A Killing Sky (22 page)

“What'd you do then?”

He shrugged. “He says take care of it, so I took care of it. I got rid of the body. I phoned the Paitleys and told them we'd paid the girl off and put her on a plane back to South America. Asked them to take the baby boy and have him put up for adoption.”

“You mean Penn Hersch.”

“Right. That's what his name is now.”

“Then what happened?”

“The Paitleys started asking a bunch of questions.”

“So?”

“So I phoned some guys I knew, and it was over.”

I stared into his eyes. They were colder now. “These guys—that was the garbage truck that killed the Paitleys?”

“I suppose. I never found out until later.”

“Your boss know about any of this?”

“He never knew the details. He didn't need to. I was just doin’ my job, fellas. I swear.”

“Is that right?” I looked at Toronto.

“Sure,” Toronto said. “Just doing his job.”

“But now Penn Hersch shows up and brings Cartwright Drummond into the equation and everything's hit the fan. That about sum it up?”

“Right,” Dworkin snickered. “That about sums it up.”

I thought it over out loud. “So Tor Drummond kills Penn Hersch's mother and you have the Paitleys killed. And Penn somehow comes up with that old article—”

“Yeah. The kid's nuts. The congressman even got a bunch of weird notes about the kidnapping. I'll bet now they were from Hersch.”

“Wait a minute, you mean he got more than the letter with the photo of Cartwright?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do with them?”

“We gave ‘em all to the FBI.”

“What do you mean the notes were weird?”

“I don't know. Crazy shit. Drawings of birds and crosses and stuff.”

“Birds… you mean like eagles?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Kid must've been trying to send some kind of message. Like he was taunting us.”

It was quiet in the tunnel for a few seconds.
These kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.

I reached over and grabbed Toronto's arm.

“What?” he said.

“We've got to go.”

“What do you mean?” Toronto asked.

“Wait a minute,” Dworkin said.

“Jake, we've got to move now. I'll explain on the way.”

“What about him?” He pointed down at Dworkin.

“Leave him. We'll tell Ferrier where to come pick him up.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You guys can't leave me here in the dark!” Dworkin bellowed.

Toronto was right behind me as I scrambled out of the tunnel with the light.

“Don't leave me here, fellas! Don't leave me. Please!”

Ferrier would have to edit the screams from the tape.

You could still hear Tor Drummond's voice echoing down the mall across Water Street as Toronto and I ran through the front door of my office building. Juanita Estavez manned her station behind the receptionist desk. She looked up at us with an expression of concern.

“What's wrong, Señores?”

“Juanita.” I slapped the photo of Penn Hersch with Averil Joseph on the desk in front of her. “Do you recognize the young man in this picture?”

She squinted at the picture and began to shake her head. But then she stopped. “Oh, sí. This is the young man who dropped that envelope off for you a couple days ago. I remember because of the way his hair looked.”

“You're certain?”

“Uh-huh.”

The note that had said,
Flight canceled,
with a drawing of an eagle. Tor Drummond was giving a speech to what he called his Eagie Council.

“Thanks very much, Juanita.”

We raced out the door. I punched Ferrier's number on the cell.

“I was right,” I said as soon as he answered. “I really think he's going for it, Bill. You better get all hands on deck at the east end of the mall!”

We ran between the buildings and onto the brick pedestrian Main Street. The ankle I'd injured a couple of days before began to throb, and my head spun from the lingering effects of the barbiturate, but I barely noticed. A cop in uniform was standing at the next corner, his radio blaring. I grabbed him and explained quickly, and he ran with us, yelling into his mike.

Half a block away now. Drummond seemed to be winding down his speech. You could see the mass of people clearly applauding, fathers with kids on their shoulders, waving signs.

We reached the edge of the crowd. Behind Drummond and to his left were Marcia and Nicole and Cassidy Drummond, with Mr. Earl still standing guard. Someone had found them all chairs. We ran to the side, where we could get a better view into the bowl.

“If he's here, kid's probably locked and loaded,” Toronto said. “He starts shooting, we could have a whole bunch of dead people on our hands.”

The spectators roared their approval at something.

“Why don't they pull Drummond off the stage?” I yelled to the cop.

He shrugged and shook his head. He was screaming into his radio. I could see movement near the podium now, a few more cops.

“There!” Toronto said suddenly, pointing at the front corner of the amphitheater to our right. I couldn't see him at first, but then I caught a glimpse of Hersch's face and the back of his head, edging through the mass of clapping and smiling people only a few feet from the stage. He was less than twenty yards from us, but there were dozens of standing bodies packed in between, many straining on tiptoe to get a better view.

