A Witness Above (3 page)

The picture gave new form to the half buried body at my feet. He had been a grinning youth with a look of worldliness beyond his years. Puffy face with waxen skin, brown almond eyes, tinged by a trace of sadness. I bent down as close as I dared and read the name and address: Dewayne Turner, 1215 Lockbridge Court, Leonardston, VA.

My eyes stung. I squinted and read it again, just to be sure. It was, after all, the town in the Allegheny highlands near where I had settled with my ex-wife and child after moving south. Camille and Nicole still lived there, not to mention Cat Cahill, who had grown up in the region, and even my ex-partner turned master falconer, Jake Toronto. Coincidence? Maybe this was my problem after all.

I was about to turn away again, when something even more curious caught my eye. If I hadn't pushed against the wallet in a certain way, I might not have noticed it at all. One of the bills was stuffed inside at an odd angle. Along the end of the single was a string of numerals and dashes in blue ink. The moisture had caused them to bleed, but it was still possible to decipher them. A phone number. Not just anyone's. She had a private number, separate from her mom's.

Here is where—and I'm ashamed to recount how easy it was—I decided to break the law. Holding the wallet upright with the stick in one hand, I reached into the leaves and picked out a sturdy twig. Now I possessed a crude pair of chopsticks, with which, after a considerable number of tries, I was able to extract the bill by its edge just far enough that I could grab it with my falconer's glove. I folded the piece of evidence and stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans. Almost as an afterthought, I did the same with the cross and chain.

The flies kept up their assault. I spat at them, but it did little good. My shirt was soaked by now. A wave of nausea seized me. Bent over double, I moved the wallet back into its original position and covered it with dry leaves, broke the twigs into several pieces, and tossed them into the woods. The smell still clung to everything, miasmic over my hands, in my clothes. My legs almost buckled and I fell to my knees.

The kid was too young, but weren't they all? More memories.
A current under sea/ Picked his bones in whispers/ As he rose and fell/ He passed the stages of his age and youth/ Entering the whirlpool,
Eliot wrote. Something like that. I would have to find the passage when I got home, on my shelves where I kept literature between the
National Geographics
and hunting magazines.

I stood and backed into the field where I could make out the rocky summit of Old Rag again through the haze. Its climb had grown so popular of late that on summer weekends it was almost impossible to find a parking space at the trailhead; the park service collected a fee and you were as likely to be climbing through gum wrappers left by some scout troop as through pristine woods.

I wondered if any hikers, standing in the right place now with a good pair of binoculars, could focus on my figure at the edge of the field three thousand feet below. Or if any would have suspected that nearby, among the woods and cropland stretched out like a hard-spun quilt, the remnants of Dewayne Turner festered in the heat.

Feeling better, I took a few steps into the grass.

“Okay … okay,” I said, and blew the whistle again loudly enough for Armistead to hear. But she still kept her distance, as if to measure my response.

I groped for a piece of meat from my falconer's bag, placed it between my thumb and forefinger, and held it up where she could see it. I must have stood like that for a long time. Eventually, the hawk's weight trembled my arm.

No fury was left in her eyes, no remorse either. She ate slowly, not greedily but with precision while I secured her jesses. When she finished, I hooded her to begin the walk out. Thunder rumbled, angry clouds appeared, and rain began.

We both forgot the cottontail.

2

We were drenched by the time we reached my truck. I settled Armistead inside her cage. Next I used the cell phone to call the state police. I also called Cahill's uncle, who worked a day job and leased out most of his acreage for others to farm.

The first to arrive was a fresh-faced state trooper, careening to a stop behind my truck, beacons spinning on his navy-and-gray Crown Victoria. The rain had stopped. I hoisted myself from the pickup.

“You the man who called about the body? Mr … Pavlicek, is it?”

He was tall, maybe six-foot-three, with a square jaw that angled over a wide neck. His crew cut made his ears look oversized. He donned his campaign hat as he approached.

