by Andy Straka
I nodded.
“The shooter could’ve been lost or might’ve been poaching. He could’ve thought he was firing at a deer or a bear, maybe even a wild boar. Or it could’ve just been some yahoo with a rifle stoned out of his mind. Had a guy last year said he thought he was trying to take down an elk. He said that after he’d blown apart someone’s backyard birdfeeder with his black-powder rifle. We get a few of those kinds too.”
“Are you saying the person might not have known they were on Chester’s land?”
“Exactly. Those posted signs deteriorate. Chester hadn’t kept them maintained.”
“You must know a lot of the deer hunters around here. Any particular suspects come to mind?”
She laughed, scratching her arm. “Most of the hunters around here are pretty responsible. … Something like this? Drive down the road and flip a coin. You might as well start searching every vehicle.”
“Okay,” I said.
She eyed me thoughtfully for a moment. “You don’t mind me asking, Mr. Pavlicek, what’s your interest in all this?”
“I knew Chester from falconry. Jake here was also my sponsor when I started.”
“I see. …”
“Frank’s a private investigator,” Farraday interjected.
“No kidding?” She raised her eyebrows toward me. “Don’t get involved in shooting cases too often though, do you?”
“Not when I can help it,” I said.
“You got any ideas, you best share them with the sheriff’s department.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
She said it had been nice meeting us and moved on.
Marcia and Nicole had come abreast of us. “Hey,” I said. “You folks up for stopping by the Carews’ house first, maybe grabbing something to eat, before we hit the road?”
“I thought you were all going to head straight home, and—” Marcia stopped in midsentence, obviously remembering our earlier words and realizing that my getting socked in the face with a shotgun barrel was going to have to make a serious dent in our plans.
“Damon wants to talk with Jake and me about Chester’s shooting,” I said. “And Betty wants to see us too.”
“Oh,” she said.
We all walked together for a few more paces, then Marcia and I peeled off from the group for a moment to stand awkwardly by her car. She seemed distracted.
“You see,” she said softly. There was anger tinged with hurt in her voice. “This is why you and I can’t be together.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Because I can’t even show up at a funeral for a friend of yours without you getting punched in the jaw and involved in some kind of trouble.”
I said nothing because she was right, at least about the getting in trouble part.
“I think I’ll just head on back to Charlottesville,” she said. “It’s a long drive and I’ve got a class to teach in the morning. Please pass on my sympathies to Chester’s widow and son.”
It was one of those times I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to act or what she needed or didn’t need from me. I didn’t want her to leave but she seemed determined.
“It was really nice of you to come, Marsh,” I heard myself saying. “Even though you hate funerals.”
She kissed me on the cheek, unlocked her car, and opened the door. I turned so that no one else would see my face while I watched her climb in, start the engine, and drive away.
3
Toronto and I rode with Damon Farraday in his old Scout. Nicole followed in my truck. The Scout was one of the ugliest buckets of bolts I’d ever seen, stained a permanent shade of rust. I got stuck in the back. My head hurt.
Toronto had left his own mode of transport, a brand-new silver-and-black Harley-Davidson V-Rod most other people wouldn’t be caught dead driving in the middle of winter, back in the Carews’ barn. Felipe said he wasn’t interested in going to the gathering at the house, so Toronto had walked his father to his vehicle before saying good-bye.
The land around Nitro looked dry and distressed. Farraday maneuvered down a steep hill, negotiating a hairpin turn. He looked uneasy himself. He glanced first at Toronto, then back at me. “Never thought I’d have to be the one to go finding somebody dead like that,” he said.
“Most people don’t.” I kept my tone neutral. “What happened?”
He glanced across at Toronto. “Well, Jake here already knows some of this. … I was working on a residential job down in South Charleston when I got a message from my office saying Betty was trying to get ahold of me. I called her up and she told me Chester hadn’t come back yet from his early-morning hunt. He was supposed to be going to his regular doctor’s appointment, but he hadn’t shown up back at the house and she was starting to worry about him. Asked if I’d go up there and make sure he was all right.”
“So you did. … What’d you find?”
“I found his Suburban parked down at the start of the dirt road leading up to his land. Didn’t look like nothing was wrong.”
“Then what?”
“Well, you heard he had Elo with him, didn’t you, and that the bird is still missing?”
I nodded.
“I know Chester’s two favorite fields and a couple of ponds where he likes to take Elo. I checked those first.”
“But you didn’t find him.”
“No.”
“So what did you do?”
“It was after noon by then. I was starting to get worried myself. I saw a couple of turkey vultures circling around high up along the ridgeline so I decided to head on up there. … Took me awhile.”
“And is that where you found him?”
“Along the streambed. About dried up with the drought.”
“Jake told me he’d been shot in the back.”
“Yeah. I ain’t never seen that kind of thing before.”
