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cheesehead commercial game farm—animals allegedly imported from Colorado, which reportedly had been infected by Canadian imports. The whole thing with fenced-in hunt clubs and game farms bugged Service. They were playgrounds for the lazy and well heeled—a quick way to bag a trophy if you had the cash, but no time for a real hunt outside the enclosures.
    The two men discarded their rubber gloves in a white plastic pail in the rear of the biologist’s truck and headed their separate ways. Service had a hard time shaking the image of the strange-acting deer. He did not enjoy putting any animal down, but this was necessary. The first one he’d had to dispatch had been during his first year near Newberry. An elderly man had called during the summer to report that a deer had been hit by a car. Service’s sergeant suggested the man shoot the animal to put it out of its misery, but the man wasn’t a hunter, didn’t own a gun, and said he couldn’t kill anything. Service was sent to handle it.
    The old man came out of the house to greet him and led him to the big doe, which had two broken forelegs and was entangled in an old wire fence. Service told the man he didn’t have to watch, but the man insisted on staying. Service took aim with his .44 and tried to neatly clip the animal’s spinal column just behind the head. Result: It began to thrash.
    The old man, who was wearing white slacks and a long-tailed white shirt said, “Oh my.”
    Service took aim a second time, and fired into the deer’s skull. Suddenly the air was awash with fine pink mist and the old man was gasping and saying, “Oh dear God . . . oh God!”
    Both of them were covered with blood. Apparently the first shot had caused extensive bleeding into the ears of the animal, which had filled like cups. When Service fired the second round, the animal’s head had snapped sideways, showering both of them. Since then he had learned to be more efficient, and over the years he had killed so many animals with potential and actual problems that he normally didn’t even think about them afterwards. It still irked him, however, when someone brought up the story of his “red rain-deer.” COs were fond of repeating stories about other COs’ screwups.

10
    FLORENCE COUNTY, WISCONSIN
MAY 20, 2004
    Grady Service kept most of his equipment in his unmarked Tahoe, including a couple of changes of work clothes. As a detective he operated mostly in the western half, but sometimes across the entire Upper Peninsula, which was the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined, and larger than Delaware. Despite making it home most nights, there had been times when he had to sleep in his vehicle somewhere in the woods.
    The chief had made it clear that he was to get over to Wisconsin PDQ, but no way was he going until he stopped at home in Gladstone to see Nantz. He punched in the speed dial on the cell phone, caught the mistake, and flipped the phone closed. He deleted the speed-dial numbers for Maridly and Walter and lectured himself to stay focused. Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself, he thought as he drove out to US 41 and headed south toward Escanaba.
    A gray-black Humvee coated with red-gray dust was parked in the lot behind the interpretive center, which was jointly run by the U.S. Forest Service, the Wisconsin DNR, and Florence County, a three-way marriage that sounded to him like a bureaucratic management stretch. There were two men in the vehicle. Service eased alongside the Humvee, got out, stretched, and showed his credentials to one of them. “Special Agent Monica?”
    The man studied the credentials and pointed. “Go seven miles west on Wisconsin Seventy, turn south across the ditch at Lilah Oliver Grade Road. There’s a gate there. Check in with the agents. I’ll let them know you’re rolling.”
    Service thanked the man, pulled onto highway W-70, and headed west, passing a