A Witness Above (17 page)

“So Morelli's people are in Fuad's computer program?”

“No. No, it's just …”

“Hey, but aren't you still curious about what happened that night back in New York?”

“Yeah.”

“I think the current buzzword is closure.”

“You mean like maybe show for sure that the kid with the fancy footwear was the one who did Singer. I never liked shoes as evidence. You walk down the street in Manhattan sometime. There must be millions of shoes.”

“Exactly.”

We broke into an unmowed meadow, long gone to seed, above Jake's farm. From up here you could see for miles. A ring of small hills encompassed his little valley and beyond them, taller mountains to the western horizon.

“So if we nail down the ballistics thing,” he said, “that's going to make our shooting Balazar, what, more justified?”

“Maybe … Plus, I told Cowan I was leaving this afternoon and Marsh will be back home in C'ville later today. Going over there gives me an excuse to take her out to dinner too.”

“Okay, Jedi, count me in.”

We had reached the back of the mews. Jake raised small quail to feed to Jersey when she wasn't hunting. There was a small wire enclosure beneath a giant maple to one side of the lawn. Maybe a hundred of the immature birds bustled about in the shade. I waited until Jake had finished getting Jersey set up inside her own room.

“Speaking of which, Priscilla Thomasen seems like quite a woman.”

“Fine
ain't the word for it.”

“You talk to her often?”

He paused. “We don't, so much, talk, I guess.”

“Right,” I said. “And how often does this occur?”

He shrugged. “I don't know, every couple of weeks. Sometimes more.”

“I guess you don't have to worry about things like politics.”

“No-o-o.”

“You aren't… worried about her personally, though? I mean, in her position and all.”

He laughed. “I'd be more worried if I was that person who broke into her office yesterday.”

We circled around to the front of the trailer. Hercules had already mounted the deck, his tail switching like mad, and was lustily drinking from his bowl. I could still smell the remnant of Jake's morning coffee aging in the brewer.

“I'm going to head back into town,” I said, “and try to avoid the sheriff while I tie up a few loose ends.”

“You going to Dewayne Turner's funeral?”

“That too.”

Toronto himself avoided funerals like the plague. He turned and was checking a weather station he had rigged on the deck between an Outer Banks hammock and an old charcoal kettle grill. “That's good. You got ‘em all off balance, I can tell.”

Nicole's arraignment later that morning was nothing short of a disaster. I never even had a chance to make my case.

Lawyer Radley showed up at the last minute, his eyes looking bloodshot and nervous. The judge was an ex-military type, who still had the crewcut to prove it, and it was obvious he had no affection, let alone respect for my daughter's attorney. He took a hard line on drug cases too, apparently, and when Priscilla Thomasen introduced the additional evidence regarding Dewayne Turner's murder—Nicole's threat and the potential match of the cocaine samples—he ordered the prisoner held without bail for the time being, and scheduled a hearing for later in the week, at which time further evidence would be considered.

The only bright spot was a brief chat I had with Priscilla. When I told her about Weems following me from the Turners’ house the night before, she went to her briefcase and came back with the kind of info a private investigator can seek his teeth into.

18

I sat at a terminal in Leonardston's public library, grateful to the local taxpayers.

A computer and a phone line have become a ticket to
the
world. Make a few calls, find out a Social Security number. Or, as in my case, acquire it, along with a few other tidbits, courtesy of a friendly prosecutor. Then plug in and suddenly you're able to discover things most people would never want known.

Take Kevin Weems, for example. I learned that he had, quite legally, changed his name. His original one had been Kevin Pauling and he had, just as he said, been born in a suburb of Atlanta, gone to Emory for a couple years before dropping out to go to work as a stockbroker. Maybe the name change had something to do with his marriage, subsequent bankruptcy, and messy divorce. Not to mention overdue child support payments. Georgia had just begun posting its most grievous offenders’ mugs on-line and there he was, in living color, along with a few hundred other upstanding citizens of the peach state.

