Cold Quarry

by Andy Straka

  “Maybe they’re hiding something. Maybe something about the land.”

  “And maybe that ties in with whatever happened to Elo,” he said.

  “We need to find out if Chester’s vet has gotten back the results from whatever tests he sent out.”

  “Seems simple. Chester could’ve found out about something the Rangers are up to and that’s why they killed him. I might buy that. Still …”

  “Still what?”

  “Seemed to me Higgins was actually telling the truth, at least about not killing Chester.”

  “What do you think these GPS way points are all about?”

  He shrugged. “Could be just one of their stupid war games.”

  “Or it could be something serious.”

  “An actual attack? I suppose Higgins might just have it in him.”

  “Seemed pretty obvious from talking to Deputy Nolestar that the Feds are watching the Rangers.”

  “Which means they’ve probably got them under surveillance and all their phones tapped.”

  “What do you think Higgins meant when he said just a couple more days?”

  “Wish I knew.”

  “Which raises another question. If they know and have solid evidence that the Rangers murdered Chester, why haven’t they moved in to at least arrest those responsible? You pick up on anything specific regarding an attack at those meetings you went to?”

  “No. Mostly just a lot of ranting and raving and party line.”

  “We’re going to need to talk to the Feds, either straight up or through Nolestar.”

  “Unless they decide they want to talk to us first.”

  “And in the meantime I’ll need more names of Rangers to talk to. No doubt Higgins’ll be on the phone with some of his buddies just as soon as he gets done unloading those cars.”

  “I can go to work on that.”

  “Something else is bothering me though too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Warnock.”

  “The lawyer? You think he’s tied in with these characters?”

  “Possibly. But he also seemed to want to make me doubt somebody else.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You.”

  Toronto smiled. “You ain’t taking the guy seriously, I hope.”

  “No. Should I?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “You aren’t holding back something on me, are you, Jake?”

  “How long have you known me, Frank?”

  “I know, I know. But I’ve never seen you lose it like you just did with Higgins either.”

  “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  We took the Dunbar exit off the interstate then wound north on back roads that eventually led us to the dirt road turnoff for Carew’s land.

  There was no gate preventing access from the highway, but an old barbed-wire fence and a string of weathered signs indicated the owner’s desire for privacy. The fence ran over a hill and down a ravine as far as you could see. The signs were ubiquitous in either direction. Anyone hunting deer without permission on this property was either blind or malevolently determined. A small piece of leftover crime scene tape dangled from one of the fence posts, the only obvious reminder of the shooting that had occurred here only a few days before.

  Before yesterday morning’s excitement, the last time I’d been out here with Chester and Toronto had been more than a year before, a few weeks after Chester had acquired Elo from a breeder out West. We’d sent up a pheasant from a radio-controlled launcher to help acquaint the peregrine with that kind of game. Elo missed on the first try. That pheasant gave a nice midair juke as the falcon was about to strike and deserved to go free. But the second bird offered up a paler version of the same move, and this time the peregrine was ready, adjusting his stoop to bag the prey. Elo was a quick learner, a very good sign.

  “The spot’s about a mile or so in,” Toronto said.

  “I remember from yesterday.”

  Toronto consulted the topo of the land he had spread out on the dashboard. A large arrow, drawn by Damon Farraday, pointed to the location. “Don’t think I’ve ever been up the hill that far,” he said.

  The narrow road, little better than a cow path, climbed steadily, even at a slow five miles an hour, jolting us with a washout every few yards. I had a Billie Holiday CD playing but had to turn it off so it wouldn’t skip. We crested a ridge, only to confront a larger one ahead.

  Farraday said he had called for help on his cell phone after he found Chester. A couple of sheriff’s deputies, probably the same two I talked to yesterday, had arrived about half an hour later.

  “Wonder how much they worked the scene.” I speculated out loud. “I didn’t get to see a whole lot.”

  “From what Damon says, doesn’t sound like much. Unless the Feds were already involved. Damn, Frank. What if it really was an accident, and all this militia business is just so much crap? Cops might even already know who the shooter is, talked with him and decided it was an accident. Just some poor father trying to put venison on the table or something.”

  “Nolestar didn’t seem to think so.”

  “Sure would make our job a whole lot easier though. We just slip downtown to one of the local honky-tonks and do some asking around. But I guess that’s why you’re still the professional investigator.”

  “So what’s that make you?”

  “A used-to-be investigator. … Now I is just professional trouble.”

  I couldn’t disagree with that.

  We came to a fork in the road and Toronto directed me to pull off to the side in a cleared-out area beneath a large poplar. We climbed out of the truck.

  “Guess we need to make sure we’re both carrying this morning,” he said. “Don’t want a repeat performance with the masked marauder.”

  I nodded.

  “Case you get lost way back in here, you can use the tree as a reference,” he said, pointing to the poplar.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I got out on my own yesterday, didn’t I? Even after tracking that guy.”

