A Killing Sky

by Andy Straka

  A man emerged from the woods along the trail, carrying a fishing pole.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Fancy meeting you way out here, Pavlicek.”

  His name was Beauford Sloan and he could've been a stunt double for Wilford Brimley, so close was the resemblance.

  “How you doing, Beauford?”

  “Fair to middlin’.”

  “Jake,” I said, “this is Beauford Sloan. He's a retired cop from Charlottesville and also a private investigator.”

  Toronto nodded.

  “Jake's my old homicide partner. Lives over in Leonardston now. Helps me out from time to time.”

  “You don't say,” Beauford said. The two men shook hands. “You fellas out here hunting?”

  I pointed downwind to the distant tree where Armistead perched. “Got the hawk up after squirrels.”

  He nodded. “Word's all around town that you've got yourself in some kind of brouhaha over this Drummond thing everybody's talking about.”

  “That would be correct,” I said.

  “Well,” he chuckled, “you know how it goes. Keep casting ‘em, partner.” He nodded at the two of us and disappeared on down the trail.

  Toronto and I headed off after Armistead and Nicole.

  “One thing's been bothering me,” I said after Beauford was gone.

  “What's that?”

  “The blood on that rental car, especially the fingerprints. Wouldn't you have thought the kidnapper or killer would've thought to wipe those away? They were in plain view, as clear as day.”

  He shrugged. “Perp might've been in a panic. Had to leave in a hurry.”

  “Maybe. But the doors were all locked.”

  “You're thinking the scene was staged?”

  “I don't know. It's a possibility.”

  “Something I don't get,” Toronto said. “If the feds think you and Haynes look good as kidnappers, why don't you just let them know where Cassidy Drummond and her mom are and get yourself off the hook?”

  “Because Drummond's trying to hide something, and now he's trying to frame me. He must be getting pretty desperate. By keeping him from knowing where the rest of his family is, I can keep him off-balance and there's a better chance he'll make a mistake.”

  “What about Haynes? You said the video and the physical evidence were pretty incriminating.”

  “I know. The fibbies are obsessed with what they think is a slam-dunk case. But a lot of the pieces just don't fit.”

  “Where are you going now with this E-mail thing?”

  “I'm not sure. It really does look like whoever sent those messages knows what happened to Cartwright Drummond and is probably responsible. And then there's the poem.”

  I had taken the paper out and looked at the words again before falling into bed the night before. The Secret Amphibian. Was Averil Joseph, autistic and seemingly retarded, capable of writing those words? If so, what did she mean? Even if she did turn out to be the writer, so what? Cartwright Drummond may have been as mystified as anyone by her strange message.

  “Hey, guys!” Nicole was almost a hundred yards ahead of us by now, following Armistead as she stooped low over the edge of the pasture. “Are we hunting here or what?”

  We jogged to catch up. The sun had risen above the trees, and the chilled air was warming. By the time we got to Nicole, Armistead had already taken her rabbit.

  “You guys missed it,” she said.

  I let the hawk feed for a bit, then called her off the rabbit using a lure. This might be one of the last times I ever do that with you, girl, I thought, and here I am, too preoccupied with a case.

  The idea of letting my first bird go was bittersweet. I didn't have to, of course. I could keep this redtail and hunt with her for many more seasons. But Armistead, like most raptors flown by falconers, lived more on the edge of being wild. I'd decided the biggest thrill in the experience was to train her and see her prepare for the day when she would fly free and alone in her environment—I hoped for many years to come. A part of me also harbored the hope that she would remember me after she'd gone.

  “All right, girl.” After feeding Armistead another piece of her kill, I slipped her hood over her head and pulled the braces snug using my teeth. Jake bagged the prey and we began the walk out with Armistead riding on my fist.

  “You two were talking more about the Drummond case, weren't you?” Nicole said.

  “Girl must have bionic hearing,” Toronto said.

  “How come those guys were following us in their car?”

  “That's a long story, honey. We're playing hardball now,” I said. I scanned the woods and the nearby hills, wondering from where they might be watching.

  “I hate it when you do that, Dad. I'm not a child. I deserve to know what's happening.”

  I said nothing.

  We walked in silence for a couple of minutes. A few cottony clouds had appeared, but overall the sky remained an electric blue. We crossed from the warmth of the sunlit pasture into a forest of box elder, witch hazel, and black gum. Up ahead you could see the forest clearing, and beyond that a highway, and down the shoulder a ways, my truck. No sign of the G-men or their car.

  “They said on the news this morning they had questioned a couple of suspects in the disappearance,” Nicole ventured as we broke out of the trees.

  “Let's just drop it, Nicky,” I said.

  “Arggghh!”

  Her frustration was loud enough for every federal agent, not to mention angler and otherwise, within a mile or so to hear.

  23

  I spent the rest of the day on the phone in my office, trying to run down any lead I could think of regarding George and Norma Paitley and Second Millennium. Nicole had two classes and a lab. Toronto passed the time at the workbench in my office cruising on-line with his own laptop. Then he sat typing some code into the computer for a while. He also set up shop on the couch and finished fashioning a new set of anklets I'd begun making for my next bird.

