Strike Dog by Joseph Heywood

away. Come fall they would reverse course and seek denser winter thermal cover and the sparse food of cedar and spruce swamps.
    He smiled as he moved. The backcountry: There was always something new to be experienced, and often it was inexplicable. The forest was an unnerving venue for people with fecund imaginations. The rain was softer now, something between a drizzle and mist. The main cell, he saw, was moving north of him. Good fishing, he told himself.
    All officers were taught and encouraged to hide their trucks a good distance from where they intended to go, but Service tended to dump his vehicle further away than most, believing that the further away you were, the less chance you had of being detected by shitballs. Some violators used scouts to patrol roads and search for game wardens’ vehicles, and with the advent of CBs, cell phones, and other radio systems, instantaneous communications was becoming the rule rather than the exception for habitual violators. A good game warden had to be willing to walk, and put his boots in dirt, mud, ice, and snow, and Service took pride in being a damn good game warden. Maybe too much pride, he chastised himself.
    He diverted toward the area where he thought he had seen the light and began playing with the ear mike, which was irritating his ear. He was still skeptical about the devices Michigan conservation officers had recently been ordered to use, and more than anything he was constantly picking at his ear, trying to make the damn thing comfortable. Between false teeth and the ear mike, he felt anything but comfortable. He was becoming a damned android, more technology than human. He had heard that some downstate districts had told their officers to forget the new devices, but he wasn’t ready to give up on it quite yet. Naturally, younger officers—Generation X or Y or whatever the hell they were being called now, those from the Nintendo generation—embraced any and all new technology, but Service thought it made game wardens look like they were playing at being Secret Service agents or James Bond wannabes. He had the microphone rigged under his shirt, and in order to transmit, he had only to press his hand to his heart. It seemed silly, but he knew there would be times when having silent radio contact and two free hands would be a good thing— if he could make it less annoying, Or he could stuff it in his ruck. But he had kept his teeth in and they were uncomfortable. Better to gut it out, try to adjust.
    â€œTwenty Five Fourteen, do you have TX?” a voice asked over the 800-megahertz radio. He had it turned down and didn’t catch the caller’s code. He glanced at the digital display on top of the 800 stuck in its belt holster and saw he was on the district’s channel.
    â€œTwenty Five Fourteen is out of vehicle, TX in fifteen minutes,” he said, touching his chest, adding, “Twenty Five Fourteen clear.” He had left his cell phone in the truck. Even there he’d be lucky to get a signal. There were vast reaches of the U.P. where cell phones refused to operate with any regularity, and other places where they would not work at all.
    He heard the cell phone buzzing as he unlocked the Tahoe, unclipped the tiny phone from the sun visor, and flipped it open to activate it.
    â€œGrady? Lorne O’Driscoll.”
    â€œChief.” O’Driscoll led the Law Enforcement Division for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement Division in Lansing. Why the hell was the chief calling him? He had already called several times to express condolences and check on him. Enough was enough.
    â€œWhere are you?” O’Driscoll asked.
    Service toyed with a smart-ass answer and rejected it; the chief was a good man, but a stickler for professional communications etiquette. “Uh, eastern Delta County—more or less.” Hell, if the chief had the Automatic Vehicle Locator up on his computer screen, he