A Witness Above

by Andy Straka

  “What would you say might happen to him?”

  “I'd say that, on the surface, this individual has a serious problem. But as a prosecutor I might be willing to consider—”

  “Extenuating circumstances?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what if the police don't see it the same way?”

  She straightened some papers on her desk. “I'm both cautious and respectful when dealing with the police.”

  “As well you should be. Can you keep them off me?”

  She stared at me for a long hard second. “I honestly don't know.”

  I nodded. “Not to take advantage of your kindness, counselor, but what can you tell me about Kevin “Weems?”

  “Weems? Isn't he Nicole's mother's boyfriend?”

  “You got it. Know anything about his background?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “I need to check him out.”

  “Well I can't officially … you suspect him of something?”

  “I suspect him of a lot of things, just like everybody else.”

  “I'll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you still get along with Camille Rhodes?”

  “Reasonably. It works best when we minimize contact.”

  “I see,” she said. “It's a shame, though, isn't it? I mean, your Nicole is a beautiful girl.”

  I said nothing.

  “We better get going to the Turners’ … Have you eaten?”

  “I picked up a burger at one of the fast-food joints down the street.”

  “Blah.” She grimaced. “Rather starve. I can stop and get something on the way. We'll go out through the front, the way you came in. Just give me a minute to close up shop here and check the back.”

  I made my out to the waiting room again. The shadows had lengthened. The air conditioner still moaned. I picked up a copy of Smithsonian and was flipping through the pictures when I heard her panicked voice: “Pavlicek!”

  I dropped the magazine and bounded toward her office again. My hand was on my gun.

  “Down here at the end of the hall!”

  In a dim back room with a kitchen table and coffeemaker she stood trembling next to a half-open door that led to a parking lot.

  “There was somebody in here,” she said.

  “Maybe someone from the staff just forgot—”

  “No.” She pointed. The door handle was broken and there were deep gouges in the wood.

  “Did you get a look at them?”

  “No, I heard footsteps and—”

  But I wasn't waiting to hear the rest of her answer. I drew my weapon and stepped out the door.

  The heat hit me like an ocean wave. The small lot in back was empty, save for a yellow Saab, which I took to be the Commonwealth attorney's; everything was enveloped in shadows cast by the building next door.

  The driveway was made of crushed stone. I waited and listened. At first, there was nothing but some distant traffic noise mixed with the sounds made by a flock of starlings that had settled in some trees a block or so away. Then I heard them: two quick steps crunching on the gravel in front.

  I moved as fast as I could around the side of the brownstone, keeping my back to the wall. I was in darkness now, hopefully concealed from whomever I was pursuing. When I made it to the front, however, no one was there. My truck was parked against the curb just as I had left it. The street appeared empty except for a couple cars that had been behind it when I pulled in. Some instinct or voice inside said to move toward the bed of the pickup and crouch low, which undoubtedly saved my life.

  A single shot from a high-velocity rifle whizzed just above my shoulder and thudded into a bed of roses on an embankment. No other sound—the shooter must have been using a silencer. Dropping, I returned one quick round in the direction from which the bullet had come, and scrambled to safety behind the truck.

  Several seconds passed. Then over on the next block, an engine roared to life and tires squealed. I stood and sprinted toward the sound; ran into a high fence and had to detour; bounded a hedge, knocked over a bicycle, and almost tripped over a garden hose. Reaching the next street, I was too late to get a make and model, let alone a plate number or glimpse of the driver. The car was already rounding the corner at the end of the block.

  I walked back to the office. “It must have just happened. The staff all go in and out this way. They only left about an hour ago and they certainly would have noticed something like this.” The prosecutor had her hands on her hips as she examined the broken lock.

  “Which means whoever it was must have come in while you were on the phone or while you and I were talking.”

  “Damn that noisy old air conditioner. I've already called 911. You sure you're okay?”

  “Fine.” Not that there was anything fine about someone shooting at me again after all these years, but it seemed like the thing to say. “Anything obvious missing?”

