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sensed that the anger that had surfaced earlier was still there, but now she was holding it back.
Measuring me?
he wondered.
Regretting inviting me back here?
    “You want me to rustle up some coffee?” she asked.
    They were still outside, between their two trucks. “That’d be good,” he said.
    She made no move to open the door to her place. “Toliver was in Paradise yesterday. Someone I know heard him say he was headed to the beach again.”
    “Were you following Toliver?” Service asked.
    “I don’t have to follow him. Katsu has a plant at the motel where Toliver stays. The informant calls Katsu, then me. Until I saw your truck pop up on the computer and cut your trail,” she said, “I had everything under control. Been up to me I’d never have let Toliver get that close to Katsu’s people, but Isaw your call on the AVL and figured I’d already had this out with Katsu; he knows he can’t be messing with Toliver or anyone else who comes out there. It’s public land, and moral right isn’t synonymous with legal right.”
    She seemed on the verge of boiling. “I didn’t intend to interfere. I’ve looked into Toliver’s background. He’s not some scribble-school chump, Detective. He’s highly respected and damn powerful in academic circles.”
    It dawned on Service that Sedge was deeply involved in all this, whatever it was, and that maybe she had neglected to inform her lieutenant. “Have you talked to the state archaeologist?” he asked her, intentionally switching directions to see how she would react.
    She made a growling sound. “Those clowns don’t talk to mere cops. We’re the equivalent of dog turds under their flip-flops.”
    “You know, we have good senior people in Lansing to run interference for such things.”
    “Yeah, and we all know what a big fan of Lansing
you
are,” she said sarcastically.
    “Does McKower know what’s going on?”
    “Know
what?
”
    “About Katsu, Toliver, any of this.”
    “Don’t you
get
it? Eight weeks ago
I
didn’t know anything. All I heard was that a bunch of tribals were harassing four-wheeler types out here, and I came out to investigate. Katsu and his people had erected a fence with signs asking all non-Indians to stay away out of respect for his ancestors’ remains.”
    She added, “The old village was in a bit of a sandy bowl, eh. Ass-bags on four-wheelers like to rip up and down the dunes, and they were obliterating everything. If you look around in daylight you can see for yourself.” She continued, “I asked Katsu to take down the barriers and to explain to me what the heck was going on, and since then I’ve been meeting with him and learning. I don’t know enough yet to officially talk to anyone downstate, but my instinct was to first go to the attorney general’s office and find out what they knew about this sort of situation. This couldn’t be the first time this sort of thing has happened.”
    “The state archaeologist won’t talk?”
    “
Hell-ooo!
They talk, but what they say is that cops do
not
have a right or a need to know where historic sites are, or to know what’s in them,
unless
a crime is committed on such ground, and if we detect a suspected crime,we’re to report it to them. Only then will the SAO verify a site’s existence.
Maybe
.”
    What the hell was she telling him?
“That makes no sense,” Service said. “How the hell do we patrol something if we don’t even know it’s there?”
    “They’re afraid we’ll reveal secrets the public isn’t entitled to know. Or steal the artifacts ourselves.”
    “We patrol and take care of underwater preserves,” he said.
    “The ones we know about,” she countered. “There’s a whole lot out there we don’t know anything about.”
    Santinaw had propelled him into something that smelled like it could carry him down to Lansing and create a nasty bureaucratic food fight. The thought made Service weary. His every interaction with Lansing was less than satisfying.