A Witness Above (6 page)

“But something else seems to be worrying you,” she said.

I hesitated. If I told her too much I risked drawing her in as a witness to my illegal collection of evidence.

“Kid was from Leonardston,” I said.

“Leonardston? You mean where you used to—?”

“Right.”

“And?”

“I saw something around the body, something that caused me to be suspicious.”

“Suspicious? Of what?”

“Of someone who went out to fly Armistead with me at the same farm not too long ago.”

She said nothing for a moment. She ran her finger around the rim of her glass, thinking. “Did you tell the police anything about what you saw?”

“No. Not yet.”

We stared at one another. “Couldn't you get into trouble?”

“Potentially. Look, it may just be a coincidence.”

“Did you talk to your daughter yet?”

I shook my head. “Left a message on her machine.”

“Don't you think you ought to try her again? When was the last time you two spoke?” She was wanning to the challenge.

“I don't know, two, maybe three weeks.”

“How long ago did you say you'd been out there with her?”

“It was earlier this month.”

“Would that have been long enough for the body to have ended up in the condition you found it?”

“Probably.”

The waitress brought our club sodas. I could sense Marcia sifting through the possibilities.

“I don't know much about police work, but might I make a suggestion?” She stroked the side of her new glass with her little finger.

“Couldn't hurt, I suppose.”

“You don't wait for Nicole to call you back. You go over there and find out in person right now what's going on.”

“You mean to Leonardston?”

“Uh-huh.” She squeezed her lime into her glass and took a sip. “You're over there all the time anyway, aren't you, to visit Jake?”

“Yeah, but that's different.”

“It's also more reason for you to go—you're familiar with the area. So I say, go now. Get to the bottom this. You can be there well before midnight.”

Any visions of romance for the night vanished. “I'm not sure it's so simple, Marsh. Other than hunting once in awhile, Nicky and I aren't exactly close. And anyway, the state police are involved. They'll want to talk to me again for sure, if she's a suspect. It's not like people down there don't know she's my daughter.”

“Jason and I are leaving early Sunday to go to Williamsburg for a couple days. Remember? It's his history club's field trip to Yorktown. If you have to be out of town, it's the perfect opportunity for you to go.”

“Look,” I said. “There'll be a story on the news tonight or in the paper tomorrow about the body. A TV van was just pulling up when I split the scene.”

“Really? I suppose as long as they don't mention your name in the reports, no one else will be able to connect you with the body,” she said.

“Connect
me
with the body? …” The folks at the next table cast us a sidelong glance.

Marcia lowered her voice. “Well, from what you said, you already have a connection, whether you like it or not.”

“But I wasn't out there looking for a dead body.”

“Maybe you were meant to.”

“Now you're beginning to sound like Walter.”

She placed her hand over mine again. “You're the detective, Frank. You'll figure it out.”

“I suppose you're going to tell me something like, ‘She's your daughter,’ too.”

She nodded. Her smile created a little dimple in her chin that I would have given anything, at that moment, to lean over and kiss. Instead, I slipped both my hands around her fingers and stared at them. They were slender, graceful even, soft to the touch.

“Anything else I can do?”

I thought about that. “Well … there is one thing …”

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “You are nothing, if not persistent. Did you call Jake and tell him what happened?”

“Not yet.”

“How about your ex-wife?”

“You kidding?”

Marcia's own ex-spouse was a big-shot executive who, after fifteen years of marriage and a child, had simply informed his wife that he no longer loved her, that he had been carrying on an affair with one of his firm's vice-presidents, an attractive twentysomething blonde.

“I did call Cahill though,” I said. “The land where I found the body belongs to his uncle.”

“He's the one who owns the restaurant in Leonardston, isn't he?”

I nodded.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. Only got his answering tape too.”

“Doesn't that make you frustrated, another machine?”

“Yes.”

“Even though your finding whatever you found is only a coincidence.”

“Okay,” I said. “You win.”