I was still wet and disheveled, clad in blue jeans and a dirty T-shirt. The shirt had been given to me by a woman named Marcia D'Angelo and it bore a drawing of a crocodile that read:
Life in the slow lane Boca Grande.

“That's me.”

He surveyed my rig, two-tone green F250 with flared fenders and a little mileage on it. Didn't swagger or act suspicious. Just examined it all with the clinical thoroughness you would expect. He paused to look in at Armistead on her ring perch.

“You out here hunting?”

“That's right.”

“Like to see some ID, sir, if you don't mind.”

I pulled out my wallet and slid my driver's license from its sleeve for him to scan.

“Thank you,” he said and handed it back. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Pavlicek?”

“I'm a private investigator.”

“S'that so?” There was no change in his expression. “How'd you come across the body then?”

“I didn't.” I nodded toward the cage. “The hawk did.” It wasn't worth giving him the whole story about the rabbit.

“You a bird hunter or something?”

“Falconer.”

He nodded.

“My apprentice license is in the truck if you'd like to see it.”

“Won't be necessary,” he said. “How far from here is the body?”

“Half mile or so, but it's rough going.”

“Any way to get a vehicle in there?”

“Not right now. If you cut some of this scrub out, maybe.”

Another car appeared around the curve. A Madison County sheriff's unit, brown with mustard star. Unlike the trooper's vehicle, its windows were wide open and I could hear radio chatter in the background. It came to a stop and two deputies jumped out.

The trooper excused himself and approached the new arrivals. The three held a low, official-sounding conference, before opening the trunk of the sheriff's vehicle and lifting out a set of orange plastic saw horses to turn away traffic. Then they turned their attention back to me.

The trooper still did the talking. “Mr. Pavlicek, could you lead us to the body so we can cordon off the area?”

“Sure.”

“Did you see anything else unusual near the body?”

“Not much.” I shaded the truth, figuring they could find the wallet just as easily as I had. “There was one funny thing though …”

“What was that?”

“A dead turkey vulture.”

“Okay,” he said. “One of us will stay here to manage traffic. … Your own bird going to be all right?”

“My truck's in the shade. She'll be pretty quiet as long as her hood is on.”

“Good,” he said. “Let's go.”

I led them to the spot. It took about fifteen minutes of hot, silent walking. The foliage was mostly bear oak and a few scattered cedar. A thin vapor coated everything—the sun had already begun boiling the moisture out of the ground. The trooper carried a handheld radio and a roll of fluorescent orange surveyor's tape. About every thirty yards he stopped to tie a piece to a branch or a rock.

When we got close enough to notice the smell, the deputy produced a set of surgical masks. We all slipped them on.

“Which way exactly?” the trooper asked.

I pointed to the base of the poplar. He and the deputy continued on while I hung back. I watched as they almost stumbled over the vulture, just as I had. They approached the body and made a big circle around it, rolling out the marker tape as they went. They pulled latex gloves from their pockets and snapped them over their hands, examining the area. Eventually, the trooper reached down and prodded at what looked to be the wallet in the same way that I had.

He said something to the deputy, and picked it up. He produced a white paper bag from somewhere, and dropped it inside. A few feet away the deputy bent over and picked up a few other objects.

They spoke quietly for a minute. The trooper said something into his radio and they waited while he listened for a reply. Before too long, he held the device close to his ear. He pulled out a small notebook and began writing. When he finished, he and the deputy took one more look around, then turned and walked back to where I stood.

“Well Mr. Pavlicek, looks like you found yourself a body all right,” the trooper said. He didn't elaborate. The three of us retraced our steps along the trail of tape.

By the time we made it back to the vehicles, four or five more state police and sheriff's cruisers had arrived. A small band of troopers and deputies stood around, and a van was parked alongside my pickup, with two men unpacking equipment.

“That's some bird you got there, mister,” the deputy who had been left behind said.

“Thanks.” I looked in on Armistead who, despite all the commotion, remained aloof beneath her hood.

They asked me to sit tight while another group went out to examine the site. I had already wasted most of the day anyway, so why not? Maybe, while I cooled my heels, I could devise a way to bill the state or local municipality for my time. Might even gain a new air of respectability—Pavlicek, government contractor PI.

