Flightfall

by Andy Straka

  Clayton focused on Toronto. “Is this still about your missing bird?”

  “That’s right,” Toronto said.

  “I know your falcons are quite capable creatures. But I didn’t think one was so skilled he could pick a lock and bypass a security system in order to hide out in a shed.”

  “You’d be surprised, sir.” Toronto smiled, trying to lighten the moment, but Clayton wasn’t buying.

  “But you didn’t find anything in the shed, did you?”

  “Nope. Looks like whatever operation you’ve got going up there is on the up-and-up.”

  “Did you seriously think I would be involved in something that wasn’t?”

  Toronto shrugged. “There’s always a first time. And I’ve been surprised before.”

  “I have an agreement with the state and federal authorities. You’re welcome to take a look at all the paperwork if you’d like.”

  Toronto waved his hand. “Won’t be necessary.”

  “Do you suspect me of doing something to harm your bird, Jake? Is that it?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean—‘not exactly’?”

  “It means everybody’s a potential suspect until I find out who did it.” Toronto wasn’t backing down.

  “What about my security guards? It could have just as easily been one of them.”

  “I suppose so.”

  The doctor turned his attention on me. “Do you normally break into buildings in the course of your investigations, Mr. Pavlicek?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “We usually call in our SWAT team for that.”

  “Your what?”

  “I’m kidding. Look, we care about what happens to our birds. They fly for us and bond to us. We owe it to Jazzy to find out what happened to him. That’s why Jake’s going so overboard on this.”

  Clayton looked back at Toronto. “But you can always get another falcon. It’s just a bird, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me,” Toronto said. They stared at one another for a moment.

  Clayton finally nodded. “All right. I’m going to let this pass. I didn’t shoot your bird, Jake. I can assure you of that. I enjoy a good hunt now and then, just like you people do, but shooting anything illegally is wrong, and it’s not something I’d ever engage in.”

  It was my turn to nod. I wasn’t sure I totally bought his story, but he garnered a lot of points by not calling the law on us.

  He looked over the three of us. “Sylvia and I have built a pretty good life here,” he said. “Things are going very well with our various businesses and television network. We love the countryside. Most days, it makes me happy to just get up in the morning. There are times I even feel like one of your birds must feel, like I’m flying.”

  He was laying it on pretty thick. I couldn’t help but wonder why.

  “But you’ve had some issues with Mrs. Clayton, haven’t you?” I asked. I wanted him to know I was fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the situation with Maria Andros.

  Clayton hunched forward in his chair. “Sylvia and I have had our differences from time to time, that’s true.” He folded his hands across the blotter on top of his desk. “But what couple hasn’t?”

  It was hard to argue with his line of logic.

  “How long have you been married?” Nicole asked. I noticed she’d pulled her smartphone from her pocket and was holding it loosely at her side.

  “Five years. My first marriage ended in divorce.”

  Toronto stepped forward “I’m very sorry we broke into your shed, Dr. Clayton. I respect your property. We won’t make that kind of mistake again.”

  Clayton leaned back in his chair. “It’s all right. No real harm done. Like I said earlier, I hope you find your falcon or whoever took him.”

  We exited the mansion no worse for the wear.

  Outside, on the bluestone patio that ran the full length of the house, Sylvia Clayton lay on a chaise in the sun. She was an attractive woman. Her leopard skin bikini left little to the imagination, and I was having visions of Marcia at the beach again.

  “I see you’re back to harass us, Jake Toronto.” Mrs. Clayton smiled from behind her oversized sunglasses as she rolled to her side and propped on an elbow to take a look at us.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is this about that falcon of yours again?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She shook her head and made a face in disgust. “I hope when you catch whoever did it you give them what’s coming to them.”

  “That’s our plan.”

  “Mrs. Clayton?” Nicole stepped forward. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “No, dear. Of course not.”

  “Were you here the other day? . . . I mean, the afternoon Jake lost his bird?”

  “Yes, I was. I was in the house most of the day. Then I spent some time picking blackberries. We have a fair number of bushes along the edges of the fields and our new chef makes these incredible blackberry pies.”

  “Did you hear anything that sounded like a shot being fired?”

  “That afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Clayton shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t hear anything of the sort.”

  Nicole let out a sigh and nodded.

  “Was my husband able to be of any more help?”

  “A little. He’s been very generous and understanding.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Clayton beamed again from behind her glasses. “That’s just the type of person he is.”

  “It certainly seems that way.”

  The matron of the manor rolled onto her back again, her face reaching out for the sky. “Anyway, I hope you people get your man.”

  As we left in Toronto’s Jeep, Nicole began punching buttons on her smartphone.

  “You got something?” I asked.

  “Yes. Did you notice the jacket draped around the side of Dr. Clayton’s chair in his office?”

  “Sure. I noticed it.”

  “I snuck a picture of it with my phone.” She pulled the photo up on her screen and showed it to Toronto and me, zooming in on the sleeve.

  “How about that patch on the shoulder,” Toronto said.

  “I saw it,” she said. “Didn’t know what it was, though. Do either of you?”