  We ate a late lunch from a vending machine off the lobby. “Things going to be okay over at your place?” I asked him as we chewed our prefab chicken sandwiches. “It's a long time to be away.”

  “Got it covered,” was all he said.

  Later, the guys in the Taurus parked across Water Street must have been getting bored. Around four o'clock they were replaced by a fresh crew: a guy and a gal in a minivan. Attempting to blend in.

  Around six-thirty I finished making my calls and looked at Toronto.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I talked to three different people with D.C. Metro, fifteen current and former neighbors of the Paitleys, a human resources manager with George Paitley's old employer. No one seems to want to speculate whether or not the couple might've been the victim of worse than a hit-and-run. ‘Tragic’ seemed to be the most common adjective. One guy said they still haven't even changed the lane markings where it happened after all this time—says the intersection is a death trap.”

  “What about the woman from South America the Paitleys’ son talked about?”

  “Nada.”

  “Too bad,” Toronto said.

  “You want to hear how I got nowhere on Second Millennium, too?”

  “Not if you got nowhere.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, it'll be dark in a little while. About time to lose these newbies across the street, don't you think?”

  “I was beginning to think you'd never ask.”

  “I thought we'd head over to Marcia's first and pick up your Jeep.”

  “Good deal. I've got an extra set of plates I keep in the back. They won't be able to trace those to me.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “You got something in mind for the folks in the van? ‘Cause if not, I could always just go down there and shoot them for you.”

  “I don't think that'll be necessary,” I said.

  There is an old coal tunnel that runs from the basement of the warehouse where my office co-op is. It's dark and dingy, and at night, it's frequ
ently home to squatting wildlife. Not many people know about it. The entrance is covered with a big sheet of wallboard, but if you know where to remove a few screws, you can slide the board and make an opening big enough to squeeze through.

  The tunnel runs under the railroad tracks behind the building and connects to another old warehouse on the other side. The second warehouse is used by the city to store mowing equipment and trucks that are rarely used. Even better, there's a bus stop on the opposite corner, shielded from the view of anyone watching my building. There's another stop off Grady Avenue just half a block down from Marcia's house.

  I stepped into the hall. The building had emptied out for the day. No one ever went to the basement anyway, except the janitor, and he finished making his rounds and went home promptly at six. We left all the lights on and the computer screen burning brightly in my office. I'd already gotten everything I needed from my truck in the parking lot. Toronto had a small suitcase loaded with an assortment of flashlights, tools for breaking into things, and a couple of weapons.

  For once, the plan went like clockwork. We made our escape, caught the bus, and were being let into the back door at Marcia's place by a nodding Mr. Earl about half an hour later.

  “Everything all right here?” I asked.

  Nod.

  Mr. Earl and Toronto clasped hands.

  “Frank!” Marcia called out. She hurried into the kitchen from the living room. The sunporch was off limits now, and all the drapes were drawn in the rest of the house. “We were beginning to get worried.”

  I kissed her lightly on the lips. She was wearing a plush terry bathrobe and slippers.

  Karen Drummond came thumping down the back stairs, followed by her daughter.

  “What's happening?”

  Toronto headed out to the garage with Mr. Earl to check on the Jeep. Marcia and the rest of us stood around the kitchen island. I gave them a capsule summary of my interviews with the Josephs and Diane Lemminger and the developments with the FBI.

  “We've been trying to cling to hope about Cartwright,” Karen Drummond said.

  “I understand.”

  “It's worse than knowing for certain that she's dead. It's like living inside a tornado—a tornado that never stops.”

  Marcia put her arm around her friend's shoulder.

  “No one knows where we are still, right?”

  “Let's hope not.”

  “Frank, maybe we should just go to the FBI,” Marcia said. “If they think you're involved—”

  “I've thought this through,” I said. “The congressman's definitely trying to hide something. He knows we're on his trail if he and his people are plugged in to the investigation, which I'm sure they are. By now, they've seen the articles about the Paitleys and the copy of the photo. I'm sure they know I've been asking a lot of questions about Second Millennium too. Whatever he's trying to cover up, it's something big enough to take a wild stab at framing me for Cartwright's disappearance.”

  “Big enough to kill for?” Karen Drummond said. Her face was set like stone.

  “Possibly.”

  “You think that's what Diane Lemminger's exposé is going to be about?” Marcia said.

  “Yes. Either that or something related.”

  “You think Tor knows about the upcoming show?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Diane said she had talked to Cartwright, but we don't know how much Cartwright may have told the congressman.”

  “If Tor Drummond wanted to stop a reporter from airing something, especially Diane Lemminger, you'd think he'd figure out how to go after her, not his own daughter.”

  “What can you tell us about Second Millennium?” I asked Karen Drummond.

  “Nothing really,” she said. “I've seen the name before, of course. It's been around a long time. Tor's family has always supported numerous charitable causes. Millennium wasn't one of the bigger charities. They help children, but I think they like to keep a low profile.”