4

Which was how I happened to find myself two hours later drifting toward hills that could have passed for the moonlit humpbacks of subterranean blue whales. Out here on a winding state highway in the sawtooth Alleghenies, the land grew pockmarked with the remnants of twenty-six-inch coal. On the seat beside me sat my cell phone and a S&W .357 Magnum, secure in its Kramer holster. It was already after eleven
P.M.,
and I had no plans to stay the night.

As I said, during the long period of investigation and legal action over the New Rochelle shooting, Cat Cahill had regaled Toronto and me with stories of growing up in western Virginia before moving to the Bronx. Without skipping to Montana after the trial, it sounded like the perfect place to escape New York. Even my heritage argued for such a move. My father had been a Czech bureaucrat who had managed to defect after Prague spring—Pavlicek was not our real name. But my mother heralded from the mountains of Tennessee. Growing up, whenever they took me to visit Mom's relatives. Dad told me the Appalachians reminded him of the Krkonose near Jablonec in northern Bohemia where he had hiked as a young man.

Never mind that the reality of Leonardston, Virginia, hadn't quite lived up to Cat Cahill's embellishments. Oh, it was beautiful enough all right, but we had only lived there a year when the arguments between Camille and myself began to escalate. I was a loser who spent too much time on his new job and had now blown everything. I didn't make enough money, didn't know who she really was. The move to a new environment and a new type of job, I had hoped, would be the balm the marriage needed to survive. Instead, it proved to be the irritant that tripped us into oblivion. By the time George Rhodes entered the picture with his big house and horses, we were already sleeping in separate beds.

Around a curve the lights of Leonardston appeared.

“Hey partners! Lasso yourselves up a great deal at Bartman Motors! In downtown Leonardston, right across from the Taco Bell!” the local FM station barked in surround sound. Next, came a pale imitation of running horses, followed by music: ZZ Top.

The seat of Affalachia County rested in a narrow valley along the banks of the Tungsten River, and despite a fortune that had waxed and waned, clung to its existence like an elderly survivor. Currently, things were on the uptick. A large civic club sign marked the entrance to town. There was a new elementary school, three modern bank branches on Main Street, and a supermarket shopping center with a big parking lot. All closed, of course, at this hour.

At least I knew where I might find Nicole. At the end of Main Street, Cahill's Restaurant sported a new maroon awning in front. Beer neons glowed through the windows. The lot was packed, but a car was just leaving. I flipped down the visor as I took its spot.

In the vanity mirror's reflection my face looked altered by age: cheeks that had long ago lost the gauntness of their youth, skin around the eyes that had begun to sag. The nose, broken twice, seemed more crooked. The once jet-black hair and heavy brows were beginning to gray. I clipped the visor back where it belonged.

I got out and walked toward the door. Three cars down from my truck, inside a rental car with Maryland plates, a man sat smoking. For a moment I thought he might be watching me, but then I thought I must have imagined it.

I slipped in through the front of the building with an eye out for Nicole. She was nowhere to be seen, so I edged through the crowd toward the bar. I recognized, vaguely, a waitress hurrying past with a load of drinks.

“Nicole Pavlicek? Seen her come in?”

She stopped and eyed me for a moment. “Ain't you her father?”

“That's right.”

She tilted her head toward a far corner. I followed her gaze, someone moved in the crowd, and I caught a glimpse of my daughter seated in a booth with another young woman.

“Thanks.”

I was already ensconced in Charlottesville by the time Cat Cahill retired from the New Rochelle force, moved back to Virginia, and opened his bar and restaurant. A few years years before, Jake Toronto too, after bouncing around the country, bought some land and settled not far from Leonardston. It seemed like poetic synergy: the three of us—Jake, Cat, and I—coming to rest in nearly the same orbit.

Unlike me, Cahill had enjoyed a long and, by all appearances, happy marriage. He had even become a grandfather. In the same way I was drawn to the stability of Walter and Patricia Dodd's home, I suppose, Jake and I were pulled into Cat's sphere of influence. Maybe the Leonardston native felt some guilt for having indirectly gotten us into the situation that ended our careers. Either way, it was hardly surprising that Nicole had become enchanted by his magnanimity too.