“How was he lying on the ground?”
“He was on his stomach.” Farraday paused for a moment, almost as if he were looking at the scene all over again. “His arms were spread out wide. Face was turned toward the ground.”
“You could tell he was dead?”
“Yeah. I felt his neck for a pulse and didn’t feel anything. I turned him over, blood all over his clothes, but there was nothing to do ‘cept call the cops.”
“They came right away?”
“I called on my cell phone. Took ‘em about a half hour to get up there.”
“No sign of the bird?”
“No, sir. That’s what I did while I waited for the sheriff’s department to show up. Chester had his yagi and receiver with him. I picked them up and tried to see if I could get a reading on the bird, but there wasn’t a thing. Not even a signal.”
“But the unit was still working?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is it now?”
He shrugged. “Deputies took it, I suppose.”
The talk of telemetry and tracking made me think of the GPS unit I’d found earlier belonging to my assailant.
“What do you think happened to Elo?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m especially worried about what happened to that bird.”
“Why is that?”
“Ain’t you heard?” Farraday looked at Toronto. “Didn’t you tell him?”
“Tell me what?” I looked over at my former partner. Toronto’s activities over the past year had been even more mysterious than usual. We hadn’t talked much. I’d been busy working under a new subcontracting arrangement with a northern Virginia investigative agency, helping with a mountain of background checks on both existing and prospective government employees. Nicole, who’d been working for me part-time ever since she’d been a student at UVA, was now trying it out full-time since she was on winter break from her senior year. We were becoming a pretty good team.
But Toronto often seemed preoccupied with his own brand of increased business, the extent of which I could only imagine. He maintained a number of contacts from his time spent in
the military before we’d worked together on the force in New York. At least twice in recent months he’d said he had to leave the country for a couple of weeks, although to where he wouldn’t say. The second time, he’d brought his two birds over to Chester’s place in Nitro for safekeeping.
He spoke without looking at me. “Chester told Farraday here that Elo had been sick. Some sort of illness and partial paralysis. The vet ran a bunch of tests, but wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. Sent some kind of labs out for further analysis. Chester called me about it too.”
“But Chester was out hunting with Elo when he was killed,” I said. “He recovered?”
“Yeah. Elo got better,” Farraday said. “Chester said he thought he was going to be all right.”
I thought about that and what it might have to do with my own encounter in the woods. How many people walked around the woods like that toting a military-style shotgun? Did the guy in the mask have something to do with Chester’s murder and Elo’s disappearance?
“Maybe the bird just raked out on him,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“What’s the vet’s name?”
“I don’t know where he took him. You, Jake?”
Toronto said, “He told me he took him down to see Dr. Winston. Winston’s a local vet, not an expert on raptors, but he’s treated Chester’s birds and a handful of others for a few years now, so I suppose he knows what he’s doing. I’ve met him on a couple of occasions with Chester. Seems like a good man.”
The Scout rumbled over a rough patch of road, causing my forehead to scrape against the ceiling, doing wonders for my throbbing cheek.
“Sorry about that,” Farraday said. “Got to get the shocks looked at one of these years.”
We had been heading down First Avenue along the railroad tracks straight into Nitro. What was left of the WWI boomtown created specifically for the manufacture of gunpowder were the hulking foundations and shells of the former Explosive Plant C, row upon row of orderly streets populated by mostly bungalow-style houses, a throwback to the days when massive barracks housed the thousands of workers, and a washed-out business district spotted by decaying buildings. We turned left and drove past the firehouse. Another quick left brought us past a giant American flag festooning a proud little city hall across the street from the headquarters of the Nitro Police Department.
“So why did you think Chester even called you guys in the first place?” I asked.
“He’d given me permission to hunt up there if I ever wanted—not that I was planning to since it’s so far from my place—and he wanted to warn me about a potential problem,” Toronto said. “He thought there might be something in the air or the water up there, maybe something that was affecting the game population too. Seemed pretty worried about it.”
“Yeah,” Farraday chimed in. “He told me the same kind of thing. Let me go hunting on his land sometimes with my redtail, Tawny, and he knew I’d been over there in that same area a couple of days before. He wanted to know if Tawny was showing any symptoms too.”
“Did she?”
“Nope. She’s been fine, far as I can tell.”
“So maybe Elo just happened to come into contact with something that made him ill. Maybe he ingested some kind of pesticide or something.”
“Maybe,” Toronto said.
“When did all this happen?”
“About ten days ago.”
“The lab results come back yet?”
Toronto shrugged. “Not that I know of. … Damon?”
Farraday was busy wrestling with his gearshift at the moment. He stared straight ahead.
“Damon?”
“Oh, sorry. What were you asking?”
“Lab results. You know if anything more has come in on Elo?”
“Uh-uh. I ain’t heard a thing.”