  My bush craft had grown considerably since taking up falconry. I’d learned, under Toronto’s tutelage, how to build a mews, assorted bow perches, and a weathering pen; how to work with various types of falconry furniture and cordage; how to handle either a bal-chatri or dho-gazza trap; how to take precise bearings; how to gut a rabbit or a squirrel; how to track mammals via signs and gait patterns; and how to obscure the evidence of my presence in an area if necessary. Still we both knew I couldn’t hold a candle to my sponsor. On the other hand, I liked to kid Toronto about growing a little rusty on the street. Problem was, these days that might have just depended on which side of the street you were considering. I thought again about what Tony Warnock had tried to suggest in his office.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  We went and found the streambed, the exact spot where Chester had died. The ATV tracks and other evidence of police presence, not to mention the darkened remnants of Carew’s blood, made the location impossible to miss. It was surrounded by a stand of oak and maple trees, their bare branches thick overhead.

  For the next hour and a half we canvassed the area together, marking out a range of fire—just to be sure—of almost two hundred yards. The woods were overgrown and gray in the midmorning. All was still except for the occasional chatter of a squirrel and the wind blowing gently through the treetops. We took our time, looking for any sign of the shooter’s presence.

  “This shooter was very good,” Toronto said after a while. “Seems like it would be tough terrain for just a hunter.”

  “What I was thinking too.”

  “Farraday said Chester was hit almost directly in the middle of the back. The killer has to be an experienced outdoorsman to have gotten the jump on Chester.”

  “Or a lucky shot.”

  “No luck involved. I’ve got a feeling what we
’re dealing with here may be a pro.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he or she has gone black, at least as far as this scene is concerned. The police didn’t find any trace and we won’t either.”

  “You’re just full of good news, aren’t you?”

  I was passing by the tentacles of a red spruce when I spotted something: a thin black piece of wire buried in the pine needles.

  “Check this out.”

  Toronto came over. “Looks like a tail transmitter.”

  “Elo’s?” I gently pulled it from beneath the needles. But it was attached to something. A thick bundle of several more transmitters, maybe three or four dozen in all, attached via an elastic band.

  “What the—?” Toronto said.

  “Somehow I don’t think all of these belonged to Elo. Spares?”

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “Why would anybody want so many transmitters?”

  “Good question.”

  “You could track a small army of birds with these.”

  We searched all around the spruce and the rest of the immediate vicinity but found nothing more.

  “What do you make of it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Chester only had three birds. Farraday’s been in here hunting and I have too on a couple of occasions, but I don’t know of any other falconers who could’ve left these here.”

  “I just remembered something … the pigeons at Higgins’s place.”

  “Right. He said he races them.”

  “They could be tracked with these too, couldn’t they?”

  “Yeah, I suppose they could.”

  “Why would he want to track his pigeons? And more importantly, why would he be tracking them way up here?”

  “Let’s get back over to the kill site. I want to check out something else,” he said.

  We threaded our way among the trees to the stream again.

  “I picked up on something different when we went through here earlier, but it didn’t make any sense to me.”

  “What’s that?”

  He knelt down by a section of mud about ten yards from where the body had lain and pointed to the ground.

  I followed his finger to a small curved trough in the mud.

  “Looks like part of a heel print,” I said.

  “I think it is.”

  “Not in very good shape. Not Chester’s boots. It’s different from the patterns on his heels I saw in tracks leading up to where the body was found.”

  “Very good.”

  “Must be from one of the cops.”

  “Maybe. But I checked out all the other patterns too. This is the only one that doesn’t repeat anywhere else.”

  “So?”

  “Look closer.”

  I examined the area around the print. Faint brush lines had smoothed what would have been the rest of the print into the surrounding gravel and mud.

  “It’s been tampered with—someone did their best to erase it, but the ground was too frozen where the heel is.”

  “You got it.”

  “Wouldn’t be a cop.”

  “Nope.”

  “The shooter then.”

  “Don’t think so. From the way Farraday described the wound and the scene, the shooter would have been on the other side of the stream.”

  “Somebody else was here then when Chester was shot?”

  “You betcha.”

  I thought it over. “I suppose it’s possible. You think the cops have considered this?”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Farraday didn’t say he saw anybody else though.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Raises some interesting questions.”

  “So we’ve got somebody else at the scene and a pile of bird-tail transmitters in the vicinity,” he said. “You see any signs of Elo while we were tramping around?”

  I shook my head.

  “Me either. Farraday said the cops took Chester’s receiver and yagi as evidence, but I took a spare telemetry unit he had from the barn. Left it in my bag in the truck. Not sure if it’ll work or not, but it might be worth a try.”

  As I turned back toward him I saw something unnatural glitter in the distance over his shoulder.

  “Jake,” I said, keeping my voice even.

