked in the rain outside the plant and steamed like a lobster inside. Nobody knew anything more than what Glen had told me.

  Using my coat for a pillow, I fell asleep on a bench in the change room. Jon woke me in the morning. “Got the information.” In his office he handed me a cup of steaming coffee. I don’t drink the stuff, but it warmed my hands and maybe the caffeine reached me by osmosis.

  Using the electrician seniority list, he marked those who had worked during each shift the “accidents” occurred. Only three guys were on the premises during all the events, and all three were currently on vacation.

  “Guys choose vacation based on seniority?” I asked.

  “We only let six guys off at a time. At the beginning of each year the first six put in for their vacation and then the next six and so on. First week of deer season . . .”

  He nattered on, but I was in my own little world. The first six guys were out at deer camp, and numbers seven, eight and ten were buried six feet under. Glen was number nine. Maybe Margie wasn’t so paranoid. Jon stopped talking and looked at me curiously.

  “Sorry, wool gathering,” I said. “How frequently do guys retire?”

  “Depends. The top two announced awhile back that this was their last year. They’ll both have thirty-five years in and get full retirement pay.”

  “So next year—” I forgot and took a sip of the coffee and had to stop myself from spitting it out. I tapped the list to buy time. “Glen and this guy, number eleven—Reginald Drum—will be eligible for vacation during the first week of deer season? How long will the next guys have to wait?”

  He curled his bottom lip in concentration. “Hard to say . . . maybe four, five years.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “We got one wrong. Arnold died while he was off-duty. How easily could someone sneak down to those holding ponds? Isn’t it more likely someone off-duty killed him?”

  He scratched the top of his head with both hands. “Could be. That would mean . . .” He trailed a pencil down the list. Now only one guy could have done it: Reginald Drum.

  “Tell me about him,” I said.

  “Moose?” He slapped the metal desk. Made me jump. “You think he killed three people so he could go deer hunting on opening day? That’s crazy.” He paused, tilted his head and stared at the ceiling. “Of course killing three guys ain’t exactly normal, is it?”

  He turned to a file cabinet, ran his finger down the drawers, reading labels aloud. “Here we are,” he said and opened a manila file. “Let’s see what Moose was working on when Donny fell.” He flipped through some pages. “According to this, both Moose and Donny were working truck maintenance. Donny went up. Moose stayed.”

  “But it’s possible,” I said, “that Drum also went to the top of the slag heap to help Donny?”

  “Not according to this file, but . . .” Jon rooted through the cabinets again, pulled another folder. “At the time of the crusher accident everyone was on break. Before and after the break most of the guys were relocating sodium lamps over the separation room. Moose was by himself replacing three-way plugs about fifty feet from the crusher control booth. I can’t believe . . . when the crusher ain’t running, this place loses that low thrum you hear and feel. Everyone woulda known the crusher was down. If he used his break to see what was happening and found Paul working inside the crusher, he coulda tripped the breaker and no one knows the better.”

  I pictured all the guys I had met the evening before. Several were sized double or triple X. “Moose a volatile kind of guy?”

  “When he gets a few under his belt.” Jon scratched his head again. “You saw him at the meeting. Little guy—the one that stormed out after the meeting?”

  “He’s Moose?”

  “It had something to do with Moosehead beer when he was a kid.”

  Only in the Northwoods. “We don’t have near enough to go to the cops,” I said, “but tell me what you think of this idea.”

  * * * *

  Jon parked me in the back stall of the men’s room where I could overhear his prepared speech. He gathered the first shift at lunch break. “Sorry, guys, for another meeting. I got two quick announcements. Seamus McCree thinks Donny, Arnold and Paul were murdered. He’s filling the manager in now and plans to head to Negaunee and talk with the State Troopers.

  “I was gonna hold off the second thing until we’re done with hunting season, but since I got you together now, I’ll get it over with. Looks like next year management’ll only let four of our guys off at a time—supposedly worried we’ll be working twelves again and spread too thin during deer season. I checked: there’s nothing in the contract says they can’t do it. Questions?”

  Guys grumbled and, Jon said, mostly stared at their shoes, except for Moose whose voice penetrated the bathroom wall.

  “This sucks,” he yelled. “If you think I’m waiting for two more guys to retire before I get that week—”

  A slammed door cut off his tirade.

  * * * *

  After waiting ten minutes, I walked deliberately to my vehicle. I wanted to look over my shoulder and see who was watching. I wanted to shout, “I don’t have any proof. I’m trying to smoke you out.” My bright idea no longer seemed so bright. I placed one foot in front of the other until I got to my camp truck, an old Ford Ranger. Had Glen succeeded at the task Jon set him to before lunchtime? Would Moose take the bait? Had I surmised wrong and hooked someone else? I scanned the lot. Moose’s black Tundra was missing.

  I eased onto the mine’s main road. At the four-way stop I looked right and left. No Moose. I surrendered my pass when I exited the mine property, a little surprised Moose hadn’t taken a run at me while I was inside. Glen was supposed to remove the ammunition from Moose’s rifle and follow him if he took his truck. I guessed I’d find out what happened from Glen when he was next at camp. At US-41 I turned away from the State Police in Negaunee, and headed home. At Michigamme, I entered the woods. The rain had stopped, but the roads were sloppy.

  Halfway home, shortly before a one-lane bridge, a truck roared out of an abandoned two-track and slammed into the passenger side of my Ranger, toppling it into the creek. Water rushed into the upsi
de down cab through the passenger door, which had sprung open from the impact. Elbowing aside the airbag, I released the seatbelt. Fighting the rush of water, I squeezed out the passenger door. The storm-swelled current swept me through the culvert, banged me on the rocky bottom and spit me into an eddy on the other side of the road.

  Shock from the collision and the near-freezing water kept me from making any noise. A heavy engine idled on the bridge, spewing out fumes. I peered through weeds and spotted a pair of legs on the other side of Moose’s truck. Glen had screwed up.

  Shivering so hard I had to keep my mouth wide open so my teeth didn’t chatter, I crawled out of the water, staying below the truck’s profile. While Moose continued to scan the Ranger’s wreckage, I used an ancient trick and tossed pebbles onto the bank where I had exited the creek. The legs inched around the side of the truck and paused at the front. I held my breath for a millennium or two. Finally, he rushed to the far side of the road and pointed a rifle toward the creek. I followed and drove my shoulders into his legs, slamming him into the ground. My brain flashed that something was wrong. Momentum carried me up his body and my weight pounded his head into an underwater rock. It wasn’t Moose; it was Glen.

  The justice of letting him drown flashed through my thoughts. Instead, I dragged his limp body and the rifle to the road and checked the truck. Under a tarp I found Moose—dead from a crushed head. Glen was stirring and I couldn’t find anything to bind him with. I covered him with the rifle.

  When Glen came to, his justifications flowed like an artesian well from built up pressure. “If Arnold hadn’t tripped and shot himself, none of this would have happened. What was I going to do? He knocked himself unconscious and I was in trouble ’cause I’d boogied from work early. Then this thought came to me: Hell, if I can’t get the first week of deer season off, at least I can take over Arnold’s poaching. So he drowned, and you know . . . I was okay with that. Accidents happen.