  “Nothing that I can see.”

  “You think our voices down the hall could have been heard from this room?”

  “With my office door open, definitely.”

  Sirens died and cars screeched to a halt out front. Two deputies followed by none other than Sheriff Cowan came down the hall with weapons drawn.

  “It's all right, sheriff,” Priscilla said. “The bad guys are long gone.”

  Cowan glared at me as he holstered his gun. “What the hell's the idea of discharging a firearm in the village, Pavlicek?”

  The CA stepped in. “I take full responsibility for Mr. Pavlicek's actions, sheriff. I think if your forensic team digs around in that rose bed next door, you'll find a rifle bullet.”

  “They used a silencer, Cowan,” I said. “This was no amateur.”

  “Uh-huh.” He looked at the jimmied door. “What happened here?”

  “Mr. Pavlicek had an appointment to see me to ask some questions about his daughter's case. When we finished, I came back here to check the lock before leaving, I found that an intruder had just exited the building. Mr. Pavlicek gave chase. He was fired upon and returned fire in self-defense.”

  “That your story, Pavlicek?”

  “It's what happened.”

  “Either of you get a look at this, uh, intruder?”

  We both shook our heads.

  He nodded. “We'll check for the bullet. In the meantime, counselor, I'm not too inspired by the idea of Mr. Trigger-happy here floating around my town loaded for bear.”

  Priscilla thought about it for a moment. “It's a legal handgun, isn't it, Mr. Pavlicek?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see no problem then with him continuing to carry it, sheriff. That is, uh, unless you have reasonable grounds for accusing him of using the weapon in the course of committing a crime.”

  Cowan gave a wry smile. “Well, I don't know. We may have to send it off to the lab in Richmond or something to cross-check with the slug we pull out of those bushes.”

  “I see no need of that. Again, I'll take responsiblity.”

  He smirked and shook his head and went about the business of securing the scene with his men.

  16

  Priscilla Thomasen handled the Saab deftly, like she was used to working the manual transmission, as I followed her down Main Street past the sheriff's department and a row of stores. She stopped at a new delicatessen I remembered had once been a hardware store, a neo-Masonic Temple with a row of tall dormers upstairs and two huge plate glass windows on the main level facing the street. Now, instead of nuts and bolts, the tiled displays served up fresh meat and seafood, huge wheels of yellow and white cheeses, and buckets of pasta salad. She spoke, laughing, with a fat man behind the counter. When she came out a couple minutes later, she carried a white paper bag and drink.

  We followed Main Street to the edge of town where the pavement forked. To the right the road turned into state asphalt. Down a hill to the left it ran into Moony's Hollow Road, a stretch of bottom land dotted with old elms. The ri
ver reshaped the topography here every few years. During the years before civil rights, Moony's Hollow had been where most of the black population lived in Leonardston. Not much had changed since then, except that more had filtered into the middle- and upper-class sections of town.

  Kids playing jump rope eyed us with mild curiosity as we passed. We pulled up to a trim bungalow, porch in front, dark green shutters, deck in the rear. Six or seven cars were parked in the driveway.

  “A welcoming committee?” I said as we both stepped out.

  “Relatives. Funeral's tomorrow.”

  “By the way, thanks for what you did back there with the sheriff.”

  “You earned it. And besides, he's an idiot.”

  We clambered up the front steps, crossed the porch, and I waited while she knocked on the flimsy screen door. The heavier door behind it opened slowly inward, but no one appeared to be pulling on the handle. Through the mesh we could see a hallway and a dining room and several people milling about, talking. Some drank from paper cups. A few saw us and looked up and smiled as we entered, but most simply went on with their talk. I looked behind the front door to see who had opened it and there stood a boy of maybe eight or nine, dressed in a dark three-piece suit, white shirt, and tie. He smiled.

  “And what might be your name, young man?”

  “Virgil,” he said.

  “Great job on the door, Virg.”

