Flightfall Read Free Page A

and hung on a pegboard. Hoods, bells, jesses, and leashes. Extra gloves, leatherworking scissors, punches, and imping kit with an array of neatly stored feathers, saved from the molt for use when needed. A smaller table below a cupboard housed his radio tracking transmitters and receiver. He stopped when he reached this table and laid his bag down. He pulled open the cupboard and sighed. One of the shelves inside was empty.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “My backup receiver is gone.”
    “You sure you didn’t take it out and leave it somewhere?”
    “I’m sure.” He looked at a piece of paper taped inside the cupboard door. “I haven’t inventoried this gear in a while. Last time was a month ago. It’s definitely gone.”
    “You think someone stole it?”
    “That’s what I’m thinking.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You think it has anything to do with the battery and Jazzy being shot?”
    “That would be the question, wouldn’t it?”
    As predicted, a storm system blew in as we were all getting ready for bed. Rain pounded against the roof of Toronto’s house trailer and the wind shook the windows. Nicole took the spare bedroom while I sacked out on the living room couch, about as far away from the beachfront condo Marcia and I had rented as I could be. Before turning out the light, Marsh and I talked on the phone for a few minutes.
    “So let me make sure I have this straight,” she said. “You and Nicky are up there in the mountains with Jake instead of you being here at the beach with me because of Jake’s peregrine falcon.”
    “Dead peregrine falcon,” I added.
    “I understand. And that’s awful. But can’t Jake and the authorities up there figure out what happened on their own?”
    “If it was just some random poacher or farmer, yes. But we think there may be more to it than that.”
    “How long will you be there?”
    “I’m not sure. It’s complicated,” I said.
    She said she understood before we ended the call, but I knew she wasn’t telling the truth. I’d have some repair work to do on my marriage if and when I finally made it to the beach.
    Maybe Nicole was right. Whoever shot Jazzman could have been half way to Canada by now, or anywhere in between, and here we were up in these midnight mountains chasing phantoms in the dark. Maybe Toronto and I were too eager to stick our noses in places they didn’t belong. Maybe we were itching for a fight.

4
     
    The next morning, Toronto, Nicole, and I piled into Toronto’s Jeep and drove into Leonardston, the Affalachia County seat. Toronto had already reported the falcon’s shooting to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Unfortunately, as Toronto had already told us, the game warden for the area was on an extended fishing trip to Alaska, and we had to make do with a promised they’d send someone else within a couple of days. The new county sheriff Webster Davies greeted us in the doorway to his office. A wiry, bespectacled man, whose pasty hair made him look more like an old preacher than a sheriff, he was a friend of Toronto.
    “Looks to me like there’s nothing either the game warden or my people can do that you and your buddies here haven’t thought of already.”
    “Maybe,” Toronto said. “But I’ve got a feeling this shooting was more than just a spur-of-the moment thing.”
    “This bird was an endangered species, you say?”
    “No. Peregrines used to be endangered. But they’re still protected under federal law.”
    We were standing beside the entrance to the jail wing of the county office building, a structure that didn’t looked to have changed much since the days of segregation. But the new law enforcement section next door made it look like someone had cobbled on a hardened, high tech command post to the older building. Its walls, bristled with antennas and satellite dishes for video uplink and high speed internet.
    “Too bad your bird wasn’t