A Witness Above

by Andy Straka

  “What about the sheriff's office?” she asked.

  I looked at Priscilla. “We'd prefer you contact me directly for now,” the Commonwealth's attorney said.

  “All right,” Carla said. “What will you do when you find whoever did this?”

  “That will be up to the police and the courts.”

  “Neither of which have ever been too friendly to the black man.” It was the glaring Warren again, entering the room. But even his demeanor softened in the presence of his mother. “You okay, Mama?”

  “Of course, honey. Of course.” She didn't turn to look at him.

  “Well for now, if anybody else knows something that might help, you know where to find me,” I said. “Mrs. Turner, I hope you won't mind if I attend Dewayne's funeral tomorrow.”

  “You'd be most welcome,” she said.

  “One other thing, Miss Thomasen may not have told you this, but I was the one who found your son's body.”

  Suddenly you could hear a pin drop in the room. Warren started to say something but his mother held up her hand. Carla Turner looked at me and nodded, her smile a mixture of confusion and the dark wave I'd seen pass over her earlier. I took the chain with the cross from my pocket and held it out for her. “I found this in his hand,” I said. “Do you recognize it?”

  “Yes …” She choked back a sob. “They give them out at our church, to the young people.”

  “Then I've found the right place for it.” I placed the fragile symbol in her hand. It was illegal to give it to her. Priscilla must have known that too, but she said nothing. Carla Turner's brown eyes glowed.

  The prosecutor followed me back out to my truck. “I didn't tell Mrs. Turner, or anyone else yet, about your suspicions concerning your daughter,” she said.

  “Thanks. But I wanted to let her know something.”

  “This is about more than just your daughter though, isn't it?” she said.

  “It is now.”

  “You know he may act like a jerk at times, but Warren might be able to help us. He wrote a series of articles a couple years ago on the gang Dewayne was running with at the time—never used his brother's or anybody else's real name, of course.”

  “You want me to talk with him? We aren't exactly pals.”

  She shrugged. “Up to you.”

  “You trust me now then?”

  She said nothing.

  “Because of Jake?”

  She shook her head. “I had to meet you for myself… you're pretty sure whoever broke into my office earlier was there to eavesdrop on us, aren't you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And it was probably the same person or persons that killed Dewayne.”

  I nodded. “What do you think, counselor?”

  “I think Carla and the Reverend Lori like you.” She stared at me for a moment.

  “What's there not to like?” I said.

  She watched me back the truck into the street. Then she turned and went into the house again. The same kids were now playing ball in the street down the block. They stood aside to let me pass as if I were nothing but a minor interruption in their game.

  As I made my way back toward Main Street, I picked up a pair of headlights tailing me. I purposefully made a wrong turn and drove around a block just to see if they followed and they did. When we reached the main thoroughfare I did the same thing and it happened once more. Only this time I pulled to the curb right in front of a large van, cut my lights, and waited. After a few seconds the car came creeping past and when I spotted it I waved; though the driver tried to act as if he hadn't seen me and quickly hit the gas.

  Curiouser and curiouser—talk about standing out like a sore thumb. It was Kevin Weems in his Porsche.

  That night I called Special Agent William Ferrier at home. He answered it himself.

  “I was about to give up on you. Decided you were taking advantage of my generosity.” A ball game blared in the background. The TV volume lowered.

  “Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.”

  “You're in Leonardston, right?”

  “In the area, yes.”

  “So, you ready to tell me what you got?”

  There was a long pause. “I don't really have anything more than you do.”

  He cleared his throat. “That's bullshit and you know it. I want to know what you were doing mucking around my crime scene.”

  The truth was if I gave him the dollar bill now, I wasn't really giving him much. The sunglasses hadn't amounted to anything. Nicole had been straight with me: Dewayne must've had a pair just like hers. Still. I wasn't ready to add more fuel to my daughter's case, at least not yet.

  “I was naturally curious,” I said. “I got a look at the kid's wallet before I took your people back out to the site. And when I saw he was from Leonardston, I was even more curious.”

  “S'that right.”

  “I should've told you sooner.”

  “Uh-huh. I hear your daughter's in some trouble over there.”

  “Yes. Did you also hear someone tried to waste me today with a rifle and a silencer?”

  He sighed. “I heard. Let's quit the games, Pavlicek. You know we know your daughter was involved with Turner. You in the picture only makes it harder on you and her.”

  “What do you want me to do then?”

  “Lay off, before you get yourself killed. Give us everything you got and let us do our job.”

  “You got any kids, Ferrier?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Then you know I can't do that.”

  He didn't speak for a moment. “Could mean other trouble for you,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I know.”

  “The sheriff down there's not exactly a big fan of you and your buddies.”

  “Yeah, well Cowan has got his own problems. Can I ask you something?”

