by Andy Straka
“I was hoping you might be able to help me piece some things together.”
“Okay. So I take it you must be looking into the circumstances surrounding your friend’s death.”
“No comment.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want my name spread all over the news and I don’t think Betty Carew wants that either.”
“Why? What are you afraid of?”
“Misunderstanding, miscommunication, sensationalism, biased reporting, quotes taken out of context … need I go on?”
She tilted her head slightly, her eyes flashing. “You think that’s what I’ll do, somehow exploit your story?”
“Not necessarily. That’s why I’m here. I’m not willing to go on the record about anything yet. I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Fair enough. As long as you’re willing to answer a couple of mine.”
“Background only,” I said.
She nodded. “Background only.”
“All right. You said you’re doing a story on extremist groups in West Virginia. Would that happen to include the Stonewall Rangers?”
“Yes. But they’re not the largest and most vocal. More of a splinter group actually.”
“Not as visible either then, I take it.”
“Well, they don’t try to march on Washington or anything, if that what’s you mean.”
“Would you say their more clandestine activities make them more dangerous?”
“Possibly. Then again they may all be dangerous.”
“You said you heard my name on the police scanner. Was there some other reason you showed up at the Carews’ house yesterday?”
“To maybe get someone from the family’s reaction to his shooting. To see if there might be more to it than just the police story about a hunting accident, and if what happened to you up in the woods might be related.”
“Makes sense. But how do you tie all that in to your story?”
“Tony Warnock’s involvement, for one thing.”
“The attorney.”
“That’s right.”
“Why would his representation of the Carew estate be a problem?”
“Because I’ve spent the last couple of months trying to trace the finances of some of these organizations and where they get their money. Warnock’s name has come up a couple of times.”
“He a Stonewaller?”
“No. As far as I’ve been able to determine, he’s not a member of any group. He’s what I like to call a silent partner.”
“A sympathizer.”
“More than that. A sympathizer with money.”
Alarm bells were going off in my head.
“Okay. So you thought his client, Chester Carew, being shot in the woods might have some bearing on your story.”
“Still do.”
“You talked to the police or FBI?”
“Yes. They’ve got their eye on a lot of these people.”
“I bet. They give you anything specific?”
“I’m a feature reporter, Frank.” She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “The words ‘the investigation is ongoing’ sound familiar to you?”
I had to smile at that. “Always worked for me.”
“Now it’s my turn,” she said. “You’re a private investigator. What was your relationship with Chester Carew?”
“Friend. I knew him through falconry.”
“You’re one of those guys hunts with hawks too, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“As an investigator though, have you formed any opinions yet about how or possibly why he was killed?”
“No.”
“But you’re here right now, so you are looking into the matter.”
“The ‘looking into’ is ongoing.”
She smiled. “What about what happened up there in the woods yesterday?”
Should I tell her about Higgins and the link to the Rangers? “Too early to tell if it’s related,” I said.
“You know, some of the PIs I’ve talked to in the past like to brag about the cases they’re working on.”
“Not if they’re any good, they don’t.”
She nodded. “Anything else you can tell me that might contribute to my story?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Not really. No.”
“You married?”
“Divorced.” I’d also noted the absence of a ring on her finger.
“Then maybe you’d like to get together for dinner sometime.”
“Are you asking me for a date?”
“Does that bother you?”
“What, being asked or you doing the asking?”
“Either.”
“Neither bothers me.”
“Good.”
“Let me get back to you on that.”
“Okay.”
On the windowsill sat a large picture frame filled with several photos of the reporter. In a number of them, she held a dog or a cat in her arms.
“You an animal lover?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Good thing to be.”
I stood up to leave. “Thanks very much for your time. I mean, on your day off and everything.”
“You’re just lucky I didn’t sic a cameraman on you.”
“Cameraperson. It’s a PC world.”
“Right,” she said softly.
“It takes guts to be going after the Stonewallers and some of these other groups.”
She shrugged. “It’s my job. People have a right to know what they’re all about.”
“Not to mention giving your station’s ratings a boost.”
“Yes,” she said. “There’s that too.”
“Everybody is scared of hatred, but they want to come home at night and watch it on their screens.”
“Makes them feel safer, I guess.”
“Sure … to be watching rather than to actually be there falling victim to the hatred themselves.”
“But what happens when the tube goes dark?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe we all look for someone to cling to.”
“Who are you looking for, Frank?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She said nothing.
“So you go ahead and ask your questions and I’ll ask mine.”
“Maybe they’ll lead us to something.”
“Just be sure to watch your back,” I said.
“Glad to hear you care about it.”
“What?”
“My back.”
I saw her turn to look out at the river as I went out and closed the door.
