Flightfall Read Free

laces of one of my own boots. Not Frye, army-navy generic. My prints would be larger than the shooter’s, deeper too.
    “I found another partial track about fifty feet into the woods.” He pointed along the ridge.
    “Okay,” I said. “Why don’t we see if we can reverse it? If the shooter used an automatic, maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble upon some brass.”
    Toronto, Nicole, and I made our way out of the light through the brush to the second footprint, also marked with a circle of flags. We began a sweep, walking in parallel about three paces apart. I swept my Coleman lantern back and forth in front of me to offer the broadest light.
    We had gone about twenty paces when Toronto said, “Got something.”
    I crossed the beam of his light. He was examining another partial print, this one a heel, and a broken sapling.
    I caught a glint of something metallic in the corner of my eye. “Hold it. I’ve got something, too. Shine your light with mine over here.” I bent down to examine the shiny object as Toronto and Nicole stepped up beside me.
    “It’s a battery,” Nicole said.
    “The girl’s a natural-born sleuth,” Toronto said.
    She punched him playfully in the arm.
    “Double A. Looks pretty fresh.” I said. “So our perp or perps must have dropped their GPS or whatever. Maybe in too much of a hurry to split.”
    “Maybe left us some nice fingerprints, too.” Toronto pulled something from his jacket pocket, reached down, and deftly picked up the object with a pair of tweezers, depositing it in a clean paper bag. But before closing the bag, he shone his flashlight on the battery and peered in at it more closely.
    “Something about the battery bothering you?” I asked.
    “I don’t know.” He closed and sealed the bag before turning to look at us . “You know, usually if a falconry bird ever gets killed, they’re attacked by an eagle or an owl or some other bigger raptor.”
    “Right.”
    “Or even stupid, like flying into a transformer, or some farmer or kid takes a pot shot and brings the bird down.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying losing Jazzy . . . this feels different somehow.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “J-man was wearing a tail transmitter. I was tracking him, but the bullet damaged the unit he was wearing, and I lost the signal. I heard the shot. I was about a half a mile away. Then it took me quite a while to find the body . . .”
    “So what does that have to do with the battery?”
    “The battery in this bag is the same kind I use in my receiver—even the same brand.”
    “But there must be millions of that brand of battery sold.” Nicole said.
    “You think someone else was tracking your bird?” I asked.
    “I’m thinking batteries don’t grow in the forest,” he said. “That’s all.”

3
     
    We continued searching in the dark for a couple more hours, but found nothing else of value.
    By midnight, we were nursing cups of coffee around the kitchen table in Jake’s doublewide, a topographical map of the mountain shoved to one side.
    “You know what,” Toronto said, as if he’d just remembered something important, “I need to get my stuff out of the jeep and go check out my equipment in the barn.”
    “I’ll go with you,” I said.
    While Nicole cleaned up in the kitchen, Toronto and I hauled the lights and all the forensic material gathered from the Jeep into the barn. Toronto’s barn dwarfed his house. There were three indoor/outdoor mews for his falconry birds, and a large, open floor for storing his tractor and other farm equipment. Another section housed an area for work and forensics gear, and behind an alarmed security fence was a locked doorway that led to his security and surveillance gear and weapons cache. After we’d finished stowing the crime scene evidence, Toronto turned with his falconry bag over his shoulder and headed straight for the anteroom to the mews.
    His falconry furniture was well organized, neatly laid out on a broad worktable