by Andy Straka
“Right.”
“What about the guy that gave me this?” I indicated the contusion at the side of my mouth.
He winced. “Now that, I’d say for sure, was one of the yahoos.”
“This sounds like something the FBI would be interested in.”
“I suppose.”
“You and Chester consider calling them?”
“I thought about it, but Chester didn’t want me to. He said to just let things ride for a while.”
“Maybe he let things ride too long.”
“Maybe.”
“So what? Now you want me to go to the Feds?”
Toronto folded his arms and smiled. “You’re at least semirespectable, Frank. You know that.”
“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You know what I mean. I start talking to Feds and they get all nervous.”
Toronto made a lot of people nervous, me included now and then. I couldn’t say for sure, but just looking at him I guessed he was in his best physical condition ever. His eyes blazed with that gaunt, hungry look I’d seen in pictures of marines getting ready to go into battle.
The outside of Chester’s house might not have appeared any different from when he’d been alive, but inside the atmosphere was changed. In the main hallway, a small display had been set up with flowers and pictures of Chester and Betty and Jason and pictures of Chester with his birds. One of Chester and Elo stood in a particularly prominent position. A long table had been set up in the dining room to receive bowls of fruit salad, greens, baked goods, and steaming main dishes. A group of mostly elderly people milled about the house, some eating off paper plates, others talking quietly. In the kitchen, four or five women worked at the stove and the counters and the sink.
Toronto and I made our way to a corner where Nicole stood talking with Farraday, who held a plastic glass filled with punch. A stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair and an expensively tailored dark suit with brown pinstripes came toward us, almost as if he’d been looking for us.
“Damon?” he asked. “Are these the gentlemen?”
Farraday nodded. “Frank, Jake, Nicole, this is Chester and Betty’s lawyer, Tony Warnock.”
“Pleasure to meet you all,” Warnock said. He shook everyone’s hand in turn. “Sorry for the sadness of the occasion, however.”
“Were you expecting us or something?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. I represent Chester’s estate and am the executor of his will. Betty is interested in speaking with you about what happened to Chester and so am I.”
“Okay.”
“Would you like to get something to eat before we talk?”
I looked at Toronto and Nicole but was met by shrugs.
“That’s all right. We’ll wait.”
“Well, I’m hungry,” Farraday said. “You all go on. I’m going to go get a sandwich.”
“Fair enough,” Warnock said. “Betty’s out back in the barn helping Jason tend to the birds for a few minutes. We thought it might give us a little more privacy.”
“Sure. My daughter works part-time for me as an investigator. Any problem if she comes too?”
Warnock cleared his throat. “As long as you’re okay with it.”
We stepped outside. The big barn in back was a much newer structure than the house and obviously better maintained. Betty had often teased Chester that his birds lived better than they did. Chester had trapped his first raptor, a kestrel, when he was a young man. He’d been flying redtails and Cooper’s hawks back in the days before there were any state or federal regs. A heavy work schedule forced him to give up falconry for many years, but when the state of West Virginia finally got around to approving new falconry regulations in 1997, he decided to take it up again. He’d been retired for a while from his job as a chemical engineer and Betty encouraged him—she was worried, she told Toronto and me some time later, that Chester was beginning to lie around the house and be forever underfoot. The irony was he had to find someone to sponsor him and go through the apprentice process just like everybody else.
Toronto and I had been introduced to Chester at a meet in Harrisonburg. There was an instant kinship, and Toronto was honored when Chester asked him to be his sponsor. Since then, the two of us had been hunting many times with Chester in and around the Kanawha Valley. Even though it was a long trek for me to get over to Nitro, I always looked forward to seeing the old man. He liked to tell Jake and me stories about the “old days” of falconry, the wild and unpredictable experience of working with birds of prey before anyone else viewed them as protected species and all the government regulations became involved.
We found Betty and Jason Carew talking next to one of the weathering cages.
Betty looked up at us, squinting. “Frank, Jake, thank you for coming. Good to see you too again, Miss Nicole.”
“Good to see you too, Betty,” I said. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh, I’m all right, I guess.” She squinted again, this time at my face. “Goodness. I didn’t get a look at you at the burial, Frank. You ought to get that looked at. What happened?”
“I’ll explain in a minute,” I said.
There was an uncomfortable silence while everyone took a moment to digest the situation. Jason hadn’t moved from his position by the hawk pen.
“Honey?” Betty said, gesturing in the boy’s direction. “You remember Mr. Pavlicek, don’t you? And Mr. Toronto? They was good friends of your daddy’s.”
The boy wiped the back of his hand across his nose and came toward us. He nodded.
“And this here’s Mr. Pavlicek’s daughter. Her name’s Nicole.”
The boy nodded again, staring at the four of us with wide eyes.
“Jason’s a little shy at first, but don’t you worry. He’ll warm up to y’all before you know it.”
I felt like asking how the boy was handling his father’s death, but not with him standing right there.