13
The GMC crew cab pickup pulled away from the curb in front of the studio as I rounded the corner out of the drive. Traffic was light and the driver hung back a ways. But even after I turned at the next two lights, I noticed he stayed with me.
I was so busy glancing off toward the distance in my rearview mirror I didn’t notice the dark unmarked sedan pull in right behind me with its blue light flashing—no siren—until we’d traveled another hundred yards or so. The big pickup was also closing fast. I turned off the street into the parking lot of an abandoned convenience store, its windows boarded over and covered with graffiti, and waited.
A tall black man wearing a green hunting jacket, dark pants, and hiking boots stepped out of the passenger side of the sedan and came around to the driver’s window of my Ford. He was built like an all-pro fullback. He had a large, expressionless—at the moment at least—face with brown eyes that looked a couple of sizes too large for his head.
I rolled down my window.
“Frank Pavlicek?” When he squinted, his eyes looked more normal.
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“Special Agent Jarrod Grooms, ATF.” He showed me his Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms shield. “Wondered if we might have a word with you for a few moments.”
“Okay.” I cut the engine and pocketed my keys.
“If you’ll follow me, please.” He gestured with hi
s head toward the other two vehicles.
I climbed out and fell in step alongside him. Our boots crunched across the broken-up asphalt of the lot. He led me through the sickening sweet cloud of exhaust from the sedan, back to the crew cab, the rear windows of which were too dark for me to see the interior.
Grooms opened the door. “After you,” he said.
I clambered inside. There was a modified bench seat and space for computers and other equipment, but no one else in back. Two men sat up front. One had his ear to a walkie-talkie. I slid across to the opposite end of the seat.
Grooms hoisted himself in behind me and shut the door. He settled into the seat across from me.
“Been busy lately, haven’t you, Frank?”
“That depends,” I said.
“C’mon. Neither of us has time for bullshit. You got yourself smacked with a shotgun yesterday morning and you’ve been kicking around asking questions about the Stonewall Rangers and what they’re up to.”
“That’s right.”
“Even though Sheriffs Deputy Nolestar asked you politely to stand down.”
“What’s being done to find out who killed Chester Carew?”
He paused to look at me for a moment. “That gets complicated. It’s being worked on.”
“Why are you here, Grooms? You part of a joint terrorism task force?”
He cleared his throat and held up his hand as if to wave away the question. “I don’t know yet what happened to your friend the old man. Okay? But we’re about to find out, along with a whole lot of other things.”
The truck’s big diesel engine burbled in front of us. The whole cab vibrated.
“You sound pretty certain.”
“I’ve been on this case for almost a year and you’ve been here for what… less than forty-eight hours? Yeah, man, I am. I’m pretty certain.”
“Toronto and I found a pile of tail transmitters up in the woods a couple of hundred yards from where Chester was killed. Did you know that? They’re used to track birds.”
He nodded. “Fits in with the information we’re working with.”
“Which is?”
He smiled and pointed to his forehead. “ ‘Need to know,’ Frank. Everything’s on a ‘need to know’ only basis. You and your buddy Toronto ought to be familiar with that.”
I looked up front. The two other agents stared straight ahead as if we weren’t just a few feet behind them talking.
“How about Tony Warnock? What’s his involvement with all this?”
“I can’t discuss specific individuals or suspects.”
“Have you at least found out what happened to Chester’s falcon Elo?”
He hesitated for a moment. “As I said, we’re about to find out a whole lot of things.”
“Yeah, and how is that? You just going to wave a magic wand and the bad guys will surrender and tell all to you?”
He said nothing.
“You’re planning to arrest some people soon then?”
Another smile. Expensive dental work. His teeth were large and white and almost perfectly straight. “We just need you to relax for a couple of days, okay, Frank? Maybe head on back to Charlottesville. You can read about it in the paper. Watch it all on the eleven o’clock news.”
“What about Betty and Jason Carew?”
“We’ll get around to that eventually. One part of the puzzle.”
“So you just want me to trust you,” I said.
“You pay your taxes, don’t you? ‘To protect and to serve.’ You know the drill.”
“What if you’ve got some of it wrong though?”
“I don’t think we have any of it wrong, Frank. And if we do, well, we’ll be the ones to suffer the consequences, won’t we?”
You and everybody else associated with this whole mess, I thought.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Good.” He pulled out a business card and passed it across to me. “But don’t take too long. My personal cell phone’s written on the back. I’d like to hear from you before the day is over.”
“I work long days.”
He shrugged. “I’m open twenty-four seven myself.” He bent down and pulled on the handle, shouldering open the door as he did.
I slid across the seat and followed him back out onto the pavement.
“Oh, and one other thing,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“This is very important, Frank.”
“What’s very important?”
