A Killing Sky (10 page)

Again it was a night of little sleep. I got up early the next morning, this time to take a jog. The day was shaping up to be picture-perfect for spring: bright blue sky, the air already warmer than the night before. Nuthatches, Carolina wrens, and even a few bluebirds sang along my route down Rugby Avenue onto Rugby Road. Out of curiosity, I decided to detour down through University Corner, behind the old medical school, through the parking lots and over Jefferson Park Avenue to the parking garage across from the primary-care building where I'd discovered Cartwright Drummond's rental car.

I was stunned to see a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk. Behind them, in a row along the curb, were two large satellite trucks and three or four television vans. Apparently, this spot had become media central for the unfolding drama and mystery of the disappearance of Cartwright Drummond. Three officers manned a barricade, keeping the curious away from the trucks. Across Lee Street a TV crew was busy setting up for an interview. The reporter, a dark-haired twenty-something male wearing a trench coat and tie, looked more like a made-up Humphrey Bogart than any of the real detectives downtown. I couldn't help musing about the image people would see on their screens—early-morning steam from the “brave” announcer's breath, the stark gray image of the concrete garage. What a fractional depiction of reality it would be. I slipped past the crowd and kept jogging. The last thing I needed was some orange-faced reporter shoving a microphone into my face.

“Hey, Pavlicek.”

I winced and turned to see none other than Jed Haynes, standing to my right with his hands in the pockets of a university warm-up jacket. He must have been in the crowd of bystanders and broken away when he saw me. I waited while he came abreast of me.

“It's all over the grounds. Everyone's been talking about it since the other night.”

“Entertainment for the masses,” I said.

“Is she dead?”

I took a long look at him before I answered. His cheeks were ruddy and narrow, his hair pleasantly disheveled. Anger still smoldered in his eyes, but it seemed to be more under control now.

“What would make you say that?” I said.

He shrugged and pointed to the second story of the garage. “I saw a lot of cops and a van that was marked ‘Forensics’ up there the night they found her car.”

“You get around, don't you?”

He shrugged.

I said nothing.

“Well? What do you think? She dead?”

“Like I told you before, I'm not a cop, Jed. I'm out of it. Better talk to the police. I know they'll want to be talking to
you.”

“They already have. And I'm supposed to be going back down to talk to somebody else this morning.”

I glanced around. Bet somebody's keeping an eye on you, too, I thought. But I saw no one.

“They won't tell me anything,” he complained. “They just keep asking more questions.”

“Maybe it'll make you more humble,” I said.

“But did they find her body?”

I ignored his question, turned, and broke into a jog again, crossing the street to make sure I put as much distance as possible as soon as possible between myself and the big trucks. Thanks to the likes of Willard Abercrombie, Cassidy Drummond's fear was fully realized: the investigation had gone media.

Nothing would be sacred now; nothing would be free from potential exposure. Not even the minutest details of a young girl's life. Hey, I make my living asking questions too, but even I stop at bra sizes.

Speculation is cheap. Whatever happened, on the slim chance that Cartwright Drummond might still be alive, time was running out.

An hour later, showered, shaved, and halfway presentable, I appeared on Marcia's doorstep once again. I was there to collect Nicole, who'd spent the night at Marcia's behest to keep Cassidy company. The plan called for Toronto to follow Nicole and me over to my office in his battered Jeep, then we would go over the computer files they'd uncovered the night before. Nicole had no classes today, so I'd told her she could come help out if she wanted. There was no plan to leave Cassidy and her mom or Marcia without protection, though. Toronto, foreseeing the need to relieve himself of full-time security duty, had, the day before, made what he called “an arrangement.”

The arrangement answered the door.

He was at least six-eight and more than three hundred pounds, most of it muscle. His head was bigger than my midsection. His jaw appeared capable of crushing small aluminum cans.

Toronto stood smiling right behind him. He was decked out in black combat boots, green coveralls, and a Virginia Tech baseball cap that in some parts of C-ville might have invited a fistfight, although I doubted anyone would dare challenge Toronto.

“Frank, I'd like you to meet Mr. Earl. Mr. Earl, this is the fella I was telling you about. My old partner, Frank Pavlicek. Best damned PI around.”

Mr. Earl grinned and took my hand in his giant paw. He shook it like it was a rag doll. I felt fortunate to get it back.

“Mr. Earl is Samoan. You might remember him. He spent a couple of seasons at right guard for the Philadelphia Eagles a few years back.”

I didn't remember but figured the safe thing to do was nod. “Right. Sure.”

Mr. Earl nodded back. We all nodded. Toronto ushered me into the kitchen while Mr. Earl went about checking the window casings.

“This guy for real?” I said when we were out of the big man's hearing.

“Saw him kill a pimp in New York last year with his bare hands. Dude had been whoring out strung-out teens, one of whom happened to be his sister's baby girl.”

“Okay … I guess. He armed?”

He nodded. “Beretta and a shotgun. Don't worry. I've worked with Mr. Earl a lot. He owes me a big favor.”

“What's his first name?”

“Don't ask him.” he said.

“Roger that.”

At my office a half hour later, a letter had arrived along with the usual assortment of bills and junk mail. Addressed to me personally, presorted standard, the stationery bore a shiny gold foil edge and the almost garish image of an equally golden eagle. The communiqué was a bold request, as he put it, from none other than Congressman Tor Drummond himself, an opportunity to donate a certain amount of money to his campaign war chest and thereby be designated an honorary member of what he called his Eagle Council. He was even planning a little get-together for this group of the local faithful—an outdoor speech and pep rally two days hence at the amphitheater on the east end of the city's downtown mall.

