A Witness Above (7 page)

“I understand you may have a problem with the way my deputies are making this arrest.”

“Yes, sheriff, I do.”

“Would you like to file a complaint?” His eyes bore into mine.

“No. I just thought your men might be using excessive force.”

“Says he used to be a cop,” the mustached deputy said. He and his partner were beginning to lead the youth from the restaurant now. The partner was reading the kid his rights.

“Is that right?” the sheriff said. “Well, Mr. …”

“Pavlicek.”

“Pavlicek. Yeah, well I'm awful sorry you see it that way. But, as I'm sure you all can appreciate, police tactics can sometimes vary from locale to locale.”

I said nothing. What, was this guy running for a new term?

Surveying the room, he crossed his arms and lowered his voice so that only I could hear. “Look here, this kid's a gang-banger. Sold some crack to a couple twelve year-olds an hour ago.”

I nodded.

He tapped me on the shoulder and nodded as well, then wheeled around to follow his deputies out the door. A couple of the kid's friends shouted taunts at them and made as if to follow, but didn't. There were some swearing and shaking of heads from the group, but it didn't take long for most of the others in the restaurant who had witnessed what happened to go back to their drinks and talking. I thought Nicole might have gone back to talk with her friend too, since she wasn't at the bar when I turned back to talk with her.

But when I looked across at the booth where the two had been sitting, they were gone.

5

Late the next morning the telephone jarred me awake. I cleared my throat and answered on the fifth ring.

“Pavlicek.”

“You sound a little out of it, Frank. Rough night?” It was Agent Ferrier of the Virginia State Police.

“Sorry. I was up late.”

“Oh?”

“It's not every day I come across a dead body.”

“Sure … Let me ask you something. You said your bird's the one led you to the spot where you found the body?”

“Right. Like I said, she'd taken a rabbit.”

“What happened to the rabbit?”

“I don't know. It was probably wounded. My guess is it might have made it to a burrow.”

“Uh-huh. You know, I been checkin’ up on you.”

“Yeah?”

“You and your partner were pretty famous there for awhile.”

“More like infamous.”

“Right. Since you used to live in Leonardston, you ever come in contact with Dewayne Turner before?”

“Never.”

“How about his family? Turns out he has quite a few relatives in that area.”

“Nope. Not that I know of.”

There was a pause while he seemed to be shuffling some papers. “Let's see. Your licenses are clean. You even pay your bills.”

“Nice to know someone cares.”

“I even talked to a couple of your old supervisors up in New York. They said you sometimes like to push the edge, but as far as they were concerned, when push came to shove, you were a pretty straight shooter.”

“I pay them to say that.” All this praise was starting to make me nervous.

“Yeah, well, that's why I'm having a hard time trying to figure out why you would tamper with a crime scene.”

I let his insinuation hang for a moment while I thought of what to say. “Who says I did?”

“Someone did. Not too long before we went over the site either. The vic's wallet looked like it had been disturbed. There was fresh soil broken near the body. Right now my prime suspect is you.”

Stupid. Stupid, stupid. I figured they would be on to me sooner or later. I just didn't count on it happening so fast. I thought back to my aborted conversation with Nicole the night before. Though I was treading on thin ice here, I wasn't about to lay my cards on the table until 1 knew more of what was going on.

“How many of these kind of killings you investigate every year, Ferrier?”

“Too many. The whole state's seeing more trafficking these days. Coke, heroin, meth, you name it. You know the way the whites and middle class blacks fled the cities? Now even the dope dealers are doing it.”

“What's your solve rate?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“It could've been anybody,” I said. “Could've been kids just messing around who found the body and were too scared to turn it in. Maybe someone who just didn't want to get involved.”

“That mean you're denying you deliberately contaminated potential evidence?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly … That the way you want to play it?”

“If I were trying to hide something, why would I have called you guys?”

“Who are you working for?”

Now there was a good question. Was I working for Nicole, or myself? “I'm not working for anybody.”