  He said nothing so I forged ahead: “Your medical examiner find any evidence that Dewayne Turner had been beaten before he was murdered?”

  He blew out a sigh. “No. Why?”

  “The Commonwealth's attorney down here is looking into allegations of police misconduct.”

  “Just great. What are you, a magnet for this kind of stuff, Pavlicek?”

  I said nothing.

  “This is not looking good.”

  “What are you planning to do?” I asked.

  “We'll be down there day after tomorrow. I'm especially looking forward to meeting your old pals. Meantime, I'll be in touch with Sheriff Cowan. I'm recommending he bring you in for questioning, and, if necessary, take you into custody for your own protection and on suspicion of obstructing justice.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “You're making your own bed, Pavlicek. I've got six other cases just like the Turner kid's waiting for me at the office tomorrow. I got enough problems without having to worry about you.”

  “But you can't expect me to just sit around here with my daughter in jail, Ferrier.”

  “How do I know you, your pals, and this daughter of yours, didn't waste this druggie, and now aren't trying to pull a scam?”

  “You don't.”

  “Damn right I don't … the ninth inning's about to start.” The TV volume grew louder again. “Anything else?”

  “Yes … I'd say from where I sit you're a pretty fair cop.”

  “Yeah, right. Semper fi.”

  17

  Birds, by almost any measure, live precarious lives. Watch them flit about, ever mindful of danger, or scatter in panic along the beach. Diseases and hunger haunt them. Predators—everything from crocodiles to the family cat—snuff them out. That millions roam the earth at any given time speaks more to their tenacity and powers of procreation than to their brawn. Of all other creatures, only man, in his mechanistic and artificial way, is able to approximate their natural power of flight, but birds pay a heavy price for their freedom. Maybe such vulnerability explains why raptors are viewed as such symbols of courage. In their own way they are just as vulnerable as
their feathered brethren, but they fight back with a single-minded determination to thrive.

  I doubt Toronto considered any such thoughts as Jersey, backed by the brilliant morning sun, alighted on his outstretched glove. She was a striking specimen, a gray ghost indeed, as Jake had called her, with a large round head, dark streaks across her breast, and piercing red eyes. It was a perfect autumn morning, blue sky with no breeze. The trees, their leaves turned shades of red and gold, hung heavy with dew. Soon the valley Jake and Jersey called home would feel its first frost of the season. Already steam curled like smoke from our mouths.

  “There's my beauty.” Jake deftly slipped Jersey's hood over her head and tightened it with his teeth as he secured her jesses. “A decent workout this morning.

  Won't be long now, girl.” He fed her from his glove. “She's ready, Frank. She is ready.”

  We always flew the red-tail separate from the goshawk. They favored different terrain in which to hunt, for one thing: Armistead preferred the open clearing whereas Jersey bound to game more readily in the deep forest. There was also the risk that the buteos might see in each other an enemy or an opportunity for a potential meal. The gos was slightly smaller but had the more ferocious reputation. I would have put even money on such a fight.

  I shook my head. “You know it's a pleasure to watch you work with her. Sometimes I feel like I'm overreaching with Armistead, maybe trying too hard.”

  “Remember what they tell hoop players, even the pros,” he said. “You gotta let the game come to you.”

  I understood what he meant. Part of learning to be a falconer meant learning to work in harmony with the bird. Not necessarily control, but partnership was the goal.

  Armistead preened, happily back in her mews, having already enjoyed her outing and morning meal. We climbed a gentle slope through the woods, Jersey riding on Toronto's arm, Hercules bounding ahead of us, the retriever's nose to the ground. Our boots crashed through the old, dead leaves, making noise far out of proportion to our size. We were beaters here, not hunters, clumsy oafs compared to the hawk.

  “So you caught someone in Priscilla's office and they tried to take you off the table,” Toronto said.

  “That's right.”

  “Figure it was one of Morelli's people?”

  “My top guess. The question is, why? And what were they after in the CA's office?”

  “What about the sheriff?” Cowan had called at the crack of dawn to say he wanted me to come into his office for questioning. It was not a request, he said. I had managed to stall him by telling him the truth: I might be headed back to Charlottesville. And by letting him believe a lie: I might be backing off a little.

  “I'm not sure I trust him either.”

  “There's also this Weems character hanging with your ex and trying to follow you. You find out any more about him?”

  “Not yet, but I'm about to.”

  “You know I've been thinking about lunch at Cat's later,” Toronto said. “What did you say he told you about going to meet with Fuad?”

  “Old wounds.”

  “Right. Old wounds … Maybe there's more to this situation with Nicky than what we're seeing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I told you, Morelli's people up in New York were supplying Dewayne Turner.”

  “Right.”

  “If they killed Turner, framed Nicole, and are now after you too, maybe this thing with Fuad is just like a diversion or something. Something to screw with our minds.”

  “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.”