Flightfall Read online

  “Looks like a hiking boot,” I said.

  He nodded again. “Frye. Not big. Size seven. Not deep either. Our trigger was not a heavyweight.”

  “That narrows it down to only a couple million or so ... Was the bird’s body intact? I mean, any pieces or parts missing?”

  Toronto scratched at the stubble on his face. “If you’re thinking rhino tusks here, forget it. There was that scandal back in the eighties. Operation Falcon. Feds caught a couple guys illegally exporting birds and tried to turn it into a sting op. But those were live birds ...”

  My watch read almost eleven p.m. A lot of sane people were fast asleep in their beds right now. A part of me wished I was there too. For his part, Toronto looked as though he was ready to go at it all night.

  “So what now?” I bent down to retie the laces of one of my own boots. Not Frye, army-navy generic. My prints would be larger than the shooter’s, deeper too.

  “I found another partial track about fifty feet into the woods.” He pointed along the ridge.

  “Okay,” I said. “Why don’t we see if we can reverse it? If the shooter used an automatic, maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble upon some brass.”

  Toronto, Nicole, and I made our way out of the light through the brush to the second footprint, also marked with a circle of flags. We began a sweep, walking in parallel about three paces apart. I swept my Coleman lantern back and forth in front of me to offer the broadest light.

  We had gone about twenty paces when Toronto said, “Got something.”

  I crossed the beam of his light. He was examining another partial print, this one a heel, and a broken sapling.

  I caught a glint of something metallic in the corner of my eye. “Hold it. I’ve got something, too. Shine your light with mine over here.” I bent down to examine the shiny object as Toronto and Nicole stepped up beside me.

  “It’s a battery,” Nicole said.

  “The girl’s a natural-born sleuth,” Toronto said.

  She punched him playfully in the arm.

  “Double A. Looks pretty fresh.” I said. “So our perp or perps must have dropped their GPS or whatever. Maybe in too much of a hurry to split.”

  “Maybe left us some nice fingerprints, too.” Toronto pulled something from his jacket pocket, reached down, and deftly picked up the object with a pair of tweezers, depositing it in a clean paper bag. But before closing the bag, he shone his flashlight on the battery and peered in at it more closely.

  “Something about the battery bothering you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He closed and sealed the bag before turning to look at us . “You know, usually if a falconry bird ever gets killed, they’re attacked by an eagle or an owl or some other bigger raptor.”

  “Right.”

  “Or even stupid, like flying into a transformer, or some farmer or kid takes a pot shot and brings the bird down.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying losing Jazzy . . . this feels different somehow.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “J-man was wearing a tail transmitter. I was tracking him, but the bullet damaged the unit he was wearing, and I lost the signal. I heard the shot. I was about a half a mile away. Then it took me quite a while to find the body . . .”

  “So what does that have to do with the battery?”

  “The battery in this bag is the same kind I use in my receiver—even the same brand.”

  “But there must be millions of that brand of battery sold.” Nicole said.

  “You think someone else was tracking your bird?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking batteries don’t grow in the forest,” he said. “That’s all.”

  3

  We continued searching in the dark for a couple more hours, but found nothing else of value.

  By midnight, we were nursing cups of coffee around the kitchen table in Jake’s doublewide, a topographical map of the mountain shoved to one side.

  “You know what,” Toronto said, as if he’d just remembered something important, “I need to get my stuff out of the jeep and go check out my equipment in the barn.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  While Nicole cleaned up in the kitchen, Toronto and I hauled the lights and all the forensic material gathered from the Jeep into the barn. Toronto’s barn dwarfed his house. There were three indoor/outdoor mews for his falconry birds, and a large, open floor for storing his tractor and other farm equipment. Another section housed an area for work and forensics gear, and behind an alarmed security fence was a locked doorway that led to his security and surveillance gear and weapons cache. After we’d finished stowing the crime scene evidence, Toronto turned with his falconry bag over his shoulder and headed straight for the anteroom to the mews.

  His falconry furniture was well organized, neatly laid out on a broad worktable and hung on a pegboard. Hoods, bells, jesses, and leashes. Extra gloves, leatherworking scissors, punches, and imping kit with an array of neatly stored feathers, saved from the molt for use when needed. A smaller table below a cupboard housed his radio tracking transmitters and receiver. He stopped when he reached this table and laid his bag down. He pulled open the cupboard and sighed. One of the shelves inside was empty.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My backup receiver is gone.”

  “You sure you didn’t take it out and leave it somewhere?”

  “I’m sure.” He looked at a piece of paper taped inside the cupboard door. “I haven’t inventoried this gear in a while. Last time was a month ago. It’s definitely gone.”

  “You think someone stole it?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think it has anything to do with the battery and Jazzy being shot?”

  “That would be the question, wouldn’t it?”

  As predicted, a storm system blew in as we were all getting ready for bed. Rain pounded against the roof of Toronto’s house trailer and the wind shook the windows. Nicole took the spare bedroom while I sacked out on the living room couch, about as far away from the beachfront condo Marcia and I had rented as I could be. Before turning out the light, Marsh and I talked on the phone for a few minutes.