“Okay. Look, Pavlicek. Since you used to be on my side of the table, I'll spare you the bluster. You know as well as I do, most in our business don't think too highly of you people on the private side. I like to keep an open mind, though, judge each person on their own merit. You know what I mean? And I gotta tell you, you ain't started off on the right foot.”

“Sorry.”

“I'll give you a couple days to think things over. Tomorrow's Sunday and not much is going to happen then anyway. But come the end of the day Monday, at the latest, I want to hear back from you as to exactly what you were looking for when you went over my crime scene, you got that? Otherwise, you'll have more than your license to worry about.”

“Would you buy professional curiosity?”

“I don't buy shit, Pavlicek. You push too hard and you're not going to like what happens.”

He hung up.

Just peachy. Not only was I playing cat-and-mouse with my daughter, now I had to fend off the official gumshoes. I couldn't really blame Ferrier. Guy was just doing his job. But, hey, Nicole said she'd call me back well before his deadline, and I'd get a better idea where we stood. If need be, maybe I could even turn up the charm and keep him at bay a little longer than he'd indicated. But something told me that might be easier said than done.

No call came from Nicole the rest of that day. Cat Cahill did call me back, however. He said he was sorry he'd missed me the night before, that it was probably a good thing I had been the one to make the discovery of Turner's body, rather than his uncle, whose ticker might not have survived the experience.

Saturday's
Charlottesville Daily Progress
carried a single quarter column on the front page of the inside regional section about my discovery of the late Dewayne Turner. The only mention of me in the article was that “a hunter” had discovered the body. Cat's uncle and Special Agent Ferrier were quoted. The dead man had been a drug dealer all right, according to the sheriff's office in Leonardston. The shooting was thought to be gang-related.

That afternoon I caught Toronto at home. He lived on a small farm surrounded by neighbors who allowed him to fly and hunt with his birds on their land. He had managed to sock away enough in various investments that he was able, supplemented by the occasional nebulous “security consultant” assignment, to support his Spartan lifestyle. I had tried his number twice earlier—Jake didn't believe in answering machines.

“Yo, my hawk-man,” he said.

I told him all about what had happened, using the same approach I had employed with Marcia when it came to the part about Nicole.

“I was over there too last night,” I said. “A quick trip to see Nicky at Cahill's. I managed to talk to her, but she wasn't exactly forthcoming. Promised to call me back before the end of the weekend though.”

“You see Cat?”

“No. They said he was taking the night off. I just talked to him on the phone this morning though.”

“Hey, maybe the dead kid you found had a crush on Nick, something simple as that. She's a fine-looking young thing.”

“Don't get any ideas.”

“I'm just saying, that's all.”

“Yeah, well it's almost time for season. How's Jersey?”

“Primed,” he said. “The ghost of the forest will be ready.”

Jersey was a three-year-old goshawk, the only raptor Jake was flying at the moment. Not being one to waste any resource, Jake, during season, would usually take what was left of Jersey's bagged quarry after the bird had eaten enough to maintain her weight. He made rabbit stew, cooked squirrel, possum, and even fashioned clothing out of some of the skins, and necklaces out of song bird feathers. Hard to believe from a guy who grew up in Elmhurst, New York, whose father had been a cop, and until he was twenty-seven years old had wanted nothing more in life than to be a detective. He said it was the Indian coming out in him.

When he first told me he was taking up falconry, I thought it a little odd. Why would anyone spend so much time just to train and take care of a big bird? But my first trip hunting with him convinced me otherwise. It wasn't the same as hunting with a gun. It was working in concert with something wild and precious. Most of the time, it didn't seem like hunting at all.

“So when you bringing Armistead over?” he said. “I need to get a look at that red-tail and make sure you aren't abusing her.”

“Soon.”

If only I'd realized then how soon it would be.