“Jake, call Mr. Earl on the cell phone. Tell him to get Drummond off that stage. Now!”

Toronto whipped out his phone and punched a button.

The cop and I dove into the crowd. Someone yelled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Earl rise from the back of the stage, looking at us in surprise, his cell phone pressed to his ear.

We were pushing people away. Suddenly, a siren whooped close by on the street. Everyone else glanced over at the source of the sound, including Tor Drummond, who paused from his closing flourish. Mr. Earl made a lunge toward the podium. But we were all too late.

I remember Penn Hersch, pulling the semiautomatic pistol from beneath his shirt and pointing it at the podium. Screams and shouts. The
pop-pop-pop-pop
as he pulled the trigger. Tor Drummond, recoiling backward from the force of the first bullets striking him in the chest, a look of utter astonishment on his face. The smell of terror. Weapons drawn. Bodies falling, tumbling, scrambling to flee. Others tackling Hersch to the ground.

I groped toward the stage. I remember seeing Marcia and Nicole and Cassidy, along with a group of the congressman's staff in hysterics, racing to bend over Drummond. A doctor, his shirt soaked with blood, futilely attempting to administer CPR. Media photographers still snapping pictures. And high above the teeming, wailing chaos, nothing but a single white balloon, lost by a tearful child, no doubt, sailing upward into an endless blue.

No one knows where all the bodies are buried. Maybe none of us really wants to know. If we do, it's only because we want to try to discover what may have been lost, all we might have gained.

Marcia and I stood with Nicole next to Karen, Cassidy, and Cartwright Drummond at the grave in the afternoon sun. The ground seemed to shake as the squad of marines in parade dress thundered off their rifle salute, filling the air with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. We waited while the smoke drifted away. The marine sergeant barked an order, and the flag was removed from the coffin, folded in triangles and presented to Karen Drummond and her daughters. When the last words had been said, the three Drummonds took turns laying roses on the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. The twins wore matching pantsuits, despite the gathering spring heat—Cartwright's visible bruises still had a lot of healing to do. As for the invisible ones, who was to say?

Leaving the ceremony, Marcia, Nicole, and I hooked back up with Toronto, Mr. Earl, Ferrier, and Upwood, who'd been standing back among the throng of mourners. I even noticed Diane Lemminger, wearing dark glasses but obviously feeling somewhat better now, climbing a little shakily into the passenger seat of her Corvette with the aid of a greaseball who had to be her producer.

I wasted the next couple of days in my office, attending to paperwork and returning all the phone calls I'd recently neglected. The inquiries from reporters were relentless, but I finally made a deal with Juanita and had my calls forwarded temporarily to the front desk, where she could intercept them like a tackle in pass protect, stacking messages for me in a neat pile.

Late on the third afternoon, just when I was getting ready to leave for the day, Bill Ferrier darkened my doorstep.

“Hey,” I said. “Now that you're halfway famous, maybe you could petition the governor for a few thousand lottery tickets.”

He chuckled. “You're the famous one, bud. I'm just a humble public servant.” He plopped down on my sofa and set a couple ice-cold bottles of beer on my table, flipping the cap off each with an opener attached to a knife he had taken from his pocket.

I got up and went across to the chair next to him. He handed me a bottle and I sat down.

“I heard Toronto's gone back home,” he said.

“Yup. Disappeared back over into his mountains like he usually does. Missed his place and his birds.”

He nodded.

“Is Abercrombie still trying to take credit for something?” I asked.

“That's why I had to get out of there.” He took a sip from his bottle. “My butt's getting sore from all his attempts to kiss it.”

I smiled. “Cost of serving the public, I guess. How do you think the case against Drummond's chief of staff will go?”

“No idea. The magistrate refused bail. There'll be a hearing tomorrow. It's in the hands of the Commonwealth's Attorney now. But I've got a feeling Mr. Working's going to be spending a long time staring at steel bars.”

“And Cartwright Drummond?”

He shrugged. “I understand they're reviewing potential charges. Looks to me like the kid just got carried away. According to her, the hoax was only supposed to last a day or so. She wanted to force her father into a public confession. She didn't know the whole story about the Paitleys or Hersch's real mother until it was too late. That was when Hersch beat her and took her out to the reservoir.”

We finished our beers in silence.

Ferrier hoisted himself up from the couch, and when he did, he stood eye to eye with Fauntleroy. He pointed at the stuffed bird. “What kind of owl is that again?”

“European eagle owl,” I said. “Largest species on the planet.”

