A Witness Above Read Online Free PDF

offered, trying not to sound too eager.
    “Unlikely. No weapon. And I doubt if they'll find any residue on his hands either. Something else out there make you think so?”
    “No. Just speculating out loud, that's all.”
    I looked at my watch. Time for me to leave.
    I pushed opened the door and a saunalike heat washed over me. In that split second I saw Ferrier reach between the front seats to replace the bag containing the wallet. His hand drew my attention to another, as-yet-to-be-sealed bag, lying in the same spot, its open end facing me.
    It must have been the other object I had seen the deputy pick up near the body, something I had missed. They were in bloody pieces now and with such a brief glance I almost didn't recognize them. A pair of clear broken sunglass frames with metallic lenses that had popped off. Oakleys, the same style and color as the ones Nicole had been wearing on our hunt the month before.
    I stepped out and leaned against the door, looking back into the car.
    “We appreciate you showing us where to find the body and waiting around to answer our questions,” Ferrier said.
    “Only wish Armistead and I hadn't been the ones to find him.”
    “I know how you feel … Oh and Pavlicek, next time you go hunting with that bird of yours?”
    “Yeah?”
    He smiled. “Let's hope she finds smaller prey.”
     

3
     
    You begin to doubt yourself in front of lawyers. Men whose livelihood—often it seems, whose very existence—depends on every twist of word. Who could stand before the real bar of justice, if there were one in this sorry world? Not I. Not anyone I have ever known.
    “So you say. Detective Pavlicek, that it was dark?” The attorney with the Brooks Brothers’ suit rested his wing-tip on the dais beneath the stand.
    “That's correct.”
    The unarmed fourteen-year-old Toronto and I shot to death was named William Balazar. He had been a straight-A student at New Rochelle High School. His grieving parents hired New York's most flamboyant, telegenic lawyer to torture us with what would be a protracted lawsuit for wrongful death.
    “But not dark enough that you could not see what you thought was a gun?” the attorney continued. He looked perfectly comfortable in this environment, his eyes clear and unyielding behind his tortoise-shell glasses, his demeanor respectful but probing, immaculate in his colorful tie.
    “Yes.”
    “And could you not also discern, in that light, that the figure standing a mere twenty yards away was an African-American?”
    “Yes.”
    He paused for a few seconds, as if to let the impact of this supposedly grand revelation sink in.
    Cahill had never dropped the throw-down, of course. My career and Jake's were effectively over, despite the fact that Officer Singer was dead and a police review board, as well as the D.A.'s office, had cleared us of any criminal wrongdoing. With tensions boiling everywhere at the time, the last thing the NYPD needed was a couple of detectives branded as trigger-happy racists. It didn't help matters any that even with a sterling solve rate, Jake and I had managed to develop something of a checkered reputation within the department.
    Even Toronto's mixed heritage couldn't save us—at various times he had described himself as part mulatto, part Indian, and he didn't care, he said, to find out what else. The city's leading minority activist stated publicly we both looked white to him.
    “So I ask you now. Detective Pavlicek, to tell the court—I am sure you and Detective Toronto have searched your souls on this—would you have made the same decision? Would you have still pulled the trigger if William Balazar had been white … ?”
    Agent Ferrier chuckled as I nodded and closed the door. I turned and began walking in the direction of my truck. A dreamy heat rose through the fumes from the line of assembled vehicles. The medical examiner was gone, already headed with his entourage toward the site. Cat's uncle, the farm owner, showed up as