None of which made him a murderer. Most serious crooks don't bother legally changing their names; it's far too easy to set up and use an alias. Besides, for all his hulking demeanor, I somehow couldn't see Weems as a killer, nor imagine him skillfully and silently popping the Commonwealth's attorney's locked back door. But as long as I was tying up loose ends, it certainly couldn't hurt to flesh out his true intentions.

I went through the same computer process with Sheriff Peter Cowan, Camille Rhodes, Regan Quinn, even Warren Turner. Those searches took a lot less time. Except for Camille's divorce from me, in the world of electronic records, court filings, and credit reports, the lawman, the stripper, the reporter, and my ex-wife were all squeaky clean.

A few doors down from the library, the
Leonardston Standard
had an office on Main Street. I had once known the editor, but the paper had changed hands at least a couple of times since then. It was like a lot of small-town weeklies, I suppose, surviving more on the loyalty of its readership than on consistent profitability.

The building was made of flesh-colored brick in need of cleaning. A large picture window faced the street. The paper's moniker dominated the door, stenciled in palace script across the glass, though the blinds were closed tight at the moment to keep out the morning sun.

Warren Turner probably wouldn't be working today. After all, it was the day of his younger brother's funeral. But a sign on the door said
OPEN, COME IN.
I did.

A cute gal wearing a microphone and headset sat talking behind a reception desk. She had long black hair and red fingernails and wore a thin halter top that revealed much of her curvaceous upper body. I waited until she was through.

“Yes?” Her eyes flashed brightly in my direction when she hung up, as if she'd only just noticed my presence.

“I was hoping to speak with Warren Turner, if he's in. My name is Frank Pavlicek.”

“Pavlicek. Are you related to Nicole?”

“Yes.”

“An uncle?” she asked. Born newshound, I guess.

“Her father,” I said.

“But I thought her father was … Oh …” She looked at me suspiciously. “Wait just one minute.”

She pushed a button on her console, which seemed to have about three or four lines glowing at the moment. When someone picked up she said: “Mr. Solomon? A Mr. Pavlicek is here to see Warren … Yes … I'll ask him to wait.”

She put the receiver down. I gave her a hopeful look.

“Mr. Turner is in a meeting with the editor right now, but they're almost through.” she said. “He asked if you could wait.”

“Absolutely.”

“There are magazines on the table.” She smiled and pointed to an empty row of padded chairs hugging the windowsill next to a stained coffeetable stacked with popular newsmagazines.

I picked up a periodical, sat down, and started reading. Anyone who tried to digest the mounds of newspeak that flooded the country these days was either a sadist or a maniac. Most of it had become garrulous to me, bland psycho-babble, contributing to, rather than ameliorating, the culture's woes.

About five minutes later I heard someone coming down a hallway that opened into the reception area. It was Warren Turner. He crossed his arms when he came into view.

“So what can I do for you, Pavlicek? Dewayne's funeral is this afternoon in case you forgot.”

“I didn't forget,” I said. “Just wanted to ask you more about what you think might have happened to him.”

He eyed me with curiosity for a moment or two “How long will it take?”

“Couple of minutes.”

He thought about it. “Okay.”

Warren, it turned out, didn't have an office. No one at the paper did, except the editor. The rest of the staff, all half dozen of them or so, worked with aging computers in a large room in the back, their separate spaces defined by five-foot-tall cubicles. Warren's was in the middle. He borrowed a chair from an absent neighbor for me to use.

“Suppose you look at this as doing penance,” he said.

“Come again?”

“Your investigation. Helping out Priscilla. No one is going to look very hard into the killing of another black teenager who'd been involved in drugs, whether he was still dealing or not. So it's penance, isn't it, for what you did back up in New York?”

“Are we on the record?”

“Not unless you want to be.”

“I didn't come down here as penance for anything. What happened to Toronto and me thirteen years ago happened because we were doing our job.”

“Maybe there was a problem with the job then.” He leaned back in his chair and glared again.

“Look, I didn't come here to debate the merits of police service with you.”

“Oh, I get it. You've had a change of heart and now you're only going to do work for public defenders and ACLU types.”

I smiled. “Is that what you're hoping?”