  He nodded proudly. “Mama say we gotta be hos-pitable. Cause even though Dewayne, he been messin’ wid drugs and got hisself kilt, she says that was only his choice, and even though it was a bad one, we still a family.”

  “Sounds like your mama knows what she's talking about.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Priscilla was across the room already speaking with a tall, bald man wearing a sport coat. She motioned for me to join her.

  “Frank, this is Graham, Dewayne's older brother,” she said. I shook his hand.

  “Pleasure, Mr. Pavlicek,” he said.

  “The pleasure's mine, Mr. Turner. I'm sorry about your brother.”

  He thanked me for my condolences.

  “Graham's an actuary for an insurance company down in Greensboro,” Priscilla said.

  “How's your mother holding up?” I asked.

  “Best as can be expected, considering. It wasn't even a year ago, you know, we buried Daddy.”

  “Mr. Turner died of cancer,” Priscilla explained.

  “I'm sorry,” I said.

  Another man approached. He was shorter than Graham and had a full head of hair, but he had the same build and strong chin and long fingers. He wore a brown suit with a maroon rep tie.

  “Graham, you know who this guy is?” The new arrival casually tried to slip an arm over Priscilla's shoulder. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out he meant me. His demeanor made it apparent that he knew me, and, unfortunately, I remembered him too. Warren Turner was a local newspaper reporter who had decided there was a scoop somewhere in Jake's and my move to Leonardston. He had never found anything to publish, but that hadn't stopped him from trying. I wondered what he thought now that Cat was back in town. Maybe since I had moved away, he had given up his digging. Priscilla looked uncomfortable and gently pushed his arm away.

  Graham said: “Mr. Pavlicek, this is my brother Warren.”

  “I know Warren,” I said. I stuck out my hand but the newspaper man ignored it.

  “The past is still the past, Pavlicek. Don't think any of us have forgotten,” he said.

  Priscilla looked embarrassed.

  “Look, Warren, that was a different time, a different place. Besides, this isn't about any of that,” Graham said.

  “The hell it ain't.” He practiced his best glare on me.

  I tried to look neutral.

  “Yes, sir,” Warren said. “Maybe I need to line up an interview with Mr. Pavlicek here, do a little expose on why he's back in town. Seems to me we have all sorts of possibilities and connections.”

  “Don't you think maybe some other time?” Graham said.

  Priscilla grabbed my arm and started to turn us away.

  “Come on,” she said, “Mrs. Turner is waiting to talk with us.”

  Warren tried his glare on Priscilla too, but to no effect. Next, I supposed, he would try it out on Virgil. Maybe the youngster was performing door duty incorrectly.

  The CA led me around a corner into a narrow pantry that led into the kitchen.

  “Pleasant chap,” I said.

  “He means well. Just gets carried away sometimes.” She surveyed the room ahead looking for the mother.

  “He seemed to know you pretty well too.”

  She nodded. “The jerk, ex-boyfriend, remember?”

  “Oh. No conflicts of interest, counselor?”

  She ignored me and continued scanning the room ahead. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Here's Mrs. Turner. Shhh …”

  At a table surrounded by a dozen others, a rotund woman sat, her eyes closed, her cheeks full and radiant. The people in the room had formed a semicircle around her and were holding hands. A dark man with blue spectacles and a mustache, dressed in a dark suit like Virgil's, was just beginning to lead them in prayer.

  We hung back, outside the room. It was an awkward position to be in, standing apart yet intimate with someone else's entreaty to the Almighty. Priscilla rocked back on her heels, and we watched the man praying.

  He prayed for Carla Turner. He prayed for her living children too, even Warren. He was specific in his requests, but he didn't just tick off a wish-list for God, as if the big guy were Santa Claus on-call, the way some preachers do on television. What surprised me was a prayer he offered in thanksgiving for Dewayne Turner's life. From what I knew of the dead dealer, I couldn't see a whole lot for which to be thankful.

  When he finished the folks around the table all hugged the woman I took to be Mrs. Turner. The little crowd began to disperse. Priscilla took my arm and pulled me forward into the room.