6

Sunday morning I tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep in. Too anxious to stay in bed. I had gone to Marcia's house for dinner the night before. She lived in a nicer part of town, a neighborhood of grand colonials nearer the university. We didn't talk much about my abbreviated trip to Leonardston. We talked instead about a new book she was writing that dealt with the role of women in the South during the Reconstruction. We talked about the play she had seen Friday night, even a little about how the university's football team was faring. She fed me salmon, baked potatoes, and yellow squash, and we stayed up late on the couch in front of a black-and-white rerun of It
Happened One Night.
We kissed a few times during the movie, but then we stopped. This incident with the body and Nicole wasn't exactly doing wonders for my love life.

Walter and Patricia made their usual noises when they left for church around eight. I laced up my running shoes and put in four miles, along Rose Hill Drive to Preston, across to Rugby Road and down through the university, then back up Emmet Street to Barracks, returning on Rugby Avenue.

Back home, I padded barefoot into the kitchen and downed half a quart of orange juice. Then I got out the frying pan, three fresh brown eggs, a mushroom, and a block of sharp Cheddar cheese. I made myself an omelet, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat alone at the kitchen table while I leafed through the Sunday paper, searching for any more mention of the murder of Dewayne Turner. There was none. Still no message from Nicole either.

I spent most of the afternoon working with Armistead again, doing some jump training in her outdoor enclosure where I had her weathering. I should have gone into the office afterward to catch up on paperwork, but couldn't bring myself to climb in the truck. Monday promised overdue reports and a series of telephone calls. I rented office space in an old converted warehouse near the downtown mall, one of those places where you share a receptionist, a copier, fax, and coffee machine with other economically underprivileged businesses. I didn't employ a secretary, just my five-year-old word processing software, which could crank out eighty words a minute when I got up to speed.

Still no word from Nicole. Early that evening I went out back to check on Armistead. The waning light shone pale on the backs of the houses along Rugby Avenue as I entered the wooden structure beside the fence. The red-tail stirred a little.

“Hello, queen,” I said. She did look rather regal on her perch. “Had a good workout today, didn't we?”

She came fully awake and tilted her hooded head toward the sound of my voice.

“If 1 don't hear from that daughter of mine you like soon, we might have to take a little trip. Over to Jake's—you'll probably remember.”

She shifted her feet.

“It's business, girl. Remember that rabbit the other day? … Well … It's turned into an even bigger problem than I thought.”

Afterward, I was lying in bed with a bead on Tom Clancy's latest opus, but I couldn't concentrate. Was I going to have to call Nicole or go back over there to find her again? I was just about to pick up the phone on the lamp stand when it rang. Nicole breathed heavily on the other end.

“Dad?”

I breathed a sigh of relief and swung my legs off the bed. “Yes?”

“I'm glad I caught you in.”

“Me too, honey.”

“Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't call back sooner, but things have gotten sort of crazy over here.”

“You sound like you've been running.”

“Running? You mean like working out?” Her laugh sounded cynical. “Not really … I've come into a little trouble though.”

“Trouble?”

“Yeah.”

My gut tightened. I could hear a hollow scraping in the background, like the sound of a desk drawer being pulled open, an echo that could have been reverberating off cinderblock walls. Someone in the background coughed.

“What's going on, Nicky?”

She didn't answer right away. She was still breathing hard, and I could tell she was trying hard not to cry, so I waited.

“Well, for one thing, I'm in jail,” she finally said.

7

For the second time in less than forty-eight hours I arrived in Leonardston, Virginia; this time with my overnight bag packed and Armistead riding securely in her hawk-box in back. The place had all the appearance of a quiet Sunday night in a small Southern town. If I weren't so worried about Nicole, I might even have been entranced by the bucolic splendor.

Near the school something flashed in the corner of my eye. Just in time for me to slam on the brakes as a group of four or five kids on mountain bikes sailed across the road in front of me. None of them looked my way—they seemed oblivious to the accident they had almost caused. But before they disappeared over an embankment, the last one in line acknowledged my presence for all of them: he flipped me the bird. So much for bucolic splendor.