by Andy Straka
Nolestar shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He subconsciously patted his jacket pocket. He looked like he wanted another cigarette. “You guys are just wonderful,” he said to himself. “Just what I need here. Cool Hand Luke and his sidekick Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“Okay,” he continued. “Let’s say everything you’ve been telling me today is the truth. You and your pal here still haven’t explained to me why the weapon he just so happened to be carrying wasn’t registered. We could get you both on a weapons charge right there.”
That nasty little detail had emerged about twenty minutes into our conversation when one of the officers, after talking outside on his radio, had come into the room and whispered something into the deputy’s ear. I’d hardly been shocked, since we were talking about Toronto and all, but it didn’t exactly bolster our reputation with the local constabulary.
The detective turned to Toronto again, who by now looked as if he were about to nod off into dreamland. “What was it you told me you did for a living, Mr. Toronto? Corporate security? Funny, I don’t find you registered in any database of licensed private security agencies.”
Toronto barely opened his eyes, shrugged a little, and said nothing.
“Maybe a night in a jail cell would help improve both y’all’s ability to impart information,” Nolestar said.
While he spoke, I noticed two large vans pull into the clinic parking lot. The deputy, whose back was to the waiting-room window, turned and followed my gaze.
“Something interest you out there, Pavlicek?” We watched as a man in a dark suit climbed from the first van and showed something to one of the officers outside. Then a woman in blue jeans and a plaid shirt and hunting vest, accompanied by two more men in suits, stepped from the back of the van. The woman was talking on a cell phone.
“Now who the hell is this?” Nolestar said.
The entourage swooped in past the propped-open front door, its frame still dangling broken glass. The woman was in the lead. She was about five feet nine, solidly built, with short-cropped brunette hair topping a pair of darting green eyes and a handsome Scandinavian/Midwestern jaw.
She lowered the cell phone to her side. “Deputy Nolestar?” Her voice was mezzosoprano.
Our inquisitor eyed her suspiciously. “That’s me. And who might you be?”
“Agent Colleen Briggs, FBI.” She held up her shield.
The two men next to her held up both their shields and ID.
Nolestar looked at them all and asked the same question I had. “Where’s Grooms and his people from ATF?”
“On his way from Pittsburgh,” she said. “Be here in about an hour. But as head of the task force, he just gave us directions on the phone.”
Nolestar twisted his mouth a little as if he wanted to say something smart but kept it quiet. “Oh, yeah? Well, ah, what can I do for you, Agent?”
“You’ve been questioning these men about a shooting and a murder that took place here tonight. Is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am. “
“And these were the same two men present at the car bombing yesterday afternoon that killed a state conservation officer.”
“Just Pavlicek.”
I didn’t like the way this was sounding.
“Thank you very much for your help, Deputy,” she said. “We’ll take over from here.”
“Wha—? What do you mean?”
“I mean, please stand down. I’ve got one of our analysts on the phone who’s attached to the CTC at Langley. He’ll give you a short debriefing.” She handed him her cell.
“Great.” Nolestar snickered under his breath and gave her a look, then stepped outside with the phone.
Agent Briggs turned her attention to me. “Let’s see, now. You must be Frank Pavlicek.” She didn’t raise her voice or show any sign of threat.
“I am,” I said.
“You’re a private investigator and you’ve been asked by Betty Carew to look into her husband’s shooting. You also met with the family’s lawyer.”
“That’s correct.”
Her cheeks creased around a flat smile. “I know Chester Carew was a friend of yours, and, given your background and, ah … line of work, I can appreciate your desire to want to run around asking questions of people, but I’m afraid it’s becoming counterproductive for our investigation.”
“I’ve already been given that message.”
“But you didn’t do anything about it, did you? Didn’t know when it was time to step away. Seems like everywhere you turn up, people are getting killed.”
“Well, as far as I can see, nobody else around here seems too interested in trying to find out who killed Chester, other than officially trying to pass it off on some poacher or something while dropping vague hints about Stonewall Ranger involvement. And I’m beginning to believe you may just be wrong about even that,” I said.
“What you believe, Mr. Pavlicek, and what the facts are may be two different things. Case in point. …”
She turned and looked dispassionately at Toronto. “This, of course, is our famous Mr. Jake Toronto.”
Toronto, still slumped back in his chair but fully awake now, stared defiantly at her.
“I’ve been looking forward to this one, Jake.”
“Been looking forward to what?” I asked.
She motioned to the agents on either side of her, who moved into position beside Toronto and firmly pulled him up from his seat. He didn’t resist.
I rose to my feet. “What the … ? What are you doing?”
“Serving a warrant,” she said. “Cuff him, please,” she said to the other two agents.
They did as she ordered. I looked at Toronto, whose face had gone as blank as the concrete walls.
“This must be some kind of mistake,” I said.
“Not this time,” she said. “Jake Toronto, you’re under arrest for the murder of Chester Carew. And for conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism against the United States.”