“Maybe I
should
put you on the record.”

“We both know there are a thousand ways to put something into an article without using a direct quote.”

His turn to smile. “Okay. We're probably not going to end up liking each other. So what do you want from me?”

“For starters, just what is it that makes you so suspicious of Sheriff Cowan? Other than his being an integral cog in the patriarchal white male power structure, that is.”

“You forget,” he said. “Priscilla's part of the patriarchy now too.”

“Sort of eased her way in there, didn't she?”

He pursed his lips. “First thing is, Cowan, from what I can tell, had no grounds to arrest Dewayne except pure harassment. I'm certain Dewayne hadn't done anything illegal for some time.”

“But he had in the past.”

“Right.”

“This church thing … his conversion was genuine then?”

“As genuine as they come.”

“I take it you're not a believer.”

“I know Dewayne was.”

“Priscilla told me you wrote a series about Dewayne's old gang. You still know any of those kids?”

He nodded. “But don't expect me to compromise any of my sources.”

“All right. Maybe you can tell me, though, how they felt about Dewayne quitting the life?”

“Maybe. But I think you'd better ask them that question yourself.”

“I thought you said you wouldn't compromise them.”

“Oh, I won't. Compromise is one thing. Communication is another.”

“They trust you?” I said.

“Some.”

“You think you could arrange this … communication?”

“Maybe.”

“Would it make sense to you if they were involved in Dewayne's killing?”

Someone turned on a copier across the room. “It makes sense, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.” He wasn't going to be led where he didn't want to go.

“This a neighborhood gang, Moony's Hollow?”

“Not as far as I can tell. Guys are from all over.”

“They deal in drugs?”

“What do you think?” he said. “For them it's the only way to buy all the junk they see pitched at them on TV.”

“Can't be that big a dope market around here though, is there? I mean, it's not like we're near a major city.”

“No. But these guys move around. They've got connections in D.C., Baltimore, New York, you name it,” he said.

“New York, huh? I understand Dewayne had a northern supplier. Man named Morelli.”

He shrugged. “I don't know anything about names from up there.”

“So what's this gang like, a rural chapter or something?”

“These dudes are their own chapter. You'll see.” He drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Let's get back to Dewayne. When he joined the church again, what'd he do, just up and quit the gang?”

He leaned back again and stretched. “Far as I know, that's about the gist of it.”

“Did he have a girlfriend?”

“Dewayne? Not really. No one special.”

“Did you know he asked my daughter for a date?”

“So?”

“There was something going on between the two of them. The sheriff claims she threatened to kill him and she's not talking.”

He snickered. “I suppose that explains why he let her go that night then, and kept Dewayne locked up.”

“Doesn't seem logical, does it?”

“Lot of things having to do with black folks and cops don't seem logical.”

“I try not to dwell on it. How about Regan Quinn?”

“What about her?”

“You know who she is?”

“I know who she is,” he said.

“Dewayne ever mention her?”

“Couple of times.”

“He ever date her?”

“Hey, girls like her don't get taken out. Besides, I wasn't Dewayne's baby-sitter. You know what I mean?”

I nodded. “You loved him though?”

The question seemed to startle him. Maybe it was an unfair one to ask on the day of his brother's funeral. He turned his face away to keep me from seeing his eyes.

I gave him a few seconds. Then I said: “I'm sorry.”

He still said nothing.

“You got anything else on the sheriff's department, anything solid?”

He looked at me again for a long moment. Finally he said: “I'm working on something.”

“Priscilla working on it with you?”

“She told you about us, huh? I mean, before …”

“She mentioned it.”

He bit his lower lip. “Now let me ask
you
a question or two, Pavlicek. How do I know you're not just trying to protect yourself or your daughter? Maybe the sheriff's department too? How do I know this whole thing isn't anything but another set-up?”

“I guess you don't,” I said. “But if it helps you sleep any better, I didn't even know who the new sheriff was down here until my daughter called to tell me she'd been arrested. Besides, if they wanted a poster boy for a cover-up, it sure wouldn't be me.”