  The large woman beamed when she saw us. “Priscilla, so thoughtful of you to come.” She was maybe sixty and exuded an aura that seemed to envelope everyone around her.

  “Carla, this is Frank Pavlicek. The private investigator I was telling you about.”

  “Oh I know who Mr. Pavlicek is, honey. You forget, he used to live around here. And I never forget a face.” She reached out and took my hand.

  I said, “I'm sorry for the occasion.”

  For a millisecond a raging form of sadness seemed to sweep across her face, but it passed just as quickly as it had appeared. Whatever demons had conquered her Dewayne, they appeared to have been all but banished from her presence now. There was mourning in her eyes—it made them oddly beautiful—but there was also resolve that could have only sprung from enduring unbearable sadness.

  “If this is not a good time …” I heard myself saying.

  “Oh no, no. Come and sit down here, young man. Rest your bones. Have you met our Reverend Lori?”

  The man with the blue eyeglasses had been speaking in low tones with someone else. He quickly excused himself and stepped forward, as if his spiritual antenna had already picked up the thread of our conversation.

  “Sister Turner,” he said.

  “Reverend Lori, this is Mr. Frank Pavlicek, you know, Camille Rhodes's first husband, who now lives … where is it, Mr. Pavlicek?”

  “Charlottesville.”

  “Oh yes, over in Charlottesville.”

  We shook hands. His gaze bore into me, not with accusation, but with question. I hoped mine gave the correct reply.

  “Miss Thomasen tells us you may be looking into Dewayne's murder,” the pastor said.

  “Not officially.” I glanced at Priscilla. “I'm, uh, assisting the police.”

  He nodded. “Uh-huh. How much official time do you think the investigation is going to get?” Clearly the Reverend had not spent all of his time behind a pulpit.

  “I guess that'll be up to the sheriff.”

  �
��Did you know that Dewayne had returned to the church?” he said.

  “That's what I've been led to understand.”

  “Came forward at an altar call. Turned around a hundred and eighty degrees. Was even beginning to try to reach out to addicts, you know. It was becoming his ministry.”

  A ministry? I had seen jailhouse conversions before, some genuine but most not. Kids in trouble trying to beat a rap.

  Lori seemed to read my mind. “Oh I can assure you, he changed, Mr. Pavlicek. The Bible says we become a new creature in Christ. It's something that won't be showing up on his autopsy. But that young man has a new, perfect body now. I guarantee it.”

  “Amen,” someone intoned from across the room.

  A perfect body. The remains of Dewayne Turner transforming into something beautiful. It was a radical thought, all right.

  I turned to Carla Turner. Her eyes were moist.

  “I know this must be difficult for you right now, ma'am, but do you feel up to answering a few questions?”

  Someone produced a tissue and handed it to her. She nodded and dabbed at her cheeks.

  I looked at Priscilla again, who nodded.

  “Did anyone you know have a big enough problem with your son to want him dead?” I asked.

  Her lip trembled. “Dewayne did a lot of bad in his past, Mr. Pavlicek. Stealin’. Sellin’ drugs. I suppose it could have been a whole bunch of different people.”

  “Forgiven,” the pastor said. “He was forgiven.”

  She reached out and the minister patted her shoulder and held her hand.

  “What about past friends or acquaintances? He still hang out with any of his old crowd?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  “A young woman named Regan Quinn?”

  Her eyes stayed blank.

  “Was he working?”

  “Yes,” she said. “For the church.”

  I looked at the pastor. “Like I told you,” he said. “The young man was developing a ministry.”

  “He receive a salary?”

  “A small one. Our church is not very well-to-do. You're welcome to take a look at our finances if you'd like.”

  I nodded.

  I took out a business card and wrote Jake's number on the back before handing it to Carla Turner. “If you think of anything, anything at all that might be significant, feel free to give me a call at this number. You can also talk to Ms. Thomasen here, of course, or Jake Toronto.”