23
On Presidents’ Day two winters before, I’d brought my first redtail over to Chester Carew’s to hunt. Toronto was busy doing something else that weekend. Jason was still too young to be of much help, so it was just the old man and myself that afternoon. Carew had enticed me with the promise of watching his new gyr-peregrine, Elo, train to the lure, as well as what he claimed was some of the best rabbit hunting around.
It snowed off and on during my drive through the mountains over to Charleston. By the time I’d reached Nitro and we’d driven up to Chester’s private hunting grounds with Armistead in the back of my truck, the flakes were coming down fat and heavy and a couple of inches had already accumulated. Wind gusts cut visibility to just a few feet.
Needless to say, we didn’t get a whole lot of hunting in that day, but I did enjoy the privilege of a snowed-in overnight at the Carews’. Betty cooked up a wonderful dinner and we played a card game with Jason before his mother went off to read to him and put him to bed. Chester and I stayed up late by the crackling fire, talking of hunting, of the old days when as a teen growing up just a couple of valleys away he’d fallen in love with and flown his first raptors.
There was no such thing as licensure and the formal sponsorship program back then. Chester said a lot of folks, especially around his neck of the woods, would just as soon shoot any hawk or falcon that came near as try to trap and take to manning one. Chester had an old library copy of Frank and John Craighead’s Hawks in the Hand as his only guide. The rest he pretty much had to figure out on his own, with predictable mixed results.
A gleam came into his eye that night by the fire, making him seem younger. He reached behind him and brought out a dog-eared Bible and pulled out a slip of paper on which he’d written a prayer.
It was for falconry birds that died, for any who died, he said. He still remembered how he’d lost a couple to automobiles, one to a bad bite from a squirrel he hadn’t known how to help heal, another to a shotgun-toting farmer who’d been so aggrieved when h
e’d found out the bird belonged to Chester he’d offered to give the young man an entire wagonload full of sweet corn in return.
I am crossing into a high country where the winters are always green and the air as sweet as ivory, where your grace abounds forever. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
“You a believer?” he asked me matter-of-factly. He took a long draw on his pipe.
“I guess that depends,” I said.
He nodded. “I know. Up North, where you come from, folks see things differently, don’t they? You got your Catholics and your big white churches with all them steeples and all, but have any of them got the fire in them?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Chester.”
“You think the world’s getting any darker, Frank?”
“Darker?”
“Yeah. Lots of people I talk to think the world’s getting darker. You know, all that stuff you see on TV these days. Killings and kidnappings and rapes and such.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He flipped through the pages of his Bible, took out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “You read some of the stuff in here, you want to know what?”
“What?”
“It was worse.”
“Yeah?”
He put his finger on a passage. “It says right here in the Book where Jesus is talking and he says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the light. No man cometh to the father, but through me.’ “
“No man, huh?”
“No man, that’s right.”
“That’s a hard thing Jesus said. It’s hard for some people to accept.”
“Lots of things is hard to accept,” he said. “Like cancer. Like that snowstorm we ran into today. Doesn’t make ‘em not so.”
Deputy Nolestar came back in through the front door, passing the two agents with Toronto on their way out.
“All right, lady. You win. I just talked to the sheriff too, but we’ve now got three fresh killings in our jurisdiction in less than a week, and I want to question Mr. Pavlicek here about them myself.”
“No way,” Briggs said.
“You got a problem with that, you or your people in Washington can talk to the sheriff about it.”
Way to go, Bobby, I thought.
The FBI agent glared at the deputy for a moment. “Fine,” she said. “But you know, we’ve got a major op going on.”
“I know about your damn major op, Special Agent. I’m not going to get in the way. But the sheriff says if you want the department’s continued cooperation, y’all need to give us a little more latitude around here with all these folks suddenly getting killed.”
No one said anything for a moment. Briggs took a quick look outside at the van.
Then she said, “I apologize, Deputy. As you know, the timing of all this can’t be helped. By all means, feel free to go ahead and question this man. But I insist on remaining present during your questioning.”
Nolestar shrugged. “No skin off my back. You’ve placed Toronto under arrest, right?”
“That’s correct.”
He turned to me. “Please sit down again, Mr. Pavlicek.”
The thought occurred to me that the deputy was already on the way to becoming a good detective. Mistrust too much authority. Always treat your suspects with respect.
I sat down.
“You saw what just happened,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “All of you are wrong. Toronto didn’t kill Chester and he certainly is no terrorist.”
“You don’t think so, huh?”
“Tell me what you’ve got on him.”
“We don’t have to tell you anything,” Briggs interrupted.
Nolestar just looked at her, then back at me. “They’ve got ballistics, Pavlicek. Turns out the rifle that killed Carew belongs to your buddy.”
“Plus, he’s had sniper training,” Briggs interrupted again. “Plus he’s been to Stonewall Ranger meetings, not to mention some of his not-so-stellar associations with various and sundry characters.”
Nolestar said, “The thinking is, Toronto’s been helping the Stonewallers. They’re planning some kind of terrorist attack. Carew found out about it. Toronto murders him to keep him quiet.”
“Nice and neat and simple,” I said.
He shrugged. “Does it need to be complicated?”