I crouched in front of him. “Jason, it’s good to see you again, buddy.”
I held out my hand;
he put his small paw in my fingers, and we shook.
“You helping your mom take care of these big birds?”
“Yes, sir.” The youngster’s voice was halting, still very much the high-pitched tenor of a boy, though now he was being asked to absorb an emotional blow that critically wounded many men.
“Honey,” Betty said evenly, “I think we’re done out here for the time being. Why don’t you go see if they need any help in the kitchen or in the dining room setting up chairs.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The boy seemed relieved to have something to do so as to not have to engage in further conversation. Without another word, he turned and exited the barn.
“Gotta be hard on him,” I said.
Betty nodded. She closed her eyes and shook her head as if she were attempting to will it away.
“I’m sorry.”
“Chester loved that boy,” she said.
Betty and Chester had adopted Jason when he was an infant. He’d been Betty’s niece’s son, but when the niece and her husband were killed in a house fire—Jason had miraculously survived—and Betty’s sister was too ill to take the boy, she and Chester had volunteered. They had no other children of their own.
One of Chester’s birds fluttered from its perch to the ground with a noisy squawk. There were two left: a big female red-tailed hawk named Mariah and a tiercel Harris’s hawk named Torch.
Nicole stepped over to the weathering enclosure. “What’s going to happen to Chester’s birds?”
“Jason’s too young to be an apprentice,” Betty said. “Damon’s been looking after them. I suppose we’re going to have to find a good home for them, but I can’t even think about that right now.”
No one spoke for a moment while the old woman gathered her thoughts.
“But that’s not what I asked y’all to come talk about, is it?” She picked up a plastic pail from the floor and placed it back on a post on the wall alongside a
couple of others.
“Damon said you wanted to talk with us about how Chester was killed,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“The police are looking for the hunter?”
“Claim to be, anyway.”
“I was just up there myself to have a look around. In fact, that’s where I got this.” I gave her and the lawyer a skeletal version of what had happened to me earlier.
“You say you already reported this to the police?” Warnock asked.
“That’s right.”
“This just confirms what I was afraid of, Tony,” Betty said. “Frank, you know about the Stonewall Rangers?”
“I filled him in,” Toronto said.
“I told Chester not to have anything to do with those people,” she said. “Isn’t that what you told him too, Jake, after he took you to those meetings?”
Toronto shrugged and nodded.
“Why doesn’t the sheriff just round all those people up, bring them in and line them up for questioning until they find out which one did it?”
“Not so fast, Betty,” Warnock said. “We don’t know that the person Mr. Pavlicek ran into this morning has anything whatsoever to do with Chester’s death, or with any particular group for that matter.”
“We don’t?” She seemed close to tears.
“Why don’t we just let the police handle the matter, the same way they’re looking into Chester’s accident?”
“I’m telling you I know evil when I see it,” she said. “And those Stonewallers are evil people.”
“I know. We may not always agree with what other people believe, but they still have rights.”
“It still could’ve been a poacher or someone else,” Nicole said. “You can’t say for sure yet.”
“Hon, I know you’re right.” Betty wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I just get upset is all. I suppose the police are good men, but I can’t help wondering if they’re barking up the wrong tree.”
I gave her a moment to compose herself.
“So what do you want from us?” I asked.
“I want you to, you know, see what you can find out.”
I looked over at Warnock, who raised an eyebrow in my direction.
“It’s not quite that simple, Betty. Via reciprocal agreement, I am licensed to do investigations in this state, but this is a manslaughter investigation. And possibly, as you say, a homicide. The police—”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Can’t you do something?“
Warnock folded his arms across his chest. “Betty, I’m afraid you’d be wasting your money—no offense, Mr. Pavlicek.”
“None taken. But I haven’t even mentioned money. Chester was a friend and—”
“Dad does pro bono work,” Nicole said.
“No,” Warnock said. “I mean … Betty, my counsel is that if you decide you really want to hire this gentleman to look into something for you, you pay him his prevailing rate.”
I said nothing. I wondered why Warnock was being such a hard-ass about hiring me and so insistent about the money side of things if I were hired. I’d already decided I was going to work my way into this investigation somehow or another. If those involved insisted I get paid, so much the better. A legitimate paying client gave me a plausible excuse for looking into the matter further.
Provided, of course, there was anything pernicious to be found. Even if Chester really had been shot by an errant hunter and these Stonewall Rangers turned out to be no more dangerous than Rescue Rangers, I could at least bring Betty a little peace of mind. I could always find a way to pay her money back if I felt it was warranted.
“I want to do this, Tony,” Betty Carew said. “I want to hire Frank to see what he can find out about Chester’s death.”
Warnock nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “It’s your money.”
Betty’s eyes met mine. “I’ve never handled money before. Chester always took care of anything to do with finances. Tony’s been helping me. I’d never even written out a check before this week.”