  “Yeah?”

  “You catch that?”

  “Catch what?”

  “Someone’s glassing us.”

  “Right now?”

  “I think so.”

  The glitter came again, this time even more visible. I nodded.

  Toronto kept his voice the same as well and didn’t change his posture or make any suspicious gestures. “Scope?”

  “Can’t tell. Might be just binoculars.”

  “Well, given the spot where we happen to be standing, not sure if I’m up to playing Russian roulette over the difference.”

  “Me either.”

  “Got a bearing on the location?”

  “Dead on. They’re right below that water tower we passed on the way in.” The tall green structure was visible across the valley from even three-quarters of a mile away.

  “How about his line of sight?”

  “Approximate. I think if we step on over there around the tree we’ll be blocked off. Then we can circle back behind that stone formation and get into the truck without being seen.”

  “What are we waiting for then?” he asked.

  10

  I pretended to point to something at the base of the tree. Toronto played along and we both walked—we hoped—out of the line of sight of the potential shooter. Once behind the tree, we circled back to hop into the truck. I started the engine, jammed it into gear, and we spun a three-sixty in the dirt.

  “No way to camouflage the dust,” I said. “Whoever they are, they’re bound to be on the move by now.”

  “There’s an access road up to that tower I remember seeing on the way in.”

  “One way in or out. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Unless he goes overland to somewhere else … the way I’d do it.”

  “But you’re not an optimist.”

  His smile was the only answer.

  The Ford caromed around a curve. I punched the accelerator to climb a steep hill. Just over the rise on the right was the access road Toronto had spoken about, but the way was blocked by a closed gate, chained and padlocked. A sign indicated it was property of the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources.

  “So much for optimism,” Toronto said.

  “Either way we’ve got to get up there.”

  Toronto reached down into the knapsack he’d brought and came out with a set of bolt cutters. “Oh, by the way, since I’m about to destroy public property, I forgot to ask, your Eagle Eye Investigations liability insurance current?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Good.”

  Before I could say anything more he’d pushed open the door, jumped over to the chain, looked both ways up and down the highway and snapped the metal links. The chain fell away and the gate, released from the tension, swung partially open. Toronto pulled it wide enough for me to drive through. Then he hopped back into the cab.

  “You tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t listen,” he said.

  I floored it and we roared up the dirt road. At the top we came to the water tower, a hundred-foot mushroom with a thick chain-link fence surrounding it, razor wire on the top. But Toronto had been right. There was no other vehicle or even evidence to indicate one had been there recently. Weapons drawn, we took the time to check out the area below the tank where I was sure I’d seen the glass reflection for tracks or any other signs of the watcher’s presence, but there wasn’t even an unnatural broken twig or leaf out of place.

  “Like I said, Hoss. This bird’s gone black,” Toronto muttered to himself at one point. “And he ain’t no rookie.

  “You’re sure you saw glass?” he asked a few minutes later when we were finished.

  “Absolutely. You reme
mber back in the eighties in the Bronx when we had that serial rapist, used to watch all his victims through high-powered binoculars from a nearby rented room for a few days before each rape? Perp kept coming back to the same neighborhood and we set up a stakeout. I still remember spotting the glint off those glasses he was using when we finally nailed the guy. This looked like the same kind of thing.”

  “All right. What now?”

  If we’d both still been in law enforcement, we might’ve had a chance—assuming we’d called in aerial support from the moment of the spotting, roadblocks to seal all avenues in and out of the area, a massive land search. We might’ve still been reduced to breaking down state-owned chains on gates in order to try to chase down the suspect, but at least we would’ve had official sanction. As it was, we had nothing.

  “I don’t doubt whoever it was got the message that we’d seen them and knew they were watching us.”

  He scanned the sky and the terrain surrounding the top of the hillside. “If he’s that good, might even be keeping an eye on us still. Not from up here, of course, somewhere else.”

  “He wouldn’t be worried we’d find him?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, we aren’t doing much good standing up here looking like idiots.”

  We climbed back into the truck and headed down the hill toward the highway. Going down, I noticed, we had a nice view of the interstate and back toward the city in the distance.

  After a minute or so, Toronto said, “You let me up here later by myself. Just put me up against your glass guy. Guarantee you I’ll track him down.”

  With Toronto it was not an idle boast.

  “You’re assuming the person’s going to stick around. Maybe they won’t.”

  He shrugged.

  My tiny new cell phone bleated like a lamb. I kept one hand on the wheel and dug into my jacket pocket and fished it out.

  “Cute,” Toronto said. “Does it meow too?”

  I ignored him and pushed the answer key and said hello.

  “Dad?” I’d called the night before and left the new phone number for Nicole on the voice mail back at the office. She had left a message with Toronto that she’d arrived home safely.

  “Hey, precious, what’s up? How was the bike ride back to C-ville?”