  “Ever wondered why?”

  “No, come to think of it, I haven't. I guess I always just assumed it was because of the nature of the families and the situations they became involved with. A lot of broken families. Children with only one parent, or no parents.”

  “Children with only one parent, like Roberta Joseph,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just thinking out loud.”

  It was quiet for a moment.

  “All right,” I said, “I'm still operating under the assumption that Cartwright is alive and we need to find her as soon as possible. Anything solid we find, we'll pass on to the FBI, but we aren't going to wait for them. Your husband's been in Congress a long time. He may have friends there, strings he can pull. While he's trying to cover up something else, he may be hampering the investigation.”

  Toronto and Mr. Earl came back in from the garage.

  “Everything ready with the Jeep?” I said.

  “Ready and waiting,” Toronto said.

  “Karen, do you know anything about your exhusband's schedule this week?”

  “A little.”

  “Now that all this has happened and his trip is off, do you think he will be up in Washington, or staying at the house out in Ivy?”

  “I don't know. He only rented the Ivy house after he moved out of our home in Richmond. He's back and forth between Charlottesville and Washington all the time, I think, and he's always stayed in an apartment up in D.C. when the House is in session. But with Cartwright missing and all, I would have no idea where he'd be right now.”

  “All right.” I stretched, stifling a yawn. “We'll just have to take our chances, then.”

  “What are you going to do?” Marcia asked.

  “Jake and I are going to do a little late-night hunting,” I said.

  24

  The moon hung full in the sky as Toronto and I made our way on Barracks Road out of the city and into Ivy horse country. We passed miles of white board fencing, gates, and side roads, backed by fields and outbuildings and substantial houses, all of which appeared to glow with an almost unearthly pallor. The ghostly hulks of the Blue Ridge, visible off and on at various twists and turns of the road, loomed like sleeping guardians.

  “I don't like going in without a layout,” Toronto said.

  “Me either. This is kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “You said there's security?”

  “There was, last time I was there. Although I'm not sure they'll be so beefed up when neither the congressman nor any of his family is at home. I'm hoping for just a caretaker or something.”

  “Long as he's not a caretaker with a shotgun.”

  We turned onto a long dirt road that followed the banks of the rock-strewn Mechums River in a wide arc back toward the way we had come. It was not the way I had approached the Drummond house before. Soon the dirt turned to pavement again, and we rolled along in the darkness, our headlights blazing a path. When I noticed a familiar landmark up ahead, the distant hillside from which Nicole and I had observed the house, I cut the lights and pulled the truck off onto a grassy shoulder.

  “How far?” Toronto asked.

  “I'd say about half a mile, across this field. It looks like there are woods on the other side. We'll have to get through there, then, if I remember correctly, work our way across another field to approach the house.”

  “Great… just great.” He was slipping out of his sneakers into black combat boots that rode high up on the legs of his fatigues. “That way they can get a clear shot at us.”

  “All the money I'm paying you and you're still being a pessimist?”

  “Right, baby. Go ahead and subtract some from my outrageously humongous bill.” He shot me a funny look.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Didn't you ever bust in anywhere when you was a kid?”

  “I must've been away at a cub scout convention that week.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, in my neighborhood, we were the cub scouts.”

  I d
idn't have an answer for that, so I said nothing. I made sure my .357 was loaded and slid it into the shoulder holster under my coat. Toronto wore his .44 on his waist and also carried a little sawed-off number that looked like a cross between an Uzi and a Gatling gun.

  “What's the current mandatory sentence for armed robbery in Virginia?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “Guess I'll have to study up on that.”

  “How about an alarm system? Did you see one when you were in there before?”

  I nodded. “But it didn't look too complicated. Probably a walk in the park for you.”

  “We'll see.” He slipped on a pair of black gloves with cut-out fingers.

  Toronto had told me stories of when he was young, running with what we now would call a gang, knocking over houses in Yorktown Heights just for kicks. Sometimes they would lift a television or a stereo; sometimes nothing at all. Of course, all this was before a stint as an Army Ranger rehabilitated the young man's ways. I doubt Yorktown Heights was a part of his history that made it into his application to join the police academy.

  “Let's go,” I said.

  We walked through the trees nearest the truck and squeezed through a rusty barbed-wire fence. Before us lay the newly plowed field. The darkened soil, with the turning, still emitted a faint acidic breath of loam. We made our way awkwardly across the furrows, Toronto dragging a bushy branch behind us to erase our tracks.

  On the far side we entered woods again. Here the trees were smaller, mostly pitch pine in rocky soil, but the bed of needles cushioned our step. After five minutes of descending a gradual slope, I caught my first glimpse of the brown grass of the field and the driveway and the house rising above. The main gate to the compound, which had been wide open a couple of days before, was closed and chain-locked, which, along with the relatively rural location, must've discouraged enough to keep them away. There were no lights on that we could see, inside the house or any of the out-buildings either, but bright floods lit a good deal of the property. We came to the edge of the woods.

  “What do you think?” Toronto whispered.