“No. Just needs to be the truth. Where did you come up with the murder weapon?” I asked.
“This afternoon we took a couple of unmarked Chevy Blazers and served a search warrant on Felipe Baldovino, Toronto’s father, up at his mountain cabin,” Briggs said. “The rifle is a legal one—surprisingly enough, from what we’ve been able to ascertain about Mr. Toronto’s activities—and registered to him. And don’t even try to suggest his father could’ve shot Carew. The old guy couldn’t even make it ten feet in the woods anymore.”
After talking with Toronto earlier, we’d gone inside to see Felipe before leaving. I remembered seeing the gun case filled with several hunting rifles.
“Have you checked to see if Toronto has an alibi for the morning of the shooting?” I asked.
“I questioned him three days ago before you came out for the funeral,” Nolestar said. “He was already out here when it happened. Claims he was visiting his father, but won’t detail his whereabouts that morning. Neither can the old man.”
“He has the right to an attorney,” I said.
“He’ll get one,” Briggs said.
I leaned back in the waiting-room chair, thought for a moment about dialing a lawyer I knew from Charlottesville with a lot of experience in dealing with the Feds, but decided that might only aggravate the situation further.
“Frank, from what I know of things, I’m not sure you’ve appreciated, up until now, the seriousness of this whole situation, and your own precarious position,” Briggs said. “Mr. Toronto is now under arrest for murder and is also under suspicion of having conspired with potential terrorists. Convince me you’re not a coconspirator.’’
What followed was more than an hour-long string of questions by the two of them. Back and forth, first one and then the other. About my relationship with Toronto, where I was on Monday morning. (I had a solid alibi. I had been in a meeting with a judge in Charlottesville about another matter.) No bright light blinded me. No one threatened to harm me or tried to coerce me in any way. But after a while, Agent Colleen Briggs’s voice really began to annoy me. It was as flat and monotonous as a long stretch of Iowa blacktop and seemed almost forced.
I guessed that, in addition to somehow infiltrating the Stonewallers, the Feds had been employing surveillance, court-ordered wiretaps, and possibly bugs as well for some time. That would be the SOP anyway. I was operating at a serious information deficit, compared to them.
“Pavlicek, I’m going to assume, for the time being, that what you’re telling us is accurate,” Nolestar said finally. “That you haven’t had much contact with Mr. Toronto in the past year and that he never discussed in too much detail his relationship with Chester Carew or his attendance at some of these militia get-togethers.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Briggs said.
Nolestar ignored her. “Don’t you think it’s time you separated yourself from this whole business, Frank? Head on back to Charlottesville to your normal work. You know as well as I do this is big-league stuff.”
“You expect me to just walk out on my friend?”
“That’s exactly what we expect, Mr. Pavlicek. In fact, we require it, unless you want to end up in a cell next to him,” Briggs said.
“But Jake didn’t do this,” I said. “Can’t you see that? He’s a former homicide detective. If he were even remotely involved with such a killing, you think he’d be so stupid as to leave the murder weapon lying around like that for someone to find it? It’s too staged. Somebody’s trying to set him up for this.”
Nolestar seemed to consider the possibility, but Briggs dismissed it.
“We’ll be the judge of that,” she said. “I think
we have just a wee bit more information than you. And we’re far better equipped to handle this sort of thing, at this point, than you are.”
“What about the rest of the killings? The reporter is another witness right here, besides myself, who’ll tell you it wasn’t Jake who was spraying bullets at us just now.”
“Maybe not. But how do you know for certain he didn’t set those bombs yesterday? Don’t try to pretend he doesn’t have the skills to have done it. And how do you know he didn’t come in here sometime earlier today and kill the veterinarian? This whole shoot-out at the OK Corral you just had could’ve been some kind of crude attempt at a cover-up. Other than the dog, no one was hit by any of the bullets, were they?”
She was right. The M.E. might establish a different time of death on the vet, but we’d have to wait to know for sure.
“I’m sorry this is happening to a friend of yours,” she said. “But we’re at war, mister.”
That did it. I held out my hands. “Hey, don’t let me get in the army’s way. But this war is about justice and defending the innocent, isn’t it? Don’t sit here and try to tell me it’s right to be arresting an innocent man. …”
I stopped, realizing I was making a fool of myself. I don’t know why I suddenly decided to start sparring with this robotic clone of a federal agent. It was like arguing with somebody’s lawyer or press release. I couldn’t really talk to her now, any more than I’d been able to talk to certain members of the review board at the hearing on the shooting Toronto and I had been involved in all those years ago in New Rochelle. You could rant and rave all you wanted about what was really going on between the lines and behind the scenes, but unless you were really willing to do the legwork to find out some of those nettlesome details you weren’t about to come any closer to the truth.
For years, Toronto had operated in a sort of shadowy nether world of security and intelligence “consulting” and “operations” for various unnamed clients and entities, much of which, I imagined, was never recorded in anybody’s official budget or records. As far as I could tell, his services were always high in demand, and since his material needs were few, he seemed beyond compromise.