  I examined the patch in the photo more closely and nodded. “That windbreaker belongs to a competitive marksman,” I said.

  14

  The Affalachia Rod and Gun Club was a rustic affair, a post and beam main structure with a patchy shingled roof. The place looked quiet, almost deserted in the blazing heat of the day.

  The proprietor’s name was Simmons. We found him perched at a table inside the front door cleaning a shotgun, a large tumbler full of Johnny Walker resting close at hand. He looked to be in his mid to late fifties with a red face, a bulbous nose, and a shock of silver hair swept to one side. His world-weary eyes were frozen gray-blue.

  “Mr. Simmons?” I asked.

  The man looked up form his cleaning. “You got him.”

  “Wonder if we might ask you a few questions.”

  “Yeah? And who might you be?”

  “My name’s Frank Pavlicek. I’m a private investigator from Charlottesville, and this is my daughter and business partner Nicole.”

  “Private investigators, huh?” He took up his cleaning again, sliding a thin brush down the barrel. “Got some sort of ID?”

  I took mine from my wallet and handed it over. Nicole gave him hers as well.. Simmons made a show of examining them while he cleaned. He looked back and forth between the ID and Nicole a couple of times, almost as if he recognized her from when she was a teen in Leonardston years before.

  “Y’all from Charlottesville, I see.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What brings you way over here to our neck of the woods?”

  I explained our situation in general terms and what had happened to Toronto’s falcon.

  “
Toronto? Y’all are friends with Jake Toronto?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell me that up front.” He put down his gun and shook our hands. “Any friend of Jake Toronto’s is a friend of mine. You people go ahead and come on in the back.”

  A smile covered his grimace as he pulled himself from his chair and began to limp across the floor, leading us toward an open doorway that led to a much larger clubroom. He must have seen me staring at his gimpy knee.

  “Got this in Desert Shield,” he said. “Took shrapnel and a 7.62 mm round courtesy of Saddam’s Republican Guard. Jake will tell you. Him and me go way back.”

  I nodded.

  “So something happened to one of Jake’s birds, huh? And I’m guessing since you’re here you’re thinking someone shot him.”

  “That’s pretty much the situation. But this is not a slow bird. If he was in a stoop when they shot him, we’re talking over two hundred miles per hour.”

  Simmons scratched his chin. “Be like shooting a missile diving straight down. Not many folks could make a shot like that.”

  “No, sir. And we couldn’t help but notice when we were in Dr. Clayton’s office out at his farm earlier this afternoon that he had a competitive marksman’s patch on his windbreaker.”

  Simmons nodded. “Clayton’s a marksman, no doubt about that. He and some of the people from his farm are out here a couple of times a month for practice. Sometimes he even brings his wife along. He likes shooting sporting clays, too, from what I hear.”

  “So you think he could’ve made such a shot?”

  “Probably. But he’s not the only one around here might’ve pulled it off. Hell’s Bells, with the right rifle I could’ve maybe hit the thing myself.”

  “You have a lot of folks coming in here who could’ve made it?”

  “Now, I didn’t say that. You’ve got to be in top form to pull off something like that. What I hear, Clayton doesn’t just shoot here. He’s got his own private range over there on his farm, too. Guess he comes over this way because he like the socializing and the variety. If he shoots over there, too, well, I’d say he’s in pretty top form.”

  “So we should still consider him among our top suspects.”

  “Assuming your bird was shot, I’d say so.”

  15

  The tractor-trailer tanker bore down on Nicole and me as we drove back to Toronto’s. We were on the two-lane highway that curved around the mountain. I had the Ford at the speed limit, maybe even a couple miles per hour more, a reasonable speed. The big rig appeared in my rearview as if from nowhere. The cab was a Peterbuilt, but in the late afternoon glare from the sun, I couldn’t make out much more in my mirror. Whoever was driving the rig must have really been pushing the edge on those curves.

  “Dad,” Nicole said, a note of concern but not panic in her voice, as she glanced in her side mirror.

  “I see him.” We’d hit an empty stretch of road still a couple of mile out of town. The roar of the tanker’s powerful engine rumbled in on us like an approaching freight train.

  I pressed down on the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb. The Ford jumped out ahead for a few moments.

  But the tanker driver wasn’t through. As we rounded a curve into a half-mile straightaway, the tanker came barreling on behind. Once he hit the straightway, the driver must have shifted down a couple of gears. The tanker closed the distance between us. A small car approached in the opposite lane.

  This was going to be close. The tanker must have been doing at least ninety as it grew larger and larger, filling my mirror, and the driver laid on his horn. A deafening wail. The small car was growing ever nearer. I could either speed up, trying to outrun the big rig, and take my chances of causing a wreck, or find a way out.

  The shoulder looked wide enough. I waited until the last possible moment, angling my truck onto the shoulder out of the tanker’s way as the tanker blew on past. The driver kept blowing his horn and the small car passed safely on the other side.

  Braking to a stop in a cloud of dust left in the tanker’s wake, I lifted my hands off the wheel. “That was interesting.”