I put my hand up against the ceiling to steady myself in the seat. “Damon, you said you had an idea about who might’ve killed Chester.”
“Yup. I do. I mean I ain’t no cop or anything, but if I was, I’d sure be looking at these two.”
“What two are you talking about?”
“I first ran into ‘em when I was hunting up there on Chester’s land a few weeks ago. Had ourselves a conversation. Two guys, seemed about my age, both carrying shotguns.”
“Poachers?”
“I ain’t sure. Didn’t look like no hunters to me.”
“What did they look like?”
“That’s just it. I couldn’t really tell ‘cause they was dressed in camo and masks.”
A ball of apprehension materialized in the pit of my stomach. “What did they say to you?”
“They wanted to know what I was doing up there. I had Tawny with me and I told ‘em, and naturally, I asked the same about them.”
“And?”
“They said they was lost.”
“Lost.”
“That’s right.”
“You tell the sheriff’s department about all this?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Scout rumbled a bit as we rounded another curve.
“Hey. If it was one of these dudes shot Chester, why don’t we just get after ‘em?” Farraday asked. “Cops probably won’t do nothing about it.”
“Let’s not go off half-cocked until we know what we’re talking about,” I said.
“I’ll tell you one thing. Whoever killed Chester is gonna pay if I have anything to say about it,” Farraday said.
4
The Carew place was a smallish Victorian relic that had seen better days. The exterior siding, though not quite peeling, was painted a dull shade of what might have once been yellow. The foundation planting lay listless in the cold. More than a dozen other vehicles lined the driveway and spilled onto the lawn.
Toronto and I were sitting in the cab of my pickup. He had pulled me aside while Farraday went with Nicole into the house and said simply, “We gotta talk.”
Both my back and my aching head rejoiced at finally being able to peel myself out of the back of Farraday’s Scout.
“What’s going on?”
“There’s more to this story,” he said. “I didn’t want to spill in front of anybody else.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“There was something else eating at Chester besides Elo getting sick.”
“Yeah?”
“He took me to a couple of meetings to see if I could help him sort things out.”
“Sort what out? What kind of meetings?”
“Ever hear of a group calling themselves the Stonewall Rangers Brigade?”
“Sounds like a bad name for a country-and-western band.”
“Well, this is no musical group. They’re active around this area. I’d guess you’d call them a militia for want of a better term. Named themselves after a unit from the Civil War.”
“You’re talking about a bunch of fools with rifles.” My masked attacker was beginning to come into clearer focus.
“Yeah. Except these people aren’t exactly fools—at least some of them aren’t anyway. They’re full of white supremacist crap, and they seem pretty serious about it.”
“I thought most of their kind went underground after the whole McVeigh execution and all that.”
“Apparently not—not around here at least.”
“Okay, but what’s any of this got to do with Carew? You say he took you to a couple of meetings? I find it hard to imagine Chester having anything to do with white supremacists,” I said.
“Me either, but here’s what happened. A few of them started showing up on his land out there where you were today. Since he was the only one hunting or doing anything on that acreage, they wanted to know if Chester would give them permission to use part of his land for some of their”—he mocked quotation marks with his fingers—”training exercises, as they called them.”
“So what, Chester let them on his land?”
“No. At least he said he told them no at first, but they kept after him. Invited him
to several of their meetings. He finally asked if I’d go with him to check them out.”
“Why didn’t he just call the cops?”
“You know Chester. He said he was going to make up his own mind before calling in the police or anything.”
“But if he let them use his land and they were ever engaged in anything illegal, he could’ve been drawn into it.”
“I told him the same thing, but I guess it was more complicated than that.”
“How come?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“So you went to a couple of meetings with him?”
“Yeah, some farm over near Hurricane. Seemed like just a bunch of bucktoothed crackers running around wearing camo to me, but then I noticed something. A few of ‘em had better credentials and were deadly serious.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean most of these folks seemed like they barely knew how to hold a rifle, but a couple of the leaders and a small group of others were experienced people.”
“Ex-military?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they talk about?”
“The head man gets up and gives some lecture about vague threats from all the Jews and enemies foreign and domestic and how we all need to be prepared. Rahrah-rah.”
I shook my head.
“I know. Hard to believe anyone would buy into it, but most of these characters just sat there nodding like bobble-heads.”
“What did you say to Chester?”
“To tell you the truth, I found the whole idea of these people out there with their little weapons pretty pathetic, especially since we’ve got legitimate military ops and people strung out all over the globe. That’s what I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was probably right.”
“You think one of these militia yahoo types is the shooter who put a bullet in Chester’s back?”
“Fifty-fifty between them and some drunk hunter. Like I said, most of ‘em didn’t look like they could shoot straight if their lives depended on it.”
“But you said there were some serious ones too.”