  “So let me make sure I have this straight,” she said. “You and Nicky are up there in the mountains with Jake instead of you being here at the beach with me because of Jake’s peregrine falcon.”

  “Dead peregrine falcon,” I added.

  “I understand. And that’s awful. But can’t Jake and the authorities up there figure out what happened on their own?”

  “If it was just some random poacher or farmer, yes. But we think there may be more to it than that.”

  “How long will you be there?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s complicated,” I said.

  She said she understood before we ended the call, but I knew she wasn’t telling the truth. I’d have some repair work to do on my marriage if and when I finally made it to the beach.

  Maybe Nicole was right. Whoever shot Jazzman could have been half way to Canada by now, or anywhere in between, and here we were up in these midnight mountains chasing phantoms in the dark. Maybe Toronto and I were too eager to stick our noses in places they didn’t belong. Maybe we were itching for a fight.

  4

  The next morning, Toronto, Nicole, and I piled into Toronto’s Jeep and drove into Leonardston, the Affalachia County seat. Toronto had already reported the falcon’s shooting to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Unfortunately, as Toronto had already told us, the game warden for the area was on an extended fishing trip to Alaska, and we had to make do with a promised they’d send someone else within a couple of days. The new county sheriff Webster Davies greeted us in the doorway to his office. A wiry, bespectacled man, whose pasty hair made him look more like an old preacher than a sheriff, he was a friend of Toronto.

&n
bsp; “Looks to me like there’s nothing either the game warden or my people can do that you and your buddies here haven’t thought of already.”

  “Maybe,” Toronto said. “But I’ve got a feeling this shooting was more than just a spur-of-the moment thing.”

  “This bird was an endangered species, you say?”

  “No. Peregrines used to be endangered. But they’re still protected under federal law.”

  We were standing beside the entrance to the jail wing of the county office building, a structure that didn’t looked to have changed much since the days of segregation. But the new law enforcement section next door made it look like someone had cobbled on a hardened, high tech command post to the older building. Its walls, bristled with antennas and satellite dishes for video uplink and high speed internet.

  “Too bad your bird wasn’t endangered. Media, reporters, and the like are always hot after anyone messing with an endangered animal... You could really put the heat on someone. How long you say you been flyin’ the thing?”

  “Two years.”

  The sheriff nodded. “How about you, Mr. Pavlicek?” He arched his eyebrows in my direction. “What’s your involvement in all this?”

  “Just here helping out a friend,” I said.

  “You ain’t even showed me no license.”

  I produced my driver’s license and private investigator’s license and he looked them over.

  “And your daughter, here?’

  “She works with me.”

  “Huh. And you all fly some of these here birds, too, do you?”

  “We do.”

  Sheriff Davies scratched his chin. “Pee-I business must be getting a little slow these days, great recession and all.”

  “We manage.”

  “You don’t look like no investigator.”

  Maybe my yellow flip-flops and Elvis Lives with Me T-shirt were throwing him off. I had figured I’d be headed to the beach by now, and hadn’t planned on an extended stay.

  “I’m supposed to be on vacation,” I said.

  He grunted in return, glanced at Toronto, who was decked out in a flak jacket, Tony Lama boots, and mirror sunglasses that could have come straight out of a G. Gordon Liddy catalog, before looking back at me. “You two fellas really ex-homicide?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “A long time ago. But...”

  “But what?” the sheriff asked.

  “Let’s just say the NYPD doesn’t always welcome us back with open arms.”

  He grunted again and looked at nothing.

  “What about the missing receiver?” Toronto asked.

  “You mean that electronic gizmo thing you showed me?”

  “Right. I have another one just like it and it’s missing.”

  We had spent an hour that morning rummaging through his barn, which he never locked, looking for the second receiver.

  “Jake. You know as well as I do, just ‘cause you found some battery out there in the woods don’t mean somebody was out to kill your hawk.” The sheriff worked his jaw as if he needed to spit. “But I suppose it could be. Had a couple old boys got into a dispute with the high school principal a while back. Kilt the family’s dog, and no one’s seen ‘em since. Likely skipped the state ... Someone upset with you, Jake? Enough to pull a stunt like that?”

  “Maybe.” Toronto’s voice dropped, betraying nothing.

  “Well, you’d best be giving that some more thought. Don’t you think?”

  Toronto nodded.

  The sheriff looked down at his watch. “We’ll have the battery checked for prints. I know I owe you, Jake, but I can’t do much more than that right now. There’s a meeting I’m supposed to be at and I’m already late.”

  5

  Toronto’s Jeep bounced through a pothole on the way out of the county office parking lot.

  “That guy was prehistoric,” Nicole said, meaning the sheriff.

  “Oh, yeah?” I gave her the evil eye. “What’s that make Jake and me then?”

  “Just ancient,” she said with a wink. “Maybe with a touch of Neanderthal.”