I weaved through the crowded tables toward Nicole. She was intent on talking with the girl seated across from her, and hadn't seen me yet. A few feet away from her clumps of young men hovered around a couple of pool tables. As I neared the booth she looked up at me with a start.

“Daddy?”

“Hi, Nicky.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

She didn't look pleased. “I'm sorry, but I'm trying to have a conversation right now. You should have called.”

“I did. Earlier this evening. Left a message, in fact.”

“Well, I didn't get it.”

“It's important, Nicky.”

She stared at me for what seemed more than a minute, but must have been only a few seconds. God, her pretty face reminded me of her mom's from a couple decades before. Her hair was different, of course, dark and cut short, somewhere between a crewcut and a bob. She wore shorts, sandals, and a tank-top blouse; eyeliner, blush, and black cherry lipstick. Her friend, a tired-looking blonde, had a harder edge to her.

Nicole sighed. “I guess. If we have to. Give me a minute, will you, Regan?” She swung her long legs up and out of the booth.

The other girl nodded and pulled a cigarette from her purse. But before she could even put it in her mouth, Nicole grabbed it from her hand. “Ah, ah-h-h. Remember what we said? You've got to give it up.”

She turned to me and took my arm. “I've only got a couple minutes. Let's go sit at the bar.”

I couldn't help feeling a small bit of pride. “What are you now, the tobacco police?”

She said nothing. The self-assurance of youth.

We crossed the room and found two empty stools. I ordered us both club sodas.

“Well?” she said.

“Nice to see you too, honey.”

“C'mon, Dad. You come barging in here unannounced. What do you want me to say?”

The drinks arrived and I took a sip. “I don't want you to say anything. Just tell me about Dewayne Turner.”

Her own drink remained untouched. She crossed her arms and bit her lip. “Is that what you came to talk to me about?”

“Did you know him?”

“What are you up to? And what do you mean,
did?”

I told her about the find I'd made while hunting.

She listened for several seconds. Her hand suddenly seemed to quiver as she picked up her drink. She glanced back at her friend across the room, then interrupted me in mid-sentence. “I can't talk about this right now, Daddy.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“I just can't, that's all. I'll call you later this weekend.”

“But—”

“I'll call you. I promise.”

A commotion broke out in the back of the place. Two sheriff's deputies in tan uniforms and hats had appeared and were in the process of arresting a black teenager who'd been playing pool. The officers were both white. One had a mustache and the other's skin was badly sunburned. A small crowd had gathered. The bartender came out from behind his counter and went over to get a better look. I turned from Nicole and followed.

The arrestee, a skinny youth, decked out in blue jeans and a muscle shirt, while not resisting, didn't appear too happy about the situation. “I didn't do nothin’, man. What you goin’ and hastlin’ me for?”

But the deputies were efficient. One of them twisted the kid's arm up against his back as if it were a pretzel.

“Hey! That hurts, you know.”

I stepped a little closer.

They had him up against the wall and the cuffs on him. The deputy with the mustache took something from one of his pockets and whispered something only the youth could hear. Then he reached for his nightstick.

“Excuse me, officers,” I said. “But I didn't see this suspect resisting arrest.”

The deputies turned to look at me. The one with the stick in his hand stared at me as if I'd stepped off another planet. “Who the hell are you?”

“Name's Pavlicek. I used to be a cop myself.”

With that he visibly relaxed. Must have been worried I was an attorney. “Just makin’ an arrest, buddy. You'd best be about your business.”

“Yeah, well I would, except—”

“Except what?”

There was a stir in the room and I turned to see another man approach, a muscular type with sandy blonde hair and a sculpted waist. He wore a golf shirt and khaki slacks with a gold star and a gun attached to his belt.

“I'm Sheriff Cowan,” he said, extending his hand to me. His grip was too strong, either out of habit, nervousness, or wanting to make an impression. His face jogged a connection in my mind, as if that terminus had just been waiting there for those features to show up to activate the circuits. It was handsome and unblemished, except for a nasty scar above one eyebrow. The chin predominated, enough to make you wonder how he would do in a fistfight. The man was practically Hollywood material—Affalachia County conjures up its vision of the all-American peacekeeper.