“Thing's got the biggest pair of eyes I ever seen.”

“For hunting in the dark.”

“You ever gone hunting with a bird like that?” he asked.

“An owl? Nope. Not very popular with falconers, unless you like to do most of your hunting at night.”

He scratched the shadow of a beard on his face. “You know, when you put it that way, Pavlicek,” he said, nodding at Fauntleroy, “that sounds like the perfect kind of partner for you.”

* * *

An hour later I climbed to a rocky outcrop up on Buck Mountain with Armistead on my fist and Marcia on my heels. The sun was beginning to drop over the Blue Ridge, a fiery streak of ruby.

“You sure you want me along for this, Frank?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What about Nicky?”

“She said she couldn't take it. Just to go do it.”

“It'll be dark in a little while.”

“I know. And this little lady's hungry. She's going to be one serious hunter.”

“Yarak?” she said.

I nodded.

“What if she can't catch anything before the sun sets?”

“Then I'll feed her and take her home and we'll try again tomorrow.”

“But if she does catch her own food, you're going to let her go for good?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why now?”

I thought for a few seconds before responding.

“Because it's time,” I said. “She's ready. I'm ready for another bird, and it'll soon be the time of year for Armistead to hook up with a mate.”

“No sadness at letting her go?”

“There's sadness, yes… but I always knew I wouldn't get to keep her forever.”

The sky had turned to mauve, and a fat white moon stood just above the eastern horizon. In the shadow of the hills, darkness was rapidly gathering.

I touched Armistead's crown for just a second, a gesture she had only lately been allowing me to do.

“Good-bye, girl.”

I let her slip her jesses, for maybe the last time. The big redtail rose with a mighty beat of her wings to a branch partway up a nearby maple. We had only been kicking through the bush for a couple of minutes when a big brown cottontail jumped out of a nearby thicket and made a dash into the woods.

The stoop was as perfect as I have ever seen. All the mature hawk's hunting skills were on display now. She deftly banked left and right between the trees and, with a wingover at the end, took the prey off a dead run. I hadn't quite wanted it to end this way, such a quick tail chase before success, but what it lacked in duration it made up for in beauty in seeing the creature work at the height of her prowess.

“Wow!” Marcia said. “That was quick.”

I made into the hawk over her kill and casually bent down and snipped off her anklets with a pair of scissors.

Normally, I called her off her prize to secure the quarry. But this time I stood back.

“It was time. I told you she was ready.”

Marcia squeezed my arm. “What now?”

“We'll back off down the slope and leave her to her dinner.”

We began to step cautiously back down the trail.

“Won't she be wondering what happened to you?” Marcia asked.

“Maybe, but not for long.”

“Will you ever see her again?”

“It's possible. Redtails are pretty territorial. I picked these woods because I've noticed a wild tiercel out here twice in the past couple of weeks. If they mate, most likely they'll build a nest nearby.”

“I'm glad this thing with the Drummonds is over,” she said, hooking her arm in mine.

“Me too.”

“I almost lost you.”

I nodded.

“You think the twins will ever be able to recover from all the trauma?”

“I suppose, in time. They've got a strong mother. And some strong friends.”

“I think through all this Cassidy is reaching out for a stronger faith.”

“Faith is good,” I said.

We'd gotten to the spot where the trail dropped steeply down the hill again. Turning back to look in the gathering shadows, I could barely distinguish the shape of the naturally camouflaged hawk on the forest floor. We watched for a few more seconds. A light breeze stirred the trees around us. Marcia took my hand in hers and we turned to head back down the slope.

“Keee-er, Keee-er
—”

I searched out the source of the sound. “It's the male,” I said, pointing to the brown form soaring through the dusk overhead. “Mr. Tiercel doesn't sound too happy about our sweetie pie invading his hillside.”

“He looks smaller than Armistead,” she said.

“He is. Males are about a third smaller than the females. That's why they're called
tiercels,
French for ‘one-third.’ Fact is, although he's quicker, Armistead can eat this boy's lunch anytime she wants, and there's not a whole lot he can do about it. If he decides to court her, he'll approach her gingerly and bow, maybe even do a little sky dance for her.”

“Exactly the way it ought to be,” she said.

The hawk above suddenly dropped into a steep descent, then, about halfway through its dive, swirled around into an acrobatic loop-the-loop.

Marcia laughed. “What do you make of that?”

“I do believe our man's changed his tune and decided to show off his stuff for the lady.”

“What a way to begin a relationship,” she said.

But their dance had only just begun when, as if they'd been figments of our imagination, the two hawks vanished over the ridge.