A Witness Above (8 page)

A recently built municipal building bore an impressive sign for the sheriff's department and, I knew, the jail. Aerials and satellite dishes protruded from the roof. Gray walls matched a flagstone sidewalk. Inside was a small reception area with a Formica-topped counter. A deputy with skin the color of mahogany and a uniform that appeared almost ready to burst apart at the seams, stood his post. He studied me, eyes flat and expressionless and dark as coals.

“Can I help you?” His voice was a deep bass.

“Yes. I'm here to see a prisoner, if that's possible. Her name is Nicole Pavlicek.”

“And you are?”

“My name is Frank Pavlicek. I'm Nicole's father.”

Some flicker of recognition seemed to enter his mind. He squinted, shifted his feet, and put his thumbs inside his gun belt. “It's after regular hours. Wait here a second,” he said and started to turn away.

“Before you go, better let me check my weapon,” I said. I smiled and slipped off my jacket, undid the holster, and handed it to him.

“You a cop or something?”

“No. But I used to be.”

He nodded, slid open a desk drawer, placed the holster inside, and locked it. “Thank you, sir. I'll be right back.”

People up north tend to think hicks from small Southern towns are either ignorant, naive, or both. I had made the same mistake when I first moved to Virginia, misconstruing civility for stupidity or weakness. I didn't anymore.

In less than a minute the deputy was back. A door opened at the side and he came through it followed by none other than Sheriff Cowan.

“Well, hello, Mr. Pavlicek. We meet again.” His smile was almost an accusation as we shook hands once more.

“Working late, aren't you, sheriff?”

He shrugged. “Comes with the job. Why don't you all come on back to my office and we can talk before we take you back to see your little girl.”

The last time I'd thought of Nicole as little was on her ninth birthday, but I said nothing. I followed him through a door and down a corridor that smelled faintly of disinfectant.

“Coffee?” he asked as we passed a machine.

“No thanks.”

“You trek all the way over from Charlottesville again this evening?”

“Right.”

“Pretty drive at sunset. Where you staying?” Casually curious.

“With a friend, Jake Toronto.” Before leaving home, I had called Toronto who'd merely grunted affirmatively when I told him I was heading his way with Armistead, and that we might have to stay a few days. I'd also called Marcia in her hotel room in Williamsburg to let her know what was happening and that I'd be gone.

“Toronto. Sure, the bird man. You two used to be partners, right?”

“You seem to know a lot about me,” I said.

“I like to know about people, especially those that walk into my jail.”

We arrived at his office. It was a spacious corner room with a window that looked out the back of the building on some shrubs and beyond to a brightly lit lawn. Built-in bookshelves lined one wall, though he didn't seem to have much reading material, mostly training or procedural manuals. The plush carpeting was easy on my feet. The sheriff settled into the leather chair behind the desk.

“ ‘The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds,’ “ I said.

“Say what?”

I took an arm chair opposite. “Nothing. Poetry, e.e. cummings.”

He snickered and picked up a piece of paper on his desk. Reading. “Let's see, now. You used to work Homicide in New York. Lost your position under, ah, special circumstances. …” We both knew what circumstances he meant. He looked up at me as if waiting for me to offer more of an explanation, but I didn't.

He went on: “Private investigator—you didn't tell me that the other night. Been doin’ it quite awhile. Says here you got a permit to carry. License is up to date.”

“I would've run for office too, but I'm not good-looking enough.”

He didn't see the joke. Great guy to work for. Perfect and humorless.

“You know why your daughter's been arrested, don't you?”

“She said you found drugs in her car.”

“That's right. And you were talking with her Friday night when we, ah, first met.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Come over here to Leonardston often, do you, Mr. Pavlicek?”

“Occasionally.”

He reached into a stack of papers on his desk and pulled out what looked like a fax. “I was reading a report from the state police on a different case this weekend—not your daughter's, you understand—and I come across some-thin’ interesting. Your name, in fact. I even spoke with an agent”—he scanned the fax—”Ferrier. Special Agent William Ferrier. He says you're the one found our late great Dewayne Turner dead.”