  “That was not fun,” Nicole said. We watched the big truck recede into the distance.

  “The guy was nuts. You think he was running late for a delivery?”

  “Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes.

  “You get a look at the driver?”

  “Baseball cap, big sunglasses, and a beard. That’s about all I could tell.”

  “You’ve just described over half of the truck drivers in Virginia.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “How about a plate number?”

  “I made out a six and a two, but the rest of the numbers were covered in grease.”

  “He might get a citation for that, at least, if the Sheriff doesn’t catch him for speeding.”

  “But that’s not really the issue.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You think it was some kind of message?”

  “No doubt.”

  “But I thought you and Jake were cool with Dr. Clayton and his federal permit for dumping and all that.”

  “I thought so, too. But there must be more to it than meets the eye. Obviously, we were mistaken.”

  “We could’ve been killed, Dad.”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet. If he’d really wanted to run us off the road, he could’ve done so easily enough around those curves. But someone is definitely trying to get our attention.”

  “You mean scare us off.”

  “That would be the idea.”

  Nicole took her sunglasses off and rubbed her eyes. One thing I knew: my daughter didn’t scare easily. She wasn’t about to back down now. “So what are we going to do?” she asked.

  I sighed. “Check the load on our guns and make sure we’re ready to go for whatever Jake has planned for tonight. If that guy Wylie wasn’t barking up the wrong tree and Jake’s peregrine getting shot is somehow mixed up in what just happened with that tanker, things ought to be coming together soon enough.”

  Nicole shook her head. “I think we may be missing something. Something to do with Maria Andros. She knew stuff she wasn’t telling us.”

  “Andros and the Claytons, and even Wylie—I wouldn’t be surprised if they all do.”

  16

  The female goshawk was only a few months old, Toronto explained, and still in her immature plumage. I’d flown a couple of red-tailed hawks, had a short stint with a Kestrel, and currently flew a Harris Hawk, but I’d never handled a Gos before. Except for her coloring, she looked plenty mature to me. I could feel the power flow through her talons as she squeezed against my glove, her almost orange eyes fixed on mine. She had a rounded back and a bold white eyebrow, and was still mostly brown up top, although Toronto said this would eventually turn a bluish-gray. The grey ghost, as Goshawks were sometimes called. Toronto had named her Jersey.

  Earlier, Toronto had taken Nicole and me through a little album of photos he’d taken of Jazzman too. In life his peregrine falcon had been magnificent: huge black eyes, steel-blue head, back, and wingtops, black and white stripes underneath. Peregrines were the fastest creature on earth, and in a vertical dive, called a stoop, could reach speeds well over two hundred miles per hour.

  Nicole was still flying an RT, but she’d always longed to have a peregrine. “I can see why you’d be so upset,” she said looking through the photos.

  “Jazzy was a good one, no doubt about that.” Toronto closed the book shut as we came to the end of the pictures. He rarely grew emotional, but the hitch in his voice betrayed his feelings over having lost something so precious, especially to someone taking it away violently, a rage tinged with deep sadness.

  He slipped on his own glove, took Jersey from me, and carried her back to her perch inside her mews.

  “What time we leaving for the mountain?” I asked.

  “A little after eight. I want to be in position before da
rk.”

  “And Sheriff Daveys is coming, too?”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “You really think someone will show?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I’m betting. Except for what you told me about Simmons and the shooting club, no one besides the vet school people knows for sure Jazzy was shot and killed. We’ve dropped enough hints with all of our suspects to make them believe we’ll be scouring the mountain tomorrow.”

  “Any hard evidence?”

  “Not really. But what else do we have? Daveys said Clayton’s prints from his business card didn’t match the ones on the battery.”

  “That would’ve been too easy,” Nicole said.

  While Nicole and I were talking to Simmons at the shooting club, Toronto had hijacked the sheriff again for a few minutes outside his office and explained our plan. In a word, the sheriff thought we were all nuts. The fingerprint from the battery hadn’t matched any in the FBI’s criminal database up in Clarksburg. The only reason Daveys even entertained the idea of heading up a mountain in the dark with the three of us was his debt to Toronto. But Toronto said the Sheriff perked up a little during a follow up phone call after hearing what we’d told Toronto about our encounter with big Tanker truck. Apparently, Wylie wasn’t the only one with suspicions about illegal dumping.

  “You’re sure the chef and the doc and his wife are the only ones who could’ve stolen your other tracker?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” Toronto said. “Not too many people know enough about my business to have pulled off the theft. The Claytons do because we’re neighbors and I’ve worked for them.”

  “But they had no motive to kill Jazzy unless there’s something to this dumping thing. And even then, it’s a pretty thin thread.”

  “Right.”

  “And Maria Andros knows you and has a motive, except—”

  “Except, hotheaded as she is, she’s no killer.”

  “You said it. I didn’t.”

  “You think we’re going in circles?” Toronto asked.

  “I don’t know. Nicky and I were talking about it earlier. There’s something here we can’t quite put our finger on, and that bothers me . . .”