“Be careful who you trust,” he said.
14
By midafternoon the sky had cleared to a cold blue. The dry air smelled of moss and pine. The green Jeep Cherokee with the brown-and-yellow West Virginia Department of Natural Resources Conservation Officer emblem on the door came up the dirt road into the Carews’ acreage and pulled in to park between my truck and Damon Farraday’s Scout.
Gwen Hallston opened the door and climbed out.
“So you guys ready to do a little more hunting today?” She nodded toward the Scout, the backseat of which was now occupied by the giant hood containing Farraday’s red-tailed hawk, Tawny.
“That’s right,” I said. “But like I said on the phone, I thought you might want to help us keep an eye out for Elo while we’re at it, not to mention make another walk-through of the area around the crime scene, see what we might turn up.”
“The sheriff’s people and others have already been through here looking, haven’t they?”
“Yeah, but they’re not necessarily outdoorsmen. We might notice something they missed.” I decided not to mention how Toronto’s and my earlier visit had been cut short.
“Where’s your other friend?”
“Toronto? He’ll probably join us a little later.”
“I assume your paperwork’s up-to-date, West Virginia out-of-state hunting license and all that?”
“Yup. In the truck if you’d like to see it.”
“I would, in fact, if you don’t mind.”
She accompanied me to the other side of the Ford, then examined the paperwork I produced from my glove compartment before pronouncing it okay. Farraday was busy preparing Tawny for hunting. We went over to watch him make his final preparations with the bird.
“Getting back to Elo, did you know he’d been sick a couple of weeks ago?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, I did,” she said. “Chester called me when it happened.”
“Chester brought him down to see a local veterinarian, Dr. Winston.”
“Greg Winston. Yeah, right. He’s a good man.”
“Apparently Winston told him Elo might’ve come in contact with some kind of hazardous materials or something.”
“I don’t know if anything’s been determined for sure on that.”
“You heard of any other cases of that happening with wildlife here in the area?”
“Nope. Not that I know of. But maybe we should keep an eye out for things with Tawny, just in case.”
“Oh, I’ll keep a close eye on her, you can bet on that,” Farraday said. He’d been listening in on our conversation while he was taking Tawny from her hood. He slammed shut the back door of the Scout with his free hand and walked over with the big bird on his glove. Her eyes were keen and she was already beginning to scan the terrain, looking for quarry.
I turned back to the officer. “Let me ask you something else. What do you know about a group around this area calling themselves the Stonewall Rangers Brigade?”
Her face darkened. “What, those idiots? What’ve they got to do with any of this?”
I gave her the highlights of my encounter with the masked man in the woods, what Toronto and I had been able to find out so far, and my conversations with the sheriff’s department and the ATF agent.
She listened, but said little.
“No one’s spoken to you about Chester’s death?”
“No. Not directly. I mean, I gave the deputies what I knew about the hunters and wildlife in the area. That was
about it.”
“Anybody from the ATF or FBI contact you?”
“Look, Pavlicek. You know I’m not supposed to talk about stuff like that. You used to be a cop too, right? I know Chester was a good friend of yours and all and you had this little run-in with a guy in the woods, but maybe you ought to just back off and let the sheriff’s department, the FBI, or whoever else is involved do their job.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Don’t you think they’re as interested as you are in finding out who killed Chester?”
I said nothing.
“Of more immediate interest to me, right now, is what’s going to happen to those two remaining birds of his. Do you know if Chester ever stipulated in writing where he wanted his birds to go if something happened to him?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Betty, although I’m not sure now would be a good time. The hawks are kind of an important link to Chester, I think, especially for the boy.”
“I understand that, but if anything happens to them while I’m—”
“Listen, Jake Toronto and I are staying there for now and the birds are being well cared for. Maybe you could just cut them some slack for a while? No one’s taking them out to hunt or anything where they might get injured.”
She looked at me for a moment. “All right,” she said. “I’ll give it a few more days.”
“Thanks. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.”
“But you should let Mrs. Carew know she’s going to have to come to a decision on the birds, barring anything found in writing from the permitee, Mr. Carew. Since her son is still a minor, and unless Mrs. Carew is interested in acquiring her falconry licensure. I’m afraid we may have to intervene and take temporary possession of the birds in order to seek a permanent home for them.”
“Sure.”
We still had about three more hours of daylight, but the bright afternoon sun was already beginning to angle down toward the horizon.
“Well, aren’t we going hunting?” she asked.
For the next two and a half hours the conservation officer trooped along with us while Tawny swooped from tree to tree and we circled deep into Carew’s woods. I carried Chester’s spare telemetry unit, holding the yagi high in the hope I might get lucky and catch some sort of signal from Elo. But after five days I knew it was a real long shot.