“Unfortunately.” This was starting to get uncomfortable.

“So let me understand here. You happen to be the one who finds a body way over there in Madison County. Vic happens to be a drug dealer from Leonardston. Then you show up that night in my town talking with your daughter in a bar.” Cahill's was more of a restaurant than a bar, but I let it pass. “Then, just a couple nights later, your daughter's arrested for possession with intention to distribute. I got it right so far, Mr. Pavlicek?”

I nodded.

“Don't all that seem a little unusual to you?”

“A little.”

He smirked. “Your daughter was pretty close with Dewayne Turner, you know.”

I didn't, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. I nodded.

“If you're dirty, I'm gonna nail you.” Just like that. John Wayne.

“I'm not dirty.”

His jaw worked hard at a smile. “Your denial is reassuring. … You know, Ferrier didn't exactly say this, but if I was in your shoes, with your background and all, and I was privy to some, let's say, privileged information about my daughter, I might be inclined to come over here and poke around a bit.” He stared at me for a long second.

I shrugged. I needed to at least try to neutralize this guy. “Next, you can tell me this isn't New York … this is official police business … I'd do the same if I were in your shoes. But look, sheriff, the way I see things, we're all on the same side here.”

“Oh, really? I'm glad to hear you say that.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head.

“Nicole says she's innocent.”

“Don't they all?”

“You okay with me talking to her then?”

He waved his hand and sat forward again. “All right. I won't stop you from trying to help your daughter.”

“That's decent of you.” I meant it.

“I got to tell you though, I've got another problem. And you coming up with that body right now doesn't exactly help.”

“Oh?”

“We had Dewayne Turner in custody the night before he disappeared, a few weeks back. … Picked him up for loitering.”

I wondered if they'd strong-armed Turner the way they did the kid in Cahill's the other night.

“Turner used to be a player in the drug trade around here. Served some juvie time when he was still a minor. Some folks are saying he got churched, that he hadn't been dealing for awhile, but I'm not so sure I buy into all that. Anyway, we didn't find anything on him that night. Questioned him but we had to turn him loose.”

“Where's your problem then?”

“Problem is, we can't find anyone who saw him again after he left our jail.” He stared at me for a long hard second.

“Which leaves you trying to explain why a black teenager, last seen in your custody, disappears and eventually turns up dead a hundred miles away.”

“You got it. What's worse. Turner's older brother is a newspaper reporter. Already threatening to bring in the NAACP to investigate and God knows who else.”

So the Affalachia County Sheriffs Department had a public relations problem. Unless the sheriff wasn't laying all his cards on the table either. Maybe there was a cover up. Maybe Cowan was the dirty one. Maybe we were just two dirty guys together.

“How did you arrest Nicole?”

“That was different. Call came in on the Crimeline yesterday. You know, one of these deals where we offer a reward for information and all. ‘Cept this caller wanted to stay anonymous. Nothing unusual about that. A male. Claimed he knew where somebody was hiding a stash of powder. Said the Pavlicek girl had it in her car, a red BMW convertible. Inconspicuous, right?”

“So you stopped her.”

“Of course. But not before she give us a good chase. Doin’ about ninety. We figure she must have panicked. Deputies pulled her over outside her mama's place. Found the coke under one of the wheel wells.”

“How much?” I said.

“Couple of keys.”

“Decent dollars.”

“Yeah. And your daughter ain't exactly known to be desperate for money.” He looked at me skeptically. “How about you?”

“I'm not broke, but I might have a hard time scraping up enough to finance a couple keys of coke on a moment's notice.”

“Uh-huh.” Cowan stood. Now that we were buddies, he turned and surveyed the night view out his window. “You want to know something? That girl of yours has had a better chance than most around here to make something of herself. Her stepdaddy, you know—nothing personal now, Frank—he was like a rock for that kid. But you take George Rhodes out of the equation …”

“Sounds like you know the family well.”