The amount of money wasn't that large—eagles must have lost some of their lofty status in the present climate. That I had somehow made it onto the congressman's mailing list was a bit ironic, given that the congressman and I had not parted on the best of terms. Also surprising, given my political leanings, which could best be described as apolitical.

I selected a Krispy Kreme from the dozen we'd stopped to pick up along the way and took a bite.

“You guys need a woman around this office more often to help keep you straight,” Nicole said, wadding up a stray napkin Toronto had left on the table and tossing it into the trash. “You know how much cholesterol there is in this junk you're eating?”

“We don't want to know, do we, Jake?”

“Un-huh,” he grunted.

“How'd you and Cassidy get along?” I asked her.

“Awesome, considering she's going through a lot right now.”

“That's good. I'm afraid what's not good is the fact the cops don't seem to have much new information and no one's found her sister's body yet. If there's any chance that Cartwright's still alive, the longer it takes to find her, the worse the chance's that she will be when we do.”

Toronto finished off his third doughnut, plugged in Cartwright Drummond's laptop, and booted it up. “Okay,” he said. “We're going to have some solid info here for you in a few minutes. I was also thinking, Frank, long as I'm gonna be here, you need any help with Armistead while you're on this case? I might as well make myself useful.”

“I'd say you're pretty useful already, but thanks very much.”

“Armistead's been a little testy lately… don't you think?” Nicole said. “You think she knows you're getting ready to release her?”

I shrugged.

“Could be,” Toronto said. “The more I work with hawks, the more I wonder just how much they know.”

“Dad,” Nicole said, “if you and the police think something bad's happened to Cartwright Drummond, we need to make sure we document and bag any evidence.”

“Bag any evidence?” Toronto cocked a brow and looked at her with teasing admiration.

“Girl wants to be an investigator,” I said.

He shook his head. “You know, Frank, passion's wasted on the young, isn't it?”

She punched him playfully in the shoulder. “It is
not,”
she said.

“In youth we learn,” I said, trying to remember the von Ebner-Eschenbach line. “In age we understand.”

They both ignored me and set to work with the computer. I flipped open the file Nicole had prepared for me, to which I'd added the newly acquired copy of the photo of Tor Drummond standing with George and Norma Paitley. The folder was in chronological order, as well organized, I thought, as any I'd ever received as background when I worked as a cop. Nicole had printed most of it from the Internet: photos and news clippings, a handful of op-eds, even a couple of spin pieces from Torrin Drummond's Web site regarding his current bid for reelection. A five-year-old article from a national business magazine profiled Drummond's business interests, which ran from publishing to biotechnology, transportation to forest redevelopment. Drummond's sex scandal figured prominently, of course, with several tabloid exposés and a number of essays. Opinions ranged from apologetic disappointment to incredulous disdain.

“Okay, you ready, Frank? Here's what we've got,” Toronto said a few minutes later, rubbing his hands together.

They'd shown me some snatches of sentences the night before, mostly gibberish, nothing too useful.

“We broke the password and got into her current E-mail pretty easily. Nothing too spectacular there. Reconstructing her deleted files, we hit pay dirt, though.”

“You can do that?” I asked.

“Sure,” Nicky said. “People think when they delete something it's automatically erased from their hard drive, but that's not true. It's only moved to a different sector, waiting to be overwritten by another file. Until that happens, you can still recover it.”

“We found two recent E-mails that looked interesting, both from the same address,” Toronto went on. He turned the laptop screen so I could read it.

Picture me, a secret amphibian,

Sprung from kingdom chain,

Species yet unfound.

Fashioned whole,

Heir to code,

Conscience,

Reason,

Blur too

fast for sound.

                 
—SA

“Looks like a poem,” I said. “Free verse—not much in the way of iambic pentameter. ‘A secret amphibian.’ Strange.”

“Sounds like it could be your swimmer,” Toronto said.

“Maybe.”

“But here, check out the second E-mail. It's a little more straightforward. Came from the same address.”

meet me. twelve-thirty a.m. i've got big news.

“That's it?” I said.

“That's it.”

“When did she receive these E-mails?”

“Both around the same time,” he said. “Two days ago.”

“The night she disappeared.”

“She must've read them, because they'd both been opened,” Nicole said.

“Somebody read them, at least,” Toronto said.

“Can they be traced?” I asked.

“You bet.” Toronto rubbed his hands together again. “That's where things really begin to get interesting. You wanna tell him, Nicky?”

My daughter picked up some more pages just coming off the printer. They'd obviously pulled them from some server somewhere. “The mailbox they came from belongs to a foundation in Richmond. It's called Second Millennium. The foundation's purpose is to help support disadvantaged kids from the inner city. It apparently doles out grants and scholarships to private schools, even pays parents or guardians for some kids’ living expenses,” she said. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“We found out who's behind the foundation—Congressman Torrin Drummond.”

“But that doesn't make any sense. Why would he have sent his own daughter E-mails like this from some foundation address?”

“I don't think our man sent them,” Toronto said. “Best I can tell, he's not involved in the day-to-day operation of the foundation. He doesn't use that E-mail box. There's a woman in Richmond who does, though. We just got the data on her. Works full-time as a nurse.” He picked up another sheet of paper. “The foundation's only address is a post office box, so my bet is she runs the thing part-time from her house or something.”

“What's her name?”

“Name's Roberta Joseph.” He handed me the paper. Listed were complete addresses, both home and work, and phone numbers.

“You guys make this too easy for me,” I said.

“You think this woman's involved, Dad?” Nicole said.

“I don't know. Seems like a stretch to me. Tell you what, Jake. Keep your cell phone handy. I may need your backup and we may need to move in a hurry. Let me know if we hear anything else from the police.