Her simple frankness was disarming.
“I tell you what,” Warnock offered. “My firm has an account to pay for research and investigations. Why don’t I take care of paying Mr. Pavlicek for now. Then we can just add the cost to your bill for handling Chester’s estate.”
“Would that be wise?” she asked.
“Sounds like commingling to me,” I said.
A dark look passed over Warnock’s countenance. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Pavlicek? I’m not one for always resting on formalities and neither was Chester.”
The lawyer and I exchanged hard glances.
“All right then. First things first,” I said. “Betty, I’d like to ask you a few more questions—alone this time, if you don’t mind. Is there someplace private in the house where we can talk?”
5
Betty Carew sat in the hard-backed chair in a spare third-floor bedroom of the house. 1 stood at the bottom of the bed. Nicole perched on the edge of the mattress across from Betty with her legs crossed and a pen and a pad of paper in her hands while Toronto leaned against a dresser in the comer.
Betty turned to look down through the lace curtains at the cars filling her driveway and lawn.
“Nice of so many people to come. This place may not be much anymore, but right now I’m just glad to be able to hang on to it.”
“Money problems?” I asked. I was having second thoughts about Warnock’s insistence that she pay me and that the money would come originally from one of his accounts. People who played games with money trails usually played other games as well; sometimes bigger, more dangerous games. Just ask any of the corporate chieftains who’d lately found themselves handcuffed before the cameras. And while there may always be two sides to every story, going on first impressions, I wasn’t sure it was Tony Warnock’s side I wanted to be on.
She turned back to face me. “Not really. I don’t mean to complain. It’s just that, like I said, Chester pretty much handled everything financial around here and now I’m left to be dependent on some lawyer.”
“You trust Warnock?”
“Oh, I suppose so. We’ve known Tony for a few years and he’s done work for Chester before, back when he inherited that land where he was killed.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable being paid for this job, especially with money out of one of his practice’s accounts.”
“Why not? They’re a big law firm, headquartered here in Charleston. If it still makes you uncomfortable, I can tell him I’ll write you out a check myself, now that I know how to do it.”
“No … that’s all right. I’ll just let him play it his way for now. Maybe I’ll learn something.”
She smoothed out her dark mourning dress, the one she hadn’t changed out of, even when she went to help Jason in the barn. “Seems to me you’ve got to start by trusting somebody, Frank,” she said.
“I do. I trust the people in this room. And I trusted Chester. Right now, that’s about as far as it goes.”
“Okay.”
“Putting the money issue aside for a moment, tell me some more about Chester.”
“Of course.”
“Did he have any enemies that you know of?”
“Enemies? Why, no. Certainly no one that would want to shoot him in the back.”
“What about at his work? Anybody hold any old grudges?”
She shook her head. “It’s been seven or eight years. The company’s been bought out since he left. I can’t imagine there’d be anyone.”
“Neighbors? Church acquaintances? Anyone with whom he’s had a recent dispute?”
Again she shook her head.
I glanced out the window. Some of the visitors were beginning to leave.
“Tell me more about his involvement with the Stonewall Rangers Brigade.”
She looked surprised by the question. “I told you what I thought about that. And like I said, I told him too.”
&n
bsp; “How involved was he with them?”
“I don’t really know. Not exactly.”
“We know he took Jake to a couple of their meetings.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever attend any others, on his own I mean?”
“Not that I was aware of.”
“Did you know the group had been asking Chester about using your land?”
“No. Why?”
“We’re not sure, exactly. They claimed for some kind of training exercises.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why those people are just a bunch of … a bunch of …”
“Of what, Betty?”
“Of evil charlatans, that’s what they are. Of the same ilk as the Klan was in my day.”
“What do you think Chester was doing going to their meetings?”
“Well, I don’t know really. I remember him coming home and telling me he was concerned some of these people were ‘over the top,’ as he put it. He was sympathetic whenever anyone started talking about big government eating away at our freedoms and whatnot, but he said they started talking about hating the Jews and that there were a bunch of them who viewed the government in Washington as the enemy. Chester didn’t like them saying that. And he said he told them so.”
“But he still went back a second time.”
“Yes.” She looked at Toronto. “What do you think, Jake?”
“Like I told Frank. It wasn’t like Chester to let anybody else tell him how to make up his mind,” he said.
That brought a small smile to her face, for the first time that day I’d been able to notice. “You’re right,” she said. “That was Chester.”
“Why do you think he wanted to take Jake with him?” I asked.
“I … I’m not sure,” she said. “But I think it was because he was afraid of something.”
“You tell the police about any of this?”
“Yes,” she said. “But the investigator seemed so certain it was just an accident, a deer hunter or somebody.”
“And you didn’t know about the Rangers asking Chester to use his land?”
“No. … But now that I come to think of it, he did get a phone call from a man about ten days ago. He got angry with the caller and they might’ve been talking about the land. At least I think I remember overhearing something about that.”