He shrugged, sat down again and put his big black walking shoes up on the desk. “ ‘Bout as well as I know everybody around here, I guess.” The ail-American cop thing again. “Your little girl's been hanging with the wrong crowd, I can tell you that.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Turner for one. That kid was trouble. I don't care what those church people say. There's a girl too, a year or two older than yours. Name's Regan Quinn. We've busted her for possession a couple times. Went to high school with Nicole but never finished. Works down to the White Spade now.”

“I know the Spade.” Quinn must have been the young woman talking with Nicole the other night.

He shrugged. “Some things don't change.”

“Nicole been arraigned yet?”

He shook his head. “Still trying to piece our facts together.”

“How about a lawyer? Her mother hire one?”

“Right,” he said. “Shelton Radley. I believe he also handled George's estate.”

Shelton Radley had been practicing law in Leonardston for over thirty years, had been George Rhodes's attorney. He was honest, as far as I knew. Except for his affair with the bottle, he might have been a decent lawyer—if there were such a thing.

“You still get along with your ex-wife?” he asked.

“We're not on each other's Christmas card list, if that's what you mean.”

“You fly hawks, don't you, like your pal Toronto?”

“One. A red-tail.”

“Big bird,” he said. “You boys get off on it when they kill something?”

How could you explain working with a bird of prey to someone like this? You couldn't—not really. “She has her moments.”

“Your daughter mention anything to you about having problems? Anything to make you think she'd be usin’ drugs?”

“Nope.”

“Well her mama don't seem so surprised.”

I decided I'd risk probing a little more. “Ferrier mentioned that the drug trade's picked up down this way.”

He glared at me. “Some.” Now I was stepping on his toes.

“How are you dealing with it?”

He waved his hand and suddenly looked tired. “How else? Best we can. Most of these new operators, gangs and whatnot, they're pretty sophisticated. Know how to come and go and all the back roads and places where they can slip across state lines. DEA came in a couple years back and mounted an operation. That made some dent. But it's like the moonshiners. If we brought in enough manpower and equipment to really do the job, people'd start complaining we was running a police state.”

“Land of the free,” I said.

He grunted again.

“So what's your working theory on the Turner murder?”

“My workin’ theory?” He chuckled. “Simple. What goes around comes around.”

“It was over drugs then?”

“Ten to one.”

“If you don't mind my asking, I assume you have a tape recording of the anonymous tipster.”

“We do.”

“Mind if I have a listen to it?”

He stuck his chin out, thinking it over. “Don't see why not. … You can come by tomorrow and I'll listen to it with you myself.”

“I'd appreciate that.”

His face hardened. “But listen, you mess with my case and I'll come down on you so fast it'll make your ears spin.”

“As long as I can still listen to Frankie Vallie.” Might as well try the humor one more time.

He still didn't get it. “Shit, I know you're not even tellin’ me half of what you know right now.”

I said nothing. Silence had to be safe.

One last grunt, standing to usher me out. “I'll have someone take you back to see your daughter,” he said.

8

As jails go, Affalachia County's must have ranked higher than most. The corridor walls were coated with fresh paint. Sterile light shown on a clean concrete floor. The lock-ups themselves enjoyed no air-conditioning, of course, but the usual odor of sweat, urine, and old Jim Beam was missing.

I waited in a small room used for questioning. No windows, a wooden table, three folding metal chairs. No video camera, I noticed, either. But I couldn't be sure what might be hidden. The light came from a single row of fluorescent fixtures embedded in the ceiling.

Nicole, led by the same deputy who'd greeted me earlier, baby-stepped into the room clad in a blaze-orange jumpsuit, shackles, and handcuffs. Standing, she was tall, only a couple inches shorter than myself. Gone was the makeup she had worn the last time I had seen her. She looked scared.

“Daddy,” she said when she saw me. Her brown eyes brimmed with tears.

I stepped toward her and we hugged. “I'm here, Nickita.

You doing okay?”

She didn't answer. She sat down in one of the hardback chairs. The deputy removed the shackles and closed the door behind him as he left.

“They treating you all right?”

She nodded, wiping a sniffle with the back of her hand.