I waited in the truck with the windows open. A lunch of tuna sandwiches, an apple, and some chocolate chip cookies lay packed in a cooler on the floor. I drank some water and ate the apple. In the glove box I found an old notepad, wrote the name and address from the dead teenager's license as best I could remember it on a slip of paper, and tucked it between two twenties in my wallet.

More police arrived. The medical examiner with an assistant. I watched them unpack some equipment while I listened to an oldies station out of Front Royal.

Finally most of the second group of cops returned. I stepped back outside, into the sun. A stocky man, almost bald, approached, removed his sunglasses and showed me his shield. He had a pasty face, a bulbous nose that had seen a hard life of broken capillaries, and squinty eyes that looked like dark beads. Rivulets of sweat eddied down his neck to stain his white collar and loose tie. He wheezed like a steam engine.

“Mr. Pavlicek”—he pronounced it Pavli-sek—”thanks for waiting. Humid, ain't it, for this time a year? … I'm Special Agent William Ferrier, state police.”

We shook. “It's Pavli-check,” I said.

“Rhymes with that basketball player—who'd he play for, the Celtics?”

“Yeah.”

“Must be from up north.”

“Used to be. I've adapted.”

“Good. Well, if you can spare us some more time, I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

“No problem. What happened to the local sheriff?”

“Department's a little understaffed here right now.” He dabbed the back of his neck with a handkerchief. “We're with the Violent Crimes Unit out of Richmond. Been up in Culpeper on some other business lately anyway. So they asked us to come over and help out.”

“Okay.”

“Why don't we sit in my car where it's cooler? I could use some water. How about you?”

“Already had some in my truck, but I wouldn't mind some more.”

I followed him to a pale, unmarked Caprice that bore official state plates, its engine running. A younger man, also wearing a tie, sat in the driver's seat sipping Pepsi from a can and rocking almost imperceptibly to some silent song. Ferrier and I went to opposite sides, opened the rear doors, and climbed into the cool of the back.

“Chad, this here is Mr. Pavlicek. Mr. Pavlicek, this is my partner, Chad Spain.”

His partner bobbed his head in greeting. He was much thinner, with slick hair and a pockmarked face and wore aquamarine sunglasses. Ferrier pulled two containers of bottled water from a cooler on the floor and handed one to me. The backseat smelled like shaving cream.

“Thanks,” I said, twisting off the top.

“Trooper tells me you're a PI from Charlottesville.” He took a long swig from his bottle before refastening the cover.

“That's right.”

“Wouldn't happen to have your license, would you?”

I extracted it from my wallet and handed it to him.

He look it over and handed it back without comment. Then he asked: “And you were out here … what … hunting?”

“That's right.”

“It's out of season, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said. “For firearms. But falconers can hunt with their birds anytime. As long as the bird kills only for its own consumption. Out of season, whatever remains has to be left where it lies … just like in the wild.”

“Learn something every day. See you also got a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”

I nodded.

“What kind of investigations you involved with down there in Charlottesville?”

“The usual,” I said. “A few skip traces, the occasional runaway, several divorce situations. Haven't ever heard from V.I. Warshawski. Seems like I spend most of my time on the computer these days.”

He grunted. Probably never heard of Warshawski.

“Ever work a murder case before?” he asked.

“Not as a PI.”

“Oh?” His forehead wrinkled. Curious.

“I specialize in greed and lust, not lethal malice.”

“Sometimes one can lead to the other,” he said. “What'd you do before you went private?”

“Homicide. Up in New York.”

His eyes bore into me for a second or two. If he was surprised, he didn't show it. “That a fact? How long ago?”

“Thirteen years.”

“Hear that, Chad? … Homicide … Thirteen years ago in New York … Pavlicek.” He paused. His mind seemed to be searching for something. “… Wait a minute, I remember you. …” The eyes softened. “You're one of those fellas got in trouble over shooting that colored kid up there. Trial was all over the news for awhile. Ain't that right?”