  “Neanderthal,” Toronto said. “Nice.”

  “What did the sherriff mean when he said he owed you?” I asked.

  Toronto shrugged. “He had a deputy thought he was the next Chuck Norris. Asked if I could maybe do anything about it. So I stepped in and helped straighten the guy out.”

  Toronto and I had worked together for a long time. ‘Straighten the guy out’ normally involved intimidation, bodily harm, or worse.

  Back to what Nicole had been talking about on the trip out. Maybe trouble, violence, whatever, followed Toronto and me around like a trailing shroud. Maybe it went even deeper than that. Maybe it was some kind of karma from our past lives in New York. I think the Old Testament might have even had something to say about that.

  “You’ve already got somebody in mind for killing your falcon, don’t you?” I said.

  Toronto nodded.

  “Well, as your pro bono investigator, I’d certainly appreciate your sharing that information with me. I’m dropping a hundred and fifty bucks a day on a beach condo I’m failing to enjoying at the moment—not to mention leaving a beautiful woman alone to cool her heels.”

  “Actually,” Toronto said. “I have more than one suspect.”

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  “There are two.”

  “I take it these are two people who have a reason to hate you,” Nicole said.

  Toronto shrugged. “You might say that.”

  “They might need to get in line,” I said.

  Nicole ignored me. “They must hate you enough, Jake,” she said. “To want to hurt you.”

  “Sound about right,” he said.

  “But you’re so tough they know they can’t get at you directly. And they might have been tempted to take it out on your falcon.”

  “Now you’re making sense. Did you know your daughter’s a genius, Frank?”

  “I think they call that displaced emotion,” I said.

  “Right. Thanks for the dissertation, Mr. Freud.”

  “Your bird didn’t kill somebody’s Chihuahua, I hope,” Nicole said.

  “Hardly. You’ve been reading too many of those tabloid websites. Anyway, those were wild hawks that did that in California.”

  “So how long are you going to keep us in suspense?” I asked.

  “Okay,” Toronto said. “Get your hard hats on.” He took the next left and pointed ahead to a wide ribbon of paved road that cut around the opposite side of the mountains from his own place. “We’re going to visit a school construction site.”

  6

  The school under construction was in a field a few miles farther along the highway. Level land carried a premium price in Affalachia County, and the government controlled more than its fair share of it. The shell of the building had already been erected. Its skeletal structure resembled a flattened beehive surrounded by heavy equipment and a fleet of private cars and pickups. A couple of big cranes hovered overhead while dozens of workers moved in and out of the building.

  “The kid we’re looking for is named Gabriel Wylie—goes by Gabe,” Toronto said.

  “Kid?” I asked.

  “Sorry. He’s probably about Nicky’s age here.”

  “What’s his beef?”

  “He’s approached me a couple of times about my birds. Seems to think I shouldn’t have any. He lives in some kind of commune with a bunch of people who grow organic vegetables and make berry juice for a legitimate business while tending a clandestine crop of marijuana on the side. There aren’t a lot of secrets around here if you spend time getting to know people.”

  “What’s he doing working construction?”

  “Guess he doesn’t mind exploiting the environment when there’s a good paycheck involved. I hear he’s not a bad carpenter, either.”

  “But why shoot your falcon?” Nicole asked. “He sounds more like the type who wouldn’t want to hurt a bird.”
<
br />   “True. But he’s also the type who would sneak in and steal my extra tracking receiver. And I know he keeps a rifle. Maybe he was trying to scare Jazzy into flying off for good. Maybe he didn’t mean to shoot him.”

  I nodded. “Stranger things have happened.”

  The foreman didn’t know Toronto, but judging by the respectful nods in our direction, a number of the workers did. We found Gabriel Wylie helping a short Hispanic man carry a stack of boards. Wylie himself was about five foot eight. He had long brown hair, the lean body of a wrestler, and wary eyes.

  “Wylie.”

  The young man turned at the sound of Toronto’s voice. “What’re you doing here, Toronto?”

  “Wonder if we could speak with you for a minute.”

  His eyes bounced back and forth between Toronto, Nicole, and me. “What’s this about?”

  “Just want to ask you a couple of questions. That’s all.”

  Wylie turned to his companion and said under his breath in Spanish: “Ahora vengo. Necessito que fumo.”

  They set down the load of boards and the other man turned and walked away.

  “You smoke, too,” Toronto said.

  “What?” Apparently, Wylie didn’t think any of us spoke Spanish.

  “Never mind.”

  “All right, you showed up here with your little entourage, and if you hang around here much longer, you’re going to get me in trouble. What do you want?”

  “Where were you yesterday?”

  “Where was I? I was here working.”

  “All day?”

  “On the job all day. You can ask anybody. Must have been fifty guys who saw me.”

  They stared at one another for a moment.

  “Why do you want to know where I was?”

  “Because I’ve got a falcon missing.”

  “What? You mean the thing finally took off on you? Serves you right, you ask me.”